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 8 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,575 5,138 7,956
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.28% 17.66% 18.45%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.53% 57.24% 60.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,236 3,400 5,240
10th Percentile £375 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.85% -3.73% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £695 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £545 £550
% change year-on-year -3.67% -0.91% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 852 293 527
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.29 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £47.81 £57.29
Median % change year-on-year +15.05% -16.55% -4.53%
75th Percentile £73.46 £66.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.44 £84.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £54.75 £58.00
% change year-on-year +0.46% -5.60% +0.87%

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 15,210 8,977 13,149
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.05% 30.85% 30.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,117 5,651 8,118
10th Percentile £348 £285 £300
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -1.14% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £650
90th Percentile £721 £704 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £534
% change year-on-year - -6.30% +0.68%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,087 512 1,072
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.13 £13.85
25th Percentile £21.25 £21.49 £17.80
Median hourly rate £47.54 £38.27 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +24.22% -4.33% -25.93%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £61.53
90th Percentile £85.36 £79.87 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £40.00 £40.94
% change year-on-year +18.75% -2.30% -17.91%

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 8 May 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 8 May 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 8 May 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 +3 9,166 £525 -2.33% 1,863
UK excluding London +1 5,870 £525 -3.67% 1,518
London +6 3,254 £525 - 491
Work from Home +4 2,833 £525 - 859
South East +1 2,216 £538 -2.27% 510
South West 0 1,296 £538 -4.44% 321
Midlands +4 899 £475 -9.52% 165
North of England -1 852 £486 -2.75% 313
West Midlands +4 763 £475 -11.55% 125
North West -2 498 £497 -0.70% 172
East of England +2 379 £525 +16.67% 144
Scotland +35 218 £500 +12.68% 45
Yorkshire -7 207 £475 -9.52% 59
North East +1 181 £475 -5.00% 85
East Midlands -3 130 £450 -5.26% 40
Wales +7 83 £500 +5.26% 35
Northern Ireland +7 18 £450 -5.26% 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
1 405 (3.83%) Confluence
2 222 (2.10%) SharePoint
3 134 (1.27%) Microsoft Exchange
4 130 (1.23%) SAS
5 106 (1.00%) Apache Spark
6 83 (0.78%) Apache
7 71 (0.67%) Apache Airflow
8 38 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 35 (0.33%) nginx
10 27 (0.26%) Jupyter
11 21 (0.20%) Tomcat
12 15 (0.14%) CMS
12 15 (0.14%) IIS
12 15 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
12 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
13 14 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
14 13 (0.12%) Skype for Business
15 11 (0.10%) NetWeaver
16 10 (0.095%) ArcGIS
17 9 (0.085%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 212 (2.00%) Microsoft Office
2 191 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
