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

6 months to
24 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 9,529 4,619 7,050
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.93% 18.44% 18.87%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.46% 59.15% 62.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,699 3,018 4,597
10th Percentile £380 £337 £357
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 £527 £550
% change year-on-year -0.38% -4.18% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 753 345 537
10th Percentile £18.20 £18.50 £14.41
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £27.13 £57.44
Median % change year-on-year +132.76% -52.78% -4.27%
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.50 £78.22 £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 13,719 7,809 11,369
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.58% 31.18% 30.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,272 4,915 7,009
10th Percentile £350 £281 £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 1,038 510 1,012
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.01
25th Percentile £22.81 £20.06 £20.25
Median hourly rate £52.50 £30.00 £42.25
Median % change year-on-year +75.00% -28.99% -23.18%
75th Percentile £73.46 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.36 £77.59 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £29.25 £40.33
% change year-on-year +70.94% -27.46% -26.85%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 3,378 £525 - 489
South East +1 2,303 £550 - 459
South West 0 1,311 £538 -4.44% 328
North of England +2 992 £500 - 257
Midlands +2 920 £469 -10.67% 120
West Midlands +1 797 £469 -10.67% 82
North West 0 535 £525 +5.00% 150
East of England +2 355 £550 +10.00% 109
Yorkshire -5 256 £500 +1.63% 58
North East +1 232 £475 -1.04% 52
East Midlands -4 112 £438 -7.89% 38
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
1 338 (3.55%) Confluence
2 215 (2.26%) SharePoint
3 141 (1.48%) SAS
4 121 (1.27%) Microsoft Exchange
5 88 (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 (0.30%) WebLogic
11 21 (0.22%) Tomcat
12 19 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
13 16 (0.17%) CMS
13 16 (0.17%) IIS
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 (0.094%) ArcGIS
19 8 (0.084%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 159 (1.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 129 (1.35%) Microsoft Office
3 76 (0.80%) Microsoft Project
4 74 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 39 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 14 (0.15%) Simulink
6 14 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
7 10 (0.10%) SOLIDWORKS
8 9 (0.094%) AutoCAD
8 9 (0.094%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.094%) Revit
9 5 (0.052%) Notepad++
10 4 (0.042%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.031%) 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 98 (1.03%) SAP S/4HANA
2 58 (0.61%) Remedy ITSM
3 44 (0.46%) Oracle ERP
4 31 (0.33%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 30 (0.31%) Teamcenter
6 28 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
7 21 (0.22%) 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 11 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
13 10 (0.10%) SAP ERP
14 9 (0.094%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 9 (0.094%) Oracle Assets
14 9 (0.094%) Salesforce CRM
14 9 (0.094%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,651 (17.33%) Azure
2 1,625 (17.05%) AWS
3 372 (3.90%) Azure DevOps
3 372 (3.90%) GitHub
4 368 (3.86%) Power Platform
5 350 (3.67%) GCP
6 246 (2.58%) Serverless
7 241 (2.53%) Entra ID
7 241 (2.53%) Microsoft 365
8 229 (2.40%) GitHub Actions
9 212 (2.22%) Amazon S3
10 168 (1.76%) AWS Lambda
11 151 (1.58%) Amazon EC2
12 137 (1.44%) OpenShift
13 134 (1.41%) SaaS
14 132 (1.39%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 128 (1.34%) PaaS
16 125 (1.31%) OCI
17 108 (1.13%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 100 (1.05%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 408 (4.28%) Firewall
2 287 (3.01%) DNS
3 220 (2.31%) Network Security
4 201 (2.11%) WAN
5 184 (1.93%) LAN
6 159 (1.67%) VPN
7 152 (1.60%) DHCP
8 132 (1.39%) BGP
9 111 (1.16%) OSPF
