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 26 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,521 4,617 7,053
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.94% 18.32% 18.88%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.45% 58.94% 62.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,694 3,020 4,591
10th Percentile £380 £336 £356
25th Percentile £450 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 748 341 541
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.22 £14.50
25th Percentile £25.75 £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 £75.10 £64.52 £72.50
90th Percentile £87.05 £77.50 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £61.33 £25.15 £56.50
% change year-on-year +143.86% -55.49% -5.83%

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 13,710 7,833 11,375
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.59% 31.07% 30.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,256 4,929 7,011
10th Percentile £350 £280 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £537
Median % change year-on-year - -2.32% -2.28%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £645
90th Percentile £716 £715 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,033 508 1,007
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.16
25th Percentile £23.78 £19.87 £20.75
Median hourly rate £53.00 £29.07 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +82.32% -31.60% -22.73%
75th Percentile £74.00 £63.94 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.40 £77.50 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £50.49 £28.34 £40.94
% change year-on-year +78.14% -30.78% -25.90%

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 26 June 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 26 June 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 26 June 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 3,384 £525 - 553
South East +1 2,300 £550 - 477
South West 0 1,305 £538 -4.44% 346
North of England +1 988 £500 +0.05% 273
Midlands +2 918 £469 -8.51% 142
West Midlands +2 795 £470 -10.50% 91
North West 0 528 £525 +5.00% 162
East of England +2 351 £550 +10.00% 122
Yorkshire -5 259 £500 +1.63% 62
North East +1 231 £475 -1.04% 52
East Midlands -5 112 £441 -7.24% 50
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
1 332 (3.49%) Confluence
2 215 (2.26%) SharePoint
3 143 (1.50%) SAS
4 122 (1.28%) Microsoft Exchange
5 88 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
6 81 (0.85%) Apache Spark
7 78 (0.82%) Apache
8 39 (0.41%) Jupyter
8 39 (0.41%) nginx
9 29 (0.30%) WebLogic
10 21 (0.22%) Tomcat
11 20 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
12 16 (0.17%) CMS
12 16 (0.17%) IIS
13 15 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
14 14 (0.15%) Skype for Business
15 12 (0.13%) Tuxedo
16 11 (0.12%) NetWeaver
17 9 (0.095%) Palantir Foundry
18 8 (0.084%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 156 (1.64%) Microsoft Excel
2 128 (1.34%) Microsoft Office
3 78 (0.82%) Microsoft Project
4 72 (0.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 39 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 14 (0.15%) Simulink
6 14 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
8 10 (0.11%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.11%) Revit
9 9 (0.095%) Chatbot
10 5 (0.053%) Notepad++
11 4 (0.042%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.032%) Sketch
13 2 (0.021%) CATIA
13 2 (0.021%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.021%) Lectora
13 2 (0.021%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.021%) Siemens NX
13 2 (0.021%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 98 (1.03%) SAP S/4HANA
2 58 (0.61%) Remedy ITSM
3 44 (0.46%) Oracle ERP
4 32 (0.34%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 32 (0.34%) Teamcenter
5 28 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
6 21 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
7 17 (0.18%) SAP PSCD
8 15 (0.16%) Findur
8 15 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.14%) Primavera
10 12 (0.13%) iTrent
10 12 (0.13%) Maximo
10 12 (0.13%) Siebel CRM
10 12 (0.13%) Temenos T24
11 11 (0.12%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.095%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.095%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.095%) Salesforce CRM
12 9 (0.095%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,646 (17.29%) Azure
2 1,622 (17.04%) AWS
3 371 (3.90%) GitHub
4 370 (3.89%) Azure DevOps
5 366 (3.84%) Power Platform
6 349 (3.67%) GCP
