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

6 months to
14 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 10,130 5,156 6,070
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.02% 18.71% 18.50%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.96% 59.43% 61.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,131 3,372 3,947
10th Percentile £395 £350 £358
25th Percentile £460 £450 £456
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 £734
UK median daily rate £543 £535 £550
% change year-on-year +1.40% -2.73% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 759 504 363
10th Percentile £21.31 £18.50 £20.24
25th Percentile £35.00 £18.87 £36.63
Median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +158.45% -59.17% +2.67%
75th Percentile £78.75 £40.16 £72.50
90th Percentile £91.31 £72.50 £83.09
UK median hourly rate £63.75 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +153.48% -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 14,690 8,676 9,797
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.94% 31.48% 29.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,865 5,501 6,078
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 £638 £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 1,165 674 586
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.15 £17.08
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% -
75th Percentile £74.00 £47.41 £69.94
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% -9.09%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 3,588 £550 +2.95% 1,694
South East +1 2,310 £565 +5.12% 903
South West 0 1,408 £550 - 779
North of England +3 1,257 £515 +3.00% 701
Midlands 0 927 £475 -7.77% 330
West Midlands +1 792 £475 -8.39% 212
North West +2 735 £530 - 457
East of England 0 373 £550 - 453
Yorkshire +4 301 £500 +2.15% 150
North East 0 242 £475 -3.80% 118
East Midlands -1 128 £450 -2.70% 116
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
1 334 (3.30%) Confluence
2 255 (2.52%) SharePoint
3 151 (1.49%) SAS
4 115 (1.14%) Microsoft Exchange
5 89 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
6 83 (0.82%) Apache
7 82 (0.81%) Apache Spark
8 35 (0.35%) nginx
9 30 (0.30%) 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
15 16 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
16 13 (0.13%) IIS
16 13 (0.13%) NetWeaver
17 12 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
18 11 (0.11%) JBoss
19 10 (0.099%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 183 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 138 (1.36%) Microsoft Office
3 95 (0.94%) Microsoft Project
4 92 (0.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 28 (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 (0.079%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.079%) 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 (0.030%) OrCAD
15 2 (0.020%) Houdini
15 2 (0.020%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 128 (1.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 75 (0.74%) Remedy ITSM
3 50 (0.49%) Oracle ERP
4 36 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
5 28 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 27 (0.27%) Teamcenter
7 25 (0.25%) SAP PSCD
8 24 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
9 23 (0.23%) Oracle Payroll
10 18 (0.18%) SAP HR
11 16 (0.16%) SAP FI
12 14 (0.14%) 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 1,844 (18.20%) Azure
2 1,669 (16.48%) AWS
3 442 (4.36%) Azure DevOps
4 425 (4.20%) Power Platform
5 413 (4.08%) GitHub
6 383 (3.78%) GCP
7 298 (2.94%) Microsoft 365
8 281 (2.77%) GitHub Actions
9 264 (2.61%) Entra ID
10 243 (2.40%) Serverless
11 203 (2.00%) Amazon S3
12 173 (1.71%) AWS Lambda
13 154 (1.52%) OCI
14 149 (1.47%) SaaS
15 143 (1.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 138 (1.36%) OpenShift
17 132 (1.30%) Amazon EKS
18 124 (1.22%) Amazon EC2
19 106 (1.05%) AWS CloudFormation
20 100 (0.99%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 403 (3.98%) Firewall
2 340 (3.36%) DNS
3 214 (2.11%) Network Security
4 186 (1.84%) WAN
5 178 (1.76%) VPN
6 168 (1.66%) DHCP
7 142 (1.40%) LAN
8 123 (1.21%) TCP/IP
9 121 (1.19%) BGP
10 115 (1.14%) Wi-Fi
11 99 (0.98%) VLAN
