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

6 months to
17 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,906 5,283 7,964
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.67% 17.80% 18.27%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.22% 57.41% 61.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,522 3,422 5,222
10th Percentile £381 £340 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £622 £650
90th Percentile £713 £698 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £533 £550
% change year-on-year -1.45% -3.14% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 839 369 574
10th Percentile £18.13 £18.48 £14.08
25th Percentile £25.22 £18.87 £21.46
Median hourly rate £60.33 £26.28 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year +129.57% -53.48% -6.40%
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.36 £77.74 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.00 £27.25 £57.50
% change year-on-year +120.18% -52.61% -

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 15,756 9,203 13,032
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.31% 31.01% 29.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,481 5,704 8,054
10th Percentile £350 £275 £310
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £616 £638
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £506 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +1.20% -4.76% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,160 598 1,119
10th Percentile £17.20 £17.74 £13.99
25th Percentile £22.68 £21.00 £18.65
Median hourly rate £50.00 £30.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +66.67% -25.00% -27.65%
75th Percentile £72.50 £63.63 £63.75
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.50 £75.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £28.34 £41.50
% change year-on-year +67.75% -31.71% -20.95%

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 17 June 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 17 June 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 17 June 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 9,425 £525 -2.23% 1,899
UK excluding London +1 6,087 £525 -1.45% 1,566
London +7 3,365 £525 - 484
Work from Home +5 2,982 £525 - 944
South East +1 2,254 £550 - 522
South West 0 1,293 £538 -4.44% 423
North of England +2 983 £500 - 274
Midlands +2 905 £469 -10.67% 136
West Midlands +2 787 £469 -10.62% 85
North West 0 536 £520 +3.91% 161
East of England +2 360 £550 +10.00% 116
Scotland +24 270 £500 +12.68% 72
Yorkshire -6 249 £499 +1.37% 61
North East +1 231 £475 -1.04% 55
East Midlands -5 107 £421 -16.91% 51
Wales +6 87 £500 +5.26% 30
Northern Ireland +6 30 £638 +34.21% 25

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
1 400 (3.67%) Confluence
2 235 (2.15%) SharePoint
3 165 (1.51%) SAS
4 132 (1.21%) Microsoft Exchange
5 105 (0.96%) Apache Spark
6 100 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
7 92 (0.84%) Apache
8 46 (0.42%) Jupyter
9 43 (0.39%) nginx
10 35 (0.32%) WebLogic
11 25 (0.23%) Tomcat
12 18 (0.17%) IIS
12 18 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
13 16 (0.15%) NetWeaver
14 15 (0.14%) CMS
14 15 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
15 14 (0.13%) Skype for Business
16 12 (0.11%) ArcGIS
16 12 (0.11%) Tuxedo
17 8 (0.073%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 173 (1.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 146 (1.34%) Microsoft Office
3 79 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
