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

6 months to
19 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +4
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 6,915 5,253 6,842
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.99% 18.13% 18.32%
As % of the Qualifications category 64.81% 59.79% 60.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,589 3,360 4,330
10th Percentile £342 £345 £363
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.65%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 698 263 440
10th Percentile £17.88 £20.44 £20.00
25th Percentile £19.73 £26.12 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £59.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -57.37% -1.67% -
75th Percentile £61.07 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.48 £75.00 £81.25
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 10,669 8,786 11,335
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.92% 30.33% 30.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,965 5,424 7,175
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £419 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £528 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.47% -4.09% -
75th Percentile £626 £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 905 413 680
10th Percentile £16.75 £20.00 £17.11
25th Percentile £19.38 £25.26 £26.65
Median hourly rate £25.15 £48.56 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -48.21% -7.50% +16.67%
75th Percentile £56.00 £68.00 £67.61
90th Percentile £76.58 £75.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year -37.13% -23.81% +16.67%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 +4 2,272 £545 -0.91% 384
South East 0 1,394 £522 -6.79% 557
South West 0 1,163 £550 -4.35% 415
North of England -1 808 £505 +6.32% 200
Midlands +4 706 £519 -5.73% 112
West Midlands +3 551 £520 -8.49% 87
North West 0 543 £525 +10.53% 139
East of England +2 319 £500 +2.56% 250
Yorkshire -13 163 £500 +5.26% 38
East Midlands +1 145 £444 -11.25% 25
North East 0 119 £450 -12.62% 28
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
1 254 (3.67%) Confluence
2 175 (2.53%) SharePoint
3 114 (1.65%) Microsoft Exchange
4 99 (1.43%) SAS
5 83 (1.20%) Apache
6 52 (0.75%) Apache Spark
7 51 (0.74%) Apache Airflow
8 38 (0.55%) Skype for Business
9 37 (0.54%) nginx
10 27 (0.39%) WebLogic
11 20 (0.29%) CMS
12 19 (0.27%) IIS
13 13 (0.19%) SharePoint Server
14 10 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2010
14 10 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 9 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
16 8 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2003
16 8 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2007
16 8 (0.12%) Office Communications Server
16 8 (0.12%) OpenStack
Applications
1 243 (3.51%) Microsoft Office
2 155 (2.24%) Microsoft Excel
3 96 (1.39%) Microsoft Project
4 50 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 34 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 20 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.19%) Siemens NX
7 13 (0.19%) Simulink
8 10 (0.14%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.072%) FrameMaker
9 5 (0.072%) Oracle Smart View
9 5 (0.072%) PTC Creo
9 5 (0.072%) Sketch
