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

6 months to
30 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 9,588 4,671 7,002
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.91% 18.31% 18.86%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.52% 58.96% 61.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,741 3,051 4,569
10th Percentile £378 £335 £356
25th Percentile £450 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 745 354 540
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.50 £14.48
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +151.03% -56.26% -4.17%
75th Percentile £75.40 £63.75 £72.50
90th Percentile £87.10 £77.50 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £61.33 £25.15 £56.15
% change year-on-year +143.86% -55.21% -6.43%

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 13,791 7,922 11,330
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.51% 31.06% 30.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,306 4,981 6,993
10th Percentile £350 £281 £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 £645
90th Percentile £716 £715 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £521 £525
% change year-on-year +0.77% -0.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,030 525 1,003
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.16
25th Percentile £23.88 £20.00 £20.50
Median hourly rate £52.50 £28.60 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +83.57% -32.71% -22.73%
75th Percentile £73.94 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.40 £77.50 £77.40
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £28.15 £40.94
% change year-on-year +77.62% -31.24% -26.00%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 3,403 £528 +0.48% 500
South East +1 2,318 £550 - 482
South West 0 1,301 £538 -4.44% 308
North of England +2 1,008 £500 - 227
Midlands +2 931 £469 -8.49% 133
West Midlands +2 796 £469 -10.58% 92
North West 0 541 £525 +5.00% 137
East of England +2 351 £550 +10.00% 116
Yorkshire -2 265 £500 +1.63% 53
North East +1 232 £475 -1.04% 40
East Midlands -1 124 £418 -12.11% 41
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 (3.46%) Confluence
2 214 (2.23%) SharePoint
3 144 (1.50%) SAS
4 122 (1.27%) Microsoft Exchange
5 89 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
6 82 (0.86%) Apache Spark
7 79 (0.82%) Apache
8 39 (0.41%) Jupyter
8 39 (0.41%) nginx
9 29 (0.30%) WebLogic
10 21 (0.22%) Tomcat
11 20 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
12 16 (0.17%) CMS
12 16 (0.17%) IIS
13 15 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
14 14 (0.15%) Skype for Business
15 12 (0.13%) Tuxedo
16 11 (0.11%) NetWeaver
17 9 (0.094%) Palantir Foundry
18 8 (0.083%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 155 (1.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 127 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 75 (0.78%) Microsoft Project
4 67 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 40 (0.42%) MS Visio
6 15 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.14%) Simulink
8 11 (0.11%) SOLIDWORKS
9 10 (0.10%) AutoCAD
9 10 (0.10%) Chatbot
9 10 (0.10%) Revit
10 5 (0.052%) Notepad++
11 4 (0.042%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.031%) Sketch
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
13 2 (0.021%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 100 (1.04%) SAP S/4HANA
2 59 (0.62%) Remedy ITSM
3 45 (0.47%) Oracle ERP
4 32 (0.33%) Teamcenter
5 31 (0.32%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 27 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
7 21 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
8 17 (0.18%) SAP PSCD
9 15 (0.16%) Findur
9 15 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
10 13 (0.14%) Primavera
10 13 (0.14%) Temenos T24
11 12 (0.13%) iTrent
11 12 (0.13%) Maximo
11 12 (0.13%) Siebel CRM
12 11 (0.11%) SAP ERP
13 9 (0.094%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 9 (0.094%) Oracle Assets
13 9 (0.094%) Salesforce CRM
13 9 (0.094%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,656 (17.27%) Azure
2 1,625 (16.95%) AWS
3 377 (3.93%) Power Platform
4 371 (3.87%) GitHub
5 369 (3.85%) Azure DevOps
6 347 (3.62%) GCP
7 246 (2.57%) Microsoft 365
8 244 (2.54%) Entra ID
8 244 (2.54%) Serverless
9 233 (2.43%) GitHub Actions
10 211 (2.20%) Amazon S3
11 168 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
