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 29 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,258 5,194 5,880
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.14% 18.85% 18.18%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.89% 59.60% 61.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,189 3,398 3,737
10th Percentile £398 £340 £355
25th Percentile £463 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.33% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £550 £537 £550
% change year-on-year +2.42% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 798 544 344
10th Percentile £20.50 £18.51 £21.25
25th Percentile £30.18 £18.87 £37.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +158.45% -59.17% +2.67%
75th Percentile £78.65 £36.31 £72.50
90th Percentile £91.31 £71.18 £84.57
UK median hourly rate £63.49 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +152.45% -58.08% -

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 14,890 8,715 9,595
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.14% 31.63% 29.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,961 5,549 5,834
10th Percentile £350 £300 £320
25th Percentile £445 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £736
UK median daily rate £530 £525 £525
% change year-on-year +0.95% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,239 715 537
10th Percentile £17.72 £17.87 £18.09
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £27.00
Median hourly rate £52.50 £25.15 £53.00
Median % change year-on-year +108.75% -52.55% -1.24%
75th Percentile £74.00 £43.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £73.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £48.56
% change year-on-year +86.88% -48.21% -9.54%

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 29 September 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 29 September 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 29 September 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 3,647 £550 +2.33% 1,410
South East +1 2,260 £564 +7.48% 854
South West 0 1,396 £550 - 746
North of England +3 1,285 £518 -1.43% 646
Midlands 0 947 £481 -6.92% 351
West Midlands 0 807 £475 -8.39% 231
North West +1 767 £530 -4.72% 383
East of England 0 432 £574 +4.36% 368
Yorkshire +2 295 £496 +1.02% 103
North East 0 243 £470 -10.05% 163
East Midlands 0 133 £495 +7.03% 119
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
1 324 (3.16%) Confluence
2 250 (2.44%) SharePoint
3 147 (1.43%) SAS
4 117 (1.14%) Microsoft Exchange
5 97 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
6 88 (0.86%) Apache Spark
7 86 (0.84%) Apache
8 34 (0.33%) nginx
9 33 (0.32%) CMS
10 32 (0.31%) Jupyter
11 28 (0.27%) WebLogic
12 22 (0.21%) Skype for Business
13 19 (0.19%) Oracle Application Server
14 16 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
14 16 (0.16%) Tomcat
15 13 (0.13%) IIS
16 11 (0.11%) JBoss
16 11 (0.11%) NetWeaver
16 11 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
17 10 (0.097%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 190 (1.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 138 (1.35%) Microsoft Office
3 94 (0.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 92 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
5 29 (0.28%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
7 21 (0.20%) AutoCAD
8 19 (0.19%) Revit
