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

6 months to
23 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,495 4,618 7,063
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.91% 18.49% 18.84%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.45% 59.20% 61.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,667 3,023 4,605
10th Percentile £379 £336 £356
25th Percentile £450 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £714 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 752 345 538
10th Percentile £18.20 £18.50 £14.43
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £62.50 £27.13 £57.39
Median % change year-on-year +130.41% -52.73% -4.36%
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.50 £79.48 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £60.91 £25.15 £56.49
% change year-on-year +142.19% -55.48% -5.85%

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 13,671 7,801 11,398
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.55% 31.23% 30.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,230 4,911 7,025
10th Percentile £350 £280 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £645
90th Percentile £719 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,035 511 1,016
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.88 £20.12 £20.22
Median hourly rate £52.50 £30.00 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +75.00% -27.71% -24.55%
75th Percentile £73.60 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.36 £78.70 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £29.26 £40.25
% change year-on-year +70.88% -27.30% -26.82%

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 23 June 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 23 June 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 23 June 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 +7 3,368 £525 - 458
South East +1 2,289 £550 - 444
South West 0 1,310 £538 -4.44% 322
North of England +2 986 £500 - 249
Midlands +2 918 £469 -10.67% 121
West Midlands +1 798 £469 -10.67% 82
North West 0 534 £525 +5.00% 144
East of England +2 358 £550 +10.00% 106
Yorkshire -5 254 £500 +1.63% 58
North East +1 229 £480 - 50
East Midlands -4 109 £438 -7.89% 39
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
1 343 (3.61%) Confluence
2 215 (2.26%) SharePoint
3 144 (1.52%) SAS
4 121 (1.27%) Microsoft Exchange
5 87 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
6 81 (0.85%) Apache Spark
7 78 (0.82%) Apache
8 40 (0.42%) Jupyter
9 39 (0.41%) nginx
10 29 (0.31%) WebLogic
11 21 (0.22%) Tomcat
12 19 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
13 16 (0.17%) IIS
14 15 (0.16%) CMS
14 15 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
15 14 (0.15%) Skype for Business
16 12 (0.13%) Tuxedo
17 11 (0.12%) NetWeaver
18 9 (0.095%) ArcGIS
19 8 (0.084%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 158 (1.66%) Microsoft Excel
2 130 (1.37%) Microsoft Office
3 76 (0.80%) Microsoft Project
4 73 (0.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 39 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 14 (0.15%) Simulink
6 14 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
7 10 (0.11%) SOLIDWORKS
8 9 (0.095%) AutoCAD
8 9 (0.095%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.095%) Revit
9 5 (0.053%) Notepad++
10 4 (0.042%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.032%) Sketch
12 2 (0.021%) CATIA
12 2 (0.021%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.021%) Lectora
12 2 (0.021%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.021%) Siemens NX
12 2 (0.021%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 97 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
2 57 (0.60%) Remedy ITSM
3 43 (0.45%) Oracle ERP
4 31 (0.33%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 30 (0.32%) Teamcenter
6 28 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
7 20 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
8 16 (0.17%) SAP PSCD
9 15 (0.16%) Findur
9 15 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
10 14 (0.15%) Maximo
11 12 (0.13%) iTrent
11 12 (0.13%) Primavera
11 12 (0.13%) Temenos T24
12 10 (0.11%) SAP ERP
12 10 (0.11%) Siebel CRM
13 9 (0.095%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 9 (0.095%) Oracle Assets
13 9 (0.095%) Salesforce CRM
13 9 (0.095%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,643 (17.30%) Azure
2 1,621 (17.07%) AWS
3 371 (3.91%) Power Platform
4 370 (3.90%) Azure DevOps
4 370 (3.90%) GitHub
5 350 (3.69%) GCP
6 245 (2.58%) Serverless
7 242 (2.55%) Microsoft 365
8 239 (2.52%) Entra ID
