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

6 months to
5 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,735 5,175 7,843
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 21.86% 17.89% 18.28%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.34% 57.60% 61.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,368 3,399 5,165
10th Percentile £381 £340 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £623 £650
90th Percentile £713 £695 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 858 321 554
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.16 £24.25 £21.46
Median hourly rate £57.35 £32.00 £56.15
Median % change year-on-year +79.22% -43.00% -6.43%
75th Percentile £74.26 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.19 £84.84
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.00 £32.50 £57.50
% change year-on-year +75.38% -43.48% -

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 15,482 8,985 12,838
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.53% 31.05% 29.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,269 5,617 7,970
10th Percentile £350 £275 £310
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £530
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -1.89% -3.64%
75th Percentile £620 £618 £644
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £535
% change year-on-year - -6.54% +1.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,134 539 1,103
10th Percentile £17.00 £17.76 £13.87
25th Percentile £21.33 £22.25 £18.26
Median hourly rate £50.00 £32.31 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +54.75% -19.23% -27.27%
75th Percentile £72.50 £65.00 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.50 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £32.00 £41.27
% change year-on-year +48.56% -22.45% -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 5 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 5 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 5 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 9,294 £525 -2.14% 2,124
UK excluding London +1 5,960 £525 -0.94% 1,672
London +7 3,338 £525 - 549
Work from Home +4 2,913 £525 - 1,054
South East +1 2,234 £550 - 543
South West 0 1,249 £538 -4.44% 443
North of England 0 958 £500 - 289
Midlands +3 883 £469 -10.67% 145
West Midlands +3 760 £470 -10.49% 106
North West -1 529 £514 +2.75% 169
East of England +2 374 £550 +10.00% 145
Scotland +24 246 £510 +14.93% 77
Yorkshire -5 246 £488 -1.71% 60
North East +1 217 £475 -1.04% 61
East Midlands -3 116 £421 -17.93% 39
Wales +5 85 £490 +3.16% 32
Northern Ireland +1 19 £650 +36.84% 32

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
1 391 (3.64%) Confluence
2 228 (2.12%) SharePoint
3 158 (1.47%) SAS
4 130 (1.21%) Microsoft Exchange
5 104 (0.97%) Apache Spark
6 95 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
7 92 (0.86%) Apache
8 42 (0.39%) nginx
9 40 (0.37%) Jupyter
10 33 (0.31%) WebLogic
11 24 (0.22%) Tomcat
12 19 (0.18%) IIS
13 18 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
14 17 (0.16%) CMS
15 15 (0.14%) NetWeaver
15 15 (0.14%) Skype for Business
16 14 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
17 10 (0.093%) ArcGIS
18 8 (0.075%) Apache Superset
18 8 (0.075%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 171 (1.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 148 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
3 77 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 69 (0.64%) Microsoft Project
