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 28 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 7,496 4,803 7,051
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.85% 18.15% 18.80%
As % of the Qualifications category 66.64% 59.69% 60.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,135 2,994 4,513
10th Percentile £350 £338 £363
25th Percentile £450 £444 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -3.68%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £656
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -3.51%
Number of hourly rates quoted 658 249 470
10th Percentile £17.69 £21.06 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.72 £26.25 £42.31
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £59.84
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% +0.27% -0.27%
75th Percentile £63.94 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £83.12
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £54.76 £60.00
% change year-on-year -54.07% -8.74% -

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 11,248 8,046 11,687
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.29% 30.41% 31.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,481 4,849 7,293
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £419 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.10% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £519 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -1.24% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 865 389 833
10th Percentile £15.62 £19.72 £14.50
25th Percentile £18.87 £25.26 £21.46
Median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -45.54% -2.78% +5.56%
75th Percentile £63.40 £67.50 £66.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.92 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £39.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year -35.51% -17.89% +5.56%

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 28 January 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 28 January 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 28 January 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 +5 2,568 £538 -1.83% 455
South East +1 1,516 £514 -6.46% 607
South West 0 1,289 £550 -3.93% 387
North of England -2 810 £500 +5.26% 226
Midlands +4 720 £515 -6.53% 166
West Midlands +2 566 £519 -6.58% 98
North West 0 533 £514 +8.16% 119
East of England +2 334 £492 -4.00% 232
Yorkshire -11 163 £500 +9.59% 69
East Midlands +3 154 £425 -21.70% 66
North East 0 138 £450 -14.29% 40
South Coast - 2 - -
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
1 269 (3.59%) Confluence
2 184 (2.45%) SharePoint
3 128 (1.71%) Microsoft Exchange
4 117 (1.56%) SAS
5 70 (0.93%) Apache
6 56 (0.75%) Apache Spark
7 48 (0.64%) Apache Airflow
8 40 (0.53%) nginx
9 38 (0.51%) Skype for Business
10 24 (0.32%) WebLogic
11 20 (0.27%) CMS
12 18 (0.24%) IIS
13 14 (0.19%) Jupyter
14 10 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
15 9 (0.12%) OpenStack
15 9 (0.12%) SharePoint Server
16 7 (0.093%) Tuxedo
17 6 (0.080%) Documentum
17 6 (0.080%) Exchange Server 2010
18 5 (0.067%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 245 (3.27%) Microsoft Office
2 149 (1.99%) Microsoft Excel
3 105 (1.40%) Microsoft Project
4 59 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 33 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.16%) Simulink
