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

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,974 6,110 6,754
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.81% 18.45% 17.74%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.74% 58.42% 60.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,310 3,936 4,311
10th Percentile £398 £336 £350
25th Percentile £462 £443 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.42% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £721 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £538 £550
% change year-on-year - -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 864 629 392
10th Percentile £20.00 £18.51 £20.12
25th Percentile £30.12 £18.87 £29.25
Median hourly rate £63.31 £25.15 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +151.72% -58.08% -
75th Percentile £76.88 £33.75 £72.05
90th Percentile £91.31 £69.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.09 £25.15 £60.46
% change year-on-year +154.83% -58.40% +3.71%

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 17,419 10,458 11,135
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.73% 31.58% 29.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,570 6,527 6,779
10th Percentile £350 £288 £312
25th Percentile £445 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £635
90th Percentile £713 £712 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,421 884 611
10th Percentile £16.88 £17.87 £18.00
25th Percentile £25.71 £18.87 £25.26
Median hourly rate £45.50 £25.15 £48.56
Median % change year-on-year +80.91% -48.21% -9.23%
75th Percentile £71.43 £42.44 £68.75
90th Percentile £88.75 £70.00 £75.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -49.70% -3.64%

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 2 October 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 2 October 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 2 October 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 10,306 £550 +2.33% 5,793
UK excluding London +1 6,669 £538 - 4,128
London +6 3,673 £550 +1.85% 1,785
Work from Home +2 3,164 £528 -1.86% 3,005
South East +1 2,261 £564 +7.48% 1,137
South West 0 1,394 £550 - 882
North of England +3 1,312 £515 -1.90% 782
Midlands 0 948 £475 -8.39% 410
West Midlands 0 803 £475 -8.57% 262
North West +1 792 £530 -5.36% 473
East of England 0 436 £552 +0.36% 499
Scotland +14 311 £495 +0.51% 313
Yorkshire 0 295 £492 - 135
North East 0 245 £466 -15.23% 180
East Midlands -1 137 £500 +8.11% 146
Wales +3 108 £550 +4.76% 88
Northern Ireland +2 36 £650 +21.50% 56

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
1 399 (3.33%) Confluence
2 262 (2.19%) SharePoint
3 155 (1.29%) SAS
4 125 (1.04%) Microsoft Exchange
5 108 (0.90%) Apache
5 108 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
5 108 (0.90%) Apache Spark
6 41 (0.34%) Jupyter
7 39 (0.33%) WebLogic
8 37 (0.31%) nginx
9 34 (0.28%) CMS
10 25 (0.21%) IIS
11 23 (0.19%) Tomcat
12 22 (0.18%) Skype for Business
13 19 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
14 17 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 16 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
16 14 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
17 11 (0.092%) JBoss
17 11 (0.092%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 215 (1.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 161 (1.34%) Microsoft Office
3 105 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 99 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (0.37%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 19 (0.16%) Revit
