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 27 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 7,071 5,203 6,837
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.24% 18.24% 18.50%
As % of the Qualifications category 65.38% 59.75% 60.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,716 3,329 4,336
10th Percentile £344 £334 £369
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.31%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £560
% change year-on-year -4.55% -1.79% -0.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 705 260 435
10th Percentile £17.87 £19.98 £20.00
25th Percentile £19.54 £25.55 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £57.38 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -56.17% -4.38% -
75th Percentile £61.18 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £80.75
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -49.70% -16.67% -

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 10,815 8,708 11,282
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.02% 30.53% 30.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,091 5,371 7,130
10th Percentile £313 £305 £300
25th Percentile £419 £420 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £735 £738
UK median daily rate £522 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.52% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 905 417 691
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.51 £16.25
25th Percentile £19.00 £24.50 £25.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £51.89
Median % change year-on-year -45.54% -11.00% +15.30%
75th Percentile £56.69 £68.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £76.58 £79.08 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £51.89
% change year-on-year -37.13% -22.91% +15.31%

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 27 December 2025.

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 27 December 2025.

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 27 December 2025. 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 +3 2,324 £540 -1.82% 572
South East +1 1,462 £525 -4.55% 913
South West 0 1,192 £550 -4.35% 637
North of England -2 810 £500 +5.26% 542
Midlands +3 709 £515 -6.53% 426
West Midlands +3 555 £519 -8.76% 246
North West 0 545 £519 +9.16% 308
East of England +2 327 £500 - 509
Yorkshire -12 160 £500 +5.82% 191
East Midlands +1 144 £438 -12.50% 157
North East 0 124 £450 -14.29% 48
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
1 259 (3.66%) Confluence
2 180 (2.55%) SharePoint
3 116 (1.64%) Microsoft Exchange
4 101 (1.43%) SAS
5 79 (1.12%) Apache
6 53 (0.75%) Apache Spark
7 48 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
8 37 (0.52%) Skype for Business
9 35 (0.49%) nginx
10 26 (0.37%) WebLogic
11 20 (0.28%) CMS
12 19 (0.27%) IIS
13 12 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
14 9 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2010
15 8 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
15 8 (0.11%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.11%) OpenStack
16 7 (0.099%) Exchange Server 2003
16 7 (0.099%) Office Communications Server
16 7 (0.099%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 249 (3.52%) Microsoft Office
2 160 (2.26%) Microsoft Excel
3 99 (1.40%) Microsoft Project
4 56 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 35 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 20 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.18%) Siemens NX
8 12 (0.17%) Simulink
9 9 (0.13%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 5 (0.071%) FrameMaker
10 5 (0.071%) Oracle Smart View
10 5 (0.071%) PTC Creo
10 5 (0.071%) Sketch
10 5 (0.071%) Stateflow
10 5 (0.071%) Windchill
11 4 (0.057%) Trello
12 3 (0.042%) Adobe Illustrator
12 3 (0.042%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.042%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.042%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 147 (2.08%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (0.51%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 34 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
4 27 (0.38%) SAP EWM
4 27 (0.38%) SAP WM
5 25 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
6 18 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
6 18 (0.25%) SAP MM
6 18 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 16 (0.23%) Maximo
7 16 (0.23%) SAP HCM
8 14 (0.20%) SAP QM
9 13 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
10 12 (0.17%) SAP PP
10 12 (0.17%) SAP VC
