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 22 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,462 5,234 8,081
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.57% 17.76% 18.61%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.97% 57.80% 60.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,154 3,503 5,269
10th Percentile £364 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £699 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £519 £548 £550
% change year-on-year -5.38% -0.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 847 281 518
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £13.95
25th Percentile £21.40 £23.00 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £52.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -4.55% -10.57%
75th Percentile £73.23 £67.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.25 £78.70 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £58.04 £55.80
% change year-on-year -5.24% +4.01% -3.18%

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 15,170 9,055 13,366
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.72% 30.73% 30.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,096 5,746 8,247
10th Percentile £345 £295 £300
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £709 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £510 £530
% change year-on-year -1.96% -3.77% +0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,105 506 1,053
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.29 £13.85
25th Percentile £21.25 £22.50 £17.80
Median hourly rate £45.46 £42.75 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.34% +6.88% -25.93%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.94 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.15 £81.01 £75.24
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £46.90 £40.00
% change year-on-year -3.07% +17.25% -20.00%

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 22 April 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 22 April 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 22 April 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 9,066 £525 -2.33% 1,876
UK excluding London +1 5,786 £519 -5.38% 1,540
London +6 3,194 £525 - 488
Work from Home +3 2,781 £525 - 831
South East +1 2,153 £531 -3.44% 484
South West 0 1,327 £538 -3.62% 349
Midlands +4 871 £483 -8.00% 182
North of England -1 857 £488 -2.50% 293
West Midlands +4 730 £485 -9.68% 127
North West -1 528 £500 - 157
East of England +2 374 £500 +11.11% 168
Yorkshire -4 205 £488 -7.14% 65
Scotland +34 201 £500 +5.26% 38
North East +1 159 £450 -6.25% 73
East Midlands -2 137 £450 -7.69% 55
Wales +3 74 £520 -4.57% 34
Northern Ireland +7 21 £475 - 21

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
1 394 (3.77%) Confluence
2 223 (2.13%) SharePoint
3 147 (1.41%) Microsoft Exchange
4 124 (1.19%) SAS
5 112 (1.07%) Apache Spark
6 87 (0.83%) Apache
7 72 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
8 50 (0.48%) nginx
9 40 (0.38%) WebLogic
10 24 (0.23%) Jupyter
11 17 (0.16%) CMS
11 17 (0.16%) Tomcat
12 15 (0.14%) IIS
12 15 (0.14%) Skype for Business
12 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
13 14 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
14 11 (0.11%) ArcGIS
14 11 (0.11%) NetWeaver
14 11 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
15 10 (0.096%) Oracle Application Server
Applications
1 229 (2.19%) Microsoft Office
2 194 (1.85%) Microsoft Excel
3 124 (1.19%) Microsoft Project
