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 18 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +4
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 6,873 5,253 6,842
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.00% 18.13% 18.32%
As % of the Qualifications category 64.82% 59.79% 60.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,564 3,360 4,330
10th Percentile £340 £345 £363
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.65%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 694 263 440
10th Percentile £17.88 £20.44 £20.00
25th Percentile £19.67 £26.12 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £59.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -57.37% -1.67% -
75th Percentile £61.07 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.78 £75.00 £81.25
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -49.70% -16.67% -

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 10,603 8,786 11,335
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.93% 30.33% 30.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,928 5,424 7,175
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £419 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £528 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.47% -4.09% -
75th Percentile £626 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 901 413 680
10th Percentile £16.75 £20.00 £17.11
25th Percentile £19.38 £25.26 £26.65
Median hourly rate £25.15 £48.56 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -48.21% -7.50% +16.67%
75th Percentile £56.00 £68.00 £67.61
90th Percentile £76.58 £75.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year -37.13% -23.81% +16.67%

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 18 December 2025.

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 18 December 2025.

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 18 December 2025. 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 +4 2,249 £550 - 457
South East 0 1,388 £522 -6.79% 730
South West 0 1,159 £550 -4.35% 524
North of England -1 804 £505 +6.32% 386
Midlands +4 705 £519 -5.73% 253
West Midlands +3 551 £520 -8.49% 161
North West 0 541 £525 +10.53% 241
East of England +2 317 £500 +2.56% 366
Yorkshire -14 162 £500 +5.26% 115
East Midlands +2 144 £450 -10.00% 84
North East 0 118 £450 -12.62% 35
South Coast - 2 - -
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
1 252 (3.67%) Confluence
2 174 (2.53%) SharePoint
3 114 (1.66%) Microsoft Exchange
4 99 (1.44%) SAS
5 83 (1.21%) Apache
6 52 (0.76%) Apache Spark
7 51 (0.74%) Apache Airflow
8 38 (0.55%) Skype for Business
9 37 (0.54%) nginx
10 27 (0.39%) WebLogic
11 20 (0.29%) CMS
12 19 (0.28%) IIS
13 13 (0.19%) SharePoint Server
14 10 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2010
14 10 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 9 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
16 8 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2003
16 8 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2007
16 8 (0.12%) Office Communications Server
16 8 (0.12%) OpenStack
Applications
1 243 (3.54%) Microsoft Office
2 155 (2.26%) Microsoft Excel
3 96 (1.40%) Microsoft Project
4 50 (0.73%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 34 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 20 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.19%) Siemens NX
