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

6 months to
17 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 9,425 4,559 7,093
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.95% 18.43% 18.93%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.42% 58.93% 61.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,594 2,975 4,620
10th Percentile £380 £339 £355
25th Percentile £450 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 754 328 529
10th Percentile £18.20 £18.22 £14.22
25th Percentile £25.15 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £62.25 £28.91 £57.29
Median % change year-on-year +115.32% -49.53% -4.53%
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.50 £80.30 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £60.33 £26.28 £56.49
% change year-on-year +129.57% -53.48% -6.40%

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 13,577 7,736 11,448
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.63% 31.27% 30.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,129 4,859 7,056
10th Percentile £350 £281 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £534
Median % change year-on-year - -1.75% -2.84%
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 1,030 496 1,012
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.68 £20.24 £20.00
Median hourly rate £52.50 £30.31 £41.27
Median % change year-on-year +73.24% -26.56% -24.97%
75th Percentile £73.46 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.36 £81.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £30.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +66.67% -25.00% -27.65%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 3,365 £525 - 478
South East +1 2,254 £550 - 573
South West 0 1,293 £538 -4.44% 448
North of England +2 983 £500 - 350
Midlands +2 905 £469 -10.67% 198
West Midlands +2 787 £469 -10.62% 120
North West 0 536 £520 +3.91% 196
East of England +2 360 £550 +10.00% 175
Yorkshire -6 249 £499 +1.37% 88
North East +1 231 £475 -1.04% 68
East Midlands -5 107 £421 -16.91% 78
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
1 342 (3.63%) Confluence
2 216 (2.29%) SharePoint
3 143 (1.52%) SAS
4 123 (1.31%) Microsoft Exchange
5 84 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
6 81 (0.86%) Apache Spark
7 78 (0.83%) Apache
8 41 (0.44%) Jupyter
9 38 (0.40%) nginx
10 29 (0.31%) WebLogic
11 21 (0.22%) Tomcat
12 18 (0.19%) 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 (0.085%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 156 (1.66%) Microsoft Excel
2 130 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
3 76 (0.81%) Microsoft Project
4 72 (0.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 40 (0.42%) MS Visio
6 15 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.15%) Simulink
8 10 (0.11%) SOLIDWORKS
9 9 (0.095%) AutoCAD
9 9 (0.095%) Chatbot
9 9 (0.095%) Revit
10 5 (0.053%) Notepad++
11 4 (0.042%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.032%) Sketch
13 2 (0.021%) CATIA
13 2 (0.021%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.021%) Lectora
13 2 (0.021%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.021%) Siemens NX
13 2 (0.021%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 97 (1.03%) SAP S/4HANA
2 57 (0.60%) Remedy ITSM
3 40 (0.42%) Oracle ERP
4 32 (0.34%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 30 (0.32%) Teamcenter
6 27 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
7 18 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
8 16 (0.17%) Oracle Payables
9 15 (0.16%) Findur
9 15 (0.16%) SAP PSCD
10 14 (0.15%) Maximo
11 12 (0.13%) iTrent
11 12 (0.13%) Primavera
11 12 (0.13%) Temenos T24
12 9 (0.095%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.095%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.095%) Salesforce CRM
12 9 (0.095%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.095%) SAP HR
13 8 (0.085%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,634 (17.34%) Azure
2 1,584 (16.81%) AWS
3 371 (3.94%) GitHub
4 367 (3.89%) Power Platform
5 365 (3.87%) Azure DevOps
6 348 (3.69%) GCP
7 239 (2.54%) Microsoft 365
7 239 (2.54%) Serverless
8 230 (2.44%) Entra ID
9 223 (2.37%) GitHub Actions
10 207 (2.20%) Amazon S3
11 166 (1.76%) AWS Lambda
12 152 (1.61%) Amazon EC2
13 135 (1.43%) PaaS
