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

6 months to
21 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 8,786 4,576 7,193
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.47% 18.68% 19.08%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.11% 60.08% 60.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,983 2,992 4,643
10th Percentile £358 £325 £351
25th Percentile £443 £450 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £548 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.20% -0.36% -2.57%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £656
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 764 254 475
10th Percentile £17.77 £21.08 £14.50
25th Percentile £20.50 £26.31 £21.46
Median hourly rate £35.00 £60.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -41.67% +9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £69.58 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.36 £78.60 £81.80
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £56.04 £55.00
% change year-on-year -37.54% +1.89% -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 12,713 7,617 11,798
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.96% 31.10% 31.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,453 4,837 7,318
10th Percentile £331 £290 £300
25th Percentile £423 £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 £538
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 985 420 909
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.62 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.75 £25.26 £18.13
Median hourly rate £29.61 £50.00 £38.75
Median % change year-on-year -40.78% +29.03% -22.50%
75th Percentile £67.84 £68.00 £63.29
90th Percentile £84.60 £82.25 £77.10
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £42.50 £38.16
% change year-on-year -29.41% +11.39% -26.63%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 3,088 £530 +0.95% 506
South East +1 2,047 £525 -4.55% 559
South West 0 1,301 £540 -3.66% 355
Midlands +3 873 £485 -10.19% 162
North of England -1 828 £488 -2.50% 274
West Midlands +2 708 £492 -10.55% 120
North West -2 518 £492 -1.60% 142
East of England +1 355 £492 +3.58% 148
Yorkshire -8 195 £500 -4.76% 70
East Midlands +1 161 £447 -12.80% 41
North East 0 147 £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
1 350 (3.98%) Confluence
2 214 (2.44%) SharePoint
3 134 (1.53%) Microsoft Exchange
4 127 (1.45%) SAS
5 74 (0.84%) Apache
6 73 (0.83%) Apache Spark
7 48 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
8 38 (0.43%) nginx
9 34 (0.39%) WebLogic
10 29 (0.33%) Skype for Business
11 21 (0.24%) Jupyter
12 16 (0.18%) CMS
12 16 (0.18%) IIS
13 14 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 14 (0.16%) Tuxedo
14 10 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
15 9 (0.10%) Tomcat
16 7 (0.080%) ArcGIS
17 6 (0.068%) JBoss
17 6 (0.068%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 248 (2.82%) Microsoft Office
2 193 (2.20%) Microsoft Excel
3 126 (1.43%) Microsoft Project
4 70 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 45 (0.51%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.35%) 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%) Chatbot
9 4 (0.046%) Sketch
10 2 (0.023%) Adobe Illustrator
10 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.023%) CATIA
10 2 (0.023%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.023%) Lectora
10 2 (0.023%) Oracle Smart View
10 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
10 2 (0.023%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 82 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.47%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 33 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
4 27 (0.31%) Teamcenter
5 26 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
6 25 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
7 16 (0.18%) Maximo
8 15 (0.17%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.15%) SAP PP
10 12 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
10 12 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
11 11 (0.13%) Temenos T24
12 10 (0.11%) SAP MM
13 9 (0.10%) Findur
13 9 (0.10%) Primavera
13 9 (0.10%) SAP ERP
14 8 (0.091%) Oracle Receivables
14 8 (0.091%) SAP HCM
14 8 (0.091%) SAP PSCD
14 8 (0.091%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,476 (16.80%) Azure
2 1,438 (16.37%) AWS
3 409 (4.66%) GitHub
4 371 (4.22%) GCP
