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

6 months to
1 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 7,531 4,802 7,189
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.90% 18.13% 18.85%
As % of the Qualifications category 67.11% 59.63% 60.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,164 2,994 4,597
10th Percentile £350 £340 £363
25th Percentile £447 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -3.41%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £548 £550
% change year-on-year -4.20% -0.36% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 662 249 487
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.30 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.57 £25.56 £42.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £59.00
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% +1.69% -1.67%
75th Percentile £65.00 £67.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £83.17
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £50.75 £59.84
% change year-on-year -50.44% -15.19% -0.27%

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 11,222 8,053 11,917
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.12% 30.40% 31.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,459 4,858 7,434
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 £545
% change year-on-year -1.52% -3.67% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 870 386 865
10th Percentile £15.62 £19.00 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.87 £25.26 £21.46
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 £75.08 £81.42 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £39.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year -35.51% -15.55% +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 1 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 1 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 1 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 2,580 £533 -2.52% 537
South East +1 1,527 £514 -6.55% 608
South West 0 1,293 £550 -1.26% 373
North of England -2 807 £500 +5.26% 201
Midlands +3 731 £515 -6.53% 161
West Midlands +2 576 £519 -5.85% 111
North West 0 527 £513 +7.89% 130
East of England +2 337 £493 -3.90% 186
Yorkshire -10 167 £500 +8.11% 38
East Midlands +3 155 £424 -20.87% 49
North East 0 140 £450 -13.46% 34
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
1 271 (3.60%) Confluence
2 185 (2.46%) SharePoint
3 129 (1.71%) Microsoft Exchange
4 122 (1.62%) SAS
5 67 (0.89%) Apache
6 55 (0.73%) Apache Spark
7 49 (0.65%) Apache Airflow
8 40 (0.53%) nginx
9 36 (0.48%) Skype for Business
10 25 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 19 (0.25%) CMS
12 18 (0.24%) Palantir Foundry
13 15 (0.20%) Jupyter
14 13 (0.17%) IIS
15 10 (0.13%) OpenStack
15 10 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
16 7 (0.093%) SharePoint Server
16 7 (0.093%) Tuxedo
17 6 (0.080%) Documentum
18 5 (0.066%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 240 (3.19%) Microsoft Office
2 149 (1.98%) Microsoft Excel
3 106 (1.41%) Microsoft Project
4 60 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 37 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.16%) Simulink
8 6 (0.080%) 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%) FrameMaker
10 4 (0.053%) Sketch
10 4 (0.053%) Stateflow
11 3 (0.040%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.040%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.027%) Adobe Illustrator
12 2 (0.027%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.027%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 141 (1.87%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (0.48%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 27 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
3 27 (0.36%) SAP WM
4 26 (0.35%) SAP EWM
5 23 (0.31%) Dynamics CRM
6 19 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
7 18 (0.24%) SAP MM
8 15 (0.20%) Teamcenter
9 14 (0.19%) Maximo
9 14 (0.19%) 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 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
12 11 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
12 11 (0.15%) Oracle Receivables
12 11 (0.15%) SAP EHS
12 11 (0.15%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,281 (17.01%) Azure
2 1,224 (16.25%) AWS
3 346 (4.59%) GitHub
4 320 (4.25%) GCP
