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

6 months to
27 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 11,920 6,060 6,784
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.81% 18.34% 17.73%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.79% 58.17% 60.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,297 3,931 4,344
10th Percentile £397 £338 £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 £725 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £537 £550
% change year-on-year +0.09% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 850 623 398
10th Percentile £19.99 £18.51 £20.12
25th Percentile £30.18 £18.87 £30.00
Median hourly rate £64.05 £25.15 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +154.65% -58.08% -
75th Percentile £77.50 £33.75 £71.74
90th Percentile £91.03 £69.75 £80.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +158.45% -58.08% +3.91%

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 17,327 10,417 11,173
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.70% 31.52% 29.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,538 6,518 6,808
10th Percentile £350 £285 £313
25th Percentile £444 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £623 £635
90th Percentile £713 £707 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,393 868 625
10th Percentile £17.00 £17.87 £17.55
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £24.18
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £49.00
Median % change year-on-year +86.88% -48.67% -9.26%
75th Percentile £72.50 £43.00 £68.00
90th Percentile £88.75 £70.00 £75.34
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.50 £25.15 £50.63
% change year-on-year +80.91% -50.32% -3.57%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 +2 10,269 £550 +2.33% 5,083
UK excluding London +1 6,657 £538 +0.09% 3,651
London +6 3,648 £550 +2.33% 1,504
Work from Home +2 3,141 £525 -2.33% 2,633
South East +1 2,270 £564 +7.48% 1,008
South West 0 1,405 £550 - 790
North of England +2 1,283 £515 -1.90% 728
Midlands 0 942 £481 -7.23% 374
West Midlands 0 804 £481 -7.33% 238
North West +1 763 £530 -4.72% 439
East of England 0 429 £587 +6.73% 403
Scotland +15 309 £493 - 269
Yorkshire +2 298 £492 +0.20% 119
North East 0 242 £470 -9.62% 173
East Midlands -2 131 £490 +5.95% 134
Wales +5 110 £550 +4.76% 63
Northern Ireland +2 35 £650 +25.00% 67

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
1 391 (3.28%) Confluence
2 267 (2.24%) SharePoint
3 169 (1.42%) SAS
4 131 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
5 112 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
6 103 (0.86%) Apache
6 103 (0.86%) Apache Spark
7 41 (0.34%) Jupyter
8 39 (0.33%) nginx
9 36 (0.30%) WebLogic
10 33 (0.28%) CMS
11 22 (0.18%) Skype for Business
12 21 (0.18%) IIS
13 19 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
13 19 (0.16%) Tomcat
14 16 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 16 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
14 16 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
15 11 (0.092%) JBoss
15 11 (0.092%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 217 (1.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 166 (1.39%) Microsoft Office
3 104 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 101 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 19 (0.16%) Revit
