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

6 months to
23 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,634 5,933 7,208
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.59% 17.99% 18.59%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.95% 57.44% 62.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,140 3,770 4,773
10th Percentile £385 £347 £350
25th Percentile £456 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £534 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.75% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £533 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -0.93% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 815 569 475
10th Percentile £19.33 £18.51 £15.06
25th Percentile £28.50 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £64.00 £25.15 £57.25
Median % change year-on-year +154.47% -56.07% -4.58%
75th Percentile £78.88 £47.12 £71.82
90th Percentile £88.00 £73.75 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £58.34
% change year-on-year +158.45% -56.89% +1.46%

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 16,873 10,329 11,596
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.32% 31.32% 29.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,283 6,375 7,338
10th Percentile £350 £289 £313
25th Percentile £434 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.38% -0.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £620 £638
90th Percentile £716 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,271 827 798
10th Percentile £17.42 £17.99 £14.48
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.23 £21.25
Median hourly rate £49.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +94.83% -41.51% -21.82%
75th Percentile £72.54 £53.63 £65.75
90th Percentile £87.96 £73.75 £75.66
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.77 £25.15 £47.50
% change year-on-year +89.94% -47.05% -8.46%

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 23 August 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 23 August 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 23 August 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 10,070 £540 +0.47% 1,831
UK excluding London +1 6,545 £533 -0.93% 1,521
London +7 3,569 £550 +3.77% 530
Work from Home +2 3,094 £525 -2.33% 844
South East +1 2,418 £563 +4.65% 508
South West 0 1,362 £545 -1.87% 375
North of England +3 1,214 £511 +2.20% 279
Midlands 0 914 £469 -8.93% 157
West Midlands +1 785 £469 -8.93% 116
North West +3 696 £525 -0.94% 152
East of England 0 334 £550 - 148
Yorkshire +1 304 £492 - 59
Scotland +15 275 £483 +1.68% 61
North East 0 238 £475 -5.00% 73
East Midlands -3 120 £438 -12.45% 41
Wales +4 103 £550 +10.00% 26
Northern Ireland +3 33 £650 +25.00% 8

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
1 414 (3.56%) Confluence
2 282 (2.42%) SharePoint
3 188 (1.62%) SAS
4 126 (1.08%) Microsoft Exchange
5 100 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
5 100 (0.86%) Apache Spark
6 96 (0.83%) Apache
7 37 (0.32%) Jupyter
8 34 (0.29%) nginx
9 28 (0.24%) WebLogic
10 24 (0.21%) IIS
11 23 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
11 23 (0.20%) Skype for Business
12 21 (0.18%) Tomcat
13 18 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
14 17 (0.15%) CMS
14 17 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
15 15 (0.13%) NetWeaver
16 13 (0.11%) JBoss
17 9 (0.077%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 206 (1.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 159 (1.37%) Microsoft Office
