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 8 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 2
Rank change year-on-year +1 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,097 4,569 7,160
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.27% 18.76% 19.16%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.83% 59.91% 61.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,262 3,056 4,659
10th Percentile £363 £325 £350
25th Percentile £448 £450 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% -1.87%
75th Percentile £625 £626 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £533 £550
% change year-on-year -1.50% -3.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 777 256 469
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.25 £24.66 £21.46
Median hourly rate £52.50 £58.04 £52.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.55% +11.62% -13.33%
75th Percentile £72.50 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.42 £78.53 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £54.75 £52.50
% change year-on-year -4.11% +4.29% -12.50%

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 13,027 7,627 11,707
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.32% 31.32% 31.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,717 4,896 7,252
10th Percentile £340 £300 £300
25th Percentile £425 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £743
UK median daily rate £518 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,001 426 929
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.50 £13.99
25th Percentile £20.50 £24.66 £17.72
Median hourly rate £39.50 £50.00 £38.75
Median % change year-on-year -21.00% +29.03% -25.48%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.36 £82.25 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £45.00 £38.95
% change year-on-year -16.67% +15.53% -27.43%

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 8 April 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 8 April 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 8 April 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 3,190 £525 - 519
South East +1 2,132 £531 -3.44% 548
South West 0 1,361 £538 -4.44% 389
Midlands +3 913 £485 -9.68% 175
North of England -1 840 £488 -2.50% 305
West Midlands +4 758 £486 -10.78% 128
North West -2 521 £500 - 169
East of England +2 364 £498 +17.06% 158
Yorkshire -5 199 £484 -7.86% 72
North East 0 153 £450 -6.25% 65
East Midlands 0 151 £450 -12.20% 46
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
1 351 (3.86%) Confluence
2 219 (2.41%) SharePoint
3 148 (1.63%) SAS
4 134 (1.47%) Microsoft Exchange
5 78 (0.86%) Apache Spark
6 77 (0.85%) Apache
7 52 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
8 40 (0.44%) nginx
9 35 (0.38%) WebLogic
10 21 (0.23%) Jupyter
10 21 (0.23%) Skype for Business
11 16 (0.18%) IIS
12 15 (0.16%) CMS
13 14 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
13 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
14 13 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
15 10 (0.11%) Tomcat
16 9 (0.099%) ArcGIS
17 8 (0.088%) Apache Superset
18 6 (0.066%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 229 (2.52%) Microsoft Office
2 192 (2.11%) Microsoft Excel
3 126 (1.39%) Microsoft Project
4 74 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 45 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.13%) Simulink
8 4 (0.044%) Adobe XD
8 4 (0.044%) Notepad++
8 4 (0.044%) Siemens NX
8 4 (0.044%) Sketch
8 4 (0.044%) Windchill
9 3 (0.033%) Chatbot
10 2 (0.022%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.022%) CATIA
10 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.022%) Lectora
10 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.011%) EPLAN
11 1 (0.011%) Trello
Business Applications
1 86 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
3 39 (0.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 27 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
5 26 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
5 26 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 18 (0.20%) Maximo
7 14 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.14%) SAP PP
8 13 (0.14%) Temenos T24
9 12 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
10 11 (0.12%) Findur
10 11 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
11 10 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
12 9 (0.099%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.099%) SAP HCM
13 8 (0.088%) Primavera
13 8 (0.088%) Workday HCM
14 7 (0.077%) SAP HR
