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 24 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 8,781 4,554 7,197
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.45% 18.73% 19.08%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.24% 60.17% 60.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,978 2,997 4,655
10th Percentile £358 £325 £353
25th Percentile £441 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £548 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.20% -0.36% -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £658
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -1.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 754 255 476
10th Percentile £17.87 £20.58 £14.14
25th Percentile £20.50 £26.00 £21.46
Median hourly rate £37.00 £60.00 £54.25
Median % change year-on-year -38.33% +10.60% -9.58%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.36 £78.56 £82.71
UK median hourly rate £41.94 £55.00 £54.25
% change year-on-year -23.75% +1.38% -9.58%

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 12,682 7,568 11,810
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.87% 31.12% 31.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,427 4,837 7,321
10th Percentile £331 £288 £300
25th Percentile £422 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £537
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.32% -2.28%
Number of hourly rates quoted 975 422 918
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.51 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.14 £25.26 £17.85
Median hourly rate £31.18 £50.00 £38.45
Median % change year-on-year -37.65% +30.03% -23.10%
75th Percentile £68.42 £68.00 £63.64
90th Percentile £85.00 £82.24 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £34.93 £42.50 £37.50
% change year-on-year -17.82% +13.33% -27.88%

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 24 March 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 24 March 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 24 March 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 3,073 £525 - 518
South East +1 2,062 £525 -4.55% 564
South West 0 1,304 £538 -4.44% 381
Midlands +4 875 £485 -10.19% 179
North of England -1 825 £481 -3.75% 312
West Midlands +2 713 £492 -10.55% 129
North West -2 520 £492 -1.60% 170
East of England +2 352 £492 +3.58% 169
Yorkshire -7 196 £500 -4.76% 81
East Midlands +2 158 £447 -12.80% 49
North East 0 141 £450 -4.26% 63
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 (4.01%) Confluence
2 210 (2.39%) SharePoint
3 132 (1.50%) Microsoft Exchange
4 127 (1.45%) SAS
5 74 (0.84%) Apache
5 74 (0.84%) Apache Spark
6 46 (0.52%) Apache Airflow
7 38 (0.43%) nginx
8 34 (0.39%) WebLogic
9 25 (0.28%) Skype for Business
10 20 (0.23%) Jupyter
11 16 (0.18%) CMS
11 16 (0.18%) IIS
12 14 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
12 14 (0.16%) Tuxedo
13 10 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
14 9 (0.10%) Tomcat
15 7 (0.080%) ArcGIS
16 6 (0.068%) JBoss
16 6 (0.068%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 244 (2.78%) Microsoft Office
2 190 (2.16%) Microsoft Excel
3 124 (1.41%) Microsoft Project
4 70 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 45 (0.51%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
7 9 (0.10%) Simulink
8 5 (0.057%) Siemens NX
8 5 (0.057%) Windchill
9 4 (0.046%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.046%) Sketch
