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

6 months to
8 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,789 4,848 7,015
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.02% 18.17% 18.93%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.63% 58.84% 61.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,890 3,162 4,581
10th Percentile £380 £335 £353
25th Percentile £450 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £719 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £529 £529 £550
% change year-on-year - -3.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 756 387 536
10th Percentile £18.31 £18.50 £14.39
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +151.03% -56.26% -4.17%
75th Percentile £76.75 £62.25 £72.37
90th Percentile £87.16 £76.63 £82.40
UK median hourly rate £62.00 £25.15 £56.49
% change year-on-year +146.52% -55.48% -5.85%

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 14,059 8,239 11,322
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.63% 30.88% 30.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,487 5,191 7,025
10th Percentile £350 £282 £313
25th Percentile £429 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £537
Median % change year-on-year - -2.23% -2.36%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £644
90th Percentile £717 £716 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £523 £525
% change year-on-year +0.38% -0.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,048 561 986
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.98 £14.16
25th Percentile £25.00 £20.00 £20.75
Median hourly rate £53.95 £28.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +92.68% -34.12% -22.73%
75th Percentile £74.00 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.43 £77.19 £76.62
UK median hourly rate £52.00 £27.50 £40.94
% change year-on-year +89.09% -32.83% -25.56%

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 8 July 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 8 July 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 8 July 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 +7 3,471 £538 +2.38% 635
South East +1 2,384 £550 - 594
South West 0 1,308 £538 -6.52% 418
North of England +2 1,053 £500 - 286
Midlands +3 954 £469 -6.29% 157
West Midlands +2 813 £470 -8.20% 111
North West 0 566 £525 +4.79% 167
East of England +2 341 £550 +10.00% 132
Yorkshire +1 278 £500 +1.63% 70
North East +1 237 £475 -3.06% 50
East Midlands -1 129 £418 -12.11% 45
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
1 345 (3.52%) Confluence
2 224 (2.29%) SharePoint
3 147 (1.50%) SAS
4 123 (1.26%) Microsoft Exchange
5 89 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
6 82 (0.84%) Apache Spark
7 80 (0.82%) Apache
8 39 (0.40%) nginx
9 37 (0.38%) Jupyter
10 32 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 21 (0.21%) Tomcat
12 18 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
13 17 (0.17%) Oracle Application Server
14 16 (0.16%) CMS
14 16 (0.16%) IIS
15 14 (0.14%) Skype for Business
16 12 (0.12%) Tuxedo
17 11 (0.11%) NetWeaver
17 11 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
18 9 (0.092%) Documentum
Applications
1 162 (1.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 130 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
3 85 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 66 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 18 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.14%) Simulink