9 226 (2.38%) GitHub Actions
10 210 (2.21%) Amazon S3
11 169 (1.78%) AWS Lambda
12 151 (1.59%) Amazon EC2
13 135 (1.42%) OpenShift
14 132 (1.39%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 131 (1.38%) SaaS
16 126 (1.33%) PaaS
17 124 (1.31%) OCI
18 108 (1.14%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 100 (1.05%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 408 (4.30%) Firewall
2 284 (2.99%) DNS
3 218 (2.30%) Network Security
4 200 (2.11%) WAN
5 183 (1.93%) LAN
6 158 (1.66%) VPN
7 151 (1.59%) DHCP
8 132 (1.39%) BGP
9 113 (1.19%) Wi-Fi
10 111 (1.17%) OSPF
11 101 (1.06%) VLAN
12 95 (1.00%) TCP/IP
13 80 (0.84%) Wireless
14 58 (0.61%) MPLS
15 55 (0.58%) SD-WAN
16 54 (0.57%) VXLAN
17 50 (0.53%) SAN
18 49 (0.52%) IPsec
18 49 (0.52%) Structured Cabling
19 48 (0.51%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 281 (2.96%) Power BI
2 235 (2.47%) PostgreSQL
3 222 (2.34%) Data Warehouse
4 213 (2.24%) SQL Server
5 139 (1.46%) Oracle Database
6 120 (1.26%) Metadata
7 107 (1.13%) Data Lake
8 106 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
9 96 (1.01%) Relational Database
10 84 (0.88%) Pentaho
11 79 (0.83%) MongoDB
12 73 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
12 73 (0.77%) MySQL
12 73 (0.77%) Oracle Reports
13 67 (0.71%) Amazon Redshift
14 66 (0.70%) NoSQL
15 62 (0.65%) Amazon Athena
16 59 (0.62%) Tableau
17 43 (0.45%) Azure SQL Database
17 43 (0.45%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 541 (5.70%) JIRA
2 425 (4.48%) Git
3 406 (4.28%) GitLab
4 371 (3.91%) Jenkins
5 102 (1.07%) Selenium
6 80 (0.84%) JUnit
7 72 (0.76%) SonarQube
8 69 (0.73%) Postman
9 58 (0.61%) Rational DOORS
10 53 (0.56%) JMeter
11 51 (0.54%) Cucumber
12 43 (0.45%) Artifactory
13 42 (0.44%) Mockito
14 41 (0.43%) Bitbucket
14 41 (0.43%) Maven
15 37 (0.39%) Visual Studio
15 37 (0.39%) Zephyr
16 34 (0.36%) Cypress.io
16 34 (0.36%) REST Assured
17 30 (0.32%) WebDriver
General
1 2,032 (21.40%) Public Sector
2 1,930 (20.33%) Social Skills
3 664 (6.99%) Analytical Skills
4 635 (6.69%) Finance
5 324 (3.41%) Military
6 271 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
7 270 (2.84%) Aerospace
8 140 (1.47%) Legal
9 124 (1.31%) Banking
10 123 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
11 105 (1.11%) Telecoms
12 96 (1.01%) Law
13 92 (0.97%) Organisational Skills
14 78 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
15 72 (0.76%) Manufacturing
16 65 (0.68%) Police
17 64 (0.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 47 (0.49%) Marketing
19 40 (0.42%) Aviation
20 38 (0.40%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,385 (14.59%) Architect
2 924 (9.73%) Developer
3 815 (8.58%) Senior
4 740 (7.79%) Lead
5 627 (6.60%) Analyst
6 462 (4.87%) Data Engineer
7 427 (4.50%) Consultant
8 413 (4.35%) DevOps Engineer
9 298 (3.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 293 (3.09%) Software Engineer
11 277 (2.92%) Technical Architect
12 256 (2.70%) Network Engineer
13 230 (2.42%) Solutions Architect
14 214 (2.25%) Business Analyst
15 206 (2.17%) Project Manager
16 203 (2.14%) Security Architect
17 194 (2.04%) Delivery Manager
18 182 (1.92%) Administrator
19 175 (1.84%) Azure Engineer
20 173 (1.82%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 291 (3.06%) REST
2 220 (2.32%) Spring
3 184 (1.94%) Spring Boot
4 170 (1.79%) React
5 158 (1.66%) .NET
6 151 (1.59%) Node.js
7 147 (1.55%) Kafka
8 142 (1.50%) RESTful
9 125 (1.32%) LDAP
10 124 (1.31%) SOAP
11 112 (1.18%) AngularJS
12 107 (1.13%) JSON
13 94 (0.99%) OAuth
13 94 (0.99%) PySpark
14 91 (0.96%) Web Services
15 84 (0.88%) HTML
16 74 (0.78%) OpenID
17 73 (0.77%) XML
18 70 (0.74%) Middleware
19 68 (0.72%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 368 (3.88%) Cloud Native
2 322 (3.39%) Product Ownership
3 290 (3.05%) Onboarding
4 273 (2.88%) Data Centre
5 152 (1.60%) Management Information System
6 151 (1.59%) Legacy Systems
7 134 (1.41%) PKI
8 128 (1.35%) Distributed Systems
9 109 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
10 104 (1.10%) Replication
11 101 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
12 99 (1.04%) Security Posture
13 86 (0.91%) CMDB
14 85 (0.90%) Data Structures
14 85 (0.90%) Hybrid Cloud
15 84 (0.88%) Clustering
16 75 (0.79%) Public Cloud
17 70 (0.74%) Security Operations Centre
18 69 (0.73%) Operational Technology
19 65 (0.68%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 767 (8.08%) Windows
2 633 (6.67%) Linux
3 240 (2.53%) Windows Server
4 177 (1.86%) Unix
5 119 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 83 (0.87%) Windows 10
7 76 (0.80%) Android