5 48 (0.45%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.15%) Simulink
6 16 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
7 9 (0.084%) SOLIDWORKS
8 8 (0.075%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.075%) Revit
9 7 (0.065%) Notepad++
10 4 (0.037%) Siemens NX
10 4 (0.037%) Sketch
10 4 (0.037%) Windchill
11 3 (0.028%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.028%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.019%) CATIA
12 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.019%) Lectora
12 2 (0.019%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 115 (1.07%) SAP S/4HANA
2 60 (0.56%) Remedy ITSM
3 34 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
4 33 (0.31%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 31 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 29 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
7 23 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.13%) Findur
8 14 (0.13%) Maximo
8 14 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.12%) SAP GRC
9 13 (0.12%) SAP PSCD
10 12 (0.11%) iTrent
10 12 (0.11%) Primavera
10 12 (0.11%) Temenos T24
11 10 (0.093%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.084%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.084%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.084%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.084%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,917 (17.86%) AWS
2 1,877 (17.48%) Azure
3 454 (4.23%) GitHub
4 428 (3.99%) GCP
5 404 (3.76%) Azure DevOps
6 396 (3.69%) Power Platform
7 274 (2.55%) Serverless
8 267 (2.49%) GitHub Actions
9 262 (2.44%) Microsoft 365
10 255 (2.38%) Entra ID
11 220 (2.05%) Amazon S3
12 193 (1.80%) AWS Lambda
13 165 (1.54%) PaaS
14 157 (1.46%) Amazon EC2
15 148 (1.38%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 142 (1.32%) Amazon EKS
17 141 (1.31%) SaaS
18 138 (1.29%) OpenShift
19 133 (1.24%) OCI
20 119 (1.11%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 483 (4.50%) Firewall
2 323 (3.01%) DNS
3 252 (2.35%) Network Security
4 235 (2.19%) WAN
5 209 (1.95%) LAN
6 184 (1.71%) VPN
7 166 (1.55%) DHCP
8 147 (1.37%) BGP
9 125 (1.16%) OSPF
10 116 (1.08%) TCP/IP
10 116 (1.08%) VLAN
11 108 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
12 85 (0.79%) Wireless
13 68 (0.63%) MPLS
14 62 (0.58%) SAN
15 61 (0.57%) VXLAN
16 57 (0.53%) SD-WAN
17 53 (0.49%) Structured Cabling
18 51 (0.48%) IPsec
18 51 (0.48%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 306 (2.85%) Power BI
2 267 (2.49%) PostgreSQL
3 245 (2.28%) Data Warehouse
4 211 (1.97%) SQL Server
5 145 (1.35%) Oracle Database
6 133 (1.24%) Metadata
7 118 (1.10%) Data Lake
8 116 (1.08%) Amazon RDS
9 104 (0.97%) MongoDB
10 98 (0.91%) Relational Database
11 83 (0.77%) NoSQL
11 83 (0.77%) Pentaho
12 81 (0.75%) Oracle Reports
13 79 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
13 79 (0.74%) MySQL
14 69 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
15 68 (0.63%) Big Data
16 67 (0.62%) Amazon Athena
17 65 (0.61%) Tableau
18 56 (0.52%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 610 (5.68%) JIRA
2 466 (4.34%) Git
3 440 (4.10%) GitLab
4 412 (3.84%) Jenkins
5 122 (1.14%) Selenium
6 90 (0.84%) Postman
7 84 (0.78%) JUnit
8 72 (0.67%) SonarQube
9 60 (0.56%) JMeter
10 59 (0.55%) Artifactory
10 59 (0.55%) Rational DOORS
11 51 (0.48%) Cucumber
12 42 (0.39%) Bitbucket
12 42 (0.39%) Mockito
13 41 (0.38%) Zephyr
14 40 (0.37%) Visual Studio
15 39 (0.36%) Maven
16 38 (0.35%) Cypress.io
17 36 (0.34%) REST Assured
18 31 (0.29%) WebDriver
General
