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

6 months to
1 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,565 5,820 7,285
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.69% 17.70% 18.47%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.16% 57.16% 62.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,042 3,709 4,863
10th Percentile £385 £340 £341
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £536 £534 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.37% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £725 £696 £726
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 846 521 509
10th Percentile £18.32 £18.51 £15.22
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £55.08
Median % change year-on-year +151.03% -54.33% -8.21%
75th Percentile £78.70 £51.10 £71.75
90th Percentile £88.00 £73.75 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £57.50
% change year-on-year +151.03% -56.26% -1.86%

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 16,721 10,182 11,745
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.36% 30.96% 29.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,173 6,306 7,464
10th Percentile £350 £281 £313
25th Percentile £431 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £638
90th Percentile £715 £702 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,247 778 878
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.48
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.38 £21.25
Median hourly rate £51.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +102.78% -41.51% -22.22%
75th Percentile £73.23 £55.43 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.00 £75.00 £77.14
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +98.81% -44.11% -14.29%

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 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 1 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 1 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 10,024 £537 -0.09% 2,668
UK excluding London +1 6,513 £525 -2.33% 1,988
London +7 3,539 £550 +4.76% 848
Work from Home +4 3,118 £525 -2.05% 1,365
South East +1 2,470 £557 +3.53% 611
South West 0 1,327 £538 -6.52% 483
North of England +2 1,129 £500 - 396
Midlands +3 972 £469 -6.20% 224
West Midlands +1 834 £469 -6.20% 173
North West 0 607 £525 - 246
East of England 0 325 £552 +3.18% 152
Yorkshire +3 305 £500 +1.63% 82
Scotland +12 258 £494 +4.44% 98
North East 0 241 £475 -5.00% 70
East Midlands 0 126 £428 -7.57% 51
Wales +3 98 £550 +15.79% 47
Northern Ireland +5 33 £650 +25.00% 25

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
1 412 (3.56%) Confluence
2 269 (2.33%) SharePoint
3 194 (1.68%) SAS
4 123 (1.06%) Microsoft Exchange
5 104 (0.90%) Apache Spark
6 101 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
7 95 (0.82%) Apache
8 41 (0.35%) WebLogic
9 38 (0.33%) Jupyter
9 38 (0.33%) nginx
10 24 (0.21%) IIS
10 24 (0.21%) Tomcat
11 20 (0.17%) Oracle Application Server
11 20 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
12 16 (0.14%) CMS
12 16 (0.14%) NetWeaver
12 16 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
13 13 (0.11%) Skype for Business
14 12 (0.10%) Tuxedo
15 10 (0.086%) JBoss
Applications
1 212 (1.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 153 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 103 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 78 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 47 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.13%) Simulink
