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 4 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 7,615 4,701 7,147
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.84% 18.00% 18.81%
As % of the Qualifications category 67.17% 59.57% 60.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,218 2,945 4,565
10th Percentile £350 £340 £360
25th Percentile £447 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.65%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £715 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 667 249 486
10th Percentile £17.69 £21.06 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.59 £25.56 £42.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £58.30
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% +2.92% -2.83%
75th Percentile £65.00 £67.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.58 £75.00 £83.33
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £51.50 £59.68
% change year-on-year -51.17% -13.71% -0.53%

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 11,337 7,891 11,841
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.01% 30.21% 31.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,528 4,780 7,378
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £416 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £517 £525 £544
% change year-on-year -1.60% -3.40% -1.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 877 386 873
10th Percentile £15.70 £19.90 £14.18
25th Percentile £18.87 £25.26 £21.31
Median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -45.54% - +2.62%
75th Percentile £63.75 £67.44 £65.00
90th Percentile £76.58 £81.42 £77.90
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £39.02 £46.18
% change year-on-year -35.55% -15.50% +2.62%

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 4 February 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 4 February 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 4 February 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 +5 2,603 £533 -1.02% 512
South East +1 1,560 £515 -6.37% 590
South West 0 1,299 £550 -1.26% 397
North of England -2 817 £500 +0.91% 209
Midlands +4 737 £514 -6.81% 160
West Midlands +2 581 £519 -5.90% 107
North West 0 529 £509 +5.22% 125
East of England +2 341 £500 -3.61% 178
Yorkshire -6 171 £500 +5.82% 47
East Midlands +2 157 £424 -20.46% 53
North East 0 144 £450 -13.46% 38
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
1 270 (3.55%) Confluence
2 187 (2.46%) SharePoint
3 132 (1.73%) Microsoft Exchange
4 124 (1.63%) SAS
5 69 (0.91%) Apache
6 59 (0.77%) Apache Spark
7 53 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.51%) nginx
9 36 (0.47%) Skype for Business
10 24 (0.32%) WebLogic
11 19 (0.25%) CMS
12 18 (0.24%) Palantir Foundry
13 15 (0.20%) Jupyter
14 13 (0.17%) IIS
15 11 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
16 9 (0.12%) OpenStack
17 7 (0.092%) SharePoint Server
17 7 (0.092%) Tuxedo
18 6 (0.079%) Documentum
19 5 (0.066%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 242 (3.18%) Microsoft Office
2 153 (2.01%) Microsoft Excel
3 109 (1.43%) Microsoft Project
4 62 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 37 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.16%) Simulink
8 6 (0.079%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.066%) Oracle Smart View
9 5 (0.066%) Siemens NX
9 5 (0.066%) Windchill
10 4 (0.053%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.053%) Sketch
10 4 (0.053%) Stateflow
11 3 (0.039%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.039%) Chatbot
11 3 (0.039%) FrameMaker
12 2 (0.026%) Adobe Illustrator
12 2 (0.026%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.026%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 139 (1.83%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (0.47%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 29 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
4 27 (0.35%) SAP WM
5 26 (0.34%) SAP EWM
6 22 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
7 19 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
7 19 (0.25%) SAP MM
8 15 (0.20%) Teamcenter
9 14 (0.18%) Maximo
9 14 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
10 13 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
10 13 (0.17%) SAP QM
11 12 (0.16%) SAP PP
11 12 (0.16%) SAP VC
12 11 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
12 11 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
12 11 (0.14%) Primavera
12 11 (0.14%) SAP EHS
12 11 (0.14%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,289 (16.93%) Azure