4 76 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 49 (0.45%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.15%) Simulink
7 15 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
8 10 (0.092%) SOLIDWORKS
9 9 (0.083%) AutoCAD
9 9 (0.083%) Chatbot
9 9 (0.083%) Revit
10 7 (0.064%) Notepad++
11 4 (0.037%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.037%) Sketch
12 3 (0.028%) Windchill
13 2 (0.018%) CATIA
13 2 (0.018%) Lectora
13 2 (0.018%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.018%) PlantUML
13 2 (0.018%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 124 (1.14%) SAP S/4HANA
2 61 (0.56%) Remedy ITSM
3 41 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
4 33 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 31 (0.28%) Teamcenter
6 29 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
7 26 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
8 16 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
8 16 (0.15%) Primavera
8 16 (0.15%) SAP GRC
9 15 (0.14%) Findur
9 15 (0.14%) SAP PSCD
10 14 (0.13%) Maximo
11 12 (0.11%) iTrent
11 12 (0.11%) Temenos T24
12 10 (0.092%) Oracle Assets
12 10 (0.092%) SAP HR
13 9 (0.083%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 9 (0.083%) Salesforce CRM
13 9 (0.083%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,965 (18.02%) AWS
2 1,910 (17.51%) Azure
3 456 (4.18%) GitHub
4 427 (3.92%) Azure DevOps
5 420 (3.85%) Power Platform
6 416 (3.81%) GCP
7 279 (2.56%) Serverless
8 273 (2.50%) GitHub Actions
9 271 (2.48%) Microsoft 365
10 260 (2.38%) Entra ID
11 229 (2.10%) Amazon S3
12 195 (1.79%) AWS Lambda
13 165 (1.51%) Amazon EC2
14 159 (1.46%) PaaS
15 157 (1.44%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 144 (1.32%) SaaS
17 140 (1.28%) Amazon EKS
18 138 (1.27%) OCI
19 137 (1.26%) OpenShift
20 120 (1.10%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 455 (4.17%) Firewall
2 306 (2.81%) DNS
3 245 (2.25%) Network Security
4 226 (2.07%) WAN
5 197 (1.81%) LAN
6 179 (1.64%) VPN
7 161 (1.48%) DHCP
8 140 (1.28%) BGP
9 118 (1.08%) OSPF
10 111 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
11 110 (1.01%) VLAN
12 104 (0.95%) TCP/IP
13 87 (0.80%) Wireless
14 67 (0.61%) MPLS
15 59 (0.54%) SD-WAN
16 58 (0.53%) SAN
16 58 (0.53%) VXLAN
17 52 (0.48%) Structured Cabling
18 51 (0.47%) IPsec
19 48 (0.44%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 324 (2.97%) Power BI
2 286 (2.62%) PostgreSQL
3 264 (2.42%) Data Warehouse
4 227 (2.08%) SQL Server
5 159 (1.46%) Oracle Database
6 139 (1.27%) Metadata
7 130 (1.19%) Data Lake
8 116 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
9 112 (1.03%) Relational Database
10 105 (0.96%) MongoDB
11 86 (0.79%) MySQL
11 86 (0.79%) Pentaho
12 84 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
13 82 (0.75%) Oracle Reports
14 77 (0.71%) NoSQL
15 75 (0.69%) Amazon Redshift
16 72 (0.66%) Amazon Athena
17 67 (0.61%) Tableau
18 65 (0.60%) Big Data
19 56 (0.51%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 625 (5.73%) JIRA
2 488 (4.47%) Git
3 457 (4.19%) GitLab
4 429 (3.93%) Jenkins
5 121 (1.11%) Selenium
6 87 (0.80%) JUnit
7 86 (0.79%) Postman
8 80 (0.73%) SonarQube
9 65 (0.60%) JMeter
10 58 (0.53%) Rational DOORS
11 56 (0.51%) Cucumber
12 51 (0.47%) Artifactory
13 45 (0.41%) Bitbucket
14 43 (0.39%) Cypress.io
14 43 (0.39%) Mockito
15 41 (0.38%) Visual Studio
15 41 (0.38%) Zephyr
16 40 (0.37%) REST Assured
17 39 (0.36%) Maven
18 37 (0.34%) Gatling
General
1 2,388 (21.90%) Public Sector
2 2,188 (20.06%) Social Skills
