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

6 months to
15 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +4
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 6,792 5,265 6,857
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.84% 18.11% 18.24%
As % of the Qualifications category 64.51% 59.99% 60.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,521 3,378 4,331
10th Percentile £340 £348 £363
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% - -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 686 268 442
10th Percentile £17.97 £20.79 £20.00
25th Percentile £19.54 £26.44 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £58.69 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -57.15% -2.19% -
75th Percentile £61.50 £68.04 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £81.13
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £51.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year -51.17% -14.17% -

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 10,528 8,776 11,374
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.85% 30.18% 30.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,895 5,423 7,191
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £419 £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 894 417 680
10th Percentile £16.87 £20.00 £17.69
25th Percentile £19.26 £25.26 £26.85
Median hourly rate £25.15 £48.56 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -48.21% -7.50% +16.67%
75th Percentile £56.92 £68.00 £67.81
90th Percentile £76.58 £75.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £41.25 £53.50
% change year-on-year -39.03% -22.90% +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 15 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 15 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 15 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 +3 2,224 £550 - 457
South East 0 1,365 £525 -6.25% 780
South West 0 1,152 £550 -4.35% 590
North of England -1 787 £513 +7.89% 408
Midlands +3 701 £519 -5.73% 249
West Midlands +2 552 £525 -7.98% 154
North West 0 518 £525 +10.18% 246
East of England +2 317 £500 - 381
Yorkshire -9 168 £500 +5.26% 117
East Midlands 0 135 £450 -2.70% 86
North East 0 116 £450 -11.37% 49
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
1 252 (3.71%) Confluence
2 168 (2.47%) SharePoint
3 110 (1.62%) Microsoft Exchange
4 100 (1.47%) SAS
5 84 (1.24%) Apache
6 50 (0.74%) Apache Airflow
7 49 (0.72%) Apache Spark
8 38 (0.56%) Skype for Business
9 36 (0.53%) nginx
10 26 (0.38%) WebLogic
11 21 (0.31%) IIS
12 20 (0.29%) CMS
13 14 (0.21%) SharePoint Server
14 11 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2010
14 11 (0.16%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 10 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2013
16 9 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2003
16 9 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2007
16 9 (0.13%) Office Communications Server
17 8 (0.12%) OpenStack
Applications
1 243 (3.58%) Microsoft Office
2 154 (2.27%) Microsoft Excel
3 98 (1.44%) Microsoft Project
4 49 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 34 (0.50%) MS Visio
6 21 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.19%) Siemens NX
7 13 (0.19%) Simulink
8 10 (0.15%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.074%) FrameMaker
