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

6 months to
10 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,828 4,905 7,052
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.93% 18.15% 19.02%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.34% 58.81% 62.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,918 3,197 4,609
10th Percentile £380 £340 £351
25th Percentile £450 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £715 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £530 £530 £550
% change year-on-year - -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 758 404 549
10th Percentile £18.31 £18.51 £14.50
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.50 £25.15 £56.89
Median % change year-on-year +152.49% -55.79% -5.19%
75th Percentile £77.50 £62.24 £71.75
90th Percentile £88.00 £76.25 £80.72
UK median hourly rate £62.50 £25.15 £55.25
% change year-on-year +148.51% -54.48% -7.92%

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 14,173 8,341 11,350
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.62% 30.86% 30.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,556 5,267 7,064
10th Percentile £350 £285 £313
25th Percentile £430 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £716 £716 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £525
% change year-on-year +0.05% -0.05% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,059 580 997
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.13 £14.16
25th Percentile £25.25 £19.87 £20.75
Median hourly rate £53.90 £27.85 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +93.54% -34.47% -22.73%
75th Percentile £74.00 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.62 £76.34 £75.65
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £27.38 £40.94
% change year-on-year +82.65% -33.13% -25.56%

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 10 July 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 10 July 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 10 July 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 +7 3,491 £538 +2.38% 609
South East +1 2,373 £550 - 561
South West 0 1,324 £538 -6.52% 384
North of England +2 1,058 £502 +0.35% 239
Midlands +2 965 £469 -6.20% 144
West Midlands +2 825 £470 -6.98% 106
North West 0 571 £525 +4.79% 144
East of England +2 337 £550 +7.32% 116
Yorkshire +2 279 £500 +1.63% 52
North East +1 236 £475 -3.06% 44
East Midlands 0 127 £418 -12.11% 38
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
1 353 (3.59%) Confluence
2 227 (2.31%) SharePoint
3 149 (1.52%) SAS
4 123 (1.25%) Microsoft Exchange
5 90 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
6 83 (0.84%) Apache
7 82 (0.83%) Apache Spark
8 39 (0.40%) nginx
9 35 (0.36%) Jupyter
10 33 (0.34%) WebLogic
11 21 (0.21%) Tomcat
12 17 (0.17%) Oracle Application Server
12 17 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
13 16 (0.16%) CMS
13 16 (0.16%) IIS
14 14 (0.14%) Skype for Business
15 12 (0.12%) Tuxedo
16 11 (0.11%) NetWeaver
16 11 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
17 9 (0.092%) Documentum
Applications
1 163 (1.66%) Microsoft Excel
2 128 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
3 83 (0.84%) Microsoft Project
4 66 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 41 (0.42%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.14%) Simulink
8 12 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
