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 2 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 2 3 4
Rank change year-on-year +1 +1 +4
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 6,550 5,463 6,980
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.35% 18.00% 18.11%
As % of the Qualifications category 63.69% 60.20% 60.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,338 3,461 4,388
10th Percentile £325 £350 £370
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.22%
75th Percentile £633 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -1.83%
Number of hourly rates quoted 677 284 457
10th Percentile £18.73 £20.43 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.10 £26.44 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £57.77 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -56.47% -3.71% -
75th Percentile £56.69 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.56 £75.00 £80.00
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 10,284 9,075 11,589
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.53% 29.91% 30.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,708 5,547 7,327
10th Percentile £306 £313 £306
25th Percentile £415 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £627 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 891 424 698
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.00 £17.72
25th Percentile £19.00 £25.70 £26.80
Median hourly rate £25.15 £48.78 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -48.44% -7.09% +16.67%
75th Percentile £53.75 £68.00 £68.47
90th Percentile £75.79 £75.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £41.50 £53.50
% change year-on-year -39.40% -22.43% +18.89%

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 2 December 2025.

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 2 December 2025.

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 2 December 2025. 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 +2 2,140 £550 - 437
South East -1 1,280 £519 -5.59% 748
South West 0 1,132 £550 -4.35% 516
North of England -1 777 £506 +6.53% 297
Midlands +2 694 £519 -5.73% 162
West Midlands +2 541 £525 -6.38% 126
North West +1 512 £525 +5.85% 203
East of England +2 292 £525 +3.70% 292
Yorkshire -10 166 £500 +8.11% 70
East Midlands -2 138 £425 -10.53% 34
North East 0 112 £475 -2.61% 29
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
1 261 (3.98%) Confluence
2 173 (2.64%) SharePoint
3 111 (1.69%) Microsoft Exchange
4 96 (1.47%) SAS
5 82 (1.25%) Apache
6 51 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
7 44 (0.67%) nginx
8 43 (0.66%) Apache Spark
9 39 (0.60%) Skype for Business
10 23 (0.35%) CMS
11 20 (0.31%) IIS
12 17 (0.26%) WebLogic
13 15 (0.23%) SharePoint Server
14 12 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2010
15 11 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2013
15 11 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 10 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2003
16 10 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2007
16 10 (0.15%) Office Communications Server
17 8 (0.12%) Documentum
Applications
1 222 (3.39%) Microsoft Office
2 154 (2.35%) Microsoft Excel
3 92 (1.40%) Microsoft Project
