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

6 months to
21 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 9,852 4,933 6,777
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.97% 18.10% 19.15%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.57% 58.64% 62.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,920 3,191 4,467
10th Percentile £380 £338 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £452
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £531 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.19% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £646
90th Percentile £719 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £533 £530 £550
% change year-on-year +0.47% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 759 430 505
10th Percentile £18.61 £18.50 £15.50
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.22
Median hourly rate £63.50 £25.15 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +152.49% -56.26% -4.17%
75th Percentile £80.00 £60.00 £71.75
90th Percentile £88.00 £76.25 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £62.50 £25.15 £55.04
% change year-on-year +148.51% -54.30% -8.27%

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 14,161 8,412 10,841
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.58% 30.87% 30.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,544 5,306 6,841
10th Percentile £350 £283 £313
25th Percentile £430 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £717 £716 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £523 £525
% change year-on-year +0.38% -0.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,057 611 885
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.13 £14.48
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £21.25
Median hourly rate £54.00 £25.32 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +113.27% -41.12% -23.76%
75th Percentile £75.00 £60.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £76.25 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £52.25 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +107.75% -41.51% -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 21 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 21 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 21 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 3,495 £540 +2.86% 568
South East +1 2,445 £550 +1.22% 503
South West 0 1,295 £538 -6.52% 317
North of England +2 1,072 £500 - 272
Midlands +3 964 £469 -6.20% 137
West Midlands +1 824 £469 -6.20% 99
North West +1 567 £525 -0.38% 151
East of England +2 315 £575 +9.52% 115
Yorkshire +2 296 £500 +1.63% 67
North East 0 238 £475 -5.00% 55
East Midlands +1 127 £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
1 350 (3.55%) Confluence
2 237 (2.41%) SharePoint
3 159 (1.61%) SAS
4 117 (1.19%) Microsoft Exchange
5 89 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
6 82 (0.83%) Apache Spark
7 79 (0.80%) Apache
8 42 (0.43%) nginx
9 33 (0.33%) Jupyter
10 32 (0.32%) WebLogic
11 21 (0.21%) Tomcat
12 18 (0.18%) Oracle Application Server
13 16 (0.16%) CMS
13 16 (0.16%) IIS
13 16 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
14 13 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
15 12 (0.12%) Tuxedo
16 11 (0.11%) NetWeaver
16 11 (0.11%) Skype for Business
17 9 (0.091%) Documentum
Applications
1 179 (1.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 125 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
