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

6 months to
9 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 9,368 4,493 7,041
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.09% 18.44% 18.94%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.58% 58.86% 61.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,541 2,965 4,588
10th Percentile £380 £338 £353
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 £713 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 771 291 518
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.38 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.84 £24.66 £21.46
Median hourly rate £57.50 £32.50 £56.89
Median % change year-on-year +76.92% -42.87% -5.19%
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.43 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £80.00 £84.45
UK median hourly rate £57.35 £31.64 £56.49
% change year-on-year +81.26% -43.99% -5.85%

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 13,463 7,633 11,374
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.74% 31.32% 30.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,035 4,809 7,031
10th Percentile £350 £278 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £721 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,024 459 1,005
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.91 £22.61 £18.79
Median hourly rate £48.61 £32.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +49.57% -18.75% -27.27%
75th Percentile £73.46 £65.62 £63.75
90th Percentile £85.25 £80.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £49.36 £32.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +54.25% -20.00% -27.27%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 3,365 £525 - 404
South East +1 2,259 £550 - 470
South West 0 1,251 £538 -4.44% 350
North of England 0 974 £500 - 244
Midlands +3 884 £469 -10.67% 114
West Midlands +3 761 £470 -10.48% 82
North West -1 539 £520 +4.00% 145
East of England +2 372 £550 +10.00% 122
Yorkshire -4 248 £489 -1.46% 49
North East +1 219 £475 -1.04% 50
East Midlands -3 116 £418 -18.54% 32
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
1 338 (3.61%) Confluence
2 213 (2.27%) SharePoint
3 136 (1.45%) SAS
4 123 (1.31%) Microsoft Exchange
5 81 (0.86%) Apache Spark
6 80 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
7 78 (0.83%) Apache
8 37 (0.39%) nginx
9 35 (0.37%) Jupyter
10 26 (0.28%) WebLogic
11 20 (0.21%) Tomcat
12 18 (0.19%) IIS
12 18 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
13 15 (0.16%) CMS
13 15 (0.16%) Skype for Business
14 14 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
15 11 (0.12%) NetWeaver
16 10 (0.11%) Tuxedo
17 8 (0.085%) Apache Superset
17 8 (0.085%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 157 (1.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 133 (1.42%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 69 (0.74%) Microsoft Project
5 39 (0.42%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.15%) Simulink
8 9 (0.096%) SOLIDWORKS
9 8 (0.085%) AutoCAD
9 8 (0.085%) Revit
10 5 (0.053%) Chatbot
10 5 (0.053%) Notepad++
11 4 (0.043%) Siemens NX
12 3 (0.032%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.032%) Sketch
12 3 (0.032%) Windchill
13 2 (0.021%) CATIA
13 2 (0.021%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.021%) Lectora
13 2 (0.021%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 93 (0.99%) SAP S/4HANA
2 56 (0.60%) Remedy ITSM
3 38 (0.41%) Oracle ERP
4 33 (0.35%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 31 (0.33%) Teamcenter
6 26 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
7 16 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.15%) Findur
8 14 (0.15%) Maximo
8 14 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.14%) SAP PSCD
10 12 (0.13%) iTrent
10 12 (0.13%) Temenos T24
11 10 (0.11%) Primavera
12 9 (0.096%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.096%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.096%) Salesforce CRM
12 9 (0.096%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.096%) SAP HCM
13 8 (0.085%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,628 (17.38%) Azure
2 1,568 (16.74%) AWS
3 381 (4.07%) GitHub
4 370 (3.95%) GCP
5 350 (3.74%) Power Platform
6 349 (3.73%) Azure DevOps
7 235 (2.51%) Serverless
8 233 (2.49%) Microsoft 365
9 230 (2.46%) Entra ID
9 230 (2.46%) GitHub Actions
10 199 (2.12%) Amazon S3
11 165 (1.76%) AWS Lambda
12 144 (1.54%) Amazon EC2
