Security Cleared Contract Job Trends

Security Clearance
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Security Cleared qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 10 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,798 5,971 6,911
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.65% 18.10% 18.05%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.69% 57.85% 61.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,251 3,835 4,492
10th Percentile £390 £350 £350
25th Percentile £458 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.93% -2.73% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £721 £700 £732
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £538 £550
% change year-on-year - -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 815 580 417
10th Percentile £19.50 £18.51 £20.07
25th Percentile £30.94 £18.87 £27.00
Median hourly rate £64.09 £25.15 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +154.83% -58.08% -
75th Percentile £78.60 £37.50 £71.75
90th Percentile £89.90 £71.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +158.45% -58.08% +4.35%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK

Security Cleared falls under the Academic Qualifications and Professional Certifications category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 17,176 10,322 11,238
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.52% 31.29% 29.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,481 6,406 6,958
10th Percentile £350 £300 £313
25th Percentile £438 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £626 £625 £638
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,308 824 674
10th Percentile £17.18 £17.97 £16.90
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £24.18
Median hourly rate £47.54 £25.15 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +89.03% -49.70% -9.09%
75th Percentile £72.54 £48.13 £67.69
90th Percentile £87.96 £71.39 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £53.00
% change year-on-year +88.87% -52.55% +2.14%

Security Cleared
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Security Cleared relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Security Cleared job vacancy trend in the UK

Security Cleared
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Security Cleared.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Security Cleared

Security Cleared
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Security Cleared over the 6 months to 10 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Security Cleared.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Security Cleared

Security Cleared
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Security Cleared over the 6 months to 10 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Top 17 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Security Cleared within the UK over the 6 months to 10 September 2026. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England +2 10,187 £548 +1.95% 2,636
UK excluding London +1 6,637 £538 - 1,977
London +7 3,605 £550 +3.77% 897
Work from Home +2 3,120 £525 -2.33% 1,451
South East +1 2,331 £565 +5.12% 618
South West 0 1,418 £550 - 454
North of England +3 1,271 £518 +3.60% 323
Midlands 0 925 £475 -7.77% 197
West Midlands +1 786 £475 -7.77% 131
North West +2 750 £530 - 181
East of England 0 369 £550 - 241
Yorkshire +3 302 £500 +2.15% 64
Scotland +13 299 £481 -0.62% 128
North East 0 240 £475 -2.56% 83
East Midlands 0 131 £450 -5.26% 66
Wales +4 108 £550 +10.00% 34
Northern Ireland +5 36 £650 +8.33% 32