3 87 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 71 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 39 (0.40%) MS Visio
6 22 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.13%) Simulink
8 12 (0.12%) AutoCAD
8 12 (0.12%) Revit
8 12 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
9 10 (0.10%) Chatbot
10 6 (0.061%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.061%) Sketch
11 5 (0.051%) Notepad++
12 4 (0.041%) Trello
13 3 (0.030%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 2 (0.020%) CATIA
14 2 (0.020%) InDesign
14 2 (0.020%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.020%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 115 (1.17%) SAP S/4HANA
2 65 (0.66%) Remedy ITSM
3 42 (0.43%) Oracle ERP
4 37 (0.38%) Teamcenter
5 30 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 27 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
7 22 (0.22%) SAP PSCD
8 21 (0.21%) Dynamics CRM
9 15 (0.15%) Findur
9 15 (0.15%) Primavera
10 13 (0.13%) Temenos T24
11 12 (0.12%) iTrent
11 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
12 11 (0.11%) Oracle Payables
12 11 (0.11%) Oracle Payroll
13 10 (0.10%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 10 (0.10%) SAP HR
14 9 (0.091%) Salesforce CRM
14 9 (0.091%) SAP ERP
15 8 (0.081%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 1,744 (17.70%) Azure
2 1,622 (16.46%) AWS
3 403 (4.09%) Azure DevOps
4 400 (4.06%) GitHub
4 400 (4.06%) Power Platform
5 347 (3.52%) GCP
6 264 (2.68%) Microsoft 365
7 251 (2.55%) GitHub Actions
8 250 (2.54%) Entra ID
9 236 (2.40%) Serverless
10 219 (2.22%) Amazon S3
11 165 (1.67%) AWS Lambda
12 150 (1.52%) Amazon EC2
13 139 (1.41%) OCI
14 137 (1.39%) SaaS
15 136 (1.38%) OpenShift
16 131 (1.33%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 124 (1.26%) PaaS
18 115 (1.17%) Amazon EKS
19 112 (1.14%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 423 (4.29%) Firewall
2 334 (3.39%) DNS
3 216 (2.19%) Network Security
4 207 (2.10%) WAN
5 182 (1.85%) LAN
6 181 (1.84%) VPN
7 170 (1.73%) DHCP
8 138 (1.40%) BGP
9 124 (1.26%) TCP/IP
10 113 (1.15%) OSPF
11 108 (1.10%) Wi-Fi
12 99 (1.00%) VLAN
13 83 (0.84%) Wireless
14 60 (0.61%) IPsec
15 58 (0.59%) MPLS
16 56 (0.57%) SAN
16 56 (0.57%) SD-WAN
17 55 (0.56%) VSAN
18 54 (0.55%) VXLAN
19 48 (0.49%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 302 (3.07%) Power BI
2 245 (2.49%) PostgreSQL
3 243 (2.47%) SQL Server
4 227 (2.30%) Data Warehouse
5 148 (1.50%) Oracle Database
6 132 (1.34%) Metadata
7 105 (1.07%) Data Lake
8 102 (1.04%) Relational Database
9 96 (0.97%) Amazon RDS
10 81 (0.82%) Pentaho
11 78 (0.79%) MySQL
11 78 (0.79%) Oracle Reports
12 74 (0.75%) MongoDB
13 71 (0.72%) Elasticsearch
14 63 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
15 60 (0.61%) NoSQL
16 58 (0.59%) Tableau
17 57 (0.58%) Amazon Athena
18 40 (0.41%) Big Data
19 38 (0.39%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 549 (5.57%) JIRA
2 453 (4.60%) Git
3 391 (3.97%) GitLab
4 369 (3.75%) Jenkins
5 99 (1.00%) Selenium
6 77 (0.78%) SonarQube
7 75 (0.76%) JUnit
8 60 (0.61%) Postman
9 57 (0.58%) Rational DOORS
10 52 (0.53%) JMeter
11 48 (0.49%) Maven
12 47 (0.48%) Cucumber
13 40 (0.41%) Mockito
14 38 (0.39%) Artifactory
15 37 (0.38%) Zephyr
16 36 (0.37%) Bitbucket
16 36 (0.37%) REST Assured
17 35 (0.36%) Visual Studio
18 32 (0.32%) Cypress.io
19 31 (0.31%) Gatling
General
1 2,066 (20.97%) Public Sector
2 2,010 (20.40%) Social Skills
3 734 (7.45%) Analytical Skills
4 678 (6.88%) Finance
