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 21 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 3 3 4
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +5
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 6,417 5,663 7,033
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.01% 18.23% 17.91%
As % of the Qualifications category 62.85% 61.10% 60.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,235 3,571 4,399
10th Percentile £325 £350 £369
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.64% - -2.22%
75th Percentile £626 £638 £650
90th Percentile £715 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £528 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 671 302 475
10th Percentile £18.43 £21.25 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.02 £30.00 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £58.49 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -57.00% -2.52% -
75th Percentile £54.25 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £52.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year -52.32% -12.08% -

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 10,210 9,268 11,688
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.43% 29.84% 29.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,617 5,670 7,418
10th Percentile £305 £313 £308
25th Percentile £416 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £526 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.24% -4.32% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £720 £734 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 898 437 711
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.30 £17.72
25th Percentile £19.06 £27.00 £26.77
Median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £53.50
Median % change year-on-year -49.70% -6.54% +18.89%
75th Percentile £52.00 £68.00 £69.81
90th Percentile £74.48 £75.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £53.67
% change year-on-year -44.11% -16.15% +19.26%

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 21 November 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 21 November 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 21 November 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 +1 2,125 £550 - 728
South East -1 1,217 £513 -6.82% 752
South West 0 1,096 £550 -4.35% 509
North of England -2 762 £515 +8.44% 210
Midlands +1 686 £519 -9.83% 177
West Midlands 0 533 £525 -8.70% 135
North West +1 499 £536 +8.72% 148
East of England +2 288 £525 +2.44% 260
Yorkshire -9 164 £500 +7.24% 35
East Midlands +2 138 £438 -12.50% 41
North East 0 106 £475 +5.56% 29
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
1 257 (4.00%) Confluence
2 174 (2.71%) SharePoint
3 116 (1.81%) Microsoft Exchange
4 95 (1.48%) SAS
5 90 (1.40%) Apache
6 54 (0.84%) nginx
7 49 (0.76%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.61%) Skype for Business
9 32 (0.50%) Apache Spark
10 25 (0.39%) IIS
11 23 (0.36%) CMS
12 17 (0.26%) WebLogic
13 15 (0.23%) SharePoint Server
14 11 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2010
14 11 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2013
14 11 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 10 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2003
15 10 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2007
15 10 (0.16%) Office Communications Server
16 8 (0.12%) Documentum
Applications
