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

6 months to
11 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 10,873 5,236 7,965
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.79% 17.83% 18.25%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.38% 57.46% 61.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,473 3,427 5,230
10th Percentile £381 £338 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £623 £650
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 862 339 568
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.48 £14.00
25th Percentile £25.15 £21.79 £21.46
Median hourly rate £57.75 £27.76 £56.15
Median % change year-on-year +108.03% -50.56% -6.43%
75th Percentile £74.44 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.50 £84.62
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £30.46 £57.47
% change year-on-year +88.80% -47.01% -0.05%

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 15,671 9,112 13,045
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.41% 31.02% 29.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,398 5,673 8,090
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 £624 £618 £638
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £501 £500 £530
% change year-on-year +0.10% -5.66% +0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,159 565 1,118
10th Percentile £17.08 £17.69 £13.87
25th Percentile £22.63 £21.25 £18.32
Median hourly rate £50.00 £30.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +63.93% -23.75% -27.27%
75th Percentile £71.75 £64.52 £62.64
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.38 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £30.00 £41.27
% change year-on-year +58.33% -27.30% -21.40%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 9,399 £525 -2.23% 1,667
UK excluding London +1 6,044 £525 -0.94% 1,362
London +7 3,376 £525 - 427
Work from Home +5 2,968 £525 - 825
South East +1 2,261 £550 - 467
South West 0 1,269 £538 -4.44% 354
North of England +1 973 £500 - 248
Midlands +1 888 £469 -10.67% 114
West Midlands +2 767 £469 -10.67% 84
North West 0 540 £520 +4.00% 148
East of England +2 370 £550 +10.00% 115
Scotland +25 262 £500 +7.18% 54
Yorkshire -3 245 £490 -0.41% 57
North East +1 220 £478 -0.52% 44
East Midlands -5 114 £418 -17.53% 30
Wales +4 85 £490 +3.16% 22
Northern Ireland +6 27 £619 +30.26% 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
1 394 (3.62%) Confluence
2 232 (2.13%) SharePoint
3 156 (1.43%) SAS
4 132 (1.21%) Microsoft Exchange
5 104 (0.96%) Apache Spark
6 96 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
7 87 (0.80%) Apache
8 42 (0.39%) nginx
9 41 (0.38%) Jupyter
10 33 (0.30%) WebLogic
11 24 (0.22%) Tomcat
12 21 (0.19%) IIS
13 18 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
14 16 (0.15%) CMS
14 16 (0.15%) NetWeaver
15 15 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
15 15 (0.14%) Skype for Business
16 13 (0.12%) Tuxedo
17 11 (0.10%) ArcGIS
18 8 (0.074%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 173 (1.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 145 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
3 78 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 73 (0.67%) Microsoft Project
5 47 (0.43%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.15%) Simulink
6 16 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
7 9 (0.083%) SOLIDWORKS