9 5 (0.074%) Oracle Smart View
9 5 (0.074%) PTC Creo
9 5 (0.074%) Sketch
9 5 (0.074%) Stateflow
10 4 (0.059%) Trello
11 3 (0.044%) Adobe Illustrator
11 3 (0.044%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.044%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.044%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.044%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 148 (2.18%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (0.53%) Remedy ITSM
3 32 (0.47%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 27 (0.40%) SAP WM
5 26 (0.38%) SAP EWM
6 24 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
7 20 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
8 18 (0.27%) SAP MM
9 17 (0.25%) SAP HCM
10 16 (0.24%) Teamcenter
11 15 (0.22%) Maximo
12 14 (0.21%) SAP QM
13 13 (0.19%) Oracle General Ledger
14 12 (0.18%) Primavera
14 12 (0.18%) SAP PP
14 12 (0.18%) SAP VC
15 11 (0.16%) SAP EHS
15 11 (0.16%) SAP PS
16 10 (0.15%) SAP HR
16 10 (0.15%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,098 (16.17%) AWS
2 1,094 (16.11%) Azure
3 312 (4.59%) Microsoft 365
4 305 (4.49%) GitHub
5 262 (3.86%) GCP
6 239 (3.52%) Power Platform
7 236 (3.47%) Azure DevOps
8 195 (2.87%) Serverless
9 165 (2.43%) Entra ID
10 162 (2.39%) GitHub Actions
11 161 (2.37%) Amazon S3
12 133 (1.96%) OpenShift
13 119 (1.75%) SaaS
14 116 (1.71%) AWS Lambda
15 105 (1.55%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 105 (1.55%) AWS CloudFormation
16 103 (1.52%) Amazon EC2
17 87 (1.28%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 84 (1.24%) Amazon EKS
19 82 (1.21%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 361 (5.32%) Firewall
2 253 (3.72%) DNS
3 170 (2.50%) VPN
4 148 (2.18%) Network Security
5 142 (2.09%) WAN
6 113 (1.66%) TCP/IP
7 103 (1.52%) LAN
8 94 (1.38%) BGP
8 94 (1.38%) DHCP
9 93 (1.37%) Wireless
10 78 (1.15%) SSL
11 71 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
12 65 (0.96%) SAN
13 56 (0.82%) MPLS
13 56 (0.82%) VLAN
14 53 (0.78%) IPsec
15 52 (0.77%) Cisco ISE
16 49 (0.72%) HTTP
17 47 (0.69%) OSPF
18 41 (0.60%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 192 (2.83%) PostgreSQL
2 162 (2.39%) Power BI
3 84 (1.24%) MongoDB
4 79 (1.16%) Amazon RDS
4 79 (1.16%) SQL Server
5 76 (1.12%) Data Warehouse
6 75 (1.10%) NoSQL
7 72 (1.06%) Relational Database
8 71 (1.05%) Oracle Database
9 70 (1.03%) Metadata
10 48 (0.71%) Azure SQL Database
11 46 (0.68%) Big Data
12 42 (0.62%) Elasticsearch
13 39 (0.57%) SAS Enterprise Guide
14 38 (0.56%) Pentaho
15 32 (0.47%) Amazon Athena
15 32 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
16 30 (0.44%) Data Lake
16 30 (0.44%) MySQL
16 30 (0.44%) Redis
Development Applications
1 466 (6.86%) JIRA
2 376 (5.54%) Git
3 356 (5.24%) Jenkins
4 268 (3.95%) GitLab
5 74 (1.09%) Selenium
6 57 (0.84%) Postman
7 50 (0.74%) Cypress.io
7 50 (0.74%) JUnit
8 48 (0.71%) SonarQube
9 46 (0.68%) Oracle APEX
10 45 (0.66%) Bitbucket
11 39 (0.57%) Artifactory
12 30 (0.44%) Cucumber
12 30 (0.44%) Maven
13 27 (0.40%) Mockito
14 24 (0.35%) MSI
15 23 (0.34%) REST Assured
16 22 (0.32%) Rational DOORS
17 21 (0.31%) Metasploit
18 19 (0.28%) Vagrant
General
1 1,861 (27.40%) Public Sector
2 1,762 (25.94%) Social Skills
3 638 (9.39%) Analytical Skills
4 489 (7.20%) Finance
5 279 (4.11%) Military
6 222 (3.27%) Telecoms
