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

6 months to
21 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 3 2
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,061 4,585 7,157
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.91% 18.71% 19.33%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.63% 59.50% 61.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,277 3,066 4,653
10th Percentile £363 £331 £350
25th Percentile £447 £450 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 767 257 478
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £25.15 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £57.50 £53.02
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +8.46% -11.64%
75th Percentile £73.46 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.25 £80.04 £83.51
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £52.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +4.76% -4.55% -10.57%

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 13,013 7,706 11,642
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.90% 31.44% 31.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,730 4,933 7,174
10th Percentile £340 £300 £300
25th Percentile £425 £416 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £623 £629 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £518 £525 £536
% change year-on-year -1.43% -2.05% -2.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 985 430 960
10th Percentile £17.02 £18.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £24.54 £17.86
Median hourly rate £47.00 £50.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.00% +25.00% -23.81%
75th Percentile £71.50 £68.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.36 £82.25 £75.42
UK median hourly rate £45.46 £42.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +6.96% +6.25% -25.93%

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 April 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 April 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 April 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 3,193 £525 - 491
South East +1 2,147 £531 -3.44% 485
South West 0 1,329 £538 -4.40% 346
Midlands +4 876 £483 -9.34% 181
North of England -1 854 £489 -2.23% 288
West Midlands +4 734 £485 -9.94% 125
North West -1 522 £500 - 155
East of England +2 372 £500 +11.11% 169
Yorkshire -6 209 £488 -7.14% 65
North East +1 158 £450 -6.25% 69
East Midlands -2 138 £450 -7.69% 56
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
1 357 (3.94%) Confluence
2 205 (2.26%) SharePoint
3 139 (1.53%) Microsoft Exchange
4 111 (1.23%) SAS
5 83 (0.92%) Apache Spark
6 72 (0.79%) Apache
7 55 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
8 45 (0.50%) nginx
9 34 (0.38%) WebLogic
10 21 (0.23%) Jupyter
11 15 (0.17%) IIS
11 15 (0.17%) Skype for Business
12 14 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
13 13 (0.14%) CMS
13 13 (0.14%) Tomcat
14 10 (0.11%) Oracle Application Server
14 10 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
15 8 (0.088%) Apache Superset
15 8 (0.088%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 220 (2.43%) Microsoft Office
2 190 (2.10%) Microsoft Excel
3 120 (1.32%) Microsoft Project
4 80 (0.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 42 (0.46%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.13%) Simulink
8 5 (0.055%) Notepad++
9 4 (0.044%) Siemens NX
9 4 (0.044%) Windchill
10 2 (0.022%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.022%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.022%) CATIA
10 2 (0.022%) Chatbot
10 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.022%) Lectora
10 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
10 2 (0.022%) Sketch
11 1 (0.011%) Camtasia
11 1 (0.011%) InVision
Business Applications
1 83 (0.92%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.46%) Remedy ITSM
3 41 (0.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 28 (0.31%) Dynamics CRM
5 26 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 25 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
7 18 (0.20%) Maximo
8 13 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
8 13 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.14%) SAP PP
8 13 (0.14%) Temenos T24
9 12 (0.13%) SAP PSCD
10 11 (0.12%) Findur
11 10 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
11 10 (0.11%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.099%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 8 (0.088%) iTrent
13 8 (0.088%) SAP HR
13 8 (0.088%) Workday HCM
