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 8 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,166 4,469 7,064
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.62% 18.44% 19.17%
As % of the Qualifications category 70.06% 58.83% 61.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,364 2,960 4,644
10th Percentile £363 £340 £351
25th Percentile £449 £450 £459
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.85% -3.73% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 766 272 489
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.23 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £52.25 £57.29
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -8.79% -4.53%
75th Percentile £74.00 £67.31 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.36 £78.67 £84.41
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £47.81 £57.29
% change year-on-year +15.05% -16.55% -4.53%

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 13,083 7,596 11,497
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.29% 31.35% 31.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,792 4,819 7,090
10th Percentile £340 £289 £310
25th Percentile £425 £414 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £621 £626 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £519 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -1.14% -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 963 440 982
10th Percentile £17.10 £18.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £22.27 £18.00
Median hourly rate £48.05 £40.55 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.51% +1.36% -23.81%
75th Percentile £72.52 £67.50 £62.25
90th Percentile £85.50 £81.35 £77.45
UK median hourly rate £47.54 £38.27 £40.00
% change year-on-year +24.22% -4.33% -25.93%

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 8 May 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 8 May 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 8 May 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 3,254 £525 - 487
South East +1 2,216 £538 -2.27% 510
South West 0 1,296 £538 -4.44% 313
Midlands +4 899 £475 -9.52% 168
North of England -1 852 £486 -2.75% 312
West Midlands +4 763 £475 -11.55% 125
North West -2 498 £497 -0.70% 175
East of England +2 379 £525 +16.67% 152
Yorkshire -7 207 £475 -9.52% 60
North East +1 181 £475 -5.00% 80
East Midlands -3 130 £450 -5.26% 43
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
1 357 (3.89%) Confluence
2 205 (2.24%) SharePoint
3 125 (1.36%) Microsoft Exchange
4 112 (1.22%) SAS
5 79 (0.86%) Apache Spark
6 68 (0.74%) Apache
7 54 (0.59%) Apache Airflow
8 32 (0.35%) WebLogic
9 30 (0.33%) nginx
10 22 (0.24%) Jupyter
11 17 (0.19%) Tomcat
12 15 (0.16%) IIS
12 15 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
13 14 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
13 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
14 13 (0.14%) CMS
14 13 (0.14%) Skype for Business
15 8 (0.087%) Apache Superset
15 8 (0.087%) ArcGIS
15 8 (0.087%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 201 (2.19%) Microsoft Office
2 184 (2.01%) Microsoft Excel
3 119 (1.30%) Microsoft Project
4 81 (0.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 38 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.12%) Simulink
8 7 (0.076%) AutoCAD
9 6 (0.065%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.055%) Notepad++
10 5 (0.055%) Revit
11 4 (0.044%) Siemens NX
11 4 (0.044%) Windchill
12 2 (0.022%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.022%) CATIA
12 2 (0.022%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.022%) Lectora
12 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.022%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 85 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (0.48%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 43 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
4 27 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
4 27 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
5 26 (0.28%) Teamcenter
6 15 (0.16%) Maximo
7 14 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
7 14 (0.15%) SAP PSCD
8 13 (0.14%) Temenos T24
9 12 (0.13%) Findur
10 10 (0.11%) iTrent
10 10 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
11 9 (0.098%) Integrated Workplace Management System
11 9 (0.098%) SAP HCM
11 9 (0.098%) SAP PP
12 8 (0.087%) Primavera
12 8 (0.087%) SAP HR
12 8 (0.087%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,589 (17.34%) Azure
2 1,499 (16.35%) AWS
3 378 (4.12%) GitHub
4 373 (4.07%) GCP
