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

6 months to
19 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 11,942 5,996 6,888
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.77% 18.20% 17.88%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.78% 58.00% 61.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,306 3,893 4,465
10th Percentile £400 £348 £350
25th Percentile £460 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £548 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.05% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £538 £550
% change year-on-year - -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 848 594 410
10th Percentile £20.00 £18.51 £19.96
25th Percentile £35.00 £18.87 £27.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +158.45% -58.08% -
75th Percentile £77.50 £35.50 £72.35
90th Percentile £89.83 £70.11 £80.06
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +158.45% -58.08% +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 17,362 10,338 11,265
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.65% 31.37% 29.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,561 6,458 6,928
10th Percentile £350 £300 £313
25th Percentile £440 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £527 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.38% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £714 £711 £729
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,376 838 653
10th Percentile £17.09 £17.87 £17.00
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £24.18
Median hourly rate £47.77 £25.15 £49.00
Median % change year-on-year +89.94% -48.67% -9.26%
75th Percentile £72.54 £45.00 £68.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £71.00 £76.08
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £52.50
% change year-on-year +88.87% -52.10% +1.17%

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 19 September 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 19 September 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 19 September 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 10,286 £550 +2.33% 5,159
UK excluding London +1 6,713 £538 - 3,648
London +6 3,632 £550 +2.33% 1,617
Work from Home +2 3,141 £525 -2.33% 2,623
South East +1 2,327 £565 +5.12% 980
South West 0 1,423 £550 - 818
North of England +3 1,281 £515 - 694
Midlands 0 951 £481 -6.70% 339
West Midlands +1 813 £481 -7.33% 227
North West +1 748 £530 -3.64% 425
East of England 0 400 £550 - 473
Scotland +18 319 £481 -0.82% 257
Yorkshire +3 303 £492 +0.20% 131
North East 0 251 £475 -1.04% 140
East Midlands -1 131 £450 -2.70% 112
Wales +4 105 £550 - 62
Northern Ireland +2 36 £650 +18.18% 76

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
1 396 (3.32%) Confluence
2 273 (2.29%) SharePoint
3 173 (1.45%) SAS
4 131 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
5 111 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
6 103 (0.86%) Apache
6 103 (0.86%) Apache Spark
7 39 (0.33%) Jupyter
8 38 (0.32%) nginx
9 35 (0.29%) WebLogic
10 23 (0.19%) Oracle Application Server
11 22 (0.18%) CMS
11 22 (0.18%) Skype for Business
12 20 (0.17%) IIS
13 19 (0.16%) Tomcat
14 16 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 16 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
14 16 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
15 12 (0.10%) NetWeaver
16 11 (0.092%) JBoss
Applications
1 212 (1.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 165 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
