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 30 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 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 11,976 6,032 6,671
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.82% 18.37% 17.74%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.77% 58.24% 60.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,326 3,906 4,251
10th Percentile £396 £335 £350
25th Percentile £462 £440 £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 £722 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £537 £550
% change year-on-year +0.09% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 853 621 391
10th Percentile £20.00 £18.51 £20.12
25th Percentile £29.07 £18.87 £28.50
Median hourly rate £63.48 £25.15 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +152.41% -58.08% -
75th Percentile £76.75 £33.75 £72.20
90th Percentile £90.80 £70.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.23
% change year-on-year +158.45% -58.24% +3.32%

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 17,415 10,358 10,991
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.73% 31.54% 29.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,583 6,484 6,674
10th Percentile £350 £283 £313
25th Percentile £445 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £634
90th Percentile £713 £710 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,404 870 609
10th Percentile £17.00 £17.87 £17.98
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £25.26
Median hourly rate £45.35 £25.15 £49.00
Median % change year-on-year +80.32% -48.67% -8.69%
75th Percentile £72.25 £42.81 £68.75
90th Percentile £88.75 £70.00 £75.57
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -49.70% -3.65%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 10,309 £550 +2.33% 5,199
UK excluding London +1 6,674 £538 +0.09% 3,663
London +5 3,667 £550 +2.33% 1,526
Work from Home +2 3,161 £526 -2.23% 2,786
South East +1 2,266 £564 +7.48% 965
South West 0 1,401 £550 - 817
North of England +3 1,303 £519 -1.19% 716
Midlands 0 949 £478 -7.60% 365
West Midlands 0 809 £475 -8.39% 245
North West +1 785 £530 -4.07% 433
East of England 0 433 £574 +4.36% 435
Scotland +14 312 £495 +0.51% 272
Yorkshire +1 294 £500 +1.83% 117
North East 0 244 £466 -10.77% 172
East Midlands 0 133 £495 +7.03% 119
Wales +5 109 £550 +4.76% 72
Northern Ireland +2 36 £650 +21.50% 64

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
1 393 (3.28%) Confluence
2 266 (2.22%) SharePoint
3 165 (1.38%) SAS
4 129 (1.08%) Microsoft Exchange
5 113 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
6 105 (0.88%) Apache
7 104 (0.87%) Apache Spark
8 41 (0.34%) Jupyter
9 39 (0.33%) WebLogic
10 38 (0.32%) nginx
11 34 (0.28%) CMS
12 24 (0.20%) IIS
13 22 (0.18%) Skype for Business
14 21 (0.18%) Tomcat
15 19 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
16 16 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 16 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
17 15 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
18 11 (0.092%) JBoss
18 11 (0.092%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 215 (1.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 165 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
3 104 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 100 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 19 (0.16%) Revit
9 18 (0.15%) SOLIDWORKS
9 18 (0.15%) Windchill
