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 17 September 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 4 3 4
Rank change year-on-year -1 +1 +7
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 5,212 6,019 7,228
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 18.77% 18.41% 17.12%
As % of the Qualifications category 59.54% 61.89% 59.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,412 3,901 4,569
10th Percentile £350 £358 £371
25th Percentile £450 £456 £461
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.27% - -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £537 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -2.36% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 515 359 438
10th Percentile £18.50 £20.20 £19.06
25th Percentile £18.87 £36.63 £44.44
Median hourly rate £25.15 £61.60 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -59.17% +2.67% +7.14%
75th Percentile £39.75 £72.50 £73.32
90th Percentile £73.25 £83.84 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -58.08% - +4.35%

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 8,754 9,726 12,089
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.53% 29.75% 28.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,563 6,003 7,819
10th Percentile £304 £325 £325
25th Percentile £413 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £713 £738 £743
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 684 574 662
10th Percentile £18.13 £17.20 £16.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £27.00 £24.31
Median hourly rate £25.15 £54.00 £54.44
Median % change year-on-year -53.43% -0.81% +20.98%
75th Percentile £47.22 £69.94 £70.00
90th Percentile £73.75 £80.00 £78.36
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £49.50 £54.44
% change year-on-year -49.19% -9.08% +20.98%

Security Cleared
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Job postings citing Security Cleared as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in England.

Job vacancy trend for Security Cleared 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 17 September 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 17 September 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 17 September 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 -2 1,782 £538 - 579
South East -1 933 £538 -6.52% 700
South West 0 875 £550 -4.35% 551
North of England -3 627 £506 +1.20% 441
Midlands 0 521 £515 -6.36% 397
West Midlands 0 401 £519 -9.83% 225
North West -1 401 £550 +10.00% 274
East of England +2 252 £550 +10.00% 320
Yorkshire -1 162 £490 +0.93% 136
East Midlands -3 103 £463 -11.06% 153
North East 0 75 £484 -3.25% 32
South Coast 0 2 - -
Security Cleared
UK

Security Cleared
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 186 (3.57%) Confluence
2 113 (2.17%) SharePoint
3 86 (1.65%) Apache
4 73 (1.40%) Microsoft Exchange
5 40 (0.77%) SAS
6 39 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
7 36 (0.69%) nginx
8 30 (0.58%) IIS
9 28 (0.54%) Apache Spark
10 27 (0.52%) Skype for Business
11 22 (0.42%) CMS
12 18 (0.35%) WebLogic
13 17 (0.33%) Exchange Server 2010
14 15 (0.29%) SharePoint Server
15 14 (0.27%) Exchange Server 2013
16 13 (0.25%) Exchange Server 2003
16 13 (0.25%) Exchange Server 2007
16 13 (0.25%) Office Communications Server
17 11 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
