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

6 months to
19 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 0 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,165 4,522 6,908
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.33% 18.59% 18.97%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.97% 58.96% 61.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,402 3,003 4,557
10th Percentile £375 £340 £353
25th Percentile £450 £450 £458
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 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.85% -3.73% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 734 274 482
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.20 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £48.90 £56.15
Median % change year-on-year +12.47% -12.90% -6.43%
75th Percentile £74.00 £67.44 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £79.61 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £40.30 £55.80
% change year-on-year +36.49% -27.79% -7.00%

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 13,098 7,669 11,228
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.92% 31.53% 30.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,823 4,882 6,959
10th Percentile £350 £285 £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 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £533
% change year-on-year - -1.50% -3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 944 436 971
10th Percentile £17.00 £18.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £22.27 £17.94
Median hourly rate £47.54 £39.66 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +19.87% -0.85% -23.81%
75th Percentile £72.50 £67.50 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.25 £81.35 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £47.80 £37.25 £40.00
% change year-on-year +28.31% -6.88% -27.25%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 3,270 £525 - 506
South East +1 2,202 £550 - 542
South West 0 1,294 £538 -6.52% 360
North of England -1 889 £500 - 281
Midlands +3 860 £472 -10.10% 143
West Midlands +3 731 £472 -10.10% 100
North West -1 514 £500 - 156
East of England +2 377 £550 +10.00% 162
Yorkshire -13 214 £480 -4.00% 50
North East +1 197 £475 -1.04% 76
East Midlands -5 123 £450 -5.26% 43
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 (3.74%) Confluence
2 207 (2.26%) SharePoint
3 122 (1.33%) Microsoft Exchange
4 110 (1.20%) SAS
5 80 (0.87%) Apache Spark
6 68 (0.74%) Apache
7 56 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
8 33 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 29 (0.32%) nginx
10 25 (0.27%) Jupyter
11 17 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
12 16 (0.17%) IIS
12 16 (0.17%) Tomcat
13 14 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
13 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
14 13 (0.14%) CMS
14 13 (0.14%) Skype for Business
15 8 (0.087%) Apache Superset
15 8 (0.087%) ArcGIS
15 8 (0.087%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 180 (1.96%) Microsoft Excel
2 179 (1.95%) Microsoft Office
3 101 (1.10%) Microsoft Project
4 83 (0.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 36 (0.39%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.13%) Simulink
8 7 (0.076%) AutoCAD
9 6 (0.065%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.055%) Notepad++
10 5 (0.055%) Revit
11 4 (0.044%) Siemens NX
11 4 (0.044%) Windchill
12 3 (0.033%) Chatbot
13 2 (0.022%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.022%) CATIA
13 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.022%) Lectora
13 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.022%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 88 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (0.49%) Remedy ITSM
3 38 (0.41%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 30 (0.33%) Teamcenter
5 26 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
5 26 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
6 15 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.15%) Maximo
7 14 (0.15%) SAP PSCD
8 13 (0.14%) Findur
8 13 (0.14%) iTrent
8 13 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
9 12 (0.13%) Temenos T24
10 10 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
11 9 (0.098%) Integrated Workplace Management System
11 9 (0.098%) SAP ERP
11 9 (0.098%) SAP HCM
11 9 (0.098%) SAP PP
12 8 (0.087%) SAP BRIM
12 8 (0.087%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 1,560 (17.02%) Azure
2 1,490 (16.26%) AWS
