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 7 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,322 5,328 5,851
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.17% 19.06% 18.22%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.86% 59.73% 61.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,219 3,453 3,687
10th Percentile £400 £336 £355
25th Percentile £463 £447 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.33% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £550 £537 £550
% change year-on-year +2.42% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 818 556 335
10th Percentile £20.50 £18.51 £21.37
25th Percentile £29.07 £18.87 £37.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £61.71
Median % change year-on-year +158.45% -59.24% +2.84%
75th Percentile £77.50 £38.94 £72.50
90th Percentile £91.31 £71.00 £84.42
UK median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +151.03% -58.08% -

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 14,990 8,920 9,579
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.20% 31.92% 29.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,001 5,662 5,807
10th Percentile £350 £291 £313
25th Percentile £447 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.90% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £712 £734
UK median daily rate £533 £525 £525
% change year-on-year +1.43% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,285 738 519
10th Percentile £17.25 £17.87 £19.97
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £30.83
Median hourly rate £50.00 £25.15 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +98.81% -52.10% -2.17%
75th Percentile £73.46 £43.19 £70.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £72.50 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £44.48 £25.15 £48.18
% change year-on-year +76.86% -47.80% -10.25%

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 7 October 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 7 October 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 7 October 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 +6 3,705 £550 +2.33% 1,669
South East +1 2,269 £570 +8.57% 1,226
South West 0 1,384 £550 - 815
North of England +2 1,319 £515 -1.44% 785
Midlands 0 924 £481 -7.23% 448
North West +1 801 £530 -3.64% 454
West Midlands 0 774 £475 -8.65% 297
East of England 0 440 £550 - 497
Yorkshire 0 295 £492 - 135
North East 0 243 £470 -10.48% 198
East Midlands 0 142 £500 +8.11% 148
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
1 332 (3.22%) Confluence
2 242 (2.34%) SharePoint
3 133 (1.29%) SAS
4 112 (1.09%) Microsoft Exchange
5 94 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
6 93 (0.90%) Apache Spark
7 90 (0.87%) Apache
8 40 (0.39%) nginx
9 36 (0.35%) CMS
10 31 (0.30%) Jupyter
11 29 (0.28%) WebLogic
12 22 (0.21%) Skype for Business
13 20 (0.19%) Tomcat
14 19 (0.18%) Oracle Application Server
15 16 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
16 15 (0.15%) IIS
17 11 (0.11%) JBoss
17 11 (0.11%) NetWeaver
17 11 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
18 10 (0.097%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 186 (1.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 130 (1.26%) Microsoft Office
3 93 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
4 90 (0.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 29 (0.28%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
7 21 (0.20%) AutoCAD
