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

6 months to
31 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 11,514 5,819 7,362
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.69% 17.74% 18.53%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.20% 57.21% 62.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,007 3,712 4,905
10th Percentile £385 £341 £345
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £537 £534 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.66% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £725 £695 £735
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 844 523 517
10th Percentile £18.32 £18.51 £15.39
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +151.03% -54.27% -8.33%
75th Percentile £78.75 £51.10 £71.75
90th Percentile £88.00 £73.75 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £57.47
% change year-on-year +151.03% -56.24% -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 16,639 10,172 11,869
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.34% 31.02% 29.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,121 6,306 7,536
10th Percentile £350 £281 £313
25th Percentile £431 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £638
90th Percentile £715 £703 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,239 775 893
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.31
25th Percentile £25.77 £19.38 £21.25
Median hourly rate £52.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +106.76% -41.51% -23.21%
75th Percentile £73.75 £56.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.03 £75.00 £77.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +98.81% -41.51% -19.87%

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 31 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 31 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 31 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 9,981 £537 -0.09% 2,001
UK excluding London +1 6,480 £525 -2.33% 1,523
London +7 3,531 £550 +4.76% 642
Work from Home +4 3,100 £525 -2.23% 1,026
South East +1 2,456 £557 +3.53% 525
South West 0 1,326 £538 -6.52% 359
North of England +2 1,121 £503 +0.60% 266
Midlands +3 963 £469 -6.20% 162
West Midlands +1 826 £469 -6.20% 122
North West 0 605 £525 - 145
East of England 0 323 £552 +3.18% 145
Yorkshire +2 301 £500 +1.63% 59
Scotland +12 259 £495 +4.71% 57
North East 0 239 £475 -5.00% 64
East Midlands 0 125 £428 -7.57% 40
Wales +3 98 £550 +15.79% 31
Northern Ireland +5 33 £650 +25.00% 15

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 (3.56%) Confluence
2 268 (2.33%) SharePoint
3 193 (1.68%) SAS
4 123 (1.07%) Microsoft Exchange
5 104 (0.90%) Apache Spark
6 100 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
7 95 (0.83%) Apache
8 41 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 38 (0.33%) Jupyter
9 38 (0.33%) nginx
10 24 (0.21%) IIS
10 24 (0.21%) Tomcat
11 20 (0.17%) Oracle Application Server
11 20 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
12 16 (0.14%) NetWeaver
12 16 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
13 15 (0.13%) CMS
14 13 (0.11%) Skype for Business
15 12 (0.10%) Tuxedo
16 10 (0.087%) JBoss
Applications
1 211 (1.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 152 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 103 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 78 (0.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 47 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.13%) Simulink
