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

6 months to
24 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 11,557 5,937 7,208
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.55% 18.00% 18.56%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.01% 57.46% 62.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,084 3,777 4,758
10th Percentile £385 £348 £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 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £533 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -0.93% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 813 569 470
10th Percentile £19.33 £18.51 £15.09
25th Percentile £28.50 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £64.00 £25.15 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +154.47% -56.26% -4.17%
75th Percentile £78.75 £47.12 £72.22
90th Percentile £88.00 £73.75 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £58.49
% change year-on-year +158.45% -57.00% +1.72%

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 16,746 10,332 11,618
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.22% 31.32% 29.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,194 6,383 7,325
10th Percentile £350 £289 £313
25th Percentile £434 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £622 £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 1,268 827 784
10th Percentile £17.42 £17.99 £14.65
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.23 £21.34
Median hourly rate £49.25 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +95.83% -41.51% -21.82%
75th Percentile £72.54 £53.63 £66.81
90th Percentile £87.96 £73.75 £76.77
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.00 £25.15 £48.09
% change year-on-year +90.85% -47.70% -7.32%

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 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 24 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 24 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 9,996 £540 +0.47% 1,830
UK excluding London +1 6,500 £533 -0.93% 1,515
London +7 3,544 £550 +3.77% 528
Work from Home +2 3,078 £525 -2.33% 849
South East +1 2,387 £563 +4.65% 513
South West 0 1,361 £545 -2.01% 375
North of England +3 1,212 £511 +2.29% 275
Midlands 0 901 £469 -8.93% 156
West Midlands +1 773 £469 -8.89% 114
North West +4 694 £525 -0.94% 150
East of England 0 334 £550 - 142
Yorkshire +3 304 £492 - 58
Scotland +14 276 £485 +0.21% 58
North East 0 238 £475 -5.00% 71
East Midlands -3 119 £438 -12.45% 42
Wales +4 103 £550 +10.00% 25
Northern Ireland +4 33 £650 +25.00% 7

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
1 410 (3.55%) Confluence
2 276 (2.39%) SharePoint
3 185 (1.60%) SAS
4 125 (1.08%) Microsoft Exchange
5 100 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
5 100 (0.87%) 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
12 22 (0.19%) Skype for Business
13 21 (0.18%) Tomcat
14 18 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
15 17 (0.15%) CMS
15 17 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
16 15 (0.13%) NetWeaver
17 13 (0.11%) JBoss
18 9 (0.078%) Documentum
Applications
1 204 (1.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 159 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
3 108 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
4 92 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.37%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.22%) 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 (0.061%) Notepad++
10 7 (0.061%) 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 (1.27%) SAP S/4HANA
2 77 (0.67%) Remedy ITSM
3 51 (0.44%) Oracle ERP
4 39 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
5 33 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 32 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
7 30 (0.26%) 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 (0.087%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,176 (18.83%) Azure
2 2,040 (17.65%) AWS
3 550 (4.76%) Azure DevOps
4 539 (4.66%) GitHub
5 487 (4.21%) Power Platform
6 457 (3.95%) GCP
7 343 (2.97%) GitHub Actions
8 319 (2.76%) Microsoft 365
9 306 (2.65%) Entra ID
10 279 (2.41%) Serverless
11 227 (1.96%) Amazon S3
12 195 (1.69%) AWS Lambda
13 173 (1.50%) OCI
14 171 (1.48%) SaaS
15 161 (1.39%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 158 (1.37%) Amazon EKS
17 141 (1.22%) PaaS
