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

6 months to
6 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 11,722 5,886 6,989
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.69% 18.00% 18.24%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.92% 57.80% 61.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,216 3,775 4,586
10th Percentile £394 £350 £350
25th Percentile £458 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.93% -2.73% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £538 £550
% change year-on-year - -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 805 561 432
10th Percentile £19.50 £18.51 £18.00
25th Percentile £29.07 £18.87 £25.51
Median hourly rate £64.09 £25.15 £59.75
Median % change year-on-year +154.83% -57.91% -0.42%
75th Percentile £78.70 £41.00 £72.01
90th Percentile £89.08 £71.25 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +158.45% -58.08% +4.35%

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 17,007 10,183 11,306
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.47% 31.13% 29.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,399 6,313 7,060
10th Percentile £350 £300 £313
25th Percentile £438 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £627 £621 £638
90th Percentile £715 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,276 804 698
10th Percentile £17.25 £18.04 £15.98
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £23.94
Median hourly rate £47.54 £25.15 £49.00
Median % change year-on-year +89.03% -48.67% -10.91%
75th Percentile £72.54 £49.06 £67.95
90th Percentile £87.16 £71.39 £75.66
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £52.50
% change year-on-year +88.87% -52.10% +1.56%

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 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 6 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 6 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 10,131 £549 +2.14% 3,404
UK excluding London +1 6,574 £538 - 2,544
London +7 3,602 £550 +3.77% 1,204
Work from Home +2 3,095 £525 -2.33% 1,794
South East +1 2,325 £564 +4.98% 732
South West 0 1,410 £550 -0.68% 599
North of England +3 1,258 £515 +3.00% 435
Midlands 0 920 £475 -7.77% 228
West Midlands +1 782 £475 -7.77% 158
North West +2 741 £530 - 260
East of England 0 354 £550 - 336
Yorkshire +3 301 £500 +2.09% 84
Scotland +10 282 £481 -0.41% 184
North East 0 237 £475 -3.80% 97
East Midlands -1 129 £450 -5.26% 70
Wales +3 107 £550 +15.79% 36
Northern Ireland +5 36 £650 +8.33% 55

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 (3.35%) Confluence
2 265 (2.26%) SharePoint
3 174 (1.48%) SAS
4 126 (1.07%) Microsoft Exchange
5 107 (0.91%) Apache
6 103 (0.88%) Apache Spark
7 101 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.33%) Jupyter
9 35 (0.30%) nginx
10 30 (0.26%) WebLogic
11 26 (0.22%) IIS
12 23 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
13 22 (0.19%) Skype for Business
13 22 (0.19%) Tomcat
14 19 (0.16%) CMS
15 17 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
15 17 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
16 13 (0.11%) JBoss
17 12 (0.10%) NetWeaver
18 10 (0.085%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 209 (1.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 166 (1.42%) Microsoft Office
3 110 (0.94%) Microsoft Project
4 99 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 42 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 23 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.15%) AutoCAD