9 11 (0.11%) AutoCAD
9 11 (0.11%) Revit
10 10 (0.10%) Chatbot
11 5 (0.051%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.051%) Notepad++
12 4 (0.041%) Sketch
13 2 (0.020%) CATIA
13 2 (0.020%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.020%) Lectora
13 2 (0.020%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.020%) Siemens NX
13 2 (0.020%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 106 (1.08%) SAP S/4HANA
2 62 (0.63%) Remedy ITSM
3 44 (0.45%) Oracle ERP
4 34 (0.35%) Teamcenter
5 29 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 26 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
7 25 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
8 23 (0.23%) SAP PSCD
9 15 (0.15%) Findur
9 15 (0.15%) Primavera
9 15 (0.15%) Temenos T24
10 12 (0.12%) iTrent
10 12 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
10 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
11 11 (0.11%) SAP ERP
12 10 (0.10%) Maximo
12 10 (0.10%) SAP HR
13 9 (0.092%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 9 (0.092%) Oracle Payroll
13 9 (0.092%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,729 (17.59%) Azure
2 1,657 (16.86%) AWS
3 393 (4.00%) Power Platform
4 390 (3.97%) GitHub
5 388 (3.95%) Azure DevOps
6 345 (3.51%) GCP
7 261 (2.66%) Microsoft 365
8 251 (2.55%) Entra ID
8 251 (2.55%) GitHub Actions
9 241 (2.45%) Serverless
10 223 (2.27%) Amazon S3
11 167 (1.70%) AWS Lambda
12 151 (1.54%) Amazon EC2
13 146 (1.49%) OCI
14 142 (1.44%) OpenShift
15 141 (1.43%) SaaS
16 132 (1.34%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 126 (1.28%) PaaS
18 113 (1.15%) Amazon EKS
19 110 (1.12%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 411 (4.18%) Firewall
2 326 (3.32%) DNS
3 225 (2.29%) Network Security
4 211 (2.15%) WAN
5 188 (1.91%) LAN
6 168 (1.71%) VPN
7 167 (1.70%) DHCP
8 138 (1.40%) BGP
9 116 (1.18%) OSPF
10 110 (1.12%) Wi-Fi
11 106 (1.08%) TCP/IP
12 104 (1.06%) VLAN
13 80 (0.81%) Wireless
14 62 (0.63%) MPLS
14 62 (0.63%) SD-WAN
15 56 (0.57%) SAN
16 53 (0.54%) VXLAN
17 51 (0.52%) BIG-IP
18 50 (0.51%) IPsec
19 44 (0.45%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 296 (3.01%) Power BI
2 248 (2.52%) PostgreSQL
3 233 (2.37%) SQL Server
4 222 (2.26%) Data Warehouse
5 147 (1.50%) Oracle Database
6 121 (1.23%) Metadata
7 104 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
7 104 (1.06%) Data Lake
8 103 (1.05%) Relational Database
9 84 (0.85%) Pentaho
10 79 (0.80%) MongoDB
10 79 (0.80%) MySQL
11 78 (0.79%) Oracle Reports
12 76 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
13 68 (0.69%) Amazon Redshift
14 66 (0.67%) NoSQL
15 61 (0.62%) Amazon Athena
16 58 (0.59%) Tableau
17 42 (0.43%) Big Data
18 41 (0.42%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 550 (5.60%) JIRA
2 448 (4.56%) Git
3 412 (4.19%) GitLab
4 380 (3.87%) Jenkins
5 106 (1.08%) Selenium
6 81 (0.82%) JUnit
7 73 (0.74%) SonarQube
8 68 (0.69%) Postman
9 59 (0.60%) Rational DOORS
10 53 (0.54%) JMeter
11 49 (0.50%) Cucumber
12 45 (0.46%) Maven
13 43 (0.44%) Mockito
14 40 (0.41%) Artifactory
14 40 (0.41%) REST Assured
15 39 (0.40%) Bitbucket
16 37 (0.38%) Zephyr
17 36 (0.37%) Cypress.io
18 35 (0.36%) Visual Studio
19 29 (0.30%) WebDriver
General
1 2,090 (21.27%) Public Sector
2 2,016 (20.51%) Social Skills
3 718 (7.31%) Analytical Skills
4 676 (6.88%) Finance
5 329 (3.35%) Military
6 271 (2.76%) Documentation Skills
7 270 (2.75%) Aerospace
