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

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,940 6,169 6,708
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.89% 18.66% 17.72%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.75% 58.65% 60.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,281 3,941 4,237
10th Percentile £398 £325 £350
25th Percentile £463 £438 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.42% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £719 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £540 £536 £550
% change year-on-year +0.75% -2.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 868 637 388
10th Percentile £20.00 £18.51 £20.12
25th Percentile £29.07 £18.87 £30.00
Median hourly rate £63.31 £25.15 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +151.72% -58.08% -
75th Percentile £76.19 £33.75 £71.25
90th Percentile £91.31 £70.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +158.45% -58.08% +2.05%

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 17,368 10,519 11,093
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.84% 31.82% 29.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,521 6,557 6,724
10th Percentile £355 £282 £310
25th Percentile £447 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.43% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £634
90th Percentile £713 £703 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £520
% change year-on-year +5.00% -3.85% -3.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,440 884 592
10th Percentile £16.50 £17.87 £18.13
25th Percentile £25.00 £18.87 £25.47
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £47.84
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -47.43% -10.88%
75th Percentile £71.43 £42.00 £68.75
90th Percentile £88.75 £70.00 £76.17
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -49.70% -3.66%

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 8 October 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 8 October 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 8 October 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 10,284 £550 +2.33% 5,590
UK excluding London +1 6,631 £540 +0.75% 4,037
London +6 3,690 £550 +2.33% 1,657
Work from Home +2 3,180 £530 -1.35% 2,906
South East +1 2,258 £570 +8.57% 1,205
South West 0 1,377 £550 - 793
North of England +2 1,317 £515 -1.44% 730
Midlands 0 922 £481 -7.33% 426
North West +1 798 £530 -3.68% 419
West Midlands 0 774 £475 -8.65% 278
East of England 0 439 £550 - 415
Scotland +13 306 £488 +0.52% 276
Yorkshire +1 294 £492 - 124
North East 0 245 £466 -11.19% 189
East Midlands 0 140 £500 +9.59% 146
Wales +2 110 £550 +4.76% 118
Northern Ireland +2 37 £650 +21.50% 105

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
1 397 (3.32%) Confluence
2 255 (2.14%) SharePoint
3 147 (1.23%) SAS
4 116 (0.97%) Microsoft Exchange
5 109 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
6 107 (0.90%) Apache Spark
7 105 (0.88%) Apache
8 45 (0.38%) nginx
9 40 (0.34%) Jupyter
10 39 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 37 (0.31%) CMS
12 24 (0.20%) IIS
13 23 (0.19%) Tomcat
14 22 (0.18%) Skype for Business
15 17 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
15 17 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 16 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
17 14 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
18 11 (0.092%) JBoss
18 11 (0.092%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 213 (1.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 155 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