14 7 (0.077%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 1,530 (16.89%) Azure
2 1,489 (16.43%) AWS
3 385 (4.25%) GitHub
4 381 (4.20%) GCP
5 358 (3.95%) Azure DevOps
6 322 (3.55%) Power Platform
7 263 (2.90%) Serverless
8 254 (2.80%) Microsoft 365
9 220 (2.43%) Entra ID
10 208 (2.30%) GitHub Actions
11 203 (2.24%) Amazon S3
12 177 (1.95%) AWS Lambda
13 131 (1.45%) PaaS
14 130 (1.43%) OpenShift
15 127 (1.40%) Amazon EC2
16 122 (1.35%) AWS CloudFormation
17 120 (1.32%) IaaS
18 109 (1.20%) Azure Data Factory
19 108 (1.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 100 (1.10%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 419 (4.62%) Firewall
2 260 (2.87%) DNS
3 214 (2.36%) Network Security
4 207 (2.28%) WAN
5 190 (2.10%) LAN
6 159 (1.75%) VPN
7 142 (1.57%) BGP
8 138 (1.52%) DHCP
9 116 (1.28%) OSPF
10 105 (1.16%) TCP/IP
11 99 (1.09%) VLAN
12 81 (0.89%) Wireless
13 67 (0.74%) Wi-Fi
14 59 (0.65%) MPLS
15 53 (0.58%) SAN
16 45 (0.50%) IPsec
17 43 (0.47%) SD-WAN
17 43 (0.47%) Structured Cabling
17 43 (0.47%) VXLAN
18 42 (0.46%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 246 (2.71%) Power BI
2 232 (2.56%) PostgreSQL
3 187 (2.06%) Data Warehouse
4 178 (1.96%) SQL Server
5 120 (1.32%) Metadata
6 104 (1.15%) Amazon RDS
7 97 (1.07%) NoSQL
8 96 (1.06%) Oracle Database
9 85 (0.94%) MongoDB
9 85 (0.94%) Relational Database
10 76 (0.84%) Azure SQL Database
11 72 (0.79%) Elasticsearch
12 70 (0.77%) Pentaho
13 69 (0.76%) Data Lake
13 69 (0.76%) MySQL
14 66 (0.73%) Tableau
15 64 (0.71%) Amazon Redshift
16 60 (0.66%) Oracle Reports
17 49 (0.54%) Amazon Athena
18 45 (0.50%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 573 (6.32%) JIRA
2 447 (4.93%) Git
3 345 (3.81%) Jenkins
4 304 (3.36%) GitLab
5 91 (1.00%) Selenium
6 76 (0.84%) Postman
7 69 (0.76%) JUnit
8 56 (0.62%) SonarQube
9 51 (0.56%) Bitbucket
10 49 (0.54%) Rational DOORS
11 43 (0.47%) Artifactory
11 43 (0.47%) Maven
12 42 (0.46%) Oracle APEX
13 38 (0.42%) Cucumber
14 37 (0.41%) Mockito
15 35 (0.39%) Cypress.io
16 34 (0.38%) JMeter
17 28 (0.31%) Visual Studio
18 27 (0.30%) Zephyr
19 23 (0.25%) REST Assured
General
1 2,078 (22.93%) Public Sector
2 1,996 (22.03%) Social Skills
3 752 (8.30%) Analytical Skills
4 646 (7.13%) Finance
5 330 (3.64%) Military
6 254 (2.80%) Documentation Skills
7 214 (2.36%) Aerospace
8 150 (1.66%) Legal
9 137 (1.51%) Telecoms
10 130 (1.43%) Manufacturing
11 119 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
12 112 (1.24%) Banking
13 102 (1.13%) Organisational Skills
14 97 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
15 80 (0.88%) Law
16 77 (0.85%) Marketing
17 70 (0.77%) Electronics
18 55 (0.61%) Police
19 49 (0.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 34 (0.38%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,355 (14.95%) Architect
2 876 (9.67%) Developer
3 781 (8.62%) Senior
4 656 (7.24%) Analyst
5 600 (6.62%) Lead
6 428 (4.72%) Consultant
7 407 (4.49%) Data Engineer
8 384 (4.24%) DevOps Engineer
9 273 (3.01%) Software Engineer
10 265 (2.92%) Network Engineer
11 261 (2.88%) Technical Architect
12 244 (2.69%) Business Analyst
13 215 (2.37%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 201 (2.22%) Project Manager
15 198 (2.19%) Solutions Architect
16 195 (2.15%) Azure Engineer
17 169 (1.87%) Delivery Manager
18 165 (1.82%) Administrator
19 164 (1.81%) Security Architect
20 154 (1.70%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 313 (3.45%) REST
2 206 (2.27%) Spring
3 177 (1.95%) Node.js
4 166 (1.83%) Kafka
5 159 (1.75%) Spring Boot
6 158 (1.74%) .NET
6 158 (1.74%) React
7 149 (1.64%) JSON
8 135 (1.49%) SOAP
9 133 (1.47%) LDAP
10 129 (1.42%) RESTful
11 113 (1.25%) AngularJS
12 106 (1.17%) PySpark
13 102 (1.13%) Web Services
14 94 (1.04%) OAuth
15 87 (0.96%) Oracle Fusion
16 86 (0.95%) HTML
17 85 (0.94%) XML
18 70 (0.77%) Elastic Stack
19 67 (0.74%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 319 (3.52%) Product Ownership
2 287 (3.17%) Cloud Native
3 267 (2.95%) Data Centre
4 240 (2.65%) Onboarding
5 177 (1.95%) PKI
6 151 (1.67%) Management Information System
7 121 (1.34%) Enterprise Software
8 120 (1.32%) Security Posture
9 119 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
10 116 (1.28%) Legacy Systems
11 115 (1.27%) Replication
12 105 (1.16%) Distributed Systems
13 78 (0.86%) Public Cloud
14 74 (0.82%) Data Structures
15 71 (0.78%) Hybrid Cloud
16 68 (0.75%) Clustering
17 67 (0.74%) Security Operations Centre
18 60 (0.66%) Virtual Team
19 55 (0.61%) CMDB
19 55 (0.61%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 773 (8.53%) Windows
