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 19 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,467 4,584 7,129
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.96% 18.43% 18.89%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.48% 59.10% 61.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,630 3,002 4,652
10th Percentile £380 £338 £356
25th Percentile £450 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 757 332 534
10th Percentile £18.20 £18.23 £14.34
25th Percentile £25.19 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £62.50 £28.13 £57.11
Median % change year-on-year +122.18% -50.74% -4.82%
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.74 £80.00 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £60.91 £25.50 £56.49
% change year-on-year +138.86% -54.86% -6.40%

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 13,625 7,757 11,501
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.61% 31.19% 30.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,174 4,885 7,098
10th Percentile £350 £281 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £534
Median % change year-on-year - -1.75% -2.84%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £645
90th Percentile £719 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,037 498 1,016
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.68 £20.00 £20.24
Median hourly rate £52.50 £30.13 £41.38
Median % change year-on-year +74.27% -27.20% -24.76%
75th Percentile £73.46 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.38 £80.30 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £30.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +66.67% -25.00% -27.65%

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 19 June 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 19 June 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 19 June 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 3,374 £525 - 400
South East +1 2,274 £550 - 451
South West 0 1,299 £538 -4.44% 336
North of England +2 982 £500 +0.45% 235
Midlands +2 913 £469 -10.67% 111
West Midlands +2 794 £470 -10.54% 76
North West 0 534 £525 +5.00% 134
East of England +2 362 £550 +10.00% 104
Yorkshire -4 252 £500 +1.63% 59
North East +1 227 £480 +0.05% 46
East Midlands -5 108 £438 -7.89% 35
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
1 343 (3.62%) Confluence
2 214 (2.26%) SharePoint
3 144 (1.52%) SAS
4 121 (1.28%) Microsoft Exchange
5 84 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
6 79 (0.83%) Apache Spark
7 77 (0.81%) Apache
8 40 (0.42%) Jupyter
9 37 (0.39%) nginx
10 29 (0.31%) WebLogic
11 21 (0.22%) Tomcat
12 19 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
13 16 (0.17%) IIS
14 15 (0.16%) CMS
14 15 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
15 14 (0.15%) Skype for Business
16 12 (0.13%) Tuxedo
17 11 (0.12%) NetWeaver
18 9 (0.095%) ArcGIS
19 8 (0.085%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 157 (1.66%) Microsoft Excel
2 129 (1.36%) Microsoft Office
3 76 (0.80%) Microsoft Project
4 72 (0.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 39 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 15 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.15%) Simulink
8 10 (0.11%) SOLIDWORKS
9 9 (0.095%) AutoCAD
9 9 (0.095%) Chatbot
9 9 (0.095%) Revit
10 5 (0.053%) Notepad++
11 4 (0.042%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.032%) Sketch
13 2 (0.021%) CATIA
13 2 (0.021%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.021%) Lectora
13 2 (0.021%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.021%) Siemens NX
13 2 (0.021%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 97 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
2 57 (0.60%) Remedy ITSM
3 42 (0.44%) Oracle ERP
4 32 (0.34%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 30 (0.32%) Teamcenter
6 28 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
7 19 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
8 16 (0.17%) SAP PSCD
9 15 (0.16%) Findur
9 15 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
10 14 (0.15%) Maximo
11 12 (0.13%) iTrent
11 12 (0.13%) Primavera
11 12 (0.13%) Temenos T24
12 10 (0.11%) SAP ERP
12 10 (0.11%) Siebel CRM
13 9 (0.095%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 9 (0.095%) Oracle Assets
13 9 (0.095%) Salesforce CRM
13 9 (0.095%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,638 (17.30%) Azure
2 1,601 (16.91%) AWS
3 369 (3.90%) GitHub
4 366 (3.87%) Azure DevOps
5 365 (3.86%) Power Platform
6 351 (3.71%) GCP
7 244 (2.58%) Serverless