3 123 (1.16%) Microsoft Project
4 83 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 45 (0.43%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.14%) Simulink
8 7 (0.066%) AutoCAD
8 7 (0.066%) Notepad++
9 6 (0.057%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.047%) Revit
10 5 (0.047%) Windchill
11 4 (0.038%) Siemens NX
11 4 (0.038%) Sketch
12 3 (0.028%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.019%) Chatbot
13 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.019%) InVision
13 2 (0.019%) Lectora
13 2 (0.019%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 107 (1.01%) SAP S/4HANA
2 47 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
3 46 (0.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 30 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
5 29 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
6 26 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 22 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
8 15 (0.14%) Maximo
9 14 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
9 14 (0.13%) SAP PSCD
10 13 (0.12%) Temenos T24
11 12 (0.11%) Findur
11 12 (0.11%) SAP PP
12 11 (0.10%) Oracle Assets
12 11 (0.10%) SAP GRC
13 10 (0.095%) iTrent
14 9 (0.085%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 9 (0.085%) SAP HCM
14 9 (0.085%) SAP HR
15 8 (0.076%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 1,841 (17.41%) AWS
2 1,838 (17.38%) Azure
3 449 (4.25%) GitHub
4 430 (4.07%) GCP
5 403 (3.81%) Azure DevOps
6 385 (3.64%) Power Platform
7 276 (2.61%) Serverless
8 272 (2.57%) Microsoft 365
9 256 (2.42%) GitHub Actions
10 255 (2.41%) Entra ID
11 212 (2.00%) Amazon S3
12 184 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
13 158 (1.49%) PaaS
14 141 (1.33%) AWS CloudFormation
15 139 (1.31%) Amazon EC2
16 138 (1.30%) OpenShift
17 136 (1.29%) Amazon EKS
18 131 (1.24%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 126 (1.19%) OCI
20 124 (1.17%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 478 (4.52%) Firewall
2 297 (2.81%) DNS
3 233 (2.20%) Network Security
4 223 (2.11%) WAN
5 203 (1.92%) LAN
6 172 (1.63%) VPN
7 146 (1.38%) BGP
8 144 (1.36%) DHCP
9 125 (1.18%) OSPF
10 122 (1.15%) TCP/IP
11 97 (0.92%) Wi-Fi
12 95 (0.90%) VLAN
13 82 (0.78%) Wireless
14 68 (0.64%) MPLS
15 58 (0.55%) SAN
16 54 (0.51%) VXLAN
17 53 (0.50%) SSL
18 52 (0.49%) SD-WAN
19 51 (0.48%) IPsec
20 46 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 298 (2.82%) Power BI
2 254 (2.40%) PostgreSQL
3 236 (2.23%) Data Warehouse
4 198 (1.87%) SQL Server
5 137 (1.30%) Metadata
6 123 (1.16%) Oracle Database
7 110 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
8 108 (1.02%) Data Lake
9 102 (0.96%) MongoDB
10 99 (0.94%) NoSQL
10 99 (0.94%) Relational Database
11 80 (0.76%) Pentaho
12 77 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
13 75 (0.71%) Big Data
14 72 (0.68%) MySQL
15 71 (0.67%) Azure SQL Database
15 71 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
16 68 (0.64%) Tableau
17 66 (0.62%) Amazon Redshift
18 60 (0.57%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 635 (6.00%) JIRA
2 468 (4.43%) Git
3 395 (3.74%) Jenkins
4 390 (3.69%) GitLab
5 100 (0.95%) Selenium
6 89 (0.84%) Postman
7 77 (0.73%) JUnit
8 69 (0.65%) SonarQube
9 53 (0.50%) Rational DOORS
10 51 (0.48%) Artifactory
11 49 (0.46%) JMeter
12 44 (0.42%) Bitbucket
13 42 (0.40%) Cucumber
14 40 (0.38%) Mockito
15 39 (0.37%) Maven
16 38 (0.36%) Visual Studio
17 36 (0.34%) Cypress.io
18 31 (0.29%) Zephyr
19 27 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
20 25 (0.24%) Gatling
General