14 7 (0.077%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 1,529 (16.81%) Azure
2 1,492 (16.40%) AWS
3 390 (4.29%) GitHub
4 370 (4.07%) GCP
5 357 (3.92%) Azure DevOps
6 319 (3.51%) Power Platform
7 271 (2.98%) Microsoft 365
8 263 (2.89%) Serverless
9 232 (2.55%) Entra ID
10 202 (2.22%) GitHub Actions
11 196 (2.15%) Amazon S3
12 174 (1.91%) AWS Lambda
13 164 (1.80%) OpenShift
14 132 (1.45%) PaaS
15 126 (1.39%) Amazon EC2
16 124 (1.36%) IaaS
17 119 (1.31%) AWS CloudFormation
18 107 (1.18%) Azure Data Factory
19 106 (1.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 99 (1.09%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 435 (4.78%) Firewall
2 264 (2.90%) DNS
3 215 (2.36%) Network Security
4 214 (2.35%) WAN
5 188 (2.07%) LAN
6 174 (1.91%) VPN
7 144 (1.58%) BGP
8 135 (1.48%) DHCP
9 118 (1.30%) TCP/IP
10 113 (1.24%) OSPF
11 97 (1.07%) VLAN
12 89 (0.98%) Wireless
13 74 (0.81%) Wi-Fi
14 62 (0.68%) MPLS
15 57 (0.63%) SAN
16 49 (0.54%) IPsec
17 48 (0.53%) Cisco ISE
18 44 (0.48%) SD-WAN
19 43 (0.47%) SSL
20 41 (0.45%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 242 (2.66%) Power BI
2 231 (2.54%) PostgreSQL
3 173 (1.90%) Data Warehouse
4 168 (1.85%) SQL Server
5 124 (1.36%) Metadata
6 104 (1.14%) Oracle Database
7 103 (1.13%) Amazon RDS
8 94 (1.03%) NoSQL
9 86 (0.95%) Relational Database
10 83 (0.91%) MongoDB
11 76 (0.84%) Azure SQL Database
12 73 (0.80%) Elasticsearch
13 71 (0.78%) MySQL
14 66 (0.73%) Pentaho
15 65 (0.71%) Data Lake
16 63 (0.69%) Tableau
17 62 (0.68%) Amazon Redshift
18 51 (0.56%) Oracle Reports
19 47 (0.52%) Big Data
20 44 (0.48%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 560 (6.16%) JIRA
2 457 (5.02%) Git
3 367 (4.03%) Jenkins
4 319 (3.51%) GitLab
5 105 (1.15%) Selenium
6 84 (0.92%) JUnit
7 75 (0.82%) Postman
8 54 (0.59%) SonarQube
9 53 (0.58%) Rational DOORS
10 50 (0.55%) Bitbucket
11 44 (0.48%) Artifactory
11 44 (0.48%) Maven
12 41 (0.45%) Cypress.io
12 41 (0.45%) Oracle APEX
13 40 (0.44%) Cucumber
14 38 (0.42%) Mockito
15 34 (0.37%) JMeter
16 28 (0.31%) REST Assured
17 27 (0.30%) Visual Studio
18 22 (0.24%) MSI
General
1 2,135 (23.47%) Public Sector
2 2,083 (22.90%) Social Skills
3 769 (8.45%) Analytical Skills
4 669 (7.35%) Finance
5 326 (3.58%) Military
6 259 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
7 220 (2.42%) Aerospace
8 155 (1.70%) Telecoms
9 154 (1.69%) Legal
10 146 (1.60%) Manufacturing
11 118 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
12 115 (1.26%) Banking
13 103 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
14 101 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
15 93 (1.02%) Marketing
16 87 (0.96%) Electronics
17 81 (0.89%) Law
18 54 (0.59%) Police
19 51 (0.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 30 (0.33%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,363 (14.98%) Architect
2 858 (9.43%) Developer
3 791 (8.70%) Senior
4 660 (7.26%) Analyst
5 583 (6.41%) Lead
6 448 (4.92%) Consultant
7 391 (4.30%) Data Engineer
8 369 (4.06%) DevOps Engineer
9 273 (3.00%) Network Engineer
10 264 (2.90%) Software Engineer
11 262 (2.88%) Technical Architect
12 241 (2.65%) Business Analyst
13 207 (2.28%) Solutions Architect
14 197 (2.17%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 196 (2.15%) Project Manager
16 192 (2.11%) Azure Engineer
17 173 (1.90%) Support Engineer
18 172 (1.89%) Delivery Manager
19 168 (1.85%) Security Architect
20 160 (1.76%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 343 (3.77%) REST
2 199 (2.19%) Spring
3 178 (1.96%) Node.js
4 168 (1.85%) Kafka
5 166 (1.82%) React
6 154 (1.69%) .NET
7 153 (1.68%) Spring Boot
8 146 (1.60%) JSON
9 143 (1.57%) LDAP
10 141 (1.55%) SOAP
11 126 (1.39%) RESTful
12 109 (1.20%) AngularJS
13 105 (1.15%) PySpark
13 105 (1.15%) Web Services
14 96 (1.06%) OAuth
15 90 (0.99%) HTML
16 88 (0.97%) Oracle Fusion
17 86 (0.95%) XML
18 78 (0.86%) SAML
19 74 (0.81%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 318 (3.50%) Product Ownership
2 279 (3.07%) Data Centre
3 277 (3.04%) Cloud Native
4 232 (2.55%) Onboarding
5 194 (2.13%) PKI
6 152 (1.67%) Management Information System
7 127 (1.40%) Self-Motivation
8 122 (1.34%) Security Posture
9 118 (1.30%) Legacy Systems
10 113 (1.24%) Enterprise Software
11 109 (1.20%) Replication
12 96 (1.06%) Distributed Systems
13 81 (0.89%) Public Cloud
14 77 (0.85%) Data Structures
15 73 (0.80%) Hybrid Cloud
16 65 (0.71%) Security Operations Centre
17 64 (0.70%) Clustering
18 62 (0.68%) Cyber Threat
19 61 (0.67%) Virtual Team
20 56 (0.62%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 803 (8.83%) Windows
2 654 (7.19%) Linux