18 140 (1.21%) Amazon EC2
19 133 (1.15%) OpenShift
20 128 (1.11%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 479 (4.14%) Firewall
2 380 (3.29%) DNS
3 229 (1.98%) WAN
4 221 (1.91%) Network Security
5 209 (1.81%) VPN
6 190 (1.64%) DHCP
7 189 (1.64%) LAN
8 145 (1.25%) TCP/IP
9 139 (1.20%) BGP
10 124 (1.07%) Wi-Fi
11 109 (0.94%) VLAN
12 100 (0.87%) OSPF
13 87 (0.75%) Wireless
14 69 (0.60%) VSAN
15 67 (0.58%) MPLS
16 62 (0.54%) SD-WAN
16 62 (0.54%) SSL
17 61 (0.53%) IPsec
17 61 (0.53%) SAN
18 51 (0.44%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 353 (3.05%) Power BI
2 302 (2.61%) PostgreSQL
3 290 (2.51%) SQL Server
4 273 (2.36%) Data Warehouse
5 167 (1.45%) Oracle Database
6 161 (1.39%) Metadata
7 142 (1.23%) Data Lake
8 136 (1.18%) Relational Database
9 120 (1.04%) MongoDB
10 110 (0.95%) Amazon RDS
11 99 (0.86%) MySQL
12 96 (0.83%) Oracle Reports
13 93 (0.80%) NoSQL
14 79 (0.68%) Pentaho
15 70 (0.61%) Amazon Athena
16 69 (0.60%) Amazon Redshift
17 63 (0.55%) Elasticsearch
18 59 (0.51%) Big Data
19 56 (0.48%) Tableau
20 49 (0.42%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 660 (5.71%) JIRA
2 567 (4.91%) Git
3 492 (4.26%) GitLab
4 477 (4.13%) Jenkins
5 136 (1.18%) Selenium
6 81 (0.70%) Postman
6 81 (0.70%) SonarQube
7 71 (0.61%) JMeter
8 67 (0.58%) JUnit
9 66 (0.57%) Maven
10 54 (0.47%) Cucumber
11 52 (0.45%) Visual Studio
12 51 (0.44%) Rational DOORS
13 50 (0.43%) Cypress.io
14 45 (0.39%) Bitbucket
15 44 (0.38%) Gradle
15 44 (0.38%) Mockito
16 40 (0.35%) Gatling
16 40 (0.35%) Zephyr
17 38 (0.33%) Artifactory
General
1 2,459 (21.28%) Social Skills
2 2,379 (20.58%) Public Sector
3 900 (7.79%) Analytical Skills
4 778 (6.73%) Finance
5 357 (3.09%) Military
6 308 (2.67%) Aerospace
7 302 (2.61%) Documentation Skills
8 195 (1.69%) Influencing Skills
9 169 (1.46%) Legal
10 166 (1.44%) Organisational Skills
11 164 (1.42%) Telecoms
12 145 (1.25%) Banking
13 138 (1.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 120 (1.04%) Manufacturing
15 110 (0.95%) Law
16 109 (0.94%) Police
17 66 (0.57%) Presentation Skills
18 46 (0.40%) Aviation
19 45 (0.39%) Retail
20 44 (0.38%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,844 (15.96%) Architect
2 1,257 (10.88%) Developer
3 1,103 (9.54%) Senior
4 1,040 (9.00%) Lead
5 691 (5.98%) Consultant
6 638 (5.52%) Analyst
7 502 (4.34%) Data Engineer
8 491 (4.25%) DevOps Engineer
9 426 (3.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 376 (3.25%) Technical Architect
11 356 (3.08%) Solutions Architect
12 310 (2.68%) Software Engineer
13 269 (2.33%) Security Architect
14 264 (2.28%) Network Engineer
15 258 (2.23%) Data Architect
16 215 (1.86%) Java Developer
17 212 (1.83%) Project Manager
18 211 (1.83%) Administrator
19 210 (1.82%) Azure Engineer
20 203 (1.76%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 993 (8.59%) Terraform
2 436 (3.77%) REST
3 248 (2.15%) Spring
4 243 (2.10%) .NET
5 240 (2.08%) Kafka
6 221 (1.91%) Spring Boot
7 218 (1.89%) RESTful
8 204 (1.77%) React
9 175 (1.51%) Node.js
10 173 (1.50%) SOAP
11 158 (1.37%) JSON
12 138 (1.19%) Web Services
13 135 (1.17%) HTML
14 133 (1.15%) AngularJS
15 132 (1.14%) OAuth
16 118 (1.02%) XML
17 114 (0.99%) Middleware
18 98 (0.85%) Playwright
19 95 (0.82%) Oracle Fusion
20 94 (0.81%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 507 (4.39%) Cloud Native
2 418 (3.62%) Onboarding
3 372 (3.22%) Product Ownership
4 302 (2.61%) Data Centre
5 236 (2.04%) Management Information System
6 191 (1.65%) Legacy Systems
7 172 (1.49%) PKI
8 158 (1.37%) Distributed Systems
9 152 (1.32%) Enterprise Software
10 147 (1.27%) CMDB
11 122 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
12 120 (1.04%) Replication
13 119 (1.03%) Hybrid Cloud
14 115 (1.00%) Data Structures
15 95 (0.82%) Cyber Threat
16 94 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
17 91 (0.79%) Clustering
17 91 (0.79%) Public Cloud
18 84 (0.73%) Virtual Team
19 79 (0.68%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 963 (8.33%) Windows
2 801 (6.93%) Linux
3 339 (2.93%) Windows Server
4 221 (1.91%) Unix
5 149 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 129 (1.12%) Windows 10
7 84 (0.73%) Android
8 61 (0.53%) Solaris
9 51 (0.44%) Apple iOS
10 49 (0.42%) Mac OS
11 41 (0.35%) Ubuntu
12 37 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
13 36 (0.31%) CentOS
14 35 (0.30%) AIX
15 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 23 (0.20%) VMS
