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

6 months to
3 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 9,177 4,515 7,121
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.67% 18.52% 19.20%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.85% 59.10% 61.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,360 2,997 4,666
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% -0.27%
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 777 270 491
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.31 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £55.00 £57.32
Median % change year-on-year - -4.05% -4.47%
75th Percentile £73.46 £68.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.36 £80.01 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £54.50 £50.00 £57.32
% change year-on-year +9.00% -12.77% -4.47%

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 13,138 7,640 11,590
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.46% 31.34% 31.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,815 4,846 7,129
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 -1.00% -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 983 441 989
10th Percentile £17.09 £18.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £22.27 £18.13
Median hourly rate £47.50 £43.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.47% +7.50% -23.81%
75th Percentile £71.50 £67.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.48 £81.35 £77.50
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 3 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 3 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 3 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 3,244 £525 - 495
South East +1 2,196 £538 -2.27% 528
South West 0 1,328 £538 -4.44% 360
Midlands +4 903 £475 -9.52% 192
North of England -1 839 £488 -2.50% 326
West Midlands +4 767 £475 -11.55% 134
North West -2 500 £498 -0.32% 166
East of England +2 382 £525 +16.67% 199
Yorkshire -6 206 £476 -9.33% 77
North East +1 167 £464 -8.62% 87
East Midlands -3 130 £450 -5.26% 58
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
1 355 (3.87%) Confluence
2 206 (2.24%) SharePoint
3 127 (1.38%) Microsoft Exchange
4 112 (1.22%) SAS
5 79 (0.86%) Apache Spark
6 70 (0.76%) Apache
7 53 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
8 33 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 32 (0.35%) nginx
10 22 (0.24%) Jupyter
11 16 (0.17%) Tomcat
12 15 (0.16%) IIS
12 15 (0.16%) Skype for Business
13 14 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
13 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
14 13 (0.14%) CMS
14 13 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
15 9 (0.098%) Palantir Foundry
16 8 (0.087%) Apache Superset
16 8 (0.087%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 210 (2.29%) Microsoft Office
2 186 (2.03%) Microsoft Excel
3 121 (1.32%) Microsoft Project
4 83 (0.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 39 (0.42%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.13%) Simulink
8 7 (0.076%) AutoCAD
9 6 (0.065%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.054%) Notepad++
10 5 (0.054%) 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 83 (0.90%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (0.49%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 43 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.31%) Dynamics CRM
5 27 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
6 26 (0.28%) Teamcenter
7 19 (0.21%) 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 (0.098%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 8 (0.087%) iTrent
13 8 (0.087%) Primavera
13 8 (0.087%) SAP HR
13 8 (0.087%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,574 (17.15%) Azure
2 1,487 (16.20%) AWS
3 376 (4.10%) GCP
4 374 (4.08%) GitHub
5 355 (3.87%) Azure DevOps
6 344 (3.75%) Power Platform
7 254 (2.77%) Serverless
8 251 (2.74%) Microsoft 365
9 224 (2.44%) Entra ID
10 208 (2.27%) GitHub Actions
11 196 (2.14%) Amazon S3
12 167 (1.82%) AWS Lambda
13 131 (1.43%) PaaS
14 129 (1.41%) Amazon EC2
15 125 (1.36%) OpenShift
16 113 (1.23%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 113 (1.23%) AWS CloudFormation