3 234 (2.57%) Windows Server
4 121 (1.33%) Unix
5 119 (1.31%) Windows 10
6 115 (1.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 111 (1.22%) Android
8 55 (0.60%) Mac OS
9 47 (0.52%) Apple iOS
10 36 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 31 (0.34%) VMS
12 22 (0.24%) CentOS
12 22 (0.24%) Solaris
13 20 (0.22%) AIX
13 20 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
14 17 (0.19%) Windows 7
14 17 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
15 12 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
16 8 (0.088%) Embedded Linux
16 8 (0.088%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,867 (20.52%) Agile
2 1,378 (15.15%) DevOps
3 1,204 (13.24%) CI/CD
4 1,074 (11.81%) Problem-Solving
5 872 (9.59%) Stakeholder Management
6 798 (8.77%) Migration
7 784 (8.62%) Continuous Improvement
8 685 (7.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 608 (6.68%) ITIL
10 571 (6.28%) Infrastructure as Code
11 564 (6.20%) Cybersecurity
12 535 (5.88%) Analytics
13 524 (5.76%) Test Automation
14 503 (5.53%) Roadmaps
15 479 (5.27%) Software Engineering
16 476 (5.23%) Containerisation
17 457 (5.02%) Scrum
18 443 (4.87%) Data Modelling
19 439 (4.83%) Service Management
20 408 (4.48%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 1,025 (11.27%) Python
2 825 (9.07%) SQL
3 560 (6.16%) PowerShell
4 524 (5.76%) Java
5 329 (3.62%) JavaScript
6 199 (2.19%) Bash
7 195 (2.14%) C#
8 149 (1.64%) TypeScript
9 104 (1.14%) PL/SQL
10 97 (1.07%) Shell Script
11 96 (1.06%) C++
12 64 (0.70%) Go
13 60 (0.66%) C
14 58 (0.64%) Ruby
15 54 (0.59%) Scala
16 52 (0.57%) Bicep
17 43 (0.47%) Ada
18 40 (0.44%) Apex Code
19 39 (0.43%) Kusto Query Language
19 39 (0.43%) R
Qualifications
1 6,841 (75.20%) SC Cleared
2 1,700 (18.69%) DV Cleared
3 429 (4.72%) Degree
4 258 (2.84%) BPSS Clearance
5 176 (1.93%) Cisco Certification
6 167 (1.84%) CISSP
7 135 (1.48%) Azure Certification
8 120 (1.32%) CCNP
9 109 (1.20%) AWS Certification
10 107 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
11 106 (1.17%) CISM
12 76 (0.84%) CCNA
13 69 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
14 66 (0.73%) TOGAF Certification
15 64 (0.70%) PMP
16 63 (0.69%) Computer Science Degree
17 56 (0.62%) PMI Certification
18 50 (0.55%) GIAC
18 50 (0.55%) ISTQB
19 49 (0.54%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 328 (3.61%) QA
2 280 (3.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 269 (2.96%) NIST
4 259 (2.85%) Data Quality
5 196 (2.15%) NCSC
6 163 (1.79%) GDPR
7 146 (1.60%) Accessibility
8 125 (1.37%) PMO
9 107 (1.18%) SLA
10 63 (0.69%) GRC
10 63 (0.69%) JSP 440
11 44 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials
12 39 (0.43%) NIST 800
13 38 (0.42%) WCAG
14 37 (0.41%) COBIT
15 33 (0.36%) PCI DSS
16 29 (0.32%) Def Stans
17 26 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 24 (0.26%) RMADS
19 20 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 607 (6.67%) Docker
2 455 (5.00%) Active Directory
3 261 (2.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 90 (0.99%) VMware NSX
5 75 (0.82%) VMware ESXi
6 73 (0.80%) vSphere
7 66 (0.73%) Hyper-V
8 53 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
9 33 (0.36%) Firmware
10 23 (0.25%) BitLocker
10 23 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
11 21 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
12 17 (0.19%) NFS
12 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 14 (0.15%) Postfix
14 12 (0.13%) vCloud
15 10 (0.11%) Squid
16 8 (0.088%) Microsoft App-V
17 5 (0.055%) KVM
17 5 (0.055%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 783 (8.61%) Kubernetes
2 715 (7.86%) Terraform
3 298 (3.28%) Ansible
4 222 (2.44%) Grafana
5 184 (2.02%) Prometheus
6 104 (1.14%) Single Sign-On
7 93 (1.02%) vCenter Server
8 83 (0.91%) SCCM
9 78 (0.86%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 62 (0.68%) Argo
11 61 (0.67%) Microsoft Intune
12 50 (0.55%) FortiGate
13 39 (0.43%) Podman
14 36 (0.40%) Packer
15 35 (0.38%) Puppet
16 34 (0.37%) Progress Chef
17 30 (0.33%) OPNET
18 25 (0.27%) Kibana
18 25 (0.27%) Oracle RMAN
19 24 (0.26%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,001 (11.00%) Microsoft
2 541 (5.95%) Oracle
3 464 (5.10%) VMware
4 399 (4.39%) Cisco
5 378 (4.16%) ServiceNow
6 346 (3.80%) SAP
7 220 (2.42%) Splunk
8 178 (1.96%) Red Hat
9 176 (1.93%) Databricks
10 132 (1.45%) Google
11 130 (1.43%) Salesforce
12 125 (1.37%) Juniper
13 124 (1.36%) Atlassian
14 117 (1.29%) IBM
15 115 (1.26%) Palo Alto
16 93 (1.02%) CyberArk
17 92 (1.01%) Talend
18 84 (0.92%) Remedy
19 81 (0.89%) Dell
20 78 (0.86%) Citrix