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

6 months to
29 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 7,519 4,819 7,000
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.88% 18.11% 18.80%
As % of the Qualifications category 66.75% 59.67% 60.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,145 3,007 4,482
10th Percentile £350 £340 £363
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -3.51%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -3.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 657 249 467
10th Percentile £17.69 £21.06 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.72 £26.25 £42.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% - -
75th Percentile £65.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £83.17
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £54.76 £60.00
% change year-on-year -54.07% -8.74% -

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 11,264 8,076 11,609
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.27% 30.36% 31.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,481 4,872 7,246
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £419 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.10% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £519 £525 £548
% change year-on-year -1.24% -4.11% -0.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 867 389 826
10th Percentile £15.62 £19.72 £14.39
25th Percentile £18.94 £25.26 £21.46
Median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -45.54% -2.78% +5.56%
75th Percentile £63.58 £67.50 £66.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.92 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £39.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year -35.51% -17.89% +5.56%

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 January 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 January 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 January 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 +5 2,575 £538 -2.27% 467
South East +1 1,521 £513 -6.82% 620
South West 0 1,291 £550 -3.08% 373
North of England -2 813 £500 +5.26% 213
Midlands +4 725 £515 -6.62% 163
West Midlands +2 570 £519 -6.58% 94
North West 0 535 £513 +7.89% 122
East of England +2 336 £493 -3.90% 218
Yorkshire -13 164 £500 +9.59% 57
East Midlands +3 155 £424 -20.75% 67
North East 0 140 £450 -14.29% 35
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
1 269 (3.58%) Confluence
2 184 (2.45%) SharePoint
3 129 (1.72%) Microsoft Exchange
4 118 (1.57%) SAS
5 70 (0.93%) Apache
6 56 (0.74%) Apache Spark
7 49 (0.65%) Apache Airflow
8 40 (0.53%) nginx
9 38 (0.51%) Skype for Business
10 25 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 20 (0.27%) CMS
12 18 (0.24%) IIS
13 14 (0.19%) Jupyter
14 10 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
15 9 (0.12%) OpenStack
15 9 (0.12%) SharePoint Server
16 7 (0.093%) Tuxedo
17 6 (0.080%) Documentum
17 6 (0.080%) Exchange Server 2010
18 5 (0.066%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 246 (3.27%) Microsoft Office
2 146 (1.94%) Microsoft Excel
3 105 (1.40%) Microsoft Project
4 59 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 35 (0.47%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.16%) Simulink
8 7 (0.093%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 6 (0.080%) Siemens NX
10 5 (0.066%) Oracle Smart View
