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

6 months to
18 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,988 5,230 8,099
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 23.08% 17.84% 18.20%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.32% 58.51% 59.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,692 3,416 5,206
10th Percentile £363 £330 £358
25th Percentile £449 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.22%
75th Percentile £620 £626 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -6.36% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 826 280 531
10th Percentile £17.71 £20.12 £14.27
25th Percentile £20.50 £24.66 £21.55
Median hourly rate £35.00 £56.75 £54.56
Median % change year-on-year -38.33% +4.01% -9.07%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £78.39 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.75 £60.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year -50.43% +9.09% -4.35%

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 14,619 8,939 13,564
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.79% 30.49% 30.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,613 5,637 8,379
10th Percentile £333 £288 £300
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £650
90th Percentile £719 £715 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,077 474 1,019
10th Percentile £16.17 £18.51 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.72 £24.50 £18.00
Median hourly rate £29.61 £42.50 £38.16
Median % change year-on-year -30.33% +11.39% -23.69%
75th Percentile £67.50 £67.50 £61.82
90th Percentile £84.00 £81.88 £75.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £48.82 £39.92
% change year-on-year -43.66% +22.28% -17.79%

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 18 March 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 18 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Top 18 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 18 March 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 +1 8,676 £525 -4.55% 1,839
UK excluding London +1 5,523 £515 -6.36% 1,565
London +6 3,053 £525 - 493
Work from Home +4 2,696 £525 - 801
South East +1 1,996 £525 -4.55% 560
South West 0 1,290 £538 -4.02% 365
Midlands +4 862 £485 -11.82% 151
North of England -1 821 £488 -2.48% 277
West Midlands +4 697 £492 -10.71% 112
North West -1 518 £500 - 147
East of England +2 357 £494 -1.30% 144
Yorkshire -8 186 £500 -4.76% 69
Scotland +13 182 £500 +12.68% 67
East Midlands +1 162 £434 -15.24% 39
North East 0 149 £450 -4.76% 62
Wales +1 81 £515 -3.25% 30
Northern Ireland +15 26 £475 +55.81% 9
Channel Islands - 1 - -

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
1 380 (3.80%) Confluence
2 225 (2.25%) SharePoint
3 145 (1.45%) Microsoft Exchange
4 139 (1.39%) SAS
5 93 (0.93%) Apache Spark
6 84 (0.84%) Apache
7 62 (0.62%) Apache Airflow
8 42 (0.42%) nginx
9 40 (0.40%) WebLogic
10 29 (0.29%) Skype for Business
11 22 (0.22%) Jupyter
12 20 (0.20%) CMS
13 17 (0.17%) IIS
13 17 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
14 15 (0.15%) Tuxedo
15 12 (0.12%) Tomcat
16 10 (0.10%) Oracle Workflow
17 9 (0.090%) ArcGIS
18 6 (0.060%) NetWeaver
18 6 (0.060%) OpenStack
Applications
1 254 (2.54%) Microsoft Office
2 203 (2.03%) Microsoft Excel
3 124 (1.24%) Microsoft Project
4 72 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 47 (0.47%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.13%) Simulink
8 6 (0.060%) Sketch
