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 25 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,534 5,899 7,203
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.50% 18.02% 18.54%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.90% 57.53% 62.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,071 3,752 4,750
10th Percentile £385 £350 £350
25th Percentile £456 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £534 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.66% -2.91% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £727
UK excluding London median daily rate £533 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -0.84% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 811 566 470
10th Percentile £19.34 £18.51 £15.09
25th Percentile £28.25 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.50 £25.15 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +152.49% -56.26% -4.17%
75th Percentile £79.00 £45.98 £72.22
90th Percentile £88.00 £73.75 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.55 £25.15 £58.49
% change year-on-year +156.64% -57.00% +1.72%

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 16,739 10,253 11,610
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.20% 31.32% 29.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,191 6,335 7,317
10th Percentile £350 £289 £313
25th Percentile £435 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £620 £638
90th Percentile £716 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £517 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.32% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,267 823 780
10th Percentile £17.42 £17.98 £14.50
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.23 £21.37
Median hourly rate £48.84 £25.15 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +94.19% -44.11% -18.18%
75th Percentile £72.60 £53.63 £67.01
90th Percentile £87.96 £73.75 £77.04
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £25.15 £48.37
% change year-on-year +89.03% -48.00% -6.78%

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 25 August 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 25 August 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 25 August 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 9,973 £540 +0.47% 1,937
UK excluding London +1 6,479 £533 -0.84% 1,648
London +7 3,550 £550 +3.77% 553
Work from Home +2 3,065 £525 -2.33% 931
South East +1 2,386 £560 +4.19% 539
South West 0 1,353 £549 -1.44% 437
North of England +3 1,214 £513 +2.50% 304
Midlands 0 886 £470 -8.74% 155
West Midlands +1 758 £470 -8.74% 110
North West +4 696 £530 - 165
East of England 0 331 £550 - 152
Yorkshire +2 305 £492 - 64
Scotland +14 280 £483 -0.21% 77
North East 0 237 £475 -5.00% 80
East Midlands -1 119 £438 -12.45% 45
Wales +4 103 £550 +10.00% 25
Northern Ireland +3 33 £650 +25.00% 10

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
1 403 (3.49%) Confluence
2 276 (2.39%) SharePoint
3 181 (1.57%) SAS
4 125 (1.08%) Microsoft Exchange
5 100 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
5 100 (0.87%) Apache Spark
6 96 (0.83%) Apache
7 37 (0.32%) Jupyter
8 34 (0.29%) nginx
9 29 (0.25%) WebLogic
10 24 (0.21%) IIS
11 23 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
12 22 (0.19%) Skype for Business
12 22 (0.19%) Tomcat
13 18 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
14 17 (0.15%) CMS
14 17 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
15 14 (0.12%) NetWeaver
16 13 (0.11%) JBoss
17 9 (0.078%) Documentum
Applications
