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 20 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 3 2
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,084 4,583 7,202
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.97% 18.70% 19.35%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.74% 59.49% 61.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,297 3,064 4,681
10th Percentile £363 £331 £350
25th Percentile £449 £450 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -0.90%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 764 257 481
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £25.15 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £57.50 £53.03
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +8.43% -11.62%
75th Percentile £73.46 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.33 £80.04 £83.41
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £52.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +4.76% -4.55% -8.33%

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 13,026 7,704 11,712
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.93% 31.44% 31.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,750 4,931 7,219
10th Percentile £340 £300 £300
25th Percentile £425 £416 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £623 £630 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £518 £525 £537
% change year-on-year -1.43% -2.23% -2.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 981 430 963
10th Percentile £17.00 £18.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £24.54 £17.88
Median hourly rate £47.50 £50.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +25.00% -23.08%
75th Percentile £71.50 £68.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.36 £82.25 £76.64
UK median hourly rate £45.46 £42.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +6.96% +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 20 April 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 20 April 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 20 April 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 3,184 £525 - 490
South East +1 2,148 £531 -3.44% 509
South West 0 1,339 £538 -4.40% 370
Midlands +4 903 £485 -8.96% 181
North of England -1 858 £488 -2.47% 297
West Midlands +4 762 £485 -9.94% 126
North West -1 524 £500 - 168
East of England +2 370 £500 +11.11% 175
Yorkshire -4 208 £488 -7.14% 63
North East +1 161 £450 -6.25% 67
East Midlands -2 137 £450 -7.69% 55
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
1 361 (3.97%) Confluence
2 206 (2.27%) SharePoint
3 140 (1.54%) SAS
4 138 (1.52%) Microsoft Exchange
5 83 (0.91%) Apache Spark
6 75 (0.83%) Apache
7 54 (0.59%) Apache Airflow
8 44 (0.48%) nginx
9 34 (0.37%) WebLogic
10 21 (0.23%) Jupyter
11 15 (0.17%) IIS
11 15 (0.17%) Skype for Business
12 14 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
13 13 (0.14%) Tomcat
14 12 (0.13%) CMS
14 12 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
15 10 (0.11%) Oracle Application Server
16 8 (0.088%) Apache Superset
16 8 (0.088%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 220 (2.42%) Microsoft Office
2 188 (2.07%) Microsoft Excel
3 121 (1.33%) Microsoft Project
4 79 (0.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.47%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.13%) Simulink
8 5 (0.055%) Notepad++
9 4 (0.044%) Siemens NX
9 4 (0.044%) Windchill
10 2 (0.022%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.022%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.022%) CATIA
10 2 (0.022%) Chatbot
10 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.022%) Lectora
10 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
10 2 (0.022%) Sketch
11 1 (0.011%) Camtasia
11 1 (0.011%) InVision
Business Applications
1 83 (0.91%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.46%) Remedy ITSM
3 41 (0.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 28 (0.31%) Dynamics CRM
5 26 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 25 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
7 18 (0.20%) Maximo
8 13 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.14%) SAP PP
8 13 (0.14%) Temenos T24
9 12 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
9 12 (0.13%) SAP PSCD
10 11 (0.12%) Findur
11 10 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
11 10 (0.11%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.099%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 8 (0.088%) iTrent
13 8 (0.088%) Workday HCM
14 7 (0.077%) SAP ERP