9 18 (0.15%) SOLIDWORKS
9 18 (0.15%) Windchill
10 10 (0.084%) Adobe XD
11 9 (0.076%) Simulink
12 8 (0.067%) Chatbot
12 8 (0.067%) Sketch
13 7 (0.059%) Notepad++
14 6 (0.050%) Adobe Creative Suite
15 4 (0.034%) OrCAD
15 4 (0.034%) Trello
16 2 (0.017%) Gliffy
16 2 (0.017%) Houdini
Business Applications
1 148 (1.24%) SAP S/4HANA
2 84 (0.70%) Remedy ITSM
3 58 (0.49%) Oracle ERP
4 45 (0.38%) Oracle EBS
5 33 (0.28%) Teamcenter
6 32 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 29 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
8 26 (0.22%) Oracle Payroll
9 25 (0.21%) SAP PSCD
10 24 (0.20%) SAP GRC
11 20 (0.17%) SAP FI
12 19 (0.16%) Primavera
13 17 (0.14%) SAP HR
14 16 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
15 14 (0.12%) SAP CO
16 13 (0.11%) Maximo
17 12 (0.10%) iTrent
17 12 (0.10%) NetSuite
17 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
18 11 (0.092%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 2,155 (18.08%) Azure
2 2,094 (17.57%) AWS
3 511 (4.29%) Azure DevOps
4 510 (4.28%) GitHub
5 489 (4.10%) Power Platform
6 458 (3.84%) GCP
7 351 (2.94%) Microsoft 365
8 348 (2.92%) GitHub Actions
9 332 (2.79%) Entra ID
10 279 (2.34%) Serverless
11 239 (2.01%) Amazon S3
12 206 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
13 177 (1.48%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 169 (1.42%) Amazon EKS
14 169 (1.42%) OCI
15 167 (1.40%) SaaS
16 143 (1.20%) Amazon EC2
17 137 (1.15%) OpenShift
18 126 (1.06%) AWS CloudFormation
19 107 (0.90%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 456 (3.83%) Firewall
2 386 (3.24%) DNS
3 243 (2.04%) Network Security
4 213 (1.79%) WAN
5 200 (1.68%) VPN
6 189 (1.59%) DHCP
7 165 (1.38%) LAN
8 137 (1.15%) TCP/IP
9 128 (1.07%) BGP
10 116 (0.97%) Wi-Fi
11 99 (0.83%) VLAN
12 91 (0.76%) Wireless
13 88 (0.74%) OSPF
14 70 (0.59%) SSL
15 64 (0.54%) MPLS
15 64 (0.54%) SAN
16 62 (0.52%) VSAN
17 61 (0.51%) IPsec
18 58 (0.49%) SD-WAN
19 50 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 346 (2.90%) Power BI
2 303 (2.54%) PostgreSQL
3 282 (2.37%) SQL Server
4 268 (2.25%) Data Warehouse
5 204 (1.71%) Metadata
6 190 (1.59%) Oracle Database
7 146 (1.22%) Data Lake
8 141 (1.18%) Relational Database
9 131 (1.10%) MongoDB
10 109 (0.91%) MySQL
11 106 (0.89%) Amazon RDS
12 95 (0.80%) NoSQL
13 88 (0.74%) Oracle Reports
14 75 (0.63%) Elasticsearch
15 71 (0.60%) Pentaho
16 69 (0.58%) Amazon Athena
17 57 (0.48%) Big Data
18 52 (0.44%) DynamoDB
18 52 (0.44%) Tableau
19 50 (0.42%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 659 (5.53%) JIRA
2 589 (4.94%) Git
3 527 (4.42%) GitLab
4 495 (4.15%) Jenkins
5 151 (1.27%) Selenium
6 87 (0.73%) Postman
7 78 (0.65%) JUnit
8 75 (0.63%) Maven
8 75 (0.63%) SonarQube
9 73 (0.61%) JMeter
10 71 (0.60%) Cucumber
11 54 (0.45%) Cypress.io
12 51 (0.43%) Gradle
13 46 (0.39%) REST Assured
14 45 (0.38%) Mockito
15 44 (0.37%) Gatling
16 40 (0.34%) Visual Studio
17 39 (0.33%) Zephyr
18 38 (0.32%) Artifactory
19 34 (0.29%) MSI
General
1 2,671 (22.41%) Social Skills
2 2,448 (20.54%) Public Sector
3 956 (8.02%) Analytical Skills
4 763 (6.40%) Finance
5 432 (3.62%) Military
6 340 (2.85%) Aerospace
7 309 (2.59%) Documentation Skills
8 230 (1.93%) Influencing Skills
9 189 (1.59%) Organisational Skills
10 175 (1.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 170 (1.43%) Legal
12 164 (1.38%) Telecoms
13 159 (1.33%) Manufacturing
