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

6 months to
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 0 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,126 4,504 7,024
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.48% 18.53% 19.11%
As % of the Qualifications category 70.02% 58.95% 61.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,330 2,989 4,619
10th Percentile £366 £340 £353
25th Percentile £450 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £527 £550
% change year-on-year -0.38% -4.18% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 755 276 490
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.23 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £51.75 £57.09
Median % change year-on-year +6.28% -9.35% -4.86%
75th Percentile £74.00 £67.63 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.36 £79.35 £83.81
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £46.30 £56.89
% change year-on-year +18.79% -18.61% -5.19%

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 13,034 7,640 11,427
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.11% 31.43% 31.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,737 4,858 7,040
10th Percentile £341 £289 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £716 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -0.95% -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 959 439 980
10th Percentile £17.10 £18.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £22.27 £18.00
Median hourly rate £48.05 £40.84 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +17.65% +2.10% -23.81%
75th Percentile £72.52 £67.50 £61.82
90th Percentile £85.50 £81.48 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £48.05 £39.18 £40.00
% change year-on-year +22.64% -2.05% -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 12 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 12 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 12 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 3,232 £525 - 493
South East +1 2,207 £540 -1.82% 517
South West 0 1,301 £538 -4.44% 332
Midlands +4 884 £475 -9.52% 167
North of England -2 857 £488 -2.50% 307
West Midlands +4 750 £475 -10.55% 126
North West -2 496 £497 -0.64% 168
East of England +2 374 £525 +8.67% 150
Yorkshire -14 207 £475 -5.00% 59
North East +1 188 £475 -3.06% 82
East Midlands -4 128 £463 -2.63% 41
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
1 354 (3.88%) Confluence
2 205 (2.25%) SharePoint
3 122 (1.34%) Microsoft Exchange
4 115 (1.26%) SAS
5 81 (0.89%) Apache Spark
6 70 (0.77%) Apache
7 56 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
8 32 (0.35%) WebLogic
9 29 (0.32%) nginx
10 24 (0.26%) Jupyter
11 17 (0.19%) Tomcat
12 15 (0.16%) IIS
12 15 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
13 14 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
13 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
14 13 (0.14%) Skype for Business
15 12 (0.13%) CMS
16 8 (0.088%) Apache Superset
16 8 (0.088%) ArcGIS
16 8 (0.088%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 196 (2.15%) Microsoft Office
2 184 (2.02%) Microsoft Excel
3 113 (1.24%) Microsoft Project
4 81 (0.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 37 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 21 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.12%) Simulink
8 7 (0.077%) AutoCAD
9 6 (0.066%) 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 87 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
3 41 (0.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 27 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
4 27 (0.30%) Teamcenter
5 25 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
6 15 (0.16%) Maximo
7 14 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
7 14 (0.15%) SAP PSCD
8 13 (0.14%) Temenos T24
9 12 (0.13%) Findur
10 10 (0.11%) iTrent
10 10 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
11 9 (0.099%) Integrated Workplace Management System
11 9 (0.099%) SAP HCM
11 9 (0.099%) SAP PP
12 8 (0.088%) Primavera
12 8 (0.088%) SAP HR
12 8 (0.088%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 1,568 (17.18%) Azure
2 1,499 (16.43%) AWS
3 373 (4.09%) GitHub
4 371 (4.07%) GCP
5 345 (3.78%) Azure DevOps
6 334 (3.66%) Power Platform
7 242 (2.65%) Serverless
8 237 (2.60%) Microsoft 365
9 229 (2.51%) Entra ID
10 214 (2.34%) GitHub Actions
11 191 (2.09%) Amazon S3
12 163 (1.79%) AWS Lambda