9 18 (0.18%) SOLIDWORKS
9 18 (0.18%) Windchill
10 9 (0.088%) Simulink
11 8 (0.078%) Chatbot
12 7 (0.068%) Adobe XD
13 6 (0.058%) Sketch
14 5 (0.049%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 5 (0.049%) Notepad++
15 4 (0.039%) OrCAD
15 4 (0.039%) Trello
16 2 (0.019%) Gliffy
16 2 (0.019%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 127 (1.24%) SAP S/4HANA
2 79 (0.77%) Remedy ITSM
3 54 (0.53%) Oracle ERP
4 40 (0.39%) Oracle EBS
5 33 (0.32%) Teamcenter
6 29 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 27 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
8 26 (0.25%) SAP PSCD
9 24 (0.23%) Oracle Payroll
10 19 (0.19%) SAP FI
11 16 (0.16%) SAP HR
12 15 (0.15%) Maximo
12 15 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
13 13 (0.13%) Primavera
13 13 (0.13%) SAP CO
14 12 (0.12%) NetSuite
14 12 (0.12%) SAP GRC
14 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
15 11 (0.11%) iTrent
15 11 (0.11%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 1,836 (17.90%) Azure
2 1,667 (16.25%) AWS
3 440 (4.29%) Power Platform
4 435 (4.24%) Azure DevOps
5 397 (3.87%) GitHub
6 384 (3.74%) GCP
7 312 (3.04%) Microsoft 365
8 287 (2.80%) Entra ID
9 276 (2.69%) GitHub Actions
10 230 (2.24%) Serverless
11 203 (1.98%) Amazon S3
12 165 (1.61%) AWS Lambda
13 151 (1.47%) OCI
14 147 (1.43%) SaaS
15 145 (1.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 136 (1.33%) Amazon EKS
17 134 (1.31%) OpenShift
18 117 (1.14%) Amazon EC2
19 106 (1.03%) PowerApps
20 102 (0.99%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 404 (3.94%) Firewall
2 351 (3.42%) DNS
3 219 (2.13%) Network Security
4 179 (1.74%) WAN
5 173 (1.69%) VPN
6 170 (1.66%) DHCP
7 141 (1.37%) LAN
8 123 (1.20%) TCP/IP
9 119 (1.16%) BGP
10 113 (1.10%) Wi-Fi
11 91 (0.89%) VLAN
12 80 (0.78%) OSPF
13 79 (0.77%) Wireless
14 62 (0.60%) SSL
15 59 (0.58%) VSAN
16 58 (0.57%) IPsec
17 57 (0.56%) MPLS
18 56 (0.55%) SAN
19 52 (0.51%) SD-WAN
20 43 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 310 (3.02%) Power BI
2 236 (2.30%) SQL Server
3 234 (2.28%) PostgreSQL
4 231 (2.25%) Data Warehouse
5 175 (1.71%) Metadata
6 164 (1.60%) Oracle Database
7 116 (1.13%) Data Lake
8 115 (1.12%) Relational Database
9 93 (0.91%) MongoDB
9 93 (0.91%) MySQL
10 89 (0.87%) Amazon RDS
11 86 (0.84%) NoSQL
12 73 (0.71%) Oracle Reports
13 65 (0.63%) Pentaho
14 60 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
15 58 (0.57%) Amazon Athena
16 51 (0.50%) Tableau
17 46 (0.45%) Amazon Aurora
18 45 (0.44%) Big Data
19 38 (0.37%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 533 (5.20%) JIRA
2 482 (4.70%) Git
3 441 (4.30%) GitLab
4 404 (3.94%) Jenkins
5 125 (1.22%) Selenium
6 71 (0.69%) Postman
7 70 (0.68%) SonarQube
8 67 (0.65%) JUnit
9 64 (0.62%) Maven
10 62 (0.60%) Cucumber
11 59 (0.58%) JMeter
12 42 (0.41%) Gradle
13 40 (0.39%) Mockito
14 36 (0.35%) Gatling
14 36 (0.35%) REST Assured
14 36 (0.35%) Zephyr
15 35 (0.34%) Artifactory
15 35 (0.34%) Cypress.io
15 35 (0.34%) Visual Studio
16 31 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,321 (22.63%) Social Skills
2 2,017 (19.66%) Public Sector
3 839 (8.18%) Analytical Skills
4 678 (6.61%) Finance
5 410 (4.00%) Military
6 321 (3.13%) Aerospace
7 253 (2.47%) Documentation Skills
8 208 (2.03%) Influencing Skills
9 172 (1.68%) Organisational Skills
10 149 (1.45%) Telecoms
11 146 (1.42%) Manufacturing
12 131 (1.28%) Banking
12 131 (1.28%) Legal
