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 27 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,560 5,356 7,919
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 23.02% 17.48% 17.94%
As % of the Qualifications category 67.58% 58.60% 59.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,458 3,451 5,035
10th Percentile £360 £325 £363
25th Percentile £450 £449 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.65%
75th Percentile £623 £633 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £520 £540 £566
% change year-on-year -3.70% -4.64% +2.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 787 276 512
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.12 £19.99
25th Percentile £20.35 £24.66 £39.74
Median hourly rate £25.15 £56.75 £57.30
Median % change year-on-year -55.68% -0.97% -4.50%
75th Percentile £67.25 £67.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.10 £75.13 £83.39
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £57.33
% change year-on-year -58.08% +4.66% -0.30%

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 14,147 9,140 13,383
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.06% 29.83% 30.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,349 5,625 8,258
10th Percentile £331 £288 £290
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £614 £630 £650
90th Percentile £719 £718 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £505 £530
% change year-on-year -0.89% -4.81% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,031 447 970
10th Percentile £16.09 £20.07 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.36 £24.18 £20.49
Median hourly rate £25.47 £40.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -36.33% -5.88% -11.46%
75th Percentile £65.00 £67.25 £64.31
90th Percentile £81.24 £81.45 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £44.25
% change year-on-year -44.11% +1.69% -1.67%

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 27 February 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 27 February 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 27 February 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 8,311 £525 -3.00% 1,480
UK excluding London 0 5,307 £520 -3.70% 1,243
London +5 2,883 £530 +0.95% 403
Work from Home +4 2,633 £530 +0.57% 675
South East +1 1,797 £525 -4.55% 509
South West 0 1,315 £550 -2.35% 283
Midlands +4 851 £495 -10.00% 135
North of England -2 826 £500 +2.04% 172
West Midlands +2 678 £500 -9.26% 102
North West 0 530 £500 +5.26% 105
East of England +1 347 £498 -0.50% 126
Yorkshire -6 177 £500 -4.76% 33
East Midlands +1 171 £425 -16.05% 33
Scotland +8 166 £475 -5.00% 30
North East +1 146 £450 -10.00% 35
Wales -1 80 £520 -0.93% 18
Northern Ireland +11 30 £500 +271.43% 2
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 (1.47%) Microsoft Exchange
4 140 (1.46%) SAS
5 82 (0.86%) Apache Spark
6 75 (0.78%) Apache
7 52 (0.54%) Apache Airflow
8 44 (0.46%) nginx
9 41 (0.43%) WebLogic
10 33 (0.35%) Skype for Business
11 21 (0.22%) Jupyter
12 19 (0.20%) CMS
12 19 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
13 15 (0.16%) Tuxedo
14 10 (0.10%) Tomcat
15 9 (0.094%) ArcGIS
16 8 (0.084%) IIS
16 8 (0.084%) Oracle Workflow
17 7 (0.073%) OpenStack
18 5 (0.052%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 255 (2.67%) Microsoft Office
2 188 (1.97%) Microsoft Excel
