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 26 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 3 3 4
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +4
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 6,480 5,642 7,013
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.13% 18.18% 18.08%
As % of the Qualifications category 63.07% 60.79% 60.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,282 3,547 4,415
10th Percentile £330 £350 £369
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.64% - -1.79%
75th Percentile £631 £638 £650
90th Percentile £719 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £528 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.09% - -1.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 669 301 467
10th Percentile £18.57 £21.25 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.05 £31.25 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% - -
75th Percentile £55.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £54.76 £60.00
% change year-on-year -54.07% -8.74% -

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 10,275 9,281 11,635
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.50% 29.91% 29.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,667 5,645 7,401
10th Percentile £306 £313 £306
25th Percentile £416 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £627 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £737 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 894 445 703
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.19 £17.72
25th Percentile £19.06 £27.00 £27.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £53.67
Median % change year-on-year -49.70% -6.83% +19.26%
75th Percentile £52.42 £68.18 £69.19
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.91 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £53.85
% change year-on-year -44.11% -16.43% +19.67%

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 26 November 2025.

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 26 November 2025.

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 26 November 2025. 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 0 2,144 £550 +2.23% 456
South East -1 1,241 £516 -6.18% 866
South West 0 1,115 £550 -4.35% 546
North of England -2 761 £515 +8.42% 220
Midlands +2 692 £519 -9.04% 232
West Midlands +1 535 £525 -8.70% 162
North West +1 499 £535 +8.52% 149
East of England +2 289 £513 - 305
Yorkshire -9 165 £500 +7.24% 52
East Midlands +1 142 £444 -12.99% 63
North East 0 105 £475 +1.06% 21
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
1 260 (4.01%) Confluence
2 175 (2.70%) SharePoint
3 114 (1.76%) Microsoft Exchange
4 96 (1.48%) SAS
5 84 (1.30%) Apache
6 51 (0.79%) nginx
7 50 (0.77%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.60%) Skype for Business
9 38 (0.59%) Apache Spark
10 23 (0.35%) CMS
11 21 (0.32%) IIS
12 17 (0.26%) WebLogic
13 15 (0.23%) SharePoint Server
14 12 (0.19%) Exchange Server 2010
15 11 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2013
15 11 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 10 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2003
16 10 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2007
16 10 (0.15%) Office Communications Server
17 8 (0.12%) Documentum
Applications
1 211 (3.26%) Microsoft Office
