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

6 months to
7 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 7,125 4,985 6,740
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.51% 18.23% 18.70%
As % of the Qualifications category 65.82% 59.61% 60.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,787 3,168 4,290
10th Percentile £350 £339 £375
25th Percentile £450 £445 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.57%
75th Percentile £627 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £723 £729
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £560
% change year-on-year -4.55% -1.79% -0.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 683 253 420
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.98 £20.00
25th Percentile £19.54 £25.26 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £56.75 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -55.68% -5.43% -
75th Percentile £61.50 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.58 £75.00 £82.20
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -49.70% -16.67% -

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 10,825 8,363 11,071
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.21% 30.58% 30.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,137 5,116 6,980
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £420 £419 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 878 410 675
10th Percentile £16.30 £18.51 £16.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £24.50 £25.19
Median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £52.21
Median % change year-on-year -45.54% -11.54% +16.01%
75th Percentile £59.56 £68.00 £68.69
90th Percentile £76.58 £80.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £39.50 £52.50
% change year-on-year -36.33% -24.76% +16.67%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 +4 2,394 £540 -1.82% 473
South East +1 1,445 £520 -5.45% 558
South West 0 1,215 £550 -0.18% 386
North of England -2 789 £500 +5.26% 221
Midlands +3 703 £515 -6.53% 144
West Midlands +3 551 £520 -5.97% 86
North West 0 534 £506 +6.53% 130
East of England +2 330 £500 - 259
Yorkshire -18 155 £500 +7.24% 56
East Midlands 0 146 £438 -12.50% 58
North East -1 120 £450 -14.29% 36
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
1 270 (3.79%) Confluence
2 186 (2.61%) SharePoint
3 118 (1.66%) Microsoft Exchange
4 106 (1.49%) SAS
5 77 (1.08%) Apache
6 53 (0.74%) Apache Spark
7 43 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
8 36 (0.51%) Skype for Business
9 35 (0.49%) nginx
10 26 (0.36%) WebLogic
11 20 (0.28%) CMS
12 18 (0.25%) IIS
13 11 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
14 9 (0.13%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2010
15 8 (0.11%) OpenStack
15 8 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
16 7 (0.098%) Exchange Server 2013
16 7 (0.098%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 7 (0.098%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 247 (3.47%) Microsoft Office
2 153 (2.15%) Microsoft Excel
3 100 (1.40%) Microsoft Project
4 61 (0.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 35 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 20 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.18%) Siemens NX
8 12 (0.17%) Simulink
9 9 (0.13%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 5 (0.070%) FrameMaker