8 240 (2.54%) Entra ID
9 237 (2.50%) Microsoft 365
10 224 (2.37%) GitHub Actions
11 210 (2.22%) Amazon S3
12 170 (1.80%) AWS Lambda
13 154 (1.63%) Amazon EC2
14 136 (1.44%) PaaS
15 131 (1.38%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 130 (1.37%) SaaS
17 128 (1.35%) OpenShift
18 123 (1.30%) OCI
19 107 (1.13%) Virtual Private Cloud
20 101 (1.07%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 405 (4.28%) Firewall
2 274 (2.89%) DNS
3 221 (2.33%) Network Security
4 204 (2.15%) WAN
5 185 (1.95%) LAN
6 157 (1.66%) VPN
7 149 (1.57%) DHCP
8 132 (1.39%) BGP
9 112 (1.18%) Wi-Fi
10 111 (1.17%) OSPF
11 101 (1.07%) VLAN
12 87 (0.92%) TCP/IP
13 82 (0.87%) Wireless
14 57 (0.60%) MPLS
15 54 (0.57%) VXLAN
16 53 (0.56%) SD-WAN
17 52 (0.55%) SAN
18 49 (0.52%) Structured Cabling
19 48 (0.51%) IPsec
20 47 (0.50%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 275 (2.90%) Power BI
2 232 (2.45%) PostgreSQL
3 223 (2.36%) Data Warehouse
4 209 (2.21%) SQL Server
5 137 (1.45%) Oracle Database
6 118 (1.25%) Metadata
7 109 (1.15%) Amazon RDS
8 107 (1.13%) Data Lake
9 95 (1.00%) Relational Database
10 83 (0.88%) Pentaho
11 79 (0.83%) MongoDB
12 73 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
12 73 (0.77%) MySQL
12 73 (0.77%) Oracle Reports
13 67 (0.71%) NoSQL
14 66 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
15 61 (0.64%) Amazon Athena
16 59 (0.62%) Tableau
17 44 (0.46%) Azure SQL Database
18 43 (0.45%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 541 (5.71%) JIRA
2 424 (4.48%) Git
3 399 (4.21%) GitLab
4 365 (3.86%) Jenkins
5 102 (1.08%) Selenium
6 79 (0.83%) JUnit
7 70 (0.74%) SonarQube
8 69 (0.73%) Postman
9 57 (0.60%) Rational DOORS
10 53 (0.56%) JMeter
11 51 (0.54%) Cucumber
12 44 (0.46%) Artifactory
13 41 (0.43%) Bitbucket
13 41 (0.43%) Mockito
14 40 (0.42%) Maven
15 37 (0.39%) Zephyr
16 36 (0.38%) Visual Studio
17 34 (0.36%) Cypress.io
17 34 (0.36%) REST Assured
18 30 (0.32%) WebDriver
General
1 2,026 (21.40%) Public Sector
2 1,915 (20.23%) Social Skills
3 649 (6.86%) Analytical Skills
4 636 (6.72%) Finance
5 320 (3.38%) Military
6 270 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
7 266 (2.81%) Aerospace
8 140 (1.48%) Legal
9 121 (1.28%) Banking
10 120 (1.27%) Influencing Skills
11 103 (1.09%) Telecoms
12 97 (1.02%) Law
13 89 (0.94%) Organisational Skills
14 78 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
15 73 (0.77%) Manufacturing
16 65 (0.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 64 (0.68%) Police
18 46 (0.49%) Marketing
19 40 (0.42%) Aviation
20 38 (0.40%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,375 (14.52%) Architect
2 914 (9.65%) Developer
3 815 (8.61%) Senior
4 728 (7.69%) Lead
5 624 (6.59%) Analyst
6 461 (4.87%) Data Engineer
7 422 (4.46%) Consultant
8 419 (4.43%) DevOps Engineer
9 296 (3.13%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 282 (2.98%) Software Engineer
11 273 (2.88%) Technical Architect
12 259 (2.74%) Network Engineer
13 229 (2.42%) Solutions Architect
14 218 (2.30%) Business Analyst
15 208 (2.20%) Project Manager
16 202 (2.13%) Security Architect
17 193 (2.04%) Delivery Manager
18 186 (1.96%) Administrator
19 182 (1.92%) Azure Engineer
20 173 (1.83%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 292 (3.08%) REST
2 217 (2.29%) Spring
3 183 (1.93%) Spring Boot
4 172 (1.82%) React
5 158 (1.67%) .NET
6 149 (1.57%) Node.js
7 145 (1.53%) Kafka
8 141 (1.49%) RESTful
9 129 (1.36%) LDAP
10 128 (1.35%) SOAP
11 113 (1.19%) AngularJS
12 108 (1.14%) JSON
13 94 (0.99%) OAuth
13 94 (0.99%) Web Services
14 93 (0.98%) PySpark
15 86 (0.91%) HTML
16 73 (0.77%) OpenID
17 72 (0.76%) XML
18 71 (0.75%) Middleware
19 68 (0.72%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 364 (3.84%) Cloud Native
2 321 (3.39%) Product Ownership
3 285 (3.01%) Onboarding
4 276 (2.92%) Data Centre
5 151 (1.60%) Management Information System
6 150 (1.58%) Legacy Systems
7 135 (1.43%) PKI
8 125 (1.32%) Distributed Systems
9 114 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
10 104 (1.10%) Replication
10 104 (1.10%) Security Posture
11 102 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
12 85 (0.90%) Data Structures
13 84 (0.89%) Clustering
14 83 (0.88%) CMDB
15 81 (0.86%) Hybrid Cloud
16 76 (0.80%) Public Cloud
17 69 (0.73%) Operational Technology
17 69 (0.73%) Security Operations Centre
18 65 (0.69%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 755 (7.98%) Windows
2 620 (6.55%) Linux
3 241 (2.55%) Windows Server
4 179 (1.89%) Unix
5 113 (1.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 78 (0.82%) Windows 10
