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

6 months to
28 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 11,859 6,020 6,769
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.80% 18.35% 17.72%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.79% 58.23% 60.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,242 3,907 4,327
10th Percentile £396 £335 £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 £722 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £537 £550
% change year-on-year +0.09% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 848 620 399
10th Percentile £19.96 £18.51 £20.12
25th Percentile £29.07 £18.87 £28.50
Median hourly rate £63.50 £25.15 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +152.49% -58.08% -
75th Percentile £77.50 £33.75 £72.20
90th Percentile £90.30 £70.00 £80.12
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +158.45% -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 17,240 10,339 11,156
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.70% 31.51% 29.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,467 6,480 6,793
10th Percentile £350 £283 £313
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 £623 £635
90th Percentile £713 £708 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,390 866 623
10th Percentile £17.00 £17.87 £17.68
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £24.34
Median hourly rate £46.80 £25.15 £49.00
Median % change year-on-year +86.08% -48.67% -9.04%
75th Percentile £72.25 £42.81 £68.75
90th Percentile £88.52 £70.00 £75.37
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -49.70% -3.65%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 10,216 £550 +2.33% 4,750
UK excluding London +1 6,624 £538 +0.09% 3,340
London +6 3,627 £550 +2.33% 1,394
Work from Home +2 3,124 £525 -2.33% 2,506
South East +1 2,257 £564 +7.48% 872
South West 0 1,395 £550 - 742
North of England +2 1,276 £519 -1.24% 675
Midlands 0 941 £481 -6.92% 352
West Midlands 0 803 £475 -8.39% 231
North West +1 761 £530 -4.72% 405
East of England 0 431 £574 +4.36% 370
Scotland +14 305 £488 -1.02% 251
Yorkshire +2 293 £500 +1.83% 109
North East 0 242 £470 -10.05% 163
East Midlands -1 131 £490 +5.95% 120
Wales +5 108 £550 +4.76% 60
Northern Ireland +2 35 £650 +21.50% 68

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 (3.30%) Confluence
2 266 (2.24%) SharePoint
3 165 (1.39%) SAS
4 129 (1.09%) Microsoft Exchange
5 110 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
6 102 (0.86%) Apache
6 102 (0.86%) Apache Spark
7 41 (0.35%) Jupyter
8 38 (0.32%) nginx
9 35 (0.30%) WebLogic
10 33 (0.28%) CMS
11 22 (0.19%) Skype for Business
12 21 (0.18%) IIS
13 19 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
14 18 (0.15%) Tomcat
15 16 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 16 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
16 15 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
17 11 (0.093%) JBoss
17 11 (0.093%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 215 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 166 (1.40%) Microsoft Office
3 104 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 101 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.19%) AutoCAD
8 19 (0.16%) Revit
9 18 (0.15%) SOLIDWORKS
9 18 (0.15%) Windchill
10 9 (0.076%) Adobe XD
11 8 (0.067%) Chatbot
11 8 (0.067%) Simulink
12 7 (0.059%) Notepad++
12 7 (0.059%) Sketch
13 6 (0.051%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 4 (0.034%) OrCAD
14 4 (0.034%) Trello
15 2 (0.017%) Gliffy
15 2 (0.017%) Houdini
Business Applications
1 148 (1.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 81 (0.68%) 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 18 (0.15%) Primavera
13 16 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
13 16 (0.13%) SAP HR
14 14 (0.12%) SAP CO
15 13 (0.11%) Maximo
16 12 (0.10%) NetSuite
16 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
17 11 (0.093%) iTrent
17 11 (0.093%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 2,143 (18.07%) Azure
2 2,084 (17.57%) AWS
3 509 (4.29%) Azure DevOps
4 506 (4.27%) GitHub
5 487 (4.11%) Power Platform
6 456 (3.85%) GCP
7 349 (2.94%) Microsoft 365
8 347 (2.93%) GitHub Actions
9 332 (2.80%) Entra ID