3 104 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 99 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 20 (0.17%) Windchill
9 19 (0.16%) Revit
10 18 (0.15%) SOLIDWORKS
11 9 (0.075%) Adobe XD
11 9 (0.075%) Chatbot
11 9 (0.075%) Simulink
12 6 (0.050%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 6 (0.050%) Sketch
13 4 (0.034%) OrCAD
13 4 (0.034%) Trello
14 2 (0.017%) Gliffy
14 2 (0.017%) Houdini
14 2 (0.017%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 150 (1.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 81 (0.68%) Remedy ITSM
3 60 (0.50%) Oracle ERP
4 49 (0.41%) Oracle EBS
5 40 (0.34%) Teamcenter
6 33 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
6 33 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 27 (0.23%) Oracle Payroll
8 26 (0.22%) SAP PSCD
9 24 (0.20%) SAP FI
9 24 (0.20%) SAP GRC
10 18 (0.15%) Primavera
11 17 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
11 17 (0.14%) SAP HR
12 15 (0.13%) SAP CO
13 14 (0.12%) Oracle General Ledger
13 14 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
13 14 (0.12%) SAP Payroll
14 13 (0.11%) Maximo
14 13 (0.11%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 2,158 (18.07%) Azure
2 2,096 (17.55%) AWS
3 534 (4.47%) GitHub
4 520 (4.36%) Azure DevOps
5 494 (4.14%) Power Platform
6 467 (3.91%) GCP
7 365 (3.06%) GitHub Actions
8 345 (2.89%) Entra ID
9 338 (2.83%) Microsoft 365
10 278 (2.33%) Serverless
11 241 (2.02%) Amazon S3
12 202 (1.69%) AWS Lambda
13 179 (1.50%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 175 (1.47%) OCI
15 174 (1.46%) Amazon EKS
16 162 (1.36%) SaaS
17 153 (1.28%) Amazon EC2
18 144 (1.21%) OpenShift
19 133 (1.11%) AWS CloudFormation
20 119 (1.00%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 451 (3.78%) Firewall
2 378 (3.17%) DNS
3 249 (2.09%) Network Security
4 205 (1.72%) VPN
5 202 (1.69%) WAN
6 185 (1.55%) DHCP
7 155 (1.30%) LAN
8 143 (1.20%) TCP/IP
9 126 (1.06%) BGP
10 115 (0.96%) Wi-Fi
11 93 (0.78%) VLAN
12 87 (0.73%) Wireless
13 84 (0.70%) OSPF
14 68 (0.57%) SSL
15 66 (0.55%) MPLS
15 66 (0.55%) SAN
16 62 (0.52%) VSAN
17 59 (0.49%) IPsec
18 55 (0.46%) SD-WAN
19 50 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 348 (2.91%) Power BI
2 311 (2.60%) PostgreSQL
3 280 (2.35%) SQL Server
4 255 (2.14%) Data Warehouse
5 211 (1.77%) Metadata
6 189 (1.58%) Oracle Database
7 148 (1.24%) Data Lake
8 145 (1.21%) Relational Database
9 142 (1.19%) MongoDB
10 116 (0.97%) Amazon RDS
11 110 (0.92%) MySQL
12 96 (0.80%) NoSQL
13 81 (0.68%) Oracle Reports
14 71 (0.59%) Pentaho
15 69 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
16 65 (0.54%) Amazon Athena
17 59 (0.49%) Big Data
18 54 (0.45%) Amazon Aurora
19 51 (0.43%) DynamoDB
19 51 (0.43%) Redis
Development Applications
1 648 (5.43%) JIRA
2 596 (4.99%) Git
3 537 (4.50%) GitLab
4 520 (4.36%) Jenkins
5 158 (1.32%) Selenium
6 92 (0.77%) Postman
7 83 (0.70%) Maven
8 81 (0.68%) JMeter
9 80 (0.67%) Cucumber
10 79 (0.66%) JUnit
11 76 (0.64%) SonarQube
12 57 (0.48%) Cypress.io
13 53 (0.44%) Gradle
14 47 (0.39%) REST Assured
15 46 (0.39%) Mockito
16 45 (0.38%) Gatling
17 41 (0.34%) Visual Studio
18 39 (0.33%) Artifactory
19 36 (0.30%) Zephyr
20 33 (0.28%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,712 (22.71%) Social Skills
2 2,493 (20.88%) Public Sector
3 973 (8.15%) Analytical Skills
4 784 (6.57%) Finance
5 439 (3.68%) Military
6 368 (3.08%) Aerospace
7 310 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
8 241 (2.02%) Influencing Skills
