Security Cleared Contract Job Trends in England

Security Clearance
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in England with a requirement for Security Cleared qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 15 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 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 9,432 4,546 7,116
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.02% 18.41% 18.95%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.58% 58.95% 61.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,590 2,964 4,636
10th Percentile £380 £338 £356
25th Percentile £450 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 768 322 526
10th Percentile £18.20 £18.39 £14.14
25th Percentile £24.93 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £60.00 £28.91 £56.89
Median % change year-on-year +107.54% -49.18% -5.19%
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.40 £80.00 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £59.50 £26.28 £55.80
% change year-on-year +126.41% -52.90% -7.00%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
England

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 in England.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 13,556 7,712 11,480
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.65% 31.23% 30.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,104 4,842 7,078
10th Percentile £350 £278 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £646
90th Percentile £721 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,032 488 1,009
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.63 £20.81 £20.00
Median hourly rate £51.22 £30.31 £41.27
Median % change year-on-year +69.02% -26.56% -24.97%
75th Percentile £73.46 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.25 £80.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £30.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +66.67% -25.00% -27.27%

Security Cleared
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Security Cleared relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Security Cleared job vacancy trend in England

Security Cleared
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Security Cleared.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Security Cleared

Security Cleared
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Security Cleared in England over the 6 months to 15 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Security Cleared in England

Security Cleared
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Security Cleared.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Security Cleared

Security Cleared
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Security Cleared in England over the 6 months to 15 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Security Cleared in England

Security Cleared
Contract Job Locations in England

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 England region over the 6 months to 15 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
London +7 3,380 £525 - 424
South East +1 2,259 £550 - 495
South West 0 1,284 £538 -4.44% 375
North of England +2 986 £500 - 258
Midlands +2 894 £469 -10.67% 109
West Midlands +2 774 £469 -10.62% 80
North West 0 544 £520 +4.00% 160
East of England +2 364 £550 +10.00% 123
Yorkshire -2 247 £490 -2.00% 56
North East +1 228 £478 -0.52% 45
East Midlands -5 113 £418 -17.53% 29
Security Cleared
UK