10 5 (0.070%) Oracle Smart View
10 5 (0.070%) Sketch
10 5 (0.070%) Windchill
11 4 (0.056%) Stateflow
11 4 (0.056%) Trello
12 3 (0.042%) Adobe Illustrator
12 3 (0.042%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.042%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.042%) Photoshop
12 3 (0.042%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 146 (2.05%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (0.51%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 33 (0.46%) Remedy ITSM
4 27 (0.38%) SAP EWM
4 27 (0.38%) SAP WM
5 25 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
6 18 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
6 18 (0.25%) SAP MM
6 18 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 17 (0.24%) Maximo
7 17 (0.24%) SAP HCM
8 14 (0.20%) SAP QM
9 13 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
10 12 (0.17%) Oracle Assets
10 12 (0.17%) SAP PP
10 12 (0.17%) SAP VC
11 11 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
11 11 (0.15%) SAP EHS
12 10 (0.14%) Primavera
12 10 (0.14%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,207 (16.94%) Azure
2 1,172 (16.45%) AWS
3 318 (4.46%) Microsoft 365
4 316 (4.44%) GitHub
5 306 (4.29%) GCP
6 268 (3.76%) Azure DevOps
7 264 (3.71%) Power Platform
8 208 (2.92%) Serverless
9 184 (2.58%) Entra ID
10 162 (2.27%) Amazon S3
11 161 (2.26%) GitHub Actions
12 137 (1.92%) OpenShift
13 124 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
14 102 (1.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 99 (1.39%) SaaS
16 98 (1.38%) Amazon EC2
17 97 (1.36%) AWS CloudFormation
18 87 (1.22%) IaaS
19 86 (1.21%) Power Automate
20 80 (1.12%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 387 (5.43%) Firewall
2 245 (3.44%) DNS
3 177 (2.48%) VPN
4 167 (2.34%) Network Security
5 157 (2.20%) WAN
6 129 (1.81%) TCP/IP
7 113 (1.59%) LAN
8 103 (1.45%) BGP
9 92 (1.29%) DHCP
10 88 (1.24%) Wireless
11 75 (1.05%) SSL
12 73 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
13 69 (0.97%) VLAN
14 59 (0.83%) OSPF
15 58 (0.81%) IPsec
15 58 (0.81%) MPLS
16 49 (0.69%) SAN
17 42 (0.59%) HTTP
17 42 (0.59%) Skype
18 40 (0.56%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 192 (2.69%) PostgreSQL
2 182 (2.55%) Power BI
3 91 (1.28%) Data Warehouse
4 86 (1.21%) SQL Server
5 81 (1.14%) Metadata
5 81 (1.14%) MongoDB
6 77 (1.08%) Amazon RDS
7 75 (1.05%) NoSQL
8 73 (1.02%) Oracle Database
9 67 (0.94%) Relational Database
10 62 (0.87%) Azure SQL Database
11 46 (0.65%) Big Data
12 44 (0.62%) Elasticsearch
13 40 (0.56%) SAS Enterprise Guide
14 39 (0.55%) Pentaho
15 38 (0.53%) Data Lake
16 35 (0.49%) Amazon Athena
17 33 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
17 33 (0.46%) MySQL
17 33 (0.46%) Redis
Development Applications
1 485 (6.81%) JIRA
2 379 (5.32%) Git
3 338 (4.74%) Jenkins
4 265 (3.72%) GitLab
5 78 (1.09%) Selenium
6 59 (0.83%) Postman
7 53 (0.74%) Cypress.io
7 53 (0.74%) JUnit
8 48 (0.67%) Oracle APEX
9 47 (0.66%) Artifactory
9 47 (0.66%) Bitbucket
10 42 (0.59%) SonarQube
11 32 (0.45%) Maven
12 30 (0.42%) Cucumber
13 29 (0.41%) Mockito
14 24 (0.34%) MSI
14 24 (0.34%) REST Assured
15 22 (0.31%) Metasploit
16 20 (0.28%) Burp Suite
16 20 (0.28%) Rational DOORS
General
1 1,897 (26.62%) Public Sector
2 1,859 (26.09%) Social Skills
3 647 (9.08%) Analytical Skills
4 505 (7.09%) Finance
5 290 (4.07%) Military