8 50 (0.53%) Solaris
9 47 (0.49%) Apple iOS
10 37 (0.39%) Mac OS
11 30 (0.32%) Ubuntu
12 28 (0.29%) AIX
13 24 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
14 22 (0.23%) CentOS
15 21 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
16 17 (0.18%) VMS
17 14 (0.15%) Windows 7
18 11 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
18 11 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
19 10 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,901 (20.02%) Agile
2 1,466 (15.44%) DevOps
3 1,302 (13.71%) CI/CD
4 994 (10.47%) Stakeholder Management
5 993 (10.46%) Problem-Solving
6 946 (9.96%) Continuous Improvement
7 765 (8.06%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 761 (8.01%) Migration
9 693 (7.30%) Infrastructure as Code
10 625 (6.58%) Cybersecurity
11 588 (6.19%) ITIL
12 574 (6.05%) Test Automation
13 568 (5.98%) Software Engineering
14 558 (5.88%) Analytics
15 539 (5.68%) Containerisation
16 534 (5.62%) Roadmaps
17 490 (5.16%) Data Modelling
18 489 (5.15%) Decision-Making
19 464 (4.89%) AI
20 444 (4.68%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 987 (10.39%) Python
2 902 (9.50%) SQL
3 606 (6.38%) Java
4 452 (4.76%) PowerShell
5 278 (2.93%) JavaScript
6 200 (2.11%) C#
7 192 (2.02%) Bash
8 148 (1.56%) TypeScript
9 122 (1.28%) PL/SQL
10 87 (0.92%) C++
11 85 (0.90%) Shell Script
12 68 (0.72%) Bicep
13 64 (0.67%) C
14 54 (0.57%) Go
15 47 (0.49%) Ada
16 43 (0.45%) Scala
17 41 (0.43%) Apex Code
18 39 (0.41%) Ruby
19 35 (0.37%) MATLAB
20 33 (0.35%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 7,171 (75.52%) SC Cleared
2 1,827 (19.24%) DV Cleared
3 384 (4.04%) Degree
4 281 (2.96%) BPSS Clearance
5 184 (1.94%) Cisco Certification
6 159 (1.67%) CISSP
7 128 (1.35%) Azure Certification
8 109 (1.15%) Microsoft Certification
9 103 (1.08%) AWS Certification
10 100 (1.05%) CCNP
11 98 (1.03%) CISM
12 80 (0.84%) PMP
13 79 (0.83%) CCNA
13 79 (0.83%) PMI Certification
14 64 (0.67%) ISTQB
15 55 (0.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 54 (0.57%) Computer Science Degree
17 48 (0.51%) ITIL Certification
18 40 (0.42%) GIAC
19 36 (0.38%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 366 (3.85%) QA
2 290 (3.05%) NIST
3 289 (3.04%) Data Quality
4 288 (3.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 210 (2.21%) NCSC
6 181 (1.91%) Accessibility
7 173 (1.82%) PMO
8 166 (1.75%) GDPR
9 103 (1.08%) SLA
10 82 (0.86%) GRC
11 60 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 47 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
13 44 (0.46%) WCAG
14 42 (0.44%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.35%) Def Stans
16 28 (0.29%) RMADS
17 23 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
17 23 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 22 (0.23%) COBIT
19 19 (0.20%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 590 (6.21%) Docker
2 426 (4.49%) Active Directory
3 286 (3.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 113 (1.19%) VMware ESXi
5 103 (1.08%) VMware NSX
6 78 (0.82%) vSphere
7 76 (0.80%) Hyper-V
8 67 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
9 32 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
10 30 (0.32%) Firmware
11 23 (0.24%) BitLocker
12 21 (0.22%) vCloud
12 21 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
13 19 (0.20%) Postfix
14 18 (0.19%) NFS
15 15 (0.16%) Squid
16 14 (0.15%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 9 (0.095%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.063%) Corosync
18 6 (0.063%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 766 (8.07%) Terraform
2 745 (7.85%) Kubernetes
3 330 (3.48%) Ansible
4 227 (2.39%) Grafana
5 185 (1.95%) Prometheus
6 110 (1.16%) vCenter Server
7 76 (0.80%) SCCM
8 75 (0.79%) Single Sign-On
9 56 (0.59%) Microsoft Intune
10 53 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 48 (0.51%) Argo
11 48 (0.51%) FortiGate
12 40 (0.42%) Puppet
13 39 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
13 39 (0.41%) SCOM
14 35 (0.37%) Podman
15 27 (0.28%) Progress Chef
16 24 (0.25%) Nagios
17 23 (0.24%) vMotion
18 22 (0.23%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 1,009 (10.63%) Microsoft
2 671 (7.07%) Oracle
3 461 (4.86%) VMware
4 405 (4.27%) ServiceNow
5 306 (3.22%) Cisco
6 301 (3.17%) SAP
7 196 (2.06%) Splunk
8 168 (1.77%) Databricks
9 154 (1.62%) Google
10 147 (1.55%) Red Hat
11 129 (1.36%) Talend
12 127 (1.34%) Salesforce
13 114 (1.20%) IBM
14 108 (1.14%) Palo Alto
15 100 (1.05%) Informatica
16 93 (0.98%) Juniper
17 83 (0.87%) F5
18 82 (0.86%) SolarWinds
19 81 (0.85%) Fortinet
20 80 (0.84%) Dynatrace