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

6 months to
24 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 7,418 4,873 6,983
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.82% 18.23% 18.64%
As % of the Qualifications category 66.52% 59.81% 60.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,066 3,062 4,463
10th Percentile £350 £340 £363
25th Percentile £450 £440 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -3.93%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £655
90th Percentile £725 £713 £735
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -3.51%
Number of hourly rates quoted 662 250 459
10th Percentile £17.71 £20.30 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.73 £25.88 £42.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £59.50 £58.30
Median % change year-on-year -57.73% +2.06% -2.83%
75th Percentile £63.75 £67.88 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £81.43
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £59.27
% change year-on-year -49.70% -15.63% -1.23%

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 11,151 8,147 11,600
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.30% 30.48% 30.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,404 4,935 7,250
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £419 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £519 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -1.24% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 870 392 799
10th Percentile £15.85 £19.35 £14.45
25th Percentile £18.90 £25.26 £21.48
Median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -45.54% -2.78% +5.56%
75th Percentile £62.50 £67.50 £65.80
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.08 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £39.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year -35.51% -17.89% +5.56%

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 24 January 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 24 January 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 24 January 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 2,530 £538 -2.27% 457
South East +1 1,497 £515 -6.36% 641
South West 0 1,277 £550 -2.57% 428
North of England -2 810 £500 +5.26% 265
Midlands +3 715 £515 -6.53% 195
West Midlands +2 562 £520 -6.06% 106
North West 0 539 £515 +8.42% 143
East of England +2 340 £492 -4.00% 257
Yorkshire -16 160 £500 +11.11% 84
East Midlands +3 153 £425 -21.70% 87
North East 0 136 £450 -14.29% 39
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 (3.65%) Confluence
2 186 (2.51%) SharePoint
3 125 (1.69%) Microsoft Exchange
4 115 (1.55%) SAS
5 77 (1.04%) Apache
6 56 (0.75%) Apache Spark
7 48 (0.65%) Apache Airflow
8 40 (0.54%) nginx
9 38 (0.51%) Skype for Business
10 30 (0.40%) WebLogic
11 19 (0.26%) CMS
12 18 (0.24%) IIS
13 14 (0.19%) Jupyter
14 10 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
15 9 (0.12%) OpenStack
15 9 (0.12%) SharePoint Server
16 7 (0.094%) Tuxedo
17 6 (0.081%) Documentum
17 6 (0.081%) Exchange Server 2010
18 5 (0.067%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 244 (3.29%) Microsoft Office
2 149 (2.01%) Microsoft Excel
3 104 (1.40%) Microsoft Project
4 60 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 35 (0.47%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.16%) Simulink
8 7 (0.094%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.067%) FrameMaker
9 5 (0.067%) Oracle Smart View
9 5 (0.067%) Siemens NX
9 5 (0.067%) Sketch
9 5 (0.067%) Windchill
10 4 (0.054%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.054%) 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
1 144 (1.94%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.50%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 27 (0.36%) SAP EWM
3 27 (0.36%) SAP WM
4 25 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
5 23 (0.31%) Dynamics CRM
6 21 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
7 18 (0.24%) Maximo
7 18 (0.24%) SAP MM
8 14 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
8 14 (0.19%) SAP QM
9 13 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
9 13 (0.18%) Teamcenter
10 12 (0.16%) SAP PP
10 12 (0.16%) SAP VC
11 11 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
11 11 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
11 11 (0.15%) Oracle Receivables
11 11 (0.15%) SAP EHS
11 11 (0.15%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,272 (17.15%) Azure
2 1,233 (16.62%) AWS
3 333 (4.49%) GitHub