14 132 (1.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 129 (1.37%) OpenShift
16 125 (1.33%) SaaS
17 123 (1.31%) OCI
18 106 (1.12%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 99 (1.05%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 405 (4.30%) Firewall
2 271 (2.88%) DNS
3 223 (2.37%) Network Security
4 206 (2.19%) WAN
5 186 (1.97%) LAN
6 159 (1.69%) VPN
7 150 (1.59%) DHCP
8 135 (1.43%) BGP
9 114 (1.21%) OSPF
10 111 (1.18%) Wi-Fi
11 102 (1.08%) VLAN
12 88 (0.93%) TCP/IP
13 81 (0.86%) Wireless
14 59 (0.63%) MPLS
15 54 (0.57%) SD-WAN
15 54 (0.57%) VXLAN
16 51 (0.54%) SAN
17 49 (0.52%) Structured Cabling
18 48 (0.51%) IPsec
19 47 (0.50%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 274 (2.91%) Power BI
2 232 (2.46%) PostgreSQL
3 223 (2.37%) Data Warehouse
4 207 (2.20%) SQL Server
5 137 (1.45%) Oracle Database
6 116 (1.23%) Metadata
7 108 (1.15%) Amazon RDS
8 107 (1.14%) Data Lake
9 93 (0.99%) Relational Database
10 83 (0.88%) Pentaho
11 79 (0.84%) MongoDB
12 75 (0.80%) Elasticsearch
13 74 (0.79%) Oracle Reports
14 72 (0.76%) MySQL
15 67 (0.71%) NoSQL
16 66 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
17 61 (0.65%) Amazon Athena
18 60 (0.64%) Tableau
19 45 (0.48%) Azure SQL Database
20 43 (0.46%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 535 (5.68%) JIRA
2 423 (4.49%) Git
3 389 (4.13%) GitLab
4 362 (3.84%) Jenkins
5 102 (1.08%) Selenium
6 80 (0.85%) JUnit
7 70 (0.74%) SonarQube
8 69 (0.73%) Postman
9 57 (0.60%) Rational DOORS
10 52 (0.55%) JMeter
11 49 (0.52%) Cucumber
12 44 (0.47%) Artifactory
13 41 (0.44%) Bitbucket
13 41 (0.44%) Mockito
14 39 (0.41%) Maven
15 37 (0.39%) Zephyr
16 36 (0.38%) Visual Studio
17 34 (0.36%) Cypress.io
17 34 (0.36%) REST Assured
18 30 (0.32%) WebDriver
General
1 2,002 (21.24%) Public Sector
2 1,901 (20.17%) Social Skills
3 646 (6.85%) Analytical Skills
4 627 (6.65%) Finance
5 313 (3.32%) Military
6 268 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
7 263 (2.79%) Aerospace
8 140 (1.49%) Legal
9 121 (1.28%) Banking
10 115 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
11 100 (1.06%) Telecoms
12 98 (1.04%) Law
13 88 (0.93%) Organisational Skills
14 78 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
15 73 (0.77%) Manufacturing
16 66 (0.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 63 (0.67%) Police
18 45 (0.48%) Marketing
19 39 (0.41%) Retail
20 38 (0.40%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,375 (14.59%) Architect
2 899 (9.54%) Developer
3 818 (8.68%) Senior
4 727 (7.71%) Lead
5 625 (6.63%) Analyst
6 465 (4.93%) Data Engineer
7 423 (4.49%) Consultant
8 422 (4.48%) DevOps Engineer
9 291 (3.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 281 (2.98%) Software Engineer
11 270 (2.86%) Technical Architect
12 260 (2.76%) Network Engineer
13 228 (2.42%) Solutions Architect
14 226 (2.40%) Business Analyst
15 209 (2.22%) Project Manager
16 201 (2.13%) Security Architect
17 190 (2.02%) Delivery Manager
18 188 (1.99%) Administrator
19 182 (1.93%) Azure Engineer
20 175 (1.86%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 291 (3.09%) REST
2 217 (2.30%) Spring
3 182 (1.93%) Spring Boot
4 171 (1.81%) React
5 160 (1.70%) .NET
6 149 (1.58%) Kafka
7 147 (1.56%) Node.js
8 139 (1.47%) RESTful
9 131 (1.39%) LDAP
10 128 (1.36%) SOAP
11 110 (1.17%) AngularJS
12 105 (1.11%) JSON
13 95 (1.01%) Web Services
14 93 (0.99%) PySpark
15 91 (0.97%) OAuth
16 87 (0.92%) HTML
17 72 (0.76%) OpenID
18 70 (0.74%) XML
19 69 (0.73%) Middleware
19 69 (0.73%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 358 (3.80%) Cloud Native
2 318 (3.37%) Product Ownership
3 283 (3.00%) Onboarding
4 280 (2.97%) Data Centre
5 150 (1.59%) Legacy Systems
5 150 (1.59%) Management Information System
6 135 (1.43%) PKI
7 124 (1.32%) Distributed Systems
8 111 (1.18%) Enterprise Software
9 107 (1.14%) Replication
9 107 (1.14%) Security Posture
10 101 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
11 86 (0.91%) Clustering
12 84 (0.89%) Data Structures
13 80 (0.85%) CMDB
14 77 (0.82%) Hybrid Cloud
15 73 (0.77%) Public Cloud
16 71 (0.75%) Security Operations Centre
17 69 (0.73%) Operational Technology
18 64 (0.68%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 745 (7.90%) Windows
2 616 (6.54%) Linux
3 244 (2.59%) Windows Server
