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

6 months to
10 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 10,187 5,173 6,080
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.00% 18.61% 18.57%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.91% 59.23% 62.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,187 3,359 3,950
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 £642
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £540 £535 £550
% change year-on-year +0.93% -2.73% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 760 506 365
10th Percentile £20.50 £18.50 £20.25
25th Percentile £34.75 £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 £78.81 £43.75 £72.50
90th Percentile £92.11 £73.75 £80.99
UK median hourly rate £64.09 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +154.83% -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 14,783 8,734 9,780
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.92% 31.42% 29.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,942 5,518 6,072
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 1,158 678 591
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.13 £17.08
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £27.00
Median hourly rate £52.52 £25.15 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +108.82% -54.27% -
75th Percentile £74.24 £50.00 £69.22
90th Percentile £88.75 £73.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £47.54 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +89.03% -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 10 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 10 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 10 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 3,605 £550 +3.77% 1,376
South East +1 2,331 £565 +5.12% 763
South West 0 1,418 £550 - 614
North of England +3 1,271 £518 +3.60% 518
Midlands 0 925 £475 -7.77% 256
West Midlands +1 786 £475 -7.77% 174
North West +2 750 £530 - 350
East of England 0 369 £550 - 355
Yorkshire +3 302 £500 +2.15% 102
North East 0 240 £475 -2.56% 88
East Midlands 0 131 £450 -5.26% 82
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
1 339 (3.33%) Confluence
2 254 (2.49%) SharePoint
3 151 (1.48%) SAS
4 117 (1.15%) Microsoft Exchange
5 92 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
6 91 (0.89%) Apache
7 88 (0.86%) Apache Spark
8 33 (0.32%) nginx
9 31 (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%) IIS
13 19 (0.19%) Tomcat
14 18 (0.18%) CMS
15 16 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
16 13 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
17 12 (0.12%) JBoss
18 9 (0.088%) Documentum
18 9 (0.088%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 185 (1.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 140 (1.37%) Microsoft Office
3 98 (0.96%) 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 13 (0.13%) 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 (0.029%) OrCAD
15 2 (0.020%) Houdini
15 2 (0.020%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 125 (1.23%) SAP S/4HANA
2 79 (0.78%) Remedy ITSM
3 47 (0.46%) 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%) Oracle Payables
10 16 (0.16%) SAP HR
11 15 (0.15%) SAP FI
12 14 (0.14%) Primavera
13 13 (0.13%) Findur
14 12 (0.12%) iTrent
14 12 (0.12%) SAP GRC
14 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
15 11 (0.11%) NetSuite
15 11 (0.11%) Remedy AR System
16 10 (0.098%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 1,859 (18.25%) Azure
2 1,690 (16.59%) AWS
3 446 (4.38%) Azure DevOps
4 432 (4.24%) Power Platform
5 428 (4.20%) GitHub
6 381 (3.74%) GCP
7 291 (2.86%) Microsoft 365
8 285 (2.80%) GitHub Actions
9 262 (2.57%) Entra ID
10 246 (2.41%) Serverless
11 210 (2.06%) Amazon S3
12 175 (1.72%) AWS Lambda
13 158 (1.55%) SaaS
14 154 (1.51%) OCI
15 141 (1.38%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 134 (1.32%) OpenShift
17 127 (1.25%) Amazon EKS
18 125 (1.23%) Amazon EC2
19 105 (1.03%) AWS CloudFormation
19 105 (1.03%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 417 (4.09%) Firewall
2 345 (3.39%) DNS