13 125 (1.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 113 (1.10%) Law
15 97 (0.95%) Police
16 66 (0.64%) Presentation Skills
17 44 (0.43%) Local Government
18 42 (0.41%) Marketing
19 40 (0.39%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,602 (15.62%) Architect
2 966 (9.42%) Developer
3 956 (9.32%) Senior
4 945 (9.21%) Lead
5 574 (5.60%) Consultant
6 568 (5.54%) Analyst
7 430 (4.19%) Data Engineer
8 420 (4.09%) DevOps Engineer
9 380 (3.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 264 (2.57%) Technical Architect
11 262 (2.55%) Solutions Architect
12 253 (2.47%) Data Architect
13 249 (2.43%) Security Architect
14 233 (2.27%) Software Engineer
15 224 (2.18%) Network Engineer
16 210 (2.05%) Administrator
17 197 (1.92%) Cloud Engineer
18 193 (1.88%) Designer
19 184 (1.79%) Java Developer
20 181 (1.76%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 874 (8.52%) Terraform
2 393 (3.83%) REST
3 209 (2.04%) Kafka
4 208 (2.03%) Spring
5 189 (1.84%) Spring Boot
6 161 (1.57%) .NET
6 161 (1.57%) SOAP
7 160 (1.56%) React
8 155 (1.51%) RESTful
9 128 (1.25%) Node.js
10 122 (1.19%) JSON
11 116 (1.13%) OAuth
12 113 (1.10%) HTML
13 104 (1.01%) XML
14 93 (0.91%) AngularJS
14 93 (0.91%) Web Services
15 91 (0.89%) Middleware
16 87 (0.85%) CSS
16 87 (0.85%) Oracle Fusion
17 84 (0.82%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 457 (4.46%) Cloud Native
2 398 (3.88%) Onboarding
3 321 (3.13%) Product Ownership
4 266 (2.59%) Data Centre
5 178 (1.74%) Management Information System
6 161 (1.57%) PKI
7 160 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
8 152 (1.48%) Enterprise Software
9 140 (1.36%) CMDB
10 118 (1.15%) Hybrid Cloud
11 113 (1.10%) Distributed Systems
12 108 (1.05%) Cyber Threat
13 105 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
14 103 (1.00%) Operational Technology
15 102 (0.99%) Replication
16 86 (0.84%) Security Posture
17 82 (0.80%) Clustering
17 82 (0.80%) Data Structures
17 82 (0.80%) Public Cloud
18 81 (0.79%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 913 (8.90%) Windows
2 706 (6.88%) Linux
3 353 (3.44%) Windows Server
4 213 (2.08%) Unix
5 146 (1.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 134 (1.31%) Windows 10
7 82 (0.80%) Solaris
8 65 (0.63%) Android
9 45 (0.44%) CentOS
9 45 (0.44%) Mac OS
10 37 (0.36%) Ubuntu
11 35 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 29 (0.28%) AIX
13 28 (0.27%) Apple iOS
14 24 (0.23%) Windows 7
15 22 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
16 18 (0.18%) VMS
17 16 (0.16%) Rocky
18 15 (0.15%) Windows Server 2016
19 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,140 (20.86%) Agile
2 1,531 (14.92%) DevOps
3 1,500 (14.62%) CI/CD
4 1,457 (14.20%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,285 (12.53%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,113 (10.85%) Problem-Solving
7 1,025 (9.99%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 890 (8.68%) Infrastructure as Code
9 849 (8.28%) Migration
10 783 (7.63%) Cybersecurity
11 717 (6.99%) ITIL
12 662 (6.45%) Roadmaps
13 659 (6.42%) AI
14 658 (6.41%) Technical Leadership
15 646 (6.30%) Test Automation
16 635 (6.19%) Decision-Making
17 631 (6.15%) Containerisation
18 616 (6.01%) Analytics
19 582 (5.67%) Software Engineering
20 560 (5.46%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,165 (11.36%) Python
2 944 (9.20%) SQL