1 204 (1.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 159 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
3 107 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
4 92 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (0.38%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.14%) AutoCAD
7 16 (0.14%) Revit
8 15 (0.13%) Simulink
8 15 (0.13%) SOLIDWORKS
9 9 (0.078%) Windchill
10 8 (0.069%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.069%) Chatbot
11 7 (0.061%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.061%) Sketch
12 5 (0.043%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 3 (0.026%) Trello
14 2 (0.017%) CPLEX
14 2 (0.017%) Houdini
14 2 (0.017%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 145 (1.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 77 (0.67%) Remedy ITSM
3 52 (0.45%) Oracle ERP
4 38 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
5 33 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
5 33 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 30 (0.26%) Teamcenter
7 24 (0.21%) SAP GRC
8 23 (0.20%) Oracle Payroll
9 22 (0.19%) SAP PSCD
10 21 (0.18%) Primavera
11 17 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
12 15 (0.13%) SAP HR
13 14 (0.12%) SAP FI
14 13 (0.11%) Findur
15 12 (0.10%) iTrent
15 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
15 12 (0.10%) Temenos T24
16 11 (0.095%) NetSuite
17 10 (0.087%) Integrated Workplace Management System
Cloud Services
1 2,180 (18.90%) Azure
2 2,027 (17.57%) AWS
3 551 (4.78%) Azure DevOps
4 537 (4.66%) GitHub
5 486 (4.21%) Power Platform
6 457 (3.96%) GCP
7 342 (2.97%) GitHub Actions
8 320 (2.77%) Microsoft 365
9 312 (2.71%) Entra ID
10 280 (2.43%) Serverless
11 227 (1.97%) Amazon S3
12 196 (1.70%) AWS Lambda
13 173 (1.50%) OCI
14 171 (1.48%) SaaS
15 162 (1.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 158 (1.37%) Amazon EKS
17 138 (1.20%) Amazon EC2
18 136 (1.18%) PaaS
19 133 (1.15%) OpenShift
20 129 (1.12%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 474 (4.11%) Firewall
2 375 (3.25%) DNS
3 227 (1.97%) WAN
4 221 (1.92%) Network Security
5 210 (1.82%) VPN
6 188 (1.63%) DHCP
7 185 (1.60%) LAN
8 139 (1.21%) BGP
9 137 (1.19%) TCP/IP
10 121 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
11 104 (0.90%) VLAN
12 100 (0.87%) OSPF
13 84 (0.73%) Wireless
14 67 (0.58%) MPLS
14 67 (0.58%) VSAN
15 63 (0.55%) SSL
16 62 (0.54%) IPsec
17 61 (0.53%) SD-WAN
18 60 (0.52%) SAN
19 51 (0.44%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 352 (3.05%) Power BI
2 291 (2.52%) PostgreSQL
3 287 (2.49%) SQL Server
4 269 (2.33%) Data Warehouse
5 168 (1.46%) Oracle Database
6 162 (1.40%) Metadata
7 143 (1.24%) Data Lake
8 134 (1.16%) Relational Database
9 120 (1.04%) MongoDB
10 109 (0.95%) Amazon RDS
11 96 (0.83%) MySQL
12 93 (0.81%) NoSQL
13 91 (0.79%) Oracle Reports
14 76 (0.66%) Pentaho
15 70 (0.61%) Amazon Athena
16 67 (0.58%) Amazon Redshift
17 62 (0.54%) Elasticsearch
18 59 (0.51%) Big Data
19 56 (0.49%) Tableau
20 48 (0.42%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 652 (5.65%) JIRA
2 561 (4.86%) Git
3 491 (4.26%) GitLab
4 469 (4.07%) Jenkins
5 135 (1.17%) Selenium
6 79 (0.68%) SonarQube
7 76 (0.66%) Postman
8 71 (0.62%) JMeter
9 68 (0.59%) JUnit
10 65 (0.56%) Maven
11 53 (0.46%) Cucumber
12 52 (0.45%) Rational DOORS
13 50 (0.43%) Cypress.io
14 47 (0.41%) Visual Studio
15 44 (0.38%) Gradle
16 43 (0.37%) Mockito
17 40 (0.35%) Bitbucket
17 40 (0.35%) Gatling
18 38 (0.33%) Artifactory
19 37 (0.32%) REST Assured
General
1 2,461 (21.34%) Social Skills
2 2,372 (20.57%) Public Sector
3 898 (7.79%) Analytical Skills