2 149 (2.30%) Microsoft Excel
3 82 (1.27%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (0.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 34 (0.52%) MS Visio
6 21 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.23%) Siemens NX
8 14 (0.22%) Simulink
9 11 (0.17%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 7 (0.11%) Sketch
11 6 (0.093%) Adobe Illustrator
11 6 (0.093%) Photoshop
12 5 (0.077%) Adobe XD
12 5 (0.077%) FrameMaker
12 5 (0.077%) Oracle Smart View
12 5 (0.077%) PTC Creo
12 5 (0.077%) Stateflow
12 5 (0.077%) Trello
12 5 (0.077%) Windchill
13 2 (0.031%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 144 (2.22%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (0.52%) Remedy ITSM
3 27 (0.42%) SAP WM
4 26 (0.40%) SAP EWM
5 25 (0.39%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 21 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
7 19 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
8 18 (0.28%) Teamcenter
9 17 (0.26%) Primavera
9 17 (0.26%) SAP MM
10 16 (0.25%) SAP HCM
11 15 (0.23%) Maximo
12 12 (0.19%) Oracle General Ledger
12 12 (0.19%) SAP PS
12 12 (0.19%) SAP QM
12 12 (0.19%) SAP VC
13 11 (0.17%) SAP EHS
14 10 (0.15%) SAP HR
14 10 (0.15%) SAP Payroll
15 8 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,087 (16.77%) AWS
2 1,041 (16.06%) Azure
3 312 (4.81%) Microsoft 365
4 306 (4.72%) GitHub
5 244 (3.77%) Power Platform
6 231 (3.56%) Azure DevOps
7 229 (3.53%) GCP
8 193 (2.98%) Serverless
9 172 (2.65%) Amazon S3
10 154 (2.38%) GitHub Actions
11 147 (2.27%) Entra ID
12 136 (2.10%) SaaS
13 121 (1.87%) OpenShift
14 113 (1.74%) Amazon EC2
15 110 (1.70%) AWS Lambda
16 108 (1.67%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 107 (1.65%) AWS CloudFormation
18 81 (1.25%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 78 (1.20%) Amazon EKS
19 78 (1.20%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 348 (5.37%) Firewall
2 252 (3.89%) DNS
3 172 (2.65%) VPN
4 142 (2.19%) Network Security
5 124 (1.91%) WAN
6 105 (1.62%) TCP/IP
7 96 (1.48%) BGP
8 91 (1.40%) DHCP
9 90 (1.39%) LAN
9 90 (1.39%) Wireless
10 71 (1.10%) SSL
11 62 (0.96%) SAN
12 61 (0.94%) MPLS
12 61 (0.94%) Wi-Fi
13 55 (0.85%) IPsec
13 55 (0.85%) VLAN
14 48 (0.74%) Cisco ISE
15 45 (0.69%) HTTP
16 42 (0.65%) SMTP
17 41 (0.63%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 201 (3.10%) PostgreSQL
2 165 (2.55%) Power BI
3 82 (1.27%) Amazon RDS
4 81 (1.25%) MongoDB
5 75 (1.16%) SQL Server
6 73 (1.13%) Oracle Database
7 71 (1.10%) Data Warehouse
8 70 (1.08%) Relational Database
9 67 (1.03%) Metadata
10 66 (1.02%) NoSQL
11 43 (0.66%) Big Data
12 41 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
13 40 (0.62%) Pentaho
14 37 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
15 36 (0.56%) SAS Enterprise Guide
16 35 (0.54%) Data Lake
17 33 (0.51%) Amazon Redshift
17 33 (0.51%) MySQL
18 32 (0.49%) Amazon Athena
19 31 (0.48%) Redis
Development Applications
1 467 (7.21%) JIRA
2 376 (5.80%) Git
3 359 (5.54%) Jenkins
4 252 (3.89%) GitLab
5 71 (1.10%) Selenium
6 56 (0.86%) JUnit
7 55 (0.85%) Cypress.io
8 53 (0.82%) SonarQube
9 49 (0.76%) Bitbucket
10 48 (0.74%) Postman
11 45 (0.69%) Oracle APEX
12 35 (0.54%) Artifactory
13 33 (0.51%) Maven
14 31 (0.48%) Mockito
15 30 (0.46%) Cucumber
16 23 (0.35%) Vagrant
17 22 (0.34%) Rational DOORS
18 21 (0.32%) MSI
18 21 (0.32%) REST Assured