1 2,338 (21.78%) Public Sector
2 2,193 (20.43%) Social Skills
3 734 (6.84%) Analytical Skills
4 671 (6.25%) Finance
5 332 (3.09%) Military
6 299 (2.79%) Documentation Skills
7 272 (2.53%) Aerospace
8 168 (1.56%) Legal
9 124 (1.16%) Banking
10 122 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
11 121 (1.13%) Telecoms
12 107 (1.00%) Manufacturing
13 102 (0.95%) Organisational Skills
14 94 (0.88%) Law
15 87 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 77 (0.72%) Presentation Skills
17 63 (0.59%) Police
18 50 (0.47%) Aviation
18 50 (0.47%) Marketing
19 41 (0.38%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,633 (15.21%) Architect
2 1,010 (9.41%) Developer
3 922 (8.59%) Senior
4 774 (7.21%) Lead
5 738 (6.87%) Analyst
6 529 (4.93%) Data Engineer
7 526 (4.90%) Consultant
8 507 (4.72%) DevOps Engineer
9 350 (3.26%) Technical Architect
10 317 (2.95%) Solutions Architect
11 315 (2.93%) Software Engineer
12 313 (2.92%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 287 (2.67%) Network Engineer
14 265 (2.47%) Business Analyst
15 226 (2.11%) Security Architect
16 221 (2.06%) Project Manager
17 218 (2.03%) Designer
18 213 (1.98%) Azure Engineer
19 196 (1.83%) Administrator
20 195 (1.82%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 332 (3.09%) REST
2 241 (2.24%) Spring
3 202 (1.88%) Kafka
3 202 (1.88%) React
4 199 (1.85%) Spring Boot
5 184 (1.71%) Node.js
6 181 (1.69%) .NET
7 154 (1.43%) LDAP
8 153 (1.43%) SOAP
9 149 (1.39%) RESTful
10 126 (1.17%) JSON
11 120 (1.12%) AngularJS
12 117 (1.09%) PySpark
13 116 (1.08%) Web Services
14 105 (0.98%) OAuth
15 98 (0.91%) Middleware
16 90 (0.84%) HTML
17 85 (0.79%) XML
18 83 (0.77%) Playwright
19 81 (0.75%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 391 (3.64%) Cloud Native
2 336 (3.13%) Product Ownership
3 324 (3.02%) Data Centre
4 300 (2.79%) Onboarding
5 216 (2.01%) Management Information System
6 158 (1.47%) PKI
7 149 (1.39%) Legacy Systems
8 131 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
9 130 (1.21%) Security Posture
10 129 (1.20%) Distributed Systems
11 121 (1.13%) Replication
12 101 (0.94%) Self-Motivation
13 90 (0.84%) Hybrid Cloud
13 90 (0.84%) Security Operations Centre
14 89 (0.83%) Clustering
15 88 (0.82%) Data Structures
15 88 (0.82%) Public Cloud
16 76 (0.71%) CMDB
17 75 (0.70%) Virtual Team
18 72 (0.67%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 846 (7.88%) Windows
2 742 (6.91%) Linux
3 267 (2.49%) Windows Server
4 195 (1.82%) Unix
5 134 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 97 (0.90%) Android
7 87 (0.81%) Windows 10
8 69 (0.64%) Apple iOS
9 53 (0.49%) Solaris
10 39 (0.36%) Mac OS
11 37 (0.34%) Ubuntu
12 31 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 30 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
14 27 (0.25%) AIX
15 25 (0.23%) VMS
16 23 (0.21%) CentOS
17 17 (0.16%) Windows 7
18 15 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
19 12 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
20 11 (0.10%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,059 (19.18%) Agile
2 1,648 (15.35%) DevOps
3 1,501 (13.98%) CI/CD
4 1,100 (10.25%) Problem-Solving
5 1,037 (9.66%) Stakeholder Management
6 998 (9.30%) Continuous Improvement
7 860 (8.01%) Migration
8 849 (7.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 785 (7.31%) Infrastructure as Code
10 667 (6.21%) Cybersecurity
11 657 (6.12%) Test Automation
12 634 (5.91%) Analytics
13 618 (5.76%) ITIL
14 605 (5.64%) Containerisation
15 593 (5.52%) Roadmaps
15 593 (5.52%) Software Engineering