Security Cleared
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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
1 338 (3.58%) Confluence
2 217 (2.30%) SharePoint
3 136 (1.44%) SAS
4 126 (1.34%) Microsoft Exchange
5 83 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
6 81 (0.86%) Apache Spark
7 76 (0.81%) Apache
8 39 (0.41%) Jupyter
9 38 (0.40%) nginx
10 30 (0.32%) WebLogic
11 21 (0.22%) Tomcat
12 18 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
13 16 (0.17%) IIS
14 15 (0.16%) CMS
14 15 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
14 15 (0.16%) Skype for Business
15 13 (0.14%) Tuxedo
16 11 (0.12%) NetWeaver
17 9 (0.095%) ArcGIS
18 8 (0.085%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 156 (1.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 131 (1.39%) Microsoft Office
3 75 (0.80%) Microsoft Project
4 73 (0.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 39 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 15 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.15%) Simulink
8 10 (0.11%) SOLIDWORKS
9 9 (0.095%) AutoCAD
9 9 (0.095%) Revit
10 8 (0.085%) Chatbot
11 5 (0.053%) Notepad++
12 3 (0.032%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.032%) Sketch
12 3 (0.032%) Windchill
13 2 (0.021%) CATIA
13 2 (0.021%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.021%) Lectora
13 2 (0.021%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.021%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 97 (1.03%) SAP S/4HANA
2 56 (0.59%) Remedy ITSM
3 40 (0.42%) Oracle ERP
4 33 (0.35%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 30 (0.32%) Teamcenter
6 26 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
7 18 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
8 15 (0.16%) Findur
9 14 (0.15%) Maximo
9 14 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
10 13 (0.14%) SAP PSCD
11 12 (0.13%) iTrent
11 12 (0.13%) Primavera
11 12 (0.13%) Temenos T24
12 9 (0.095%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.095%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.095%) Salesforce CRM
12 9 (0.095%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.095%) SAP HR
13 8 (0.085%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,639 (17.38%) Azure
2 1,583 (16.78%) AWS
3 378 (4.01%) GitHub
4 362 (3.84%) GCP
5 361 (3.83%) Power Platform
6 360 (3.82%) Azure DevOps
7 239 (2.53%) Serverless
8 234 (2.48%) Microsoft 365
9 229 (2.43%) Entra ID
10 227 (2.41%) GitHub Actions
11 205 (2.17%) Amazon S3
12 167 (1.77%) AWS Lambda
13 148 (1.57%) Amazon EC2
14 135 (1.43%) PaaS
15 130 (1.38%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 129 (1.37%) OpenShift
17 123 (1.30%) OCI
18 122 (1.29%) SaaS
19 105 (1.11%) Virtual Private Cloud
20 97 (1.03%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 412 (4.37%) Firewall
2 273 (2.89%) DNS
3 223 (2.36%) Network Security
4 205 (2.17%) WAN
5 186 (1.97%) LAN
6 158 (1.68%) VPN
7 149 (1.58%) DHCP
8 136 (1.44%) BGP
9 115 (1.22%) OSPF
10 111 (1.18%) Wi-Fi
11 103 (1.09%) VLAN
12 92 (0.98%) TCP/IP
13 79 (0.84%) Wireless
14 59 (0.63%) MPLS
15 55 (0.58%) VXLAN
16 54 (0.57%) SD-WAN
17 52 (0.55%) SAN
18 48 (0.51%) Ethernet VPN
18 48 (0.51%) Structured Cabling
19 47 (0.50%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 269 (2.85%) Power BI
2 232 (2.46%) PostgreSQL
3 215 (2.28%) Data Warehouse
4 203 (2.15%) SQL Server
5 133 (1.41%) Oracle Database
6 117 (1.24%) Metadata
7 108 (1.15%) Amazon RDS
8 103 (1.09%) Data Lake
9 92 (0.98%) Relational Database
10 82 (0.87%) Pentaho
11 80 (0.85%) MongoDB
12 75 (0.80%) Elasticsearch
12 75 (0.80%) Oracle Reports
13 69 (0.73%) MySQL
14 67 (0.71%) NoSQL
15 64 (0.68%) Amazon Redshift
16 60 (0.64%) Amazon Athena
16 60 (0.64%) Tableau
17 45 (0.48%) Azure SQL Database
18 43 (0.46%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 532 (5.64%) JIRA
