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

6 months to
11 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 0 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,158 4,532 7,026
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.52% 18.51% 19.11%
As % of the Qualifications category 70.09% 58.94% 61.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,357 3,008 4,618
10th Percentile £363 £340 £353
25th Percentile £449 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £527 £550
% change year-on-year -0.43% -4.14% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 759 279 491
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.38 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £52.00 £56.89
Median % change year-on-year +5.77% -8.59% -5.19%
75th Percentile £74.00 £67.50 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.39 £78.96 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £47.05 £56.89
% change year-on-year +16.89% -17.28% -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 13,066 7,689 11,429
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.12% 31.40% 31.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,766 4,885 7,039
10th Percentile £340 £289 £313
25th Percentile £425 £414 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £522 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.67% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £622 £626 £650
90th Percentile £725 £717 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -0.95% -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 960 446 981
10th Percentile £17.10 £18.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £22.27 £18.00
Median hourly rate £47.54 £40.55 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +17.25% +1.36% -23.81%
75th Percentile £72.50 £67.50 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.50 £81.35 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £47.54 £37.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +26.77% -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 11 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 11 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 11 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 3,239 £525 - 472
South East +1 2,211 £538 -2.27% 507
South West 0 1,306 £538 -4.44% 312
Midlands +4 894 £473 -9.90% 156
North of England -2 860 £488 -2.50% 293
West Midlands +4 759 £475 -10.64% 117
North West -2 496 £497 -0.64% 174
East of England +2 379 £525 +9.66% 140
Yorkshire -14 207 £475 -6.13% 51
North East +1 191 £475 -3.06% 70
East Midlands -3 129 £450 -5.26% 39
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
1 359 (3.92%) Confluence
2 205 (2.24%) SharePoint
3 122 (1.33%) Microsoft Exchange
4 114 (1.24%) SAS
5 81 (0.88%) Apache Spark
6 70 (0.76%) Apache
7 56 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
8 32 (0.35%) WebLogic
9 30 (0.33%) nginx
10 24 (0.26%) Jupyter
11 17 (0.19%) Tomcat
12 15 (0.16%) IIS
12 15 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
13 14 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
13 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
14 13 (0.14%) Skype for Business
15 12 (0.13%) CMS
16 8 (0.087%) Apache Superset
16 8 (0.087%) ArcGIS
16 8 (0.087%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 199 (2.17%) Microsoft Office
2 185 (2.02%) Microsoft Excel
3 118 (1.29%) Microsoft Project
4 81 (0.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 38 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.12%) Simulink
8 7 (0.076%) 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 2 (0.022%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.022%) CATIA
12 2 (0.022%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.022%) Lectora
12 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.022%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 88 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.46%) Remedy ITSM
3 41 (0.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 27 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
4 27 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
4 27 (0.29%) Teamcenter
5 15 (0.16%) Maximo
6 14 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
6 14 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
6 14 (0.15%) SAP PSCD
7 13 (0.14%) Temenos T24
8 12 (0.13%) Findur
9 10 (0.11%) iTrent
9 10 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
10 9 (0.098%) Integrated Workplace Management System
10 9 (0.098%) SAP HCM
10 9 (0.098%) SAP PP
11 8 (0.087%) Primavera
11 8 (0.087%) SAP HR