3 369 (4.03%) GCP
3 369 (4.03%) GitHub
4 342 (3.73%) Azure DevOps
5 334 (3.64%) Power Platform
6 234 (2.55%) Serverless
7 230 (2.51%) Microsoft 365
8 227 (2.48%) Entra ID
9 211 (2.30%) GitHub Actions
10 189 (2.06%) Amazon S3
11 159 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
12 136 (1.48%) Amazon EC2
13 132 (1.44%) PaaS
14 123 (1.34%) OpenShift
15 113 (1.23%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 112 (1.22%) OCI
17 104 (1.13%) IaaS
18 103 (1.12%) SaaS
19 101 (1.10%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 421 (4.59%) Firewall
2 265 (2.89%) DNS
3 214 (2.33%) WAN
4 211 (2.30%) Network Security
5 196 (2.14%) LAN
6 155 (1.69%) VPN
7 141 (1.54%) BGP
7 141 (1.54%) DHCP
8 121 (1.32%) OSPF
9 104 (1.13%) TCP/IP
10 99 (1.08%) VLAN
11 95 (1.04%) Wi-Fi
12 80 (0.87%) Wireless
13 59 (0.64%) MPLS
14 53 (0.58%) SAN
14 53 (0.58%) Structured Cabling
15 51 (0.56%) VXLAN
16 48 (0.52%) IPsec
17 47 (0.51%) SD-WAN
18 45 (0.49%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 257 (2.80%) Power BI
2 211 (2.30%) PostgreSQL
3 198 (2.16%) Data Warehouse
4 188 (2.05%) SQL Server
5 116 (1.27%) Metadata
6 112 (1.22%) Oracle Database
7 101 (1.10%) Amazon RDS
8 89 (0.97%) MongoDB
9 84 (0.92%) Relational Database
10 83 (0.91%) NoSQL
11 79 (0.86%) Data Lake
12 76 (0.83%) Pentaho
13 70 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
14 67 (0.73%) Oracle Reports
15 63 (0.69%) Tableau
16 60 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
16 60 (0.65%) Azure SQL Database
17 59 (0.64%) MySQL
18 52 (0.57%) Amazon Athena
19 47 (0.51%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 537 (5.86%) JIRA
2 402 (4.39%) Git
3 346 (3.78%) Jenkins
4 343 (3.74%) GitLab
5 93 (1.01%) Selenium
6 72 (0.79%) Postman
7 66 (0.72%) JUnit
8 55 (0.60%) Rational DOORS
9 54 (0.59%) SonarQube
10 48 (0.52%) Artifactory
11 44 (0.48%) JMeter
12 43 (0.47%) Bitbucket
13 39 (0.43%) Cucumber
14 38 (0.41%) Maven
15 36 (0.39%) Mockito
16 33 (0.36%) Visual Studio
17 30 (0.33%) Cypress.io
17 30 (0.33%) REST Assured
18 28 (0.31%) Zephyr
19 25 (0.27%) Gatling
General
1 1,972 (21.52%) Public Sector
2 1,915 (20.89%) Social Skills
3 665 (7.26%) Analytical Skills
4 639 (6.97%) Finance
5 328 (3.58%) Military
6 260 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
7 224 (2.44%) Aerospace
8 141 (1.54%) Legal
9 114 (1.24%) Telecoms
10 112 (1.22%) Banking
11 107 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
12 102 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
13 99 (1.08%) Manufacturing
14 84 (0.92%) Law
15 80 (0.87%) Presentation Skills
16 58 (0.63%) Marketing
17 54 (0.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 53 (0.58%) Police
19 46 (0.50%) Electronics
20 39 (0.43%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,350 (14.73%) Architect
2 843 (9.20%) Developer
3 775 (8.46%) Senior
4 653 (7.12%) Lead
5 649 (7.08%) Analyst
6 445 (4.86%) Data Engineer
7 417 (4.55%) DevOps Engineer
8 411 (4.48%) Consultant
9 277 (3.02%) Network Engineer
10 276 (3.01%) Software Engineer
11 262 (2.86%) Technical Architect
12 258 (2.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 244 (2.66%) Business Analyst
14 208 (2.27%) Project Manager
15 206 (2.25%) Solutions Architect
16 197 (2.15%) Azure Engineer
17 175 (1.91%) Administrator
17 175 (1.91%) Designer
18 174 (1.90%) Security Architect
19 167 (1.82%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 291 (3.18%) REST
2 216 (2.36%) Spring
3 176 (1.92%) Spring Boot
4 164 (1.79%) React
5 163 (1.78%) Kafka
6 162 (1.77%) Node.js
7 155 (1.69%) .NET
8 140 (1.53%) LDAP
9 136 (1.48%) SOAP
10 128 (1.40%) RESTful
11 113 (1.23%) AngularJS
12 109 (1.19%) JSON
13 99 (1.08%) Web Services
14 97 (1.06%) PySpark
15 87 (0.95%) Oracle Fusion
16 82 (0.89%) OAuth
17 79 (0.86%) HTML
18 76 (0.83%) XML
19 69 (0.75%) Middleware
20 67 (0.73%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 310 (3.38%) Cloud Native
2 302 (3.30%) Product Ownership
3 270 (2.95%) Data Centre
4 250 (2.73%) Onboarding
5 142 (1.55%) Management Information System
6 139 (1.52%) PKI
7 122 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
7 122 (1.33%) Security Posture
8 113 (1.23%) Replication
9 111 (1.21%) Enterprise Software
10 105 (1.15%) Distributed Systems
11 90 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
12 82 (0.89%) Clustering
13 80 (0.87%) Data Structures
14 74 (0.81%) Hybrid Cloud
15 72 (0.79%) Public Cloud
16 69 (0.75%) Security Operations Centre
17 63 (0.69%) Operational Technology
17 63 (0.69%) Virtual Team
