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

6 months to
16 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 9,416 4,546 7,091
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.98% 18.41% 18.94%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.47% 58.95% 61.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,584 2,964 4,618
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 757 323 528
10th Percentile £18.20 £18.41 £14.19
25th Percentile £25.15 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £62.00 £28.55 £57.09
Median % change year-on-year +117.16% -49.99% -4.86%
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.50 £80.00 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £60.00 £26.28 £56.49
% change year-on-year +128.31% -53.48% -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 13,554 7,711 11,445
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.63% 31.22% 30.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,107 4,840 7,054
10th Percentile £350 £278 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -1.87% -2.73%
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 1,029 489 1,011
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.68 £21.00 £20.00
Median hourly rate £52.00 £30.29 £41.27
Median % change year-on-year +71.67% -26.60% -24.97%
75th Percentile £73.46 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.27 £80.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £30.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +66.67% -25.00% -27.69%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 3,377 £525 - 574
South East +1 2,247 £550 - 552
South West 0 1,286 £538 -4.44% 449
North of England +2 982 £500 - 303
Midlands +2 892 £469 -10.67% 140
West Midlands +2 775 £469 -10.62% 99
North West 0 541 £520 +4.00% 187
East of England +2 364 £550 +10.00% 129
Yorkshire -3 246 £494 -1.25% 61
North East +1 228 £478 -0.52% 59
East Midlands -5 106 £418 -17.53% 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
1 340 (3.61%) Confluence
2 212 (2.25%) SharePoint
3 138 (1.47%) SAS
4 123 (1.31%) Microsoft Exchange
5 83 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
6 80 (0.85%) Apache Spark
7 76 (0.81%) Apache
8 39 (0.41%) Jupyter
9 38 (0.40%) nginx
10 29 (0.31%) WebLogic
11 21 (0.22%) Tomcat
12 18 (0.19%) 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 (0.096%) ArcGIS
19 8 (0.085%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 156 (1.66%) Microsoft Excel
2 130 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
3 75 (0.80%) Microsoft Project
4 73 (0.78%) 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 (0.096%) AutoCAD
9 9 (0.096%) Revit
10 8 (0.085%) Chatbot
11 5 (0.053%) Notepad++
12 3 (0.032%) 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 (1.03%) SAP S/4HANA
2 57 (0.61%) Remedy ITSM
3 40 (0.42%) Oracle ERP
4 32 (0.34%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 29 (0.31%) Teamcenter
6 27 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
7 18 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
8 15 (0.16%) Findur
9 14 (0.15%) Maximo
9 14 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
9 14 (0.15%) SAP PSCD
10 12 (0.13%) iTrent
10 12 (0.13%) Primavera
10 12 (0.13%) Temenos T24
11 9 (0.096%) Integrated Workplace Management System
11 9 (0.096%) Oracle Assets
11 9 (0.096%) Salesforce CRM
11 9 (0.096%) SAP ERP
11 9 (0.096%) SAP HR
12 8 (0.085%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,633 (17.34%) Azure
2 1,582 (16.80%) AWS
3 377 (4.00%) GitHub
4 364 (3.87%) Power Platform
5 361 (3.83%) Azure DevOps
6 352 (3.74%) GCP
7 240 (2.55%) Serverless
8 233 (2.47%) Microsoft 365
9 229 (2.43%) Entra ID
10 226 (2.40%) GitHub Actions
11 207 (2.20%) Amazon S3
12 167 (1.77%) AWS Lambda
13 150 (1.59%) Amazon EC2
14 135 (1.43%) PaaS
15 132 (1.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 130 (1.38%) OpenShift
17 123 (1.31%) SaaS
18 122 (1.30%) OCI
19 105 (1.12%) Virtual Private Cloud
20 100 (1.06%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 407 (4.32%) Firewall
2 273 (2.90%) DNS
3 222 (2.36%) Network Security
4 202 (2.15%) WAN
5 183 (1.94%) LAN
6 157 (1.67%) VPN
7 149 (1.58%) DHCP
8 134 (1.42%) BGP
