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

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,687 5,130 7,787
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.88% 17.91% 18.22%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.23% 57.65% 60.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,322 3,393 5,172
10th Percentile £381 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £529 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.76% -3.82% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £718 £690 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £536 £550
% change year-on-year -2.05% -2.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 869 302 527
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £13.99
25th Percentile £22.68 £24.19 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £32.50 £55.08
Median % change year-on-year +69.23% -40.99% -8.21%
75th Percentile £74.00 £65.53 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £78.67 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £38.00 £57.33
% change year-on-year +44.74% -33.72% -0.30%

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 15,438 8,898 12,812
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.61% 31.06% 29.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,233 5,612 8,001
10th Percentile £350 £275 £310
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £521 £533
Median % change year-on-year +0.77% -2.25% -3.09%
75th Percentile £620 £615 £645
90th Percentile £715 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £534
% change year-on-year - -6.32% +1.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,136 509 1,073
10th Percentile £16.35 £17.87 £13.69
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.50 £18.00
Median hourly rate £47.54 £32.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +46.28% -18.75% -27.27%
75th Percentile £71.50 £65.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.25 £78.46 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £32.50 £40.63
% change year-on-year +46.15% -20.01% -21.10%

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 28 May 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 28 May 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 28 May 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 9,269 £525 -2.33% 1,756
UK excluding London +1 5,943 £525 -2.05% 1,408
London +6 3,305 £525 - 469
Work from Home +4 2,879 £525 - 850
South East +1 2,230 £550 - 468
South West 0 1,280 £538 -4.44% 359
North of England 0 932 £500 - 259
Midlands +3 871 £470 -10.48% 136
West Midlands +3 746 £470 -10.48% 108
North West -1 526 £513 +2.50% 157
East of England +2 383 £550 +10.00% 125
Yorkshire -9 236 £488 -1.71% 48
Scotland +28 231 £525 +16.67% 53
North East +1 208 £475 -1.04% 55
East Midlands -2 118 £444 -6.58% 28
Wales +6 86 £490 +3.16% 29
Northern Ireland +1 20 £644 +35.53% 9

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
1 386 (3.61%) Confluence
2 223 (2.09%) SharePoint
3 144 (1.35%) SAS
4 130 (1.22%) Microsoft Exchange
5 100 (0.94%) Apache Spark
6 87 (0.81%) Apache
7 80 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.36%) nginx
8 39 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 32 (0.30%) Jupyter
10 21 (0.20%) Tomcat
11 19 (0.18%) IIS
12 18 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
13 15 (0.14%) CMS
13 15 (0.14%) Skype for Business
13 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
14 14 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
15 13 (0.12%) NetWeaver
16 10 (0.094%) ArcGIS