10 5 (0.066%) Sketch
10 5 (0.066%) Windchill
11 4 (0.053%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.053%) FrameMaker
11 4 (0.053%) Stateflow
12 3 (0.040%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.040%) Chatbot
13 2 (0.027%) Adobe Illustrator
13 2 (0.027%) Photoshop
13 2 (0.027%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 143 (1.90%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.49%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 28 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
4 27 (0.36%) SAP WM
5 26 (0.35%) SAP EWM
6 24 (0.32%) Dynamics CRM
7 19 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
8 18 (0.24%) SAP MM
9 15 (0.20%) Teamcenter
10 14 (0.19%) Maximo
10 14 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
11 13 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
11 13 (0.17%) SAP QM
12 12 (0.16%) SAP PP
12 12 (0.16%) SAP VC
13 11 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
13 11 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
13 11 (0.15%) Oracle Receivables
13 11 (0.15%) SAP EHS
13 11 (0.15%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,279 (17.01%) Azure
2 1,233 (16.40%) AWS
3 343 (4.56%) GitHub
4 323 (4.30%) GCP
5 306 (4.07%) Microsoft 365
6 282 (3.75%) Azure DevOps
7 278 (3.70%) Power Platform
8 219 (2.91%) Serverless
9 206 (2.74%) Entra ID
10 172 (2.29%) Amazon S3
11 169 (2.25%) GitHub Actions
12 152 (2.02%) OpenShift
13 137 (1.82%) AWS Lambda
14 103 (1.37%) Amazon EC2
15 101 (1.34%) AWS CloudFormation
16 98 (1.30%) IaaS
17 97 (1.29%) PaaS
18 96 (1.28%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 96 (1.28%) SaaS
19 93 (1.24%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 391 (5.20%) Firewall
2 264 (3.51%) DNS
3 187 (2.49%) Network Security
4 178 (2.37%) VPN
5 164 (2.18%) WAN
6 133 (1.77%) TCP/IP
7 118 (1.57%) LAN
8 115 (1.53%) DHCP
9 113 (1.50%) BGP
10 84 (1.12%) Wireless
11 80 (1.06%) VLAN
12 70 (0.93%) Wi-Fi
13 65 (0.86%) MPLS
14 64 (0.85%) OSPF
15 61 (0.81%) SSL
16 59 (0.78%) IPsec
17 52 (0.69%) SAN
18 46 (0.61%) Skype
19 42 (0.56%) Cisco ISE
20 39 (0.52%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 198 (2.63%) PostgreSQL
2 191 (2.54%) Power BI
3 94 (1.25%) Data Warehouse
4 88 (1.17%) MongoDB
5 87 (1.16%) Metadata
6 86 (1.14%) SQL Server
7 85 (1.13%) NoSQL
8 82 (1.09%) Oracle Database
9 78 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
10 74 (0.98%) Relational Database
11 61 (0.81%) Azure SQL Database
12 52 (0.69%) Elasticsearch
13 45 (0.60%) Pentaho
14 42 (0.56%) Big Data
14 42 (0.56%) Data Lake
14 42 (0.56%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 38 (0.51%) Amazon Redshift
16 37 (0.49%) Amazon Athena
17 36 (0.48%) MySQL
18 34 (0.45%) Redis
Development Applications
1 464 (6.17%) JIRA
2 389 (5.17%) Git
3 350 (4.65%) Jenkins
4 288 (3.83%) GitLab
5 89 (1.18%) Selenium
6 70 (0.93%) Postman
7 60 (0.80%) JUnit
8 57 (0.76%) Cypress.io
9 47 (0.63%) Bitbucket
9 47 (0.63%) Oracle APEX
9 47 (0.63%) SonarQube
10 45 (0.60%) Artifactory
11 36 (0.48%) Maven
12 34 (0.45%) Cucumber
13 31 (0.41%) Mockito
14 30 (0.40%) REST Assured
15 23 (0.31%) Metasploit
15 23 (0.31%) MSI
15 23 (0.31%) Rational DOORS
16 21 (0.28%) Burp Suite
General
1 1,940 (25.80%) Public Sector
2 1,909 (25.39%) Social Skills
3 661 (8.79%) Analytical Skills
4 532 (7.08%) Finance
5 301 (4.00%) Military
