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

6 months to
19 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 8,689 4,562 7,168
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.48% 18.64% 18.95%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.08% 60.03% 60.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,906 2,977 4,622
10th Percentile £358 £325 £350
25th Percentile £443 £450 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.31%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 763 256 480
10th Percentile £17.76 £21.13 £14.50
25th Percentile £20.50 £26.44 £21.46
Median hourly rate £29.00 £60.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -51.67% +9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £69.00 £68.26 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.36 £80.05 £80.13
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £56.75 £55.00
% change year-on-year -38.33% +3.18% -8.33%

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 12,578 7,599 11,796
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.99% 31.06% 31.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,345 4,816 7,308
10th Percentile £331 £289 £300
25th Percentile £422 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 981 416 917
10th Percentile £16.30 £18.57 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.54 £25.26 £18.19
Median hourly rate £28.50 £50.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -43.00% +33.33% -25.00%
75th Percentile £67.84 £68.00 £63.29
90th Percentile £85.00 £82.50 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £29.61 £42.50 £37.50
% change year-on-year -30.33% +13.33% -25.00%

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 19 March 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 19 March 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 19 March 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 3,048 £528 +0.48% 485
South East +1 2,011 £525 -4.55% 543
South West 0 1,289 £539 -4.22% 351
Midlands +4 866 £485 -11.82% 159
North of England -1 822 £488 -2.50% 277
West Midlands +3 700 £492 -10.71% 120
North West -2 516 £497 -0.63% 141
East of England +2 356 £492 -1.60% 146
Yorkshire -5 189 £500 -4.76% 71
East Midlands +1 163 £434 -15.24% 39
North East 0 149 £450 -0.88% 67
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
1 349 (4.02%) Confluence
2 209 (2.41%) SharePoint
3 134 (1.54%) Microsoft Exchange
4 127 (1.46%) SAS
5 73 (0.84%) Apache Spark
6 72 (0.83%) Apache
7 48 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
8 37 (0.43%) nginx
9 34 (0.39%) WebLogic
10 29 (0.33%) Skype for Business
11 21 (0.24%) Jupyter
12 16 (0.18%) CMS
12 16 (0.18%) IIS
13 14 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 14 (0.16%) Tuxedo
14 10 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
15 9 (0.10%) Tomcat
16 7 (0.081%) ArcGIS
17 6 (0.069%) JBoss
17 6 (0.069%) OpenStack
Applications
1 248 (2.85%) Microsoft Office
2 193 (2.22%) Microsoft Excel
3 123 (1.42%) Microsoft Project
4 71 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 45 (0.52%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
7 9 (0.10%) Simulink
8 5 (0.058%) Siemens NX
8 5 (0.058%) Windchill
9 4 (0.046%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.046%) Chatbot
9 4 (0.046%) Sketch
10 2 (0.023%) Adobe Illustrator
10 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.023%) CATIA
