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

6 months to
24 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 9,398 5,276 7,945
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.94% 17.46% 17.89%
As % of the Qualifications category 67.36% 58.70% 59.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,353 3,398 5,043
10th Percentile £360 £327 £363
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £539 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.60% -2.00% -2.65%
75th Percentile £624 £637 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £520 £540 £565
% change year-on-year -3.70% -4.42% +2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 772 269 521
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.12 £19.99
25th Percentile £20.35 £24.66 £40.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £56.75 £57.32
Median % change year-on-year -55.68% -1.00% -4.47%
75th Percentile £65.06 £67.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.24 £75.30 £83.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £57.33
% change year-on-year -58.08% +4.66% -0.74%

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 13,951 8,988 13,453
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.05% 29.75% 30.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,211 5,527 8,301
10th Percentile £330 £294 £290
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £614 £630 £650
90th Percentile £719 £715 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £510 £530
% change year-on-year -1.96% -3.77% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,017 438 968
10th Percentile £16.01 £20.00 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £24.18 £20.77
Median hourly rate £25.15 £40.25 £44.00
Median % change year-on-year -37.52% -8.52% -7.37%
75th Percentile £64.00 £67.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.04 £82.15 £77.15
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £46.71 £44.50
% change year-on-year -46.16% +4.97% -1.11%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 8,173 £525 -4.20% 1,759
UK excluding London 0 5,232 £520 -3.70% 1,462
London +5 2,830 £530 +0.95% 478
Work from Home +4 2,571 £530 - 784
South East +1 1,759 £525 -4.55% 580
South West 0 1,304 £550 -2.35% 338
Midlands +4 834 £500 -9.09% 178
North of England -2 824 £497 +1.40% 200
West Midlands +2 659 £500 -9.26% 134
North West 0 531 £500 +5.26% 117
East of England +1 341 £498 -0.50% 149
East Midlands +1 173 £425 -16.05% 44
Yorkshire -5 173 £500 -4.76% 42
Scotland +7 164 £475 -5.00% 34
North East 0 147 £450 -10.00% 42
Wales -1 81 £515 -1.87% 17
Northern Ireland +13 30 £500 +271.43% 2
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
1 322 (3.43%) Confluence
2 209 (2.22%) SharePoint
3 141 (1.50%) Microsoft Exchange
4 134 (1.43%) SAS
5 82 (0.87%) Apache Spark
6 76 (0.81%) Apache
7 52 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
8 43 (0.46%) nginx
9 41 (0.44%) WebLogic
10 33 (0.35%) Skype for Business
11 21 (0.22%) Jupyter
12 19 (0.20%) CMS
13 18 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
14 12 (0.13%) Tuxedo
15 10 (0.11%) Tomcat
16 9 (0.096%) ArcGIS
17 8 (0.085%) IIS
17 8 (0.085%) OpenStack
18 7 (0.074%) Oracle Workflow
19 5 (0.053%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 253 (2.69%) Microsoft Office
2 189 (2.01%) Microsoft Excel
3 119 (1.27%) Microsoft Project
4 70 (0.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 41 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.15%) Simulink
