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

6 months to
2 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 9,545 5,276 8,027
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 23.06% 17.48% 17.98%
As % of the Qualifications category 67.77% 58.23% 59.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,428 3,400 5,100
10th Percentile £360 £325 £360
25th Percentile £450 £446 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.65%
75th Percentile £623 £630 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £519 £540 £563
% change year-on-year -3.98% -4.00% +2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 796 272 534
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.12 £18.00
25th Percentile £20.39 £24.66 £31.94
Median hourly rate £25.77 £57.12 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -54.89% +1.12% -5.85%
75th Percentile £67.50 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £76.18 £83.21
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £56.89
% change year-on-year -58.08% +5.48% -1.29%

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 14,084 9,061 13,536
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.03% 30.02% 30.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,294 5,576 8,351
10th Percentile £331 £285 £288
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £517 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.55% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £614 £628 £650
90th Percentile £719 £725 £732
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £510 £525
% change year-on-year -1.96% -2.86% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,039 447 1,000
10th Percentile £16.15 £20.07 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.38 £24.50 £19.99
Median hourly rate £25.77 £42.50 £40.63
Median % change year-on-year -39.36% +4.62% -17.09%
75th Percentile £65.00 £67.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £81.50 £82.16 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £47.81 £41.37
% change year-on-year -47.39% +15.57% -8.08%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 8,302 £525 -2.78% 1,855
UK excluding London 0 5,303 £519 -3.98% 1,516
London +5 2,878 £530 +0.95% 480
Work from Home +4 2,613 £530 +0.95% 856
South East +1 1,813 £525 -4.55% 580
South West 0 1,306 £550 -0.09% 357
Midlands +4 847 £492 -10.55% 166
North of England -2 816 £496 +3.59% 203
West Midlands +3 676 £495 -10.16% 117
North West 0 531 £500 +5.26% 121
East of England +1 346 £495 -1.00% 166
East Midlands +2 169 £425 -17.07% 49
Scotland +10 168 £475 -3.11% 44
Yorkshire -7 167 £499 -5.00% 45
North East +1 145 £450 -10.00% 38
Wales -2 78 £515 +0.28% 36
Northern Ireland +13 30 £500 +271.11% 4
Channel Islands - 1 - - 2

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
1 340 (3.56%) Confluence
2 212 (2.22%) SharePoint
3 141 (1.48%) Microsoft Exchange
4 139 (1.46%) SAS
5 82 (0.86%) Apache Spark
6 72 (0.75%) Apache
7 53 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
8 43 (0.45%) nginx
9 40 (0.42%) WebLogic
10 31 (0.32%) Skype for Business
11 21 (0.22%) Jupyter
12 19 (0.20%) CMS
13 16 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
14 15 (0.16%) Tuxedo
15 10 (0.10%) Tomcat
16 9 (0.094%) ArcGIS
16 9 (0.094%) IIS
16 9 (0.094%) Oracle Workflow
17 7 (0.073%) OpenStack
18 5 (0.052%) Mattermost
Applications
1 254 (2.66%) Microsoft Office
2 192 (2.01%) Microsoft Excel
3 122 (1.28%) Microsoft Project