5 302 (4.01%) Microsoft 365
6 287 (3.81%) Azure DevOps
7 281 (3.73%) Power Platform
8 218 (2.89%) Serverless
9 206 (2.74%) Entra ID
10 170 (2.26%) GitHub Actions
11 163 (2.16%) Amazon S3
12 153 (2.03%) OpenShift
13 136 (1.81%) AWS Lambda
14 105 (1.39%) AWS CloudFormation
15 98 (1.30%) PaaS
16 97 (1.29%) Amazon EC2
16 97 (1.29%) IaaS
17 95 (1.26%) SaaS
18 92 (1.22%) Power Automate
19 91 (1.21%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 382 (5.07%) Firewall
2 252 (3.35%) DNS
3 187 (2.48%) Network Security
4 169 (2.24%) VPN
5 160 (2.12%) WAN
6 129 (1.71%) TCP/IP
7 119 (1.58%) LAN
8 115 (1.53%) BGP
9 113 (1.50%) DHCP
10 80 (1.06%) VLAN
11 79 (1.05%) Wireless
12 72 (0.96%) Wi-Fi
13 66 (0.88%) OSPF
14 65 (0.86%) MPLS
15 56 (0.74%) IPsec
16 53 (0.70%) SAN
17 51 (0.68%) SSL
18 46 (0.61%) Skype
19 42 (0.56%) Cisco ISE
20 39 (0.52%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 194 (2.58%) PostgreSQL
2 193 (2.56%) Power BI
3 100 (1.33%) Data Warehouse
4 93 (1.23%) Metadata
5 89 (1.18%) SQL Server
6 86 (1.14%) Oracle Database
7 85 (1.13%) NoSQL
8 83 (1.10%) MongoDB
9 76 (1.01%) Amazon RDS
10 75 (1.00%) Relational Database
11 61 (0.81%) Azure SQL Database
12 53 (0.70%) Elasticsearch
13 48 (0.64%) Pentaho
14 43 (0.57%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 41 (0.54%) Big Data
15 41 (0.54%) Data Lake
16 37 (0.49%) MySQL
17 36 (0.48%) Amazon Redshift
18 34 (0.45%) Amazon Athena
18 34 (0.45%) Redis
Development Applications
1 468 (6.21%) JIRA
2 387 (5.14%) Git
3 343 (4.55%) Jenkins
4 287 (3.81%) GitLab
5 89 (1.18%) Selenium
6 70 (0.93%) Postman
7 60 (0.80%) JUnit
8 57 (0.76%) Cypress.io
9 47 (0.62%) SonarQube
10 46 (0.61%) Bitbucket
10 46 (0.61%) Oracle APEX
11 45 (0.60%) Artifactory
12 36 (0.48%) Maven
13 35 (0.46%) Cucumber
14 31 (0.41%) REST Assured
15 30 (0.40%) Mockito
16 23 (0.31%) Metasploit
16 23 (0.31%) Rational DOORS
17 22 (0.29%) MSI
18 21 (0.28%) Burp Suite
General
1 1,940 (25.76%) Public Sector
2 1,907 (25.32%) Social Skills
3 666 (8.84%) Analytical Skills
4 534 (7.09%) Finance
5 296 (3.93%) Military
6 221 (2.93%) Documentation Skills
7 190 (2.52%) Telecoms
8 185 (2.46%) Manufacturing
9 131 (1.74%) Marketing
10 128 (1.70%) Aerospace
10 128 (1.70%) Electronics
11 110 (1.46%) Organisational Skills
12 109 (1.45%) Legal
13 98 (1.30%) Presentation Skills
14 88 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
15 86 (1.14%) Banking
16 73 (0.97%) Law
17 48 (0.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 34 (0.45%) Police
19 30 (0.40%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,018 (13.52%) Architect
2 729 (9.68%) Developer
3 630 (8.37%) Senior
4 546 (7.25%) Analyst
5 490 (6.51%) Consultant
6 421 (5.59%) Lead
7 364 (4.83%) DevOps Engineer
8 246 (3.27%) Data Engineer
9 234 (3.11%) Support Engineer
10 227 (3.01%) Network Engineer
11 182 (2.42%) Technical Architect
12 181 (2.40%) Business Analyst
13 176 (2.34%) Software Engineer
14 171 (2.27%) Solutions Architect
15 145 (1.93%) Azure Engineer
15 145 (1.93%) Tester
16 137 (1.82%) Project Manager
17 136 (1.81%) AWS Engineer
18 129 (1.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 128 (1.70%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 313 (4.16%) REST
2 180 (2.39%) Node.js
3 171 (2.27%) React
4 153 (2.03%) Kafka
5 148 (1.97%) Spring
6 144 (1.91%) LDAP
7 141 (1.87%) SOAP
8 140 (1.86%) JSON
9 119 (1.58%) Spring Boot
10 103 (1.37%) HTML
11 96 (1.27%) .NET
11 96 (1.27%) RESTful
12 95 (1.26%) XML
13 94 (1.25%) OAuth
14 92 (1.22%) Oracle Fusion
15 91 (1.21%) CSS
16 84 (1.12%) AngularJS
17 79 (1.05%) PySpark
17 79 (1.05%) Web Services
18 78 (1.04%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 238 (3.16%) Data Centre
2 223 (2.96%) Product Ownership
3 210 (2.79%) Cloud Native
4 204 (2.71%) Onboarding
5 190 (2.52%) PKI
6 138 (1.83%) Management Information System
7 126 (1.67%) Security Posture
8 106 (1.41%) Enterprise Software
9 105 (1.39%) Self-Motivation
10 94 (1.25%) Replication
11 92 (1.22%) Legacy Systems
12 73 (0.97%) Cyber Threat
13 69 (0.92%) Driving Licence
14 61 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
15 56 (0.74%) Hybrid Cloud
15 56 (0.74%) Public Cloud
16 49 (0.65%) Private Cloud
17 44 (0.58%) CMDB
18 43 (0.57%) Distributed Systems
19 42 (0.56%) Cyber Defence
Operating Systems
1 815 (10.82%) Windows
2 582 (7.73%) Linux
3 205 (2.72%) Windows Server