8 8 (0.074%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.074%) Chatbot
8 8 (0.074%) Revit
9 7 (0.064%) Notepad++
10 4 (0.037%) Sketch
10 4 (0.037%) Windchill
11 3 (0.028%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.018%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.018%) Lectora
12 2 (0.018%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.018%) PlantUML
12 2 (0.018%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 120 (1.10%) SAP S/4HANA
2 60 (0.55%) Remedy ITSM
3 43 (0.40%) Oracle ERP
4 34 (0.31%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 30 (0.28%) Teamcenter
6 28 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
7 25 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
8 15 (0.14%) Findur
8 15 (0.14%) Primavera
8 15 (0.14%) SAP GRC
9 14 (0.13%) Maximo
9 14 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
10 13 (0.12%) SAP PSCD
11 12 (0.11%) iTrent
11 12 (0.11%) Temenos T24
12 10 (0.092%) Oracle Assets
13 9 (0.083%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 9 (0.083%) Salesforce CRM
13 9 (0.083%) SAP ERP
13 9 (0.083%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,944 (17.88%) AWS
2 1,909 (17.56%) Azure
3 466 (4.29%) GitHub
4 433 (3.98%) GCP
5 415 (3.82%) Azure DevOps
6 404 (3.72%) Power Platform
7 279 (2.57%) GitHub Actions
8 276 (2.54%) Serverless
9 266 (2.45%) Microsoft 365
10 258 (2.37%) Entra ID
11 224 (2.06%) Amazon S3
12 193 (1.78%) AWS Lambda
13 163 (1.50%) PaaS
14 158 (1.45%) Amazon EC2
15 151 (1.39%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 143 (1.32%) SaaS
17 141 (1.30%) Amazon EKS
18 140 (1.29%) OCI
19 135 (1.24%) OpenShift
20 122 (1.12%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 467 (4.30%) Firewall
2 309 (2.84%) DNS
3 239 (2.20%) Network Security
4 227 (2.09%) WAN
5 200 (1.84%) LAN
6 175 (1.61%) VPN
7 160 (1.47%) DHCP
8 143 (1.32%) BGP
9 121 (1.11%) OSPF
10 112 (1.03%) VLAN
11 111 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
12 110 (1.01%) TCP/IP
13 84 (0.77%) Wireless
14 68 (0.63%) MPLS
15 59 (0.54%) SAN
15 59 (0.54%) VXLAN
16 58 (0.53%) SD-WAN
17 54 (0.50%) Structured Cabling
18 51 (0.47%) IPsec
19 48 (0.44%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 312 (2.87%) Power BI
2 279 (2.57%) PostgreSQL
3 248 (2.28%) Data Warehouse
4 222 (2.04%) SQL Server
5 149 (1.37%) Oracle Database
6 135 (1.24%) Metadata
7 121 (1.11%) Data Lake
8 116 (1.07%) Amazon RDS
9 109 (1.00%) Relational Database
10 104 (0.96%) MongoDB
11 84 (0.77%) MySQL
11 84 (0.77%) Oracle Reports
11 84 (0.77%) Pentaho
12 79 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
12 79 (0.73%) NoSQL
13 69 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
14 68 (0.63%) Amazon Athena
15 67 (0.62%) Tableau
16 66 (0.61%) Big Data
17 56 (0.52%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 616 (5.67%) JIRA
2 473 (4.35%) Git
3 440 (4.05%) GitLab
4 424 (3.90%) Jenkins
5 120 (1.10%) Selenium
6 91 (0.84%) Postman
7 85 (0.78%) JUnit
8 76 (0.70%) SonarQube
9 60 (0.55%) JMeter
10 58 (0.53%) Rational DOORS
11 55 (0.51%) Artifactory
12 53 (0.49%) Cucumber
13 45 (0.41%) Bitbucket
14 43 (0.40%) Cypress.io
15 41 (0.38%) Mockito
15 41 (0.38%) Zephyr
16 40 (0.37%) Visual Studio
17 39 (0.36%) REST Assured
18 38 (0.35%) Maven
19 33 (0.30%) Gatling
General
1 2,356 (21.67%) Public Sector
2 2,196 (20.20%) Social Skills
3 729 (6.70%) Analytical Skills
4 678 (6.24%) Finance