6 217 (2.89%) Documentation Skills
7 192 (2.55%) Telecoms
8 189 (2.51%) Manufacturing
9 130 (1.73%) Marketing
10 129 (1.72%) Electronics
11 126 (1.68%) Aerospace
12 109 (1.45%) Legal
12 109 (1.45%) Organisational Skills
13 97 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
14 87 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
15 83 (1.10%) Banking
16 69 (0.92%) Law
17 48 (0.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 31 (0.41%) Police
19 29 (0.39%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,013 (13.47%) Architect
2 731 (9.72%) Developer
3 630 (8.38%) Senior
4 544 (7.24%) Analyst
5 498 (6.62%) Consultant
6 420 (5.59%) Lead
7 364 (4.84%) DevOps Engineer
8 244 (3.25%) Data Engineer
9 235 (3.13%) Support Engineer
10 230 (3.06%) Network Engineer
11 179 (2.38%) Business Analyst
11 179 (2.38%) Technical Architect
12 176 (2.34%) Software Engineer
13 172 (2.29%) Solutions Architect
14 145 (1.93%) Tester
15 138 (1.84%) AWS Engineer
16 137 (1.82%) Azure Engineer
17 134 (1.78%) Project Manager
18 132 (1.76%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 128 (1.70%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 313 (4.16%) REST
2 178 (2.37%) Node.js
3 171 (2.27%) React
4 161 (2.14%) Kafka
5 147 (1.96%) Spring
6 146 (1.94%) LDAP
7 142 (1.89%) SOAP
8 137 (1.82%) JSON
9 118 (1.57%) Spring Boot
10 104 (1.38%) HTML
11 97 (1.29%) RESTful
12 96 (1.28%) .NET
13 95 (1.26%) XML
14 94 (1.25%) OAuth
15 92 (1.22%) Oracle Fusion
16 91 (1.21%) CSS
17 84 (1.12%) AngularJS
18 80 (1.06%) PySpark
18 80 (1.06%) Web Services
19 78 (1.04%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 240 (3.19%) Data Centre
2 224 (2.98%) Product Ownership
3 209 (2.78%) Cloud Native
4 203 (2.70%) Onboarding
5 195 (2.59%) PKI
6 140 (1.86%) Management Information System
7 124 (1.65%) Security Posture
8 104 (1.38%) Enterprise Software
9 102 (1.36%) Self-Motivation
10 95 (1.26%) Replication
11 92 (1.22%) Legacy Systems
12 76 (1.01%) Cyber Threat
13 68 (0.90%) Driving Licence
14 62 (0.82%) Security Operations Centre
15 57 (0.76%) Public Cloud
16 52 (0.69%) Hybrid Cloud
17 49 (0.65%) Private Cloud
18 44 (0.59%) CMDB
18 44 (0.59%) Distributed Systems
19 42 (0.56%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 820 (10.91%) Windows
2 576 (7.66%) Linux
3 205 (2.73%) Windows Server
4 182 (2.42%) Windows 10
5 98 (1.30%) Unix
6 95 (1.26%) Android
7 94 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 66 (0.88%) Mac OS
9 44 (0.59%) Ubuntu
10 41 (0.55%) VMS
11 32 (0.43%) Apple iOS
12 24 (0.32%) CentOS
13 22 (0.29%) Windows 7
13 22 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
14 16 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
14 16 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
15 14 (0.19%) Amazon Linux
15 14 (0.19%) Mac OS X
16 12 (0.16%) Solaris
16 12 (0.16%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,439 (19.14%) Agile
2 1,193 (15.87%) DevOps
3 1,036 (13.78%) CI/CD
4 972 (12.93%) Problem-Solving
5 668 (8.88%) Migration
6 649 (8.63%) Stakeholder Management
7 546 (7.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 525 (6.98%) Continuous Improvement
9 514 (6.84%) Cybersecurity
10 476 (6.33%) ITIL
11 472 (6.28%) Infrastructure as Code
12 434 (5.77%) Test Automation
13 407 (5.41%) Analytics
14 394 (5.24%) Containerisation
15 391 (5.20%) Business Intelligence
16 374 (4.97%) Roadmaps
17 368 (4.89%) Service Management