7 13 (0.19%) Simulink
8 10 (0.15%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.073%) FrameMaker
9 5 (0.073%) Oracle Smart View
9 5 (0.073%) PTC Creo
9 5 (0.073%) Sketch
9 5 (0.073%) Stateflow
10 4 (0.058%) Trello
10 4 (0.058%) Windchill
11 3 (0.044%) Adobe Illustrator
11 3 (0.044%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.044%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.044%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 146 (2.12%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (0.49%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 33 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
4 27 (0.39%) SAP WM
5 26 (0.38%) SAP EWM
6 25 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
7 18 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
7 18 (0.26%) SAP MM
8 17 (0.25%) Teamcenter
9 15 (0.22%) SAP HCM
10 14 (0.20%) SAP QM
11 13 (0.19%) Maximo
11 13 (0.19%) Oracle General Ledger
12 12 (0.17%) SAP PP
12 12 (0.17%) SAP VC
13 11 (0.16%) Primavera
13 11 (0.16%) SAP EHS
14 10 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
14 10 (0.15%) SAP Payroll
14 10 (0.15%) SAP PS
Cloud Services
1 1,122 (16.32%) AWS
2 1,120 (16.30%) Azure
3 318 (4.63%) Microsoft 365
4 316 (4.60%) GitHub
5 280 (4.07%) GCP
6 245 (3.56%) Power Platform
7 238 (3.46%) Azure DevOps
8 196 (2.85%) Serverless
9 168 (2.44%) GitHub Actions
10 166 (2.42%) Entra ID
11 158 (2.30%) Amazon S3
12 137 (1.99%) OpenShift
13 118 (1.72%) AWS Lambda
14 115 (1.67%) SaaS
15 106 (1.54%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 104 (1.51%) AWS CloudFormation
17 99 (1.44%) Amazon EC2
18 86 (1.25%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 84 (1.22%) Amazon EKS
20 82 (1.19%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 363 (5.28%) Firewall
2 255 (3.71%) DNS
3 173 (2.52%) VPN
4 155 (2.26%) Network Security
5 145 (2.11%) WAN
6 116 (1.69%) TCP/IP
7 110 (1.60%) LAN
8 95 (1.38%) BGP
8 95 (1.38%) DHCP
9 86 (1.25%) Wireless
10 77 (1.12%) SSL
11 72 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
12 61 (0.89%) SAN
13 59 (0.86%) VLAN
14 56 (0.81%) MPLS
15 53 (0.77%) IPsec
16 49 (0.71%) OSPF
17 48 (0.70%) HTTP
18 44 (0.64%) Cisco ISE
19 42 (0.61%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 197 (2.87%) PostgreSQL
2 164 (2.39%) Power BI
3 84 (1.22%) MongoDB
4 79 (1.15%) Data Warehouse
4 79 (1.15%) SQL Server
5 75 (1.09%) NoSQL
6 74 (1.08%) Amazon RDS
7 72 (1.05%) Metadata
8 71 (1.03%) Relational Database
9 69 (1.00%) Oracle Database
10 51 (0.74%) Big Data
11 48 (0.70%) Azure SQL Database
12 44 (0.64%) Elasticsearch
13 39 (0.57%) SAS Enterprise Guide
14 38 (0.55%) Pentaho
15 35 (0.51%) Amazon Athena
16 34 (0.49%) Amazon Redshift
16 34 (0.49%) Redis
17 33 (0.48%) Data Lake
18 30 (0.44%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 469 (6.82%) JIRA
2 379 (5.51%) Git
3 351 (5.11%) Jenkins
4 266 (3.87%) GitLab
5 75 (1.09%) Selenium
6 58 (0.84%) Postman
7 50 (0.73%) JUnit
8 49 (0.71%) Cypress.io
9 45 (0.65%) Bitbucket
9 45 (0.65%) Oracle APEX
9 45 (0.65%) SonarQube
10 42 (0.61%) Artifactory
11 31 (0.45%) Maven
12 30 (0.44%) Cucumber
13 27 (0.39%) Mockito
14 25 (0.36%) MSI
15 23 (0.33%) REST Assured
16 22 (0.32%) Rational DOORS
17 21 (0.31%) Metasploit
18 19 (0.28%) Burp Suite
General
1 1,857 (27.02%) Public Sector
2 1,791 (26.06%) Social Skills
3 652 (9.49%) Analytical Skills