18 60 (0.65%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 755 (8.24%) Windows
2 632 (6.90%) Linux
3 231 (2.52%) Windows Server
4 164 (1.79%) Unix
5 111 (1.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 86 (0.94%) Android
7 80 (0.87%) Windows 10
8 51 (0.56%) Apple iOS
9 41 (0.45%) Solaris
10 39 (0.43%) Mac OS
11 33 (0.36%) Ubuntu
12 25 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 24 (0.26%) AIX
14 23 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
15 22 (0.24%) VMS
16 21 (0.23%) CentOS
17 14 (0.15%) Windows 7
18 11 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
19 9 (0.098%) Windows Server 2003
19 9 (0.098%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,781 (19.43%) Agile
2 1,401 (15.29%) DevOps
3 1,220 (13.31%) CI/CD
4 991 (10.81%) Problem-Solving
5 880 (9.60%) Stakeholder Management
6 807 (8.81%) Continuous Improvement
7 758 (8.27%) Migration
8 669 (7.30%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 626 (6.83%) Infrastructure as Code
10 595 (6.49%) ITIL
11 550 (6.00%) Cybersecurity
12 526 (5.74%) Test Automation
13 519 (5.66%) Software Engineering
14 511 (5.58%) Analytics
15 496 (5.41%) Roadmaps
16 492 (5.37%) Containerisation
17 475 (5.18%) Data Modelling
18 434 (4.74%) Decision-Making
19 409 (4.46%) Scrum
20 394 (4.30%) AI
Programming Languages
1 973 (10.62%) Python
2 835 (9.11%) SQL
3 562 (6.13%) Java
4 490 (5.35%) PowerShell
5 278 (3.03%) JavaScript
6 198 (2.16%) C#
7 177 (1.93%) Bash
8 139 (1.52%) TypeScript
9 93 (1.01%) PL/SQL
10 87 (0.95%) C++
11 85 (0.93%) Shell Script
12 65 (0.71%) Go
13 63 (0.69%) Scala
14 56 (0.61%) C
15 53 (0.58%) Bicep
16 50 (0.55%) Ruby
17 42 (0.46%) Apex Code
18 40 (0.44%) Ada
19 38 (0.41%) R
20 36 (0.39%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 6,880 (75.07%) SC Cleared
2 1,760 (19.20%) DV Cleared
3 398 (4.34%) Degree
4 261 (2.85%) BPSS Clearance
5 179 (1.95%) Cisco Certification
6 150 (1.64%) CISSP
7 120 (1.31%) Azure Certification
8 113 (1.23%) CCNP
9 100 (1.09%) CISM
10 97 (1.06%) AWS Certification
11 89 (0.97%) Microsoft Certification
12 75 (0.82%) CCNA
13 69 (0.75%) PMP
14 61 (0.67%) PMI Certification
15 57 (0.62%) Computer Science Degree
16 56 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
17 55 (0.60%) ISTQB
18 54 (0.59%) TOGAF Certification
19 49 (0.53%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
20 48 (0.52%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 345 (3.76%) QA
2 273 (2.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 271 (2.96%) NIST
4 266 (2.90%) Data Quality
5 179 (1.95%) NCSC
6 165 (1.80%) Accessibility
7 155 (1.69%) PMO
8 152 (1.66%) GDPR
9 96 (1.05%) SLA
10 63 (0.69%) GRC
11 56 (0.61%) JSP 440
12 53 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials
13 38 (0.41%) WCAG
14 37 (0.40%) NIST 800
15 30 (0.33%) COBIT
15 30 (0.33%) Def Stans
16 29 (0.32%) PCI DSS
17 25 (0.27%) RMADS
18 21 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 19 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 563 (6.14%) Docker
2 427 (4.66%) Active Directory
3 256 (2.79%) VMware Infrastructure
4 95 (1.04%) VMware ESXi
5 82 (0.89%) VMware NSX
6 72 (0.79%) Hyper-V
7 70 (0.76%) vSphere
8 67 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
9 34 (0.37%) Firmware
10 27 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
11 24 (0.26%) Virtual Desktop
12 20 (0.22%) NFS
13 19 (0.21%) BitLocker
14 18 (0.20%) vCloud
15 16 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 15 (0.16%) Postfix
16 15 (0.16%) Squid
17 8 (0.087%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.065%) Corosync
18 6 (0.065%) KVM
Systems Management
1 712 (7.77%) Kubernetes
2 705 (7.69%) Terraform
3 324 (3.54%) Ansible
4 228 (2.49%) Grafana
5 185 (2.02%) Prometheus
6 99 (1.08%) vCenter Server
7 83 (0.91%) Single Sign-On
8 71 (0.77%) SCCM
9 55 (0.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 51 (0.56%) Microsoft Intune
11 47 (0.51%) FortiGate
12 46 (0.50%) Argo
13 39 (0.43%) Puppet
14 37 (0.40%) Podman
15 32 (0.35%) Oracle RMAN
15 32 (0.35%) Progress Chef
16 30 (0.33%) Nagios
17 29 (0.32%) SCOM
18 22 (0.24%) OPNET
18 22 (0.24%) WSUS
Vendors
1 940 (10.26%) Microsoft
2 572 (6.24%) Oracle
3 450 (4.91%) VMware
4 366 (3.99%) ServiceNow
5 323 (3.52%) Cisco
6 320 (3.49%) SAP
7 215 (2.35%) Splunk
8 180 (1.96%) Databricks
9 152 (1.66%) Red Hat
10 148 (1.61%) Google
11 116 (1.27%) Palo Alto
12 113 (1.23%) Talend
13 112 (1.22%) Salesforce
14 108 (1.18%) IBM
15 98 (1.07%) Juniper
16 91 (0.99%) CyberArk
17 81 (0.88%) Atlassian
17 81 (0.88%) Informatica
18 80 (0.87%) F5
19 76 (0.83%) Remedy