8 7 (0.093%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.067%) Oracle Smart View
9 5 (0.067%) Siemens NX
9 5 (0.067%) Sketch
9 5 (0.067%) Windchill
10 4 (0.053%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.053%) FrameMaker
10 4 (0.053%) Stateflow
11 3 (0.040%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.040%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.027%) Adobe Illustrator
12 2 (0.027%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.027%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 143 (1.91%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.49%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 28 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
4 27 (0.36%) SAP EWM
4 27 (0.36%) SAP WM
5 23 (0.31%) Dynamics CRM
6 19 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
7 18 (0.24%) Maximo
7 18 (0.24%) SAP MM
8 14 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
8 14 (0.19%) Teamcenter
9 13 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
9 13 (0.17%) SAP QM
10 12 (0.16%) SAP PP
10 12 (0.16%) SAP VC
11 11 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
11 11 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
11 11 (0.15%) Oracle Receivables
11 11 (0.15%) SAP EHS
11 11 (0.15%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,278 (17.05%) Azure
2 1,233 (16.45%) AWS
3 341 (4.55%) GitHub
4 330 (4.40%) GCP
5 303 (4.04%) Microsoft 365
6 281 (3.75%) Azure DevOps
7 274 (3.66%) Power Platform
8 219 (2.92%) Serverless
9 203 (2.71%) Entra ID
10 172 (2.29%) Amazon S3
11 169 (2.25%) GitHub Actions
12 156 (2.08%) OpenShift
13 137 (1.83%) AWS Lambda
14 104 (1.39%) Amazon EC2
15 102 (1.36%) AWS CloudFormation
16 99 (1.32%) IaaS
17 97 (1.29%) PaaS
17 97 (1.29%) SaaS
18 96 (1.28%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 89 (1.19%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 389 (5.19%) Firewall
2 262 (3.50%) DNS
3 184 (2.45%) Network Security
4 175 (2.33%) VPN
5 163 (2.17%) WAN
6 134 (1.79%) TCP/IP
7 117 (1.56%) LAN
8 114 (1.52%) DHCP
9 110 (1.47%) BGP
10 85 (1.13%) Wireless
11 79 (1.05%) VLAN
12 70 (0.93%) Wi-Fi
13 63 (0.84%) MPLS
13 63 (0.84%) OSPF
14 61 (0.81%) SSL
15 58 (0.77%) IPsec
16 52 (0.69%) SAN
17 46 (0.61%) Skype
18 42 (0.56%) Cisco ISE
19 37 (0.49%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 196 (2.61%) PostgreSQL
2 189 (2.52%) Power BI
3 94 (1.25%) Data Warehouse
4 87 (1.16%) MongoDB
5 86 (1.15%) SQL Server
6 85 (1.13%) NoSQL
7 84 (1.12%) Metadata
8 81 (1.08%) Oracle Database
9 79 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
10 72 (0.96%) Relational Database
11 61 (0.81%) Azure SQL Database
12 52 (0.69%) Elasticsearch
13 45 (0.60%) Pentaho
14 42 (0.56%) Big Data
14 42 (0.56%) Data Lake
15 41 (0.55%) SAS Enterprise Guide
16 37 (0.49%) Amazon Athena
16 37 (0.49%) Amazon Redshift
17 36 (0.48%) MySQL
18 34 (0.45%) Redis
Development Applications
1 464 (6.19%) JIRA
2 388 (5.18%) Git
3 349 (4.66%) Jenkins
4 287 (3.83%) GitLab
5 87 (1.16%) Selenium
6 70 (0.93%) Postman
7 58 (0.77%) JUnit
8 56 (0.75%) Cypress.io
9 48 (0.64%) Bitbucket
10 47 (0.63%) Oracle APEX
10 47 (0.63%) SonarQube
11 45 (0.60%) Artifactory
12 36 (0.48%) Maven
13 34 (0.45%) Cucumber
14 31 (0.41%) Mockito
15 29 (0.39%) REST Assured
16 23 (0.31%) Metasploit
16 23 (0.31%) MSI
17 22 (0.29%) Rational DOORS
18 21 (0.28%) Burp Suite
General
1 1,934 (25.80%) Public Sector
2 1,915 (25.55%) Social Skills
3 659 (8.79%) Analytical Skills
4 535 (7.14%) Finance
