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

6 months to
4 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 2
Rank change year-on-year +3 -2 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,116 4,514 7,073
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.63% 18.52% 19.18%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.90% 59.10% 61.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,320 2,997 4,647
10th Percentile £363 £336 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £529 £550
% change year-on-year -0.76% -3.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 770 269 488
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.50 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £55.00 £57.30
Median % change year-on-year - -4.02% -4.50%
75th Percentile £73.46 £68.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.36 £80.02 £83.94
UK median hourly rate £54.00 £50.20 £57.30
% change year-on-year +7.58% -12.40% -4.50%

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 13,042 7,638 11,518
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.37% 31.33% 31.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,753 4,846 7,100
10th Percentile £340 £289 £307
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £627 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -0.95% -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 967 440 984
10th Percentile £17.08 £18.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £22.29 £18.10
Median hourly rate £47.50 £44.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.95% +10.00% -23.81%
75th Percentile £71.75 £67.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.44 £81.42 £76.47
UK median hourly rate £47.50 £40.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +18.75% - -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 4 May 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 4 May 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 4 May 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 3,232 £525 - 503
South East +1 2,179 £538 -2.27% 548
South West 0 1,304 £538 -4.44% 385
Midlands +4 900 £475 -9.52% 206
North of England -2 835 £488 -2.50% 343
West Midlands +4 765 £475 -11.55% 137
North West -2 492 £497 -0.70% 169
East of England +2 383 £525 +16.67% 220
Yorkshire -5 206 £476 -9.33% 82
North East +1 171 £475 -6.40% 95
East Midlands -3 129 £450 -5.26% 69
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 (3.88%) Confluence
2 204 (2.24%) SharePoint
3 124 (1.36%) Microsoft Exchange
4 112 (1.23%) SAS
5 79 (0.87%) Apache Spark
6 70 (0.77%) Apache
7 53 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
8 32 (0.35%) nginx
8 32 (0.35%) WebLogic
9 22 (0.24%) Jupyter
10 16 (0.18%) Tomcat
11 15 (0.16%) IIS
12 14 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
13 13 (0.14%) CMS
13 13 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
14 12 (0.13%) Skype for Business
15 9 (0.099%) Palantir Foundry
16 8 (0.088%) Apache Superset
16 8 (0.088%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 205 (2.25%) Microsoft Office
2 184 (2.02%) Microsoft Excel
3 118 (1.29%) Microsoft Project
4 82 (0.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 38 (0.42%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.13%) Simulink
8 7 (0.077%) AutoCAD
9 6 (0.066%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.055%) Notepad++
10 5 (0.055%) Revit
11 4 (0.044%) Siemens NX
11 4 (0.044%) Windchill
12 2 (0.022%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.022%) CATIA
12 2 (0.022%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.022%) Lectora
12 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.022%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 82 (0.90%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (0.50%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 43 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.31%) Dynamics CRM
5 27 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
6 26 (0.29%) Teamcenter
7 17 (0.19%) Maximo
8 13 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.14%) Temenos T24
9 12 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
9 12 (0.13%) SAP PP
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%) Primavera
13 8 (0.088%) SAP HR
13 8 (0.088%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,567 (17.19%) Azure
2 1,477 (16.20%) AWS
3 374 (4.10%) GCP
4 370 (4.06%) GitHub
5 351 (3.85%) Azure DevOps
6 343 (3.76%) Power Platform
7 251 (2.75%) Serverless
8 250 (2.74%) Microsoft 365
9 221 (2.42%) Entra ID