8 6 (0.064%) Sketch
9 5 (0.053%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.053%) Siemens NX
9 5 (0.053%) Windchill
10 4 (0.043%) Chatbot
10 4 (0.043%) Oracle Smart View
11 3 (0.032%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.021%) Adobe Illustrator
12 2 (0.021%) CATIA
12 2 (0.021%) InVision
12 2 (0.021%) Mozilla Thunderbird
12 2 (0.021%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.021%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 158 (1.68%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.44%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 30 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
4 27 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
5 25 (0.27%) SAP MM
6 22 (0.23%) Dynamics CRM
6 22 (0.23%) Teamcenter
7 18 (0.19%) SAP PP
8 15 (0.16%) Maximo
8 15 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
8 15 (0.16%) SAP WM
9 14 (0.15%) SAP EWM
9 14 (0.15%) SAP VC
10 13 (0.14%) SAP QM
11 12 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
12 11 (0.12%) Oracle General Ledger
12 11 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
12 11 (0.12%) SAP HCM
13 10 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
14 9 (0.096%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,607 (17.10%) AWS
2 1,527 (16.25%) Azure
3 409 (4.35%) GitHub
4 392 (4.17%) GCP
5 342 (3.64%) Power Platform
6 334 (3.55%) Azure DevOps
7 308 (3.28%) Microsoft 365
8 264 (2.81%) Serverless
9 224 (2.38%) Entra ID
10 216 (2.30%) GitHub Actions
11 205 (2.18%) Amazon S3
12 181 (1.93%) OpenShift
13 172 (1.83%) AWS Lambda
14 144 (1.53%) AWS CloudFormation
15 134 (1.43%) Amazon EC2
16 133 (1.42%) Amazon EKS
17 131 (1.39%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 110 (1.17%) IaaS
19 108 (1.15%) OCI
20 105 (1.12%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 439 (4.67%) Firewall
2 287 (3.05%) DNS
3 220 (2.34%) Network Security
4 193 (2.05%) WAN
5 176 (1.87%) VPN
6 152 (1.62%) LAN
7 139 (1.48%) TCP/IP
8 136 (1.45%) BGP
9 128 (1.36%) DHCP
10 93 (0.99%) OSPF
11 91 (0.97%) Wireless
12 86 (0.92%) VLAN
13 74 (0.79%) MPLS
14 69 (0.73%) Wi-Fi
15 61 (0.65%) SSL
16 57 (0.61%) IPsec
17 55 (0.59%) SAN
18 49 (0.52%) Cisco ISE
19 42 (0.45%) Skype
20 41 (0.44%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 254 (2.70%) PostgreSQL
2 245 (2.61%) Power BI
3 165 (1.76%) Data Warehouse
4 133 (1.42%) SQL Server
5 119 (1.27%) Metadata
6 106 (1.13%) Oracle Database
7 100 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
8 98 (1.04%) MongoDB
9 97 (1.03%) NoSQL
10 88 (0.94%) Relational Database
11 76 (0.81%) Data Lake
12 75 (0.80%) Elasticsearch
13 73 (0.78%) Azure SQL Database
14 67 (0.71%) Big Data
15 59 (0.63%) MySQL
16 57 (0.61%) Pentaho
17 52 (0.55%) Tableau
18 43 (0.46%) DynamoDB
19 42 (0.45%) Amazon Redshift
19 42 (0.45%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 537 (5.71%) JIRA
2 450 (4.79%) Git
3 390 (4.15%) Jenkins
4 353 (3.76%) GitLab
5 112 (1.19%) Selenium
6 87 (0.93%) Postman
7 81 (0.86%) JUnit
8 62 (0.66%) Cypress.io
9 54 (0.57%) SonarQube
10 49 (0.52%) Artifactory
11 45 (0.48%) Oracle APEX
12 44 (0.47%) Maven
13 43 (0.46%) Cucumber
14 41 (0.44%) Bitbucket
15 39 (0.41%) Mockito
16 35 (0.37%) REST Assured
17 32 (0.34%) JMeter
18 30 (0.32%) Rational DOORS
19 24 (0.26%) Metasploit
19 24 (0.26%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,395 (25.48%) Public Sector
2 2,269 (24.14%) Social Skills
3 780 (8.30%) Analytical Skills