Security Cleared
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 401 (3.40%) Confluence
2 272 (2.31%) SharePoint
3 173 (1.47%) SAS
4 128 (1.08%) Microsoft Exchange
5 108 (0.92%) Apache
6 103 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
6 103 (0.87%) Apache Spark
7 39 (0.33%) Jupyter
8 35 (0.30%) nginx
9 33 (0.28%) WebLogic
10 27 (0.23%) IIS
11 23 (0.19%) Oracle Application Server
12 22 (0.19%) Skype for Business
12 22 (0.19%) Tomcat
13 19 (0.16%) CMS
14 17 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
15 16 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
16 14 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 12 (0.10%) JBoss
17 12 (0.10%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 211 (1.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 167 (1.42%) Microsoft Office
3 110 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
4 101 (0.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 42 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 23 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
7 18 (0.15%) AutoCAD
8 17 (0.14%) Revit
9 16 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
10 15 (0.13%) Simulink
11 8 (0.068%) Adobe XD
11 8 (0.068%) Chatbot
11 8 (0.068%) Windchill
12 7 (0.059%) Notepad++
12 7 (0.059%) Sketch
13 6 (0.051%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 4 (0.034%) Trello
15 3 (0.025%) OrCAD
16 2 (0.017%) Houdini
16 2 (0.017%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 149 (1.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 82 (0.70%) Remedy ITSM
3 51 (0.43%) Oracle ERP
4 43 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
5 34 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 30 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 28 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
8 25 (0.21%) Oracle Payroll
8 25 (0.21%) SAP GRC
9 24 (0.20%) SAP PSCD
10 19 (0.16%) Primavera
11 18 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
12 17 (0.14%) SAP FI
13 16 (0.14%) SAP HR
14 13 (0.11%) Findur
15 12 (0.10%) iTrent
15 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
16 11 (0.093%) NetSuite
16 11 (0.093%) Remedy AR System
17 10 (0.085%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 2,166 (18.36%) Azure
2 2,101 (17.81%) AWS
3 543 (4.60%) GitHub
4 526 (4.46%) Azure DevOps
5 482 (4.09%) Power Platform
6 453 (3.84%) GCP
7 353 (2.99%) GitHub Actions
8 327 (2.77%) Microsoft 365
9 306 (2.59%) Entra ID
10 287 (2.43%) Serverless
11 243 (2.06%) Amazon S3
12 210 (1.78%) AWS Lambda
13 178 (1.51%) SaaS
14 174 (1.47%) OCI
15 172 (1.46%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 164 (1.39%) Amazon EKS
17 149 (1.26%) Amazon EC2
18 137 (1.16%) OpenShift
19 130 (1.10%) AWS CloudFormation
20 119 (1.01%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 471 (3.99%) Firewall
2 381 (3.23%) DNS
3 234 (1.98%) Network Security
4 221 (1.87%) WAN
5 210 (1.78%) VPN
6 187 (1.59%) DHCP
7 169 (1.43%) LAN
8 137 (1.16%) TCP/IP
9 131 (1.11%) BGP
10 120 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
11 106 (0.90%) VLAN
12 92 (0.78%) OSPF
12 92 (0.78%) Wireless
13 75 (0.64%) SSL
14 66 (0.56%) IPsec
14 66 (0.56%) MPLS
14 66 (0.56%) VSAN
15 64 (0.54%) SAN
16 58 (0.49%) SD-WAN
17 50 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 349 (2.96%) Power BI
2 314 (2.66%) PostgreSQL
3 295 (2.50%) SQL Server
4 271 (2.30%) Data Warehouse
5 195 (1.65%) Metadata
6 184 (1.56%) Oracle Database
7 151 (1.28%) Relational Database
8 148 (1.25%) Data Lake
9 133 (1.13%) MongoDB
10 113 (0.96%) Amazon RDS
11 108 (0.92%) MySQL
12 99 (0.84%) NoSQL
13 94 (0.80%) Oracle Reports
14 74 (0.63%) Pentaho
15 69 (0.58%) Amazon Athena
16 67 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
17 58 (0.49%) Tableau
18 56 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
19 55 (0.47%) Big Data