5 332 (3.37%) Military
6 272 (2.76%) Aerospace
7 254 (2.58%) Documentation Skills
8 154 (1.56%) Influencing Skills
9 147 (1.49%) Legal
10 127 (1.29%) Telecoms
11 121 (1.23%) Banking
12 120 (1.22%) Organisational Skills
13 92 (0.93%) Law
14 87 (0.88%) Police
15 75 (0.76%) Manufacturing
16 71 (0.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 68 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
18 43 (0.44%) Marketing
19 37 (0.38%) Aviation
20 36 (0.37%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,438 (14.60%) Architect
2 1,014 (10.29%) Developer
3 885 (8.98%) Senior
4 853 (8.66%) Lead
5 626 (6.35%) Analyst
6 466 (4.73%) Data Engineer
7 465 (4.72%) Consultant
8 397 (4.03%) DevOps Engineer
9 344 (3.49%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 292 (2.96%) Software Engineer
11 267 (2.71%) Technical Architect
12 240 (2.44%) Network Engineer
13 232 (2.35%) Security Architect
14 231 (2.34%) Solutions Architect
15 196 (1.99%) Java Developer
16 192 (1.95%) Delivery Manager
17 191 (1.94%) Business Analyst
18 189 (1.92%) Project Manager
19 186 (1.89%) Data Architect
20 183 (1.86%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 338 (3.43%) REST
2 233 (2.37%) Spring
3 196 (1.99%) Spring Boot
4 172 (1.75%) .NET
5 167 (1.70%) Kafka
6 164 (1.66%) React
7 158 (1.60%) RESTful
8 145 (1.47%) Node.js
9 140 (1.42%) SOAP
10 118 (1.20%) JSON
11 114 (1.16%) AngularJS
12 96 (0.97%) Web Services
13 94 (0.95%) OAuth
14 90 (0.91%) HTML
15 86 (0.87%) PySpark
16 83 (0.84%) LDAP
17 76 (0.77%) XML
18 74 (0.75%) OpenID
19 66 (0.67%) CSS
19 66 (0.67%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 395 (4.01%) Cloud Native
2 336 (3.41%) Onboarding
3 317 (3.22%) Product Ownership
4 274 (2.78%) Data Centre
5 176 (1.79%) Legacy Systems
6 150 (1.52%) Management Information System
7 142 (1.44%) Distributed Systems
8 141 (1.43%) PKI
9 116 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
10 107 (1.09%) CMDB
11 102 (1.04%) Replication
12 97 (0.98%) Hybrid Cloud
13 95 (0.96%) Data Structures
14 94 (0.95%) Enterprise Software
15 89 (0.90%) Clustering
16 86 (0.87%) Security Posture
17 84 (0.85%) Public Cloud
18 76 (0.77%) Virtual Team
19 74 (0.75%) Security Operations Centre
20 69 (0.70%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 808 (8.20%) Windows
2 677 (6.87%) Linux
3 263 (2.67%) Windows Server
4 199 (2.02%) Unix
5 136 (1.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 88 (0.89%) Windows 10
7 80 (0.81%) Android
8 59 (0.60%) Solaris
9 45 (0.46%) Apple iOS
9 45 (0.46%) Mac OS
10 33 (0.33%) AIX
11 31 (0.31%) Ubuntu
11 31 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
12 28 (0.28%) CentOS
13 16 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
14 15 (0.15%) VMS
15 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
15 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
16 10 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
17 9 (0.091%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,036 (20.67%) Agile
2 1,504 (15.27%) DevOps
3 1,379 (14.00%) CI/CD
4 1,074 (10.90%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,056 (10.72%) Problem-Solving
6 1,051 (10.67%) Continuous Improvement
7 868 (8.81%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 768 (7.80%) Migration
9 751 (7.62%) Infrastructure as Code
10 680 (6.90%) ITIL
11 675 (6.85%) Cybersecurity
12 597 (6.06%) Analytics
13 590 (5.99%) Test Automation
14 585 (5.94%) Software Engineering
15 577 (5.86%) Containerisation
16 570 (5.79%) Roadmaps
