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

6 months to
11 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 2
Rank change year-on-year +1 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,093 4,553 7,177
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.24% 18.71% 19.19%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.88% 59.56% 61.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,273 3,041 4,671
10th Percentile £363 £328 £351
25th Percentile £447 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% -1.43%
75th Percentile £625 £626 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £534 £550
% change year-on-year -1.59% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 772 253 463
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.25 £24.66 £21.46
Median hourly rate £52.78 £57.50 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -8.22% +9.52% -12.50%
75th Percentile £73.46 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.36 £79.74 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £52.64 £54.99 £52.50
% change year-on-year -4.28% +4.74% -12.50%

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 13,013 7,644 11,722
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.26% 31.40% 31.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,718 4,899 7,257
10th Percentile £340 £300 £300
25th Percentile £425 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £740
UK median daily rate £518 £525 £536
% change year-on-year -1.43% -2.05% -2.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 991 421 932
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.50 £13.99
25th Percentile £20.82 £24.50 £17.72
Median hourly rate £42.71 £50.00 £38.85
Median % change year-on-year -14.59% +28.70% -24.93%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.40 £82.25 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.94 £45.00 £38.75
% change year-on-year -6.80% +16.13% -26.19%

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 11 April 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 11 April 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 11 April 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 3,193 £525 - 519
South East +1 2,137 £531 -3.44% 548
South West 0 1,357 £538 -4.44% 389
Midlands +4 897 £485 -9.68% 175
North of England -1 857 £488 -2.50% 305
West Midlands +4 749 £490 -10.09% 128
North West -1 533 £500 - 169
East of England +2 363 £500 +53.26% 158
Yorkshire -1 199 £484 -7.86% 72
North East +1 160 £450 -6.25% 65
East Midlands -2 144 £447 -11.73% 46
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
1 350 (3.85%) Confluence
2 214 (2.35%) SharePoint
3 148 (1.63%) SAS
4 129 (1.42%) Microsoft Exchange
5 78 (0.86%) Apache Spark
6 74 (0.81%) Apache
7 52 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.43%) nginx
9 35 (0.38%) WebLogic
10 21 (0.23%) Jupyter
11 17 (0.19%) Skype for Business
12 16 (0.18%) IIS
13 14 (0.15%) CMS
13 14 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
13 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
14 11 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
15 10 (0.11%) Tomcat
16 8 (0.088%) Apache Superset
16 8 (0.088%) ArcGIS
17 6 (0.066%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 227 (2.50%) Microsoft Office
2 191 (2.10%) Microsoft Excel
3 127 (1.40%) Microsoft Project
4 75 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.47%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.13%) Simulink
8 5 (0.055%) Notepad++
9 4 (0.044%) Siemens NX
9 4 (0.044%) Windchill
10 2 (0.022%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.022%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.022%) CATIA
10 2 (0.022%) Chatbot
10 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.022%) Lectora
10 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
10 2 (0.022%) Sketch
11 1 (0.011%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.011%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 85 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
2 40 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
3 39 (0.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 28 (0.31%) Dynamics CRM
5 26 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
5 26 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 18 (0.20%) Maximo
7 14 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.14%) SAP PP
8 13 (0.14%) Temenos T24
9 12 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
10 11 (0.12%) Findur
10 11 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
11 10 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