10 274 (2.31%) Serverless
11 238 (2.01%) Amazon S3
12 202 (1.70%) AWS Lambda
13 176 (1.48%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 169 (1.43%) OCI
15 168 (1.42%) Amazon EKS
16 167 (1.41%) SaaS
17 143 (1.21%) Amazon EC2
18 137 (1.16%) OpenShift
19 126 (1.06%) AWS CloudFormation
20 107 (0.90%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 454 (3.83%) Firewall
2 386 (3.25%) DNS
3 241 (2.03%) Network Security
4 210 (1.77%) WAN
5 200 (1.69%) VPN
6 189 (1.59%) DHCP
7 162 (1.37%) LAN
8 137 (1.16%) TCP/IP
9 128 (1.08%) BGP
10 116 (0.98%) Wi-Fi
11 99 (0.83%) VLAN
12 91 (0.77%) 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
1 344 (2.90%) Power BI
2 300 (2.53%) PostgreSQL
3 276 (2.33%) SQL Server
4 268 (2.26%) Data Warehouse
5 203 (1.71%) Metadata
6 188 (1.59%) Oracle Database
7 146 (1.23%) Data Lake
8 141 (1.19%) Relational Database
9 131 (1.10%) MongoDB
10 109 (0.92%) MySQL
11 105 (0.89%) Amazon RDS
12 95 (0.80%) NoSQL
13 88 (0.74%) Oracle Reports
14 72 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
15 69 (0.58%) Amazon Athena
15 69 (0.58%) Pentaho
16 57 (0.48%) Big Data
17 52 (0.44%) Tableau
18 50 (0.42%) Amazon Aurora
18 50 (0.42%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 655 (5.52%) JIRA
2 579 (4.88%) Git
3 523 (4.41%) GitLab
4 491 (4.14%) Jenkins
5 150 (1.26%) Selenium
6 87 (0.73%) Postman
7 76 (0.64%) JUnit
8 75 (0.63%) Maven
8 75 (0.63%) SonarQube
9 74 (0.62%) JMeter
10 71 (0.60%) Cucumber
11 54 (0.46%) 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 32 (0.27%) MSI
General
1 2,662 (22.45%) Social Skills
2 2,432 (20.51%) Public Sector
3 953 (8.04%) Analytical Skills
4 762 (6.43%) Finance
5 431 (3.63%) Military
6 336 (2.83%) Aerospace
7 308 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
8 230 (1.94%) Influencing Skills
9 189 (1.59%) Organisational Skills
10 175 (1.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 166 (1.40%) Legal
12 163 (1.37%) Telecoms
13 160 (1.35%) Manufacturing
14 141 (1.19%) Banking
15 122 (1.03%) Law
16 121 (1.02%) Police
17 75 (0.63%) Presentation Skills
18 53 (0.45%) Local Government
19 49 (0.41%) Aviation
20 42 (0.35%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,932 (16.29%) Architect
2 1,210 (10.20%) Developer
3 1,133 (9.55%) Senior
4 1,051 (8.86%) Lead
5 686 (5.78%) Consultant
6 642 (5.41%) Analyst
7 514 (4.33%) DevOps Engineer
8 485 (4.09%) Data Engineer
9 425 (3.58%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 373 (3.15%) Solutions Architect
11 366 (3.09%) Technical Architect
12 301 (2.54%) Data Architect
13 288 (2.43%) Security Architect
14 263 (2.22%) Software Engineer
15 250 (2.11%) Network Engineer
16 229 (1.93%) Administrator
17 214 (1.80%) Designer
18 212 (1.79%) Java Developer
19 210 (1.77%) Azure Engineer
20 208 (1.75%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 997 (8.41%) Terraform
2 465 (3.92%) REST
3 262 (2.21%) Kafka
4 256 (2.16%) Spring
5 235 (1.98%) Spring Boot
6 210 (1.77%) RESTful
7 202 (1.70%) .NET
8 189 (1.59%) React
9 183 (1.54%) SOAP
10 174 (1.47%) Node.js
11 155 (1.31%) JSON
12 142 (1.20%) OAuth
13 138 (1.16%) HTML
14 135 (1.14%) XML
15 126 (1.06%) Middleware
16 110 (0.93%) Web Services
17 108 (0.91%) AngularJS
17 108 (0.91%) Oracle Fusion
18 104 (0.88%) CSS
19 98 (0.83%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 533 (4.49%) Cloud Native
2 470 (3.96%) Onboarding
3 375 (3.16%) Product Ownership
4 309 (2.61%) Data Centre
5 271 (2.29%) Management Information System
6 185 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
7 181 (1.53%) PKI
8 177 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
9 164 (1.38%) CMDB
10 138 (1.16%) Distributed Systems
11 125 (1.05%) Hybrid Cloud
12 121 (1.02%) Cyber Threat
13 117 (0.99%) 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 (0.77%) Security Operations Centre
20 90 (0.76%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 1,001 (8.44%) Windows
2 787 (6.64%) Linux
3 374 (3.15%) Windows Server
4 240 (2.02%) Unix
5 155 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 146 (1.23%) Windows 10
7 82 (0.69%) Solaris
8 78 (0.66%) Android
9 48 (0.40%) Mac OS
10 46 (0.39%) CentOS
11 45 (0.38%) Apple iOS
12 39 (0.33%) Ubuntu
13 37 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