3 210 (2.06%) Network Security
4 191 (1.87%) WAN
5 183 (1.80%) VPN
6 172 (1.69%) DHCP
7 149 (1.46%) LAN
8 125 (1.23%) BGP
9 124 (1.22%) TCP/IP
10 117 (1.15%) Wi-Fi
11 100 (0.98%) VLAN
12 86 (0.84%) OSPF
13 82 (0.80%) Wireless
14 64 (0.63%) IPsec
14 64 (0.63%) VSAN
15 62 (0.61%) SSL
16 57 (0.56%) MPLS
17 56 (0.55%) SAN
18 55 (0.54%) SD-WAN
19 43 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 311 (3.05%) Power BI
2 255 (2.50%) SQL Server
3 246 (2.41%) PostgreSQL
4 232 (2.28%) Data Warehouse
5 167 (1.64%) Metadata
6 159 (1.56%) Oracle Database
7 124 (1.22%) Relational Database
8 120 (1.18%) Data Lake
9 97 (0.95%) Amazon RDS
10 93 (0.91%) MongoDB
10 93 (0.91%) MySQL
11 90 (0.88%) NoSQL
12 78 (0.77%) Oracle Reports
13 69 (0.68%) Pentaho
14 58 (0.57%) Amazon Athena
15 57 (0.56%) Tableau
16 55 (0.54%) Elasticsearch
17 47 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
18 44 (0.43%) Amazon Aurora
19 43 (0.42%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 542 (5.32%) JIRA
2 485 (4.76%) Git
3 433 (4.25%) GitLab
4 397 (3.90%) Jenkins
5 122 (1.20%) Selenium
6 74 (0.73%) SonarQube
7 69 (0.68%) JUnit
7 69 (0.68%) Postman
8 58 (0.57%) Maven
9 55 (0.54%) JMeter
10 50 (0.49%) Cucumber
11 41 (0.40%) Mockito
12 40 (0.39%) Gradle
13 35 (0.34%) Zephyr
14 34 (0.33%) Cypress.io
14 34 (0.33%) REST Assured
15 33 (0.32%) Artifactory
15 33 (0.32%) Gatling
16 32 (0.31%) Rational DOORS
17 30 (0.29%) MSI
General
1 2,272 (22.30%) Social Skills
2 2,030 (19.93%) Public Sector
3 830 (8.15%) Analytical Skills
4 685 (6.72%) Finance
5 386 (3.79%) Military
6 293 (2.88%) Aerospace
7 254 (2.49%) Documentation Skills
8 190 (1.87%) Influencing Skills
9 166 (1.63%) Organisational Skills
10 149 (1.46%) Telecoms
11 141 (1.38%) Banking
12 133 (1.31%) Legal
13 114 (1.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 113 (1.11%) Law
15 110 (1.08%) Manufacturing
16 93 (0.91%) Police
17 57 (0.56%) Presentation Skills
18 46 (0.45%) Marketing
19 44 (0.43%) Retail
20 41 (0.40%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,566 (15.37%) Architect
2 984 (9.66%) Developer
3 957 (9.39%) Lead
4 945 (9.28%) Senior
5 574 (5.63%) Consultant
6 570 (5.60%) Analyst
7 447 (4.39%) Data Engineer
8 408 (4.01%) DevOps Engineer
9 376 (3.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 267 (2.62%) Technical Architect
11 262 (2.57%) Software Engineer
12 255 (2.50%) Solutions Architect
13 249 (2.44%) Data Architect
14 231 (2.27%) Security Architect
15 230 (2.26%) Network Engineer
16 199 (1.95%) Administrator
17 192 (1.88%) Cloud Engineer
18 188 (1.85%) Delivery Manager
19 184 (1.81%) Java Developer
20 180 (1.77%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 872 (8.56%) Terraform
2 384 (3.77%) REST
3 212 (2.08%) Spring
4 201 (1.97%) Kafka
5 190 (1.87%) Spring Boot
6 176 (1.73%) .NET
7 175 (1.72%) React
8 170 (1.67%) RESTful
9 152 (1.49%) SOAP
10 136 (1.34%) JSON
11 132 (1.30%) Node.js
12 109 (1.07%) HTML
13 106 (1.04%) AngularJS
13 106 (1.04%) OAuth
14 99 (0.97%) XML
15 96 (0.94%) Web Services
16 86 (0.84%) PySpark
17 85 (0.83%) CSS
18 84 (0.82%) Oracle Fusion
19 79 (0.78%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 457 (4.49%) Cloud Native
2 382 (3.75%) Onboarding
3 311 (3.05%) Product Ownership
4 266 (2.61%) Data Centre
5 173 (1.70%) Management Information System
6 170 (1.67%) Legacy Systems
7 158 (1.55%) PKI
8 146 (1.43%) Enterprise Software
9 140 (1.37%) CMDB
10 125 (1.23%) Distributed Systems
11 117 (1.15%) Hybrid Cloud
12 113 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
13 112 (1.10%) Replication
14 100 (0.98%) Cyber Threat
15 93 (0.91%) Operational Technology
16 87 (0.85%) Security Operations Centre
17 85 (0.83%) Clustering
18 84 (0.82%) Data Structures
18 84 (0.82%) Public Cloud
19 77 (0.76%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 906 (8.89%) Windows
2 704 (6.91%) Linux
3 351 (3.45%) Windows Server
4 206 (2.02%) Unix
5 140 (1.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 133 (1.31%) Windows 10
7 68 (0.67%) Solaris
8 63 (0.62%) Android
9 45 (0.44%) Mac OS
10 40 (0.39%) CentOS
11 36 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 34 (0.33%) Ubuntu
