Security Cleared Contracts

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 5 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 4 3 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 +2 +6
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 5,596 7,913 9,112
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 17.60% 18.26% 16.12%
As % of the Qualifications category 56.99% 61.24% 60.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,621 5,192 6,090
10th Percentile £340 £343 £387
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £527 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.18% - -
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £695 £738 £727
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -2.27% - +3.77%
Number of hourly rates quoted 423 584 503
10th Percentile £18.50 £14.34 £19.06
25th Percentile £18.87 £22.00 £41.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £56.49 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -55.48% -5.85% +11.11%
75th Percentile £60.00 £72.50 £70.13
90th Percentile £75.40 £82.86 £80.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £58.02 £57.50
% change year-on-year -56.65% +0.91% +6.48%

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 9,820 12,922 15,172
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 30.88% 29.81% 26.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,076 8,015 10,048
10th Percentile £275 £310 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £521 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.81% -4.55% +3.77%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £703 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £527 £525
% change year-on-year -5.12% +0.38% +5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 657 1,098 739
10th Percentile £17.87 £14.00 £15.24
25th Percentile £20.15 £20.12 £22.51
Median hourly rate £27.53 £40.97 £55.25
Median % change year-on-year -32.80% -25.85% +24.16%
75th Percentile £59.00 £65.00 £68.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.24 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.23 £43.00 £53.35
% change year-on-year -41.34% -19.40% +51.99%

Security Cleared
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Security Cleared as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Security Cleared.

Daily rate trend for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Security Cleared over the 6 months to 5 July 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Security Cleared.

Hourly rate trend for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Security Cleared over the 6 months to 5 July 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Top 17 Contract 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 5 July 2025. 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 4,824 £537 -2.32% 7,172
UK excluding London -1 3,005 £538 -2.27% 5,660
London 0 1,725 £525 -0.94% 2,028
Work from Home -1 1,688 £525 -4.55% 4,238
South East -1 879 £550 -8.03% 1,458
South West 0 816 £575 +4.55% 1,196
North of England +1 588 £500 -2.44% 1,011
North West 0 385 £500 -2.44% 603
Midlands -2 381 £510 -2.86% 746
West Midlands -1 280 £512 -0.58% 471
East of England -2 213 £500 -9.09% 715
Yorkshire +3 137 £492 -6.29% 317
Scotland -21 110 £438 -5.91% 369
East Midlands -4 96 £475 -12.84% 271
North East 0 75 £500 +11.11% 94
Wales -4 40 £475 -7.32% 147
Northern Ireland -9 30 £500 -13.04% 97

Security Cleared
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 187 (3.34%) Confluence
2 127 (2.27%) SharePoint
