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

6 months to
6 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 8,545 4,637 7,060
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.48% 18.15% 18.70%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.64% 59.53% 60.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,826 2,991 4,491
10th Percentile £356 £313 £353
25th Percentile £444 £445 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% -2.65%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £706 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.28%
Number of hourly rates quoted 752 251 487
10th Percentile £17.69 £21.25 £17.89
25th Percentile £20.35 £25.63 £26.62
Median hourly rate £25.77 £60.00 £55.80
Median % change year-on-year -57.05% +7.53% -7.00%
75th Percentile £67.58 £68.34 £70.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £77.50 £83.31
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £56.75 £56.40
% change year-on-year -54.59% +0.61% -6.00%

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 12,449 7,790 11,734
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.21% 30.49% 31.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,265 4,840 7,238
10th Percentile £325 £285 £290
25th Percentile £422 £414 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £730 £738
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.89% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 964 394 909
10th Percentile £16.17 £20.17 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.38 £25.26 £20.00
Median hourly rate £25.77 £50.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -48.46% +25.00% -18.78%
75th Percentile £65.00 £68.42 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £82.99 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £42.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year -39.36% +6.25% -20.00%

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 6 March 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 6 March 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 6 March 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 +5 2,975 £530 +0.95% 493
South East +1 1,896 £525 -4.55% 532
South West 0 1,329 £550 -0.18% 371
Midlands +4 861 £492 -10.55% 155
North of England -2 833 £492 +0.41% 223
West Midlands +3 689 £495 -10.16% 114
North West 0 535 £500 +5.26% 127
East of England +1 351 £495 -1.00% 149
Yorkshire -12 176 £480 -8.57% 49
East Midlands +2 170 £425 -17.07% 39
North East +1 151 £450 -10.00% 48
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
1 325 (3.80%) Confluence
2 210 (2.46%) SharePoint
3 138 (1.61%) Microsoft Exchange
4 134 (1.57%) SAS
5 65 (0.76%) Apache
5 65 (0.76%) Apache Spark
6 45 (0.53%) Apache Airflow
7 38 (0.44%) nginx
8 34 (0.40%) WebLogic
9 32 (0.37%) Skype for Business
10 20 (0.23%) Jupyter
11 16 (0.19%) CMS
12 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
13 14 (0.16%) Tuxedo
14 10 (0.12%) IIS
15 9 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
16 7 (0.082%) OpenStack
16 7 (0.082%) Tomcat
17 6 (0.070%) ArcGIS
18 5 (0.059%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 248 (2.90%) Microsoft Office
2 187 (2.19%) Microsoft Excel
3 118 (1.38%) Microsoft Project
4 68 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (0.51%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.082%) Simulink
8 5 (0.059%) Oracle Smart View
8 5 (0.059%) Siemens NX