11 11 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
11 11 (0.16%) SAP EHS
12 10 (0.14%) Primavera
12 10 (0.14%) SAP HR
12 10 (0.14%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,182 (16.72%) Azure
2 1,150 (16.26%) AWS
3 319 (4.51%) Microsoft 365
4 317 (4.48%) GitHub
5 297 (4.20%) GCP
6 256 (3.62%) Azure DevOps
6 256 (3.62%) Power Platform
7 203 (2.87%) Serverless
8 178 (2.52%) Entra ID
9 167 (2.36%) GitHub Actions
10 162 (2.29%) Amazon S3
11 141 (1.99%) OpenShift
12 123 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
13 110 (1.56%) SaaS
14 106 (1.50%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 101 (1.43%) Amazon EC2
15 101 (1.43%) AWS CloudFormation
16 88 (1.24%) Power Automate
17 87 (1.23%) IaaS
18 84 (1.19%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 382 (5.40%) Firewall
2 253 (3.58%) DNS
3 180 (2.55%) VPN
4 165 (2.33%) Network Security
5 156 (2.21%) WAN
6 125 (1.77%) TCP/IP
7 119 (1.68%) LAN
8 101 (1.43%) BGP
9 96 (1.36%) DHCP
10 89 (1.26%) Wireless
11 78 (1.10%) SSL
12 76 (1.07%) Wi-Fi
13 66 (0.93%) VLAN
14 60 (0.85%) SAN
15 59 (0.83%) MPLS
16 56 (0.79%) IPsec
16 56 (0.79%) OSPF
17 47 (0.66%) HTTP
18 43 (0.61%) Cisco ISE
19 42 (0.59%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 194 (2.74%) PostgreSQL
2 174 (2.46%) Power BI
3 85 (1.20%) Data Warehouse
4 84 (1.19%) SQL Server
5 82 (1.16%) MongoDB
6 76 (1.07%) Amazon RDS
7 75 (1.06%) NoSQL
8 74 (1.05%) Metadata
9 70 (0.99%) Relational Database
10 69 (0.98%) Oracle Database
11 55 (0.78%) Azure SQL Database
12 48 (0.68%) Big Data
13 44 (0.62%) Elasticsearch
14 39 (0.55%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 38 (0.54%) Pentaho
16 37 (0.52%) Data Lake
17 36 (0.51%) Amazon Athena
18 33 (0.47%) Redis
19 32 (0.45%) Amazon Redshift
20 30 (0.42%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 478 (6.76%) JIRA
2 383 (5.42%) Git
3 348 (4.92%) Jenkins
4 262 (3.71%) GitLab
5 77 (1.09%) Selenium
6 59 (0.83%) Postman
7 52 (0.74%) JUnit
8 51 (0.72%) Cypress.io
9 46 (0.65%) Bitbucket
10 45 (0.64%) Oracle APEX
11 44 (0.62%) Artifactory
12 41 (0.58%) SonarQube
13 31 (0.44%) Maven
14 29 (0.41%) Cucumber
15 28 (0.40%) Mockito
16 24 (0.34%) MSI
16 24 (0.34%) REST Assured
17 21 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
18 19 (0.27%) Metasploit
19 18 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,885 (26.66%) Public Sector
2 1,850 (26.16%) Social Skills
3 657 (9.29%) Analytical Skills
4 502 (7.10%) Finance
5 284 (4.02%) Military
6 212 (3.00%) Telecoms
7 206 (2.91%) Manufacturing
8 173 (2.45%) Documentation Skills
9 145 (2.05%) Electronics
10 140 (1.98%) Marketing
11 130 (1.84%) Aerospace
12 114 (1.61%) Organisational Skills
13 102 (1.44%) Legal
14 86 (1.22%) Banking
15 83 (1.17%) Presentation Skills
16 78 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
17 62 (0.88%) Law
18 45 (0.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 36 (0.51%) Aviation
20 32 (0.45%) Police
Job Titles
1 978 (13.83%) Architect
2 659 (9.32%) Developer
3 585 (8.27%) Senior
4 523 (7.40%) Consultant
5 503 (7.11%) Analyst
6 402 (5.69%) Lead
7 332 (4.70%) DevOps Engineer
8 240 (3.39%) Support Engineer
9 217 (3.07%) Network Engineer
10 192 (2.72%) Data Engineer
11 169 (2.39%) Solutions Architect
12 149 (2.11%) Software Engineer
13 146 (2.06%) Technical Architect
14 142 (2.01%) SAP Consultant
15 136 (1.92%) AWS Engineer
16 133 (1.88%) Administrator
16 133 (1.88%) Business Analyst
16 133 (1.88%) Platform Engineer
17 129 (1.82%) Tester
18 127 (1.80%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 291 (4.12%) REST
2 174 (2.46%) React
3 172 (2.43%) Node.js
4 154 (2.18%) Kafka
5 138 (1.95%) JSON
5 138 (1.95%) SOAP
6 113 (1.60%) HTML
7 112 (1.58%) Spring
8 100 (1.41%) XML
9 99 (1.40%) LDAP
10 96 (1.36%) .NET
11 95 (1.34%) AngularJS
11 95 (1.34%) CSS
12 90 (1.27%) Spring Boot
13 89 (1.26%) Web Services
14 88 (1.24%) RESTful
15 79 (1.12%) OAuth
15 79 (1.12%) Oracle Fusion
16 71 (1.00%) PySpark
17 58 (0.82%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 220 (3.11%) Data Centre
2 193 (2.73%) Cloud Native
3 191 (2.70%) PKI
4 179 (2.53%) Onboarding
5 176 (2.49%) Product Ownership
6 139 (1.97%) Management Information System
7 102 (1.44%) Self-Motivation
8 101 (1.43%) Security Posture
9 90 (1.27%) Enterprise Software
10 89 (1.26%) Legacy Systems
11 80 (1.13%) Cyber Threat
12 74 (1.05%) Driving Licence
13 67 (0.95%) Replication
13 67 (0.95%) Security Operations Centre
14 65 (0.92%) Hybrid Cloud
15 60 (0.85%) Analytical Mindset
16 55 (0.78%) CMDB
17 49 (0.69%) Private Cloud
18 47 (0.66%) Public Cloud
19 46 (0.65%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 788 (11.14%) Windows
