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

6 months to
15 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,135 4,469 6,944
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.43% 18.47% 19.04%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.95% 58.80% 61.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,361 2,966 4,561
10th Percentile £371 £338 £351
25th Percentile £450 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.28% -2.32% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 741 271 490
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.22 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £50.00 £56.89
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -12.10% -5.19%
75th Percentile £74.00 £67.50 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.50 £78.70 £83.81
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £43.75 £56.89
% change year-on-year +25.71% -23.09% -5.19%

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 13,060 7,600 11,282
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.06% 31.41% 30.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,773 4,834 6,961
10th Percentile £348 £285 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £750
UK median daily rate £521 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -0.86% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 951 434 979
10th Percentile £17.05 £18.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £22.27 £18.00
Median hourly rate £48.72 £40.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +21.80% - -23.81%
75th Percentile £73.00 £67.50 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.50 £81.81 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £49.36 £37.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +31.63% -6.25% -25.93%

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 May 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 May 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 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
London +6 3,256 £525 - 477
South East +1 2,204 £538 -2.27% 518
South West 0 1,294 £538 -6.52% 345
North of England -1 875 £498 -0.50% 285
Midlands +4 866 £474 -9.71% 158
West Midlands +4 735 £475 -11.64% 115
North West -2 509 £500 - 159
East of England +2 373 £538 +7.55% 156
Yorkshire -10 212 £484 -3.25% 52
North East +1 189 £475 -1.04% 76
East Midlands -4 125 £450 -5.26% 43
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
1 353 (3.86%) Confluence
2 204 (2.23%) SharePoint
3 124 (1.36%) Microsoft Exchange
4 114 (1.25%) SAS
5 79 (0.86%) Apache Spark
6 68 (0.74%) Apache
7 55 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
8 32 (0.35%) WebLogic
9 29 (0.32%) nginx
10 24 (0.26%) Jupyter
11 17 (0.19%) Tomcat
12 16 (0.18%) IIS
12 16 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
13 14 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
13 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
14 13 (0.14%) CMS
14 13 (0.14%) Skype for Business
15 9 (0.099%) ArcGIS
16 8 (0.088%) Apache Superset
16 8 (0.088%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 189 (2.07%) Microsoft Office
2 184 (2.01%) Microsoft Excel
3 109 (1.19%) Microsoft Project
4 84 (0.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 36 (0.39%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.12%) Simulink
8 7 (0.077%) AutoCAD
9 6 (0.066%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.055%) Notepad++
10 5 (0.055%) Revit
11 4 (0.044%) Siemens NX
11 4 (0.044%) Windchill
12 3 (0.033%) Chatbot
13 2 (0.022%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.022%) CATIA
13 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.022%) Lectora
13 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.022%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 88 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
3 37 (0.41%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 28 (0.31%) Teamcenter
5 27 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
6 25 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
7 15 (0.16%) Maximo
8 14 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
8 14 (0.15%) SAP PSCD
9 13 (0.14%) Temenos T24
10 12 (0.13%) Findur
10 12 (0.13%) iTrent
11 10 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.099%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.099%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.099%) SAP PP
13 8 (0.088%) SAP BRIM
13 8 (0.088%) SAP Hybris
13 8 (0.088%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 1,569 (17.18%) Azure
2 1,498 (16.40%) AWS
3 373 (4.08%) GCP
4 371 (4.06%) GitHub
