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

6 months to
1 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 11,582 5,917 7,121
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.59% 18.07% 18.44%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.92% 57.81% 62.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,105 3,778 4,682
10th Percentile £388 £350 £350
25th Percentile £458 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.56% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £537 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -0.09% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 799 573 447
10th Percentile £19.50 £18.51 £15.64
25th Percentile £29.72 £18.87 £24.18
Median hourly rate £63.50 £25.15 £58.49
Median % change year-on-year +152.49% -57.00% -2.52%
75th Percentile £78.75 £43.75 £72.11
90th Percentile £88.00 £71.41 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.55 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +156.64% -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 16,805 10,236 11,482
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.32% 31.26% 29.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,233 6,338 7,203
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 £626 £623 £638
90th Percentile £716 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £523 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.60% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,261 822 732
10th Percentile £17.42 £17.98 £15.11
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £48.81 £25.15 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +94.08% -47.05% -13.64%
75th Percentile £72.54 £50.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £87.16 £71.43 £76.17
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +89.03% -49.70% -

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 +3 10,017 £548 +1.86% 4,181
UK excluding London +1 6,500 £537 -0.09% 3,215
London +7 3,571 £550 +3.77% 1,483
Work from Home +2 3,065 £525 -2.33% 2,385
South East +1 2,342 £564 +4.98% 817
South West 0 1,374 £550 -0.90% 777
North of England +3 1,236 £515 +2.83% 657
Midlands 0 911 £475 -7.77% 271
West Midlands +1 776 £475 -8.08% 184
North West +3 721 £530 -0.93% 426
East of England 0 332 £550 - 334
Yorkshire -1 301 £500 +1.63% 126
Scotland +12 277 £481 -0.41% 240
North East 0 238 £475 -5.00% 126
East Midlands -1 126 £450 -7.69% 87
Wales +4 108 £550 +10.00% 43
Northern Ireland +6 35 £650 +16.07% 125

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 (3.48%) Confluence
2 265 (2.29%) SharePoint
3 176 (1.52%) SAS
4 122 (1.05%) Microsoft Exchange
5 102 (0.88%) Apache Spark
6 100 (0.86%) Apache
6 100 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
7 39 (0.34%) Jupyter
8 34 (0.29%) nginx
9 28 (0.24%) WebLogic
10 23 (0.20%) IIS
10 23 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
11 22 (0.19%) Skype for Business
11 22 (0.19%) Tomcat
12 18 (0.16%) CMS
13 17 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
13 17 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
14 13 (0.11%) JBoss
14 13 (0.11%) NetWeaver
15 9 (0.078%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 205 (1.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 161 (1.39%) Microsoft Office
3 109 (0.94%) Microsoft Project
4 98 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 41 (0.35%) 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 (0.069%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.069%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.069%) Windchill
11 7 (0.060%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.060%) Sketch
12 5 (0.043%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 3 (0.026%) OrCAD
13 3 (0.026%) Trello
14 2 (0.017%) Houdini
14 2 (0.017%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 149 (1.29%) SAP S/4HANA
2 79 (0.68%) Remedy ITSM
3 51 (0.44%) Oracle ERP
4 37 (0.32%) Oracle EBS
5 34 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
6 33 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 28 (0.24%) Teamcenter
8 25 (0.22%) SAP GRC
9 24 (0.21%) 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 (0.095%) NetSuite
16 11 (0.095%) Temenos T24
17 10 (0.086%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,161 (18.66%) Azure
2 2,061 (17.79%) AWS
3 533 (4.60%) Azure DevOps
4 532 (4.59%) GitHub
5 487 (4.20%) Power Platform
6 451 (3.89%) GCP
7 339 (2.93%) GitHub Actions
8 320 (2.76%) Microsoft 365
9 297 (2.56%) Entra ID