7 17 (0.15%) Revit
8 16 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
9 15 (0.13%) Simulink
10 8 (0.068%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.068%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.068%) Windchill
11 7 (0.060%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.060%) Sketch
12 5 (0.043%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 4 (0.034%) Trello
14 3 (0.026%) OrCAD
15 2 (0.017%) Houdini
15 2 (0.017%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 148 (1.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 80 (0.68%) Remedy ITSM
3 51 (0.44%) Oracle ERP
4 39 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
5 34 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 30 (0.26%) Teamcenter
7 27 (0.23%) Dynamics CRM
8 25 (0.21%) SAP GRC
9 24 (0.20%) Oracle Payroll
10 22 (0.19%) SAP PSCD
11 20 (0.17%) Primavera
12 17 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
13 16 (0.14%) SAP FI
13 16 (0.14%) SAP HR
14 13 (0.11%) Findur
15 12 (0.10%) iTrent
15 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
16 11 (0.094%) NetSuite
16 11 (0.094%) Temenos T24
17 10 (0.085%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 2,162 (18.44%) Azure
2 2,096 (17.88%) AWS
3 538 (4.59%) GitHub
4 528 (4.50%) Azure DevOps
5 478 (4.08%) Power Platform
6 454 (3.87%) GCP
7 348 (2.97%) GitHub Actions
8 329 (2.81%) Microsoft 365
9 305 (2.60%) Entra ID
10 284 (2.42%) Serverless
11 237 (2.02%) Amazon S3
12 206 (1.76%) AWS Lambda
13 175 (1.49%) SaaS
14 173 (1.48%) OCI
15 170 (1.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 161 (1.37%) Amazon EKS
17 142 (1.21%) Amazon EC2
18 137 (1.17%) OpenShift
19 126 (1.07%) AWS CloudFormation
20 118 (1.01%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 474 (4.04%) Firewall
2 380 (3.24%) DNS
3 233 (1.99%) Network Security
4 227 (1.94%) WAN
5 211 (1.80%) VPN
6 186 (1.59%) DHCP
7 176 (1.50%) LAN
8 137 (1.17%) TCP/IP
9 135 (1.15%) BGP
10 120 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
11 104 (0.89%) VLAN
12 96 (0.82%) OSPF
13 92 (0.78%) Wireless
14 75 (0.64%) SSL
15 67 (0.57%) IPsec
16 66 (0.56%) MPLS
16 66 (0.56%) VSAN
17 63 (0.54%) SAN
18 62 (0.53%) SD-WAN
19 52 (0.44%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 349 (2.98%) Power BI
2 309 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
3 290 (2.47%) SQL Server
4 270 (2.30%) Data Warehouse
5 193 (1.65%) Metadata
6 181 (1.54%) Oracle Database
7 147 (1.25%) Relational Database
8 146 (1.25%) Data Lake
9 131 (1.12%) MongoDB
10 111 (0.95%) Amazon RDS
11 105 (0.90%) MySQL
12 97 (0.83%) NoSQL
13 93 (0.79%) Oracle Reports
14 75 (0.64%) Pentaho
15 70 (0.60%) Amazon Athena
16 65 (0.55%) Elasticsearch
17 60 (0.51%) Big Data
18 58 (0.49%) Tableau
19 57 (0.49%) Amazon Redshift
20 50 (0.43%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 649 (5.54%) JIRA
2 575 (4.91%) Git
3 511 (4.36%) GitLab
4 474 (4.04%) Jenkins
5 145 (1.24%) Selenium
6 81 (0.69%) Postman
7 77 (0.66%) SonarQube
8 75 (0.64%) JMeter
9 73 (0.62%) JUnit
10 70 (0.60%) Maven
11 57 (0.49%) Cucumber
12 54 (0.46%) Cypress.io
13 48 (0.41%) Gradle
14 44 (0.38%) Mockito
15 41 (0.35%) Gatling
15 41 (0.35%) REST Assured
16 39 (0.33%) Visual Studio
17 38 (0.32%) Zephyr
18 36 (0.31%) Artifactory
19 34 (0.29%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,574 (21.96%) Social Skills
2 2,406 (20.53%) Public Sector
3 931 (7.94%) Analytical Skills
4 756 (6.45%) Finance
5 398 (3.40%) Military
6 309 (2.64%) Aerospace
7 307 (2.62%) Documentation Skills
8 210 (1.79%) Influencing Skills
