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 10 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,625 5,218 7,922
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 22.24% 17.76% 18.40%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.53% 57.48% 60.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,274 3,456 5,235
10th Percentile £374 £350 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £527 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.43% -4.14% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £694 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £541 £550
% change year-on-year -3.00% -1.59% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 849 301 528
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £21.29 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £47.81 £56.89
Median % change year-on-year +15.05% -15.96% -5.19%
75th Percentile £73.46 £66.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £77.50 £84.41
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £54.75 £57.75
% change year-on-year +0.46% -5.19% +0.43%

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 15,281 9,078 13,080
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.98% 30.89% 30.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,166 5,722 8,087
10th Percentile £349 £288 £305
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £619 £623 £650
90th Percentile £721 £701 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £534
% change year-on-year - -6.32% +0.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,088 518 1,071
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.13 £13.85
25th Percentile £21.25 £21.47 £17.80
Median hourly rate £47.54 £38.27 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +24.22% -4.33% -25.93%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.46 £61.55
90th Percentile £85.36 £80.03 £75.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £40.00 £40.94
% change year-on-year +18.75% -2.30% -18.12%

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 10 May 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 10 May 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 10 May 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 +2 9,211 £525 -2.23% 1,819
UK excluding London +1 5,904 £525 -3.00% 1,473
London +6 3,267 £525 - 493
Work from Home +4 2,849 £525 - 861
South East +1 2,223 £538 -2.27% 504
South West 0 1,310 £538 -4.44% 316
Midlands +4 900 £475 -9.52% 157
North of England -1 859 £488 -2.50% 289
West Midlands +4 763 £475 -10.55% 122
North West -2 498 £497 -0.70% 170
East of England +2 382 £525 +9.66% 143
Scotland +36 220 £500 +6.95% 42
Yorkshire -15 207 £475 -6.13% 49
North East +1 188 £475 -3.06% 72
East Midlands -2 131 £450 -5.26% 35
Wales +6 83 £500 - 39
Northern Ireland +5 19 £550 +12.82% 19

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
1 408 (3.84%) Confluence
2 224 (2.11%) SharePoint
3 132 (1.24%) SAS
4 131 (1.23%) Microsoft Exchange
5 108 (1.02%) Apache Spark
6 85 (0.80%) Apache
7 73 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
8 38 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 36 (0.34%) nginx
10 29 (0.27%) Jupyter
11 21 (0.20%) Tomcat
12 15 (0.14%) IIS
12 15 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
12 15 (0.14%) Tuxedo
13 14 (0.13%) CMS
13 14 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
14 13 (0.12%) Skype for Business
15 11 (0.10%) NetWeaver
16 10 (0.094%) ArcGIS
17 9 (0.085%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 211 (1.99%) Microsoft Office