8 147 (1.50%) Influencing Skills
9 144 (1.47%) Legal
10 128 (1.30%) Banking
11 123 (1.25%) Telecoms
12 110 (1.12%) Organisational Skills
13 95 (0.97%) Law
14 79 (0.80%) Police
15 77 (0.78%) Manufacturing
16 72 (0.73%) Presentation Skills
17 67 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 40 (0.41%) Marketing
19 37 (0.38%) Aviation
19 37 (0.38%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,420 (14.45%) Architect
2 1,012 (10.30%) Developer
3 848 (8.63%) Senior
4 826 (8.40%) Lead
5 624 (6.35%) Analyst
6 467 (4.75%) Data Engineer
7 453 (4.61%) Consultant
8 415 (4.22%) DevOps Engineer
9 329 (3.35%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 306 (3.11%) Software Engineer
11 279 (2.84%) Technical Architect
12 237 (2.41%) Network Engineer
13 228 (2.32%) Security Architect
13 228 (2.32%) Solutions Architect
14 199 (2.02%) Business Analyst
14 199 (2.02%) Java Developer
14 199 (2.02%) Project Manager
15 194 (1.97%) Delivery Manager
16 186 (1.89%) Administrator
17 175 (1.78%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 331 (3.37%) REST
2 242 (2.46%) Spring
3 195 (1.98%) Spring Boot
4 172 (1.75%) React
5 170 (1.73%) .NET
6 165 (1.68%) Kafka
7 158 (1.61%) Node.js
8 155 (1.58%) RESTful
9 138 (1.40%) SOAP
10 118 (1.20%) JSON
11 112 (1.14%) AngularJS
12 105 (1.07%) OAuth
13 102 (1.04%) LDAP
14 92 (0.94%) Web Services
15 90 (0.92%) PySpark
16 87 (0.89%) HTML
17 77 (0.78%) OpenID
17 77 (0.78%) XML
18 73 (0.74%) Elastic Stack
19 70 (0.71%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 397 (4.04%) Cloud Native
2 326 (3.32%) Onboarding
3 320 (3.26%) Product Ownership
4 274 (2.79%) Data Centre
5 169 (1.72%) Legacy Systems
6 144 (1.47%) Management Information System
7 139 (1.41%) Distributed Systems
7 139 (1.41%) PKI
8 112 (1.14%) Replication
9 109 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
10 105 (1.07%) CMDB
11 93 (0.95%) Enterprise Software
12 89 (0.91%) Clustering
12 89 (0.91%) Data Structures
13 87 (0.89%) Hybrid Cloud
13 87 (0.89%) Security Posture
14 79 (0.80%) Public Cloud
15 74 (0.75%) Security Operations Centre
15 74 (0.75%) Virtual Team
16 72 (0.73%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 812 (8.26%) Windows
2 680 (6.92%) Linux
3 263 (2.68%) Windows Server
4 192 (1.95%) Unix
5 135 (1.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 89 (0.91%) Windows 10
7 78 (0.79%) Android
8 53 (0.54%) Solaris
9 46 (0.47%) Apple iOS
10 43 (0.44%) Mac OS
11 32 (0.33%) AIX
11 32 (0.33%) Ubuntu
12 29 (0.30%) CentOS
13 25 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
14 16 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
15 15 (0.15%) VMS
16 13 (0.13%) Windows 7
17 11 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
17 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
17 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,009 (20.44%) Agile
2 1,527 (15.54%) DevOps
3 1,400 (14.25%) CI/CD
4 1,046 (10.64%) Problem-Solving
5 1,044 (10.62%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,019 (10.37%) Continuous Improvement
7 834 (8.49%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 760 (7.73%) Migration
9 739 (7.52%) Infrastructure as Code
10 672 (6.84%) Cybersecurity
11 658 (6.70%) ITIL
12 596 (6.06%) Test Automation
13 589 (5.99%) Software Engineering
14 577 (5.87%) Containerisation
15 573 (5.83%) Analytics
15 573 (5.83%) Roadmaps
16 525 (5.34%) Decision-Making
17 511 (5.20%) Data Modelling
18 506 (5.15%) AI
