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

6 months to
16 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 0 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,195 4,499 6,893
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.41% 18.54% 18.96%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.93% 58.98% 61.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,405 2,989 4,534
10th Percentile £372 £340 £351
25th Percentile £450 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £529 £550
% change year-on-year -0.76% -3.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 745 271 481
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £23.34 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £50.00 £55.80
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -10.39% -6.69%
75th Percentile £74.26 £67.38 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.45 £78.70 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £41.55 £55.80
% change year-on-year +32.39% -25.55% -7.00%

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 13,149 7,628 11,219
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.05% 31.44% 30.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,838 4,861 6,930
10th Percentile £350 £285 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £750
UK median daily rate £522 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -0.57% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 955 433 967
10th Percentile £17.07 £18.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £22.27 £17.88
Median hourly rate £50.00 £40.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% - -23.81%
75th Percentile £73.19 £67.50 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.50 £81.35 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £37.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +33.33% -6.25% -25.93%

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 16 May 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 16 May 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 16 May 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 +6 3,276 £525 - 480
South East +1 2,221 £545 -0.91% 522
South West 0 1,298 £538 -6.52% 347
North of England -1 887 £498 -0.50% 277
Midlands +4 865 £473 -9.90% 149
West Midlands +4 734 £474 -11.73% 111
North West -2 516 £500 - 157
East of England +2 377 £550 +10.00% 154
Yorkshire -13 214 £484 -3.25% 52
North East +1 192 £475 -1.04% 70
East Midlands -3 125 £450 -5.26% 38
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
1 352 (3.83%) Confluence
2 204 (2.22%) SharePoint
3 124 (1.35%) Microsoft Exchange
4 114 (1.24%) SAS
5 79 (0.86%) Apache Spark
6 68 (0.74%) Apache
7 55 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
8 33 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 29 (0.32%) nginx
10 24 (0.26%) Jupyter
11 17 (0.18%) Tomcat
12 16 (0.17%) IIS
12 16 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
13 14 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
13 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
14 13 (0.14%) CMS
14 13 (0.14%) Skype for Business
15 9 (0.098%) ArcGIS
16 8 (0.087%) Apache Superset
16 8 (0.087%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 188 (2.04%) Microsoft Office
2 184 (2.00%) Microsoft Excel
3 108 (1.17%) Microsoft Project
4 84 (0.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 36 (0.39%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.13%) Simulink
8 7 (0.076%) AutoCAD
9 6 (0.065%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.054%) Notepad++
10 5 (0.054%) Revit
11 4 (0.044%) Siemens NX
11 4 (0.044%) Windchill
12 3 (0.033%) Chatbot
13 2 (0.022%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.022%) CATIA
13 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.022%) Lectora
13 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.022%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 89 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
3 37 (0.40%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 29 (0.32%) Teamcenter
5 27 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
6 25 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
7 15 (0.16%) Maximo
7 15 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
8 14 (0.15%) SAP PSCD
9 13 (0.14%) iTrent
9 13 (0.14%) Temenos T24
10 12 (0.13%) Findur
11 10 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.098%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.098%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.098%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.098%) SAP PP
13 8 (0.087%) SAP HR
13 8 (0.087%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 1,577 (17.15%) Azure