12 150 (1.56%) Amazon EC2
13 139 (1.45%) SaaS
14 134 (1.40%) OpenShift
15 130 (1.36%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 129 (1.35%) OCI
16 129 (1.35%) PaaS
17 109 (1.14%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 100 (1.04%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 411 (4.29%) Firewall
2 298 (3.11%) DNS
3 223 (2.33%) Network Security
4 209 (2.18%) WAN
5 188 (1.96%) LAN
6 164 (1.71%) VPN
7 158 (1.65%) DHCP
8 134 (1.40%) BGP
9 113 (1.18%) OSPF
10 110 (1.15%) Wi-Fi
11 105 (1.10%) VLAN
12 97 (1.01%) TCP/IP
13 79 (0.82%) Wireless
14 59 (0.62%) MPLS
14 59 (0.62%) SD-WAN
15 55 (0.57%) VXLAN
16 53 (0.55%) SAN
17 50 (0.52%) BIG-IP
18 48 (0.50%) IPsec
19 46 (0.48%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 287 (2.99%) Power BI
2 240 (2.50%) PostgreSQL
3 223 (2.33%) Data Warehouse
4 222 (2.32%) SQL Server
5 143 (1.49%) Oracle Database
6 121 (1.26%) Metadata
7 107 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
7 107 (1.12%) Data Lake
8 99 (1.03%) Relational Database
9 83 (0.87%) MongoDB
9 83 (0.87%) Pentaho
10 79 (0.82%) MySQL
11 75 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
12 73 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
13 68 (0.71%) Amazon Redshift
14 66 (0.69%) NoSQL
15 62 (0.65%) Amazon Athena
16 59 (0.62%) Tableau
17 43 (0.45%) DynamoDB
18 42 (0.44%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 531 (5.54%) JIRA
2 427 (4.45%) Git
3 407 (4.24%) GitLab
4 369 (3.85%) Jenkins
5 106 (1.11%) Selenium
6 80 (0.83%) JUnit
7 71 (0.74%) SonarQube
8 68 (0.71%) Postman
9 58 (0.60%) Rational DOORS
10 53 (0.55%) JMeter
11 50 (0.52%) Cucumber
12 42 (0.44%) Artifactory
12 42 (0.44%) Mockito
13 41 (0.43%) Maven
14 40 (0.42%) Bitbucket
15 39 (0.41%) REST Assured
16 37 (0.39%) Visual Studio
16 37 (0.39%) Zephyr
17 35 (0.37%) Cypress.io
18 30 (0.31%) WebDriver
General
1 2,043 (21.31%) Public Sector
2 1,937 (20.20%) Social Skills
3 673 (7.02%) Analytical Skills
4 648 (6.76%) Finance
5 319 (3.33%) Military
6 270 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
7 266 (2.77%) Aerospace
8 142 (1.48%) Legal
9 137 (1.43%) Influencing Skills
10 123 (1.28%) Banking
11 112 (1.17%) Telecoms
12 99 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
13 96 (1.00%) Law
14 77 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
15 75 (0.78%) Manufacturing
16 73 (0.76%) Police
17 65 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 44 (0.46%) Marketing
19 38 (0.40%) Aviation
20 37 (0.39%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,401 (14.61%) Architect
2 960 (10.01%) Developer
3 826 (8.61%) Senior
4 764 (7.97%) Lead
5 619 (6.46%) Analyst
6 462 (4.82%) Data Engineer
7 427 (4.45%) Consultant
8 414 (4.32%) DevOps Engineer
9 314 (3.27%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 303 (3.16%) Software Engineer
11 282 (2.94%) Technical Architect
12 251 (2.62%) Network Engineer
13 231 (2.41%) Solutions Architect
14 214 (2.23%) Security Architect
15 205 (2.14%) Business Analyst
16 204 (2.13%) Project Manager
17 192 (2.00%) Delivery Manager
18 187 (1.95%) Java Developer
19 182 (1.90%) Administrator
20 173 (1.80%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 291 (3.04%) REST
2 231 (2.41%) Spring
3 187 (1.95%) Spring Boot
4 170 (1.77%) React
5 164 (1.71%) .NET
6 155 (1.62%) Kafka
7 153 (1.60%) Node.js
8 145 (1.51%) RESTful
9 122 (1.27%) SOAP
10 113 (1.18%) LDAP
11 112 (1.17%) JSON
12 110 (1.15%) AngularJS
13 95 (0.99%) OAuth
14 93 (0.97%) PySpark
15 89 (0.93%) Web Services
16 83 (0.87%) HTML
17 76 (0.79%) XML
18 75 (0.78%) OpenID
19 69 (0.72%) Playwright
20 68 (0.71%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 375 (3.91%) Cloud Native
2 321 (3.35%) Product Ownership
3 298 (3.11%) Onboarding
4 278 (2.90%) Data Centre
5 152 (1.59%) Legacy Systems
6 146 (1.52%) Management Information System
7 135 (1.41%) PKI
8 133 (1.39%) Distributed Systems
9 109 (1.14%) Replication
10 104 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
11 96 (1.00%) Enterprise Software
12 94 (0.98%) Security Posture
13 91 (0.95%) CMDB
14 88 (0.92%) Clustering
14 88 (0.92%) Data Structures
15 86 (0.90%) Hybrid Cloud
16 75 (0.78%) Public Cloud
17 70 (0.73%) Security Operations Centre
17 70 (0.73%) Virtual Team
18 67 (0.70%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 780 (8.14%) Windows
2 644 (6.72%) Linux
3 249 (2.60%) Windows Server
4 176 (1.84%) Unix
5 125 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 84 (0.88%) Windows 10
