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

6 months to
18 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 10,194 5,200 6,051
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.08% 18.70% 18.36%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.92% 59.37% 61.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,156 3,414 3,914
10th Percentile £400 £350 £356
25th Percentile £462 £450 £455
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 £548 £537 £550
% change year-on-year +1.96% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 785 518 359
10th Percentile £21.33 £18.50 £20.26
25th Percentile £36.25 £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 £78.75 £40.49 £72.50
90th Percentile £91.31 £72.50 £83.84
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +158.45% -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 14,790 8,759 9,798
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.03% 31.49% 29.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,908 5,575 6,037
10th Percentile £350 £301 £325
25th Percentile £443 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £528 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year +0.48% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £715 £738
UK median daily rate £527 £525 £525
% change year-on-year +0.33% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,204 691 572
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.13 £17.51
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £27.00
Median hourly rate £53.00 £25.15 £54.00
Median % change year-on-year +110.74% -53.43% -
75th Percentile £74.37 £47.31 £70.00
90th Percentile £89.08 £73.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £48.72 £25.15 £49.00
% change year-on-year +93.72% -48.67% -9.26%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 3,595 £550 +2.33% 1,570
South East +1 2,312 £565 +5.12% 942
South West 0 1,412 £550 - 781
North of England +3 1,275 £515 - 688
Midlands 0 942 £481 -6.70% 340
West Midlands +1 804 £481 -7.33% 218
North West +1 746 £530 -3.64% 421
East of England 0 391 £550 - 420
Yorkshire +3 301 £492 +0.20% 133
North East 0 249 £475 -1.04% 138
East Midlands -1 131 £450 -2.70% 122
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
1 328 (3.22%) Confluence
2 253 (2.48%) SharePoint
3 153 (1.50%) SAS
4 116 (1.14%) Microsoft Exchange
5 96 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
6 87 (0.85%) Apache Spark
7 85 (0.83%) Apache
8 35 (0.34%) nginx
9 30 (0.29%) Jupyter
10 25 (0.25%) WebLogic
11 23 (0.23%) Oracle Application Server
12 22 (0.22%) Skype for Business
13 18 (0.18%) CMS
14 17 (0.17%) Tomcat
15 16 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
16 12 (0.12%) IIS
16 12 (0.12%) NetWeaver
16 12 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
17 11 (0.11%) JBoss
18 10 (0.098%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 183 (1.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 135 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 91 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 90 (0.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 29 (0.28%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
7 19 (0.19%) AutoCAD
8 18 (0.18%) Revit
9 17 (0.17%) SOLIDWORKS
10 14 (0.14%) Windchill
11 9 (0.088%) Simulink
12 8 (0.078%) Adobe XD
12 8 (0.078%) Chatbot
13 7 (0.069%) Sketch
14 5 (0.049%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 5 (0.049%) Notepad++
15 4 (0.039%) Trello
16 3 (0.029%) OrCAD
17 2 (0.020%) Houdini
17 2 (0.020%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 130 (1.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 77 (0.76%) Remedy ITSM
3 52 (0.51%) Oracle ERP
4 35 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
5 30 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 30 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 26 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
7 25 (0.25%) SAP PSCD
8 24 (0.24%) Oracle Payroll
9 17 (0.17%) SAP FI
9 17 (0.17%) SAP HR
10 14 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
10 14 (0.14%) Primavera
11 13 (0.13%) SAP CO
12 12 (0.12%) iTrent
12 12 (0.12%) Maximo
12 12 (0.12%) NetSuite
12 12 (0.12%) SAP GRC
12 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
13 11 (0.11%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 1,846 (18.11%) Azure
2 1,675 (16.43%) AWS
3 440 (4.32%) Azure DevOps
4 430 (4.22%) Power Platform
5 404 (3.96%) GitHub
6 381 (3.74%) GCP
7 298 (2.92%) Microsoft 365
8 278 (2.73%) GitHub Actions