17 112 (1.22%) IaaS
18 108 (1.18%) OCI
19 106 (1.16%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 420 (4.58%) Firewall
2 266 (2.90%) DNS
3 214 (2.33%) WAN
4 212 (2.31%) Network Security
5 194 (2.11%) LAN
6 160 (1.74%) VPN
7 141 (1.54%) BGP
8 139 (1.51%) DHCP
9 123 (1.34%) OSPF
10 104 (1.13%) TCP/IP
11 96 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
12 92 (1.00%) VLAN
13 80 (0.87%) Wireless
14 59 (0.64%) MPLS
15 51 (0.56%) SAN
16 50 (0.54%) VXLAN
17 49 (0.53%) SD-WAN
18 46 (0.50%) IPsec
19 44 (0.48%) Ethernet VPN
20 43 (0.47%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 261 (2.84%) Power BI
2 212 (2.31%) PostgreSQL
3 196 (2.14%) Data Warehouse
4 182 (1.98%) SQL Server
5 121 (1.32%) Metadata
6 104 (1.13%) Oracle Database
7 103 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
8 88 (0.96%) NoSQL
9 83 (0.90%) MongoDB
10 82 (0.89%) Relational Database
11 78 (0.85%) Data Lake
12 75 (0.82%) Pentaho
13 70 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
14 69 (0.75%) Azure SQL Database
15 64 (0.70%) Oracle Reports
16 62 (0.68%) Amazon Redshift
17 61 (0.66%) MySQL
17 61 (0.66%) Tableau
18 53 (0.58%) Amazon Athena
19 48 (0.52%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 569 (6.20%) JIRA
2 425 (4.63%) Git
3 342 (3.73%) Jenkins
4 322 (3.51%) GitLab
5 86 (0.94%) Selenium
6 74 (0.81%) Postman
7 70 (0.76%) JUnit
8 57 (0.62%) SonarQube
9 49 (0.53%) Rational DOORS
10 45 (0.49%) Bitbucket
11 42 (0.46%) Artifactory
12 41 (0.45%) Maven
13 38 (0.41%) Cucumber
13 38 (0.41%) JMeter
14 37 (0.40%) Mockito
15 33 (0.36%) Cypress.io
16 32 (0.35%) Visual Studio
17 27 (0.29%) Zephyr
18 26 (0.28%) Oracle APEX
19 23 (0.25%) MSI
General
1 2,021 (22.02%) Public Sector
2 1,999 (21.78%) Social Skills
3 726 (7.91%) Analytical Skills
4 652 (7.10%) Finance
5 329 (3.59%) Military
6 256 (2.79%) Documentation Skills
7 219 (2.39%) Aerospace
8 143 (1.56%) Legal
9 129 (1.41%) Telecoms
10 118 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
11 116 (1.26%) Manufacturing
12 108 (1.18%) Banking
13 102 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
14 93 (1.01%) Presentation Skills
15 87 (0.95%) Law
16 64 (0.70%) Marketing
17 58 (0.63%) Police
18 57 (0.62%) Electronics
19 56 (0.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 37 (0.40%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,345 (14.66%) Architect
2 881 (9.60%) Developer
3 785 (8.55%) Senior
4 659 (7.18%) Analyst
5 635 (6.92%) Lead
6 434 (4.73%) Data Engineer
7 417 (4.54%) Consultant
8 398 (4.34%) DevOps Engineer
9 277 (3.02%) Network Engineer
10 272 (2.96%) Software Engineer
11 260 (2.83%) Technical Architect
12 250 (2.72%) Business Analyst
13 240 (2.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 210 (2.29%) Project Manager
15 200 (2.18%) Solutions Architect
16 197 (2.15%) Azure Engineer
17 170 (1.85%) Delivery Manager
17 170 (1.85%) Security Architect
18 166 (1.81%) Administrator
19 164 (1.79%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 307 (3.35%) REST
2 210 (2.29%) Spring
3 167 (1.82%) Node.js
4 164 (1.79%) Spring Boot
5 162 (1.77%) Kafka
6 156 (1.70%) .NET
7 153 (1.67%) React
8 141 (1.54%) LDAP
9 135 (1.47%) SOAP
10 130 (1.42%) RESTful
11 129 (1.41%) JSON
12 112 (1.22%) AngularJS
13 99 (1.08%) PySpark
13 99 (1.08%) Web Services
14 87 (0.95%) Oracle Fusion
15 85 (0.93%) HTML
16 83 (0.90%) OAuth
17 82 (0.89%) XML
18 70 (0.76%) Elastic Stack
19 64 (0.70%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 313 (3.41%) Product Ownership
2 304 (3.31%) Cloud Native
3 273 (2.97%) Data Centre
4 261 (2.84%) Onboarding
5 168 (1.83%) PKI
6 139 (1.51%) Management Information System
7 121 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
8 119 (1.30%) Security Posture
9 116 (1.26%) Enterprise Software
9 116 (1.26%) Replication
10 108 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
11 103 (1.12%) Distributed Systems
12 78 (0.85%) Clustering
13 75 (0.82%) Data Structures
14 73 (0.80%) Hybrid Cloud
14 73 (0.80%) Public Cloud
15 64 (0.70%) Virtual Team
16 62 (0.68%) Security Operations Centre
17 56 (0.61%) Cyber Threat
17 56 (0.61%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 787 (8.58%) Windows
2 640 (6.97%) Linux
3 232 (2.53%) Windows Server