3 739 (6.78%) Analytical Skills
4 685 (6.28%) Finance
5 337 (3.09%) Military
6 296 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
7 288 (2.64%) Aerospace
8 175 (1.60%) Legal
9 130 (1.19%) Banking
10 129 (1.18%) Influencing Skills
11 114 (1.05%) Telecoms
12 100 (0.92%) Law
13 99 (0.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 97 (0.89%) Organisational Skills
15 94 (0.86%) Manufacturing
16 78 (0.72%) Presentation Skills
17 70 (0.64%) Police
18 51 (0.47%) Aviation
19 45 (0.41%) Marketing
20 41 (0.38%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,659 (15.21%) Architect
2 1,069 (9.80%) Developer
3 958 (8.78%) Senior
4 817 (7.49%) Lead
5 732 (6.71%) Analyst
6 543 (4.98%) Consultant
7 532 (4.88%) Data Engineer
8 511 (4.69%) DevOps Engineer
9 357 (3.27%) Technical Architect
10 323 (2.96%) Solutions Architect
11 322 (2.95%) Software Engineer
12 320 (2.93%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 282 (2.59%) Network Engineer
14 259 (2.37%) Business Analyst
15 240 (2.20%) Security Architect
16 226 (2.07%) Project Manager
17 217 (1.99%) Designer
18 207 (1.90%) Azure Engineer
19 204 (1.87%) Administrator
20 201 (1.84%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 328 (3.01%) REST
2 248 (2.27%) Spring
3 208 (1.91%) Spring Boot
4 201 (1.84%) React
5 197 (1.81%) Kafka
6 188 (1.72%) .NET
7 179 (1.64%) Node.js
8 157 (1.44%) RESTful
9 142 (1.30%) SOAP
10 136 (1.25%) LDAP
11 124 (1.14%) JSON
12 122 (1.12%) AngularJS
13 115 (1.05%) PySpark
14 114 (1.05%) Web Services
15 104 (0.95%) OAuth
16 97 (0.89%) Middleware
17 93 (0.85%) HTML
18 92 (0.84%) Playwright
19 84 (0.77%) OpenID
20 79 (0.72%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 412 (3.78%) Cloud Native
2 350 (3.21%) Product Ownership
3 321 (2.94%) Onboarding
4 313 (2.87%) Data Centre
5 219 (2.01%) Management Information System
6 167 (1.53%) Legacy Systems
7 145 (1.33%) PKI
8 139 (1.27%) Distributed Systems
9 126 (1.16%) Enterprise Software
10 116 (1.06%) Security Posture
11 115 (1.05%) Replication
12 107 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
13 95 (0.87%) Data Structures
14 93 (0.85%) CMDB
15 87 (0.80%) Clustering
16 86 (0.79%) Public Cloud
17 84 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
18 83 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
19 75 (0.69%) Virtual Team
20 73 (0.67%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 829 (7.60%) Windows
2 717 (6.57%) Linux
3 263 (2.41%) Windows Server
4 197 (1.81%) Unix
5 128 (1.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 89 (0.82%) Android
7 82 (0.75%) Windows 10
8 65 (0.60%) Apple iOS
9 54 (0.50%) Solaris
10 38 (0.35%) Mac OS
11 36 (0.33%) Ubuntu
12 32 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 29 (0.27%) AIX
13 29 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
14 21 (0.19%) CentOS
14 21 (0.19%) VMS
15 16 (0.15%) Windows 7
16 15 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
17 11 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
17 11 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,140 (19.62%) Agile
2 1,689 (15.49%) DevOps
3 1,533 (14.06%) CI/CD
4 1,110 (10.18%) Problem-Solving
5 1,084 (9.94%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,047 (9.60%) Continuous Improvement
7 895 (8.21%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 863 (7.91%) Migration
9 806 (7.39%) Infrastructure as Code
10 678 (6.22%) Test Automation
11 669 (6.13%) Cybersecurity
12 645 (5.91%) Analytics
13 637 (5.84%) Containerisation
14 619 (5.68%) ITIL
15 617 (5.66%) Software Engineering