8 14 (0.12%) AutoCAD
8 14 (0.12%) Revit
8 14 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
9 9 (0.078%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.069%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.061%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.061%) Sketch
12 4 (0.035%) Trello
13 3 (0.026%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 3 (0.026%) Windchill
14 2 (0.017%) CPLEX
14 2 (0.017%) Houdini
14 2 (0.017%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 152 (1.31%) SAP S/4HANA
2 77 (0.67%) Remedy ITSM
3 44 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
4 43 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
5 36 (0.31%) Teamcenter
6 32 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 23 (0.20%) Dynamics CRM
7 23 (0.20%) SAP PSCD
8 21 (0.18%) Primavera
9 20 (0.17%) SAP GRC
10 16 (0.14%) Oracle Payroll
11 15 (0.13%) Findur
12 14 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
13 13 (0.11%) Temenos T24
14 12 (0.10%) iTrent
14 12 (0.10%) SAP FI
14 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
15 11 (0.095%) NetSuite
15 11 (0.095%) SAP HR
16 10 (0.086%) Integrated Workplace Management System
Cloud Services
1 2,091 (18.08%) Azure
2 2,056 (17.78%) AWS
3 527 (4.56%) GitHub
4 504 (4.36%) Azure DevOps
5 469 (4.06%) Power Platform
6 444 (3.84%) GCP
7 326 (2.82%) GitHub Actions
8 305 (2.64%) Microsoft 365
9 290 (2.51%) Entra ID
10 287 (2.48%) Serverless
11 252 (2.18%) Amazon S3
12 206 (1.78%) AWS Lambda
13 168 (1.45%) OCI
14 166 (1.44%) SaaS
15 165 (1.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 162 (1.40%) Amazon EC2
17 161 (1.39%) Amazon EKS
18 154 (1.33%) PaaS
19 137 (1.18%) OpenShift
20 127 (1.10%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 492 (4.25%) Firewall
2 372 (3.22%) DNS
3 232 (2.01%) Network Security
4 231 (2.00%) WAN
5 199 (1.72%) VPN
6 196 (1.69%) LAN
7 182 (1.57%) DHCP
8 148 (1.28%) BGP
9 132 (1.14%) TCP/IP
10 119 (1.03%) OSPF
11 114 (0.99%) Wi-Fi
12 108 (0.93%) VLAN
13 92 (0.80%) Wireless
14 69 (0.60%) MPLS
15 67 (0.58%) IPsec
16 64 (0.55%) SAN
17 63 (0.54%) VSAN
18 62 (0.54%) SD-WAN
19 61 (0.53%) SSL
20 60 (0.52%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 358 (3.10%) Power BI
2 310 (2.68%) PostgreSQL
3 282 (2.44%) SQL Server
4 278 (2.40%) Data Warehouse
5 169 (1.46%) Oracle Database
6 154 (1.33%) Metadata
7 136 (1.18%) Data Lake
8 127 (1.10%) Relational Database
9 108 (0.93%) MongoDB
10 106 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
11 100 (0.86%) Oracle Reports
12 97 (0.84%) MySQL
13 92 (0.80%) Pentaho
14 79 (0.68%) NoSQL
15 75 (0.65%) Elasticsearch
16 73 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
17 69 (0.60%) Amazon Athena
18 60 (0.52%) Big Data
18 60 (0.52%) Tableau
19 54 (0.47%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 666 (5.76%) JIRA
2 562 (4.86%) Git
3 472 (4.08%) GitLab
4 465 (4.02%) Jenkins
5 124 (1.07%) Selenium
6 85 (0.73%) SonarQube
7 84 (0.73%) JUnit
8 76 (0.66%) Postman
9 68 (0.59%) Maven
10 66 (0.57%) JMeter
11 56 (0.48%) Cucumber
11 56 (0.48%) Rational DOORS
12 49 (0.42%) Mockito
13 48 (0.42%) Visual Studio
14 45 (0.39%) Cypress.io
15 42 (0.36%) Bitbucket
15 42 (0.36%) Zephyr
16 40 (0.35%) Artifactory
17 39 (0.34%) Gradle
17 39 (0.34%) REST Assured
General
1 2,496 (21.58%) Public Sector
2 2,378 (20.56%) Social Skills
3 870 (7.52%) Analytical Skills
