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 6 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,923 6,104 6,685
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.82% 18.60% 17.74%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.72% 58.56% 60.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,271 3,915 4,225
10th Percentile £400 £325 £350
25th Percentile £463 £438 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.42% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £540 £537 £550
% change year-on-year +0.56% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 871 633 388
10th Percentile £20.00 £18.51 £20.12
25th Percentile £29.07 £18.87 £30.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +151.03% -58.08% -
75th Percentile £76.00 £33.75 £71.25
90th Percentile £91.31 £68.75 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.09 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +154.83% -58.08% +1.67%

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 17,350 10,423 11,061
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.75% 31.76% 29.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,514 6,507 6,697
10th Percentile £351 £283 £310
25th Percentile £447 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.43% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £634
90th Percentile £713 £703 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £520
% change year-on-year +5.00% -3.85% -3.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,440 885 603
10th Percentile £16.80 £17.87 £18.01
25th Percentile £25.20 £18.87 £25.36
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +78.93% -47.05% -11.69%
75th Percentile £71.43 £41.94 £68.38
90th Percentile £88.75 £70.00 £75.37
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -49.70% -4.49%

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 6 October 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 6 October 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 6 October 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 10,263 £550 +2.33% 5,661
UK excluding London +1 6,633 £540 +0.56% 3,983
London +6 3,673 £550 +2.33% 1,716
Work from Home +2 3,170 £530 -1.40% 2,895
South East +1 2,260 £569 +8.38% 1,123
South West 0 1,377 £550 - 810
North of England +2 1,316 £515 -1.90% 758
Midlands 0 920 £481 -7.23% 430
North West +1 798 £530 -3.64% 442
West Midlands 0 773 £475 -8.48% 277
East of England 0 441 £551 +0.18% 436
Scotland +12 308 £486 -1.27% 276
Yorkshire 0 296 £492 - 126
North East 0 242 £466 -11.19% 192
East Midlands 0 139 £500 +8.11% 152
Wales +1 108 £550 +4.76% 110
Northern Ireland +2 37 £650 +21.50% 70

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 (3.30%) Confluence
2 260 (2.18%) SharePoint
3 146 (1.22%) SAS
4 124 (1.04%) Microsoft Exchange
5 106 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
5 106 (0.89%) Apache Spark
6 104 (0.87%) Apache
7 40 (0.34%) Jupyter
7 40 (0.34%) nginx
8 39 (0.33%) WebLogic
9 34 (0.29%) CMS
10 24 (0.20%) IIS
11 23 (0.19%) Tomcat
12 22 (0.18%) Skype for Business
13 19 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
14 17 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 16 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
16 14 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
17 11 (0.092%) JBoss
17 11 (0.092%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 212 (1.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 157 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 105 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 97 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 41 (0.34%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 20 (0.17%) Windchill