8 14 (0.12%) AutoCAD
8 14 (0.12%) Revit
8 14 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
9 9 (0.078%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.069%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.061%) Notepad++
11 7 (0.061%) Sketch
12 4 (0.035%) Trello
13 3 (0.026%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 3 (0.026%) Windchill
14 2 (0.017%) CPLEX
14 2 (0.017%) Houdini
14 2 (0.017%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 152 (1.32%) SAP S/4HANA
2 77 (0.67%) Remedy ITSM
3 43 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
3 43 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
4 37 (0.32%) Teamcenter
5 32 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 23 (0.20%) Dynamics CRM
6 23 (0.20%) SAP PSCD
7 21 (0.18%) Primavera
8 20 (0.17%) SAP GRC
9 16 (0.14%) Oracle Payroll
10 15 (0.13%) Findur
11 13 (0.11%) Oracle Payables
11 13 (0.11%) Temenos T24
12 12 (0.10%) iTrent
12 12 (0.10%) SAP FI
12 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
13 11 (0.096%) NetSuite
13 11 (0.096%) SAP HR
14 10 (0.087%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,074 (18.01%) Azure
2 2,044 (17.75%) AWS
3 525 (4.56%) GitHub
4 498 (4.33%) Azure DevOps
5 467 (4.06%) Power Platform
6 440 (3.82%) GCP
7 324 (2.81%) GitHub Actions
8 305 (2.65%) Microsoft 365
9 287 (2.49%) Entra ID
10 283 (2.46%) Serverless
11 250 (2.17%) Amazon S3
12 203 (1.76%) AWS Lambda
13 165 (1.43%) SaaS
14 164 (1.42%) OCI
15 162 (1.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 161 (1.40%) Amazon EC2
17 159 (1.38%) Amazon EKS
18 153 (1.33%) PaaS
19 135 (1.17%) OpenShift
20 125 (1.09%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 489 (4.25%) Firewall
2 366 (3.18%) DNS
3 231 (2.01%) WAN
4 230 (2.00%) Network Security
5 198 (1.72%) VPN
6 196 (1.70%) LAN
7 179 (1.55%) DHCP
8 148 (1.29%) BGP
9 132 (1.15%) TCP/IP
10 119 (1.03%) OSPF
11 114 (0.99%) Wi-Fi
12 108 (0.94%) VLAN
13 92 (0.80%) Wireless
14 69 (0.60%) MPLS
15 67 (0.58%) IPsec
16 63 (0.55%) SAN
16 63 (0.55%) VSAN
17 62 (0.54%) SD-WAN
18 60 (0.52%) VXLAN
19 58 (0.50%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 357 (3.10%) Power BI
2 309 (2.68%) PostgreSQL
3 281 (2.44%) SQL Server
4 276 (2.40%) Data Warehouse
5 165 (1.43%) Oracle Database
6 153 (1.33%) Metadata
7 136 (1.18%) Data Lake
8 127 (1.10%) Relational Database
9 106 (0.92%) MongoDB
10 105 (0.91%) Amazon RDS
11 99 (0.86%) Oracle Reports
12 96 (0.83%) MySQL
13 89 (0.77%) Pentaho
14 79 (0.69%) NoSQL
15 75 (0.65%) Elasticsearch
16 73 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
17 69 (0.60%) Amazon Athena
18 60 (0.52%) Big Data
18 60 (0.52%) Tableau
19 54 (0.47%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 660 (5.73%) JIRA
2 557 (4.84%) Git
3 466 (4.05%) GitLab
4 460 (4.00%) Jenkins
5 123 (1.07%) Selenium
6 85 (0.74%) SonarQube
7 84 (0.73%) JUnit
8 76 (0.66%) Postman
9 67 (0.58%) Maven
10 66 (0.57%) JMeter
11 56 (0.49%) Cucumber
12 55 (0.48%) Rational DOORS
13 49 (0.43%) Mockito
14 48 (0.42%) Visual Studio
15 45 (0.39%) Cypress.io
16 42 (0.36%) Bitbucket
16 42 (0.36%) Zephyr
17 40 (0.35%) Artifactory
18 39 (0.34%) REST Assured
19 37 (0.32%) Gradle
General
1 2,479 (21.53%) Public Sector
2 2,359 (20.49%) Social Skills
3 863 (7.50%) Analytical Skills
4 768 (6.67%) Finance
5 365 (3.17%) Military
6 291 (2.53%) Aerospace
7 281 (2.44%) Documentation Skills