9 203 (1.70%) Organisational Skills
10 182 (1.52%) Manufacturing
11 173 (1.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 172 (1.44%) Legal
13 165 (1.38%) Telecoms
14 139 (1.16%) Banking
15 135 (1.13%) Police
16 121 (1.01%) Law
17 73 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
18 58 (0.49%) Local Government
19 57 (0.48%) Aviation
20 42 (0.35%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,918 (16.06%) Architect
2 1,225 (10.26%) Developer
3 1,153 (9.66%) Senior
4 1,054 (8.83%) Lead
5 698 (5.85%) Consultant
6 687 (5.75%) Analyst
7 516 (4.32%) DevOps Engineer
8 477 (3.99%) Data Engineer
9 408 (3.42%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 378 (3.17%) Solutions Architect
11 350 (2.93%) Technical Architect
12 306 (2.56%) Data Architect
13 295 (2.47%) Security Architect
14 254 (2.13%) Software Engineer
15 242 (2.03%) Network Engineer
16 231 (1.93%) Administrator
17 219 (1.83%) Java Developer
18 204 (1.71%) Designer
19 201 (1.68%) Cloud Engineer
20 200 (1.68%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,026 (8.59%) Terraform
2 491 (4.11%) REST
3 271 (2.27%) Kafka
4 251 (2.10%) Spring
5 232 (1.94%) Spring Boot
6 220 (1.84%) RESTful
7 200 (1.68%) React
8 197 (1.65%) .NET
9 181 (1.52%) SOAP
10 177 (1.48%) Node.js
11 159 (1.33%) JSON
12 152 (1.27%) OAuth
13 144 (1.21%) HTML
14 139 (1.16%) XML
15 131 (1.10%) Middleware
16 115 (0.96%) Oracle Fusion
17 113 (0.95%) Web Services
18 111 (0.93%) AngularJS
19 107 (0.90%) CSS
20 101 (0.85%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 555 (4.65%) Cloud Native
2 485 (4.06%) Onboarding
3 385 (3.22%) Product Ownership
4 303 (2.54%) Data Centre
5 285 (2.39%) Management Information System
6 197 (1.65%) Enterprise Software
7 188 (1.57%) Legacy Systems
8 183 (1.53%) PKI
9 169 (1.42%) CMDB
10 138 (1.16%) Distributed Systems
11 134 (1.12%) Hybrid Cloud
12 126 (1.06%) Cyber Threat
13 125 (1.05%) Replication
14 118 (0.99%) Operational Technology
15 105 (0.88%) Self-Motivation
16 102 (0.85%) Security Posture
17 101 (0.85%) Data Structures
18 99 (0.83%) Security Operations Centre
19 89 (0.75%) Public Cloud
20 88 (0.74%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 998 (8.36%) Windows
2 798 (6.68%) Linux
3 372 (3.12%) Windows Server
4 228 (1.91%) Unix
5 151 (1.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 147 (1.23%) Windows 10
7 80 (0.67%) Solaris
8 70 (0.59%) Android
9 44 (0.37%) CentOS
9 44 (0.37%) Mac OS
10 40 (0.34%) Ubuntu
11 38 (0.32%) Apple iOS
12 37 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
13 27 (0.23%) AIX
14 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
15 24 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
16 22 (0.18%) VMS
17 19 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
18 17 (0.14%) Rocky
19 11 (0.092%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,535 (21.23%) Agile
2 1,846 (15.46%) CI/CD
3 1,827 (15.30%) DevOps
4 1,720 (14.41%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,494 (12.51%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,290 (10.80%) Problem-Solving
7 1,225 (10.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,054 (8.83%) Infrastructure as Code
9 949 (7.95%) Migration
10 896 (7.50%) Cybersecurity
11 803 (6.73%) Test Automation
12 802 (6.72%) ITIL
13 785 (6.57%) Containerisation
14 771 (6.46%) AI
14 771 (6.46%) Decision-Making
15 768 (6.43%) Roadmaps
16 764 (6.40%) Technical Leadership
17 732 (6.13%) Analytics
18 695 (5.82%) Software Engineering
19 650 (5.44%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 1,396 (11.69%) Python