2 1,234 (16.20%) AWS
3 348 (4.57%) GitHub
4 323 (4.24%) GCP
5 301 (3.95%) Microsoft 365
6 289 (3.80%) Azure DevOps
7 281 (3.69%) Power Platform
8 220 (2.89%) Serverless
9 207 (2.72%) Entra ID
10 171 (2.25%) GitHub Actions
11 163 (2.14%) Amazon S3
12 158 (2.07%) OpenShift
13 137 (1.80%) AWS Lambda
14 104 (1.37%) AWS CloudFormation
15 99 (1.30%) PaaS
16 98 (1.29%) Amazon EC2
17 97 (1.27%) IaaS
18 94 (1.23%) SaaS
19 93 (1.22%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 93 (1.22%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 386 (5.07%) Firewall
2 255 (3.35%) DNS
3 188 (2.47%) Network Security
4 171 (2.25%) VPN
5 161 (2.11%) WAN
6 131 (1.72%) TCP/IP
7 120 (1.58%) LAN
8 117 (1.54%) BGP
9 114 (1.50%) DHCP
10 82 (1.08%) VLAN
11 80 (1.05%) Wireless
12 72 (0.95%) Wi-Fi
13 68 (0.89%) OSPF
14 66 (0.87%) MPLS
15 56 (0.74%) IPsec
16 54 (0.71%) SAN
17 51 (0.67%) SSL
18 46 (0.60%) Skype
19 42 (0.55%) Cisco ISE
20 39 (0.51%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 195 (2.56%) PostgreSQL
2 194 (2.55%) Power BI
3 104 (1.37%) Data Warehouse
4 93 (1.22%) Metadata
5 91 (1.20%) SQL Server
6 90 (1.18%) Oracle Database
7 86 (1.13%) NoSQL
8 83 (1.09%) MongoDB
9 78 (1.02%) Relational Database
10 76 (1.00%) Amazon RDS
11 61 (0.80%) Azure SQL Database
12 56 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
13 50 (0.66%) Pentaho
14 44 (0.58%) Big Data
14 44 (0.58%) Data Lake
14 44 (0.58%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 42 (0.55%) MySQL
16 38 (0.50%) Amazon Redshift
17 34 (0.45%) Redis
18 33 (0.43%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 473 (6.21%) JIRA
2 389 (5.11%) Git
3 348 (4.57%) Jenkins
4 295 (3.87%) GitLab
5 89 (1.17%) Selenium
6 70 (0.92%) Postman
7 59 (0.77%) JUnit
8 56 (0.74%) Cypress.io
9 46 (0.60%) Oracle APEX
10 45 (0.59%) SonarQube
11 43 (0.56%) Artifactory
11 43 (0.56%) Bitbucket
12 35 (0.46%) Cucumber
12 35 (0.46%) Maven
13 31 (0.41%) REST Assured
14 30 (0.39%) Mockito
15 23 (0.30%) Metasploit
15 23 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
16 22 (0.29%) MSI
17 21 (0.28%) Burp Suite
General
1 1,962 (25.76%) Public Sector
2 1,918 (25.19%) Social Skills
3 665 (8.73%) Analytical Skills
4 544 (7.14%) Finance
5 302 (3.97%) Military
6 225 (2.95%) Documentation Skills
7 188 (2.47%) Telecoms
8 181 (2.38%) Manufacturing
9 134 (1.76%) Aerospace
10 127 (1.67%) Marketing
11 125 (1.64%) Electronics
12 113 (1.48%) Legal
13 112 (1.47%) Organisational Skills
14 98 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
15 91 (1.20%) Influencing Skills
16 87 (1.14%) Banking
17 73 (0.96%) Law
18 46 (0.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 34 (0.45%) Police
20 31 (0.41%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,029 (13.51%) Architect
2 735 (9.65%) Developer
3 636 (8.35%) Senior
4 554 (7.28%) Analyst
5 488 (6.41%) Consultant
6 426 (5.59%) Lead
7 367 (4.82%) DevOps Engineer
8 255 (3.35%) Data Engineer
9 235 (3.09%) Support Engineer
10 230 (3.02%) Network Engineer
11 185 (2.43%) Business Analyst
12 183 (2.40%) Technical Architect
13 177 (2.32%) Software Engineer
14 173 (2.27%) Solutions Architect
15 148 (1.94%) Tester
16 145 (1.90%) Azure Engineer
17 139 (1.83%) Project Manager
18 137 (1.80%) AWS Engineer
19 132 (1.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
20 129 (1.69%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 316 (4.15%) REST
2 181 (2.38%) Node.js
3 171 (2.25%) React
4 158 (2.07%) Kafka
5 150 (1.97%) Spring
6 144 (1.89%) LDAP
7 143 (1.88%) JSON
7 143 (1.88%) SOAP
8 121 (1.59%) Spring Boot
9 102 (1.34%) HTML
10 97 (1.27%) RESTful
11 96 (1.26%) .NET
11 96 (1.26%) XML
12 94 (1.23%) OAuth
13 93 (1.22%) Oracle Fusion
14 91 (1.20%) CSS
15 85 (1.12%) AngularJS
16 81 (1.06%) PySpark
17 80 (1.05%) Web Services
18 78 (1.02%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 241 (3.16%) Data Centre
2 223 (2.93%) Product Ownership
3 213 (2.80%) Cloud Native
4 209 (2.74%) Onboarding
5 191 (2.51%) PKI
6 143 (1.88%) Management Information System
7 125 (1.64%) Security Posture
8 108 (1.42%) Self-Motivation
9 107 (1.41%) Enterprise Software
10 93 (1.22%) Replication
11 92 (1.21%) Legacy Systems
12 73 (0.96%) Cyber Threat
13 69 (0.91%) Driving Licence
14 61 (0.80%) Security Operations Centre
15 59 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
16 56 (0.74%) Public Cloud
17 48 (0.63%) Private Cloud
18 45 (0.59%) CMDB
18 45 (0.59%) Distributed Systems
19 42 (0.55%) Cyber Defence
Operating Systems
1 819 (10.76%) Windows
2 591 (7.76%) Linux
3 205 (2.69%) Windows Server
