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

6 months to
9 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,830 5,211 7,906
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.80% 17.80% 18.26%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.31% 57.47% 61.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,446 3,417 5,194
10th Percentile £381 £340 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £713 £695 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 859 327 559
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.33 £24.46 £21.46
Median hourly rate £57.35 £31.64 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year +81.26% -43.99% -5.85%
75th Percentile £74.59 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £76.63 £84.56
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.35 £32.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +79.22% -44.35% -

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 15,625 9,067 12,961
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.45% 30.97% 29.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,368 5,651 8,039
10th Percentile £350 £275 £310
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £621 £619 £638
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £530
% change year-on-year +1.00% -5.66% +0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,152 554 1,109
10th Percentile £17.00 £17.53 £13.87
25th Percentile £21.91 £22.23 £18.19
Median hourly rate £49.36 £32.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +54.25% -20.00% -27.27%
75th Percentile £72.50 £65.00 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.00 £76.25 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £30.91 £40.97
% change year-on-year +53.70% -24.57% -21.96%

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 9 June 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 9 June 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 9 June 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 +3 9,368 £525 -2.23% 1,778
UK excluding London +1 6,019 £525 -0.94% 1,455
London +7 3,365 £525 - 448
Work from Home +4 2,945 £525 - 861
South East +1 2,259 £550 - 502
South West 0 1,251 £538 -4.44% 375
North of England 0 974 £500 - 250
Midlands +3 884 £469 -10.67% 117
West Midlands +3 761 £470 -10.48% 79
North West -1 539 £520 +4.00% 146
East of England +2 372 £550 +10.00% 122
Scotland +28 254 £500 +7.18% 62
Yorkshire -4 248 £489 -1.46% 50
North East +1 219 £475 -1.04% 55
East Midlands -3 116 £418 -18.54% 38
Wales +7 86 £490 +3.16% 28
Northern Ireland +4 26 £638 +34.21% 28

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
1 395 (3.65%) Confluence
2 230 (2.12%) SharePoint
3 158 (1.46%) SAS
4 131 (1.21%) Microsoft Exchange
5 105 (0.97%) Apache Spark
6 96 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
7 92 (0.85%) Apache
8 42 (0.39%) nginx
9 40 (0.37%) Jupyter
10 32 (0.30%) WebLogic
11 24 (0.22%) Tomcat
12 19 (0.18%) IIS
13 18 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
14 16 (0.15%) CMS
14 16 (0.15%) NetWeaver
15 15 (0.14%) Skype for Business
16 14 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
17 10 (0.092%) ArcGIS
17 10 (0.092%) Tuxedo
18 8 (0.074%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 174 (1.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 147 (1.36%) Microsoft Office
3 78 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 72 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
5 48 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.15%) Simulink
