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 27 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 7,440 4,782 7,081
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.85% 18.19% 18.77%
As % of the Qualifications category 66.61% 59.78% 60.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,094 2,983 4,533
10th Percentile £350 £340 £363
25th Percentile £450 £445 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -4.26%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £656
90th Percentile £725 £712 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -3.51%
Number of hourly rates quoted 658 249 470
10th Percentile £17.69 £21.06 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.72 £26.25 £42.31
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £59.84
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% +0.27% -0.27%
75th Percentile £63.94 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £83.12
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £54.76 £60.00
% change year-on-year -54.07% -8.74% -

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 11,169 7,999 11,742
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.31% 30.43% 31.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,426 4,817 7,333
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £419 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.05% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £519 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -1.24% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 864 388 833
10th Percentile £15.66 £19.67 £14.50
25th Percentile £18.87 £25.26 £21.46
Median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -45.54% -2.78% +5.56%
75th Percentile £63.40 £67.50 £66.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.09 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £39.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year -35.51% -17.89% +5.56%

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 27 January 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 27 January 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 27 January 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 +5 2,542 £538 -0.46% 447
South East +1 1,504 £515 -6.37% 608
South West 0 1,288 £550 -4.35% 383
North of England -2 801 £500 +5.26% 226
Midlands +4 715 £515 -6.53% 170
West Midlands +2 562 £519 -6.58% 104
North West 0 530 £513 +7.89% 125
East of England +2 336 £492 -4.00% 241
Yorkshire -11 158 £500 +9.59% 66
East Midlands +3 153 £425 -21.70% 64
North East 0 137 £450 -14.29% 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
1 268 (3.60%) Confluence
2 183 (2.46%) SharePoint
3 127 (1.71%) Microsoft Exchange
4 117 (1.57%) SAS
5 70 (0.94%) Apache
6 56 (0.75%) Apache Spark
7 48 (0.65%) Apache Airflow
8 40 (0.54%) nginx
9 38 (0.51%) Skype for Business
10 24 (0.32%) WebLogic
11 19 (0.26%) CMS
12 18 (0.24%) IIS
13 14 (0.19%) Jupyter
14 10 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
15 9 (0.12%) OpenStack
15 9 (0.12%) SharePoint Server
16 7 (0.094%) Tuxedo
17 6 (0.081%) Documentum
17 6 (0.081%) Exchange Server 2010
18 5 (0.067%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 245 (3.29%) Microsoft Office
2 148 (1.99%) Microsoft Excel
3 105 (1.41%) Microsoft Project
4 59 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 33 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.16%) Simulink
8 7 (0.094%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.067%) Oracle Smart View
9 5 (0.067%) Siemens NX
9 5 (0.067%) Sketch
9 5 (0.067%) Windchill
10 4 (0.054%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.054%) FrameMaker
10 4 (0.054%) Stateflow
11 3 (0.040%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.040%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.027%) Adobe Illustrator
12 2 (0.027%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.027%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 143 (1.92%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.50%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 27 (0.36%) SAP EWM
3 27 (0.36%) SAP WM
4 26 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
5 23 (0.31%) Dynamics CRM
6 19 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
7 18 (0.24%) Maximo
7 18 (0.24%) SAP MM
8 14 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
8 14 (0.19%) Teamcenter
9 13 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
9 13 (0.17%) SAP QM
10 12 (0.16%) SAP PP
10 12 (0.16%) SAP VC
11 11 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
11 11 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