9 113 (1.20%) OSPF
10 112 (1.19%) Wi-Fi
11 103 (1.09%) VLAN
12 91 (0.97%) TCP/IP
13 78 (0.83%) Wireless
14 59 (0.63%) MPLS
15 54 (0.57%) VXLAN
16 53 (0.56%) SD-WAN
17 50 (0.53%) SAN
18 49 (0.52%) Structured Cabling
19 47 (0.50%) BIG-IP
19 47 (0.50%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 272 (2.89%) Power BI
2 232 (2.46%) PostgreSQL
3 218 (2.32%) Data Warehouse
4 204 (2.17%) SQL Server
5 135 (1.43%) Oracle Database
6 117 (1.24%) Metadata
7 108 (1.15%) Amazon RDS
8 104 (1.10%) Data Lake
9 92 (0.98%) Relational Database
10 83 (0.88%) Pentaho
11 79 (0.84%) MongoDB
12 75 (0.80%) Elasticsearch
13 74 (0.79%) Oracle Reports
14 69 (0.73%) MySQL
15 67 (0.71%) NoSQL
16 65 (0.69%) Amazon Redshift
17 61 (0.65%) Amazon Athena
18 60 (0.64%) Tableau
19 45 (0.48%) Azure SQL Database
20 43 (0.46%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 533 (5.66%) JIRA
2 419 (4.45%) Git
3 386 (4.10%) GitLab
4 357 (3.79%) Jenkins
5 101 (1.07%) Selenium
6 79 (0.84%) JUnit
7 70 (0.74%) SonarQube
8 68 (0.72%) Postman
9 57 (0.61%) Rational DOORS
10 51 (0.54%) JMeter
11 48 (0.51%) Cucumber
12 47 (0.50%) Artifactory
13 41 (0.44%) Bitbucket
14 40 (0.42%) Mockito
15 39 (0.41%) Maven
16 37 (0.39%) Zephyr
17 36 (0.38%) Visual Studio
18 34 (0.36%) Cypress.io
18 34 (0.36%) REST Assured
19 30 (0.32%) WebDriver
General
1 1,993 (21.17%) Public Sector
2 1,903 (20.21%) Social Skills
3 644 (6.84%) Analytical Skills
4 625 (6.64%) Finance
5 308 (3.27%) Military
6 267 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
7 264 (2.80%) Aerospace
8 142 (1.51%) Legal
9 120 (1.27%) Banking
10 113 (1.20%) Influencing Skills
11 98 (1.04%) Law
11 98 (1.04%) Telecoms
12 86 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
13 78 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
14 73 (0.78%) Manufacturing
15 65 (0.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 63 (0.67%) Police
17 45 (0.48%) Marketing
18 39 (0.41%) Retail
19 38 (0.40%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,374 (14.59%) Architect
2 893 (9.48%) Developer
3 816 (8.67%) Senior
4 724 (7.69%) Lead
5 634 (6.73%) Analyst
6 465 (4.94%) Data Engineer
7 425 (4.51%) DevOps Engineer
8 421 (4.47%) Consultant
9 291 (3.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 281 (2.98%) Software Engineer
11 271 (2.88%) Technical Architect
12 258 (2.74%) Network Engineer
13 230 (2.44%) Solutions Architect
14 229 (2.43%) Business Analyst
15 208 (2.21%) Project Manager
16 204 (2.17%) Security Architect
17 189 (2.01%) Delivery Manager
18 187 (1.99%) Administrator
19 184 (1.95%) Azure Engineer
20 175 (1.86%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 291 (3.09%) REST
2 215 (2.28%) Spring
3 181 (1.92%) Spring Boot
4 169 (1.79%) React
5 160 (1.70%) .NET
6 151 (1.60%) Kafka
7 148 (1.57%) Node.js
8 138 (1.47%) RESTful
9 132 (1.40%) LDAP
10 130 (1.38%) SOAP
11 111 (1.18%) AngularJS
12 105 (1.12%) JSON
13 95 (1.01%) Web Services
14 94 (1.00%) PySpark
15 90 (0.96%) OAuth
16 87 (0.92%) HTML
17 71 (0.75%) OpenID
17 71 (0.75%) XML
18 70 (0.74%) Oracle Fusion
19 69 (0.73%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 357 (3.79%) Cloud Native
2 317 (3.37%) Product Ownership
3 282 (2.99%) Onboarding
4 280 (2.97%) Data Centre
5 150 (1.59%) Legacy Systems
6 148 (1.57%) Management Information System
7 135 (1.43%) PKI
8 123 (1.31%) Distributed Systems
9 113 (1.20%) Security Posture
10 109 (1.16%) Enterprise Software
10 109 (1.16%) Replication
11 99 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
12 88 (0.93%) Clustering
13 82 (0.87%) Data Structures
14 81 (0.86%) CMDB
15 77 (0.82%) Hybrid Cloud
16 75 (0.80%) Public Cloud
17 73 (0.78%) Security Operations Centre
18 70 (0.74%) Operational Technology
19 66 (0.70%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 749 (7.95%) Windows
2 618 (6.56%) Linux
3 247 (2.62%) Windows Server
4 179 (1.90%) Unix
5 108 (1.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 78 (0.83%) Windows 10
7 73 (0.78%) Android
8 51 (0.54%) Solaris
9 48 (0.51%) Apple iOS
10 35 (0.37%) Mac OS
11 30 (0.32%) Ubuntu
12 27 (0.29%) AIX
13 26 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
14 23 (0.24%) Windows Server 2016
15 21 (0.22%) CentOS
16 15 (0.16%) VMS
