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

6 months to
6 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 2
Rank change year-on-year +3 -2 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,186 4,508 7,073
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.60% 18.48% 19.18%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.90% 59.02% 61.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,368 2,993 4,647
10th Percentile £363 £338 £350
25th Percentile £450 £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 -0.38% -4.18% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 775 269 488
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.25 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £55.00 £57.30
Median % change year-on-year - -4.02% -4.50%
75th Percentile £73.46 £68.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.32 £80.02 £83.94
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £50.20 £57.30
% change year-on-year +9.57% -12.40% -4.50%

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 13,142 7,638 11,520
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.34% 31.31% 31.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,822 4,857 7,101
10th Percentile £340 £290 £308
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £623 £627 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -0.95% -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 975 440 984
10th Percentile £17.10 £18.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £22.27 £18.10
Median hourly rate £47.50 £44.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.95% +10.00% -23.81%
75th Percentile £72.25 £67.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.46 £81.42 £76.47
UK median hourly rate £47.50 £40.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +18.75% - -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 6 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 6 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 6 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 3,258 £525 - 525
South East +1 2,199 £538 -2.27% 592
South West 0 1,306 £538 -4.44% 366
Midlands +4 913 £475 -9.52% 206
North of England -1 849 £488 -2.50% 373
West Midlands +4 776 £475 -11.55% 131
North West -2 497 £496 -0.76% 179
East of England +2 385 £525 +16.67% 231
Yorkshire -7 210 £476 -9.43% 84
North East +1 175 £475 -5.00% 113
East Midlands -3 131 £463 -2.63% 75
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
1 362 (3.94%) Confluence
2 205 (2.23%) SharePoint
3 125 (1.36%) Microsoft Exchange
4 112 (1.22%) SAS
5 78 (0.85%) Apache Spark
6 70 (0.76%) Apache
7 53 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
8 32 (0.35%) nginx
8 32 (0.35%) WebLogic
9 22 (0.24%) Jupyter
10 16 (0.17%) Tomcat
11 15 (0.16%) IIS
12 14 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
12 14 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
13 13 (0.14%) Skype for Business
14 12 (0.13%) CMS
15 8 (0.087%) Apache Superset
15 8 (0.087%) ArcGIS
15 8 (0.087%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 204 (2.22%) Microsoft Office
2 186 (2.02%) Microsoft Excel
3 119 (1.30%) Microsoft Project
4 81 (0.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 38 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.13%) Simulink
8 7 (0.076%) AutoCAD
9 6 (0.065%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.054%) Notepad++
10 5 (0.054%) 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 83 (0.90%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (0.50%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 42 (0.46%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
5 27 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
6 26 (0.28%) Teamcenter
7 17 (0.19%) Maximo
8 14 (0.15%) SAP PSCD
9 13 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
9 13 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.14%) Temenos T24
10 12 (0.13%) SAP PP
11 11 (0.12%) Findur
12 10 (0.11%) iTrent
12 10 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
12 10 (0.11%) SAP HCM
13 9 (0.098%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 8 (0.087%) SAP BRIM
14 8 (0.087%) SAP Hybris
14 8 (0.087%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,583 (17.23%) Azure
2 1,497 (16.30%) AWS
3 375 (4.08%) GCP
4 373 (4.06%) GitHub
5 356 (3.88%) Azure DevOps
6 342 (3.72%) Power Platform
7 250 (2.72%) Microsoft 365
8 249 (2.71%) Serverless
9 225 (2.45%) Entra ID
10 210 (2.29%) GitHub Actions