9 276 (2.71%) Entra ID
10 236 (2.32%) Serverless
11 202 (1.98%) Amazon S3
12 167 (1.64%) AWS Lambda
13 156 (1.53%) OCI
14 147 (1.44%) SaaS
15 143 (1.40%) OpenShift
16 141 (1.38%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 131 (1.29%) Amazon EKS
18 122 (1.20%) Amazon EC2
19 101 (0.99%) PowerApps
20 100 (0.98%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 406 (3.98%) Firewall
2 348 (3.41%) DNS
3 212 (2.08%) Network Security
4 186 (1.82%) WAN
5 174 (1.71%) VPN
6 172 (1.69%) DHCP
7 146 (1.43%) LAN
8 125 (1.23%) TCP/IP
9 124 (1.22%) BGP
10 117 (1.15%) Wi-Fi
11 100 (0.98%) VLAN
12 85 (0.83%) OSPF
13 83 (0.81%) Wireless
14 60 (0.59%) VSAN
15 59 (0.58%) IPsec
15 59 (0.58%) SSL
16 56 (0.55%) MPLS
17 54 (0.53%) SAN
17 54 (0.53%) SD-WAN
18 43 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 305 (2.99%) Power BI
2 246 (2.41%) SQL Server
3 237 (2.32%) PostgreSQL
4 236 (2.32%) Data Warehouse
5 173 (1.70%) Metadata
6 162 (1.59%) Oracle Database
7 119 (1.17%) Relational Database
8 116 (1.14%) Data Lake
9 93 (0.91%) Amazon RDS
10 91 (0.89%) MySQL
11 89 (0.87%) MongoDB
12 86 (0.84%) NoSQL
13 78 (0.77%) Oracle Reports
14 67 (0.66%) Pentaho
15 59 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
16 58 (0.57%) Amazon Athena
17 52 (0.51%) Tableau
18 46 (0.45%) Amazon Aurora
19 44 (0.43%) Big Data
20 43 (0.42%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 537 (5.27%) JIRA
2 489 (4.80%) Git
3 435 (4.27%) GitLab
4 406 (3.98%) Jenkins
5 117 (1.15%) Selenium
6 77 (0.76%) SonarQube
7 70 (0.69%) Postman
8 64 (0.63%) JUnit
9 62 (0.61%) Maven
10 51 (0.50%) JMeter
11 49 (0.48%) Cucumber
12 40 (0.39%) Gradle
13 39 (0.38%) Mockito
14 36 (0.35%) Zephyr
15 35 (0.34%) Artifactory
16 34 (0.33%) Cypress.io
16 34 (0.33%) Gatling
17 33 (0.32%) REST Assured
17 33 (0.32%) Visual Studio
18 30 (0.29%) MSI
General
1 2,305 (22.61%) Social Skills
2 1,996 (19.58%) Public Sector
3 825 (8.09%) Analytical Skills
4 683 (6.70%) Finance
5 400 (3.92%) Military
6 302 (2.96%) Aerospace
7 249 (2.44%) Documentation Skills
8 200 (1.96%) Influencing Skills
9 167 (1.64%) Organisational Skills
10 147 (1.44%) Telecoms
11 133 (1.30%) Legal
12 130 (1.28%) Manufacturing
13 128 (1.26%) Banking
14 116 (1.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 115 (1.13%) Law
16 97 (0.95%) Police
17 60 (0.59%) Presentation Skills
18 47 (0.46%) Marketing
19 44 (0.43%) Retail
20 43 (0.42%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,594 (15.64%) Architect
2 969 (9.51%) Developer
3 948 (9.30%) Senior
4 937 (9.19%) Lead
5 585 (5.74%) Consultant
6 556 (5.45%) Analyst
7 431 (4.23%) Data Engineer
8 421 (4.13%) DevOps Engineer
9 380 (3.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 264 (2.59%) Technical Architect
11 257 (2.52%) Software Engineer
12 255 (2.50%) Solutions Architect
13 251 (2.46%) Data Architect
14 239 (2.34%) Security Architect
15 227 (2.23%) Network Engineer
16 205 (2.01%) Administrator
17 197 (1.93%) Cloud Engineer
18 184 (1.80%) Designer
19 183 (1.80%) Java Developer
20 182 (1.79%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 886 (8.69%) Terraform
2 394 (3.87%) REST
3 209 (2.05%) Spring
4 204 (2.00%) Kafka
5 189 (1.85%) Spring Boot
6 167 (1.64%) .NET
7 164 (1.61%) React
8 163 (1.60%) RESTful
9 157 (1.54%) SOAP
10 133 (1.30%) Node.js
11 130 (1.28%) JSON
12 110 (1.08%) OAuth
13 108 (1.06%) HTML
14 104 (1.02%) AngularJS
15 103 (1.01%) XML
16 100 (0.98%) Web Services
17 88 (0.86%) Middleware
18 86 (0.84%) CSS
19 83 (0.81%) LDAP
20 81 (0.79%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 455 (4.46%) Cloud Native
2 387 (3.80%) Onboarding
3 308 (3.02%) Product Ownership
4 261 (2.56%) Data Centre
5 181 (1.78%) Management Information System
6 161 (1.58%) Legacy Systems
6 161 (1.58%) PKI
7 147 (1.44%) Enterprise Software
8 139 (1.36%) CMDB
9 117 (1.15%) Hybrid Cloud
10 116 (1.14%) Distributed Systems
11 109 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
12 107 (1.05%) Replication
13 106 (1.04%) Cyber Threat
14 98 (0.96%) Operational Technology
15 84 (0.82%) Security Operations Centre
16 81 (0.79%) Clustering
16 81 (0.79%) Public Cloud
17 79 (0.77%) Security Posture
18 77 (0.76%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 906 (8.89%) Windows
2 718 (7.04%) Linux
3 350 (3.43%) Windows Server
4 209 (2.05%) Unix
5 150 (1.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 133 (1.30%) Windows 10
7 71 (0.70%) Solaris
8 65 (0.64%) 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 28 (0.27%) Apple iOS