2 421 (4.46%) Git
3 386 (4.09%) GitLab
4 357 (3.78%) Jenkins
5 102 (1.08%) Selenium
6 79 (0.84%) JUnit
7 70 (0.74%) SonarQube
8 68 (0.72%) Postman
9 57 (0.60%) Rational DOORS
10 51 (0.54%) JMeter
11 47 (0.50%) Artifactory
11 47 (0.50%) Cucumber
12 41 (0.43%) Bitbucket
13 40 (0.42%) Mockito
14 39 (0.41%) Maven
15 37 (0.39%) Visual Studio
15 37 (0.39%) Zephyr
16 34 (0.36%) Cypress.io
17 33 (0.35%) REST Assured
18 30 (0.32%) WebDriver
General
1 1,982 (21.01%) Public Sector
2 1,912 (20.27%) Social Skills
3 649 (6.88%) Analytical Skills
4 624 (6.62%) Finance
5 308 (3.27%) Military
6 267 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
7 259 (2.75%) Aerospace
8 142 (1.51%) Legal
9 121 (1.28%) Banking
10 112 (1.19%) Influencing Skills
11 99 (1.05%) Law
12 92 (0.98%) Telecoms
13 88 (0.93%) Organisational Skills
14 79 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
15 74 (0.78%) Manufacturing
16 64 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 63 (0.67%) Police
18 44 (0.47%) Marketing
19 39 (0.41%) Retail
20 37 (0.39%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,376 (14.59%) Architect
2 893 (9.47%) Developer
3 815 (8.64%) Senior
4 725 (7.69%) Lead
5 640 (6.79%) Analyst
6 462 (4.90%) Data Engineer
7 423 (4.48%) DevOps Engineer
8 420 (4.45%) Consultant
9 291 (3.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 280 (2.97%) Software Engineer
11 271 (2.87%) Technical Architect
12 259 (2.75%) Network Engineer
13 233 (2.47%) Business Analyst
14 231 (2.45%) Solutions Architect
15 208 (2.21%) Project Manager
16 204 (2.16%) Security Architect
17 189 (2.00%) Administrator
18 186 (1.97%) Delivery Manager
19 184 (1.95%) Azure Engineer
20 175 (1.86%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 293 (3.11%) REST
2 214 (2.27%) Spring
3 180 (1.91%) Spring Boot
4 169 (1.79%) React
5 161 (1.71%) .NET
6 152 (1.61%) Kafka
7 148 (1.57%) Node.js
8 138 (1.46%) RESTful
9 134 (1.42%) LDAP
10 131 (1.39%) SOAP
11 112 (1.19%) AngularJS
12 104 (1.10%) JSON
13 95 (1.01%) Web Services
14 93 (0.99%) PySpark
15 90 (0.95%) OAuth
16 88 (0.93%) HTML
17 72 (0.76%) Middleware
17 72 (0.76%) Oracle Fusion
18 71 (0.75%) OpenID
18 71 (0.75%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 355 (3.76%) Cloud Native
2 314 (3.33%) Product Ownership
3 282 (2.99%) Data Centre
4 280 (2.97%) Onboarding
5 151 (1.60%) Management Information System
6 149 (1.58%) Legacy Systems
7 136 (1.44%) PKI
8 123 (1.30%) Distributed Systems
9 115 (1.22%) Security Posture
10 113 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
11 111 (1.18%) Replication
12 99 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
13 88 (0.93%) Clustering
14 82 (0.87%) Data Structures
15 80 (0.85%) CMDB
16 79 (0.84%) Hybrid Cloud
17 75 (0.80%) Public Cloud
18 73 (0.77%) Security Operations Centre
19 70 (0.74%) Operational Technology
20 65 (0.69%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 753 (7.98%) Windows
2 625 (6.63%) Linux
3 248 (2.63%) Windows Server
4 181 (1.92%) Unix
5 109 (1.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 78 (0.83%) Windows 10
7 74 (0.78%) Android
8 51 (0.54%) Solaris
9 48 (0.51%) Apple iOS
10 32 (0.34%) Mac OS
11 31 (0.33%) Ubuntu
12 27 (0.29%) AIX
13 26 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
14 24 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
15 22 (0.23%) CentOS
16 15 (0.16%) VMS
17 14 (0.15%) Windows 7
18 11 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
18 11 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
19 10 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,859 (19.71%) Agile
2 1,452 (15.39%) DevOps
3 1,284 (13.61%) CI/CD
4 965 (10.23%) Problem-Solving
5 961 (10.19%) Stakeholder Management
6 898 (9.52%) Continuous Improvement
7 786 (8.33%) Migration