1 2,328 (22.01%) Public Sector
2 2,267 (21.44%) Social Skills
3 798 (7.55%) Analytical Skills
4 703 (6.65%) Finance
5 349 (3.30%) Military
6 284 (2.69%) Documentation Skills
7 247 (2.34%) Aerospace
8 170 (1.61%) Legal
9 134 (1.27%) Telecoms
10 128 (1.21%) Influencing Skills
11 120 (1.13%) Manufacturing
12 117 (1.11%) Banking
13 116 (1.10%) Organisational Skills
14 91 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
15 88 (0.83%) Law
16 82 (0.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 69 (0.65%) Police
18 56 (0.53%) Marketing
19 51 (0.48%) Electronics
20 38 (0.36%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,608 (15.21%) Architect
2 997 (9.43%) Developer
3 904 (8.55%) Senior
4 749 (7.08%) Analyst
5 731 (6.91%) Lead
6 532 (5.03%) Consultant
7 506 (4.78%) Data Engineer
8 491 (4.64%) DevOps Engineer
9 319 (3.02%) Technical Architect
10 313 (2.96%) Software Engineer
11 298 (2.82%) Network Engineer
12 282 (2.67%) Solutions Architect
13 281 (2.66%) Business Analyst
14 267 (2.52%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 231 (2.18%) Project Manager
16 218 (2.06%) Azure Engineer
17 213 (2.01%) Designer
18 212 (2.00%) Security Architect
19 188 (1.78%) Administrator
20 183 (1.73%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 330 (3.12%) REST
2 252 (2.38%) Spring
3 217 (2.05%) Kafka
4 204 (1.93%) Spring Boot
5 194 (1.83%) Node.js
6 183 (1.73%) React
7 178 (1.68%) .NET
8 153 (1.45%) LDAP
9 148 (1.40%) RESTful
9 148 (1.40%) SOAP
10 136 (1.29%) JSON
11 122 (1.15%) AngularJS
11 122 (1.15%) PySpark
12 116 (1.10%) Web Services
13 98 (0.93%) Oracle Fusion
14 93 (0.88%) OAuth
15 92 (0.87%) HTML
16 87 (0.82%) Elastic Stack
17 85 (0.80%) Middleware
17 85 (0.80%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 367 (3.47%) Cloud Native
2 346 (3.27%) Product Ownership
3 311 (2.94%) Data Centre
4 299 (2.83%) Onboarding
5 193 (1.83%) Management Information System
6 175 (1.65%) PKI
7 139 (1.31%) Legacy Systems
8 131 (1.24%) Security Posture
9 127 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
10 123 (1.16%) Distributed Systems
10 123 (1.16%) Replication
11 104 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
12 90 (0.85%) Public Cloud
13 81 (0.77%) Data Structures
14 80 (0.76%) Clustering
15 79 (0.75%) Hybrid Cloud
16 76 (0.72%) Security Operations Centre
17 74 (0.70%) Virtual Team
18 67 (0.63%) Greenfield Project
19 61 (0.58%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 875 (8.27%) Windows
2 730 (6.90%) Linux
3 253 (2.39%) Windows Server
4 174 (1.65%) Unix
5 129 (1.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 111 (1.05%) Android
7 99 (0.94%) Windows 10
8 67 (0.63%) Apple iOS
9 48 (0.45%) Mac OS
10 43 (0.41%) Ubuntu
11 40 (0.38%) Solaris
12 33 (0.31%) VMS
13 29 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
13 29 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
14 27 (0.26%) AIX
15 22 (0.21%) CentOS
16 15 (0.14%) Windows 7
17 14 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
18 11 (0.10%) Windows Server 2008
19 10 (0.095%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,047 (19.36%) Agile
2 1,600 (15.13%) DevOps
3 1,440 (13.62%) CI/CD
4 1,152 (10.89%) Problem-Solving
5 1,000 (9.46%) Stakeholder Management
6 923 (8.73%) Continuous Improvement
7 858 (8.11%) Migration
8 786 (7.43%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 739 (6.99%) Infrastructure as Code
10 640 (6.05%) ITIL
11 620 (5.86%) Test Automation
12 615 (5.82%) Cybersecurity
13 608 (5.75%) Analytics
14 595 (5.63%) Containerisation
15 571 (5.40%) Roadmaps
16 570 (5.39%) Software Engineering