11 11 (0.15%) Oracle Receivables
11 11 (0.15%) SAP EHS
11 11 (0.15%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,261 (16.95%) Azure
2 1,220 (16.40%) AWS
3 337 (4.53%) GitHub
4 326 (4.38%) GCP
5 302 (4.06%) Microsoft 365
6 280 (3.76%) Azure DevOps
7 272 (3.66%) Power Platform
8 219 (2.94%) Serverless
9 198 (2.66%) Entra ID
10 171 (2.30%) Amazon S3
11 169 (2.27%) GitHub Actions
12 151 (2.03%) OpenShift
13 137 (1.84%) AWS Lambda
14 103 (1.38%) Amazon EC2
15 102 (1.37%) AWS CloudFormation
16 98 (1.32%) IaaS
17 97 (1.30%) SaaS
18 96 (1.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 94 (1.26%) PaaS
20 89 (1.20%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 386 (5.19%) Firewall
2 261 (3.51%) DNS
3 183 (2.46%) Network Security
4 174 (2.34%) VPN
5 162 (2.18%) WAN
6 134 (1.80%) TCP/IP
7 116 (1.56%) LAN
8 113 (1.52%) DHCP
9 110 (1.48%) BGP
10 85 (1.14%) Wireless
11 79 (1.06%) VLAN
12 70 (0.94%) Wi-Fi
13 63 (0.85%) MPLS
14 62 (0.83%) OSPF
15 61 (0.82%) SSL
16 58 (0.78%) IPsec
17 50 (0.67%) SAN
18 46 (0.62%) Skype
19 42 (0.56%) Cisco ISE
20 37 (0.50%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 196 (2.63%) PostgreSQL
2 188 (2.53%) Power BI
3 93 (1.25%) Data Warehouse
4 85 (1.14%) MongoDB
5 84 (1.13%) NoSQL
6 83 (1.12%) Metadata
6 83 (1.12%) SQL Server
7 79 (1.06%) Oracle Database
8 78 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
9 70 (0.94%) Relational Database
10 61 (0.82%) Azure SQL Database
11 52 (0.70%) Elasticsearch
12 45 (0.60%) Pentaho
13 42 (0.56%) Big Data
13 42 (0.56%) Data Lake
14 41 (0.55%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 37 (0.50%) Amazon Athena
15 37 (0.50%) Amazon Redshift
16 36 (0.48%) MySQL
17 34 (0.46%) Redis
Development Applications
1 463 (6.22%) JIRA
2 387 (5.20%) Git
3 346 (4.65%) Jenkins
4 285 (3.83%) GitLab
5 85 (1.14%) Selenium
6 68 (0.91%) Postman
7 58 (0.78%) JUnit
8 56 (0.75%) Cypress.io
9 48 (0.65%) Bitbucket
10 47 (0.63%) Oracle APEX
10 47 (0.63%) SonarQube
11 45 (0.60%) Artifactory
12 36 (0.48%) Maven
13 34 (0.46%) Cucumber
14 31 (0.42%) Mockito
15 27 (0.36%) REST Assured
16 23 (0.31%) Metasploit
16 23 (0.31%) MSI
17 22 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
18 21 (0.28%) Burp Suite
General
1 1,920 (25.81%) Public Sector
2 1,903 (25.58%) Social Skills
3 654 (8.79%) Analytical Skills
4 528 (7.10%) Finance
5 297 (3.99%) Military
6 213 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
7 195 (2.62%) Telecoms
8 190 (2.55%) Manufacturing
9 132 (1.77%) Electronics
10 131 (1.76%) Marketing
11 124 (1.67%) Aerospace
12 110 (1.48%) Organisational Skills
13 106 (1.42%) Legal
14 96 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
15 87 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
16 81 (1.09%) Banking
17 67 (0.90%) Law
18 48 (0.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 31 (0.42%) Police
20 29 (0.39%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,004 (13.49%) Architect
2 722 (9.70%) Developer
3 627 (8.43%) Senior
4 532 (7.15%) Analyst
5 496 (6.67%) Consultant
6 411 (5.52%) Lead
7 361 (4.85%) DevOps Engineer
8 243 (3.27%) Data Engineer
9 235 (3.16%) Support Engineer
10 228 (3.06%) Network Engineer
11 177 (2.38%) Technical Architect
12 176 (2.37%) Software Engineer
13 174 (2.34%) Business Analyst
14 173 (2.33%) Solutions Architect
15 143 (1.92%) Tester
16 137 (1.84%) AWS Engineer
17 133 (1.79%) Azure Engineer
17 133 (1.79%) Project Manager
18 131 (1.76%) SAP Consultant
19 130 (1.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 309 (4.15%) REST
2 178 (2.39%) Node.js
3 171 (2.30%) React
4 159 (2.14%) Kafka
5 142 (1.91%) Spring
6 140 (1.88%) SOAP
7 139 (1.87%) LDAP
8 135 (1.81%) JSON
9 112 (1.51%) Spring Boot
10 106 (1.42%) HTML
11 97 (1.30%) .NET
12 96 (1.29%) RESTful
13 94 (1.26%) CSS
14 93 (1.25%) OAuth
14 93 (1.25%) XML
15 89 (1.20%) Oracle Fusion
16 84 (1.13%) AngularJS
17 80 (1.08%) PySpark
18 79 (1.06%) Web Services
19 78 (1.05%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 238 (3.20%) Data Centre
2 219 (2.94%) Product Ownership
3 212 (2.85%) Cloud Native
4 202 (2.72%) Onboarding
5 192 (2.58%) PKI
6 140 (1.88%) Management Information System
7 120 (1.61%) Security Posture
8 104 (1.40%) Enterprise Software
9 101 (1.36%) Self-Motivation
10 92 (1.24%) Legacy Systems
11 91 (1.22%) Replication
12 77 (1.03%) Cyber Threat
13 69 (0.93%) Driving Licence
14 61 (0.82%) Security Operations Centre
15 56 (0.75%) Public Cloud
16 53 (0.71%) Hybrid Cloud
17 49 (0.66%) Private Cloud
18 47 (0.63%) Distributed Systems
19 45 (0.60%) CMDB
20 42 (0.56%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 814 (10.94%) Windows
2 570 (7.66%) Linux