19 472 (4.80%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 1,049 (10.67%) Python
2 932 (9.48%) SQL
3 673 (6.85%) Java
4 459 (4.67%) PowerShell
5 297 (3.02%) JavaScript
6 230 (2.34%) Bash
7 202 (2.06%) C#
8 148 (1.51%) TypeScript
9 135 (1.37%) PL/SQL
10 88 (0.90%) C++
11 86 (0.88%) Shell Script
12 67 (0.68%) Bicep
12 67 (0.68%) C
13 55 (0.56%) Go
14 46 (0.47%) Ada
15 40 (0.41%) Apex Code
15 40 (0.41%) Kotlin
15 40 (0.41%) Ruby
15 40 (0.41%) Scala
16 35 (0.36%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 7,378 (75.07%) SC Cleared
2 1,961 (19.95%) DV Cleared
3 395 (4.02%) Degree
4 317 (3.23%) BPSS Clearance
5 185 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
6 164 (1.67%) CISSP
7 136 (1.38%) Azure Certification
8 118 (1.20%) Microsoft Certification
9 109 (1.11%) AWS Certification
10 94 (0.96%) CCNP
10 94 (0.96%) CISM
11 86 (0.88%) PMP
12 85 (0.86%) PMI Certification
13 77 (0.78%) CCNA
14 66 (0.67%) ISTQB
15 59 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 57 (0.58%) Computer Science Degree
17 48 (0.49%) ITIL Certification
18 44 (0.45%) TOGAF Certification
19 38 (0.39%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 386 (3.93%) QA
2 298 (3.03%) Data Quality
3 290 (2.95%) NIST
4 285 (2.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 219 (2.23%) NCSC
6 199 (2.02%) Accessibility
7 177 (1.80%) PMO
8 168 (1.71%) GDPR
9 101 (1.03%) SLA
10 92 (0.94%) GRC
11 61 (0.62%) JSP 440
12 49 (0.50%) WCAG
13 45 (0.46%) NIST 800
14 44 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials
15 34 (0.35%) Def Stans
16 25 (0.25%) RMADS
17 24 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 23 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
18 23 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 21 (0.21%) COBIT
System Software
1 645 (6.56%) Docker
2 441 (4.49%) Active Directory
3 319 (3.25%) VMware Infrastructure
4 122 (1.24%) VMware ESXi
5 119 (1.21%) VMware NSX
6 92 (0.94%) vSphere
7 86 (0.88%) Hyper-V
8 76 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
9 40 (0.41%) Oracle RAC
10 33 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
11 32 (0.33%) Firmware
12 22 (0.22%) BitLocker
13 20 (0.20%) NFS
13 20 (0.20%) vCloud
14 19 (0.19%) Postfix
15 18 (0.18%) Squid
16 10 (0.10%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 8 (0.081%) Microsoft App-V
18 7 (0.071%) KVM
18 7 (0.071%) UAG
Systems Management
1 814 (8.28%) Terraform
2 794 (8.08%) Kubernetes
3 358 (3.64%) Ansible
4 240 (2.44%) Grafana
5 189 (1.92%) Prometheus
6 117 (1.19%) vCenter Server
7 86 (0.88%) SCCM
8 69 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
9 64 (0.65%) Microsoft Intune
10 59 (0.60%) Argo
11 51 (0.52%) SCOM
12 49 (0.50%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 47 (0.48%) FortiGate
14 45 (0.46%) Oracle RMAN
14 45 (0.46%) Puppet
15 30 (0.31%) Progress Chef
16 28 (0.28%) Data Guard
16 28 (0.28%) Podman
17 25 (0.25%) Kibana
17 25 (0.25%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,099 (11.18%) Microsoft
2 721 (7.34%) Oracle
3 489 (4.98%) VMware
4 463 (4.71%) ServiceNow
5 321 (3.27%) SAP
6 298 (3.03%) Cisco
7 200 (2.04%) Splunk
8 173 (1.76%) Databricks
9 164 (1.67%) Google
10 136 (1.38%) Red Hat
11 129 (1.31%) Talend
12 128 (1.30%) Salesforce
13 113 (1.15%) IBM
14 105 (1.07%) Informatica
15 99 (1.01%) Palo Alto
16 96 (0.98%) Juniper
17 88 (0.90%) SolarWinds
18 86 (0.88%) F5
19 85 (0.86%) Citrix
20 83 (0.84%) Fortinet