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

6 months to
27 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,508 5,192 8,090
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.44% 17.68% 18.57%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.09% 57.62% 60.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,194 3,461 5,283
10th Percentile £369 £340 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £694 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £520 £549 £550
% change year-on-year -5.28% -0.18% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 846 290 530
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.60 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £52.25 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -7.51% -7.30%
75th Percentile £73.00 £67.50 £71.75
90th Percentile £85.25 £78.39 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £57.50 £57.47
% change year-on-year -4.35% +0.05% -0.05%

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 15,209 9,010 13,366
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.48% 30.68% 30.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,131 5,699 8,226
10th Percentile £350 £290 £300
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £620 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £709 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £507 £530
% change year-on-year -1.43% -4.30% +0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,098 514 1,074
10th Percentile £16.46 £18.20 £13.87
25th Percentile £21.25 £22.27 £17.88
Median hourly rate £47.50 £42.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +11.76% +6.25% -25.93%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.25 £80.07 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £45.01 £40.31
% change year-on-year +5.54% +11.65% -19.18%

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 April 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 April 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 April 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 9,120 £525 -2.33% 1,558
UK excluding London +1 5,810 £520 -5.28% 1,335
London +6 3,226 £525 - 384
Work from Home +4 2,798 £525 - 869
South East +1 2,170 £535 -2.73% 473
South West 0 1,325 £538 -3.10% 285
Midlands +3 877 £482 -8.17% 147
North of England -1 850 £488 -2.50% 259
West Midlands +4 735 £484 -9.84% 115
North West -2 509 £497 -0.64% 142
East of England +2 379 £506 +12.50% 141
Yorkshire -7 210 £488 -7.14% 50
Scotland +39 203 £500 +8.11% 30
North East +1 162 £450 -10.00% 69
East Midlands -4 136 £450 -5.26% 32
Wales +4 77 £515 -4.59% 28
Northern Ireland +5 18 £475 - 10

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
1 396 (3.77%) Confluence
2 216 (2.06%) SharePoint
3 139 (1.32%) Microsoft Exchange
4 125 (1.19%) SAS
5 109 (1.04%) Apache Spark
6 85 (0.81%) Apache
7 72 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
8 51 (0.49%) nginx
9 40 (0.38%) WebLogic
10 24 (0.23%) Jupyter
11 18 (0.17%) Tomcat
12 16 (0.15%) IIS
13 15 (0.14%) CMS
13 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
14 14 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
14 14 (0.13%) Skype for Business
15 13 (0.12%) Oracle Application Server
16 11 (0.10%) ArcGIS
16 11 (0.10%) NetWeaver
16 11 (0.10%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 223 (2.12%) Microsoft Office
2 190 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
3 121 (1.15%) Microsoft Project