4 43 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 32 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 20 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.21%) Simulink
8 12 (0.18%) Siemens NX
9 11 (0.17%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 7 (0.11%) Sketch
11 5 (0.076%) Adobe Illustrator
11 5 (0.076%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.076%) FrameMaker
11 5 (0.076%) Oracle Smart View
11 5 (0.076%) Photoshop
11 5 (0.076%) PTC Creo
11 5 (0.076%) Stateflow
11 5 (0.076%) Windchill
12 4 (0.061%) Trello
13 3 (0.046%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 148 (2.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (0.53%) Remedy ITSM
3 27 (0.41%) SAP WM
3 27 (0.41%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 26 (0.40%) SAP EWM
5 21 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
6 19 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
7 18 (0.27%) SAP MM
8 16 (0.24%) SAP HCM
8 16 (0.24%) Teamcenter
9 15 (0.23%) Maximo
9 15 (0.23%) Primavera
10 13 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
11 12 (0.18%) SAP PS
11 12 (0.18%) SAP QM
11 12 (0.18%) SAP VC
12 11 (0.17%) SAP EHS
13 10 (0.15%) SAP HR
13 10 (0.15%) SAP Payroll
14 9 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,080 (16.49%) AWS
2 1,052 (16.06%) Azure
3 313 (4.78%) Microsoft 365
4 303 (4.63%) GitHub
5 240 (3.66%) Power Platform
6 239 (3.65%) GCP
7 231 (3.53%) Azure DevOps
8 194 (2.96%) Serverless
9 164 (2.50%) Amazon S3
10 156 (2.38%) Entra ID
11 150 (2.29%) GitHub Actions
12 126 (1.92%) SaaS
13 124 (1.89%) OpenShift
14 109 (1.66%) AWS Lambda
15 108 (1.65%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 108 (1.65%) Amazon EC2
16 107 (1.63%) AWS CloudFormation
17 87 (1.33%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 82 (1.25%) Amazon EKS
19 80 (1.22%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 347 (5.30%) Firewall
2 243 (3.71%) DNS
3 165 (2.52%) VPN
4 138 (2.11%) Network Security
5 131 (2.00%) WAN
6 104 (1.59%) TCP/IP
7 93 (1.42%) LAN
8 91 (1.39%) BGP
9 90 (1.37%) Wireless
10 89 (1.36%) DHCP
11 72 (1.10%) SSL
12 63 (0.96%) Wi-Fi
13 61 (0.93%) SAN
14 57 (0.87%) MPLS
15 52 (0.79%) IPsec
15 52 (0.79%) VLAN
16 50 (0.76%) Cisco ISE
17 46 (0.70%) HTTP
18 42 (0.64%) OSPF
19 41 (0.63%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 197 (3.01%) PostgreSQL
2 159 (2.43%) Power BI
3 82 (1.25%) Amazon RDS
4 81 (1.24%) MongoDB
5 77 (1.18%) SQL Server
6 74 (1.13%) Oracle Database
7 70 (1.07%) NoSQL
8 69 (1.05%) Metadata
8 69 (1.05%) Relational Database
9 67 (1.02%) Data Warehouse
10 46 (0.70%) Big Data
11 43 (0.66%) Azure SQL Database
12 38 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
12 38 (0.58%) Pentaho
13 36 (0.55%) SAS Enterprise Guide
14 35 (0.53%) Redis
15 32 (0.49%) Amazon Athena
16 31 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
17 29 (0.44%) Data Lake
17 29 (0.44%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 465 (7.10%) JIRA
2 372 (5.68%) Git
3 352 (5.37%) Jenkins
4 253 (3.86%) GitLab
5 71 (1.08%) Selenium
6 53 (0.81%) Cypress.io
6 53 (0.81%) JUnit
7 50 (0.76%) Postman
8 48 (0.73%) SonarQube
9 46 (0.70%) Bitbucket
10 45 (0.69%) Oracle APEX
11 34 (0.52%) Artifactory
12 31 (0.47%) Maven
13 30 (0.46%) Cucumber
13 30 (0.46%) Mockito
14 23 (0.35%) REST Assured
15 22 (0.34%) Vagrant
16 21 (0.32%) Rational DOORS
17 20 (0.31%) MSI
18 19 (0.29%) Metasploit
General
1 1,821 (27.80%) Public Sector
