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 11 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 8,921 5,351 8,007
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.48% 17.38% 17.96%
As % of the Qualifications category 66.54% 58.68% 59.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,042 3,398 5,094
10th Percentile £356 £338 £363
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% -2.65%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £706 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £548 £563
% change year-on-year -4.20% -2.58% +2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 732 271 526
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.12 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.87 £24.34 £40.83
Median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £58.30
Median % change year-on-year -49.70% -14.24% -2.83%
75th Percentile £65.00 £67.25 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.58 £75.00 £83.33
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £59.00 £58.00
% change year-on-year -57.37% +1.72% -3.33%

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 13,407 9,119 13,521
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.78% 29.63% 30.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,856 5,538 8,370
10th Percentile £319 £296 £294
25th Percentile £416 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £517 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.52% -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £619 £630 £650
90th Percentile £719 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £502 £530
% change year-on-year -0.35% -5.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 981 434 952
10th Percentile £15.75 £20.00 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.10 £24.18 £21.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year -37.13% -12.82% +1.96%
75th Percentile £63.75 £66.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £76.58 £79.59 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £42.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year -40.82% -7.97% +2.62%

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 11 February 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 11 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Top 18 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 11 February 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 +1 7,763 £525 -4.55% 1,828
UK excluding London 0 5,003 £525 -4.20% 1,533
London +5 2,660 £530 -1.40% 519
Work from Home +4 2,435 £535 -0.93% 857
South East +1 1,643 £520 -5.45% 561
South West 0 1,293 £550 - 365
North of England -2 821 £500 +0.91% 228
Midlands +4 741 £508 -7.64% 173
West Midlands +2 575 £519 -5.90% 126
North West 0 536 £500 +4.60% 127
East of England +3 341 £497 -4.29% 173
East Midlands +2 168 £425 -17.07% 47
Yorkshire -9 168 £500 +2.56% 54
Scotland +5 154 £500 - 43
North East 0 144 £450 -12.62% 50
Wales 0 80 £525 -0.24% 25
Northern Ireland +9 34 £500 +271.43% 4
Channel Islands - 1 - - 2

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
1 295 (3.31%) Confluence
2 198 (2.22%) SharePoint
3 138 (1.55%) Microsoft Exchange
4 114 (1.28%) SAS
5 77 (0.86%) Apache
5 77 (0.86%) Apache Spark
6 61 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
7 45 (0.50%) nginx
8 34 (0.38%) Skype for Business
9 29 (0.33%) WebLogic
10 21 (0.24%) CMS
11 19 (0.21%) Jupyter
11 19 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
12 12 (0.13%) IIS
13 9 (0.10%) ArcGIS
13 9 (0.10%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.10%) Tuxedo