4 81 (0.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 45 (0.43%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.15%) Simulink
8 7 (0.067%) Notepad++
9 6 (0.057%) AutoCAD
10 5 (0.048%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.048%) Windchill
11 4 (0.038%) Revit
11 4 (0.038%) Siemens NX
11 4 (0.038%) Sketch
12 3 (0.029%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.019%) Chatbot
13 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.019%) InVision
13 2 (0.019%) Lectora
13 2 (0.019%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 101 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
2 47 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
3 45 (0.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 30 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
5 27 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
6 26 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 21 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
8 18 (0.17%) Maximo
9 16 (0.15%) SAP PP
10 13 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
10 13 (0.12%) Temenos T24
11 12 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
12 11 (0.10%) Findur
12 11 (0.10%) Oracle Assets
13 10 (0.095%) SAP HCM
14 9 (0.086%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 9 (0.086%) SAP HR
14 9 (0.086%) SAP PM
15 8 (0.076%) iTrent
15 8 (0.076%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 1,833 (17.44%) AWS
2 1,793 (17.06%) Azure
3 450 (4.28%) GitHub
4 435 (4.14%) GCP
5 408 (3.88%) Azure DevOps
6 372 (3.54%) Power Platform
7 294 (2.80%) Serverless
8 271 (2.58%) Microsoft 365
9 250 (2.38%) GitHub Actions
10 241 (2.29%) Entra ID
11 224 (2.13%) Amazon S3
12 197 (1.87%) AWS Lambda
13 156 (1.48%) AWS CloudFormation
14 155 (1.48%) PaaS
15 139 (1.32%) Amazon EC2
16 138 (1.31%) OpenShift
17 135 (1.28%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 134 (1.28%) Amazon EKS
19 131 (1.25%) IaaS
20 125 (1.19%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 468 (4.45%) Firewall
2 294 (2.80%) DNS
3 235 (2.24%) Network Security
4 225 (2.14%) WAN
5 206 (1.96%) LAN
6 177 (1.68%) VPN
7 144 (1.37%) DHCP
8 140 (1.33%) BGP
9 121 (1.15%) OSPF
9 121 (1.15%) TCP/IP
10 98 (0.93%) VLAN
11 82 (0.78%) Wireless
12 74 (0.70%) Wi-Fi
13 65 (0.62%) MPLS
14 57 (0.54%) SAN
15 53 (0.50%) SSL
16 50 (0.48%) SD-WAN
17 49 (0.47%) IPsec
18 47 (0.45%) VXLAN
19 45 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 285 (2.71%) Power BI
2 266 (2.53%) PostgreSQL
3 233 (2.22%) Data Warehouse
4 195 (1.86%) SQL Server
5 147 (1.40%) Metadata
6 118 (1.12%) Oracle Database
7 112 (1.07%) Amazon RDS
8 107 (1.02%) NoSQL
9 104 (0.99%) MongoDB
10 99 (0.94%) Relational Database
11 97 (0.92%) Data Lake
12 81 (0.77%) MySQL
13 78 (0.74%) Pentaho
14 77 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
15 76 (0.72%) Big Data
16 72 (0.69%) Azure SQL Database
16 72 (0.69%) Tableau
17 67 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
17 67 (0.64%) Oracle Reports
18 57 (0.54%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 630 (6.00%) JIRA
2 497 (4.73%) Git
3 384 (3.65%) Jenkins
4 363 (3.45%) GitLab
5 102 (0.97%) Selenium
6 87 (0.83%) Postman
7 74 (0.70%) JUnit
8 69 (0.66%) SonarQube
9 50 (0.48%) Rational DOORS
10 49 (0.47%) Bitbucket
11 45 (0.43%) Artifactory
12 44 (0.42%) JMeter
13 41 (0.39%) Cucumber
13 41 (0.39%) Maven
14 39 (0.37%) Cypress.io
15 38 (0.36%) Mockito
16 37 (0.35%) Oracle APEX
17 35 (0.33%) Visual Studio
18 30 (0.29%) Zephyr
19 25 (0.24%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 2,413 (22.96%) Public Sector