2 1,705 (26.03%) Social Skills
3 607 (9.27%) Analytical Skills
4 472 (7.21%) Finance
5 268 (4.09%) Military
6 207 (3.16%) Telecoms
7 194 (2.96%) Manufacturing
8 157 (2.40%) Documentation Skills
9 140 (2.14%) Electronics
10 132 (2.02%) Marketing
11 124 (1.89%) Aerospace
12 100 (1.53%) Legal
13 97 (1.48%) Organisational Skills
14 84 (1.28%) Banking
15 79 (1.21%) Influencing Skills
16 78 (1.19%) Presentation Skills
17 67 (1.02%) Law
18 39 (0.60%) Aviation
18 39 (0.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 35 (0.53%) Police
Job Titles
1 887 (13.54%) Architect
2 645 (9.85%) Developer
3 523 (7.98%) Consultant
4 521 (7.95%) Senior
5 423 (6.46%) Analyst
6 396 (6.05%) Lead
7 285 (4.35%) DevOps Engineer
8 237 (3.62%) Support Engineer
9 197 (3.01%) Network Engineer
10 166 (2.53%) Solutions Architect
11 159 (2.43%) Data Engineer
12 145 (2.21%) SAP Consultant
13 136 (2.08%) AWS Engineer
14 128 (1.95%) IT Engineer
15 126 (1.92%) Platform Engineer
16 125 (1.91%) Technical Architect
17 122 (1.86%) Software Engineer
18 118 (1.80%) Administrator
19 110 (1.68%) IT Support
20 109 (1.66%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 256 (3.91%) REST
2 165 (2.52%) Node.js
2 165 (2.52%) React
3 158 (2.41%) Kafka
4 130 (1.98%) JSON
5 115 (1.76%) SOAP
6 114 (1.74%) Spring
7 106 (1.62%) HTML
8 96 (1.47%) XML
9 95 (1.45%) RESTful
10 93 (1.42%) AngularJS
11 90 (1.37%) .NET
12 88 (1.34%) CSS
13 87 (1.33%) Spring Boot
14 85 (1.30%) Web Services
15 72 (1.10%) OAuth
16 68 (1.04%) LDAP
17 57 (0.87%) Oracle Fusion
18 56 (0.85%) Elastic Stack
19 55 (0.84%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 201 (3.07%) Data Centre
2 183 (2.79%) Onboarding
3 178 (2.72%) PKI
4 177 (2.70%) Cloud Native
5 151 (2.31%) Product Ownership
6 141 (2.15%) Management Information System
7 100 (1.53%) Self-Motivation
8 80 (1.22%) Legacy Systems
9 76 (1.16%) Driving Licence
10 69 (1.05%) Replication
11 68 (1.04%) Security Posture
12 67 (1.02%) Cyber Threat
13 61 (0.93%) Hybrid Cloud
14 60 (0.92%) Security Operations Centre
15 57 (0.87%) Enterprise Software
16 56 (0.85%) CMDB
17 50 (0.76%) Analytical Mindset
17 50 (0.76%) Private Cloud
18 43 (0.66%) Distributed Systems
19 40 (0.61%) Cyber Defence
Operating Systems
1 753 (11.50%) Windows
2 506 (7.73%) Linux
3 177 (2.70%) Windows Server
4 175 (2.67%) Windows 10
5 96 (1.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 93 (1.42%) Android
7 85 (1.30%) Mac OS
8 83 (1.27%) Unix
9 47 (0.72%) VMS
10 36 (0.55%) Ubuntu
11 27 (0.41%) Apple iOS
11 27 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
12 25 (0.38%) Amazon Linux
13 24 (0.37%) Windows 7
14 21 (0.32%) CentOS
15 20 (0.31%) Windows Server 2012
16 19 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
17 16 (0.24%) Windows Server 2003
18 15 (0.23%) Mac OS X
19 9 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,313 (20.05%) Agile
2 994 (15.18%) DevOps
3 906 (13.83%) CI/CD
4 815 (12.44%) Problem-Solving
5 638 (9.74%) Migration
6 522 (7.97%) Stakeholder Management
7 459 (7.01%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 454 (6.93%) ITIL
9 443 (6.76%) Cybersecurity
10 417 (6.37%) Continuous Improvement
11 411 (6.27%) Infrastructure as Code
12 391 (5.97%) Service Management
13 369 (5.63%) Business Intelligence
14 363 (5.54%) Containerisation
15 358 (5.47%) Test Automation
16 335 (5.11%) Analytics