2 192 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
3 122 (1.15%) Microsoft Project
4 84 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 45 (0.42%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.14%) Simulink
8 7 (0.066%) AutoCAD
8 7 (0.066%) Notepad++
9 6 (0.056%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.047%) Revit
10 5 (0.047%) Windchill
11 4 (0.038%) Siemens NX
11 4 (0.038%) Sketch
12 3 (0.028%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.019%) Chatbot
13 2 (0.019%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.019%) InVision
13 2 (0.019%) Lectora
13 2 (0.019%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 110 (1.04%) SAP S/4HANA
2 48 (0.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 47 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
4 31 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
5 29 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
6 27 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 22 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
8 15 (0.14%) Maximo
9 14 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
9 14 (0.13%) SAP PSCD
10 13 (0.12%) Temenos T24
11 12 (0.11%) Findur
11 12 (0.11%) SAP PP
12 11 (0.10%) Oracle Assets
12 11 (0.10%) SAP GRC
13 10 (0.094%) iTrent
14 9 (0.085%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 9 (0.085%) SAP HCM
14 9 (0.085%) SAP HR
15 8 (0.075%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 1,856 (17.47%) AWS
2 1,847 (17.38%) Azure
3 448 (4.22%) GitHub
4 437 (4.11%) GCP
5 401 (3.77%) Azure DevOps
6 386 (3.63%) Power Platform
7 276 (2.60%) Serverless
8 272 (2.56%) Microsoft 365
9 257 (2.42%) GitHub Actions
10 256 (2.41%) Entra ID
11 213 (2.00%) Amazon S3
12 185 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
13 158 (1.49%) PaaS
14 143 (1.35%) Amazon EC2
15 140 (1.32%) AWS CloudFormation
16 138 (1.30%) OpenShift
17 137 (1.29%) Amazon EKS
18 134 (1.26%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 128 (1.20%) OCI
20 123 (1.16%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 481 (4.53%) Firewall
2 295 (2.78%) DNS
3 235 (2.21%) Network Security
4 222 (2.09%) WAN
5 203 (1.91%) LAN
6 170 (1.60%) VPN
7 145 (1.36%) BGP
8 143 (1.35%) DHCP
9 125 (1.18%) OSPF
10 124 (1.17%) TCP/IP
11 97 (0.91%) Wi-Fi
12 95 (0.89%) VLAN
13 82 (0.77%) Wireless
14 67 (0.63%) MPLS
15 57 (0.54%) SAN
16 54 (0.51%) VXLAN
17 52 (0.49%) SD-WAN
17 52 (0.49%) SSL
18 50 (0.47%) IPsec
19 47 (0.44%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 300 (2.82%) Power BI
2 255 (2.40%) PostgreSQL
3 235 (2.21%) Data Warehouse
4 198 (1.86%) SQL Server
5 137 (1.29%) Metadata
6 125 (1.18%) Oracle Database
7 111 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
8 106 (1.00%) Data Lake
9 102 (0.96%) MongoDB
10 101 (0.95%) Relational Database
11 99 (0.93%) NoSQL
12 82 (0.77%) Pentaho
13 79 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
14 75 (0.71%) Big Data
15 72 (0.68%) MySQL
16 71 (0.67%) Azure SQL Database
16 71 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
17 68 (0.64%) Tableau
18 66 (0.62%) Amazon Redshift
19 60 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 636 (5.99%) JIRA
2 470 (4.42%) Git
3 397 (3.74%) Jenkins
4 393 (3.70%) GitLab
5 99 (0.93%) Selenium
6 88 (0.83%) Postman
7 77 (0.72%) JUnit
8 69 (0.65%) SonarQube
9 55 (0.52%) Rational DOORS
10 51 (0.48%) Artifactory
11 50 (0.47%) JMeter
12 44 (0.41%) Bitbucket
13 42 (0.40%) Cucumber
14 40 (0.38%) Mockito
15 39 (0.37%) Maven
16 38 (0.36%) Visual Studio
17 35 (0.33%) Cypress.io
18 31 (0.29%) Zephyr
19 27 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