6 16 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
7 9 (0.083%) SOLIDWORKS
8 8 (0.074%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.074%) Revit
9 7 (0.065%) Notepad++
10 5 (0.046%) Chatbot
11 4 (0.037%) Siemens NX
11 4 (0.037%) Sketch
11 4 (0.037%) Windchill
12 3 (0.028%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.018%) CATIA
13 2 (0.018%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.018%) Lectora
13 2 (0.018%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 117 (1.08%) SAP S/4HANA
2 60 (0.55%) Remedy ITSM
3 40 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
4 33 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 32 (0.30%) Teamcenter
6 28 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
7 24 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.13%) Findur
8 14 (0.13%) Maximo
8 14 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
8 14 (0.13%) Primavera
9 13 (0.12%) SAP GRC
9 13 (0.12%) SAP PSCD
10 12 (0.11%) iTrent
10 12 (0.11%) Temenos T24
11 10 (0.092%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.083%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.083%) Salesforce CRM
12 9 (0.083%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.083%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,941 (17.92%) AWS
2 1,895 (17.50%) Azure
3 462 (4.27%) GitHub
4 435 (4.02%) GCP
5 405 (3.74%) Azure DevOps
6 402 (3.71%) Power Platform
7 276 (2.55%) Serverless
8 275 (2.54%) GitHub Actions
9 264 (2.44%) Microsoft 365
10 258 (2.38%) Entra ID
11 221 (2.04%) Amazon S3
12 194 (1.79%) AWS Lambda
13 164 (1.51%) PaaS
14 157 (1.45%) Amazon EC2
15 149 (1.38%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 142 (1.31%) Amazon EKS
16 142 (1.31%) SaaS
17 136 (1.26%) OCI
17 136 (1.26%) OpenShift
18 122 (1.13%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 481 (4.44%) Firewall
2 322 (2.97%) DNS
3 248 (2.29%) Network Security
4 235 (2.17%) WAN
5 208 (1.92%) LAN
6 185 (1.71%) VPN
7 167 (1.54%) DHCP
8 147 (1.36%) BGP
9 125 (1.15%) OSPF
10 117 (1.08%) VLAN
11 115 (1.06%) TCP/IP
12 112 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
13 84 (0.78%) Wireless
14 69 (0.64%) MPLS
15 63 (0.58%) SAN
16 61 (0.56%) VXLAN
17 58 (0.54%) SD-WAN
18 54 (0.50%) Structured Cabling
19 52 (0.48%) IPsec
20 48 (0.44%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 311 (2.87%) Power BI
2 272 (2.51%) PostgreSQL
3 248 (2.29%) Data Warehouse
4 217 (2.00%) SQL Server
5 149 (1.38%) Oracle Database
6 134 (1.24%) Metadata
7 121 (1.12%) Data Lake
8 117 (1.08%) Amazon RDS
9 105 (0.97%) Relational Database
10 102 (0.94%) MongoDB
11 83 (0.77%) Pentaho
12 82 (0.76%) MySQL
13 81 (0.75%) NoSQL
13 81 (0.75%) Oracle Reports
14 80 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
15 69 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
16 68 (0.63%) Amazon Athena
16 68 (0.63%) Big Data
17 66 (0.61%) Tableau
18 56 (0.52%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 615 (5.68%) JIRA
2 471 (4.35%) Git
3 442 (4.08%) GitLab
4 420 (3.88%) Jenkins
5 122 (1.13%) Selenium
6 90 (0.83%) Postman
7 84 (0.78%) JUnit
8 74 (0.68%) SonarQube
9 60 (0.55%) JMeter
10 59 (0.54%) Artifactory
10 59 (0.54%) Rational DOORS
11 51 (0.47%) Cucumber
12 46 (0.42%) Bitbucket
13 41 (0.38%) Mockito
13 41 (0.38%) Zephyr
14 40 (0.37%) Maven
14 40 (0.37%) Visual Studio
15 39 (0.36%) Cypress.io
16 36 (0.33%) REST Assured
17 31 (0.29%) WebDriver
General
1 2,356 (21.75%) Public Sector
2 2,198 (20.30%) Social Skills
3 741 (6.84%) Analytical Skills