4 778 (6.75%) Finance
5 357 (3.10%) Military
6 311 (2.70%) Aerospace
7 300 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
8 196 (1.70%) Influencing Skills
9 170 (1.47%) Organisational Skills
10 169 (1.47%) Legal
11 165 (1.43%) Telecoms
12 146 (1.27%) Banking
13 140 (1.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 119 (1.03%) Manufacturing
15 110 (0.95%) Law
15 110 (0.95%) Police
16 62 (0.54%) Presentation Skills
17 46 (0.40%) Aviation
18 45 (0.39%) Retail
19 44 (0.38%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,840 (15.95%) Architect
2 1,249 (10.83%) Developer
3 1,099 (9.53%) Senior
4 1,042 (9.03%) Lead
5 695 (6.03%) Consultant
6 639 (5.54%) Analyst
7 496 (4.30%) Data Engineer
8 492 (4.27%) DevOps Engineer
9 423 (3.67%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 373 (3.23%) Technical Architect
11 357 (3.10%) Solutions Architect
12 304 (2.64%) Software Engineer
13 269 (2.33%) Security Architect
14 261 (2.26%) Network Engineer
15 259 (2.25%) Data Architect
16 213 (1.85%) Java Developer
17 212 (1.84%) Administrator
18 211 (1.83%) Azure Engineer
19 210 (1.82%) Project Manager
20 206 (1.79%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 988 (8.57%) Terraform
2 435 (3.77%) REST
3 248 (2.15%) Spring
4 242 (2.10%) .NET
5 236 (2.05%) Kafka
6 221 (1.92%) Spring Boot
7 214 (1.86%) RESTful
8 203 (1.76%) React
9 172 (1.49%) Node.js
10 171 (1.48%) SOAP
11 158 (1.37%) JSON
12 135 (1.17%) Web Services
13 133 (1.15%) OAuth
14 132 (1.14%) HTML
15 129 (1.12%) AngularJS
16 118 (1.02%) XML
17 111 (0.96%) Middleware
18 96 (0.83%) Oracle Fusion
18 96 (0.83%) Playwright
19 94 (0.81%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 508 (4.40%) Cloud Native
2 416 (3.61%) Onboarding
3 374 (3.24%) Product Ownership
4 301 (2.61%) Data Centre
5 241 (2.09%) Management Information System
6 192 (1.66%) Legacy Systems
7 172 (1.49%) PKI
8 157 (1.36%) Distributed Systems
9 153 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
10 151 (1.31%) CMDB
11 122 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
12 119 (1.03%) Hybrid Cloud
13 118 (1.02%) Replication
14 115 (1.00%) Data Structures
15 95 (0.82%) Cyber Threat
16 94 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
17 91 (0.79%) Public Cloud
18 89 (0.77%) Clustering
19 84 (0.73%) Virtual Team
20 80 (0.69%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 962 (8.34%) Windows
2 796 (6.90%) Linux
3 341 (2.96%) Windows Server
4 218 (1.89%) Unix
5 149 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 133 (1.15%) Windows 10
7 84 (0.73%) Android
8 61 (0.53%) Solaris
9 50 (0.43%) Apple iOS
10 49 (0.42%) Mac OS
11 42 (0.36%) Ubuntu
12 37 (0.32%) CentOS
12 37 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
13 35 (0.30%) AIX
14 26 (0.23%) Windows 7
15 22 (0.19%) VMS
15 22 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
16 21 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
17 15 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
18 13 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,411 (20.90%) Agile
2 1,815 (15.74%) DevOps
3 1,736 (15.05%) CI/CD
4 1,432 (12.42%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,318 (11.43%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,189 (10.31%) Problem-Solving
7 1,137 (9.86%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 969 (8.40%) Infrastructure as Code
9 912 (7.91%) Migration
10 808 (7.01%) Cybersecurity
11 767 (6.65%) ITIL
12 748 (6.49%) Test Automation
13 722 (6.26%) Analytics
14 713 (6.18%) Containerisation
15 684 (5.93%) Software Engineering
16 676 (5.86%) Technical Leadership