18 9 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 117 (2.24%) Microsoft Office
2 101 (1.94%) Microsoft Excel
3 39 (0.75%) Microsoft Project
4 33 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 24 (0.46%) Siemens NX
6 22 (0.42%) MS Visio
7 21 (0.40%) Simulink
8 11 (0.21%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 9 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.096%) FrameMaker
10 5 (0.096%) InfoPath
10 5 (0.096%) Sketch
10 5 (0.096%) Stateflow
10 5 (0.096%) Trello
10 5 (0.096%) Windchill
11 4 (0.077%) Adobe Illustrator
11 4 (0.077%) AutoCAD
11 4 (0.077%) Oracle Smart View
11 4 (0.077%) Photoshop
12 3 (0.058%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 99 (1.90%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (0.69%) Teamcenter
3 25 (0.48%) Oracle ERP
3 25 (0.48%) SAP EWM
4 22 (0.42%) Dynamics CRM
4 22 (0.42%) SAP WM
5 21 (0.40%) Remedy ITSM
6 19 (0.36%) SAP HCM
7 18 (0.35%) SAP PS
8 17 (0.33%) Primavera
9 14 (0.27%) Maximo
10 12 (0.23%) Oracle General Ledger
11 10 (0.19%) SAP EHS
11 10 (0.19%) SAP HR
12 8 (0.15%) SAP QM
13 7 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
13 7 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle Cash Management
14 6 (0.12%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 883 (16.94%) AWS
2 725 (13.91%) Azure
3 192 (3.68%) Microsoft 365
4 176 (3.38%) GitHub
5 168 (3.22%) Amazon S3
6 161 (3.09%) Power Platform
7 157 (3.01%) GCP
8 153 (2.94%) Serverless
9 127 (2.44%) Azure DevOps
10 121 (2.32%) SaaS
11 107 (2.05%) Entra ID
12 105 (2.01%) Amazon EC2
13 101 (1.94%) AWS CloudFormation
14 93 (1.78%) AWS Lambda
14 93 (1.78%) GitHub Actions
15 83 (1.59%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 74 (1.42%) Amazon EKS
17 68 (1.30%) OpenShift
18 64 (1.23%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 60 (1.15%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 333 (6.39%) Firewall
2 226 (4.34%) DNS
3 167 (3.20%) VPN
4 135 (2.59%) Network Security
5 118 (2.26%) WAN
6 89 (1.71%) BGP
7 83 (1.59%) LAN
8 82 (1.57%) SSL
9 80 (1.53%) DHCP
10 78 (1.50%) TCP/IP
11 71 (1.36%) SAN
12 56 (1.07%) SMTP
13 54 (1.04%) IPsec
14 52 (1.00%) HTTP
15 48 (0.92%) MPLS
15 48 (0.92%) OSPF
15 48 (0.92%) Wireless
16 44 (0.84%) Cisco ISE
17 43 (0.83%) Wi-Fi
18 39 (0.75%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 176 (3.38%) PostgreSQL
2 105 (2.01%) Amazon RDS
3 102 (1.96%) Power BI
4 76 (1.46%) SQL Server
5 74 (1.42%) MongoDB
6 63 (1.21%) Relational Database
7 55 (1.06%) Oracle Database
8 52 (1.00%) NoSQL
9 51 (0.98%) Big Data
10 49 (0.94%) Data Warehouse
11 47 (0.90%) Elasticsearch
12 38 (0.73%) MySQL
13 31 (0.59%) Amazon Aurora
13 31 (0.59%) Metadata
14 29 (0.56%) Data Lake
14 29 (0.56%) Redis
15 26 (0.50%) Pentaho
16 25 (0.48%) Hadoop
17 24 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
18 22 (0.42%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 352 (6.75%) JIRA
2 319 (6.12%) Jenkins
3 261 (5.01%) Git
4 212 (4.07%) GitLab
5 84 (1.61%) SonarQube
6 64 (1.23%) Selenium
7 52 (1.00%) JUnit
8 47 (0.90%) Mockito
9 41 (0.79%) Cucumber
10 40 (0.77%) Cypress.io
11 39 (0.75%) Bitbucket
11 39 (0.75%) Liquibase
12 35 (0.67%) Maven
13 34 (0.65%) Gradle
14 33 (0.63%) REST Assured
15 31 (0.59%) Postman
16 26 (0.50%) MSI
17 25 (0.48%) Artifactory
17 25 (0.48%) Vagrant
18 22 (0.42%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,435 (27.53%) Public Sector
2 1,287 (24.69%) Social Skills