1 198 (3.09%) Microsoft Office
2 142 (2.21%) Microsoft Excel
3 73 (1.14%) Microsoft Project
4 34 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 34 (0.53%) MS Visio
5 22 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
6 15 (0.23%) Siemens NX
7 14 (0.22%) Simulink
8 11 (0.17%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 7 (0.11%) Sketch
10 6 (0.094%) Adobe Illustrator
10 6 (0.094%) Photoshop
10 6 (0.094%) Windchill
11 5 (0.078%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.078%) FrameMaker
11 5 (0.078%) Oracle Smart View
11 5 (0.078%) PTC Creo
11 5 (0.078%) Stateflow
11 5 (0.078%) Trello
12 3 (0.047%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 143 (2.23%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (0.53%) Remedy ITSM
3 27 (0.42%) SAP WM
4 26 (0.41%) SAP EWM
5 23 (0.36%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 22 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
7 21 (0.33%) Teamcenter
8 20 (0.31%) Maximo
9 18 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
9 18 (0.28%) Primavera
10 16 (0.25%) SAP HCM
10 16 (0.25%) SAP MM
11 14 (0.22%) SAP PS
12 13 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
13 12 (0.19%) SAP QM
13 12 (0.19%) SAP VC
14 11 (0.17%) SAP EHS
15 10 (0.16%) SAP HR
15 10 (0.16%) SAP Payroll
16 9 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,080 (16.83%) AWS
2 1,043 (16.25%) Azure
3 315 (4.91%) Microsoft 365
4 303 (4.72%) GitHub
5 243 (3.79%) Power Platform
6 230 (3.58%) GCP
7 229 (3.57%) Azure DevOps
8 185 (2.88%) Serverless
9 170 (2.65%) Amazon S3
10 147 (2.29%) Entra ID
11 146 (2.28%) GitHub Actions
12 137 (2.13%) SaaS
13 122 (1.90%) OpenShift
14 113 (1.76%) Amazon EC2
15 108 (1.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 105 (1.64%) AWS CloudFormation
17 102 (1.59%) AWS Lambda
18 81 (1.26%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 78 (1.22%) Power Automate
20 73 (1.14%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 345 (5.38%) Firewall
2 252 (3.93%) DNS
3 171 (2.66%) VPN
4 142 (2.21%) Network Security
5 124 (1.93%) WAN
6 105 (1.64%) TCP/IP
7 95 (1.48%) BGP
8 92 (1.43%) DHCP
9 89 (1.39%) LAN
10 86 (1.34%) Wireless
11 71 (1.11%) SSL
12 62 (0.97%) SAN
13 61 (0.95%) Wi-Fi
14 60 (0.94%) MPLS
15 56 (0.87%) VLAN
16 54 (0.84%) IPsec
17 48 (0.75%) Cisco ISE
18 45 (0.70%) HTTP
19 43 (0.67%) SMTP
20 41 (0.64%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 199 (3.10%) PostgreSQL
2 164 (2.56%) Power BI
3 85 (1.32%) Amazon RDS
4 84 (1.31%) MongoDB
5 81 (1.26%) SQL Server
6 74 (1.15%) Oracle Database
7 69 (1.08%) Relational Database
8 68 (1.06%) Data Warehouse
9 66 (1.03%) NoSQL
10 62 (0.97%) Metadata
11 44 (0.69%) Big Data
12 41 (0.64%) Pentaho
13 39 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
14 38 (0.59%) Azure SQL Database
15 36 (0.56%) MySQL
15 36 (0.56%) SAS Enterprise Guide
16 35 (0.55%) Data Lake
17 31 (0.48%) Amazon Redshift
17 31 (0.48%) Redis
18 30 (0.47%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 462 (7.20%) JIRA
2 368 (5.73%) Git
3 352 (5.49%) Jenkins
4 246 (3.83%) GitLab
5 71 (1.11%) Selenium
6 62 (0.97%) SonarQube
7 57 (0.89%) JUnit
8 55 (0.86%) Cypress.io
9 48 (0.75%) Bitbucket
9 48 (0.75%) Postman
10 44 (0.69%) Oracle APEX
11 35 (0.55%) Artifactory
12 34 (0.53%) Maven
13 32 (0.50%) Mockito
14 31 (0.48%) Cucumber
15 23 (0.36%) Rational DOORS
15 23 (0.36%) Vagrant
16 22 (0.34%) REST Assured
17 21 (0.33%) Metasploit