11 192 (2.09%) Amazon S3
12 164 (1.79%) AWS Lambda
13 133 (1.45%) PaaS
14 127 (1.38%) Amazon EC2
14 127 (1.38%) OpenShift
15 111 (1.21%) AWS CloudFormation
16 110 (1.20%) IaaS
17 109 (1.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 108 (1.18%) OCI
19 103 (1.12%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 420 (4.57%) Firewall
2 260 (2.83%) DNS
3 213 (2.32%) Network Security
4 210 (2.29%) WAN
5 190 (2.07%) LAN
6 155 (1.69%) VPN
7 141 (1.53%) BGP
8 135 (1.47%) DHCP
9 121 (1.32%) OSPF
10 104 (1.13%) TCP/IP
11 97 (1.06%) Wi-Fi
12 89 (0.97%) VLAN
13 80 (0.87%) Wireless
14 60 (0.65%) MPLS
15 51 (0.56%) SAN
16 50 (0.54%) VXLAN
17 48 (0.52%) IPsec
17 48 (0.52%) SD-WAN
18 44 (0.48%) Ethernet VPN
19 43 (0.47%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 262 (2.85%) Power BI
2 212 (2.31%) PostgreSQL
3 196 (2.13%) Data Warehouse
4 182 (1.98%) SQL Server
5 119 (1.30%) Metadata
6 102 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
6 102 (1.11%) Oracle Database
7 85 (0.93%) NoSQL
8 81 (0.88%) Relational Database
9 80 (0.87%) MongoDB
10 78 (0.85%) Data Lake
11 76 (0.83%) Pentaho
12 71 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
13 67 (0.73%) Azure SQL Database
14 66 (0.72%) Oracle Reports
15 62 (0.67%) Amazon Redshift
16 61 (0.66%) Tableau
17 60 (0.65%) MySQL
18 51 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
19 48 (0.52%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 572 (6.23%) JIRA
2 421 (4.58%) Git
3 349 (3.80%) Jenkins
4 330 (3.59%) GitLab
5 85 (0.93%) Selenium
6 76 (0.83%) Postman
7 71 (0.77%) JUnit
8 57 (0.62%) SonarQube
9 50 (0.54%) Rational DOORS
10 47 (0.51%) Artifactory
11 45 (0.49%) Bitbucket
12 41 (0.45%) Maven
13 40 (0.44%) JMeter
14 38 (0.41%) Mockito
15 37 (0.40%) Cucumber
16 32 (0.35%) Cypress.io
16 32 (0.35%) Visual Studio
17 28 (0.30%) Zephyr
18 23 (0.25%) REST Assured
18 23 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,997 (21.74%) Public Sector
2 1,993 (21.70%) Social Skills
3 716 (7.79%) Analytical Skills
4 646 (7.03%) Finance
5 331 (3.60%) Military
6 255 (2.78%) Documentation Skills
7 219 (2.38%) Aerospace
8 145 (1.58%) Legal
9 123 (1.34%) Telecoms
10 113 (1.23%) Influencing Skills
11 109 (1.19%) Banking
11 109 (1.19%) Manufacturing
12 102 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
13 91 (0.99%) Presentation Skills
14 88 (0.96%) Law
15 57 (0.62%) Marketing
15 57 (0.62%) Police
16 56 (0.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 51 (0.56%) Electronics
18 37 (0.40%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,351 (14.71%) Architect
2 869 (9.46%) Developer
3 783 (8.52%) Senior
4 656 (7.14%) Analyst
5 635 (6.91%) Lead
6 439 (4.78%) Data Engineer
7 412 (4.49%) Consultant
8 406 (4.42%) DevOps Engineer
9 278 (3.03%) Network Engineer
10 272 (2.96%) Software Engineer
11 257 (2.80%) Technical Architect
12 248 (2.70%) Business Analyst
13 244 (2.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 211 (2.30%) Project Manager
15 200 (2.18%) Azure Engineer
16 199 (2.17%) Solutions Architect
17 176 (1.92%) Security Architect
18 170 (1.85%) Delivery Manager
19 167 (1.82%) Designer
20 166 (1.81%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 303 (3.30%) REST
2 215 (2.34%) Spring
3 170 (1.85%) Spring Boot
4 165 (1.80%) Kafka
5 164 (1.79%) Node.js
6 153 (1.67%) .NET
6 153 (1.67%) React
7 142 (1.55%) LDAP
8 133 (1.45%) SOAP
9 131 (1.43%) RESTful
10 121 (1.32%) JSON
11 112 (1.22%) AngularJS
12 100 (1.09%) Web Services
13 98 (1.07%) PySpark
14 87 (0.95%) Oracle Fusion
15 84 (0.91%) HTML
16 81 (0.88%) OAuth
17 77 (0.84%) XML
18 71 (0.77%) Elastic Stack
19 65 (0.71%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 318 (3.46%) Product Ownership
2 309 (3.36%) Cloud Native
3 273 (2.97%) Data Centre
4 265 (2.88%) Onboarding
5 162 (1.76%) PKI
6 136 (1.48%) Management Information System
7 122 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
8 119 (1.30%) Security Posture
9 117 (1.27%) Replication
10 114 (1.24%) Enterprise Software
11 103 (1.12%) Distributed Systems
12 100 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
13 78 (0.85%) Clustering
14 74 (0.81%) Data Structures
14 74 (0.81%) Hybrid Cloud
15 72 (0.78%) Public Cloud
16 63 (0.69%) Security Operations Centre
17 61 (0.66%) Virtual Team
18 56 (0.61%) Cyber Threat
18 56 (0.61%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 782 (8.51%) Windows
2 633 (6.89%) Linux
3 235 (2.56%) Windows Server
4 153 (1.67%) Unix
