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

6 months to
13 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 9,045 4,470 6,977
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.44% 18.53% 19.09%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.98% 58.84% 61.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,281 2,973 4,578
10th Percentile £368 £340 £353
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 £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 738 270 489
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.20 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £50.00 £57.29
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -12.72% -4.53%
75th Percentile £74.00 £67.44 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.40 £78.39 £83.88
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £42.50 £57.09
% change year-on-year +29.41% -25.55% -4.86%

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 12,925 7,597 11,354
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.06% 31.50% 31.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,674 4,832 6,983
10th Percentile £343 £288 £313
25th Percentile £425 £414 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £533
% change year-on-year -0.95% -1.50% -3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 942 432 976
10th Percentile £17.05 £18.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £22.27 £18.00
Median hourly rate £48.72 £40.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +21.80% - -23.81%
75th Percentile £73.00 £67.50 £61.82
90th Percentile £85.50 £81.35 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £37.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +33.33% -6.25% -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 13 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 13 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 13 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 3,210 £525 - 487
South East +1 2,195 £538 -2.27% 506
South West 0 1,288 £538 -6.52% 321
Midlands +4 861 £475 -9.52% 169
North of England -2 853 £488 -2.50% 302
West Midlands +4 730 £475 -11.55% 126
North West -2 496 £498 -0.32% 169
East of England +2 371 £550 +10.00% 147
Yorkshire -13 205 £475 -5.00% 60
North East +1 186 £475 -3.06% 75
East Midlands -3 125 £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
1 350 (3.87%) Confluence
2 204 (2.26%) SharePoint
3 123 (1.36%) Microsoft Exchange
4 114 (1.26%) SAS
5 79 (0.87%) Apache Spark
6 68 (0.75%) Apache
7 56 (0.62%) Apache Airflow
8 32 (0.35%) WebLogic
9 29 (0.32%) nginx
10 24 (0.27%) Jupyter
11 17 (0.19%) Tomcat
12 15 (0.17%) IIS
12 15 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
13 14 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
13 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
14 13 (0.14%) Skype for Business
15 12 (0.13%) CMS
16 8 (0.088%) Apache Superset
16 8 (0.088%) ArcGIS
16 8 (0.088%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 191 (2.11%) Microsoft Office
2 183 (2.02%) Microsoft Excel
3 110 (1.22%) Microsoft Project
4 81 (0.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 36 (0.40%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.12%) Simulink
8 7 (0.077%) AutoCAD
9 6 (0.066%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.055%) Notepad++
10 5 (0.055%) 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 88 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.46%) Remedy ITSM
3 37 (0.41%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 27 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
4 27 (0.30%) Teamcenter
5 24 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
6 15 (0.17%) Maximo
7 14 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
7 14 (0.15%) SAP PSCD
8 13 (0.14%) Temenos T24
9 12 (0.13%) Findur
10 10 (0.11%) iTrent
10 10 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
11 9 (0.100%) Integrated Workplace Management System
11 9 (0.100%) SAP HCM
11 9 (0.100%) SAP PP
12 8 (0.088%) SAP HR
12 8 (0.088%) SAP MM
12 8 (0.088%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,548 (17.11%) Azure
2 1,493 (16.51%) AWS
3 372 (4.11%) GCP
4 368 (4.07%) GitHub
5 338 (3.74%) Azure DevOps
6 330 (3.65%) Power Platform
7 235 (2.60%) Serverless
8 233 (2.58%) Microsoft 365
9 227 (2.51%) Entra ID
10 210 (2.32%) GitHub Actions
11 189 (2.09%) Amazon S3
12 160 (1.77%) AWS Lambda
13 133 (1.47%) PaaS
14 132 (1.46%) Amazon EC2
15 125 (1.38%) OpenShift