14 142 (1.19%) Banking
15 124 (1.04%) Law
16 122 (1.02%) Police
17 75 (0.63%) Presentation Skills
18 53 (0.44%) Local Government
19 49 (0.41%) Aviation
20 42 (0.35%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,936 (16.24%) Architect
2 1,217 (10.21%) Developer
3 1,144 (9.60%) Senior
4 1,062 (8.91%) Lead
5 691 (5.80%) Consultant
6 644 (5.40%) Analyst
7 515 (4.32%) DevOps Engineer
8 489 (4.10%) Data Engineer
9 423 (3.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 373 (3.13%) Solutions Architect
11 369 (3.10%) Technical Architect
12 302 (2.53%) Data Architect
13 289 (2.42%) Security Architect
14 270 (2.27%) Software Engineer
15 249 (2.09%) Network Engineer
16 229 (1.92%) Administrator
17 216 (1.81%) Designer
18 212 (1.78%) Java Developer
19 211 (1.77%) Azure Engineer
20 208 (1.74%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,003 (8.41%) Terraform
2 468 (3.93%) REST
3 265 (2.22%) Kafka
4 259 (2.17%) Spring
5 238 (2.00%) Spring Boot
6 212 (1.78%) RESTful
7 209 (1.75%) .NET
8 194 (1.63%) React
9 183 (1.54%) SOAP
10 177 (1.48%) Node.js
11 158 (1.33%) JSON
12 143 (1.20%) OAuth
13 139 (1.17%) HTML
14 135 (1.13%) XML
15 128 (1.07%) Middleware
16 111 (0.93%) Web Services
17 108 (0.91%) AngularJS
17 108 (0.91%) Oracle Fusion
18 105 (0.88%) CSS
19 102 (0.86%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 536 (4.50%) Cloud Native
2 471 (3.95%) Onboarding
3 376 (3.15%) Product Ownership
4 311 (2.61%) Data Centre
5 272 (2.28%) Management Information System
6 185 (1.55%) Legacy Systems
7 181 (1.52%) PKI
8 177 (1.48%) Enterprise Software
9 165 (1.38%) CMDB
10 138 (1.16%) Distributed Systems
11 125 (1.05%) Hybrid Cloud
12 121 (1.02%) Cyber Threat
13 117 (0.98%) Replication
14 113 (0.95%) Operational Technology
15 112 (0.94%) Self-Motivation
16 100 (0.84%) Data Structures
17 99 (0.83%) Security Posture
18 93 (0.78%) Public Cloud
19 91 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
20 90 (0.76%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 1,006 (8.44%) Windows
2 797 (6.69%) Linux
3 375 (3.15%) Windows Server
4 242 (2.03%) Unix
5 159 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 148 (1.24%) Windows 10
7 83 (0.70%) Solaris
8 78 (0.65%) Android
9 48 (0.40%) Mac OS
10 46 (0.39%) CentOS
11 45 (0.38%) Apple iOS
12 40 (0.34%) Ubuntu
13 38 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
14 32 (0.27%) AIX
15 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 25 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
17 20 (0.17%) VMS
17 20 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
18 16 (0.13%) Rocky
19 13 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,534 (21.26%) Agile
2 1,814 (15.22%) DevOps
3 1,810 (15.18%) CI/CD
4 1,675 (14.05%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,468 (12.32%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,276 (10.70%) Problem-Solving
7 1,202 (10.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,022 (8.57%) Infrastructure as Code
9 967 (8.11%) Migration
10 867 (7.27%) Cybersecurity
11 795 (6.67%) ITIL
12 779 (6.54%) Test Automation
13 764 (6.41%) Technical Leadership
14 761 (6.38%) Containerisation
15 755 (6.33%) Decision-Making
16 742 (6.22%) AI
17 731 (6.13%) Roadmaps
18 718 (6.02%) Analytics
19 680 (5.70%) Software Engineering
20 626 (5.25%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 1,369 (11.48%) Python