17 516 (4.88%) Data Modelling
18 505 (4.78%) Decision-Making
19 462 (4.37%) Scrum
20 453 (4.28%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,199 (11.34%) Python
2 972 (9.19%) SQL
3 668 (6.32%) Java
4 559 (5.29%) PowerShell
5 341 (3.22%) JavaScript
6 222 (2.10%) C#
7 194 (1.83%) Bash
8 183 (1.73%) TypeScript
9 118 (1.12%) PL/SQL
10 99 (0.94%) C++
11 97 (0.92%) Shell Script
12 75 (0.71%) Go
13 71 (0.67%) Scala
14 66 (0.62%) Ruby
15 60 (0.57%) Bicep
16 59 (0.56%) C
17 51 (0.48%) R
18 45 (0.43%) Apex Code
19 41 (0.39%) Ada
20 40 (0.38%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 8,073 (76.34%) SC Cleared
2 1,891 (17.88%) DV Cleared
3 468 (4.43%) Degree
4 309 (2.92%) BPSS Clearance
5 209 (1.98%) Cisco Certification
6 175 (1.65%) CISSP
7 140 (1.32%) Azure Certification
8 128 (1.21%) AWS Certification
9 121 (1.14%) CCNP
10 115 (1.09%) CISM
11 96 (0.91%) Microsoft Certification
12 87 (0.82%) CCNA
13 78 (0.74%) Computer Science Degree
14 77 (0.73%) PMP
15 71 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
15 71 (0.67%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 67 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
17 65 (0.61%) PMI Certification
18 57 (0.54%) ISTQB
19 49 (0.46%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 383 (3.62%) QA
2 321 (3.04%) Data Quality
3 300 (2.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 294 (2.78%) NIST
5 203 (1.92%) NCSC
6 199 (1.88%) Accessibility
7 168 (1.59%) GDPR
8 164 (1.55%) PMO
9 110 (1.04%) SLA
10 73 (0.69%) GRC
11 65 (0.61%) JSP 440
12 52 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
13 42 (0.40%) WCAG
14 39 (0.37%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.31%) PCI DSS
15 33 (0.31%) RMADS
16 32 (0.30%) COBIT
17 31 (0.29%) Def Stans
18 28 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 23 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 670 (6.34%) Docker
2 490 (4.63%) Active Directory
3 299 (2.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 100 (0.95%) VMware ESXi
5 99 (0.94%) VMware NSX
6 87 (0.82%) Hyper-V
7 78 (0.74%) vSphere
8 74 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
9 41 (0.39%) Firmware
10 34 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
11 22 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
12 20 (0.19%) BitLocker
12 20 (0.19%) NFS
13 17 (0.16%) Postfix
13 17 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 15 (0.14%) vCloud
15 12 (0.11%) Squid
16 8 (0.076%) KVM
16 8 (0.076%) Microsoft App-V
17 7 (0.066%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 861 (8.14%) Kubernetes
2 845 (7.99%) Terraform
3 358 (3.39%) Ansible
4 267 (2.52%) Grafana
5 224 (2.12%) Prometheus
6 114 (1.08%) Single Sign-On
7 103 (0.97%) vCenter Server
8 85 (0.80%) SCCM
9 64 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 56 (0.53%) Argo
10 56 (0.53%) FortiGate
11 55 (0.52%) Microsoft Intune
12 40 (0.38%) Puppet
13 36 (0.34%) Podman
14 35 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
14 35 (0.33%) Progress Chef
15 33 (0.31%) vRealize
16 32 (0.30%) Nagios
17 31 (0.29%) OPNET
18 27 (0.26%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,075 (10.17%) Microsoft
2 654 (6.18%) Oracle
3 520 (4.92%) VMware
4 417 (3.94%) ServiceNow
5 381 (3.60%) Cisco
5 381 (3.60%) SAP
6 246 (2.33%) Splunk
7 208 (1.97%) Databricks
8 171 (1.62%) Google
9 170 (1.61%) Red Hat
10 134 (1.27%) Salesforce
11 128 (1.21%) IBM
12 126 (1.19%) Talend
13 121 (1.14%) Palo Alto
14 109 (1.03%) Juniper
15 106 (1.00%) Atlassian
16 102 (0.96%) CyberArk
17 94 (0.89%) Informatica
18 89 (0.84%) Dynatrace
19 87 (0.82%) Remedy