5 300 (4.00%) Military
6 215 (2.87%) Documentation Skills
7 195 (2.60%) Telecoms
8 190 (2.53%) Manufacturing
9 132 (1.76%) Electronics
10 131 (1.75%) Marketing
11 124 (1.65%) Aerospace
12 110 (1.47%) Organisational Skills
13 107 (1.43%) Legal
14 97 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
15 87 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
16 84 (1.12%) Banking
17 68 (0.91%) Law
18 48 (0.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 31 (0.41%) Police
20 29 (0.39%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,009 (13.46%) Architect
2 725 (9.67%) Developer
3 629 (8.39%) Senior
4 539 (7.19%) Analyst
5 498 (6.64%) Consultant
6 418 (5.58%) Lead
7 365 (4.87%) DevOps Engineer
8 244 (3.26%) Data Engineer
9 235 (3.14%) Support Engineer
10 229 (3.05%) Network Engineer
11 178 (2.37%) Technical Architect
12 177 (2.36%) Business Analyst
13 176 (2.35%) Software Engineer
14 175 (2.33%) Solutions Architect
15 143 (1.91%) Tester
16 138 (1.84%) AWS Engineer
17 136 (1.81%) Azure Engineer
18 133 (1.77%) Project Manager
19 131 (1.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 131 (1.75%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 311 (4.15%) REST
2 178 (2.37%) Node.js
3 171 (2.28%) React
4 161 (2.15%) Kafka
5 144 (1.92%) Spring
6 143 (1.91%) LDAP
7 142 (1.89%) SOAP
8 137 (1.83%) JSON
9 114 (1.52%) Spring Boot
10 106 (1.41%) HTML
11 97 (1.29%) .NET
11 97 (1.29%) RESTful
12 94 (1.25%) CSS
12 94 (1.25%) OAuth
12 94 (1.25%) XML
13 92 (1.23%) Oracle Fusion
14 84 (1.12%) AngularJS
15 81 (1.08%) Web Services
16 80 (1.07%) PySpark
17 78 (1.04%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 240 (3.20%) Data Centre
2 223 (2.97%) Product Ownership
3 213 (2.84%) Cloud Native
4 203 (2.71%) Onboarding
5 193 (2.57%) PKI
6 141 (1.88%) Management Information System
7 123 (1.64%) Security Posture
8 104 (1.39%) Enterprise Software
9 101 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
10 94 (1.25%) Replication
11 92 (1.23%) Legacy Systems
12 77 (1.03%) Cyber Threat
13 69 (0.92%) Driving Licence
14 61 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
15 57 (0.76%) Public Cloud
16 54 (0.72%) Hybrid Cloud
17 50 (0.67%) Private Cloud
18 49 (0.65%) Distributed Systems
19 45 (0.60%) CMDB
20 42 (0.56%) Cyber Defence
Operating Systems
1 819 (10.93%) Windows
2 576 (7.68%) Linux
3 205 (2.73%) Windows Server
4 182 (2.43%) Windows 10
5 97 (1.29%) Unix
6 94 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 93 (1.24%) Android
8 67 (0.89%) Mac OS
9 42 (0.56%) Ubuntu
10 41 (0.55%) VMS
11 29 (0.39%) Apple iOS
12 24 (0.32%) CentOS
13 22 (0.29%) Windows 7
13 22 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
14 16 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
14 16 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
15 14 (0.19%) Amazon Linux
15 14 (0.19%) Mac OS X
16 12 (0.16%) Solaris
16 12 (0.16%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,431 (19.09%) Agile
2 1,188 (15.85%) DevOps
3 1,038 (13.85%) CI/CD
4 968 (12.91%) Problem-Solving
5 668 (8.91%) Migration
6 643 (8.58%) Stakeholder Management
7 543 (7.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 523 (6.98%) Continuous Improvement
9 512 (6.83%) Cybersecurity
10 474 (6.32%) ITIL
11 472 (6.30%) Infrastructure as Code
12 431 (5.75%) Test Automation
13 402 (5.36%) Analytics
14 393 (5.24%) Containerisation
15 392 (5.23%) Business Intelligence
16 376 (5.02%) Roadmaps