9 5 (0.072%) Stateflow
10 4 (0.058%) Trello
10 4 (0.058%) Windchill
11 3 (0.043%) Adobe Illustrator
11 3 (0.043%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.043%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.043%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 146 (2.11%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (0.49%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 33 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
4 27 (0.39%) SAP WM
5 26 (0.38%) SAP EWM
6 25 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
7 18 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
7 18 (0.26%) SAP MM
8 17 (0.25%) Teamcenter
9 15 (0.22%) SAP HCM
10 14 (0.20%) SAP QM
11 13 (0.19%) Maximo
11 13 (0.19%) Oracle General Ledger
12 12 (0.17%) SAP PP
12 12 (0.17%) SAP VC
13 11 (0.16%) Primavera
13 11 (0.16%) SAP EHS
14 10 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
14 10 (0.14%) SAP Payroll
14 10 (0.14%) SAP PS
Cloud Services
1 1,127 (16.30%) Azure
2 1,124 (16.25%) AWS
3 319 (4.61%) Microsoft 365
4 317 (4.58%) GitHub
5 281 (4.06%) GCP
6 247 (3.57%) Power Platform
7 239 (3.46%) Azure DevOps
8 196 (2.83%) Serverless
9 168 (2.43%) GitHub Actions
10 166 (2.40%) Entra ID
11 158 (2.28%) Amazon S3
12 137 (1.98%) OpenShift
13 118 (1.71%) AWS Lambda
14 115 (1.66%) SaaS
15 106 (1.53%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 104 (1.50%) AWS CloudFormation
17 99 (1.43%) Amazon EC2
18 87 (1.26%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 85 (1.23%) Amazon EKS
20 82 (1.19%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 367 (5.31%) Firewall
2 255 (3.69%) DNS
3 176 (2.55%) VPN
4 156 (2.26%) Network Security
5 147 (2.13%) WAN
6 116 (1.68%) TCP/IP
7 110 (1.59%) LAN
8 97 (1.40%) BGP
9 95 (1.37%) DHCP
10 86 (1.24%) Wireless
11 78 (1.13%) SSL
12 72 (1.04%) Wi-Fi
13 61 (0.88%) SAN
14 59 (0.85%) VLAN
15 58 (0.84%) MPLS
16 53 (0.77%) IPsec
17 51 (0.74%) OSPF
18 48 (0.69%) HTTP
19 44 (0.64%) Cisco ISE
20 42 (0.61%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 197 (2.85%) PostgreSQL
2 165 (2.39%) Power BI
3 84 (1.21%) MongoDB
4 79 (1.14%) Data Warehouse
4 79 (1.14%) SQL Server
5 75 (1.08%) NoSQL
6 74 (1.07%) Amazon RDS
7 72 (1.04%) Metadata
8 71 (1.03%) Relational Database
9 69 (1.00%) Oracle Database
10 51 (0.74%) Big Data
11 48 (0.69%) Azure SQL Database
12 44 (0.64%) Elasticsearch
13 39 (0.56%) SAS Enterprise Guide
14 38 (0.55%) Pentaho
15 35 (0.51%) Amazon Athena
16 34 (0.49%) Amazon Redshift
16 34 (0.49%) Data Lake
16 34 (0.49%) Redis
17 30 (0.43%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 470 (6.80%) JIRA
2 380 (5.50%) Git
3 352 (5.09%) Jenkins
4 268 (3.88%) GitLab
5 75 (1.08%) Selenium
6 58 (0.84%) Postman
7 51 (0.74%) JUnit
8 49 (0.71%) Cypress.io
9 45 (0.65%) Bitbucket
9 45 (0.65%) Oracle APEX
9 45 (0.65%) SonarQube
10 43 (0.62%) Artifactory
11 31 (0.45%) Maven
12 30 (0.43%) Cucumber
13 27 (0.39%) Mockito
14 25 (0.36%) MSI
15 23 (0.33%) REST Assured
16 22 (0.32%) Rational DOORS
17 21 (0.30%) Metasploit
18 19 (0.27%) Burp Suite
General
1 1,869 (27.03%) Public Sector
2 1,802 (26.06%) Social Skills
3 653 (9.44%) Analytical Skills
4 502 (7.26%) Finance
5 281 (4.06%) Military
6 221 (3.20%) Telecoms
7 206 (2.98%) Manufacturing
8 166 (2.40%) Documentation Skills
9 146 (2.11%) Electronics
