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

6 months to
25 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 8,255 4,622 6,999
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.41% 18.07% 18.67%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.19% 59.79% 60.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,650 2,966 4,441
10th Percentile £356 £319 £356
25th Percentile £444 £440 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £548 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.20% -0.36% -3.08%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £703 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.42% -2.18% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 719 248 474
10th Percentile £17.69 £21.25 £19.99
25th Percentile £20.00 £26.13 £36.79
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% +6.21% -5.85%
75th Percentile £65.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £77.28 £83.40
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £57.12 £57.09
% change year-on-year -55.97% +0.07% -4.86%

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 12,106 7,730 11,647
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.33% 30.22% 31.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,057 4,762 7,182
10th Percentile £325 £294 £290
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.42% -2.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 930 386 880
10th Percentile £16.01 £20.00 £14.24
25th Percentile £19.26 £25.32 £20.75
Median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £43.17
Median % change year-on-year -49.70% +15.82% -9.12%
75th Percentile £65.00 £68.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.87 £82.50 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year -37.13% -5.88% -11.27%

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 25 February 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 25 February 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 25 February 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 +4 2,853 £530 +0.95% 481
South East +1 1,768 £525 -4.55% 587
South West 0 1,319 £550 -2.22% 316
Midlands +4 852 £495 -10.00% 160
North of England -2 831 £498 +1.22% 189
West Midlands +2 676 £500 -9.26% 119
North West 0 535 £500 +5.26% 118
East of England +1 345 £498 -0.50% 140
Yorkshire -5 175 £500 -4.76% 39
East Midlands +1 174 £425 -16.05% 41
North East 0 148 £450 -10.00% 33
South Coast - 1 - -
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
1 311 (3.77%) Confluence
2 200 (2.42%) SharePoint
3 134 (1.62%) Microsoft Exchange
4 130 (1.57%) SAS
5 68 (0.82%) Apache
6 65 (0.79%) Apache Spark
7 41 (0.50%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.47%) nginx
9 35 (0.42%) WebLogic
10 33 (0.40%) Skype for Business
11 20 (0.24%) Jupyter
12 17 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
13 15 (0.18%) CMS
14 12 (0.15%) Tuxedo
15 8 (0.097%) IIS
15 8 (0.097%) OpenStack
16 7 (0.085%) Oracle Workflow
16 7 (0.085%) Tomcat
17 6 (0.073%) ArcGIS
18 5 (0.061%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 247 (2.99%) Microsoft Office
2 180 (2.18%) Microsoft Excel
3 116 (1.41%) Microsoft Project
4 68 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 39 (0.47%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
7 9 (0.11%) Simulink
8 5 (0.061%) Siemens NX
8 5 (0.061%) Windchill
9 4 (0.048%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.048%) Chatbot