8 756 (8.02%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 679 (7.20%) Infrastructure as Code
10 612 (6.49%) Cybersecurity
11 573 (6.08%) Test Automation
12 570 (6.04%) ITIL
13 550 (5.83%) Analytics
13 550 (5.83%) Software Engineering
14 527 (5.59%) Roadmaps
15 519 (5.50%) Containerisation
16 487 (5.16%) Data Modelling
17 470 (4.98%) Decision-Making
18 448 (4.75%) AI
19 441 (4.68%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 985 (10.44%) Python
2 888 (9.41%) SQL
3 589 (6.24%) Java
4 479 (5.08%) PowerShell
5 264 (2.80%) JavaScript
6 203 (2.15%) C#
7 183 (1.94%) Bash
8 141 (1.49%) TypeScript
9 115 (1.22%) PL/SQL
10 86 (0.91%) Shell Script
11 83 (0.88%) C++
12 63 (0.67%) Bicep
13 60 (0.64%) C
14 53 (0.56%) Go
15 48 (0.51%) Scala
16 45 (0.48%) Ada
17 43 (0.46%) Ruby
18 42 (0.45%) Apex Code
19 35 (0.37%) MATLAB
20 33 (0.35%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 7,128 (75.57%) SC Cleared
2 1,799 (19.07%) DV Cleared
3 385 (4.08%) Degree
4 270 (2.86%) BPSS Clearance
5 180 (1.91%) Cisco Certification
6 154 (1.63%) CISSP
7 123 (1.30%) Azure Certification
8 105 (1.11%) CCNP
9 102 (1.08%) Microsoft Certification
10 101 (1.07%) CISM
11 99 (1.05%) AWS Certification
12 78 (0.83%) PMP
13 77 (0.82%) CCNA
14 72 (0.76%) PMI Certification
15 64 (0.68%) ISTQB
16 56 (0.59%) Computer Science Degree
17 55 (0.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 52 (0.55%) ITIL Certification
19 41 (0.43%) GIAC
20 34 (0.36%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 362 (3.84%) QA
2 288 (3.05%) NIST
3 282 (2.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 270 (2.86%) Data Quality
5 199 (2.11%) NCSC
6 181 (1.92%) Accessibility
7 168 (1.78%) PMO
8 160 (1.70%) GDPR
9 105 (1.11%) SLA
10 79 (0.84%) GRC
11 60 (0.64%) JSP 440
12 51 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials
13 44 (0.47%) WCAG
14 41 (0.43%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.35%) Def Stans
16 28 (0.30%) RMADS
17 22 (0.23%) COBIT
17 22 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
17 22 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 20 (0.21%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 582 (6.17%) Docker
2 429 (4.55%) Active Directory
3 288 (3.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 114 (1.21%) VMware ESXi
5 98 (1.04%) VMware NSX
6 80 (0.85%) Hyper-V
7 78 (0.83%) vSphere
8 70 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
9 32 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
10 30 (0.32%) Firmware
11 23 (0.24%) BitLocker
12 21 (0.22%) vCloud
13 19 (0.20%) NFS
13 19 (0.20%) Postfix
14 18 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
15 16 (0.17%) Squid
16 15 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 10 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.064%) Corosync
18 6 (0.064%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 751 (7.96%) Terraform
2 724 (7.68%) Kubernetes
3 334 (3.54%) Ansible
4 232 (2.46%) Grafana
5 188 (1.99%) Prometheus
6 115 (1.22%) vCenter Server
7 79 (0.84%) Single Sign-On
8 73 (0.77%) SCCM
9 57 (0.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 55 (0.58%) Microsoft Intune
11 50 (0.53%) Argo
12 47 (0.50%) FortiGate
13 40 (0.42%) Puppet
14 39 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
14 39 (0.41%) SCOM
15 37 (0.39%) Podman
16 27 (0.29%) Progress Chef
17 25 (0.27%) Nagios
18 24 (0.25%) vMotion
19 21 (0.22%) WSUS
Vendors
1 978 (10.37%) Microsoft
2 653 (6.92%) Oracle
3 469 (4.97%) VMware
4 388 (4.11%) ServiceNow
5 318 (3.37%) Cisco
6 298 (3.16%) SAP
7 209 (2.22%) Splunk
8 174 (1.84%) Databricks
9 149 (1.58%) Google
10 144 (1.53%) Red Hat
11 126 (1.34%) Talend
12 118 (1.25%) Salesforce
13 116 (1.23%) Palo Alto
14 115 (1.22%) IBM
15 99 (1.05%) Juniper
16 96 (1.02%) Informatica
17 84 (0.89%) CyberArk
17 84 (0.89%) F5
18 82 (0.87%) Dynatrace
18 82 (0.87%) Fortinet