8 19 (0.18%) Revit
8 19 (0.18%) Windchill
9 18 (0.17%) SOLIDWORKS
10 9 (0.087%) Chatbot
10 9 (0.087%) Simulink
11 7 (0.068%) Adobe XD
12 6 (0.058%) Sketch
13 5 (0.048%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 4 (0.039%) OrCAD
14 4 (0.039%) Trello
15 2 (0.019%) Gliffy
15 2 (0.019%) Houdini
15 2 (0.019%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 129 (1.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 79 (0.77%) Remedy ITSM
3 53 (0.51%) Oracle ERP
4 41 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
5 37 (0.36%) Teamcenter
6 30 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 28 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
8 27 (0.26%) SAP PSCD
9 25 (0.24%) Oracle Payroll
10 22 (0.21%) SAP FI
11 18 (0.17%) SAP HR
12 16 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
13 14 (0.14%) SAP CO
14 13 (0.13%) Maximo
14 13 (0.13%) NetSuite
14 13 (0.13%) Primavera
14 13 (0.13%) SAP BRIM
15 12 (0.12%) SAP GRC
15 12 (0.12%) SAP Payroll
15 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,856 (17.98%) Azure
2 1,680 (16.28%) AWS
3 455 (4.41%) Azure DevOps
4 440 (4.26%) Power Platform
5 421 (4.08%) GitHub
6 396 (3.84%) GCP
7 305 (2.95%) Microsoft 365
8 300 (2.91%) Entra ID
9 292 (2.83%) GitHub Actions
10 231 (2.24%) Serverless
11 205 (1.99%) Amazon S3
12 163 (1.58%) AWS Lambda
13 157 (1.52%) OCI
14 148 (1.43%) SaaS
15 144 (1.40%) Amazon EKS
16 142 (1.38%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 142 (1.38%) OpenShift
17 126 (1.22%) Amazon EC2
18 110 (1.07%) PowerApps
19 104 (1.01%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 399 (3.87%) Firewall
2 342 (3.31%) DNS
3 225 (2.18%) Network Security
4 174 (1.69%) VPN
5 171 (1.66%) WAN
6 166 (1.61%) DHCP
7 134 (1.30%) LAN
8 128 (1.24%) TCP/IP
9 118 (1.14%) BGP
10 113 (1.09%) Wi-Fi
11 87 (0.84%) VLAN
12 77 (0.75%) OSPF
13 75 (0.73%) Wireless
14 60 (0.58%) SSL
15 59 (0.57%) SAN
15 59 (0.57%) VSAN
16 58 (0.56%) MPLS
17 56 (0.54%) IPsec
18 50 (0.48%) SD-WAN
19 43 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 308 (2.98%) Power BI
2 245 (2.37%) PostgreSQL
3 243 (2.35%) SQL Server
4 221 (2.14%) Data Warehouse
5 183 (1.77%) Metadata
6 166 (1.61%) Oracle Database
7 119 (1.15%) Relational Database
8 117 (1.13%) Data Lake
9 100 (0.97%) MongoDB
10 97 (0.94%) Amazon RDS
11 94 (0.91%) MySQL
12 87 (0.84%) NoSQL
13 68 (0.66%) Oracle Reports
14 66 (0.64%) Pentaho
15 58 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
16 52 (0.50%) Amazon Athena
17 49 (0.47%) Big Data
18 48 (0.47%) Amazon Aurora
19 41 (0.40%) Tableau
20 37 (0.36%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 529 (5.12%) JIRA
2 494 (4.79%) Git
3 448 (4.34%) GitLab
4 429 (4.16%) Jenkins
5 133 (1.29%) Selenium
6 75 (0.73%) Postman
7 72 (0.70%) SonarQube
8 70 (0.68%) Cucumber
9 69 (0.67%) JUnit
9 69 (0.67%) Maven
10 63 (0.61%) JMeter
11 44 (0.43%) Gradle
12 40 (0.39%) Mockito
13 37 (0.36%) Gatling
14 36 (0.35%) Cypress.io
14 36 (0.35%) REST Assured
14 36 (0.35%) Visual Studio
15 35 (0.34%) Artifactory
16 33 (0.32%) Rational DOORS
16 33 (0.32%) Zephyr
General
1 2,361 (22.87%) Social Skills
2 2,058 (19.94%) Public Sector
3 851 (8.24%) Analytical Skills
4 689 (6.68%) Finance
5 412 (3.99%) Military
6 339 (3.28%) Aerospace
7 252 (2.44%) Documentation Skills
8 214 (2.07%) Influencing Skills
9 181 (1.75%) Organisational Skills
10 161 (1.56%) Manufacturing
11 148 (1.43%) Telecoms
12 131 (1.27%) Legal
13 130 (1.26%) Banking
