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

6 months to
1 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 9,192 4,512 7,155
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.77% 18.53% 19.24%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.82% 59.17% 61.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,367 2,996 4,671
10th Percentile £363 £331 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £529 £550
% change year-on-year -0.76% -3.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 780 266 491
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.54 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £55.00 £57.33
Median % change year-on-year - -4.06% -4.45%
75th Percentile £73.46 £68.00 £72.33
90th Percentile £85.26 £80.05 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £54.50 £50.20 £57.33
% change year-on-year +8.58% -12.45% -4.45%

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 13,166 7,626 11,630
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.61% 31.33% 31.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,835 4,847 7,139
10th Percentile £341 £290 £302
25th Percentile £425 £415 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £629 £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 988 435 986
10th Percentile £17.10 £18.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £22.39 £18.13
Median hourly rate £47.50 £45.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% +12.50% -23.51%
75th Percentile £71.50 £67.75 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.40 £81.74 £75.25
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 1 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 1 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 1 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 3,244 £525 - 455
South East +1 2,189 £538 -2.27% 470
South West 0 1,334 £538 -4.44% 284
Midlands +3 909 £475 -9.52% 150
North of England -1 849 £488 -2.50% 249
West Midlands +3 770 £475 -9.52% 118
North West -2 499 £500 - 131
East of England +2 382 £525 +16.67% 123
Yorkshire -4 217 £484 -7.86% 50
North East +1 166 £450 -12.62% 72
East Midlands -4 133 £450 -5.26% 32
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
1 355 (3.86%) Confluence
2 202 (2.20%) SharePoint
3 125 (1.36%) Microsoft Exchange
4 112 (1.22%) SAS
5 82 (0.89%) Apache Spark
6 70 (0.76%) Apache
7 53 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
8 33 (0.36%) nginx
8 33 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 22 (0.24%) Jupyter
10 16 (0.17%) IIS
11 14 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
11 14 (0.15%) Tomcat
11 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
12 13 (0.14%) CMS
12 13 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
12 13 (0.14%) Skype for Business
13 9 (0.098%) Palantir Foundry
14 8 (0.087%) Apache Superset
14 8 (0.087%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 210 (2.28%) Microsoft Office
2 185 (2.01%) Microsoft Excel
3 119 (1.29%) Microsoft Project
4 83 (0.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 39 (0.42%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.30%) 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 81 (0.88%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (0.49%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 43 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
4 29 (0.32%) Dynamics CRM
5 27 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
6 26 (0.28%) Teamcenter
7 19 (0.21%) Maximo
8 13 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
8 13 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.14%) Temenos T24
9 12 (0.13%) SAP PP
9 12 (0.13%) SAP PSCD
10 11 (0.12%) Findur
11 10 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
11 10 (0.11%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.098%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 8 (0.087%) iTrent
13 8 (0.087%) Primavera
13 8 (0.087%) SAP HR
13 8 (0.087%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,573 (17.11%) Azure
2 1,502 (16.34%) AWS
3 385 (4.19%) GitHub
4 378 (4.11%) GCP
5 356 (3.87%) Azure DevOps
6 341 (3.71%) Power Platform
7 259 (2.82%) Serverless
8 246 (2.68%) Microsoft 365
9 226 (2.46%) Entra ID
10 216 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
11 201 (2.19%) Amazon S3
12 172 (1.87%) AWS Lambda