4 630 (6.70%) Finance
5 330 (3.51%) Military
6 258 (2.75%) Documentation Skills
7 197 (2.10%) Aerospace
8 189 (2.01%) Telecoms
9 183 (1.95%) Manufacturing
10 141 (1.50%) Legal
11 127 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
12 120 (1.28%) Electronics
12 120 (1.28%) Marketing
13 117 (1.24%) Influencing Skills
14 104 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
15 94 (1.00%) Banking
16 68 (0.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 68 (0.72%) Law
17 47 (0.50%) Police
18 37 (0.39%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,307 (13.91%) Architect
2 912 (9.70%) Developer
3 823 (8.76%) Senior
4 709 (7.54%) Analyst
5 635 (6.76%) Consultant
6 558 (5.94%) Lead
7 436 (4.64%) DevOps Engineer
8 338 (3.60%) Data Engineer
9 247 (2.63%) Solutions Architect
10 246 (2.62%) Business Analyst
10 246 (2.62%) Network Engineer
11 238 (2.53%) Support Engineer
12 232 (2.47%) Software Engineer
13 227 (2.42%) Technical Architect
14 193 (2.05%) Tester
15 181 (1.93%) AWS Engineer
16 168 (1.79%) Azure Engineer
17 165 (1.76%) Designer
18 164 (1.75%) Security Architect
19 157 (1.67%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 352 (3.75%) REST
2 217 (2.31%) Node.js
3 204 (2.17%) Spring
4 203 (2.16%) Kafka
5 196 (2.09%) React
6 168 (1.79%) JSON
7 158 (1.68%) SOAP
8 156 (1.66%) Spring Boot
9 149 (1.59%) LDAP
10 120 (1.28%) .NET
11 111 (1.18%) PySpark
12 109 (1.16%) HTML
12 109 (1.16%) RESTful
13 105 (1.12%) OAuth
14 104 (1.11%) XML
15 103 (1.10%) AngularJS
15 103 (1.10%) Oracle Fusion
16 101 (1.07%) Web Services
17 94 (1.00%) CSS
18 82 (0.87%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 294 (3.13%) Data Centre
2 264 (2.81%) Cloud Native
3 262 (2.79%) Product Ownership
4 239 (2.54%) Onboarding
5 206 (2.19%) PKI
6 178 (1.89%) Management Information System
7 139 (1.48%) Security Posture
8 116 (1.23%) Legacy Systems
9 114 (1.21%) Enterprise Software
10 113 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
11 98 (1.04%) Replication
12 81 (0.86%) Security Operations Centre
13 79 (0.84%) Public Cloud
14 76 (0.81%) Driving Licence
14 76 (0.81%) Hybrid Cloud
15 69 (0.73%) Cyber Threat
16 64 (0.68%) Distributed Systems
17 50 (0.53%) Analytical Mindset
18 49 (0.52%) Algorithms
19 48 (0.51%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 867 (9.23%) Windows
2 701 (7.46%) Linux
3 222 (2.36%) Windows Server
4 157 (1.67%) Windows 10
5 127 (1.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 127 (1.35%) Unix
6 120 (1.28%) Android
7 66 (0.70%) Mac OS
8 49 (0.52%) Apple iOS
9 42 (0.45%) Ubuntu
10 37 (0.39%) VMS
11 30 (0.32%) Windows Server 2016
12 24 (0.26%) CentOS
12 24 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
13 22 (0.23%) Solaris
14 21 (0.22%) Windows 7
15 14 (0.15%) Mac OS X
15 14 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
16 11 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
17 8 (0.085%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,746 (18.58%) Agile
2 1,404 (14.94%) DevOps
3 1,240 (13.19%) CI/CD
4 1,161 (12.35%) Problem-Solving
5 854 (9.09%) Stakeholder Management
6 810 (8.62%) Migration
7 726 (7.73%) Continuous Improvement
8 650 (6.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 615 (6.54%) Cybersecurity
10 602 (6.41%) Infrastructure as Code
11 555 (5.91%) ITIL
12 536 (5.70%) Test Automation
13 513 (5.46%) Containerisation
14 511 (5.44%) Analytics
15 507 (5.39%) Roadmaps
16 443 (4.71%) Business Intelligence
17 426 (4.53%) Scrum