4 499 (7.26%) Finance
5 279 (4.06%) Military
6 220 (3.20%) Telecoms
7 206 (3.00%) Manufacturing
8 163 (2.37%) Documentation Skills
9 146 (2.12%) Electronics
10 139 (2.02%) Marketing
11 124 (1.80%) Aerospace
12 108 (1.57%) Organisational Skills
13 106 (1.54%) Legal
14 87 (1.27%) Banking
15 81 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
16 80 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
17 65 (0.95%) Law
18 40 (0.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 35 (0.51%) Aviation
20 33 (0.48%) Police
Job Titles
1 943 (13.72%) Architect
2 642 (9.34%) Developer
3 556 (8.09%) Senior
4 529 (7.70%) Consultant
5 478 (6.95%) Analyst
6 387 (5.63%) Lead
7 310 (4.51%) DevOps Engineer
8 243 (3.54%) Support Engineer
9 204 (2.97%) Network Engineer
10 175 (2.55%) Data Engineer
11 172 (2.50%) Solutions Architect
12 147 (2.14%) SAP Consultant
13 141 (2.05%) Software Engineer
14 139 (2.02%) Technical Architect
15 136 (1.98%) AWS Engineer
16 131 (1.91%) Platform Engineer
17 127 (1.85%) IT Engineer
18 124 (1.80%) Administrator
19 121 (1.76%) Tester
20 120 (1.75%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 281 (4.09%) REST
2 172 (2.50%) Node.js
3 167 (2.43%) React
4 160 (2.33%) Kafka
5 137 (1.99%) JSON
6 131 (1.91%) SOAP
7 112 (1.63%) Spring
8 106 (1.54%) HTML
9 99 (1.44%) XML
10 91 (1.32%) RESTful
11 90 (1.31%) .NET
12 89 (1.29%) AngularJS
12 89 (1.29%) CSS
12 89 (1.29%) Spring Boot
13 86 (1.25%) LDAP
13 86 (1.25%) Web Services
14 78 (1.13%) OAuth
14 78 (1.13%) Oracle Fusion
15 64 (0.93%) PySpark
16 58 (0.84%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 213 (3.10%) Data Centre
2 187 (2.72%) PKI
3 184 (2.68%) Cloud Native
4 176 (2.56%) Onboarding
5 166 (2.42%) Product Ownership
6 134 (1.95%) Management Information System
7 101 (1.47%) Self-Motivation
8 88 (1.28%) Legacy Systems
9 87 (1.27%) Security Posture
10 78 (1.13%) Cyber Threat
11 73 (1.06%) Driving Licence
12 71 (1.03%) Replication
13 69 (1.00%) Enterprise Software
14 67 (0.97%) Security Operations Centre
15 63 (0.92%) Hybrid Cloud
16 60 (0.87%) Analytical Mindset
17 59 (0.86%) CMDB
18 47 (0.68%) Private Cloud
19 45 (0.65%) Distributed Systems
19 45 (0.65%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 781 (11.36%) Windows
2 538 (7.83%) Linux
3 182 (2.65%) Windows Server
4 172 (2.50%) Windows 10
5 98 (1.43%) Android
5 98 (1.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 93 (1.35%) Unix
7 84 (1.22%) Mac OS
8 49 (0.71%) VMS
9 38 (0.55%) Ubuntu
10 28 (0.41%) Apple iOS
11 25 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
12 22 (0.32%) CentOS
13 21 (0.31%) Amazon Linux
14 20 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
15 18 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
16 17 (0.25%) Windows 7
17 15 (0.22%) Mac OS X
18 14 (0.20%) Windows Server 2003
19 9 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,339 (19.48%) Agile
2 1,049 (15.26%) DevOps
3 945 (13.75%) CI/CD
4 872 (12.69%) Problem-Solving
5 670 (9.75%) Migration
6 545 (7.93%) Stakeholder Management
7 493 (7.17%) ITIL
8 488 (7.10%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 461 (6.71%) Cybersecurity
10 449 (6.53%) Continuous Improvement
11 437 (6.36%) Infrastructure as Code
12 400 (5.82%) Service Management
13 382 (5.56%) Business Intelligence
14 372 (5.41%) Test Automation
15 371 (5.40%) Containerisation
16 361 (5.25%) Analytics
17 339 (4.93%) Workflow
