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 22 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 3 3 4
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +4
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 7,375 6,555 8,025
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 20.53% 17.84% 17.22%
As % of the Qualifications category 61.65% 60.61% 59.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,841 4,106 5,023
10th Percentile £334 £350 £375
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £528 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% - -2.22%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £650
90th Percentile £716 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 751 360 520
10th Percentile £18.87 £20.12 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.38 £24.18 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £52.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -52.10% -12.50% -
75th Percentile £48.73 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £73.75 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £54.00 £59.68
% change year-on-year -53.43% -9.52% -0.53%

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 11,963 10,815 13,599
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.30% 29.44% 29.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,699 6,533 8,612
10th Percentile £303 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £420 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £719 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £520 £535
% change year-on-year -3.85% -2.80% +1.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,040 531 772
10th Percentile £17.47 £19.30 £17.72
25th Percentile £19.36 £24.18 £27.38
Median hourly rate £25.15 £42.50 £53.85
Median % change year-on-year -40.82% -21.08% +19.67%
75th Percentile £45.46 £66.00 £68.97
90th Percentile £73.75 £75.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £52.50
% change year-on-year -45.54% -12.04% +16.67%

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 22 November 2025.

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 22 November 2025.

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 22 November 2025. 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 0 6,448 £530 -3.64% 2,468
UK excluding London 0 4,259 £525 -4.55% 1,923
London +1 2,131 £550 +1.85% 717
Work from Home +2 2,091 £538 -0.46% 1,258
South East -1 1,223 £513 -7.24% 754
South West 0 1,108 £550 -4.35% 532
North of England -2 762 £515 +8.42% 207
Midlands +1 691 £519 -9.83% 186
West Midlands 0 535 £525 -8.70% 146
North West +1 503 £535 +8.52% 145
East of England +2 293 £525 +2.44% 244
Yorkshire -11 163 £500 +6.38% 34
Scotland -10 159 £475 +1.82% 51
East Midlands +1 141 £438 -13.37% 39
North East 0 103 £475 +4.63% 30
Wales -2 80 £550 +10.00% 35
Northern Ireland 0 42 £500 -16.67% 27
Channel Islands - 1 - - 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
1 270 (3.66%) Confluence
2 183 (2.48%) SharePoint
3 125 (1.69%) Microsoft Exchange
4 103 (1.40%) SAS
5 95 (1.29%) Apache
6 53 (0.72%) nginx
7 52 (0.71%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.53%) Apache Spark
8 39 (0.53%) Skype for Business
9 28 (0.38%) CMS
10 25 (0.34%) IIS
10 25 (0.34%) WebLogic
11 15 (0.20%) SharePoint Server
12 14 (0.19%) Exchange Server 2013
13 13 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2010
14 11 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 10 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2003