10 277 (2.39%) Serverless
11 229 (1.98%) Amazon S3
12 198 (1.71%) AWS Lambda
13 174 (1.50%) SaaS
14 172 (1.49%) OCI
15 166 (1.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 162 (1.40%) Amazon EKS
17 140 (1.21%) Amazon EC2
18 136 (1.17%) OpenShift
19 125 (1.08%) AWS CloudFormation
20 119 (1.03%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 478 (4.13%) Firewall
2 375 (3.24%) DNS
3 229 (1.98%) WAN
4 226 (1.95%) Network Security
5 217 (1.87%) VPN
6 186 (1.61%) DHCP
7 181 (1.56%) LAN
8 140 (1.21%) BGP
9 139 (1.20%) TCP/IP
10 120 (1.04%) Wi-Fi
11 106 (0.92%) VLAN
12 101 (0.87%) OSPF
13 87 (0.75%) Wireless
14 72 (0.62%) SSL
15 68 (0.59%) MPLS
16 67 (0.58%) IPsec
17 66 (0.57%) VSAN
18 63 (0.54%) SD-WAN
19 62 (0.54%) SAN
20 53 (0.46%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 352 (3.04%) Power BI
2 299 (2.58%) PostgreSQL
3 292 (2.52%) SQL Server
4 267 (2.31%) Data Warehouse
5 182 (1.57%) Metadata
6 176 (1.52%) Oracle Database
7 145 (1.25%) Relational Database
8 144 (1.24%) Data Lake
9 124 (1.07%) MongoDB
10 109 (0.94%) Amazon RDS
11 106 (0.92%) MySQL
12 96 (0.83%) NoSQL
13 92 (0.79%) Oracle Reports
14 75 (0.65%) Pentaho
15 71 (0.61%) Amazon Athena
16 64 (0.55%) Elasticsearch
17 62 (0.54%) Amazon Redshift
18 60 (0.52%) Big Data
19 57 (0.49%) Tableau
20 48 (0.41%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 640 (5.53%) JIRA
2 562 (4.85%) Git
3 504 (4.35%) GitLab
4 472 (4.08%) Jenkins
5 139 (1.20%) Selenium
6 82 (0.71%) Postman
7 78 (0.67%) SonarQube
8 74 (0.64%) JMeter
9 69 (0.60%) JUnit
10 66 (0.57%) Maven
11 54 (0.47%) Cucumber
11 54 (0.47%) Cypress.io
12 46 (0.40%) Gradle
13 42 (0.36%) Mockito
14 41 (0.35%) Visual Studio
15 40 (0.35%) Gatling
15 40 (0.35%) Rational DOORS
16 39 (0.34%) Artifactory
17 38 (0.33%) REST Assured
17 38 (0.33%) Zephyr
General
1 2,517 (21.73%) Social Skills
2 2,381 (20.56%) Public Sector
3 908 (7.84%) Analytical Skills
4 770 (6.65%) Finance
5 383 (3.31%) Military
6 307 (2.65%) Aerospace
7 303 (2.62%) Documentation Skills
8 203 (1.75%) Influencing Skills
9 172 (1.49%) Organisational Skills
10 168 (1.45%) Telecoms
11 165 (1.42%) Legal
12 148 (1.28%) Banking
13 144 (1.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 118 (1.02%) Manufacturing
15 112 (0.97%) Law
15 112 (0.97%) Police
16 61 (0.53%) Presentation Skills
17 46 (0.40%) Retail
18 44 (0.38%) Marketing
19 43 (0.37%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,859 (16.05%) Architect
2 1,217 (10.51%) Developer
3 1,107 (9.56%) Senior
4 1,047 (9.04%) Lead
5 701 (6.05%) Consultant
6 632 (5.46%) Analyst
7 501 (4.33%) Data Engineer
7 501 (4.33%) DevOps Engineer
8 425 (3.67%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 369 (3.19%) Technical Architect
10 354 (3.06%) Solutions Architect
11 290 (2.50%) Software Engineer
12 281 (2.43%) Data Architect
13 269 (2.32%) Security Architect
14 258 (2.23%) Network Engineer
15 215 (1.86%) Administrator
16 210 (1.81%) Java Developer
17 206 (1.78%) Azure Engineer
18 204 (1.76%) Project Manager
19 201 (1.74%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 998 (8.62%) Terraform
2 432 (3.73%) REST
3 249 (2.15%) Spring
4 246 (2.12%) Kafka
5 225 (1.94%) Spring Boot
6 219 (1.89%) .NET
7 215 (1.86%) RESTful
8 207 (1.79%) React
9 173 (1.49%) Node.js
10 166 (1.43%) SOAP
11 162 (1.40%) JSON
12 131 (1.13%) HTML
13 128 (1.11%) OAuth
14 121 (1.04%) Web Services
14 121 (1.04%) XML
15 118 (1.02%) AngularJS
16 114 (0.98%) Middleware
17 101 (0.87%) CSS
18 97 (0.84%) Playwright
19 94 (0.81%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 508 (4.39%) Cloud Native
2 424 (3.66%) Onboarding
3 360 (3.11%) Product Ownership
4 306 (2.64%) Data Centre
5 253 (2.18%) Management Information System
6 193 (1.67%) Legacy Systems
7 171 (1.48%) PKI
8 159 (1.37%) Enterprise Software
9 157 (1.36%) CMDB
10 147 (1.27%) Distributed Systems
11 126 (1.09%) Replication
12 123 (1.06%) Hybrid Cloud
13 118 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
14 103 (0.89%) Data Structures
15 99 (0.85%) Cyber Threat
16 94 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
17 92 (0.79%) Public Cloud
18 88 (0.76%) Clustering
19 87 (0.75%) Operational Technology
20 84 (0.73%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 967 (8.35%) Windows
2 798 (6.89%) Linux
3 356 (3.07%) Windows Server
4 220 (1.90%) Unix
5 155 (1.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 137 (1.18%) Windows 10
7 77 (0.66%) Android
8 64 (0.55%) Solaris
9 51 (0.44%) Mac OS
10 46 (0.40%) Apple iOS
11 40 (0.35%) Ubuntu
