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

6 months to
2 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 9,169 4,514 7,138
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.69% 18.50% 19.21%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.83% 59.08% 61.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,359 2,995 4,671
10th Percentile £363 £331 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -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 779 268 490
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.62 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £55.52 £57.30
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -3.11% -4.50%
75th Percentile £73.46 £68.00 £72.46
90th Percentile £85.36 £80.03 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £54.00 £50.95 £57.29
% change year-on-year +6.00% -11.07% -4.53%

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 13,131 7,640 11,611
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.50% 31.31% 31.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,819 4,842 7,133
10th Percentile £340 £290 £306
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 £629 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £536
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.05% -2.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 985 438 988
10th Percentile £17.10 £18.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £22.33 £18.13
Median hourly rate £47.50 £45.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% +12.50% -23.81%
75th Percentile £71.50 £67.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.46 £81.55 £77.14
UK median hourly rate £47.50 £40.25 £40.00
% change year-on-year +18.01% +0.63% -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 2 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 2 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 2 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 3,238 £525 - 483
South East +1 2,193 £538 -2.27% 483
South West 0 1,328 £538 -4.44% 294
Midlands +4 904 £475 -9.52% 155
North of England -1 839 £488 -2.50% 256
West Midlands +4 767 £475 -10.55% 123
North West -2 501 £497 -0.64% 135
East of England +2 382 £525 +16.67% 122
Yorkshire -6 206 £476 -9.33% 51
North East +1 166 £453 -12.14% 73
East Midlands -4 131 £450 -5.26% 32
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
1 356 (3.88%) Confluence
2 203 (2.21%) SharePoint
3 127 (1.39%) 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%) nginx
8 33 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 22 (0.24%) Jupyter
10 15 (0.16%) IIS
10 15 (0.16%) Skype for Business
10 15 (0.16%) Tomcat
11 14 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
11 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
12 13 (0.14%) CMS
12 13 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
13 9 (0.098%) Palantir Foundry
14 8 (0.087%) Apache Superset
14 8 (0.087%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 211 (2.30%) Microsoft Office
2 185 (2.02%) Microsoft Excel
3 121 (1.32%) Microsoft Project
4 83 (0.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 39 (0.43%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.13%) Simulink
8 7 (0.076%) AutoCAD
9 6 (0.065%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.055%) Notepad++
10 5 (0.055%) 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 82 (0.89%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (0.49%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 44 (0.48%) 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 (17.17%) Azure
2 1,488 (16.23%) AWS
3 377 (4.11%) GCP
4 376 (4.10%) GitHub
5 355 (3.87%) Azure DevOps
6 344 (3.75%) Power Platform
7 254 (2.77%) Serverless
8 250 (2.73%) Microsoft 365
9 225 (2.45%) Entra ID
10 209 (2.28%) GitHub Actions
11 196 (2.14%) Amazon S3
12 167 (1.82%) AWS Lambda
13 131 (1.43%) PaaS
14 128 (1.40%) Amazon EC2
15 125 (1.36%) OpenShift
16 114 (1.24%) IaaS
17 113 (1.23%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 113 (1.23%) AWS CloudFormation
18 108 (1.18%) OCI
19 105 (1.15%) 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 (2.12%) LAN
6 160 (1.75%) VPN
7 141 (1.54%) BGP
8 139 (1.52%) 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 (0.55%) 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 (2.85%) Power BI
2 214 (2.33%) 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 89 (0.97%) NoSQL
9 83 (0.91%) 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
16 62 (0.68%) MySQL
17 61 (0.67%) Tableau
18 53 (0.58%) Amazon Athena
19 48 (0.52%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 569 (6.21%) JIRA
2 426 (4.65%) Git
3 344 (3.75%) Jenkins
4 323 (3.52%) GitLab
5 86 (0.94%) Selenium
6 74 (0.81%) Postman
7 71 (0.77%) JUnit
8 57 (0.62%) SonarQube
9 49 (0.53%) Rational DOORS
10 46 (0.50%) 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%) Oracle APEX
17 27 (0.29%) Zephyr