3 451 (8.65%) Analytical Skills
4 405 (7.77%) Finance
5 207 (3.97%) Military
6 171 (3.28%) Telecoms
7 150 (2.88%) Manufacturing
8 110 (2.11%) Electronics
9 103 (1.98%) Documentation Skills
10 98 (1.88%) Aerospace
10 98 (1.88%) Marketing
11 80 (1.53%) Organisational Skills
12 68 (1.30%) Law
13 64 (1.23%) Legal
14 61 (1.17%) Banking
15 60 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
16 49 (0.94%) Influencing Skills
17 45 (0.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 43 (0.83%) Police
19 30 (0.58%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 698 (13.39%) Architect
2 457 (8.77%) Developer
3 444 (8.52%) Consultant
4 375 (7.19%) Senior
5 353 (6.77%) Analyst
6 308 (5.91%) Lead
7 222 (4.26%) DevOps Engineer
8 182 (3.49%) Network Engineer
9 143 (2.74%) Support Engineer
10 136 (2.61%) Data Engineer
11 118 (2.26%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 118 (2.26%) SAP Consultant
11 118 (2.26%) Solutions Architect
12 116 (2.23%) Project Manager
13 103 (1.98%) Security Architect
14 98 (1.88%) Administrator
14 98 (1.88%) AWS Engineer
15 96 (1.84%) Network Architect
16 95 (1.82%) Java Developer
17 93 (1.78%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 163 (3.13%) React
2 151 (2.90%) Kafka
3 149 (2.86%) REST
4 131 (2.51%) Node.js
5 102 (1.96%) SOAP
6 97 (1.86%) Spring
7 87 (1.67%) Spring Boot
8 86 (1.65%) XML
9 82 (1.57%) HTML
10 81 (1.55%) Web Services
11 68 (1.30%) RESTful
12 67 (1.29%) AngularJS
13 65 (1.25%) .NET
13 65 (1.25%) JSON
14 63 (1.21%) CSS
15 52 (1.00%) LDAP
16 46 (0.88%) Elastic Stack
16 46 (0.88%) OAuth
17 45 (0.86%) Oracle Fusion
18 42 (0.81%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 204 (3.91%) Data Centre
2 185 (3.55%) Onboarding
3 154 (2.95%) Management Information System
4 138 (2.65%) PKI
5 88 (1.69%) Cloud Native
6 84 (1.61%) Product Ownership
7 78 (1.50%) Driving Licence
8 65 (1.25%) Security Operations Centre
9 59 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
10 58 (1.11%) Replication
11 57 (1.09%) CMDB
12 55 (1.06%) Cyber Threat
13 50 (0.96%) Security Posture
14 48 (0.92%) Private Cloud
15 46 (0.88%) Hybrid Cloud
16 44 (0.84%) Algorithms
17 41 (0.79%) Enterprise Software
18 38 (0.73%) Legacy Systems
19 37 (0.71%) Analytical Mindset
19 37 (0.71%) CSOC
Operating Systems
1 616 (11.82%) Windows
2 389 (7.46%) Linux
3 176 (3.38%) Windows Server
4 119 (2.28%) Windows 10
5 73 (1.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 66 (1.27%) Unix
7 62 (1.19%) Windows Server 2019
8 46 (0.88%) Windows Server 2016
9 43 (0.83%) Mac OS
10 39 (0.75%) Android
11 38 (0.73%) VMS
12 25 (0.48%) Amazon Linux
12 25 (0.48%) Windows Server 2003
13 22 (0.42%) Apple iOS
13 22 (0.42%) Windows Server 2012
14 18 (0.35%) CentOS
14 18 (0.35%) Windows 7
15 16 (0.31%) Ubuntu
16 12 (0.23%) Mac OS X
17 5 (0.096%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 984 (18.88%) Agile
2 717 (13.76%) DevOps
3 649 (12.45%) Problem-Solving
4 603 (11.57%) CI/CD
5 497 (9.54%) Migration
6 418 (8.02%) Stakeholder Management
7 366 (7.02%) ITIL
8 318 (6.10%) Cybersecurity
9 306 (5.87%) Infrastructure as Code
10 298 (5.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 285 (5.47%) Service Management
12 270 (5.18%) Containerisation
13 258 (4.95%) Business Intelligence
14 256 (4.91%) Test Automation
15 255 (4.89%) Microservices
16 254 (4.87%) Continuous Improvement
17 252 (4.83%) Workflow