17 8 (0.075%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 176 (1.65%) Microsoft Excel
1 176 (1.65%) Microsoft Office
2 86 (0.80%) Microsoft Project
3 80 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 45 (0.42%) MS Visio
5 17 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
6 15 (0.14%) Simulink
7 8 (0.075%) AutoCAD
8 7 (0.066%) Notepad++
8 7 (0.066%) SOLIDWORKS
9 6 (0.056%) Revit
10 5 (0.047%) Sketch
11 4 (0.037%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.037%) Siemens NX
11 4 (0.037%) Windchill
12 3 (0.028%) Chatbot
13 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.019%) InVision
13 2 (0.019%) Lectora
13 2 (0.019%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 111 (1.04%) SAP S/4HANA
2 54 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
3 39 (0.36%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 31 (0.29%) Teamcenter
5 30 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
6 28 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
7 24 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.13%) Maximo
8 14 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.12%) Findur
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 (0.094%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.084%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.084%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.084%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.084%) SAP HR
13 8 (0.075%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 1,873 (17.53%) AWS
2 1,845 (17.26%) Azure
3 441 (4.13%) GitHub
4 425 (3.98%) GCP
5 397 (3.71%) Azure DevOps
6 384 (3.59%) Power Platform
7 262 (2.45%) Serverless
8 257 (2.40%) Entra ID
9 253 (2.37%) Microsoft 365
10 251 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
11 211 (1.97%) Amazon S3
12 181 (1.69%) AWS Lambda
13 155 (1.45%) PaaS
14 151 (1.41%) Amazon EC2
15 142 (1.33%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 139 (1.30%) Amazon EKS
17 137 (1.28%) OpenShift
18 132 (1.24%) OCI
19 131 (1.23%) SaaS
20 127 (1.19%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 486 (4.55%) Firewall
2 313 (2.93%) DNS
3 243 (2.27%) Network Security
4 237 (2.22%) WAN
5 212 (1.98%) LAN
6 177 (1.66%) VPN
7 159 (1.49%) DHCP
8 149 (1.39%) BGP
9 127 (1.19%) OSPF
10 118 (1.10%) TCP/IP
11 115 (1.08%) VLAN
12 110 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
13 87 (0.81%) Wireless
14 71 (0.66%) MPLS
15 65 (0.61%) SAN
16 61 (0.57%) VXLAN
17 58 (0.54%) Structured Cabling
18 56 (0.52%) SD-WAN
19 53 (0.50%) IPsec
20 51 (0.48%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 299 (2.80%) Power BI
2 259 (2.42%) PostgreSQL
3 239 (2.24%) Data Warehouse
4 212 (1.98%) SQL Server
5 135 (1.26%) Oracle Database
6 134 (1.25%) Metadata
7 115 (1.08%) Data Lake
8 113 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
9 108 (1.01%) MongoDB
10 99 (0.93%) Relational Database
11 88 (0.82%) NoSQL
12 79 (0.74%) Pentaho
13 77 (0.72%) Elasticsearch
13 77 (0.72%) MySQL
13 77 (0.72%) Oracle Reports
14 68 (0.64%) Tableau
15 67 (0.63%) Big Data
16 62 (0.58%) Amazon Redshift
17 60 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
18 59 (0.55%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 606 (5.67%) JIRA
2 449 (4.20%) Git
3 417 (3.90%) GitLab
4 403 (3.77%) Jenkins
5 113 (1.06%) Selenium
6 89 (0.83%) Postman
7 75 (0.70%) JUnit
8 72 (0.67%) SonarQube
9 60 (0.56%) Rational DOORS
10 57 (0.53%) JMeter
11 56 (0.52%) Artifactory
12 44 (0.41%) Cucumber
13 41 (0.38%) Bitbucket
13 41 (0.38%) Mockito
14 40 (0.37%) Visual Studio
15 39 (0.36%) Maven
