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

6 months to
24 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,469 5,764 7,567
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.73% 17.64% 18.53%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.30% 57.18% 61.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,960 3,692 5,009
10th Percentile £381 £338 £340
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.62% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £630 £619 £638
90th Percentile £719 £695 £727
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 841 503 546
10th Percentile £18.31 £18.51 £15.36
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £62.50 £25.15 £55.16
Median % change year-on-year +148.51% -54.41% -8.06%
75th Percentile £77.50 £55.00 £71.75
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £57.50
% change year-on-year +151.03% -56.26% -2.59%

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 16,550 10,081 12,235
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.36% 30.84% 29.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,044 6,256 7,729
10th Percentile £350 £278 £311
25th Percentile £430 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £521 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.86% -0.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £638
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,211 751 962
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.25
25th Percentile £25.75 £19.38 £21.05
Median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -25.00%
75th Percentile £73.00 £56.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.00 £75.00 £76.92
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -21.82%

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 24 July 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 24 July 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 24 July 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 9,897 £533 -0.93% 2,303
UK excluding London +1 6,433 £525 -2.33% 1,809
London +7 3,510 £545 +3.81% 672
Work from Home +4 3,110 £525 -1.59% 1,194
South East +1 2,443 £550 +1.22% 582
South West 0 1,302 £538 -6.52% 449
North of England +2 1,089 £500 +0.05% 346
Midlands +3 974 £469 -6.20% 181
West Midlands +2 833 £469 -6.20% 129
North West 0 580 £525 - 178
East of England +2 312 £575 +9.52% 155
Yorkshire +2 299 £500 +1.63% 70
Scotland +16 276 £498 +7.57% 82
North East 0 237 £475 -5.00% 99
East Midlands 0 128 £418 -9.73% 52
Wales +4 103 £550 +15.79% 29
Northern Ireland +5 33 £650 +25.00% 11

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
1 406 (3.54%) Confluence
2 264 (2.30%) SharePoint
3 189 (1.65%) SAS
4 127 (1.11%) Microsoft Exchange
5 109 (0.95%) Apache Spark
6 105 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
7 99 (0.86%) Apache
8 45 (0.39%) WebLogic
9 41 (0.36%) nginx
10 39 (0.34%) Jupyter
11 25 (0.22%) Tomcat
12 24 (0.21%) IIS
13 20 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
14 18 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
15 16 (0.14%) CMS
15 16 (0.14%) NetWeaver
16 15 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
17 12 (0.10%) Skype for Business
17 12 (0.10%) Tuxedo
18 9 (0.078%) Documentum
Applications
1 207 (1.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 152 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
3 97 (0.85%) Microsoft Project