8 178 (1.55%) Influencing Skills
9 177 (1.54%) Legal
10 149 (1.29%) Telecoms
11 142 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
12 128 (1.11%) Banking
13 112 (0.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 104 (0.90%) Police
15 103 (0.89%) Manufacturing
16 99 (0.86%) Law
17 77 (0.67%) Presentation Skills
18 54 (0.47%) Aviation
19 41 (0.36%) Marketing
20 40 (0.35%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,810 (15.72%) Architect
2 1,288 (11.19%) Developer
3 1,078 (9.36%) Senior
4 975 (8.47%) Lead
5 701 (6.09%) Analyst
6 622 (5.40%) Consultant
7 527 (4.58%) Data Engineer
8 472 (4.10%) DevOps Engineer
9 400 (3.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 364 (3.16%) Technical Architect
11 351 (3.05%) Solutions Architect
12 334 (2.90%) Software Engineer
13 279 (2.42%) Security Architect
14 265 (2.30%) Network Engineer
15 234 (2.03%) Java Developer
16 232 (2.01%) Data Architect
17 225 (1.95%) Designer
18 209 (1.82%) Delivery Manager
19 208 (1.81%) Business Analyst
20 207 (1.80%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 421 (3.66%) REST
2 269 (2.34%) Spring
3 233 (2.02%) Spring Boot
4 226 (1.96%) .NET
5 223 (1.94%) Kafka
6 207 (1.80%) React
6 207 (1.80%) RESTful
7 189 (1.64%) Node.js
8 172 (1.49%) SOAP
9 154 (1.34%) JSON
10 140 (1.22%) AngularJS
11 129 (1.12%) Web Services
12 126 (1.09%) OAuth
13 114 (0.99%) HTML
14 107 (0.93%) Middleware
15 103 (0.89%) PySpark
15 103 (0.89%) XML
16 91 (0.79%) Playwright
17 81 (0.70%) CSS
17 81 (0.70%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 474 (4.12%) Cloud Native
2 396 (3.44%) Onboarding
3 359 (3.12%) Product Ownership
4 322 (2.80%) Data Centre
5 237 (2.06%) Management Information System
6 197 (1.71%) Legacy Systems
7 173 (1.50%) Distributed Systems
8 171 (1.49%) PKI
9 131 (1.14%) CMDB
10 130 (1.13%) Enterprise Software
11 125 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
12 116 (1.01%) Data Structures
13 107 (0.93%) Hybrid Cloud
14 103 (0.89%) Replication
15 101 (0.88%) Clustering
16 94 (0.82%) Public Cloud
17 88 (0.76%) Virtual Team
18 81 (0.70%) Security Operations Centre
19 80 (0.69%) Cyber Threat
19 80 (0.69%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 921 (8.00%) Windows
2 782 (6.79%) Linux
3 307 (2.67%) Windows Server
4 228 (1.98%) Unix
5 154 (1.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 101 (0.88%) Android
7 98 (0.85%) Windows 10
8 65 (0.56%) Solaris
9 64 (0.56%) Apple iOS
10 48 (0.42%) Mac OS
11 41 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
12 36 (0.31%) AIX
13 34 (0.30%) Ubuntu
14 30 (0.26%) CentOS
15 22 (0.19%) VMS
16 21 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
17 17 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
18 15 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
19 13 (0.11%) Windows 7
20 11 (0.096%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,399 (20.84%) Agile
2 1,772 (15.39%) DevOps
3 1,679 (14.58%) CI/CD
4 1,276 (11.08%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,256 (10.91%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,216 (10.56%) Problem-Solving
7 1,041 (9.04%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 888 (7.71%) Infrastructure as Code
9 870 (7.56%) Migration
10 739 (6.42%) ITIL
11 737 (6.40%) Cybersecurity
12 716 (6.22%) Analytics
13 712 (6.18%) Test Automation
14 706 (6.13%) Containerisation
15 687 (5.97%) Software Engineering
16 669 (5.81%) Roadmaps