4 80 (0.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 45 (0.43%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.15%) Simulink
8 7 (0.067%) Notepad++
9 5 (0.048%) Windchill
10 4 (0.038%) AutoCAD
10 4 (0.038%) Siemens NX
10 4 (0.038%) Sketch
11 3 (0.029%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.029%) SOLIDWORKS
12 2 (0.019%) CATIA
12 2 (0.019%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.019%) InVision
12 2 (0.019%) Lectora
12 2 (0.019%) PlantUML
12 2 (0.019%) Revit
Business Applications
1 102 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
2 45 (0.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 30 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
4 27 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
5 26 (0.25%) Teamcenter
6 21 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
7 18 (0.17%) Maximo
7 18 (0.17%) SAP PP
8 13 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.12%) Temenos T24
9 12 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
10 11 (0.11%) Findur
10 11 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
11 10 (0.096%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.086%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.086%) SAP HR
12 9 (0.086%) SAP PM
13 8 (0.076%) SAP EWM
13 8 (0.076%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 1,822 (17.42%) AWS
2 1,776 (16.98%) Azure
3 452 (4.32%) GitHub
4 434 (4.15%) GCP
5 412 (3.94%) Azure DevOps
6 368 (3.52%) Power Platform
7 296 (2.83%) Serverless
8 277 (2.65%) Microsoft 365
9 247 (2.36%) GitHub Actions
10 241 (2.30%) Entra ID
11 224 (2.14%) Amazon S3
12 197 (1.88%) AWS Lambda
13 156 (1.49%) PaaS
14 151 (1.44%) AWS CloudFormation
15 141 (1.35%) OpenShift
16 138 (1.32%) Amazon EC2
17 135 (1.29%) IaaS
18 134 (1.28%) Amazon EKS
19 128 (1.22%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 121 (1.16%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 471 (4.50%) Firewall
2 289 (2.76%) DNS
3 236 (2.26%) Network Security
4 223 (2.13%) WAN
5 205 (1.96%) LAN
6 175 (1.67%) VPN
7 146 (1.40%) BGP
8 143 (1.37%) DHCP
9 121 (1.16%) TCP/IP
10 119 (1.14%) OSPF
11 104 (0.99%) VLAN
12 85 (0.81%) Wireless
13 66 (0.63%) Wi-Fi
14 65 (0.62%) MPLS
15 57 (0.54%) SAN
16 52 (0.50%) SSL
17 51 (0.49%) SD-WAN
18 47 (0.45%) IPsec
18 47 (0.45%) VXLAN
19 45 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 282 (2.70%) Power BI
2 266 (2.54%) PostgreSQL
3 226 (2.16%) Data Warehouse
4 194 (1.85%) SQL Server
5 145 (1.39%) Metadata
6 117 (1.12%) Oracle Database
7 110 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
7 110 (1.05%) NoSQL
8 105 (1.00%) MongoDB
9 98 (0.94%) Relational Database
10 95 (0.91%) Data Lake
11 83 (0.79%) MySQL
12 78 (0.75%) Azure SQL Database
13 77 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
14 75 (0.72%) Tableau
15 74 (0.71%) Big Data
15 74 (0.71%) Pentaho
16 68 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
17 64 (0.61%) Oracle Reports
18 57 (0.54%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 631 (6.03%) JIRA
2 501 (4.79%) Git
3 385 (3.68%) Jenkins
4 358 (3.42%) GitLab
5 103 (0.98%) Selenium
6 88 (0.84%) Postman
7 74 (0.71%) JUnit
8 68 (0.65%) SonarQube
9 51 (0.49%) Bitbucket
10 50 (0.48%) Rational DOORS
11 47 (0.45%) Artifactory
12 44 (0.42%) JMeter
13 43 (0.41%) Maven
14 42 (0.40%) Cucumber
14 42 (0.40%) Oracle APEX
15 39 (0.37%) Mockito
16 36 (0.34%) Cypress.io
17 33 (0.32%) Visual Studio
18 30 (0.29%) Zephyr
19 25 (0.24%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 2,430 (23.23%) Public Sector
2 2,277 (21.76%) Social Skills
