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 23 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 6,977 5,192 6,831
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.07% 18.12% 18.59%
As % of the Qualifications category 65.08% 59.69% 60.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,639 3,318 4,331
10th Percentile £347 £331 £365
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.65%
75th Percentile £631 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 700 256 432
10th Percentile £17.87 £20.30 £20.00
25th Percentile £19.70 £25.55 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £57.94 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -56.59% -3.44% -
75th Percentile £61.18 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £81.13
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -49.70% -16.67% -

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 10,721 8,698 11,258
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.92% 30.36% 30.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,012 5,360 7,124
10th Percentile £313 £305 £300
25th Percentile £419 £420 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £626 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 904 411 673
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.70 £17.54
25th Percentile £19.36 £24.88 £26.78
Median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -45.54% -12.04% +16.67%
75th Percentile £56.69 £67.88 £67.56
90th Percentile £76.58 £75.40 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year -37.13% -23.81% +16.67%

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 23 December 2025.

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 23 December 2025.

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 23 December 2025. 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 +4 2,302 £550 - 649
South East +1 1,423 £523 -5.00% 942
South West 0 1,172 £550 -4.35% 681
North of England -2 806 £501 +5.37% 550
Midlands +4 701 £515 -6.53% 416
West Midlands +3 548 £520 -8.77% 248
North West 0 543 £520 +9.47% 324
East of England +2 321 £500 +5.26% 534
Yorkshire -12 161 £500 +5.26% 178
East Midlands +1 143 £444 -12.13% 151
North East 0 119 £450 -13.46% 53
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
1 253 (3.63%) Confluence
2 175 (2.51%) SharePoint
3 114 (1.63%) Microsoft Exchange
4 98 (1.40%) SAS
5 82 (1.18%) Apache
6 53 (0.76%) Apache Spark
7 50 (0.72%) Apache Airflow
8 37 (0.53%) Skype for Business
9 36 (0.52%) nginx
10 26 (0.37%) WebLogic
11 20 (0.29%) CMS
12 19 (0.27%) IIS
13 12 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
14 9 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2010
14 9 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 8 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
15 8 (0.11%) OpenStack
16 7 (0.10%) Exchange Server 2007
16 7 (0.10%) Jupyter
16 7 (0.10%) Office Communications Server
Applications
1 244 (3.50%) Microsoft Office
2 157 (2.25%) Microsoft Excel
3 97 (1.39%) Microsoft Project
4 51 (0.73%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 35 (0.50%) MS Visio
6 20 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.19%) Siemens NX
7 13 (0.19%) Simulink
8 10 (0.14%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.072%) FrameMaker
9 5 (0.072%) Oracle Smart View