19 20 (0.31%) CircleCI
General
1 1,789 (27.61%) Public Sector
2 1,708 (26.36%) Social Skills
3 605 (9.34%) Analytical Skills
4 472 (7.28%) Finance
5 257 (3.97%) Military
6 206 (3.18%) Telecoms
7 190 (2.93%) Manufacturing
8 161 (2.48%) Documentation Skills
9 142 (2.19%) Electronics
10 133 (2.05%) Marketing
11 123 (1.90%) Aerospace
12 100 (1.54%) Legal
13 94 (1.45%) Organisational Skills
14 87 (1.34%) Banking
15 78 (1.20%) Influencing Skills
16 77 (1.19%) Presentation Skills
17 68 (1.05%) Law
18 40 (0.62%) Aviation
18 40 (0.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 39 (0.60%) Police
Job Titles
1 864 (13.33%) Architect
2 643 (9.92%) Developer
3 527 (8.13%) Consultant
4 506 (7.81%) Senior
5 426 (6.57%) Analyst
6 393 (6.06%) Lead
7 276 (4.26%) DevOps Engineer
8 236 (3.64%) Support Engineer
9 199 (3.07%) Network Engineer
10 160 (2.47%) Solutions Architect
11 153 (2.36%) Data Engineer
12 143 (2.21%) SAP Consultant
13 135 (2.08%) AWS Engineer
14 127 (1.96%) Platform Engineer
15 126 (1.94%) IT Engineer
15 126 (1.94%) Technical Architect
16 118 (1.82%) Administrator
17 117 (1.81%) Software Engineer
18 110 (1.70%) Senior Developer
19 109 (1.68%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 257 (3.97%) REST
2 165 (2.55%) React
3 162 (2.50%) Node.js
4 154 (2.38%) Kafka
5 128 (1.98%) JSON
6 116 (1.79%) SOAP
7 113 (1.74%) Spring
8 109 (1.68%) HTML
9 97 (1.50%) XML
10 95 (1.47%) AngularJS
11 92 (1.42%) RESTful
12 90 (1.39%) CSS
13 89 (1.37%) Web Services
14 88 (1.36%) .NET
15 87 (1.34%) Spring Boot
16 71 (1.10%) OAuth
17 66 (1.02%) LDAP
18 55 (0.85%) Elastic Stack
18 55 (0.85%) SAML
19 50 (0.77%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 199 (3.07%) Data Centre
2 190 (2.93%) Onboarding
3 184 (2.84%) PKI
4 172 (2.65%) Cloud Native
5 147 (2.27%) Management Information System
6 142 (2.19%) Product Ownership
7 102 (1.57%) Self-Motivation
8 78 (1.20%) Legacy Systems
9 75 (1.16%) Driving Licence
10 70 (1.08%) Replication
11 67 (1.03%) Cyber Threat
12 66 (1.02%) Security Operations Centre
13 65 (1.00%) Security Posture
14 60 (0.93%) Hybrid Cloud
15 58 (0.90%) Enterprise Software
16 55 (0.85%) CMDB
17 53 (0.82%) Private Cloud
18 50 (0.77%) Analytical Mindset
19 44 (0.68%) Public Cloud
20 42 (0.65%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 753 (11.62%) Windows
2 512 (7.90%) Linux
3 178 (2.75%) Windows Server
4 172 (2.65%) Windows 10
5 97 (1.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 90 (1.39%) Android
7 86 (1.33%) Mac OS
8 83 (1.28%) Unix
9 47 (0.73%) VMS
10 34 (0.52%) Ubuntu
11 28 (0.43%) Amazon Linux
11 28 (0.43%) Apple iOS
11 28 (0.43%) Windows Server 2019
12 24 (0.37%) Windows 7
13 22 (0.34%) CentOS
14 20 (0.31%) Windows Server 2012
15 19 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
16 17 (0.26%) Windows Server 2003
17 15 (0.23%) Mac OS X
18 9 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,307 (20.17%) Agile
2 986 (15.22%) DevOps
3 894 (13.80%) CI/CD
4 803 (12.39%) Problem-Solving
5 645 (9.95%) Migration
6 514 (7.93%) Stakeholder Management
7 450 (6.94%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 446 (6.88%) Cybersecurity
9 434 (6.70%) ITIL
10 416 (6.42%) Infrastructure as Code
11 413 (6.37%) Continuous Improvement
12 383 (5.91%) Service Management
13 378 (5.83%) Business Intelligence
14 355 (5.48%) Test Automation
15 352 (5.43%) Containerisation