10 9 (0.075%) Adobe XD
10 9 (0.075%) Simulink
11 8 (0.067%) Chatbot
12 7 (0.058%) Notepad++
12 7 (0.058%) Sketch
13 6 (0.050%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 4 (0.033%) OrCAD
14 4 (0.033%) Trello
15 2 (0.017%) Gliffy
15 2 (0.017%) Houdini
Business Applications
1 149 (1.24%) SAP S/4HANA
2 81 (0.68%) Remedy ITSM
3 60 (0.50%) Oracle ERP
4 48 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
5 37 (0.31%) Teamcenter
6 32 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 30 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
8 26 (0.22%) Oracle Payroll
8 26 (0.22%) SAP PSCD
9 24 (0.20%) SAP GRC
10 22 (0.18%) SAP FI
11 18 (0.15%) Primavera
12 17 (0.14%) SAP HR
13 16 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
14 15 (0.13%) Maximo
15 14 (0.12%) SAP CO
16 13 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
16 13 (0.11%) Oracle Receivables
17 12 (0.10%) NetSuite
17 12 (0.10%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 2,161 (18.04%) Azure
2 2,113 (17.64%) AWS
3 514 (4.29%) GitHub
4 511 (4.27%) Azure DevOps
5 496 (4.14%) Power Platform
6 463 (3.87%) GCP
7 352 (2.94%) GitHub Actions
8 350 (2.92%) Microsoft 365
9 332 (2.77%) Entra ID
10 279 (2.33%) Serverless
11 241 (2.01%) Amazon S3
12 207 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
13 182 (1.52%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 171 (1.43%) Amazon EKS
15 170 (1.42%) OCI
16 167 (1.39%) SaaS
17 148 (1.24%) Amazon EC2
18 137 (1.14%) OpenShift
19 131 (1.09%) AWS CloudFormation
20 111 (0.93%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 459 (3.83%) Firewall
2 388 (3.24%) DNS
3 244 (2.04%) Network Security
4 212 (1.77%) WAN
5 202 (1.69%) VPN
6 189 (1.58%) DHCP
7 163 (1.36%) LAN
8 138 (1.15%) TCP/IP
9 128 (1.07%) BGP
10 116 (0.97%) Wi-Fi
11 99 (0.83%) VLAN
12 91 (0.76%) Wireless
13 88 (0.73%) OSPF
14 71 (0.59%) SSL
15 65 (0.54%) MPLS
15 65 (0.54%) SAN
16 63 (0.53%) VSAN
17 61 (0.51%) IPsec
18 58 (0.48%) SD-WAN
19 50 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 352 (2.94%) Power BI
2 303 (2.53%) PostgreSQL
3 277 (2.31%) SQL Server
4 269 (2.25%) Data Warehouse
5 203 (1.70%) Metadata
6 187 (1.56%) Oracle Database
7 147 (1.23%) Data Lake
8 142 (1.19%) Relational Database
9 131 (1.09%) MongoDB
10 110 (0.92%) MySQL
11 107 (0.89%) Amazon RDS
12 95 (0.79%) NoSQL
13 88 (0.73%) Oracle Reports
14 72 (0.60%) Elasticsearch
15 70 (0.58%) Amazon Athena
16 69 (0.58%) Pentaho
17 58 (0.48%) Big Data
18 53 (0.44%) Tableau
19 52 (0.43%) DynamoDB
20 51 (0.43%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 657 (5.49%) JIRA
2 587 (4.90%) Git
3 533 (4.45%) GitLab
4 502 (4.19%) Jenkins
5 154 (1.29%) Selenium
6 87 (0.73%) Postman
7 81 (0.68%) Maven
8 78 (0.65%) JUnit
9 76 (0.63%) SonarQube
10 75 (0.63%) JMeter
11 73 (0.61%) Cucumber
12 54 (0.45%) Cypress.io
13 51 (0.43%) Gradle
14 48 (0.40%) REST Assured
15 46 (0.38%) Mockito
16 44 (0.37%) Gatling
17 40 (0.33%) Visual Studio
18 39 (0.33%) Artifactory
18 39 (0.33%) Zephyr
19 32 (0.27%) MSI
General
1 2,681 (22.39%) Social Skills
2 2,460 (20.54%) Public Sector
3 964 (8.05%) Analytical Skills
4 773 (6.45%) Finance
5 432 (3.61%) Military
6 342 (2.86%) Aerospace
7 313 (2.61%) Documentation Skills
8 233 (1.95%) Influencing Skills
9 195 (1.63%) Organisational Skills
10 175 (1.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 168 (1.40%) Legal
12 166 (1.39%) Telecoms
13 165 (1.38%) Manufacturing
14 141 (1.18%) Banking