4 776 (6.71%) Finance
5 366 (3.16%) Military
6 291 (2.52%) Aerospace
7 288 (2.49%) Documentation Skills
8 178 (1.54%) Influencing Skills
8 178 (1.54%) Legal
9 149 (1.29%) Telecoms
10 143 (1.24%) Organisational Skills
11 131 (1.13%) Banking
12 118 (1.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 104 (0.90%) Manufacturing
13 104 (0.90%) Police
14 99 (0.86%) Law
15 77 (0.67%) Presentation Skills
16 53 (0.46%) Aviation
17 41 (0.35%) Marketing
18 40 (0.35%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,817 (15.71%) Architect
2 1,297 (11.21%) Developer
3 1,085 (9.38%) Senior
4 979 (8.47%) Lead
5 703 (6.08%) Analyst
6 627 (5.42%) Consultant
7 532 (4.60%) Data Engineer
8 474 (4.10%) DevOps Engineer
9 405 (3.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 362 (3.13%) Technical Architect
11 352 (3.04%) Solutions Architect
12 337 (2.91%) Software Engineer
13 282 (2.44%) Security Architect
14 265 (2.29%) Network Engineer
15 235 (2.03%) Data Architect
15 235 (2.03%) Java Developer
16 225 (1.95%) Designer
17 210 (1.82%) Delivery Manager
18 209 (1.81%) Business Analyst
19 208 (1.80%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 426 (3.68%) REST
2 271 (2.34%) Spring
3 235 (2.03%) Spring Boot
4 227 (1.96%) .NET
4 227 (1.96%) Kafka
5 209 (1.81%) React
6 208 (1.80%) RESTful
7 191 (1.65%) Node.js
8 172 (1.49%) SOAP
9 158 (1.37%) JSON
10 142 (1.23%) AngularJS
11 129 (1.12%) Web Services
12 126 (1.09%) OAuth
13 115 (0.99%) HTML
14 107 (0.93%) Middleware
15 105 (0.91%) XML
16 103 (0.89%) PySpark
17 91 (0.79%) Playwright
18 82 (0.71%) CSS
19 81 (0.70%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 479 (4.14%) Cloud Native
2 399 (3.45%) Onboarding
3 362 (3.13%) Product Ownership
4 324 (2.80%) Data Centre
5 240 (2.08%) Management Information System
6 197 (1.70%) Legacy Systems
7 173 (1.50%) Distributed Systems
8 171 (1.48%) PKI
9 132 (1.14%) CMDB
9 132 (1.14%) Enterprise Software
10 126 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
11 116 (1.00%) Data Structures
12 110 (0.95%) Hybrid Cloud
13 107 (0.93%) Replication
14 102 (0.88%) Clustering
15 95 (0.82%) Public Cloud
16 88 (0.76%) Virtual Team
17 82 (0.71%) Cyber Threat
17 82 (0.71%) Security Operations Centre
18 80 (0.69%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 928 (8.02%) Windows
2 793 (6.86%) Linux
3 309 (2.67%) Windows Server
4 230 (1.99%) Unix
5 155 (1.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 102 (0.88%) Android
7 98 (0.85%) Windows 10
8 66 (0.57%) Solaris
9 64 (0.55%) Apple iOS
10 48 (0.42%) Mac OS
11 41 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 37 (0.32%) AIX
13 35 (0.30%) Ubuntu
14 30 (0.26%) CentOS
15 22 (0.19%) VMS
16 21 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
17 17 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
18 15 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
19 13 (0.11%) Windows 7
20 12 (0.10%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,416 (20.89%) Agile
2 1,786 (15.44%) DevOps
3 1,694 (14.65%) CI/CD
4 1,286 (11.12%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,267 (10.96%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,226 (10.60%) Problem-Solving
7 1,053 (9.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 895 (7.74%) Infrastructure as Code
9 881 (7.62%) Migration
10 745 (6.44%) Cybersecurity
11 741 (6.41%) ITIL
12 720 (6.23%) Analytics
13 716 (6.19%) Test Automation
14 709 (6.13%) Containerisation