12 82 (0.81%) OSPF
13 80 (0.79%) Wireless
14 63 (0.62%) VSAN
15 61 (0.60%) IPsec
16 58 (0.57%) SSL
17 57 (0.56%) MPLS
18 54 (0.53%) SD-WAN
19 53 (0.52%) SAN
20 41 (0.40%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 302 (2.98%) Power BI
2 247 (2.44%) SQL Server
3 243 (2.40%) PostgreSQL
4 233 (2.30%) Data Warehouse
5 167 (1.65%) Metadata
6 160 (1.58%) Oracle Database
7 127 (1.25%) Relational Database
8 115 (1.14%) Data Lake
9 97 (0.96%) Amazon RDS
10 95 (0.94%) MongoDB
11 91 (0.90%) MySQL
12 89 (0.88%) NoSQL
13 79 (0.78%) Oracle Reports
14 67 (0.66%) Pentaho
15 57 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
15 57 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
16 52 (0.51%) Tableau
17 46 (0.45%) Amazon Aurora
18 43 (0.42%) Amazon Redshift
18 43 (0.42%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 541 (5.34%) JIRA
2 486 (4.80%) Git
3 432 (4.26%) GitLab
4 403 (3.98%) Jenkins
5 118 (1.16%) Selenium
6 77 (0.76%) SonarQube
7 69 (0.68%) Postman
8 67 (0.66%) JUnit
9 59 (0.58%) Maven
10 49 (0.48%) JMeter
11 48 (0.47%) Cucumber
12 41 (0.40%) Gradle
12 41 (0.40%) Mockito
13 36 (0.36%) Artifactory
13 36 (0.36%) Zephyr
14 34 (0.34%) Cypress.io
14 34 (0.34%) REST Assured
15 33 (0.33%) Visual Studio
16 32 (0.32%) Gatling
17 30 (0.30%) MSI
General
1 2,274 (22.45%) Social Skills
2 2,005 (19.79%) Public Sector
3 823 (8.12%) Analytical Skills
4 683 (6.74%) Finance
5 392 (3.87%) Military
6 291 (2.87%) Aerospace
7 244 (2.41%) Documentation Skills
8 195 (1.92%) Influencing Skills
9 164 (1.62%) Organisational Skills
10 147 (1.45%) Telecoms
11 137 (1.35%) Legal
12 134 (1.32%) Banking
13 114 (1.13%) Manufacturing
14 113 (1.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 113 (1.12%) Law
15 95 (0.94%) Police
16 59 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
17 46 (0.45%) Marketing
18 43 (0.42%) Retail
19 41 (0.40%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,575 (15.55%) Architect
2 973 (9.61%) Developer
3 944 (9.32%) Lead
4 939 (9.27%) Senior
5 577 (5.70%) Consultant
6 555 (5.48%) Analyst
7 433 (4.27%) Data Engineer
8 415 (4.10%) DevOps Engineer
9 374 (3.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 267 (2.64%) Technical Architect
11 262 (2.59%) Software Engineer
12 256 (2.53%) Solutions Architect
13 250 (2.47%) Data Architect
14 231 (2.28%) Security Architect
15 224 (2.21%) Network Engineer
16 205 (2.02%) Administrator
17 195 (1.92%) Cloud Engineer
18 183 (1.81%) Delivery Manager
19 181 (1.79%) Java Developer
20 178 (1.76%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 881 (8.70%) Terraform
2 382 (3.77%) REST
3 210 (2.07%) Spring
4 202 (1.99%) Kafka
5 190 (1.88%) Spring Boot
6 175 (1.73%) React
7 173 (1.71%) .NET
8 168 (1.66%) RESTful
9 153 (1.51%) SOAP
10 135 (1.33%) Node.js
11 133 (1.31%) JSON
12 110 (1.09%) HTML
13 107 (1.06%) AngularJS
14 106 (1.05%) OAuth
15 99 (0.98%) XML
16 97 (0.96%) Web Services
17 86 (0.85%) CSS
18 83 (0.82%) Oracle Fusion
19 82 (0.81%) Middleware
20 81 (0.80%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 450 (4.44%) Cloud Native
2 381 (3.76%) Onboarding
3 304 (3.00%) Product Ownership
4 262 (2.59%) Data Centre
5 173 (1.71%) Management Information System
6 162 (1.60%) Legacy Systems
7 155 (1.53%) PKI
8 145 (1.43%) Enterprise Software
9 138 (1.36%) CMDB
10 121 (1.19%) Distributed Systems
11 116 (1.15%) Hybrid Cloud
12 109 (1.08%) Replication
13 107 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
14 100 (0.99%) Cyber Threat
15 94 (0.93%) Operational Technology
16 84 (0.83%) Public Cloud
16 84 (0.83%) Security Operations Centre
17 82 (0.81%) Clustering
18 80 (0.79%) Data Structures
19 75 (0.74%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 905 (8.93%) Windows
2 712 (7.03%) Linux
3 345 (3.41%) Windows Server
4 205 (2.02%) Unix
5 144 (1.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 135 (1.33%) Windows 10
7 69 (0.68%) Solaris
8 64 (0.63%) Android
9 46 (0.45%) Mac OS
10 42 (0.41%) CentOS
11 36 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
12 35 (0.35%) Ubuntu
13 29 (0.29%) AIX
14 26 (0.26%) Apple iOS
15 24 (0.24%) Windows 7
16 22 (0.22%) 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 2,110 (20.83%) Agile
2 1,532 (15.12%) DevOps
