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

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,438 5,697 7,839
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.73% 17.54% 18.39%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.27% 57.15% 61.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,948 3,636 5,137
10th Percentile £381 £350 £340
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -3.64% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £645
90th Percentile £715 £700 £735
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 837 487 589
10th Percentile £18.31 £18.51 £15.10
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £55.80
Median % change year-on-year +151.03% -54.93% -7.00%
75th Percentile £76.75 £58.75 £72.50
90th Percentile £87.98 £75.00 £83.59
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £57.50
% change year-on-year +151.03% -56.26% -1.16%

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 16,512 9,968 12,720
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.38% 30.68% 29.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,042 6,170 7,955
10th Percentile £350 £281 £310
25th Percentile £430 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £713 £707 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,196 729 1,082
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.16
25th Percentile £25.75 £19.75 £20.50
Median hourly rate £52.50 £25.50 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +105.88% -38.55% -24.93%
75th Percentile £73.00 £57.24 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.40 £75.00 £75.22
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -19.87%

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 16 July 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 16 July 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 16 July 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 9,839 £530 -1.40% 1,896
UK excluding London +1 6,393 £525 -2.33% 1,529
London +7 3,496 £538 +2.38% 545
Work from Home +4 3,137 £525 -1.59% 934
South East +1 2,411 £550 - 548
South West 0 1,304 £538 -6.52% 371
North of England +2 1,073 £500 - 254
Midlands +3 952 £469 -7.17% 166
West Midlands +2 814 £469 -8.40% 119
North West 0 573 £525 - 157
East of England +2 327 £551 +2.90% 115
Yorkshire +1 295 £500 +1.63% 58
Scotland +18 288 £495 +8.49% 61
North East +1 234 £478 -4.50% 40
East Midlands -2 125 £418 -12.11% 47
Wales +3 103 £550 +15.79% 28
Northern Ireland +5 32 £650 +27.45% 14

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
1 409 (3.58%) Confluence
2 259 (2.26%) SharePoint
3 178 (1.56%) SAS
4 133 (1.16%) Microsoft Exchange
5 105 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
6 104 (0.91%) Apache Spark
7 94 (0.82%) Apache
8 49 (0.43%) nginx
9 40 (0.35%) WebLogic
10 39 (0.34%) Jupyter
11 27 (0.24%) Tomcat
12 25 (0.22%) IIS
13 20 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
14 18 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
15 17 (0.15%) CMS
16 16 (0.14%) NetWeaver
17 13 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
17 13 (0.11%) Skype for Business
18 12 (0.10%) Tuxedo
19 9 (0.079%) Documentum
Applications
1 194 (1.70%) Microsoft Excel
2 154 (1.35%) Microsoft Office
3 89 (0.78%) Microsoft Project
4 76 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 51 (0.45%) MS Visio
6 18 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.14%) Simulink
8 12 (0.10%) AutoCAD
8 12 (0.10%) Revit
8 12 (0.10%) SOLIDWORKS