17 21 (0.33%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,775 (27.66%) Public Sector
2 1,699 (26.48%) Social Skills
3 587 (9.15%) Analytical Skills
4 466 (7.26%) Finance
5 248 (3.86%) Military
6 210 (3.27%) Telecoms
7 194 (3.02%) Manufacturing
8 157 (2.45%) Documentation Skills
9 147 (2.29%) Electronics
10 135 (2.10%) Marketing
11 125 (1.95%) Aerospace
12 94 (1.46%) Organisational Skills
13 93 (1.45%) Legal
14 85 (1.32%) Banking
15 77 (1.20%) Influencing Skills
16 75 (1.17%) Presentation Skills
17 68 (1.06%) Law
18 42 (0.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 41 (0.64%) Police
20 40 (0.62%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 833 (12.98%) Architect
2 639 (9.96%) Developer
3 533 (8.31%) Consultant
4 492 (7.67%) Senior
5 424 (6.61%) Analyst
6 395 (6.16%) Lead
7 264 (4.11%) DevOps Engineer
8 237 (3.69%) Support Engineer
9 195 (3.04%) Network Engineer
10 157 (2.45%) Solutions Architect
11 151 (2.35%) Data Engineer
12 143 (2.23%) SAP Consultant
13 133 (2.07%) AWS Engineer
14 124 (1.93%) Platform Engineer
15 122 (1.90%) IT Engineer
16 121 (1.89%) Technical Architect
17 117 (1.82%) Administrator
18 116 (1.81%) Software Engineer
19 112 (1.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
20 109 (1.70%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 252 (3.93%) REST
2 165 (2.57%) React
3 162 (2.52%) Node.js
4 146 (2.28%) Kafka
5 128 (1.99%) JSON
6 120 (1.87%) SOAP
7 107 (1.67%) HTML
8 106 (1.65%) Spring
9 101 (1.57%) XML
10 96 (1.50%) AngularJS
11 93 (1.45%) Web Services
12 92 (1.43%) RESTful
13 90 (1.40%) CSS
14 86 (1.34%) .NET
15 85 (1.32%) Spring Boot
16 70 (1.09%) OAuth
17 67 (1.04%) LDAP
18 54 (0.84%) Elastic Stack
18 54 (0.84%) SAML
19 50 (0.78%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 199 (3.10%) Data Centre
2 193 (3.01%) Onboarding
3 183 (2.85%) PKI
4 165 (2.57%) Cloud Native
5 149 (2.32%) Management Information System
6 136 (2.12%) Product Ownership
7 104 (1.62%) Self-Motivation
8 77 (1.20%) Legacy Systems
9 75 (1.17%) Driving Licence
10 69 (1.08%) Replication
11 66 (1.03%) Cyber Threat
12 65 (1.01%) Security Operations Centre
13 61 (0.95%) Security Posture
14 59 (0.92%) Hybrid Cloud
15 58 (0.90%) Enterprise Software
16 56 (0.87%) CMDB
17 54 (0.84%) Private Cloud
18 50 (0.78%) Analytical Mindset
19 43 (0.67%) Public Cloud
20 41 (0.64%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 758 (11.81%) Windows
2 507 (7.90%) Linux
3 185 (2.88%) Windows Server
4 177 (2.76%) Windows 10
5 99 (1.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 90 (1.40%) Android
7 86 (1.34%) Mac OS
8 82 (1.28%) Unix
9 47 (0.73%) VMS
10 33 (0.51%) Ubuntu
11 30 (0.47%) Windows Server 2019
12 29 (0.45%) Apple iOS
13 28 (0.44%) Amazon Linux
14 24 (0.37%) CentOS
15 23 (0.36%) Windows 7
16 19 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
16 19 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
17 18 (0.28%) Windows Server 2003
18 15 (0.23%) Mac OS X
19 9 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,295 (20.18%) Agile
2 983 (15.32%) DevOps
3 884 (13.78%) CI/CD
4 804 (12.53%) Problem-Solving
5 634 (9.88%) Migration
6 502 (7.82%) Stakeholder Management
7 447 (6.97%) Cybersecurity
8 444 (6.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 425 (6.62%) ITIL
10 416 (6.48%) Infrastructure as Code
11 410 (6.39%) Continuous Improvement
12 388 (6.05%) Service Management
13 378 (5.89%) Business Intelligence
