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

6 months to
21 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 8,122 4,654 7,059
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.24% 18.00% 18.60%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.07% 59.70% 59.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,547 2,980 4,467
10th Percentile £356 £320 £356
25th Percentile £445 £440 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £548 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.20% -0.36% -2.65%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £703 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.42% -2.18% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 714 241 490
10th Percentile £17.69 £21.25 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.79 £25.75 £40.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £58.00
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% +3.46% -3.34%
75th Percentile £65.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £79.96 £75.50 £83.40
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £55.51 £58.15
% change year-on-year -54.69% -4.55% -3.08%

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 11,931 7,796 11,779
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.15% 30.16% 31.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,922 4,791 7,261
10th Percentile £325 £294 £295
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.42% -2.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 924 372 895
10th Percentile £16.01 £20.01 £14.25
25th Percentile £19.00 £25.26 £21.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £48.40 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -48.04% +7.56% -2.17%
75th Percentile £65.00 £68.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.52 £83.13 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year -37.13% -11.11% -4.26%

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 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 21 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 21 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 2,817 £525 - 480
South East +1 1,728 £522 -5.09% 613
South West 0 1,303 £550 -0.72% 357
North of England -2 831 £498 +3.65% 213
Midlands +4 821 £500 -9.09% 190
West Midlands +2 646 £500 -9.26% 137
North West 0 536 £500 +5.26% 119
East of England +1 343 £500 - 171
Yorkshire -8 174 £500 -4.76% 49
East Midlands +2 173 £425 -17.07% 52
North East 0 148 £450 -10.00% 46
South Coast - 1 - -
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
1 300 (3.69%) Confluence
2 189 (2.33%) SharePoint
3 132 (1.63%) Microsoft Exchange
4 123 (1.51%) SAS
5 68 (0.84%) Apache
6 65 (0.80%) Apache Spark
7 41 (0.50%) Apache Airflow
8 40 (0.49%) nginx
9 35 (0.43%) WebLogic
10 32 (0.39%) Skype for Business
11 20 (0.25%) Jupyter
12 17 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
13 15 (0.18%) CMS
14 10 (0.12%) Tuxedo
15 9 (0.11%) IIS
16 8 (0.098%) OpenStack
17 7 (0.086%) Oracle Workflow
17 7 (0.086%) Tomcat
18 6 (0.074%) ArcGIS
19 5 (0.062%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 246 (3.03%) Microsoft Office
2 178 (2.19%) Microsoft Excel
3 115 (1.42%) Microsoft Project
4 68 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 40 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
7 9 (0.11%) Simulink
8 5 (0.062%) Siemens NX
8 5 (0.062%) Windchill
