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

6 months to
25 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 8,791 4,542 7,202
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.44% 18.71% 19.09%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.23% 60.02% 60.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,989 2,992 4,660
10th Percentile £358 £325 £353
25th Percentile £442 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £545 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.67% -0.91% -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £658
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -1.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 758 256 476
10th Percentile £17.87 £20.65 £14.14
25th Percentile £20.50 £26.13 £21.46
Median hourly rate £42.32 £60.00 £54.25
Median % change year-on-year -29.46% +10.60% -9.58%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.36 £78.53 £82.71
UK median hourly rate £47.50 £55.00 £54.25
% change year-on-year -13.64% +1.38% -9.58%

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 12,699 7,568 11,816
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.85% 31.17% 31.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,437 4,833 7,326
10th Percentile £331 £291 £300
25th Percentile £421 £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 979 426 919
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.51 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.31 £25.26 £17.90
Median hourly rate £35.00 £50.00 £38.75
Median % change year-on-year -30.00% +29.03% -22.50%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.00 £63.52
90th Percentile £85.00 £82.25 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £42.50 £37.83
% change year-on-year -17.65% +12.35% -26.90%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 3,082 £525 - 507
South East +1 2,065 £525 -4.55% 547
South West 0 1,297 £538 -5.20% 373
Midlands +3 877 £485 -10.19% 169
North of England -1 828 £481 -3.75% 303
West Midlands +2 715 £492 -10.55% 123
North West -2 517 £488 -2.47% 169
East of England +2 354 £492 +9.33% 159
Yorkshire -2 196 £500 -4.76% 73
East Midlands +2 158 £434 -15.24% 45
North East 0 147 £450 -4.26% 62
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
1 354 (4.03%) Confluence
2 204 (2.32%) SharePoint
3 128 (1.46%) SAS
4 127 (1.44%) Microsoft Exchange
5 74 (0.84%) Apache
5 74 (0.84%) Apache Spark
6 45 (0.51%) Apache Airflow
7 38 (0.43%) nginx
8 34 (0.39%) WebLogic
9 24 (0.27%) Skype for Business
10 20 (0.23%) Jupyter
11 16 (0.18%) CMS
11 16 (0.18%) IIS
12 14 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
12 14 (0.16%) Tuxedo
13 10 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
14 9 (0.10%) Tomcat
15 7 (0.080%) ArcGIS
16 6 (0.068%) JBoss
16 6 (0.068%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 243 (2.76%) Microsoft Office
2 190 (2.16%) Microsoft Excel
3 125 (1.42%) Microsoft Project
4 69 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 45 (0.51%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
7 10 (0.11%) Simulink
8 5 (0.057%) Siemens NX
8 5 (0.057%) Windchill
9 4 (0.046%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.046%) Sketch
10 3 (0.034%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.023%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.023%) CATIA
11 2 (0.023%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.023%) Lectora
11 2 (0.023%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.023%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 81 (0.92%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (0.49%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 36 (0.41%) Remedy ITSM
4 27 (0.31%) Teamcenter
5 26 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
5 26 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
6 16 (0.18%) Maximo
7 15 (0.17%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.15%) SAP PP
9 12 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
9 12 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
10 11 (0.13%) Temenos T24
11 9 (0.10%) Findur
11 9 (0.10%) Primavera
11 9 (0.10%) SAP ERP
11 9 (0.10%) SAP HCM
11 9 (0.10%) SAP MM
12 8 (0.091%) Oracle Receivables
12 8 (0.091%) SAP PSCD
12 8 (0.091%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,475 (16.78%) Azure
2 1,433 (16.30%) AWS
3 409 (4.65%) GitHub
4 375 (4.27%) GCP
5 354 (4.03%) Azure DevOps
6 316 (3.59%) Power Platform
7 283 (3.22%) Microsoft 365
8 250 (2.84%) Serverless