18 241 (4.62%) Analytics
19 226 (4.34%) Software Engineering
20 211 (4.05%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 603 (11.57%) Python
2 433 (8.31%) SQL
3 388 (7.44%) Java
4 320 (6.14%) PowerShell
5 245 (4.70%) JavaScript
6 163 (3.13%) Bash
7 136 (2.61%) TypeScript
8 112 (2.15%) C#
9 66 (1.27%) Go
10 60 (1.15%) C++
11 45 (0.86%) Perl
12 43 (0.83%) C
12 43 (0.83%) Groovy
13 42 (0.81%) PL/SQL
14 35 (0.67%) MATLAB
15 31 (0.59%) Shell Script
16 28 (0.54%) ABAP
17 20 (0.38%) PHP
18 19 (0.36%) Bicep
19 18 (0.35%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 3,926 (75.33%) SC Cleared
2 921 (17.67%) DV Cleared
3 254 (4.87%) Degree
4 238 (4.57%) BPSS Clearance
5 107 (2.05%) Cisco Certification
6 90 (1.73%) CISSP
7 87 (1.67%) Microsoft Certification
8 79 (1.52%) CCNP
9 77 (1.48%) AWS Certification
10 66 (1.27%) Azure Certification
11 46 (0.88%) CISM
12 43 (0.83%) Computer Science Degree
13 41 (0.79%) ITIL Certification
14 36 (0.69%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 34 (0.65%) CCNA
16 33 (0.63%) CHECK Team Member
17 28 (0.54%) DBS Check
18 26 (0.50%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
18 26 (0.50%) MCSE
19 24 (0.46%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 183 (3.51%) QA
2 129 (2.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 127 (2.44%) NIST
4 117 (2.24%) SLA
5 109 (2.09%) NCSC
6 92 (1.77%) Data Quality
7 79 (1.52%) GDPR
8 64 (1.23%) Accessibility
9 40 (0.77%) PMO
10 34 (0.65%) JSP 440
11 29 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 20000
12 28 (0.54%) NIST 800
13 27 (0.52%) RMADS
14 25 (0.48%) Def Stans
15 22 (0.42%) GRC
15 22 (0.42%) WCAG
16 15 (0.29%) HIPAA
17 14 (0.27%) IEC 61508
18 13 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
19 11 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 397 (7.62%) Docker
2 323 (6.20%) Active Directory
3 200 (3.84%) VMware Infrastructure
4 88 (1.69%) VMware ESXi
5 59 (1.13%) vSphere
6 44 (0.84%) VMware NSX
7 42 (0.81%) Hyper-V
8 41 (0.79%) Firmware
9 34 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
10 25 (0.48%) Microsoft Virtual Server
10 25 (0.48%) Virtual Servers
11 23 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
12 21 (0.40%) DFS Replication
13 20 (0.38%) Microsoft App-V
13 20 (0.38%) Postfix
14 18 (0.35%) NFS
15 15 (0.29%) Dovecot
15 15 (0.29%) Terminal Services
16 13 (0.25%) Brightmail
16 13 (0.25%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 447 (8.58%) Terraform
2 438 (8.40%) Kubernetes
3 291 (5.58%) Ansible
4 116 (2.23%) Grafana
5 109 (2.09%) Prometheus
6 92 (1.77%) SCCM
7 63 (1.21%) Microsoft Intune
8 57 (1.09%) Single Sign-On
9 53 (1.02%) vCenter Server
10 37 (0.71%) WSUS
11 35 (0.67%) Puppet
12 29 (0.56%) Nessus
13 27 (0.52%) Jamf Pro
13 27 (0.52%) Kibana
13 27 (0.52%) Packer
14 23 (0.44%) Podman
14 23 (0.44%) SCOM
14 23 (0.44%) vRealize
15 22 (0.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 22 (0.42%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 687 (13.18%) Microsoft
2 342 (6.56%) SAP
3 333 (6.39%) Cisco
4 315 (6.04%) VMware
5 251 (4.82%) Oracle
6 227 (4.36%) ServiceNow
7 165 (3.17%) Splunk
8 129 (2.48%) Juniper
9 92 (1.77%) Google
10 85 (1.63%) HP
11 84 (1.61%) Palo Alto
12 76 (1.46%) IBM
13 74 (1.42%) Dell
14 70 (1.34%) Red Hat
15 67 (1.29%) SolarWinds
16 63 (1.21%) F5
17 62 (1.19%) CheckPoint
18 60 (1.15%) Atlassian
19 58 (1.11%) NetApp
20 51 (0.98%) Fortinet