13 140 (1.49%) PaaS
14 127 (1.36%) OpenShift
15 124 (1.32%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 122 (1.30%) SaaS
17 120 (1.28%) OCI
18 104 (1.11%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 96 (1.02%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 424 (4.53%) Firewall
2 281 (3.00%) DNS
3 226 (2.41%) Network Security
4 215 (2.30%) WAN
5 195 (2.08%) LAN
6 163 (1.74%) VPN
7 154 (1.64%) DHCP
8 142 (1.52%) BGP
9 121 (1.29%) OSPF
10 112 (1.20%) Wi-Fi
11 109 (1.16%) VLAN
12 96 (1.02%) TCP/IP
13 78 (0.83%) Wireless
14 61 (0.65%) MPLS
15 56 (0.60%) SAN
15 56 (0.60%) VXLAN
16 53 (0.57%) SD-WAN
17 51 (0.54%) Structured Cabling
18 49 (0.52%) IPsec
19 48 (0.51%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 262 (2.80%) Power BI
2 227 (2.42%) PostgreSQL
3 210 (2.24%) Data Warehouse
4 199 (2.12%) SQL Server
5 128 (1.37%) Oracle Database
6 115 (1.23%) Metadata
7 108 (1.15%) Amazon RDS
8 99 (1.06%) Data Lake
9 87 (0.93%) Relational Database
10 80 (0.85%) Pentaho
11 79 (0.84%) MongoDB
12 74 (0.79%) Oracle Reports
13 72 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
14 70 (0.75%) NoSQL
15 68 (0.73%) MySQL
16 61 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
17 59 (0.63%) Tableau
18 58 (0.62%) Amazon Athena
19 48 (0.51%) Azure SQL Database
20 43 (0.46%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 530 (5.66%) JIRA
2 410 (4.38%) Git
3 376 (4.01%) GitLab
4 360 (3.84%) Jenkins
5 105 (1.12%) Selenium
6 77 (0.82%) JUnit
7 74 (0.79%) Postman
8 64 (0.68%) SonarQube
9 58 (0.62%) Rational DOORS
10 52 (0.56%) Artifactory
11 50 (0.53%) JMeter
12 46 (0.49%) Cucumber
13 42 (0.45%) Bitbucket
14 40 (0.43%) Maven
15 39 (0.42%) Mockito
16 37 (0.39%) Zephyr
17 35 (0.37%) Visual Studio
18 32 (0.34%) Cypress.io
18 32 (0.34%) REST Assured
19 29 (0.31%) WebDriver
General
1 1,979 (21.13%) Public Sector
2 1,907 (20.36%) Social Skills
3 655 (6.99%) Analytical Skills
4 613 (6.54%) Finance
5 312 (3.33%) Military
6 274 (2.92%) Documentation Skills
7 249 (2.66%) Aerospace
8 140 (1.49%) Legal
9 119 (1.27%) Banking
10 109 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
11 103 (1.10%) Telecoms
12 96 (1.02%) Law
13 93 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
14 78 (0.83%) Manufacturing
14 78 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
15 58 (0.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 57 (0.61%) Police
17 46 (0.49%) Marketing
18 39 (0.42%) Retail
19 37 (0.39%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,365 (14.57%) Architect
2 857 (9.15%) Developer
3 789 (8.42%) Senior
4 705 (7.53%) Lead
5 643 (6.86%) Analyst
6 464 (4.95%) Data Engineer
7 425 (4.54%) DevOps Engineer
8 416 (4.44%) Consultant
9 289 (3.08%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 283 (3.02%) Software Engineer
11 271 (2.89%) Technical Architect
12 260 (2.78%) Network Engineer
13 234 (2.50%) Business Analyst
14 222 (2.37%) Solutions Architect
15 207 (2.21%) Project Manager
16 197 (2.10%) Security Architect
17 190 (2.03%) Azure Engineer
18 185 (1.97%) Administrator
19 183 (1.95%) Delivery Manager
20 177 (1.89%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 297 (3.17%) REST
2 208 (2.22%) Spring
3 175 (1.87%) Spring Boot
4 172 (1.84%) React
5 155 (1.65%) .NET
6 152 (1.62%) Node.js
7 149 (1.59%) Kafka
8 146 (1.56%) LDAP
9 138 (1.47%) SOAP
10 133 (1.42%) RESTful
11 110 (1.17%) JSON
12 109 (1.16%) AngularJS
13 99 (1.06%) Web Services
14 95 (1.01%) PySpark
15 92 (0.98%) OAuth
16 83 (0.89%) HTML
17 76 (0.81%) XML
18 73 (0.78%) Oracle Fusion
19 72 (0.77%) Middleware
20 71 (0.76%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 342 (3.65%) Cloud Native
2 309 (3.30%) Product Ownership
3 289 (3.08%) Data Centre
4 268 (2.86%) Onboarding
5 150 (1.60%) Management Information System
6 146 (1.56%) PKI
7 137 (1.46%) Legacy Systems
8 122 (1.30%) Security Posture
9 118 (1.26%) Enterprise Software
10 115 (1.23%) Distributed Systems
11 114 (1.22%) Replication
12 95 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
13 89 (0.95%) Clustering
14 81 (0.86%) Data Structures
14 81 (0.86%) Hybrid Cloud
15 74 (0.79%) Public Cloud
16 73 (0.78%) Security Operations Centre
17 71 (0.76%) CMDB
18 69 (0.74%) Operational Technology
19 63 (0.67%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 759 (8.10%) Windows
2 633 (6.76%) Linux
3 250 (2.67%) Windows Server
4 178 (1.90%) Unix
5 114 (1.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 79 (0.84%) Windows 10