17 526 (5.34%) Data Modelling
17 526 (5.34%) Decision-Making
18 517 (5.25%) AI
19 482 (4.89%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 1,042 (10.58%) Python
2 941 (9.55%) SQL
3 664 (6.74%) Java
4 459 (4.66%) PowerShell
5 297 (3.01%) JavaScript
6 244 (2.48%) Bash
7 201 (2.04%) C#
8 141 (1.43%) TypeScript
9 140 (1.42%) PL/SQL
10 83 (0.84%) C++
11 82 (0.83%) Bicep
11 82 (0.83%) Shell Script
12 64 (0.65%) C
13 49 (0.50%) Go
14 42 (0.43%) Kotlin
14 42 (0.43%) Scala
15 39 (0.40%) Ada
15 39 (0.40%) Apex Code
16 38 (0.39%) Ruby
17 33 (0.33%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 7,390 (75.01%) SC Cleared
2 2,009 (20.39%) DV Cleared
3 399 (4.05%) Degree
4 331 (3.36%) BPSS Clearance
5 181 (1.84%) Cisco Certification
6 161 (1.63%) CISSP
7 142 (1.44%) Azure Certification
8 122 (1.24%) Microsoft Certification
9 116 (1.18%) AWS Certification
10 94 (0.95%) CISM
11 93 (0.94%) PMI Certification
12 90 (0.91%) PMP
13 89 (0.90%) CCNP
14 76 (0.77%) CCNA
15 70 (0.71%) ISTQB
16 59 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 55 (0.56%) Computer Science Degree
18 45 (0.46%) ITIL Certification
19 44 (0.45%) TOGAF Certification
20 36 (0.37%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 369 (3.75%) QA
2 303 (3.08%) Data Quality
3 280 (2.84%) NIST
4 271 (2.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 215 (2.18%) NCSC
6 208 (2.11%) Accessibility
7 195 (1.98%) PMO
8 152 (1.54%) GDPR
9 105 (1.07%) GRC
10 100 (1.02%) SLA
11 58 (0.59%) WCAG
12 55 (0.56%) JSP 440
13 47 (0.48%) NIST 800
14 42 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
15 32 (0.32%) Def Stans
16 25 (0.25%) Government Security Classifications
16 25 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 22 (0.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 22 (0.22%) RMADS
18 20 (0.20%) COBIT
System Software
1 636 (6.46%) Docker
2 453 (4.60%) Active Directory
3 340 (3.45%) VMware Infrastructure
4 131 (1.33%) VMware NSX
5 130 (1.32%) VMware ESXi
6 96 (0.97%) vSphere
7 86 (0.87%) Hyper-V
8 75 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
9 43 (0.44%) Oracle RAC
10 34 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
11 28 (0.28%) Firmware
12 21 (0.21%) vCloud
13 20 (0.20%) NFS
14 18 (0.18%) BitLocker
14 18 (0.18%) Postfix
14 18 (0.18%) Squid
15 8 (0.081%) KVM
15 8 (0.081%) Microsoft App-V
15 8 (0.081%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 7 (0.071%) UAG
Systems Management
1 821 (8.33%) Terraform
2 770 (7.82%) Kubernetes
3 363 (3.68%) Ansible
4 234 (2.38%) Grafana
5 181 (1.84%) Prometheus
6 129 (1.31%) vCenter Server
7 87 (0.88%) SCCM
8 70 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
9 63 (0.64%) Argo
10 57 (0.58%) SCOM
11 55 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
12 48 (0.49%) Oracle RMAN
13 47 (0.48%) FortiGate
14 44 (0.45%) Puppet
15 33 (0.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 31 (0.31%) Data Guard
17 28 (0.28%) Nagios
18 27 (0.27%) Progress Chef
19 25 (0.25%) Podman
20 23 (0.23%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,136 (11.53%) Microsoft
2 738 (7.49%) Oracle
3 503 (5.11%) VMware
4 472 (4.79%) ServiceNow
5 338 (3.43%) SAP
6 290 (2.94%) Cisco
7 193 (1.96%) Splunk
8 180 (1.83%) Google
9 173 (1.76%) Databricks
10 142 (1.44%) Red Hat
11 125 (1.27%) Salesforce
12 122 (1.24%) Talend
13 112 (1.14%) IBM
13 112 (1.14%) Informatica
14 103 (1.05%) Palo Alto
15 98 (0.99%) Juniper
16 92 (0.93%) SolarWinds
17 86 (0.87%) F5
18 80 (0.81%) Citrix
18 80 (0.81%) Fortinet