16 601 (5.51%) Roadmaps
17 582 (5.34%) Decision-Making
18 570 (5.23%) Data Modelling
19 506 (4.64%) AI
20 498 (4.57%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,203 (11.03%) Python
2 1,036 (9.50%) SQL
3 706 (6.47%) Java
4 516 (4.73%) PowerShell
5 319 (2.92%) JavaScript
6 230 (2.11%) C#
7 215 (1.97%) Bash
8 189 (1.73%) TypeScript
9 140 (1.28%) PL/SQL
10 94 (0.86%) Shell Script
11 93 (0.85%) C++
12 77 (0.71%) Bicep
13 63 (0.58%) Apex Code
13 63 (0.58%) C
14 61 (0.56%) Ruby
15 58 (0.53%) Go
16 53 (0.49%) Scala
17 45 (0.41%) Ada
18 44 (0.40%) Kotlin
19 40 (0.37%) R
Qualifications
1 8,365 (76.70%) SC Cleared
2 1,951 (17.89%) DV Cleared
3 426 (3.91%) Degree
4 322 (2.95%) BPSS Clearance
5 212 (1.94%) Cisco Certification
6 176 (1.61%) CISSP
7 140 (1.28%) Azure Certification
8 123 (1.13%) AWS Certification
9 117 (1.07%) CISM
10 111 (1.02%) Microsoft Certification
11 110 (1.01%) CCNP
12 95 (0.87%) CCNA
13 87 (0.80%) PMP
14 81 (0.74%) PMI Certification
15 75 (0.69%) ISTQB
16 67 (0.61%) Computer Science Degree
17 66 (0.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 55 (0.50%) ITIL Certification
19 41 (0.38%) CompTIA Security+
19 41 (0.38%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 418 (3.83%) QA
2 334 (3.06%) Data Quality
3 314 (2.88%) NIST
4 313 (2.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 231 (2.12%) NCSC
6 218 (2.00%) Accessibility
7 184 (1.69%) GDPR
8 172 (1.58%) PMO
9 121 (1.11%) SLA
10 95 (0.87%) GRC
11 68 (0.62%) JSP 440
12 51 (0.47%) WCAG
13 49 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials
14 44 (0.40%) NIST 800
15 36 (0.33%) RMADS
16 33 (0.30%) Def Stans
17 28 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 24 (0.22%) COBIT
18 24 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
19 23 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 692 (6.35%) Docker
2 459 (4.21%) Active Directory
3 309 (2.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 115 (1.05%) VMware ESXi
5 106 (0.97%) VMware NSX
6 93 (0.85%) Hyper-V
7 81 (0.74%) vSphere
8 75 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
9 39 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
10 33 (0.30%) Firmware
11 24 (0.22%) NFS
12 23 (0.21%) BitLocker
13 21 (0.19%) vCloud
14 19 (0.17%) Postfix
14 19 (0.17%) Squid
14 19 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
15 15 (0.14%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 10 (0.092%) Microsoft App-V
17 6 (0.055%) Corosync
17 6 (0.055%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 889 (8.15%) Terraform
2 853 (7.82%) Kubernetes
3 373 (3.42%) Ansible
4 272 (2.49%) Grafana
5 227 (2.08%) Prometheus
6 113 (1.04%) vCenter Server
7 99 (0.91%) Single Sign-On
8 78 (0.72%) SCCM
9 59 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 59 (0.54%) Microsoft Intune
10 55 (0.50%) Argo
11 50 (0.46%) FortiGate
12 45 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
13 41 (0.38%) Puppet
14 39 (0.36%) SCOM
15 38 (0.35%) Podman
16 27 (0.25%) Nagios
16 27 (0.25%) Progress Chef
16 27 (0.25%) vRealize
17 24 (0.22%) Data Guard
Vendors
1 1,107 (10.15%) Microsoft
2 759 (6.96%) Oracle
3 501 (4.59%) VMware
4 442 (4.05%) ServiceNow
5 346 (3.17%) SAP
6 339 (3.11%) Cisco
7 228 (2.09%) Splunk
8 202 (1.85%) Databricks
9 180 (1.65%) Salesforce
10 168 (1.54%) Google
11 164 (1.50%) Red Hat
12 145 (1.33%) Talend
13 128 (1.17%) IBM
14 121 (1.11%) Informatica
15 120 (1.10%) Palo Alto
16 102 (0.94%) Juniper
17 94 (0.86%) Fortinet
18 90 (0.83%) F5
19 88 (0.81%) Dynatrace
20 86 (0.79%) Denodo