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

6 months to
4 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 2 3 4
Rank change year-on-year +1 +1 +4
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 6,643 5,512 6,871
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.32% 18.03% 18.13%
As % of the Qualifications category 63.61% 60.17% 60.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,399 3,496 4,315
10th Percentile £331 £350 £375
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.22%
75th Percentile £633 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 683 281 452
10th Percentile £18.22 £20.30 £20.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £26.25 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £57.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -56.26% -4.17% -
75th Percentile £55.50 £68.18 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £80.00
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 10,443 9,161 11,417
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.52% 29.96% 30.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,811 5,607 7,206
10th Percentile £306 £312 £304
25th Percentile £415 £425 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £627 £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 899 425 693
10th Percentile £17.30 £20.00 £17.72
25th Percentile £18.87 £25.50 £26.88
Median hourly rate £25.15 £48.56 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -48.21% -7.50% +16.67%
75th Percentile £52.54 £68.00 £67.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £41.25 £53.50
% change year-on-year -39.03% -22.90% +18.89%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 +2 2,166 £550 - 404
South East -1 1,307 £519 -5.73% 714
South West 0 1,149 £550 -4.35% 492
North of England -1 782 £506 +6.53% 269
Midlands +2 703 £519 -5.73% 155
West Midlands +2 548 £525 -6.38% 125
North West +1 516 £525 +6.49% 179
East of England +2 297 £500 -2.44% 290
Yorkshire -8 166 £500 +8.11% 57
East Midlands -2 140 £431 -9.21% 29
North East 0 113 £475 -2.61% 37
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
1 263 (3.96%) Confluence
2 173 (2.60%) SharePoint
3 112 (1.69%) Microsoft Exchange
4 96 (1.45%) SAS
5 83 (1.25%) Apache
6 51 (0.77%) Apache Airflow
7 45 (0.68%) Apache Spark
8 44 (0.66%) nginx
9 39 (0.59%) Skype for Business
10 23 (0.35%) CMS
11 21 (0.32%) WebLogic
12 20 (0.30%) IIS
13 15 (0.23%) SharePoint Server
14 12 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2010
15 11 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2013
15 11 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 10 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2003
16 10 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2007
16 10 (0.15%) Office Communications Server
17 8 (0.12%) Documentum
Applications
1 232 (3.49%) Microsoft Office
2 159 (2.39%) Microsoft Excel
3 101 (1.52%) Microsoft Project
4 46 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 32 (0.48%) MS Visio
6 20 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.20%) Simulink
8 12 (0.18%) Siemens NX
9 11 (0.17%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 7 (0.11%) Sketch
11 5 (0.075%) Adobe Illustrator