3 120 (1.26%) Microsoft Project
4 70 (0.73%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (0.46%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.15%) Simulink
8 6 (0.063%) Oracle Smart View
8 6 (0.063%) Sketch
8 6 (0.063%) Windchill
9 5 (0.052%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.052%) Siemens NX
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%) Lectora
12 2 (0.021%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.021%) Stateflow
12 2 (0.021%) Trello
Business Applications
1 163 (1.71%) 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
5 25 (0.26%) Teamcenter
6 21 (0.22%) Dynamics CRM
7 19 (0.20%) SAP PP
8 16 (0.17%) Maximo
8 16 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
9 14 (0.15%) SAP VC
10 13 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
10 13 (0.14%) SAP QM
10 13 (0.14%) SAP WM
11 12 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
11 12 (0.13%) SAP EWM
12 11 (0.12%) Oracle General Ledger
12 11 (0.12%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 11 (0.12%) SAP HCM
13 9 (0.094%) SAP PM
Cloud Services
1 1,643 (17.19%) AWS
2 1,560 (16.32%) Azure
3 420 (4.39%) GitHub
4 402 (4.21%) GCP
5 348 (3.64%) Power Platform
6 342 (3.58%) Azure DevOps
7 312 (3.26%) Microsoft 365
8 266 (2.78%) Serverless
9 232 (2.43%) Entra ID
10 223 (2.33%) GitHub Actions
11 207 (2.17%) Amazon S3
12 182 (1.90%) OpenShift
13 173 (1.81%) AWS Lambda
14 147 (1.54%) AWS CloudFormation
15 136 (1.42%) Amazon EC2
16 134 (1.40%) Amazon EKS
17 131 (1.37%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 113 (1.18%) IaaS
19 111 (1.16%) OCI
20 109 (1.14%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 452 (4.73%) Firewall
2 298 (3.12%) DNS
3 220 (2.30%) Network Security
4 197 (2.06%) WAN
5 177 (1.85%) VPN
6 157 (1.64%) LAN
7 149 (1.56%) TCP/IP
8 135 (1.41%) DHCP
9 134 (1.40%) BGP
10 99 (1.04%) Wireless
11 94 (0.98%) VLAN
12 93 (0.97%) OSPF
13 73 (0.76%) Wi-Fi
14 71 (0.74%) MPLS
15 58 (0.61%) SSL
16 55 (0.58%) SAN
17 54 (0.56%) IPsec
18 50 (0.52%) Cisco ISE
19 42 (0.44%) Skype
20 41 (0.43%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 269 (2.81%) PostgreSQL
2 249 (2.60%) Power BI
3 171 (1.79%) Data Warehouse
4 140 (1.46%) SQL Server
5 121 (1.27%) Metadata
6 107 (1.12%) Oracle Database
7 101 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
8 100 (1.05%) MongoDB
9 98 (1.03%) NoSQL
10 91 (0.95%) Relational Database
11 77 (0.81%) Elasticsearch
12 76 (0.79%) Data Lake
13 74 (0.77%) Azure SQL Database
14 67 (0.70%) Big Data
15 63 (0.66%) MySQL
16 61 (0.64%) Pentaho
17 52 (0.54%) Tableau
18 46 (0.48%) Amazon Redshift
19 44 (0.46%) DynamoDB
20 42 (0.44%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 562 (5.88%) JIRA
2 466 (4.87%) Git
3 411 (4.30%) Jenkins
4 362 (3.79%) GitLab
5 111 (1.16%) Selenium
6 89 (0.93%) Postman
7 83 (0.87%) JUnit
8 61 (0.64%) Cypress.io
9 60 (0.63%) SonarQube
10 48 (0.50%) Artifactory
11 46 (0.48%) Bitbucket
11 46 (0.48%) Cucumber
11 46 (0.48%) Maven
12 45 (0.47%) Oracle APEX
13 41 (0.43%) Mockito
14 36 (0.38%) REST Assured
15 34 (0.36%) Rational DOORS
16 33 (0.35%) JMeter
17 32 (0.33%) Visual Studio
18 24 (0.25%) Metasploit
General
1 2,428 (25.40%) Public Sector
2 2,297 (24.03%) Social Skills
3 794 (8.31%) Analytical Skills
4 646 (6.76%) Finance
5 331 (3.46%) Military
6 260 (2.72%) Documentation Skills
7 204 (2.13%) Aerospace