15 121 (1.01%) Law
15 121 (1.01%) Police
16 76 (0.63%) Presentation Skills
17 54 (0.45%) Local Government
18 52 (0.43%) Aviation
19 42 (0.35%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,947 (16.26%) Architect
2 1,227 (10.25%) Developer
3 1,140 (9.52%) Senior
4 1,060 (8.85%) Lead
5 699 (5.84%) Consultant
6 653 (5.45%) Analyst
7 518 (4.33%) DevOps Engineer
8 492 (4.11%) Data Engineer
9 428 (3.57%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 374 (3.12%) Solutions Architect
11 368 (3.07%) Technical Architect
12 305 (2.55%) Data Architect
13 290 (2.42%) Security Architect
14 260 (2.17%) Software Engineer
15 252 (2.10%) Network Engineer
16 232 (1.94%) Administrator
17 221 (1.85%) Java Developer
18 216 (1.80%) Designer
19 211 (1.76%) Azure Engineer
20 209 (1.75%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,010 (8.43%) Terraform
2 471 (3.93%) REST
3 267 (2.23%) Kafka
4 260 (2.17%) Spring
5 240 (2.00%) Spring Boot
6 215 (1.80%) RESTful
7 202 (1.69%) .NET
8 190 (1.59%) React
9 183 (1.53%) SOAP
10 177 (1.48%) Node.js
11 156 (1.30%) JSON
12 143 (1.19%) OAuth
13 139 (1.16%) HTML
14 135 (1.13%) XML
15 130 (1.09%) Middleware
16 114 (0.95%) Web Services
17 111 (0.93%) Oracle Fusion
18 108 (0.90%) AngularJS
19 104 (0.87%) CSS
20 101 (0.84%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 545 (4.55%) Cloud Native
2 478 (3.99%) Onboarding
3 381 (3.18%) Product Ownership
4 310 (2.59%) Data Centre
5 272 (2.27%) Management Information System
6 187 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
7 182 (1.52%) Enterprise Software
7 182 (1.52%) PKI
8 163 (1.36%) CMDB
9 139 (1.16%) Distributed Systems
10 127 (1.06%) Hybrid Cloud
11 122 (1.02%) Cyber Threat
12 118 (0.99%) Replication
13 115 (0.96%) Operational Technology
14 112 (0.94%) Self-Motivation
15 101 (0.84%) Data Structures
16 99 (0.83%) Security Operations Centre
16 99 (0.83%) Security Posture
17 94 (0.78%) Public Cloud
18 90 (0.75%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 1,011 (8.44%) Windows
2 798 (6.66%) Linux
3 376 (3.14%) Windows Server
4 240 (2.00%) Unix
5 154 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 147 (1.23%) Windows 10
7 83 (0.69%) Solaris
8 79 (0.66%) Android
9 49 (0.41%) Mac OS
10 47 (0.39%) Apple iOS
11 46 (0.38%) CentOS
12 39 (0.33%) Ubuntu
13 37 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
14 31 (0.26%) AIX
15 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 25 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
17 21 (0.18%) VMS
18 19 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
19 16 (0.13%) Rocky
20 12 (0.10%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,548 (21.28%) Agile
2 1,818 (15.18%) DevOps
3 1,815 (15.16%) CI/CD
4 1,689 (14.10%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,474 (12.31%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,282 (10.70%) Problem-Solving
7 1,208 (10.09%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,036 (8.65%) Infrastructure as Code
9 976 (8.15%) Migration
10 877 (7.32%) Cybersecurity
11 799 (6.67%) ITIL
12 784 (6.55%) Test Automation
13 770 (6.43%) Containerisation
14 769 (6.42%) Decision-Making
15 763 (6.37%) Technical Leadership
16 751 (6.27%) AI
17 743 (6.20%) Roadmaps
18 724 (6.05%) Analytics
19 678 (5.66%) Software Engineering
20 632 (5.28%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,374 (11.47%) Python
2 1,120 (9.35%) SQL
3 804 (6.71%) Java
4 595 (4.97%) PowerShell