8 12 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
9 11 (0.11%) AutoCAD
9 11 (0.11%) Revit
10 10 (0.10%) Chatbot
11 5 (0.051%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.051%) Notepad++
12 4 (0.041%) Sketch
13 2 (0.020%) CATIA
13 2 (0.020%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.020%) Lectora
13 2 (0.020%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.020%) Siemens NX
13 2 (0.020%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 104 (1.06%) SAP S/4HANA
2 62 (0.63%) Remedy ITSM
3 44 (0.45%) Oracle ERP
4 34 (0.35%) Teamcenter
5 30 (0.31%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 26 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
7 24 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
8 23 (0.23%) SAP PSCD
9 15 (0.15%) Findur
9 15 (0.15%) Primavera
9 15 (0.15%) Temenos T24
10 13 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
11 12 (0.12%) iTrent
11 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
12 11 (0.11%) SAP ERP
13 10 (0.10%) Maximo
14 9 (0.092%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 9 (0.092%) Salesforce CRM
14 9 (0.092%) SAP HR
15 8 (0.082%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 1,705 (17.42%) Azure
2 1,635 (16.70%) AWS
3 387 (3.95%) GitHub
3 387 (3.95%) Power Platform
4 382 (3.90%) Azure DevOps
5 345 (3.52%) GCP
6 258 (2.64%) Microsoft 365
7 250 (2.55%) Entra ID
8 249 (2.54%) GitHub Actions
9 237 (2.42%) Serverless
10 218 (2.23%) Amazon S3
11 165 (1.69%) AWS Lambda
12 150 (1.53%) Amazon EC2
13 145 (1.48%) OCI
14 143 (1.46%) SaaS
15 141 (1.44%) OpenShift
16 130 (1.33%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 129 (1.32%) PaaS
18 111 (1.13%) Amazon EKS
19 110 (1.12%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 410 (4.19%) Firewall
2 321 (3.28%) DNS
3 227 (2.32%) Network Security
4 211 (2.16%) WAN
5 189 (1.93%) LAN
6 170 (1.74%) VPN
7 165 (1.69%) DHCP
8 138 (1.41%) BGP
9 115 (1.17%) OSPF
10 110 (1.12%) Wi-Fi
11 105 (1.07%) VLAN
12 100 (1.02%) TCP/IP
13 80 (0.82%) Wireless
14 61 (0.62%) MPLS
14 61 (0.62%) SD-WAN
15 55 (0.56%) SAN
15 55 (0.56%) VXLAN
16 51 (0.52%) BIG-IP
17 49 (0.50%) IPsec
18 46 (0.47%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 292 (2.98%) Power BI
2 240 (2.45%) PostgreSQL
3 228 (2.33%) SQL Server
4 220 (2.25%) Data Warehouse
5 147 (1.50%) Oracle Database
6 115 (1.17%) Metadata
7 104 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
8 102 (1.04%) Data Lake
9 99 (1.01%) Relational Database
10 84 (0.86%) Pentaho
11 79 (0.81%) MongoDB
12 77 (0.79%) Elasticsearch
12 77 (0.79%) Oracle Reports
13 75 (0.77%) MySQL
14 68 (0.69%) Amazon Redshift
15 66 (0.67%) NoSQL
16 61 (0.62%) Amazon Athena
17 58 (0.59%) Tableau
18 42 (0.43%) Big Data
19 40 (0.41%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 542 (5.54%) JIRA
2 440 (4.49%) Git
3 410 (4.19%) GitLab
4 377 (3.85%) Jenkins
5 106 (1.08%) Selenium
6 80 (0.82%) JUnit
7 72 (0.74%) SonarQube
8 68 (0.69%) Postman
9 59 (0.60%) Rational DOORS
10 53 (0.54%) JMeter
11 49 (0.50%) Cucumber
12 42 (0.43%) Maven
12 42 (0.43%) Mockito
13 40 (0.41%) Artifactory
13 40 (0.41%) REST Assured
14 39 (0.40%) Bitbucket
15 37 (0.38%) Zephyr
16 36 (0.37%) Visual Studio
17 35 (0.36%) Cypress.io
18 29 (0.30%) WebDriver
General
1 2,069 (21.14%) Public Sector
2 1,998 (20.41%) Social Skills
3 703 (7.18%) Analytical Skills
4 678 (6.93%) Finance