9 5 (0.072%) PTC Creo
9 5 (0.072%) Sketch
9 5 (0.072%) Stateflow
10 4 (0.057%) Trello
10 4 (0.057%) Windchill
11 3 (0.043%) Adobe Illustrator
11 3 (0.043%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.043%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.043%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 147 (2.11%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (0.50%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 33 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
4 27 (0.39%) SAP EWM
4 27 (0.39%) SAP WM
5 25 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
6 18 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
6 18 (0.26%) SAP MM
7 17 (0.24%) Teamcenter
8 15 (0.21%) SAP HCM
9 14 (0.20%) SAP QM
10 13 (0.19%) Maximo
10 13 (0.19%) Oracle General Ledger
11 12 (0.17%) SAP PP
11 12 (0.17%) SAP VC
12 11 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
12 11 (0.16%) Primavera
12 11 (0.16%) SAP EHS
13 10 (0.14%) SAP Payroll
13 10 (0.14%) SAP PS
Cloud Services
1 1,148 (16.45%) Azure
2 1,132 (16.22%) AWS
3 317 (4.54%) Microsoft 365
4 314 (4.50%) GitHub
5 289 (4.14%) GCP
6 247 (3.54%) Power Platform
7 241 (3.45%) Azure DevOps
8 199 (2.85%) Serverless
9 171 (2.45%) Entra ID
10 168 (2.41%) GitHub Actions
11 161 (2.31%) Amazon S3
12 136 (1.95%) OpenShift
13 121 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
14 114 (1.63%) SaaS
15 106 (1.52%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 102 (1.46%) Amazon EC2
16 102 (1.46%) AWS CloudFormation
17 88 (1.26%) Amazon EKS
18 87 (1.25%) IaaS
18 87 (1.25%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 373 (5.35%) Firewall
2 256 (3.67%) DNS
3 179 (2.57%) VPN
4 162 (2.32%) Network Security
5 153 (2.19%) WAN
6 120 (1.72%) TCP/IP
7 115 (1.65%) LAN
8 99 (1.42%) BGP
9 96 (1.38%) DHCP
10 87 (1.25%) Wireless
11 78 (1.12%) SSL
12 73 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
13 62 (0.89%) VLAN
14 61 (0.87%) SAN
15 59 (0.85%) MPLS
16 54 (0.77%) IPsec
17 53 (0.76%) OSPF
18 48 (0.69%) HTTP
19 44 (0.63%) Cisco ISE
20 42 (0.60%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 196 (2.81%) PostgreSQL
2 165 (2.36%) Power BI
3 82 (1.18%) MongoDB
4 80 (1.15%) Data Warehouse
5 79 (1.13%) SQL Server
6 77 (1.10%) Amazon RDS
7 74 (1.06%) NoSQL
8 72 (1.03%) Metadata
9 69 (0.99%) Oracle Database
9 69 (0.99%) Relational Database
10 50 (0.72%) Big Data
11 48 (0.69%) Azure SQL Database
12 45 (0.64%) Elasticsearch
13 39 (0.56%) SAS Enterprise Guide
14 38 (0.54%) Pentaho
15 35 (0.50%) Amazon Athena
16 34 (0.49%) Amazon Redshift
16 34 (0.49%) Redis
17 33 (0.47%) Data Lake
18 29 (0.42%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 470 (6.74%) JIRA
2 384 (5.50%) Git
3 350 (5.02%) Jenkins
4 267 (3.83%) GitLab
5 75 (1.07%) Selenium
6 58 (0.83%) Postman
7 51 (0.73%) JUnit
8 49 (0.70%) Cypress.io
9 45 (0.64%) Bitbucket
9 45 (0.64%) Oracle APEX
10 44 (0.63%) Artifactory
11 42 (0.60%) SonarQube
12 30 (0.43%) Maven
13 29 (0.42%) Cucumber
14 27 (0.39%) Mockito
15 24 (0.34%) MSI
16 23 (0.33%) REST Assured
17 22 (0.32%) Rational DOORS
18 18 (0.26%) Metasploit
18 18 (0.26%) Vagrant
General
1 1,876 (26.89%) Public Sector
2 1,827 (26.19%) Social Skills
3 656 (9.40%) Analytical Skills
4 504 (7.22%) Finance
5 280 (4.01%) Military
6 221 (3.17%) Telecoms
7 207 (2.97%) Manufacturing
8 167 (2.39%) Documentation Skills