11 8 (0.087%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,577 (17.22%) Azure
2 1,500 (16.38%) AWS
3 374 (4.08%) GitHub
4 373 (4.07%) GCP
5 346 (3.78%) Azure DevOps
6 336 (3.67%) Power Platform
7 243 (2.65%) Serverless
8 237 (2.59%) Microsoft 365
9 229 (2.50%) Entra ID
10 214 (2.34%) GitHub Actions
11 191 (2.09%) Amazon S3
12 163 (1.78%) AWS Lambda
13 133 (1.45%) PaaS
14 129 (1.41%) Amazon EC2
15 126 (1.38%) OpenShift
16 112 (1.22%) OCI
17 111 (1.21%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 106 (1.16%) AWS CloudFormation
19 103 (1.12%) IaaS
19 103 (1.12%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 423 (4.62%) Firewall
2 262 (2.86%) DNS
3 212 (2.31%) Network Security
4 209 (2.28%) WAN
5 191 (2.09%) LAN
6 150 (1.64%) VPN
7 140 (1.53%) BGP
8 137 (1.50%) DHCP
9 121 (1.32%) OSPF
10 106 (1.16%) TCP/IP
11 97 (1.06%) Wi-Fi
12 90 (0.98%) VLAN
13 74 (0.81%) Wireless
14 59 (0.64%) MPLS
15 52 (0.57%) SAN
16 51 (0.56%) VXLAN
17 48 (0.52%) SD-WAN
18 47 (0.51%) IPsec
19 45 (0.49%) Ethernet VPN
19 45 (0.49%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 260 (2.84%) Power BI
2 214 (2.34%) PostgreSQL
3 197 (2.15%) Data Warehouse
4 182 (1.99%) SQL Server
5 116 (1.27%) Metadata
6 105 (1.15%) Oracle Database
7 102 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
8 85 (0.93%) NoSQL
9 82 (0.90%) Relational Database
10 81 (0.88%) MongoDB
11 79 (0.86%) Data Lake
11 79 (0.86%) Pentaho
12 72 (0.79%) Elasticsearch
13 67 (0.73%) Azure SQL Database
14 66 (0.72%) Oracle Reports
15 61 (0.67%) Amazon Redshift
15 61 (0.67%) Tableau
16 59 (0.64%) MySQL
17 51 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
18 48 (0.52%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 565 (6.17%) JIRA
2 411 (4.49%) Git
3 351 (3.83%) Jenkins
4 335 (3.66%) GitLab
5 85 (0.93%) Selenium
6 75 (0.82%) Postman
7 70 (0.76%) JUnit
8 57 (0.62%) SonarQube
9 54 (0.59%) Rational DOORS
10 46 (0.50%) Artifactory
11 43 (0.47%) Bitbucket
12 41 (0.45%) JMeter
13 38 (0.41%) Cucumber
13 38 (0.41%) Maven
14 37 (0.40%) Mockito
15 34 (0.37%) Visual Studio
16 30 (0.33%) Cypress.io
17 28 (0.31%) Zephyr
18 24 (0.26%) REST Assured
19 23 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,986 (21.69%) Public Sector
2 1,963 (21.43%) Social Skills
3 704 (7.69%) Analytical Skills
4 654 (7.14%) Finance
5 334 (3.65%) Military
6 257 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
7 222 (2.42%) Aerospace
8 145 (1.58%) Legal
9 121 (1.32%) Telecoms
10 110 (1.20%) Influencing Skills
11 106 (1.16%) Banking
12 103 (1.12%) Manufacturing
12 103 (1.12%) Organisational Skills
13 89 (0.97%) Presentation Skills
14 85 (0.93%) Law
15 60 (0.66%) Police
16 55 (0.60%) Marketing
17 51 (0.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 49 (0.54%) Electronics
19 38 (0.41%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,360 (14.85%) Architect
2 839 (9.16%) Developer
3 761 (8.31%) Senior
4 656 (7.16%) Analyst
5 637 (6.96%) Lead
6 443 (4.84%) Data Engineer
7 411 (4.49%) Consultant
8 408 (4.46%) DevOps Engineer
9 272 (2.97%) Network Engineer
10 271 (2.96%) Software Engineer
11 262 (2.86%) Technical Architect
12 251 (2.74%) Business Analyst
13 248 (2.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 216 (2.36%) Project Manager
15 203 (2.22%) Solutions Architect
16 195 (2.13%) Azure Engineer
17 176 (1.92%) Security Architect
18 170 (1.86%) Designer
19 167 (1.82%) Administrator
19 167 (1.82%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 290 (3.17%) REST
2 217 (2.37%) Spring
3 176 (1.92%) Spring Boot
4 164 (1.79%) Kafka
5 162 (1.77%) Node.js
6 157 (1.71%) .NET
6 157 (1.71%) React
7 145 (1.58%) LDAP
8 134 (1.46%) SOAP
9 132 (1.44%) RESTful
10 114 (1.24%) JSON
11 112 (1.22%) AngularJS
12 102 (1.11%) Web Services
13 99 (1.08%) PySpark
14 90 (0.98%) Oracle Fusion
15 83 (0.91%) OAuth
16 79 (0.86%) HTML
17 76 (0.83%) XML
18 70 (0.76%) Elastic Stack
19 64 (0.70%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 323 (3.53%) Cloud Native
2 312 (3.41%) Product Ownership
3 272 (2.97%) Data Centre
4 263 (2.87%) Onboarding
5 151 (1.65%) PKI
6 141 (1.54%) Management Information System
7 124 (1.35%) Legacy Systems
8 121 (1.32%) Security Posture
9 116 (1.27%) Replication
10 113 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
11 108 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
12 93 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
13 79 (0.86%) Clustering
14 76 (0.83%) Data Structures
15 73 (0.80%) Hybrid Cloud
16 72 (0.79%) Public Cloud
17 65 (0.71%) Security Operations Centre
18 63 (0.69%) Virtual Team
19 58 (0.63%) Operational Technology