4 76 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 50 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 22 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.13%) Simulink
8 13 (0.11%) AutoCAD
8 13 (0.11%) Revit
8 13 (0.11%) SOLIDWORKS
9 9 (0.078%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.070%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.061%) Notepad++
12 6 (0.052%) Sketch
13 4 (0.035%) Trello
14 3 (0.026%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 3 (0.026%) Windchill
15 2 (0.017%) CATIA
15 2 (0.017%) CPLEX
15 2 (0.017%) Houdini
Business Applications
1 152 (1.33%) SAP S/4HANA
2 72 (0.63%) Remedy ITSM
3 42 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
4 41 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
5 38 (0.33%) Teamcenter
6 32 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 23 (0.20%) Dynamics CRM
7 23 (0.20%) SAP PSCD
8 22 (0.19%) SAP GRC
9 21 (0.18%) Primavera
10 15 (0.13%) Findur
11 13 (0.11%) Oracle Payroll
11 13 (0.11%) Temenos T24
12 12 (0.10%) iTrent
12 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
13 11 (0.096%) Oracle Payables
13 11 (0.096%) SAP HR
14 10 (0.087%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 10 (0.087%) NetSuite
14 10 (0.087%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 2,052 (17.89%) Azure
2 2,033 (17.73%) AWS
3 512 (4.46%) GitHub
4 484 (4.22%) Azure DevOps
5 457 (3.98%) Power Platform
6 432 (3.77%) GCP
7 315 (2.75%) GitHub Actions
8 305 (2.66%) Microsoft 365
9 289 (2.52%) Entra ID
10 271 (2.36%) Serverless
11 244 (2.13%) Amazon S3
12 195 (1.70%) AWS Lambda
13 161 (1.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 159 (1.39%) OCI
14 159 (1.39%) SaaS
15 158 (1.38%) Amazon EC2
15 158 (1.38%) Amazon EKS
16 153 (1.33%) PaaS
17 135 (1.18%) OpenShift
18 128 (1.12%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 484 (4.22%) Firewall
2 360 (3.14%) DNS
3 240 (2.09%) Network Security
4 235 (2.05%) WAN
5 203 (1.77%) VPN
6 199 (1.74%) LAN
7 179 (1.56%) DHCP
8 147 (1.28%) BGP
9 131 (1.14%) TCP/IP
10 122 (1.06%) OSPF
11 113 (0.99%) Wi-Fi
12 108 (0.94%) VLAN
13 91 (0.79%) Wireless
14 69 (0.60%) MPLS
15 68 (0.59%) SAN
16 65 (0.57%) IPsec
17 63 (0.55%) SD-WAN
18 59 (0.51%) VXLAN
19 58 (0.51%) VSAN
20 54 (0.47%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 349 (3.04%) Power BI
2 309 (2.69%) PostgreSQL
3 284 (2.48%) SQL Server
4 282 (2.46%) Data Warehouse
5 171 (1.49%) Oracle Database
6 166 (1.45%) Metadata
7 136 (1.19%) Data Lake
8 133 (1.16%) Relational Database
9 111 (0.97%) MongoDB
10 105 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
11 98 (0.85%) MySQL
12 94 (0.82%) Oracle Reports
13 87 (0.76%) Pentaho
14 78 (0.68%) Elasticsearch
14 78 (0.68%) NoSQL
15 74 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
16 69 (0.60%) Amazon Athena
17 65 (0.57%) Big Data
18 61 (0.53%) Tableau
19 49 (0.43%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 649 (5.66%) JIRA
2 548 (4.78%) Git
3 464 (4.05%) GitLab
4 452 (3.94%) Jenkins
5 123 (1.07%) Selenium
6 83 (0.72%) JUnit
7 82 (0.71%) SonarQube
8 78 (0.68%) Postman
9 64 (0.56%) JMeter
10 63 (0.55%) Maven
11 55 (0.48%) Cucumber
11 55 (0.48%) Rational DOORS
12 47 (0.41%) Visual Studio
13 45 (0.39%) Mockito
14 44 (0.38%) Cypress.io
15 42 (0.37%) Artifactory
15 42 (0.37%) REST Assured
15 42 (0.37%) Zephyr
16 40 (0.35%) Bitbucket
16 40 (0.35%) Gatling
General
1 2,495 (21.75%) Public Sector
2 2,328 (20.30%) Social Skills
3 855 (7.45%) Analytical Skills
4 758 (6.61%) Finance
5 364 (3.17%) Military
6 288 (2.51%) Aerospace
7 281 (2.45%) Documentation Skills
