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 26 October 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 3 3 4
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +7
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 5,672 5,698 7,092
As % of all contract jobs in England 19.88% 18.16% 17.47%
As % of the Qualifications category 61.13% 60.92% 60.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,690 3,593 4,475
10th Percentile £325 £350 £375
25th Percentile £446 £453 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £537 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.36% - -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £537 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -2.36% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 587 300 465
10th Percentile £18.22 £21.25 £19.06
25th Percentile £18.87 £35.00 £44.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £58.59
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% +2.41% -2.35%
75th Percentile £35.50 £70.00 £70.66
90th Percentile £71.00 £75.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £55.25 £59.36
% change year-on-year -54.48% -6.92% +2.42%

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 9,278 9,353 11,806
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.52% 29.81% 29.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,934 5,716 7,624
10th Percentile £300 £313 £313
25th Percentile £413 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £713 £733 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 786 440 698
10th Percentile £17.57 £19.98 £16.65
25th Percentile £18.87 £30.00 £24.81
Median hourly rate £25.15 £51.72 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -51.37% -1.49% +16.67%
75th Percentile £42.63 £68.75 £69.40
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £52.50
% change year-on-year -45.54% -12.04% +16.67%

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 26 October 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 26 October 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 26 October 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 0 1,898 £550 - 724
South East -1 1,021 £521 -5.23% 863
South West 0 962 £550 -4.35% 588
North of England -2 705 £519 +9.16% 365
Midlands +1 611 £519 -9.83% 183
West Midlands 0 464 £520 -9.57% 130
North West +1 450 £550 +11.56% 239
East of England +1 259 £550 - 247
Yorkshire 0 171 £490 +8.89% 68
East Midlands 0 130 £463 -2.63% 51
North East 0 92 £500 +12.36% 58
South Coast -1 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
1 194 (3.42%) Confluence
2 155 (2.73%) SharePoint
3 96 (1.69%) Microsoft Exchange
4 90 (1.59%) SAS
5 84 (1.48%) Apache
6 44 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
7 34 (0.60%) nginx
7 34 (0.60%) Skype for Business
8 26 (0.46%) IIS
9 23 (0.41%) Apache Spark
10 20 (0.35%) CMS
11 16 (0.28%) WebLogic
12 15 (0.26%) SharePoint Server
13 11 (0.19%) Exchange Server 2013
13 11 (0.19%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 10 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2003
14 10 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2007
14 10 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2010
14 10 (0.18%) Office Communications Server
15 8 (0.14%) OpenStack
Applications
1 162 (2.86%) Microsoft Office
2 131 (2.31%) Microsoft Excel
3 47 (0.83%) Microsoft Project