18 341 (4.54%) Scrum
19 339 (4.51%) Software Engineering
20 313 (4.16%) Workflow
Programming Languages
1 925 (12.30%) Python
2 590 (7.85%) SQL
3 531 (7.06%) PowerShell
4 414 (5.51%) Java
5 351 (4.67%) JavaScript
6 202 (2.69%) Bash
7 171 (2.27%) TypeScript
8 134 (1.78%) C#
9 88 (1.17%) C++
10 79 (1.05%) Go
11 70 (0.93%) Shell Script
12 69 (0.92%) PL/SQL
13 63 (0.84%) C
14 44 (0.59%) Ada
14 44 (0.59%) Ruby
14 44 (0.59%) Scala
15 36 (0.48%) MATLAB
16 33 (0.44%) ABAP
17 31 (0.41%) Bicep
18 29 (0.39%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 5,771 (76.75%) SC Cleared
2 1,277 (16.98%) DV Cleared
3 380 (5.05%) Degree
4 220 (2.93%) BPSS Clearance
5 144 (1.92%) CISSP
6 120 (1.60%) Cisco Certification
7 117 (1.56%) Azure Certification
8 115 (1.53%) Microsoft Certification
9 103 (1.37%) CCNP
10 97 (1.29%) AWS Certification
11 89 (1.18%) CISM
12 63 (0.84%) Computer Science Degree
12 63 (0.84%) ITIL Certification
13 54 (0.72%) CCNA
14 50 (0.66%) CEH
15 49 (0.65%) GIAC
16 48 (0.64%) TOGAF Certification
17 42 (0.56%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 40 (0.53%) CHECK Team Member
19 39 (0.52%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 246 (3.27%) QA
2 235 (3.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 229 (3.05%) NIST
4 189 (2.51%) NCSC
5 174 (2.31%) Data Quality
6 157 (2.09%) GDPR
7 131 (1.74%) Accessibility
8 115 (1.53%) SLA
9 75 (1.00%) PMO
10 51 (0.68%) GRC
11 49 (0.65%) JSP 440
12 43 (0.57%) WCAG
13 38 (0.51%) Def Stans
14 35 (0.47%) Cyber Essentials
15 29 (0.39%) COBIT
16 27 (0.36%) PCI DSS
17 25 (0.33%) NIST 800
18 20 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 19 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
20 18 (0.24%) RMADS
System Software
1 557 (7.41%) Docker
2 478 (6.36%) Active Directory
3 222 (2.95%) VMware Infrastructure
4 74 (0.98%) VMware NSX
5 63 (0.84%) vSphere
6 57 (0.76%) VMware ESXi
7 56 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
8 44 (0.59%) Hyper-V
9 28 (0.37%) Firmware
10 27 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
11 17 (0.23%) BitLocker
12 13 (0.17%) Squid
13 11 (0.15%) DFS Replication
13 11 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
13 11 (0.15%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 10 (0.13%) Postfix
15 9 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.12%) NFS
16 7 (0.093%) Dovecot
16 7 (0.093%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 702 (9.34%) Kubernetes
2 636 (8.46%) Terraform
3 280 (3.72%) Ansible
4 180 (2.39%) Grafana
5 152 (2.02%) Prometheus
6 107 (1.42%) Single Sign-On
7 106 (1.41%) SCCM
8 97 (1.29%) vCenter Server
9 84 (1.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 63 (0.84%) Argo
11 62 (0.82%) Microsoft Intune
12 36 (0.48%) Kibana
13 35 (0.47%) Packer
14 34 (0.45%) Podman
15 33 (0.44%) OPNET
16 28 (0.37%) vRealize
17 27 (0.36%) Progress Chef
17 27 (0.36%) Puppet
18 25 (0.33%) Nessus
18 25 (0.33%) Nmap
Vendors
1 953 (12.67%) Microsoft
2 424 (5.64%) Oracle
3 407 (5.41%) SAP
4 401 (5.33%) Cisco
5 389 (5.17%) VMware
6 312 (4.15%) ServiceNow
7 206 (2.74%) Splunk
8 151 (2.01%) Red Hat
9 132 (1.76%) Palo Alto
10 124 (1.65%) Juniper
11 123 (1.64%) CyberArk
12 113 (1.50%) Google
13 111 (1.48%) Databricks
14 106 (1.41%) Atlassian
15 97 (1.29%) Dell
16 96 (1.28%) Salesforce
17 77 (1.02%) HP
18 74 (0.98%) Dynatrace
19 71 (0.94%) CheckPoint
20 66 (0.88%) F5