5 338 (3.11%) Military
6 300 (2.76%) Documentation Skills
7 281 (2.58%) Aerospace
8 175 (1.61%) Legal
9 127 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
10 124 (1.14%) Banking
11 117 (1.08%) Telecoms
12 100 (0.92%) Law
13 99 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
14 98 (0.90%) Manufacturing
15 96 (0.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 78 (0.72%) Presentation Skills
17 67 (0.62%) Police
18 49 (0.45%) Aviation
19 48 (0.44%) Marketing
20 40 (0.37%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,660 (15.27%) Architect
2 1,031 (9.48%) Developer
3 944 (8.68%) Senior
4 808 (7.43%) Lead
5 753 (6.93%) Analyst
6 538 (4.95%) Consultant
7 530 (4.87%) Data Engineer
8 513 (4.72%) DevOps Engineer
9 361 (3.32%) Technical Architect
10 322 (2.96%) Software Engineer
11 320 (2.94%) Solutions Architect
12 318 (2.92%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 281 (2.58%) Network Engineer
14 270 (2.48%) Business Analyst
15 239 (2.20%) Security Architect
16 222 (2.04%) Project Manager
17 217 (2.00%) Designer
18 213 (1.96%) Azure Engineer
19 201 (1.85%) Administrator
19 201 (1.85%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 335 (3.08%) REST
2 241 (2.22%) Spring
3 202 (1.86%) React
3 202 (1.86%) Spring Boot
4 200 (1.84%) Kafka
5 185 (1.70%) .NET
6 177 (1.63%) Node.js
7 153 (1.41%) RESTful
8 151 (1.39%) SOAP
9 148 (1.36%) LDAP
10 127 (1.17%) JSON
11 124 (1.14%) AngularJS
12 116 (1.07%) Web Services
13 115 (1.06%) PySpark
14 108 (0.99%) OAuth
15 99 (0.91%) Middleware
16 95 (0.87%) HTML
17 91 (0.84%) Playwright
18 86 (0.79%) OpenID
19 84 (0.77%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 408 (3.75%) Cloud Native
2 340 (3.13%) Product Ownership
3 324 (2.98%) Data Centre
4 310 (2.85%) Onboarding
5 217 (2.00%) Management Information System
6 162 (1.49%) Legacy Systems
7 148 (1.36%) PKI
8 137 (1.26%) Distributed Systems
9 132 (1.21%) Enterprise Software
9 132 (1.21%) Security Posture
10 119 (1.09%) Replication
11 103 (0.95%) Self-Motivation
12 90 (0.83%) Data Structures
12 90 (0.83%) Public Cloud
13 88 (0.81%) Clustering
13 88 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
14 87 (0.80%) Hybrid Cloud
15 85 (0.78%) CMDB
16 78 (0.72%) Virtual Team
17 75 (0.69%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 841 (7.73%) Windows
2 732 (6.73%) Linux
3 266 (2.45%) Windows Server
4 200 (1.84%) Unix
5 131 (1.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 93 (0.86%) Android
7 81 (0.74%) Windows 10
8 68 (0.63%) Apple iOS
9 54 (0.50%) Solaris
10 37 (0.34%) Mac OS
10 37 (0.34%) Ubuntu
11 32 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
12 30 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
13 28 (0.26%) AIX
14 24 (0.22%) VMS
15 22 (0.20%) CentOS
16 16 (0.15%) Windows 7
17 15 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
18 11 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
18 11 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,092 (19.24%) Agile
2 1,679 (15.44%) DevOps
3 1,523 (14.01%) CI/CD
4 1,102 (10.14%) Problem-Solving
5 1,066 (9.80%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,013 (9.32%) Continuous Improvement
7 882 (8.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 875 (8.05%) Migration
9 797 (7.33%) Infrastructure as Code
10 683 (6.28%) Cybersecurity
11 660 (6.07%) Test Automation
12 641 (5.90%) Analytics
13 618 (5.68%) Containerisation