16 113 (1.25%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 112 (1.24%) OCI
18 104 (1.15%) AWS CloudFormation
19 103 (1.14%) IaaS
20 101 (1.12%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 422 (4.67%) Firewall
2 261 (2.89%) DNS
3 208 (2.30%) WAN
4 206 (2.28%) Network Security
5 190 (2.10%) LAN
6 149 (1.65%) VPN
7 140 (1.55%) BGP
8 138 (1.53%) DHCP
9 121 (1.34%) OSPF
10 108 (1.19%) TCP/IP
11 96 (1.06%) Wi-Fi
12 91 (1.01%) VLAN
13 73 (0.81%) Wireless
14 58 (0.64%) MPLS
15 51 (0.56%) VXLAN
16 50 (0.55%) SAN
17 48 (0.53%) SD-WAN
18 47 (0.52%) IPsec
19 46 (0.51%) Structured Cabling
20 45 (0.50%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 254 (2.81%) Power BI
2 212 (2.34%) PostgreSQL
3 196 (2.17%) Data Warehouse
4 183 (2.02%) SQL Server
5 114 (1.26%) Metadata
6 103 (1.14%) Oracle Database
7 100 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
8 82 (0.91%) NoSQL
9 80 (0.88%) MongoDB
9 80 (0.88%) Relational Database
10 79 (0.87%) Pentaho
11 78 (0.86%) Data Lake
12 71 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
13 66 (0.73%) Oracle Reports
14 63 (0.70%) Azure SQL Database
15 61 (0.67%) Amazon Redshift
16 60 (0.66%) Tableau
17 59 (0.65%) MySQL
18 51 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
19 47 (0.52%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 552 (6.10%) JIRA
2 408 (4.51%) Git
3 346 (3.83%) Jenkins
4 334 (3.69%) GitLab
5 86 (0.95%) Selenium
6 74 (0.82%) Postman
7 67 (0.74%) JUnit
8 56 (0.62%) SonarQube
9 54 (0.60%) Rational DOORS
10 49 (0.54%) Artifactory
11 42 (0.46%) Bitbucket
12 41 (0.45%) JMeter
13 38 (0.42%) Maven
14 37 (0.41%) Cucumber
15 36 (0.40%) Mockito
16 35 (0.39%) Visual Studio
17 31 (0.34%) Cypress.io
18 28 (0.31%) Zephyr
19 24 (0.27%) REST Assured
20 23 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,952 (21.58%) Public Sector
2 1,906 (21.07%) Social Skills
3 679 (7.51%) Analytical Skills
4 640 (7.08%) Finance
5 332 (3.67%) Military
6 257 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
7 221 (2.44%) Aerospace
8 143 (1.58%) Legal
9 116 (1.28%) Telecoms
10 104 (1.15%) Banking
10 104 (1.15%) Influencing Skills
11 102 (1.13%) Organisational Skills
12 100 (1.11%) Manufacturing
13 85 (0.94%) Presentation Skills
14 84 (0.93%) Law
15 59 (0.65%) Police
16 53 (0.59%) Marketing
17 49 (0.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 48 (0.53%) Electronics
19 38 (0.42%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,335 (14.76%) Architect
2 822 (9.09%) Developer
3 754 (8.34%) Senior
4 637 (7.04%) Analyst
5 635 (7.02%) Lead
6 445 (4.92%) Data Engineer
7 410 (4.53%) DevOps Engineer
8 408 (4.51%) Consultant
9 273 (3.02%) Network Engineer
10 269 (2.97%) Software Engineer
11 258 (2.85%) Technical Architect
12 247 (2.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 237 (2.62%) Business Analyst
14 212 (2.34%) Project Manager
15 203 (2.24%) Solutions Architect
16 193 (2.13%) Azure Engineer
17 170 (1.88%) Designer
18 169 (1.87%) Security Architect
19 167 (1.85%) Delivery Manager
20 165 (1.82%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 285 (3.15%) REST
2 212 (2.34%) Spring
3 171 (1.89%) Spring Boot
4 161 (1.78%) Node.js
5 160 (1.77%) Kafka
6 158 (1.75%) React
7 153 (1.69%) .NET
8 145 (1.60%) LDAP
9 132 (1.46%) SOAP
10 129 (1.43%) RESTful
11 112 (1.24%) JSON
12 108 (1.19%) AngularJS
13 102 (1.13%) Web Services
14 97 (1.07%) PySpark
15 90 (1.00%) Oracle Fusion
16 84 (0.93%) OAuth
17 78 (0.86%) HTML
18 75 (0.83%) XML
19 68 (0.75%) Elastic Stack
20 64 (0.71%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 317 (3.50%) Cloud Native
2 308 (3.41%) Product Ownership
3 271 (3.00%) Data Centre
4 254 (2.81%) Onboarding
5 146 (1.61%) PKI
6 141 (1.56%) Management Information System
7 122 (1.35%) Security Posture
8 121 (1.34%) Legacy Systems
9 115 (1.27%) Replication
10 111 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
11 107 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
12 90 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
13 81 (0.90%) Clustering
14 76 (0.84%) Data Structures
15 74 (0.82%) Hybrid Cloud
16 71 (0.78%) Public Cloud
17 66 (0.73%) Security Operations Centre
18 62 (0.69%) Virtual Team
19 59 (0.65%) Operational Technology
20 57 (0.63%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 761 (8.41%) Windows
2 626 (6.92%) Linux
3 231 (2.55%) Windows Server
4 158 (1.75%) Unix
5 111 (1.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 92 (1.02%) Android
7 84 (0.93%) Windows 10
