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

6 months to
11 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 10,200 5,187 6,109
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.98% 18.64% 18.53%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.81% 59.22% 62.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,191 3,369 3,968
10th Percentile £390 £350 £360
25th Percentile £459 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £548 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.95% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £641
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £540 £537 £550
% change year-on-year +0.56% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 755 507 366
10th Percentile £21.33 £18.50 £20.17
25th Percentile £35.63 £18.87 £36.44
Median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +158.45% -59.17% +2.67%
75th Percentile £78.88 £43.75 £72.50
90th Percentile £91.67 £73.75 £80.92
UK median hourly rate £64.09 £25.15 £59.75
% change year-on-year +154.83% -57.91% -0.42%

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 14,823 8,759 9,850
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.95% 31.48% 29.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,961 5,535 6,109
10th Percentile £350 £304 £325
25th Percentile £440 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £525
% change year-on-year - - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,163 680 593
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.13 £17.02
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £27.00
Median hourly rate £52.50 £25.15 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +108.75% -54.27% +0.40%
75th Percentile £74.00 £50.00 £69.69
90th Percentile £88.75 £73.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +88.87% -49.70% -8.73%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 +7 3,610 £550 +2.80% 888
South East +1 2,332 £565 +5.12% 614
South West 0 1,419 £550 - 447
North of England +3 1,270 £518 +3.60% 330
Midlands 0 928 £475 -7.77% 199
West Midlands +1 792 £475 -7.77% 135
North West +2 748 £530 - 187
East of England 0 369 £550 - 241
Yorkshire +2 302 £500 +2.15% 68
North East 0 241 £475 -2.56% 82
East Midlands 0 129 £450 -4.00% 64
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
1 342 (3.35%) Confluence
2 258 (2.53%) SharePoint
3 151 (1.48%) SAS
4 116 (1.14%) Microsoft Exchange
5 91 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
6 90 (0.88%) Apache
7 87 (0.85%) Apache Spark
8 33 (0.32%) nginx
9 30 (0.29%) Jupyter
10 24 (0.24%) WebLogic
11 23 (0.23%) Oracle Application Server
12 22 (0.22%) Skype for Business
13 19 (0.19%) Tomcat
14 18 (0.18%) CMS
14 18 (0.18%) IIS
15 16 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
16 13 (0.13%) NetWeaver
16 13 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
17 12 (0.12%) JBoss
18 10 (0.098%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 186 (1.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 141 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
3 99 (0.97%) Microsoft Project
4 94 (0.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 29 (0.28%) MS Visio
6 23 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.17%) AutoCAD
7 17 (0.17%) Revit
8 16 (0.16%) SOLIDWORKS
9 11 (0.11%) Simulink
10 8 (0.078%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.078%) Windchill
11 6 (0.059%) Adobe XD
11 6 (0.059%) Sketch
12 5 (0.049%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 5 (0.049%) Notepad++
13 4 (0.039%) Trello
14 3 (0.029%) OrCAD
15 2 (0.020%) Houdini
15 2 (0.020%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 128 (1.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 78 (0.76%) Remedy ITSM
3 49 (0.48%) Oracle ERP
4 38 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
5 31 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 28 (0.27%) Teamcenter
7 24 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
7 24 (0.24%) SAP PSCD
8 23 (0.23%) Oracle Payroll
9 17 (0.17%) SAP HR
10 16 (0.16%) SAP FI
11 15 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
12 14 (0.14%) Primavera
13 13 (0.13%) Findur
14 12 (0.12%) iTrent
14 12 (0.12%) SAP CO
14 12 (0.12%) SAP GRC
14 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
15 11 (0.11%) NetSuite
15 11 (0.11%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 1,865 (18.28%) Azure
2 1,688 (16.55%) AWS
3 450 (4.41%) Azure DevOps
4 435 (4.26%) Power Platform
5 427 (4.19%) GitHub
6 385 (3.77%) GCP
7 294 (2.88%) Microsoft 365
8 287 (2.81%) GitHub Actions
9 263 (2.58%) Entra ID