10 139 (2.01%) Marketing
11 127 (1.84%) Aerospace
12 110 (1.59%) Organisational Skills
13 107 (1.55%) Legal
14 87 (1.26%) Banking
15 81 (1.17%) Presentation Skills
16 80 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
17 66 (0.95%) Law
18 42 (0.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 35 (0.51%) Aviation
20 34 (0.49%) Police
Job Titles
1 948 (13.71%) Architect
2 645 (9.33%) Developer
3 561 (8.11%) Senior
4 531 (7.68%) Consultant
5 481 (6.96%) Analyst
6 391 (5.65%) Lead
7 318 (4.60%) DevOps Engineer
8 243 (3.51%) Support Engineer
9 204 (2.95%) Network Engineer
10 178 (2.57%) Data Engineer
11 172 (2.49%) Solutions Architect
12 147 (2.13%) SAP Consultant
13 143 (2.07%) Software Engineer
14 139 (2.01%) Technical Architect
15 136 (1.97%) AWS Engineer
16 131 (1.89%) Platform Engineer
17 128 (1.85%) IT Engineer
18 124 (1.79%) Administrator
19 123 (1.78%) Business Analyst
20 121 (1.75%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 282 (4.08%) REST
2 172 (2.49%) Node.js
3 167 (2.42%) React
4 160 (2.31%) Kafka
5 138 (2.00%) JSON
6 132 (1.91%) SOAP
7 112 (1.62%) Spring
8 106 (1.53%) HTML
9 100 (1.45%) XML
10 91 (1.32%) .NET
10 91 (1.32%) RESTful
11 89 (1.29%) AngularJS
11 89 (1.29%) CSS
11 89 (1.29%) Spring Boot
12 87 (1.26%) LDAP
12 87 (1.26%) Web Services
13 79 (1.14%) OAuth
13 79 (1.14%) Oracle Fusion
14 65 (0.94%) PySpark
15 58 (0.84%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 214 (3.09%) Data Centre
2 188 (2.72%) PKI
3 184 (2.66%) Cloud Native
4 176 (2.55%) Onboarding
5 167 (2.42%) Product Ownership
6 134 (1.94%) Management Information System
7 101 (1.46%) Self-Motivation
8 89 (1.29%) Security Posture
9 88 (1.27%) Legacy Systems
10 79 (1.14%) Cyber Threat
11 73 (1.06%) Driving Licence
12 71 (1.03%) Replication
13 70 (1.01%) Enterprise Software
14 68 (0.98%) Security Operations Centre
15 63 (0.91%) Hybrid Cloud
16 60 (0.87%) Analytical Mindset
17 59 (0.85%) CMDB
18 47 (0.68%) Private Cloud
19 45 (0.65%) Distributed Systems
19 45 (0.65%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 782 (11.31%) Windows
2 542 (7.84%) Linux
3 183 (2.65%) Windows Server
4 172 (2.49%) Windows 10
5 99 (1.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 98 (1.42%) Android
7 93 (1.34%) Unix
8 84 (1.21%) Mac OS
9 49 (0.71%) VMS
10 39 (0.56%) Ubuntu
11 28 (0.40%) Apple iOS
12 25 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
13 22 (0.32%) CentOS
14 21 (0.30%) Amazon Linux
15 20 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
16 18 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
17 17 (0.25%) Windows 7
18 15 (0.22%) Mac OS X
19 14 (0.20%) Windows Server 2003
20 9 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,344 (19.44%) Agile
2 1,059 (15.31%) DevOps
3 948 (13.71%) CI/CD
4 876 (12.67%) Problem-Solving
5 674 (9.75%) Migration
6 550 (7.95%) Stakeholder Management
7 494 (7.14%) ITIL
8 491 (7.10%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 463 (6.70%) Cybersecurity
10 450 (6.51%) Continuous Improvement
11 440 (6.36%) Infrastructure as Code
12 401 (5.80%) Service Management
13 384 (5.55%) Business Intelligence
14 376 (5.44%) Test Automation
15 372 (5.38%) Containerisation
16 362 (5.23%) Analytics
17 341 (4.93%) Workflow
18 338 (4.89%) Roadmaps
19 330 (4.77%) Scrum