7 74 (0.78%) Android
8 53 (0.56%) Solaris
9 48 (0.51%) Apple iOS
10 36 (0.38%) Mac OS
11 29 (0.31%) Ubuntu
12 28 (0.30%) AIX
13 25 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
14 22 (0.23%) CentOS
14 22 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
15 17 (0.18%) VMS
16 14 (0.15%) Windows 7
17 11 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
17 11 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
18 10 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,893 (20.00%) Agile
2 1,461 (15.43%) DevOps
3 1,297 (13.70%) CI/CD
4 974 (10.29%) Stakeholder Management
5 973 (10.28%) Problem-Solving
6 924 (9.76%) Continuous Improvement
7 775 (8.19%) Migration
8 766 (8.09%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 691 (7.30%) Infrastructure as Code
10 614 (6.49%) Cybersecurity
11 576 (6.08%) Test Automation
12 572 (6.04%) ITIL
13 556 (5.87%) Software Engineering
14 549 (5.80%) Analytics
15 536 (5.66%) Roadmaps
16 534 (5.64%) Containerisation
17 489 (5.17%) Data Modelling
18 481 (5.08%) Decision-Making
19 454 (4.80%) AI
20 443 (4.68%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 977 (10.32%) Python
2 901 (9.52%) SQL
3 600 (6.34%) Java
4 460 (4.86%) PowerShell
5 276 (2.92%) JavaScript
6 203 (2.14%) C#
7 182 (1.92%) Bash
8 145 (1.53%) TypeScript
9 119 (1.26%) PL/SQL
10 85 (0.90%) Shell Script
11 84 (0.89%) C++
12 67 (0.71%) Bicep
13 63 (0.67%) C
14 54 (0.57%) Go
15 46 (0.49%) Scala
16 45 (0.48%) Ada
17 42 (0.44%) Ruby
18 41 (0.43%) Apex Code
19 35 (0.37%) MATLAB
20 33 (0.35%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 7,148 (75.50%) SC Cleared
2 1,823 (19.26%) DV Cleared
3 383 (4.05%) Degree
4 279 (2.95%) BPSS Clearance
5 181 (1.91%) Cisco Certification
6 157 (1.66%) CISSP
7 126 (1.33%) Azure Certification
8 105 (1.11%) Microsoft Certification
9 102 (1.08%) AWS Certification
10 101 (1.07%) CISM
11 99 (1.05%) CCNP
12 81 (0.86%) CCNA
13 79 (0.83%) PMP
14 77 (0.81%) PMI Certification
15 64 (0.68%) ISTQB
16 56 (0.59%) Computer Science Degree
17 52 (0.55%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 48 (0.51%) ITIL Certification
19 41 (0.43%) GIAC
20 35 (0.37%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 365 (3.86%) QA
2 287 (3.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 286 (3.02%) NIST
4 283 (2.99%) Data Quality
5 205 (2.17%) NCSC
6 178 (1.88%) Accessibility
7 170 (1.80%) PMO
8 165 (1.74%) GDPR
9 106 (1.12%) SLA
10 81 (0.86%) GRC
11 60 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 47 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials
13 43 (0.45%) WCAG
14 42 (0.44%) NIST 800
15 32 (0.34%) Def Stans
16 29 (0.31%) RMADS
17 24 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 23 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
19 22 (0.23%) COBIT
20 19 (0.20%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 588 (6.21%) Docker
2 431 (4.55%) Active Directory
3 283 (2.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 113 (1.19%) VMware ESXi
5 100 (1.06%) VMware NSX
6 77 (0.81%) Hyper-V
7 76 (0.80%) vSphere
8 66 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
9 32 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
10 31 (0.33%) Firmware
11 24 (0.25%) BitLocker
12 21 (0.22%) vCloud
13 19 (0.20%) NFS
13 19 (0.20%) Postfix
13 19 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
14 15 (0.16%) Squid
15 14 (0.15%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 10 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
17 6 (0.063%) Corosync
17 6 (0.063%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 761 (8.04%) Terraform
2 728 (7.69%) Kubernetes
3 329 (3.48%) Ansible
4 225 (2.38%) Grafana
5 183 (1.93%) Prometheus
6 112 (1.18%) vCenter Server
7 78 (0.82%) Single Sign-On
8 72 (0.76%) SCCM
9 57 (0.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 55 (0.58%) Microsoft Intune
11 48 (0.51%) FortiGate
12 47 (0.50%) Argo
13 41 (0.43%) Puppet
14 39 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
14 39 (0.41%) SCOM
15 36 (0.38%) Podman
16 27 (0.29%) Progress Chef
17 25 (0.26%) Nagios
18 24 (0.25%) vMotion
19 21 (0.22%) Packer
Vendors
1 987 (10.43%) Microsoft
2 664 (7.01%) Oracle
3 454 (4.80%) VMware
4 394 (4.16%) ServiceNow
5 311 (3.29%) Cisco
6 303 (3.20%) SAP
7 198 (2.09%) Splunk
8 172 (1.82%) Databricks
9 145 (1.53%) Google
10 140 (1.48%) Red Hat
11 128 (1.35%) Talend
12 124 (1.31%) Salesforce
13 116 (1.23%) IBM
14 109 (1.15%) Palo Alto
15 99 (1.05%) Informatica
16 96 (1.01%) Juniper
17 84 (0.89%) F5
18 83 (0.88%) Fortinet
19 81 (0.86%) SolarWinds
20 79 (0.83%) CyberArk