11 40 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 38 (0.33%) CentOS
13 36 (0.31%) AIX
14 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
15 23 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
16 22 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
17 21 (0.18%) VMS
18 15 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
18 15 (0.13%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,430 (20.98%) Agile
2 1,794 (15.49%) DevOps
3 1,733 (14.96%) CI/CD
4 1,484 (12.81%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,349 (11.65%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,218 (10.52%) Problem-Solving
7 1,159 (10.01%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 985 (8.50%) Infrastructure as Code
9 923 (7.97%) Migration
10 827 (7.14%) Cybersecurity
11 781 (6.74%) ITIL
12 758 (6.54%) Test Automation
13 717 (6.19%) Analytics
14 714 (6.16%) Containerisation
15 706 (6.10%) Technical Leadership
16 682 (5.89%) Roadmaps
17 673 (5.81%) Decision-Making
18 670 (5.78%) Software Engineering
19 660 (5.70%) AI
20 625 (5.40%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,333 (11.51%) Python
2 1,110 (9.58%) SQL
3 786 (6.79%) Java
4 574 (4.96%) PowerShell
5 397 (3.43%) JavaScript
6 337 (2.91%) Bash
7 236 (2.04%) C#
8 204 (1.76%) TypeScript
9 159 (1.37%) PL/SQL
10 125 (1.08%) Bicep
11 81 (0.70%) Shell Script
12 70 (0.60%) C++
13 62 (0.54%) C
14 54 (0.47%) Apex Code
15 50 (0.43%) Scala
16 47 (0.41%) Groovy
17 46 (0.40%) Go
17 46 (0.40%) Ruby
18 45 (0.39%) Kotlin
19 39 (0.34%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,829 (76.23%) SC Cleared
2 2,172 (18.75%) DV Cleared
3 466 (4.02%) BPSS Clearance
4 457 (3.95%) Degree
5 211 (1.82%) CISSP
6 181 (1.56%) Cisco Certification
7 179 (1.55%) Azure Certification
8 165 (1.42%) Microsoft Certification
9 145 (1.25%) AWS Certification
10 142 (1.23%) CISM
11 107 (0.92%) PMI Certification
12 104 (0.90%) PMP
13 91 (0.79%) ISTQB
14 80 (0.69%) CCNP
15 72 (0.62%) Computer Science Degree
16 71 (0.61%) CCNA
17 63 (0.54%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 47 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 45 (0.39%) ITIL Certification
20 44 (0.38%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 503 (4.34%) QA
2 384 (3.32%) Data Quality
3 320 (2.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 313 (2.70%) NIST
5 272 (2.35%) NCSC
6 257 (2.22%) Accessibility
7 226 (1.95%) PMO
8 181 (1.56%) GDPR
9 164 (1.42%) SLA
10 155 (1.34%) GRC
11 83 (0.72%) WCAG
12 65 (0.56%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
14 44 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 35 (0.30%) Def Stans
16 28 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 25 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 24 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
19 22 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 22 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 800 (6.91%) Docker
2 577 (4.98%) Active Directory
3 423 (3.65%) VMware Infrastructure
4 148 (1.28%) VMware NSX
5 139 (1.20%) VMware ESXi
6 130 (1.12%) Hyper-V
7 127 (1.10%) vSphere
8 83 (0.72%) Virtual Machines
9 43 (0.37%) Firmware
9 43 (0.37%) Oracle RAC
10 41 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
11 27 (0.23%) vCloud
12 25 (0.22%) BitLocker
13 15 (0.13%) NFS
14 14 (0.12%) Squid
15 13 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
16 11 (0.095%) Postfix
17 9 (0.078%) KVM
18 8 (0.069%) Ceph
18 8 (0.069%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 977 (8.44%) Kubernetes
2 447 (3.86%) Ansible
3 263 (2.27%) Grafana
4 208 (1.80%) Prometheus
5 136 (1.17%) SCCM
6 134 (1.16%) vCenter Server
7 89 (0.77%) SCOM
8 85 (0.73%) Microsoft Intune
9 69 (0.60%) Argo
10 68 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
11 51 (0.44%) Oracle RMAN
12 48 (0.41%) Puppet
13 42 (0.36%) Data Guard
14 32 (0.28%) Istio
14 32 (0.28%) Kibana
15 30 (0.26%) Progress Chef
16 29 (0.25%) Control-M
16 29 (0.25%) Nagios
17 28 (0.24%) WSUS
18 26 (0.22%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,493 (12.89%) Microsoft
2 926 (8.00%) Oracle
3 601 (5.19%) VMware
4 541 (4.67%) ServiceNow
5 449 (3.88%) SAP
6 307 (2.65%) Cisco
7 244 (2.11%) Google
8 228 (1.97%) Splunk
9 215 (1.86%) Databricks
10 185 (1.60%) Salesforce
11 148 (1.28%) Red Hat
12 130 (1.12%) Palo Alto
13 119 (1.03%) IBM
14 118 (1.02%) Informatica
15 112 (0.97%) Talend
16 98 (0.85%) Dynatrace
17 89 (0.77%) Remedy
18 85 (0.73%) CyberArk
19 84 (0.73%) SolarWinds
20 83 (0.72%) F5