9 146 (2.09%) Electronics
10 139 (1.99%) Marketing
11 127 (1.82%) Aerospace
12 113 (1.62%) Organisational Skills
13 109 (1.56%) Legal
14 86 (1.23%) Banking
15 83 (1.19%) Presentation Skills
16 79 (1.13%) Influencing Skills
17 67 (0.96%) Law
18 44 (0.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 35 (0.50%) Aviation
20 34 (0.49%) Police
Job Titles
1 955 (13.69%) Architect
2 650 (9.32%) Developer
3 570 (8.17%) Senior
4 527 (7.55%) Consultant
5 485 (6.95%) Analyst
6 398 (5.70%) Lead
7 327 (4.69%) DevOps Engineer
8 242 (3.47%) Support Engineer
9 207 (2.97%) Network Engineer
10 181 (2.59%) Data Engineer
11 171 (2.45%) Solutions Architect
12 146 (2.09%) Software Engineer
13 142 (2.04%) SAP Consultant
14 140 (2.01%) Technical Architect
15 138 (1.98%) AWS Engineer
16 131 (1.88%) Platform Engineer
17 130 (1.86%) Administrator
18 128 (1.83%) IT Engineer
19 126 (1.81%) Business Analyst
20 123 (1.76%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 287 (4.11%) REST
2 172 (2.47%) Node.js
3 170 (2.44%) React
4 159 (2.28%) Kafka
5 138 (1.98%) JSON
6 135 (1.93%) SOAP
7 112 (1.61%) Spring
8 108 (1.55%) HTML
9 100 (1.43%) XML
10 93 (1.33%) LDAP
11 92 (1.32%) .NET
12 91 (1.30%) AngularJS
12 91 (1.30%) CSS
13 90 (1.29%) RESTful
14 89 (1.28%) Spring Boot
14 89 (1.28%) Web Services
15 79 (1.13%) OAuth
15 79 (1.13%) Oracle Fusion
16 67 (0.96%) PySpark
17 58 (0.83%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 215 (3.08%) Data Centre
2 192 (2.75%) PKI
3 188 (2.69%) Cloud Native
4 175 (2.51%) Onboarding
5 168 (2.41%) Product Ownership
6 134 (1.92%) Management Information System
7 103 (1.48%) Self-Motivation
8 94 (1.35%) Security Posture
9 88 (1.26%) Legacy Systems
10 80 (1.15%) Cyber Threat
11 77 (1.10%) Enterprise Software
12 75 (1.07%) Driving Licence
13 69 (0.99%) Security Operations Centre
14 68 (0.97%) Replication
15 63 (0.90%) Hybrid Cloud
16 61 (0.87%) Analytical Mindset
17 56 (0.80%) CMDB
18 48 (0.69%) Private Cloud
19 46 (0.66%) Public Cloud
20 45 (0.64%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 783 (11.22%) Windows
2 541 (7.75%) Linux
3 186 (2.67%) Windows Server
4 174 (2.49%) Windows 10
5 98 (1.40%) Android
6 96 (1.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 95 (1.36%) Unix
8 83 (1.19%) Mac OS
9 47 (0.67%) VMS
10 39 (0.56%) Ubuntu
11 29 (0.42%) Apple iOS
12 23 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
13 21 (0.30%) Amazon Linux
14 20 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
15 19 (0.27%) CentOS
15 19 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
16 17 (0.24%) Windows 7
17 15 (0.21%) Mac OS X
18 13 (0.19%) Windows Server 2003
19 9 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,359 (19.48%) Agile
2 1,071 (15.35%) DevOps
3 955 (13.69%) CI/CD
4 877 (12.57%) Problem-Solving
5 674 (9.66%) Migration
6 551 (7.90%) Stakeholder Management
7 502 (7.20%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 496 (7.11%) ITIL
9 460 (6.59%) Cybersecurity
10 452 (6.48%) Continuous Improvement
11 445 (6.38%) Infrastructure as Code
12 400 (5.73%) Service Management
13 383 (5.49%) Business Intelligence
14 378 (5.42%) Containerisation
15 377 (5.40%) Test Automation
16 357 (5.12%) Analytics
17 341 (4.89%) Roadmaps
18 335 (4.80%) Workflow
19 331 (4.74%) Scrum
20 308 (4.41%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 922 (13.21%) Python