3 108 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
4 92 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.37%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.14%) AutoCAD
7 16 (0.14%) Revit
8 15 (0.13%) Simulink
8 15 (0.13%) SOLIDWORKS
9 8 (0.069%) Adobe XD
9 8 (0.069%) Chatbot
9 8 (0.069%) Windchill
10 7 (0.060%) Notepad++
10 7 (0.060%) Sketch
11 5 (0.043%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 3 (0.026%) Trello
13 2 (0.017%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.017%) Houdini
13 2 (0.017%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 147 (1.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 78 (0.67%) Remedy ITSM
3 50 (0.43%) Oracle ERP
4 40 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
5 33 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 32 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
7 31 (0.27%) Teamcenter
8 24 (0.21%) SAP GRC
9 23 (0.20%) Oracle Payroll
10 22 (0.19%) SAP PSCD
11 21 (0.18%) Primavera
12 17 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
13 14 (0.12%) SAP FI
13 14 (0.12%) SAP HR
14 13 (0.11%) Findur
15 12 (0.10%) iTrent
15 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
15 12 (0.10%) Temenos T24
16 11 (0.095%) NetSuite
17 10 (0.086%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,180 (18.74%) Azure
2 2,058 (17.69%) AWS
3 551 (4.74%) Azure DevOps
4 543 (4.67%) GitHub
5 491 (4.22%) Power Platform
6 460 (3.95%) GCP
7 346 (2.97%) GitHub Actions
8 324 (2.78%) Microsoft 365
9 307 (2.64%) Entra ID
10 281 (2.42%) Serverless
11 230 (1.98%) Amazon S3
12 196 (1.68%) AWS Lambda
13 173 (1.49%) OCI
14 171 (1.47%) SaaS
15 164 (1.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 159 (1.37%) Amazon EKS
17 144 (1.24%) Amazon EC2
18 142 (1.22%) PaaS
19 134 (1.15%) OpenShift
20 130 (1.12%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 485 (4.17%) Firewall
2 385 (3.31%) DNS
3 233 (2.00%) WAN
4 226 (1.94%) Network Security
5 211 (1.81%) VPN
6 193 (1.66%) DHCP
6 193 (1.66%) LAN
7 146 (1.25%) TCP/IP
8 141 (1.21%) BGP
9 125 (1.07%) Wi-Fi
10 110 (0.95%) VLAN
11 102 (0.88%) OSPF
12 89 (0.76%) Wireless
13 70 (0.60%) VSAN
14 68 (0.58%) MPLS
15 63 (0.54%) SD-WAN
16 62 (0.53%) SSL
17 61 (0.52%) IPsec
17 61 (0.52%) SAN
18 51 (0.44%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 355 (3.05%) Power BI
2 307 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
3 297 (2.55%) SQL Server
4 280 (2.41%) Data Warehouse
5 167 (1.44%) Oracle Database
6 162 (1.39%) Metadata
7 142 (1.22%) Data Lake
8 136 (1.17%) Relational Database
9 120 (1.03%) MongoDB
10 111 (0.95%) Amazon RDS
11 102 (0.88%) MySQL
12 101 (0.87%) Oracle Reports
13 93 (0.80%) NoSQL
14 83 (0.71%) Pentaho
15 72 (0.62%) Amazon Athena
16 71 (0.61%) Amazon Redshift
17 63 (0.54%) Elasticsearch
18 59 (0.51%) Big Data
19 56 (0.48%) Tableau
20 50 (0.43%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 667 (5.73%) JIRA
2 576 (4.95%) Git
3 496 (4.26%) GitLab
4 483 (4.15%) Jenkins
5 136 (1.17%) Selenium
6 86 (0.74%) Postman
7 82 (0.70%) SonarQube
8 71 (0.61%) JMeter
9 68 (0.58%) JUnit
9 68 (0.58%) Maven
10 54 (0.46%) Cucumber
11 52 (0.45%) Rational DOORS
11 52 (0.45%) Visual Studio
12 50 (0.43%) Cypress.io
13 46 (0.40%) Bitbucket
14 45 (0.39%) Mockito
14 45 (0.39%) Zephyr
15 44 (0.38%) Gradle
16 40 (0.34%) Gatling
17 39 (0.34%) Artifactory
General
1 2,482 (21.33%) Social Skills
2 2,404 (20.66%) Public Sector
3 904 (7.77%) Analytical Skills
4 788 (6.77%) Finance
5 358 (3.08%) Military
6 312 (2.68%) Aerospace