10 2 (0.023%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.023%) Lectora
10 2 (0.023%) Oracle Smart View
10 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
10 2 (0.023%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 83 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.47%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 31 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 27 (0.31%) Teamcenter
5 26 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
6 25 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
7 16 (0.18%) Maximo
8 15 (0.17%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.15%) SAP PP
10 12 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
10 12 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
11 11 (0.13%) Temenos T24
12 10 (0.12%) SAP MM
13 9 (0.10%) Primavera
13 9 (0.10%) SAP ERP
14 8 (0.092%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 8 (0.092%) Oracle Receivables
14 8 (0.092%) SAP HCM
14 8 (0.092%) Workday HCM
15 7 (0.081%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,458 (16.78%) Azure
2 1,428 (16.43%) AWS
3 400 (4.60%) GitHub
4 370 (4.26%) GCP
5 344 (3.96%) Azure DevOps
6 328 (3.77%) Power Platform
7 291 (3.35%) Microsoft 365
8 246 (2.83%) Serverless
9 233 (2.68%) Entra ID
10 204 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
11 185 (2.13%) Amazon S3
12 168 (1.93%) OpenShift
13 162 (1.86%) AWS Lambda
14 126 (1.45%) Amazon EC2
15 116 (1.34%) AWS CloudFormation
16 109 (1.25%) PaaS
17 107 (1.23%) IaaS
18 103 (1.19%) Azure Data Factory
19 100 (1.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 95 (1.09%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 411 (4.73%) Firewall
2 253 (2.91%) DNS
3 210 (2.42%) Network Security
4 196 (2.26%) WAN
5 167 (1.92%) VPN
6 166 (1.91%) LAN
7 138 (1.59%) BGP
8 127 (1.46%) DHCP
9 123 (1.42%) TCP/IP
10 100 (1.15%) OSPF
11 92 (1.06%) Wireless
12 83 (0.96%) VLAN
13 75 (0.86%) Wi-Fi
14 65 (0.75%) MPLS
15 51 (0.59%) IPsec
15 51 (0.59%) SAN
16 49 (0.56%) Cisco ISE
17 42 (0.48%) SSL
18 38 (0.44%) Junos
19 37 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 244 (2.81%) Power BI
2 229 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
3 150 (1.73%) Data Warehouse
4 148 (1.70%) SQL Server
5 114 (1.31%) Metadata
6 98 (1.13%) Amazon RDS
7 97 (1.12%) Oracle Database
8 94 (1.08%) NoSQL
9 89 (1.02%) MongoDB
10 88 (1.01%) Relational Database
11 78 (0.90%) Azure SQL Database
12 67 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
13 64 (0.74%) Data Lake
14 62 (0.71%) MySQL
15 61 (0.70%) Pentaho
16 52 (0.60%) Amazon Redshift
17 48 (0.55%) Big Data
17 48 (0.55%) Tableau
18 40 (0.46%) Delta Lake
19 37 (0.43%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 555 (6.39%) JIRA
2 438 (5.04%) Git
3 359 (4.13%) Jenkins
4 309 (3.56%) GitLab
5 103 (1.19%) Selenium
6 81 (0.93%) JUnit
7 70 (0.81%) Postman
8 55 (0.63%) Rational DOORS
9 51 (0.59%) Bitbucket
10 48 (0.55%) Cypress.io
11 45 (0.52%) SonarQube
12 44 (0.51%) Cucumber
12 44 (0.51%) Maven
13 43 (0.49%) Artifactory
14 42 (0.48%) Oracle APEX
15 36 (0.41%) Mockito
16 35 (0.40%) JMeter
17 30 (0.35%) Visual Studio
18 29 (0.33%) REST Assured
19 23 (0.26%) Metasploit
General
1 2,196 (25.27%) Public Sector
2 2,070 (23.82%) Social Skills
3 753 (8.67%) Analytical Skills
4 650 (7.48%) Finance
5 319 (3.67%) Military
6 247 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