8 181 (1.58%) Legal
9 170 (1.48%) Influencing Skills
10 150 (1.31%) Telecoms
11 138 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
12 130 (1.13%) Banking
13 110 (0.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 102 (0.89%) Law
14 102 (0.89%) Manufacturing
14 102 (0.89%) Police
15 72 (0.63%) Presentation Skills
16 53 (0.46%) Aviation
17 41 (0.36%) Marketing
18 38 (0.33%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 1,786 (15.57%) Architect
2 1,262 (11.00%) Developer
3 1,049 (9.15%) Senior
4 970 (8.46%) Lead
5 713 (6.22%) Analyst
6 595 (5.19%) Consultant
7 522 (4.55%) Data Engineer
8 485 (4.23%) DevOps Engineer
9 388 (3.38%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 368 (3.21%) Technical Architect
11 346 (3.02%) Solutions Architect
12 329 (2.87%) Software Engineer
13 279 (2.43%) Security Architect
14 268 (2.34%) Network Engineer
15 227 (1.98%) Java Developer
16 224 (1.95%) Data Architect
17 223 (1.94%) Designer
18 213 (1.86%) Business Analyst
19 207 (1.80%) Project Manager
20 203 (1.77%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 411 (3.58%) REST
2 274 (2.39%) Spring
3 236 (2.06%) Spring Boot
4 226 (1.97%) Kafka
5 220 (1.92%) .NET
6 202 (1.76%) RESTful
7 201 (1.75%) React
8 188 (1.64%) Node.js
9 167 (1.46%) SOAP
10 150 (1.31%) JSON
11 136 (1.19%) AngularJS
12 127 (1.11%) Web Services
13 115 (1.00%) OAuth
14 113 (0.99%) HTML
15 104 (0.91%) Middleware
16 101 (0.88%) PySpark
16 101 (0.88%) XML
17 92 (0.80%) Playwright
18 82 (0.71%) Elastic Stack
19 80 (0.70%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 465 (4.05%) Cloud Native
2 386 (3.37%) Onboarding
3 355 (3.10%) Product Ownership
4 317 (2.76%) Data Centre
5 233 (2.03%) Management Information System
6 197 (1.72%) Legacy Systems
7 173 (1.51%) Distributed Systems
8 165 (1.44%) PKI
9 126 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
10 124 (1.08%) CMDB
11 122 (1.06%) Enterprise Software
12 115 (1.00%) Data Structures
13 110 (0.96%) Replication
14 109 (0.95%) Hybrid Cloud
15 96 (0.84%) Clustering
16 93 (0.81%) Public Cloud
17 92 (0.80%) Security Posture
18 87 (0.76%) Virtual Team
19 81 (0.71%) Security Operations Centre
20 76 (0.66%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 915 (7.98%) Windows
2 784 (6.84%) Linux
3 293 (2.55%) Windows Server
4 226 (1.97%) Unix
5 152 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 98 (0.85%) Android
7 93 (0.81%) Windows 10
8 66 (0.58%) Apple iOS
9 62 (0.54%) Solaris
10 48 (0.42%) Mac OS
11 37 (0.32%) Ubuntu
12 36 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
13 35 (0.31%) AIX
14 29 (0.25%) CentOS
15 21 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
16 20 (0.17%) VMS
17 13 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
17 13 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
18 11 (0.096%) Windows 7
19 10 (0.087%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,370 (20.66%) Agile
2 1,766 (15.40%) DevOps
3 1,665 (14.52%) CI/CD
4 1,233 (10.75%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,219 (10.63%) Problem-Solving
6 1,215 (10.59%) Continuous Improvement
7 1,025 (8.94%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 890 (7.76%) Migration
9 877 (7.65%) Infrastructure as Code
10 735 (6.41%) Cybersecurity
11 734 (6.40%) ITIL
12 716 (6.24%) Containerisation
12 716 (6.24%) Test Automation
13 700 (6.10%) Analytics
14 676 (5.89%) Software Engineering
15 655 (5.71%) Roadmaps
16 634 (5.53%) Decision-Making
17 617 (5.38%) Data Modelling