10 248 (2.43%) Serverless
11 209 (2.05%) Amazon S3
12 177 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
13 156 (1.53%) SaaS
14 155 (1.52%) OCI
15 142 (1.39%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 136 (1.33%) OpenShift
17 129 (1.26%) Amazon EKS
18 126 (1.24%) Amazon EC2
19 106 (1.04%) AWS CloudFormation
20 105 (1.03%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 416 (4.08%) Firewall
2 347 (3.40%) DNS
3 214 (2.10%) Network Security
4 191 (1.87%) WAN
5 183 (1.79%) VPN
6 172 (1.69%) DHCP
7 148 (1.45%) LAN
8 125 (1.23%) BGP
9 123 (1.21%) TCP/IP
10 116 (1.14%) Wi-Fi
11 99 (0.97%) VLAN
12 86 (0.84%) OSPF
13 81 (0.79%) Wireless
14 65 (0.64%) VSAN
15 64 (0.63%) IPsec
15 64 (0.63%) SSL
16 58 (0.57%) MPLS
17 56 (0.55%) SAN
17 56 (0.55%) SD-WAN
18 43 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 314 (3.08%) Power BI
2 251 (2.46%) SQL Server
3 245 (2.40%) PostgreSQL
4 233 (2.28%) Data Warehouse
5 170 (1.67%) Metadata
6 158 (1.55%) Oracle Database
7 126 (1.24%) Relational Database
8 119 (1.17%) Data Lake
9 99 (0.97%) Amazon RDS
10 95 (0.93%) MongoDB
11 92 (0.90%) MySQL
12 89 (0.87%) NoSQL
13 79 (0.77%) Oracle Reports
14 68 (0.67%) Pentaho
15 58 (0.57%) Amazon Athena
16 57 (0.56%) Tableau
17 55 (0.54%) Elasticsearch
18 47 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
19 45 (0.44%) Amazon Aurora
20 43 (0.42%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 545 (5.34%) JIRA
2 493 (4.83%) Git
3 434 (4.25%) GitLab
4 400 (3.92%) Jenkins
5 120 (1.18%) Selenium
6 77 (0.75%) SonarQube
7 69 (0.68%) JUnit
7 69 (0.68%) Postman
8 59 (0.58%) Maven
9 51 (0.50%) JMeter
10 50 (0.49%) Cucumber
11 42 (0.41%) Mockito
12 41 (0.40%) Gradle
13 35 (0.34%) Artifactory
13 35 (0.34%) Zephyr
14 34 (0.33%) Cypress.io
14 34 (0.33%) REST Assured
15 32 (0.31%) Gatling
16 30 (0.29%) MSI
16 30 (0.29%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,286 (22.41%) Social Skills
2 2,025 (19.85%) Public Sector
3 831 (8.15%) Analytical Skills
4 690 (6.76%) Finance
5 389 (3.81%) Military
6 294 (2.88%) Aerospace
7 251 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
8 194 (1.90%) Influencing Skills
9 165 (1.62%) Organisational Skills
10 149 (1.46%) Telecoms
11 138 (1.35%) Banking
12 134 (1.31%) Legal
13 116 (1.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 113 (1.11%) Law
15 111 (1.09%) Manufacturing
16 96 (0.94%) Police
17 60 (0.59%) Presentation Skills
18 46 (0.45%) Marketing
19 44 (0.43%) Retail
20 41 (0.40%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,573 (15.42%) Architect
2 982 (9.63%) Developer
3 955 (9.36%) Lead
4 945 (9.26%) Senior
5 577 (5.66%) Consultant
6 563 (5.52%) Analyst
7 444 (4.35%) Data Engineer
8 415 (4.07%) DevOps Engineer
9 377 (3.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 271 (2.66%) Technical Architect
11 261 (2.56%) Software Engineer
12 257 (2.52%) Solutions Architect
13 248 (2.43%) Data Architect
14 231 (2.26%) Security Architect
15 229 (2.25%) Network Engineer
16 198 (1.94%) Administrator
17 193 (1.89%) Cloud Engineer
18 190 (1.86%) Delivery Manager
19 184 (1.80%) Java Developer
20 182 (1.78%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 881 (8.64%) Terraform
2 387 (3.79%) REST
3 212 (2.08%) Spring
4 203 (1.99%) Kafka
5 191 (1.87%) Spring Boot
6 177 (1.74%) React
7 175 (1.72%) .NET
8 171 (1.68%) RESTful
9 154 (1.51%) SOAP
10 135 (1.32%) JSON
10 135 (1.32%) Node.js
11 111 (1.09%) HTML
12 107 (1.05%) AngularJS
13 106 (1.04%) OAuth
14 100 (0.98%) XML
15 96 (0.94%) Web Services
16 87 (0.85%) CSS
17 86 (0.84%) Oracle Fusion
18 85 (0.83%) PySpark
19 82 (0.80%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 457 (4.48%) Cloud Native
2 382 (3.75%) Onboarding
3 314 (3.08%) Product Ownership
4 267 (2.62%) Data Centre
5 175 (1.72%) Management Information System
6 169 (1.66%) Legacy Systems
7 159 (1.56%) PKI
8 148 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
9 138 (1.35%) CMDB
10 123 (1.21%) Distributed Systems
11 117 (1.15%) Hybrid Cloud
12 114 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
13 113 (1.11%) Replication
14 102 (1.00%) Cyber Threat
15 93 (0.91%) Operational Technology
16 86 (0.84%) Security Operations Centre
17 85 (0.83%) Clustering
18 84 (0.82%) Public Cloud
19 83 (0.81%) Data Structures
20 77 (0.75%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 909 (8.91%) Windows
2 710 (6.96%) Linux
3 351 (3.44%) Windows Server
4 207 (2.03%) Unix
5 144 (1.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 134 (1.31%) Windows 10
7 68 (0.67%) Solaris
8 64 (0.63%) Android
9 45 (0.44%) Mac OS
10 41 (0.40%) CentOS