7 208 (2.39%) Aerospace
8 167 (1.92%) Manufacturing
9 166 (1.91%) Telecoms
10 142 (1.63%) Legal
11 112 (1.29%) Banking
11 112 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
12 107 (1.23%) Marketing
13 105 (1.21%) Presentation Skills
14 104 (1.20%) Electronics
15 103 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
16 72 (0.83%) Law
17 48 (0.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 48 (0.55%) Police
18 33 (0.38%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,256 (14.46%) Architect
2 828 (9.53%) Developer
3 749 (8.62%) Senior
4 667 (7.68%) Analyst
5 539 (6.20%) Lead
6 465 (5.35%) Consultant
7 345 (3.97%) DevOps Engineer
8 341 (3.92%) Data Engineer
9 256 (2.95%) Network Engineer
10 239 (2.75%) Business Analyst
11 236 (2.72%) Technical Architect
12 233 (2.68%) Software Engineer
13 209 (2.41%) Support Engineer
14 205 (2.36%) Solutions Architect
15 174 (2.00%) Project Manager
16 162 (1.86%) Delivery Manager
17 159 (1.83%) Azure Engineer
18 158 (1.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 154 (1.77%) Tester
20 152 (1.75%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 335 (3.86%) REST
2 198 (2.28%) Spring
3 181 (2.08%) Node.js
4 170 (1.96%) React
5 167 (1.92%) Kafka
6 146 (1.68%) Spring Boot
7 144 (1.66%) SOAP
8 143 (1.65%) JSON
9 140 (1.61%) LDAP
10 136 (1.57%) .NET
11 114 (1.31%) RESTful
12 110 (1.27%) AngularJS
13 105 (1.21%) HTML
14 97 (1.12%) PySpark
15 96 (1.10%) OAuth
15 96 (1.10%) Web Services
16 90 (1.04%) Oracle Fusion
17 87 (1.00%) CSS
18 86 (0.99%) XML
19 77 (0.89%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 302 (3.48%) Product Ownership
2 280 (3.22%) Data Centre
3 257 (2.96%) Cloud Native
4 223 (2.57%) Onboarding
5 199 (2.29%) PKI
6 150 (1.73%) Management Information System
7 129 (1.48%) Security Posture
8 119 (1.37%) Legacy Systems
9 115 (1.32%) Self-Motivation
10 107 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
11 101 (1.16%) Replication
12 79 (0.91%) Distributed Systems
13 74 (0.85%) Hybrid Cloud
14 73 (0.84%) Public Cloud
15 68 (0.78%) Cyber Threat
15 68 (0.78%) Data Structures
16 65 (0.75%) Security Operations Centre
17 58 (0.67%) Clustering
18 56 (0.64%) Driving Licence
19 50 (0.58%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 810 (9.32%) Windows
2 629 (7.24%) Linux
3 225 (2.59%) Windows Server
4 132 (1.52%) Windows 10
5 124 (1.43%) Android
6 109 (1.25%) Unix
7 108 (1.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 69 (0.79%) Mac OS
9 45 (0.52%) Apple iOS
10 42 (0.48%) Ubuntu
11 28 (0.32%) VMS
12 25 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
13 22 (0.25%) CentOS
14 20 (0.23%) Windows 7
15 19 (0.22%) Solaris
16 17 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
17 14 (0.16%) AIX
18 11 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
19 10 (0.12%) Windows Server 2003
20 8 (0.092%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,758 (20.23%) Agile
2 1,336 (15.38%) DevOps
3 1,157 (13.32%) CI/CD
4 1,071 (12.33%) Problem-Solving
5 812 (9.35%) Stakeholder Management
6 765 (8.80%) Migration
7 732 (8.42%) Continuous Improvement
8 640 (7.37%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 565 (6.50%) ITIL
10 557 (6.41%) Cybersecurity
11 519 (5.97%) Infrastructure as Code
12 492 (5.66%) Analytics
13 489 (5.63%) Test Automation
14 480 (5.52%) Roadmaps
15 457 (5.26%) Containerisation
16 435 (5.01%) Scrum