4 69 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.45%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.15%) Simulink
8 6 (0.063%) Oracle Smart View
8 6 (0.063%) Sketch
9 5 (0.052%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.052%) Siemens NX
9 5 (0.052%) Windchill
10 4 (0.042%) Chatbot
11 3 (0.031%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.021%) Adobe Illustrator
12 2 (0.021%) CATIA
12 2 (0.021%) InVision
12 2 (0.021%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.021%) PlantUML
12 2 (0.021%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 159 (1.67%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 31 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
4 28 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
5 25 (0.26%) SAP MM
6 24 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 21 (0.22%) Dynamics CRM
8 19 (0.20%) SAP PP
9 16 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
10 15 (0.16%) Maximo
11 14 (0.15%) SAP VC
12 13 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
12 13 (0.14%) SAP QM
12 13 (0.14%) SAP WM
13 12 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
13 12 (0.13%) SAP EWM
14 11 (0.12%) Oracle General Ledger
14 11 (0.12%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
14 11 (0.12%) SAP HCM
15 9 (0.094%) SAP PM
Cloud Services
1 1,639 (17.17%) AWS
2 1,553 (16.27%) Azure
3 416 (4.36%) GitHub
4 406 (4.25%) GCP
5 350 (3.67%) Power Platform
6 345 (3.61%) Azure DevOps
7 312 (3.27%) Microsoft 365
8 262 (2.74%) Serverless
9 235 (2.46%) Entra ID
10 221 (2.32%) GitHub Actions
11 206 (2.16%) Amazon S3
12 182 (1.91%) OpenShift
13 171 (1.79%) AWS Lambda
14 146 (1.53%) AWS CloudFormation
15 134 (1.40%) Amazon EC2
16 132 (1.38%) Amazon EKS
17 129 (1.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 112 (1.17%) IaaS
19 111 (1.16%) OCI
20 109 (1.14%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 446 (4.67%) Firewall
2 289 (3.03%) DNS
3 218 (2.28%) Network Security
4 195 (2.04%) WAN
5 175 (1.83%) VPN
6 157 (1.64%) LAN
7 145 (1.52%) TCP/IP
8 133 (1.39%) BGP
9 130 (1.36%) DHCP
10 97 (1.02%) Wireless
11 92 (0.96%) OSPF
12 90 (0.94%) VLAN
13 73 (0.76%) Wi-Fi
14 71 (0.74%) MPLS
15 56 (0.59%) SSL
16 54 (0.57%) SAN
17 53 (0.56%) IPsec
18 49 (0.51%) Cisco ISE
19 41 (0.43%) Cisco IOS
19 41 (0.43%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 266 (2.79%) PostgreSQL
2 250 (2.62%) Power BI
3 176 (1.84%) Data Warehouse
4 140 (1.47%) SQL Server
5 121 (1.27%) Metadata
6 106 (1.11%) Oracle Database
7 99 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
8 97 (1.02%) NoSQL
9 95 (1.00%) MongoDB
10 90 (0.94%) Relational Database
11 77 (0.81%) Data Lake
12 76 (0.80%) Azure SQL Database
13 74 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
14 64 (0.67%) Big Data
15 62 (0.65%) MySQL
16 60 (0.63%) Pentaho
17 52 (0.54%) Tableau
18 48 (0.50%) Amazon Redshift
19 44 (0.46%) DynamoDB
20 43 (0.45%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 564 (5.91%) JIRA
2 465 (4.87%) Git
3 405 (4.24%) Jenkins
4 360 (3.77%) GitLab
5 109 (1.14%) Selenium
6 88 (0.92%) Postman
7 83 (0.87%) JUnit
8 61 (0.64%) Cypress.io
9 59 (0.62%) SonarQube
10 50 (0.52%) Bitbucket
11 46 (0.48%) Artifactory
11 46 (0.48%) Maven
12 45 (0.47%) Cucumber
13 44 (0.46%) Oracle APEX
14 37 (0.39%) Rational DOORS
15 36 (0.38%) Mockito
16 34 (0.36%) JMeter
16 34 (0.36%) REST Assured
17 33 (0.35%) Visual Studio
18 24 (0.25%) Metasploit
General
1 2,424 (25.40%) Public Sector
2 2,292 (24.01%) Social Skills
3 789 (8.27%) Analytical Skills
4 642 (6.73%) Finance