3 104 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 97 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 20 (0.17%) AutoCAD
8 18 (0.15%) Revit
9 17 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
10 14 (0.12%) Windchill
11 10 (0.084%) Adobe XD
11 10 (0.084%) Simulink
12 8 (0.067%) Chatbot
12 8 (0.067%) Sketch
13 7 (0.059%) Notepad++
14 6 (0.050%) Adobe Creative Suite
15 4 (0.033%) Trello
16 3 (0.025%) OrCAD
17 2 (0.017%) Houdini
17 2 (0.017%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 154 (1.29%) SAP S/4HANA
2 81 (0.68%) Remedy ITSM
3 56 (0.47%) Oracle ERP
4 41 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
5 33 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 32 (0.27%) Teamcenter
7 30 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
8 26 (0.22%) Oracle Payroll
9 25 (0.21%) SAP GRC
9 25 (0.21%) SAP PSCD
10 19 (0.16%) Primavera
10 19 (0.16%) SAP FI
11 17 (0.14%) SAP HR
12 15 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
13 13 (0.11%) SAP CO
14 12 (0.10%) iTrent
14 12 (0.10%) Maximo
14 12 (0.10%) NetSuite
14 12 (0.10%) Siebel CRM
15 11 (0.092%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 2,167 (18.15%) Azure
2 2,108 (17.65%) AWS
3 522 (4.37%) Azure DevOps
4 520 (4.35%) GitHub
5 483 (4.04%) Power Platform
6 456 (3.82%) GCP
7 350 (2.93%) GitHub Actions
8 340 (2.85%) Microsoft 365
9 323 (2.70%) Entra ID
10 282 (2.36%) Serverless
11 238 (1.99%) Amazon S3
12 207 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
13 176 (1.47%) OCI
14 174 (1.46%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 168 (1.41%) SaaS
16 166 (1.39%) Amazon EKS
17 150 (1.26%) Amazon EC2
18 147 (1.23%) OpenShift
19 128 (1.07%) AWS CloudFormation
20 111 (0.93%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 463 (3.88%) Firewall
2 388 (3.25%) DNS
3 243 (2.03%) Network Security
4 220 (1.84%) WAN
5 201 (1.68%) VPN
6 191 (1.60%) DHCP
7 168 (1.41%) LAN
8 140 (1.17%) TCP/IP
9 132 (1.11%) BGP
10 120 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
11 107 (0.90%) VLAN
12 94 (0.79%) Wireless
13 92 (0.77%) OSPF
14 71 (0.59%) SSL
15 66 (0.55%) MPLS
16 64 (0.54%) VSAN
17 63 (0.53%) SAN
18 62 (0.52%) IPsec
19 60 (0.50%) SD-WAN
20 50 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 345 (2.89%) Power BI
2 312 (2.61%) PostgreSQL
3 285 (2.39%) SQL Server
4 276 (2.31%) Data Warehouse
5 207 (1.73%) Metadata
6 189 (1.58%) Oracle Database
7 146 (1.22%) Data Lake
7 146 (1.22%) Relational Database
8 132 (1.11%) MongoDB
9 112 (0.94%) Amazon RDS
10 106 (0.89%) MySQL
11 97 (0.81%) NoSQL
12 95 (0.80%) Oracle Reports
13 72 (0.60%) Elasticsearch
13 72 (0.60%) Pentaho
14 70 (0.59%) Amazon Athena
15 56 (0.47%) Big Data
16 53 (0.44%) Tableau
17 52 (0.44%) Amazon Redshift
17 52 (0.44%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 662 (5.54%) JIRA
2 593 (4.97%) Git
3 526 (4.40%) GitLab
4 499 (4.18%) Jenkins
5 145 (1.21%) Selenium
6 86 (0.72%) Postman
7 82 (0.69%) SonarQube
8 78 (0.65%) Maven
9 74 (0.62%) JUnit
10 67 (0.56%) JMeter
11 62 (0.52%) Cucumber
12 53 (0.44%) Cypress.io
13 50 (0.42%) Gradle
14 46 (0.39%) Mockito
15 43 (0.36%) Gatling
16 42 (0.35%) REST Assured
17 40 (0.33%) Visual Studio
18 39 (0.33%) Artifactory
18 39 (0.33%) Zephyr
19 32 (0.27%) MSI
General
1 2,680 (22.44%) Social Skills
2 2,428 (20.33%) Public Sector
3 959 (8.03%) Analytical Skills
4 776 (6.50%) Finance
5 426 (3.57%) Military
6 330 (2.76%) Aerospace
7 310 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
8 229 (1.92%) Influencing Skills
9 190 (1.59%) Organisational Skills