14 351 (5.47%) Test Automation
15 342 (5.33%) Containerisation
16 339 (5.28%) Workflow
17 334 (5.20%) Analytics
18 328 (5.11%) Scrum
19 292 (4.55%) Microservices
20 289 (4.50%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 846 (13.18%) Python
2 506 (7.89%) SQL
3 428 (6.67%) PowerShell
4 412 (6.42%) Java
5 336 (5.24%) JavaScript
6 227 (3.54%) Bash
7 161 (2.51%) TypeScript
8 122 (1.90%) C#
9 92 (1.43%) C++
10 79 (1.23%) Go
11 68 (1.06%) PL/SQL
12 64 (1.00%) C
13 60 (0.94%) Shell Script
14 46 (0.72%) Perl
15 37 (0.58%) ABAP
16 30 (0.47%) Groovy
17 29 (0.45%) Bicep
18 28 (0.44%) Ruby
19 27 (0.42%) Ada
20 26 (0.41%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 4,918 (76.64%) SC Cleared
2 1,102 (17.17%) DV Cleared
3 316 (4.92%) Degree
4 261 (4.07%) BPSS Clearance
5 127 (1.98%) CISSP
6 125 (1.95%) Microsoft Certification
7 109 (1.70%) Azure Certification
7 109 (1.70%) Cisco Certification
8 97 (1.51%) AWS Certification
9 82 (1.28%) CCNP
10 72 (1.12%) CISM
11 52 (0.81%) Computer Science Degree
12 51 (0.79%) ITIL Certification
13 42 (0.65%) CCNA
14 39 (0.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 36 (0.56%) CEH
15 36 (0.56%) CHECK Team Member
16 32 (0.50%) OSCP
17 30 (0.47%) MCSE
18 29 (0.45%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 206 (3.21%) QA
2 194 (3.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 192 (2.99%) NIST
4 158 (2.46%) NCSC
5 128 (1.99%) SLA
6 122 (1.90%) GDPR
7 109 (1.70%) Data Quality
8 105 (1.64%) Accessibility
9 52 (0.81%) PMO
10 50 (0.78%) JSP 440
11 39 (0.61%) NIST 800
12 37 (0.58%) WCAG
13 32 (0.50%) GRC
14 31 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 29 (0.45%) Def Stans
16 27 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
17 24 (0.37%) RMADS
18 22 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 18 (0.28%) COBIT
20 15 (0.23%) HIPAA
System Software
1 521 (8.12%) Docker
2 399 (6.22%) Active Directory
3 207 (3.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 69 (1.08%) VMware ESXi
5 67 (1.04%) vSphere
6 64 (1.00%) VMware NSX
7 49 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
8 40 (0.62%) Firmware
9 33 (0.51%) Hyper-V
10 26 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
11 21 (0.33%) DFS Replication
12 20 (0.31%) Postfix
13 16 (0.25%) NFS
14 15 (0.23%) Dovecot
15 11 (0.17%) Squid
16 10 (0.16%) BitLocker
16 10 (0.16%) Brightmail
16 10 (0.16%) ISA Server
17 9 (0.14%) Terminal Services
18 7 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 609 (9.49%) Kubernetes
2 580 (9.04%) Terraform
3 279 (4.35%) Ansible
4 162 (2.52%) Grafana
5 134 (2.09%) Prometheus
6 107 (1.67%) SCCM
7 89 (1.39%) Single Sign-On
8 76 (1.18%) Microsoft Intune
9 61 (0.95%) vCenter Server
10 55 (0.86%) Argo
11 51 (0.79%) Packer
12 49 (0.76%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 34 (0.53%) Jamf Pro
13 34 (0.53%) Kibana
14 26 (0.41%) FortiGate
14 26 (0.41%) SCOM
15 24 (0.37%) Consul
16 23 (0.36%) Nessus
17 22 (0.34%) Nmap
17 22 (0.34%) vRealize
Vendors
1 869 (13.54%) Microsoft
2 436 (6.79%) SAP
3 415 (6.47%) Cisco
4 348 (5.42%) VMware
5 338 (5.27%) Oracle
6 305 (4.75%) ServiceNow
7 176 (2.74%) Splunk
8 155 (2.42%) Juniper
9 130 (2.03%) Red Hat
10 105 (1.64%) Google
11 95 (1.48%) HP
12 92 (1.43%) Atlassian
13 91 (1.42%) Dell
13 91 (1.42%) Palo Alto
14 82 (1.28%) Salesforce
15 75 (1.17%) IBM
16 73 (1.14%) SolarWinds
17 71 (1.11%) F5
18 70 (1.09%) Apple
19 64 (1.00%) CyberArk