2 1,117 (9.36%) SQL
3 797 (6.68%) Java
4 610 (5.11%) PowerShell
5 427 (3.58%) JavaScript
6 375 (3.14%) Bash
7 227 (1.90%) C#
7 227 (1.90%) TypeScript
8 151 (1.26%) PL/SQL
9 134 (1.12%) Bicep
10 82 (0.69%) Shell Script
11 65 (0.54%) Go
12 59 (0.49%) C++
12 59 (0.49%) Scala
13 58 (0.49%) Groovy
14 49 (0.41%) C
15 48 (0.40%) Kotlin
16 40 (0.34%) T-SQL
17 39 (0.33%) Apex Code
18 37 (0.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 9,102 (76.23%) SC Cleared
2 2,240 (18.76%) DV Cleared
3 576 (4.82%) BPSS Clearance
4 501 (4.20%) Degree
5 228 (1.91%) CISSP
6 186 (1.56%) Azure Certification
7 182 (1.52%) Cisco Certification
8 165 (1.38%) AWS Certification
9 163 (1.37%) Microsoft Certification
10 143 (1.20%) CISM
11 106 (0.89%) PMI Certification
12 96 (0.80%) ISTQB
13 95 (0.80%) PMP
14 84 (0.70%) CCNP
15 79 (0.66%) Computer Science Degree
16 65 (0.54%) CCNA
17 55 (0.46%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 54 (0.45%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 48 (0.40%) DBS Check
20 47 (0.39%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 543 (4.55%) QA
2 404 (3.38%) Data Quality
3 342 (2.86%) NIST
4 335 (2.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 318 (2.66%) NCSC
6 293 (2.45%) Accessibility
7 221 (1.85%) PMO
8 187 (1.57%) SLA
9 181 (1.52%) GDPR
10 172 (1.44%) GRC
11 85 (0.71%) WCAG
12 55 (0.46%) JSP 440
13 51 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
14 42 (0.35%) NIST 800
15 38 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
16 36 (0.30%) Def Stans
17 33 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 23 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 22 (0.18%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 22 (0.18%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 848 (7.10%) Docker
2 650 (5.44%) Active Directory
3 440 (3.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 138 (1.16%) VMware ESXi
5 136 (1.14%) Hyper-V
6 135 (1.13%) VMware NSX
7 133 (1.11%) vSphere
8 91 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
9 48 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
10 40 (0.34%) Firmware
11 37 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
12 24 (0.20%) BitLocker
12 24 (0.20%) vCloud
13 22 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
14 18 (0.15%) NFS
15 14 (0.12%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 11 (0.092%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 11 (0.092%) Squid
17 10 (0.084%) KVM
18 8 (0.067%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 1,042 (8.73%) Kubernetes
2 453 (3.79%) Ansible
3 274 (2.29%) Grafana
4 201 (1.68%) Prometheus
5 144 (1.21%) SCCM
6 125 (1.05%) vCenter Server
7 103 (0.86%) Microsoft Intune
8 97 (0.81%) SCOM
9 67 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
10 64 (0.54%) Argo
11 55 (0.46%) Kibana
12 42 (0.35%) Puppet
13 41 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
14 38 (0.32%) Data Guard
15 37 (0.31%) NetBackup
16 33 (0.28%) Istio
17 31 (0.26%) VxRail
18 29 (0.24%) Control-M
19 24 (0.20%) Failover Clustering
19 24 (0.20%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 1,610 (13.48%) Microsoft
2 959 (8.03%) Oracle
3 593 (4.97%) VMware
4 526 (4.41%) ServiceNow
5 442 (3.70%) SAP
6 284 (2.38%) Google
7 277 (2.32%) Cisco
8 222 (1.86%) Splunk
9 189 (1.58%) Databricks
10 152 (1.27%) Salesforce
11 132 (1.11%) Red Hat
12 130 (1.09%) Palo Alto
13 117 (0.98%) Informatica
14 109 (0.91%) Dynatrace
15 99 (0.83%) CyberArk
15 99 (0.83%) IBM
16 98 (0.82%) Talend
17 93 (0.78%) Remedy
18 75 (0.63%) Citrix
18 75 (0.63%) SolarWinds