17 637 (5.53%) Decision-Making
18 629 (5.46%) Data Modelling
19 615 (5.34%) AI
20 612 (5.32%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,289 (11.20%) Python
2 1,122 (9.74%) SQL
3 818 (7.10%) Java
4 519 (4.51%) PowerShell
5 375 (3.26%) JavaScript
6 298 (2.59%) Bash
7 256 (2.22%) C#
8 191 (1.66%) TypeScript
9 180 (1.56%) PL/SQL
10 103 (0.89%) Bicep
11 94 (0.82%) Shell Script
12 87 (0.76%) C++
13 62 (0.54%) C
14 61 (0.53%) Apex Code
15 56 (0.49%) Kotlin
16 55 (0.48%) Ruby
17 50 (0.43%) Go
17 50 (0.43%) Scala
18 40 (0.35%) Groovy
19 36 (0.31%) R
Qualifications
1 8,787 (76.32%) SC Cleared
2 2,169 (18.84%) DV Cleared
3 446 (3.87%) Degree
4 426 (3.70%) BPSS Clearance
5 212 (1.84%) Cisco Certification
6 186 (1.62%) CISSP
7 166 (1.44%) Azure Certification
8 147 (1.28%) Microsoft Certification
9 134 (1.16%) AWS Certification
10 114 (0.99%) CISM
11 108 (0.94%) PMI Certification
12 104 (0.90%) PMP
13 95 (0.83%) CCNP
14 92 (0.80%) CCNA
15 83 (0.72%) ISTQB
16 68 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 64 (0.56%) Computer Science Degree
18 49 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 49 (0.43%) TOGAF Certification
19 48 (0.42%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 444 (3.86%) QA
2 373 (3.24%) Data Quality
3 305 (2.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 300 (2.61%) NIST
5 257 (2.23%) Accessibility
6 245 (2.13%) NCSC
7 213 (1.85%) PMO
8 179 (1.55%) GDPR
9 139 (1.21%) GRC
9 139 (1.21%) SLA
10 76 (0.66%) WCAG
11 64 (0.56%) JSP 440
12 51 (0.44%) NIST 800
13 42 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
14 32 (0.28%) Government Security Classifications
15 28 (0.24%) Def Stans
15 28 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 20000
16 27 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 22 (0.19%) RMADS
18 18 (0.16%) COBIT
System Software
1 795 (6.90%) Docker
2 510 (4.43%) Active Directory
3 384 (3.34%) VMware Infrastructure
4 146 (1.27%) VMware NSX
5 132 (1.15%) VMware ESXi
6 111 (0.96%) vSphere
7 101 (0.88%) Hyper-V
8 79 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
9 45 (0.39%) Oracle RAC
10 37 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
11 30 (0.26%) Firmware
12 22 (0.19%) vCloud
13 20 (0.17%) BitLocker
14 19 (0.17%) NFS
15 18 (0.16%) Postfix
16 16 (0.14%) Squid
17 10 (0.087%) KVM
18 8 (0.069%) Microsoft App-V
19 7 (0.061%) UAG
20 6 (0.052%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 959 (8.33%) Terraform
2 941 (8.17%) Kubernetes
3 419 (3.64%) Ansible
4 266 (2.31%) Grafana
5 211 (1.83%) Prometheus
6 131 (1.14%) vCenter Server
7 104 (0.90%) SCCM
8 82 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
9 70 (0.61%) Argo
10 67 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
11 63 (0.55%) SCOM
12 54 (0.47%) Oracle RMAN
13 50 (0.43%) Puppet
14 44 (0.38%) FortiGate
15 38 (0.33%) Data Guard
16 30 (0.26%) Nagios
17 29 (0.25%) Progress Chef
18 25 (0.22%) Podman
18 25 (0.22%) Red Hat Satellite
19 24 (0.21%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,315 (11.42%) Microsoft
2 897 (7.79%) Oracle
3 561 (4.87%) VMware
4 556 (4.83%) ServiceNow
5 432 (3.75%) SAP
6 312 (2.71%) Cisco
7 215 (1.87%) Google
8 206 (1.79%) Splunk
9 199 (1.73%) Databricks
10 197 (1.71%) Salesforce
11 159 (1.38%) Red Hat
12 138 (1.20%) Informatica
13 137 (1.19%) Talend
14 120 (1.04%) IBM
15 112 (0.97%) Palo Alto
16 105 (0.91%) Juniper
17 97 (0.84%) F5
18 93 (0.81%) SolarWinds
19 89 (0.77%) Fortinet
20 88 (0.76%) Remedy