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 29 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 3 2
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,166 4,513 7,128
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.77% 18.57% 19.28%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.76% 59.22% 61.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,348 2,992 4,647
10th Percentile £363 £332 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 782 266 487
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.66 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £56.40 £57.29
Median % change year-on-year -2.47% -1.55% -4.53%
75th Percentile £73.34 £68.00 £72.33
90th Percentile £85.25 £80.05 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £51.75 £57.29
% change year-on-year +6.28% -9.66% -4.53%

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 13,139 7,621 11,593
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.65% 31.36% 31.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,814 4,838 7,118
10th Percentile £343 £299 £300
25th Percentile £425 £415 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £518 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -1.33% -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 996 438 981
10th Percentile £17.10 £18.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £23.13 £18.00
Median hourly rate £47.50 £46.90 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.28% +17.25% -23.51%
75th Percentile £70.15 £67.88 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.36 £81.55 £76.99
UK median hourly rate £47.50 £42.21 £40.00
% change year-on-year +12.55% +5.51% -25.93%

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 29 April 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 29 April 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 29 April 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 3,237 £525 - 363
South East +1 2,179 £535 -2.73% 416
South West 0 1,330 £538 -2.98% 258
Midlands +3 899 £475 -9.52% 135
North of England -1 853 £488 -2.50% 254
West Midlands +4 757 £481 -10.43% 104
North West -2 505 £500 - 140
East of England +2 384 £513 +13.89% 120
Yorkshire -2 217 £488 -7.14% 52
North East +1 164 £450 -10.00% 66
East Midlands -4 136 £447 -5.92% 31
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
1 362 (3.95%) Confluence
2 200 (2.18%) SharePoint
3 129 (1.41%) Microsoft Exchange
4 111 (1.21%) SAS
5 83 (0.91%) Apache Spark
6 69 (0.75%) Apache
7 54 (0.59%) Apache Airflow
8 46 (0.50%) nginx
9 34 (0.37%) WebLogic
10 21 (0.23%) Jupyter
11 16 (0.17%) IIS
12 14 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 14 (0.15%) Skype for Business
12 14 (0.15%) Tomcat
12 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
13 13 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
14 12 (0.13%) CMS
15 9 (0.098%) Palantir Foundry
16 8 (0.087%) Apache Superset
16 8 (0.087%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 214 (2.33%) Microsoft Office
2 187 (2.04%) Microsoft Excel
3 116 (1.27%) Microsoft Project
4 84 (0.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 39 (0.43%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.13%) Simulink
8 6 (0.065%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.055%) Notepad++
9 5 (0.055%) SOLIDWORKS
10 4 (0.044%) Revit
10 4 (0.044%) Siemens NX
10 4 (0.044%) Windchill
11 2 (0.022%) Adobe XD
11 2 (0.022%) CATIA
11 2 (0.022%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.022%) Lectora
11 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.022%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 78 (0.85%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
3 42 (0.46%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 29 (0.32%) Dynamics CRM
5 27 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
6 26 (0.28%) Teamcenter
7 19 (0.21%) Maximo
8 13 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
8 13 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.14%) Temenos T24
9 12 (0.13%) SAP PP
9 12 (0.13%) SAP PSCD
10 11 (0.12%) Findur
11 10 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
11 10 (0.11%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.098%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 8 (0.087%) iTrent
13 8 (0.087%) Primavera
13 8 (0.087%) SAP HR
13 8 (0.087%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,560 (17.02%) Azure
2 1,513 (16.51%) AWS
3 386 (4.21%) GitHub
4 378 (4.12%) GCP
5 355 (3.87%) Azure DevOps