2 1,509 (16.41%) AWS
3 375 (4.08%) GCP
4 374 (4.07%) GitHub
5 342 (3.72%) Azure DevOps
6 336 (3.65%) Power Platform
7 237 (2.58%) Serverless
8 236 (2.57%) Microsoft 365
9 229 (2.49%) Entra ID
10 212 (2.31%) GitHub Actions
11 190 (2.07%) Amazon S3
12 161 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
13 135 (1.47%) Amazon EC2
14 134 (1.46%) PaaS
15 125 (1.36%) OpenShift
16 115 (1.25%) OCI
17 114 (1.24%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 105 (1.14%) IaaS
19 103 (1.12%) AWS CloudFormation
20 101 (1.10%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 428 (4.65%) Firewall
2 269 (2.93%) DNS
3 214 (2.33%) WAN
4 212 (2.31%) Network Security
5 195 (2.12%) LAN
6 154 (1.67%) VPN
7 145 (1.58%) DHCP
8 140 (1.52%) BGP
9 121 (1.32%) OSPF
10 109 (1.19%) TCP/IP
11 99 (1.08%) VLAN
12 96 (1.04%) Wi-Fi
13 82 (0.89%) Wireless
14 60 (0.65%) MPLS
15 56 (0.61%) SAN
16 53 (0.58%) Structured Cabling
17 51 (0.55%) VXLAN
18 48 (0.52%) SD-WAN
19 47 (0.51%) IPsec
20 45 (0.49%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 258 (2.81%) Power BI
2 213 (2.32%) PostgreSQL
3 199 (2.16%) Data Warehouse
4 187 (2.03%) SQL Server
5 116 (1.26%) Metadata
6 109 (1.19%) Oracle Database
7 102 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
8 88 (0.96%) MongoDB
9 85 (0.92%) Relational Database
10 84 (0.91%) NoSQL
11 80 (0.87%) Pentaho
12 79 (0.86%) Data Lake
13 70 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
14 68 (0.74%) Oracle Reports
15 63 (0.69%) Tableau
16 62 (0.67%) Azure SQL Database
17 60 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
17 60 (0.65%) MySQL
18 52 (0.57%) Amazon Athena
19 47 (0.51%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 554 (6.03%) JIRA
2 412 (4.48%) Git
3 352 (3.83%) Jenkins
4 343 (3.73%) GitLab
5 93 (1.01%) Selenium
6 74 (0.80%) Postman
7 67 (0.73%) JUnit
8 55 (0.60%) SonarQube
9 54 (0.59%) Rational DOORS
10 49 (0.53%) Artifactory
11 43 (0.47%) Bitbucket
11 43 (0.47%) JMeter
12 40 (0.44%) Cucumber
13 38 (0.41%) Maven
14 36 (0.39%) Mockito
15 34 (0.37%) Visual Studio
16 31 (0.34%) Cypress.io
17 29 (0.32%) REST Assured
18 28 (0.30%) Zephyr
19 25 (0.27%) Gatling
General
1 1,988 (21.62%) Public Sector
2 1,941 (21.11%) Social Skills
3 675 (7.34%) Analytical Skills
4 647 (7.04%) Finance
5 337 (3.67%) Military
6 265 (2.88%) Documentation Skills
7 226 (2.46%) Aerospace
8 144 (1.57%) Legal
9 116 (1.26%) Telecoms
10 114 (1.24%) Banking
11 107 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
12 104 (1.13%) Organisational Skills
13 100 (1.09%) Manufacturing
14 83 (0.90%) Law
14 83 (0.90%) Presentation Skills
15 59 (0.64%) Police
16 58 (0.63%) Marketing
17 52 (0.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 47 (0.51%) Electronics
19 40 (0.44%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,362 (14.81%) Architect
2 845 (9.19%) Developer
3 772 (8.40%) Senior
4 650 (7.07%) Lead
5 647 (7.04%) Analyst
6 448 (4.87%) Data Engineer
7 415 (4.51%) DevOps Engineer
8 413 (4.49%) Consultant
9 278 (3.02%) Network Engineer
10 276 (3.00%) Software Engineer
11 264 (2.87%) Technical Architect
12 254 (2.76%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 243 (2.64%) Business Analyst
14 212 (2.31%) Project Manager
15 210 (2.28%) Solutions Architect
16 196 (2.13%) Azure Engineer
17 174 (1.89%) Security Architect
18 173 (1.88%) Designer
19 171 (1.86%) Administrator
20 169 (1.84%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 297 (3.23%) REST
2 217 (2.36%) Spring
3 177 (1.92%) Spring Boot
4 166 (1.81%) Node.js
5 164 (1.78%) Kafka
6 163 (1.77%) React
7 156 (1.70%) .NET
8 144 (1.57%) LDAP
9 138 (1.50%) SOAP
10 131 (1.42%) RESTful
11 113 (1.23%) AngularJS
12 112 (1.22%) JSON
13 102 (1.11%) Web Services
14 97 (1.05%) PySpark
15 91 (0.99%) Oracle Fusion
16 87 (0.95%) OAuth
17 79 (0.86%) HTML
18 76 (0.83%) XML
19 67 (0.73%) Elastic Stack
19 67 (0.73%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 320 (3.48%) Cloud Native
2 307 (3.34%) Product Ownership
3 274 (2.98%) Data Centre
4 254 (2.76%) Onboarding
5 145 (1.58%) PKI
6 143 (1.56%) Management Information System
7 124 (1.35%) Legacy Systems
8 123 (1.34%) Security Posture
9 116 (1.26%) Replication
10 112 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
11 106 (1.15%) Distributed Systems
12 90 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
13 82 (0.89%) Clustering
14 80 (0.87%) Data Structures
15 75 (0.82%) Hybrid Cloud
16 74 (0.80%) Public Cloud
17 70 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
18 63 (0.69%) Virtual Team
19 62 (0.67%) Operational Technology
20 59 (0.64%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 767 (8.34%) Windows