5 331 (3.47%) Military
6 257 (2.69%) Documentation Skills
7 210 (2.20%) Aerospace
8 185 (1.94%) Manufacturing
9 184 (1.93%) Telecoms
10 147 (1.54%) Legal
11 131 (1.37%) Organisational Skills
12 118 (1.24%) Influencing Skills
12 118 (1.24%) Marketing
13 117 (1.23%) Electronics
14 110 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
15 100 (1.05%) Banking
16 70 (0.73%) Law
17 69 (0.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 50 (0.52%) Police
19 38 (0.40%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,333 (13.97%) Architect
2 937 (9.82%) Developer
3 828 (8.67%) Senior
4 724 (7.59%) Analyst
5 644 (6.75%) Consultant
6 568 (5.95%) Lead
7 430 (4.50%) DevOps Engineer
8 352 (3.69%) Data Engineer
9 255 (2.67%) Solutions Architect
10 254 (2.66%) Network Engineer
11 252 (2.64%) Business Analyst
12 250 (2.62%) Software Engineer
13 236 (2.47%) Support Engineer
14 233 (2.44%) Technical Architect
15 197 (2.06%) Tester
16 179 (1.88%) AWS Engineer
17 173 (1.81%) Designer
18 169 (1.77%) Security Architect
19 167 (1.75%) Azure Engineer
20 161 (1.69%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 349 (3.66%) REST
2 228 (2.39%) Node.js
3 213 (2.23%) Spring
4 200 (2.10%) Kafka
5 199 (2.08%) React
6 161 (1.69%) Spring Boot
7 158 (1.66%) JSON
8 157 (1.64%) SOAP
9 150 (1.57%) LDAP
10 138 (1.45%) .NET
11 122 (1.28%) HTML
12 121 (1.27%) AngularJS
13 116 (1.22%) RESTful
14 110 (1.15%) PySpark
14 110 (1.15%) Web Services
15 105 (1.10%) Oracle Fusion
16 104 (1.09%) OAuth
17 97 (1.02%) XML
18 95 (1.00%) CSS
19 82 (0.86%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 296 (3.10%) Data Centre
2 274 (2.87%) Cloud Native
2 274 (2.87%) Product Ownership
3 243 (2.55%) Onboarding
4 204 (2.14%) PKI
5 180 (1.89%) Management Information System
6 139 (1.46%) Security Posture
7 117 (1.23%) Legacy Systems
8 116 (1.22%) Self-Motivation
9 110 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
10 99 (1.04%) Replication
11 83 (0.87%) Public Cloud
12 79 (0.83%) Security Operations Centre
13 77 (0.81%) Hybrid Cloud
14 73 (0.76%) Driving Licence
15 70 (0.73%) Distributed Systems
16 67 (0.70%) Cyber Threat
17 50 (0.52%) Clustering
17 50 (0.52%) Data Structures
18 49 (0.51%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 868 (9.09%) Windows
2 691 (7.24%) Linux
3 221 (2.32%) Windows Server
4 150 (1.57%) Windows 10
5 127 (1.33%) Android
6 126 (1.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 121 (1.27%) Unix
8 66 (0.69%) Mac OS
9 52 (0.54%) Apple iOS
10 43 (0.45%) Ubuntu
11 37 (0.39%) VMS
12 30 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
13 24 (0.25%) CentOS
13 24 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
14 22 (0.23%) Solaris
15 21 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 14 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
17 11 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
18 8 (0.084%) Windows Server 2003
19 7 (0.073%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,814 (19.00%) Agile
2 1,444 (15.13%) DevOps
3 1,281 (13.42%) CI/CD
4 1,165 (12.21%) Problem-Solving
5 875 (9.17%) Stakeholder Management
6 822 (8.61%) Migration
7 760 (7.96%) Continuous Improvement
8 659 (6.90%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 615 (6.44%) Cybersecurity
10 610 (6.39%) Infrastructure as Code
11 558 (5.85%) ITIL
12 534 (5.59%) Test Automation
13 524 (5.49%) Roadmaps
14 518 (5.43%) Analytics
15 517 (5.42%) Containerisation
16 445 (4.66%) Scrum
16 445 (4.66%) Software Engineering
17 444 (4.65%) Business Intelligence