9 224 (2.55%) Entra ID
10 210 (2.39%) GitHub Actions
11 192 (2.18%) Amazon S3
12 176 (2.00%) OpenShift
13 165 (1.88%) AWS Lambda
14 132 (1.50%) Amazon EC2
15 116 (1.32%) AWS CloudFormation
16 115 (1.31%) PaaS
17 110 (1.25%) IaaS
18 106 (1.21%) Azure Data Factory
19 98 (1.11%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 96 (1.09%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 416 (4.73%) Firewall
2 247 (2.81%) DNS
3 212 (2.41%) Network Security
4 201 (2.29%) WAN
5 174 (1.98%) LAN
6 170 (1.93%) VPN
7 141 (1.60%) BGP
8 125 (1.42%) DHCP
9 121 (1.38%) TCP/IP
10 104 (1.18%) OSPF
11 94 (1.07%) Wireless
12 84 (0.96%) 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 40 (0.46%) SSL
19 39 (0.44%) Junos
20 38 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 232 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
1 232 (2.64%) Power BI
2 155 (1.76%) Data Warehouse
3 153 (1.74%) SQL Server
4 116 (1.32%) Metadata
5 101 (1.15%) Amazon RDS
6 97 (1.10%) Oracle Database
7 92 (1.05%) NoSQL
8 86 (0.98%) MongoDB
9 84 (0.96%) Relational Database
10 78 (0.89%) Azure SQL Database
11 67 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
12 66 (0.75%) Data Lake
13 64 (0.73%) MySQL
14 62 (0.71%) Pentaho
15 56 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
16 50 (0.57%) Tableau
17 47 (0.53%) Big Data
18 42 (0.48%) Oracle Reports
19 40 (0.46%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 560 (6.37%) JIRA
2 448 (5.10%) Git
3 369 (4.20%) Jenkins
4 304 (3.46%) GitLab
5 100 (1.14%) Selenium
6 82 (0.93%) JUnit
7 70 (0.80%) Postman
8 55 (0.63%) Rational DOORS
9 52 (0.59%) Bitbucket
9 52 (0.59%) SonarQube
10 47 (0.53%) Artifactory
10 47 (0.53%) Cypress.io
10 47 (0.53%) Maven
11 41 (0.47%) Cucumber
11 41 (0.47%) Oracle APEX
12 37 (0.42%) Mockito
13 34 (0.39%) JMeter
14 30 (0.34%) Visual Studio
15 27 (0.31%) REST Assured
16 21 (0.24%) Metasploit
General
1 2,176 (24.75%) Public Sector
2 2,093 (23.81%) Social Skills
3 753 (8.57%) Analytical Skills
4 665 (7.56%) Finance
5 315 (3.58%) Military
6 250 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
7 213 (2.42%) Aerospace
8 163 (1.85%) Manufacturing
8 163 (1.85%) Telecoms
9 149 (1.69%) Legal
10 116 (1.32%) Influencing Skills
11 115 (1.31%) Banking
12 108 (1.23%) Marketing
13 104 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
14 103 (1.17%) Electronics
14 103 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
15 75 (0.85%) Law
16 50 (0.57%) Police
17 49 (0.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 31 (0.35%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,292 (14.70%) Architect
2 832 (9.46%) Developer
3 761 (8.66%) Senior
4 661 (7.52%) Analyst
5 548 (6.23%) Lead
6 476 (5.41%) Consultant
7 357 (4.06%) DevOps Engineer
8 346 (3.94%) Data Engineer
9 263 (2.99%) Network Engineer
10 243 (2.76%) Technical Architect
11 239 (2.72%) Software Engineer
12 238 (2.71%) Business Analyst
13 205 (2.33%) Solutions Architect
14 194 (2.21%) Support Engineer
15 179 (2.04%) Project Manager
16 166 (1.89%) Delivery Manager
17 165 (1.88%) Azure Engineer
18 160 (1.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 159 (1.81%) Security Architect
20 154 (1.75%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 336 (3.82%) REST
2 194 (2.21%) Spring
3 181 (2.06%) Node.js
4 170 (1.93%) React
5 166 (1.89%) Kafka
6 144 (1.64%) JSON
6 144 (1.64%) Spring Boot
7 143 (1.63%) SOAP
8 141 (1.60%) LDAP
9 140 (1.59%) .NET
10 120 (1.37%) AngularJS
11 119 (1.35%) RESTful
12 104 (1.18%) HTML
13 98 (1.11%) Web Services
14 96 (1.09%) PySpark
15 95 (1.08%) OAuth
16 91 (1.04%) Oracle Fusion
17 87 (0.99%) CSS
17 87 (0.99%) XML
18 77 (0.88%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 308 (3.50%) Product Ownership
2 279 (3.17%) Data Centre
3 266 (3.03%) Cloud Native
4 223 (2.54%) Onboarding
5 199 (2.26%) PKI
6 150 (1.71%) Management Information System
7 130 (1.48%) Security Posture
8 120 (1.37%) Self-Motivation
9 118 (1.34%) Legacy Systems
10 110 (1.25%) Replication
11 108 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
12 87 (0.99%) Distributed Systems
13 74 (0.84%) Hybrid Cloud
14 73 (0.83%) Public Cloud
15 70 (0.80%) Data Structures
16 68 (0.77%) Cyber Threat
17 65 (0.74%) Security Operations Centre
18 60 (0.68%) Clustering
19 53 (0.60%) Virtual Team
20 52 (0.59%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 809 (9.20%) Windows
2 639 (7.27%) Linux
3 226 (2.57%) Windows Server
4 125 (1.42%) Windows 10
5 121 (1.38%) Android