13 133 (1.46%) PaaS
14 130 (1.42%) Amazon EC2
15 126 (1.38%) OpenShift
16 112 (1.23%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 112 (1.23%) OCI
17 106 (1.16%) AWS CloudFormation
18 103 (1.13%) SaaS
19 102 (1.12%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 422 (4.62%) Firewall
2 261 (2.86%) DNS
3 208 (2.28%) Network Security
3 208 (2.28%) WAN
4 190 (2.08%) LAN
5 150 (1.64%) VPN
6 140 (1.53%) BGP
7 137 (1.50%) DHCP
8 121 (1.33%) OSPF
9 107 (1.17%) TCP/IP
10 97 (1.06%) Wi-Fi
11 90 (0.99%) VLAN
12 74 (0.81%) Wireless
13 58 (0.64%) MPLS
14 52 (0.57%) SAN
15 51 (0.56%) VXLAN
16 48 (0.53%) SD-WAN
17 47 (0.52%) IPsec
18 45 (0.49%) Ethernet VPN
18 45 (0.49%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 258 (2.83%) Power BI
2 213 (2.33%) PostgreSQL
3 197 (2.16%) Data Warehouse
4 183 (2.01%) SQL Server
5 116 (1.27%) Metadata
6 105 (1.15%) Oracle Database
7 102 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
8 84 (0.92%) NoSQL
9 82 (0.90%) Relational Database
10 80 (0.88%) MongoDB
11 79 (0.87%) Data Lake
11 79 (0.87%) Pentaho
12 72 (0.79%) Elasticsearch
13 66 (0.72%) Oracle Reports
14 65 (0.71%) Azure SQL Database
15 61 (0.67%) Amazon Redshift
15 61 (0.67%) Tableau
16 59 (0.65%) MySQL
17 51 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
18 48 (0.53%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 556 (6.09%) JIRA
2 409 (4.48%) Git
3 349 (3.82%) Jenkins
4 334 (3.66%) GitLab
5 85 (0.93%) Selenium
6 75 (0.82%) Postman
7 70 (0.77%) JUnit
8 57 (0.62%) SonarQube
9 54 (0.59%) Rational DOORS
10 46 (0.50%) Artifactory
11 42 (0.46%) Bitbucket
12 41 (0.45%) JMeter
13 38 (0.42%) Cucumber
13 38 (0.42%) Maven
14 37 (0.41%) Mockito
15 35 (0.38%) Visual Studio
16 30 (0.33%) Cypress.io
17 28 (0.31%) Zephyr
18 24 (0.26%) REST Assured
19 23 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,974 (21.63%) Public Sector
2 1,942 (21.28%) Social Skills
3 692 (7.58%) Analytical Skills
4 645 (7.07%) Finance
5 334 (3.66%) Military
6 254 (2.78%) Documentation Skills
7 223 (2.44%) Aerospace
8 145 (1.59%) Legal
9 119 (1.30%) Telecoms
10 110 (1.21%) Influencing Skills
11 106 (1.16%) Banking
12 103 (1.13%) Organisational Skills
13 100 (1.10%) Manufacturing
14 90 (0.99%) Presentation Skills
15 85 (0.93%) Law
16 59 (0.65%) Police
17 53 (0.58%) Marketing
18 51 (0.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 47 (0.52%) Electronics
20 38 (0.42%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,352 (14.81%) Architect
2 833 (9.13%) Developer
3 759 (8.32%) Senior
4 648 (7.10%) Analyst
5 636 (6.97%) Lead
6 445 (4.88%) Data Engineer
7 411 (4.50%) Consultant
8 409 (4.48%) DevOps Engineer
9 273 (2.99%) Network Engineer
9 273 (2.99%) Software Engineer
10 260 (2.85%) Technical Architect
11 248 (2.72%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 247 (2.71%) Business Analyst
13 214 (2.34%) Project Manager
14 201 (2.20%) Solutions Architect
15 195 (2.14%) Azure Engineer
16 175 (1.92%) Security Architect
17 170 (1.86%) Designer
18 166 (1.82%) Delivery Manager
19 163 (1.79%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 291 (3.19%) REST
2 214 (2.34%) Spring
3 173 (1.90%) Spring Boot
4 164 (1.80%) Kafka
5 163 (1.79%) Node.js
6 157 (1.72%) React
7 156 (1.71%) .NET
8 144 (1.58%) LDAP
9 134 (1.47%) SOAP
10 130 (1.42%) RESTful
11 113 (1.24%) JSON
12 110 (1.21%) AngularJS
13 103 (1.13%) Web Services
14 99 (1.08%) PySpark
15 90 (0.99%) Oracle Fusion
16 83 (0.91%) OAuth
17 79 (0.87%) HTML
18 76 (0.83%) XML
19 69 (0.76%) Elastic Stack
20 64 (0.70%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 323 (3.54%) Cloud Native
2 310 (3.40%) Product Ownership
3 271 (2.97%) Data Centre
4 257 (2.82%) Onboarding
5 150 (1.64%) PKI
6 141 (1.55%) Management Information System
7 124 (1.36%) Legacy Systems
8 121 (1.33%) Security Posture
9 116 (1.27%) Replication
10 112 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
11 108 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
12 92 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
13 80 (0.88%) Clustering
14 76 (0.83%) Data Structures
15 73 (0.80%) Hybrid Cloud
16 71 (0.78%) Public Cloud
17 65 (0.71%) Security Operations Centre
18 62 (0.68%) Virtual Team
19 59 (0.65%) Operational Technology
20 56 (0.61%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 771 (8.45%) Windows
2 624 (6.84%) Linux
3 233 (2.55%) Windows Server
4 158 (1.73%) Unix
5 109 (1.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 92 (1.01%) Android
