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

6 months to
30 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,216 5,274 8,150
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 23.01% 18.01% 18.41%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.72% 58.72% 60.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,855 3,499 5,302
10th Percentile £363 £331 £358
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -1.79%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £518 £546 £550
% change year-on-year -5.22% -0.73% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 833 283 511
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.82 £24.34 £21.46
Median hourly rate £48.72 £54.99 £53.50
Median % change year-on-year -11.40% +2.79% -10.83%
75th Percentile £71.50 £67.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.34 £76.25 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.03 £60.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year -19.96% +9.09% -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 14,867 8,981 13,556
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.48% 30.66% 30.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,794 5,724 8,418
10th Percentile £341 £295 £300
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.89% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,090 490 1,010
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.51 £13.83
25th Percentile £20.46 £24.18 £17.72
Median hourly rate £36.00 £42.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -15.29% +13.33% -28.57%
75th Percentile £68.75 £67.50 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.00 £80.63 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 £47.81 £37.50
% change year-on-year -26.79% +27.48% -23.47%

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 30 March 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 30 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Top 18 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 30 March 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 +1 8,869 £525 -2.78% 1,964
UK excluding London +1 5,684 £518 -5.22% 1,650
London +6 3,108 £525 - 519
Work from Home +4 2,751 £525 -0.38% 861
South East +1 2,080 £525 -4.55% 548
South West 0 1,318 £538 -4.70% 389
Midlands +3 879 £485 -9.68% 175
North of England -1 844 £481 -2.88% 305
West Midlands +2 721 £492 -10.55% 128
North West -2 517 £492 -1.60% 169
East of England 0 358 £492 +9.33% 158
Yorkshire -3 207 £494 -5.95% 72
Scotland +13 195 £500 +11.11% 61
East Midlands +1 154 £450 -11.11% 46
North East 0 153 £450 -3.74% 65
Wales +1 82 £525 -1.41% 36
Northern Ireland +10 25 £463 -2.63% 12
Channel Islands - 1 - -

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
1 388 (3.80%) Confluence
2 221 (2.16%) SharePoint
3 146 (1.43%) SAS
4 132 (1.29%) Microsoft Exchange
5 97 (0.95%) Apache Spark
6 85 (0.83%) Apache
7 62 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
8 44 (0.43%) nginx
9 41 (0.40%) WebLogic
10 24 (0.23%) Skype for Business
11 22 (0.22%) Jupyter
12 19 (0.19%) CMS
13 16 (0.16%) IIS
14 15 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
14 15 (0.15%) Tuxedo
15 14 (0.14%) Tomcat
16 11 (0.11%) ArcGIS
16 11 (0.11%) NetWeaver
16 11 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
17 6 (0.059%) SAP EP
Applications
1 241 (2.36%) Microsoft Office
2 197 (1.93%) Microsoft Excel
3 127 (1.24%) Microsoft Project