17 22 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
18 21 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
19 15 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
20 13 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,434 (21.06%) Agile
2 1,828 (15.82%) DevOps
3 1,749 (15.13%) CI/CD
4 1,422 (12.30%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,317 (11.40%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,195 (10.34%) Problem-Solving
7 1,131 (9.79%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 971 (8.40%) Infrastructure as Code
9 916 (7.93%) Migration
10 804 (6.96%) Cybersecurity
11 764 (6.61%) ITIL
12 756 (6.54%) Test Automation
13 721 (6.24%) Analytics
14 716 (6.20%) Containerisation
15 690 (5.97%) Software Engineering
16 677 (5.86%) Technical Leadership
17 667 (5.77%) Roadmaps
18 654 (5.66%) Decision-Making
19 640 (5.54%) AI
20 613 (5.30%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,303 (11.27%) Python
2 1,119 (9.68%) SQL
3 798 (6.90%) Java
4 574 (4.97%) PowerShell
5 410 (3.55%) JavaScript
6 327 (2.83%) Bash
7 273 (2.36%) C#
8 203 (1.76%) TypeScript
9 160 (1.38%) PL/SQL
10 124 (1.07%) Bicep
11 86 (0.74%) C++
12 82 (0.71%) Shell Script
13 67 (0.58%) C
14 56 (0.48%) Apex Code
15 52 (0.45%) Ruby
16 51 (0.44%) Kotlin
16 51 (0.44%) Scala
17 47 (0.41%) Groovy
18 44 (0.38%) Go
19 36 (0.31%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,798 (76.13%) SC Cleared
2 2,155 (18.65%) DV Cleared
3 460 (3.98%) Degree
4 445 (3.85%) BPSS Clearance
5 212 (1.83%) CISSP
6 196 (1.70%) Cisco Certification
7 177 (1.53%) Azure Certification
8 157 (1.36%) Microsoft Certification
9 143 (1.24%) CISM
10 138 (1.19%) AWS Certification
11 106 (0.92%) PMI Certification
12 104 (0.90%) PMP
13 93 (0.80%) ISTQB
14 89 (0.77%) CCNP
15 84 (0.73%) CCNA
16 73 (0.63%) Computer Science Degree
17 67 (0.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 48 (0.42%) ITIL Certification
19 47 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 41 (0.35%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 492 (4.26%) QA
2 374 (3.24%) Data Quality
3 314 (2.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 308 (2.67%) NIST
5 275 (2.38%) NCSC
6 258 (2.23%) Accessibility
7 226 (1.96%) PMO
8 181 (1.57%) GDPR
9 157 (1.36%) SLA
10 155 (1.34%) GRC
11 80 (0.69%) WCAG
12 64 (0.55%) JSP 440
13 47 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
14 43 (0.37%) NIST 800
15 34 (0.29%) Def Stans
16 30 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 29 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 28 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
19 25 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
20 22 (0.19%) RMADS
System Software
1 801 (6.93%) Docker
2 556 (4.81%) Active Directory
3 412 (3.56%) VMware Infrastructure
4 151 (1.31%) VMware NSX
5 137 (1.19%) VMware ESXi
6 123 (1.06%) vSphere
7 122 (1.06%) Hyper-V
8 82 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
9 42 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
10 41 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
11 36 (0.31%) Firmware
12 26 (0.22%) BitLocker
12 26 (0.22%) vCloud
13 16 (0.14%) NFS
14 15 (0.13%) Squid
15 13 (0.11%) Postfix
16 12 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
17 9 (0.078%) KVM
18 8 (0.069%) Ceph
18 8 (0.069%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 980 (8.48%) Kubernetes
2 444 (3.84%) Ansible
3 264 (2.28%) Grafana
4 210 (1.82%) Prometheus
5 134 (1.16%) vCenter Server
6 129 (1.12%) SCCM
7 85 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
8 77 (0.67%) SCOM
9 68 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
10 67 (0.58%) Argo
11 51 (0.44%) Oracle RMAN
11 51 (0.44%) Puppet
12 40 (0.35%) Data Guard
13 34 (0.29%) Istio
13 34 (0.29%) Progress Chef
14 29 (0.25%) Nagios
15 28 (0.24%) Control-M
15 28 (0.24%) FortiGate
16 27 (0.23%) WSUS
17 26 (0.22%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,474 (12.75%) Microsoft
2 921 (7.97%) Oracle
3 590 (5.11%) VMware
4 535 (4.63%) ServiceNow
5 447 (3.87%) SAP
6 305 (2.64%) Cisco
7 241 (2.09%) Google
8 210 (1.82%) Databricks
8 210 (1.82%) Splunk
9 186 (1.61%) Salesforce
10 147 (1.27%) Red Hat
11 127 (1.10%) IBM
12 122 (1.06%) Palo Alto
13 121 (1.05%) Informatica
14 112 (0.97%) Talend
15 94 (0.81%) Dynatrace
16 86 (0.74%) Remedy
17 81 (0.70%) SolarWinds
18 79 (0.68%) CyberArk
18 79 (0.68%) F5