13 27 (0.26%) AIX
14 24 (0.24%) Windows 7
15 22 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
16 21 (0.21%) VMS
17 16 (0.16%) Rocky
17 16 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
18 13 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,123 (20.83%) Agile
2 1,532 (15.03%) DevOps
3 1,495 (14.67%) CI/CD
4 1,410 (13.83%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,254 (12.30%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,099 (10.78%) Problem-Solving
7 1,008 (9.89%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 889 (8.72%) Infrastructure as Code
9 824 (8.08%) Migration
10 778 (7.63%) Cybersecurity
11 719 (7.05%) ITIL
12 648 (6.36%) Roadmaps
12 648 (6.36%) Test Automation
13 647 (6.35%) AI
14 644 (6.32%) Technical Leadership
15 634 (6.22%) Containerisation
16 624 (6.12%) Analytics
17 614 (6.02%) Decision-Making
18 600 (5.89%) Software Engineering
19 547 (5.37%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,161 (11.39%) Python
2 939 (9.21%) SQL
3 651 (6.39%) Java
4 541 (5.31%) PowerShell
5 343 (3.36%) JavaScript
6 307 (3.01%) Bash
7 189 (1.85%) C#
8 173 (1.70%) TypeScript
9 134 (1.31%) PL/SQL
10 110 (1.08%) Bicep
11 66 (0.65%) Shell Script
12 62 (0.61%) C++
13 52 (0.51%) C
13 52 (0.51%) Go
14 49 (0.48%) Groovy
15 45 (0.44%) Scala
16 42 (0.41%) Kotlin
17 30 (0.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 27 (0.26%) Apex Code
19 25 (0.25%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 7,629 (74.84%) SC Cleared
2 2,122 (20.82%) DV Cleared
3 427 (4.19%) Degree
4 415 (4.07%) BPSS Clearance
5 199 (1.95%) CISSP
6 176 (1.73%) Azure Certification
7 159 (1.56%) Cisco Certification
8 156 (1.53%) Microsoft Certification
9 140 (1.37%) AWS Certification
10 119 (1.17%) CISM
11 100 (0.98%) PMI Certification
12 91 (0.89%) PMP
13 86 (0.84%) ISTQB
14 79 (0.77%) CCNP
15 63 (0.62%) Computer Science Degree
16 60 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 55 (0.54%) CCNA
18 44 (0.43%) TOGAF Certification
19 43 (0.42%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 42 (0.41%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 458 (4.49%) QA
2 326 (3.20%) Data Quality
3 299 (2.93%) NIST
4 289 (2.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 248 (2.43%) NCSC
6 230 (2.26%) Accessibility
7 219 (2.15%) PMO
8 147 (1.44%) GDPR
8 147 (1.44%) SLA
9 138 (1.35%) GRC
10 70 (0.69%) WCAG
11 54 (0.53%) JSP 440
12 44 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
13 42 (0.41%) NIST 800
14 37 (0.36%) Def Stans
15 25 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 20000
16 21 (0.21%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 20 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
18 19 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
19 18 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 684 (6.71%) Docker
2 570 (5.59%) Active Directory
3 391 (3.84%) VMware Infrastructure
4 141 (1.38%) VMware ESXi
5 133 (1.30%) VMware NSX
6 125 (1.23%) vSphere
7 124 (1.22%) Hyper-V
8 85 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
9 43 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
10 41 (0.40%) Firmware
11 37 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
12 26 (0.26%) vCloud
13 23 (0.23%) BitLocker
14 15 (0.15%) NFS
15 14 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
16 11 (0.11%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 11 (0.11%) Postfix
17 10 (0.098%) Squid
18 9 (0.088%) Embedded Firmware
18 9 (0.088%) KVM
Systems Management
1 832 (8.16%) Kubernetes
2 407 (3.99%) Ansible
3 226 (2.22%) Grafana
4 173 (1.70%) Prometheus
5 131 (1.29%) vCenter Server
6 127 (1.25%) SCCM
7 93 (0.91%) SCOM
8 86 (0.84%) Microsoft Intune
9 62 (0.61%) Argo
10 50 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
11 46 (0.45%) Puppet
12 41 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
13 36 (0.35%) Data Guard
14 35 (0.34%) Kibana
15 29 (0.28%) VxRail
16 27 (0.26%) Control-M
16 27 (0.26%) Istio
16 27 (0.26%) Progress Chef
16 27 (0.26%) WSUS
17 25 (0.25%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,359 (13.33%) Microsoft
2 813 (7.98%) Oracle
3 551 (5.41%) VMware
4 472 (4.63%) ServiceNow
5 403 (3.95%) SAP
6 273 (2.68%) Cisco
7 230 (2.26%) Google
8 199 (1.95%) Splunk
9 177 (1.74%) Databricks
10 132 (1.29%) Red Hat
11 118 (1.16%) Salesforce
12 113 (1.11%) Palo Alto
13 97 (0.95%) IBM
14 95 (0.93%) Informatica
15 90 (0.88%) Talend
16 88 (0.86%) CyberArk
17 87 (0.85%) Dynatrace
17 87 (0.85%) Remedy
18 75 (0.74%) SolarWinds
19 72 (0.71%) Citrix