18 336 (4.89%) Roadmaps
19 330 (4.80%) Scrum
20 301 (4.38%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 906 (13.18%) Python
2 529 (7.70%) SQL
3 465 (6.77%) PowerShell
4 399 (5.81%) Java
5 348 (5.06%) JavaScript
6 221 (3.22%) Bash
7 160 (2.33%) TypeScript
8 122 (1.78%) C#
9 95 (1.38%) C++
10 88 (1.28%) Go
11 70 (1.02%) C
12 68 (0.99%) PL/SQL
13 67 (0.97%) Shell Script
14 39 (0.57%) ABAP
14 39 (0.57%) Ruby
15 37 (0.54%) Perl
16 35 (0.51%) Scala
17 29 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
18 28 (0.41%) Ada
19 26 (0.38%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 5,272 (76.71%) SC Cleared
2 1,139 (16.57%) DV Cleared
3 364 (5.30%) Degree
4 249 (3.62%) BPSS Clearance
5 126 (1.83%) CISSP
6 117 (1.70%) Microsoft Certification
7 112 (1.63%) Azure Certification
7 112 (1.63%) Cisco Certification
8 100 (1.45%) AWS Certification
9 93 (1.35%) CCNP
10 69 (1.00%) CISM
11 60 (0.87%) ITIL Certification
12 58 (0.84%) Computer Science Degree
13 48 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
14 46 (0.67%) CCNA
15 44 (0.64%) CEH
16 42 (0.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 38 (0.55%) CHECK Team Member
18 34 (0.49%) CTC Cleared
19 33 (0.48%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 207 (3.01%) QA
2 197 (2.87%) NIST
3 196 (2.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 159 (2.31%) NCSC
5 134 (1.95%) GDPR
6 131 (1.91%) Data Quality
7 119 (1.73%) SLA
8 112 (1.63%) Accessibility
9 60 (0.87%) PMO
10 44 (0.64%) JSP 440
11 41 (0.60%) WCAG
12 38 (0.55%) GRC
13 32 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 28 (0.41%) Def Stans
15 27 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
15 27 (0.39%) NIST 800
16 26 (0.38%) COBIT
17 23 (0.33%) PCI DSS
18 18 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 15 (0.22%) RMADS
System Software
1 523 (7.61%) Docker
2 426 (6.20%) Active Directory
3 205 (2.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 66 (0.96%) VMware NSX
5 61 (0.89%) vSphere
6 54 (0.79%) Virtual Machines
6 54 (0.79%) VMware ESXi
7 37 (0.54%) Firmware
8 32 (0.47%) Hyper-V
9 31 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
10 17 (0.25%) DFS Replication
11 16 (0.23%) Postfix
12 14 (0.20%) Dovecot
13 13 (0.19%) NFS
14 11 (0.16%) BitLocker
15 10 (0.15%) ISA Server
15 10 (0.15%) Squid
16 9 (0.13%) Terminal Services
17 8 (0.12%) Brightmail
18 7 (0.10%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 644 (9.37%) Kubernetes
2 603 (8.77%) Terraform
3 295 (4.29%) Ansible
4 173 (2.52%) Grafana
5 142 (2.07%) Prometheus
6 103 (1.50%) SCCM
7 87 (1.27%) Single Sign-On
8 75 (1.09%) vCenter Server
9 73 (1.06%) Microsoft Intune
10 62 (0.90%) Argo
11 52 (0.76%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 38 (0.55%) Packer
13 37 (0.54%) Kibana
14 33 (0.48%) OPNET
15 28 (0.41%) Jamf Pro
16 25 (0.36%) Puppet
17 24 (0.35%) Nessus
17 24 (0.35%) Progress Chef
17 24 (0.35%) vRealize
18 23 (0.33%) Podman
Vendors
1 882 (12.83%) Microsoft
2 458 (6.66%) SAP
3 399 (5.81%) Cisco
4 376 (5.47%) Oracle
5 350 (5.09%) VMware
6 328 (4.77%) ServiceNow
7 187 (2.72%) Splunk
8 149 (2.17%) Red Hat
9 144 (2.10%) Juniper
10 116 (1.69%) Google
11 105 (1.53%) Palo Alto
12 101 (1.47%) Atlassian
13 95 (1.38%) HP
14 91 (1.32%) Dell
14 91 (1.32%) Salesforce
15 83 (1.21%) Databricks
16 81 (1.18%) CyberArk
17 78 (1.13%) Remedy
18 69 (1.00%) Apple
19 66 (0.96%) CheckPoint