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

6 months to
13 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 7,098 4,816 6,812
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.66% 18.12% 18.73%
As % of the Qualifications category 66.18% 59.57% 60.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,792 3,056 4,349
10th Percentile £348 £333 £369
25th Percentile £450 £438 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.65%
75th Percentile £627 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £718 £730
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £560
% change year-on-year -4.55% -1.79% -0.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 660 237 424
10th Percentile £17.87 £20.87 £20.00
25th Percentile £19.62 £27.00 £45.88
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% - -
75th Percentile £61.18 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.58 £75.00 £80.88
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -49.70% -16.67% -

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 10,726 8,085 11,209
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.24% 30.41% 30.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,076 4,925 7,066
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £420 £416 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £728 £738
UK median daily rate £522 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.52% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 854 383 698
10th Percentile £16.00 £19.41 £14.50
25th Percentile £18.87 £25.26 £23.19
Median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -45.54% -7.64% +11.11%
75th Percentile £57.19 £67.88 £67.50
90th Percentile £76.58 £82.25 £78.36
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £39.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year -35.51% -22.00% +11.11%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 2,398 £548 -0.45% 413
South East +1 1,443 £522 -5.09% 539
South West 0 1,211 £550 -0.18% 360
North of England -2 779 £500 +5.26% 213
Midlands +3 700 £519 -5.90% 140
West Midlands +3 546 £525 -4.72% 87
North West 0 525 £501 +5.52% 123
East of England +2 316 £490 -4.44% 229
Yorkshire -12 154 £500 +8.11% 58
East Midlands +3 151 £438 -12.50% 51
North East -1 121 £450 -14.29% 32
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
1 265 (3.73%) Confluence
2 182 (2.56%) SharePoint
3 119 (1.68%) Microsoft Exchange
4 108 (1.52%) SAS
5 78 (1.10%) Apache
6 53 (0.75%) Apache Spark
7 45 (0.63%) Apache Airflow
8 36 (0.51%) Skype for Business
9 34 (0.48%) nginx
10 27 (0.38%) WebLogic
11 20 (0.28%) CMS
12 17 (0.24%) IIS
13 14 (0.20%) Jupyter
14 11 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
15 10 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
16 8 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2010
16 8 (0.11%) OpenStack
17 7 (0.099%) Exchange Server 2013
17 7 (0.099%) Tuxedo
18 6 (0.085%) Tomcat
Applications
1 241 (3.40%) Microsoft Office
2 148 (2.09%) Microsoft Excel
3 102 (1.44%) Microsoft Project
4 58 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 35 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 21 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.17%) Siemens NX
7 12 (0.17%) Simulink
8 8 (0.11%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.070%) FrameMaker
9 5 (0.070%) Oracle Smart View
9 5 (0.070%) Sketch
9 5 (0.070%) Windchill
10 4 (0.056%) Stateflow
10 4 (0.056%) Trello
11 3 (0.042%) Adobe Illustrator
11 3 (0.042%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.042%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.042%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.042%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 146 (2.06%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.52%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 28 (0.39%) Remedy ITSM
4 27 (0.38%) SAP EWM
4 27 (0.38%) SAP WM
5 25 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
6 18 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
6 18 (0.25%) SAP MM
7 17 (0.24%) SAP HCM
7 17 (0.24%) Teamcenter
8 16 (0.23%) Maximo
9 14 (0.20%) Oracle Assets
9 14 (0.20%) SAP QM
10 13 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
11 12 (0.17%) SAP PP
11 12 (0.17%) SAP VC
12 11 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