3 205 (2.76%) Windows Server
4 182 (2.45%) Windows 10
5 97 (1.30%) Unix
6 93 (1.25%) Android
6 93 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 67 (0.90%) Mac OS
8 42 (0.56%) Ubuntu
9 41 (0.55%) VMS
10 29 (0.39%) Apple iOS
11 24 (0.32%) CentOS
12 22 (0.30%) Windows 7
12 22 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
13 16 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
13 16 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
14 14 (0.19%) Amazon Linux
14 14 (0.19%) Mac OS X
15 12 (0.16%) Solaris
15 12 (0.16%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,420 (19.09%) Agile
2 1,176 (15.81%) DevOps
3 1,027 (13.80%) CI/CD
4 955 (12.84%) Problem-Solving
5 663 (8.91%) Migration
6 639 (8.59%) Stakeholder Management
7 543 (7.30%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 518 (6.96%) Continuous Improvement
9 505 (6.79%) Cybersecurity
10 471 (6.33%) ITIL
11 468 (6.29%) Infrastructure as Code
12 425 (5.71%) Test Automation
13 401 (5.39%) Analytics
14 391 (5.26%) Containerisation
15 390 (5.24%) Business Intelligence
16 374 (5.03%) Roadmaps
17 369 (4.96%) Service Management
18 338 (4.54%) Software Engineering
19 333 (4.48%) Scrum
20 318 (4.27%) Workflow
Programming Languages
1 924 (12.42%) Python
2 582 (7.82%) SQL
3 524 (7.04%) PowerShell
4 411 (5.52%) Java
5 351 (4.72%) JavaScript
6 201 (2.70%) Bash
7 169 (2.27%) TypeScript
8 132 (1.77%) C#
9 87 (1.17%) C++
10 86 (1.16%) Go
11 69 (0.93%) PL/SQL
11 69 (0.93%) Shell Script
12 62 (0.83%) C
13 44 (0.59%) Ruby
13 44 (0.59%) Scala
14 43 (0.58%) Ada
15 36 (0.48%) MATLAB
16 33 (0.44%) ABAP
17 31 (0.42%) Bicep
17 31 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 5,717 (76.84%) SC Cleared
2 1,258 (16.91%) DV Cleared
3 379 (5.09%) Degree
4 214 (2.88%) BPSS Clearance
5 140 (1.88%) CISSP
6 117 (1.57%) Azure Certification
6 117 (1.57%) Cisco Certification
7 115 (1.55%) Microsoft Certification
8 100 (1.34%) CCNP
9 96 (1.29%) AWS Certification
10 85 (1.14%) CISM
11 63 (0.85%) Computer Science Degree
11 63 (0.85%) ITIL Certification
12 54 (0.73%) CCNA
13 49 (0.66%) CEH
14 48 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
15 46 (0.62%) GIAC
16 42 (0.56%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 40 (0.54%) CHECK Team Member
18 37 (0.50%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 241 (3.24%) QA
2 233 (3.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 223 (3.00%) NIST
4 188 (2.53%) NCSC
5 172 (2.31%) Data Quality
6 154 (2.07%) GDPR
7 124 (1.67%) Accessibility
8 117 (1.57%) SLA
9 75 (1.01%) PMO
10 50 (0.67%) GRC
11 49 (0.66%) JSP 440
12 42 (0.56%) WCAG
13 37 (0.50%) Def Stans
14 33 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
15 29 (0.39%) COBIT
16 27 (0.36%) PCI DSS
17 25 (0.34%) NIST 800
18 19 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 18 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 18 (0.24%) RMADS
System Software
1 551 (7.41%) Docker
2 469 (6.30%) Active Directory
3 215 (2.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 74 (0.99%) VMware NSX
5 63 (0.85%) vSphere
6 56 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
7 54 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
8 43 (0.58%) Hyper-V
9 28 (0.38%) Firmware
10 27 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
11 17 (0.23%) BitLocker
12 13 (0.17%) Squid
13 11 (0.15%) DFS Replication
13 11 (0.15%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 10 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
14 10 (0.13%) Postfix
15 9 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
16 8 (0.11%) NFS
17 7 (0.094%) Dovecot
17 7 (0.094%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 701 (9.42%) Kubernetes
2 633 (8.51%) Terraform
3 278 (3.74%) Ansible
4 175 (2.35%) Grafana
5 147 (1.98%) Prometheus
6 107 (1.44%) SCCM
7 105 (1.41%) Single Sign-On
8 94 (1.26%) vCenter Server
9 81 (1.09%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 61 (0.82%) Argo
10 61 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
11 36 (0.48%) Kibana
11 36 (0.48%) Packer
12 34 (0.46%) Podman
13 33 (0.44%) OPNET
14 30 (0.40%) vRealize
15 27 (0.36%) Puppet
16 26 (0.35%) Progress Chef
17 25 (0.34%) Nessus
17 25 (0.34%) Nmap
Vendors
1 945 (12.70%) Microsoft
2 416 (5.59%) Oracle
3 413 (5.55%) SAP
4 398 (5.35%) Cisco
5 380 (5.11%) VMware
6 306 (4.11%) ServiceNow
7 202 (2.72%) Splunk
8 150 (2.02%) Red Hat
9 130 (1.75%) Palo Alto
10 124 (1.67%) Juniper
11 121 (1.63%) CyberArk
12 112 (1.51%) Google
13 107 (1.44%) Atlassian
13 107 (1.44%) Databricks
14 96 (1.29%) Dell
14 96 (1.29%) Salesforce
15 79 (1.06%) HP
16 73 (0.98%) Dynatrace
17 70 (0.94%) CheckPoint
18 66 (0.89%) F5