4 70 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 46 (0.45%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.15%) Simulink
8 7 (0.069%) Sketch
9 6 (0.059%) Adobe XD
9 6 (0.059%) Windchill
10 5 (0.049%) Siemens NX
11 3 (0.029%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.020%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.020%) CATIA
12 2 (0.020%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.020%) InVision
12 2 (0.020%) Lectora
12 2 (0.020%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.020%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.020%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 115 (1.13%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (0.44%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 41 (0.40%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
5 27 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
5 27 (0.26%) Teamcenter
6 20 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
7 19 (0.19%) SAP PP
8 16 (0.16%) Maximo
9 14 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
10 13 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
11 12 (0.12%) SAP MM
11 12 (0.12%) Temenos T24
12 9 (0.088%) Findur
12 9 (0.088%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.088%) SAP PM
12 9 (0.088%) SAP PSCD
13 8 (0.078%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 8 (0.078%) SAP ERP
13 8 (0.078%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,750 (17.13%) AWS
2 1,697 (16.61%) Azure
3 479 (4.69%) GitHub
4 428 (4.19%) GCP
5 399 (3.91%) Azure DevOps
6 350 (3.43%) Power Platform
7 287 (2.81%) Microsoft 365
7 287 (2.81%) Serverless
8 253 (2.48%) GitHub Actions
9 235 (2.30%) Entra ID
10 213 (2.08%) Amazon S3
11 189 (1.85%) AWS Lambda
12 178 (1.74%) OpenShift
13 148 (1.45%) AWS CloudFormation
14 145 (1.42%) Amazon EC2
15 138 (1.35%) PaaS
16 128 (1.25%) Amazon EKS
17 127 (1.24%) IaaS
18 121 (1.18%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 118 (1.16%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 473 (4.63%) Firewall
2 275 (2.69%) DNS
3 231 (2.26%) Network Security
4 224 (2.19%) WAN
5 196 (1.92%) LAN
6 186 (1.82%) VPN
7 148 (1.45%) BGP
8 135 (1.32%) TCP/IP
9 128 (1.25%) DHCP
10 111 (1.09%) OSPF
11 94 (0.92%) VLAN
12 92 (0.90%) Wireless
13 75 (0.73%) Wi-Fi
14 73 (0.71%) MPLS
15 56 (0.55%) SAN
16 55 (0.54%) SSL
17 52 (0.51%) IPsec
18 49 (0.48%) Cisco ISE
19 47 (0.46%) SD-WAN
20 45 (0.44%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 269 (2.63%) PostgreSQL
2 257 (2.52%) Power BI
3 191 (1.87%) Data Warehouse
4 179 (1.75%) SQL Server
5 137 (1.34%) Metadata
6 120 (1.17%) Oracle Database
7 111 (1.09%) Amazon RDS
8 109 (1.07%) MongoDB
9 107 (1.05%) NoSQL
10 97 (0.95%) Relational Database
11 91 (0.89%) Data Lake
12 90 (0.88%) Azure SQL Database
13 77 (0.75%) MySQL
14 75 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
15 69 (0.68%) Big Data
16 66 (0.65%) Pentaho
17 60 (0.59%) Tableau
18 59 (0.58%) Amazon Redshift
19 55 (0.54%) Delta Lake
20 46 (0.45%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 604 (5.91%) JIRA
2 497 (4.86%) Git
3 411 (4.02%) Jenkins
4 360 (3.52%) GitLab
5 119 (1.16%) Selenium
6 90 (0.88%) JUnit
7 84 (0.82%) Postman
8 62 (0.61%) SonarQube
9 56 (0.55%) Rational DOORS
10 53 (0.52%) Bitbucket
11 50 (0.49%) Artifactory
12 49 (0.48%) Cypress.io
13 47 (0.46%) JMeter
13 47 (0.46%) Maven
14 46 (0.45%) Cucumber
15 41 (0.40%) Oracle APEX
16 40 (0.39%) Mockito
17 37 (0.36%) Visual Studio
18 28 (0.27%) REST Assured
19 21 (0.21%) MSI
General
1 2,491 (24.38%) Public Sector