9 4 (0.048%) Oracle Smart View
9 4 (0.048%) Sketch
10 3 (0.036%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.024%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.024%) CATIA
11 2 (0.024%) Lectora
11 2 (0.024%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 2 (0.024%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.024%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 126 (1.53%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 28 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
4 25 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
5 22 (0.27%) Teamcenter
6 20 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
7 19 (0.23%) SAP MM
8 16 (0.19%) Maximo
9 13 (0.16%) SAP QM
9 13 (0.16%) SAP WM
10 12 (0.15%) Oracle Assets
10 12 (0.15%) SAP PP
10 12 (0.15%) SAP VC
11 11 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
11 11 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
11 11 (0.13%) SAP EWM
11 11 (0.13%) SAP HCM
12 10 (0.12%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 9 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
13 9 (0.11%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,361 (16.49%) AWS
2 1,347 (16.32%) Azure
3 352 (4.26%) GitHub
4 346 (4.19%) GCP
5 299 (3.62%) Power Platform
6 297 (3.60%) Azure DevOps
7 296 (3.59%) Microsoft 365
8 229 (2.77%) Serverless
9 213 (2.58%) Entra ID
10 183 (2.22%) Amazon S3
11 175 (2.12%) GitHub Actions
12 168 (2.04%) OpenShift
13 150 (1.82%) AWS Lambda
14 125 (1.51%) Amazon EC2
15 109 (1.32%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 109 (1.32%) AWS CloudFormation
16 102 (1.24%) IaaS
17 99 (1.20%) Amazon EKS
18 98 (1.19%) PaaS
19 95 (1.15%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 405 (4.91%) Firewall
2 270 (3.27%) DNS
3 204 (2.47%) Network Security
4 178 (2.16%) WAN
5 166 (2.01%) VPN
6 142 (1.72%) LAN
7 133 (1.61%) TCP/IP
8 131 (1.59%) BGP
9 125 (1.51%) DHCP
10 89 (1.08%) OSPF
10 89 (1.08%) Wireless
11 85 (1.03%) VLAN
12 72 (0.87%) Wi-Fi
13 67 (0.81%) MPLS
14 55 (0.67%) IPsec
15 51 (0.62%) SAN
16 49 (0.59%) SSL
17 45 (0.55%) Cisco ISE
18 42 (0.51%) Skype
19 37 (0.45%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 225 (2.73%) PostgreSQL
2 215 (2.60%) Power BI
3 138 (1.67%) Data Warehouse
4 123 (1.49%) SQL Server
5 104 (1.26%) Metadata
6 95 (1.15%) Oracle Database
7 89 (1.08%) Amazon RDS
8 85 (1.03%) MongoDB
9 83 (1.01%) NoSQL
10 78 (0.94%) Relational Database
11 71 (0.86%) Elasticsearch
12 64 (0.78%) Azure SQL Database
13 58 (0.70%) Pentaho
14 50 (0.61%) Data Lake
14 50 (0.61%) MySQL
15 47 (0.57%) Big Data
16 43 (0.52%) Tableau
17 39 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
18 36 (0.44%) DynamoDB
19 35 (0.42%) SAS Enterprise Guide
Development Applications
1 514 (6.23%) JIRA
2 422 (5.11%) Git
3 363 (4.40%) Jenkins
4 310 (3.76%) GitLab
5 102 (1.24%) Selenium
6 81 (0.98%) Postman
7 77 (0.93%) JUnit
8 59 (0.71%) Cypress.io
9 51 (0.62%) SonarQube
10 46 (0.56%) Maven
11 45 (0.55%) Artifactory
11 45 (0.55%) Bitbucket
11 45 (0.55%) Oracle APEX
12 41 (0.50%) Cucumber
13 36 (0.44%) Mockito
14 35 (0.42%) REST Assured
15 29 (0.35%) Rational DOORS
16 24 (0.29%) JMeter
16 24 (0.29%) Metasploit
16 24 (0.29%) Visual Studio
General
1 2,101 (25.45%) Public Sector
2 2,025 (24.53%) Social Skills
3 706 (8.55%) Analytical Skills
4 585 (7.09%) Finance
5 319 (3.86%) Military
6 240 (2.91%) Documentation Skills