20 303 (4.38%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 911 (13.17%) Python
2 532 (7.69%) SQL
3 471 (6.81%) PowerShell
4 400 (5.78%) Java
5 348 (5.03%) JavaScript
6 223 (3.22%) Bash
7 160 (2.31%) TypeScript
8 125 (1.81%) C#
9 95 (1.37%) C++
10 89 (1.29%) Go
11 70 (1.01%) C
12 68 (0.98%) PL/SQL
13 67 (0.97%) Shell Script
14 39 (0.56%) ABAP
14 39 (0.56%) Ruby
15 37 (0.54%) Perl
16 35 (0.51%) Scala
17 29 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
18 28 (0.40%) Ada
19 26 (0.38%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 5,308 (76.76%) SC Cleared
2 1,145 (16.56%) DV Cleared
3 364 (5.26%) Degree
4 249 (3.60%) BPSS Clearance
5 126 (1.82%) CISSP
6 118 (1.71%) Microsoft Certification
7 113 (1.63%) Azure Certification
7 113 (1.63%) Cisco Certification
8 100 (1.45%) AWS Certification
9 93 (1.34%) CCNP
10 69 (1.00%) CISM
11 60 (0.87%) ITIL Certification
12 58 (0.84%) Computer Science Degree
13 48 (0.69%) TOGAF Certification
14 47 (0.68%) CCNA
15 44 (0.64%) CEH
16 42 (0.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 38 (0.55%) CHECK Team Member
18 34 (0.49%) CTC Cleared
19 33 (0.48%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 210 (3.04%) QA
2 198 (2.86%) NIST
3 196 (2.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 160 (2.31%) NCSC
5 135 (1.95%) GDPR
6 132 (1.91%) Data Quality
7 119 (1.72%) SLA
8 112 (1.62%) Accessibility
9 62 (0.90%) PMO
10 44 (0.64%) JSP 440
11 41 (0.59%) WCAG
12 38 (0.55%) GRC
13 32 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 29 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
14 29 (0.42%) Def Stans
15 27 (0.39%) NIST 800
16 26 (0.38%) COBIT
17 23 (0.33%) PCI DSS
18 19 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 15 (0.22%) RMADS
System Software
1 525 (7.59%) Docker
2 428 (6.19%) Active Directory
3 205 (2.96%) VMware Infrastructure
4 66 (0.95%) VMware NSX
5 61 (0.88%) vSphere
6 54 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
6 54 (0.78%) VMware ESXi
7 37 (0.54%) Firmware
8 32 (0.46%) Hyper-V
9 31 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
10 17 (0.25%) DFS Replication
11 16 (0.23%) Postfix
12 14 (0.20%) Dovecot
13 13 (0.19%) NFS
14 11 (0.16%) BitLocker
14 11 (0.16%) Squid
15 10 (0.14%) ISA Server
16 9 (0.13%) Terminal Services
17 8 (0.12%) Brightmail
18 7 (0.10%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 646 (9.34%) Kubernetes
2 607 (8.78%) Terraform
3 296 (4.28%) Ansible
4 174 (2.52%) Grafana
5 143 (2.07%) Prometheus
6 103 (1.49%) SCCM
7 88 (1.27%) Single Sign-On
8 75 (1.08%) vCenter Server
9 73 (1.06%) Microsoft Intune
10 62 (0.90%) Argo
11 52 (0.75%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 38 (0.55%) Packer
13 37 (0.54%) Kibana
14 33 (0.48%) OPNET
15 28 (0.40%) Jamf Pro
16 25 (0.36%) Puppet
17 24 (0.35%) Nessus
17 24 (0.35%) Podman
17 24 (0.35%) Progress Chef
17 24 (0.35%) vRealize
Vendors
1 890 (12.87%) Microsoft
2 458 (6.62%) SAP
3 403 (5.83%) Cisco
4 378 (5.47%) Oracle
5 352 (5.09%) VMware
6 329 (4.76%) ServiceNow
7 187 (2.70%) Splunk
8 150 (2.17%) Red Hat
9 145 (2.10%) Juniper
10 116 (1.68%) Google
11 107 (1.55%) Palo Alto
12 101 (1.46%) Atlassian
13 95 (1.37%) HP
14 93 (1.34%) Salesforce
15 91 (1.32%) Dell
16 84 (1.21%) Databricks
17 82 (1.19%) CyberArk
18 78 (1.13%) Remedy
19 69 (1.00%) Apple
20 67 (0.97%) CheckPoint