9 177 (1.51%) Organisational Skills
10 172 (1.47%) Legal
11 168 (1.43%) Telecoms
12 157 (1.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 148 (1.26%) Banking
14 120 (1.02%) Manufacturing
15 117 (1.00%) Law
16 115 (0.98%) Police
17 64 (0.55%) Presentation Skills
18 47 (0.40%) Local Government
19 46 (0.39%) Retail
20 45 (0.38%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,894 (16.16%) Architect
2 1,226 (10.46%) Developer
3 1,118 (9.54%) Senior
4 1,061 (9.05%) Lead
5 702 (5.99%) Consultant
6 645 (5.50%) Analyst
7 509 (4.34%) DevOps Engineer
8 503 (4.29%) Data Engineer
9 425 (3.63%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 368 (3.14%) Technical Architect
11 359 (3.06%) Solutions Architect
12 290 (2.47%) Data Architect
13 285 (2.43%) Software Engineer
14 273 (2.33%) Security Architect
15 258 (2.20%) Network Engineer
16 214 (1.83%) Administrator
17 213 (1.82%) Java Developer
18 207 (1.77%) Azure Engineer
19 206 (1.76%) Delivery Manager
20 199 (1.70%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 995 (8.49%) Terraform
2 450 (3.84%) REST
3 252 (2.15%) Spring
4 248 (2.12%) Kafka
5 229 (1.95%) Spring Boot
6 218 (1.86%) .NET
7 216 (1.84%) RESTful
8 206 (1.76%) React
9 175 (1.49%) Node.js
10 173 (1.48%) SOAP
11 166 (1.42%) JSON
12 132 (1.13%) HTML
13 131 (1.12%) OAuth
14 123 (1.05%) XML
15 121 (1.03%) Web Services
16 120 (1.02%) Middleware
17 119 (1.02%) AngularJS
18 102 (0.87%) CSS
18 102 (0.87%) Oracle Fusion
19 97 (0.83%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 517 (4.41%) Cloud Native
2 439 (3.75%) Onboarding
3 358 (3.05%) Product Ownership
4 309 (2.64%) Data Centre
5 259 (2.21%) Management Information System
6 191 (1.63%) Legacy Systems
7 174 (1.48%) PKI
8 171 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
9 162 (1.38%) CMDB
10 148 (1.26%) Distributed Systems
11 129 (1.10%) Replication
12 123 (1.05%) Hybrid Cloud
13 118 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
14 106 (0.90%) Cyber Threat
15 104 (0.89%) Data Structures
16 95 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
17 93 (0.79%) Public Cloud
18 92 (0.78%) Operational Technology
19 90 (0.77%) Clustering
20 87 (0.74%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 989 (8.44%) Windows
2 798 (6.81%) Linux
3 371 (3.16%) Windows Server
4 227 (1.94%) Unix
5 153 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 141 (1.20%) Windows 10
7 78 (0.67%) Android
8 65 (0.55%) Solaris
9 49 (0.42%) Mac OS
10 45 (0.38%) Apple iOS
11 40 (0.34%) CentOS
11 40 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 39 (0.33%) Ubuntu
13 33 (0.28%) AIX
14 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
15 24 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
16 22 (0.19%) VMS
16 22 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
17 16 (0.14%) Rocky
18 14 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,475 (21.11%) Agile
2 1,800 (15.36%) DevOps
3 1,761 (15.02%) CI/CD
4 1,530 (13.05%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,390 (11.86%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,237 (10.55%) Problem-Solving
7 1,163 (9.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 997 (8.51%) Infrastructure as Code
9 937 (7.99%) Migration
10 838 (7.15%) Cybersecurity
11 800 (6.82%) ITIL
12 773 (6.59%) Test Automation
13 733 (6.25%) Containerisation
14 721 (6.15%) Technical Leadership
15 718 (6.13%) Analytics
16 693 (5.91%) Roadmaps
17 691 (5.89%) Decision-Making
18 689 (5.88%) AI
19 676 (5.77%) Software Engineering