5 353 (4.02%) Azure DevOps
6 328 (3.73%) Power Platform
7 295 (3.36%) Microsoft 365
8 250 (2.85%) Serverless
9 232 (2.64%) Entra ID
10 211 (2.40%) GitHub Actions
11 188 (2.14%) Amazon S3
12 170 (1.93%) OpenShift
13 164 (1.87%) AWS Lambda
14 129 (1.47%) Amazon EC2
15 117 (1.33%) AWS CloudFormation
16 111 (1.26%) PaaS
17 108 (1.23%) IaaS
18 105 (1.20%) Azure Data Factory
19 100 (1.14%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 97 (1.10%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 415 (4.72%) Firewall
2 256 (2.91%) DNS
3 213 (2.42%) Network Security
4 198 (2.25%) WAN
5 169 (1.92%) LAN
6 168 (1.91%) VPN
7 140 (1.59%) BGP
8 128 (1.46%) DHCP
9 124 (1.41%) TCP/IP
10 102 (1.16%) OSPF
11 94 (1.07%) Wireless
12 83 (0.94%) VLAN
13 77 (0.88%) Wi-Fi
14 66 (0.75%) MPLS
15 52 (0.59%) SAN
16 51 (0.58%) IPsec
17 49 (0.56%) Cisco ISE
18 42 (0.48%) SSL
19 38 (0.43%) Junos
19 38 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 242 (2.75%) Power BI
2 233 (2.65%) PostgreSQL
3 153 (1.74%) SQL Server
4 150 (1.71%) Data Warehouse
5 115 (1.31%) Metadata
6 99 (1.13%) Amazon RDS
7 97 (1.10%) Oracle Database
8 94 (1.07%) NoSQL
9 89 (1.01%) Relational Database
10 87 (0.99%) MongoDB
11 77 (0.88%) Azure SQL Database
12 68 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
13 64 (0.73%) 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 37 (0.42%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 561 (6.39%) JIRA
2 442 (5.03%) Git
3 366 (4.17%) Jenkins
4 311 (3.54%) GitLab
5 101 (1.15%) Selenium
6 81 (0.92%) JUnit
7 69 (0.79%) Postman
8 55 (0.63%) Rational DOORS
9 52 (0.59%) Bitbucket
10 48 (0.55%) Cypress.io
11 47 (0.53%) Artifactory
12 46 (0.52%) Maven
12 46 (0.52%) SonarQube
13 42 (0.48%) Cucumber
13 42 (0.48%) Oracle APEX
14 35 (0.40%) JMeter
14 35 (0.40%) Mockito
15 30 (0.34%) Visual Studio
16 28 (0.32%) REST Assured
17 23 (0.26%) Metasploit
General
1 2,202 (25.06%) Public Sector
2 2,104 (23.95%) Social Skills
3 761 (8.66%) Analytical Skills
4 661 (7.52%) Finance
5 321 (3.65%) Military
6 248 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
7 211 (2.40%) Aerospace
8 167 (1.90%) Manufacturing
9 166 (1.89%) Telecoms
10 143 (1.63%) Legal
11 115 (1.31%) Banking
12 114 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
13 110 (1.25%) Marketing
14 106 (1.21%) Electronics
15 105 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
16 104 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
17 72 (0.82%) Law
18 49 (0.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 48 (0.55%) Police
20 33 (0.38%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,277 (14.53%) Architect
2 830 (9.45%) Developer
3 762 (8.67%) Senior
4 667 (7.59%) Analyst
5 546 (6.21%) Lead
6 475 (5.41%) Consultant
7 354 (4.03%) DevOps Engineer
8 343 (3.90%) Data Engineer
9 259 (2.95%) Network Engineer
10 240 (2.73%) Business Analyst
11 239 (2.72%) Technical Architect
12 237 (2.70%) Software Engineer
13 209 (2.38%) Support Engineer
14 207 (2.36%) Solutions Architect
15 176 (2.00%) Project Manager
16 163 (1.86%) Delivery Manager
17 160 (1.82%) Azure Engineer
17 160 (1.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 156 (1.78%) Security Architect
18 156 (1.78%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 336 (3.82%) REST
2 197 (2.24%) Spring
3 181 (2.06%) Node.js
4 172 (1.96%) React
5 166 (1.89%) Kafka
6 146 (1.66%) JSON
6 146 (1.66%) Spring Boot
7 144 (1.64%) SOAP
8 141 (1.60%) LDAP
9 139 (1.58%) .NET
10 116 (1.32%) RESTful
11 110 (1.25%) AngularJS
12 104 (1.18%) HTML
13 97 (1.10%) OAuth
13 97 (1.10%) PySpark
14 96 (1.09%) Web Services
15 90 (1.02%) Oracle Fusion
16 89 (1.01%) XML
17 86 (0.98%) CSS
18 77 (0.88%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 304 (3.46%) Product Ownership
2 278 (3.16%) Data Centre
3 262 (2.98%) Cloud Native
4 221 (2.52%) Onboarding
5 200 (2.28%) PKI
6 152 (1.73%) Management Information System
7 128 (1.46%) Security Posture
8 118 (1.34%) Legacy Systems
8 118 (1.34%) Self-Motivation
9 109 (1.24%) Enterprise Software
9 109 (1.24%) Replication
10 82 (0.93%) Distributed Systems
11 75 (0.85%) Hybrid Cloud
12 73 (0.83%) Public Cloud
13 70 (0.80%) Cyber Threat
14 69 (0.79%) Data Structures
15 66 (0.75%) Security Operations Centre
16 58 (0.66%) Clustering
17 56 (0.64%) Driving Licence
18 51 (0.58%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 820 (9.33%) Windows
2 636 (7.24%) Linux
3 228 (2.60%) Windows Server
4 134 (1.53%) Windows 10