2 2,277 (21.67%) Social Skills
3 818 (7.78%) Analytical Skills
4 700 (6.66%) Finance
5 348 (3.31%) Military
6 283 (2.69%) Documentation Skills
7 243 (2.31%) Aerospace
8 165 (1.57%) Legal
9 150 (1.43%) Telecoms
10 145 (1.38%) Manufacturing
11 137 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
12 118 (1.12%) Banking
13 113 (1.08%) Organisational Skills
14 98 (0.93%) Presentation Skills
15 82 (0.78%) Law
16 80 (0.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 75 (0.71%) Marketing
18 70 (0.67%) Electronics
19 62 (0.59%) Police
20 34 (0.32%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,603 (15.26%) Architect
2 1,057 (10.06%) Developer
3 920 (8.76%) Senior
4 751 (7.15%) Analyst
5 714 (6.79%) Lead
6 552 (5.25%) Consultant
7 478 (4.55%) Data Engineer
8 473 (4.50%) DevOps Engineer
9 320 (3.05%) Technical Architect
10 314 (2.99%) Software Engineer
11 289 (2.75%) Solutions Architect
12 288 (2.74%) Network Engineer
13 276 (2.63%) Business Analyst
14 244 (2.32%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 219 (2.08%) Azure Engineer
16 216 (2.06%) Project Manager
17 205 (1.95%) Security Architect
18 204 (1.94%) Designer
19 189 (1.80%) Administrator
20 187 (1.78%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 352 (3.35%) REST
2 241 (2.29%) Spring
3 212 (2.02%) Kafka
4 204 (1.94%) Node.js
5 188 (1.79%) Spring Boot
6 183 (1.74%) React
7 179 (1.70%) .NET
8 157 (1.49%) JSON
9 156 (1.48%) SOAP
10 148 (1.41%) RESTful
11 147 (1.40%) LDAP
12 124 (1.18%) PySpark
13 121 (1.15%) AngularJS
14 120 (1.14%) Web Services
15 99 (0.94%) HTML
15 99 (0.94%) OAuth
15 99 (0.94%) Oracle Fusion
16 95 (0.90%) XML
17 85 (0.81%) Middleware
18 84 (0.80%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 344 (3.27%) Cloud Native
2 339 (3.23%) Product Ownership
3 299 (2.85%) Data Centre
4 278 (2.65%) Onboarding
5 194 (1.85%) Management Information System
6 185 (1.76%) PKI
7 131 (1.25%) Legacy Systems
7 131 (1.25%) Security Posture
8 129 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
9 125 (1.19%) Replication
10 123 (1.17%) Distributed Systems
10 123 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
11 91 (0.87%) Public Cloud
12 82 (0.78%) Data Structures
13 80 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
14 78 (0.74%) Clustering
15 76 (0.72%) Hybrid Cloud
16 71 (0.68%) Virtual Team
17 67 (0.64%) Greenfield Project
18 62 (0.59%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 858 (8.17%) Windows
2 747 (7.11%) Linux
3 247 (2.35%) Windows Server
4 161 (1.53%) Unix
5 127 (1.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 117 (1.11%) Android
7 107 (1.02%) Windows 10
8 67 (0.64%) Apple iOS
9 49 (0.47%) Mac OS
10 41 (0.39%) Ubuntu
11 33 (0.31%) VMS
12 31 (0.30%) Solaris
13 30 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
14 28 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
15 23 (0.22%) AIX
16 22 (0.21%) CentOS
17 16 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
18 15 (0.14%) Windows 7
19 10 (0.095%) Embedded Linux
19 10 (0.095%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,045 (19.46%) Agile
2 1,580 (15.04%) DevOps
3 1,386 (13.19%) CI/CD
4 1,146 (10.91%) Problem-Solving
5 971 (9.24%) Stakeholder Management
6 886 (8.43%) Continuous Improvement
7 882 (8.39%) Migration
8 783 (7.45%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 711 (6.77%) Infrastructure as Code
10 651 (6.20%) ITIL
11 616 (5.86%) Analytics
12 598 (5.69%) Test Automation
13 591 (5.62%) Cybersecurity
14 570 (5.42%) Roadmaps
15 561 (5.34%) Containerisation