4 146 (1.59%) Unix
5 107 (1.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 101 (1.10%) Windows 10
7 100 (1.09%) Android
8 51 (0.56%) Apple iOS
9 47 (0.51%) Mac OS
10 36 (0.39%) Ubuntu
11 33 (0.36%) Solaris
12 29 (0.32%) 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 17 (0.19%) Windows 7
18 12 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
19 10 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
20 8 (0.087%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,827 (19.91%) Agile
2 1,395 (15.20%) DevOps
3 1,207 (13.15%) CI/CD
4 1,028 (11.20%) Problem-Solving
5 877 (9.56%) Stakeholder Management
6 809 (8.82%) Continuous Improvement
7 786 (8.56%) Migration
8 674 (7.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 603 (6.57%) Infrastructure as Code
9 603 (6.57%) ITIL
10 539 (5.87%) Cybersecurity
11 524 (5.71%) Analytics
12 523 (5.70%) Test Automation
13 508 (5.54%) Software Engineering
14 498 (5.43%) Roadmaps
15 490 (5.34%) Containerisation
16 450 (4.90%) Data Modelling
17 428 (4.66%) Scrum
18 417 (4.54%) Decision-Making
19 410 (4.47%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 991 (10.80%) Python
2 844 (9.20%) SQL
3 564 (6.15%) Java
4 512 (5.58%) PowerShell
5 295 (3.21%) JavaScript
6 199 (2.17%) C#
7 168 (1.83%) Bash
8 144 (1.57%) TypeScript
9 100 (1.09%) PL/SQL
10 94 (1.02%) C++
11 87 (0.95%) Shell Script
12 67 (0.73%) Go
13 63 (0.69%) Scala
14 59 (0.64%) C
15 56 (0.61%) 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 6,900 (75.19%) SC Cleared
2 1,733 (18.88%) DV Cleared
3 425 (4.63%) Degree
4 270 (2.94%) BPSS Clearance
5 171 (1.86%) Cisco Certification
6 151 (1.65%) CISSP
7 128 (1.39%) Azure Certification
8 110 (1.20%) CCNP
9 107 (1.17%) AWS Certification
10 98 (1.07%) CISM
11 89 (0.97%) Microsoft Certification
12 71 (0.77%) PMP
13 68 (0.74%) CCNA
14 67 (0.73%) TOGAF Certification
15 65 (0.71%) ITIL Certification
16 61 (0.66%) Computer Science Degree
16 61 (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 (3.70%) QA
2 270 (2.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 266 (2.90%) Data Quality
3 266 (2.90%) NIST
4 184 (2.01%) NCSC
5 160 (1.74%) PMO
6 156 (1.70%) Accessibility
7 147 (1.60%) GDPR
8 103 (1.12%) SLA
9 62 (0.68%) GRC
10 58 (0.63%) JSP 440
11 49 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials
12 39 (0.42%) NIST 800
13 34 (0.37%) WCAG
14 33 (0.36%) COBIT
15 31 (0.34%) Def Stans
15 31 (0.34%) PCI DSS
16 26 (0.28%) RMADS
17 19 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
17 19 (0.21%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 577 (6.29%) Docker
2 442 (4.82%) Active Directory
3 267 (2.91%) VMware Infrastructure
4 92 (1.00%) VMware ESXi
5 83 (0.90%) VMware NSX
6 76 (0.83%) Hyper-V
7 73 (0.80%) vSphere
8 68 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
9 38 (0.41%) Firmware
10 26 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
11 22 (0.24%) BitLocker
12 20 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
13 17 (0.19%) NFS
13 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 16 (0.17%) Postfix
15 13 (0.14%) vCloud
16 10 (0.11%) Squid
17 8 (0.087%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.065%) Corosync
19 5 (0.054%) KVM
Systems Management
1 752 (8.19%) Kubernetes
2 713 (7.77%) Terraform
3 313 (3.41%) Ansible
4 225 (2.45%) Grafana
5 184 (2.01%) Prometheus
6 97 (1.06%) vCenter Server
7 87 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
8 79 (0.86%) SCCM
9 56 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 53 (0.58%) Microsoft Intune
11 52 (0.57%) FortiGate
12 47 (0.51%) Argo
13 38 (0.41%) Puppet
14 36 (0.39%) Podman
15 32 (0.35%) Progress Chef
16 30 (0.33%) OPNET
17 29 (0.32%) Nagios
17 29 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
18 28 (0.31%) Packer
19 23 (0.25%) Kibana
Vendors
1 983 (10.71%) Microsoft
2 563 (6.13%) Oracle
3 462 (5.03%) VMware
4 381 (4.15%) ServiceNow
5 349 (3.80%) Cisco
6 333 (3.63%) SAP
7 212 (2.31%) Splunk
8 171 (1.86%) Databricks
9 152 (1.66%) Red Hat
10 151 (1.65%) Google
11 118 (1.29%) IBM
12 112 (1.22%) Palo Alto
13 107 (1.17%) Juniper
14 106 (1.16%) Salesforce
15 104 (1.13%) Talend
16 103 (1.12%) Atlassian
17 95 (1.04%) CyberArk
18 83 (0.90%) Remedy
19 80 (0.87%) F5
20 77 (0.84%) SolarWinds