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

6 months to
6 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 7,634 4,729 7,155
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.85% 18.00% 18.82%
As % of the Qualifications category 67.24% 59.65% 60.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,223 2,972 4,569
10th Percentile £350 £335 £360
25th Percentile £445 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.65%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £715 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £546 £550
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.73% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 672 247 487
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.87 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.62 £25.53 £42.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £58.30
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% +2.92% -2.83%
75th Percentile £65.00 £67.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.71 £75.00 £83.31
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £54.51 £59.59
% change year-on-year -53.86% -8.52% -0.68%

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 11,353 7,928 11,848
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.98% 30.18% 31.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,538 4,815 7,382
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £417 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -1.87% -2.78% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 882 384 875
10th Percentile £15.75 £19.98 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.87 £25.26 £21.28
Median hourly rate £25.15 £47.37 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -46.91% +2.58% +2.62%
75th Percentile £63.75 £67.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.71 £81.75 £77.80
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year -37.13% -13.38% +2.62%

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 February 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 February 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 February 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 2,609 £530 -1.44% 556
South East +1 1,590 £518 -5.82% 585
South West 0 1,292 £550 -0.18% 444
North of England -2 809 £500 +0.10% 232
Midlands +4 731 £506 -8.08% 165
West Midlands +2 568 £515 -6.53% 114
North West 0 529 £500 +1.73% 150
East of England +2 342 £500 -3.61% 179
Yorkshire -10 166 £500 +5.82% 53
East Midlands +2 164 £424 -18.31% 51
North East 0 141 £448 -13.11% 30
South Coast - 2 - -
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
1 271 (3.55%) Confluence
2 186 (2.44%) SharePoint
3 133 (1.74%) Microsoft Exchange
4 108 (1.41%) SAS
5 68 (0.89%) Apache
6 59 (0.77%) Apache Spark
7 48 (0.63%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.51%) nginx
9 36 (0.47%) Skype for Business
10 24 (0.31%) WebLogic
11 18 (0.24%) CMS
11 18 (0.24%) Palantir Foundry
12 16 (0.21%) Jupyter
13 13 (0.17%) IIS
14 9 (0.12%) OpenStack
15 8 (0.10%) Oracle Workflow
16 7 (0.092%) SharePoint Server
16 7 (0.092%) Tuxedo
17 6 (0.079%) ArcGIS
17 6 (0.079%) Documentum
Applications
1 242 (3.17%) Microsoft Office
2 152 (1.99%) Microsoft Excel
3 111 (1.45%) Microsoft Project
4 62 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 38 (0.50%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.14%) Simulink