6 206 (2.89%) Telecoms
7 200 (2.81%) Manufacturing
8 179 (2.51%) Documentation Skills
9 142 (1.99%) Electronics
10 140 (1.96%) Marketing
11 130 (1.82%) Aerospace
12 113 (1.59%) Organisational Skills
13 100 (1.40%) Legal
14 86 (1.21%) Presentation Skills
15 85 (1.19%) Banking
16 76 (1.07%) Influencing Skills
17 66 (0.93%) Law
18 45 (0.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 32 (0.45%) Aviation
19 32 (0.45%) Police
Job Titles
1 981 (13.77%) Architect
2 671 (9.42%) Developer
3 597 (8.38%) Senior
4 520 (7.30%) Consultant
5 507 (7.12%) Analyst
6 416 (5.84%) Lead
7 343 (4.81%) DevOps Engineer
8 239 (3.35%) Support Engineer
9 223 (3.13%) Network Engineer
10 200 (2.81%) Data Engineer
11 172 (2.41%) Solutions Architect
12 157 (2.20%) Software Engineer
13 152 (2.13%) Technical Architect
14 147 (2.06%) Business Analyst
15 140 (1.96%) SAP Consultant
16 132 (1.85%) Tester
17 131 (1.84%) AWS Engineer
18 129 (1.81%) Platform Engineer
19 125 (1.75%) IT Engineer
19 125 (1.75%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 303 (4.25%) REST
2 172 (2.41%) Node.js
2 172 (2.41%) React
3 153 (2.15%) Kafka
4 141 (1.98%) SOAP
5 138 (1.94%) JSON
6 115 (1.61%) HTML
7 113 (1.59%) Spring
8 112 (1.57%) LDAP
9 100 (1.40%) .NET
10 97 (1.36%) CSS
11 95 (1.33%) AngularJS
12 91 (1.28%) Spring Boot
13 88 (1.24%) XML
14 87 (1.22%) RESTful
14 87 (1.22%) Web Services
15 84 (1.18%) Oracle Fusion
16 76 (1.07%) OAuth
17 74 (1.04%) PySpark
18 60 (0.84%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 224 (3.14%) Data Centre
2 196 (2.75%) Cloud Native
3 188 (2.64%) Product Ownership
4 187 (2.62%) PKI
5 181 (2.54%) Onboarding
6 144 (2.02%) Management Information System
7 113 (1.59%) Security Posture
8 105 (1.47%) Enterprise Software
9 101 (1.42%) Self-Motivation
10 91 (1.28%) Legacy Systems
11 80 (1.12%) Cyber Threat
12 72 (1.01%) Driving Licence
13 65 (0.91%) Replication
13 65 (0.91%) Security Operations Centre
14 59 (0.83%) Analytical Mindset
15 55 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
16 50 (0.70%) CMDB
17 48 (0.67%) Public Cloud
18 47 (0.66%) Distributed Systems
19 44 (0.62%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 782 (10.98%) Windows
2 544 (7.64%) Linux
3 183 (2.57%) Windows Server
4 176 (2.47%) Windows 10
5 98 (1.38%) Android
6 97 (1.36%) Unix
7 93 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 78 (1.09%) Mac OS
9 47 (0.66%) VMS
10 41 (0.58%) Ubuntu
11 29 (0.41%) Apple iOS
12 22 (0.31%) CentOS
13 19 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
14 18 (0.25%) Amazon Linux
15 16 (0.22%) Windows 7
16 15 (0.21%) Mac OS X
16 15 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
17 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2003
18 10 (0.14%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,373 (19.27%) Agile
2 1,119 (15.71%) DevOps
3 968 (13.59%) CI/CD
4 889 (12.48%) Problem-Solving
5 684 (9.60%) Migration
6 584 (8.20%) Stakeholder Management
7 526 (7.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 487 (6.84%) ITIL
9 476 (6.68%) Continuous Improvement
10 467 (6.55%) Cybersecurity
11 449 (6.30%) Infrastructure as Code
12 398 (5.59%) Business Intelligence
13 389 (5.46%) Service Management
14 387 (5.43%) Containerisation
14 387 (5.43%) Test Automation
15 380 (5.33%) Analytics
16 353 (4.95%) Roadmaps
17 330 (4.63%) Workflow
18 325 (4.56%) Scrum