9 19 (0.16%) Revit
10 18 (0.15%) SOLIDWORKS
11 9 (0.075%) Adobe XD
11 9 (0.075%) Chatbot
11 9 (0.075%) Simulink
12 7 (0.059%) Sketch
13 6 (0.050%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 4 (0.034%) OrCAD
14 4 (0.034%) Trello
15 2 (0.017%) Gliffy
15 2 (0.017%) Houdini
15 2 (0.017%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 151 (1.27%) SAP S/4HANA
2 81 (0.68%) Remedy ITSM
3 60 (0.50%) Oracle ERP
4 49 (0.41%) Oracle EBS
5 40 (0.34%) Teamcenter
6 33 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 32 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
8 27 (0.23%) Oracle Payroll
9 26 (0.22%) SAP PSCD
10 24 (0.20%) SAP GRC
11 23 (0.19%) SAP FI
12 18 (0.15%) Primavera
12 18 (0.15%) SAP HR
13 17 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
14 15 (0.13%) SAP CO
15 14 (0.12%) Oracle General Ledger
15 14 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
15 14 (0.12%) SAP Payroll
16 13 (0.11%) Maximo
16 13 (0.11%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 2,158 (18.10%) Azure
2 2,096 (17.58%) AWS
3 535 (4.49%) GitHub
4 520 (4.36%) Azure DevOps
5 493 (4.13%) Power Platform
6 471 (3.95%) GCP
7 365 (3.06%) GitHub Actions
8 342 (2.87%) Microsoft 365
9 339 (2.84%) Entra ID
10 276 (2.31%) Serverless
11 240 (2.01%) Amazon S3
12 201 (1.69%) AWS Lambda
13 177 (1.48%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 176 (1.48%) OCI
15 174 (1.46%) Amazon EKS
16 169 (1.42%) SaaS
17 149 (1.25%) Amazon EC2
18 145 (1.22%) OpenShift
19 134 (1.12%) AWS CloudFormation
20 115 (0.96%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 446 (3.74%) Firewall
2 376 (3.15%) DNS
3 244 (2.05%) Network Security
4 204 (1.71%) WAN
5 197 (1.65%) VPN
6 183 (1.53%) DHCP
7 157 (1.32%) LAN
8 140 (1.17%) TCP/IP
9 127 (1.07%) BGP
10 117 (0.98%) Wi-Fi
11 95 (0.80%) VLAN
12 89 (0.75%) Wireless
13 85 (0.71%) OSPF
14 68 (0.57%) SAN
14 68 (0.57%) SSL
15 66 (0.55%) MPLS
16 63 (0.53%) VSAN
17 59 (0.49%) IPsec
18 56 (0.47%) SD-WAN
19 50 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 347 (2.91%) Power BI
2 311 (2.61%) PostgreSQL
3 283 (2.37%) SQL Server
4 257 (2.16%) Data Warehouse
5 211 (1.77%) Metadata
6 188 (1.58%) Oracle Database
7 148 (1.24%) Data Lake
8 144 (1.21%) Relational Database
9 139 (1.17%) MongoDB
10 113 (0.95%) Amazon RDS
11 112 (0.94%) MySQL
12 96 (0.81%) NoSQL
13 84 (0.70%) Oracle Reports
14 69 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
14 69 (0.58%) Pentaho
15 64 (0.54%) Amazon Athena
16 60 (0.50%) Big Data
17 54 (0.45%) Amazon Aurora
18 52 (0.44%) DynamoDB
19 50 (0.42%) Redis
Development Applications
1 644 (5.40%) JIRA
2 589 (4.94%) Git
3 528 (4.43%) GitLab
4 514 (4.31%) Jenkins
5 158 (1.33%) Selenium
6 92 (0.77%) Postman
7 82 (0.69%) Maven
8 80 (0.67%) JMeter
9 79 (0.66%) Cucumber
10 78 (0.65%) JUnit
11 77 (0.65%) SonarQube
12 56 (0.47%) Cypress.io
13 53 (0.44%) Gradle
14 47 (0.39%) REST Assured
15 46 (0.39%) Mockito
16 45 (0.38%) Gatling
17 40 (0.34%) Visual Studio
18 39 (0.33%) Artifactory
19 36 (0.30%) Zephyr
20 33 (0.28%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,700 (22.65%) Social Skills
2 2,472 (20.73%) Public Sector
3 967 (8.11%) Analytical Skills
4 774 (6.49%) Finance
5 433 (3.63%) Military
6 356 (2.99%) Aerospace
7 309 (2.59%) Documentation Skills
8 238 (2.00%) Influencing Skills
9 201 (1.69%) Organisational Skills
10 178 (1.49%) Manufacturing