4 327 (4.41%) GCP
5 308 (4.15%) Microsoft 365
6 282 (3.80%) Azure DevOps
7 275 (3.71%) Power Platform
8 222 (2.99%) Serverless
9 197 (2.66%) Entra ID
10 172 (2.32%) Amazon S3
11 166 (2.24%) GitHub Actions
12 150 (2.02%) OpenShift
13 138 (1.86%) AWS Lambda
14 103 (1.39%) Amazon EC2
14 103 (1.39%) AWS CloudFormation
15 100 (1.35%) SaaS
16 97 (1.31%) IaaS
17 96 (1.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 93 (1.25%) PaaS
19 90 (1.21%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 387 (5.22%) Firewall
2 256 (3.45%) DNS
3 184 (2.48%) Network Security
4 173 (2.33%) VPN
5 162 (2.18%) WAN
6 132 (1.78%) TCP/IP
7 116 (1.56%) LAN
8 109 (1.47%) BGP
9 108 (1.46%) DHCP
10 86 (1.16%) Wireless
11 78 (1.05%) VLAN
12 71 (0.96%) Wi-Fi
13 63 (0.85%) SSL
14 61 (0.82%) MPLS
14 61 (0.82%) OSPF
15 58 (0.78%) IPsec
16 49 (0.66%) SAN
17 46 (0.62%) Skype
18 41 (0.55%) Cisco ISE
19 37 (0.50%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 194 (2.62%) PostgreSQL
2 189 (2.55%) Power BI
3 93 (1.25%) Data Warehouse
4 85 (1.15%) NoSQL
5 84 (1.13%) MongoDB
6 83 (1.12%) Metadata
6 83 (1.12%) SQL Server
7 78 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
7 78 (1.05%) Oracle Database
8 68 (0.92%) Relational Database
9 61 (0.82%) Azure SQL Database
10 51 (0.69%) Elasticsearch
11 45 (0.61%) Pentaho
12 42 (0.57%) Big Data
12 42 (0.57%) Data Lake
13 41 (0.55%) SAS Enterprise Guide
14 38 (0.51%) Amazon Athena
14 38 (0.51%) Amazon Redshift
15 36 (0.49%) MySQL
16 34 (0.46%) Redis
Development Applications
1 469 (6.32%) JIRA
2 387 (5.22%) Git
3 346 (4.66%) Jenkins
4 284 (3.83%) GitLab
5 85 (1.15%) Selenium
6 68 (0.92%) Postman
7 58 (0.78%) JUnit
8 56 (0.75%) Cypress.io
9 48 (0.65%) Bitbucket
10 47 (0.63%) Oracle APEX
11 45 (0.61%) SonarQube
12 44 (0.59%) Artifactory
13 36 (0.49%) Maven
14 34 (0.46%) Cucumber
15 32 (0.43%) Mockito
16 27 (0.36%) REST Assured
17 24 (0.32%) MSI
18 23 (0.31%) Metasploit
18 23 (0.31%) Rational DOORS
19 21 (0.28%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,929 (26.00%) Public Sector
2 1,898 (25.59%) Social Skills
3 656 (8.84%) Analytical Skills
4 524 (7.06%) Finance
5 298 (4.02%) Military
6 214 (2.88%) Documentation Skills
7 195 (2.63%) Telecoms
8 189 (2.55%) Manufacturing
9 132 (1.78%) Electronics
10 131 (1.77%) Marketing
11 124 (1.67%) Aerospace
12 109 (1.47%) Organisational Skills
13 107 (1.44%) Legal
14 96 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
15 86 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
16 79 (1.06%) Banking
17 67 (0.90%) Law
18 49 (0.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 31 (0.42%) Police
20 29 (0.39%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,009 (13.60%) Architect
2 719 (9.69%) Developer
3 639 (8.61%) Senior
4 528 (7.12%) Analyst
5 495 (6.67%) Consultant
6 411 (5.54%) Lead
7 363 (4.89%) DevOps Engineer
8 239 (3.22%) Data Engineer
9 235 (3.17%) Support Engineer
10 228 (3.07%) Network Engineer
11 178 (2.40%) Technical Architect
12 176 (2.37%) Software Engineer
13 174 (2.35%) Solutions Architect
14 170 (2.29%) Business Analyst
15 141 (1.90%) Tester
16 139 (1.87%) AWS Engineer
17 134 (1.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 132 (1.78%) SAP Consultant
19 131 (1.77%) Project Manager
20 130 (1.75%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 308 (4.15%) REST
2 178 (2.40%) Node.js
3 171 (2.31%) React
4 157 (2.12%) Kafka
5 141 (1.90%) SOAP
6 139 (1.87%) Spring
7 136 (1.83%) JSON
7 136 (1.83%) LDAP
8 110 (1.48%) Spring Boot
9 107 (1.44%) HTML
10 99 (1.33%) .NET
11 95 (1.28%) RESTful
12 94 (1.27%) XML
13 93 (1.25%) CSS
13 93 (1.25%) OAuth
14 86 (1.16%) Oracle Fusion
15 85 (1.15%) AngularJS
16 81 (1.09%) Web Services
17 80 (1.08%) PySpark
18 79 (1.06%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 240 (3.24%) Data Centre
2 217 (2.93%) Product Ownership
3 212 (2.86%) Cloud Native
4 202 (2.72%) Onboarding
5 193 (2.60%) PKI
6 139 (1.87%) Management Information System
7 118 (1.59%) Security Posture
8 105 (1.42%) Enterprise Software
9 101 (1.36%) Self-Motivation
10 89 (1.20%) Legacy Systems
11 86 (1.16%) Replication
12 76 (1.02%) Cyber Threat
13 69 (0.93%) Driving Licence
14 61 (0.82%) Security Operations Centre
15 56 (0.75%) Hybrid Cloud
15 56 (0.75%) Public Cloud
16 48 (0.65%) Private Cloud
17 47 (0.63%) Distributed Systems
18 45 (0.61%) CMDB
19 43 (0.58%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 817 (11.01%) Windows
2 576 (7.76%) Linux
3 207 (2.79%) Windows Server
4 181 (2.44%) Windows 10
5 101 (1.36%) Unix