8 6 (0.079%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.065%) Oracle Smart View
9 5 (0.065%) Siemens NX
9 5 (0.065%) Windchill
10 4 (0.052%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.052%) Sketch
10 4 (0.052%) Stateflow
11 3 (0.039%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.039%) Chatbot
11 3 (0.039%) FrameMaker
12 2 (0.026%) Adobe Illustrator
12 2 (0.026%) CATIA
12 2 (0.026%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 135 (1.77%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.48%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 29 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
4 27 (0.35%) SAP WM
5 26 (0.34%) SAP EWM
6 21 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
7 19 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
7 19 (0.25%) SAP MM
8 15 (0.20%) Maximo
8 15 (0.20%) Teamcenter
9 14 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
10 13 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
10 13 (0.17%) SAP QM
11 12 (0.16%) SAP HCM
11 12 (0.16%) SAP PP
11 12 (0.16%) SAP VC
12 11 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
12 11 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
12 11 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
12 11 (0.14%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 1,280 (16.77%) Azure
2 1,226 (16.06%) AWS
3 348 (4.56%) GitHub
4 319 (4.18%) GCP
5 297 (3.89%) Microsoft 365
6 290 (3.80%) Azure DevOps
7 281 (3.68%) Power Platform
8 214 (2.80%) Serverless
9 208 (2.72%) Entra ID
10 173 (2.27%) GitHub Actions
11 163 (2.14%) Amazon S3
12 155 (2.03%) OpenShift
13 134 (1.76%) AWS Lambda
14 106 (1.39%) AWS CloudFormation
15 97 (1.27%) Amazon EC2
16 96 (1.26%) IaaS
17 91 (1.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 90 (1.18%) PaaS
18 90 (1.18%) Power Automate
19 86 (1.13%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 389 (5.10%) Firewall
2 254 (3.33%) DNS
3 191 (2.50%) Network Security
4 170 (2.23%) VPN
5 162 (2.12%) WAN
6 129 (1.69%) TCP/IP
7 123 (1.61%) LAN
8 116 (1.52%) BGP
9 113 (1.48%) DHCP
10 82 (1.07%) VLAN
11 81 (1.06%) Wireless
12 71 (0.93%) Wi-Fi
13 69 (0.90%) OSPF
14 64 (0.84%) MPLS
15 54 (0.71%) IPsec
15 54 (0.71%) SAN
16 51 (0.67%) SSL
17 46 (0.60%) Skype
18 42 (0.55%) Cisco ISE
19 39 (0.51%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 195 (2.55%) Power BI
2 193 (2.53%) PostgreSQL
3 104 (1.36%) Data Warehouse
4 94 (1.23%) Metadata
5 91 (1.19%) SQL Server
6 87 (1.14%) Oracle Database
7 84 (1.10%) MongoDB
8 83 (1.09%) NoSQL
9 75 (0.98%) Relational Database
10 72 (0.94%) Amazon RDS
11 61 (0.80%) Azure SQL Database
12 56 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
13 45 (0.59%) Data Lake
14 43 (0.56%) Big Data
15 40 (0.52%) MySQL
15 40 (0.52%) Pentaho
16 38 (0.50%) Amazon Redshift
16 38 (0.50%) SAS Enterprise Guide
17 33 (0.43%) Redis
18 32 (0.42%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 464 (6.08%) JIRA
2 372 (4.87%) Git
3 330 (4.32%) Jenkins
4 292 (3.82%) GitLab
5 90 (1.18%) Selenium
6 71 (0.93%) Postman
7 59 (0.77%) JUnit
8 57 (0.75%) Cypress.io
9 46 (0.60%) Oracle APEX
10 44 (0.58%) Artifactory
11 43 (0.56%) SonarQube
12 40 (0.52%) Bitbucket
13 36 (0.47%) Cucumber
14 33 (0.43%) Maven
15 32 (0.42%) REST Assured
16 30 (0.39%) Mockito
17 23 (0.30%) Metasploit
17 23 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
18 22 (0.29%) MSI
19 21 (0.28%) Burp Suite
General
1 1,957 (25.64%) Public Sector
2 1,913 (25.06%) Social Skills