5 340 (3.72%) Azure DevOps
6 336 (3.68%) Power Platform
7 236 (2.58%) Microsoft 365
8 235 (2.57%) Serverless
9 229 (2.51%) Entra ID
10 211 (2.31%) GitHub Actions
11 188 (2.06%) Amazon S3
12 159 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
13 133 (1.46%) Amazon EC2
13 133 (1.46%) PaaS
14 125 (1.37%) OpenShift
15 114 (1.25%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 113 (1.24%) OCI
17 103 (1.13%) AWS CloudFormation
17 103 (1.13%) IaaS
18 102 (1.12%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 428 (4.69%) Firewall
2 268 (2.93%) DNS
3 213 (2.33%) WAN
4 211 (2.31%) Network Security
5 195 (2.13%) LAN
6 155 (1.70%) VPN
7 144 (1.58%) DHCP
8 140 (1.53%) BGP
9 121 (1.32%) OSPF
10 108 (1.18%) TCP/IP
11 98 (1.07%) VLAN
12 96 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
13 82 (0.90%) Wireless
14 60 (0.66%) MPLS
15 56 (0.61%) SAN
16 52 (0.57%) Structured Cabling
17 51 (0.56%) VXLAN
18 48 (0.53%) SD-WAN
19 47 (0.51%) IPsec
20 45 (0.49%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 258 (2.82%) Power BI
2 212 (2.32%) PostgreSQL
3 198 (2.17%) Data Warehouse
4 185 (2.03%) SQL Server
5 115 (1.26%) Metadata
6 107 (1.17%) Oracle Database
7 100 (1.09%) Amazon RDS
8 84 (0.92%) MongoDB
9 83 (0.91%) NoSQL
9 83 (0.91%) Relational Database
10 80 (0.88%) Pentaho
11 79 (0.86%) Data Lake
12 70 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
13 68 (0.74%) Oracle Reports
14 63 (0.69%) Tableau
15 62 (0.68%) Azure SQL Database
16 60 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
17 59 (0.65%) MySQL
18 52 (0.57%) Amazon Athena
19 47 (0.51%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 556 (6.09%) JIRA
2 409 (4.48%) Git
3 349 (3.82%) Jenkins
4 339 (3.71%) GitLab
5 89 (0.97%) Selenium
6 73 (0.80%) Postman
7 67 (0.73%) JUnit
8 55 (0.60%) SonarQube
9 54 (0.59%) Rational DOORS
10 49 (0.54%) Artifactory
11 43 (0.47%) Bitbucket
12 42 (0.46%) JMeter
13 38 (0.42%) Cucumber
13 38 (0.42%) Maven
14 36 (0.39%) Mockito
15 34 (0.37%) Visual Studio
16 31 (0.34%) Cypress.io
17 28 (0.31%) Zephyr
18 27 (0.30%) REST Assured
19 23 (0.25%) Gatling
General
1 1,971 (21.58%) Public Sector
2 1,935 (21.18%) Social Skills
3 673 (7.37%) Analytical Skills
4 640 (7.01%) Finance
5 336 (3.68%) Military
6 262 (2.87%) Documentation Skills
7 225 (2.46%) Aerospace
8 144 (1.58%) Legal
9 115 (1.26%) Telecoms
10 111 (1.22%) Banking
11 106 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
12 104 (1.14%) Organisational Skills
13 99 (1.08%) Manufacturing
14 84 (0.92%) Law
14 84 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
15 59 (0.65%) Police
16 57 (0.62%) Marketing
17 49 (0.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 47 (0.51%) Electronics
19 40 (0.44%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,359 (14.88%) Architect
2 833 (9.12%) Developer
3 764 (8.36%) Senior
4 644 (7.05%) Analyst
4 644 (7.05%) Lead
5 448 (4.90%) Data Engineer
6 414 (4.53%) DevOps Engineer
7 410 (4.49%) Consultant
8 280 (3.07%) Network Engineer
9 272 (2.98%) Software Engineer
10 263 (2.88%) Technical Architect
11 250 (2.74%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 241 (2.64%) Business Analyst
13 212 (2.32%) Project Manager
14 209 (2.29%) Solutions Architect
15 195 (2.13%) Azure Engineer
16 173 (1.89%) Security Architect
17 172 (1.88%) Designer
18 168 (1.84%) Administrator
18 168 (1.84%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 294 (3.22%) REST
2 214 (2.34%) Spring
3 174 (1.90%) Spring Boot
4 165 (1.81%) Node.js
5 161 (1.76%) Kafka
6 160 (1.75%) React
7 154 (1.69%) .NET
8 144 (1.58%) LDAP
9 137 (1.50%) SOAP
10 130 (1.42%) RESTful
11 112 (1.23%) JSON
12 111 (1.22%) AngularJS
13 102 (1.12%) Web Services
14 97 (1.06%) PySpark
15 91 (1.00%) Oracle Fusion
16 86 (0.94%) OAuth
17 78 (0.85%) HTML
18 76 (0.83%) XML
19 67 (0.73%) Elastic Stack
20 65 (0.71%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 315 (3.45%) Cloud Native
2 306 (3.35%) Product Ownership
3 272 (2.98%) Data Centre
4 253 (2.77%) Onboarding
5 145 (1.59%) PKI
6 142 (1.55%) Management Information System
7 123 (1.35%) Legacy Systems
8 122 (1.34%) Security Posture
9 115 (1.26%) Replication
10 111 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
11 106 (1.16%) Distributed Systems
12 90 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
13 81 (0.89%) Clustering
14 77 (0.84%) Data Structures
15 73 (0.80%) Hybrid Cloud
16 72 (0.79%) Public Cloud
17 67 (0.73%) Security Operations Centre
18 63 (0.69%) Virtual Team
19 61 (0.67%) Operational Technology
20 57 (0.62%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 762 (8.34%) Windows
2 628 (6.87%) Linux