15 10 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2007
15 10 (0.14%) Office Communications Server
16 9 (0.12%) WordPress
Applications
1 207 (2.81%) Microsoft Office
2 151 (2.05%) Microsoft Excel
3 77 (1.04%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (0.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 36 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 21 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 20 (0.27%) Simulink
8 15 (0.20%) Siemens NX
9 11 (0.15%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 10 (0.14%) Sketch
11 8 (0.11%) ProjectWise
12 7 (0.095%) Adobe XD
13 6 (0.081%) Adobe Illustrator
13 6 (0.081%) AutoCAD
13 6 (0.081%) Oracle Smart View
13 6 (0.081%) Photoshop
13 6 (0.081%) Trello
13 6 (0.081%) Windchill
14 5 (0.068%) FrameMaker
14 5 (0.068%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 177 (2.40%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.56%) Remedy ITSM
3 29 (0.39%) SAP EWM
3 29 (0.39%) SAP WM
4 27 (0.37%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 23 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
6 22 (0.30%) SAP MM
6 22 (0.30%) Teamcenter
7 21 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
7 21 (0.28%) Maximo
8 19 (0.26%) Primavera
9 17 (0.23%) SAP HCM
10 14 (0.19%) Oracle General Ledger
10 14 (0.19%) SAP VC
11 13 (0.18%) SAP PS
12 12 (0.16%) SAP EHS
12 12 (0.16%) SAP PP
12 12 (0.16%) SAP QM
13 10 (0.14%) SAP HR
13 10 (0.14%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,240 (16.81%) AWS
2 1,168 (15.84%) Azure
3 360 (4.88%) GitHub
4 333 (4.52%) Microsoft 365
5 275 (3.73%) Power Platform
6 270 (3.66%) Azure DevOps
7 257 (3.48%) GCP
8 213 (2.89%) Serverless
9 190 (2.58%) Amazon S3
10 189 (2.56%) GitHub Actions
11 157 (2.13%) Entra ID
12 143 (1.94%) SaaS
13 131 (1.78%) OpenShift
14 127 (1.72%) AWS CloudFormation
15 123 (1.67%) Amazon EC2
16 122 (1.65%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 121 (1.64%) AWS Lambda
18 99 (1.34%) Amazon EKS
19 89 (1.21%) Virtual Private Cloud
20 84 (1.14%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 372 (5.04%) Firewall
2 266 (3.61%) DNS
3 180 (2.44%) VPN
4 160 (2.17%) Network Security
5 137 (1.86%) WAN
6 109 (1.48%) TCP/IP
7 99 (1.34%) DHCP
8 97 (1.32%) BGP
9 96 (1.30%) LAN
10 93 (1.26%) Wireless
11 79 (1.07%) SSL
12 67 (0.91%) SAN
13 63 (0.85%) MPLS
14 62 (0.84%) Wi-Fi
15 57 (0.77%) VLAN
16 55 (0.75%) Cisco ISE
17 54 (0.73%) IPsec
18 50 (0.68%) HTTP
19 46 (0.62%) SMTP
20 42 (0.57%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 223 (3.02%) PostgreSQL
2 185 (2.51%) Power BI
3 100 (1.36%) Amazon RDS
4 98 (1.33%) SQL Server
5 90 (1.22%) Oracle Database
6 87 (1.18%) MongoDB
7 83 (1.13%) Data Warehouse
8 82 (1.11%) Relational Database
9 74 (1.00%) Metadata
10 73 (0.99%) NoSQL
11 52 (0.71%) Azure SQL Database
12 47 (0.64%) Big Data
13 44 (0.60%) Elasticsearch
14 43 (0.58%) Pentaho
15 40 (0.54%) MySQL
16 39 (0.53%) Data Lake
17 38 (0.52%) Amazon Redshift
18 37 (0.50%) SAS Enterprise Guide
19 36 (0.49%) Amazon Athena
20 31 (0.42%) Redis
Development Applications
1 495 (6.71%) JIRA
2 401 (5.44%) Git
3 388 (5.26%) Jenkins
4 281 (3.81%) GitLab
5 84 (1.14%) Selenium
6 70 (0.95%) SonarQube
7 67 (0.91%) JUnit
8 58 (0.79%) Cypress.io
9 53 (0.72%) Postman
10 50 (0.68%) Bitbucket
11 46 (0.62%) Oracle APEX
12 40 (0.54%) Mockito
13 36 (0.49%) Artifactory
14 35 (0.47%) Maven
15 33 (0.45%) Cucumber
16 31 (0.42%) CircleCI