20 25 (0.24%) Gatling
General
1 2,343 (22.05%) Public Sector
2 2,268 (21.35%) Social Skills
3 795 (7.48%) Analytical Skills
4 709 (6.67%) Finance
5 355 (3.34%) Military
6 287 (2.70%) Documentation Skills
7 248 (2.33%) Aerospace
8 171 (1.61%) Legal
9 133 (1.25%) Telecoms
10 127 (1.20%) Influencing Skills
11 119 (1.12%) Banking
11 119 (1.12%) Manufacturing
12 116 (1.09%) Organisational Skills
13 90 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
14 87 (0.82%) Law
15 82 (0.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 70 (0.66%) Police
17 56 (0.53%) Marketing
18 52 (0.49%) Electronics
19 38 (0.36%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,619 (15.24%) Architect
2 1,005 (9.46%) Developer
3 903 (8.50%) Senior
4 755 (7.11%) Analyst
5 735 (6.92%) Lead
6 534 (5.03%) Consultant
7 508 (4.78%) Data Engineer
8 494 (4.65%) DevOps Engineer
9 320 (3.01%) Technical Architect
10 313 (2.95%) Software Engineer
11 295 (2.78%) Network Engineer
12 285 (2.68%) Solutions Architect
13 283 (2.66%) Business Analyst
14 268 (2.52%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 231 (2.17%) Project Manager
16 217 (2.04%) Azure Engineer
17 216 (2.03%) Security Architect
18 213 (2.00%) Designer
19 188 (1.77%) Administrator
20 184 (1.73%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 328 (3.09%) REST
2 254 (2.39%) Spring
3 217 (2.04%) Kafka
4 206 (1.94%) Spring Boot
5 194 (1.83%) Node.js
6 187 (1.76%) React
7 179 (1.68%) .NET
8 154 (1.45%) LDAP
9 149 (1.40%) RESTful
9 149 (1.40%) SOAP
10 134 (1.26%) JSON
11 122 (1.15%) AngularJS
11 122 (1.15%) PySpark
12 116 (1.09%) Web Services
13 99 (0.93%) Oracle Fusion
14 95 (0.89%) OAuth
15 91 (0.86%) HTML
16 86 (0.81%) Elastic Stack
16 86 (0.81%) Middleware
16 86 (0.81%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 372 (3.50%) Cloud Native
2 346 (3.26%) Product Ownership
3 314 (2.96%) Data Centre
4 301 (2.83%) Onboarding
5 197 (1.85%) Management Information System
6 167 (1.57%) PKI
7 143 (1.35%) Legacy Systems
8 133 (1.25%) Security Posture
9 126 (1.19%) Enterprise Software
10 123 (1.16%) Distributed Systems
10 123 (1.16%) Replication
11 102 (0.96%) Self-Motivation
12 90 (0.85%) Public Cloud
13 83 (0.78%) Data Structures
14 80 (0.75%) Clustering
14 80 (0.75%) Security Operations Centre
15 79 (0.74%) Hybrid Cloud
16 74 (0.70%) Virtual Team
17 69 (0.65%) Greenfield Project
18 61 (0.57%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 872 (8.21%) Windows
2 731 (6.88%) Linux
3 249 (2.34%) Windows Server
4 176 (1.66%) Unix
5 130 (1.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 113 (1.06%) Android
7 99 (0.93%) Windows 10
8 69 (0.65%) Apple iOS
9 50 (0.47%) Mac OS
10 43 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 42 (0.40%) Solaris
12 33 (0.31%) VMS
13 29 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
13 29 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
14 27 (0.25%) AIX
15 22 (0.21%) CentOS
16 14 (0.13%) Windows 7
17 12 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
18 11 (0.10%) Windows Server 2008
19 10 (0.094%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,050 (19.29%) Agile
2 1,609 (15.14%) DevOps
3 1,448 (13.63%) CI/CD
4 1,160 (10.92%) Problem-Solving
5 1,004 (9.45%) Stakeholder Management
6 930 (8.75%) Continuous Improvement
7 858 (8.08%) Migration
8 790 (7.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 742 (6.98%) Infrastructure as Code
10 645 (6.07%) ITIL
11 624 (5.87%) Cybersecurity
12 621 (5.84%) Test Automation
13 609 (5.73%) Analytics
14 600 (5.65%) Containerisation
15 576 (5.42%) Roadmaps