8 187 (1.96%) Manufacturing
9 185 (1.94%) Telecoms
10 145 (1.52%) Legal
11 130 (1.36%) Organisational Skills
12 120 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
13 118 (1.23%) Marketing
14 117 (1.22%) Electronics
15 110 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
16 99 (1.04%) Banking
17 70 (0.73%) Law
18 68 (0.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 48 (0.50%) Police
20 36 (0.38%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,335 (13.96%) Architect
2 941 (9.84%) Developer
3 834 (8.72%) Senior
4 719 (7.52%) Analyst
5 647 (6.77%) Consultant
6 567 (5.93%) Lead
7 432 (4.52%) DevOps Engineer
8 351 (3.67%) Data Engineer
9 253 (2.65%) Network Engineer
9 253 (2.65%) Solutions Architect
10 251 (2.63%) Business Analyst
11 248 (2.59%) Software Engineer
12 239 (2.50%) Support Engineer
13 234 (2.45%) Technical Architect
14 198 (2.07%) Tester
15 181 (1.89%) AWS Engineer
16 170 (1.78%) Designer
17 169 (1.77%) Azure Engineer
18 168 (1.76%) Security Architect
19 159 (1.66%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 353 (3.69%) REST
2 225 (2.35%) Node.js
3 213 (2.23%) Spring
4 209 (2.19%) Kafka
5 198 (2.07%) React
6 163 (1.71%) Spring Boot
7 161 (1.68%) JSON
8 156 (1.63%) SOAP
9 151 (1.58%) LDAP
10 134 (1.40%) .NET
11 120 (1.26%) HTML
12 119 (1.24%) AngularJS
13 115 (1.20%) RESTful
14 111 (1.16%) PySpark
15 109 (1.14%) Web Services
16 105 (1.10%) Oracle Fusion
17 104 (1.09%) OAuth
18 100 (1.05%) XML
19 94 (0.98%) CSS
20 84 (0.88%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 295 (3.09%) Data Centre
2 274 (2.87%) Cloud Native
3 269 (2.81%) Product Ownership
4 243 (2.54%) Onboarding
5 206 (2.15%) PKI
6 180 (1.88%) Management Information System
7 141 (1.47%) Security Posture
8 119 (1.24%) Legacy Systems
9 115 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
10 112 (1.17%) Enterprise Software
11 100 (1.05%) Replication
12 82 (0.86%) Public Cloud
12 82 (0.86%) Security Operations Centre
13 78 (0.82%) Hybrid Cloud
14 77 (0.81%) Driving Licence
15 70 (0.73%) Cyber Threat
15 70 (0.73%) Distributed Systems
16 51 (0.53%) Analytical Mindset
17 50 (0.52%) Clustering
18 49 (0.51%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 881 (9.22%) Windows
2 709 (7.42%) Linux
3 223 (2.33%) Windows Server
4 156 (1.63%) Windows 10
5 129 (1.35%) Unix
6 127 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 126 (1.32%) Android
8 66 (0.69%) Mac OS
9 52 (0.54%) Apple iOS
10 44 (0.46%) Ubuntu
11 38 (0.40%) 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 12 (0.13%) Mac OS X
18 11 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
19 8 (0.084%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,823 (19.07%) Agile
2 1,442 (15.08%) DevOps
3 1,286 (13.45%) CI/CD
4 1,182 (12.36%) Problem-Solving
5 875 (9.15%) Stakeholder Management
6 823 (8.61%) Migration
7 752 (7.87%) Continuous Improvement
8 659 (6.89%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 620 (6.49%) Cybersecurity
10 613 (6.41%) Infrastructure as Code
11 560 (5.86%) ITIL
12 549 (5.74%) Test Automation
13 525 (5.49%) Containerisation
14 523 (5.47%) Roadmaps
15 518 (5.42%) Analytics
16 448 (4.69%) Scrum
16 448 (4.69%) Software Engineering
17 444 (4.64%) Business Intelligence
18 424 (4.44%) Service Management
19 411 (4.30%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,162 (12.15%) Python
2 804 (8.41%) SQL