7 303 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
8 195 (1.68%) Influencing Skills
9 170 (1.46%) Legal
10 166 (1.43%) Organisational Skills
11 164 (1.41%) Telecoms
12 146 (1.25%) Banking
13 139 (1.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 121 (1.04%) Manufacturing
15 111 (0.95%) Law
16 110 (0.95%) Police
17 67 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
18 46 (0.40%) Aviation
19 45 (0.39%) Retail
20 44 (0.38%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,859 (15.98%) Architect
2 1,264 (10.86%) Developer
3 1,112 (9.56%) Senior
4 1,040 (8.94%) Lead
5 694 (5.97%) Consultant
6 645 (5.54%) Analyst
7 505 (4.34%) Data Engineer
8 493 (4.24%) DevOps Engineer
9 428 (3.68%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 379 (3.26%) Technical Architect
11 356 (3.06%) Solutions Architect
12 311 (2.67%) Software Engineer
13 271 (2.33%) Security Architect
14 266 (2.29%) Network Engineer
15 259 (2.23%) Data Architect
16 216 (1.86%) Java Developer
17 213 (1.83%) Administrator
17 213 (1.83%) Project Manager
18 210 (1.81%) Azure Engineer
19 205 (1.76%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,001 (8.60%) Terraform
2 439 (3.77%) REST
3 249 (2.14%) Spring
4 245 (2.11%) .NET
5 240 (2.06%) Kafka
6 222 (1.91%) Spring Boot
7 220 (1.89%) RESTful
8 204 (1.75%) React
9 176 (1.51%) Node.js
10 174 (1.50%) SOAP
11 158 (1.36%) JSON
12 139 (1.19%) Web Services
13 135 (1.16%) HTML
14 134 (1.15%) AngularJS
15 132 (1.13%) OAuth
16 119 (1.02%) XML
17 114 (0.98%) Middleware
18 98 (0.84%) Playwright
19 97 (0.83%) Oracle Fusion
20 94 (0.81%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 510 (4.38%) Cloud Native
2 422 (3.63%) Onboarding
3 373 (3.21%) Product Ownership
4 306 (2.63%) Data Centre
5 240 (2.06%) Management Information System
6 191 (1.64%) Legacy Systems
7 176 (1.51%) PKI
8 160 (1.38%) Distributed Systems
9 154 (1.32%) Enterprise Software
10 147 (1.26%) CMDB
11 124 (1.07%) Replication
12 122 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
13 119 (1.02%) Hybrid Cloud
14 115 (0.99%) Data Structures
15 96 (0.83%) Security Operations Centre
16 95 (0.82%) Cyber Threat
17 93 (0.80%) Clustering
18 92 (0.79%) Public Cloud
19 86 (0.74%) Virtual Team
20 79 (0.68%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 972 (8.35%) Windows
2 806 (6.93%) Linux
3 343 (2.95%) Windows Server
4 224 (1.93%) Unix
5 151 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 129 (1.11%) Windows 10
7 85 (0.73%) Android
8 61 (0.52%) Solaris
9 52 (0.45%) Apple iOS
10 49 (0.42%) Mac OS
11 41 (0.35%) Ubuntu
12 38 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
13 37 (0.32%) CentOS
14 35 (0.30%) AIX
15 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 23 (0.20%) VMS
16 23 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
17 21 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
18 15 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
19 13 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,455 (21.10%) Agile
2 1,842 (15.83%) DevOps
3 1,763 (15.15%) CI/CD
4 1,434 (12.33%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,325 (11.39%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,204 (10.35%) Problem-Solving
7 1,138 (9.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 976 (8.39%) Infrastructure as Code
9 929 (7.99%) Migration
10 806 (6.93%) Cybersecurity
11 769 (6.61%) ITIL
12 765 (6.58%) Test Automation
13 727 (6.25%) Analytics
14 722 (6.21%) Containerisation
15 691 (5.94%) Software Engineering
16 677 (5.82%) Technical Leadership
17 672 (5.78%) Roadmaps