5 106 (1.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 98 (1.07%) Android
6 98 (1.07%) Windows 10
7 51 (0.56%) Apple iOS
8 47 (0.51%) Mac OS
9 36 (0.39%) Ubuntu
10 34 (0.37%) Solaris
11 28 (0.30%) VMS
12 25 (0.27%) AIX
13 23 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
14 22 (0.24%) CentOS
15 21 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
16 15 (0.16%) Windows 7
17 12 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
18 10 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
19 8 (0.087%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,830 (19.92%) Agile
2 1,400 (15.24%) DevOps
3 1,222 (13.30%) CI/CD
4 1,020 (11.10%) Problem-Solving
5 877 (9.55%) Stakeholder Management
6 808 (8.80%) Continuous Improvement
7 775 (8.44%) Migration
8 680 (7.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 610 (6.64%) Infrastructure as Code
10 597 (6.50%) ITIL
11 545 (5.93%) Cybersecurity
12 533 (5.80%) Test Automation
13 520 (5.66%) Analytics
14 514 (5.60%) Software Engineering
15 500 (5.44%) Containerisation
16 493 (5.37%) Roadmaps
17 454 (4.94%) Data Modelling
18 422 (4.59%) Scrum
19 419 (4.56%) Decision-Making
20 405 (4.41%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 990 (10.78%) Python
2 847 (9.22%) SQL
3 568 (6.18%) Java
4 510 (5.55%) PowerShell
5 287 (3.12%) JavaScript
6 197 (2.14%) C#
7 170 (1.85%) Bash
8 144 (1.57%) TypeScript
9 101 (1.10%) PL/SQL
10 90 (0.98%) C++
11 84 (0.91%) Shell Script
12 68 (0.74%) Go
13 63 (0.69%) Scala
14 59 (0.64%) C
15 53 (0.58%) Bicep
15 53 (0.58%) Ruby
16 44 (0.48%) Apex Code
17 41 (0.45%) Ada
18 40 (0.44%) R
19 35 (0.38%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 6,902 (75.14%) SC Cleared
2 1,742 (18.96%) DV Cleared
3 420 (4.57%) Degree
4 264 (2.87%) BPSS Clearance
5 172 (1.87%) Cisco Certification
6 156 (1.70%) CISSP
7 126 (1.37%) Azure Certification
8 110 (1.20%) CCNP
9 105 (1.14%) AWS Certification
10 102 (1.11%) CISM
11 90 (0.98%) Microsoft Certification
12 71 (0.77%) PMP
13 68 (0.74%) CCNA
14 67 (0.73%) TOGAF Certification
15 61 (0.66%) Computer Science Degree
15 61 (0.66%) ITIL Certification
15 61 (0.66%) PMI Certification
16 55 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 54 (0.59%) ISTQB
18 48 (0.52%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 345 (3.76%) QA
2 270 (2.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 266 (2.90%) Data Quality
3 266 (2.90%) NIST
4 179 (1.95%) NCSC
5 162 (1.76%) PMO
6 157 (1.71%) Accessibility
7 150 (1.63%) GDPR
8 100 (1.09%) SLA
9 62 (0.67%) GRC
10 58 (0.63%) JSP 440
11 50 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials
12 38 (0.41%) NIST 800
13 33 (0.36%) WCAG
14 31 (0.34%) Def Stans
14 31 (0.34%) PCI DSS
15 30 (0.33%) COBIT
16 25 (0.27%) RMADS
17 20 (0.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 19 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 583 (6.35%) Docker
2 443 (4.82%) Active Directory
3 272 (2.96%) VMware Infrastructure
4 93 (1.01%) VMware ESXi
5 85 (0.93%) VMware NSX
6 76 (0.83%) Hyper-V
7 73 (0.79%) vSphere
8 68 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
9 38 (0.41%) Firmware
10 26 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
11 20 (0.22%) BitLocker
11 20 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
12 17 (0.19%) NFS
12 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 16 (0.17%) Postfix
14 14 (0.15%) vCloud
15 10 (0.11%) Squid
16 8 (0.087%) Microsoft App-V
17 6 (0.065%) Corosync
18 5 (0.054%) KVM
Systems Management
1 751 (8.18%) Kubernetes
2 717 (7.81%) Terraform
3 316 (3.44%) Ansible
4 227 (2.47%) Grafana
5 186 (2.02%) Prometheus
6 99 (1.08%) vCenter Server
7 85 (0.93%) Single Sign-On
8 78 (0.85%) SCCM
9 55 (0.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 51 (0.56%) FortiGate
10 51 (0.56%) Microsoft Intune
11 48 (0.52%) Argo
12 39 (0.42%) Puppet
13 36 (0.39%) Podman
14 33 (0.36%) Progress Chef
15 31 (0.34%) OPNET
16 29 (0.32%) Nagios
16 29 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
17 27 (0.29%) Packer
18 23 (0.25%) WSUS
Vendors
1 971 (10.57%) Microsoft
2 569 (6.19%) Oracle
3 468 (5.09%) VMware
4 375 (4.08%) ServiceNow
5 344 (3.74%) Cisco
6 328 (3.57%) SAP
7 209 (2.28%) Splunk
8 170 (1.85%) Databricks
9 152 (1.65%) Google
10 150 (1.63%) Red Hat
11 116 (1.26%) IBM
12 113 (1.23%) Palo Alto
13 112 (1.22%) Talend
14 107 (1.16%) Salesforce
15 105 (1.14%) Juniper
16 101 (1.10%) Atlassian
17 95 (1.03%) CyberArk
18 82 (0.89%) Remedy
19 80 (0.87%) F5
20 77 (0.84%) SolarWinds