13 30 (0.29%) AIX
14 26 (0.26%) 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 2,136 (20.97%) Agile
2 1,532 (15.04%) DevOps
3 1,483 (14.56%) CI/CD
4 1,367 (13.42%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,240 (12.17%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,089 (10.69%) Problem-Solving
7 1,001 (9.83%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 876 (8.60%) Infrastructure as Code
9 834 (8.19%) Migration
10 775 (7.61%) Cybersecurity
11 733 (7.20%) ITIL
12 656 (6.44%) Test Automation
13 636 (6.24%) Roadmaps
14 627 (6.15%) Analytics
15 626 (6.15%) Containerisation
15 626 (6.15%) Technical Leadership
16 622 (6.11%) AI
17 596 (5.85%) Software Engineering
18 590 (5.79%) Decision-Making
19 561 (5.51%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,171 (11.50%) Python
2 959 (9.41%) SQL
3 658 (6.46%) Java
4 546 (5.36%) PowerShell
5 341 (3.35%) JavaScript
6 294 (2.89%) Bash
7 192 (1.88%) C#
8 171 (1.68%) TypeScript
9 135 (1.33%) PL/SQL
10 107 (1.05%) Bicep
11 67 (0.66%) Shell Script
12 63 (0.62%) C++
13 56 (0.55%) C
14 48 (0.47%) Go
15 46 (0.45%) Groovy
16 41 (0.40%) Scala
17 40 (0.39%) Kotlin
18 31 (0.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 30 (0.29%) Apex Code
19 30 (0.29%) R
Qualifications
1 7,633 (74.93%) SC Cleared
2 2,106 (20.67%) DV Cleared
3 426 (4.18%) Degree
4 392 (3.85%) BPSS Clearance
5 195 (1.91%) CISSP
6 161 (1.58%) Azure Certification
7 156 (1.53%) Microsoft Certification
8 155 (1.52%) Cisco Certification
9 134 (1.32%) AWS Certification
10 117 (1.15%) CISM
11 101 (0.99%) PMI Certification
12 97 (0.95%) PMP
13 82 (0.80%) ISTQB
14 76 (0.75%) CCNP
15 62 (0.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 61 (0.60%) Computer Science Degree
17 54 (0.53%) CCNA
18 43 (0.42%) TOGAF Certification
19 41 (0.40%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
19 41 (0.40%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 466 (4.57%) QA
2 328 (3.22%) Data Quality
3 289 (2.84%) NIST
4 283 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 241 (2.37%) NCSC
6 222 (2.18%) Accessibility
6 222 (2.18%) PMO
7 148 (1.45%) GDPR
7 148 (1.45%) SLA
8 130 (1.28%) GRC
9 70 (0.69%) WCAG
10 58 (0.57%) JSP 440
11 44 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
11 44 (0.43%) NIST 800
12 35 (0.34%) Def Stans
13 26 (0.26%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 25 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 20 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
16 19 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
16 19 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 680 (6.68%) Docker
2 555 (5.45%) Active Directory
3 395 (3.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 143 (1.40%) VMware ESXi
5 138 (1.35%) VMware NSX
6 123 (1.21%) Hyper-V
7 121 (1.19%) vSphere
8 84 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
9 43 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
10 41 (0.40%) Firmware
11 37 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
12 27 (0.27%) vCloud
13 25 (0.25%) BitLocker
14 15 (0.15%) NFS
15 11 (0.11%) Postfix
15 11 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
16 10 (0.098%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 10 (0.098%) Squid
17 9 (0.088%) KVM
18 8 (0.079%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 818 (8.03%) Kubernetes
2 406 (3.99%) Ansible
3 220 (2.16%) Grafana
4 173 (1.70%) Prometheus
5 137 (1.34%) vCenter Server
6 129 (1.27%) 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 44 (0.43%) 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 (0.27%) WSUS
17 26 (0.26%) VxRail
18 25 (0.25%) Istio
18 25 (0.25%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,343 (13.18%) Microsoft
2 810 (7.95%) Oracle
3 560 (5.50%) VMware
4 480 (4.71%) ServiceNow
5 392 (3.85%) SAP
6 277 (2.72%) Cisco
7 225 (2.21%) Google
8 199 (1.95%) Splunk
9 186 (1.83%) Databricks
10 129 (1.27%) Red Hat
11 122 (1.20%) Salesforce
12 116 (1.14%) Palo Alto
13 103 (1.01%) IBM
14 97 (0.95%) Informatica
15 93 (0.91%) Talend
16 89 (0.87%) Remedy
17 85 (0.83%) Dynatrace
18 82 (0.80%) CyberArk
19 75 (0.74%) SolarWinds
20 71 (0.70%) Citrix