3 231 (2.53%) Windows Server
4 159 (1.74%) Unix
5 112 (1.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 90 (0.99%) Android
7 83 (0.91%) Windows 10
8 50 (0.55%) Apple iOS
9 41 (0.45%) Mac OS
10 39 (0.43%) Solaris
11 34 (0.37%) Ubuntu
12 25 (0.27%) VMS
13 24 (0.26%) AIX
14 23 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
15 22 (0.24%) CentOS
15 22 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
16 14 (0.15%) Windows 7
17 11 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
18 9 (0.099%) Windows Server 2003
19 8 (0.088%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,787 (19.56%) Agile
2 1,397 (15.29%) DevOps
3 1,219 (13.34%) CI/CD
4 999 (10.94%) Problem-Solving
5 884 (9.68%) Stakeholder Management
6 797 (8.72%) Continuous Improvement
7 754 (8.25%) Migration
8 665 (7.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 615 (6.73%) Infrastructure as Code
10 607 (6.64%) ITIL
11 551 (6.03%) Cybersecurity
12 528 (5.78%) Test Automation
13 516 (5.65%) Analytics
14 513 (5.62%) Software Engineering
15 500 (5.47%) Roadmaps
16 491 (5.37%) Containerisation
17 471 (5.16%) Data Modelling
18 433 (4.74%) Decision-Making
19 414 (4.53%) Scrum
20 390 (4.27%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 978 (10.71%) Python
2 840 (9.20%) SQL
3 557 (6.10%) Java
4 496 (5.43%) PowerShell
5 278 (3.04%) JavaScript
6 199 (2.18%) C#
7 179 (1.96%) Bash
8 138 (1.51%) TypeScript
9 93 (1.02%) PL/SQL
10 88 (0.96%) C++
11 85 (0.93%) Shell Script
12 65 (0.71%) Go
13 62 (0.68%) Scala
14 55 (0.60%) C
15 51 (0.56%) Bicep
16 49 (0.54%) Ruby
17 40 (0.44%) Apex Code
18 39 (0.43%) Ada
18 39 (0.43%) R
19 36 (0.39%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 6,849 (74.98%) SC Cleared
2 1,755 (19.21%) DV Cleared
3 410 (4.49%) Degree
4 254 (2.78%) BPSS Clearance
5 181 (1.98%) Cisco Certification
6 155 (1.70%) CISSP
7 121 (1.32%) Azure Certification
8 115 (1.26%) CCNP
9 104 (1.14%) AWS Certification
9 104 (1.14%) CISM
10 88 (0.96%) Microsoft Certification
11 76 (0.83%) CCNA
12 74 (0.81%) PMP
13 65 (0.71%) PMI Certification
14 63 (0.69%) TOGAF Certification
15 60 (0.66%) Computer Science Degree
16 57 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
17 53 (0.58%) ISTQB
18 51 (0.56%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 49 (0.54%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 342 (3.74%) QA
2 272 (2.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 269 (2.94%) Data Quality
3 269 (2.94%) NIST
4 178 (1.95%) NCSC
5 163 (1.78%) Accessibility
6 158 (1.73%) PMO
7 149 (1.63%) GDPR
8 98 (1.07%) SLA
9 62 (0.68%) GRC
10 56 (0.61%) JSP 440
11 51 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials
12 37 (0.41%) NIST 800
13 36 (0.39%) WCAG
14 30 (0.33%) COBIT
15 29 (0.32%) Def Stans
15 29 (0.32%) PCI DSS
16 25 (0.27%) RMADS
17 21 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 19 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 565 (6.19%) Docker
2 440 (4.82%) Active Directory
3 260 (2.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 96 (1.05%) VMware ESXi
5 83 (0.91%) VMware NSX
6 74 (0.81%) Hyper-V
7 70 (0.77%) vSphere
8 67 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
9 35 (0.38%) Firmware
10 27 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
11 22 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
12 21 (0.23%) NFS
13 19 (0.21%) BitLocker
14 17 (0.19%) vCloud
15 16 (0.18%) Postfix
15 16 (0.18%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 15 (0.16%) Squid
17 8 (0.088%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.066%) Corosync
18 6 (0.066%) KVM
Systems Management
1 716 (7.84%) Kubernetes
2 699 (7.65%) Terraform
3 320 (3.50%) Ansible
4 225 (2.46%) Grafana
5 182 (1.99%) Prometheus
6 100 (1.09%) vCenter Server
7 86 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
8 70 (0.77%) SCCM
9 57 (0.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 51 (0.56%) Microsoft Intune
11 48 (0.53%) FortiGate
12 46 (0.50%) Argo
13 38 (0.42%) Podman
13 38 (0.42%) Puppet
14 32 (0.35%) Progress Chef
15 30 (0.33%) Nagios
15 30 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
16 28 (0.31%) OPNET
17 26 (0.28%) SCOM
18 22 (0.24%) WSUS
Vendors
1 947 (10.37%) Microsoft
2 572 (6.26%) Oracle
3 457 (5.00%) VMware
4 376 (4.12%) ServiceNow
5 333 (3.65%) Cisco
6 321 (3.51%) SAP
7 214 (2.34%) Splunk
8 179 (1.96%) Databricks
9 153 (1.67%) Red Hat
10 151 (1.65%) Google
11 117 (1.28%) Talend
12 116 (1.27%) Palo Alto
13 111 (1.22%) IBM
14 107 (1.17%) Salesforce
15 98 (1.07%) Juniper
16 94 (1.03%) CyberArk
17 90 (0.99%) Atlassian
18 81 (0.89%) F5
18 81 (0.89%) Informatica
19 79 (0.86%) Remedy