13 129 (1.40%) Amazon EC2
13 129 (1.40%) PaaS
14 126 (1.37%) OpenShift
15 114 (1.24%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 113 (1.23%) AWS CloudFormation
16 113 (1.23%) IaaS
17 108 (1.17%) OCI
18 104 (1.13%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 422 (4.59%) Firewall
2 268 (2.92%) DNS
3 217 (2.36%) WAN
4 215 (2.34%) Network Security
5 196 (2.13%) LAN
6 162 (1.76%) VPN
7 141 (1.53%) BGP
7 141 (1.53%) DHCP
8 123 (1.34%) OSPF
9 104 (1.13%) TCP/IP
10 96 (1.04%) Wi-Fi
11 94 (1.02%) VLAN
12 78 (0.85%) Wireless
13 59 (0.64%) MPLS
14 51 (0.55%) SAN
15 50 (0.54%) VXLAN
16 49 (0.53%) SD-WAN
17 46 (0.50%) IPsec
18 44 (0.48%) Ethernet VPN
19 43 (0.47%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 260 (2.83%) Power BI
2 224 (2.44%) PostgreSQL
3 197 (2.14%) Data Warehouse
4 184 (2.00%) SQL Server
5 123 (1.34%) Metadata
6 108 (1.17%) Amazon RDS
7 104 (1.13%) Oracle Database
8 92 (1.00%) NoSQL
9 85 (0.92%) Relational Database
10 84 (0.91%) MongoDB
11 77 (0.84%) Data Lake
11 77 (0.84%) Pentaho
12 71 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
13 69 (0.75%) Azure SQL Database
14 66 (0.72%) MySQL
15 64 (0.70%) Oracle Reports
16 62 (0.67%) Amazon Redshift
17 61 (0.66%) Tableau
18 53 (0.58%) Amazon Athena
19 50 (0.54%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 566 (6.16%) JIRA
2 430 (4.68%) Git
3 346 (3.76%) Jenkins
4 325 (3.54%) GitLab
5 87 (0.95%) Selenium
6 74 (0.81%) Postman
7 71 (0.77%) JUnit
8 57 (0.62%) SonarQube
9 48 (0.52%) Rational DOORS
10 46 (0.50%) Bitbucket
11 42 (0.46%) Artifactory
12 41 (0.45%) Maven
13 38 (0.41%) Cucumber
13 38 (0.41%) JMeter
13 38 (0.41%) Mockito
14 36 (0.39%) Cypress.io
15 32 (0.35%) Visual Studio
16 29 (0.32%) Oracle APEX
17 27 (0.29%) Zephyr
18 24 (0.26%) MSI
General
1 2,031 (22.10%) Public Sector
2 2,014 (21.91%) Social Skills
3 730 (7.94%) Analytical Skills
4 649 (7.06%) Finance
5 335 (3.64%) Military
6 259 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
7 219 (2.38%) Aerospace
8 143 (1.56%) Legal
9 131 (1.43%) Telecoms
10 124 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
11 118 (1.28%) Manufacturing
12 109 (1.19%) Banking
13 102 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
14 93 (1.01%) Presentation Skills
15 87 (0.95%) Law
16 66 (0.72%) Marketing
17 59 (0.64%) Electronics
17 59 (0.64%) Police
18 57 (0.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 35 (0.38%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,354 (14.73%) Architect
2 884 (9.62%) Developer
3 789 (8.58%) Senior
4 659 (7.17%) Analyst
5 639 (6.95%) Lead
6 432 (4.70%) Data Engineer
7 417 (4.54%) Consultant
8 399 (4.34%) DevOps Engineer
9 276 (3.00%) Network Engineer
9 276 (3.00%) Software Engineer
10 261 (2.84%) Technical Architect
11 252 (2.74%) Business Analyst
12 238 (2.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 208 (2.26%) Project Manager
14 199 (2.16%) Solutions Architect
15 196 (2.13%) Azure Engineer
16 169 (1.84%) Delivery Manager
17 168 (1.83%) Administrator
18 167 (1.82%) Security Architect
19 163 (1.77%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 310 (3.37%) REST
2 211 (2.30%) Spring
3 171 (1.86%) Node.js
4 166 (1.81%) Spring Boot
5 164 (1.78%) Kafka
6 161 (1.75%) React
7 156 (1.70%) .NET
8 139 (1.51%) LDAP
9 135 (1.47%) RESTful
9 135 (1.47%) SOAP
10 133 (1.45%) JSON
11 112 (1.22%) AngularJS
12 100 (1.09%) PySpark
13 99 (1.08%) Web Services
14 87 (0.95%) Oracle Fusion
15 85 (0.92%) HTML
16 83 (0.90%) OAuth
17 82 (0.89%) XML
18 70 (0.76%) Elastic Stack
19 64 (0.70%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 314 (3.42%) Product Ownership
2 306 (3.33%) Cloud Native
3 274 (2.98%) Data Centre
4 257 (2.80%) Onboarding
5 169 (1.84%) PKI
6 144 (1.57%) Management Information System
7 124 (1.35%) Legacy Systems
8 121 (1.32%) Security Posture
9 117 (1.27%) Enterprise Software
9 117 (1.27%) Replication
10 111 (1.21%) Self-Motivation
11 104 (1.13%) Distributed Systems
12 77 (0.84%) Clustering
13 75 (0.82%) Data Structures
14 74 (0.81%) Hybrid Cloud
14 74 (0.81%) Public Cloud
15 65 (0.71%) Security Operations Centre
16 64 (0.70%) Virtual Team
17 56 (0.61%) Cyber Threat
18 55 (0.60%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 780 (8.49%) Windows
2 645 (7.02%) Linux
3 228 (2.48%) Windows Server
4 147 (1.60%) Unix