2 2,349 (22.99%) Social Skills
3 847 (8.29%) Analytical Skills
4 709 (6.94%) Finance
5 331 (3.24%) Military
6 274 (2.68%) Documentation Skills
7 244 (2.39%) Aerospace
8 175 (1.71%) Manufacturing
9 173 (1.69%) Telecoms
10 172 (1.68%) Legal
11 131 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
12 123 (1.20%) Banking
13 116 (1.14%) Organisational Skills
14 105 (1.03%) Marketing
14 105 (1.03%) Presentation Skills
15 101 (0.99%) Electronics
16 79 (0.77%) Law
17 73 (0.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 59 (0.58%) Police
19 36 (0.35%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,530 (14.98%) Architect
2 983 (9.62%) Developer
3 915 (8.96%) Senior
4 759 (7.43%) Analyst
5 645 (6.31%) Consultant
6 639 (6.25%) Lead
7 422 (4.13%) DevOps Engineer
8 413 (4.04%) Data Engineer
9 294 (2.88%) Solutions Architect
10 292 (2.86%) Software Engineer
11 288 (2.82%) Technical Architect
12 280 (2.74%) Network Engineer
13 270 (2.64%) Business Analyst
14 200 (1.96%) Support Engineer
15 198 (1.94%) Project Manager
16 192 (1.88%) Azure Engineer
16 192 (1.88%) Security Architect
17 190 (1.86%) Designer
18 179 (1.75%) Delivery Manager
18 179 (1.75%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 382 (3.74%) REST
2 220 (2.15%) Spring
3 218 (2.13%) Kafka
4 208 (2.04%) Node.js
5 189 (1.85%) React
6 172 (1.68%) JSON
6 172 (1.68%) Spring Boot
7 165 (1.62%) .NET
8 161 (1.58%) SOAP
9 152 (1.49%) LDAP
10 141 (1.38%) RESTful
11 124 (1.21%) PySpark
12 123 (1.20%) AngularJS
13 122 (1.19%) Web Services
14 108 (1.06%) HTML
14 108 (1.06%) OAuth
15 100 (0.98%) Oracle Fusion
16 98 (0.96%) XML
17 89 (0.87%) Elastic Stack
18 84 (0.82%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 341 (3.34%) Product Ownership
2 303 (2.97%) Data Centre
3 300 (2.94%) Cloud Native
4 256 (2.51%) Onboarding
5 205 (2.01%) PKI
6 196 (1.92%) Management Information System
7 142 (1.39%) Security Posture
8 126 (1.23%) Self-Motivation
9 125 (1.22%) Legacy Systems
10 118 (1.16%) Enterprise Software
11 116 (1.14%) Replication
12 102 (1.00%) Distributed Systems
13 91 (0.89%) Public Cloud
14 83 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
15 80 (0.78%) Hybrid Cloud
16 76 (0.74%) Data Structures
17 72 (0.70%) Cyber Threat
18 65 (0.64%) Virtual Team
19 63 (0.62%) Driving Licence
20 62 (0.61%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 872 (8.54%) Windows
2 744 (7.28%) Linux
3 243 (2.38%) Windows Server
4 139 (1.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 129 (1.26%) Unix
6 121 (1.18%) Android
7 120 (1.17%) Windows 10
8 60 (0.59%) Mac OS
9 52 (0.51%) Apple iOS
10 45 (0.44%) Ubuntu
11 36 (0.35%) VMS
12 34 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
13 28 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
14 22 (0.22%) Solaris
15 20 (0.20%) CentOS
16 18 (0.18%) AIX
16 18 (0.18%) Windows 7
17 13 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
18 9 (0.088%) Windows Server 2008
19 8 (0.078%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,009 (19.67%) Agile
2 1,522 (14.90%) DevOps
3 1,358 (13.29%) CI/CD
4 1,192 (11.67%) Problem-Solving
5 950 (9.30%) Stakeholder Management
6 851 (8.33%) Continuous Improvement
7 843 (8.25%) Migration
8 755 (7.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 662 (6.48%) Cybersecurity
10 657 (6.43%) Infrastructure as Code
11 634 (6.21%) ITIL
12 601 (5.88%) Analytics
13 583 (5.71%) Test Automation
14 570 (5.58%) Roadmaps
15 560 (5.48%) Containerisation
16 518 (5.07%) Software Engineering