3 671 (8.79%) Analytical Skills
4 544 (7.13%) Finance
5 305 (4.00%) Military
6 222 (2.91%) Documentation Skills
7 185 (2.42%) Telecoms
8 181 (2.37%) Manufacturing
9 136 (1.78%) Aerospace
10 125 (1.64%) Marketing
11 122 (1.60%) Electronics
12 114 (1.49%) Legal
13 113 (1.48%) Organisational Skills
14 100 (1.31%) Presentation Skills
15 96 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
16 86 (1.13%) Banking
17 71 (0.93%) Law
18 46 (0.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 35 (0.46%) Police
20 31 (0.41%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,028 (13.47%) Architect
2 736 (9.64%) Developer
3 642 (8.41%) Senior
4 557 (7.30%) Analyst
5 487 (6.38%) Consultant
6 436 (5.71%) Lead
7 370 (4.85%) DevOps Engineer
8 249 (3.26%) Data Engineer
9 234 (3.07%) Support Engineer
10 227 (2.97%) Network Engineer
11 186 (2.44%) Business Analyst
12 180 (2.36%) Technical Architect
13 177 (2.32%) Software Engineer
14 171 (2.24%) Solutions Architect
15 147 (1.93%) Tester
16 146 (1.91%) Azure Engineer
17 140 (1.83%) Project Manager
18 134 (1.76%) AWS Engineer
19 133 (1.74%) Infrastructure Engineer
20 132 (1.73%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 315 (4.13%) REST
2 179 (2.34%) Node.js
3 172 (2.25%) React
4 159 (2.08%) Kafka
5 152 (1.99%) Spring
6 145 (1.90%) JSON
7 144 (1.89%) LDAP
8 141 (1.85%) SOAP
9 120 (1.57%) Spring Boot
10 101 (1.32%) HTML
11 98 (1.28%) .NET
12 95 (1.24%) OAuth
13 94 (1.23%) XML
14 92 (1.21%) RESTful
15 90 (1.18%) CSS
16 87 (1.14%) Oracle Fusion
17 83 (1.09%) AngularJS
18 82 (1.07%) PySpark
19 79 (1.03%) Web Services
20 78 (1.02%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 245 (3.21%) Data Centre
2 219 (2.87%) Product Ownership
3 211 (2.76%) Cloud Native
4 208 (2.72%) Onboarding
5 189 (2.48%) PKI
6 143 (1.87%) Management Information System
7 130 (1.70%) Security Posture
8 108 (1.41%) Self-Motivation
9 105 (1.38%) Enterprise Software
10 93 (1.22%) Replication
11 91 (1.19%) Legacy Systems
12 73 (0.96%) Cyber Threat
13 69 (0.90%) Driving Licence
14 62 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
15 60 (0.79%) Hybrid Cloud
16 56 (0.73%) Public Cloud
17 48 (0.63%) Private Cloud
18 45 (0.59%) CMDB
19 44 (0.58%) Distributed Systems
20 41 (0.54%) Cyber Defence
Operating Systems
1 818 (10.72%) Windows
2 593 (7.77%) Linux
3 205 (2.69%) Windows Server
4 178 (2.33%) Windows 10
5 99 (1.30%) Unix
6 98 (1.28%) Android
7 94 (1.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 66 (0.86%) Mac OS
9 44 (0.58%) Ubuntu
10 38 (0.50%) VMS
11 33 (0.43%) Apple iOS
12 24 (0.31%) CentOS
13 22 (0.29%) Windows 7
13 22 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
14 16 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
14 16 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
15 14 (0.18%) Mac OS X
16 13 (0.17%) Solaris
17 12 (0.16%) Amazon Linux
18 10 (0.13%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,442 (18.89%) Agile
2 1,188 (15.56%) DevOps
3 1,024 (13.41%) CI/CD
4 986 (12.92%) Problem-Solving
5 675 (8.84%) Migration
6 667 (8.74%) Stakeholder Management
7 539 (7.06%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 538 (7.05%) Continuous Improvement
9 517 (6.77%) Cybersecurity
10 479 (6.27%) Infrastructure as Code
11 471 (6.17%) ITIL
12 432 (5.66%) Test Automation
13 402 (5.27%) Analytics
14 391 (5.12%) Containerisation
15 380 (4.98%) Roadmaps
16 376 (4.93%) Business Intelligence
17 373 (4.89%) Service Management