4 177 (2.35%) Windows 10
5 98 (1.30%) Unix
6 95 (1.26%) Android
7 93 (1.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 66 (0.88%) Mac OS
9 44 (0.58%) Ubuntu
10 38 (0.50%) VMS
11 32 (0.42%) 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 (0.19%) Mac OS X
16 12 (0.16%) Amazon Linux
16 12 (0.16%) Solaris
17 10 (0.13%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,436 (19.07%) Agile
2 1,194 (15.85%) DevOps
3 1,038 (13.78%) CI/CD
4 979 (13.00%) Problem-Solving
5 680 (9.03%) Migration
6 652 (8.66%) Stakeholder Management
7 545 (7.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 527 (7.00%) Continuous Improvement
9 504 (6.69%) Cybersecurity
10 478 (6.35%) Infrastructure as Code
11 467 (6.20%) ITIL
12 442 (5.87%) Test Automation
13 410 (5.44%) Analytics
14 397 (5.27%) Containerisation
15 392 (5.21%) Business Intelligence
16 376 (4.99%) Roadmaps
17 368 (4.89%) Service Management
18 344 (4.57%) Scrum
19 340 (4.51%) Software Engineering
20 315 (4.18%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 917 (12.18%) Python
2 592 (7.86%) SQL
3 536 (7.12%) PowerShell
4 407 (5.40%) Java
5 347 (4.61%) JavaScript
6 198 (2.63%) Bash
7 171 (2.27%) TypeScript
8 136 (1.81%) C#
9 88 (1.17%) C++
10 77 (1.02%) Go
11 71 (0.94%) Shell Script
12 67 (0.89%) PL/SQL
13 64 (0.85%) C
14 46 (0.61%) Ada
15 44 (0.58%) Ruby
15 44 (0.58%) Scala
16 36 (0.48%) Bicep
16 36 (0.48%) MATLAB
17 33 (0.44%) ABAP
18 27 (0.36%) Perl
Qualifications
1 5,782 (76.78%) SC Cleared
2 1,280 (17.00%) DV Cleared
3 381 (5.06%) Degree
4 222 (2.95%) BPSS Clearance
5 145 (1.93%) CISSP
6 122 (1.62%) Cisco Certification
7 117 (1.55%) Azure Certification
8 114 (1.51%) Microsoft Certification
9 105 (1.39%) CCNP
10 97 (1.29%) AWS Certification
11 89 (1.18%) CISM
12 64 (0.85%) ITIL Certification
13 63 (0.84%) Computer Science Degree
14 55 (0.73%) CCNA
15 50 (0.66%) CEH
16 49 (0.65%) GIAC
17 48 (0.64%) TOGAF Certification
18 42 (0.56%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 40 (0.53%) CHECK Team Member
20 39 (0.52%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 246 (3.27%) QA
2 236 (3.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 226 (3.00%) NIST
4 189 (2.51%) NCSC
5 180 (2.39%) Data Quality
6 158 (2.10%) GDPR
7 132 (1.75%) Accessibility
8 114 (1.51%) SLA
9 75 (1.00%) PMO
10 53 (0.70%) GRC
11 50 (0.66%) JSP 440
12 43 (0.57%) WCAG
13 38 (0.50%) Def Stans
14 35 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
15 30 (0.40%) PCI DSS
16 29 (0.39%) COBIT
17 25 (0.33%) NIST 800
18 20 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 19 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
20 18 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 554 (7.36%) Docker
2 473 (6.28%) Active Directory
3 225 (2.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 74 (0.98%) VMware NSX
5 63 (0.84%) vSphere
6 57 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
6 57 (0.76%) VMware ESXi
7 49 (0.65%) Hyper-V
8 28 (0.37%) Firmware
9 27 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
10 17 (0.23%) BitLocker
11 12 (0.16%) NFS
11 12 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 12 (0.16%) Squid
12 11 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
13 9 (0.12%) DFS Replication
13 9 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
13 9 (0.12%) Postfix
14 7 (0.093%) Virtual Servers
15 6 (0.080%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 704 (9.35%) Kubernetes
2 639 (8.48%) Terraform
3 276 (3.66%) Ansible
4 179 (2.38%) Grafana
5 150 (1.99%) Prometheus
6 106 (1.41%) SCCM
6 106 (1.41%) Single Sign-On
7 97 (1.29%) vCenter Server
8 85 (1.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 63 (0.84%) Microsoft Intune
10 60 (0.80%) Argo
11 36 (0.48%) Kibana
12 35 (0.46%) Packer
12 35 (0.46%) Podman
13 33 (0.44%) OPNET
14 28 (0.37%) vRealize
15 27 (0.36%) Progress Chef
15 27 (0.36%) Puppet
16 25 (0.33%) Nmap
17 21 (0.28%) Nessus
Vendors
1 957 (12.71%) Microsoft
2 430 (5.71%) Oracle
3 402 (5.34%) SAP
4 396 (5.26%) Cisco
5 391 (5.19%) VMware
6 307 (4.08%) ServiceNow
7 205 (2.72%) Splunk
8 150 (1.99%) Red Hat
9 130 (1.73%) Palo Alto
10 123 (1.63%) CyberArk
11 119 (1.58%) Juniper
12 114 (1.51%) Google
13 112 (1.49%) Databricks
14 105 (1.39%) Atlassian
15 97 (1.29%) Dell
16 95 (1.26%) Salesforce
17 77 (1.02%) HP
18 74 (0.98%) Dynatrace
19 67 (0.89%) SolarWinds
20 66 (0.88%) Aruba