17 368 (4.91%) Service Management
18 338 (4.51%) Software Engineering
19 337 (4.50%) Scrum
20 318 (4.24%) Workflow
Programming Languages
1 930 (12.41%) Python
2 590 (7.87%) SQL
3 529 (7.06%) PowerShell
4 414 (5.52%) Java
5 351 (4.68%) JavaScript
6 203 (2.71%) Bash
7 170 (2.27%) TypeScript
8 132 (1.76%) C#
9 87 (1.16%) C++
10 86 (1.15%) Go
11 70 (0.93%) Shell Script
12 69 (0.92%) PL/SQL
13 62 (0.83%) C
14 44 (0.59%) Ruby
14 44 (0.59%) Scala
15 43 (0.57%) Ada
16 36 (0.48%) MATLAB
17 33 (0.44%) ABAP
18 31 (0.41%) Bicep
18 31 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 5,757 (76.80%) SC Cleared
2 1,265 (16.88%) DV Cleared
3 379 (5.06%) Degree
4 215 (2.87%) BPSS Clearance
5 143 (1.91%) CISSP
6 118 (1.57%) Cisco Certification
7 117 (1.56%) Azure Certification
8 115 (1.53%) Microsoft Certification
9 101 (1.35%) CCNP
10 97 (1.29%) AWS Certification
11 88 (1.17%) CISM
12 64 (0.85%) ITIL Certification
13 63 (0.84%) Computer Science Degree
14 54 (0.72%) CCNA
15 49 (0.65%) CEH
16 48 (0.64%) TOGAF Certification
17 47 (0.63%) GIAC
18 42 (0.56%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 40 (0.53%) CHECK Team Member
20 37 (0.49%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 242 (3.23%) QA
2 235 (3.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 227 (3.03%) NIST
4 188 (2.51%) NCSC
5 172 (2.29%) Data Quality
6 156 (2.08%) GDPR
7 127 (1.69%) Accessibility
8 117 (1.56%) SLA
9 75 (1.00%) PMO
10 50 (0.67%) GRC
11 49 (0.65%) JSP 440
12 42 (0.56%) WCAG
13 37 (0.49%) Def Stans
14 33 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
15 29 (0.39%) COBIT
16 27 (0.36%) PCI DSS
17 25 (0.33%) NIST 800
18 19 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 18 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 18 (0.24%) RMADS
System Software
1 556 (7.42%) Docker
2 477 (6.36%) Active Directory
3 219 (2.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 75 (1.00%) VMware NSX
5 63 (0.84%) vSphere
6 56 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
7 54 (0.72%) VMware ESXi
8 43 (0.57%) Hyper-V
9 29 (0.39%) Firmware
10 27 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
11 17 (0.23%) BitLocker
12 13 (0.17%) Squid
13 11 (0.15%) DFS Replication
13 11 (0.15%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 10 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
14 10 (0.13%) Postfix
15 9 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.12%) NFS
16 7 (0.093%) Dovecot
16 7 (0.093%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 708 (9.45%) Kubernetes
2 637 (8.50%) Terraform
3 282 (3.76%) Ansible
4 180 (2.40%) Grafana
5 152 (2.03%) Prometheus
6 107 (1.43%) SCCM
6 107 (1.43%) Single Sign-On
7 94 (1.25%) vCenter Server
8 83 (1.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 63 (0.84%) Argo
10 61 (0.81%) Microsoft Intune
11 36 (0.48%) Kibana
11 36 (0.48%) Packer
12 34 (0.45%) Podman
13 33 (0.44%) OPNET
14 30 (0.40%) vRealize
15 27 (0.36%) Progress Chef
15 27 (0.36%) Puppet
16 25 (0.33%) Nessus
16 25 (0.33%) Nmap
Vendors
1 952 (12.70%) Microsoft
2 422 (5.63%) Oracle
3 414 (5.52%) SAP
4 399 (5.32%) Cisco
5 384 (5.12%) VMware
6 310 (4.14%) ServiceNow
7 205 (2.73%) Splunk
8 151 (2.01%) Red Hat
9 130 (1.73%) Palo Alto
10 124 (1.65%) Juniper
11 123 (1.64%) CyberArk
12 113 (1.51%) Google
13 109 (1.45%) Databricks
14 107 (1.43%) Atlassian
15 97 (1.29%) Salesforce
16 96 (1.28%) Dell
17 79 (1.05%) HP
18 74 (0.99%) Dynatrace
19 70 (0.93%) CheckPoint
20 66 (0.88%) F5