18 344 (4.51%) Software Engineering
19 338 (4.43%) Scrum
20 313 (4.10%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 920 (12.05%) Python
2 590 (7.73%) SQL
3 541 (7.09%) PowerShell
4 410 (5.37%) Java
5 344 (4.51%) JavaScript
6 199 (2.61%) Bash
7 171 (2.24%) TypeScript
8 136 (1.78%) C#
9 87 (1.14%) C++
10 78 (1.02%) Go
11 72 (0.94%) Shell Script
12 67 (0.88%) PL/SQL
13 62 (0.81%) C
14 47 (0.62%) Ada
15 45 (0.59%) Scala
16 44 (0.58%) Ruby
17 37 (0.48%) Bicep
18 34 (0.45%) MATLAB
19 31 (0.41%) ABAP
19 31 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 5,850 (76.63%) SC Cleared
2 1,306 (17.11%) DV Cleared
3 386 (5.06%) Degree
4 227 (2.97%) BPSS Clearance
5 146 (1.91%) CISSP
6 126 (1.65%) Cisco Certification
7 119 (1.56%) Azure Certification
8 115 (1.51%) Microsoft Certification
9 109 (1.43%) CCNP
10 98 (1.28%) AWS Certification
11 89 (1.17%) CISM
12 66 (0.86%) Computer Science Degree
13 63 (0.83%) ITIL Certification
14 57 (0.75%) CCNA
15 50 (0.65%) CEH
16 49 (0.64%) GIAC
16 49 (0.64%) TOGAF Certification
17 42 (0.55%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 40 (0.52%) CHECK Team Member
19 37 (0.48%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 251 (3.29%) QA
2 240 (3.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 231 (3.03%) NIST
4 195 (2.55%) NCSC
5 179 (2.34%) Data Quality
6 160 (2.10%) GDPR
7 144 (1.89%) Accessibility
8 116 (1.52%) SLA
9 76 (1.00%) PMO
10 53 (0.69%) GRC
10 53 (0.69%) JSP 440
11 43 (0.56%) WCAG
12 37 (0.48%) Def Stans
13 35 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
14 30 (0.39%) PCI DSS
15 29 (0.38%) COBIT
15 29 (0.38%) NIST 800
16 20 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 19 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 18 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 539 (7.06%) Docker
2 474 (6.21%) Active Directory
3 231 (3.03%) VMware Infrastructure
4 77 (1.01%) VMware NSX
5 65 (0.85%) vSphere
6 59 (0.77%) VMware ESXi
7 58 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
8 49 (0.64%) Hyper-V
9 27 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
10 26 (0.34%) Firmware
11 17 (0.22%) BitLocker
12 13 (0.17%) NFS
12 13 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 12 (0.16%) Squid
14 11 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
15 9 (0.12%) DFS Replication
15 9 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.12%) Postfix
16 7 (0.092%) Virtual Servers
17 6 (0.079%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 696 (9.12%) Kubernetes
2 646 (8.46%) Terraform
3 279 (3.65%) Ansible
4 187 (2.45%) Grafana
5 156 (2.04%) Prometheus
6 107 (1.40%) SCCM
7 106 (1.39%) Single Sign-On
8 100 (1.31%) vCenter Server
9 85 (1.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 64 (0.84%) Microsoft Intune
11 60 (0.79%) Argo
12 36 (0.47%) Kibana
13 35 (0.46%) Podman
14 34 (0.45%) Packer
15 33 (0.43%) OPNET
16 26 (0.34%) Progress Chef
16 26 (0.34%) Puppet
16 26 (0.34%) vRealize
17 25 (0.33%) Nmap
18 21 (0.28%) Nessus
Vendors
1 951 (12.46%) Microsoft
2 420 (5.50%) Oracle
3 399 (5.23%) Cisco
3 399 (5.23%) VMware
4 396 (5.19%) SAP
5 319 (4.18%) ServiceNow
6 201 (2.63%) Splunk
7 150 (1.96%) Red Hat
8 130 (1.70%) Palo Alto
9 123 (1.61%) CyberArk
10 118 (1.55%) Juniper
11 117 (1.53%) Google
12 112 (1.47%) Databricks
13 105 (1.38%) Atlassian
14 101 (1.32%) Salesforce
15 98 (1.28%) Dell
16 78 (1.02%) HP
17 68 (0.89%) SolarWinds
18 67 (0.88%) Aruba
19 65 (0.85%) Dynatrace