9 111 (1.16%) Wi-Fi
10 103 (1.08%) VLAN
11 94 (0.99%) TCP/IP
12 79 (0.83%) Wireless
13 59 (0.62%) MPLS
14 56 (0.59%) SD-WAN
15 54 (0.57%) VXLAN
16 51 (0.54%) SAN
17 50 (0.52%) IPsec
18 49 (0.51%) BIG-IP
18 49 (0.51%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 277 (2.91%) Power BI
2 237 (2.49%) PostgreSQL
3 221 (2.32%) Data Warehouse
4 212 (2.22%) SQL Server
5 140 (1.47%) Oracle Database
6 119 (1.25%) Metadata
7 106 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
7 106 (1.11%) Data Lake
8 97 (1.02%) Relational Database
9 84 (0.88%) Pentaho
10 81 (0.85%) MongoDB
11 73 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
11 73 (0.77%) MySQL
11 73 (0.77%) Oracle Reports
12 67 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
13 66 (0.69%) NoSQL
14 61 (0.64%) Amazon Athena
15 59 (0.62%) Tableau
16 43 (0.45%) Azure SQL Database
16 43 (0.45%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 535 (5.61%) JIRA
2 426 (4.47%) Git
3 408 (4.28%) GitLab
4 371 (3.89%) Jenkins
5 101 (1.06%) Selenium
6 81 (0.85%) JUnit
7 72 (0.76%) SonarQube
8 68 (0.71%) Postman
9 58 (0.61%) Rational DOORS
10 53 (0.56%) JMeter
11 51 (0.54%) Cucumber
12 43 (0.45%) Artifactory
12 43 (0.45%) Mockito
13 42 (0.44%) Maven
14 41 (0.43%) Bitbucket
15 37 (0.39%) Visual Studio
15 37 (0.39%) Zephyr
16 34 (0.36%) REST Assured
17 33 (0.35%) Cypress.io
18 30 (0.31%) WebDriver
General
1 2,034 (21.35%) Public Sector
2 1,930 (20.25%) Social Skills
3 664 (6.97%) Analytical Skills
4 638 (6.70%) Finance
5 322 (3.38%) Military
6 271 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
7 270 (2.83%) Aerospace
8 141 (1.48%) Legal
9 129 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
10 124 (1.30%) Banking
11 107 (1.12%) Telecoms
12 96 (1.01%) Law
13 93 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
14 77 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
15 74 (0.78%) Manufacturing
16 66 (0.69%) Police
17 65 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 46 (0.48%) Marketing
19 39 (0.41%) Aviation
20 37 (0.39%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,393 (14.62%) Architect
2 936 (9.82%) Developer
3 820 (8.61%) Senior
4 746 (7.83%) Lead
5 622 (6.53%) Analyst
6 461 (4.84%) Data Engineer
7 426 (4.47%) Consultant
8 415 (4.36%) DevOps Engineer
9 299 (3.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 298 (3.13%) Software Engineer
11 280 (2.94%) Technical Architect
12 256 (2.69%) Network Engineer
13 232 (2.43%) Solutions Architect
14 208 (2.18%) Business Analyst
15 206 (2.16%) Security Architect
16 204 (2.14%) Project Manager
17 193 (2.03%) Delivery Manager
18 180 (1.89%) Administrator
19 178 (1.87%) Azure Engineer
20 175 (1.84%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 293 (3.07%) REST
2 221 (2.32%) Spring
3 184 (1.93%) Spring Boot
4 173 (1.82%) React
5 161 (1.69%) .NET
6 152 (1.60%) Node.js
7 147 (1.54%) Kafka
8 144 (1.51%) RESTful
9 126 (1.32%) SOAP
10 123 (1.29%) LDAP
11 113 (1.19%) AngularJS
12 110 (1.15%) JSON
13 95 (1.00%) OAuth
13 95 (1.00%) PySpark
14 89 (0.93%) Web Services
15 85 (0.89%) HTML
16 76 (0.80%) XML
17 75 (0.79%) OpenID
18 70 (0.73%) Middleware
19 68 (0.71%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 373 (3.91%) Cloud Native
2 327 (3.43%) Product Ownership
3 295 (3.10%) Onboarding
4 278 (2.92%) Data Centre
5 151 (1.58%) Legacy Systems
5 151 (1.58%) Management Information System
6 136 (1.43%) PKI
7 132 (1.39%) Distributed Systems
8 110 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
9 104 (1.09%) Replication
10 101 (1.06%) Security Posture
10 101 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
11 88 (0.92%) CMDB
12 86 (0.90%) Hybrid Cloud
13 85 (0.89%) Data Structures
14 84 (0.88%) Clustering
15 75 (0.79%) Public Cloud
16 71 (0.75%) Security Operations Centre
17 68 (0.71%) Operational Technology
18 65 (0.68%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 769 (8.07%) Windows
2 636 (6.67%) Linux
3 242 (2.54%) Windows Server
4 176 (1.85%) Unix
5 120 (1.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 82 (0.86%) Windows 10
7 76 (0.80%) Android
8 50 (0.52%) Solaris
9 47 (0.49%) Apple iOS
10 37 (0.39%) Mac OS
11 31 (0.33%) Ubuntu
12 28 (0.29%) AIX
13 23 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 22 (0.23%) CentOS