14 7 (0.077%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 1,522 (16.75%) Azure
2 1,490 (16.40%) AWS
3 382 (4.21%) GCP
3 382 (4.21%) GitHub
4 355 (3.91%) Azure DevOps
5 320 (3.52%) Power Platform
6 268 (2.95%) Serverless
7 256 (2.82%) Microsoft 365
8 219 (2.41%) Entra ID
9 205 (2.26%) GitHub Actions
10 202 (2.22%) Amazon S3
11 179 (1.97%) AWS Lambda
12 142 (1.56%) OpenShift
13 131 (1.44%) PaaS
14 124 (1.37%) Amazon EC2
15 122 (1.34%) AWS CloudFormation
16 120 (1.32%) IaaS
17 108 (1.19%) Azure Data Factory
18 106 (1.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 101 (1.11%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 419 (4.61%) Firewall
2 265 (2.92%) DNS
3 211 (2.32%) Network Security
4 206 (2.27%) WAN
5 189 (2.08%) LAN
6 159 (1.75%) VPN
7 141 (1.55%) BGP
8 137 (1.51%) DHCP
9 115 (1.27%) OSPF
10 106 (1.17%) TCP/IP
11 98 (1.08%) VLAN
12 81 (0.89%) Wireless
13 66 (0.73%) Wi-Fi
14 59 (0.65%) MPLS
15 53 (0.58%) SAN
16 45 (0.50%) IPsec
17 43 (0.47%) SD-WAN
17 43 (0.47%) Structured Cabling
17 43 (0.47%) VXLAN
18 42 (0.46%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 245 (2.70%) Power BI
2 233 (2.56%) PostgreSQL
3 189 (2.08%) Data Warehouse
4 177 (1.95%) SQL Server
5 127 (1.40%) Metadata
6 107 (1.18%) Oracle Database
7 102 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
8 98 (1.08%) NoSQL
9 85 (0.94%) Relational Database
10 84 (0.92%) MongoDB
11 76 (0.84%) Azure SQL Database
12 74 (0.81%) Pentaho
13 73 (0.80%) Elasticsearch
14 70 (0.77%) MySQL
15 68 (0.75%) Data Lake
16 66 (0.73%) Tableau
17 65 (0.72%) Amazon Redshift
18 61 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
19 51 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
20 47 (0.52%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 579 (6.37%) JIRA
2 461 (5.07%) Git
3 356 (3.92%) Jenkins
4 314 (3.46%) GitLab
5 101 (1.11%) Selenium
6 78 (0.86%) JUnit
7 77 (0.85%) Postman
8 56 (0.62%) SonarQube
9 51 (0.56%) Bitbucket
10 49 (0.54%) Rational DOORS
11 43 (0.47%) Artifactory
11 43 (0.47%) Maven
12 42 (0.46%) Oracle APEX
13 38 (0.42%) Cucumber
14 37 (0.41%) Mockito
15 36 (0.40%) Cypress.io
16 34 (0.37%) JMeter
17 27 (0.30%) Visual Studio
17 27 (0.30%) Zephyr
18 24 (0.26%) REST Assured
General
1 2,087 (22.97%) Public Sector
2 2,008 (22.10%) Social Skills
3 750 (8.26%) Analytical Skills
4 643 (7.08%) Finance
5 329 (3.62%) Military
6 259 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
7 214 (2.36%) Aerospace
8 151 (1.66%) Legal
9 138 (1.52%) Telecoms
10 132 (1.45%) Manufacturing
11 119 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
12 111 (1.22%) Banking
13 102 (1.12%) Organisational Skills
14 97 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
15 81 (0.89%) Law
16 79 (0.87%) Marketing
17 71 (0.78%) Electronics
18 55 (0.61%) Police
19 49 (0.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 33 (0.36%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,360 (14.97%) Architect
2 873 (9.61%) Developer
3 780 (8.59%) Senior
4 654 (7.20%) Analyst
5 598 (6.58%) Lead
6 430 (4.73%) Consultant
7 410 (4.51%) Data Engineer
8 380 (4.18%) DevOps Engineer
9 272 (2.99%) Software Engineer
10 262 (2.88%) Network Engineer
10 262 (2.88%) Technical Architect
11 244 (2.69%) Business Analyst
12 212 (2.33%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 201 (2.21%) Project Manager
13 201 (2.21%) Solutions Architect
14 195 (2.15%) Azure Engineer
15 170 (1.87%) Delivery Manager
16 167 (1.84%) Administrator
17 164 (1.81%) Security Architect
18 153 (1.68%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 330 (3.63%) REST
2 205 (2.26%) Spring
3 180 (1.98%) Node.js
4 166 (1.83%) Kafka
5 164 (1.81%) React
6 159 (1.75%) .NET
7 157 (1.73%) Spring Boot
8 146 (1.61%) JSON
9 137 (1.51%) SOAP
10 132 (1.45%) LDAP
11 130 (1.43%) RESTful
12 114 (1.25%) AngularJS
13 106 (1.17%) PySpark
14 104 (1.14%) Web Services
15 100 (1.10%) OAuth
16 85 (0.94%) Oracle Fusion
16 85 (0.94%) XML
17 84 (0.92%) HTML
18 74 (0.81%) SAML
19 71 (0.78%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 320 (3.52%) Product Ownership
2 288 (3.17%) Cloud Native
3 268 (2.95%) Data Centre
4 239 (2.63%) Onboarding
5 177 (1.95%) PKI
6 149 (1.64%) Management Information System
7 119 (1.31%) Enterprise Software
7 119 (1.31%) Security Posture
8 115 (1.27%) Legacy Systems
8 115 (1.27%) Self-Motivation
9 114 (1.25%) Replication
10 106 (1.17%) Distributed Systems
11 78 (0.86%) Public Cloud
12 75 (0.83%) Data Structures
13 70 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
14 68 (0.75%) Clustering
15 65 (0.72%) Security Operations Centre
16 60 (0.66%) Virtual Team
17 58 (0.64%) Private Cloud