10 206 (2.26%) GitHub Actions
11 196 (2.15%) Amazon S3
12 166 (1.82%) AWS Lambda
13 131 (1.44%) PaaS
14 129 (1.42%) Amazon EC2
15 125 (1.37%) OpenShift
16 113 (1.24%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 111 (1.22%) AWS CloudFormation
18 108 (1.18%) IaaS
18 108 (1.18%) OCI
19 104 (1.14%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 419 (4.60%) Firewall
2 260 (2.85%) DNS
3 212 (2.33%) Network Security
4 210 (2.30%) WAN
5 191 (2.10%) LAN
6 155 (1.70%) VPN
7 141 (1.55%) BGP
8 136 (1.49%) DHCP
9 123 (1.35%) OSPF
10 104 (1.14%) TCP/IP
11 93 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
12 89 (0.98%) VLAN
13 80 (0.88%) Wireless
14 58 (0.64%) MPLS
15 51 (0.56%) SAN
16 50 (0.55%) VXLAN
17 48 (0.53%) SD-WAN
18 46 (0.50%) IPsec
19 44 (0.48%) Ethernet VPN
20 43 (0.47%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 260 (2.85%) Power BI
2 209 (2.29%) PostgreSQL
3 196 (2.15%) Data Warehouse
4 181 (1.99%) SQL Server
5 119 (1.31%) Metadata
6 103 (1.13%) Amazon RDS
7 102 (1.12%) Oracle Database
8 87 (0.95%) NoSQL
9 82 (0.90%) MongoDB
9 82 (0.90%) Relational Database
10 78 (0.86%) Data Lake
11 75 (0.82%) Pentaho
12 71 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
13 68 (0.75%) Azure SQL Database
14 64 (0.70%) Oracle Reports
15 62 (0.68%) Amazon Redshift
16 61 (0.67%) Tableau
17 60 (0.66%) MySQL
18 52 (0.57%) Amazon Athena
19 48 (0.53%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 564 (6.19%) JIRA
2 421 (4.62%) Git
3 340 (3.73%) Jenkins
4 320 (3.51%) GitLab
5 86 (0.94%) Selenium
6 74 (0.81%) Postman
7 69 (0.76%) JUnit
8 57 (0.63%) SonarQube
9 49 (0.54%) Rational DOORS
10 44 (0.48%) Bitbucket
11 41 (0.45%) Artifactory
11 41 (0.45%) Maven
12 38 (0.42%) Cucumber
12 38 (0.42%) JMeter
13 37 (0.41%) Mockito
14 33 (0.36%) Cypress.io
15 32 (0.35%) Visual Studio
16 27 (0.30%) Zephyr
17 23 (0.25%) REST Assured
17 23 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,997 (21.91%) Public Sector
2 1,979 (21.71%) Social Skills
3 715 (7.84%) Analytical Skills
4 644 (7.06%) Finance
5 328 (3.60%) Military
6 256 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
7 219 (2.40%) Aerospace
8 143 (1.57%) Legal
9 123 (1.35%) Telecoms
10 114 (1.25%) Influencing Skills
11 111 (1.22%) Manufacturing
12 108 (1.18%) Banking
13 101 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
14 92 (1.01%) Presentation Skills
15 87 (0.95%) Law
16 60 (0.66%) Marketing
17 57 (0.63%) Police
18 56 (0.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 53 (0.58%) Electronics
20 37 (0.41%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,333 (14.62%) Architect
2 873 (9.58%) Developer
3 778 (8.53%) Senior
4 651 (7.14%) Analyst
5 629 (6.90%) Lead
6 435 (4.77%) Data Engineer
7 410 (4.50%) Consultant
8 403 (4.42%) DevOps Engineer
9 277 (3.04%) Network Engineer
10 269 (2.95%) Software Engineer
11 258 (2.83%) Technical Architect
12 248 (2.72%) Business Analyst
13 242 (2.65%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 209 (2.29%) Project Manager
15 198 (2.17%) Azure Engineer
16 196 (2.15%) Solutions Architect
17 172 (1.89%) Security Architect
18 170 (1.86%) Delivery Manager
19 165 (1.81%) Administrator
19 165 (1.81%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 302 (3.31%) REST
2 211 (2.31%) Spring
3 167 (1.83%) Node.js
4 165 (1.81%) Spring Boot
5 162 (1.78%) Kafka
6 154 (1.69%) .NET
7 152 (1.67%) React
8 141 (1.55%) LDAP
9 134 (1.47%) SOAP
10 129 (1.42%) RESTful
11 122 (1.34%) JSON
12 112 (1.23%) AngularJS
13 99 (1.09%) PySpark
13 99 (1.09%) Web Services
14 87 (0.95%) Oracle Fusion
15 84 (0.92%) HTML
16 82 (0.90%) OAuth
17 78 (0.86%) XML
18 69 (0.76%) Elastic Stack
19 64 (0.70%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 313 (3.43%) Product Ownership
2 305 (3.35%) Cloud Native
3 273 (2.99%) Data Centre
4 262 (2.87%) Onboarding
5 164 (1.80%) PKI
6 135 (1.48%) Management Information System
7 119 (1.31%) Legacy Systems
8 118 (1.29%) Security Posture
9 116 (1.27%) Replication
10 115 (1.26%) Enterprise Software
11 103 (1.13%) Distributed Systems
12 102 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
13 78 (0.86%) Clustering
14 73 (0.80%) Data Structures
14 73 (0.80%) Hybrid Cloud
15 72 (0.79%) Public Cloud
16 63 (0.69%) Virtual Team
17 62 (0.68%) Security Operations Centre
18 55 (0.60%) Cyber Threat
19 54 (0.59%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 778 (8.53%) Windows
2 632 (6.93%) Linux
3 232 (2.54%) Windows Server
4 146 (1.60%) Unix
5 106 (1.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 99 (1.09%) Android
7 97 (1.06%) Windows 10