15 692 (5.98%) Software Engineering
16 674 (5.83%) Roadmaps
17 640 (5.53%) Decision-Making
18 634 (5.48%) Data Modelling
19 617 (5.34%) AI
19 617 (5.34%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,295 (11.20%) Python
2 1,130 (9.77%) SQL
3 821 (7.10%) Java
4 525 (4.54%) PowerShell
5 379 (3.28%) JavaScript
6 304 (2.63%) Bash
7 257 (2.22%) C#
8 192 (1.66%) TypeScript
9 181 (1.57%) PL/SQL
10 105 (0.91%) Bicep
11 95 (0.82%) Shell Script
12 89 (0.77%) C++
13 65 (0.56%) C
14 61 (0.53%) Apex Code
15 57 (0.49%) Kotlin
16 55 (0.48%) Ruby
17 50 (0.43%) Go
17 50 (0.43%) Scala
18 41 (0.35%) Groovy
19 36 (0.31%) R
Qualifications
1 8,825 (76.31%) SC Cleared
2 2,174 (18.80%) DV Cleared
3 449 (3.88%) Degree
4 429 (3.71%) BPSS Clearance
5 213 (1.84%) Cisco Certification
6 190 (1.64%) CISSP
7 168 (1.45%) Azure Certification
8 150 (1.30%) Microsoft Certification
9 135 (1.17%) AWS Certification
10 117 (1.01%) CISM
11 108 (0.93%) PMI Certification
12 104 (0.90%) PMP
13 95 (0.82%) CCNP
14 93 (0.80%) CCNA
15 84 (0.73%) ISTQB
16 68 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 65 (0.56%) Computer Science Degree
18 49 (0.42%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 49 (0.42%) TOGAF Certification
19 48 (0.42%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 446 (3.86%) QA
2 375 (3.24%) Data Quality
3 310 (2.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 306 (2.65%) NIST
5 260 (2.25%) Accessibility
6 246 (2.13%) NCSC
7 213 (1.84%) PMO
8 181 (1.57%) GDPR
9 140 (1.21%) GRC
9 140 (1.21%) SLA
10 78 (0.67%) WCAG
11 64 (0.55%) JSP 440
12 51 (0.44%) NIST 800
13 45 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
14 32 (0.28%) Government Security Classifications
15 28 (0.24%) Def Stans
15 28 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 20000
16 27 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 22 (0.19%) RMADS
18 19 (0.16%) COBIT
System Software
1 800 (6.92%) Docker
2 515 (4.45%) Active Directory
3 394 (3.41%) VMware Infrastructure
4 147 (1.27%) VMware NSX
5 132 (1.14%) VMware ESXi
6 112 (0.97%) vSphere
7 106 (0.92%) Hyper-V
8 81 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
9 45 (0.39%) Oracle RAC
10 37 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
11 30 (0.26%) Firmware
12 22 (0.19%) vCloud
13 20 (0.17%) BitLocker
14 19 (0.16%) NFS
15 18 (0.16%) Postfix
16 17 (0.15%) Squid
17 10 (0.086%) KVM
18 8 (0.069%) Microsoft App-V
19 7 (0.061%) Ceph
19 7 (0.061%) UAG
Systems Management
1 966 (8.35%) Terraform
2 948 (8.20%) Kubernetes
3 423 (3.66%) Ansible
4 267 (2.31%) Grafana
5 212 (1.83%) Prometheus
6 131 (1.13%) vCenter Server
7 108 (0.93%) SCCM
8 83 (0.72%) Microsoft Intune
9 70 (0.61%) Argo
10 67 (0.58%) SCOM
10 67 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
11 54 (0.47%) Oracle RMAN
12 50 (0.43%) Puppet
13 44 (0.38%) FortiGate
14 38 (0.33%) Data Guard
15 30 (0.26%) Nagios
16 29 (0.25%) Progress Chef
17 25 (0.22%) Control-M
17 25 (0.22%) Podman
17 25 (0.22%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 1,323 (11.44%) Microsoft
2 906 (7.83%) Oracle
3 571 (4.94%) VMware
4 561 (4.85%) ServiceNow
5 432 (3.74%) SAP
6 313 (2.71%) Cisco
7 217 (1.88%) Google
8 210 (1.82%) Splunk
9 200 (1.73%) Databricks
10 197 (1.70%) Salesforce
11 161 (1.39%) Red Hat
12 138 (1.19%) Informatica
12 138 (1.19%) Talend
13 120 (1.04%) IBM
14 113 (0.98%) Palo Alto
15 105 (0.91%) Juniper
16 97 (0.84%) F5
17 96 (0.83%) SolarWinds
18 89 (0.77%) Fortinet
19 88 (0.76%) Remedy