12 9 (0.099%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.099%) SAP HCM
13 8 (0.088%) Primavera
13 8 (0.088%) Workday HCM
14 7 (0.077%) SAP HR
14 7 (0.077%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 1,526 (16.78%) Azure
2 1,486 (16.34%) AWS
3 382 (4.20%) GitHub
4 376 (4.14%) GCP
5 356 (3.92%) Azure DevOps
6 325 (3.57%) Power Platform
7 265 (2.91%) Microsoft 365
8 259 (2.85%) Serverless
9 229 (2.52%) Entra ID
10 198 (2.18%) Amazon S3
11 196 (2.16%) GitHub Actions
12 175 (1.92%) AWS Lambda
13 156 (1.72%) OpenShift
14 133 (1.46%) PaaS
15 126 (1.39%) IaaS
16 124 (1.36%) Amazon EC2
17 119 (1.31%) AWS CloudFormation
18 107 (1.18%) Azure Data Factory
19 106 (1.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 99 (1.09%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 436 (4.79%) Firewall
2 257 (2.83%) DNS
3 213 (2.34%) Network Security
4 212 (2.33%) WAN
5 190 (2.09%) LAN
6 170 (1.87%) VPN
7 143 (1.57%) BGP
8 131 (1.44%) DHCP
9 115 (1.26%) OSPF
10 112 (1.23%) TCP/IP
11 97 (1.07%) VLAN
12 88 (0.97%) Wireless
13 73 (0.80%) Wi-Fi
14 61 (0.67%) MPLS
15 57 (0.63%) SAN
16 48 (0.53%) Cisco ISE
17 47 (0.52%) IPsec
18 43 (0.47%) SD-WAN
18 43 (0.47%) SSL
19 42 (0.46%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 247 (2.72%) Power BI
2 230 (2.53%) PostgreSQL
3 177 (1.95%) Data Warehouse
3 177 (1.95%) SQL Server
4 127 (1.40%) Metadata
5 106 (1.17%) Oracle Database
6 102 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
7 90 (0.99%) NoSQL
8 84 (0.92%) Relational Database
9 82 (0.90%) MongoDB
10 76 (0.84%) Azure SQL Database
11 72 (0.79%) Elasticsearch
12 70 (0.77%) MySQL
13 66 (0.73%) Data Lake
13 66 (0.73%) Pentaho
14 65 (0.71%) Tableau
15 64 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
16 51 (0.56%) Oracle Reports
17 48 (0.53%) Amazon Athena
18 43 (0.47%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 559 (6.15%) JIRA
2 463 (5.09%) Git
3 360 (3.96%) Jenkins
4 314 (3.45%) GitLab
5 104 (1.14%) Selenium
6 82 (0.90%) JUnit
7 74 (0.81%) Postman
8 55 (0.60%) SonarQube
9 52 (0.57%) Rational DOORS
10 50 (0.55%) Bitbucket
11 44 (0.48%) Artifactory
12 43 (0.47%) Maven
13 41 (0.45%) Cypress.io
13 41 (0.45%) Oracle APEX
14 37 (0.41%) Cucumber
15 36 (0.40%) Mockito
16 34 (0.37%) JMeter
17 28 (0.31%) REST Assured
18 27 (0.30%) Visual Studio
19 22 (0.24%) MSI
General
1 2,122 (23.34%) Public Sector
2 2,055 (22.60%) Social Skills
3 762 (8.38%) Analytical Skills
4 664 (7.30%) Finance
5 324 (3.56%) Military
6 262 (2.88%) Documentation Skills
7 220 (2.42%) Aerospace
8 155 (1.70%) Telecoms
9 152 (1.67%) Legal
10 146 (1.61%) Manufacturing
11 119 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
12 114 (1.25%) Banking
13 100 (1.10%) Organisational Skills
14 98 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
15 93 (1.02%) Marketing
16 85 (0.93%) Electronics
17 84 (0.92%) Law
18 58 (0.64%) Police
19 50 (0.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 31 (0.34%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,367 (15.03%) Architect
2 860 (9.46%) Developer
3 788 (8.67%) Senior
4 656 (7.21%) Analyst
5 591 (6.50%) Lead
6 443 (4.87%) Consultant
7 392 (4.31%) Data Engineer
8 366 (4.03%) DevOps Engineer
9 272 (2.99%) Network Engineer
10 269 (2.96%) Software Engineer
11 261 (2.87%) Technical Architect
12 244 (2.68%) Business Analyst
13 204 (2.24%) Solutions Architect
14 202 (2.22%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 197 (2.17%) Project Manager
16 193 (2.12%) Azure Engineer
17 172 (1.89%) Delivery Manager
18 166 (1.83%) Security Architect
19 164 (1.80%) Support Engineer
20 156 (1.72%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 342 (3.76%) REST
2 202 (2.22%) Spring
3 178 (1.96%) Node.js
4 162 (1.78%) Kafka
4 162 (1.78%) React
5 158 (1.74%) .NET
6 154 (1.69%) Spring Boot
7 146 (1.61%) JSON
8 139 (1.53%) LDAP
8 139 (1.53%) SOAP
9 126 (1.39%) RESTful
10 109 (1.20%) AngularJS
11 106 (1.17%) PySpark
12 105 (1.15%) Web Services
13 92 (1.01%) OAuth
14 88 (0.97%) Oracle Fusion
15 86 (0.95%) XML
16 83 (0.91%) HTML
17 74 (0.81%) SAML
18 70 (0.77%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 319 (3.51%) Product Ownership
2 282 (3.10%) Data Centre
3 279 (3.07%) Cloud Native
4 237 (2.61%) Onboarding
5 188 (2.07%) PKI
6 153 (1.68%) Management Information System
7 126 (1.39%) Self-Motivation
8 120 (1.32%) Security Posture
9 119 (1.31%) Legacy Systems
10 118 (1.30%) Enterprise Software
11 111 (1.22%) Replication
12 100 (1.10%) Distributed Systems
13 79 (0.87%) Public Cloud
14 77 (0.85%) Data Structures
15 74 (0.81%) Hybrid Cloud
16 68 (0.75%) Clustering
17 65 (0.71%) Security Operations Centre
18 57 (0.63%) Cyber Threat
18 57 (0.63%) Private Cloud