8 19 (0.16%) Windchill
9 18 (0.15%) SOLIDWORKS
10 9 (0.075%) Adobe XD
10 9 (0.075%) Chatbot
10 9 (0.075%) Simulink
11 7 (0.058%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.058%) Sketch
12 6 (0.050%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 4 (0.033%) OrCAD
13 4 (0.033%) Trello
14 2 (0.017%) Houdini
14 2 (0.017%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 150 (1.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 81 (0.68%) Remedy ITSM
3 60 (0.50%) Oracle ERP
4 48 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
5 39 (0.33%) Teamcenter
6 32 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
6 32 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 27 (0.23%) Oracle Payroll
8 26 (0.22%) SAP PSCD
9 24 (0.20%) SAP GRC
10 22 (0.18%) SAP FI
11 18 (0.15%) Primavera
11 18 (0.15%) SAP HR
12 17 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
13 15 (0.13%) Maximo
14 14 (0.12%) Oracle General Ledger
14 14 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
14 14 (0.12%) SAP CO
15 13 (0.11%) SAP Payroll
16 12 (0.10%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 2,161 (18.05%) Azure
2 2,109 (17.61%) AWS
3 524 (4.38%) GitHub
4 521 (4.35%) Azure DevOps
5 494 (4.13%) Power Platform
6 467 (3.90%) GCP
7 363 (3.03%) GitHub Actions
8 344 (2.87%) Microsoft 365
9 334 (2.79%) Entra ID
10 281 (2.35%) Serverless
11 248 (2.07%) Amazon S3
12 209 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
13 183 (1.53%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 177 (1.48%) Amazon EKS
15 174 (1.45%) OCI
16 167 (1.39%) SaaS
17 151 (1.26%) Amazon EC2
18 145 (1.21%) OpenShift
19 134 (1.12%) AWS CloudFormation
20 113 (0.94%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 448 (3.74%) Firewall
2 377 (3.15%) DNS
3 243 (2.03%) Network Security
4 209 (1.75%) WAN
5 196 (1.64%) VPN
6 184 (1.54%) DHCP
7 160 (1.34%) LAN
8 137 (1.14%) TCP/IP
9 126 (1.05%) BGP
10 116 (0.97%) Wi-Fi
11 96 (0.80%) VLAN
12 90 (0.75%) Wireless
13 84 (0.70%) OSPF
14 70 (0.58%) SSL
15 67 (0.56%) SAN
16 66 (0.55%) MPLS
17 64 (0.53%) VSAN
18 60 (0.50%) IPsec
19 56 (0.47%) SD-WAN
20 49 (0.41%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 349 (2.91%) Power BI
2 309 (2.58%) PostgreSQL
3 281 (2.35%) SQL Server
4 266 (2.22%) Data Warehouse
5 212 (1.77%) Metadata
6 184 (1.54%) Oracle Database
7 148 (1.24%) Data Lake
8 142 (1.19%) Relational Database
9 136 (1.14%) MongoDB
10 113 (0.94%) Amazon RDS
11 112 (0.94%) MySQL
12 96 (0.80%) NoSQL
13 89 (0.74%) Oracle Reports
14 72 (0.60%) Elasticsearch
15 69 (0.58%) Amazon Athena
16 68 (0.57%) Pentaho
17 62 (0.52%) Big Data
18 54 (0.45%) Amazon Aurora
19 53 (0.44%) DynamoDB
20 49 (0.41%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 662 (5.53%) JIRA
2 591 (4.94%) Git
3 538 (4.49%) GitLab
4 506 (4.23%) Jenkins
5 159 (1.33%) Selenium
6 94 (0.79%) Postman
7 82 (0.68%) Maven
8 78 (0.65%) JUnit
9 77 (0.64%) Cucumber
9 77 (0.64%) JMeter
9 77 (0.64%) SonarQube
10 55 (0.46%) Cypress.io
11 52 (0.43%) Gradle
12 48 (0.40%) REST Assured
13 46 (0.38%) Mockito
14 44 (0.37%) Gatling
15 40 (0.33%) Visual Studio
15 40 (0.33%) Zephyr
16 39 (0.33%) Artifactory
17 32 (0.27%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,691 (22.47%) Social Skills
2 2,461 (20.55%) Public Sector
3 972 (8.12%) Analytical Skills
4 773 (6.46%) Finance
5 430 (3.59%) Military
6 351 (2.93%) Aerospace
7 311 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
8 237 (1.98%) Influencing Skills
9 201 (1.68%) Organisational Skills