5 354 (3.86%) Azure DevOps
6 338 (3.69%) Power Platform
7 244 (2.66%) Serverless
8 242 (2.64%) Microsoft 365
9 228 (2.49%) Entra ID
10 214 (2.33%) GitHub Actions
11 190 (2.07%) Amazon S3
12 163 (1.78%) AWS Lambda
13 133 (1.45%) PaaS
14 127 (1.39%) OpenShift
15 126 (1.37%) Amazon EC2
16 109 (1.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 109 (1.19%) OCI
17 108 (1.18%) AWS CloudFormation
17 108 (1.18%) IaaS
18 101 (1.10%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 421 (4.59%) Firewall
2 264 (2.88%) DNS
3 211 (2.30%) Network Security
4 209 (2.28%) WAN
5 191 (2.08%) LAN
6 153 (1.67%) VPN
7 141 (1.54%) BGP
8 138 (1.51%) DHCP
9 121 (1.32%) OSPF
10 104 (1.13%) TCP/IP
11 97 (1.06%) Wi-Fi
12 90 (0.98%) VLAN
13 78 (0.85%) Wireless
14 61 (0.67%) MPLS
15 53 (0.58%) SAN
16 50 (0.55%) VXLAN
17 48 (0.52%) IPsec
18 47 (0.51%) SD-WAN
19 44 (0.48%) Ethernet VPN
19 44 (0.48%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 258 (2.81%) Power BI
2 214 (2.33%) PostgreSQL
3 198 (2.16%) Data Warehouse
4 182 (1.99%) SQL Server
5 116 (1.27%) Metadata
6 104 (1.13%) Oracle Database
7 101 (1.10%) Amazon RDS
8 85 (0.93%) NoSQL
9 81 (0.88%) MongoDB
9 81 (0.88%) Relational Database
10 80 (0.87%) Data Lake
11 77 (0.84%) Pentaho
12 70 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
13 67 (0.73%) Azure SQL Database
13 67 (0.73%) Oracle Reports
14 61 (0.67%) Amazon Redshift
14 61 (0.67%) Tableau
15 60 (0.65%) MySQL
16 51 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
17 48 (0.52%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 566 (6.17%) JIRA
2 412 (4.49%) Git
3 350 (3.82%) Jenkins
4 333 (3.63%) GitLab
5 86 (0.94%) Selenium
6 75 (0.82%) Postman
7 70 (0.76%) JUnit
8 57 (0.62%) SonarQube
9 52 (0.57%) Rational DOORS
10 46 (0.50%) Artifactory
11 44 (0.48%) Bitbucket
12 40 (0.44%) JMeter
13 39 (0.43%) Maven
14 38 (0.41%) Cucumber
15 37 (0.40%) Mockito
16 34 (0.37%) Visual Studio
17 31 (0.34%) Cypress.io
18 28 (0.31%) Zephyr
19 24 (0.26%) REST Assured
20 23 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,984 (21.65%) Social Skills
2 1,982 (21.62%) Public Sector
3 718 (7.83%) Analytical Skills
4 652 (7.11%) Finance
5 329 (3.59%) Military
6 257 (2.80%) Documentation Skills
7 220 (2.40%) Aerospace
8 146 (1.59%) Legal
9 122 (1.33%) Telecoms
10 112 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
11 110 (1.20%) Banking
12 104 (1.13%) Manufacturing
13 103 (1.12%) Organisational Skills
14 91 (0.99%) Presentation Skills
15 86 (0.94%) Law
16 59 (0.64%) Police
17 55 (0.60%) Marketing
18 51 (0.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 48 (0.52%) Electronics
20 38 (0.41%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,359 (14.83%) Architect
2 848 (9.25%) Developer
3 768 (8.38%) Senior
4 651 (7.10%) Analyst
5 638 (6.96%) Lead
6 440 (4.80%) Data Engineer
7 412 (4.49%) Consultant
8 408 (4.45%) DevOps Engineer
9 277 (3.02%) Network Engineer
10 272 (2.97%) Software Engineer
11 261 (2.85%) Technical Architect
12 250 (2.73%) Business Analyst
13 248 (2.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 216 (2.36%) Project Manager
15 199 (2.17%) Solutions Architect
16 198 (2.16%) Azure Engineer
17 175 (1.91%) Security Architect
18 169 (1.84%) Designer
19 168 (1.83%) Administrator
20 166 (1.81%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 295 (3.22%) REST
2 217 (2.37%) Spring
3 175 (1.91%) Spring Boot
4 166 (1.81%) Kafka
5 165 (1.80%) Node.js
6 157 (1.71%) .NET
7 155 (1.69%) React
8 144 (1.57%) LDAP
9 133 (1.45%) SOAP
10 132 (1.44%) RESTful
11 119 (1.30%) JSON
12 113 (1.23%) AngularJS
13 101 (1.10%) Web Services
14 99 (1.08%) PySpark
15 89 (0.97%) Oracle Fusion
16 81 (0.88%) HTML
16 81 (0.88%) OAuth
17 76 (0.83%) XML
18 71 (0.77%) Elastic Stack
19 63 (0.69%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 318 (3.47%) Cloud Native
2 316 (3.45%) Product Ownership
3 272 (2.97%) Data Centre
4 264 (2.88%) Onboarding
5 161 (1.76%) PKI
6 138 (1.51%) Management Information System
7 125 (1.36%) Legacy Systems
8 119 (1.30%) Security Posture
9 116 (1.27%) Replication
10 114 (1.24%) Enterprise Software
11 108 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
12 97 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
13 79 (0.86%) Clustering
14 74 (0.81%) Data Structures
14 74 (0.81%) Public Cloud
15 72 (0.79%) Hybrid Cloud
16 62 (0.68%) Security Operations Centre
16 62 (0.68%) Virtual Team
17 57 (0.62%) Operational Technology
18 54 (0.59%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 785 (8.56%) Windows
2 628 (6.85%) Linux
3 238 (2.60%) Windows Server
4 156 (1.70%) Unix