3 1,485 (14.66%) CI/CD
4 1,373 (13.55%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,237 (12.21%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,093 (10.79%) Problem-Solving
7 990 (9.77%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 889 (8.78%) Infrastructure as Code
9 825 (8.14%) Migration
10 762 (7.52%) Cybersecurity
11 717 (7.08%) ITIL
12 649 (6.41%) Test Automation
13 636 (6.28%) Technical Leadership
14 633 (6.25%) AI
15 632 (6.24%) Roadmaps
16 630 (6.22%) Containerisation
17 622 (6.14%) Analytics
18 601 (5.93%) Software Engineering
19 592 (5.84%) Decision-Making
20 548 (5.41%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,160 (11.45%) Python
2 936 (9.24%) SQL
3 655 (6.47%) Java
4 543 (5.36%) PowerShell
5 346 (3.42%) JavaScript
6 306 (3.02%) Bash
7 192 (1.90%) C#
8 175 (1.73%) TypeScript
9 133 (1.31%) PL/SQL
10 109 (1.08%) Bicep
11 64 (0.63%) C++
12 63 (0.62%) Shell Script
13 54 (0.53%) C
14 51 (0.50%) Go
15 48 (0.47%) Groovy
16 39 (0.38%) Kotlin
16 39 (0.38%) Scala
17 31 (0.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 28 (0.28%) Apex Code
19 27 (0.27%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 7,595 (74.98%) SC Cleared
2 2,099 (20.72%) DV Cleared
3 418 (4.13%) Degree
4 400 (3.95%) BPSS Clearance
5 193 (1.91%) CISSP
6 166 (1.64%) Azure Certification
7 156 (1.54%) Microsoft Certification
8 154 (1.52%) Cisco Certification
9 137 (1.35%) AWS Certification
10 116 (1.15%) CISM
11 98 (0.97%) PMI Certification
12 92 (0.91%) PMP
13 83 (0.82%) ISTQB
14 76 (0.75%) CCNP
15 64 (0.63%) Computer Science Degree
16 61 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 52 (0.51%) CCNA
18 41 (0.40%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 41 (0.40%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 40 (0.39%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 460 (4.54%) QA
2 321 (3.17%) Data Quality
3 288 (2.84%) NIST
4 282 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 241 (2.38%) NCSC
6 219 (2.16%) Accessibility
7 217 (2.14%) PMO
8 147 (1.45%) GDPR
9 145 (1.43%) SLA
10 131 (1.29%) GRC
11 68 (0.67%) WCAG
12 57 (0.56%) JSP 440
13 44 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
14 41 (0.40%) NIST 800
15 35 (0.35%) Def Stans
16 25 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 22 (0.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 20 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
19 19 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
20 18 (0.18%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 678 (6.69%) Docker
2 558 (5.51%) Active Directory
3 392 (3.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 142 (1.40%) VMware ESXi
5 136 (1.34%) VMware NSX
6 122 (1.20%) Hyper-V
7 119 (1.17%) vSphere
8 84 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
9 43 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
10 41 (0.40%) Firmware
11 37 (0.37%) Oracle RAC
12 26 (0.26%) vCloud
13 23 (0.23%) BitLocker
14 15 (0.15%) NFS
15 13 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
16 11 (0.11%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 11 (0.11%) Postfix
17 10 (0.099%) Squid
18 9 (0.089%) Embedded Firmware
18 9 (0.089%) KVM
Systems Management
1 824 (8.13%) Kubernetes
2 406 (4.01%) Ansible
3 223 (2.20%) Grafana
4 176 (1.74%) Prometheus
5 133 (1.31%) vCenter Server
6 132 (1.30%) SCCM
7 90 (0.89%) SCOM
8 89 (0.88%) Microsoft Intune
9 63 (0.62%) Argo
10 47 (0.46%) Puppet
10 47 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
11 41 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
12 36 (0.36%) Data Guard
13 29 (0.29%) Kibana
13 29 (0.29%) Progress Chef
14 28 (0.28%) Control-M
14 28 (0.28%) VxRail
15 27 (0.27%) WSUS
16 26 (0.26%) Istio
17 25 (0.25%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,350 (13.33%) Microsoft
2 808 (7.98%) Oracle
3 553 (5.46%) VMware
4 467 (4.61%) ServiceNow
5 401 (3.96%) SAP
6 269 (2.66%) Cisco
7 230 (2.27%) Google
8 197 (1.94%) Splunk
9 177 (1.75%) Databricks
10 129 (1.27%) Red Hat
11 118 (1.16%) Salesforce
12 113 (1.12%) Palo Alto
13 95 (0.94%) IBM
13 95 (0.94%) Informatica
14 90 (0.89%) Talend
15 86 (0.85%) CyberArk
15 86 (0.85%) Dynatrace
16 85 (0.84%) Remedy
17 73 (0.72%) SolarWinds
18 71 (0.70%) Citrix