15 20 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
16 15 (0.16%) VMS
17 14 (0.15%) Windows 7
18 11 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
18 11 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
18 11 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,915 (20.10%) Agile
2 1,471 (15.44%) DevOps
3 1,310 (13.75%) CI/CD
4 996 (10.45%) Problem-Solving
5 993 (10.42%) Stakeholder Management
6 953 (10.00%) Continuous Improvement
7 765 (8.03%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 762 (8.00%) Migration
9 700 (7.35%) Infrastructure as Code
10 627 (6.58%) Cybersecurity
11 595 (6.24%) ITIL
12 577 (6.06%) Test Automation
13 576 (6.04%) Software Engineering
14 558 (5.86%) Analytics
15 545 (5.72%) Containerisation
16 536 (5.62%) Roadmaps
17 493 (5.17%) Decision-Making
18 491 (5.15%) Data Modelling
19 470 (4.93%) AI
20 451 (4.73%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 1,000 (10.49%) Python
2 905 (9.50%) SQL
3 610 (6.40%) Java
4 454 (4.76%) PowerShell
5 281 (2.95%) JavaScript
6 203 (2.13%) C#
7 195 (2.05%) Bash
8 150 (1.57%) TypeScript
9 124 (1.30%) PL/SQL
10 88 (0.92%) C++
11 86 (0.90%) Shell Script
12 70 (0.73%) Bicep
13 65 (0.68%) C
14 55 (0.58%) Go
15 48 (0.50%) Ada
16 43 (0.45%) Scala
17 40 (0.42%) Apex Code
17 40 (0.42%) Ruby
18 35 (0.37%) MATLAB
19 33 (0.35%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 7,198 (75.54%) SC Cleared
2 1,839 (19.30%) DV Cleared
3 384 (4.03%) Degree
4 282 (2.96%) BPSS Clearance
5 185 (1.94%) Cisco Certification
6 161 (1.69%) CISSP
7 127 (1.33%) Azure Certification
8 109 (1.14%) Microsoft Certification
9 103 (1.08%) AWS Certification
10 101 (1.06%) CCNP
11 99 (1.04%) CISM
12 79 (0.83%) CCNA
12 79 (0.83%) PMP
13 78 (0.82%) PMI Certification
14 65 (0.68%) ISTQB
15 56 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 54 (0.57%) Computer Science Degree
17 48 (0.50%) ITIL Certification
18 40 (0.42%) GIAC
19 36 (0.38%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 369 (3.87%) QA
2 291 (3.05%) Data Quality
2 291 (3.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 290 (3.04%) NIST
4 212 (2.22%) NCSC
5 181 (1.90%) Accessibility
6 172 (1.81%) PMO
7 166 (1.74%) GDPR
8 100 (1.05%) SLA
9 84 (0.88%) GRC
10 59 (0.62%) JSP 440
11 45 (0.47%) Cyber Essentials
12 44 (0.46%) WCAG
13 42 (0.44%) NIST 800
14 33 (0.35%) Def Stans
15 28 (0.29%) RMADS
16 24 (0.25%) Government Security Classifications
16 24 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 22 (0.23%) COBIT
18 19 (0.20%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 597 (6.27%) Docker
2 428 (4.49%) Active Directory
3 287 (3.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 114 (1.20%) VMware ESXi
5 105 (1.10%) VMware NSX
6 79 (0.83%) vSphere
7 76 (0.80%) Hyper-V
8 68 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
9 32 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
10 31 (0.33%) Firmware
11 23 (0.24%) BitLocker
12 22 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
13 21 (0.22%) vCloud
14 19 (0.20%) Postfix
15 18 (0.19%) NFS
16 15 (0.16%) Squid
17 14 (0.15%) Slurm Workload Manager
18 9 (0.094%) Microsoft App-V
19 6 (0.063%) Corosync
19 6 (0.063%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 771 (8.09%) Terraform
2 751 (7.88%) Kubernetes
3 331 (3.47%) Ansible
4 227 (2.38%) Grafana
5 186 (1.95%) Prometheus
6 111 (1.16%) vCenter Server
7 76 (0.80%) SCCM
8 74 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
9 56 (0.59%) Microsoft Intune
10 53 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 48 (0.50%) Argo
11 48 (0.50%) FortiGate
12 41 (0.43%) Puppet
13 39 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
13 39 (0.41%) SCOM
14 35 (0.37%) Podman
15 28 (0.29%) Progress Chef
16 24 (0.25%) Nagios
17 23 (0.24%) vMotion
18 22 (0.23%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,012 (10.62%) Microsoft
2 674 (7.07%) Oracle
3 461 (4.84%) VMware
4 404 (4.24%) ServiceNow
5 306 (3.21%) Cisco
6 304 (3.19%) SAP
7 196 (2.06%) Splunk
8 170 (1.78%) Databricks
9 156 (1.64%) Google
10 147 (1.54%) Red Hat
11 129 (1.35%) Talend
12 125 (1.31%) Salesforce
13 114 (1.20%) IBM
14 107 (1.12%) Palo Alto
15 100 (1.05%) Informatica
16 93 (0.98%) Juniper
17 84 (0.88%) F5
18 83 (0.87%) SolarWinds
19 80 (0.84%) Dynatrace
19 80 (0.84%) Fortinet