2 544 (7.69%) Linux
3 186 (2.63%) Windows Server
4 174 (2.46%) Windows 10
5 99 (1.40%) Android
6 97 (1.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 97 (1.37%) Unix
7 80 (1.13%) Mac OS
8 47 (0.66%) VMS
9 40 (0.57%) Ubuntu
10 29 (0.41%) Apple iOS
11 23 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
13 20 (0.28%) CentOS
13 20 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
14 19 (0.27%) Amazon Linux
15 17 (0.24%) Windows 7
16 15 (0.21%) Mac OS X
17 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2003
18 9 (0.13%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,369 (19.36%) Agile
2 1,096 (15.50%) DevOps
3 967 (13.68%) CI/CD
4 882 (12.47%) Problem-Solving
5 684 (9.67%) Migration
6 563 (7.96%) Stakeholder Management
7 503 (7.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 498 (7.04%) ITIL
9 461 (6.52%) Continuous Improvement
10 458 (6.48%) Cybersecurity
11 450 (6.36%) Infrastructure as Code
12 396 (5.60%) Service Management
13 391 (5.53%) Business Intelligence
14 386 (5.46%) Test Automation
15 383 (5.42%) Containerisation
16 369 (5.22%) Analytics
17 347 (4.91%) Roadmaps
18 337 (4.77%) Workflow
19 331 (4.68%) Scrum
20 308 (4.36%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 924 (13.07%) Python
2 545 (7.71%) SQL
3 493 (6.97%) PowerShell
4 389 (5.50%) Java
5 355 (5.02%) JavaScript
6 213 (3.01%) Bash
7 165 (2.33%) TypeScript
8 132 (1.87%) C#
9 90 (1.27%) C++
10 89 (1.26%) Go
11 67 (0.95%) PL/SQL
11 67 (0.95%) Shell Script
12 65 (0.92%) C
13 43 (0.61%) Ruby
14 39 (0.55%) ABAP
15 38 (0.54%) Scala
16 36 (0.51%) Perl
17 29 (0.41%) Ada
17 29 (0.41%) Bicep
17 29 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 5,442 (76.96%) SC Cleared
2 1,170 (16.55%) DV Cleared
3 372 (5.26%) Degree
4 243 (3.44%) BPSS Clearance
5 131 (1.85%) CISSP
6 120 (1.70%) Cisco Certification
7 118 (1.67%) Azure Certification
7 118 (1.67%) Microsoft Certification
8 100 (1.41%) CCNP
9 99 (1.40%) AWS Certification
10 76 (1.07%) CISM
11 60 (0.85%) Computer Science Degree
12 58 (0.82%) ITIL Certification
13 52 (0.74%) CCNA
14 48 (0.68%) TOGAF Certification
15 45 (0.64%) CEH
16 40 (0.57%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 37 (0.52%) CHECK Team Member
18 36 (0.51%) CTC Cleared
19 35 (0.49%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 216 (3.05%) QA
2 204 (2.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 203 (2.87%) NIST
4 158 (2.23%) NCSC
5 142 (2.01%) Data Quality
5 142 (2.01%) GDPR
6 122 (1.73%) SLA
7 115 (1.63%) Accessibility
8 68 (0.96%) PMO
9 44 (0.62%) JSP 440
10 42 (0.59%) WCAG
11 39 (0.55%) GRC
12 32 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 30 (0.42%) Def Stans
14 29 (0.41%) NIST 800
15 28 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
16 26 (0.37%) COBIT
16 26 (0.37%) PCI DSS
17 17 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 15 (0.21%) RMADS
System Software
1 537 (7.59%) Docker
2 445 (6.29%) Active Directory
3 203 (2.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 67 (0.95%) VMware NSX
5 62 (0.88%) vSphere
6 56 (0.79%) VMware ESXi
7 52 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
8 36 (0.51%) Firmware
9 34 (0.48%) Hyper-V
10 30 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
11 16 (0.23%) DFS Replication
12 15 (0.21%) Postfix
13 13 (0.18%) Dovecot
14 12 (0.17%) BitLocker
15 11 (0.16%) NFS
16 10 (0.14%) Squid
16 10 (0.14%) Terminal Services
17 9 (0.13%) ISA Server
18 8 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
19 7 (0.099%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 653 (9.23%) Kubernetes
2 612 (8.66%) Terraform
3 297 (4.20%) Ansible
4 173 (2.45%) Grafana
5 143 (2.02%) Prometheus
6 104 (1.47%) SCCM
7 94 (1.33%) Single Sign-On
8 82 (1.16%) vCenter Server
9 73 (1.03%) Microsoft Intune
10 63 (0.89%) Argo
11 57 (0.81%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 37 (0.52%) Kibana
13 36 (0.51%) Packer
14 33 (0.47%) OPNET
15 27 (0.38%) Podman
16 26 (0.37%) Puppet
17 25 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
17 25 (0.35%) vRealize
18 24 (0.34%) Nessus
18 24 (0.34%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 913 (12.91%) Microsoft
2 450 (6.36%) SAP
3 410 (5.80%) Cisco
4 382 (5.40%) Oracle
5 360 (5.09%) VMware
6 328 (4.64%) ServiceNow
7 191 (2.70%) Splunk
8 157 (2.22%) Red Hat
9 142 (2.01%) Juniper
10 120 (1.70%) Palo Alto
11 119 (1.68%) Google
12 105 (1.48%) Atlassian
13 95 (1.34%) Databricks
13 95 (1.34%) HP
13 95 (1.34%) Salesforce
14 94 (1.33%) CyberArk
14 94 (1.33%) Dell
15 79 (1.12%) Remedy
16 71 (1.00%) CheckPoint
17 66 (0.93%) Apple