8 6 (0.060%) Windchill
9 5 (0.050%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.050%) Siemens NX
10 4 (0.040%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.020%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.020%) CATIA
11 2 (0.020%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.020%) InVision
11 2 (0.020%) Lectora
11 2 (0.020%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.020%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.020%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 117 (1.17%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (0.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 34 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
5 27 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
5 27 (0.27%) Teamcenter
6 19 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
6 19 (0.19%) SAP PP
7 16 (0.16%) Maximo
8 15 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
8 15 (0.15%) SAP MM
9 12 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
10 11 (0.11%) Temenos T24
11 9 (0.090%) Primavera
11 9 (0.090%) SAP HR
11 9 (0.090%) SAP PM
12 8 (0.080%) SAP ERP
12 8 (0.080%) SAP HCM
12 8 (0.080%) SAP Payroll
12 8 (0.080%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,713 (17.15%) AWS
2 1,664 (16.66%) Azure
3 466 (4.67%) GitHub
4 425 (4.26%) GCP
5 385 (3.85%) Azure DevOps
6 374 (3.74%) Power Platform
7 314 (3.14%) Microsoft 365
8 279 (2.79%) Serverless
9 251 (2.51%) Entra ID
10 247 (2.47%) GitHub Actions
11 206 (2.06%) Amazon S3
12 182 (1.82%) AWS Lambda
13 180 (1.80%) OpenShift
14 147 (1.47%) AWS CloudFormation
15 136 (1.36%) Amazon EC2
15 136 (1.36%) Amazon EKS
16 128 (1.28%) PaaS
17 121 (1.21%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 121 (1.21%) IaaS
18 113 (1.13%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 461 (4.62%) Firewall
2 279 (2.79%) DNS
3 226 (2.26%) Network Security
4 215 (2.15%) WAN
5 183 (1.83%) VPN
6 182 (1.82%) LAN
7 143 (1.43%) BGP
8 137 (1.37%) TCP/IP
9 132 (1.32%) DHCP
10 104 (1.04%) OSPF
11 96 (0.96%) Wireless
12 88 (0.88%) VLAN
13 75 (0.75%) Wi-Fi
14 73 (0.73%) MPLS
15 55 (0.55%) SAN
16 54 (0.54%) IPsec
17 53 (0.53%) SSL
18 51 (0.51%) Cisco ISE
19 44 (0.44%) SD-WAN
20 43 (0.43%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 277 (2.77%) Power BI
2 270 (2.70%) PostgreSQL
3 182 (1.82%) Data Warehouse
4 168 (1.68%) SQL Server
5 129 (1.29%) Metadata
6 114 (1.14%) Oracle Database
7 108 (1.08%) NoSQL
8 106 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
9 104 (1.04%) MongoDB
10 100 (1.00%) Relational Database
11 90 (0.90%) Data Lake
12 89 (0.89%) Azure SQL Database
13 74 (0.74%) MySQL
14 73 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
15 72 (0.72%) Big Data
16 63 (0.63%) Pentaho
17 57 (0.57%) Tableau
18 55 (0.55%) Amazon Redshift
19 53 (0.53%) Delta Lake
20 44 (0.44%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 597 (5.98%) JIRA
2 481 (4.82%) Git
3 399 (3.99%) Jenkins
4 355 (3.55%) GitLab
5 116 (1.16%) Selenium
6 86 (0.86%) JUnit
7 81 (0.81%) Postman
8 56 (0.56%) Rational DOORS
9 53 (0.53%) Bitbucket
10 52 (0.52%) SonarQube
11 51 (0.51%) Cypress.io
12 47 (0.47%) Cucumber
13 46 (0.46%) Artifactory
13 46 (0.46%) JMeter
14 43 (0.43%) Maven
15 42 (0.42%) Oracle APEX
16 40 (0.40%) Mockito
17 38 (0.38%) Visual Studio
18 29 (0.29%) REST Assured
19 23 (0.23%) Metasploit
General
1 2,527 (25.30%) Public Sector
2 2,339 (23.42%) Social Skills
3 840 (8.41%) Analytical Skills
4 695 (6.96%) Finance