7 174 (2.11%) Telecoms
8 172 (2.08%) Aerospace
9 169 (2.05%) Manufacturing
10 127 (1.54%) Legal
11 116 (1.41%) Organisational Skills
12 115 (1.39%) Marketing
13 110 (1.33%) Electronics
14 105 (1.27%) Influencing Skills
14 105 (1.27%) Presentation Skills
15 84 (1.02%) Banking
16 69 (0.84%) Law
17 44 (0.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 40 (0.48%) Police
19 34 (0.41%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,157 (14.02%) Architect
2 781 (9.46%) Developer
3 698 (8.46%) Senior
4 628 (7.61%) Analyst
5 483 (5.85%) Consultant
6 469 (5.68%) Lead
7 368 (4.46%) DevOps Engineer
8 297 (3.60%) Data Engineer
9 239 (2.90%) Network Engineer
10 227 (2.75%) Support Engineer
11 220 (2.67%) Business Analyst
12 209 (2.53%) Software Engineer
13 204 (2.47%) Technical Architect
14 184 (2.23%) Solutions Architect
15 167 (2.02%) Tester
16 149 (1.80%) Azure Engineer
17 142 (1.72%) Administrator
17 142 (1.72%) Project Manager
18 141 (1.71%) AWS Engineer
19 140 (1.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 324 (3.92%) REST
2 189 (2.29%) Node.js
3 185 (2.24%) Spring
4 174 (2.11%) React
5 169 (2.05%) Kafka
6 144 (1.74%) JSON
7 142 (1.72%) Spring Boot
8 141 (1.71%) LDAP
9 140 (1.70%) SOAP
10 107 (1.30%) .NET
11 101 (1.22%) RESTful
12 100 (1.21%) HTML
13 96 (1.16%) AngularJS
14 93 (1.13%) OAuth
15 91 (1.10%) Oracle Fusion
15 91 (1.10%) Web Services
16 89 (1.08%) CSS
17 88 (1.07%) XML
18 87 (1.05%) PySpark
19 76 (0.92%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 269 (3.26%) Data Centre
2 244 (2.96%) Product Ownership
3 229 (2.77%) Cloud Native
4 218 (2.64%) Onboarding
5 198 (2.40%) PKI
6 149 (1.80%) Management Information System
7 131 (1.59%) Security Posture
8 107 (1.30%) Enterprise Software
8 107 (1.30%) Self-Motivation
9 104 (1.26%) Legacy Systems
10 95 (1.15%) Replication
11 70 (0.85%) Hybrid Cloud
12 66 (0.80%) Driving Licence
12 66 (0.80%) Public Cloud
13 64 (0.78%) Cyber Threat
13 64 (0.78%) Security Operations Centre
14 59 (0.71%) Distributed Systems
15 47 (0.57%) Clustering
16 45 (0.55%) Private Cloud
17 44 (0.53%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 813 (9.85%) Windows
2 633 (7.67%) Linux
3 210 (2.54%) Windows Server
4 155 (1.88%) Windows 10
5 118 (1.43%) Android
6 116 (1.41%) Unix
7 109 (1.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 65 (0.79%) Mac OS
9 46 (0.56%) Apple iOS
10 42 (0.51%) Ubuntu
11 35 (0.42%) VMS
12 24 (0.29%) CentOS
12 24 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
13 21 (0.25%) Windows 7
14 19 (0.23%) Solaris
15 17 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
16 14 (0.17%) Mac OS X
17 12 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
18 8 (0.097%) Windows Server 2003
18 8 (0.097%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,601 (19.39%) Agile
2 1,258 (15.24%) DevOps
3 1,098 (13.30%) CI/CD
4 1,060 (12.84%) Problem-Solving
5 751 (9.10%) Stakeholder Management
6 727 (8.81%) Migration
7 640 (7.75%) Continuous Improvement
8 568 (6.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 539 (6.53%) Cybersecurity
10 513 (6.21%) ITIL
11 504 (6.11%) Infrastructure as Code
12 481 (5.83%) Test Automation
13 445 (5.39%) Roadmaps
14 442 (5.35%) Analytics
15 432 (5.23%) Containerisation
16 402 (4.87%) Service Management
17 401 (4.86%) Scrum
18 399 (4.83%) Business Intelligence
19 395 (4.78%) Software Engineering
20 360 (4.36%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 984 (11.92%) Python