9 4 (0.047%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.047%) Chatbot
9 4 (0.047%) Sketch
9 4 (0.047%) Windchill
10 3 (0.035%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.023%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.023%) CATIA
11 2 (0.023%) Lectora
11 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.023%) PTC Creo
11 2 (0.023%) Trello
Business Applications
1 125 (1.46%) SAP S/4HANA
2 38 (0.44%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 29 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
4 26 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
5 25 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 23 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
7 19 (0.22%) SAP MM
8 16 (0.19%) Maximo
9 13 (0.15%) Oracle Assets
9 13 (0.15%) SAP PP
9 13 (0.15%) SAP QM
10 12 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
10 12 (0.14%) SAP VC
11 11 (0.13%) SAP WM
12 10 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
12 10 (0.12%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 10 (0.12%) SAP HCM
13 9 (0.11%) Oracle Receivables
13 9 (0.11%) Primavera
13 9 (0.11%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 1,410 (16.50%) Azure
2 1,394 (16.31%) AWS
3 370 (4.33%) GitHub
4 361 (4.22%) GCP
5 320 (3.74%) Azure DevOps
6 319 (3.73%) Power Platform
7 305 (3.57%) Microsoft 365
8 239 (2.80%) Entra ID
9 234 (2.74%) Serverless
10 187 (2.19%) GitHub Actions
11 186 (2.18%) Amazon S3
12 170 (1.99%) OpenShift
13 149 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
14 127 (1.49%) Amazon EC2
15 109 (1.28%) AWS CloudFormation
16 107 (1.25%) PaaS
17 105 (1.23%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 105 (1.23%) IaaS
18 97 (1.14%) OCI
19 96 (1.12%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 406 (4.75%) Firewall
2 270 (3.16%) DNS
3 203 (2.38%) Network Security
4 182 (2.13%) WAN
5 167 (1.95%) VPN
6 149 (1.74%) LAN
7 132 (1.54%) TCP/IP
8 129 (1.51%) BGP
9 127 (1.49%) DHCP
10 92 (1.08%) Wireless
11 91 (1.06%) OSPF
12 84 (0.98%) VLAN
13 74 (0.87%) Wi-Fi
14 64 (0.75%) MPLS
15 49 (0.57%) IPsec
16 48 (0.56%) SAN
17 46 (0.54%) SSL
18 44 (0.51%) Cisco ISE
19 40 (0.47%) Skype
20 37 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 227 (2.66%) PostgreSQL
2 226 (2.64%) Power BI
3 149 (1.74%) Data Warehouse
4 137 (1.60%) SQL Server
5 107 (1.25%) Metadata
6 96 (1.12%) Oracle Database
7 91 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
8 86 (1.01%) NoSQL
9 84 (0.98%) MongoDB
10 80 (0.94%) Relational Database
11 69 (0.81%) Elasticsearch
12 68 (0.80%) Azure SQL Database
13 60 (0.70%) Pentaho
14 53 (0.62%) MySQL
15 51 (0.60%) Data Lake
16 47 (0.55%) Amazon Redshift
16 47 (0.55%) Big Data
17 44 (0.51%) Tableau
18 36 (0.42%) DynamoDB
18 36 (0.42%) SAS Enterprise Guide
Development Applications
1 536 (6.27%) JIRA
2 433 (5.07%) Git
3 373 (4.37%) Jenkins
4 314 (3.67%) GitLab
5 101 (1.18%) Selenium
6 78 (0.91%) JUnit
7 77 (0.90%) Postman
8 58 (0.68%) Cypress.io
9 51 (0.60%) SonarQube
10 50 (0.59%) Bitbucket
11 46 (0.54%) Maven
12 44 (0.51%) Artifactory
12 44 (0.51%) Oracle APEX
13 43 (0.50%) Rational DOORS
14 42 (0.49%) Cucumber
15 33 (0.39%) REST Assured
16 32 (0.37%) Mockito
17 30 (0.35%) Visual Studio
18 26 (0.30%) JMeter
19 24 (0.28%) Metasploit
General
1 2,157 (25.24%) Public Sector
2 2,067 (24.19%) Social Skills
3 721 (8.44%) Analytical Skills
4 623 (7.29%) Finance
5 318 (3.72%) Military
6 238 (2.79%) Documentation Skills
7 198 (2.32%) Aerospace
8 174 (2.04%) Manufacturing