16 549 (5.11%) Data Modelling
17 547 (5.10%) Decision-Making
18 481 (4.48%) AI
19 478 (4.45%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 1,204 (11.22%) Python
2 991 (9.23%) SQL
3 672 (6.26%) Java
4 554 (5.16%) PowerShell
5 328 (3.06%) JavaScript
6 222 (2.07%) C#
7 212 (1.97%) Bash
8 182 (1.70%) TypeScript
9 129 (1.20%) PL/SQL
10 99 (0.92%) C++
11 96 (0.89%) Shell Script
12 67 (0.62%) Bicep
13 62 (0.58%) Go
14 61 (0.57%) Ruby
14 61 (0.57%) Scala
15 57 (0.53%) C
16 54 (0.50%) Apex Code
17 45 (0.42%) Ada
18 42 (0.39%) R
19 41 (0.38%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 8,211 (76.49%) SC Cleared
2 1,922 (17.90%) DV Cleared
3 427 (3.98%) Degree
4 307 (2.86%) BPSS Clearance
5 218 (2.03%) Cisco Certification
6 180 (1.68%) CISSP
7 138 (1.29%) Azure Certification
8 123 (1.15%) CCNP
9 117 (1.09%) CISM
10 115 (1.07%) AWS Certification
11 104 (0.97%) Microsoft Certification
12 93 (0.87%) CCNA
13 80 (0.75%) PMP
14 74 (0.69%) Computer Science Degree
15 73 (0.68%) PMI Certification
16 71 (0.66%) ISTQB
16 71 (0.66%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 59 (0.55%) ITIL Certification
18 46 (0.43%) GIAC
19 42 (0.39%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 395 (3.68%) QA
2 320 (2.98%) Data Quality
3 304 (2.83%) NIST
4 300 (2.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 210 (1.96%) NCSC
6 206 (1.92%) Accessibility
7 176 (1.64%) GDPR
8 158 (1.47%) PMO
9 120 (1.12%) SLA
10 78 (0.73%) GRC
11 66 (0.61%) JSP 440
12 53 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
13 44 (0.41%) WCAG
14 41 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 36 (0.34%) RMADS
16 32 (0.30%) Def Stans
17 28 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 25 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
19 24 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
19 24 (0.22%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 671 (6.25%) Docker
2 471 (4.39%) Active Directory
3 315 (2.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 116 (1.08%) VMware ESXi
5 106 (0.99%) VMware NSX
6 92 (0.86%) Hyper-V
7 84 (0.78%) vSphere
8 73 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
9 36 (0.34%) Firmware
9 36 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
10 23 (0.21%) BitLocker
10 23 (0.21%) NFS
11 21 (0.20%) vCloud
12 19 (0.18%) Postfix
12 19 (0.18%) Squid
13 18 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
14 15 (0.14%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 10 (0.093%) Microsoft App-V
16 9 (0.084%) KVM
17 6 (0.056%) Ceph
Systems Management
1 867 (8.08%) Terraform
2 838 (7.81%) Kubernetes
3 390 (3.63%) Ansible
4 273 (2.54%) Grafana
5 227 (2.11%) Prometheus
6 117 (1.09%) vCenter Server
7 105 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
8 78 (0.73%) SCCM
9 61 (0.57%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 59 (0.55%) Microsoft Intune
11 53 (0.49%) FortiGate
12 50 (0.47%) Argo
13 42 (0.39%) Puppet
14 41 (0.38%) Oracle RMAN
15 39 (0.36%) SCOM
16 38 (0.35%) Podman
17 32 (0.30%) Nagios
18 29 (0.27%) Progress Chef
19 27 (0.25%) vRealize
20 25 (0.23%) Istio
Vendors
1 1,082 (10.08%) Microsoft
2 712 (6.63%) Oracle
3 517 (4.82%) VMware
4 415 (3.87%) ServiceNow
5 358 (3.33%) Cisco
6 349 (3.25%) SAP
7 246 (2.29%) Splunk
8 209 (1.95%) Databricks
9 174 (1.62%) Google
10 169 (1.57%) Red Hat
11 160 (1.49%) Salesforce
12 141 (1.31%) Talend
13 128 (1.19%) Palo Alto
14 126 (1.17%) IBM
15 108 (1.01%) Informatica
16 106 (0.99%) Juniper
17 98 (0.91%) CyberArk
18 97 (0.90%) Fortinet
19 91 (0.85%) Dynatrace
20 88 (0.82%) F5