3 87 (1.55%) Microsoft Exchange
4 81 (1.45%) Apache
5 36 (0.64%) Apache Airflow
6 33 (0.59%) Apache Spark
7 29 (0.52%) nginx
8 24 (0.43%) IIS
9 23 (0.41%) Skype for Business
10 21 (0.38%) CMS
10 21 (0.38%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 15 (0.27%) Camunda
12 13 (0.23%) Anypoint
13 12 (0.21%) WebLogic
14 11 (0.20%) Exchange Server 2010
14 11 (0.20%) Exchange Server 2013
14 11 (0.20%) SAS
14 11 (0.20%) WebSphere
14 11 (0.20%) WordPress
15 10 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 126 (2.25%) Microsoft Office
2 101 (1.80%) Microsoft Excel
3 56 (1.00%) Microsoft Project
4 29 (0.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 22 (0.39%) Spreadsheet
6 16 (0.29%) Siemens NX
7 15 (0.27%) Simulink
8 14 (0.25%) Oracle Smart View
9 11 (0.20%) MS Visio
9 11 (0.20%) Sketch
10 8 (0.14%) Trello
11 7 (0.13%) AutoCAD
11 7 (0.13%) Revit
11 7 (0.13%) Windchill
12 6 (0.11%) Adobe XD
13 5 (0.089%) InfoPath
14 4 (0.071%) InVision
15 3 (0.054%) Adobe Illustrator
15 3 (0.054%) Fusion 360
15 3 (0.054%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 55 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.66%) Teamcenter
3 33 (0.59%) Primavera
4 28 (0.50%) Dynamics CRM
5 16 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
6 14 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
6 14 (0.25%) SAP PS
7 11 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
7 11 (0.20%) SAP HCM
7 11 (0.20%) SAP PP
8 10 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
8 10 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
9 9 (0.16%) Oracle Assets
9 9 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
9 9 (0.16%) SAP EWM
9 9 (0.16%) SAP GTS
9 9 (0.16%) SAP HR
10 8 (0.14%) Maximo
10 8 (0.14%) Oracle Cash Management
10 8 (0.14%) SAP CO
Cloud Services
1 1,082 (19.34%) AWS
2 774 (13.83%) Azure
3 196 (3.50%) Power Platform
4 186 (3.32%) Microsoft 365
5 181 (3.23%) GCP
6 170 (3.04%) GitHub
7 167 (2.98%) Serverless
8 158 (2.82%) Amazon S3
9 131 (2.34%) SaaS
10 121 (2.16%) Azure DevOps
11 109 (1.95%) AWS Lambda
12 105 (1.88%) Amazon EC2
13 103 (1.84%) AWS CloudFormation
14 96 (1.72%) Entra ID
15 87 (1.55%) Amazon EKS
16 76 (1.36%) GitHub Actions
17 70 (1.25%) PaaS
18 68 (1.22%) OCI
19 67 (1.20%) OpenShift
20 64 (1.14%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 368 (6.58%) Firewall
2 235 (4.20%) DNS
3 167 (2.98%) VPN
4 154 (2.75%) Network Security
5 120 (2.14%) WAN
6 92 (1.64%) LAN
7 85 (1.52%) BGP
8 84 (1.50%) DHCP
9 65 (1.16%) SAN
9 65 (1.16%) TCP/IP
10 57 (1.02%) Cisco ISE
11 56 (1.00%) Cisco Firepower
11 56 (1.00%) OSPF
12 52 (0.93%) Wi-Fi
13 51 (0.91%) IPsec
14 49 (0.88%) HTTP
15 48 (0.86%) Wireless
16 46 (0.82%) Cisco Nexus
17 45 (0.80%) Cisco ASA
17 45 (0.80%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 195 (3.48%) PostgreSQL
2 144 (2.57%) Power BI
3 115 (2.06%) Amazon RDS
4 108 (1.93%) Relational Database
5 95 (1.70%) MongoDB
6 94 (1.68%) Data Warehouse
7 89 (1.59%) SQL Server
8 69 (1.23%) Oracle Database
9 68 (1.22%) MySQL
10 56 (1.00%) NoSQL
11 53 (0.95%) Big Data
12 51 (0.91%) Oracle Reports
13 48 (0.86%) Tableau
14 44 (0.79%) Elasticsearch
15 43 (0.77%) Data Lake
16 36 (0.64%) Metadata
17 34 (0.61%) Amazon Aurora
18 30 (0.54%) Amazon Redshift
19 29 (0.52%) Redis
20 27 (0.48%) GIS
Development Applications
1 319 (5.70%) JIRA
2 300 (5.36%) Jenkins
3 251 (4.49%) Git
4 207 (3.70%) GitLab
5 84 (1.50%) SonarQube
6 74 (1.32%) JUnit
7 62 (1.11%) Selenium
8 49 (0.88%) Cypress.io
9 48 (0.86%) Bitbucket
9 48 (0.86%) Mockito
10 46 (0.82%) Maven
11 45 (0.80%) Gradle