10 174 (1.46%) Legal
11 169 (1.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 165 (1.38%) Telecoms
13 153 (1.28%) Manufacturing
14 139 (1.16%) Banking
15 124 (1.04%) Law
16 121 (1.01%) Police
17 72 (0.60%) Presentation Skills
18 51 (0.43%) Local Government
19 48 (0.40%) Aviation
20 47 (0.39%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,944 (16.28%) Architect
2 1,226 (10.27%) Developer
3 1,145 (9.59%) Senior
4 1,055 (8.83%) Lead
5 718 (6.01%) Consultant
6 639 (5.35%) Analyst
7 522 (4.37%) DevOps Engineer
8 488 (4.09%) Data Engineer
9 426 (3.57%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 372 (3.12%) Technical Architect
11 367 (3.07%) Solutions Architect
12 298 (2.50%) Data Architect
13 285 (2.39%) Software Engineer
14 283 (2.37%) Security Architect
15 253 (2.12%) Network Engineer
16 228 (1.91%) Administrator
17 218 (1.83%) Java Developer
18 216 (1.81%) Azure Engineer
19 210 (1.76%) Designer
20 209 (1.75%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,013 (8.48%) Terraform
2 471 (3.94%) REST
3 261 (2.19%) Kafka
4 259 (2.17%) Spring
5 238 (1.99%) Spring Boot
6 214 (1.79%) RESTful
7 209 (1.75%) .NET
8 192 (1.61%) React
9 180 (1.51%) Node.js
10 179 (1.50%) SOAP
11 165 (1.38%) JSON
12 139 (1.16%) OAuth
13 134 (1.12%) HTML
13 134 (1.12%) XML
14 128 (1.07%) Middleware
15 119 (1.00%) AngularJS
15 119 (1.00%) Web Services
16 104 (0.87%) CSS
17 102 (0.85%) Oracle Fusion
18 100 (0.84%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 530 (4.44%) Cloud Native
2 459 (3.84%) Onboarding
3 368 (3.08%) Product Ownership
4 306 (2.56%) Data Centre
5 276 (2.31%) Management Information System
6 184 (1.54%) Legacy Systems
7 183 (1.53%) PKI
8 174 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
9 160 (1.34%) CMDB
10 142 (1.19%) Distributed Systems
11 126 (1.06%) Replication
12 124 (1.04%) Hybrid Cloud
13 122 (1.02%) Cyber Threat
14 117 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
15 112 (0.94%) Operational Technology
16 97 (0.81%) Data Structures
17 93 (0.78%) Security Operations Centre
18 92 (0.77%) Security Posture
19 91 (0.76%) Public Cloud
20 89 (0.75%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 1,006 (8.42%) Windows
2 822 (6.88%) Linux
3 373 (3.12%) Windows Server
4 238 (1.99%) Unix
5 165 (1.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 146 (1.22%) Windows 10
7 79 (0.66%) Android
8 75 (0.63%) Solaris
9 49 (0.41%) Mac OS
10 46 (0.39%) Apple iOS
10 46 (0.39%) CentOS
11 40 (0.33%) Ubuntu
12 39 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
13 32 (0.27%) AIX
14 26 (0.22%) Windows 7
15 25 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
16 23 (0.19%) VMS
17 21 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
18 16 (0.13%) Rocky
19 13 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,539 (21.26%) Agile
2 1,823 (15.27%) DevOps
3 1,805 (15.11%) CI/CD
4 1,644 (13.77%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,454 (12.18%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,283 (10.74%) Problem-Solving
7 1,196 (10.02%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 1,031 (8.63%) Infrastructure as Code
9 953 (7.98%) Migration
10 868 (7.27%) Cybersecurity
11 804 (6.73%) ITIL
12 786 (6.58%) Test Automation
13 762 (6.38%) Containerisation
14 752 (6.30%) Technical Leadership
15 746 (6.25%) Decision-Making
16 732 (6.13%) AI
17 727 (6.09%) Analytics
17 727 (6.09%) Roadmaps
18 696 (5.83%) Software Engineering
19 635 (5.32%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,381 (11.56%) Python