18 600 (5.23%) AI
19 592 (5.16%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,277 (11.13%) Python
2 1,119 (9.76%) SQL
3 815 (7.11%) Java
4 518 (4.52%) PowerShell
5 366 (3.19%) JavaScript
6 285 (2.48%) Bash
7 253 (2.21%) C#
8 185 (1.61%) TypeScript
9 176 (1.53%) PL/SQL
10 101 (0.88%) Bicep
11 97 (0.85%) Shell Script
12 88 (0.77%) C++
13 63 (0.55%) C
14 59 (0.51%) Apex Code
15 58 (0.51%) Ruby
16 54 (0.47%) Kotlin
17 52 (0.45%) Go
18 49 (0.43%) Scala
19 38 (0.33%) R
20 37 (0.32%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 8,757 (76.35%) SC Cleared
2 2,164 (18.87%) DV Cleared
3 448 (3.91%) Degree
4 407 (3.55%) BPSS Clearance
5 216 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
6 187 (1.63%) CISSP
7 163 (1.42%) Azure Certification
8 143 (1.25%) Microsoft Certification
9 133 (1.16%) AWS Certification
10 115 (1.00%) CISM
11 107 (0.93%) PMI Certification
12 103 (0.90%) PMP
13 100 (0.87%) CCNP
14 93 (0.81%) CCNA
15 83 (0.72%) ISTQB
16 66 (0.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 64 (0.56%) Computer Science Degree
18 49 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
19 48 (0.42%) TOGAF Certification
20 47 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 438 (3.82%) QA
2 369 (3.22%) Data Quality
3 300 (2.62%) NIST
4 298 (2.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 255 (2.22%) Accessibility
6 241 (2.10%) NCSC
7 201 (1.75%) PMO
8 181 (1.58%) GDPR
9 135 (1.18%) GRC
10 125 (1.09%) SLA
11 75 (0.65%) WCAG
12 64 (0.56%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.43%) NIST 800
14 44 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
15 30 (0.26%) Government Security Classifications
16 28 (0.24%) Def Stans
17 26 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 25 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 20000
19 22 (0.19%) RMADS
20 20 (0.17%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 782 (6.82%) Docker
2 499 (4.35%) Active Directory
3 379 (3.30%) VMware Infrastructure
4 141 (1.23%) VMware NSX
5 131 (1.14%) VMware ESXi
6 104 (0.91%) vSphere
7 102 (0.89%) Hyper-V
8 81 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
9 48 (0.42%) Oracle RAC
10 36 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
11 30 (0.26%) Firmware
12 24 (0.21%) NFS
13 21 (0.18%) vCloud
14 19 (0.17%) BitLocker
15 18 (0.16%) Postfix
16 16 (0.14%) Squid
17 9 (0.078%) KVM
18 8 (0.070%) Microsoft App-V
19 7 (0.061%) UAG
20 6 (0.052%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 959 (8.36%) Terraform
2 934 (8.14%) Kubernetes
3 415 (3.62%) Ansible
4 272 (2.37%) Grafana
5 218 (1.90%) Prometheus
6 128 (1.12%) vCenter Server
7 99 (0.86%) SCCM
8 77 (0.67%) Microsoft Intune
9 67 (0.58%) Argo
9 67 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
10 60 (0.52%) SCOM
11 53 (0.46%) Oracle RMAN
12 48 (0.42%) Puppet
13 44 (0.38%) FortiGate
14 36 (0.31%) Data Guard
15 30 (0.26%) Nagios
16 29 (0.25%) Progress Chef
17 27 (0.24%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 27 (0.24%) Podman
18 23 (0.20%) Istio
Vendors
1 1,297 (11.31%) Microsoft
2 888 (7.74%) Oracle
3 557 (4.86%) VMware
4 540 (4.71%) ServiceNow
5 408 (3.56%) SAP
6 313 (2.73%) Cisco
7 217 (1.89%) Splunk
8 214 (1.87%) Google
9 199 (1.74%) Databricks
10 187 (1.63%) Salesforce
11 155 (1.35%) Red Hat
12 142 (1.24%) Informatica
13 140 (1.22%) Talend
14 125 (1.09%) IBM
15 116 (1.01%) Palo Alto
16 101 (0.88%) Juniper
17 97 (0.85%) F5
18 96 (0.84%) SolarWinds
19 91 (0.79%) Fortinet
20 86 (0.75%) Citrix