7 247 (2.59%) Serverless
8 243 (2.55%) Microsoft 365
9 240 (2.52%) Entra ID
10 232 (2.44%) GitHub Actions
11 211 (2.22%) Amazon S3
12 170 (1.79%) AWS Lambda
13 150 (1.58%) Amazon EC2
14 138 (1.45%) SaaS
15 134 (1.41%) OpenShift
16 131 (1.38%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 127 (1.33%) OCI
17 127 (1.33%) PaaS
18 109 (1.14%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 100 (1.05%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 405 (4.25%) Firewall
2 291 (3.06%) DNS
3 219 (2.30%) Network Security
4 201 (2.11%) WAN
5 183 (1.92%) LAN
6 158 (1.66%) VPN
7 153 (1.61%) DHCP
8 131 (1.38%) BGP
9 110 (1.16%) OSPF
9 110 (1.16%) Wi-Fi
10 102 (1.07%) VLAN
11 92 (0.97%) TCP/IP
12 80 (0.84%) Wireless
13 61 (0.64%) MPLS
14 58 (0.61%) SD-WAN
15 54 (0.57%) VXLAN
16 53 (0.56%) SAN
17 50 (0.53%) BIG-IP
18 48 (0.50%) IPsec
19 46 (0.48%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 275 (2.89%) Power BI
2 240 (2.52%) PostgreSQL
3 220 (2.31%) Data Warehouse
4 214 (2.25%) SQL Server
5 142 (1.49%) Oracle Database
6 118 (1.24%) Metadata
7 106 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
7 106 (1.11%) Data Lake
8 98 (1.03%) Relational Database
9 84 (0.88%) Pentaho
10 82 (0.86%) MongoDB
11 73 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
11 73 (0.77%) MySQL
11 73 (0.77%) Oracle Reports
12 67 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
13 66 (0.69%) NoSQL
14 61 (0.64%) Amazon Athena
15 58 (0.61%) Tableau
16 43 (0.45%) DynamoDB
17 41 (0.43%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 532 (5.59%) JIRA
2 427 (4.48%) Git
3 411 (4.32%) GitLab
4 372 (3.91%) Jenkins
5 106 (1.11%) Selenium
6 80 (0.84%) JUnit
7 72 (0.76%) SonarQube
8 68 (0.71%) Postman
9 58 (0.61%) Rational DOORS
10 53 (0.56%) JMeter
11 50 (0.53%) Cucumber
12 43 (0.45%) Artifactory
13 42 (0.44%) Mockito
14 41 (0.43%) Maven
15 40 (0.42%) Bitbucket
16 39 (0.41%) REST Assured
17 37 (0.39%) Visual Studio
17 37 (0.39%) Zephyr
18 35 (0.37%) Cypress.io
19 30 (0.32%) WebDriver
General
1 2,028 (21.30%) Public Sector
2 1,931 (20.28%) Social Skills
3 665 (6.98%) Analytical Skills
4 640 (6.72%) Finance
5 318 (3.34%) Military
6 270 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
7 269 (2.83%) Aerospace
8 141 (1.48%) Legal
9 133 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
10 123 (1.29%) Banking
11 112 (1.18%) Telecoms
12 96 (1.01%) Law
13 95 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
14 78 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
15 74 (0.78%) Manufacturing
16 67 (0.70%) Police
17 65 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 44 (0.46%) Marketing
19 38 (0.40%) Aviation
20 37 (0.39%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,387 (14.57%) Architect
2 946 (9.94%) Developer
3 821 (8.62%) Senior
4 760 (7.98%) Lead
5 616 (6.47%) Analyst
6 460 (4.83%) Data Engineer
7 428 (4.50%) Consultant
8 411 (4.32%) DevOps Engineer
9 305 (3.20%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 298 (3.13%) Software Engineer
11 280 (2.94%) Technical Architect
12 250 (2.63%) Network Engineer
13 230 (2.42%) Solutions Architect
14 208 (2.18%) Security Architect
15 205 (2.15%) Business Analyst
15 205 (2.15%) Project Manager
16 191 (2.01%) Delivery Manager
17 186 (1.95%) Java Developer
18 179 (1.88%) Administrator
19 174 (1.83%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 293 (3.08%) REST
2 229 (2.41%) Spring
3 185 (1.94%) Spring Boot
4 170 (1.79%) React
5 163 (1.71%) .NET
6 153 (1.61%) Node.js
7 150 (1.58%) Kafka
8 145 (1.52%) RESTful
9 125 (1.31%) SOAP
10 120 (1.26%) LDAP
11 111 (1.17%) AngularJS
11 111 (1.17%) JSON
12 96 (1.01%) PySpark
13 95 (1.00%) OAuth
14 89 (0.93%) Web Services
15 84 (0.88%) HTML
16 76 (0.80%) XML
17 75 (0.79%) OpenID
18 69 (0.72%) Playwright
19 68 (0.71%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 376 (3.95%) Cloud Native
2 326 (3.42%) Product Ownership
3 298 (3.13%) Onboarding
4 279 (2.93%) Data Centre
5 152 (1.60%) Legacy Systems
6 149 (1.56%) Management Information System
7 135 (1.42%) PKI
8 132 (1.39%) Distributed Systems
9 105 (1.10%) Replication
10 104 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
11 101 (1.06%) Enterprise Software
12 99 (1.04%) Security Posture
13 89 (0.93%) CMDB
14 86 (0.90%) Data Structures
15 85 (0.89%) Clustering
16 84 (0.88%) Hybrid Cloud
17 76 (0.80%) Public Cloud
18 71 (0.75%) Security Operations Centre
19 67 (0.70%) Operational Technology
20 66 (0.69%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 772 (8.11%) Windows
2 640 (6.72%) Linux
3 243 (2.55%) Windows Server
4 174 (1.83%) Unix