6 95 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 93 (1.25%) Android
8 68 (0.92%) Mac OS
9 42 (0.57%) Ubuntu
10 41 (0.55%) VMS
11 29 (0.39%) Apple iOS
12 24 (0.32%) CentOS
13 22 (0.30%) Windows 7
13 22 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
14 16 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
14 16 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
15 14 (0.19%) Amazon Linux
15 14 (0.19%) Mac OS X
16 12 (0.16%) Solaris
16 12 (0.16%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,414 (19.06%) Agile
2 1,180 (15.91%) DevOps
3 1,024 (13.80%) CI/CD
4 945 (12.74%) Problem-Solving
5 661 (8.91%) Migration
6 636 (8.57%) Stakeholder Management
7 539 (7.27%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 519 (7.00%) Continuous Improvement
9 502 (6.77%) Cybersecurity
10 476 (6.42%) ITIL
11 468 (6.31%) Infrastructure as Code
12 423 (5.70%) Test Automation
13 407 (5.49%) Analytics
14 397 (5.35%) Business Intelligence
15 392 (5.28%) Containerisation
16 379 (5.11%) Service Management
17 378 (5.10%) Roadmaps
18 338 (4.56%) Scrum
19 336 (4.53%) Software Engineering
20 323 (4.35%) Workflow
Programming Languages
1 926 (12.48%) Python
2 586 (7.90%) SQL
3 521 (7.02%) PowerShell
4 410 (5.53%) Java
5 349 (4.70%) JavaScript
6 201 (2.71%) Bash
7 169 (2.28%) TypeScript
8 132 (1.78%) C#
9 87 (1.17%) Go
10 86 (1.16%) C++
11 69 (0.93%) Shell Script
12 68 (0.92%) PL/SQL
13 61 (0.82%) C
14 44 (0.59%) Scala
15 43 (0.58%) Ada
15 43 (0.58%) Ruby
16 36 (0.49%) MATLAB
17 33 (0.44%) ABAP
18 32 (0.43%) Bicep
19 31 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 5,702 (76.87%) SC Cleared
2 1,249 (16.84%) DV Cleared
3 378 (5.10%) Degree
4 216 (2.91%) BPSS Clearance
5 140 (1.89%) CISSP
6 119 (1.60%) Cisco Certification
7 118 (1.59%) Azure Certification
8 115 (1.55%) Microsoft Certification
9 101 (1.36%) CCNP
10 96 (1.29%) AWS Certification
11 84 (1.13%) CISM
12 63 (0.85%) ITIL Certification
13 62 (0.84%) Computer Science Degree
14 54 (0.73%) CCNA
15 50 (0.67%) CEH
16 48 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
17 44 (0.59%) GIAC
18 42 (0.57%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 40 (0.54%) CHECK Team Member
20 37 (0.50%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 237 (3.19%) QA
2 233 (3.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 223 (3.01%) NIST
4 185 (2.49%) NCSC
5 172 (2.32%) Data Quality
6 155 (2.09%) GDPR
7 123 (1.66%) Accessibility
8 118 (1.59%) SLA
9 75 (1.01%) PMO
10 49 (0.66%) GRC
10 49 (0.66%) JSP 440
11 42 (0.57%) WCAG
12 37 (0.50%) Def Stans
13 33 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
14 29 (0.39%) COBIT
14 29 (0.39%) PCI DSS
15 25 (0.34%) NIST 800
16 19 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 18 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 18 (0.24%) RMADS
System Software
1 555 (7.48%) Docker
2 466 (6.28%) Active Directory
3 213 (2.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 73 (0.98%) VMware NSX
5 63 (0.85%) vSphere
6 56 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
7 54 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
8 42 (0.57%) Hyper-V
9 28 (0.38%) Firmware
10 27 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
11 17 (0.23%) BitLocker
12 13 (0.18%) Squid
13 11 (0.15%) DFS Replication
13 11 (0.15%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 10 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
14 10 (0.13%) Postfix
15 9 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
16 7 (0.094%) Dovecot
16 7 (0.094%) NFS
16 7 (0.094%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 704 (9.49%) Kubernetes
2 633 (8.53%) Terraform
3 279 (3.76%) Ansible
4 177 (2.39%) Grafana
5 147 (1.98%) Prometheus
6 107 (1.44%) Single Sign-On
7 106 (1.43%) SCCM
8 94 (1.27%) vCenter Server
9 77 (1.04%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 64 (0.86%) Microsoft Intune
11 61 (0.82%) Argo
12 37 (0.50%) Kibana
13 36 (0.49%) Packer
14 35 (0.47%) Podman
15 33 (0.44%) OPNET
16 30 (0.40%) vRealize
17 27 (0.36%) Puppet
18 26 (0.35%) Progress Chef
19 24 (0.32%) Nessus
19 24 (0.32%) Nmap
Vendors
1 946 (12.75%) Microsoft
2 418 (5.63%) SAP
3 417 (5.62%) Oracle
4 404 (5.45%) Cisco
5 380 (5.12%) VMware
6 311 (4.19%) ServiceNow
7 204 (2.75%) Splunk
8 150 (2.02%) Red Hat
9 128 (1.73%) Palo Alto
10 127 (1.71%) Juniper
11 120 (1.62%) CyberArk
12 113 (1.52%) Google
13 107 (1.44%) Atlassian
13 107 (1.44%) Databricks
14 96 (1.29%) Salesforce
15 95 (1.28%) Dell
16 80 (1.08%) HP
17 78 (1.05%) Dynatrace
18 70 (0.94%) CheckPoint
19 67 (0.90%) F5