8 51 (0.56%) Apple iOS
9 47 (0.52%) Mac OS
10 36 (0.39%) Ubuntu
11 33 (0.36%) Solaris
12 28 (0.31%) VMS
13 25 (0.27%) AIX
14 23 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
15 22 (0.24%) CentOS
16 21 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
17 14 (0.15%) Windows 7
18 12 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
19 10 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
20 8 (0.088%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,809 (19.84%) Agile
2 1,386 (15.20%) DevOps
3 1,199 (13.15%) CI/CD
4 1,015 (11.13%) Problem-Solving
5 872 (9.57%) Stakeholder Management
6 804 (8.82%) Continuous Improvement
7 776 (8.51%) Migration
8 671 (7.36%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 601 (6.59%) Infrastructure as Code
10 596 (6.54%) ITIL
11 534 (5.86%) Cybersecurity
12 521 (5.72%) Analytics
12 521 (5.72%) Test Automation
13 506 (5.55%) Software Engineering
14 491 (5.39%) Roadmaps
15 489 (5.36%) Containerisation
16 446 (4.89%) Data Modelling
17 420 (4.61%) Scrum
18 416 (4.56%) Decision-Making
19 403 (4.42%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 984 (10.79%) Python
2 835 (9.16%) SQL
3 564 (6.19%) Java
4 503 (5.52%) PowerShell
5 290 (3.18%) JavaScript
6 199 (2.18%) C#
7 167 (1.83%) Bash
8 143 (1.57%) TypeScript
9 96 (1.05%) PL/SQL
10 92 (1.01%) C++
11 86 (0.94%) Shell Script
12 67 (0.73%) Go
13 63 (0.69%) Scala
14 59 (0.65%) C
15 53 (0.58%) Ruby
16 52 (0.57%) Bicep
17 43 (0.47%) Apex Code
18 41 (0.45%) Ada
19 40 (0.44%) R
20 35 (0.38%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 6,849 (75.13%) SC Cleared
2 1,731 (18.99%) DV Cleared
3 418 (4.59%) Degree
4 263 (2.89%) BPSS Clearance
5 171 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
6 151 (1.66%) CISSP
7 126 (1.38%) Azure Certification
8 110 (1.21%) CCNP
9 105 (1.15%) AWS Certification
10 98 (1.08%) CISM
11 90 (0.99%) Microsoft Certification
12 70 (0.77%) PMP
13 68 (0.75%) CCNA
14 67 (0.73%) TOGAF Certification
15 61 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
15 61 (0.67%) ITIL Certification
16 60 (0.66%) PMI Certification
17 55 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 51 (0.56%) ISTQB
19 46 (0.50%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 340 (3.73%) QA
2 266 (2.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 265 (2.91%) Data Quality
4 262 (2.87%) NIST
5 179 (1.96%) NCSC
6 158 (1.73%) PMO
7 156 (1.71%) Accessibility
8 146 (1.60%) GDPR
9 101 (1.11%) SLA
10 62 (0.68%) GRC
11 57 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 49 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials
13 38 (0.42%) NIST 800
14 34 (0.37%) WCAG
15 31 (0.34%) Def Stans
15 31 (0.34%) PCI DSS
16 30 (0.33%) COBIT
17 26 (0.29%) RMADS
18 19 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
19 18 (0.20%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 577 (6.33%) Docker
2 438 (4.80%) Active Directory
3 267 (2.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 92 (1.01%) VMware ESXi
5 83 (0.91%) VMware NSX
6 75 (0.82%) Hyper-V
7 73 (0.80%) vSphere
8 67 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
9 38 (0.42%) Firmware
10 26 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
11 20 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
12 19 (0.21%) BitLocker
13 17 (0.19%) NFS
13 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 16 (0.18%) Postfix
15 13 (0.14%) vCloud
16 10 (0.11%) Squid
17 8 (0.088%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.066%) Corosync
19 5 (0.055%) KVM
Systems Management
1 748 (8.21%) Kubernetes
2 710 (7.79%) Terraform
3 313 (3.43%) Ansible
4 224 (2.46%) Grafana
5 183 (2.01%) Prometheus
6 97 (1.06%) vCenter Server
7 86 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
8 76 (0.83%) SCCM
9 56 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 52 (0.57%) FortiGate
10 52 (0.57%) Microsoft Intune
11 47 (0.52%) Argo
12 38 (0.42%) Puppet
13 36 (0.39%) Podman
14 32 (0.35%) Progress Chef
15 30 (0.33%) OPNET
16 29 (0.32%) Nagios
16 29 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
17 28 (0.31%) Packer
18 23 (0.25%) Kibana
Vendors
1 973 (10.67%) Microsoft
2 556 (6.10%) Oracle
3 461 (5.06%) VMware
4 375 (4.11%) ServiceNow
5 343 (3.76%) Cisco
6 328 (3.60%) SAP
7 209 (2.29%) Splunk
8 171 (1.88%) Databricks
9 151 (1.66%) Google
9 151 (1.66%) Red Hat
10 115 (1.26%) IBM
11 112 (1.23%) Palo Alto
12 106 (1.16%) Juniper
12 106 (1.16%) Salesforce
13 104 (1.14%) Talend
14 101 (1.11%) Atlassian
15 94 (1.03%) CyberArk
16 83 (0.91%) Remedy
17 80 (0.88%) F5
18 77 (0.84%) SolarWinds