4 31 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 30 (0.53%) MS Visio
6 21 (0.37%) Siemens NX
7 16 (0.28%) Simulink
8 13 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
9 11 (0.19%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 7 (0.12%) Sketch
11 6 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
11 6 (0.11%) Photoshop
12 5 (0.088%) Adobe XD
12 5 (0.088%) FrameMaker
12 5 (0.088%) Oracle Smart View
12 5 (0.088%) PTC Creo
12 5 (0.088%) Stateflow
12 5 (0.088%) Trello
12 5 (0.088%) Windchill
13 4 (0.071%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 128 (2.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (0.49%) Teamcenter
3 26 (0.46%) Remedy ITSM
4 25 (0.44%) Oracle ERP
5 24 (0.42%) SAP EWM
5 24 (0.42%) SAP WM
6 19 (0.33%) SAP HCM
7 17 (0.30%) Primavera
8 16 (0.28%) SAP MM
9 15 (0.26%) Maximo
9 15 (0.26%) SAP PS
10 14 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
10 14 (0.25%) Oracle General Ledger
11 11 (0.19%) SAP EHS
11 11 (0.19%) SAP HR
12 10 (0.18%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
13 9 (0.16%) Oracle Assets
13 9 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
13 9 (0.16%) SAP Payroll
14 8 (0.14%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 932 (16.43%) AWS
2 861 (15.18%) Azure
3 277 (4.88%) Microsoft 365
4 256 (4.51%) GitHub
5 214 (3.77%) Power Platform
6 186 (3.28%) GCP
7 172 (3.03%) Azure DevOps
8 152 (2.68%) Amazon S3
9 148 (2.61%) Serverless
10 138 (2.43%) Entra ID
11 127 (2.24%) SaaS
12 125 (2.20%) GitHub Actions
13 113 (1.99%) OpenShift
14 111 (1.96%) Amazon EC2
15 90 (1.59%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 80 (1.41%) AWS CloudFormation
17 79 (1.39%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 78 (1.38%) AWS Lambda
19 69 (1.22%) Amazon EKS
20 66 (1.16%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 333 (5.87%) Firewall
2 244 (4.30%) DNS
3 161 (2.84%) VPN
4 137 (2.42%) Network Security
5 121 (2.13%) WAN
6 98 (1.73%) TCP/IP
7 96 (1.69%) BGP
8 82 (1.45%) DHCP
9 81 (1.43%) SSL
10 79 (1.39%) LAN
11 75 (1.32%) Wireless
12 72 (1.27%) SAN
13 55 (0.97%) MPLS
14 54 (0.95%) VLAN
15 53 (0.93%) Wi-Fi
16 52 (0.92%) IPsec
17 51 (0.90%) Cisco ISE
18 43 (0.76%) HTTP
19 41 (0.72%) SD-WAN
20 40 (0.71%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 180 (3.17%) PostgreSQL
2 145 (2.56%) Power BI
3 84 (1.48%) SQL Server
4 80 (1.41%) Amazon RDS
4 80 (1.41%) MongoDB
5 71 (1.25%) Oracle Database
6 61 (1.08%) Data Warehouse
7 58 (1.02%) Relational Database
8 54 (0.95%) NoSQL
9 47 (0.83%) Metadata
10 39 (0.69%) Big Data
11 38 (0.67%) Elasticsearch
12 36 (0.63%) SAS Enterprise Guide
13 33 (0.58%) Data Lake
13 33 (0.58%) Pentaho
14 32 (0.56%) MySQL
15 29 (0.51%) Redis
16 28 (0.49%) Azure SQL Database
17 26 (0.46%) Hadoop
17 26 (0.46%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 372 (6.56%) JIRA
2 342 (6.03%) Jenkins
3 307 (5.41%) Git
4 234 (4.13%) GitLab
5 74 (1.30%) Selenium
6 68 (1.20%) SonarQube
7 54 (0.95%) JUnit
8 52 (0.92%) Cypress.io
9 46 (0.81%) Postman
10 38 (0.67%) Maven
11 36 (0.63%) Bitbucket
12 32 (0.56%) Artifactory
12 32 (0.56%) Cucumber
13 29 (0.51%) Mockito
14 27 (0.48%) REST Assured
15 24 (0.42%) Vagrant
16 23 (0.41%) MSI
16 23 (0.41%) Rational DOORS
17 21 (0.37%) Metasploit
17 21 (0.37%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,570 (27.68%) Public Sector