14 6 (0.067%) Oracle Workflow
14 6 (0.067%) SharePoint Server
14 6 (0.067%) Tomcat
Applications
1 251 (2.81%) Microsoft Office
2 165 (1.85%) Microsoft Excel
3 118 (1.32%) Microsoft Project
4 64 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 41 (0.46%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.17%) Simulink
8 6 (0.067%) Oracle Smart View
8 6 (0.067%) Sketch
9 5 (0.056%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.056%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.056%) Siemens NX
9 5 (0.056%) Windchill
10 3 (0.034%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.034%) Chatbot
10 3 (0.034%) FrameMaker
10 3 (0.034%) Stateflow
11 2 (0.022%) InVision
11 2 (0.022%) PTC Creo
11 2 (0.022%) Trello
Business Applications
1 164 (1.84%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.47%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 30 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
4 25 (0.28%) SAP MM
5 24 (0.27%) SAP EWM
5 24 (0.27%) SAP WM
6 23 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
7 21 (0.24%) Remedy ITSM
8 18 (0.20%) SAP PP
8 18 (0.20%) Teamcenter
9 15 (0.17%) Maximo
10 14 (0.16%) Oracle Assets
10 14 (0.16%) Oracle General Ledger
10 14 (0.16%) SAP VC
11 13 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
11 13 (0.15%) SAP EHS
11 13 (0.15%) SAP QM
12 12 (0.13%) Primavera
12 12 (0.13%) SAP HCM
13 11 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,504 (16.86%) AWS
2 1,489 (16.69%) Azure
3 409 (4.58%) GitHub
4 374 (4.19%) GCP
5 334 (3.74%) Azure DevOps
6 325 (3.64%) Power Platform
7 305 (3.42%) Microsoft 365
8 253 (2.84%) Serverless
9 226 (2.53%) Entra ID
10 218 (2.44%) GitHub Actions
11 194 (2.17%) Amazon S3
12 171 (1.92%) OpenShift
13 160 (1.79%) AWS Lambda
14 142 (1.59%) AWS CloudFormation
15 124 (1.39%) Amazon EKS
16 116 (1.30%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 112 (1.26%) Amazon EC2
18 106 (1.19%) IaaS
19 98 (1.10%) Amazon ECS
19 98 (1.10%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 421 (4.72%) Firewall
2 271 (3.04%) DNS
3 211 (2.37%) Network Security
4 183 (2.05%) VPN
5 177 (1.98%) WAN
6 140 (1.57%) TCP/IP
7 135 (1.51%) LAN
8 123 (1.38%) BGP
9 115 (1.29%) DHCP
10 86 (0.96%) VLAN
10 86 (0.96%) Wireless
11 75 (0.84%) OSPF
12 73 (0.82%) MPLS
13 69 (0.77%) Wi-Fi
14 63 (0.71%) SSL
15 58 (0.65%) SAN
16 56 (0.63%) IPsec
17 43 (0.48%) Cisco ISE
17 43 (0.48%) Skype
18 42 (0.47%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 233 (2.61%) PostgreSQL
2 231 (2.59%) Power BI
3 137 (1.54%) Data Warehouse
4 113 (1.27%) SQL Server
5 110 (1.23%) Metadata
6 100 (1.12%) MongoDB
6 100 (1.12%) Oracle Database
7 99 (1.11%) NoSQL
8 84 (0.94%) Amazon RDS
8 84 (0.94%) Relational Database
9 71 (0.80%) Azure SQL Database
9 71 (0.80%) Data Lake
10 68 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
11 64 (0.72%) Big Data
12 52 (0.58%) MySQL
13 43 (0.48%) Amazon Athena
14 42 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
15 39 (0.44%) Pentaho
15 39 (0.44%) Tableau
16 37 (0.41%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 505 (5.66%) JIRA
2 406 (4.55%) Git
3 364 (4.08%) Jenkins
4 337 (3.78%) GitLab
5 102 (1.14%) Selenium
6 79 (0.89%) Postman
7 66 (0.74%) JUnit
8 61 (0.68%) Cypress.io
9 53 (0.59%) SonarQube
10 48 (0.54%) Artifactory
11 45 (0.50%) Oracle APEX
12 41 (0.46%) Bitbucket
13 39 (0.44%) Cucumber
14 38 (0.43%) Mockito
15 36 (0.40%) Maven
16 35 (0.39%) REST Assured
17 25 (0.28%) MSI
18 24 (0.27%) JMeter
19 23 (0.26%) Metasploit
19 23 (0.26%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,273 (25.48%) Public Sector