10 175 (1.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 174 (1.45%) Manufacturing
12 166 (1.39%) Telecoms
13 165 (1.38%) Legal
14 140 (1.17%) Banking
15 124 (1.04%) Police
16 120 (1.00%) Law
17 74 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
18 56 (0.47%) Local Government
19 53 (0.44%) Aviation
20 42 (0.35%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,941 (16.21%) Architect
2 1,228 (10.26%) Developer
3 1,145 (9.56%) Senior
4 1,058 (8.84%) Lead
5 703 (5.87%) Consultant
6 666 (5.56%) Analyst
7 512 (4.28%) DevOps Engineer
8 489 (4.08%) Data Engineer
9 422 (3.52%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 376 (3.14%) Solutions Architect
11 359 (3.00%) Technical Architect
12 307 (2.56%) Data Architect
13 290 (2.42%) Security Architect
14 260 (2.17%) Software Engineer
15 249 (2.08%) Network Engineer
16 229 (1.91%) Administrator
17 223 (1.86%) Java Developer
18 211 (1.76%) Designer
19 205 (1.71%) Azure Engineer
19 205 (1.71%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,019 (8.51%) Terraform
2 481 (4.02%) REST
3 271 (2.26%) Kafka
4 260 (2.17%) Spring
5 240 (2.00%) Spring Boot
6 218 (1.82%) RESTful
7 201 (1.68%) .NET
8 190 (1.59%) React
9 184 (1.54%) SOAP
10 175 (1.46%) Node.js
11 159 (1.33%) JSON
12 144 (1.20%) OAuth
13 141 (1.18%) HTML
14 138 (1.15%) XML
15 131 (1.09%) Middleware
16 114 (0.95%) Web Services
17 111 (0.93%) Oracle Fusion
18 110 (0.92%) AngularJS
19 104 (0.87%) CSS
20 100 (0.84%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 545 (4.55%) Cloud Native
2 477 (3.98%) Onboarding
3 384 (3.21%) Product Ownership
4 308 (2.57%) Data Centre
5 269 (2.25%) Management Information System
6 187 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
7 183 (1.53%) Enterprise Software
8 180 (1.50%) PKI
9 168 (1.40%) CMDB
10 135 (1.13%) Distributed Systems
11 129 (1.08%) Hybrid Cloud
12 122 (1.02%) Cyber Threat
12 122 (1.02%) Replication
13 119 (0.99%) Operational Technology
14 108 (0.90%) Self-Motivation
15 102 (0.85%) Data Structures
16 99 (0.83%) Security Posture
17 98 (0.82%) Security Operations Centre
18 89 (0.74%) Public Cloud
19 86 (0.72%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 1,002 (8.37%) Windows
2 797 (6.66%) Linux
3 371 (3.10%) Windows Server
4 237 (1.98%) Unix
5 153 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 144 (1.20%) Windows 10
7 82 (0.68%) Solaris
8 80 (0.67%) Android
9 50 (0.42%) Mac OS
10 49 (0.41%) Apple iOS
11 44 (0.37%) CentOS
12 41 (0.34%) Ubuntu
13 37 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
14 31 (0.26%) AIX
15 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 24 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
17 22 (0.18%) VMS
18 19 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
19 16 (0.13%) Rocky
20 11 (0.092%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,547 (21.27%) Agile
2 1,828 (15.27%) CI/CD
3 1,819 (15.19%) DevOps
4 1,694 (14.15%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,478 (12.34%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,285 (10.73%) Problem-Solving
7 1,222 (10.21%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,043 (8.71%) Infrastructure as Code
9 971 (8.11%) Migration
10 882 (7.37%) Cybersecurity
11 795 (6.64%) Test Automation
12 790 (6.60%) ITIL
13 772 (6.45%) Decision-Making
14 771 (6.44%) Containerisation
15 764 (6.38%) Technical Leadership
16 762 (6.36%) AI
17 743 (6.21%) Roadmaps
18 720 (6.01%) Analytics
19 684 (5.71%) Software Engineering
20 636 (5.31%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,384 (11.56%) Python