19 322 (4.52%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 927 (13.01%) Python
2 552 (7.75%) SQL
3 496 (6.96%) PowerShell
4 376 (5.28%) Java
5 352 (4.94%) JavaScript
6 209 (2.93%) Bash
7 168 (2.36%) TypeScript
8 130 (1.82%) C#
9 89 (1.25%) Go
10 88 (1.24%) C++
11 68 (0.95%) PL/SQL
12 62 (0.87%) C
12 62 (0.87%) Shell Script
13 42 (0.59%) Ruby
14 41 (0.58%) Scala
15 39 (0.55%) ABAP
16 33 (0.46%) Bicep
16 33 (0.46%) Perl
17 30 (0.42%) MATLAB
18 29 (0.41%) Ada
Qualifications
1 5,511 (77.35%) SC Cleared
2 1,156 (16.22%) DV Cleared
3 374 (5.25%) Degree
4 231 (3.24%) BPSS Clearance
5 133 (1.87%) CISSP
6 120 (1.68%) Microsoft Certification
7 119 (1.67%) Azure Certification
7 119 (1.67%) Cisco Certification
8 101 (1.42%) CCNP
9 97 (1.36%) AWS Certification
10 80 (1.12%) CISM
11 60 (0.84%) Computer Science Degree
12 56 (0.79%) ITIL Certification
13 53 (0.74%) CCNA
14 47 (0.66%) CEH
14 47 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
15 40 (0.56%) CHECK Team Member
16 39 (0.55%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 36 (0.51%) CTC Cleared
17 36 (0.51%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 215 (3.02%) QA
2 207 (2.91%) NIST
3 201 (2.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 165 (2.32%) NCSC
5 153 (2.15%) Data Quality
6 141 (1.98%) GDPR
7 125 (1.75%) SLA
8 117 (1.64%) Accessibility
9 75 (1.05%) PMO
10 46 (0.65%) JSP 440
11 42 (0.59%) WCAG
12 40 (0.56%) GRC
13 31 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
13 31 (0.44%) Def Stans
13 31 (0.44%) NIST 800
14 29 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 29 (0.41%) PCI DSS
15 27 (0.38%) COBIT
16 18 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 14 (0.20%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 540 (7.58%) Docker
2 454 (6.37%) Active Directory
3 201 (2.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 66 (0.93%) VMware NSX
5 63 (0.88%) vSphere
6 56 (0.79%) VMware ESXi
7 50 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
8 35 (0.49%) Hyper-V
9 33 (0.46%) Firmware
10 30 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
11 15 (0.21%) DFS Replication
11 15 (0.21%) Postfix
12 13 (0.18%) Dovecot
13 12 (0.17%) BitLocker
14 10 (0.14%) NFS
14 10 (0.14%) Squid
14 10 (0.14%) Terminal Services
15 8 (0.11%) ISA Server
15 8 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
16 7 (0.098%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 655 (9.19%) Kubernetes
2 614 (8.62%) Terraform
3 284 (3.99%) Ansible
4 175 (2.46%) Grafana
5 146 (2.05%) Prometheus
6 103 (1.45%) SCCM
7 93 (1.31%) Single Sign-On
8 85 (1.19%) vCenter Server
9 72 (1.01%) Microsoft Intune
10 62 (0.87%) Argo
11 58 (0.81%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 35 (0.49%) Kibana
12 35 (0.49%) Packer
13 33 (0.46%) OPNET
14 30 (0.42%) Podman
15 26 (0.36%) Puppet
16 25 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
16 25 (0.35%) Nessus
16 25 (0.35%) vRealize
17 23 (0.32%) Nmap
Vendors
1 916 (12.86%) Microsoft
2 439 (6.16%) SAP
3 399 (5.60%) Cisco
4 393 (5.52%) Oracle
5 360 (5.05%) VMware
6 323 (4.53%) ServiceNow
7 195 (2.74%) Splunk
8 152 (2.13%) Red Hat
9 131 (1.84%) Juniper
10 130 (1.82%) Palo Alto
11 109 (1.53%) Google
12 108 (1.52%) Atlassian
13 105 (1.47%) CyberArk
14 97 (1.36%) Salesforce
15 95 (1.33%) Databricks
16 93 (1.31%) Dell
17 87 (1.22%) HP
18 78 (1.09%) Remedy
19 72 (1.01%) CheckPoint
20 70 (0.98%) Dynatrace