16 337 (5.20%) Analytics
17 336 (5.19%) Workflow
18 323 (4.98%) Scrum
19 302 (4.66%) Roadmaps
20 301 (4.65%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 842 (12.99%) Python
2 500 (7.72%) SQL
3 427 (6.59%) PowerShell
4 411 (6.34%) Java
5 333 (5.14%) JavaScript
6 219 (3.38%) Bash
7 164 (2.53%) TypeScript
8 122 (1.88%) C#
9 91 (1.40%) C++
10 78 (1.20%) Go
11 69 (1.06%) PL/SQL
12 63 (0.97%) C
13 59 (0.91%) Shell Script
14 43 (0.66%) Perl
15 37 (0.57%) ABAP
16 33 (0.51%) Ruby
17 31 (0.48%) Groovy
18 28 (0.43%) Ada
18 28 (0.43%) Bicep
19 26 (0.40%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 4,968 (76.67%) SC Cleared
2 1,106 (17.07%) DV Cleared
3 327 (5.05%) Degree
4 264 (4.07%) BPSS Clearance
5 128 (1.98%) CISSP
6 123 (1.90%) Microsoft Certification
7 109 (1.68%) Azure Certification
7 109 (1.68%) Cisco Certification
8 95 (1.47%) AWS Certification
9 82 (1.27%) CCNP
10 74 (1.14%) CISM
11 56 (0.86%) ITIL Certification
12 52 (0.80%) Computer Science Degree
13 42 (0.65%) CCNA
14 38 (0.59%) CEH
15 37 (0.57%) TOGAF Certification
15 37 (0.57%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 34 (0.52%) CHECK Team Member
17 29 (0.45%) CTC Cleared
17 29 (0.45%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 198 (3.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 198 (3.06%) QA
2 193 (2.98%) NIST
3 153 (2.36%) NCSC
4 128 (1.98%) GDPR
5 125 (1.93%) SLA
6 114 (1.76%) Data Quality
7 106 (1.64%) Accessibility
8 59 (0.91%) PMO
9 49 (0.76%) JSP 440
10 39 (0.60%) NIST 800
11 38 (0.59%) WCAG
12 32 (0.49%) GRC
13 31 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 29 (0.45%) Def Stans
15 27 (0.42%) COBIT
16 23 (0.35%) RMADS
17 22 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials
18 17 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 17 (0.26%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 529 (8.16%) Docker
2 390 (6.02%) Active Directory
3 206 (3.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 65 (1.00%) VMware ESXi
5 64 (0.99%) VMware NSX
5 64 (0.99%) vSphere
6 52 (0.80%) Virtual Machines
7 40 (0.62%) Firmware
8 31 (0.48%) Hyper-V
9 26 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
10 21 (0.32%) DFS Replication
11 19 (0.29%) Postfix
12 15 (0.23%) Dovecot
12 15 (0.23%) NFS
13 11 (0.17%) ISA Server
13 11 (0.17%) Squid
14 10 (0.15%) BitLocker
14 10 (0.15%) Brightmail
15 9 (0.14%) Terminal Services
16 7 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 622 (9.60%) Kubernetes
2 583 (9.00%) Terraform
3 278 (4.29%) Ansible
4 160 (2.47%) Grafana
5 132 (2.04%) Prometheus
6 104 (1.60%) SCCM
7 91 (1.40%) Single Sign-On
8 76 (1.17%) Microsoft Intune
9 61 (0.94%) vCenter Server
10 55 (0.85%) Argo
11 50 (0.77%) Packer
12 49 (0.76%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 35 (0.54%) Jamf Pro
14 33 (0.51%) Kibana
15 26 (0.40%) FortiGate
16 24 (0.37%) Nessus
16 24 (0.37%) SCOM
17 23 (0.35%) OPNET
18 22 (0.34%) Consul
18 22 (0.34%) vRealize
Vendors
1 863 (13.32%) Microsoft
2 436 (6.73%) SAP
3 414 (6.39%) Cisco
4 344 (5.31%) VMware
5 339 (5.23%) Oracle
6 313 (4.83%) ServiceNow
7 183 (2.82%) Splunk
8 155 (2.39%) Juniper
9 129 (1.99%) Red Hat
10 108 (1.67%) Google
11 99 (1.53%) Atlassian
12 94 (1.45%) HP
13 92 (1.42%) Palo Alto
14 91 (1.40%) Dell
15 83 (1.28%) Salesforce
16 71 (1.10%) F5
17 70 (1.08%) Apple
17 70 (1.08%) SolarWinds
18 68 (1.05%) IBM
18 68 (1.05%) Remedy