5 125 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 83 (0.87%) Windows 10
7 75 (0.79%) Android
8 49 (0.51%) Solaris
9 47 (0.49%) Apple iOS
10 37 (0.39%) Mac OS
11 33 (0.35%) Ubuntu
12 29 (0.30%) AIX
13 23 (0.24%) CentOS
13 23 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 19 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 16 (0.17%) VMS
16 14 (0.15%) Windows 7
17 11 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
17 11 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
17 11 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,930 (20.27%) Agile
2 1,468 (15.42%) DevOps
3 1,321 (13.87%) CI/CD
4 1,003 (10.53%) Problem-Solving
5 993 (10.43%) Stakeholder Management
6 953 (10.01%) Continuous Improvement
7 773 (8.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 766 (8.05%) Migration
9 699 (7.34%) Infrastructure as Code
10 627 (6.59%) Cybersecurity
11 597 (6.27%) ITIL
12 581 (6.10%) Test Automation
13 577 (6.06%) Software Engineering
14 552 (5.80%) Analytics
15 551 (5.79%) Containerisation
16 539 (5.66%) Roadmaps
17 494 (5.19%) Decision-Making
18 486 (5.10%) Data Modelling
19 476 (5.00%) AI
20 449 (4.72%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 999 (10.49%) Python
2 904 (9.49%) SQL
3 621 (6.52%) Java
4 449 (4.72%) PowerShell
5 279 (2.93%) JavaScript
6 204 (2.14%) C#
7 196 (2.06%) Bash
8 149 (1.56%) TypeScript
9 126 (1.32%) PL/SQL
10 88 (0.92%) C++
11 86 (0.90%) Shell Script
12 66 (0.69%) Bicep
13 65 (0.68%) C
14 54 (0.57%) Go
15 48 (0.50%) Ada
16 43 (0.45%) Scala
17 40 (0.42%) Apex Code
18 39 (0.41%) Ruby
19 35 (0.37%) MATLAB
20 34 (0.36%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 7,181 (75.42%) SC Cleared
2 1,856 (19.49%) DV Cleared
3 384 (4.03%) Degree
4 285 (2.99%) BPSS Clearance
5 182 (1.91%) Cisco Certification
6 157 (1.65%) CISSP
7 122 (1.28%) Azure Certification
8 105 (1.10%) Microsoft Certification
9 102 (1.07%) AWS Certification
10 98 (1.03%) CCNP
11 95 (1.00%) CISM
12 80 (0.84%) PMP
13 79 (0.83%) PMI Certification
14 77 (0.81%) CCNA
15 65 (0.68%) ISTQB
16 57 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 55 (0.58%) Computer Science Degree
18 48 (0.50%) ITIL Certification
19 40 (0.42%) GIAC
20 35 (0.37%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 372 (3.91%) QA
2 291 (3.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 286 (3.00%) Data Quality
4 285 (2.99%) NIST
5 211 (2.22%) NCSC
6 184 (1.93%) Accessibility
7 172 (1.81%) PMO
8 170 (1.79%) GDPR
9 100 (1.05%) SLA
10 83 (0.87%) GRC
11 60 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 45 (0.47%) Cyber Essentials
13 43 (0.45%) WCAG
14 39 (0.41%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.35%) Def Stans
16 28 (0.29%) RMADS
17 24 (0.25%) Government Security Classifications
17 24 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 22 (0.23%) COBIT
19 19 (0.20%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 605 (6.35%) Docker
2 425 (4.46%) Active Directory
3 291 (3.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 113 (1.19%) VMware ESXi
5 107 (1.12%) VMware NSX
6 78 (0.82%) Hyper-V
6 78 (0.82%) vSphere
7 71 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
8 33 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
9 31 (0.33%) Firmware
10 24 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
11 23 (0.24%) BitLocker
12 21 (0.22%) vCloud
13 19 (0.20%) Postfix
14 18 (0.19%) NFS
15 15 (0.16%) Squid
16 13 (0.14%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 9 (0.095%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.063%) Corosync
18 6 (0.063%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 770 (8.09%) Terraform
2 758 (7.96%) Kubernetes
3 335 (3.52%) Ansible
4 225 (2.36%) Grafana
5 184 (1.93%) Prometheus
6 109 (1.14%) vCenter Server
7 78 (0.82%) SCCM
8 73 (0.77%) Single Sign-On
9 58 (0.61%) Microsoft Intune
10 52 (0.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 48 (0.50%) Argo
11 48 (0.50%) FortiGate
12 41 (0.43%) Puppet
13 40 (0.42%) Oracle RMAN
14 39 (0.41%) SCOM
15 34 (0.36%) Podman
16 28 (0.29%) Progress Chef
17 24 (0.25%) Nagios
18 23 (0.24%) vMotion
18 23 (0.24%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,013 (10.64%) Microsoft
2 676 (7.10%) Oracle
3 462 (4.85%) VMware
4 412 (4.33%) ServiceNow
5 306 (3.21%) SAP
6 303 (3.18%) Cisco
7 192 (2.02%) Splunk
8 173 (1.82%) Databricks
9 159 (1.67%) Google
10 144 (1.51%) Red Hat
11 129 (1.35%) Talend
12 124 (1.30%) Salesforce
13 112 (1.18%) IBM
14 103 (1.08%) Informatica
15 102 (1.07%) Palo Alto
16 93 (0.98%) Juniper
17 84 (0.88%) F5
17 84 (0.88%) SolarWinds
18 81 (0.85%) Fortinet
19 76 (0.80%) Citrix