2 2,179 (24.43%) Social Skills
3 747 (8.37%) Analytical Skills
4 600 (6.73%) Finance
5 323 (3.62%) Military
6 249 (2.79%) Documentation Skills
7 195 (2.19%) Telecoms
8 191 (2.14%) Manufacturing
9 166 (1.86%) Aerospace
10 134 (1.50%) Legal
11 130 (1.46%) Electronics
12 128 (1.43%) Marketing
13 125 (1.40%) Organisational Skills
14 112 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
15 100 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
16 94 (1.05%) Banking
17 74 (0.83%) Law
18 68 (0.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 40 (0.45%) Police
20 32 (0.36%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,207 (13.53%) Architect
2 880 (9.86%) Developer
3 781 (8.75%) Senior
4 655 (7.34%) Analyst
5 633 (7.10%) Consultant
6 533 (5.97%) Lead
7 438 (4.91%) DevOps Engineer
8 297 (3.33%) Data Engineer
9 241 (2.70%) Support Engineer
10 239 (2.68%) Network Engineer
11 235 (2.63%) Solutions Architect
12 220 (2.47%) Business Analyst
13 210 (2.35%) Software Engineer
14 208 (2.33%) Technical Architect
15 181 (2.03%) Tester
16 175 (1.96%) AWS Engineer
17 168 (1.88%) Azure Engineer
18 155 (1.74%) Project Manager
19 147 (1.65%) Senior Developer
20 145 (1.63%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 351 (3.93%) REST
2 214 (2.40%) Node.js
3 197 (2.21%) Kafka
4 194 (2.17%) React
5 174 (1.95%) Spring
6 169 (1.89%) JSON
7 166 (1.86%) SOAP
8 155 (1.74%) LDAP
9 136 (1.52%) Spring Boot
10 115 (1.29%) .NET
10 115 (1.29%) HTML
11 109 (1.22%) XML
12 107 (1.20%) OAuth
13 105 (1.18%) RESTful
14 104 (1.17%) PySpark
15 98 (1.10%) AngularJS
16 96 (1.08%) CSS
17 95 (1.06%) Oracle Fusion
18 93 (1.04%) Web Services
19 80 (0.90%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 269 (3.02%) Data Centre
2 253 (2.84%) Cloud Native
3 243 (2.72%) Product Ownership
4 235 (2.63%) Onboarding
5 197 (2.21%) PKI
6 172 (1.93%) Management Information System
7 139 (1.56%) Security Posture
8 119 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
9 113 (1.27%) Enterprise Software
10 106 (1.19%) Legacy Systems
11 98 (1.10%) Replication
12 78 (0.87%) Driving Licence
13 75 (0.84%) Cyber Threat
13 75 (0.84%) Security Operations Centre
14 69 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
15 68 (0.76%) Public Cloud
16 56 (0.63%) Private Cloud
17 52 (0.58%) Distributed Systems
18 50 (0.56%) CMDB
19 49 (0.55%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 879 (9.85%) Windows
2 684 (7.67%) Linux
3 223 (2.50%) Windows Server
4 179 (2.01%) Windows 10
5 123 (1.38%) Unix
6 119 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 103 (1.15%) Android
8 68 (0.76%) Mac OS
9 44 (0.49%) Ubuntu
10 39 (0.44%) Apple iOS
10 39 (0.44%) VMS
11 29 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
12 24 (0.27%) CentOS
13 22 (0.25%) Windows 7
13 22 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
14 18 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
15 17 (0.19%) Mac OS X
15 17 (0.19%) Solaris
16 10 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
16 10 (0.11%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,641 (18.39%) Agile
2 1,366 (15.31%) DevOps
3 1,191 (13.35%) CI/CD
4 1,113 (12.48%) Problem-Solving
5 789 (8.84%) Stakeholder Management
6 768 (8.61%) Migration
7 636 (7.13%) Continuous Improvement
8 634 (7.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 602 (6.75%) Cybersecurity
10 581 (6.51%) Infrastructure as Code
11 514 (5.76%) ITIL
12 502 (5.63%) Test Automation
13 477 (5.35%) Containerisation
14 476 (5.34%) Analytics
15 447 (5.01%) Roadmaps
16 422 (4.73%) Business Intelligence