2 647 (7.14%) Linux
3 234 (2.58%) Windows Server
4 136 (1.50%) Unix
5 117 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 106 (1.17%) Windows 10
7 104 (1.15%) Android
8 50 (0.55%) Apple iOS
9 48 (0.53%) Mac OS
10 34 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 29 (0.32%) VMS
12 27 (0.30%) Solaris
13 22 (0.24%) Windows Server 2016
14 21 (0.23%) AIX
14 21 (0.23%) CentOS
15 19 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
16 15 (0.17%) Windows 7
17 12 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
18 8 (0.088%) Embedded Linux
18 8 (0.088%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,834 (20.24%) Agile
2 1,364 (15.05%) DevOps
3 1,177 (12.99%) CI/CD
4 1,032 (11.39%) Problem-Solving
5 852 (9.40%) Stakeholder Management
6 797 (8.80%) Migration
7 788 (8.70%) Continuous Improvement
8 673 (7.43%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 602 (6.64%) ITIL
10 571 (6.30%) Infrastructure as Code
11 528 (5.83%) Cybersecurity
12 514 (5.67%) Analytics
13 513 (5.66%) Test Automation
14 499 (5.51%) Roadmaps
15 488 (5.39%) Software Engineering
16 465 (5.13%) Containerisation
17 446 (4.92%) Scrum
18 443 (4.89%) Data Modelling
19 429 (4.73%) Service Management
20 403 (4.45%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 1,005 (11.09%) Python
2 846 (9.34%) SQL
3 550 (6.07%) Java
4 533 (5.88%) PowerShell
5 322 (3.55%) JavaScript
6 197 (2.17%) C#
7 186 (2.05%) Bash
8 149 (1.64%) TypeScript
9 106 (1.17%) PL/SQL
10 93 (1.03%) C++
11 90 (0.99%) Shell Script
12 68 (0.75%) Go
13 65 (0.72%) Scala
14 58 (0.64%) C
15 57 (0.63%) Ruby
16 49 (0.54%) Bicep
17 42 (0.46%) Ada
17 42 (0.46%) Apex Code
18 41 (0.45%) R
19 39 (0.43%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 6,829 (75.37%) SC Cleared
2 1,674 (18.47%) DV Cleared
3 419 (4.62%) Degree
4 275 (3.03%) BPSS Clearance
5 175 (1.93%) Cisco Certification
6 153 (1.69%) CISSP
7 134 (1.48%) Azure Certification
8 119 (1.31%) CCNP
9 112 (1.24%) AWS Certification
10 96 (1.06%) CISM
11 94 (1.04%) Microsoft Certification
12 75 (0.83%) CCNA
13 70 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
14 69 (0.76%) PMP
15 65 (0.72%) TOGAF Certification
16 60 (0.66%) PMI Certification
17 59 (0.65%) Computer Science Degree
18 52 (0.57%) ISTQB
19 49 (0.54%) GIAC
20 46 (0.51%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 326 (3.60%) QA
2 265 (2.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 261 (2.88%) Data Quality
4 260 (2.87%) NIST
5 181 (2.00%) NCSC
6 151 (1.67%) GDPR
7 139 (1.53%) Accessibility
8 138 (1.52%) PMO
9 101 (1.11%) SLA
10 63 (0.70%) GRC
11 62 (0.68%) JSP 440
12 41 (0.45%) NIST 800
13 40 (0.44%) COBIT
14 39 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
15 34 (0.38%) PCI DSS
16 31 (0.34%) Def Stans
16 31 (0.34%) WCAG
17 26 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 25 (0.28%) RMADS
19 18 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 594 (6.56%) Docker
2 445 (4.91%) Active Directory
3 263 (2.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 85 (0.94%) VMware NSX
5 79 (0.87%) VMware ESXi
6 73 (0.81%) Hyper-V
7 66 (0.73%) vSphere
8 53 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
9 34 (0.38%) Firmware
10 23 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
11 20 (0.22%) BitLocker
11 20 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
12 17 (0.19%) NFS
12 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 16 (0.18%) Postfix
14 12 (0.13%) vCloud
15 10 (0.11%) Squid
16 8 (0.088%) Microsoft App-V
17 5 (0.055%) Corosync
17 5 (0.055%) KVM
Systems Management
1 754 (8.32%) Kubernetes
2 714 (7.88%) Terraform
3 289 (3.19%) Ansible
4 216 (2.38%) Grafana
5 177 (1.95%) Prometheus
6 90 (0.99%) vCenter Server
7 89 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
8 80 (0.88%) SCCM
9 67 (0.74%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 56 (0.62%) Microsoft Intune
11 53 (0.58%) FortiGate
12 52 (0.57%) Argo
13 37 (0.41%) Packer
13 37 (0.41%) Puppet
14 36 (0.40%) Podman
15 32 (0.35%) Progress Chef
16 30 (0.33%) OPNET
17 26 (0.29%) Kibana
17 26 (0.29%) Oracle RMAN
18 25 (0.28%) Nagios
Vendors
1 966 (10.66%) Microsoft
2 556 (6.14%) Oracle
3 455 (5.02%) VMware
4 380 (4.19%) ServiceNow
5 367 (4.05%) Cisco
6 331 (3.65%) SAP
7 209 (2.31%) Splunk
8 182 (2.01%) Databricks
9 169 (1.87%) Red Hat
10 153 (1.69%) Google
11 121 (1.34%) Salesforce
12 119 (1.31%) Atlassian
13 114 (1.26%) IBM
14 110 (1.21%) Juniper
15 105 (1.16%) Palo Alto
16 100 (1.10%) Talend
17 96 (1.06%) CyberArk
18 82 (0.90%) Remedy
19 78 (0.86%) Citrix
20 74 (0.82%) Fortinet