12 44 (0.79%) Liquibase
13 38 (0.68%) Cucumber
14 33 (0.59%) MSI
15 29 (0.52%) REST Assured
16 25 (0.45%) JMeter
17 23 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
18 22 (0.39%) CircleCI
18 22 (0.39%) Postman
General
1 1,439 (25.71%) Public Sector
2 1,378 (24.62%) Social Skills
3 491 (8.77%) Analytical Skills
4 470 (8.40%) Finance
5 182 (3.25%) Military
6 180 (3.22%) Telecoms
7 148 (2.64%) Manufacturing
8 124 (2.22%) Electronics
9 111 (1.98%) Marketing
10 99 (1.77%) Legal
11 82 (1.47%) Documentation Skills
12 71 (1.27%) Presentation Skills
13 70 (1.25%) Law
14 68 (1.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 64 (1.14%) Aerospace
16 61 (1.09%) Organisational Skills
17 51 (0.91%) Police
18 50 (0.89%) Banking
19 44 (0.79%) Influencing Skills
20 23 (0.41%) Billing
Job Titles
1 822 (14.69%) Architect
2 560 (10.01%) Developer
3 427 (7.63%) Senior
4 381 (6.81%) Analyst
5 380 (6.79%) Consultant
6 338 (6.04%) Lead
7 218 (3.90%) DevOps Engineer
8 203 (3.63%) Network Engineer
9 194 (3.47%) Data Engineer
10 166 (2.97%) Solutions Architect
11 152 (2.72%) Support Engineer
12 141 (2.52%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 138 (2.47%) Security Architect
14 130 (2.32%) Project Manager
15 117 (2.09%) Java Developer
16 105 (1.88%) AWS Engineer
17 104 (1.86%) Business Analyst
18 97 (1.73%) Administrator
19 96 (1.72%) Technical Architect
20 93 (1.66%) Network Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 187 (3.34%) React
2 183 (3.27%) Kafka
3 154 (2.75%) Spring
4 149 (2.66%) REST
5 139 (2.48%) Spring Boot
6 127 (2.27%) Node.js
7 120 (2.14%) HTML
8 108 (1.93%) SOAP
9 95 (1.70%) CSS
10 90 (1.61%) Web Services
11 85 (1.52%) XML
12 76 (1.36%) .NET
12 76 (1.36%) AngularJS
13 73 (1.30%) RESTful
14 58 (1.04%) Oracle Fusion
15 57 (1.02%) Swagger
16 53 (0.95%) OpenAPI
17 50 (0.89%) Elastic Stack
18 47 (0.84%) JSON
19 44 (0.79%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 211 (3.77%) Data Centre
2 201 (3.59%) Onboarding
3 145 (2.59%) Management Information System
4 129 (2.31%) PKI
5 88 (1.57%) Driving Licence
6 86 (1.54%) Product Ownership
7 61 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
8 59 (1.05%) CMDB
9 56 (1.00%) Security Operations Centre
10 55 (0.98%) Hybrid Cloud
11 51 (0.91%) Cloud Native
12 46 (0.82%) Private Cloud
13 44 (0.79%) Enterprise Software
13 44 (0.79%) Security Posture
14 39 (0.70%) Public Cloud
15 38 (0.68%) Replication
16 37 (0.66%) Algorithms
16 37 (0.66%) Linux Command Line
17 36 (0.64%) Cyber Threat
17 36 (0.64%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 661 (11.81%) Windows
2 411 (7.34%) Linux
3 233 (4.16%) Windows Server
4 140 (2.50%) Windows 10
5 87 (1.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 71 (1.27%) Windows Server 2019
7 54 (0.96%) Windows Server 2016
8 37 (0.66%) Android
8 37 (0.66%) Windows Server 2012
9 35 (0.63%) Unix
10 32 (0.57%) Mac OS
11 31 (0.55%) Windows 7
12 28 (0.50%) VMS
13 22 (0.39%) Windows Server 2003
14 16 (0.29%) Apple iOS
14 16 (0.29%) CentOS
15 12 (0.21%) Ubuntu
16 11 (0.20%) Amazon Linux
16 11 (0.20%) Oracle Linux
17 8 (0.14%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,093 (19.53%) Agile
2 790 (14.12%) Problem-Solving
3 697 (12.46%) DevOps
4 544 (9.72%) CI/CD
5 516 (9.22%) Migration
6 395 (7.06%) Stakeholder Management
7 363 (6.49%) ITIL
8 329 (5.88%) Microservices
9 322 (5.75%) Containerisation
10 303 (5.41%) Cybersecurity
11 302 (5.40%) Service Management
12 287 (5.13%) Infrastructure as Code
13 274 (4.90%) Test Automation
14 269 (4.81%) Business Intelligence
15 267 (4.77%) Software Engineering