5 108 (1.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 95 (1.04%) Android
6 95 (1.04%) Windows 10
7 51 (0.56%) Apple iOS
8 45 (0.49%) Mac OS
9 37 (0.40%) Solaris
9 37 (0.40%) Ubuntu
10 29 (0.32%) VMS
11 25 (0.27%) AIX
12 23 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
13 22 (0.24%) CentOS
13 22 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 15 (0.16%) Windows 7
15 12 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
16 10 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
17 8 (0.087%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,827 (19.93%) Agile
2 1,400 (15.27%) DevOps
3 1,223 (13.34%) CI/CD
4 1,022 (11.15%) Problem-Solving
5 888 (9.69%) Stakeholder Management
6 809 (8.83%) Continuous Improvement
7 776 (8.47%) Migration
8 680 (7.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 616 (6.72%) Infrastructure as Code
10 598 (6.52%) ITIL
11 541 (5.90%) Cybersecurity
12 533 (5.81%) Test Automation
13 518 (5.65%) Analytics
14 511 (5.57%) Software Engineering
15 502 (5.48%) Containerisation
16 497 (5.42%) Roadmaps
17 452 (4.93%) Data Modelling
18 420 (4.58%) Decision-Making
19 417 (4.55%) Scrum
20 398 (4.34%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 982 (10.71%) Python
2 847 (9.24%) SQL
3 568 (6.20%) Java
4 507 (5.53%) PowerShell
5 283 (3.09%) JavaScript
6 201 (2.19%) C#
7 171 (1.87%) Bash
8 145 (1.58%) TypeScript
9 100 (1.09%) PL/SQL
10 89 (0.97%) C++
11 84 (0.92%) Shell Script
12 67 (0.73%) Go
13 64 (0.70%) Scala
14 58 (0.63%) C
15 53 (0.58%) Bicep
16 48 (0.52%) Ruby
17 41 (0.45%) Ada
17 41 (0.45%) Apex Code
18 40 (0.44%) R
19 35 (0.38%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 6,882 (75.08%) SC Cleared
2 1,748 (19.07%) DV Cleared
3 420 (4.58%) Degree
4 257 (2.80%) BPSS Clearance
5 172 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
6 153 (1.67%) CISSP
7 127 (1.39%) Azure Certification
8 110 (1.20%) CCNP
9 105 (1.15%) AWS Certification
10 100 (1.09%) CISM
11 91 (0.99%) Microsoft Certification
12 72 (0.79%) PMP
13 68 (0.74%) CCNA
13 68 (0.74%) TOGAF Certification
14 62 (0.68%) Computer Science Degree
15 61 (0.67%) ITIL Certification
15 61 (0.67%) PMI Certification
16 54 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 53 (0.58%) ISTQB
18 47 (0.51%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 346 (3.77%) QA
2 268 (2.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 266 (2.90%) Data Quality
4 264 (2.88%) NIST
5 180 (1.96%) NCSC
6 161 (1.76%) PMO
7 157 (1.71%) Accessibility
8 150 (1.64%) GDPR
9 100 (1.09%) SLA
10 62 (0.68%) GRC
11 58 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 50 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials
13 36 (0.39%) NIST 800
14 34 (0.37%) WCAG
15 31 (0.34%) Def Stans
15 31 (0.34%) PCI DSS
16 30 (0.33%) COBIT
17 25 (0.27%) RMADS
18 20 (0.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 19 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 574 (6.26%) Docker
2 449 (4.90%) Active Directory
3 273 (2.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 94 (1.03%) VMware ESXi
5 85 (0.93%) VMware NSX
6 78 (0.85%) Hyper-V
7 72 (0.79%) vSphere
8 68 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
9 37 (0.40%) Firmware
10 26 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
11 22 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
12 20 (0.22%) BitLocker
13 19 (0.21%) NFS
14 17 (0.19%) Postfix
14 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 15 (0.16%) vCloud
16 10 (0.11%) Squid
17 8 (0.087%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.065%) Corosync
18 6 (0.065%) KVM
Systems Management
1 740 (8.07%) Kubernetes
2 711 (7.76%) Terraform
3 317 (3.46%) Ansible
4 225 (2.45%) Grafana
5 186 (2.03%) Prometheus
6 100 (1.09%) vCenter Server
7 84 (0.92%) Single Sign-On
8 79 (0.86%) SCCM
9 55 (0.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 52 (0.57%) Microsoft Intune
11 50 (0.55%) FortiGate
12 48 (0.52%) Argo
13 38 (0.41%) Puppet
14 35 (0.38%) Podman
15 33 (0.36%) Progress Chef
16 31 (0.34%) OPNET
17 30 (0.33%) Nagios
18 29 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
19 24 (0.26%) SCOM
20 23 (0.25%) Kibana
Vendors
1 966 (10.54%) Microsoft
2 571 (6.23%) Oracle
3 469 (5.12%) VMware
4 372 (4.06%) ServiceNow
5 341 (3.72%) Cisco
6 323 (3.52%) SAP
7 210 (2.29%) Splunk
8 173 (1.89%) Databricks
9 151 (1.65%) Red Hat
10 150 (1.64%) Google
11 115 (1.25%) IBM
12 114 (1.24%) Palo Alto
13 112 (1.22%) Talend
14 105 (1.15%) Juniper
15 102 (1.11%) Salesforce
16 99 (1.08%) Atlassian
17 97 (1.06%) CyberArk
18 83 (0.91%) Remedy
19 80 (0.87%) F5
20 77 (0.84%) Informatica