5 337 (3.37%) Military
6 275 (2.75%) Documentation Skills
7 235 (2.35%) Aerospace
8 186 (1.86%) Manufacturing
9 182 (1.82%) Telecoms
10 156 (1.56%) Legal
11 128 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
12 121 (1.21%) Banking
13 114 (1.14%) Organisational Skills
14 112 (1.12%) Electronics
14 112 (1.12%) Marketing
15 107 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
16 74 (0.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 73 (0.73%) Law
18 55 (0.55%) Police
19 38 (0.38%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,455 (14.57%) Architect
2 987 (9.88%) Developer
3 878 (8.79%) Senior
4 759 (7.60%) Analyst
5 622 (6.23%) Consultant
6 620 (6.21%) Lead
7 411 (4.11%) DevOps Engineer
8 395 (3.95%) Data Engineer
9 283 (2.83%) Solutions Architect
10 272 (2.72%) Technical Architect
11 270 (2.70%) Network Engineer
12 268 (2.68%) Software Engineer
13 265 (2.65%) Business Analyst
14 233 (2.33%) Support Engineer
15 185 (1.85%) Tester
16 184 (1.84%) Designer
17 183 (1.83%) Project Manager
17 183 (1.83%) Security Architect
18 180 (1.80%) Azure Engineer
19 173 (1.73%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 368 (3.68%) REST
2 227 (2.27%) Spring
3 215 (2.15%) Kafka
4 214 (2.14%) Node.js
5 193 (1.93%) React
6 169 (1.69%) Spring Boot
7 165 (1.65%) SOAP
8 164 (1.64%) JSON
9 155 (1.55%) .NET
10 151 (1.51%) LDAP
11 129 (1.29%) RESTful
12 123 (1.23%) AngularJS
13 120 (1.20%) HTML
14 119 (1.19%) PySpark
15 117 (1.17%) Web Services
16 108 (1.08%) OAuth
17 104 (1.04%) Oracle Fusion
18 99 (0.99%) XML
19 95 (0.95%) CSS
20 84 (0.84%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 321 (3.21%) Product Ownership
2 316 (3.16%) Data Centre
3 300 (3.00%) Cloud Native
4 249 (2.49%) Onboarding
5 209 (2.09%) PKI
6 187 (1.87%) Management Information System
7 140 (1.40%) Security Posture
8 130 (1.30%) Legacy Systems
9 122 (1.22%) Self-Motivation
10 115 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
11 104 (1.04%) Replication
12 86 (0.86%) Public Cloud
13 85 (0.85%) Distributed Systems
14 81 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
15 80 (0.80%) Hybrid Cloud
16 72 (0.72%) Data Structures
17 69 (0.69%) Cyber Threat
18 68 (0.68%) Driving Licence
19 59 (0.59%) Clustering
20 57 (0.57%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 885 (8.86%) Windows
2 720 (7.21%) Linux
3 241 (2.41%) Windows Server
4 137 (1.37%) Windows 10
5 131 (1.31%) Android
6 127 (1.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 127 (1.27%) Unix
7 70 (0.70%) Mac OS
8 53 (0.53%) Apple iOS
9 49 (0.49%) Ubuntu
10 32 (0.32%) VMS
10 32 (0.32%) Windows Server 2016
11 25 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
12 22 (0.22%) CentOS
12 22 (0.22%) Solaris
13 20 (0.20%) Windows 7
14 14 (0.14%) AIX
15 13 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
16 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
17 10 (0.10%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,944 (19.46%) Agile
2 1,504 (15.06%) DevOps
3 1,331 (13.33%) CI/CD
4 1,195 (11.96%) Problem-Solving
5 921 (9.22%) Stakeholder Management
6 851 (8.52%) Migration
7 820 (8.21%) Continuous Improvement
8 725 (7.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 642 (6.43%) Cybersecurity
10 625 (6.26%) Infrastructure as Code
11 610 (6.11%) ITIL
12 571 (5.72%) Analytics
13 557 (5.58%) Test Automation
14 553 (5.54%) Roadmaps
15 548 (5.49%) Containerisation
16 484 (4.85%) Software Engineering
17 466 (4.67%) Business Intelligence
17 466 (4.67%) Scrum