14 124 (1.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 113 (1.09%) Law
16 109 (1.06%) Police
17 63 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
18 48 (0.47%) Local Government
19 42 (0.41%) Marketing
20 39 (0.38%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,592 (15.42%) Architect
2 978 (9.47%) Senior
3 971 (9.41%) Developer
4 954 (9.24%) Lead
5 605 (5.86%) Analyst
6 589 (5.71%) Consultant
7 432 (4.19%) DevOps Engineer
8 423 (4.10%) Data Engineer
9 363 (3.52%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 268 (2.60%) Solutions Architect
11 254 (2.46%) Data Architect
12 252 (2.44%) Security Architect
12 252 (2.44%) Technical Architect
13 230 (2.23%) Software Engineer
14 216 (2.09%) Network Engineer
15 212 (2.05%) Administrator
16 190 (1.84%) Cloud Engineer
17 185 (1.79%) Designer
18 183 (1.77%) Java Developer
19 181 (1.75%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 895 (8.67%) Terraform
2 415 (4.02%) REST
3 216 (2.09%) Kafka
4 206 (2.00%) Spring
5 188 (1.82%) Spring Boot
6 168 (1.63%) React
7 161 (1.56%) .NET
7 161 (1.56%) RESTful
7 161 (1.56%) SOAP
8 131 (1.27%) Node.js
9 125 (1.21%) JSON
10 120 (1.16%) OAuth
11 117 (1.13%) HTML
12 108 (1.05%) XML
13 98 (0.95%) Middleware
14 96 (0.93%) AngularJS
14 96 (0.93%) Web Services
15 90 (0.87%) CSS
16 89 (0.86%) Oracle Fusion
17 88 (0.85%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 470 (4.55%) Cloud Native
2 412 (3.99%) Onboarding
3 327 (3.17%) Product Ownership
4 264 (2.56%) Data Centre
5 191 (1.85%) Management Information System
6 168 (1.63%) Enterprise Software
7 163 (1.58%) PKI
8 161 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
9 148 (1.43%) CMDB
10 123 (1.19%) Hybrid Cloud
11 113 (1.09%) Cyber Threat
12 110 (1.07%) Distributed Systems
13 108 (1.05%) Operational Technology
14 107 (1.04%) Replication
15 101 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
16 86 (0.83%) Security Posture
17 84 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
18 81 (0.78%) Data Structures
19 80 (0.78%) Clustering
20 77 (0.75%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 912 (8.84%) Windows
2 712 (6.90%) Linux
3 350 (3.39%) Windows Server
4 203 (1.97%) Unix
5 144 (1.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 137 (1.33%) Windows 10
7 81 (0.78%) Solaris
8 65 (0.63%) Android
9 43 (0.42%) CentOS
9 43 (0.42%) Mac OS
10 39 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 35 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 29 (0.28%) Apple iOS
13 27 (0.26%) AIX
14 24 (0.23%) Windows 7
15 21 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
16 20 (0.19%) VMS
17 17 (0.16%) Rocky
18 15 (0.15%) Windows Server 2016
19 10 (0.097%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,142 (20.75%) Agile
2 1,564 (15.15%) DevOps
3 1,558 (15.09%) CI/CD
4 1,488 (14.42%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,311 (12.70%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,130 (10.95%) Problem-Solving
7 1,044 (10.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 910 (8.82%) Infrastructure as Code
9 841 (8.15%) Migration
10 811 (7.86%) Cybersecurity
11 720 (6.98%) ITIL
12 679 (6.58%) Roadmaps
13 678 (6.57%) AI
14 677 (6.56%) Test Automation
15 665 (6.44%) Technical Leadership
16 658 (6.37%) Containerisation
17 647 (6.27%) Decision-Making
18 625 (6.06%) Analytics
19 594 (5.75%) Software Engineering
20 559 (5.42%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 1,193 (11.56%) Python
2 959 (9.29%) SQL
3 649 (6.29%) Java