20 648 (5.53%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,354 (11.55%) Python
2 1,109 (9.46%) SQL
3 792 (6.76%) Java
4 581 (4.96%) PowerShell
5 398 (3.40%) JavaScript
6 340 (2.90%) Bash
7 235 (2.00%) C#
8 212 (1.81%) TypeScript
9 162 (1.38%) PL/SQL
10 126 (1.07%) Bicep
11 82 (0.70%) Shell Script
12 65 (0.55%) C++
13 59 (0.50%) C
14 52 (0.44%) Scala
15 51 (0.44%) Apex Code
16 50 (0.43%) Go
17 47 (0.40%) Groovy
18 45 (0.38%) Kotlin
19 43 (0.37%) Ruby
20 39 (0.33%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,932 (76.20%) SC Cleared
2 2,220 (18.94%) DV Cleared
3 468 (3.99%) BPSS Clearance
4 461 (3.93%) Degree
5 215 (1.83%) CISSP
6 185 (1.58%) Cisco Certification
7 177 (1.51%) Azure Certification
8 164 (1.40%) Microsoft Certification
9 144 (1.23%) AWS Certification
10 140 (1.19%) CISM
11 107 (0.91%) PMI Certification
12 102 (0.87%) PMP
13 93 (0.79%) ISTQB
14 84 (0.72%) CCNP
15 74 (0.63%) Computer Science Degree
16 71 (0.61%) CCNA
17 63 (0.54%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 48 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 46 (0.39%) ITIL Certification
20 45 (0.38%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 527 (4.50%) QA
2 392 (3.34%) Data Quality
3 327 (2.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 317 (2.70%) NIST
5 280 (2.39%) NCSC
6 262 (2.24%) Accessibility
7 228 (1.95%) PMO
8 185 (1.58%) GDPR
9 175 (1.49%) SLA
10 156 (1.33%) GRC
11 85 (0.73%) WCAG
12 66 (0.56%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
14 43 (0.37%) NIST 800
15 36 (0.31%) Def Stans
16 28 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 26 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 24 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
19 22 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 22 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 815 (6.95%) Docker
2 608 (5.19%) Active Directory
3 430 (3.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 147 (1.25%) VMware NSX
5 141 (1.20%) VMware ESXi
6 137 (1.17%) Hyper-V
7 128 (1.09%) vSphere
8 90 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
9 43 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
10 42 (0.36%) Firmware
11 41 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
12 27 (0.23%) vCloud
13 25 (0.21%) BitLocker
14 19 (0.16%) NFS
15 14 (0.12%) Squid
16 13 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
17 11 (0.094%) Postfix
18 9 (0.077%) Citrix Hypervisor
18 9 (0.077%) KVM
19 8 (0.068%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 990 (8.45%) Kubernetes
2 448 (3.82%) Ansible
3 261 (2.23%) Grafana
4 210 (1.79%) Prometheus
5 137 (1.17%) SCCM
6 136 (1.16%) vCenter Server
7 93 (0.79%) SCOM
8 90 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
9 67 (0.57%) Argo
9 67 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
10 50 (0.43%) Oracle RMAN
11 48 (0.41%) Puppet
12 41 (0.35%) Data Guard
13 32 (0.27%) Kibana
14 31 (0.26%) Istio
15 30 (0.26%) Progress Chef
16 29 (0.25%) Control-M
16 29 (0.25%) NetBackup
17 28 (0.24%) WSUS
18 27 (0.23%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,509 (12.87%) Microsoft
2 941 (8.03%) Oracle
3 608 (5.19%) VMware
4 550 (4.69%) ServiceNow
5 447 (3.81%) SAP
6 308 (2.63%) Cisco
7 246 (2.10%) Google
8 223 (1.90%) Splunk
9 216 (1.84%) Databricks
10 183 (1.56%) Salesforce
11 146 (1.25%) Red Hat
12 131 (1.12%) Palo Alto
13 118 (1.01%) Informatica
14 115 (0.98%) IBM
15 110 (0.94%) Talend
16 100 (0.85%) Dynatrace
17 92 (0.78%) Remedy
18 91 (0.78%) CyberArk
19 82 (0.70%) F5
19 82 (0.70%) SolarWinds