17 434 (4.99%) Software Engineering
18 417 (4.80%) Data Modelling
19 415 (4.78%) Business Intelligence
20 410 (4.72%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 1,007 (11.59%) Python
2 770 (8.86%) SQL
3 565 (6.50%) PowerShell
4 499 (5.74%) Java
5 349 (4.02%) JavaScript
6 204 (2.35%) Bash
7 181 (2.08%) C#
8 160 (1.84%) TypeScript
9 100 (1.15%) C++
10 94 (1.08%) PL/SQL
11 88 (1.01%) Shell Script
12 70 (0.81%) Go
13 60 (0.69%) Ruby
14 59 (0.68%) C
15 50 (0.58%) Scala
16 46 (0.53%) Ada
17 41 (0.47%) Bicep
18 40 (0.46%) Kusto Query Language
19 34 (0.39%) Apex Code
20 33 (0.38%) R
Qualifications
1 6,543 (75.30%) SC Cleared
2 1,564 (18.00%) DV Cleared
3 437 (5.03%) Degree
4 248 (2.85%) BPSS Clearance
5 164 (1.89%) CISSP
6 162 (1.86%) Cisco Certification
7 122 (1.40%) Azure Certification
8 116 (1.34%) AWS Certification
9 113 (1.30%) CCNP
10 107 (1.23%) Microsoft Certification
11 102 (1.17%) CISM
12 70 (0.81%) CCNA
13 69 (0.79%) Computer Science Degree
14 62 (0.71%) ITIL Certification
14 62 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
15 55 (0.63%) PMP
16 47 (0.54%) GIAC
16 47 (0.54%) PMI Certification
17 46 (0.53%) CEH
17 46 (0.53%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 301 (3.46%) QA
2 280 (3.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 272 (3.13%) NIST
4 240 (2.76%) Data Quality
5 202 (2.32%) NCSC
6 170 (1.96%) GDPR
7 146 (1.68%) Accessibility
8 115 (1.32%) PMO
9 110 (1.27%) SLA
10 61 (0.70%) JSP 440
11 58 (0.67%) GRC
12 44 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
13 43 (0.49%) WCAG
14 36 (0.41%) NIST 800
15 35 (0.40%) COBIT
16 31 (0.36%) Def Stans
16 31 (0.36%) PCI DSS
17 26 (0.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 24 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 21 (0.24%) RMADS
System Software
1 582 (6.70%) Docker
2 456 (5.25%) Active Directory
3 240 (2.76%) VMware Infrastructure
4 86 (0.99%) VMware NSX
5 69 (0.79%) vSphere
6 62 (0.71%) VMware ESXi
7 57 (0.66%) Virtual Machines
8 56 (0.64%) Hyper-V
9 25 (0.29%) Firmware
10 21 (0.24%) BitLocker
10 21 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
10 21 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
11 17 (0.20%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 15 (0.17%) NFS
13 10 (0.12%) Postfix
13 10 (0.12%) vCloud
14 9 (0.10%) Squid
15 7 (0.081%) Microsoft App-V
16 6 (0.069%) Terminal Services
17 4 (0.046%) Snort
Systems Management
1 756 (8.70%) Kubernetes
2 676 (7.78%) Terraform
3 290 (3.34%) Ansible
4 218 (2.51%) Grafana
5 176 (2.03%) Prometheus
6 105 (1.21%) Single Sign-On
7 94 (1.08%) SCCM
8 89 (1.02%) vCenter Server
9 80 (0.92%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 64 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
11 62 (0.71%) Argo
12 44 (0.51%) FortiGate
13 37 (0.43%) Packer
13 37 (0.43%) Podman
14 30 (0.35%) OPNET
15 29 (0.33%) Progress Chef
15 29 (0.33%) Puppet
16 25 (0.29%) Kibana
17 24 (0.28%) Nmap
18 21 (0.24%) Consul
Vendors
1 992 (11.42%) Microsoft
2 491 (5.65%) Oracle
3 433 (4.98%) VMware
4 397 (4.57%) Cisco
5 365 (4.20%) ServiceNow
6 328 (3.77%) SAP
7 213 (2.45%) Splunk
8 179 (2.06%) Red Hat
9 148 (1.70%) Databricks
10 139 (1.60%) Google
11 128 (1.47%) Juniper
12 124 (1.43%) Atlassian
13 120 (1.38%) CyberArk
13 120 (1.38%) Palo Alto
13 120 (1.38%) Salesforce
14 108 (1.24%) IBM
15 96 (1.10%) Dell
16 86 (0.99%) HP
17 83 (0.96%) Talend
18 77 (0.89%) Aruba