13 618 (5.68%) ITIL
14 608 (5.59%) Software Engineering
15 595 (5.47%) Roadmaps
16 561 (5.16%) Decision-Making
17 557 (5.12%) Data Modelling
18 497 (4.57%) AI
19 492 (4.52%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,220 (11.22%) Python
2 1,008 (9.27%) SQL
3 687 (6.32%) Java
4 540 (4.97%) PowerShell
5 322 (2.96%) JavaScript
6 231 (2.12%) C#
7 217 (2.00%) Bash
8 189 (1.74%) TypeScript
9 135 (1.24%) PL/SQL
10 95 (0.87%) Shell Script
11 94 (0.86%) C++
12 73 (0.67%) Bicep
13 61 (0.56%) C
13 61 (0.56%) Ruby
14 57 (0.52%) Go
14 57 (0.52%) Scala
15 55 (0.51%) Apex Code
16 45 (0.41%) Ada
16 45 (0.41%) Kotlin
17 42 (0.39%) R
Qualifications
1 8,346 (76.76%) SC Cleared
2 1,920 (17.66%) DV Cleared
3 435 (4.00%) Degree
4 315 (2.90%) BPSS Clearance
5 212 (1.95%) Cisco Certification
6 179 (1.65%) CISSP
7 140 (1.29%) Azure Certification
8 118 (1.09%) AWS Certification
9 117 (1.08%) CISM
10 115 (1.06%) CCNP
11 107 (0.98%) Microsoft Certification
12 91 (0.84%) CCNA
13 83 (0.76%) PMP
14 77 (0.71%) PMI Certification
15 74 (0.68%) ISTQB
16 72 (0.66%) Computer Science Degree
17 70 (0.64%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 60 (0.55%) ITIL Certification
19 46 (0.42%) CompTIA Security+
20 43 (0.40%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 406 (3.73%) QA
2 319 (2.93%) Data Quality
3 318 (2.92%) NIST
4 314 (2.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 223 (2.05%) NCSC
6 214 (1.97%) Accessibility
7 180 (1.66%) GDPR
8 169 (1.55%) PMO
9 122 (1.12%) SLA
10 88 (0.81%) GRC
11 68 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 51 (0.47%) Cyber Essentials
13 50 (0.46%) WCAG
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%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 679 (6.24%) Docker
2 468 (4.30%) Active Directory
3 318 (2.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 116 (1.07%) VMware ESXi
5 107 (0.98%) VMware NSX
6 94 (0.86%) Hyper-V
7 84 (0.77%) vSphere
8 77 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
9 38 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
10 32 (0.29%) Firmware
11 24 (0.22%) NFS
12 22 (0.20%) BitLocker
13 20 (0.18%) vCloud
14 19 (0.17%) Postfix
14 19 (0.17%) Squid
15 18 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
16 15 (0.14%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 9 (0.083%) Microsoft App-V
18 8 (0.074%) KVM
19 6 (0.055%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 883 (8.12%) Terraform
2 851 (7.83%) Kubernetes
3 385 (3.54%) Ansible
4 275 (2.53%) Grafana
5 229 (2.11%) Prometheus
6 114 (1.05%) vCenter Server
7 105 (0.97%) Single Sign-On
8 76 (0.70%) SCCM
9 60 (0.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 60 (0.55%) Microsoft Intune
10 54 (0.50%) Argo
11 52 (0.48%) FortiGate
12 44 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
13 39 (0.36%) Puppet
14 38 (0.35%) SCOM
15 37 (0.34%) Podman
16 28 (0.26%) vRealize
17 27 (0.25%) Progress Chef
18 26 (0.24%) Nagios
19 25 (0.23%) Istio
Vendors
1 1,087 (10.00%) Microsoft
2 746 (6.86%) Oracle
3 518 (4.76%) VMware
4 431 (3.96%) ServiceNow
5 347 (3.19%) Cisco
5 347 (3.19%) SAP
6 240 (2.21%) Splunk
7 208 (1.91%) Databricks
8 174 (1.60%) Google
9 170 (1.56%) Red Hat
10 168 (1.55%) Salesforce
11 142 (1.31%) Talend
12 127 (1.17%) IBM
13 125 (1.15%) Palo Alto
14 109 (1.00%) Informatica
15 101 (0.93%) Juniper
16 97 (0.89%) CyberArk
17 93 (0.86%) Fortinet
18 91 (0.84%) Dynatrace
19 87 (0.80%) F5