10 3 (0.034%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.023%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.023%) CATIA
11 2 (0.023%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.023%) Lectora
11 2 (0.023%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.023%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 83 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.48%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 36 (0.41%) Remedy ITSM
4 27 (0.31%) Teamcenter
5 26 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
5 26 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
6 16 (0.18%) Maximo
7 15 (0.17%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.15%) SAP PP
9 12 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
9 12 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
10 11 (0.13%) Temenos T24
11 10 (0.11%) SAP MM
12 9 (0.10%) Findur
12 9 (0.10%) Primavera
12 9 (0.10%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.10%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.10%) SAP HR
13 8 (0.091%) Oracle Receivables
13 8 (0.091%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 1,474 (16.79%) Azure
2 1,429 (16.27%) AWS
3 408 (4.65%) GitHub
4 373 (4.25%) GCP
5 354 (4.03%) Azure DevOps
6 321 (3.66%) Power Platform
7 290 (3.30%) Microsoft 365
8 250 (2.85%) Serverless
9 228 (2.60%) Entra ID
10 209 (2.38%) GitHub Actions
11 191 (2.18%) Amazon S3
12 171 (1.95%) OpenShift
13 165 (1.88%) AWS Lambda
14 131 (1.49%) Amazon EC2
15 116 (1.32%) AWS CloudFormation
16 114 (1.30%) PaaS
17 110 (1.25%) IaaS
18 105 (1.20%) Azure Data Factory
19 97 (1.10%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 94 (1.07%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 415 (4.73%) Firewall
2 251 (2.86%) DNS
3 212 (2.41%) Network Security
4 200 (2.28%) WAN
5 174 (1.98%) LAN
6 168 (1.91%) VPN
7 140 (1.59%) BGP
8 126 (1.43%) DHCP
9 120 (1.37%) TCP/IP
10 103 (1.17%) OSPF
11 94 (1.07%) Wireless
12 82 (0.93%) VLAN
13 77 (0.88%) Wi-Fi
14 66 (0.75%) MPLS
15 52 (0.59%) SAN
16 51 (0.58%) IPsec
17 50 (0.57%) Cisco ISE
18 41 (0.47%) SSL
19 39 (0.44%) Junos
20 38 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 236 (2.69%) Power BI
2 232 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
3 154 (1.75%) SQL Server
4 151 (1.72%) Data Warehouse
5 116 (1.32%) Metadata
6 100 (1.14%) Amazon RDS
7 97 (1.10%) Oracle Database
8 92 (1.05%) NoSQL
9 86 (0.98%) MongoDB
10 85 (0.97%) Relational Database
11 78 (0.89%) Azure SQL Database
12 67 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
13 66 (0.75%) Data Lake
14 63 (0.72%) MySQL
15 61 (0.69%) Pentaho
16 55 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
17 49 (0.56%) Tableau
18 48 (0.55%) Big Data
19 40 (0.46%) Delta Lake
20 38 (0.43%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 561 (6.39%) JIRA
2 445 (5.07%) Git
3 369 (4.20%) Jenkins
4 304 (3.46%) GitLab
5 100 (1.14%) Selenium
6 80 (0.91%) JUnit
7 68 (0.77%) Postman
8 55 (0.63%) Rational DOORS
9 52 (0.59%) Bitbucket
10 47 (0.54%) Artifactory
11 46 (0.52%) Cypress.io
11 46 (0.52%) Maven
12 45 (0.51%) SonarQube
13 42 (0.48%) Oracle APEX
14 41 (0.47%) Cucumber
15 35 (0.40%) Mockito
16 34 (0.39%) JMeter
17 30 (0.34%) Visual Studio
18 27 (0.31%) REST Assured
19 21 (0.24%) Metasploit
General
1 2,185 (24.88%) Public Sector
2 2,096 (23.87%) Social Skills
3 752 (8.56%) Analytical Skills
4 664 (7.56%) Finance