2 636 (6.92%) Linux
3 233 (2.53%) Windows Server
4 161 (1.75%) Unix
5 113 (1.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 91 (0.99%) Android
7 83 (0.90%) Windows 10
8 51 (0.55%) Apple iOS
9 41 (0.45%) Mac OS
10 39 (0.42%) Solaris
11 35 (0.38%) Ubuntu
12 25 (0.27%) VMS
13 24 (0.26%) AIX
14 23 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
15 22 (0.24%) CentOS
15 22 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
16 13 (0.14%) Windows 7
17 11 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
18 9 (0.098%) Windows Server 2003
19 8 (0.087%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,797 (19.54%) Agile
2 1,407 (15.30%) DevOps
3 1,231 (13.39%) CI/CD
4 1,003 (10.91%) Problem-Solving
5 885 (9.62%) Stakeholder Management
6 804 (8.74%) Continuous Improvement
7 762 (8.29%) Migration
8 672 (7.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 622 (6.76%) Infrastructure as Code
10 607 (6.60%) ITIL
11 557 (6.06%) Cybersecurity
12 532 (5.79%) Test Automation
13 519 (5.64%) Analytics
14 518 (5.63%) Software Engineering
15 506 (5.50%) Roadmaps
16 495 (5.38%) Containerisation
17 476 (5.18%) Data Modelling
18 436 (4.74%) Decision-Making
19 414 (4.50%) Scrum
20 394 (4.28%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 985 (10.71%) Python
2 843 (9.17%) SQL
3 563 (6.12%) Java
4 499 (5.43%) PowerShell
5 281 (3.06%) JavaScript
6 201 (2.19%) C#
7 179 (1.95%) Bash
8 139 (1.51%) TypeScript
9 93 (1.01%) PL/SQL
10 88 (0.96%) C++
11 85 (0.92%) Shell Script
12 65 (0.71%) Go
13 62 (0.67%) Scala
14 56 (0.61%) C
15 52 (0.57%) Bicep
16 50 (0.54%) Ruby
17 40 (0.44%) Apex Code
18 39 (0.42%) Ada
18 39 (0.42%) R
19 36 (0.39%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 6,899 (75.03%) SC Cleared
2 1,771 (19.26%) DV Cleared
3 410 (4.46%) Degree
4 255 (2.77%) BPSS Clearance
5 180 (1.96%) Cisco Certification
6 155 (1.69%) CISSP
7 121 (1.32%) Azure Certification
8 114 (1.24%) CCNP
9 104 (1.13%) AWS Certification
9 104 (1.13%) CISM
10 88 (0.96%) Microsoft Certification
11 75 (0.82%) CCNA
11 75 (0.82%) PMP
12 66 (0.72%) PMI Certification
13 62 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
14 60 (0.65%) Computer Science Degree
15 57 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
16 54 (0.59%) ISTQB
17 52 (0.57%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 49 (0.53%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 346 (3.76%) QA
2 272 (2.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 269 (2.93%) Data Quality
3 269 (2.93%) NIST
4 179 (1.95%) NCSC
5 165 (1.79%) Accessibility
6 159 (1.73%) PMO
7 151 (1.64%) GDPR
8 98 (1.07%) SLA
9 62 (0.67%) GRC
10 57 (0.62%) JSP 440
11 51 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials
12 37 (0.40%) NIST 800
12 37 (0.40%) WCAG
13 30 (0.33%) COBIT
13 30 (0.33%) Def Stans
14 29 (0.32%) PCI DSS
15 25 (0.27%) RMADS
16 21 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 19 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 570 (6.20%) Docker
2 439 (4.77%) Active Directory
3 264 (2.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 98 (1.07%) VMware ESXi
5 84 (0.91%) VMware NSX
6 75 (0.82%) Hyper-V
7 72 (0.78%) vSphere
8 68 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
9 34 (0.37%) Firmware
10 27 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
11 23 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
12 21 (0.23%) NFS
13 19 (0.21%) BitLocker
14 18 (0.20%) vCloud
15 16 (0.17%) Postfix
15 16 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 15 (0.16%) Squid
17 8 (0.087%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.065%) Corosync
18 6 (0.065%) KVM
Systems Management
1 721 (7.84%) Kubernetes
2 706 (7.68%) Terraform
3 325 (3.53%) Ansible
4 227 (2.47%) Grafana
5 184 (2.00%) Prometheus
6 100 (1.09%) vCenter Server
7 86 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
8 70 (0.76%) SCCM
9 57 (0.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 51 (0.55%) Microsoft Intune
11 48 (0.52%) FortiGate
12 46 (0.50%) Argo
13 39 (0.42%) Puppet
14 38 (0.41%) Podman
15 32 (0.35%) Progress Chef
16 31 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
17 30 (0.33%) Nagios
18 27 (0.29%) OPNET
18 27 (0.29%) SCOM
19 22 (0.24%) WSUS
Vendors
1 948 (10.31%) Microsoft
2 578 (6.29%) Oracle
3 461 (5.01%) VMware
4 378 (4.11%) ServiceNow
5 332 (3.61%) Cisco
6 324 (3.52%) SAP
7 215 (2.34%) Splunk
8 181 (1.97%) Databricks
9 153 (1.66%) Red Hat
10 151 (1.64%) Google
11 117 (1.27%) Talend
12 116 (1.26%) Palo Alto
13 111 (1.21%) IBM
14 110 (1.20%) Salesforce
15 96 (1.04%) Juniper
16 94 (1.02%) CyberArk
17 89 (0.97%) Atlassian
18 81 (0.88%) F5
18 81 (0.88%) Informatica
19 79 (0.86%) Remedy