9 4 (0.049%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.049%) Chatbot
9 4 (0.049%) Oracle Smart View
9 4 (0.049%) Sketch
10 3 (0.037%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.037%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 2 (0.025%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.025%) CATIA
11 2 (0.025%) Lectora
11 2 (0.025%) PTC Creo
11 2 (0.025%) Stateflow
Business Applications
1 124 (1.53%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.46%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 28 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
4 24 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
5 22 (0.27%) Teamcenter
6 20 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
7 19 (0.23%) SAP MM
8 15 (0.18%) Maximo
8 15 (0.18%) SAP WM
9 13 (0.16%) SAP EWM
9 13 (0.16%) SAP QM
10 12 (0.15%) Oracle Assets
10 12 (0.15%) SAP PP
10 12 (0.15%) SAP VC
11 11 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
11 11 (0.14%) SAP HCM
12 10 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
12 10 (0.12%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 9 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
13 9 (0.11%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,344 (16.55%) AWS
2 1,343 (16.54%) Azure
3 351 (4.32%) GitHub
4 346 (4.26%) GCP
5 296 (3.64%) Power Platform
6 294 (3.62%) Azure DevOps
7 290 (3.57%) Microsoft 365
8 230 (2.83%) Serverless
9 212 (2.61%) Entra ID
10 184 (2.27%) Amazon S3
11 177 (2.18%) GitHub Actions
12 168 (2.07%) OpenShift
13 151 (1.86%) AWS Lambda
14 119 (1.47%) Amazon EC2
15 109 (1.34%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 106 (1.31%) AWS CloudFormation
17 97 (1.19%) Amazon EKS
18 96 (1.18%) IaaS
19 94 (1.16%) OCI
20 93 (1.15%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 402 (4.95%) Firewall
2 263 (3.24%) DNS
3 200 (2.46%) Network Security
4 170 (2.09%) WAN
5 164 (2.02%) VPN
6 135 (1.66%) LAN
7 129 (1.59%) BGP
8 126 (1.55%) TCP/IP
9 122 (1.50%) DHCP
10 87 (1.07%) OSPF
11 85 (1.05%) Wireless
12 81 (1.00%) VLAN
13 68 (0.84%) Wi-Fi
14 66 (0.81%) MPLS
15 55 (0.68%) IPsec
16 51 (0.63%) SAN
17 50 (0.62%) SSL
18 45 (0.55%) Cisco ISE
19 40 (0.49%) Skype
20 36 (0.44%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 214 (2.63%) Power BI
2 210 (2.59%) PostgreSQL
3 128 (1.58%) Data Warehouse
4 111 (1.37%) SQL Server
5 103 (1.27%) Metadata
6 94 (1.16%) Oracle Database
7 91 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
8 85 (1.05%) MongoDB
9 83 (1.02%) NoSQL
10 76 (0.94%) Relational Database
11 69 (0.85%) Elasticsearch
12 62 (0.76%) Azure SQL Database
13 52 (0.64%) Pentaho
14 50 (0.62%) Data Lake
15 47 (0.58%) Big Data
16 44 (0.54%) MySQL
17 43 (0.53%) Tableau
18 36 (0.44%) Amazon Athena
18 36 (0.44%) Amazon Redshift
19 35 (0.43%) SAS Enterprise Guide
Development Applications
1 499 (6.14%) JIRA
2 406 (5.00%) Git
3 352 (4.33%) Jenkins
4 306 (3.77%) GitLab
5 102 (1.26%) Selenium
6 75 (0.92%) JUnit
7 73 (0.90%) Postman
8 60 (0.74%) Cypress.io
9 49 (0.60%) SonarQube
10 45 (0.55%) Oracle APEX
11 44 (0.54%) Artifactory
12 41 (0.50%) Cucumber
12 41 (0.50%) Maven
13 39 (0.48%) Bitbucket
14 34 (0.42%) Mockito
14 34 (0.42%) REST Assured
15 28 (0.34%) Rational DOORS
16 25 (0.31%) JMeter
17 24 (0.30%) Metasploit
18 22 (0.27%) Burp Suite
General
1 2,066 (25.44%) Public Sector
2 1,997 (24.59%) Social Skills
3 695 (8.56%) Analytical Skills
4 575 (7.08%) Finance
5 317 (3.90%) Military
6 236 (2.91%) Documentation Skills