16 559 (5.32%) Software Engineering
17 509 (4.84%) Data Modelling
18 493 (4.69%) Scrum
19 481 (4.58%) Decision-Making
20 453 (4.31%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,213 (11.54%) Python
2 962 (9.15%) SQL
3 651 (6.20%) Java
4 582 (5.54%) PowerShell
5 371 (3.53%) JavaScript
6 221 (2.10%) C#
7 197 (1.87%) Bash
8 185 (1.76%) TypeScript
9 120 (1.14%) PL/SQL
10 106 (1.01%) C++
11 104 (0.99%) Shell Script
12 76 (0.72%) Go
13 71 (0.68%) Scala
14 70 (0.67%) Ruby
15 60 (0.57%) C
16 58 (0.55%) Bicep
17 50 (0.48%) Apex Code
18 48 (0.46%) R
19 44 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
20 41 (0.39%) Ada
Qualifications
1 8,034 (76.46%) SC Cleared
2 1,843 (17.54%) DV Cleared
3 470 (4.47%) Degree
4 335 (3.19%) BPSS Clearance
5 195 (1.86%) Cisco Certification
6 171 (1.63%) CISSP
7 144 (1.37%) Azure Certification
8 134 (1.28%) AWS Certification
9 119 (1.13%) CCNP
10 109 (1.04%) CISM
11 99 (0.94%) Microsoft Certification
12 80 (0.76%) CCNA
13 79 (0.75%) Computer Science Degree
14 77 (0.73%) ITIL Certification
15 73 (0.69%) PMP
16 70 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
17 68 (0.65%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 65 (0.62%) PMI Certification
19 56 (0.53%) ISTQB
20 50 (0.48%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 369 (3.51%) QA
2 320 (3.05%) Data Quality
3 291 (2.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 291 (2.77%) NIST
4 201 (1.91%) NCSC
5 179 (1.70%) Accessibility
6 169 (1.61%) GDPR
7 150 (1.43%) PMO
8 112 (1.07%) SLA
9 68 (0.65%) GRC
10 67 (0.64%) JSP 440
11 44 (0.42%) COBIT
12 43 (0.41%) NIST 800
13 41 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
14 39 (0.37%) WCAG
15 34 (0.32%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 33 (0.31%) PCI DSS
16 33 (0.31%) RMADS
17 32 (0.30%) Def Stans
18 23 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 682 (6.49%) Docker
2 477 (4.54%) Active Directory
3 289 (2.75%) VMware Infrastructure
4 97 (0.92%) VMware NSX
5 93 (0.89%) VMware ESXi
6 84 (0.80%) Hyper-V
7 77 (0.73%) vSphere
8 69 (0.66%) Virtual Machines
9 40 (0.38%) Firmware
10 33 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
11 20 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
12 19 (0.18%) BitLocker
13 17 (0.16%) NFS
13 17 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 16 (0.15%) Postfix
15 12 (0.11%) Squid
15 12 (0.11%) vCloud
16 8 (0.076%) Microsoft App-V
17 7 (0.067%) KVM
18 6 (0.057%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 872 (8.30%) Kubernetes
2 860 (8.18%) Terraform
3 341 (3.25%) Ansible
4 260 (2.47%) Grafana
5 218 (2.07%) Prometheus
6 117 (1.11%) Single Sign-On
7 98 (0.93%) vCenter Server
8 84 (0.80%) SCCM
9 68 (0.65%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 59 (0.56%) Microsoft Intune
11 58 (0.55%) FortiGate
12 57 (0.54%) Argo
13 41 (0.39%) Packer
14 40 (0.38%) Puppet
15 36 (0.34%) Podman
16 35 (0.33%) Progress Chef
17 34 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
17 34 (0.32%) vRealize
18 30 (0.29%) OPNET
19 29 (0.28%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,074 (10.22%) Microsoft
2 645 (6.14%) Oracle
3 505 (4.81%) VMware
4 424 (4.04%) ServiceNow
5 405 (3.85%) SAP
6 393 (3.74%) Cisco
7 243 (2.31%) Splunk
8 208 (1.98%) Databricks
9 172 (1.64%) Google
9 172 (1.64%) Red Hat
10 158 (1.50%) Salesforce
11 125 (1.19%) IBM
12 121 (1.15%) Atlassian
13 116 (1.10%) Talend
14 113 (1.08%) Palo Alto
15 110 (1.05%) Juniper
16 97 (0.92%) CyberArk
17 87 (0.83%) Remedy
18 85 (0.81%) Fortinet
19 83 (0.79%) Informatica