4 177 (2.32%) Windows 10
5 100 (1.31%) Unix
6 97 (1.27%) Android
7 92 (1.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 66 (0.87%) Mac OS
9 44 (0.58%) Ubuntu
10 38 (0.50%) VMS
11 33 (0.43%) Apple iOS
12 24 (0.32%) CentOS
13 22 (0.29%) Windows 7
13 22 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
14 16 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
14 16 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
15 14 (0.18%) Mac OS X
16 13 (0.17%) Solaris
17 12 (0.16%) Amazon Linux
18 10 (0.13%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,452 (19.07%) Agile
2 1,203 (15.80%) DevOps
3 1,044 (13.71%) CI/CD
4 990 (13.00%) Problem-Solving
5 679 (8.92%) Migration
6 665 (8.73%) Stakeholder Management
7 544 (7.14%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 537 (7.05%) Continuous Improvement
9 507 (6.66%) Cybersecurity
10 481 (6.32%) Infrastructure as Code
11 473 (6.21%) ITIL
12 449 (5.90%) Test Automation
13 417 (5.48%) Analytics
14 398 (5.23%) Containerisation
15 389 (5.11%) Business Intelligence
16 380 (4.99%) Roadmaps
17 373 (4.90%) Service Management
18 348 (4.57%) Scrum
19 342 (4.49%) Software Engineering
20 318 (4.18%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 932 (12.24%) Python
2 597 (7.84%) SQL
3 541 (7.10%) PowerShell
4 410 (5.38%) Java
5 347 (4.56%) JavaScript
6 201 (2.64%) Bash
7 171 (2.25%) TypeScript
8 136 (1.79%) C#
9 88 (1.16%) C++
10 79 (1.04%) Go
11 73 (0.96%) Shell Script
12 67 (0.88%) PL/SQL
13 65 (0.85%) C
14 47 (0.62%) Ada
15 45 (0.59%) Scala
16 44 (0.58%) Ruby
17 37 (0.49%) MATLAB
18 36 (0.47%) Bicep
19 32 (0.42%) ABAP
20 31 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 5,836 (76.64%) SC Cleared
2 1,299 (17.06%) DV Cleared
3 384 (5.04%) Degree
4 225 (2.95%) BPSS Clearance
5 146 (1.92%) CISSP
6 125 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
7 119 (1.56%) Azure Certification
8 115 (1.51%) Microsoft Certification
9 108 (1.42%) CCNP
10 98 (1.29%) AWS Certification
11 89 (1.17%) CISM
12 64 (0.84%) ITIL Certification
13 63 (0.83%) Computer Science Degree
14 55 (0.72%) CCNA
15 50 (0.66%) CEH
16 49 (0.64%) GIAC
16 49 (0.64%) TOGAF Certification
17 42 (0.55%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 40 (0.53%) CHECK Team Member
19 39 (0.51%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 250 (3.28%) QA
2 237 (3.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 227 (2.98%) NIST
4 190 (2.50%) NCSC
5 188 (2.47%) Data Quality
6 158 (2.07%) GDPR
7 137 (1.80%) Accessibility
8 114 (1.50%) SLA
9 76 (1.00%) PMO
10 53 (0.70%) GRC
11 51 (0.67%) JSP 440
12 43 (0.56%) WCAG
13 37 (0.49%) Def Stans
14 35 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
15 30 (0.39%) PCI DSS
16 29 (0.38%) COBIT
17 26 (0.34%) NIST 800
18 20 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 19 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
20 18 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 557 (7.31%) Docker
2 475 (6.24%) Active Directory
3 230 (3.02%) VMware Infrastructure
4 76 (1.00%) VMware NSX
5 65 (0.85%) vSphere
6 59 (0.77%) VMware ESXi
7 58 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
8 49 (0.64%) Hyper-V
9 28 (0.37%) Firmware
10 27 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
11 17 (0.22%) BitLocker
12 13 (0.17%) NFS
13 12 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 12 (0.16%) Squid
14 11 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
15 9 (0.12%) DFS Replication
15 9 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.12%) Postfix
16 7 (0.092%) Virtual Servers
17 6 (0.079%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 711 (9.34%) Kubernetes
2 648 (8.51%) Terraform
3 281 (3.69%) Ansible
4 183 (2.40%) Grafana
5 153 (2.01%) Prometheus
6 107 (1.41%) SCCM
7 106 (1.39%) Single Sign-On
8 100 (1.31%) vCenter Server
9 85 (1.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 64 (0.84%) Microsoft Intune
11 60 (0.79%) Argo
12 36 (0.47%) Kibana
13 35 (0.46%) Packer
14 34 (0.45%) Podman
15 33 (0.43%) OPNET
16 27 (0.35%) vRealize
17 26 (0.34%) Nmap
17 26 (0.34%) Progress Chef
17 26 (0.34%) Puppet
18 21 (0.28%) Nessus
Vendors
1 962 (12.63%) Microsoft
2 439 (5.76%) Oracle
3 400 (5.25%) Cisco
4 399 (5.24%) SAP
5 398 (5.23%) VMware
6 318 (4.18%) ServiceNow
7 204 (2.68%) Splunk
8 152 (2.00%) Red Hat
9 131 (1.72%) Palo Alto
10 123 (1.62%) CyberArk
11 119 (1.56%) Juniper
12 115 (1.51%) Google
13 114 (1.50%) Databricks
14 105 (1.38%) Atlassian
15 98 (1.29%) Dell
15 98 (1.29%) Salesforce
16 78 (1.02%) HP
17 71 (0.93%) Dynatrace
18 68 (0.89%) SolarWinds
19 66 (0.87%) Aruba