16 261 (4.66%) Project Management
17 248 (4.43%) Analytics
18 242 (4.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 219 (3.91%) Roadmaps
20 210 (3.75%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 657 (11.74%) Python
2 508 (9.08%) SQL
3 455 (8.13%) Java
4 377 (6.74%) PowerShell
5 293 (5.24%) JavaScript
6 202 (3.61%) Bash
7 140 (2.50%) TypeScript
8 132 (2.36%) C#
9 80 (1.43%) PL/SQL
10 59 (1.05%) C++
11 49 (0.88%) Perl
12 39 (0.70%) Go
13 33 (0.59%) Groovy
14 28 (0.50%) VB
15 27 (0.48%) ABAP
15 27 (0.48%) C
15 27 (0.48%) Shell Script
16 26 (0.46%) PHP
17 25 (0.45%) R
18 21 (0.38%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 4,316 (77.13%) SC Cleared
2 953 (17.03%) DV Cleared
3 290 (5.18%) Degree
4 240 (4.29%) BPSS Clearance
5 154 (2.75%) Cisco Certification
6 105 (1.88%) CISSP
7 102 (1.82%) CCNP
8 92 (1.64%) AWS Certification
9 76 (1.36%) Microsoft Certification
10 68 (1.22%) Computer Science Degree
10 68 (1.22%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 57 (1.02%) CISM
12 53 (0.95%) CCNA
13 51 (0.91%) Azure Certification
14 46 (0.82%) ITIL Certification
15 43 (0.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 31 (0.55%) Oracle Certification
17 28 (0.50%) DBS Check
18 23 (0.41%) ISTQB
19 22 (0.39%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 206 (3.68%) QA
2 132 (2.36%) SLA
3 120 (2.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 102 (1.82%) NIST
5 91 (1.63%) Data Quality
6 89 (1.59%) NCSC
7 70 (1.25%) GDPR
8 60 (1.07%) Accessibility
9 50 (0.89%) PMO
10 31 (0.55%) JSP 440
11 24 (0.43%) RMADS
12 23 (0.41%) Def Stans
12 23 (0.41%) HIPAA
13 22 (0.39%) NIST 800
14 21 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
15 19 (0.34%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 18 (0.32%) WCAG
17 17 (0.30%) GRC
18 11 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 11 (0.20%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 400 (7.15%) Docker
2 359 (6.42%) Active Directory
3 253 (4.52%) VMware Infrastructure
4 94 (1.68%) VMware ESXi
5 75 (1.34%) Hyper-V
6 63 (1.13%) vSphere
7 45 (0.80%) VMware NSX
8 40 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
9 33 (0.59%) Firmware
10 27 (0.48%) Virtual Servers
11 26 (0.46%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 22 (0.39%) Microsoft App-V
13 20 (0.36%) BitLocker
14 18 (0.32%) NFS
15 16 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
16 10 (0.18%) Terminal Services
17 9 (0.16%) Postfix
18 8 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
19 7 (0.13%) Brightmail
19 7 (0.13%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 462 (8.26%) Kubernetes
2 457 (8.17%) Terraform
3 335 (5.99%) Ansible
4 107 (1.91%) SCCM
5 101 (1.80%) Grafana
6 93 (1.66%) Prometheus
7 78 (1.39%) Microsoft Intune
8 66 (1.18%) Puppet
9 64 (1.14%) vCenter Server
10 53 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
11 49 (0.88%) WSUS
12 42 (0.75%) Progress Chef
13 35 (0.63%) FortiGate
14 29 (0.52%) Jamf Pro
15 24 (0.43%) Data Guard
15 24 (0.43%) Kibana
15 24 (0.43%) Packer
16 19 (0.34%) NetBackup
16 19 (0.34%) PowerCLI
17 18 (0.32%) vRealize
Vendors
1 695 (12.42%) Microsoft
2 393 (7.02%) Cisco
3 382 (6.83%) VMware
4 318 (5.68%) SAP
5 295 (5.27%) Oracle
6 222 (3.97%) ServiceNow
7 132 (2.36%) Splunk
8 126 (2.25%) Google
9 124 (2.22%) Juniper
10 115 (2.06%) Dell
11 107 (1.91%) HP
12 96 (1.72%) Palo Alto
13 90 (1.61%) Red Hat
14 82 (1.47%) Databricks
15 80 (1.43%) Atlassian
16 77 (1.38%) IBM
17 74 (1.32%) SolarWinds
18 65 (1.16%) F5
19 63 (1.13%) Citrix
20 55 (0.98%) Fortinet