9 170 (1.99%) Telecoms
10 134 (1.57%) Legal
11 122 (1.43%) Organisational Skills
12 113 (1.32%) Marketing
13 112 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
14 109 (1.28%) Presentation Skills
15 108 (1.26%) Electronics
16 96 (1.12%) Banking
17 72 (0.84%) Law
18 46 (0.54%) Police
19 45 (0.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 34 (0.40%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,199 (14.03%) Architect
2 820 (9.60%) Developer
3 728 (8.52%) Senior
4 656 (7.68%) Analyst
5 510 (5.97%) Lead
6 502 (5.87%) Consultant
7 363 (4.25%) DevOps Engineer
8 313 (3.66%) Data Engineer
9 247 (2.89%) Network Engineer
10 234 (2.74%) Business Analyst
11 224 (2.62%) Support Engineer
12 223 (2.61%) Software Engineer
13 215 (2.52%) Technical Architect
14 191 (2.24%) Solutions Architect
15 167 (1.95%) Tester
16 157 (1.84%) Project Manager
17 152 (1.78%) Azure Engineer
18 151 (1.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 148 (1.73%) Administrator
20 144 (1.69%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 328 (3.84%) REST
2 197 (2.31%) Node.js
3 190 (2.22%) Spring
4 177 (2.07%) React
5 161 (1.88%) Kafka
6 147 (1.72%) SOAP
7 141 (1.65%) LDAP
7 141 (1.65%) Spring Boot
8 137 (1.60%) JSON
9 130 (1.52%) .NET
10 110 (1.29%) AngularJS
11 109 (1.28%) HTML
12 105 (1.23%) RESTful
13 103 (1.21%) Web Services
14 98 (1.15%) OAuth
15 92 (1.08%) Oracle Fusion
16 89 (1.04%) CSS
17 87 (1.02%) PySpark
18 86 (1.01%) XML
19 79 (0.92%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 275 (3.22%) Data Centre
2 272 (3.18%) Product Ownership
3 238 (2.79%) Cloud Native
4 221 (2.59%) Onboarding
5 194 (2.27%) PKI
6 152 (1.78%) Management Information System
7 132 (1.54%) Security Posture
8 114 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
9 107 (1.25%) Legacy Systems
10 104 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
11 96 (1.12%) Replication
12 71 (0.83%) Hybrid Cloud
13 70 (0.82%) Public Cloud
14 65 (0.76%) Cyber Threat
15 64 (0.75%) Distributed Systems
15 64 (0.75%) Driving Licence
15 64 (0.75%) Security Operations Centre
16 55 (0.64%) Clustering
16 55 (0.64%) Data Structures
17 47 (0.55%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 821 (9.61%) Windows
2 625 (7.31%) Linux
3 217 (2.54%) Windows Server
4 150 (1.76%) Windows 10
5 122 (1.43%) Android
6 110 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 106 (1.24%) Unix
8 66 (0.77%) Mac OS
9 47 (0.55%) Apple iOS
10 45 (0.53%) Ubuntu
11 33 (0.39%) VMS
12 25 (0.29%) CentOS
12 25 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
13 20 (0.23%) Windows 7
14 19 (0.22%) Solaris
15 18 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
16 12 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
17 9 (0.11%) AIX
17 9 (0.11%) Windows Server 2003
18 8 (0.094%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,680 (19.66%) Agile
2 1,318 (15.42%) DevOps
3 1,139 (13.33%) CI/CD
4 1,069 (12.51%) Problem-Solving
5 796 (9.32%) Stakeholder Management
6 750 (8.78%) Migration
7 687 (8.04%) Continuous Improvement
8 603 (7.06%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 546 (6.39%) Cybersecurity
10 532 (6.23%) ITIL
11 514 (6.02%) Infrastructure as Code
12 482 (5.64%) Test Automation
13 468 (5.48%) Roadmaps
14 466 (5.45%) Analytics
15 439 (5.14%) Containerisation
16 417 (4.88%) Scrum
17 413 (4.83%) Software Engineering
18 406 (4.75%) Business Intelligence
19 401 (4.69%) Service Management