17 667 (5.78%) Roadmaps
18 655 (5.68%) Decision-Making
19 643 (5.57%) AI
20 616 (5.34%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,297 (11.25%) Python
2 1,106 (9.59%) SQL
3 791 (6.86%) Java
4 572 (4.96%) PowerShell
5 402 (3.49%) JavaScript
6 323 (2.80%) Bash
7 267 (2.31%) C#
8 202 (1.75%) TypeScript
9 159 (1.38%) PL/SQL
10 125 (1.08%) Bicep
11 82 (0.71%) C++
12 81 (0.70%) Shell Script
13 67 (0.58%) C
14 56 (0.49%) Apex Code
15 51 (0.44%) Kotlin
15 51 (0.44%) Ruby
15 51 (0.44%) Scala
16 47 (0.41%) Groovy
17 44 (0.38%) Go
18 36 (0.31%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,779 (76.11%) SC Cleared
2 2,150 (18.64%) DV Cleared
3 457 (3.96%) Degree
4 448 (3.88%) BPSS Clearance
5 210 (1.82%) CISSP
6 186 (1.61%) Cisco Certification
7 176 (1.53%) Azure Certification
8 155 (1.34%) Microsoft Certification
9 143 (1.24%) CISM
10 133 (1.15%) AWS Certification
11 105 (0.91%) PMI Certification
12 103 (0.89%) PMP
13 90 (0.78%) ISTQB
14 83 (0.72%) CCNP
15 77 (0.67%) CCNA
16 69 (0.60%) Computer Science Degree
17 62 (0.54%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 48 (0.42%) ITIL Certification
19 47 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 41 (0.36%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 485 (4.20%) QA
2 377 (3.27%) Data Quality
3 312 (2.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 306 (2.65%) NIST
5 274 (2.38%) NCSC
6 256 (2.22%) Accessibility
7 226 (1.96%) PMO
8 182 (1.58%) GDPR
9 158 (1.37%) SLA
10 154 (1.34%) GRC
11 80 (0.69%) WCAG
12 64 (0.55%) JSP 440
13 48 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
14 43 (0.37%) NIST 800
15 32 (0.28%) Def Stans
16 29 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 29 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 28 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
18 25 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
19 22 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 798 (6.92%) Docker
2 562 (4.87%) Active Directory
3 410 (3.55%) VMware Infrastructure
4 148 (1.28%) VMware NSX
5 135 (1.17%) VMware ESXi
6 123 (1.07%) Hyper-V
6 123 (1.07%) vSphere
7 82 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
8 42 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
9 41 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
10 36 (0.31%) Firmware
11 26 (0.23%) BitLocker
11 26 (0.23%) vCloud
12 16 (0.14%) NFS
13 14 (0.12%) Squid
14 13 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
15 12 (0.10%) Postfix
16 9 (0.078%) KVM
17 8 (0.069%) Ceph
17 8 (0.069%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 972 (8.43%) Kubernetes
2 439 (3.81%) Ansible
3 261 (2.26%) Grafana
4 210 (1.82%) Prometheus
5 132 (1.14%) vCenter Server
6 130 (1.13%) SCCM
7 86 (0.75%) Microsoft Intune
8 77 (0.67%) SCOM
9 67 (0.58%) Argo
9 67 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
10 51 (0.44%) Oracle RMAN
11 48 (0.42%) Puppet
12 41 (0.36%) Data Guard
13 34 (0.29%) Istio
14 31 (0.27%) Progress Chef
15 29 (0.25%) Nagios
16 28 (0.24%) Control-M
17 27 (0.23%) FortiGate
17 27 (0.23%) Kibana
17 27 (0.23%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,473 (12.77%) Microsoft
2 913 (7.92%) Oracle
3 584 (5.06%) VMware
4 534 (4.63%) ServiceNow
5 447 (3.88%) SAP
6 306 (2.65%) Cisco
7 240 (2.08%) Google
8 212 (1.84%) Splunk
9 210 (1.82%) Databricks
10 186 (1.61%) Salesforce
11 146 (1.27%) Red Hat
12 127 (1.10%) IBM
13 120 (1.04%) Palo Alto
14 119 (1.03%) Informatica
15 109 (0.95%) Talend
16 96 (0.83%) Dynatrace
17 86 (0.75%) Remedy
18 81 (0.70%) SolarWinds
19 80 (0.69%) F5
20 79 (0.68%) Juniper