16 37 (0.35%) Cypress.io
16 37 (0.35%) Zephyr
17 35 (0.33%) REST Assured
18 30 (0.28%) Gatling
General
1 2,318 (21.69%) Public Sector
2 2,189 (20.48%) Social Skills
3 730 (6.83%) Analytical Skills
4 679 (6.35%) Finance
5 344 (3.22%) Military
6 288 (2.69%) Documentation Skills
7 266 (2.49%) Aerospace
8 166 (1.55%) Legal
9 128 (1.20%) Telecoms
10 121 (1.13%) Influencing Skills
11 119 (1.11%) Banking
12 111 (1.04%) Organisational Skills
13 107 (1.00%) Manufacturing
14 92 (0.86%) Law
15 78 (0.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 77 (0.72%) Presentation Skills
17 60 (0.56%) Police
18 55 (0.51%) Marketing
19 48 (0.45%) Aviation
20 43 (0.40%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 1,628 (15.23%) Architect
2 996 (9.32%) Developer
3 909 (8.51%) Senior
4 750 (7.02%) Lead
5 744 (6.96%) Analyst
6 527 (4.93%) Consultant
7 521 (4.88%) Data Engineer
8 501 (4.69%) DevOps Engineer
9 338 (3.16%) Technical Architect
10 318 (2.98%) Software Engineer
11 305 (2.85%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 303 (2.84%) Solutions Architect
13 298 (2.79%) Network Engineer
14 265 (2.48%) Business Analyst
15 228 (2.13%) Project Manager
16 218 (2.04%) Designer
16 218 (2.04%) Security Architect
17 211 (1.97%) Azure Engineer
18 193 (1.81%) AWS Engineer
19 189 (1.77%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 327 (3.06%) REST
2 243 (2.27%) Spring
3 205 (1.92%) Kafka
4 201 (1.88%) Spring Boot
5 200 (1.87%) React
6 185 (1.73%) Node.js
7 179 (1.67%) .NET
8 154 (1.44%) LDAP
9 153 (1.43%) SOAP
10 152 (1.42%) RESTful
11 125 (1.17%) JSON
12 122 (1.14%) AngularJS
13 117 (1.09%) Web Services
14 115 (1.08%) PySpark
15 103 (0.96%) OAuth
16 93 (0.87%) Middleware
17 89 (0.83%) HTML
18 88 (0.82%) Oracle Fusion
18 88 (0.82%) XML
19 86 (0.80%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 374 (3.50%) Cloud Native
2 331 (3.10%) Product Ownership
3 322 (3.01%) Data Centre
4 299 (2.80%) Onboarding
5 207 (1.94%) Management Information System
6 157 (1.47%) PKI
7 147 (1.38%) Legacy Systems
8 131 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
9 130 (1.22%) Security Posture
10 124 (1.16%) Distributed Systems
11 123 (1.15%) Replication
12 97 (0.91%) Self-Motivation
13 90 (0.84%) Hybrid Cloud
14 89 (0.83%) Data Structures
15 86 (0.80%) Clustering
15 86 (0.80%) Public Cloud
16 85 (0.80%) Security Operations Centre
17 76 (0.71%) Virtual Team
18 74 (0.69%) CMDB
19 72 (0.67%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 847 (7.93%) Windows
2 749 (7.01%) Linux
3 250 (2.34%) Windows Server
4 196 (1.83%) Unix
5 134 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 100 (0.94%) Android
7 88 (0.82%) Windows 10
8 67 (0.63%) Apple iOS
9 48 (0.45%) Solaris
10 41 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 40 (0.37%) Mac OS
12 31 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 29 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
14 27 (0.25%) AIX
15 24 (0.22%) VMS
16 23 (0.22%) CentOS
17 15 (0.14%) Windows 7
18 13 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
19 12 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
20 10 (0.094%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,029 (18.99%) Agile
2 1,623 (15.19%) DevOps
3 1,462 (13.68%) CI/CD
4 1,107 (10.36%) Problem-Solving
5 1,014 (9.49%) Stakeholder Management
6 965 (9.03%) Continuous Improvement
7 845 (7.91%) Migration
8 818 (7.65%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 759 (7.10%) Infrastructure as Code
10 651 (6.09%) Cybersecurity
11 630 (5.90%) Test Automation
12 628 (5.88%) ITIL
13 609 (5.70%) Analytics