6 337 (3.68%) Power Platform
7 262 (2.86%) Serverless
8 244 (2.66%) Microsoft 365
9 223 (2.43%) Entra ID
10 215 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
11 202 (2.20%) Amazon S3
12 176 (1.92%) AWS Lambda
13 128 (1.40%) Amazon EC2
13 128 (1.40%) PaaS
14 127 (1.39%) OpenShift
15 123 (1.34%) AWS CloudFormation
16 115 (1.25%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 112 (1.22%) IaaS
18 107 (1.17%) OCI
19 105 (1.15%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 421 (4.59%) Firewall
2 265 (2.89%) DNS
3 215 (2.35%) Network Security
4 214 (2.33%) WAN
5 192 (2.09%) LAN
6 162 (1.77%) VPN
7 140 (1.53%) BGP
7 140 (1.53%) DHCP
8 122 (1.33%) OSPF
9 103 (1.12%) TCP/IP
10 93 (1.01%) VLAN
11 87 (0.95%) Wi-Fi
12 78 (0.85%) Wireless
13 58 (0.63%) MPLS
14 53 (0.58%) SAN
15 50 (0.55%) VXLAN
16 48 (0.52%) SD-WAN
17 46 (0.50%) IPsec
18 44 (0.48%) Ethernet VPN
19 43 (0.47%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 259 (2.83%) Power BI
2 228 (2.49%) PostgreSQL
3 198 (2.16%) Data Warehouse
4 181 (1.97%) SQL Server
5 120 (1.31%) Metadata
6 109 (1.19%) Amazon RDS
7 103 (1.12%) Oracle Database
8 93 (1.01%) NoSQL
9 85 (0.93%) Relational Database
10 83 (0.91%) MongoDB
11 78 (0.85%) Pentaho
12 76 (0.83%) Data Lake
13 71 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
14 69 (0.75%) Azure SQL Database
15 66 (0.72%) MySQL
16 63 (0.69%) Amazon Redshift
16 63 (0.69%) Oracle Reports
17 61 (0.67%) Tableau
18 51 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
19 49 (0.53%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 575 (6.27%) JIRA
2 442 (4.82%) Git
3 346 (3.77%) Jenkins
4 324 (3.53%) GitLab
5 85 (0.93%) Selenium
6 72 (0.79%) Postman
7 68 (0.74%) JUnit
8 57 (0.62%) SonarQube
9 50 (0.55%) Bitbucket
10 49 (0.53%) Rational DOORS
11 41 (0.45%) Artifactory
11 41 (0.45%) Maven
12 37 (0.40%) Mockito
13 36 (0.39%) Cucumber
14 35 (0.38%) Cypress.io
14 35 (0.38%) JMeter
15 32 (0.35%) Oracle APEX
16 31 (0.34%) Visual Studio
17 27 (0.29%) Zephyr
18 24 (0.26%) MSI
General
1 2,044 (22.30%) Public Sector
2 2,016 (21.99%) Social Skills
3 730 (7.96%) Analytical Skills
4 645 (7.04%) Finance
5 333 (3.63%) Military
6 255 (2.78%) Documentation Skills
7 217 (2.37%) Aerospace
8 141 (1.54%) Legal
9 133 (1.45%) Telecoms
10 122 (1.33%) Influencing Skills
11 120 (1.31%) Manufacturing
12 110 (1.20%) Banking
13 101 (1.10%) Organisational Skills
14 94 (1.03%) Presentation Skills
15 84 (0.92%) Law
16 69 (0.75%) Marketing
17 62 (0.68%) Electronics
18 57 (0.62%) Police
19 55 (0.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 35 (0.38%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,354 (14.77%) Architect
2 894 (9.75%) Developer
3 786 (8.58%) Senior
4 656 (7.16%) Analyst
5 622 (6.79%) Lead
6 429 (4.68%) Data Engineer
7 415 (4.53%) Consultant
8 399 (4.35%) DevOps Engineer
9 277 (3.02%) Software Engineer
10 270 (2.95%) Network Engineer
11 264 (2.88%) Technical Architect
12 247 (2.69%) Business Analyst
13 239 (2.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 203 (2.21%) Project Manager
15 200 (2.18%) Solutions Architect
16 197 (2.15%) Azure Engineer
17 169 (1.84%) Administrator
17 169 (1.84%) Delivery Manager
17 169 (1.84%) Security Architect
18 160 (1.75%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 310 (3.38%) REST
2 210 (2.29%) Spring
3 172 (1.88%) Node.js
4 165 (1.80%) Spring Boot
5 163 (1.78%) Kafka
6 161 (1.76%) React
7 158 (1.72%) .NET
8 139 (1.52%) SOAP
9 138 (1.51%) LDAP
10 136 (1.48%) JSON
11 133 (1.45%) RESTful
12 112 (1.22%) AngularJS
13 102 (1.11%) PySpark
14 101 (1.10%) Web Services
15 87 (0.95%) Oracle Fusion
16 85 (0.93%) HTML
16 85 (0.93%) XML
17 84 (0.92%) OAuth
18 70 (0.76%) Elastic Stack
19 65 (0.71%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 309 (3.37%) Product Ownership
2 306 (3.34%) Cloud Native
3 273 (2.98%) Data Centre
4 249 (2.72%) Onboarding
5 173 (1.89%) PKI
6 144 (1.57%) Management Information System
7 121 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
7 121 (1.32%) Security Posture
8 119 (1.30%) Replication
9 117 (1.28%) Enterprise Software
10 113 (1.23%) Self-Motivation
11 106 (1.16%) Distributed Systems
12 76 (0.83%) Clustering
12 76 (0.83%) Data Structures
13 74 (0.81%) Hybrid Cloud
13 74 (0.81%) Public Cloud
14 66 (0.72%) Security Operations Centre
15 61 (0.67%) Virtual Team
16 55 (0.60%) CMDB
16 55 (0.60%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 777 (8.48%) Windows
2 648 (7.07%) Linux
3 231 (2.52%) Windows Server
4 143 (1.56%) Unix