11 5 (0.075%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.075%) FrameMaker
11 5 (0.075%) Oracle Smart View
11 5 (0.075%) Photoshop
11 5 (0.075%) PTC Creo
11 5 (0.075%) Stateflow
11 5 (0.075%) Windchill
12 4 (0.060%) Trello
13 3 (0.045%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 148 (2.23%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (0.53%) Remedy ITSM
3 29 (0.44%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 27 (0.41%) SAP WM
5 26 (0.39%) SAP EWM
6 22 (0.33%) Oracle ERP
7 19 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
8 18 (0.27%) SAP MM
9 16 (0.24%) SAP HCM
10 15 (0.23%) Maximo
10 15 (0.23%) Primavera
10 15 (0.23%) Teamcenter
11 13 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
12 12 (0.18%) SAP PS
12 12 (0.18%) SAP QM
12 12 (0.18%) SAP VC
13 11 (0.17%) SAP EHS
14 10 (0.15%) SAP HR
14 10 (0.15%) SAP Payroll
15 9 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 1,096 (16.50%) AWS
2 1,059 (15.94%) Azure
3 316 (4.76%) Microsoft 365
4 307 (4.62%) GitHub
5 241 (3.63%) Power Platform
6 240 (3.61%) GCP
7 231 (3.48%) Azure DevOps
8 196 (2.95%) Serverless
9 167 (2.51%) Amazon S3
10 157 (2.36%) Entra ID
11 151 (2.27%) GitHub Actions
12 126 (1.90%) SaaS
13 125 (1.88%) OpenShift
14 112 (1.69%) AWS CloudFormation
15 110 (1.66%) AWS Lambda
16 109 (1.64%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 109 (1.64%) Amazon EC2
17 88 (1.32%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 82 (1.23%) Amazon EKS
19 81 (1.22%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 349 (5.25%) Firewall
2 245 (3.69%) DNS
3 166 (2.50%) VPN
4 137 (2.06%) Network Security
5 132 (1.99%) WAN
6 106 (1.60%) TCP/IP
7 93 (1.40%) LAN
8 90 (1.35%) BGP
8 90 (1.35%) Wireless
9 89 (1.34%) DHCP
10 72 (1.08%) SSL
11 64 (0.96%) Wi-Fi
12 63 (0.95%) SAN
13 57 (0.86%) MPLS
14 52 (0.78%) IPsec
14 52 (0.78%) VLAN
15 50 (0.75%) Cisco ISE
16 46 (0.69%) HTTP
17 42 (0.63%) OSPF
18 41 (0.62%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 199 (3.00%) PostgreSQL
2 160 (2.41%) Power BI
3 83 (1.25%) MongoDB
4 82 (1.23%) Amazon RDS
5 78 (1.17%) SQL Server
6 75 (1.13%) Oracle Database
7 71 (1.07%) NoSQL
8 70 (1.05%) Data Warehouse
8 70 (1.05%) Relational Database
9 69 (1.04%) Metadata
10 47 (0.71%) Big Data
11 44 (0.66%) Azure SQL Database
12 39 (0.59%) Elasticsearch
13 38 (0.57%) Pentaho
14 36 (0.54%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 35 (0.53%) Redis
16 32 (0.48%) Amazon Athena
17 31 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
17 31 (0.47%) MySQL
18 29 (0.44%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 479 (7.21%) JIRA
2 376 (5.66%) Git
3 357 (5.37%) Jenkins
4 256 (3.85%) GitLab
5 71 (1.07%) Selenium
6 53 (0.80%) Cypress.io
6 53 (0.80%) JUnit
6 53 (0.80%) Postman
7 49 (0.74%) SonarQube
8 46 (0.69%) Bitbucket
9 45 (0.68%) Oracle APEX
10 34 (0.51%) Artifactory
11 31 (0.47%) Maven
12 30 (0.45%) Cucumber
12 30 (0.45%) Mockito
13 24 (0.36%) MSI
14 23 (0.35%) REST Assured
15 22 (0.33%) Vagrant
16 21 (0.32%) Rational DOORS
17 19 (0.29%) Metasploit
General
1 1,841 (27.71%) Public Sector
2 1,728 (26.01%) Social Skills
3 613 (9.23%) Analytical Skills
4 482 (7.26%) Finance
5 278 (4.18%) Military
6 207 (3.12%) Telecoms
7 194 (2.92%) Manufacturing
8 158 (2.38%) Documentation Skills