7 77 (0.82%) Android
8 52 (0.56%) Apple iOS
9 51 (0.54%) Solaris
10 35 (0.37%) Mac OS
11 31 (0.33%) Ubuntu
12 26 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 25 (0.27%) AIX
14 24 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
15 23 (0.25%) CentOS
16 20 (0.21%) VMS
17 15 (0.16%) Windows 7
18 11 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
18 11 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
19 10 (0.11%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,829 (19.52%) Agile
2 1,446 (15.44%) DevOps
3 1,270 (13.56%) CI/CD
4 971 (10.37%) Problem-Solving
5 933 (9.96%) Stakeholder Management
6 879 (9.38%) Continuous Improvement
7 784 (8.37%) Migration
8 738 (7.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 669 (7.14%) Infrastructure as Code
10 610 (6.51%) Cybersecurity
11 570 (6.08%) ITIL
12 560 (5.98%) Test Automation
13 546 (5.83%) Analytics
14 543 (5.80%) Software Engineering
15 526 (5.61%) Roadmaps
16 507 (5.41%) Containerisation
17 483 (5.16%) Data Modelling
18 461 (4.92%) Decision-Making
19 433 (4.62%) AI
19 433 (4.62%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 987 (10.54%) Python
2 869 (9.28%) SQL
3 570 (6.08%) Java
4 496 (5.29%) PowerShell
5 269 (2.87%) JavaScript
6 198 (2.11%) C#
7 179 (1.91%) Bash
8 140 (1.49%) TypeScript
9 108 (1.15%) PL/SQL
10 87 (0.93%) C++
11 85 (0.91%) Shell Script
12 57 (0.61%) Bicep
12 57 (0.61%) C
13 55 (0.59%) Go
14 54 (0.58%) Scala
15 46 (0.49%) Ada
16 44 (0.47%) Ruby
17 42 (0.45%) Apex Code
18 35 (0.37%) MATLAB
19 33 (0.35%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 7,056 (75.32%) SC Cleared
2 1,796 (19.17%) DV Cleared
3 392 (4.18%) Degree
4 262 (2.80%) BPSS Clearance
5 183 (1.95%) Cisco Certification
6 160 (1.71%) CISSP
7 126 (1.35%) Azure Certification
8 109 (1.16%) CCNP
9 103 (1.10%) CISM
10 97 (1.04%) Microsoft Certification
11 93 (0.99%) AWS Certification
12 76 (0.81%) CCNA
13 73 (0.78%) PMP
14 66 (0.70%) PMI Certification
15 64 (0.68%) ISTQB
16 62 (0.66%) Computer Science Degree
17 55 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 54 (0.58%) ITIL Certification
19 46 (0.49%) GIAC
20 34 (0.36%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 359 (3.83%) QA
2 284 (3.03%) NIST
3 276 (2.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 270 (2.88%) Data Quality
5 194 (2.07%) NCSC
6 172 (1.84%) Accessibility
7 162 (1.73%) PMO
8 160 (1.71%) GDPR
9 107 (1.14%) SLA
10 68 (0.73%) GRC
11 60 (0.64%) JSP 440
12 52 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials
13 40 (0.43%) WCAG
14 38 (0.41%) NIST 800
15 34 (0.36%) Def Stans
16 28 (0.30%) RMADS
17 22 (0.23%) COBIT
17 22 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
17 22 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 22 (0.23%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 571 (6.10%) Docker
2 437 (4.66%) Active Directory
3 287 (3.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 111 (1.18%) VMware ESXi
5 97 (1.04%) VMware NSX
6 79 (0.84%) Hyper-V
7 77 (0.82%) vSphere
8 70 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
9 34 (0.36%) Firmware
10 30 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
11 23 (0.25%) BitLocker
12 21 (0.22%) vCloud
13 19 (0.20%) NFS
13 19 (0.20%) Postfix
14 18 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
15 16 (0.17%) Squid
16 15 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 10 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.064%) Corosync
18 6 (0.064%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 742 (7.92%) Terraform
2 718 (7.66%) Kubernetes
3 344 (3.67%) Ansible
4 231 (2.47%) Grafana
5 188 (2.01%) Prometheus
6 115 (1.23%) vCenter Server
7 81 (0.86%) Single Sign-On
8 72 (0.77%) SCCM
9 57 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 55 (0.59%) Microsoft Intune
11 48 (0.51%) FortiGate
12 44 (0.47%) Argo
13 41 (0.44%) Puppet
14 39 (0.42%) SCOM
15 37 (0.39%) Oracle RMAN
15 37 (0.39%) Podman
16 29 (0.31%) Nagios
16 29 (0.31%) Progress Chef
17 24 (0.26%) vMotion
18 21 (0.22%) WSUS
Vendors
1 978 (10.44%) Microsoft
2 633 (6.76%) Oracle
3 473 (5.05%) VMware
4 374 (3.99%) ServiceNow
5 327 (3.49%) Cisco
6 295 (3.15%) SAP
7 212 (2.26%) Splunk
8 180 (1.92%) Databricks
9 153 (1.63%) Google
10 147 (1.57%) Red Hat
11 124 (1.32%) Talend
12 119 (1.27%) Palo Alto
12 119 (1.27%) Salesforce
13 116 (1.24%) IBM
14 103 (1.10%) Juniper
15 94 (1.00%) CyberArk
16 89 (0.95%) Informatica
17 85 (0.91%) Fortinet
18 84 (0.90%) F5
19 80 (0.85%) Dynatrace