18 657 (5.65%) Decision-Making
19 643 (5.53%) AI
20 619 (5.32%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,316 (11.31%) Python
2 1,135 (9.76%) SQL
3 801 (6.88%) Java
4 581 (4.99%) PowerShell
5 413 (3.55%) JavaScript
6 331 (2.85%) Bash
7 276 (2.37%) C#
8 203 (1.74%) TypeScript
9 163 (1.40%) PL/SQL
10 124 (1.07%) Bicep
11 87 (0.75%) C++
12 82 (0.70%) Shell Script
13 67 (0.58%) C
14 56 (0.48%) Apex Code
15 52 (0.45%) Ruby
15 52 (0.45%) Scala
16 51 (0.44%) Kotlin
17 47 (0.40%) Go
17 47 (0.40%) Groovy
18 36 (0.31%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,854 (76.10%) SC Cleared
2 2,177 (18.71%) DV Cleared
3 461 (3.96%) Degree
4 446 (3.83%) BPSS Clearance
5 211 (1.81%) CISSP
6 198 (1.70%) Cisco Certification
7 177 (1.52%) Azure Certification
8 160 (1.38%) Microsoft Certification
9 142 (1.22%) CISM
10 140 (1.20%) AWS Certification
11 106 (0.91%) PMI Certification
12 104 (0.89%) PMP
13 96 (0.83%) ISTQB
14 90 (0.77%) CCNP
15 84 (0.72%) CCNA
16 73 (0.63%) Computer Science Degree
17 67 (0.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 48 (0.41%) ITIL Certification
19 47 (0.40%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 41 (0.35%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 500 (4.30%) QA
2 377 (3.24%) Data Quality
3 315 (2.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 309 (2.66%) NIST
5 277 (2.38%) NCSC
6 258 (2.22%) Accessibility
7 227 (1.95%) PMO
8 181 (1.56%) GDPR
9 157 (1.35%) SLA
10 155 (1.33%) GRC
11 80 (0.69%) WCAG
12 65 (0.56%) JSP 440
13 47 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
14 43 (0.37%) NIST 800
15 34 (0.29%) Def Stans
16 30 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 30 (0.26%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 28 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
18 25 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
19 22 (0.19%) RMADS
System Software
1 807 (6.94%) Docker
2 561 (4.82%) Active Directory
3 415 (3.57%) VMware Infrastructure
4 154 (1.32%) VMware NSX
5 138 (1.19%) VMware ESXi
6 124 (1.07%) vSphere
7 123 (1.06%) Hyper-V
8 82 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
9 42 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
10 41 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
11 36 (0.31%) Firmware
12 27 (0.23%) vCloud
13 26 (0.22%) BitLocker
14 16 (0.14%) NFS
15 15 (0.13%) Squid
16 13 (0.11%) Postfix
17 12 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
18 9 (0.077%) KVM
19 8 (0.069%) Ceph
19 8 (0.069%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 989 (8.50%) Kubernetes
2 449 (3.86%) Ansible
3 268 (2.30%) Grafana
4 212 (1.82%) Prometheus
5 136 (1.17%) vCenter Server
6 129 (1.11%) SCCM
7 86 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
8 77 (0.66%) SCOM
9 68 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
10 67 (0.58%) Argo
11 52 (0.45%) Puppet
12 51 (0.44%) Oracle RMAN
13 40 (0.34%) Data Guard
14 34 (0.29%) Istio
14 34 (0.29%) Progress Chef
15 30 (0.26%) Nagios
16 29 (0.25%) FortiGate
17 28 (0.24%) Control-M
18 27 (0.23%) WSUS
19 26 (0.22%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,487 (12.78%) Microsoft
2 934 (8.03%) Oracle
3 597 (5.13%) VMware
4 538 (4.62%) ServiceNow
5 447 (3.84%) SAP
6 309 (2.66%) Cisco
7 242 (2.08%) Google
8 211 (1.81%) Splunk
9 210 (1.81%) Databricks
10 186 (1.60%) Salesforce
11 148 (1.27%) Red Hat
12 127 (1.09%) IBM
13 123 (1.06%) Informatica
14 122 (1.05%) Palo Alto
15 118 (1.01%) Talend
16 95 (0.82%) Dynatrace
17 87 (0.75%) Remedy
18 83 (0.71%) F5
18 83 (0.71%) SolarWinds
19 82 (0.70%) Denodo