17 26 (0.35%) Visual Studio
18 24 (0.33%) REST Assured
19 23 (0.31%) Rational DOORS
19 23 (0.31%) Vagrant
General
1 1,992 (27.01%) Public Sector
2 1,892 (25.65%) Social Skills
3 661 (8.96%) Analytical Skills
4 526 (7.13%) Finance
5 261 (3.54%) Military
6 235 (3.19%) Telecoms
7 220 (2.98%) Manufacturing
8 183 (2.48%) Documentation Skills
9 169 (2.29%) Electronics
10 152 (2.06%) Marketing
11 136 (1.84%) Aerospace
12 109 (1.48%) Legal
13 106 (1.44%) Organisational Skills
14 96 (1.30%) Banking
15 90 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
16 79 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
17 71 (0.96%) Law
18 53 (0.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 46 (0.62%) Police
20 41 (0.56%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 959 (13.00%) Architect
2 752 (10.20%) Developer
3 669 (9.07%) Consultant
4 570 (7.73%) Senior
5 491 (6.66%) Analyst
6 453 (6.14%) Lead
7 321 (4.35%) DevOps Engineer
8 253 (3.43%) Support Engineer
9 206 (2.79%) Network Engineer
10 202 (2.74%) Solutions Architect
11 169 (2.29%) Data Engineer
12 167 (2.26%) SAP Consultant
13 149 (2.02%) AWS Engineer
14 145 (1.97%) Technical Architect
15 134 (1.82%) Platform Engineer
16 133 (1.80%) IT Engineer
17 129 (1.75%) Administrator
18 126 (1.71%) Business Analyst
18 126 (1.71%) Software Engineer
19 122 (1.65%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 278 (3.77%) REST
2 187 (2.54%) Node.js
3 182 (2.47%) React
4 165 (2.24%) Kafka
5 152 (2.06%) JSON
6 138 (1.87%) SOAP
7 123 (1.67%) Spring
8 119 (1.61%) HTML
9 114 (1.55%) XML
10 106 (1.44%) RESTful
11 102 (1.38%) AngularJS
12 101 (1.37%) Spring Boot
12 101 (1.37%) Web Services
13 99 (1.34%) CSS
14 98 (1.33%) .NET
15 77 (1.04%) OAuth
16 72 (0.98%) LDAP
17 64 (0.87%) Elastic Stack
18 57 (0.77%) SAML
19 56 (0.76%) SAP Fiori
Miscellaneous
1 214 (2.90%) Data Centre
2 213 (2.89%) Onboarding
3 186 (2.52%) Cloud Native
4 185 (2.51%) PKI
5 157 (2.13%) Management Information System
6 147 (1.99%) Product Ownership
7 113 (1.53%) Self-Motivation
8 99 (1.34%) Legacy Systems
9 83 (1.13%) Driving Licence
10 78 (1.06%) Cyber Threat
11 72 (0.98%) Security Operations Centre
12 70 (0.95%) Replication
13 67 (0.91%) Enterprise Software
14 64 (0.87%) CMDB
15 62 (0.84%) Security Posture
16 61 (0.83%) Hybrid Cloud
17 58 (0.79%) Private Cloud
18 56 (0.76%) Analytical Mindset
19 52 (0.71%) Public Cloud
20 46 (0.62%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 815 (11.05%) Windows
2 557 (7.55%) Linux
3 199 (2.70%) Windows Server
4 182 (2.47%) Windows 10
5 111 (1.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 92 (1.25%) Android
7 91 (1.23%) Unix
8 86 (1.17%) Mac OS
9 52 (0.71%) VMS
10 36 (0.49%) Windows Server 2019
11 34 (0.46%) Ubuntu
12 31 (0.42%) Apple iOS
13 28 (0.38%) Amazon Linux
14 25 (0.34%) Windows Server 2012
14 25 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
15 24 (0.33%) CentOS
16 23 (0.31%) Windows 7
17 19 (0.26%) Windows Server 2003
18 16 (0.22%) Mac OS X
19 9 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,439 (19.51%) Agile
2 1,131 (15.34%) DevOps
3 1,014 (13.75%) CI/CD
4 887 (12.03%) Problem-Solving
5 776 (10.52%) Migration
6 574 (7.78%) Stakeholder Management
7 519 (7.04%) Cybersecurity
8 496 (6.73%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 494 (6.70%) Infrastructure as Code
10 464 (6.29%) ITIL
11 460 (6.24%) Continuous Improvement
12 421 (5.71%) Workflow
13 419 (5.68%) Service Management
14 416 (5.64%) Business Intelligence