18 23 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 2,023 (22.06%) Public Sector
2 2,002 (21.83%) Social Skills
3 729 (7.95%) Analytical Skills
4 653 (7.12%) Finance
5 331 (3.61%) Military
6 257 (2.80%) Documentation Skills
7 219 (2.39%) Aerospace
8 144 (1.57%) Legal
9 131 (1.43%) Telecoms
10 119 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
11 118 (1.29%) Manufacturing
12 108 (1.18%) Banking
13 102 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
14 93 (1.01%) Presentation Skills
15 87 (0.95%) Law
16 66 (0.72%) Marketing
17 59 (0.64%) Electronics
18 58 (0.63%) Police
19 56 (0.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 37 (0.40%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,349 (14.71%) Architect
2 880 (9.60%) Developer
3 782 (8.53%) Senior
4 658 (7.18%) Analyst
5 632 (6.89%) Lead
6 432 (4.71%) Data Engineer
7 415 (4.53%) Consultant
8 397 (4.33%) DevOps Engineer
9 277 (3.02%) Network Engineer
10 272 (2.97%) Software Engineer
11 261 (2.85%) Technical Architect
12 250 (2.73%) Business Analyst
13 238 (2.60%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 211 (2.30%) Project Manager
15 199 (2.17%) Solutions Architect
16 196 (2.14%) Azure Engineer
17 170 (1.85%) Delivery Manager
17 170 (1.85%) Security Architect
18 166 (1.81%) Administrator
19 163 (1.78%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 309 (3.37%) REST
2 211 (2.30%) Spring
3 167 (1.82%) Node.js
4 165 (1.80%) Spring Boot
5 162 (1.77%) Kafka
6 156 (1.70%) .NET
7 154 (1.68%) React
8 140 (1.53%) LDAP
9 135 (1.47%) SOAP
10 131 (1.43%) JSON
10 131 (1.43%) RESTful
11 112 (1.22%) AngularJS
12 99 (1.08%) PySpark
12 99 (1.08%) Web Services
13 87 (0.95%) Oracle Fusion
14 86 (0.94%) HTML
15 83 (0.91%) OAuth
16 82 (0.89%) XML
17 70 (0.76%) Elastic Stack
18 64 (0.70%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 314 (3.42%) Product Ownership
2 304 (3.32%) Cloud Native
3 273 (2.98%) Data Centre
4 261 (2.85%) Onboarding
5 171 (1.86%) PKI
6 140 (1.53%) Management Information System
7 121 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
8 119 (1.30%) Security Posture
9 117 (1.28%) Enterprise Software
10 116 (1.27%) Replication
11 110 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
12 103 (1.12%) Distributed Systems
13 78 (0.85%) Clustering
14 75 (0.82%) Data Structures
15 74 (0.81%) Public Cloud
16 73 (0.80%) Hybrid Cloud
17 64 (0.70%) Virtual Team
18 62 (0.68%) Security Operations Centre
19 56 (0.61%) Cyber Threat
19 56 (0.61%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 788 (8.59%) Windows
2 641 (6.99%) 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 1,832 (19.98%) Agile
2 1,395 (15.21%) DevOps
3 1,207 (13.16%) CI/CD
4 1,030 (11.23%) Problem-Solving
5 877 (9.56%) Stakeholder Management
6 808 (8.81%) Continuous Improvement
7 786 (8.57%) Migration
8 677 (7.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 604 (6.59%) ITIL
10 603 (6.58%) Infrastructure as Code
11 538 (5.87%) Cybersecurity
12 524 (5.71%) Analytics
13 523 (5.70%) Test Automation
14 508 (5.54%) Software Engineering
15 499 (5.44%) Roadmaps
16 489 (5.33%) Containerisation
17 452 (4.93%) Data Modelling
18 430 (4.69%) Scrum
19 417 (4.55%) Decision-Making
20 412 (4.49%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 992 (10.82%) Python
2 848 (9.25%) SQL
3 564 (6.15%) Java
4 515 (5.62%) PowerShell
5 297 (3.24%) JavaScript
6 199 (2.17%) C#
7 169 (1.84%) Bash
8 145 (1.58%) TypeScript
9 101 (1.10%) PL/SQL
10 94 (1.03%) 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%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 6,898 (75.23%) SC Cleared
2 1,730 (18.87%) DV Cleared
3 426 (4.65%) Degree
4 271 (2.96%) BPSS Clearance
5 171 (1.86%) Cisco Certification
6 151 (1.65%) CISSP
7 128 (1.40%) 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 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
16 61 (0.67%) PMI Certification
17 55 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 52 (0.57%) ISTQB
19 46 (0.50%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 340 (3.71%) QA
2 270 (2.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 266 (2.90%) Data Quality
3 266 (2.90%) NIST
4 184 (2.01%) NCSC
5 159 (1.73%) 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 (0.43%) 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
1 578 (6.30%) Docker
2 443 (4.83%) Active Directory
3 267 (2.91%) VMware Infrastructure
4 92 (1.00%) VMware ESXi
5 83 (0.91%) 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 (0.055%) KVM
Systems Management
1 751 (8.19%) Kubernetes
2 713 (7.78%) 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
1 985 (10.74%) Microsoft
2 563 (6.14%) Oracle
3 461 (5.03%) VMware
4 382 (4.17%) ServiceNow
5 351 (3.83%) Cisco
6 332 (3.62%) SAP
7 212 (2.31%) Splunk
8 171 (1.86%) Databricks
9 152 (1.66%) Red Hat
10 150 (1.64%) 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%) Atlassian
16 103 (1.12%) Talend
17 95 (1.04%) CyberArk
18 84 (0.92%) Remedy
19 80 (0.87%) F5
20 77 (0.84%) SolarWinds