3 608 (6.36%) PowerShell
4 547 (5.72%) Java
5 441 (4.61%) JavaScript
6 239 (2.50%) Bash
7 210 (2.20%) TypeScript
8 184 (1.92%) C#
9 108 (1.13%) C++
10 106 (1.11%) PL/SQL
11 104 (1.09%) Shell Script
12 86 (0.90%) Go
13 66 (0.69%) C
14 59 (0.62%) Ruby
15 51 (0.53%) Ada
16 50 (0.52%) Scala
17 42 (0.44%) Bicep
18 41 (0.43%) ABAP
19 38 (0.40%) Kusto Query Language
20 36 (0.38%) R
Qualifications
1 7,355 (76.94%) SC Cleared
2 1,585 (16.58%) DV Cleared
3 464 (4.85%) Degree
4 318 (3.33%) BPSS Clearance
5 184 (1.92%) Cisco Certification
6 175 (1.83%) CISSP
7 135 (1.41%) AWS Certification
8 130 (1.36%) Azure Certification
8 130 (1.36%) CCNP
9 119 (1.24%) Microsoft Certification
10 109 (1.14%) CISM
11 88 (0.92%) Computer Science Degree
12 81 (0.85%) CCNA
13 66 (0.69%) ITIL Certification
13 66 (0.69%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 63 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
15 55 (0.58%) ISTQB
16 52 (0.54%) PMP
17 50 (0.52%) PMI Certification
18 49 (0.51%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 317 (3.32%) QA
2 293 (3.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 281 (2.94%) NIST
4 261 (2.73%) Data Quality
5 212 (2.22%) NCSC
6 192 (2.01%) Accessibility
7 179 (1.87%) GDPR
8 128 (1.34%) SLA
9 99 (1.04%) PMO
10 64 (0.67%) GRC
11 60 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 50 (0.52%) WCAG
13 43 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials
14 41 (0.43%) Def Stans
15 39 (0.41%) NIST 800
16 35 (0.37%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 34 (0.36%) PCI DSS
18 32 (0.33%) COBIT
19 27 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
20 26 (0.27%) RMADS
System Software
1 660 (6.90%) Docker
2 494 (5.17%) Active Directory
3 250 (2.62%) VMware Infrastructure
4 92 (0.96%) VMware NSX
5 71 (0.74%) vSphere
6 65 (0.68%) Hyper-V
7 63 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
8 62 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
9 27 (0.28%) Firmware
9 27 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
10 23 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
11 18 (0.19%) BitLocker
12 16 (0.17%) NFS
12 16 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 12 (0.13%) Postfix
14 11 (0.12%) Squid
15 8 (0.084%) vCloud
16 7 (0.073%) Virtual Servers
17 6 (0.063%) KVM
18 5 (0.052%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 844 (8.83%) Kubernetes
2 805 (8.42%) Terraform
3 313 (3.27%) Ansible
4 238 (2.49%) Grafana
5 195 (2.04%) Prometheus
6 132 (1.38%) Single Sign-On
7 103 (1.08%) SCCM
8 94 (0.98%) vCenter Server
9 91 (0.95%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 73 (0.76%) Argo
10 73 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
11 46 (0.48%) FortiGate
12 45 (0.47%) vRealize
13 40 (0.42%) Podman
14 37 (0.39%) Packer
15 34 (0.36%) Kibana
16 32 (0.33%) Puppet
17 30 (0.31%) OPNET
18 29 (0.30%) Progress Chef
19 25 (0.26%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,062 (11.11%) Microsoft
2 545 (5.70%) Oracle
3 474 (4.96%) VMware
4 454 (4.75%) SAP
5 444 (4.64%) Cisco
6 398 (4.16%) ServiceNow
7 233 (2.44%) Splunk
8 189 (1.98%) Red Hat
9 148 (1.55%) Databricks
10 145 (1.52%) CyberArk
10 145 (1.52%) Google
11 142 (1.49%) Palo Alto
12 134 (1.40%) Juniper
13 132 (1.38%) Salesforce
14 117 (1.22%) Atlassian
15 99 (1.04%) Dell
16 86 (0.90%) Talend
17 84 (0.88%) IBM
18 81 (0.85%) Dynatrace
18 81 (0.85%) HP