11 175 (1.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 168 (1.41%) Legal
13 162 (1.36%) Telecoms
14 140 (1.17%) Banking
15 127 (1.07%) Police
16 120 (1.01%) Law
17 73 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
18 56 (0.47%) Local Government
19 55 (0.46%) Aviation
20 42 (0.35%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,929 (16.18%) Architect
2 1,222 (10.25%) Developer
3 1,152 (9.66%) Senior
4 1,058 (8.87%) Lead
5 701 (5.88%) Consultant
6 680 (5.70%) Analyst
7 515 (4.32%) DevOps Engineer
8 468 (3.93%) Data Engineer
9 409 (3.43%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 381 (3.20%) Solutions Architect
11 355 (2.98%) Technical Architect
12 307 (2.57%) Data Architect
13 291 (2.44%) Security Architect
14 256 (2.15%) Software Engineer
15 244 (2.05%) Network Engineer
16 230 (1.93%) Administrator
17 219 (1.84%) Java Developer
18 205 (1.72%) Designer
19 202 (1.69%) Cloud Engineer
20 200 (1.68%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,011 (8.48%) Terraform
2 482 (4.04%) REST
3 269 (2.26%) Kafka
4 253 (2.12%) Spring
5 234 (1.96%) Spring Boot
6 218 (1.83%) RESTful
7 199 (1.67%) .NET
8 194 (1.63%) React
9 183 (1.53%) SOAP
10 177 (1.48%) Node.js
11 158 (1.33%) JSON
12 146 (1.22%) OAuth
13 143 (1.20%) HTML
14 139 (1.17%) XML
15 132 (1.11%) Middleware
16 114 (0.96%) Web Services
17 111 (0.93%) AngularJS
17 111 (0.93%) Oracle Fusion
18 107 (0.90%) CSS
19 100 (0.84%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 552 (4.63%) Cloud Native
2 480 (4.03%) Onboarding
3 379 (3.18%) Product Ownership
4 305 (2.56%) Data Centre
5 280 (2.35%) Management Information System
6 195 (1.64%) Enterprise Software
7 189 (1.59%) Legacy Systems
8 183 (1.53%) PKI
9 172 (1.44%) CMDB
10 136 (1.14%) Distributed Systems
11 129 (1.08%) Hybrid Cloud
12 125 (1.05%) Cyber Threat
13 124 (1.04%) Replication
14 119 (1.00%) Operational Technology
15 107 (0.90%) Self-Motivation
16 101 (0.85%) Data Structures
17 100 (0.84%) Security Operations Centre
18 99 (0.83%) Security Posture
19 88 (0.74%) Clustering
19 88 (0.74%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 994 (8.34%) Windows
2 792 (6.64%) Linux
3 368 (3.09%) Windows Server
4 227 (1.90%) Unix
5 153 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 149 (1.25%) Windows 10
7 82 (0.69%) Solaris
8 76 (0.64%) Android
9 47 (0.39%) Mac OS
10 44 (0.37%) Apple iOS
10 44 (0.37%) CentOS
11 41 (0.34%) Ubuntu
12 37 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
13 29 (0.24%) AIX
14 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
15 24 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
16 22 (0.18%) VMS
17 19 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
18 17 (0.14%) Rocky
19 11 (0.092%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,523 (21.16%) Agile
2 1,835 (15.39%) CI/CD
3 1,814 (15.21%) DevOps
4 1,707 (14.32%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,473 (12.35%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,286 (10.79%) Problem-Solving
7 1,221 (10.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,040 (8.72%) Infrastructure as Code
9 955 (8.01%) Migration
10 887 (7.44%) Cybersecurity
11 796 (6.68%) Test Automation
12 789 (6.62%) ITIL
13 784 (6.58%) Containerisation
14 767 (6.43%) AI
15 764 (6.41%) Decision-Making
16 761 (6.38%) Technical Leadership
17 751 (6.30%) Roadmaps
18 718 (6.02%) Analytics
19 688 (5.77%) Software Engineering
20 637 (5.34%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,383 (11.60%) Python
2 1,112 (9.33%) SQL
3 792 (6.64%) Java
4 602 (5.05%) PowerShell