18 57 (0.63%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 800 (8.80%) Windows
2 649 (7.14%) Linux
3 236 (2.60%) Windows Server
4 130 (1.43%) Unix
5 112 (1.23%) Windows 10
6 111 (1.22%) Android
6 111 (1.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 55 (0.60%) Mac OS
8 49 (0.54%) Apple iOS
9 35 (0.38%) Ubuntu
10 30 (0.33%) VMS
11 22 (0.24%) Solaris
12 21 (0.23%) CentOS
13 20 (0.22%) AIX
14 19 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
15 17 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
16 16 (0.18%) Windows 7
17 12 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
18 8 (0.088%) Embedded Linux
18 8 (0.088%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,856 (20.41%) Agile
2 1,376 (15.13%) DevOps
3 1,205 (13.25%) CI/CD
4 1,056 (11.61%) Problem-Solving
5 870 (9.57%) Stakeholder Management
6 791 (8.70%) Migration
7 785 (8.63%) Continuous Improvement
8 688 (7.57%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 600 (6.60%) ITIL
10 565 (6.21%) Infrastructure as Code
11 552 (6.07%) Cybersecurity
12 540 (5.94%) Analytics
13 524 (5.76%) Test Automation
14 507 (5.58%) Roadmaps
15 481 (5.29%) Software Engineering
16 475 (5.22%) Containerisation
17 455 (5.00%) Scrum
18 446 (4.90%) Data Modelling
19 436 (4.79%) Service Management
20 411 (4.52%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 1,030 (11.33%) Python
2 835 (9.18%) SQL
3 561 (6.17%) PowerShell
4 524 (5.76%) Java
5 324 (3.56%) JavaScript
6 199 (2.19%) C#
7 193 (2.12%) Bash
8 147 (1.62%) TypeScript
9 107 (1.18%) PL/SQL
10 96 (1.06%) C++
10 96 (1.06%) Shell Script
11 68 (0.75%) Go
12 61 (0.67%) C
13 57 (0.63%) Ruby
14 55 (0.60%) Scala
15 51 (0.56%) Bicep
16 44 (0.48%) Ada
17 41 (0.45%) Apex Code
18 39 (0.43%) R
19 38 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 6,837 (75.19%) SC Cleared
2 1,695 (18.64%) DV Cleared
3 432 (4.75%) Degree
4 267 (2.94%) BPSS Clearance
5 177 (1.95%) Cisco Certification
6 165 (1.81%) CISSP
7 135 (1.48%) Azure Certification
8 120 (1.32%) CCNP
9 109 (1.20%) AWS Certification
10 106 (1.17%) Microsoft Certification
11 103 (1.13%) CISM
12 75 (0.82%) CCNA
13 68 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
14 65 (0.71%) PMP
14 65 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
15 62 (0.68%) Computer Science Degree
16 57 (0.63%) PMI Certification
17 50 (0.55%) GIAC
17 50 (0.55%) ISTQB
18 47 (0.52%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 332 (3.65%) QA
2 281 (3.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 271 (2.98%) NIST
4 261 (2.87%) Data Quality
5 193 (2.12%) NCSC
6 158 (1.74%) GDPR
7 143 (1.57%) Accessibility
8 130 (1.43%) PMO
9 105 (1.15%) SLA
10 64 (0.70%) JSP 440
11 62 (0.68%) GRC
12 41 (0.45%) NIST 800
13 40 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
14 39 (0.43%) COBIT
15 34 (0.37%) PCI DSS
15 34 (0.37%) WCAG
16 28 (0.31%) Def Stans
17 26 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 25 (0.27%) RMADS
19 18 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 609 (6.70%) Docker
2 455 (5.00%) Active Directory
3 259 (2.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 89 (0.98%) VMware NSX
5 76 (0.84%) VMware ESXi
6 69 (0.76%) vSphere
7 66 (0.73%) Hyper-V
8 51 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
9 33 (0.36%) Firmware
10 23 (0.25%) BitLocker
10 23 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
11 20 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
12 17 (0.19%) NFS
12 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 14 (0.15%) Postfix
14 12 (0.13%) vCloud
15 10 (0.11%) Squid
16 8 (0.088%) Microsoft App-V
17 5 (0.055%) KVM
17 5 (0.055%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 777 (8.55%) Kubernetes
2 709 (7.80%) Terraform
3 298 (3.28%) Ansible
4 214 (2.35%) Grafana
5 177 (1.95%) Prometheus
6 99 (1.09%) Single Sign-On
7 94 (1.03%) vCenter Server
8 81 (0.89%) SCCM
9 77 (0.85%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 60 (0.66%) Microsoft Intune
11 55 (0.60%) Argo
12 51 (0.56%) FortiGate
13 37 (0.41%) Podman
14 36 (0.40%) Packer
14 36 (0.40%) Puppet
15 34 (0.37%) Progress Chef
16 30 (0.33%) OPNET
17 25 (0.27%) Oracle RMAN
18 24 (0.26%) Nagios
19 23 (0.25%) Kibana
Vendors
1 985 (10.83%) Microsoft
2 552 (6.07%) Oracle
3 459 (5.05%) VMware
4 393 (4.32%) Cisco
5 375 (4.12%) ServiceNow
6 347 (3.82%) SAP
7 205 (2.25%) Splunk
8 177 (1.95%) Databricks
9 174 (1.91%) Red Hat
10 134 (1.47%) Google
11 130 (1.43%) Salesforce
12 125 (1.37%) Atlassian
13 119 (1.31%) Juniper
14 116 (1.28%) IBM
15 112 (1.23%) Palo Alto
16 99 (1.09%) CyberArk
17 92 (1.01%) Talend
18 83 (0.91%) Remedy
19 80 (0.88%) Dell
20 77 (0.85%) Citrix