4 664 (6.13%) Finance
5 336 (3.10%) Military
6 303 (2.80%) Documentation Skills
7 275 (2.54%) Aerospace
8 172 (1.59%) Legal
9 124 (1.14%) Banking
9 124 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
10 117 (1.08%) Telecoms
11 102 (0.94%) Organisational Skills
12 99 (0.91%) Manufacturing
13 98 (0.90%) Law
14 90 (0.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 78 (0.72%) Presentation Skills
16 64 (0.59%) Police
17 49 (0.45%) Aviation
18 47 (0.43%) Marketing
19 41 (0.38%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,650 (15.24%) Architect
2 1,013 (9.35%) Developer
3 927 (8.56%) Senior
4 796 (7.35%) Lead
5 746 (6.89%) Analyst
6 534 (4.93%) Data Engineer
7 532 (4.91%) Consultant
8 515 (4.76%) DevOps Engineer
9 355 (3.28%) Technical Architect
10 324 (2.99%) Software Engineer
11 318 (2.94%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 318 (2.94%) Solutions Architect
12 282 (2.60%) Network Engineer
13 266 (2.46%) Business Analyst
14 235 (2.17%) Security Architect
15 220 (2.03%) Project Manager
16 219 (2.02%) Designer
17 215 (1.99%) Azure Engineer
18 201 (1.86%) Administrator
19 198 (1.83%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 332 (3.07%) REST
2 240 (2.22%) Spring
3 204 (1.88%) React
4 201 (1.86%) Kafka
4 201 (1.86%) Spring Boot
5 182 (1.68%) Node.js
6 181 (1.67%) .NET
7 153 (1.41%) LDAP
8 152 (1.40%) RESTful
8 152 (1.40%) SOAP
9 128 (1.18%) JSON
10 121 (1.12%) AngularJS
11 118 (1.09%) PySpark
12 115 (1.06%) Web Services
13 108 (1.00%) OAuth
14 98 (0.90%) Middleware
15 92 (0.85%) HTML
16 84 (0.78%) OpenID
16 84 (0.78%) Playwright
16 84 (0.78%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 398 (3.67%) Cloud Native
2 339 (3.13%) Product Ownership
3 326 (3.01%) Data Centre
4 304 (2.81%) Onboarding
5 217 (2.00%) Management Information System
6 159 (1.47%) PKI
7 153 (1.41%) Legacy Systems
8 132 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
8 132 (1.22%) Security Posture
9 129 (1.19%) Distributed Systems
10 122 (1.13%) Replication
11 101 (0.93%) Self-Motivation
12 90 (0.83%) Clustering
12 90 (0.83%) Data Structures
13 89 (0.82%) Hybrid Cloud
13 89 (0.82%) Security Operations Centre
14 88 (0.81%) Public Cloud
15 81 (0.75%) CMDB
16 76 (0.70%) Virtual Team
17 73 (0.67%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 850 (7.85%) Windows
2 740 (6.83%) Linux
3 270 (2.49%) Windows Server
4 198 (1.83%) Unix
5 134 (1.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 94 (0.87%) Android
7 83 (0.77%) Windows 10
8 69 (0.64%) Apple iOS
9 54 (0.50%) Solaris
10 38 (0.35%) Mac OS
11 37 (0.34%) Ubuntu
12 32 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
13 30 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
14 27 (0.25%) AIX
15 24 (0.22%) VMS
16 23 (0.21%) CentOS
17 17 (0.16%) Windows 7
18 15 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
19 11 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
19 11 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,072 (19.13%) Agile
2 1,670 (15.42%) DevOps
3 1,518 (14.02%) CI/CD
4 1,106 (10.21%) Problem-Solving
5 1,045 (9.65%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,005 (9.28%) Continuous Improvement
7 868 (8.01%) Migration
7 868 (8.01%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 798 (7.37%) Infrastructure as Code
9 680 (6.28%) Cybersecurity
10 657 (6.07%) Test Automation
11 640 (5.91%) Analytics
12 619 (5.72%) ITIL
13 613 (5.66%) Containerisation
14 607 (5.60%) Software Engineering
15 595 (5.49%) Roadmaps
16 555 (5.12%) Data Modelling