20 379 (4.44%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 993 (11.62%) Python
2 736 (8.61%) SQL
3 560 (6.55%) PowerShell
4 471 (5.51%) Java
5 374 (4.38%) JavaScript
6 212 (2.48%) Bash
7 181 (2.12%) C#
8 176 (2.06%) TypeScript
9 101 (1.18%) C++
10 93 (1.09%) PL/SQL
10 93 (1.09%) Shell Script
11 77 (0.90%) Go
12 62 (0.73%) C
13 52 (0.61%) Ruby
14 50 (0.59%) Ada
15 48 (0.56%) Scala
16 41 (0.48%) Kusto Query Language
17 40 (0.47%) Bicep
18 30 (0.35%) ABAP
18 30 (0.35%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 6,484 (75.88%) SC Cleared
2 1,493 (17.47%) DV Cleared
3 432 (5.06%) Degree
4 255 (2.98%) BPSS Clearance
5 163 (1.91%) Cisco Certification
6 158 (1.85%) CISSP
7 122 (1.43%) Azure Certification
8 119 (1.39%) CCNP
9 116 (1.36%) Microsoft Certification
10 110 (1.29%) AWS Certification
11 97 (1.14%) CISM
12 75 (0.88%) Computer Science Degree
13 72 (0.84%) CCNA
14 64 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
15 60 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
16 51 (0.60%) PMP
17 47 (0.55%) ISTQB
18 46 (0.54%) PMI Certification
19 45 (0.53%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
20 44 (0.51%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 297 (3.48%) QA
2 271 (3.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 258 (3.02%) NIST
4 222 (2.60%) Data Quality
5 197 (2.31%) NCSC
6 171 (2.00%) GDPR
7 154 (1.80%) Accessibility
8 117 (1.37%) SLA
9 103 (1.21%) PMO
10 65 (0.76%) GRC
11 54 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 42 (0.49%) WCAG
13 41 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials
14 39 (0.46%) Def Stans
15 34 (0.40%) NIST 800
16 32 (0.37%) PCI DSS
17 30 (0.35%) COBIT
18 23 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 23 (0.27%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 20 (0.23%) RMADS
System Software
1 586 (6.86%) Docker
2 476 (5.57%) Active Directory
3 232 (2.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 80 (0.94%) VMware NSX
5 67 (0.78%) vSphere
6 60 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
6 60 (0.70%) VMware ESXi
7 55 (0.64%) Hyper-V
8 22 (0.26%) Firmware
9 21 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
9 21 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
10 19 (0.22%) BitLocker
11 17 (0.20%) NFS
12 16 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 11 (0.13%) Postfix
14 10 (0.12%) Squid
15 9 (0.11%) vCloud
16 6 (0.070%) Microsoft App-V
16 6 (0.070%) Virtual Servers
17 5 (0.059%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 759 (8.88%) Kubernetes
2 689 (8.06%) Terraform
3 293 (3.43%) Ansible
4 212 (2.48%) Grafana
5 167 (1.95%) Prometheus
6 106 (1.24%) Single Sign-On
7 98 (1.15%) SCCM
8 89 (1.04%) vCenter Server
9 81 (0.95%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 67 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
11 65 (0.76%) Argo
12 41 (0.48%) FortiGate
13 39 (0.46%) Packer
14 38 (0.44%) Podman
15 31 (0.36%) Puppet
16 30 (0.35%) OPNET
17 29 (0.34%) Kibana
18 28 (0.33%) Progress Chef
19 25 (0.29%) Nmap
20 24 (0.28%) vRealize
Vendors
1 1,008 (11.80%) Microsoft
2 489 (5.72%) Oracle
3 424 (4.96%) VMware
4 399 (4.67%) Cisco
5 373 (4.37%) SAP
6 369 (4.32%) ServiceNow
7 206 (2.41%) Splunk
8 178 (2.08%) Red Hat
9 130 (1.52%) Google
10 129 (1.51%) Juniper
10 129 (1.51%) Palo Alto
11 128 (1.50%) Databricks
12 120 (1.40%) Atlassian
13 119 (1.39%) CyberArk
14 111 (1.30%) Salesforce
15 93 (1.09%) Dell
16 86 (1.01%) IBM
17 81 (0.95%) Talend
18 78 (0.91%) HP
19 75 (0.88%) Aruba