11 36 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 35 (0.34%) Ubuntu
13 30 (0.29%) AIX
14 26 (0.25%) Apple iOS
15 24 (0.24%) Windows 7
16 21 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
17 20 (0.20%) VMS
18 17 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
19 16 (0.16%) Rocky
20 14 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,147 (21.05%) Agile
2 1,545 (15.15%) DevOps
3 1,495 (14.66%) CI/CD
4 1,381 (13.54%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,245 (12.21%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,104 (10.82%) Problem-Solving
7 1,005 (9.85%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 889 (8.72%) Infrastructure as Code
9 833 (8.17%) Migration
10 776 (7.61%) Cybersecurity
11 737 (7.23%) ITIL
12 657 (6.44%) Test Automation
13 640 (6.27%) Roadmaps
14 634 (6.22%) Technical Leadership
15 633 (6.21%) Analytics
16 632 (6.20%) Containerisation
17 626 (6.14%) AI
18 598 (5.86%) Software Engineering
19 594 (5.82%) Decision-Making
20 558 (5.47%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,172 (11.49%) Python
2 956 (9.37%) SQL
3 661 (6.48%) Java
4 551 (5.40%) PowerShell
5 343 (3.36%) JavaScript
6 303 (2.97%) Bash
7 191 (1.87%) C#
8 172 (1.69%) TypeScript
9 135 (1.32%) PL/SQL
10 111 (1.09%) Bicep
11 67 (0.66%) Shell Script
12 62 (0.61%) C++
13 55 (0.54%) C
14 49 (0.48%) Go
15 47 (0.46%) Groovy
16 41 (0.40%) Scala
17 39 (0.38%) Kotlin
18 31 (0.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 29 (0.28%) Apex Code
19 29 (0.28%) R
Qualifications
1 7,642 (74.92%) SC Cleared
2 2,121 (20.79%) DV Cleared
3 425 (4.17%) Degree
4 393 (3.85%) BPSS Clearance
5 197 (1.93%) CISSP
6 161 (1.58%) Azure Certification
7 156 (1.53%) Cisco Certification
8 154 (1.51%) Microsoft Certification
9 136 (1.33%) AWS Certification
10 118 (1.16%) CISM
11 101 (0.99%) PMI Certification
12 97 (0.95%) PMP
13 81 (0.79%) ISTQB
14 76 (0.75%) CCNP
15 63 (0.62%) Computer Science Degree
16 62 (0.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 53 (0.52%) CCNA
18 42 (0.41%) TOGAF Certification
19 41 (0.40%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 41 (0.40%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 462 (4.53%) QA
2 327 (3.21%) Data Quality
3 291 (2.85%) NIST
4 284 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 242 (2.37%) NCSC
6 223 (2.19%) Accessibility
7 221 (2.17%) PMO
8 149 (1.46%) GDPR
9 146 (1.43%) SLA
10 131 (1.28%) GRC
11 71 (0.70%) WCAG
12 59 (0.58%) JSP 440
13 44 (0.43%) NIST 800
14 43 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
15 36 (0.35%) Def Stans
16 26 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 24 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 20 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
19 19 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
19 19 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 685 (6.72%) Docker
2 558 (5.47%) Active Directory
3 397 (3.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 143 (1.40%) VMware ESXi
5 139 (1.36%) VMware NSX
6 125 (1.23%) Hyper-V
7 122 (1.20%) vSphere
8 84 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
9 43 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
10 40 (0.39%) Firmware
11 37 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
12 27 (0.26%) vCloud
13 25 (0.25%) BitLocker
14 15 (0.15%) NFS
15 11 (0.11%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 11 (0.11%) Postfix
15 11 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
16 10 (0.098%) Squid
17 9 (0.088%) KVM
18 8 (0.078%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 823 (8.07%) Kubernetes
2 411 (4.03%) Ansible
3 220 (2.16%) Grafana
4 172 (1.69%) Prometheus
5 137 (1.34%) vCenter Server
6 129 (1.26%) SCCM
7 90 (0.88%) SCOM
8 88 (0.86%) Microsoft Intune
9 62 (0.61%) Argo
10 48 (0.47%) Puppet
11 47 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
12 42 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
13 36 (0.35%) Data Guard
14 29 (0.28%) Kibana
14 29 (0.28%) Progress Chef
15 28 (0.27%) Control-M
16 27 (0.26%) WSUS
17 26 (0.25%) VxRail
18 25 (0.25%) Istio
18 25 (0.25%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,350 (13.24%) Microsoft
2 810 (7.94%) Oracle
3 563 (5.52%) VMware
4 481 (4.72%) ServiceNow
5 398 (3.90%) SAP
6 278 (2.73%) Cisco
7 229 (2.25%) Google
8 199 (1.95%) Splunk
9 184 (1.80%) Databricks
10 131 (1.28%) Red Hat
11 119 (1.17%) Salesforce
12 115 (1.13%) Palo Alto
13 100 (0.98%) IBM
14 97 (0.95%) Informatica
15 92 (0.90%) Talend
16 88 (0.86%) Remedy
17 85 (0.83%) Dynatrace
18 83 (0.81%) CyberArk
19 75 (0.74%) SolarWinds
20 73 (0.72%) Citrix