9 139 (2.09%) Electronics
10 132 (1.99%) Marketing
11 124 (1.87%) Aerospace
12 102 (1.54%) Legal
12 102 (1.54%) Organisational Skills
13 84 (1.26%) Banking
14 81 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
15 79 (1.19%) Presentation Skills
16 68 (1.02%) Law
17 40 (0.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 39 (0.59%) Aviation
19 35 (0.53%) Police
Job Titles
1 896 (13.49%) Architect
2 650 (9.78%) Developer
3 528 (7.95%) Senior
4 525 (7.90%) Consultant
5 437 (6.58%) Analyst
6 402 (6.05%) Lead
7 287 (4.32%) DevOps Engineer
8 239 (3.60%) Support Engineer
9 198 (2.98%) Network Engineer
10 166 (2.50%) Solutions Architect
11 161 (2.42%) Data Engineer
12 145 (2.18%) SAP Consultant
13 139 (2.09%) AWS Engineer
14 130 (1.96%) Platform Engineer
15 129 (1.94%) IT Engineer
16 126 (1.90%) Software Engineer
16 126 (1.90%) Technical Architect
17 118 (1.78%) Administrator
18 113 (1.70%) Tester
19 111 (1.67%) IT Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 259 (3.90%) REST
2 167 (2.51%) Node.js
2 167 (2.51%) React
3 161 (2.42%) Kafka
4 134 (2.02%) JSON
5 117 (1.76%) SOAP
6 116 (1.75%) Spring
7 107 (1.61%) HTML
8 99 (1.49%) XML
9 97 (1.46%) RESTful
10 96 (1.45%) AngularJS
11 90 (1.35%) .NET
12 89 (1.34%) CSS
12 89 (1.34%) Spring Boot
13 88 (1.32%) Web Services
14 75 (1.13%) OAuth
15 68 (1.02%) LDAP
16 65 (0.98%) Oracle Fusion
17 57 (0.86%) SAML
18 56 (0.84%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 203 (3.06%) Data Centre
2 185 (2.78%) Onboarding
3 178 (2.68%) Cloud Native
3 178 (2.68%) PKI
4 154 (2.32%) Product Ownership
5 141 (2.12%) Management Information System
6 100 (1.51%) Self-Motivation
7 80 (1.20%) Legacy Systems
8 76 (1.14%) Driving Licence
9 69 (1.04%) Replication
10 68 (1.02%) Security Posture
11 67 (1.01%) Cyber Threat
12 61 (0.92%) Hybrid Cloud
13 60 (0.90%) Security Operations Centre
14 57 (0.86%) Enterprise Software
15 56 (0.84%) CMDB
16 50 (0.75%) Analytical Mindset
16 50 (0.75%) Private Cloud
17 44 (0.66%) Distributed Systems
18 40 (0.60%) Cyber Defence
Operating Systems
1 770 (11.59%) Windows
2 522 (7.86%) Linux
3 178 (2.68%) Windows Server
4 175 (2.63%) Windows 10
5 97 (1.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 94 (1.42%) Android
7 89 (1.34%) Unix
8 85 (1.28%) Mac OS
9 47 (0.71%) VMS
10 39 (0.59%) Ubuntu
11 27 (0.41%) Apple iOS
11 27 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
12 25 (0.38%) Amazon Linux
13 24 (0.36%) Windows 7
14 21 (0.32%) CentOS
15 20 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
16 19 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
17 16 (0.24%) Windows Server 2003
18 15 (0.23%) Mac OS X
19 9 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,339 (20.16%) Agile
2 1,007 (15.16%) DevOps
3 918 (13.82%) CI/CD
4 826 (12.43%) Problem-Solving
5 644 (9.69%) Migration
6 528 (7.95%) Stakeholder Management
7 465 (7.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 461 (6.94%) ITIL
9 445 (6.70%) Cybersecurity
10 423 (6.37%) Continuous Improvement
11 417 (6.28%) Infrastructure as Code
12 393 (5.92%) Service Management
13 370 (5.57%) Business Intelligence
14 366 (5.51%) Containerisation
15 361 (5.43%) Test Automation
16 341 (5.13%) Analytics
17 330 (4.97%) Workflow
18 324 (4.88%) Scrum