16 573 (5.39%) Software Engineering
17 519 (4.88%) Data Modelling
18 513 (4.83%) Decision-Making
19 463 (4.36%) Scrum
20 457 (4.30%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,203 (11.32%) Python
2 970 (9.13%) SQL
3 671 (6.32%) Java
4 552 (5.20%) PowerShell
5 341 (3.21%) JavaScript
6 222 (2.09%) C#
7 197 (1.85%) Bash
8 184 (1.73%) TypeScript
9 118 (1.11%) PL/SQL
10 99 (0.93%) C++
11 98 (0.92%) Shell Script
12 75 (0.71%) Go
13 70 (0.66%) Scala
14 66 (0.62%) Ruby
15 60 (0.56%) Bicep
16 58 (0.55%) C
17 51 (0.48%) R
18 48 (0.45%) Apex Code
19 40 (0.38%) Ada
19 40 (0.38%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 8,110 (76.33%) SC Cleared
2 1,901 (17.89%) DV Cleared
3 469 (4.41%) Degree
4 308 (2.90%) BPSS Clearance
5 211 (1.99%) Cisco Certification
6 179 (1.68%) CISSP
7 140 (1.32%) Azure Certification
8 128 (1.20%) AWS Certification
9 122 (1.15%) CCNP
10 119 (1.12%) CISM
11 93 (0.88%) Microsoft Certification
12 86 (0.81%) CCNA
13 78 (0.73%) Computer Science Degree
14 77 (0.72%) PMP
15 71 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
16 69 (0.65%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 68 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
18 66 (0.62%) PMI Certification
19 55 (0.52%) ISTQB
20 50 (0.47%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 384 (3.61%) QA
2 320 (3.01%) Data Quality
3 304 (2.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 298 (2.80%) NIST
5 207 (1.95%) NCSC
6 199 (1.87%) Accessibility
7 175 (1.65%) GDPR
8 164 (1.54%) PMO
9 111 (1.04%) SLA
10 73 (0.69%) GRC
11 65 (0.61%) JSP 440
12 52 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
13 42 (0.40%) WCAG
14 40 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.31%) PCI DSS
16 32 (0.30%) COBIT
16 32 (0.30%) RMADS
17 31 (0.29%) Def Stans
18 28 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 24 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 672 (6.32%) Docker
2 488 (4.59%) Active Directory
3 296 (2.79%) VMware Infrastructure
4 101 (0.95%) VMware ESXi
5 98 (0.92%) VMware NSX
6 87 (0.82%) Hyper-V
7 78 (0.73%) vSphere
8 74 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
9 39 (0.37%) Firmware
10 34 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
11 23 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
12 20 (0.19%) BitLocker
12 20 (0.19%) NFS
13 17 (0.16%) Postfix
13 17 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 16 (0.15%) vCloud
15 14 (0.13%) Squid
16 8 (0.075%) KVM
16 8 (0.075%) Microsoft App-V
17 7 (0.066%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 859 (8.08%) Kubernetes
2 846 (7.96%) Terraform
3 359 (3.38%) Ansible
4 269 (2.53%) Grafana
5 224 (2.11%) Prometheus
6 115 (1.08%) Single Sign-On
7 101 (0.95%) vCenter Server
8 85 (0.80%) SCCM
9 65 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 56 (0.53%) Argo
10 56 (0.53%) FortiGate
10 56 (0.53%) Microsoft Intune
11 40 (0.38%) Puppet
12 37 (0.35%) Podman
13 35 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
13 35 (0.33%) Progress Chef
14 33 (0.31%) vRealize
15 32 (0.30%) Nagios
16 31 (0.29%) OPNET
17 27 (0.25%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,071 (10.08%) Microsoft
2 658 (6.19%) Oracle
3 517 (4.87%) VMware
4 417 (3.92%) ServiceNow
5 381 (3.59%) SAP
6 375 (3.53%) Cisco
7 247 (2.32%) Splunk
8 208 (1.96%) Databricks
9 174 (1.64%) Google
10 170 (1.60%) Red Hat
11 137 (1.29%) Salesforce
12 129 (1.21%) IBM
12 129 (1.21%) Talend
13 123 (1.16%) Palo Alto
14 104 (0.98%) Atlassian
14 104 (0.98%) Juniper
15 102 (0.96%) CyberArk
16 97 (0.91%) Informatica
17 89 (0.84%) Dynatrace
18 87 (0.82%) Remedy