5 327 (3.34%) Military
6 270 (2.76%) Documentation Skills
7 269 (2.75%) Aerospace
8 146 (1.49%) Influencing Skills
9 143 (1.46%) Legal
10 127 (1.30%) Banking
11 121 (1.24%) Telecoms
12 105 (1.07%) Organisational Skills
13 92 (0.94%) Law
14 78 (0.80%) Police
15 77 (0.79%) Manufacturing
16 75 (0.77%) Presentation Skills
17 65 (0.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 40 (0.41%) Marketing
19 36 (0.37%) Aviation
19 36 (0.37%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,424 (14.55%) Architect
2 994 (10.15%) Developer
3 846 (8.64%) Senior
4 810 (8.27%) Lead
5 622 (6.35%) Analyst
6 465 (4.75%) Data Engineer
7 450 (4.60%) Consultant
8 412 (4.21%) DevOps Engineer
9 326 (3.33%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 305 (3.12%) Software Engineer
11 282 (2.88%) Technical Architect
12 243 (2.48%) Network Engineer
13 229 (2.34%) Solutions Architect
14 228 (2.33%) Security Architect
15 200 (2.04%) Project Manager
16 197 (2.01%) Business Analyst
17 196 (2.00%) Java Developer
18 194 (1.98%) Delivery Manager
19 183 (1.87%) Administrator
20 180 (1.84%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 324 (3.31%) REST
2 235 (2.40%) Spring
3 191 (1.95%) Spring Boot
4 168 (1.72%) React
5 167 (1.71%) .NET
6 160 (1.63%) Kafka
7 154 (1.57%) Node.js
8 152 (1.55%) RESTful
9 137 (1.40%) SOAP
10 117 (1.20%) JSON
11 111 (1.13%) AngularJS
12 105 (1.07%) LDAP
13 104 (1.06%) OAuth
14 91 (0.93%) Web Services
15 90 (0.92%) PySpark
16 85 (0.87%) HTML
17 78 (0.80%) OpenID
17 78 (0.80%) XML
18 71 (0.73%) Elastic Stack
19 70 (0.72%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 382 (3.90%) Cloud Native
2 320 (3.27%) Onboarding
3 319 (3.26%) Product Ownership
4 277 (2.83%) Data Centre
5 160 (1.63%) Legacy Systems
6 143 (1.46%) Management Information System
7 140 (1.43%) PKI
8 134 (1.37%) Distributed Systems
9 112 (1.14%) Replication
10 108 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
11 103 (1.05%) CMDB
12 91 (0.93%) Enterprise Software
13 90 (0.92%) Clustering
13 90 (0.92%) Data Structures
14 87 (0.89%) Security Posture
15 86 (0.88%) Hybrid Cloud
16 78 (0.80%) Public Cloud
17 74 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
17 74 (0.76%) Virtual Team
18 70 (0.72%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 814 (8.32%) Windows
2 671 (6.85%) Linux
3 266 (2.72%) Windows Server
4 191 (1.95%) Unix
5 132 (1.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 88 (0.90%) Windows 10
7 79 (0.81%) Android
8 54 (0.55%) Solaris
9 47 (0.48%) Apple iOS
10 44 (0.45%) Mac OS
11 32 (0.33%) Ubuntu
12 30 (0.31%) AIX
13 27 (0.28%) CentOS
14 26 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
15 18 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
16 15 (0.15%) VMS
17 14 (0.14%) Windows 7
18 11 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
18 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
18 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,000 (20.43%) Agile
2 1,510 (15.43%) DevOps
3 1,375 (14.05%) CI/CD
4 1,031 (10.53%) Problem-Solving
5 1,030 (10.52%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,002 (10.24%) Continuous Improvement
7 825 (8.43%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 761 (7.77%) Migration
9 724 (7.40%) Infrastructure as Code
10 660 (6.74%) Cybersecurity
11 658 (6.72%) ITIL
12 596 (6.09%) Test Automation
13 586 (5.99%) Software Engineering
14 571 (5.83%) Containerisation
15 565 (5.77%) Analytics