2 1,433 (25.26%) Social Skills
3 489 (8.62%) Analytical Skills
4 411 (7.25%) Finance
5 219 (3.86%) Military
6 183 (3.23%) Telecoms
7 167 (2.94%) Manufacturing
8 129 (2.27%) Documentation Skills
9 127 (2.24%) Electronics
10 114 (2.01%) Marketing
11 112 (1.97%) Aerospace
12 89 (1.57%) Organisational Skills
13 77 (1.36%) Legal
14 69 (1.22%) Banking
15 61 (1.08%) Law
16 60 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
17 55 (0.97%) Influencing Skills
18 38 (0.67%) Aviation
18 38 (0.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 37 (0.65%) Police
Job Titles
1 687 (12.11%) Architect
2 521 (9.19%) Consultant
3 507 (8.94%) Developer
4 412 (7.26%) Senior
5 371 (6.54%) Analyst
6 352 (6.21%) Lead
7 243 (4.28%) DevOps Engineer
8 204 (3.60%) Support Engineer
9 192 (3.39%) Network Engineer
10 138 (2.43%) Data Engineer
11 136 (2.40%) SAP Consultant
12 131 (2.31%) Solutions Architect
13 111 (1.96%) Security Engineer
14 106 (1.87%) IT Engineer
15 105 (1.85%) Administrator
15 105 (1.85%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 102 (1.80%) AWS Engineer
17 99 (1.75%) Platform Engineer
18 98 (1.73%) Project Manager
19 97 (1.71%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 206 (3.63%) REST
2 157 (2.77%) React
3 142 (2.50%) Node.js
4 133 (2.34%) Kafka
5 112 (1.97%) SOAP
6 101 (1.78%) HTML
7 94 (1.66%) JSON
8 91 (1.60%) XML
9 89 (1.57%) Spring
10 86 (1.52%) Web Services
11 84 (1.48%) AngularJS
12 79 (1.39%) CSS
12 79 (1.39%) RESTful
13 71 (1.25%) .NET
14 69 (1.22%) Spring Boot
15 58 (1.02%) LDAP
16 56 (0.99%) OAuth
17 50 (0.88%) Elastic Stack
18 46 (0.81%) SAML
19 45 (0.79%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 201 (3.54%) Data Centre
2 187 (3.30%) Onboarding
3 143 (2.52%) Management Information System
4 142 (2.50%) PKI
5 125 (2.20%) Cloud Native
6 103 (1.82%) Product Ownership
7 81 (1.43%) Self-Motivation
8 76 (1.34%) Driving Licence
9 70 (1.23%) Security Operations Centre
10 67 (1.18%) Cyber Threat
11 61 (1.08%) Replication
12 58 (1.02%) Security Posture
13 55 (0.97%) CMDB
14 54 (0.95%) Legacy Systems
15 53 (0.93%) Hybrid Cloud
16 52 (0.92%) Private Cloud
17 44 (0.78%) Analytical Mindset
17 44 (0.78%) Enterprise Software
18 42 (0.74%) CSOC
19 39 (0.69%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 684 (12.06%) Windows
2 441 (7.78%) Linux
3 178 (3.14%) Windows Server
4 148 (2.61%) Windows 10
5 92 (1.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 76 (1.34%) Mac OS
6 76 (1.34%) Unix
7 67 (1.18%) Android
8 52 (0.92%) Windows Server 2019
9 41 (0.72%) Windows Server 2016
10 39 (0.69%) VMS
11 28 (0.49%) Ubuntu
12 25 (0.44%) Amazon Linux
12 25 (0.44%) Apple iOS
13 20 (0.35%) Windows Server 2003
14 19 (0.33%) CentOS
15 16 (0.28%) Windows 7
15 16 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
16 14 (0.25%) Mac OS X
17 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,060 (18.69%) Agile
2 826 (14.56%) DevOps
3 763 (13.45%) CI/CD
4 708 (12.48%) Problem-Solving
5 546 (9.63%) Migration
6 453 (7.99%) Stakeholder Management
7 405 (7.14%) Cybersecurity
8 353 (6.22%) Infrastructure as Code
9 352 (6.21%) ITIL
10 348 (6.14%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 329 (5.80%) Business Intelligence
12 323 (5.69%) Continuous Improvement
13 317 (5.59%) Service Management
14 310 (5.47%) Test Automation
15 304 (5.36%) Containerisation
16 295 (5.20%) Workflow