4 550 (5.33%) PowerShell
5 365 (3.54%) JavaScript
6 319 (3.09%) Bash
7 183 (1.77%) C#
8 181 (1.75%) TypeScript
9 122 (1.18%) PL/SQL
10 113 (1.09%) Bicep
11 67 (0.65%) Shell Script
12 58 (0.56%) C++
13 56 (0.54%) Go
13 56 (0.54%) Groovy
14 47 (0.46%) Scala
15 46 (0.45%) C
16 44 (0.43%) Kotlin
17 32 (0.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 27 (0.26%) ABAP
18 27 (0.26%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 7,731 (74.90%) SC Cleared
2 2,126 (20.60%) DV Cleared
3 482 (4.67%) BPSS Clearance
4 456 (4.42%) Degree
5 202 (1.96%) CISSP
6 173 (1.68%) Azure Certification
7 154 (1.49%) Cisco Certification
8 153 (1.48%) Microsoft Certification
9 150 (1.45%) AWS Certification
10 118 (1.14%) CISM
11 96 (0.93%) PMI Certification
12 88 (0.85%) PMP
13 86 (0.83%) ISTQB
14 78 (0.76%) CCNP
15 69 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
16 57 (0.55%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 51 (0.49%) CCNA
18 46 (0.45%) TOGAF Certification
19 44 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 41 (0.40%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 473 (4.58%) QA
2 342 (3.31%) Data Quality
3 305 (2.95%) NIST
4 293 (2.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 265 (2.57%) NCSC
6 244 (2.36%) Accessibility
7 214 (2.07%) PMO
8 158 (1.53%) SLA
9 149 (1.44%) GDPR
10 144 (1.40%) GRC
11 70 (0.68%) WCAG
12 49 (0.47%) JSP 440
13 45 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
14 39 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 35 (0.34%) Def Stans
16 32 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 25 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
18 22 (0.21%) ISO 9001
19 21 (0.20%) HMG Security Policy Framework
20 19 (0.18%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 702 (6.80%) Docker
2 576 (5.58%) Active Directory
3 409 (3.96%) VMware Infrastructure
4 138 (1.34%) VMware ESXi
5 127 (1.23%) VMware NSX
6 124 (1.20%) vSphere
7 123 (1.19%) Hyper-V
8 83 (0.80%) Virtual Machines
9 47 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
10 39 (0.38%) Firmware
11 34 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
12 24 (0.23%) BitLocker
12 24 (0.23%) vCloud
13 21 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
14 13 (0.13%) Citrix Hypervisor
14 13 (0.13%) NFS
15 11 (0.11%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 10 (0.097%) KVM
17 9 (0.087%) Squid
18 7 (0.068%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 868 (8.41%) Kubernetes
2 410 (3.97%) Ansible
3 237 (2.30%) Grafana
4 172 (1.67%) Prometheus
5 132 (1.28%) SCCM
6 125 (1.21%) vCenter Server
7 95 (0.92%) Microsoft Intune
8 92 (0.89%) SCOM
9 62 (0.60%) Argo
10 48 (0.47%) Kibana
10 48 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
11 42 (0.41%) Puppet
12 34 (0.33%) Data Guard
12 34 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
13 30 (0.29%) VxRail
14 29 (0.28%) Istio
15 28 (0.27%) Control-M
16 27 (0.26%) NetBackup
17 24 (0.23%) Progress Chef
17 24 (0.23%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,409 (13.65%) Microsoft
2 815 (7.90%) Oracle
3 552 (5.35%) VMware
4 462 (4.48%) ServiceNow
5 392 (3.80%) SAP
6 257 (2.49%) Cisco
7 255 (2.47%) Google
8 194 (1.88%) Splunk
9 168 (1.63%) Databricks
10 119 (1.15%) Red Hat
11 114 (1.10%) Palo Alto
12 108 (1.05%) Salesforce
13 99 (0.96%) Informatica
14 93 (0.90%) Dynatrace
14 93 (0.90%) IBM
15 90 (0.87%) CyberArk
15 90 (0.87%) Remedy
16 84 (0.81%) Talend
17 71 (0.69%) SolarWinds
18 69 (0.67%) Citrix