7 176 (2.17%) Telecoms
8 169 (2.08%) Manufacturing
9 168 (2.07%) Aerospace
10 126 (1.55%) Legal
11 118 (1.45%) Organisational Skills
12 116 (1.43%) Marketing
13 111 (1.37%) Electronics
14 103 (1.27%) Influencing Skills
15 101 (1.24%) Presentation Skills
16 83 (1.02%) Banking
17 66 (0.81%) Law
18 46 (0.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 37 (0.46%) Police
20 35 (0.43%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,129 (13.90%) Architect
2 765 (9.42%) Developer
3 682 (8.40%) Senior
4 623 (7.67%) Analyst
5 479 (5.90%) Consultant
6 463 (5.70%) Lead
7 371 (4.57%) DevOps Engineer
8 287 (3.53%) Data Engineer
9 233 (2.87%) Network Engineer
10 224 (2.76%) Support Engineer
11 218 (2.68%) Business Analyst
12 200 (2.46%) Software Engineer
13 199 (2.45%) Technical Architect
14 183 (2.25%) Solutions Architect
15 161 (1.98%) Tester
16 149 (1.83%) Azure Engineer
17 142 (1.75%) AWS Engineer
18 140 (1.72%) Administrator
19 139 (1.71%) Project Manager
20 133 (1.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 320 (3.94%) REST
2 184 (2.27%) Node.js
3 182 (2.24%) Spring
4 173 (2.13%) React
5 170 (2.09%) Kafka
6 147 (1.81%) JSON
7 141 (1.74%) LDAP
7 141 (1.74%) SOAP
8 139 (1.71%) Spring Boot
9 102 (1.26%) .NET
10 96 (1.18%) HTML
11 95 (1.17%) RESTful
12 93 (1.15%) OAuth
13 91 (1.12%) XML
14 90 (1.11%) AngularJS
14 90 (1.11%) Oracle Fusion
15 88 (1.08%) CSS
16 87 (1.07%) PySpark
17 86 (1.06%) Web Services
18 76 (0.94%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 265 (3.26%) Data Centre
2 243 (2.99%) Product Ownership
3 227 (2.79%) Cloud Native
4 214 (2.63%) Onboarding
5 194 (2.39%) PKI
6 146 (1.80%) Management Information System
7 130 (1.60%) Security Posture
8 106 (1.31%) Enterprise Software
8 106 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
9 104 (1.28%) Legacy Systems
10 90 (1.11%) Replication
11 68 (0.84%) Hybrid Cloud
12 67 (0.82%) Driving Licence
13 64 (0.79%) Public Cloud
14 63 (0.78%) Cyber Threat
15 61 (0.75%) Security Operations Centre
16 57 (0.70%) Distributed Systems
17 45 (0.55%) Private Cloud
18 42 (0.52%) Algorithms
18 42 (0.52%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 797 (9.81%) Windows
2 622 (7.66%) Linux
3 206 (2.54%) Windows Server
4 155 (1.91%) Windows 10
5 113 (1.39%) Android
6 112 (1.38%) Unix
7 106 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 65 (0.80%) Mac OS
9 43 (0.53%) Ubuntu
10 42 (0.52%) Apple iOS
11 37 (0.46%) VMS
12 23 (0.28%) CentOS
12 23 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
13 21 (0.26%) Windows 7
14 19 (0.23%) Solaris
15 16 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
16 14 (0.17%) Mac OS X
17 12 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
18 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
19 8 (0.098%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,551 (19.10%) Agile
2 1,234 (15.19%) DevOps
3 1,076 (13.25%) CI/CD
4 1,041 (12.82%) Problem-Solving
5 733 (9.02%) Stakeholder Management
6 710 (8.74%) Migration
7 628 (7.73%) Continuous Improvement
8 563 (6.93%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 543 (6.69%) Cybersecurity
10 508 (6.25%) ITIL
11 499 (6.14%) Infrastructure as Code
12 465 (5.73%) Test Automation
13 434 (5.34%) Roadmaps
14 433 (5.33%) Analytics
15 421 (5.18%) Containerisation
16 396 (4.88%) Service Management
17 395 (4.86%) Business Intelligence
18 382 (4.70%) Software Engineering
19 379 (4.67%) Scrum