17 490 (4.80%) Data Modelling
17 490 (4.80%) Scrum
18 452 (4.42%) Business Intelligence
19 450 (4.40%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 1,224 (11.98%) Python
2 900 (8.81%) SQL
3 624 (6.11%) PowerShell
4 594 (5.81%) Java
5 410 (4.01%) JavaScript
6 223 (2.18%) Bash
7 209 (2.05%) C#
8 186 (1.82%) TypeScript
9 113 (1.11%) PL/SQL
10 109 (1.07%) C++
11 107 (1.05%) Shell Script
12 76 (0.74%) Go
13 71 (0.69%) Ruby
14 62 (0.61%) C
15 59 (0.58%) Scala
16 48 (0.47%) Bicep
17 45 (0.44%) Ada
17 45 (0.44%) Kusto Query Language
18 44 (0.43%) Apex Code
18 44 (0.43%) R
Qualifications
1 7,785 (76.20%) SC Cleared
2 1,787 (17.49%) DV Cleared
3 483 (4.73%) Degree
4 311 (3.04%) BPSS Clearance
5 188 (1.84%) Cisco Certification
6 185 (1.81%) CISSP
7 137 (1.34%) Azure Certification
8 135 (1.32%) AWS Certification
9 124 (1.21%) CCNP
10 118 (1.16%) CISM
11 105 (1.03%) Microsoft Certification
12 82 (0.80%) Computer Science Degree
13 79 (0.77%) CCNA
14 71 (0.69%) ITIL Certification
15 66 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
16 61 (0.60%) PMP
17 58 (0.57%) ISTQB
17 58 (0.57%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 55 (0.54%) PMI Certification
19 52 (0.51%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 340 (3.33%) QA
2 321 (3.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 308 (3.01%) NIST
4 307 (3.01%) Data Quality
5 222 (2.17%) NCSC
6 184 (1.80%) GDPR
7 177 (1.73%) Accessibility
8 122 (1.19%) PMO
8 122 (1.19%) SLA
9 73 (0.71%) JSP 440
10 64 (0.63%) GRC
11 48 (0.47%) WCAG
12 47 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
13 45 (0.44%) NIST 800
14 42 (0.41%) COBIT
15 41 (0.40%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 35 (0.34%) Def Stans
17 34 (0.33%) PCI DSS
18 30 (0.29%) RMADS
19 24 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 681 (6.67%) Docker
2 467 (4.57%) Active Directory
3 270 (2.64%) VMware Infrastructure
4 100 (0.98%) VMware NSX
5 81 (0.79%) vSphere
6 74 (0.72%) VMware ESXi
7 70 (0.69%) Hyper-V
8 56 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
9 34 (0.33%) Firmware
10 31 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
11 22 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
12 21 (0.21%) BitLocker
13 17 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 14 (0.14%) NFS
15 12 (0.12%) Squid
16 11 (0.11%) Postfix
16 11 (0.11%) vCloud
17 7 (0.069%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.059%) KVM
19 5 (0.049%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 868 (8.50%) Kubernetes
2 810 (7.93%) Terraform
3 335 (3.28%) Ansible
4 255 (2.50%) Grafana
5 214 (2.09%) Prometheus
6 128 (1.25%) Single Sign-On
7 91 (0.89%) vCenter Server
8 90 (0.88%) SCCM
9 85 (0.83%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 69 (0.68%) Argo
11 65 (0.64%) Microsoft Intune
12 52 (0.51%) FortiGate
13 40 (0.39%) Podman
14 38 (0.37%) Packer
15 37 (0.36%) Progress Chef
15 37 (0.36%) vRealize
16 36 (0.35%) Puppet
17 30 (0.29%) OPNET
17 30 (0.29%) Oracle RMAN
18 27 (0.26%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,069 (10.46%) Microsoft
2 586 (5.74%) Oracle
3 502 (4.91%) VMware
4 425 (4.16%) Cisco
5 419 (4.10%) SAP
6 407 (3.98%) ServiceNow
7 247 (2.42%) Splunk
8 203 (1.99%) Databricks
9 195 (1.91%) Red Hat
10 160 (1.57%) Google
11 158 (1.55%) Salesforce
12 144 (1.41%) CyberArk
13 132 (1.29%) Atlassian
14 131 (1.28%) IBM
14 131 (1.28%) Juniper
14 131 (1.28%) Palo Alto
15 96 (0.94%) Dell
16 95 (0.93%) Talend
17 86 (0.84%) Remedy
18 85 (0.83%) HP