5 105 (1.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 103 (1.12%) Windows 10
7 101 (1.10%) Android
8 51 (0.56%) Apple iOS
9 46 (0.50%) Mac OS
10 35 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 29 (0.32%) Solaris
11 29 (0.32%) VMS
12 23 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
13 22 (0.24%) CentOS
14 21 (0.23%) AIX
15 20 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
16 15 (0.16%) Windows 7
16 15 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
17 10 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
18 8 (0.087%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,843 (20.11%) Agile
2 1,398 (15.25%) DevOps
3 1,199 (13.08%) CI/CD
4 1,026 (11.19%) Problem-Solving
5 865 (9.44%) Stakeholder Management
6 796 (8.68%) Migration
7 791 (8.63%) Continuous Improvement
8 670 (7.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 611 (6.67%) ITIL
10 606 (6.61%) Infrastructure as Code
11 528 (5.76%) Analytics
12 524 (5.72%) Cybersecurity
13 519 (5.66%) Test Automation
14 512 (5.59%) Software Engineering
15 492 (5.37%) Roadmaps
16 480 (5.24%) Containerisation
17 458 (5.00%) Data Modelling
18 442 (4.82%) Scrum
19 411 (4.48%) Service Management
20 407 (4.44%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 1,005 (10.96%) Python
2 849 (9.26%) SQL
3 564 (6.15%) Java
4 517 (5.64%) PowerShell
5 308 (3.36%) JavaScript
6 200 (2.18%) C#
7 174 (1.90%) Bash
8 150 (1.64%) TypeScript
9 103 (1.12%) PL/SQL
10 97 (1.06%) C++
11 88 (0.96%) Shell Script
12 68 (0.74%) Go
13 63 (0.69%) Scala
14 62 (0.68%) C
15 56 (0.61%) Ruby
16 52 (0.57%) Bicep
17 43 (0.47%) Apex Code
18 41 (0.45%) Ada
19 40 (0.44%) Kusto Query Language
20 39 (0.43%) R
Qualifications
1 6,908 (75.37%) SC Cleared
2 1,708 (18.63%) DV Cleared
3 425 (4.64%) Degree
4 275 (3.00%) BPSS Clearance
5 167 (1.82%) Cisco Certification
6 148 (1.61%) CISSP
7 131 (1.43%) Azure Certification
8 110 (1.20%) AWS Certification
8 110 (1.20%) CCNP
9 95 (1.04%) CISM
9 95 (1.04%) Microsoft Certification
10 70 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
10 70 (0.76%) PMP
11 69 (0.75%) CCNA
12 66 (0.72%) TOGAF Certification
13 62 (0.68%) PMI Certification
14 61 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
15 56 (0.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 52 (0.57%) ISTQB
17 47 (0.51%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 334 (3.64%) QA
2 263 (2.87%) Data Quality
3 261 (2.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 260 (2.84%) NIST
5 181 (1.97%) NCSC
6 152 (1.66%) PMO
7 148 (1.61%) GDPR
8 145 (1.58%) Accessibility
9 103 (1.12%) SLA
10 62 (0.68%) GRC
10 62 (0.68%) JSP 440
11 40 (0.44%) COBIT
11 40 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
12 39 (0.43%) NIST 800
13 34 (0.37%) WCAG
14 31 (0.34%) Def Stans
14 31 (0.34%) PCI DSS
15 26 (0.28%) RMADS
16 24 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 18 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 592 (6.46%) Docker
2 440 (4.80%) Active Directory
3 264 (2.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 91 (0.99%) VMware ESXi
5 82 (0.89%) VMware NSX
6 77 (0.84%) Hyper-V
7 74 (0.81%) vSphere
8 66 (0.72%) Virtual Machines
9 38 (0.41%) Firmware
10 25 (0.27%) Oracle RAC
11 20 (0.22%) BitLocker
11 20 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
12 17 (0.19%) NFS
12 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 16 (0.17%) Postfix
14 12 (0.13%) vCloud
15 10 (0.11%) Squid
16 8 (0.087%) Microsoft App-V
17 5 (0.055%) Corosync
17 5 (0.055%) KVM
Systems Management
1 760 (8.29%) Kubernetes
2 739 (8.06%) Terraform
3 313 (3.41%) Ansible
4 228 (2.49%) Grafana
5 186 (2.03%) Prometheus
6 95 (1.04%) vCenter Server
7 88 (0.96%) Single Sign-On
8 80 (0.87%) SCCM
9 57 (0.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 54 (0.59%) Microsoft Intune
11 52 (0.57%) FortiGate
12 49 (0.53%) Argo
13 38 (0.41%) Packer
13 38 (0.41%) Puppet
14 36 (0.39%) Podman
15 33 (0.36%) Progress Chef
16 30 (0.33%) OPNET
17 28 (0.31%) Oracle RMAN
18 26 (0.28%) Kibana
19 25 (0.27%) Nagios
Vendors
1 976 (10.65%) Microsoft
2 571 (6.23%) Oracle
3 459 (5.01%) VMware
4 381 (4.16%) ServiceNow
5 352 (3.84%) Cisco
6 327 (3.57%) SAP
7 211 (2.30%) Splunk
8 173 (1.89%) Databricks
9 152 (1.66%) Red Hat
10 151 (1.65%) Google
11 113 (1.23%) Atlassian
11 113 (1.23%) IBM
11 113 (1.23%) Salesforce
12 111 (1.21%) Palo Alto
13 106 (1.16%) Juniper
14 104 (1.13%) Talend
15 92 (1.00%) CyberArk
16 83 (0.91%) Remedy
17 80 (0.87%) F5
18 76 (0.83%) Dynatrace