2 691 (8.37%) SQL
3 543 (6.58%) PowerShell
4 477 (5.78%) Java
5 355 (4.30%) JavaScript
6 215 (2.60%) Bash
7 171 (2.07%) TypeScript
8 152 (1.84%) C#
9 92 (1.11%) C++
9 92 (1.11%) PL/SQL
10 88 (1.07%) Shell Script
11 78 (0.94%) Go
12 59 (0.71%) C
13 51 (0.62%) Ada
14 48 (0.58%) Scala
15 47 (0.57%) Ruby
16 39 (0.47%) Bicep
17 36 (0.44%) Kusto Query Language
18 31 (0.38%) ABAP
18 31 (0.38%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 6,295 (76.26%) SC Cleared
2 1,445 (17.50%) DV Cleared
3 404 (4.89%) Degree
4 254 (3.08%) BPSS Clearance
5 156 (1.89%) Cisco Certification
5 156 (1.89%) CISSP
6 121 (1.47%) Azure Certification
7 117 (1.42%) CCNP
7 117 (1.42%) Microsoft Certification
8 114 (1.38%) AWS Certification
9 95 (1.15%) CISM
10 72 (0.87%) Computer Science Degree
11 67 (0.81%) CCNA
12 62 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
13 60 (0.73%) TOGAF Certification
14 46 (0.56%) ISTQB
15 45 (0.55%) GIAC
15 45 (0.55%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 44 (0.53%) CEH
16 44 (0.53%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 286 (3.46%) QA
2 264 (3.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 248 (3.00%) NIST
4 210 (2.54%) Data Quality
5 191 (2.31%) NCSC
6 165 (2.00%) GDPR
7 149 (1.80%) Accessibility
8 114 (1.38%) SLA
9 94 (1.14%) PMO
10 57 (0.69%) GRC
11 52 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 44 (0.53%) WCAG
13 42 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
14 39 (0.47%) Def Stans
15 32 (0.39%) PCI DSS
16 30 (0.36%) COBIT
16 30 (0.36%) NIST 800
17 23 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 22 (0.27%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 19 (0.23%) RMADS
System Software
1 579 (7.01%) Docker
2 468 (5.67%) Active Directory
3 236 (2.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 78 (0.94%) VMware NSX
5 64 (0.78%) vSphere
6 59 (0.71%) VMware ESXi
7 58 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
8 57 (0.69%) Hyper-V
9 24 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
10 22 (0.27%) Firmware
11 19 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
12 18 (0.22%) BitLocker
13 16 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 15 (0.18%) NFS
15 11 (0.13%) Postfix
15 11 (0.13%) Squid
16 8 (0.097%) vCloud
17 7 (0.085%) Virtual Servers
18 5 (0.061%) Microsoft Virtual Server
18 5 (0.061%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 743 (9.00%) Kubernetes
2 681 (8.25%) Terraform
3 287 (3.48%) Ansible
4 206 (2.50%) Grafana
5 166 (2.01%) Prometheus
6 106 (1.28%) Single Sign-On
7 96 (1.16%) SCCM
8 94 (1.14%) vCenter Server
9 82 (0.99%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 65 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
11 64 (0.78%) Argo
12 39 (0.47%) Podman
13 38 (0.46%) FortiGate
14 37 (0.45%) Packer
15 31 (0.38%) Kibana
15 31 (0.38%) Puppet
16 30 (0.36%) OPNET
17 28 (0.34%) Progress Chef
18 26 (0.31%) Nmap
19 23 (0.28%) vRealize
Vendors
1 979 (11.86%) Microsoft
2 483 (5.85%) Oracle
3 421 (5.10%) VMware
4 407 (4.93%) Cisco
5 376 (4.55%) SAP
6 354 (4.29%) ServiceNow
7 208 (2.52%) Splunk
8 174 (2.11%) Red Hat
9 132 (1.60%) Juniper
9 132 (1.60%) Palo Alto
10 124 (1.50%) Databricks
10 124 (1.50%) Google
11 121 (1.47%) CyberArk
12 113 (1.37%) Atlassian
13 109 (1.32%) Salesforce
14 90 (1.09%) Dell
15 78 (0.94%) SolarWinds
16 76 (0.92%) Talend
17 75 (0.91%) HP
18 74 (0.90%) Aruba