3 839 (8.02%) Analytical Skills
4 698 (6.67%) Finance
5 350 (3.35%) Military
6 278 (2.66%) Documentation Skills
7 240 (2.29%) Aerospace
8 172 (1.64%) Legal
9 153 (1.46%) Manufacturing
9 153 (1.46%) Telecoms
10 137 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
11 121 (1.16%) Banking
12 114 (1.09%) Organisational Skills
13 98 (0.94%) Presentation Skills
14 82 (0.78%) Marketing
15 80 (0.76%) Law
16 77 (0.74%) Electronics
16 77 (0.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 62 (0.59%) Police
18 34 (0.32%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,599 (15.28%) Architect
2 1,038 (9.92%) Developer
3 923 (8.82%) Senior
4 751 (7.18%) Analyst
5 702 (6.71%) Lead
6 557 (5.32%) Consultant
7 474 (4.53%) Data Engineer
8 464 (4.44%) DevOps Engineer
9 319 (3.05%) Technical Architect
10 311 (2.97%) Software Engineer
11 288 (2.75%) Solutions Architect
12 282 (2.70%) Network Engineer
13 274 (2.62%) Business Analyst
14 237 (2.27%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 221 (2.11%) Azure Engineer
16 216 (2.06%) Project Manager
17 202 (1.93%) Security Architect
18 200 (1.91%) Designer
19 186 (1.78%) Administrator
20 183 (1.75%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 349 (3.34%) REST
2 238 (2.27%) Spring
3 213 (2.04%) Kafka
4 204 (1.95%) Node.js
5 185 (1.77%) Spring Boot
6 180 (1.72%) .NET
6 180 (1.72%) React
7 166 (1.59%) JSON
8 154 (1.47%) SOAP
9 144 (1.38%) RESTful
10 143 (1.37%) LDAP
11 129 (1.23%) PySpark
12 123 (1.18%) AngularJS
13 118 (1.13%) Web Services
14 101 (0.97%) OAuth
14 101 (0.97%) Oracle Fusion
15 100 (0.96%) HTML
16 97 (0.93%) XML
17 86 (0.82%) Middleware
18 84 (0.80%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 349 (3.34%) Product Ownership
2 333 (3.18%) Cloud Native
3 306 (2.92%) Data Centre
4 276 (2.64%) Onboarding
5 199 (1.90%) Management Information System
6 186 (1.78%) PKI
7 131 (1.25%) Security Posture
8 130 (1.24%) Legacy Systems
9 129 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
10 126 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
11 125 (1.19%) Replication
12 123 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
13 95 (0.91%) Public Cloud
14 80 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
15 79 (0.76%) Data Structures
16 78 (0.75%) Hybrid Cloud
17 75 (0.72%) Clustering
18 72 (0.69%) Virtual Team
19 63 (0.60%) Greenfield Project
20 62 (0.59%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 863 (8.25%) Windows
2 754 (7.21%) Linux
3 255 (2.44%) Windows Server
4 158 (1.51%) Unix
5 140 (1.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 119 (1.14%) Android
7 109 (1.04%) Windows 10
8 66 (0.63%) Apple iOS
9 51 (0.49%) Mac OS
10 40 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 33 (0.32%) VMS
12 31 (0.30%) Solaris
13 29 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
14 27 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
15 23 (0.22%) AIX
16 21 (0.20%) CentOS
17 15 (0.14%) Windows 7
17 15 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
18 10 (0.096%) Windows Server 2008
19 8 (0.076%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,043 (19.53%) Agile
2 1,563 (14.94%) DevOps
3 1,375 (13.14%) CI/CD
4 1,159 (11.08%) Problem-Solving
5 967 (9.24%) Stakeholder Management
6 893 (8.54%) Continuous Improvement
7 889 (8.50%) Migration
8 779 (7.45%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 692 (6.61%) Infrastructure as Code
10 653 (6.24%) ITIL
11 606 (5.79%) Analytics
12 602 (5.75%) Cybersecurity
13 596 (5.70%) Test Automation
14 572 (5.47%) Roadmaps