6 109 (1.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 108 (1.23%) Unix
8 67 (0.76%) Mac OS
9 44 (0.50%) Apple iOS
10 42 (0.48%) Ubuntu
11 29 (0.33%) VMS
12 24 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
13 20 (0.23%) CentOS
14 19 (0.22%) Solaris
14 19 (0.22%) Windows 7
15 17 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
16 15 (0.17%) AIX
17 12 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
18 8 (0.091%) Windows Server 2003
19 7 (0.080%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,787 (20.33%) Agile
2 1,340 (15.24%) DevOps
3 1,167 (13.27%) CI/CD
4 1,080 (12.29%) Problem-Solving
5 831 (9.45%) Stakeholder Management
6 758 (8.62%) Migration
7 748 (8.51%) Continuous Improvement
8 653 (7.43%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 583 (6.63%) ITIL
10 565 (6.43%) Cybersecurity
11 536 (6.10%) Infrastructure as Code
12 505 (5.74%) Analytics
13 495 (5.63%) Roadmaps
14 494 (5.62%) Test Automation
15 468 (5.32%) Containerisation
16 448 (5.10%) Software Engineering
17 445 (5.06%) Scrum
18 425 (4.83%) Data Modelling
19 419 (4.77%) Service Management
20 405 (4.61%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 1,013 (11.52%) Python
2 773 (8.79%) SQL
3 564 (6.42%) PowerShell
4 503 (5.72%) Java
5 344 (3.91%) JavaScript
6 202 (2.30%) Bash
7 180 (2.05%) C#
8 158 (1.80%) TypeScript
9 100 (1.14%) C++
10 93 (1.06%) PL/SQL
11 90 (1.02%) Shell Script
12 67 (0.76%) Go
13 62 (0.71%) C
13 62 (0.71%) Ruby
14 53 (0.60%) Scala
15 47 (0.53%) Ada
16 45 (0.51%) Bicep
17 40 (0.46%) Kusto Query Language
18 37 (0.42%) Apex Code
19 34 (0.39%) R
Qualifications
1 6,609 (75.18%) SC Cleared
2 1,606 (18.27%) DV Cleared
3 434 (4.94%) Degree
4 249 (2.83%) BPSS Clearance
5 163 (1.85%) CISSP
6 162 (1.84%) Cisco Certification
7 127 (1.44%) Azure Certification
8 113 (1.29%) AWS Certification
9 112 (1.27%) CCNP
10 104 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
11 101 (1.15%) CISM
12 69 (0.78%) Computer Science Degree
13 68 (0.77%) CCNA
14 63 (0.72%) ITIL Certification
15 62 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
16 54 (0.61%) PMP
17 47 (0.53%) GIAC
17 47 (0.53%) PMI Certification
18 45 (0.51%) ISTQB
19 44 (0.50%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 313 (3.56%) QA
2 284 (3.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 277 (3.15%) NIST
4 244 (2.78%) Data Quality
5 198 (2.25%) NCSC
6 171 (1.95%) GDPR
7 138 (1.57%) Accessibility
8 117 (1.33%) PMO
9 113 (1.29%) SLA
10 65 (0.74%) JSP 440
11 57 (0.65%) GRC
12 44 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials
13 40 (0.46%) WCAG
14 37 (0.42%) COBIT
14 37 (0.42%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.38%) Def Stans
16 31 (0.35%) PCI DSS
17 26 (0.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 24 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 22 (0.25%) RMADS
System Software
1 591 (6.72%) Docker
2 446 (5.07%) Active Directory
3 239 (2.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 89 (1.01%) VMware NSX
5 70 (0.80%) vSphere
6 64 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
7 58 (0.66%) Hyper-V
8 53 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
9 28 (0.32%) Firmware
10 22 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
11 21 (0.24%) BitLocker
11 21 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
12 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 15 (0.17%) NFS
14 11 (0.13%) Postfix
14 11 (0.13%) vCloud
15 10 (0.11%) Squid
16 7 (0.080%) Microsoft App-V
17 5 (0.057%) Terminal Services
18 4 (0.046%) Snort
Systems Management
1 770 (8.76%) Kubernetes
2 690 (7.85%) Terraform
3 299 (3.40%) Ansible
4 220 (2.50%) Grafana
5 182 (2.07%) Prometheus
6 103 (1.17%) Single Sign-On
7 89 (1.01%) SCCM
8 88 (1.00%) vCenter Server
9 77 (0.88%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 67 (0.76%) Argo
11 63 (0.72%) Microsoft Intune
12 47 (0.53%) FortiGate
13 37 (0.42%) Packer
13 37 (0.42%) Podman
14 34 (0.39%) Progress Chef
14 34 (0.39%) Puppet
15 30 (0.34%) OPNET
16 24 (0.27%) Kibana
17 22 (0.25%) Nmap
18 21 (0.24%) Consul
Vendors
1 984 (11.19%) Microsoft
2 502 (5.71%) Oracle
3 438 (4.98%) VMware
4 397 (4.52%) Cisco
5 363 (4.13%) ServiceNow
6 339 (3.86%) SAP
7 214 (2.43%) Splunk
8 188 (2.14%) Red Hat
9 164 (1.87%) Databricks
10 141 (1.60%) Google
11 132 (1.50%) Juniper
12 126 (1.43%) Salesforce
13 124 (1.41%) Atlassian
14 120 (1.37%) CyberArk
15 119 (1.35%) Palo Alto
16 112 (1.27%) IBM
17 93 (1.06%) Dell
18 84 (0.96%) Talend
19 83 (0.94%) HP
20 81 (0.92%) Remedy