17 329 (5.02%) Workflow
18 321 (4.90%) Scrum
19 305 (4.66%) Roadmaps
20 302 (4.61%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 842 (12.85%) Python
2 499 (7.62%) SQL
3 423 (6.46%) PowerShell
4 406 (6.20%) Java
5 339 (5.18%) JavaScript
6 213 (3.25%) Bash
7 159 (2.43%) TypeScript
8 119 (1.82%) C#
9 92 (1.40%) C++
10 82 (1.25%) Go
11 67 (1.02%) PL/SQL
12 65 (0.99%) C
13 60 (0.92%) Shell Script
14 41 (0.63%) Perl
15 37 (0.56%) ABAP
16 34 (0.52%) Ruby
17 30 (0.46%) Groovy
18 29 (0.44%) Bicep
19 26 (0.40%) Ada
20 25 (0.38%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 5,016 (76.58%) SC Cleared
2 1,109 (16.93%) DV Cleared
3 331 (5.05%) Degree
4 259 (3.95%) BPSS Clearance
5 126 (1.92%) CISSP
6 116 (1.77%) Microsoft Certification
7 104 (1.59%) Azure Certification
8 103 (1.57%) Cisco Certification
9 97 (1.48%) AWS Certification
10 79 (1.21%) CCNP
11 71 (1.08%) CISM
12 55 (0.84%) ITIL Certification
13 51 (0.78%) Computer Science Degree
14 44 (0.67%) CCNA
14 44 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
15 39 (0.60%) CEH
16 36 (0.55%) CHECK Team Member
17 35 (0.53%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 30 (0.46%) CTC Cleared
19 28 (0.43%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 200 (3.05%) QA
2 197 (3.01%) NIST
3 194 (2.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 158 (2.41%) NCSC
5 130 (1.98%) GDPR
6 123 (1.88%) SLA
7 116 (1.77%) Data Quality
8 105 (1.60%) Accessibility
9 61 (0.93%) PMO
10 50 (0.76%) JSP 440
11 39 (0.60%) NIST 800
12 38 (0.58%) WCAG
13 34 (0.52%) GRC
14 32 (0.49%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 27 (0.41%) COBIT
15 27 (0.41%) Def Stans
16 23 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials
17 22 (0.34%) RMADS
18 20 (0.31%) PCI DSS
19 17 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 534 (8.15%) Docker
2 396 (6.05%) Active Directory
3 198 (3.02%) VMware Infrastructure
4 63 (0.96%) VMware NSX
5 58 (0.89%) vSphere
6 56 (0.85%) VMware ESXi
7 49 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
8 39 (0.60%) Firmware
9 30 (0.46%) Hyper-V
9 30 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
10 20 (0.31%) DFS Replication
11 18 (0.27%) Postfix
12 15 (0.23%) Dovecot
12 15 (0.23%) NFS
13 11 (0.17%) ISA Server
13 11 (0.17%) Squid
14 10 (0.15%) BitLocker
14 10 (0.15%) Brightmail
15 9 (0.14%) Terminal Services
16 7 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 619 (9.45%) Kubernetes
2 581 (8.87%) Terraform
3 266 (4.06%) Ansible
4 159 (2.43%) Grafana
5 131 (2.00%) Prometheus
6 103 (1.57%) SCCM
7 89 (1.36%) Single Sign-On
8 74 (1.13%) Microsoft Intune
9 65 (0.99%) vCenter Server
10 57 (0.87%) Argo
11 50 (0.76%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 46 (0.70%) Packer
13 34 (0.52%) Jamf Pro
14 32 (0.49%) Kibana
15 30 (0.46%) OPNET
16 24 (0.37%) Nessus
16 24 (0.37%) SCOM
17 23 (0.35%) vRealize
18 22 (0.34%) Podman
18 22 (0.34%) Puppet
Vendors
1 867 (13.24%) Microsoft
2 445 (6.79%) SAP
3 400 (6.11%) Cisco
4 341 (5.21%) Oracle
5 336 (5.13%) VMware
6 326 (4.98%) ServiceNow
7 175 (2.67%) Splunk
8 149 (2.27%) Juniper
9 131 (2.00%) Red Hat
10 109 (1.66%) Google
11 98 (1.50%) Atlassian
12 94 (1.44%) HP
12 94 (1.44%) Palo Alto
13 92 (1.40%) Dell
14 85 (1.30%) Salesforce
15 75 (1.15%) Remedy
16 71 (1.08%) Apple
17 69 (1.05%) F5
17 69 (1.05%) IBM
17 69 (1.05%) SolarWinds