14 584 (5.46%) Software Engineering
15 582 (5.45%) Roadmaps
16 581 (5.44%) Containerisation
17 548 (5.13%) Data Modelling
18 529 (4.95%) Decision-Making
19 461 (4.31%) AI
19 461 (4.31%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 1,185 (11.09%) Python
2 983 (9.20%) SQL
3 665 (6.22%) Java
4 547 (5.12%) PowerShell
5 331 (3.10%) JavaScript
6 216 (2.02%) C#
7 214 (2.00%) Bash
8 181 (1.69%) TypeScript
9 121 (1.13%) PL/SQL
10 99 (0.93%) C++
11 98 (0.92%) Shell Script
12 69 (0.65%) Go
13 65 (0.61%) Bicep
13 65 (0.61%) Scala
14 64 (0.60%) Ruby
15 57 (0.53%) C
16 53 (0.50%) Apex Code
17 44 (0.41%) Ada
18 41 (0.38%) R
19 40 (0.37%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 8,160 (76.35%) SC Cleared
2 1,929 (18.05%) DV Cleared
3 445 (4.16%) Degree
4 297 (2.78%) BPSS Clearance
5 225 (2.11%) Cisco Certification
6 183 (1.71%) CISSP
7 133 (1.24%) Azure Certification
8 130 (1.22%) CCNP
9 119 (1.11%) CISM
10 111 (1.04%) AWS Certification
11 97 (0.91%) Microsoft Certification
12 96 (0.90%) CCNA
13 80 (0.75%) PMP
14 73 (0.68%) Computer Science Degree
15 72 (0.67%) PMI Certification
16 70 (0.66%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 64 (0.60%) ISTQB
18 57 (0.53%) ITIL Certification
19 49 (0.46%) GIAC
20 44 (0.41%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 381 (3.57%) QA
2 319 (2.98%) Data Quality
3 305 (2.85%) NIST
4 302 (2.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 215 (2.01%) NCSC
6 207 (1.94%) Accessibility
7 176 (1.65%) GDPR
8 156 (1.46%) PMO
9 116 (1.09%) SLA
10 79 (0.74%) GRC
11 68 (0.64%) JSP 440
12 55 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
13 44 (0.41%) WCAG
14 41 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 36 (0.34%) RMADS
16 32 (0.30%) Def Stans
17 28 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 27 (0.25%) PCI DSS
19 25 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
20 24 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 651 (6.09%) Docker
2 471 (4.41%) Active Directory
3 299 (2.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 108 (1.01%) VMware ESXi
5 105 (0.98%) VMware NSX
6 87 (0.81%) Hyper-V
7 83 (0.78%) vSphere
8 69 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
9 37 (0.35%) Firmware
10 36 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
11 24 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
12 22 (0.21%) NFS
13 21 (0.20%) BitLocker
14 20 (0.19%) vCloud
15 19 (0.18%) Postfix
15 19 (0.18%) Squid
16 16 (0.15%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 9 (0.084%) KVM
18 8 (0.075%) Microsoft App-V
19 6 (0.056%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 843 (7.89%) Terraform
2 830 (7.77%) Kubernetes
3 383 (3.58%) Ansible
4 276 (2.58%) Grafana
5 229 (2.14%) Prometheus
6 111 (1.04%) vCenter Server
7 109 (1.02%) Single Sign-On
8 75 (0.70%) SCCM
9 65 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 53 (0.50%) Argo
10 53 (0.50%) FortiGate
10 53 (0.50%) Microsoft Intune
11 41 (0.38%) Oracle RMAN
12 40 (0.37%) Puppet
13 38 (0.36%) Podman
14 33 (0.31%) Progress Chef
14 33 (0.31%) SCOM
15 31 (0.29%) Nagios
16 28 (0.26%) vRealize
17 26 (0.24%) Istio
Vendors
1 1,065 (9.97%) Microsoft
2 682 (6.38%) Oracle
3 513 (4.80%) VMware
4 410 (3.84%) ServiceNow
5 371 (3.47%) Cisco
6 357 (3.34%) SAP
7 244 (2.28%) Splunk
8 210 (1.97%) Databricks
9 177 (1.66%) Red Hat
10 170 (1.59%) Google
11 158 (1.48%) Salesforce
12 137 (1.28%) Talend
13 128 (1.20%) Palo Alto
14 123 (1.15%) IBM
15 108 (1.01%) Juniper
16 104 (0.97%) Informatica
17 98 (0.92%) CyberArk
18 97 (0.91%) Fortinet
19 88 (0.82%) F5
20 85 (0.80%) Dynatrace