2 1,105 (9.27%) SQL
3 788 (6.61%) Java
4 592 (4.97%) PowerShell
5 415 (3.48%) JavaScript
6 353 (2.96%) Bash
7 237 (1.99%) C#
8 225 (1.89%) TypeScript
9 159 (1.33%) PL/SQL
10 126 (1.06%) Bicep
11 81 (0.68%) Shell Script
12 60 (0.50%) C++
12 60 (0.50%) Go
13 59 (0.49%) Scala
14 50 (0.42%) C
15 48 (0.40%) Groovy
15 48 (0.40%) Kotlin
16 43 (0.36%) Apex Code
17 38 (0.32%) T-SQL
18 33 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 9,090 (76.26%) SC Cleared
2 2,248 (18.86%) DV Cleared
3 529 (4.44%) BPSS Clearance
4 481 (4.04%) Degree
5 228 (1.91%) CISSP
6 195 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
7 187 (1.57%) Azure Certification
8 168 (1.41%) Microsoft Certification
9 152 (1.28%) AWS Certification
10 144 (1.21%) CISM
11 108 (0.91%) PMI Certification
12 98 (0.82%) ISTQB
12 98 (0.82%) PMP
13 93 (0.78%) CCNP
14 72 (0.60%) Computer Science Degree
15 71 (0.60%) CCNA
16 60 (0.50%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 55 (0.46%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 46 (0.39%) TOGAF Certification
19 43 (0.36%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 535 (4.49%) QA
2 388 (3.26%) Data Quality
3 339 (2.84%) NIST
4 328 (2.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 310 (2.60%) NCSC
6 291 (2.44%) Accessibility
7 222 (1.86%) PMO
8 182 (1.53%) SLA
9 176 (1.48%) GDPR
10 168 (1.41%) GRC
11 86 (0.72%) WCAG
12 58 (0.49%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
14 44 (0.37%) NIST 800
15 36 (0.30%) Def Stans
16 35 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
17 29 (0.24%) 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
1 836 (7.01%) Docker
2 654 (5.49%) Active Directory
3 445 (3.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 144 (1.21%) VMware ESXi
5 141 (1.18%) VMware NSX
6 139 (1.17%) Hyper-V
7 132 (1.11%) vSphere
8 92 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
9 44 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
10 41 (0.34%) Firmware
11 40 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
12 26 (0.22%) BitLocker
13 25 (0.21%) vCloud
14 21 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
15 20 (0.17%) NFS
16 12 (0.10%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 11 (0.092%) Squid
18 10 (0.084%) KVM
18 10 (0.084%) Microsoft Virtual Server
18 10 (0.084%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 1,008 (8.46%) Kubernetes
2 441 (3.70%) Ansible
3 265 (2.22%) Grafana
4 202 (1.69%) Prometheus
5 138 (1.16%) SCCM
6 130 (1.09%) vCenter Server
7 99 (0.83%) SCOM
8 94 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
9 69 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
10 60 (0.50%) Argo
11 47 (0.39%) Oracle RMAN
12 46 (0.39%) Kibana
13 42 (0.35%) Puppet
14 41 (0.34%) Data Guard
15 36 (0.30%) Istio
16 33 (0.28%) NetBackup
17 31 (0.26%) VxRail
18 29 (0.24%) Control-M
19 26 (0.22%) Nagios
19 26 (0.22%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,581 (13.26%) Microsoft
2 960 (8.05%) Oracle
3 604 (5.07%) VMware
4 545 (4.57%) ServiceNow
5 437 (3.67%) SAP
6 301 (2.53%) Cisco
7 269 (2.26%) Google
8 224 (1.88%) Splunk
9 182 (1.53%) Databricks
10 169 (1.42%) Salesforce
11 138 (1.16%) Red Hat
12 129 (1.08%) Palo Alto
13 110 (0.92%) Informatica
14 103 (0.86%) Dynatrace
14 103 (0.86%) IBM
15 102 (0.86%) Talend
16 99 (0.83%) CyberArk
17 96 (0.81%) Remedy
18 81 (0.68%) SolarWinds
19 80 (0.67%) Fortinet