4 177 (1.88%) Unix
5 109 (1.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 78 (0.83%) Windows 10
7 72 (0.76%) Android
8 51 (0.54%) Solaris
9 48 (0.51%) Apple iOS
10 35 (0.37%) Mac OS
11 30 (0.32%) Ubuntu
12 27 (0.29%) AIX
13 26 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
14 23 (0.24%) Windows Server 2016
15 21 (0.22%) CentOS
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 1,877 (19.92%) Agile
2 1,455 (15.44%) DevOps
3 1,283 (13.61%) CI/CD
4 965 (10.24%) Problem-Solving
5 959 (10.18%) Stakeholder Management
6 904 (9.59%) Continuous Improvement
7 776 (8.23%) Migration
8 757 (8.03%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 682 (7.24%) Infrastructure as Code
10 606 (6.43%) Cybersecurity
11 576 (6.11%) Test Automation
12 565 (5.99%) ITIL
13 552 (5.86%) Software Engineering
14 548 (5.81%) Analytics
15 529 (5.61%) Containerisation
16 528 (5.60%) Roadmaps
17 493 (5.23%) Data Modelling
18 476 (5.05%) Decision-Making
19 450 (4.77%) AI
20 437 (4.64%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 973 (10.32%) Python
2 896 (9.51%) SQL
3 593 (6.29%) Java
4 465 (4.93%) PowerShell
5 267 (2.83%) JavaScript
6 204 (2.16%) C#
7 181 (1.92%) Bash
8 143 (1.52%) TypeScript
9 116 (1.23%) PL/SQL
10 84 (0.89%) Shell Script
11 83 (0.88%) C++
12 65 (0.69%) Bicep
13 62 (0.66%) C
14 54 (0.57%) Go
15 47 (0.50%) Scala
16 45 (0.48%) Ada
17 43 (0.46%) Apex Code
17 43 (0.46%) Ruby
18 35 (0.37%) MATLAB
19 31 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 7,121 (75.55%) SC Cleared
2 1,807 (19.17%) DV Cleared
3 382 (4.05%) Degree
4 269 (2.85%) BPSS Clearance
5 181 (1.92%) Cisco Certification
6 155 (1.64%) CISSP
7 124 (1.32%) Azure Certification
8 105 (1.11%) Microsoft Certification
9 101 (1.07%) AWS Certification
9 101 (1.07%) CISM
10 100 (1.06%) CCNP
11 81 (0.86%) CCNA
12 80 (0.85%) PMP
13 74 (0.79%) PMI Certification
14 64 (0.68%) ISTQB
15 55 (0.58%) Computer Science Degree
16 53 (0.56%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 48 (0.51%) ITIL Certification
18 41 (0.44%) GIAC
19 33 (0.35%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 365 (3.87%) QA
2 286 (3.03%) NIST
3 283 (3.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 280 (2.97%) Data Quality
5 203 (2.15%) NCSC
6 182 (1.93%) Accessibility
7 168 (1.78%) PMO
8 165 (1.75%) GDPR
9 104 (1.10%) SLA
10 80 (0.85%) GRC
11 60 (0.64%) JSP 440
12 49 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials
13 44 (0.47%) WCAG
14 41 (0.44%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.35%) Def Stans
16 28 (0.30%) RMADS
17 22 (0.23%) COBIT
17 22 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
17 22 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 19 (0.20%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 585 (6.21%) Docker
2 425 (4.51%) Active Directory
3 280 (2.97%) VMware Infrastructure
4 111 (1.18%) VMware ESXi
5 99 (1.05%) VMware NSX
6 79 (0.84%) Hyper-V
7 75 (0.80%) vSphere
8 68 (0.72%) Virtual Machines
9 32 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
10 31 (0.33%) Firmware
11 23 (0.24%) BitLocker
12 21 (0.22%) vCloud
13 19 (0.20%) NFS
13 19 (0.20%) Postfix
14 18 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
15 16 (0.17%) Squid
16 15 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 10 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.064%) Corosync
18 6 (0.064%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 748 (7.94%) Terraform
2 722 (7.66%) Kubernetes
3 324 (3.44%) Ansible
4 226 (2.40%) Grafana
5 184 (1.95%) Prometheus
6 112 (1.19%) vCenter Server
7 79 (0.84%) Single Sign-On
8 73 (0.77%) SCCM
9 57 (0.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 54 (0.57%) Microsoft Intune
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 37 (0.39%) Podman
15 27 (0.29%) Progress Chef
16 25 (0.27%) Nagios
17 24 (0.25%) vMotion
18 21 (0.22%) WSUS
Vendors
1 988 (10.48%) Microsoft
2 657 (6.97%) Oracle
3 454 (4.82%) VMware
4 389 (4.13%) ServiceNow
5 316 (3.35%) Cisco
6 300 (3.18%) SAP
7 199 (2.11%) Splunk
8 173 (1.84%) Databricks
9 145 (1.54%) Google
10 139 (1.47%) Red Hat
11 127 (1.35%) Talend
12 123 (1.31%) Salesforce
13 116 (1.23%) IBM
14 113 (1.20%) Palo Alto
15 98 (1.04%) Juniper
16 97 (1.03%) Informatica
17 85 (0.90%) F5
18 83 (0.88%) Fortinet
19 80 (0.85%) CyberArk
20 79 (0.84%) Dynatrace