17 393 (4.41%) Software Engineering
18 390 (4.37%) Service Management
19 382 (4.28%) Scrum
20 374 (4.19%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,101 (12.34%) Python
2 684 (7.67%) SQL
3 606 (6.79%) PowerShell
4 484 (5.43%) Java
5 425 (4.76%) JavaScript
6 223 (2.50%) Bash
7 210 (2.35%) TypeScript
8 159 (1.78%) C#
9 92 (1.03%) C++
10 88 (0.99%) Go
11 85 (0.95%) Shell Script
12 77 (0.86%) PL/SQL
13 66 (0.74%) C
14 54 (0.61%) Ruby
15 47 (0.53%) Ada
15 47 (0.53%) Scala
16 42 (0.47%) ABAP
17 41 (0.46%) Bicep
18 39 (0.44%) MATLAB
19 35 (0.39%) R
Qualifications
1 6,877 (77.09%) SC Cleared
2 1,487 (16.67%) DV Cleared
3 446 (5.00%) Degree
4 307 (3.44%) BPSS Clearance
5 160 (1.79%) CISSP
6 149 (1.67%) Cisco Certification
7 128 (1.43%) Azure Certification
8 123 (1.38%) AWS Certification
9 118 (1.32%) CCNP
10 116 (1.30%) Microsoft Certification
11 102 (1.14%) CISM
12 84 (0.94%) Computer Science Degree
13 70 (0.78%) CCNA
14 67 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
15 64 (0.72%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 52 (0.58%) CEH
16 52 (0.58%) GIAC
16 52 (0.58%) TOGAF Certification
17 48 (0.54%) Master's Degree
18 46 (0.52%) CHECK Team Member
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 280 (3.14%) QA
2 272 (3.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 260 (2.91%) NIST
4 223 (2.50%) Data Quality
5 203 (2.28%) NCSC
6 186 (2.08%) Accessibility
7 171 (1.92%) GDPR
8 128 (1.43%) SLA
9 82 (0.92%) PMO
10 60 (0.67%) GRC
11 57 (0.64%) JSP 440
12 51 (0.57%) WCAG
13 39 (0.44%) Def Stans
14 38 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
15 33 (0.37%) NIST 800
16 32 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 32 (0.36%) PCI DSS
17 31 (0.35%) COBIT
18 24 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
19 23 (0.26%) RMADS
System Software
1 608 (6.82%) Docker
2 506 (5.67%) Active Directory
3 260 (2.91%) VMware Infrastructure
4 93 (1.04%) VMware NSX
5 73 (0.82%) vSphere
6 65 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
7 63 (0.71%) Hyper-V
8 62 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
9 30 (0.34%) Firmware
10 27 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
11 19 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
12 18 (0.20%) BitLocker
13 15 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 14 (0.16%) NFS
15 13 (0.15%) Squid
16 10 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
16 10 (0.11%) Postfix
17 7 (0.078%) DFS Replication
17 7 (0.078%) vCloud
17 7 (0.078%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 796 (8.92%) Kubernetes
2 773 (8.66%) Terraform
3 306 (3.43%) Ansible
4 216 (2.42%) Grafana
5 182 (2.04%) Prometheus
6 134 (1.50%) Single Sign-On
7 110 (1.23%) SCCM
8 101 (1.13%) vCenter Server
9 92 (1.03%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 72 (0.81%) Argo
11 68 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
12 48 (0.54%) vRealize
13 40 (0.45%) Kibana
14 39 (0.44%) Podman
15 35 (0.39%) Packer
16 31 (0.35%) OPNET
17 29 (0.33%) Puppet
18 28 (0.31%) Progress Chef
19 27 (0.30%) FortiGate
20 25 (0.28%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,025 (11.49%) Microsoft
2 473 (5.30%) SAP
2 473 (5.30%) VMware
3 464 (5.20%) Oracle
4 436 (4.89%) Cisco
5 355 (3.98%) ServiceNow
6 219 (2.45%) Splunk
7 175 (1.96%) Red Hat
8 149 (1.67%) CyberArk
9 142 (1.59%) Google
10 141 (1.58%) Palo Alto
11 140 (1.57%) Databricks
12 127 (1.42%) Salesforce
13 120 (1.35%) Juniper
14 108 (1.21%) Atlassian
15 106 (1.19%) Dell
16 82 (0.92%) HP
17 75 (0.84%) Dynatrace
18 74 (0.83%) IBM
19 72 (0.81%) Aruba