9 10 (0.087%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.070%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.061%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.061%) Sketch
12 3 (0.026%) Windchill
13 2 (0.017%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.017%) Lectora
13 2 (0.017%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.017%) PlantUML
13 2 (0.017%) Trello
Business Applications
1 140 (1.22%) SAP S/4HANA
2 68 (0.59%) Remedy ITSM
3 43 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
4 39 (0.34%) Teamcenter
5 35 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
6 30 (0.26%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 28 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
8 23 (0.20%) SAP PSCD
9 20 (0.17%) Primavera
10 19 (0.17%) SAP GRC
11 15 (0.13%) Findur
11 15 (0.13%) Temenos T24
12 12 (0.10%) iTrent
12 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
13 11 (0.096%) Oracle Payables
13 11 (0.096%) Oracle Payroll
13 11 (0.096%) SAP ERP
13 11 (0.096%) SAP HR
14 10 (0.087%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 10 (0.087%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 2,034 (17.78%) AWS
2 2,021 (17.67%) Azure
3 507 (4.43%) GitHub
4 472 (4.13%) Azure DevOps
5 447 (3.91%) Power Platform
6 422 (3.69%) GCP
7 317 (2.77%) GitHub Actions
8 295 (2.58%) Microsoft 365
9 289 (2.53%) Entra ID
10 278 (2.43%) Serverless
11 247 (2.16%) Amazon S3
12 198 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
13 164 (1.43%) Amazon EC2
14 156 (1.36%) OCI
14 156 (1.36%) SaaS
15 154 (1.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 150 (1.31%) Amazon EKS
16 150 (1.31%) PaaS
17 144 (1.26%) OpenShift
18 133 (1.16%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 477 (4.17%) Firewall
2 368 (3.22%) DNS
3 246 (2.15%) Network Security
4 234 (2.05%) WAN
5 205 (1.79%) VPN
6 199 (1.74%) LAN
7 179 (1.56%) DHCP
8 147 (1.29%) BGP
9 128 (1.12%) TCP/IP
10 121 (1.06%) OSPF
11 110 (0.96%) VLAN
12 109 (0.95%) Wi-Fi
13 89 (0.78%) Wireless
14 73 (0.64%) MPLS
15 64 (0.56%) SAN
15 64 (0.56%) SD-WAN
16 61 (0.53%) IPsec
17 58 (0.51%) VXLAN
18 51 (0.45%) SSL
18 51 (0.45%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 345 (3.02%) Power BI
2 312 (2.73%) PostgreSQL
3 277 (2.42%) SQL Server
4 275 (2.40%) Data Warehouse
5 176 (1.54%) Oracle Database
6 155 (1.36%) Metadata
7 135 (1.18%) Relational Database
8 133 (1.16%) Data Lake
9 111 (0.97%) MongoDB
10 106 (0.93%) Amazon RDS
11 98 (0.86%) MySQL
12 94 (0.82%) Oracle Reports
13 88 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
14 85 (0.74%) Pentaho
15 73 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
15 73 (0.64%) NoSQL
16 70 (0.61%) Amazon Athena
17 67 (0.59%) Big Data
18 62 (0.54%) Tableau
19 50 (0.44%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 646 (5.65%) JIRA
2 542 (4.74%) Git
3 466 (4.07%) GitLab
4 455 (3.98%) Jenkins
5 123 (1.08%) Selenium
6 85 (0.74%) SonarQube
7 83 (0.73%) JUnit
8 81 (0.71%) Postman
9 65 (0.57%) JMeter
10 58 (0.51%) Rational DOORS
11 57 (0.50%) Maven
12 52 (0.45%) Cucumber
13 46 (0.40%) Cypress.io
14 45 (0.39%) Visual Studio
15 44 (0.38%) Artifactory
15 44 (0.38%) Mockito
15 44 (0.38%) REST Assured
16 41 (0.36%) Bitbucket
16 41 (0.36%) Zephyr
17 39 (0.34%) Gatling
General
1 2,493 (21.80%) Public Sector
2 2,316 (20.25%) Social Skills
3 840 (7.34%) Analytical Skills
4 741 (6.48%) Finance
5 355 (3.10%) Military
6 302 (2.64%) Documentation Skills
7 294 (2.57%) Aerospace