2 1,114 (9.33%) SQL
3 800 (6.70%) Java
4 601 (5.03%) PowerShell
5 406 (3.40%) JavaScript
6 364 (3.05%) Bash
7 233 (1.95%) C#
8 217 (1.82%) TypeScript
9 166 (1.39%) PL/SQL
10 127 (1.06%) Bicep
11 85 (0.71%) Shell Script
12 65 (0.54%) C++
13 61 (0.51%) Scala
14 59 (0.49%) Go
15 55 (0.46%) C
16 51 (0.43%) Groovy
17 48 (0.40%) Kotlin
18 46 (0.39%) Apex Code
19 39 (0.33%) T-SQL
20 35 (0.29%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 9,094 (76.15%) SC Cleared
2 2,264 (18.96%) DV Cleared
3 506 (4.24%) BPSS Clearance
4 478 (4.00%) Degree
5 229 (1.92%) CISSP
6 193 (1.62%) Azure Certification
7 192 (1.61%) Cisco Certification
8 171 (1.43%) Microsoft Certification
9 152 (1.27%) AWS Certification
10 146 (1.22%) CISM
11 111 (0.93%) PMI Certification
12 101 (0.85%) PMP
13 96 (0.80%) ISTQB
14 89 (0.75%) CCNP
15 75 (0.63%) Computer Science Degree
16 71 (0.59%) CCNA
17 61 (0.51%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 54 (0.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 48 (0.40%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
20 46 (0.39%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 536 (4.49%) QA
2 391 (3.27%) Data Quality
3 343 (2.87%) NIST
4 336 (2.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 300 (2.51%) NCSC
6 280 (2.34%) Accessibility
7 225 (1.88%) PMO
8 180 (1.51%) GDPR
9 177 (1.48%) SLA
10 165 (1.38%) GRC
11 85 (0.71%) WCAG
12 61 (0.51%) JSP 440
13 49 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
14 47 (0.39%) NIST 800
15 38 (0.32%) Def Stans
16 31 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
17 25 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 22 (0.18%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 21 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
20 19 (0.16%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 834 (6.98%) Docker
2 640 (5.36%) Active Directory
3 439 (3.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 147 (1.23%) VMware ESXi
5 143 (1.20%) VMware NSX
6 141 (1.18%) Hyper-V
7 133 (1.11%) vSphere
8 94 (0.79%) Virtual Machines
9 46 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
10 42 (0.35%) Firmware
11 40 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
12 26 (0.22%) vCloud
13 23 (0.19%) BitLocker
14 20 (0.17%) NFS
15 18 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
16 14 (0.12%) Squid
17 11 (0.092%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 11 (0.092%) Postfix
18 10 (0.084%) KVM
19 9 (0.075%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 1,016 (8.51%) Kubernetes
2 453 (3.79%) Ansible
3 268 (2.24%) Grafana
4 207 (1.73%) Prometheus
5 137 (1.15%) SCCM
6 134 (1.12%) vCenter Server
7 99 (0.83%) SCOM
8 92 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
9 70 (0.59%) Single Sign-On
10 67 (0.56%) Argo
11 49 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
12 46 (0.39%) Puppet
13 42 (0.35%) Kibana
14 41 (0.34%) Data Guard
15 32 (0.27%) Istio
15 32 (0.27%) NetBackup
15 32 (0.27%) VxRail
16 28 (0.23%) Control-M
17 27 (0.23%) Nagios
17 27 (0.23%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,568 (13.13%) Microsoft
2 961 (8.05%) Oracle
3 612 (5.12%) VMware
4 544 (4.56%) ServiceNow
5 461 (3.86%) SAP
6 302 (2.53%) Cisco
7 256 (2.14%) Google
8 227 (1.90%) Splunk
9 204 (1.71%) Databricks
10 177 (1.48%) Salesforce
11 152 (1.27%) Red Hat
12 129 (1.08%) Palo Alto
13 115 (0.96%) Informatica
14 106 (0.89%) IBM
14 106 (0.89%) Talend
15 103 (0.86%) Dynatrace
16 97 (0.81%) CyberArk
17 92 (0.77%) Remedy
18 84 (0.70%) SolarWinds
19 82 (0.69%) Fortinet