5 422 (3.54%) JavaScript
6 372 (3.12%) Bash
7 226 (1.90%) TypeScript
8 223 (1.87%) C#
9 151 (1.27%) PL/SQL
10 128 (1.07%) Bicep
11 81 (0.68%) Shell Script
12 63 (0.53%) Go
13 60 (0.50%) Scala
14 59 (0.49%) C++
15 53 (0.44%) Groovy
16 49 (0.41%) C
17 48 (0.40%) Kotlin
18 41 (0.34%) T-SQL
19 39 (0.33%) Apex Code
20 35 (0.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 9,090 (76.24%) SC Cleared
2 2,236 (18.75%) DV Cleared
3 565 (4.74%) BPSS Clearance
4 493 (4.13%) Degree
5 225 (1.89%) CISSP
6 187 (1.57%) Azure Certification
7 185 (1.55%) Cisco Certification
8 168 (1.41%) Microsoft Certification
9 162 (1.36%) AWS Certification
10 140 (1.17%) CISM
11 107 (0.90%) PMI Certification
12 98 (0.82%) PMP
13 96 (0.81%) ISTQB
14 86 (0.72%) CCNP
15 75 (0.63%) Computer Science Degree
16 67 (0.56%) CCNA
17 58 (0.49%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 55 (0.46%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 50 (0.42%) DBS Check
20 45 (0.38%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 543 (4.55%) QA
2 403 (3.38%) Data Quality
3 341 (2.86%) NIST
4 333 (2.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 317 (2.66%) NCSC
6 292 (2.45%) Accessibility
7 221 (1.85%) PMO
8 187 (1.57%) SLA
9 182 (1.53%) GDPR
10 172 (1.44%) GRC
11 86 (0.72%) WCAG
12 55 (0.46%) JSP 440
13 51 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
14 42 (0.35%) NIST 800
15 37 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
16 36 (0.30%) Def Stans
17 32 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 22 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 22 (0.18%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 22 (0.18%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 845 (7.09%) Docker
2 641 (5.38%) Active Directory
3 444 (3.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 142 (1.19%) VMware ESXi
5 136 (1.14%) Hyper-V
5 136 (1.14%) VMware NSX
6 133 (1.12%) vSphere
7 92 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
8 47 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
9 40 (0.34%) Firmware
10 37 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
11 24 (0.20%) BitLocker
11 24 (0.20%) vCloud
12 22 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
13 18 (0.15%) NFS
14 13 (0.11%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 11 (0.092%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 11 (0.092%) Squid
16 10 (0.084%) KVM
17 7 (0.059%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 1,045 (8.76%) Kubernetes
2 450 (3.77%) Ansible
3 279 (2.34%) Grafana
4 207 (1.74%) Prometheus
5 139 (1.17%) SCCM
6 128 (1.07%) vCenter Server
7 98 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
8 97 (0.81%) SCOM
9 67 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
10 66 (0.55%) Argo
11 50 (0.42%) Kibana
12 42 (0.35%) Puppet
13 41 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
14 38 (0.32%) Data Guard
14 38 (0.32%) NetBackup
15 33 (0.28%) Istio
16 31 (0.26%) VxRail
17 29 (0.24%) Control-M
18 24 (0.20%) Progress Chef
18 24 (0.20%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,599 (13.41%) Microsoft
2 954 (8.00%) Oracle
3 597 (5.01%) VMware
4 531 (4.45%) ServiceNow
5 443 (3.72%) SAP
6 283 (2.37%) Cisco
7 280 (2.35%) Google
8 223 (1.87%) Splunk
9 188 (1.58%) Databricks
10 152 (1.27%) Salesforce
11 136 (1.14%) Red Hat
12 130 (1.09%) Palo Alto
13 116 (0.97%) Informatica
14 108 (0.91%) Dynatrace
15 100 (0.84%) IBM
16 99 (0.83%) CyberArk
17 96 (0.81%) Talend
18 93 (0.78%) Remedy
19 77 (0.65%) SolarWinds
20 75 (0.63%) Citrix