15 407 (5.52%) Test Automation
16 399 (5.41%) Containerisation
17 371 (5.03%) Analytics
18 353 (4.79%) Scrum
19 347 (4.71%) Roadmaps
20 331 (4.49%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 922 (12.50%) Python
2 557 (7.55%) SQL
3 476 (6.45%) PowerShell
4 464 (6.29%) Java
5 379 (5.14%) JavaScript
6 242 (3.28%) Bash
7 199 (2.70%) TypeScript
8 137 (1.86%) C#
9 98 (1.33%) C++
10 80 (1.08%) Go
11 72 (0.98%) PL/SQL
12 70 (0.95%) C
13 69 (0.94%) Shell Script
14 47 (0.64%) ABAP
15 43 (0.58%) Perl
16 36 (0.49%) Groovy
17 34 (0.46%) Ruby
18 33 (0.45%) MATLAB
19 32 (0.43%) Bicep
20 29 (0.39%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 5,679 (77.00%) SC Cleared
2 1,199 (16.26%) DV Cleared
3 351 (4.76%) Degree
4 346 (4.69%) BPSS Clearance
5 144 (1.95%) CISSP
6 131 (1.78%) Microsoft Certification
7 118 (1.60%) Azure Certification
8 117 (1.59%) Cisco Certification
9 112 (1.52%) AWS Certification
10 85 (1.15%) CCNP
11 83 (1.13%) CISM
12 58 (0.79%) Computer Science Degree
12 58 (0.79%) ITIL Certification
13 46 (0.62%) CCNA
14 44 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 43 (0.58%) CEH
16 39 (0.53%) CHECK Team Member
17 38 (0.52%) CTC Cleared
18 33 (0.45%) OSCP
19 32 (0.43%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 237 (3.21%) QA
2 216 (2.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 214 (2.90%) NIST
4 169 (2.29%) NCSC
5 142 (1.93%) SLA
6 134 (1.82%) Accessibility
6 134 (1.82%) Data Quality
7 130 (1.76%) GDPR
8 54 (0.73%) JSP 440
9 53 (0.72%) PMO
10 46 (0.62%) WCAG
11 45 (0.61%) NIST 800
12 36 (0.49%) GRC
13 31 (0.42%) Def Stans
13 31 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 29 (0.39%) COBIT
15 28 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
16 24 (0.33%) RMADS
17 22 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 21 (0.28%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 577 (7.82%) Docker
2 419 (5.68%) Active Directory
3 226 (3.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 77 (1.04%) vSphere
5 74 (1.00%) VMware NSX
6 72 (0.98%) VMware ESXi
7 51 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
8 46 (0.62%) Firmware
9 41 (0.56%) Hyper-V
10 26 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
11 21 (0.28%) DFS Replication
12 20 (0.27%) Postfix
13 16 (0.22%) NFS
14 15 (0.20%) Dovecot
15 11 (0.15%) Squid
15 11 (0.15%) Terminal Services
16 10 (0.14%) BitLocker
16 10 (0.14%) Brightmail
16 10 (0.14%) ISA Server
17 7 (0.095%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 703 (9.53%) Kubernetes
2 679 (9.21%) Terraform
3 291 (3.95%) Ansible
4 186 (2.52%) Grafana
5 159 (2.16%) Prometheus
6 116 (1.57%) SCCM
7 96 (1.30%) Single Sign-On
8 84 (1.14%) Microsoft Intune
9 64 (0.87%) vCenter Server
10 59 (0.80%) Argo
11 51 (0.69%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 50 (0.68%) Packer
13 38 (0.52%) Kibana
14 34 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
15 28 (0.38%) vRealize
16 27 (0.37%) FortiGate
16 27 (0.37%) SCOM
17 23 (0.31%) Consul
17 23 (0.31%) Nessus
18 22 (0.30%) Nmap
Vendors
1 938 (12.72%) Microsoft
2 526 (7.13%) SAP
3 445 (6.03%) Cisco
4 387 (5.25%) VMware
5 384 (5.21%) Oracle
6 339 (4.60%) ServiceNow
7 186 (2.52%) Splunk
8 155 (2.10%) Juniper
9 139 (1.88%) Red Hat
10 123 (1.67%) Google
11 113 (1.53%) Salesforce
12 99 (1.34%) Dell
12 99 (1.34%) Palo Alto
13 98 (1.33%) HP
14 96 (1.30%) Atlassian
15 86 (1.17%) CyberArk
16 84 (1.14%) IBM
17 77 (1.04%) SolarWinds
18 72 (0.98%) Apple
18 72 (0.98%) F5