20 56 (0.61%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 775 (8.46%) Windows
2 625 (6.82%) Linux
3 232 (2.53%) Windows Server
4 158 (1.73%) Unix
5 109 (1.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 93 (1.02%) Android
7 91 (0.99%) Windows 10
8 52 (0.57%) Apple iOS
9 43 (0.47%) Mac OS
10 39 (0.43%) Solaris
11 36 (0.39%) Ubuntu
12 29 (0.32%) VMS
13 25 (0.27%) 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 10 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
18 9 (0.098%) Windows Server 2012
19 8 (0.087%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,810 (19.76%) Agile
2 1,393 (15.21%) DevOps
3 1,220 (13.32%) CI/CD
4 1,019 (11.13%) Problem-Solving
5 890 (9.72%) Stakeholder Management
6 807 (8.81%) Continuous Improvement
7 772 (8.43%) Migration
8 676 (7.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 617 (6.74%) Infrastructure as Code
10 596 (6.51%) ITIL
11 550 (6.01%) Cybersecurity
12 526 (5.74%) Test Automation
13 519 (5.67%) Analytics
14 511 (5.58%) Software Engineering
15 504 (5.50%) Containerisation
16 498 (5.44%) Roadmaps
17 454 (4.96%) Data Modelling
18 427 (4.66%) Decision-Making
19 417 (4.55%) Scrum
20 393 (4.29%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 979 (10.69%) Python
2 842 (9.19%) SQL
3 568 (6.20%) Java
4 497 (5.43%) PowerShell
5 276 (3.01%) JavaScript
6 199 (2.17%) C#
7 173 (1.89%) Bash
8 143 (1.56%) TypeScript
9 96 (1.05%) PL/SQL
10 89 (0.97%) C++
11 85 (0.93%) Shell Script
12 67 (0.73%) Go
13 63 (0.69%) Scala
14 57 (0.62%) C
15 52 (0.57%) Bicep
16 48 (0.52%) Ruby
17 41 (0.45%) Apex Code
18 40 (0.44%) Ada
18 40 (0.44%) R
19 35 (0.38%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 6,868 (74.99%) SC Cleared
2 1,751 (19.12%) DV Cleared
3 418 (4.56%) Degree
4 256 (2.80%) BPSS Clearance
5 174 (1.90%) Cisco Certification
6 155 (1.69%) CISSP
7 127 (1.39%) Azure Certification
8 111 (1.21%) CCNP
9 105 (1.15%) AWS Certification
10 103 (1.12%) CISM
11 88 (0.96%) Microsoft Certification
12 72 (0.79%) PMP
13 68 (0.74%) TOGAF Certification
14 67 (0.73%) CCNA
15 62 (0.68%) ITIL Certification
15 62 (0.68%) PMI Certification
16 61 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
17 52 (0.57%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 51 (0.56%) ISTQB
19 48 (0.52%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 341 (3.72%) QA
2 272 (2.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 268 (2.93%) NIST
4 266 (2.90%) Data Quality
5 182 (1.99%) NCSC
6 163 (1.78%) PMO
7 158 (1.73%) Accessibility
8 155 (1.69%) GDPR
9 99 (1.08%) SLA
10 62 (0.68%) GRC
11 58 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 50 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials
13 36 (0.39%) NIST 800
14 34 (0.37%) WCAG
15 31 (0.34%) Def Stans
15 31 (0.34%) PCI DSS
16 30 (0.33%) COBIT
17 24 (0.26%) RMADS
18 20 (0.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 19 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 571 (6.23%) Docker
2 444 (4.85%) Active Directory
3 268 (2.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 95 (1.04%) VMware ESXi
5 84 (0.92%) VMware NSX
6 74 (0.81%) Hyper-V
7 72 (0.79%) vSphere
8 68 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
9 35 (0.38%) Firmware
10 26 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
11 22 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
12 20 (0.22%) BitLocker
13 19 (0.21%) NFS
14 17 (0.19%) Postfix
14 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 16 (0.17%) vCloud
16 12 (0.13%) Squid
17 8 (0.087%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.066%) Corosync
18 6 (0.066%) KVM
Systems Management
1 732 (7.99%) Kubernetes
2 707 (7.72%) Terraform
3 316 (3.45%) Ansible
4 226 (2.47%) Grafana
5 185 (2.02%) Prometheus
6 98 (1.07%) vCenter Server
7 85 (0.93%) Single Sign-On
8 76 (0.83%) SCCM
9 56 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 52 (0.57%) Microsoft Intune
11 50 (0.55%) FortiGate
12 47 (0.51%) Argo
13 38 (0.41%) Puppet
14 36 (0.39%) Podman
15 33 (0.36%) Progress Chef
16 31 (0.34%) OPNET
17 30 (0.33%) Nagios
18 29 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
19 24 (0.26%) SCOM
20 22 (0.24%) Kibana
Vendors
1 956 (10.44%) Microsoft
2 567 (6.19%) Oracle
3 460 (5.02%) VMware
4 375 (4.09%) ServiceNow
5 328 (3.58%) Cisco
6 322 (3.52%) SAP
7 211 (2.30%) Splunk
8 173 (1.89%) Databricks
9 150 (1.64%) Google
9 150 (1.64%) Red Hat
10 116 (1.27%) Palo Alto
11 115 (1.26%) IBM
11 115 (1.26%) Talend
12 102 (1.11%) Salesforce
13 99 (1.08%) Juniper
14 97 (1.06%) Atlassian
15 95 (1.04%) CyberArk
16 82 (0.90%) Remedy
17 81 (0.88%) F5
18 80 (0.87%) Informatica