7 207 (3.05%) Manufacturing
8 164 (2.41%) Documentation Skills
9 148 (2.18%) Electronics
10 141 (2.08%) Marketing
11 122 (1.80%) Aerospace
12 106 (1.56%) Organisational Skills
13 104 (1.53%) Legal
14 84 (1.24%) Banking
15 81 (1.19%) Influencing Skills
16 79 (1.16%) Presentation Skills
17 67 (0.99%) Law
18 40 (0.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 36 (0.53%) Aviation
20 33 (0.49%) Police
Job Titles
1 926 (13.63%) Architect
2 640 (9.42%) Developer
3 541 (7.97%) Senior
4 538 (7.92%) Consultant
5 456 (6.71%) Analyst
6 387 (5.70%) Lead
7 304 (4.48%) DevOps Engineer
8 241 (3.55%) Support Engineer
9 207 (3.05%) Network Engineer
10 171 (2.52%) Data Engineer
11 166 (2.44%) Solutions Architect
12 149 (2.19%) SAP Consultant
13 142 (2.09%) Software Engineer
14 137 (2.02%) AWS Engineer
15 136 (2.00%) Technical Architect
16 128 (1.88%) Platform Engineer
17 124 (1.83%) IT Engineer
18 120 (1.77%) Tester
19 116 (1.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
20 115 (1.69%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 275 (4.05%) REST
2 176 (2.59%) Node.js
3 167 (2.46%) React
4 153 (2.25%) Kafka
5 139 (2.05%) JSON
6 129 (1.90%) SOAP
7 111 (1.63%) Spring
8 106 (1.56%) HTML
9 100 (1.47%) XML
10 92 (1.35%) AngularJS
10 92 (1.35%) Web Services
11 89 (1.31%) RESTful
12 87 (1.28%) .NET
12 87 (1.28%) CSS
12 87 (1.28%) Spring Boot
13 83 (1.22%) LDAP
14 79 (1.16%) OAuth
15 74 (1.09%) Oracle Fusion
16 60 (0.88%) PySpark
16 60 (0.88%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 215 (3.17%) Data Centre
2 186 (2.74%) PKI
3 179 (2.64%) Cloud Native
4 175 (2.58%) Onboarding
5 157 (2.31%) Product Ownership
6 133 (1.96%) Management Information System
7 100 (1.47%) Self-Motivation
8 83 (1.22%) Legacy Systems
9 76 (1.12%) Security Posture
10 74 (1.09%) Driving Licence
11 72 (1.06%) Cyber Threat
12 66 (0.97%) Replication
12 66 (0.97%) Security Operations Centre
13 61 (0.90%) Enterprise Software
13 61 (0.90%) Hybrid Cloud
14 60 (0.88%) Analytical Mindset
15 58 (0.85%) CMDB
16 45 (0.66%) Private Cloud
17 44 (0.65%) Distributed Systems
18 43 (0.63%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 770 (11.34%) Windows
2 524 (7.71%) Linux
3 175 (2.58%) Windows Server
4 173 (2.55%) Windows 10
5 100 (1.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 97 (1.43%) Android
7 88 (1.30%) Unix
8 86 (1.27%) Mac OS
9 50 (0.74%) VMS
10 37 (0.54%) Ubuntu
11 27 (0.40%) Apple iOS
12 24 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
13 22 (0.32%) Amazon Linux
14 21 (0.31%) CentOS
15 20 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
16 19 (0.28%) Windows 7
17 16 (0.24%) Windows Server 2016
18 15 (0.22%) Mac OS X
18 15 (0.22%) Windows Server 2003
19 9 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,340 (19.73%) Agile
2 1,034 (15.22%) DevOps
3 937 (13.80%) CI/CD
4 848 (12.49%) Problem-Solving
5 640 (9.42%) Migration
6 525 (7.73%) Stakeholder Management
7 479 (7.05%) ITIL
8 471 (6.93%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 459 (6.76%) Cybersecurity
10 435 (6.40%) Continuous Improvement
11 425 (6.26%) Infrastructure as Code
12 394 (5.80%) Service Management
13 380 (5.59%) Business Intelligence
14 370 (5.45%) Containerisation
15 365 (5.37%) Test Automation
16 356 (5.24%) Analytics
17 328 (4.83%) Workflow
18 326 (4.80%) Scrum
19 324 (4.77%) Roadmaps