16 561 (5.73%) Roadmaps
17 522 (5.33%) Decision-Making
18 506 (5.17%) AI
19 503 (5.14%) Data Modelling
20 466 (4.76%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 1,033 (10.55%) Python
2 924 (9.44%) SQL
3 658 (6.72%) Java
4 459 (4.69%) PowerShell
5 290 (2.96%) JavaScript
6 223 (2.28%) Bash
7 201 (2.05%) C#
8 148 (1.51%) TypeScript
9 132 (1.35%) PL/SQL
10 88 (0.90%) C++
11 85 (0.87%) Shell Script
12 67 (0.68%) C
13 66 (0.67%) Bicep
14 54 (0.55%) Go
15 46 (0.47%) Ada
16 40 (0.41%) Apex Code
16 40 (0.41%) Kotlin
16 40 (0.41%) Scala
17 39 (0.40%) Ruby
18 34 (0.35%) R
Qualifications
1 7,338 (74.96%) SC Cleared
2 1,957 (19.99%) DV Cleared
3 397 (4.06%) Degree
4 313 (3.20%) BPSS Clearance
5 187 (1.91%) Cisco Certification
6 163 (1.67%) CISSP
7 133 (1.36%) Azure Certification
8 112 (1.14%) Microsoft Certification
9 105 (1.07%) AWS Certification
10 97 (0.99%) CCNP
11 94 (0.96%) CISM
12 86 (0.88%) PMP
13 83 (0.85%) PMI Certification
14 80 (0.82%) CCNA
15 66 (0.67%) ISTQB
16 59 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 57 (0.58%) Computer Science Degree
18 48 (0.49%) ITIL Certification
19 43 (0.44%) TOGAF Certification
20 38 (0.39%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 379 (3.87%) QA
2 289 (2.95%) NIST
3 287 (2.93%) Data Quality
3 287 (2.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 215 (2.20%) NCSC
5 196 (2.00%) Accessibility
6 177 (1.81%) PMO
7 168 (1.72%) GDPR
8 99 (1.01%) SLA
9 89 (0.91%) GRC
10 62 (0.63%) JSP 440
11 49 (0.50%) WCAG
12 43 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
12 43 (0.44%) NIST 800
13 33 (0.34%) Def Stans
14 26 (0.27%) RMADS
15 24 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 20000
16 23 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 22 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
18 21 (0.21%) COBIT
System Software
1 637 (6.51%) Docker
2 439 (4.48%) Active Directory
3 314 (3.21%) VMware Infrastructure
4 123 (1.26%) VMware ESXi
5 117 (1.20%) VMware NSX
6 89 (0.91%) vSphere
7 83 (0.85%) Hyper-V
8 76 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
9 40 (0.41%) Oracle RAC
10 32 (0.33%) Firmware
10 32 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
11 23 (0.23%) BitLocker
11 23 (0.23%) vCloud
12 20 (0.20%) NFS
13 19 (0.19%) Postfix
14 18 (0.18%) Squid
15 12 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 9 (0.092%) Microsoft App-V
17 7 (0.072%) KVM
17 7 (0.072%) UAG
Systems Management
1 799 (8.16%) Terraform
2 782 (7.99%) Kubernetes
3 351 (3.59%) Ansible
4 239 (2.44%) Grafana
5 188 (1.92%) Prometheus
6 120 (1.23%) vCenter Server
7 86 (0.88%) SCCM
8 70 (0.72%) Single Sign-On
9 64 (0.65%) Microsoft Intune
10 58 (0.59%) Argo
11 51 (0.52%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 51 (0.52%) SCOM
12 47 (0.48%) FortiGate
13 46 (0.47%) Puppet
14 44 (0.45%) Oracle RMAN
15 30 (0.31%) Podman
15 30 (0.31%) Progress Chef
16 28 (0.29%) Data Guard
17 26 (0.27%) Nagios
18 25 (0.26%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,087 (11.10%) Microsoft
2 713 (7.28%) Oracle
3 487 (4.97%) VMware
4 458 (4.68%) ServiceNow
5 320 (3.27%) SAP
6 305 (3.12%) Cisco
7 199 (2.03%) Splunk
8 173 (1.77%) Databricks
9 165 (1.69%) Google
10 136 (1.39%) Red Hat
11 129 (1.32%) Talend
12 127 (1.30%) Salesforce
13 112 (1.14%) IBM
14 105 (1.07%) Informatica
15 101 (1.03%) Palo Alto
16 99 (1.01%) Juniper
17 89 (0.91%) SolarWinds
18 87 (0.89%) F5
19 86 (0.88%) Citrix
20 83 (0.85%) Fortinet