2 537 (7.70%) SQL
3 486 (6.97%) PowerShell
4 398 (5.70%) Java
5 350 (5.02%) JavaScript
6 217 (3.11%) Bash
7 160 (2.29%) TypeScript
8 129 (1.85%) C#
9 92 (1.32%) C++
10 89 (1.28%) Go
11 67 (0.96%) C
11 67 (0.96%) PL/SQL
12 66 (0.95%) Shell Script
13 42 (0.60%) Ruby
14 39 (0.56%) ABAP
15 38 (0.54%) Perl
16 37 (0.53%) Scala
17 29 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
18 27 (0.39%) Ada
19 26 (0.37%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 5,354 (76.74%) SC Cleared
2 1,171 (16.78%) DV Cleared
3 367 (5.26%) Degree
4 244 (3.50%) BPSS Clearance
5 129 (1.85%) CISSP
6 116 (1.66%) Cisco Certification
7 115 (1.65%) Microsoft Certification
8 113 (1.62%) Azure Certification
9 100 (1.43%) AWS Certification
10 95 (1.36%) CCNP
11 72 (1.03%) CISM
12 60 (0.86%) Computer Science Degree
13 59 (0.85%) ITIL Certification
14 50 (0.72%) CCNA
15 47 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
16 44 (0.63%) CEH
17 40 (0.57%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 36 (0.52%) CHECK Team Member
19 34 (0.49%) CTC Cleared
19 34 (0.49%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 212 (3.04%) QA
2 199 (2.85%) NIST
3 197 (2.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 159 (2.28%) NCSC
5 136 (1.95%) GDPR
6 134 (1.92%) Data Quality
7 121 (1.73%) SLA
8 111 (1.59%) Accessibility
9 62 (0.89%) PMO
10 44 (0.63%) JSP 440
11 40 (0.57%) WCAG
12 39 (0.56%) GRC
13 32 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 29 (0.42%) Def Stans
15 28 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
16 26 (0.37%) COBIT
16 26 (0.37%) NIST 800
17 23 (0.33%) PCI DSS
18 18 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 16 (0.23%) RMADS
System Software
1 534 (7.65%) Docker
2 439 (6.29%) Active Directory
3 205 (2.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 67 (0.96%) VMware NSX
5 60 (0.86%) vSphere
6 55 (0.79%) VMware ESXi
7 53 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
8 37 (0.53%) Firmware
9 33 (0.47%) Hyper-V
10 31 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
11 17 (0.24%) DFS Replication
12 16 (0.23%) Postfix
13 14 (0.20%) Dovecot
14 12 (0.17%) BitLocker
14 12 (0.17%) NFS
15 11 (0.16%) Squid
16 10 (0.14%) Terminal Services
17 9 (0.13%) ISA Server
18 8 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
19 7 (0.10%) Brightmail
Systems Management
1 648 (9.29%) Kubernetes
2 609 (8.73%) Terraform
3 297 (4.26%) Ansible
4 172 (2.47%) Grafana
5 142 (2.04%) Prometheus
6 104 (1.49%) SCCM
7 91 (1.30%) Single Sign-On
8 79 (1.13%) vCenter Server
9 74 (1.06%) Microsoft Intune
10 62 (0.89%) Argo
11 56 (0.80%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 37 (0.53%) Kibana
13 36 (0.52%) Packer
14 33 (0.47%) OPNET
15 27 (0.39%) Jamf Pro
16 26 (0.37%) Puppet
17 25 (0.36%) Podman
17 25 (0.36%) vRealize
18 24 (0.34%) Nessus
18 24 (0.34%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 896 (12.84%) Microsoft
2 453 (6.49%) SAP
3 410 (5.88%) Cisco
4 379 (5.43%) Oracle
5 355 (5.09%) VMware
6 325 (4.66%) ServiceNow
7 187 (2.68%) Splunk
8 150 (2.15%) Red Hat
9 147 (2.11%) Juniper
10 118 (1.69%) Google
11 112 (1.61%) Palo Alto
12 101 (1.45%) Atlassian
13 95 (1.36%) HP
14 93 (1.33%) Dell
14 93 (1.33%) Salesforce
15 91 (1.30%) Databricks
16 88 (1.26%) CyberArk
17 78 (1.12%) Remedy
18 69 (0.99%) Apple
19 68 (0.97%) IBM