18 424 (4.51%) Software Engineering
19 420 (4.47%) Service Management
20 404 (4.30%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,149 (12.23%) Python
2 770 (8.19%) SQL
3 605 (6.44%) PowerShell
4 530 (5.64%) Java
5 420 (4.47%) JavaScript
6 236 (2.51%) Bash
7 205 (2.18%) TypeScript
8 166 (1.77%) C#
9 102 (1.09%) PL/SQL
10 101 (1.07%) Shell Script
11 98 (1.04%) C++
12 87 (0.93%) Go
13 64 (0.68%) C
14 56 (0.60%) Ruby
15 50 (0.53%) Scala
16 49 (0.52%) Ada
17 42 (0.45%) Bicep
18 41 (0.44%) ABAP
19 39 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
20 37 (0.39%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 7,223 (76.86%) SC Cleared
2 1,574 (16.75%) DV Cleared
3 452 (4.81%) Degree
4 318 (3.38%) BPSS Clearance
5 172 (1.83%) CISSP
6 167 (1.78%) Cisco Certification
7 129 (1.37%) AWS Certification
8 128 (1.36%) Azure Certification
9 120 (1.28%) CCNP
10 117 (1.24%) Microsoft Certification
11 108 (1.15%) CISM
12 85 (0.90%) Computer Science Degree
13 70 (0.74%) CCNA
14 65 (0.69%) ITIL Certification
15 63 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
16 62 (0.66%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 52 (0.55%) ISTQB
18 49 (0.52%) CEH
18 49 (0.52%) GIAC
18 49 (0.52%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 303 (3.22%) QA
2 288 (3.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 273 (2.90%) NIST
4 255 (2.71%) Data Quality
5 210 (2.23%) NCSC
6 187 (1.99%) Accessibility
7 175 (1.86%) GDPR
8 128 (1.36%) SLA
9 96 (1.02%) PMO
10 62 (0.66%) GRC
11 60 (0.64%) JSP 440
12 50 (0.53%) WCAG
13 43 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
14 39 (0.41%) Def Stans
15 36 (0.38%) NIST 800
16 34 (0.36%) PCI DSS
17 33 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 32 (0.34%) COBIT
19 25 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
20 24 (0.26%) RMADS
System Software
1 648 (6.90%) Docker
2 493 (5.25%) Active Directory
3 249 (2.65%) VMware Infrastructure
4 89 (0.95%) VMware NSX
5 72 (0.77%) vSphere
6 65 (0.69%) Hyper-V
7 63 (0.67%) VMware ESXi
8 61 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
9 27 (0.29%) Firmware
10 26 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
11 24 (0.26%) Virtual Desktop
12 18 (0.19%) BitLocker
13 16 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 15 (0.16%) NFS
15 10 (0.11%) Postfix
15 10 (0.11%) Squid
16 8 (0.085%) vCloud
17 7 (0.074%) Virtual Servers
18 6 (0.064%) KVM
19 5 (0.053%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 825 (8.78%) Kubernetes
2 796 (8.47%) Terraform
3 304 (3.23%) Ansible
4 227 (2.42%) Grafana
5 189 (2.01%) Prometheus
6 131 (1.39%) Single Sign-On
7 103 (1.10%) SCCM
8 95 (1.01%) vCenter Server
9 91 (0.97%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 72 (0.77%) Argo
11 71 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
12 45 (0.48%) vRealize
13 42 (0.45%) FortiGate
14 41 (0.44%) Podman
15 38 (0.40%) Packer
16 35 (0.37%) Kibana
17 30 (0.32%) OPNET
17 30 (0.32%) Puppet
18 27 (0.29%) Progress Chef
19 26 (0.28%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,045 (11.12%) Microsoft
2 525 (5.59%) Oracle
3 466 (4.96%) VMware
4 457 (4.86%) SAP
5 444 (4.72%) Cisco
6 387 (4.12%) ServiceNow
7 236 (2.51%) Splunk
8 186 (1.98%) Red Hat
9 147 (1.56%) Databricks
10 144 (1.53%) CyberArk
10 144 (1.53%) Google
11 140 (1.49%) Palo Alto
12 135 (1.44%) Juniper
13 133 (1.42%) Salesforce
14 113 (1.20%) Atlassian
15 98 (1.04%) Dell
16 81 (0.86%) IBM
17 80 (0.85%) Dynatrace
17 80 (0.85%) HP
17 80 (0.85%) Talend