20 353 (4.35%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 965 (11.88%) Python
2 659 (8.11%) SQL
3 532 (6.55%) PowerShell
4 464 (5.71%) Java
5 347 (4.27%) JavaScript
6 207 (2.55%) Bash
7 169 (2.08%) TypeScript
8 142 (1.75%) C#
9 88 (1.08%) Shell Script
10 87 (1.07%) C++
11 86 (1.06%) PL/SQL
12 75 (0.92%) Go
13 59 (0.73%) C
14 49 (0.60%) Ada
15 47 (0.58%) Scala
16 46 (0.57%) Ruby
17 39 (0.48%) Bicep
18 34 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
19 32 (0.39%) MATLAB
20 31 (0.38%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 6,189 (76.20%) SC Cleared
2 1,413 (17.40%) DV Cleared
3 397 (4.89%) Degree
4 250 (3.08%) BPSS Clearance
5 154 (1.90%) CISSP
6 146 (1.80%) Cisco Certification
7 122 (1.50%) Azure Certification
8 113 (1.39%) Microsoft Certification
9 111 (1.37%) CCNP
10 108 (1.33%) AWS Certification
11 97 (1.19%) CISM
12 68 (0.84%) Computer Science Degree
13 62 (0.76%) CCNA
14 61 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
15 60 (0.74%) TOGAF Certification
16 47 (0.58%) GIAC
17 44 (0.54%) CEH
18 43 (0.53%) PMP
19 41 (0.50%) PMI Certification
19 41 (0.50%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 270 (3.32%) QA
2 263 (3.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 245 (3.02%) NIST
4 206 (2.54%) Data Quality
5 189 (2.33%) NCSC
6 163 (2.01%) GDPR
7 151 (1.86%) Accessibility
8 114 (1.40%) SLA
9 91 (1.12%) PMO
10 56 (0.69%) GRC
11 51 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 44 (0.54%) WCAG
13 41 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials
14 38 (0.47%) Def Stans
15 32 (0.39%) PCI DSS
16 30 (0.37%) COBIT
16 30 (0.37%) NIST 800
17 22 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 21 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 18 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 573 (7.05%) Docker
2 465 (5.73%) Active Directory
3 231 (2.84%) VMware Infrastructure
4 72 (0.89%) VMware NSX
5 63 (0.78%) vSphere
6 58 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
7 57 (0.70%) VMware ESXi
8 55 (0.68%) Hyper-V
9 24 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
10 22 (0.27%) Firmware
11 18 (0.22%) BitLocker
11 18 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
12 16 (0.20%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 15 (0.18%) NFS
14 11 (0.14%) Postfix
14 11 (0.14%) Squid
15 7 (0.086%) vCloud
15 7 (0.086%) Virtual Servers
16 6 (0.074%) Terminal Services
17 5 (0.062%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 736 (9.06%) Kubernetes
2 673 (8.29%) Terraform
3 277 (3.41%) Ansible
4 200 (2.46%) Grafana
5 165 (2.03%) Prometheus
6 107 (1.32%) Single Sign-On
7 95 (1.17%) SCCM
8 90 (1.11%) vCenter Server
9 82 (1.01%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 64 (0.79%) Argo
11 61 (0.75%) Microsoft Intune
12 38 (0.47%) Podman
13 37 (0.46%) Packer
14 36 (0.44%) FortiGate
15 31 (0.38%) Kibana
16 30 (0.37%) OPNET
17 27 (0.33%) Puppet
18 26 (0.32%) Nmap
19 25 (0.31%) Progress Chef
20 23 (0.28%) vRealize
Vendors
1 954 (11.75%) Microsoft
2 458 (5.64%) Oracle
3 406 (5.00%) Cisco
4 405 (4.99%) VMware
5 379 (4.67%) SAP
6 350 (4.31%) ServiceNow
7 210 (2.59%) Splunk
8 171 (2.11%) Red Hat
9 129 (1.59%) Juniper
9 129 (1.59%) Palo Alto
10 124 (1.53%) Databricks
10 124 (1.53%) Google
11 121 (1.49%) CyberArk
12 110 (1.35%) Atlassian
13 109 (1.34%) Salesforce
14 91 (1.12%) Dell
15 77 (0.95%) SolarWinds
16 75 (0.92%) HP
17 70 (0.86%) Aruba
17 70 (0.86%) IBM