18 418 (4.38%) Service Management
19 414 (4.34%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,158 (12.13%) Python
2 804 (8.42%) SQL
3 604 (6.33%) PowerShell
4 533 (5.58%) Java
5 441 (4.62%) JavaScript
6 236 (2.47%) Bash
7 213 (2.23%) TypeScript
8 187 (1.96%) C#
9 109 (1.14%) C++
10 106 (1.11%) PL/SQL
11 105 (1.10%) Shell Script
12 85 (0.89%) Go
13 65 (0.68%) C
14 59 (0.62%) Ruby
15 51 (0.53%) Ada
16 50 (0.52%) Scala
17 43 (0.45%) Bicep
18 40 (0.42%) ABAP
18 40 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
19 35 (0.37%) R
Qualifications
1 7,327 (76.76%) SC Cleared
2 1,581 (16.56%) DV Cleared
3 465 (4.87%) Degree
4 312 (3.27%) BPSS Clearance
5 182 (1.91%) Cisco Certification
6 174 (1.82%) CISSP
7 134 (1.40%) AWS Certification
8 128 (1.34%) CCNP
9 127 (1.33%) Azure Certification
10 110 (1.15%) Microsoft Certification
11 107 (1.12%) CISM
12 88 (0.92%) Computer Science Degree
13 80 (0.84%) CCNA
14 66 (0.69%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 65 (0.68%) ITIL Certification
16 63 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
17 55 (0.58%) ISTQB
18 51 (0.53%) PMP
19 49 (0.51%) Master's Degree
19 49 (0.51%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 319 (3.34%) QA
2 291 (3.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 277 (2.90%) NIST
4 262 (2.74%) Data Quality
5 209 (2.19%) NCSC
6 190 (1.99%) Accessibility
7 179 (1.88%) GDPR
8 127 (1.33%) SLA
9 103 (1.08%) PMO
10 64 (0.67%) GRC
11 60 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 48 (0.50%) WCAG
13 43 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials
14 41 (0.43%) Def Stans
15 38 (0.40%) NIST 800
16 35 (0.37%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 34 (0.36%) PCI DSS
18 32 (0.34%) COBIT
19 26 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
19 26 (0.27%) RMADS
System Software
1 653 (6.84%) Docker
2 487 (5.10%) Active Directory
3 243 (2.55%) VMware Infrastructure
4 91 (0.95%) VMware NSX
5 71 (0.74%) vSphere
6 63 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
7 61 (0.64%) Hyper-V
8 59 (0.62%) Virtual Machines
9 28 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
10 27 (0.28%) Firmware
11 22 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
12 18 (0.19%) BitLocker
13 16 (0.17%) NFS
13 16 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 11 (0.12%) Postfix
15 10 (0.10%) Squid
16 8 (0.084%) vCloud
17 6 (0.063%) KVM
17 6 (0.063%) Virtual Servers
18 5 (0.052%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 839 (8.79%) Kubernetes
2 799 (8.37%) Terraform
3 313 (3.28%) Ansible
4 234 (2.45%) Grafana
5 192 (2.01%) Prometheus
6 130 (1.36%) Single Sign-On
7 102 (1.07%) SCCM
8 92 (0.96%) vCenter Server
9 90 (0.94%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 73 (0.76%) Argo
11 72 (0.75%) Microsoft Intune
12 46 (0.48%) FortiGate
13 45 (0.47%) vRealize
14 40 (0.42%) Podman
15 37 (0.39%) Packer
16 33 (0.35%) Kibana
17 32 (0.34%) Puppet
18 30 (0.31%) OPNET
19 29 (0.30%) Progress Chef
20 25 (0.26%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,052 (11.02%) Microsoft
2 542 (5.68%) Oracle
3 468 (4.90%) VMware
4 452 (4.74%) SAP
5 436 (4.57%) Cisco
6 399 (4.18%) ServiceNow
7 231 (2.42%) Splunk
8 188 (1.97%) Red Hat
9 150 (1.57%) Databricks
10 146 (1.53%) Google
11 144 (1.51%) CyberArk
12 139 (1.46%) Palo Alto
13 132 (1.38%) Juniper
13 132 (1.38%) Salesforce
14 119 (1.25%) Atlassian
15 99 (1.04%) Dell
16 87 (0.91%) IBM
17 85 (0.89%) Talend
18 81 (0.85%) HP
19 78 (0.82%) Dynatrace