5 318 (3.62%) Military
6 249 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
7 211 (2.40%) Aerospace
8 165 (1.88%) Manufacturing
8 165 (1.88%) Telecoms
9 147 (1.67%) Legal
10 115 (1.31%) Banking
10 115 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
11 109 (1.24%) Marketing
12 105 (1.20%) Electronics
13 104 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
14 103 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
15 73 (0.83%) Law
16 49 (0.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 48 (0.55%) Police
18 31 (0.35%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,286 (14.65%) Architect
2 823 (9.37%) Developer
3 766 (8.72%) Senior
4 663 (7.55%) Analyst
5 547 (6.23%) Lead
6 479 (5.45%) Consultant
7 354 (4.03%) DevOps Engineer
8 346 (3.94%) Data Engineer
9 261 (2.97%) Network Engineer
10 242 (2.76%) Technical Architect
11 239 (2.72%) Business Analyst
11 239 (2.72%) Software Engineer
12 205 (2.33%) Solutions Architect
13 200 (2.28%) Support Engineer
14 178 (2.03%) Project Manager
15 164 (1.87%) Delivery Manager
16 162 (1.84%) Azure Engineer
17 160 (1.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 159 (1.81%) Security Architect
19 156 (1.78%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 331 (3.77%) REST
2 192 (2.19%) Spring
3 183 (2.08%) Node.js
4 172 (1.96%) React
5 164 (1.87%) Kafka
6 144 (1.64%) JSON
7 141 (1.61%) LDAP
7 141 (1.61%) SOAP
7 141 (1.61%) Spring Boot
8 140 (1.59%) .NET
9 115 (1.31%) RESTful
10 114 (1.30%) AngularJS
11 104 (1.18%) HTML
12 98 (1.12%) PySpark
13 96 (1.09%) Web Services
14 95 (1.08%) OAuth
15 91 (1.04%) Oracle Fusion
16 88 (1.00%) XML
17 86 (0.98%) CSS
18 77 (0.88%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 304 (3.46%) Product Ownership
2 279 (3.18%) Data Centre
3 264 (3.01%) Cloud Native
4 222 (2.53%) Onboarding
5 201 (2.29%) PKI
6 150 (1.71%) Management Information System
7 128 (1.46%) Security Posture
8 120 (1.37%) Self-Motivation
9 118 (1.34%) Legacy Systems
10 109 (1.24%) Replication
11 108 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
12 84 (0.96%) Distributed Systems
13 74 (0.84%) Hybrid Cloud
14 71 (0.81%) Public Cloud
15 70 (0.80%) Data Structures
16 68 (0.77%) Cyber Threat
17 65 (0.74%) Security Operations Centre
18 59 (0.67%) Clustering
19 53 (0.60%) Virtual Team
20 50 (0.57%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 814 (9.27%) Windows
2 635 (7.23%) Linux
3 227 (2.59%) Windows Server
4 131 (1.49%) Windows 10
5 123 (1.40%) Android
6 108 (1.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 108 (1.23%) Unix
7 68 (0.77%) Mac OS
8 45 (0.51%) Apple iOS
9 42 (0.48%) Ubuntu
10 28 (0.32%) VMS
11 25 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
12 20 (0.23%) CentOS
12 20 (0.23%) Windows 7
13 19 (0.22%) Solaris
14 17 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
15 15 (0.17%) AIX
16 12 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
17 9 (0.10%) Windows Server 2003
18 7 (0.080%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,778 (20.25%) Agile
2 1,344 (15.31%) DevOps
3 1,165 (13.27%) CI/CD
4 1,082 (12.32%) Problem-Solving
5 823 (9.37%) Stakeholder Management
6 756 (8.61%) Migration
7 745 (8.48%) Continuous Improvement
8 651 (7.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 584 (6.65%) ITIL
10 565 (6.43%) Cybersecurity
11 532 (6.06%) Infrastructure as Code
12 495 (5.64%) Analytics
13 494 (5.63%) Roadmaps
14 485 (5.52%) Test Automation