18 464 (4.65%) Data Modelling
19 434 (4.35%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 1,196 (11.97%) Python
2 878 (8.79%) SQL
3 634 (6.35%) PowerShell
4 569 (5.70%) Java
5 423 (4.24%) JavaScript
6 225 (2.25%) Bash
7 208 (2.08%) C#
8 197 (1.97%) TypeScript
9 114 (1.14%) C++
10 108 (1.08%) PL/SQL
11 106 (1.06%) Shell Script
12 77 (0.77%) Go
13 71 (0.71%) Ruby
14 66 (0.66%) C
15 54 (0.54%) Scala
16 49 (0.49%) Ada
17 45 (0.45%) Kusto Query Language
18 43 (0.43%) Bicep
19 42 (0.42%) R
20 39 (0.39%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 7,620 (76.29%) SC Cleared
2 1,706 (17.08%) DV Cleared
3 490 (4.91%) Degree
4 308 (3.08%) BPSS Clearance
5 182 (1.82%) Cisco Certification
6 181 (1.81%) CISSP
7 141 (1.41%) AWS Certification
8 130 (1.30%) Azure Certification
9 121 (1.21%) CCNP
10 116 (1.16%) CISM
11 109 (1.09%) Microsoft Certification
12 86 (0.86%) Computer Science Degree
13 80 (0.80%) CCNA
14 67 (0.67%) ITIL Certification
15 65 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
16 59 (0.59%) ISTQB
16 59 (0.59%) PMP
17 58 (0.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 52 (0.52%) PMI Certification
19 51 (0.51%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 326 (3.26%) QA
2 315 (3.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 301 (3.01%) NIST
4 293 (2.93%) Data Quality
5 226 (2.26%) NCSC
6 184 (1.84%) GDPR
7 182 (1.82%) Accessibility
8 125 (1.25%) SLA
9 117 (1.17%) PMO
10 70 (0.70%) JSP 440
11 61 (0.61%) GRC
12 49 (0.49%) WCAG
13 45 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials
14 43 (0.43%) NIST 800
15 41 (0.41%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 39 (0.39%) COBIT
17 33 (0.33%) Def Stans
17 33 (0.33%) PCI DSS
18 29 (0.29%) RMADS
19 25 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 667 (6.68%) Docker
2 488 (4.89%) Active Directory
3 256 (2.56%) VMware Infrastructure
4 95 (0.95%) VMware NSX
5 79 (0.79%) vSphere
6 65 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
7 64 (0.64%) Hyper-V
8 59 (0.59%) Virtual Machines
9 30 (0.30%) Firmware
10 29 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
11 21 (0.21%) BitLocker
12 19 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
13 17 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 15 (0.15%) NFS
15 10 (0.10%) Postfix
15 10 (0.10%) vCloud
16 9 (0.090%) Squid
17 7 (0.070%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.060%) KVM
18 6 (0.060%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 857 (8.58%) Kubernetes
2 799 (8.00%) Terraform
3 321 (3.21%) Ansible
4 249 (2.49%) Grafana
5 204 (2.04%) Prometheus
6 133 (1.33%) Single Sign-On
7 100 (1.00%) SCCM
8 89 (0.89%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 89 (0.89%) vCenter Server
9 70 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
10 69 (0.69%) Argo
11 49 (0.49%) FortiGate
12 39 (0.39%) Podman
13 38 (0.38%) Packer
14 35 (0.35%) vRealize
15 33 (0.33%) Puppet
16 31 (0.31%) Progress Chef
17 30 (0.30%) OPNET
18 28 (0.28%) Kibana
19 25 (0.25%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 1,078 (10.79%) Microsoft
2 562 (5.63%) Oracle
3 480 (4.81%) VMware
4 431 (4.32%) Cisco
5 415 (4.15%) ServiceNow
6 409 (4.09%) SAP
7 244 (2.44%) Splunk
8 196 (1.96%) Red Hat
9 174 (1.74%) Databricks
10 162 (1.62%) Google
11 145 (1.45%) CyberArk
12 141 (1.41%) Salesforce
13 132 (1.32%) Juniper
14 130 (1.30%) Atlassian
15 129 (1.29%) Palo Alto
16 121 (1.21%) IBM
17 105 (1.05%) Dell
18 93 (0.93%) HP
19 91 (0.91%) Talend
20 79 (0.79%) Aruba