16 555 (5.12%) Decision-Making
17 491 (4.53%) AI
18 486 (4.49%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,215 (11.22%) Python
2 999 (9.22%) SQL
3 677 (6.25%) Java
4 551 (5.09%) PowerShell
5 325 (3.00%) JavaScript
6 222 (2.05%) C#
7 214 (1.98%) Bash
8 184 (1.70%) TypeScript
9 131 (1.21%) PL/SQL
10 97 (0.90%) C++
11 96 (0.89%) Shell Script
12 69 (0.64%) Bicep
13 62 (0.57%) Ruby
14 60 (0.55%) Scala
15 59 (0.54%) Go
16 58 (0.54%) C
17 56 (0.52%) Apex Code
18 46 (0.42%) Ada
19 41 (0.38%) Kotlin
19 41 (0.38%) R
Qualifications
1 8,290 (76.55%) SC Cleared
2 1,942 (17.93%) DV Cleared
3 436 (4.03%) Degree
4 314 (2.90%) BPSS Clearance
5 216 (1.99%) Cisco Certification
6 181 (1.67%) CISSP
7 140 (1.29%) Azure Certification
8 120 (1.11%) CCNP
9 117 (1.08%) CISM
10 116 (1.07%) AWS Certification
11 104 (0.96%) Microsoft Certification
12 91 (0.84%) CCNA
13 79 (0.73%) PMP
14 76 (0.70%) Computer Science Degree
15 72 (0.66%) ISTQB
15 72 (0.66%) PMI Certification
16 70 (0.65%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 60 (0.55%) ITIL Certification
18 46 (0.42%) GIAC
19 42 (0.39%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 405 (3.74%) QA
2 323 (2.98%) Data Quality
3 312 (2.88%) NIST
4 306 (2.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 219 (2.02%) NCSC
6 210 (1.94%) Accessibility
7 180 (1.66%) GDPR
8 166 (1.53%) PMO
9 121 (1.12%) SLA
10 83 (0.77%) GRC
11 68 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 53 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
13 48 (0.44%) WCAG
14 41 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 36 (0.33%) RMADS
16 34 (0.31%) Def Stans
17 28 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 24 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
18 24 (0.22%) COBIT
18 24 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 675 (6.23%) Docker
2 473 (4.37%) Active Directory
3 317 (2.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 116 (1.07%) VMware ESXi
5 107 (0.99%) VMware NSX
6 93 (0.86%) Hyper-V
7 83 (0.77%) vSphere
8 76 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
9 37 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
10 36 (0.33%) Firmware
11 24 (0.22%) NFS
12 23 (0.21%) BitLocker
13 21 (0.19%) vCloud
14 19 (0.18%) Postfix
14 19 (0.18%) Squid
15 18 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
16 15 (0.14%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 10 (0.092%) Microsoft App-V
18 8 (0.074%) KVM
19 6 (0.055%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 885 (8.17%) Terraform
2 846 (7.81%) Kubernetes
3 392 (3.62%) Ansible
4 277 (2.56%) Grafana
5 231 (2.13%) Prometheus
6 117 (1.08%) vCenter Server
7 106 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
8 77 (0.71%) SCCM
9 61 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 60 (0.55%) Microsoft Intune
11 53 (0.49%) FortiGate
12 51 (0.47%) Argo
13 43 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
14 42 (0.39%) Puppet
15 39 (0.36%) SCOM
16 38 (0.35%) Podman
17 31 (0.29%) Nagios
18 29 (0.27%) Progress Chef
19 28 (0.26%) vRealize
20 25 (0.23%) Istio
Vendors
1 1,090 (10.06%) Microsoft
2 732 (6.76%) Oracle
3 523 (4.83%) VMware
4 424 (3.92%) ServiceNow
5 356 (3.29%) Cisco
6 340 (3.14%) SAP
7 245 (2.26%) Splunk
8 211 (1.95%) Databricks
9 175 (1.62%) Google
10 172 (1.59%) Red Hat
11 169 (1.56%) Salesforce
12 141 (1.30%) Talend
13 128 (1.18%) IBM
13 128 (1.18%) Palo Alto
14 108 (1.00%) Informatica
14 108 (1.00%) Juniper
15 98 (0.90%) CyberArk
15 98 (0.90%) Fortinet
16 90 (0.83%) Dynatrace
17 88 (0.81%) F5