20 303 (4.46%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 888 (13.07%) Python
2 519 (7.64%) SQL
3 448 (6.60%) PowerShell
4 401 (5.90%) Java
5 351 (5.17%) JavaScript
6 221 (3.25%) Bash
7 160 (2.36%) TypeScript
8 119 (1.75%) C#
9 97 (1.43%) C++
10 89 (1.31%) Go
11 71 (1.05%) C
12 67 (0.99%) PL/SQL
13 65 (0.96%) Shell Script
14 39 (0.57%) ABAP
14 39 (0.57%) Perl
14 39 (0.57%) Ruby
15 33 (0.49%) Scala
16 29 (0.43%) Kusto Query Language
17 28 (0.41%) Ada
17 28 (0.41%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 5,199 (76.55%) SC Cleared
2 1,149 (16.92%) DV Cleared
3 355 (5.23%) Degree
4 247 (3.64%) BPSS Clearance
5 128 (1.88%) CISSP
6 111 (1.63%) Azure Certification
6 111 (1.63%) Microsoft Certification
7 110 (1.62%) Cisco Certification
8 100 (1.47%) AWS Certification
9 86 (1.27%) CCNP
10 70 (1.03%) CISM
11 57 (0.84%) Computer Science Degree
12 55 (0.81%) ITIL Certification
13 48 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
14 46 (0.68%) CCNA
15 44 (0.65%) CEH
16 38 (0.56%) CHECK Team Member
16 38 (0.56%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 34 (0.50%) CTC Cleared
18 33 (0.49%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 207 (3.05%) QA
2 202 (2.97%) NIST
3 198 (2.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 160 (2.36%) NCSC
5 136 (2.00%) GDPR
6 130 (1.91%) Data Quality
7 118 (1.74%) SLA
8 105 (1.55%) Accessibility
9 60 (0.88%) PMO
10 47 (0.69%) JSP 440
11 39 (0.57%) WCAG
12 38 (0.56%) GRC
13 37 (0.54%) NIST 800
14 32 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 27 (0.40%) COBIT
15 27 (0.40%) Def Stans
16 25 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials
17 23 (0.34%) PCI DSS
18 20 (0.29%) RMADS
19 17 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 523 (7.70%) Docker
2 417 (6.14%) Active Directory
3 194 (2.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 66 (0.97%) VMware NSX
5 56 (0.82%) vSphere
6 50 (0.74%) VMware ESXi
7 48 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
8 40 (0.59%) Firmware
9 31 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
10 29 (0.43%) Hyper-V
11 18 (0.27%) DFS Replication
12 16 (0.24%) Postfix
13 14 (0.21%) Dovecot
14 13 (0.19%) NFS
15 11 (0.16%) BitLocker
15 11 (0.16%) ISA Server
16 10 (0.15%) Squid
17 9 (0.13%) Brightmail
17 9 (0.13%) Terminal Services
18 7 (0.10%) UAG
Systems Management
1 634 (9.33%) Kubernetes
2 587 (8.64%) Terraform
3 281 (4.14%) Ansible
4 162 (2.39%) Grafana
5 133 (1.96%) Prometheus
6 101 (1.49%) SCCM
7 91 (1.34%) Single Sign-On
8 72 (1.06%) Microsoft Intune
9 70 (1.03%) vCenter Server
10 58 (0.85%) Argo
11 52 (0.77%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 39 (0.57%) Packer
13 37 (0.54%) Kibana
14 33 (0.49%) OPNET
15 31 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
16 26 (0.38%) Puppet
17 25 (0.37%) Progress Chef
18 24 (0.35%) Nessus
18 24 (0.35%) Podman
18 24 (0.35%) vRealize
Vendors
1 875 (12.88%) Microsoft
2 460 (6.77%) SAP
3 407 (5.99%) Cisco
4 366 (5.39%) Oracle
5 333 (4.90%) VMware
6 332 (4.89%) ServiceNow
7 176 (2.59%) Splunk
8 149 (2.19%) Juniper
9 144 (2.12%) Red Hat
10 109 (1.60%) Google
11 101 (1.49%) Atlassian
12 98 (1.44%) Palo Alto
13 95 (1.40%) HP
14 93 (1.37%) Dell
15 90 (1.33%) Salesforce
16 81 (1.19%) Databricks
16 81 (1.19%) Remedy
17 75 (1.10%) CyberArk
18 72 (1.06%) SolarWinds
19 71 (1.05%) Apple