5 108 (1.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 100 (1.09%) Android
7 99 (1.08%) Windows 10
8 51 (0.55%) Apple iOS
9 47 (0.51%) Mac OS
10 36 (0.39%) Ubuntu
11 33 (0.36%) Solaris
12 29 (0.32%) VMS
13 25 (0.27%) AIX
14 23 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
15 22 (0.24%) CentOS
16 20 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
17 15 (0.16%) Windows 7
18 12 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
19 10 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
20 8 (0.087%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,841 (20.03%) Agile
2 1,399 (15.22%) DevOps
3 1,206 (13.12%) CI/CD
4 1,033 (11.24%) Problem-Solving
5 878 (9.55%) Stakeholder Management
6 804 (8.75%) Continuous Improvement
7 792 (8.62%) Migration
8 674 (7.33%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 612 (6.66%) ITIL
10 609 (6.63%) Infrastructure as Code
11 536 (5.83%) Cybersecurity
12 527 (5.73%) Analytics
12 527 (5.73%) Test Automation
13 515 (5.60%) Software Engineering
14 499 (5.43%) Roadmaps
15 490 (5.33%) Containerisation
16 455 (4.95%) Data Modelling
17 432 (4.70%) Scrum
18 413 (4.49%) Decision-Making
19 409 (4.45%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 1,007 (10.96%) Python
2 849 (9.24%) SQL
3 567 (6.17%) Java
4 516 (5.61%) PowerShell
5 304 (3.31%) JavaScript
6 199 (2.16%) C#
7 172 (1.87%) Bash
8 151 (1.64%) TypeScript
9 102 (1.11%) PL/SQL
10 95 (1.03%) C++
11 88 (0.96%) Shell Script
12 68 (0.74%) Go
13 64 (0.70%) Scala
14 60 (0.65%) C
15 56 (0.61%) Ruby
16 52 (0.57%) Bicep
17 43 (0.47%) Apex Code
18 41 (0.45%) Ada
19 40 (0.44%) R
20 38 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 6,921 (75.29%) SC Cleared
2 1,723 (18.74%) DV Cleared
3 428 (4.66%) Degree
4 273 (2.97%) BPSS Clearance
5 170 (1.85%) Cisco Certification
6 152 (1.65%) CISSP
7 129 (1.40%) Azure Certification
8 110 (1.20%) CCNP
9 108 (1.17%) AWS Certification
10 97 (1.06%) CISM
11 92 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
12 71 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
12 71 (0.77%) PMP
13 68 (0.74%) CCNA
14 67 (0.73%) TOGAF Certification
15 62 (0.67%) PMI Certification
16 61 (0.66%) Computer Science Degree
17 56 (0.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 51 (0.55%) ISTQB
19 48 (0.52%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 337 (3.67%) QA
2 269 (2.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 266 (2.89%) Data Quality
4 265 (2.88%) NIST
5 184 (2.00%) NCSC
6 154 (1.68%) Accessibility
7 152 (1.65%) PMO
8 148 (1.61%) GDPR
9 103 (1.12%) SLA
10 63 (0.69%) JSP 440
11 61 (0.66%) GRC
12 46 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials
13 40 (0.44%) COBIT
14 39 (0.42%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.36%) WCAG
16 31 (0.34%) Def Stans
16 31 (0.34%) PCI DSS
17 26 (0.28%) RMADS
18 24 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 19 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 581 (6.32%) Docker
2 441 (4.80%) Active Directory
3 263 (2.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 91 (0.99%) VMware ESXi
5 82 (0.89%) VMware NSX
6 76 (0.83%) Hyper-V
7 74 (0.81%) vSphere
8 66 (0.72%) 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 (0.18%) NFS
12 17 (0.18%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 16 (0.17%) Postfix
14 12 (0.13%) 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
1 755 (8.21%) Kubernetes
2 721 (7.84%) Terraform
3 314 (3.42%) Ansible
4 229 (2.49%) Grafana
5 186 (2.02%) Prometheus
6 95 (1.03%) vCenter Server
7 89 (0.97%) Single Sign-On
8 77 (0.84%) SCCM
9 56 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 53 (0.58%) Microsoft Intune
11 52 (0.57%) FortiGate
12 49 (0.53%) Argo
13 38 (0.41%) Puppet
14 36 (0.39%) Podman
15 32 (0.35%) Progress Chef
16 30 (0.33%) Nagios
16 30 (0.33%) OPNET
16 30 (0.33%) Packer
17 29 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
18 26 (0.28%) Kibana
Vendors
1 978 (10.64%) Microsoft
2 572 (6.22%) Oracle
3 459 (4.99%) VMware
4 377 (4.10%) ServiceNow
5 350 (3.81%) Cisco
6 328 (3.57%) SAP
7 215 (2.34%) Splunk
8 172 (1.87%) Databricks
9 153 (1.66%) Red Hat
10 150 (1.63%) Google
11 117 (1.27%) IBM
12 112 (1.22%) Palo Alto
13 107 (1.16%) Juniper
13 107 (1.16%) Salesforce
14 105 (1.14%) Atlassian
14 105 (1.14%) Talend
15 94 (1.02%) CyberArk
16 83 (0.90%) Remedy
17 80 (0.87%) F5
18 77 (0.84%) SolarWinds