2 1,132 (9.45%) SQL
3 808 (6.75%) Java
4 600 (5.01%) PowerShell
5 415 (3.47%) JavaScript
6 363 (3.03%) Bash
7 230 (1.92%) C#
8 224 (1.87%) TypeScript
9 154 (1.29%) PL/SQL
10 126 (1.05%) Bicep
11 84 (0.70%) Shell Script
12 62 (0.52%) Go
13 61 (0.51%) C++
14 60 (0.50%) Scala
15 51 (0.43%) C
16 49 (0.41%) Groovy
17 48 (0.40%) Kotlin
18 39 (0.33%) Apex Code
18 39 (0.33%) T-SQL
19 35 (0.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 9,138 (76.32%) SC Cleared
2 2,239 (18.70%) DV Cleared
3 550 (4.59%) BPSS Clearance
4 495 (4.13%) Degree
5 224 (1.87%) CISSP
6 188 (1.57%) Azure Certification
7 185 (1.55%) Cisco Certification
8 167 (1.39%) Microsoft Certification
9 158 (1.32%) AWS Certification
10 139 (1.16%) CISM
11 108 (0.90%) PMI Certification
12 99 (0.83%) PMP
13 98 (0.82%) ISTQB
14 86 (0.72%) CCNP
15 74 (0.62%) Computer Science Degree
16 67 (0.56%) CCNA
17 60 (0.50%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 54 (0.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 50 (0.42%) DBS Check
20 45 (0.38%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 544 (4.54%) QA
2 400 (3.34%) Data Quality
3 339 (2.83%) NIST
4 329 (2.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 310 (2.59%) NCSC
6 297 (2.48%) Accessibility
7 223 (1.86%) PMO
8 186 (1.55%) SLA
9 179 (1.49%) GDPR
10 173 (1.44%) GRC
11 86 (0.72%) WCAG
12 55 (0.46%) JSP 440
13 50 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
14 43 (0.36%) NIST 800
15 37 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
16 36 (0.30%) Def Stans
17 30 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 22 (0.18%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 21 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
20 20 (0.17%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 839 (7.01%) Docker
2 649 (5.42%) Active Directory
3 442 (3.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 142 (1.19%) VMware ESXi
4 142 (1.19%) VMware NSX
5 137 (1.14%) Hyper-V
6 136 (1.14%) vSphere
7 94 (0.79%) Virtual Machines
8 45 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
9 40 (0.33%) Firmware
10 37 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
11 25 (0.21%) BitLocker
12 24 (0.20%) vCloud
13 22 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
14 18 (0.15%) NFS
15 13 (0.11%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 11 (0.092%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 11 (0.092%) Squid
17 10 (0.084%) KVM
18 8 (0.067%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 1,034 (8.64%) Kubernetes
2 451 (3.77%) Ansible
3 275 (2.30%) Grafana
4 208 (1.74%) Prometheus
5 137 (1.14%) SCCM
6 129 (1.08%) vCenter Server
7 99 (0.83%) SCOM
8 94 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
9 69 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
10 67 (0.56%) Argo
11 49 (0.41%) Kibana
12 43 (0.36%) Puppet
13 42 (0.35%) Oracle RMAN
14 38 (0.32%) Data Guard
15 36 (0.30%) Istio
16 34 (0.28%) NetBackup
17 31 (0.26%) VxRail
18 29 (0.24%) Control-M
19 25 (0.21%) Active Directory Federation Services
19 25 (0.21%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,592 (13.30%) Microsoft
2 973 (8.13%) Oracle
3 596 (4.98%) VMware
4 535 (4.47%) ServiceNow
5 444 (3.71%) SAP
6 285 (2.38%) Cisco
7 282 (2.36%) Google
8 226 (1.89%) Splunk
9 190 (1.59%) Databricks
10 161 (1.34%) Salesforce
11 135 (1.13%) Red Hat
12 129 (1.08%) Palo Alto
13 117 (0.98%) Informatica
14 103 (0.86%) IBM
15 102 (0.85%) Dynatrace
16 99 (0.83%) CyberArk
16 99 (0.83%) Talend
17 93 (0.78%) Remedy
18 78 (0.65%) SolarWinds
19 76 (0.63%) Citrix