14 31 (0.26%) AIX
15 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 25 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
17 20 (0.17%) VMS
18 19 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
19 16 (0.13%) Rocky
20 12 (0.10%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,521 (21.26%) Agile
2 1,801 (15.19%) DevOps
3 1,792 (15.11%) CI/CD
4 1,665 (14.04%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,457 (12.29%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,274 (10.74%) Problem-Solving
7 1,195 (10.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,021 (8.61%) Infrastructure as Code
9 962 (8.11%) Migration
10 861 (7.26%) Cybersecurity
11 789 (6.65%) ITIL
12 769 (6.48%) Test Automation
13 759 (6.40%) Technical Leadership
14 753 (6.35%) Containerisation
15 751 (6.33%) Decision-Making
16 740 (6.24%) AI
17 732 (6.17%) Roadmaps
18 711 (6.00%) Analytics
19 671 (5.66%) Software Engineering
20 622 (5.24%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,357 (11.44%) Python
2 1,096 (9.24%) SQL
3 783 (6.60%) Java
4 591 (4.98%) PowerShell
5 411 (3.47%) JavaScript
6 353 (2.98%) Bash
7 230 (1.94%) C#
8 220 (1.86%) TypeScript
9 156 (1.32%) PL/SQL
10 126 (1.06%) Bicep
11 81 (0.68%) Shell Script
12 60 (0.51%) C++
13 59 (0.50%) Go
14 58 (0.49%) Scala
15 50 (0.42%) C
16 48 (0.40%) Groovy
16 48 (0.40%) Kotlin
17 40 (0.34%) Apex Code
18 38 (0.32%) T-SQL
19 33 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 9,038 (76.21%) SC Cleared
2 2,240 (18.89%) DV Cleared
3 527 (4.44%) BPSS Clearance
4 479 (4.04%) Degree
5 226 (1.91%) CISSP
6 192 (1.62%) Cisco Certification
7 187 (1.58%) Azure Certification
8 168 (1.42%) Microsoft Certification
9 152 (1.28%) AWS Certification
10 142 (1.20%) CISM
11 107 (0.90%) PMI Certification
12 97 (0.82%) PMP
13 96 (0.81%) ISTQB
14 90 (0.76%) CCNP
15 72 (0.61%) Computer Science Degree
16 71 (0.60%) CCNA
17 59 (0.50%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 55 (0.46%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 45 (0.38%) TOGAF Certification
20 43 (0.36%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 535 (4.51%) QA
2 384 (3.24%) Data Quality
3 338 (2.85%) NIST
4 325 (2.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 308 (2.60%) NCSC
6 288 (2.43%) Accessibility
7 220 (1.86%) PMO
8 182 (1.53%) SLA
9 176 (1.48%) GDPR
10 167 (1.41%) GRC
11 85 (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 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
17 29 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 22 (0.19%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 21 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
20 20 (0.17%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 825 (6.96%) Docker
2 653 (5.51%) Active Directory
3 442 (3.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 142 (1.20%) VMware ESXi
5 140 (1.18%) VMware NSX
6 139 (1.17%) Hyper-V
7 132 (1.11%) vSphere
8 92 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
9 44 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
10 40 (0.34%) Firmware
11 38 (0.32%) 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 (0.093%) Squid
18 10 (0.084%) KVM
18 10 (0.084%) Microsoft Virtual Server
18 10 (0.084%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 1,003 (8.46%) Kubernetes
2 441 (3.72%) Ansible
3 265 (2.23%) Grafana
4 202 (1.70%) Prometheus
5 138 (1.16%) SCCM
6 129 (1.09%) vCenter Server
7 99 (0.83%) SCOM
8 94 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
9 69 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
10 61 (0.51%) Argo
11 46 (0.39%) Kibana
12 44 (0.37%) Oracle RMAN
13 42 (0.35%) Puppet
14 39 (0.33%) 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%) WSUS
20 25 (0.21%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,576 (13.29%) Microsoft
2 953 (8.04%) Oracle
3 601 (5.07%) VMware
4 541 (4.56%) ServiceNow
5 436 (3.68%) SAP
6 301 (2.54%) Cisco
7 268 (2.26%) Google
8 223 (1.88%) Splunk
9 182 (1.53%) Databricks
10 162 (1.37%) Salesforce
11 137 (1.16%) Red Hat
12 129 (1.09%) Palo Alto
13 110 (0.93%) Informatica
14 102 (0.86%) Dynatrace
15 101 (0.85%) IBM
16 100 (0.84%) Talend
17 99 (0.83%) CyberArk
18 93 (0.78%) Remedy
19 80 (0.67%) Fortinet
19 80 (0.67%) SolarWinds