20 49 (0.42%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 660 (5.59%) JIRA
2 579 (4.91%) Git
3 518 (4.39%) GitLab
4 480 (4.07%) Jenkins
5 151 (1.28%) Selenium
6 84 (0.71%) Postman
7 79 (0.67%) SonarQube
8 77 (0.65%) JUnit
9 74 (0.63%) JMeter
10 72 (0.61%) Maven
11 60 (0.51%) Cucumber
12 53 (0.45%) Cypress.io
13 49 (0.42%) Gradle
14 46 (0.39%) Mockito
15 43 (0.36%) REST Assured
16 42 (0.36%) Gatling
17 38 (0.32%) Visual Studio
17 38 (0.32%) Zephyr
18 37 (0.31%) Artifactory
19 34 (0.29%) Bitbucket
General
1 2,622 (22.22%) Social Skills
2 2,426 (20.56%) Public Sector
3 947 (8.03%) Analytical Skills
4 768 (6.51%) Finance
5 410 (3.48%) Military
6 311 (2.64%) Aerospace
7 309 (2.62%) Documentation Skills
8 212 (1.80%) Influencing Skills
9 185 (1.57%) Organisational Skills
10 172 (1.46%) Legal
11 166 (1.41%) Telecoms
12 157 (1.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 150 (1.27%) Banking
14 128 (1.08%) Manufacturing
15 121 (1.03%) Law
16 117 (0.99%) Police
17 65 (0.55%) Presentation Skills
18 48 (0.41%) Local Government
19 46 (0.39%) Marketing
19 46 (0.39%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,898 (16.09%) Architect
2 1,232 (10.44%) Developer
3 1,126 (9.54%) Senior
4 1,062 (9.00%) Lead
5 701 (5.94%) Consultant
6 646 (5.48%) Analyst
7 508 (4.31%) DevOps Engineer
8 503 (4.26%) Data Engineer
9 423 (3.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 369 (3.13%) Technical Architect
11 363 (3.08%) Solutions Architect
12 291 (2.47%) Data Architect
13 287 (2.43%) Software Engineer
14 273 (2.31%) Security Architect
15 256 (2.17%) Network Engineer
16 220 (1.86%) Administrator
17 216 (1.83%) Java Developer
18 211 (1.79%) Azure Engineer
19 205 (1.74%) Delivery Manager
20 202 (1.71%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 998 (8.46%) Terraform
2 452 (3.83%) REST
3 257 (2.18%) Spring
4 251 (2.13%) Kafka
5 235 (1.99%) Spring Boot
6 220 (1.86%) RESTful
7 219 (1.86%) .NET
8 202 (1.71%) React
9 177 (1.50%) Node.js
10 173 (1.47%) SOAP
11 168 (1.42%) JSON
12 132 (1.12%) HTML
13 131 (1.11%) OAuth
14 129 (1.09%) XML
15 121 (1.03%) AngularJS
16 118 (1.00%) Middleware
16 118 (1.00%) Web Services
17 104 (0.88%) Oracle Fusion
18 101 (0.86%) CSS
18 101 (0.86%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 525 (4.45%) Cloud Native
2 442 (3.75%) Onboarding
3 362 (3.07%) Product Ownership
4 311 (2.64%) Data Centre
5 264 (2.24%) Management Information System
6 192 (1.63%) Legacy Systems
7 177 (1.50%) PKI
8 175 (1.48%) Enterprise Software
9 160 (1.36%) CMDB
10 150 (1.27%) Distributed Systems
11 129 (1.09%) Replication
12 124 (1.05%) Hybrid Cloud
13 120 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
14 111 (0.94%) Cyber Threat
15 102 (0.86%) Data Structures
16 97 (0.82%) Operational Technology
17 94 (0.80%) Security Operations Centre
18 93 (0.79%) Public Cloud
19 92 (0.78%) Clustering
20 88 (0.75%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 1,005 (8.52%) Windows
2 804 (6.81%) Linux
3 377 (3.20%) Windows Server
4 233 (1.97%) Unix
5 154 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 145 (1.23%) Windows 10
7 77 (0.65%) Android
8 69 (0.58%) Solaris
9 48 (0.41%) Mac OS
10 44 (0.37%) Apple iOS
11 41 (0.35%) CentOS
12 40 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
13 37 (0.31%) Ubuntu
14 33 (0.28%) AIX
15 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 24 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
17 23 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
18 21 (0.18%) VMS
19 16 (0.14%) Rocky
20 14 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,507 (21.25%) Agile
2 1,813 (15.37%) DevOps
3 1,776 (15.05%) CI/CD
4 1,567 (13.28%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,416 (12.00%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,257 (10.65%) Problem-Solving
7 1,173 (9.94%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,009 (8.55%) Infrastructure as Code