19 309 (4.65%) Roadmaps
20 304 (4.58%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 855 (12.87%) Python
2 505 (7.60%) SQL
3 426 (6.41%) PowerShell
4 411 (6.19%) Java
5 341 (5.13%) JavaScript
6 218 (3.28%) Bash
7 162 (2.44%) TypeScript
8 119 (1.79%) C#
9 92 (1.38%) C++
10 83 (1.25%) Go
11 67 (1.01%) PL/SQL
12 65 (0.98%) C
13 63 (0.95%) Shell Script
14 41 (0.62%) Perl
15 37 (0.56%) ABAP
15 37 (0.56%) Ruby
16 30 (0.45%) Groovy
17 29 (0.44%) Bicep
18 26 (0.39%) Ada
18 26 (0.39%) Scala
Qualifications
1 5,085 (76.55%) SC Cleared
2 1,136 (17.10%) DV Cleared
3 343 (5.16%) Degree
4 260 (3.91%) BPSS Clearance
5 126 (1.90%) CISSP
6 117 (1.76%) Microsoft Certification
7 106 (1.60%) Azure Certification
8 103 (1.55%) Cisco Certification
9 98 (1.48%) AWS Certification
10 79 (1.19%) CCNP
11 71 (1.07%) CISM
12 55 (0.83%) ITIL Certification
13 51 (0.77%) Computer Science Degree
14 46 (0.69%) TOGAF Certification
15 44 (0.66%) CCNA
16 39 (0.59%) CEH
17 36 (0.54%) CHECK Team Member
17 36 (0.54%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 32 (0.48%) CTC Cleared
19 29 (0.44%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 202 (3.04%) QA
2 198 (2.98%) NIST
3 195 (2.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 160 (2.41%) NCSC
5 131 (1.97%) GDPR
6 122 (1.84%) SLA
7 119 (1.79%) Data Quality
8 105 (1.58%) Accessibility
9 63 (0.95%) PMO
10 50 (0.75%) JSP 440
11 39 (0.59%) NIST 800
12 38 (0.57%) WCAG
13 34 (0.51%) GRC
14 32 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 27 (0.41%) COBIT
15 27 (0.41%) Def Stans
16 24 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
17 22 (0.33%) RMADS
18 20 (0.30%) PCI DSS
19 17 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 538 (8.10%) Docker
2 400 (6.02%) Active Directory
3 200 (3.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 65 (0.98%) VMware NSX
5 59 (0.89%) vSphere
6 57 (0.86%) VMware ESXi
7 49 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
8 38 (0.57%) Firmware
9 31 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
10 30 (0.45%) Hyper-V
11 20 (0.30%) DFS Replication
12 18 (0.27%) Postfix
13 15 (0.23%) Dovecot
13 15 (0.23%) NFS
14 12 (0.18%) ISA Server
15 11 (0.17%) Squid
16 10 (0.15%) BitLocker
16 10 (0.15%) Brightmail
17 9 (0.14%) Terminal Services
18 7 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 625 (9.41%) Kubernetes
2 588 (8.85%) Terraform
3 267 (4.02%) Ansible
4 160 (2.41%) Grafana
5 132 (1.99%) Prometheus
6 103 (1.55%) SCCM
7 91 (1.37%) Single Sign-On
8 74 (1.11%) Microsoft Intune
9 66 (0.99%) vCenter Server
10 59 (0.89%) Argo
11 52 (0.78%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 46 (0.69%) Packer
13 34 (0.51%) Jamf Pro
14 32 (0.48%) Kibana
14 32 (0.48%) OPNET
15 25 (0.38%) Nessus
16 24 (0.36%) SCOM
17 23 (0.35%) Podman
17 23 (0.35%) vRealize
18 22 (0.33%) Puppet
Vendors
1 877 (13.20%) Microsoft
2 445 (6.70%) SAP
3 400 (6.02%) Cisco
4 352 (5.30%) Oracle
5 341 (5.13%) VMware
6 330 (4.97%) ServiceNow
7 177 (2.66%) Splunk
8 149 (2.24%) Juniper
9 136 (2.05%) Red Hat
10 108 (1.63%) Google
11 100 (1.51%) Atlassian
12 94 (1.42%) HP
12 94 (1.42%) Palo Alto
13 93 (1.40%) Dell
14 86 (1.29%) Salesforce
15 79 (1.19%) Remedy
16 71 (1.07%) Apple
17 69 (1.04%) F5
17 69 (1.04%) IBM
17 69 (1.04%) SolarWinds