15 556 (5.31%) Containerisation
16 546 (5.22%) Software Engineering
17 505 (4.83%) Data Modelling
18 493 (4.71%) Scrum
19 473 (4.52%) Decision-Making
20 458 (4.38%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 1,215 (11.61%) Python
2 969 (9.26%) SQL
3 642 (6.14%) Java
4 599 (5.73%) PowerShell
5 377 (3.60%) JavaScript
6 219 (2.09%) C#
7 210 (2.01%) Bash
8 179 (1.71%) TypeScript
9 125 (1.19%) PL/SQL
10 105 (1.00%) Shell Script
11 103 (0.98%) C++
12 76 (0.73%) Go
13 72 (0.69%) Scala
14 71 (0.68%) Ruby
15 58 (0.55%) C
16 57 (0.54%) Bicep
17 50 (0.48%) R
18 48 (0.46%) Apex Code
19 44 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
20 41 (0.39%) Ada
Qualifications
1 8,005 (76.52%) SC Cleared
2 1,826 (17.45%) DV Cleared
3 468 (4.47%) Degree
4 333 (3.18%) BPSS Clearance
5 201 (1.92%) Cisco Certification
6 172 (1.64%) CISSP
7 148 (1.41%) Azure Certification
8 135 (1.29%) AWS Certification
9 128 (1.22%) CCNP
10 108 (1.03%) CISM
11 97 (0.93%) Microsoft Certification
12 85 (0.81%) CCNA
13 78 (0.75%) Computer Science Degree
14 77 (0.74%) ITIL Certification
15 71 (0.68%) PMP
16 68 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
17 67 (0.64%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 64 (0.61%) PMI Certification
19 60 (0.57%) ISTQB
20 50 (0.48%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 365 (3.49%) QA
2 320 (3.06%) Data Quality
3 294 (2.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 289 (2.76%) NIST
5 202 (1.93%) NCSC
6 178 (1.70%) Accessibility
7 170 (1.62%) GDPR
8 144 (1.38%) PMO
9 112 (1.07%) SLA
10 68 (0.65%) GRC
11 67 (0.64%) JSP 440
12 45 (0.43%) NIST 800
13 44 (0.42%) COBIT
14 40 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
15 37 (0.35%) WCAG
16 36 (0.34%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 36 (0.34%) PCI DSS
17 33 (0.32%) RMADS
18 31 (0.30%) Def Stans
19 24 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 681 (6.51%) Docker
2 475 (4.54%) Active Directory
3 292 (2.79%) VMware Infrastructure
4 98 (0.94%) VMware NSX
5 91 (0.87%) VMware ESXi
6 82 (0.78%) Hyper-V
7 78 (0.75%) vSphere
8 64 (0.61%) Virtual Machines
9 38 (0.36%) Firmware
10 33 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
11 20 (0.19%) BitLocker
11 20 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
12 17 (0.16%) NFS
12 17 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 16 (0.15%) Postfix
14 12 (0.11%) Squid
14 12 (0.11%) vCloud
15 8 (0.076%) Microsoft App-V
16 7 (0.067%) KVM
17 6 (0.057%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 872 (8.33%) Kubernetes
2 850 (8.12%) Terraform
3 337 (3.22%) Ansible
4 254 (2.43%) Grafana
5 213 (2.04%) Prometheus
6 113 (1.08%) Single Sign-On
7 97 (0.93%) vCenter Server
8 87 (0.83%) SCCM
9 74 (0.71%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 60 (0.57%) Microsoft Intune
11 59 (0.56%) Argo
12 58 (0.55%) FortiGate
13 40 (0.38%) Puppet
14 39 (0.37%) Packer
15 37 (0.35%) Podman
16 35 (0.33%) Progress Chef
17 34 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
17 34 (0.32%) vRealize
18 30 (0.29%) Kibana
18 30 (0.29%) OPNET
Vendors
1 1,073 (10.26%) Microsoft
2 642 (6.14%) Oracle
3 511 (4.88%) VMware
4 425 (4.06%) ServiceNow
5 405 (3.87%) Cisco
6 402 (3.84%) SAP
7 237 (2.27%) Splunk
8 214 (2.05%) Databricks
9 187 (1.79%) Red Hat
10 171 (1.63%) Google
11 160 (1.53%) Salesforce
12 128 (1.22%) IBM
13 125 (1.19%) Atlassian
14 114 (1.09%) Palo Alto
15 113 (1.08%) Talend
16 112 (1.07%) Juniper
17 100 (0.96%) CyberArk
18 85 (0.81%) Remedy
19 84 (0.80%) Dell
19 84 (0.80%) Fortinet