15 463 (5.27%) Containerisation
16 442 (5.03%) Software Engineering
17 432 (4.92%) Scrum
18 422 (4.81%) Data Modelling
18 422 (4.81%) Service Management
19 408 (4.65%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 1,014 (11.55%) Python
2 775 (8.83%) SQL
3 568 (6.47%) PowerShell
4 495 (5.64%) Java
5 347 (3.95%) JavaScript
6 203 (2.31%) Bash
7 182 (2.07%) C#
8 159 (1.81%) TypeScript
9 101 (1.15%) C++
10 94 (1.07%) PL/SQL
11 90 (1.02%) Shell Script
12 67 (0.76%) Go
13 62 (0.71%) Ruby
14 61 (0.69%) C
15 53 (0.60%) Scala
16 47 (0.54%) Ada
17 45 (0.51%) Bicep
18 40 (0.46%) Kusto Query Language
19 37 (0.42%) Apex Code
20 34 (0.39%) R
Qualifications
1 6,603 (75.20%) SC Cleared
2 1,604 (18.27%) DV Cleared
3 434 (4.94%) Degree
4 250 (2.85%) BPSS Clearance
5 163 (1.86%) CISSP
6 159 (1.81%) Cisco Certification
7 126 (1.43%) Azure Certification
8 113 (1.29%) AWS Certification
9 109 (1.24%) CCNP
10 103 (1.17%) Microsoft Certification
11 101 (1.15%) CISM
12 70 (0.80%) Computer Science Degree
13 67 (0.76%) CCNA
14 63 (0.72%) ITIL Certification
15 62 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
16 54 (0.61%) PMP
17 47 (0.54%) GIAC
18 46 (0.52%) PMI Certification
19 45 (0.51%) ISTQB
20 44 (0.50%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 308 (3.51%) QA
2 285 (3.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 274 (3.12%) NIST
4 243 (2.77%) Data Quality
5 198 (2.25%) NCSC
6 171 (1.95%) GDPR
7 140 (1.59%) Accessibility
8 116 (1.32%) PMO
9 113 (1.29%) SLA
10 65 (0.74%) JSP 440
11 57 (0.65%) GRC
12 44 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials
13 40 (0.46%) WCAG
14 38 (0.43%) COBIT
14 38 (0.43%) NIST 800
15 32 (0.36%) Def Stans
16 31 (0.35%) PCI DSS
17 26 (0.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 24 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 22 (0.25%) RMADS
System Software
1 590 (6.72%) Docker
2 454 (5.17%) Active Directory
3 239 (2.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 85 (0.97%) VMware NSX
5 68 (0.77%) vSphere
6 62 (0.71%) VMware ESXi
7 57 (0.65%) Hyper-V
8 56 (0.64%) Virtual Machines
9 25 (0.28%) Firmware
10 22 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
11 21 (0.24%) BitLocker
11 21 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
12 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 15 (0.17%) NFS
14 11 (0.13%) vCloud
15 10 (0.11%) Postfix
15 10 (0.11%) Squid
16 7 (0.080%) Microsoft App-V
17 5 (0.057%) Terminal Services
18 4 (0.046%) Snort
Systems Management
1 765 (8.71%) Kubernetes
2 688 (7.84%) Terraform
3 297 (3.38%) Ansible
4 218 (2.48%) Grafana
5 181 (2.06%) Prometheus
6 105 (1.20%) Single Sign-On
7 93 (1.06%) SCCM
8 89 (1.01%) vCenter Server
9 79 (0.90%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 64 (0.73%) Microsoft Intune
11 62 (0.71%) Argo
12 46 (0.52%) FortiGate
13 37 (0.42%) Packer
13 37 (0.42%) Podman
14 34 (0.39%) Progress Chef
14 34 (0.39%) Puppet
15 30 (0.34%) OPNET
16 24 (0.27%) Kibana
17 22 (0.25%) Nmap
18 21 (0.24%) Consul
Vendors
1 994 (11.32%) Microsoft
2 497 (5.66%) Oracle
3 433 (4.93%) VMware
4 400 (4.56%) Cisco
5 364 (4.15%) ServiceNow
6 344 (3.92%) SAP
7 214 (2.44%) Splunk
8 184 (2.10%) Red Hat
9 158 (1.80%) Databricks
10 143 (1.63%) Google
11 132 (1.50%) Juniper
12 126 (1.43%) Salesforce
13 124 (1.41%) Atlassian
14 119 (1.36%) CyberArk
14 119 (1.36%) Palo Alto
15 113 (1.29%) IBM
16 92 (1.05%) Dell
17 83 (0.95%) HP
17 83 (0.95%) Talend
18 81 (0.92%) Remedy