5 124 (1.41%) Android
6 109 (1.24%) Unix
7 108 (1.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 69 (0.79%) Mac OS
9 45 (0.51%) Apple iOS
10 42 (0.48%) Ubuntu
11 28 (0.32%) VMS
12 25 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
13 21 (0.24%) CentOS
14 20 (0.23%) Windows 7
15 19 (0.22%) Solaris
16 17 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
17 14 (0.16%) AIX
18 12 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
19 10 (0.11%) Windows Server 2003
20 8 (0.091%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,776 (20.21%) Agile
2 1,350 (15.37%) DevOps
3 1,170 (13.32%) CI/CD
4 1,091 (12.42%) Problem-Solving
5 820 (9.33%) Stakeholder Management
6 768 (8.74%) Migration
7 741 (8.43%) Continuous Improvement
8 653 (7.43%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 580 (6.60%) ITIL
10 567 (6.45%) Cybersecurity
11 531 (6.04%) Infrastructure as Code
12 497 (5.66%) Analytics
13 491 (5.59%) Roadmaps
13 491 (5.59%) Test Automation
14 468 (5.33%) Containerisation
15 438 (4.99%) Software Engineering
16 436 (4.96%) Scrum
17 421 (4.79%) Data Modelling
18 418 (4.76%) Service Management
19 416 (4.73%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 1,019 (11.60%) Python
2 775 (8.82%) SQL
3 573 (6.52%) PowerShell
4 500 (5.69%) Java
5 347 (3.95%) JavaScript
6 208 (2.37%) Bash
7 182 (2.07%) C#
8 160 (1.82%) TypeScript
9 101 (1.15%) C++
10 94 (1.07%) PL/SQL
11 89 (1.01%) Shell Script
12 70 (0.80%) Go
13 61 (0.69%) Ruby
14 59 (0.67%) C
15 53 (0.60%) Scala
16 46 (0.52%) Ada
17 44 (0.50%) Bicep
18 40 (0.46%) Kusto Query Language
19 36 (0.41%) Apex Code
20 34 (0.39%) R
Qualifications
1 6,628 (75.44%) SC Cleared
2 1,581 (17.99%) DV Cleared
3 442 (5.03%) Degree
4 251 (2.86%) BPSS Clearance
5 164 (1.87%) CISSP
6 162 (1.84%) Cisco Certification
7 126 (1.43%) Azure Certification
8 116 (1.32%) AWS Certification
9 113 (1.29%) CCNP
10 108 (1.23%) Microsoft Certification
11 102 (1.16%) CISM
12 70 (0.80%) CCNA
12 70 (0.80%) Computer Science Degree
13 63 (0.72%) ITIL Certification
14 62 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
15 56 (0.64%) PMP
16 48 (0.55%) PMI Certification
17 47 (0.53%) GIAC
18 46 (0.52%) CEH
18 46 (0.52%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 303 (3.45%) QA
2 287 (3.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 275 (3.13%) NIST
4 242 (2.75%) Data Quality
5 201 (2.29%) NCSC
6 172 (1.96%) GDPR
7 146 (1.66%) Accessibility
8 119 (1.35%) PMO
9 112 (1.27%) SLA
10 61 (0.69%) JSP 440
11 57 (0.65%) GRC
12 45 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
13 42 (0.48%) WCAG
14 38 (0.43%) NIST 800
15 37 (0.42%) COBIT
16 32 (0.36%) Def Stans
17 31 (0.35%) PCI DSS
18 26 (0.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 24 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
20 21 (0.24%) RMADS
System Software
1 594 (6.76%) Docker
2 459 (5.22%) Active Directory
3 241 (2.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 86 (0.98%) VMware NSX
5 69 (0.79%) vSphere
6 62 (0.71%) VMware ESXi
7 57 (0.65%) Hyper-V
7 57 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
8 25 (0.28%) Firmware
9 22 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
10 21 (0.24%) BitLocker
10 21 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
11 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 15 (0.17%) NFS
13 10 (0.11%) Postfix
13 10 (0.11%) Squid
13 10 (0.11%) vCloud
14 7 (0.080%) Microsoft App-V
15 6 (0.068%) Terminal Services
16 4 (0.046%) Snort
Systems Management
1 771 (8.78%) Kubernetes
2 689 (7.84%) Terraform
3 296 (3.37%) Ansible
4 223 (2.54%) Grafana
5 181 (2.06%) Prometheus
6 106 (1.21%) Single Sign-On
7 96 (1.09%) SCCM
8 89 (1.01%) vCenter Server
9 80 (0.91%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 66 (0.75%) Microsoft Intune
11 62 (0.71%) Argo
12 45 (0.51%) FortiGate
13 38 (0.43%) Packer
14 37 (0.42%) Podman
15 33 (0.38%) Puppet
16 32 (0.36%) Progress Chef
17 30 (0.34%) OPNET
18 25 (0.28%) Kibana
19 24 (0.27%) Nmap
20 21 (0.24%) Consul
Vendors
1 1,007 (11.46%) Microsoft
2 494 (5.62%) Oracle
3 435 (4.95%) VMware
4 399 (4.54%) Cisco
5 367 (4.18%) ServiceNow
6 338 (3.85%) SAP
7 215 (2.45%) Splunk
8 184 (2.09%) Red Hat
9 154 (1.75%) Databricks
10 141 (1.60%) Google
11 129 (1.47%) Juniper
12 125 (1.42%) Salesforce
13 124 (1.41%) Atlassian
14 120 (1.37%) CyberArk
14 120 (1.37%) Palo Alto
15 111 (1.26%) IBM
16 96 (1.09%) Dell
17 87 (0.99%) HP
18 83 (0.94%) Talend
19 78 (0.89%) Remedy