17 290 (5.11%) Analytics
18 256 (4.51%) Microservices
19 251 (4.43%) Scrum
20 241 (4.25%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 726 (12.80%) Python
2 431 (7.60%) SQL
3 379 (6.68%) PowerShell
4 366 (6.45%) Java
5 278 (4.90%) JavaScript
6 212 (3.74%) Bash
7 138 (2.43%) TypeScript
8 111 (1.96%) C#
9 80 (1.41%) C++
10 77 (1.36%) Go
11 56 (0.99%) C
12 51 (0.90%) Shell Script
13 47 (0.83%) Perl
14 42 (0.74%) PL/SQL
15 31 (0.55%) Groovy
16 28 (0.49%) MATLAB
17 27 (0.48%) ABAP
18 26 (0.46%) Ada
19 22 (0.39%) Bicep
20 19 (0.33%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 4,326 (76.27%) SC Cleared
2 979 (17.26%) DV Cleared
3 276 (4.87%) Degree
4 237 (4.18%) BPSS Clearance
5 111 (1.96%) Cisco Certification
6 109 (1.92%) Microsoft Certification
7 108 (1.90%) CISSP
8 84 (1.48%) Azure Certification
9 81 (1.43%) CCNP
10 74 (1.30%) AWS Certification
11 60 (1.06%) CISM
12 49 (0.86%) Computer Science Degree
13 39 (0.69%) CCNA
14 37 (0.65%) ITIL Certification
15 36 (0.63%) CHECK Team Member
16 35 (0.62%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 31 (0.55%) OSCP
18 28 (0.49%) CEH
18 28 (0.49%) MCSE
19 27 (0.48%) CHECK Team Leader
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 190 (3.35%) QA
2 177 (3.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 170 (3.00%) NIST
4 146 (2.57%) NCSC
5 126 (2.22%) SLA
6 105 (1.85%) Data Quality
7 103 (1.82%) Accessibility
7 103 (1.82%) GDPR
8 41 (0.72%) JSP 440
9 38 (0.67%) WCAG
10 36 (0.63%) PMO
11 34 (0.60%) NIST 800
12 31 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 27 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials
13 27 (0.48%) Def Stans
13 27 (0.48%) GRC
14 24 (0.42%) RMADS
15 22 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 16 (0.28%) HIPAA
17 14 (0.25%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 455 (8.02%) Docker
2 360 (6.35%) Active Directory
3 196 (3.46%) VMware Infrastructure
4 70 (1.23%) VMware ESXi
5 67 (1.18%) vSphere
6 53 (0.93%) VMware NSX
7 42 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
8 39 (0.69%) Firmware
9 29 (0.51%) Hyper-V
10 27 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
11 24 (0.42%) Microsoft Virtual Server
11 24 (0.42%) Virtual Servers
12 21 (0.37%) DFS Replication
13 18 (0.32%) Postfix
14 17 (0.30%) NFS
15 15 (0.26%) Dovecot
16 11 (0.19%) Squid
17 10 (0.18%) Brightmail
17 10 (0.18%) ISA Server
18 8 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 518 (9.13%) Kubernetes
2 472 (8.32%) Terraform
3 281 (4.95%) Ansible
4 144 (2.54%) Grafana
5 125 (2.20%) Prometheus
6 111 (1.96%) SCCM
7 75 (1.32%) Single Sign-On
8 72 (1.27%) Microsoft Intune
9 53 (0.93%) vCenter Server
10 49 (0.86%) Argo
11 45 (0.79%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 34 (0.60%) WSUS
13 32 (0.56%) Packer
14 30 (0.53%) Jamf Pro
15 29 (0.51%) Kibana
16 25 (0.44%) Nessus
17 24 (0.42%) FortiGate
18 23 (0.41%) SCOM
19 22 (0.39%) Nmap
19 22 (0.39%) Podman
Vendors
1 794 (14.00%) Microsoft
2 384 (6.77%) SAP
3 381 (6.72%) Cisco
4 327 (5.77%) VMware
5 291 (5.13%) Oracle
6 252 (4.44%) ServiceNow
7 192 (3.39%) Splunk
8 151 (2.66%) Juniper
9 122 (2.15%) Red Hat
10 91 (1.60%) Google
11 90 (1.59%) HP
12 88 (1.55%) Palo Alto
13 82 (1.45%) Dell
14 76 (1.34%) SolarWinds
15 75 (1.32%) IBM
16 70 (1.23%) F5
17 68 (1.20%) Salesforce
18 62 (1.09%) Apple
19 59 (1.04%) Atlassian
19 59 (1.04%) NetApp