7 90 (0.99%) Windows 10
8 52 (0.57%) Apple iOS
9 43 (0.47%) Mac OS
10 39 (0.43%) Solaris
11 36 (0.39%) Ubuntu
12 29 (0.32%) VMS
13 25 (0.27%) AIX
14 23 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
15 22 (0.24%) CentOS
15 22 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
16 14 (0.15%) Windows 7
17 11 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
18 9 (0.099%) Windows Server 2012
19 8 (0.088%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,796 (19.68%) Agile
2 1,390 (15.23%) DevOps
3 1,217 (13.34%) CI/CD
4 1,010 (11.07%) Problem-Solving
5 882 (9.66%) Stakeholder Management
6 801 (8.78%) Continuous Improvement
7 770 (8.44%) Migration
8 670 (7.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 614 (6.73%) Infrastructure as Code
10 595 (6.52%) ITIL
11 548 (6.00%) Cybersecurity
12 523 (5.73%) Test Automation
13 515 (5.64%) Analytics
14 514 (5.63%) Software Engineering
15 502 (5.50%) Containerisation
16 497 (5.45%) Roadmaps
17 455 (4.99%) Data Modelling
18 427 (4.68%) Decision-Making
19 414 (4.54%) Scrum
20 392 (4.30%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 976 (10.69%) Python
2 838 (9.18%) SQL
3 565 (6.19%) Java
4 495 (5.42%) PowerShell
5 275 (3.01%) JavaScript
6 200 (2.19%) C#
7 173 (1.90%) Bash
8 140 (1.53%) TypeScript
9 95 (1.04%) PL/SQL
10 90 (0.99%) C++
11 84 (0.92%) Shell Script
12 67 (0.73%) Go
13 63 (0.69%) Scala
14 57 (0.62%) C
15 52 (0.57%) Bicep
16 48 (0.53%) Ruby
17 41 (0.45%) Apex Code
18 40 (0.44%) Ada
18 40 (0.44%) R
19 35 (0.38%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 6,841 (74.96%) SC Cleared
2 1,749 (19.17%) DV Cleared
3 416 (4.56%) Degree
4 256 (2.81%) BPSS Clearance
5 174 (1.91%) Cisco Certification
6 154 (1.69%) CISSP
7 127 (1.39%) Azure Certification
8 111 (1.22%) CCNP
9 105 (1.15%) AWS Certification
10 102 (1.12%) CISM
11 88 (0.96%) Microsoft Certification
12 72 (0.79%) PMP
13 67 (0.73%) CCNA
13 67 (0.73%) TOGAF Certification
14 62 (0.68%) ITIL Certification
14 62 (0.68%) PMI Certification
15 61 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
16 52 (0.57%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 51 (0.56%) ISTQB
18 48 (0.53%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 340 (3.73%) QA
2 271 (2.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 267 (2.93%) NIST
4 266 (2.91%) Data Quality
5 182 (1.99%) NCSC
6 160 (1.75%) PMO
7 158 (1.73%) Accessibility
8 153 (1.68%) GDPR
9 96 (1.05%) SLA
10 62 (0.68%) GRC
11 57 (0.62%) JSP 440
12 51 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials
13 36 (0.39%) NIST 800
14 34 (0.37%) WCAG
15 31 (0.34%) PCI DSS
16 30 (0.33%) COBIT
16 30 (0.33%) Def Stans
17 24 (0.26%) RMADS
18 20 (0.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 19 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 568 (6.22%) Docker
2 443 (4.85%) Active Directory
3 267 (2.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 95 (1.04%) VMware ESXi
5 84 (0.92%) VMware NSX
6 74 (0.81%) Hyper-V
7 72 (0.79%) vSphere
8 68 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
9 35 (0.38%) Firmware
10 26 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
11 22 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
12 20 (0.22%) BitLocker
13 19 (0.21%) NFS
14 17 (0.19%) Postfix
14 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 16 (0.18%) vCloud
16 12 (0.13%) Squid
17 8 (0.088%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.066%) Corosync
18 6 (0.066%) KVM
Systems Management
1 728 (7.98%) Kubernetes
2 704 (7.71%) Terraform
3 316 (3.46%) Ansible
4 225 (2.47%) Grafana
5 185 (2.03%) Prometheus
6 98 (1.07%) vCenter Server
7 85 (0.93%) Single Sign-On
8 76 (0.83%) SCCM
9 56 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 52 (0.57%) Microsoft Intune
11 50 (0.55%) FortiGate
12 47 (0.52%) Argo
13 38 (0.42%) Puppet
14 36 (0.39%) Podman
15 33 (0.36%) Progress Chef
16 30 (0.33%) Nagios
16 30 (0.33%) OPNET
17 29 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
18 24 (0.26%) SCOM
19 22 (0.24%) Kibana
Vendors
1 948 (10.39%) Microsoft
2 566 (6.20%) Oracle
3 460 (5.04%) VMware
4 375 (4.11%) ServiceNow
5 327 (3.58%) Cisco
6 319 (3.50%) SAP
7 212 (2.32%) Splunk
8 173 (1.90%) Databricks
9 150 (1.64%) Google
9 150 (1.64%) Red Hat
10 116 (1.27%) Palo Alto
11 115 (1.26%) IBM
11 115 (1.26%) Talend
12 102 (1.12%) Salesforce
13 99 (1.08%) Juniper
14 94 (1.03%) Atlassian
14 94 (1.03%) CyberArk
15 82 (0.90%) Remedy
16 80 (0.88%) F5
16 80 (0.88%) Informatica