8 180 (1.57%) Legal
9 164 (1.43%) Influencing Skills
10 146 (1.28%) Telecoms
11 134 (1.17%) Banking
12 126 (1.10%) Organisational Skills
13 103 (0.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 99 (0.87%) Manufacturing
15 96 (0.84%) Law
16 90 (0.79%) Police
17 71 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
18 54 (0.47%) Aviation
19 43 (0.38%) Marketing
20 38 (0.33%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,761 (15.40%) Architect
2 1,246 (10.89%) Developer
3 1,040 (9.09%) Senior
4 938 (8.20%) Lead
5 726 (6.35%) Analyst
6 584 (5.11%) Consultant
7 526 (4.60%) Data Engineer
8 501 (4.38%) DevOps Engineer
9 379 (3.31%) Technical Architect
10 376 (3.29%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 339 (2.96%) Software Engineer
12 337 (2.95%) Solutions Architect
13 272 (2.38%) Security Architect
14 265 (2.32%) Network Engineer
15 231 (2.02%) Java Developer
16 221 (1.93%) Designer
17 218 (1.91%) Business Analyst
18 209 (1.83%) Data Architect
19 208 (1.82%) AWS Engineer
20 204 (1.78%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 392 (3.43%) REST
2 276 (2.41%) Spring
3 238 (2.08%) Spring Boot
4 221 (1.93%) .NET
4 221 (1.93%) Kafka
5 209 (1.83%) React
6 199 (1.74%) RESTful
7 192 (1.68%) Node.js
8 159 (1.39%) SOAP
9 142 (1.24%) JSON
10 135 (1.18%) AngularJS
11 122 (1.07%) OAuth
12 117 (1.02%) Web Services
13 112 (0.98%) HTML
14 107 (0.94%) Middleware
15 105 (0.92%) PySpark
16 103 (0.90%) LDAP
17 95 (0.83%) XML
18 93 (0.81%) OpenID
19 92 (0.80%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 467 (4.08%) Cloud Native
2 382 (3.34%) Onboarding
3 361 (3.16%) Product Ownership
4 317 (2.77%) Data Centre
5 220 (1.92%) Management Information System
6 192 (1.68%) Legacy Systems
7 165 (1.44%) Distributed Systems
8 159 (1.39%) PKI
9 126 (1.10%) Replication
10 123 (1.08%) CMDB
11 118 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
12 113 (0.99%) Enterprise Software
13 107 (0.94%) Data Structures
14 97 (0.85%) Hybrid Cloud
15 95 (0.83%) Security Posture
16 93 (0.81%) Clustering
16 93 (0.81%) Public Cloud
17 88 (0.77%) Virtual Team
18 87 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
19 77 (0.67%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 904 (7.90%) Windows
2 781 (6.83%) Linux
3 288 (2.52%) Windows Server
4 222 (1.94%) Unix
5 151 (1.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 97 (0.85%) Android
7 92 (0.80%) Windows 10
8 68 (0.59%) Apple iOS
9 59 (0.52%) Solaris
10 47 (0.41%) Mac OS
11 37 (0.32%) Ubuntu
12 35 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
13 33 (0.29%) AIX
14 28 (0.24%) CentOS
15 22 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
16 20 (0.17%) VMS
17 15 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
18 14 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
19 12 (0.10%) Windows 7
20 10 (0.087%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,330 (20.37%) Agile
2 1,782 (15.58%) DevOps
3 1,666 (14.57%) CI/CD
4 1,219 (10.66%) Problem-Solving
5 1,197 (10.47%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,190 (10.40%) Continuous Improvement
7 988 (8.64%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 879 (7.68%) Infrastructure as Code
9 877 (7.67%) Migration
10 741 (6.48%) Cybersecurity
11 728 (6.36%) ITIL
12 706 (6.17%) Test Automation
13 704 (6.15%) Containerisation
14 688 (6.02%) Analytics
15 673 (5.88%) Software Engineering
16 648 (5.67%) Roadmaps
17 624 (5.46%) Decision-Making
18 617 (5.39%) Data Modelling