9 942 (7.98%) Migration
10 848 (7.19%) Cybersecurity
11 805 (6.82%) ITIL
12 787 (6.67%) Test Automation
13 745 (6.31%) Containerisation
14 722 (6.12%) Analytics
14 722 (6.12%) Technical Leadership
15 706 (5.98%) Decision-Making
16 704 (5.97%) Roadmaps
17 703 (5.96%) AI
18 683 (5.79%) Software Engineering
19 655 (5.55%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,378 (11.68%) Python
2 1,123 (9.52%) SQL
3 802 (6.80%) Java
4 600 (5.09%) PowerShell
5 404 (3.42%) JavaScript
6 346 (2.93%) Bash
7 239 (2.03%) C#
8 217 (1.84%) TypeScript
9 166 (1.41%) PL/SQL
10 124 (1.05%) Bicep
11 81 (0.69%) Shell Script
12 65 (0.55%) C++
13 59 (0.50%) C
14 54 (0.46%) Go
15 53 (0.45%) Scala
16 51 (0.43%) Apex Code
17 47 (0.40%) Groovy
17 47 (0.40%) Kotlin
18 43 (0.36%) Ruby
19 41 (0.35%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,985 (76.16%) SC Cleared
2 2,235 (18.94%) DV Cleared
3 473 (4.01%) BPSS Clearance
4 465 (3.94%) Degree
5 224 (1.90%) CISSP
6 186 (1.58%) Cisco Certification
7 177 (1.50%) Azure Certification
8 170 (1.44%) Microsoft Certification
9 144 (1.22%) AWS Certification
9 144 (1.22%) CISM
10 108 (0.92%) PMI Certification
11 104 (0.88%) PMP
12 94 (0.80%) ISTQB
13 84 (0.71%) CCNP
14 72 (0.61%) Computer Science Degree
15 70 (0.59%) CCNA
16 63 (0.53%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 51 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 46 (0.39%) ITIL Certification
18 46 (0.39%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 540 (4.58%) QA
2 391 (3.31%) Data Quality
3 331 (2.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 321 (2.72%) NIST
5 284 (2.41%) NCSC
6 267 (2.26%) Accessibility
7 227 (1.92%) PMO
8 180 (1.53%) GDPR
9 176 (1.49%) SLA
10 156 (1.32%) GRC
11 86 (0.73%) WCAG
12 64 (0.54%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
14 46 (0.39%) NIST 800
15 36 (0.31%) Def Stans
16 29 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 26 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 25 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
19 22 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 22 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 819 (6.94%) Docker
2 622 (5.27%) Active Directory
3 438 (3.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 147 (1.25%) VMware NSX
5 146 (1.24%) VMware ESXi
6 140 (1.19%) Hyper-V
7 130 (1.10%) vSphere
8 91 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
9 46 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
10 43 (0.36%) Firmware
11 40 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
12 27 (0.23%) vCloud
13 25 (0.21%) BitLocker
14 20 (0.17%) NFS
15 14 (0.12%) Squid
16 13 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
17 11 (0.093%) Postfix
18 10 (0.085%) Citrix Hypervisor
19 9 (0.076%) KVM
20 8 (0.068%) UAG
Systems Management
1 996 (8.44%) Kubernetes
2 452 (3.83%) Ansible
3 256 (2.17%) Grafana
4 205 (1.74%) Prometheus
5 139 (1.18%) vCenter Server
6 138 (1.17%) SCCM
7 95 (0.81%) SCOM
8 92 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
9 67 (0.57%) Argo
10 65 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
11 51 (0.43%) Oracle RMAN
12 48 (0.41%) Puppet
13 41 (0.35%) Data Guard
14 32 (0.27%) Kibana
15 31 (0.26%) Istio
16 29 (0.25%) Control-M
16 29 (0.25%) NetBackup
16 29 (0.25%) Progress Chef
17 27 (0.23%) Nagios
17 27 (0.23%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,534 (13.00%) Microsoft
2 955 (8.09%) Oracle
3 614 (5.20%) VMware
4 551 (4.67%) ServiceNow
5 447 (3.79%) SAP
6 302 (2.56%) Cisco
7 246 (2.09%) Google
8 222 (1.88%) Splunk
9 214 (1.81%) Databricks
10 182 (1.54%) Salesforce
11 148 (1.25%) Red Hat
12 130 (1.10%) Palo Alto
13 117 (0.99%) Informatica
14 111 (0.94%) IBM
15 109 (0.92%) Talend
16 100 (0.85%) Dynatrace
17 93 (0.79%) CyberArk
17 93 (0.79%) Remedy
18 83 (0.70%) SolarWinds
19 80 (0.68%) F5