3 648 (6.32%) Java
4 535 (5.22%) PowerShell
5 353 (3.44%) JavaScript
6 301 (2.93%) Bash
7 187 (1.82%) C#
8 177 (1.73%) TypeScript
9 125 (1.22%) PL/SQL
10 109 (1.06%) Bicep
11 70 (0.68%) Shell Script
12 59 (0.58%) C++
13 52 (0.51%) Go
14 48 (0.47%) C
15 47 (0.46%) Groovy
16 45 (0.44%) Scala
17 44 (0.43%) Kotlin
18 31 (0.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 27 (0.26%) Kusto Query Language
20 25 (0.24%) R
Qualifications
1 7,686 (74.93%) SC Cleared
2 2,119 (20.66%) DV Cleared
3 447 (4.36%) BPSS Clearance
4 437 (4.26%) Degree
5 199 (1.94%) CISSP
6 169 (1.65%) Azure Certification
7 161 (1.57%) Cisco Certification
8 154 (1.50%) Microsoft Certification
9 141 (1.37%) AWS Certification
10 117 (1.14%) CISM
11 97 (0.95%) PMI Certification
12 88 (0.86%) PMP
13 86 (0.84%) ISTQB
14 82 (0.80%) CCNP
15 62 (0.60%) Computer Science Degree
16 59 (0.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 55 (0.54%) CCNA
18 44 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 44 (0.43%) TOGAF Certification
19 41 (0.40%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 459 (4.47%) QA
2 327 (3.19%) Data Quality
3 302 (2.94%) NIST
4 283 (2.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 257 (2.51%) NCSC
6 242 (2.36%) Accessibility
7 215 (2.10%) PMO
8 154 (1.50%) SLA
9 146 (1.42%) GDPR
10 141 (1.37%) GRC
11 70 (0.68%) WCAG
12 52 (0.51%) JSP 440
13 44 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
14 41 (0.40%) NIST 800
15 35 (0.34%) Def Stans
16 29 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 25 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
18 21 (0.20%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 20 (0.19%) ISO 9001
20 19 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 681 (6.64%) Docker
2 585 (5.70%) Active Directory
3 405 (3.95%) VMware Infrastructure
4 139 (1.36%) VMware ESXi
5 130 (1.27%) VMware NSX
6 125 (1.22%) Hyper-V
7 124 (1.21%) vSphere
8 83 (0.81%) Virtual Machines
9 41 (0.40%) Firmware
9 41 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
10 35 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
11 26 (0.25%) BitLocker
12 25 (0.24%) vCloud
13 20 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
14 15 (0.15%) NFS
15 12 (0.12%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 10 (0.097%) KVM
16 10 (0.097%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 10 (0.097%) Postfix
17 9 (0.088%) Squid
Systems Management
1 822 (8.01%) Kubernetes
2 400 (3.90%) Ansible
3 228 (2.22%) Grafana
4 171 (1.67%) Prometheus
5 129 (1.26%) SCCM
6 127 (1.24%) vCenter Server
7 94 (0.92%) SCOM
8 90 (0.88%) Microsoft Intune
9 57 (0.56%) Argo
10 50 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
11 43 (0.42%) Puppet
12 40 (0.39%) Kibana
13 36 (0.35%) Oracle RMAN
14 34 (0.33%) Data Guard
15 30 (0.29%) VxRail
16 29 (0.28%) Istio
17 28 (0.27%) Control-M
18 27 (0.26%) NetBackup
19 26 (0.25%) WSUS
20 25 (0.24%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,383 (13.48%) Microsoft
2 816 (7.95%) Oracle
3 551 (5.37%) VMware
4 472 (4.60%) ServiceNow
5 388 (3.78%) SAP
6 275 (2.68%) Cisco
7 246 (2.40%) Google
8 196 (1.91%) Splunk
9 162 (1.58%) Databricks
10 121 (1.18%) Red Hat
11 113 (1.10%) Palo Alto
12 109 (1.06%) Salesforce
13 96 (0.94%) IBM
14 92 (0.90%) Informatica
15 90 (0.88%) CyberArk
15 90 (0.88%) Remedy
16 87 (0.85%) Dynatrace
17 85 (0.83%) Talend
18 74 (0.72%) SolarWinds
19 71 (0.69%) Citrix