17 14 (0.15%) Windows 7
18 11 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
18 11 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
19 10 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,865 (19.81%) Agile
2 1,458 (15.48%) DevOps
3 1,284 (13.64%) CI/CD
4 961 (10.21%) Stakeholder Management
5 960 (10.20%) Problem-Solving
6 907 (9.63%) Continuous Improvement
7 779 (8.27%) Migration
8 761 (8.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 683 (7.25%) Infrastructure as Code
10 612 (6.50%) Cybersecurity
11 576 (6.12%) Test Automation
12 569 (6.04%) ITIL
13 550 (5.84%) Software Engineering
14 546 (5.80%) Analytics
15 529 (5.62%) Roadmaps
16 522 (5.54%) Containerisation
17 491 (5.21%) Data Modelling
18 473 (5.02%) Decision-Making
19 448 (4.76%) AI
20 439 (4.66%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 977 (10.38%) Python
2 888 (9.43%) SQL
3 590 (6.27%) Java
4 471 (5.00%) PowerShell
5 266 (2.82%) JavaScript
6 202 (2.15%) C#
7 180 (1.91%) Bash
8 141 (1.50%) TypeScript
9 115 (1.22%) PL/SQL
10 84 (0.89%) Shell Script
11 83 (0.88%) C++
12 63 (0.67%) Bicep
13 62 (0.66%) C
14 54 (0.57%) Go
15 48 (0.51%) Scala
16 45 (0.48%) Ada
17 43 (0.46%) Apex Code
17 43 (0.46%) Ruby
18 35 (0.37%) MATLAB
19 33 (0.35%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 7,115 (75.56%) SC Cleared
2 1,802 (19.14%) DV Cleared
3 383 (4.07%) Degree
4 270 (2.87%) BPSS Clearance
5 179 (1.90%) Cisco Certification
6 155 (1.65%) CISSP
7 124 (1.32%) Azure Certification
8 104 (1.10%) Microsoft Certification
9 102 (1.08%) CCNP
9 102 (1.08%) CISM
10 101 (1.07%) AWS Certification
11 79 (0.84%) PMP
12 78 (0.83%) CCNA
13 73 (0.78%) PMI Certification
14 64 (0.68%) ISTQB
15 56 (0.59%) Computer Science Degree
16 55 (0.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 51 (0.54%) ITIL Certification
18 41 (0.44%) GIAC
19 34 (0.36%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 363 (3.86%) QA
2 289 (3.07%) NIST
3 283 (3.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 273 (2.90%) Data Quality
5 201 (2.13%) NCSC
6 182 (1.93%) Accessibility
7 168 (1.78%) PMO
8 161 (1.71%) GDPR
9 104 (1.10%) SLA
10 79 (0.84%) GRC
11 60 (0.64%) JSP 440
12 51 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials
13 44 (0.47%) WCAG
14 41 (0.44%) NIST 800
15 34 (0.36%) Def Stans
16 28 (0.30%) RMADS
17 22 (0.23%) COBIT
17 22 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
17 22 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 19 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 579 (6.15%) Docker
2 426 (4.52%) Active Directory
3 283 (3.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 114 (1.21%) VMware ESXi
5 99 (1.05%) VMware NSX
6 79 (0.84%) Hyper-V
7 77 (0.82%) vSphere
8 69 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
9 32 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
10 30 (0.32%) Firmware
11 23 (0.24%) BitLocker
12 21 (0.22%) vCloud
13 19 (0.20%) NFS
13 19 (0.20%) Postfix
14 18 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
15 16 (0.17%) Squid
16 15 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 10 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.064%) Corosync
18 6 (0.064%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 753 (8.00%) Terraform
2 721 (7.66%) Kubernetes
3 332 (3.53%) Ansible
4 228 (2.42%) Grafana
5 185 (1.96%) Prometheus
6 115 (1.22%) vCenter Server
7 79 (0.84%) Single Sign-On
8 73 (0.78%) SCCM
9 57 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 55 (0.58%) Microsoft Intune
11 51 (0.54%) Argo
12 47 (0.50%) FortiGate
13 40 (0.42%) Puppet
14 39 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
14 39 (0.41%) SCOM
15 37 (0.39%) Podman
16 27 (0.29%) Progress Chef
17 25 (0.27%) Nagios
18 24 (0.25%) vMotion
19 21 (0.22%) WSUS
Vendors
1 977 (10.38%) Microsoft
2 654 (6.95%) Oracle
3 462 (4.91%) VMware
4 389 (4.13%) ServiceNow
5 316 (3.36%) Cisco
6 299 (3.18%) SAP
7 205 (2.18%) Splunk
8 173 (1.84%) Databricks
9 148 (1.57%) Google
10 142 (1.51%) Red Hat
11 127 (1.35%) Talend
12 121 (1.29%) Salesforce
13 115 (1.22%) IBM
14 114 (1.21%) Palo Alto
15 98 (1.04%) Juniper
16 97 (1.03%) Informatica
17 84 (0.89%) F5
18 82 (0.87%) CyberArk
19 80 (0.85%) Fortinet
20 79 (0.84%) Dynatrace