19 575 (5.03%) Technical Leadership
20 571 (4.99%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,284 (11.23%) Python
2 1,110 (9.70%) SQL
3 812 (7.10%) Java
4 516 (4.51%) PowerShell
5 360 (3.15%) JavaScript
6 273 (2.39%) Bash
7 246 (2.15%) C#
8 191 (1.67%) TypeScript
9 175 (1.53%) PL/SQL
10 97 (0.85%) Shell Script
11 91 (0.80%) C++
12 86 (0.75%) Bicep
13 67 (0.59%) C
14 61 (0.53%) Apex Code
15 60 (0.52%) Ruby
16 56 (0.49%) Go
17 53 (0.46%) Kotlin
18 48 (0.42%) Scala
19 43 (0.38%) R
20 42 (0.37%) Ada
Qualifications
1 8,720 (76.24%) SC Cleared
2 2,150 (18.80%) DV Cleared
3 431 (3.77%) Degree
4 392 (3.43%) BPSS Clearance
5 217 (1.90%) Cisco Certification
6 185 (1.62%) CISSP
7 161 (1.41%) Azure Certification
8 135 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
9 134 (1.17%) AWS Certification
10 111 (0.97%) CISM
11 103 (0.90%) CCNP
12 96 (0.84%) PMI Certification
13 95 (0.83%) PMP
14 94 (0.82%) CCNA
15 80 (0.70%) ISTQB
16 70 (0.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 67 (0.59%) Computer Science Degree
18 55 (0.48%) ITIL Certification
19 47 (0.41%) TOGAF Certification
20 45 (0.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 445 (3.89%) QA
2 360 (3.15%) Data Quality
3 315 (2.75%) NIST
4 308 (2.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 251 (2.19%) NCSC
6 248 (2.17%) Accessibility
7 191 (1.67%) PMO
8 185 (1.62%) GDPR
9 124 (1.08%) SLA
10 122 (1.07%) GRC
11 64 (0.56%) WCAG
12 62 (0.54%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.43%) NIST 800
14 43 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
15 35 (0.31%) Def Stans
16 26 (0.23%) RMADS
17 25 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
17 25 (0.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 24 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 20000
19 23 (0.20%) COBIT
System Software
1 781 (6.83%) Docker
2 489 (4.28%) Active Directory
3 366 (3.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 136 (1.19%) VMware NSX
5 133 (1.16%) VMware ESXi
6 100 (0.87%) vSphere
7 98 (0.86%) Hyper-V
8 86 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
9 51 (0.45%) Oracle RAC
10 35 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
11 32 (0.28%) Firmware
12 25 (0.22%) NFS
13 21 (0.18%) Squid
13 21 (0.18%) vCloud
14 20 (0.17%) BitLocker
15 19 (0.17%) Postfix
16 8 (0.070%) KVM
16 8 (0.070%) Microsoft App-V
16 8 (0.070%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 7 (0.061%) UAG
Systems Management
1 960 (8.39%) Terraform
2 937 (8.19%) Kubernetes
3 405 (3.54%) Ansible
4 280 (2.45%) Grafana
5 226 (1.98%) Prometheus
6 127 (1.11%) vCenter Server
7 91 (0.80%) SCCM
8 84 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
9 68 (0.59%) Microsoft Intune
10 63 (0.55%) Argo
11 55 (0.48%) SCOM
12 54 (0.47%) Oracle RMAN
13 49 (0.43%) FortiGate
14 46 (0.40%) Puppet
15 44 (0.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 36 (0.31%) Data Guard
17 30 (0.26%) Nagios
17 30 (0.26%) Progress Chef
18 27 (0.24%) Podman
19 26 (0.23%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,273 (11.13%) Microsoft
2 868 (7.59%) Oracle
3 545 (4.76%) VMware
4 532 (4.65%) ServiceNow
5 392 (3.43%) SAP
6 320 (2.80%) Cisco
7 229 (2.00%) Splunk
8 201 (1.76%) Google
9 192 (1.68%) Databricks
10 190 (1.66%) Salesforce
11 157 (1.37%) Red Hat
12 139 (1.22%) Talend
13 136 (1.19%) Informatica
14 126 (1.10%) IBM
15 114 (1.00%) Palo Alto
16 104 (0.91%) Juniper
17 98 (0.86%) F5
18 94 (0.82%) SolarWinds
19 92 (0.80%) Fortinet
20 88 (0.77%) Citrix