5 414 (3.46%) JavaScript
6 359 (3.00%) Bash
7 231 (1.93%) C#
8 225 (1.88%) TypeScript
9 156 (1.30%) PL/SQL
10 127 (1.06%) Bicep
11 86 (0.72%) Shell Script
12 61 (0.51%) Scala
13 60 (0.50%) C++
13 60 (0.50%) Go
14 51 (0.43%) C
15 49 (0.41%) Groovy
15 49 (0.41%) Kotlin
16 40 (0.33%) Apex Code
17 38 (0.32%) T-SQL
18 35 (0.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 9,134 (76.27%) SC Cleared
2 2,247 (18.76%) DV Cleared
3 540 (4.51%) BPSS Clearance
4 483 (4.03%) Degree
5 226 (1.89%) CISSP
6 192 (1.60%) Cisco Certification
7 188 (1.57%) Azure Certification
8 169 (1.41%) Microsoft Certification
9 155 (1.29%) AWS Certification
10 142 (1.19%) CISM
11 108 (0.90%) PMI Certification
12 98 (0.82%) PMP
13 97 (0.81%) ISTQB
14 90 (0.75%) CCNP
15 73 (0.61%) Computer Science Degree
16 71 (0.59%) CCNA
17 60 (0.50%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 55 (0.46%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 49 (0.41%) DBS Check
20 45 (0.38%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 539 (4.50%) QA
2 391 (3.26%) Data Quality
3 343 (2.86%) NIST
4 327 (2.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 314 (2.62%) NCSC
6 296 (2.47%) Accessibility
7 222 (1.85%) PMO
8 191 (1.59%) SLA
9 178 (1.49%) GDPR
10 168 (1.40%) GRC
11 86 (0.72%) WCAG
12 58 (0.48%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
14 44 (0.37%) NIST 800
15 36 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
15 36 (0.30%) Def Stans
16 29 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 22 (0.18%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 21 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 20 (0.17%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 838 (7.00%) Docker
2 659 (5.50%) Active Directory
3 445 (3.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 143 (1.19%) VMware ESXi
5 141 (1.18%) VMware NSX
6 140 (1.17%) Hyper-V
7 133 (1.11%) vSphere
8 94 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
9 44 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
10 43 (0.36%) Firmware
11 38 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
12 26 (0.22%) BitLocker
13 25 (0.21%) vCloud
14 21 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
15 20 (0.17%) NFS
16 13 (0.11%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 11 (0.092%) KVM
17 11 (0.092%) Squid
18 10 (0.084%) Microsoft Virtual Server
18 10 (0.084%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 1,018 (8.50%) Kubernetes
2 444 (3.71%) Ansible
3 273 (2.28%) Grafana
4 206 (1.72%) Prometheus
5 137 (1.14%) SCCM
6 130 (1.09%) vCenter Server
7 99 (0.83%) SCOM
8 95 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
9 69 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
10 62 (0.52%) Argo
11 49 (0.41%) Kibana
12 44 (0.37%) Oracle RMAN
13 43 (0.36%) Puppet
14 39 (0.33%) Data Guard
15 36 (0.30%) Istio
16 34 (0.28%) NetBackup
17 31 (0.26%) VxRail
18 29 (0.24%) Control-M
19 26 (0.22%) WSUS
20 25 (0.21%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,583 (13.22%) Microsoft
2 968 (8.08%) Oracle
3 602 (5.03%) VMware
4 543 (4.53%) ServiceNow
5 444 (3.71%) SAP
6 302 (2.52%) Cisco
7 276 (2.30%) Google
8 226 (1.89%) Splunk
9 187 (1.56%) Databricks
10 162 (1.35%) Salesforce
11 136 (1.14%) Red Hat
12 129 (1.08%) Palo Alto
13 110 (0.92%) Informatica
14 103 (0.86%) IBM
15 102 (0.85%) Dynatrace
16 100 (0.84%) Talend
17 99 (0.83%) CyberArk
18 93 (0.78%) Remedy
19 80 (0.67%) Fortinet
19 80 (0.67%) SolarWinds