7 76 (0.79%) Android
8 49 (0.51%) Solaris
9 47 (0.49%) Apple iOS
10 37 (0.39%) Mac OS
11 32 (0.33%) Ubuntu
12 29 (0.30%) AIX
13 23 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 22 (0.23%) CentOS
15 19 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
16 17 (0.18%) VMS
17 14 (0.15%) Windows 7
18 11 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
18 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
18 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,943 (20.26%) Agile
2 1,484 (15.48%) DevOps
3 1,329 (13.86%) CI/CD
4 1,000 (10.43%) Problem-Solving
5 995 (10.38%) Stakeholder Management
6 966 (10.08%) Continuous Improvement
7 783 (8.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 764 (7.97%) Migration
9 696 (7.26%) Infrastructure as Code
10 626 (6.53%) Cybersecurity
11 618 (6.45%) ITIL
12 583 (6.08%) Test Automation
13 579 (6.04%) Software Engineering
14 554 (5.78%) Analytics
14 554 (5.78%) Containerisation
15 543 (5.66%) Roadmaps
16 501 (5.23%) Decision-Making
17 496 (5.17%) Data Modelling
18 481 (5.02%) AI
19 454 (4.74%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 1,006 (10.49%) Python
2 910 (9.49%) SQL
3 629 (6.56%) Java
4 450 (4.69%) PowerShell
5 277 (2.89%) JavaScript
6 203 (2.12%) C#
7 202 (2.11%) Bash
8 147 (1.53%) TypeScript
9 128 (1.34%) PL/SQL
10 88 (0.92%) C++
11 84 (0.88%) Shell Script
12 67 (0.70%) Bicep
13 64 (0.67%) C
14 54 (0.56%) Go
15 46 (0.48%) Ada
16 41 (0.43%) Scala
17 40 (0.42%) Apex Code
18 39 (0.41%) Ruby
19 37 (0.39%) Kotlin
20 33 (0.34%) R
Qualifications
1 7,231 (75.42%) SC Cleared
2 1,875 (19.56%) DV Cleared
3 391 (4.08%) Degree
4 288 (3.00%) BPSS Clearance
5 185 (1.93%) Cisco Certification
6 156 (1.63%) CISSP
7 127 (1.32%) Azure Certification
8 111 (1.16%) Microsoft Certification
9 103 (1.07%) AWS Certification
10 100 (1.04%) CCNP
11 95 (0.99%) CISM
12 79 (0.82%) CCNA
12 79 (0.82%) PMP
13 78 (0.81%) PMI Certification
14 65 (0.68%) ISTQB
15 58 (0.60%) Computer Science Degree
16 57 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 48 (0.50%) ITIL Certification
18 38 (0.40%) GIAC
19 35 (0.37%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 372 (3.88%) QA
2 287 (2.99%) Data Quality
2 287 (2.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 287 (2.99%) NIST
3 210 (2.19%) NCSC
4 186 (1.94%) Accessibility
5 171 (1.78%) GDPR
6 168 (1.75%) PMO
7 100 (1.04%) SLA
8 83 (0.87%) GRC
9 62 (0.65%) JSP 440
10 45 (0.47%) Cyber Essentials
11 43 (0.45%) WCAG
12 41 (0.43%) NIST 800
13 33 (0.34%) Def Stans
14 28 (0.29%) RMADS
15 24 (0.25%) Government Security Classifications
15 24 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 21 (0.22%) COBIT
17 20 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 607 (6.33%) Docker
2 423 (4.41%) Active Directory
3 295 (3.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 113 (1.18%) VMware ESXi
5 107 (1.12%) VMware NSX
6 80 (0.83%) vSphere
7 78 (0.81%) Hyper-V
8 75 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
9 33 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
10 32 (0.33%) Firmware
11 26 (0.27%) Virtual Desktop
12 23 (0.24%) BitLocker
13 21 (0.22%) vCloud
14 19 (0.20%) NFS
14 19 (0.20%) Postfix
15 18 (0.19%) Squid
16 13 (0.14%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 9 (0.094%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.063%) Corosync
18 6 (0.063%) KVM
Systems Management
1 772 (8.05%) Terraform
2 760 (7.93%) Kubernetes
3 336 (3.50%) Ansible
4 222 (2.32%) Grafana
5 181 (1.89%) Prometheus
6 109 (1.14%) vCenter Server
7 80 (0.83%) SCCM
8 73 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
9 61 (0.64%) Microsoft Intune
10 52 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 48 (0.50%) FortiGate
12 47 (0.49%) Argo
13 43 (0.45%) SCOM
14 41 (0.43%) Puppet
15 40 (0.42%) Oracle RMAN
16 32 (0.33%) Podman
17 28 (0.29%) Progress Chef
18 24 (0.25%) Nagios
19 23 (0.24%) vMotion
19 23 (0.24%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,028 (10.72%) Microsoft
2 684 (7.13%) Oracle
3 466 (4.86%) VMware
4 425 (4.43%) ServiceNow
5 309 (3.22%) SAP
6 307 (3.20%) Cisco
7 187 (1.95%) Splunk
8 169 (1.76%) Databricks
9 161 (1.68%) Google
10 140 (1.46%) Red Hat
11 128 (1.34%) Talend
12 125 (1.30%) Salesforce
13 112 (1.17%) IBM
14 106 (1.11%) Palo Alto
15 104 (1.08%) Informatica
16 94 (0.98%) Juniper
17 85 (0.89%) F5
18 84 (0.88%) SolarWinds
19 83 (0.87%) Fortinet
20 79 (0.82%) Citrix