8 52 (0.57%) Apple iOS
9 43 (0.48%) Mac OS
10 39 (0.43%) Solaris
11 36 (0.40%) Ubuntu
12 25 (0.28%) VMS
13 24 (0.27%) AIX
14 23 (0.25%) CentOS
14 23 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
15 22 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
16 14 (0.15%) Windows 7
17 11 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
18 9 (0.100%) Windows Server 2003
18 9 (0.100%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,781 (19.69%) Agile
2 1,385 (15.31%) DevOps
3 1,208 (13.36%) CI/CD
4 997 (11.02%) Problem-Solving
5 878 (9.71%) Stakeholder Management
6 793 (8.77%) Continuous Improvement
7 741 (8.19%) Migration
8 659 (7.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 610 (6.74%) Infrastructure as Code
10 595 (6.58%) ITIL
11 544 (6.01%) Cybersecurity
12 520 (5.75%) Test Automation
13 509 (5.63%) Analytics
13 509 (5.63%) Software Engineering
14 494 (5.46%) Roadmaps
15 491 (5.43%) Containerisation
16 454 (5.02%) Data Modelling
17 426 (4.71%) Decision-Making
18 411 (4.54%) Scrum
19 387 (4.28%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 973 (10.76%) Python
2 827 (9.14%) SQL
3 552 (6.10%) Java
4 494 (5.46%) PowerShell
5 271 (3.00%) JavaScript
6 197 (2.18%) C#
7 176 (1.95%) Bash
8 135 (1.49%) TypeScript
9 90 (1.00%) PL/SQL
10 89 (0.98%) C++
11 84 (0.93%) Shell Script
12 66 (0.73%) Go
13 62 (0.69%) Scala
14 56 (0.62%) C
15 50 (0.55%) Bicep
16 47 (0.52%) Ruby
17 40 (0.44%) Apex Code
18 39 (0.43%) Ada
18 39 (0.43%) R
19 36 (0.40%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 6,773 (74.88%) SC Cleared
2 1,745 (19.29%) DV Cleared
3 410 (4.53%) Degree
4 254 (2.81%) BPSS Clearance
5 173 (1.91%) Cisco Certification
6 152 (1.68%) CISSP
7 123 (1.36%) Azure Certification
8 112 (1.24%) CCNP
9 102 (1.13%) AWS Certification
10 101 (1.12%) CISM
11 88 (0.97%) Microsoft Certification
12 73 (0.81%) PMP
13 68 (0.75%) CCNA
14 65 (0.72%) PMI Certification
15 64 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
16 61 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
17 60 (0.66%) ITIL Certification
18 53 (0.59%) ISTQB
19 51 (0.56%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
20 47 (0.52%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 337 (3.73%) QA
2 269 (2.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 266 (2.94%) NIST
4 265 (2.93%) Data Quality
5 177 (1.96%) NCSC
6 160 (1.77%) Accessibility
6 160 (1.77%) PMO
7 148 (1.64%) GDPR
8 98 (1.08%) SLA
9 61 (0.67%) GRC
10 56 (0.62%) JSP 440
11 51 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials
12 36 (0.40%) NIST 800
13 35 (0.39%) WCAG
14 30 (0.33%) Def Stans
15 29 (0.32%) PCI DSS
16 28 (0.31%) COBIT
17 24 (0.27%) RMADS
18 21 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 19 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 561 (6.20%) Docker
2 438 (4.84%) Active Directory
3 264 (2.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 95 (1.05%) VMware ESXi
5 84 (0.93%) VMware NSX
6 74 (0.82%) Hyper-V
7 70 (0.77%) vSphere
8 67 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
9 35 (0.39%) Firmware
10 26 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
11 22 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
12 19 (0.21%) BitLocker
12 19 (0.21%) NFS
13 17 (0.19%) Postfix
13 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 16 (0.18%) vCloud
15 15 (0.17%) Squid
16 8 (0.088%) Microsoft App-V
17 6 (0.066%) Corosync
17 6 (0.066%) KVM
Systems Management
1 717 (7.93%) Kubernetes
2 697 (7.71%) Terraform
3 319 (3.53%) Ansible
4 224 (2.48%) Grafana
5 181 (2.00%) Prometheus
6 98 (1.08%) vCenter Server
7 86 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
8 70 (0.77%) SCCM
9 56 (0.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 51 (0.56%) Microsoft Intune
11 50 (0.55%) FortiGate
12 46 (0.51%) Argo
13 38 (0.42%) Podman
13 38 (0.42%) Puppet
14 32 (0.35%) Progress Chef
15 30 (0.33%) Nagios
16 29 (0.32%) OPNET
16 29 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
17 24 (0.27%) SCOM
18 22 (0.24%) WSUS
Vendors
1 933 (10.32%) Microsoft
2 564 (6.24%) Oracle
3 459 (5.07%) VMware
4 367 (4.06%) ServiceNow
5 324 (3.58%) Cisco
6 320 (3.54%) SAP
7 213 (2.35%) Splunk
8 170 (1.88%) Databricks
9 151 (1.67%) Red Hat
10 149 (1.65%) Google
11 116 (1.28%) Palo Alto
12 115 (1.27%) Talend
13 111 (1.23%) IBM
14 102 (1.13%) Salesforce
15 98 (1.08%) Juniper
16 94 (1.04%) CyberArk
17 91 (1.01%) Atlassian
18 80 (0.88%) Informatica
19 79 (0.87%) F5
19 79 (0.87%) Remedy