18 54 (0.59%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 781 (8.60%) Windows
2 643 (7.08%) Linux
3 240 (2.64%) Windows Server
4 134 (1.48%) Unix
5 117 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 105 (1.16%) Windows 10
7 104 (1.14%) Android
8 49 (0.54%) Apple iOS
8 49 (0.54%) Mac OS
9 34 (0.37%) Ubuntu
10 29 (0.32%) VMS
11 27 (0.30%) Solaris
12 22 (0.24%) Windows Server 2016
13 21 (0.23%) AIX
13 21 (0.23%) CentOS
14 19 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
15 15 (0.17%) Windows 7
16 12 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
17 8 (0.088%) Embedded Linux
17 8 (0.088%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,853 (20.40%) Agile
2 1,376 (15.15%) DevOps
3 1,201 (13.22%) CI/CD
4 1,047 (11.53%) Problem-Solving
5 863 (9.50%) Stakeholder Management
6 804 (8.85%) Migration
7 787 (8.66%) Continuous Improvement
8 677 (7.45%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 607 (6.68%) ITIL
10 571 (6.29%) Infrastructure as Code
11 530 (5.83%) Cybersecurity
12 529 (5.82%) Analytics
13 527 (5.80%) Test Automation
14 503 (5.54%) Roadmaps
15 487 (5.36%) Software Engineering
16 474 (5.22%) Containerisation
17 460 (5.06%) Scrum
18 448 (4.93%) Data Modelling
19 436 (4.80%) Service Management
20 407 (4.48%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 1,025 (11.28%) Python
2 845 (9.30%) SQL
3 546 (6.01%) Java
4 542 (5.97%) PowerShell
5 327 (3.60%) JavaScript
6 196 (2.16%) C#
7 185 (2.04%) Bash
8 152 (1.67%) TypeScript
9 106 (1.17%) PL/SQL
10 92 (1.01%) C++
11 89 (0.98%) Shell Script
12 68 (0.75%) Go
13 65 (0.72%) Scala
14 57 (0.63%) C
14 57 (0.63%) Ruby
15 48 (0.53%) Bicep
16 42 (0.46%) Ada
16 42 (0.46%) Apex Code
17 41 (0.45%) R
18 38 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 6,849 (75.40%) SC Cleared
2 1,684 (18.54%) DV Cleared
3 420 (4.62%) Degree
4 278 (3.06%) BPSS Clearance
5 175 (1.93%) Cisco Certification
6 152 (1.67%) CISSP
7 132 (1.45%) Azure Certification
8 119 (1.31%) CCNP
9 110 (1.21%) AWS Certification
10 101 (1.11%) Microsoft Certification
11 95 (1.05%) CISM
12 75 (0.83%) CCNA
13 69 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
14 67 (0.74%) PMP
15 65 (0.72%) TOGAF Certification
16 60 (0.66%) Computer Science Degree
16 60 (0.66%) PMI Certification
17 52 (0.57%) ISTQB
18 49 (0.54%) GIAC
19 46 (0.51%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 332 (3.65%) QA
2 267 (2.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 263 (2.90%) NIST
4 261 (2.87%) Data Quality
5 182 (2.00%) NCSC
6 152 (1.67%) GDPR
7 139 (1.53%) Accessibility
8 135 (1.49%) PMO
9 99 (1.09%) SLA
10 63 (0.69%) GRC
11 62 (0.68%) JSP 440
12 41 (0.45%) NIST 800
13 40 (0.44%) COBIT
14 39 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
15 34 (0.37%) PCI DSS
16 31 (0.34%) WCAG
17 30 (0.33%) Def Stans
18 26 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 25 (0.28%) RMADS
20 17 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 603 (6.64%) Docker
2 454 (5.00%) Active Directory
3 261 (2.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 84 (0.92%) VMware NSX
5 79 (0.87%) VMware ESXi
6 73 (0.80%) Hyper-V
7 67 (0.74%) vSphere
8 51 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
9 33 (0.36%) Firmware
10 23 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
11 20 (0.22%) BitLocker
11 20 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
12 17 (0.19%) NFS
12 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 16 (0.18%) Postfix
14 12 (0.13%) vCloud
15 10 (0.11%) Squid
16 8 (0.088%) Microsoft App-V
17 5 (0.055%) Corosync
17 5 (0.055%) KVM
Systems Management
1 770 (8.48%) Kubernetes
2 709 (7.80%) Terraform
3 289 (3.18%) Ansible
4 214 (2.36%) Grafana
5 174 (1.92%) Prometheus
6 98 (1.08%) Single Sign-On
7 90 (0.99%) vCenter Server
8 80 (0.88%) SCCM
9 75 (0.83%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 56 (0.62%) Microsoft Intune
11 53 (0.58%) FortiGate
12 52 (0.57%) Argo
13 37 (0.41%) Packer
13 37 (0.41%) Puppet
14 36 (0.40%) Podman
15 32 (0.35%) Progress Chef
16 30 (0.33%) OPNET
17 27 (0.30%) Kibana
18 25 (0.28%) Nagios
18 25 (0.28%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 977 (10.76%) Microsoft
2 570 (6.27%) Oracle
3 459 (5.05%) VMware
4 377 (4.15%) ServiceNow
5 368 (4.05%) Cisco
6 332 (3.65%) SAP
7 208 (2.29%) Splunk
8 181 (1.99%) Databricks
9 172 (1.89%) Red Hat
10 153 (1.68%) Google
11 126 (1.39%) Atlassian
12 122 (1.34%) Salesforce
13 114 (1.25%) IBM
14 110 (1.21%) Juniper
15 104 (1.14%) Palo Alto
15 104 (1.14%) Talend
16 97 (1.07%) CyberArk
17 84 (0.92%) Remedy
18 77 (0.85%) Citrix
19 74 (0.81%) SolarWinds