12 11 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
12 11 (0.15%) Oracle Receivables
12 11 (0.15%) SAP EHS
Cloud Services
1 1,209 (17.03%) Azure
2 1,168 (16.46%) AWS
3 316 (4.45%) GitHub
4 312 (4.40%) Microsoft 365
5 304 (4.28%) GCP
6 266 (3.75%) Azure DevOps
7 258 (3.63%) Power Platform
8 206 (2.90%) Serverless
9 181 (2.55%) Entra ID
10 164 (2.31%) Amazon S3
11 160 (2.25%) GitHub Actions
12 136 (1.92%) OpenShift
13 123 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
14 102 (1.44%) SaaS
15 101 (1.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 98 (1.38%) Amazon EC2
17 94 (1.32%) AWS CloudFormation
18 93 (1.31%) IaaS
19 87 (1.23%) Power Automate
20 86 (1.21%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 384 (5.41%) Firewall
2 240 (3.38%) DNS
3 173 (2.44%) VPN
4 167 (2.35%) Network Security
5 159 (2.24%) WAN
6 129 (1.82%) TCP/IP
7 112 (1.58%) LAN
8 105 (1.48%) BGP
9 95 (1.34%) DHCP
10 87 (1.23%) Wireless
11 73 (1.03%) VLAN
12 67 (0.94%) Wi-Fi
13 65 (0.92%) SSL
14 60 (0.85%) OSPF
15 58 (0.82%) IPsec
16 57 (0.80%) MPLS
17 49 (0.69%) SAN
18 42 (0.59%) Skype
19 39 (0.55%) Cisco ISE
20 35 (0.49%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 189 (2.66%) PostgreSQL
2 176 (2.48%) Power BI
3 89 (1.25%) Data Warehouse
4 82 (1.16%) Metadata
5 81 (1.14%) SQL Server
6 80 (1.13%) MongoDB
7 76 (1.07%) NoSQL
8 75 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
8 75 (1.06%) Oracle Database
9 65 (0.92%) Relational Database
10 59 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
11 45 (0.63%) Big Data
11 45 (0.63%) Elasticsearch
12 41 (0.58%) SAS Enterprise Guide
13 39 (0.55%) Pentaho
14 36 (0.51%) Data Lake
15 35 (0.49%) Amazon Athena
16 34 (0.48%) Amazon Redshift
17 33 (0.46%) Redis
18 32 (0.45%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 468 (6.59%) JIRA
2 373 (5.26%) Git
3 333 (4.69%) Jenkins
4 256 (3.61%) GitLab
5 79 (1.11%) Selenium
6 59 (0.83%) Postman
7 53 (0.75%) JUnit
8 51 (0.72%) Cypress.io
9 48 (0.68%) Oracle APEX
10 44 (0.62%) Bitbucket
11 42 (0.59%) Artifactory
12 39 (0.55%) SonarQube
13 31 (0.44%) Cucumber
13 31 (0.44%) Maven
14 29 (0.41%) Mockito
15 24 (0.34%) REST Assured
16 23 (0.32%) Metasploit
16 23 (0.32%) MSI
17 21 (0.30%) Burp Suite
18 20 (0.28%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,874 (26.40%) Public Sector
2 1,833 (25.82%) Social Skills
3 636 (8.96%) Analytical Skills
4 496 (6.99%) Finance
5 290 (4.09%) Military
6 200 (2.82%) Telecoms
7 197 (2.78%) Manufacturing
8 176 (2.48%) Documentation Skills
9 139 (1.96%) Electronics
10 138 (1.94%) Marketing
11 124 (1.75%) Aerospace
12 115 (1.62%) Organisational Skills
13 101 (1.42%) Legal
14 89 (1.25%) Presentation Skills
15 84 (1.18%) Banking
16 78 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
17 68 (0.96%) Law
18 45 (0.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 32 (0.45%) Police
20 29 (0.41%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 981 (13.82%) Architect
2 666 (9.38%) Developer
3 602 (8.48%) Senior
4 507 (7.14%) Consultant
5 501 (7.06%) Analyst
6 415 (5.85%) Lead
7 345 (4.86%) DevOps Engineer
8 239 (3.37%) Support Engineer
9 221 (3.11%) Network Engineer
10 204 (2.87%) Data Engineer
11 174 (2.45%) Solutions Architect
12 158 (2.23%) Software Engineer
13 157 (2.21%) Technical Architect
14 149 (2.10%) Business Analyst
15 140 (1.97%) SAP Consultant
16 130 (1.83%) AWS Engineer
16 130 (1.83%) IT Engineer
16 130 (1.83%) Tester
17 128 (1.80%) Platform Engineer
18 126 (1.78%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 298 (4.20%) REST
2 170 (2.40%) Node.js
3 168 (2.37%) React
4 152 (2.14%) Kafka
5 135 (1.90%) SOAP
6 132 (1.86%) JSON
7 114 (1.61%) Spring
8 105 (1.48%) HTML
8 105 (1.48%) LDAP
9 93 (1.31%) .NET
9 93 (1.31%) Spring Boot
10 91 (1.28%) CSS
11 88 (1.24%) XML
12 85 (1.20%) AngularJS
13 84 (1.18%) RESTful
14 83 (1.17%) Oracle Fusion
15 80 (1.13%) Web Services
16 77 (1.08%) OAuth
17 76 (1.07%) PySpark
18 57 (0.80%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 231 (3.25%) Data Centre
2 193 (2.72%) Cloud Native
2 193 (2.72%) Product Ownership
3 192 (2.70%) PKI
4 179 (2.52%) Onboarding
5 142 (2.00%) Management Information System
6 112 (1.58%) Security Posture
7 103 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
8 101 (1.42%) Self-Motivation
9 89 (1.25%) Legacy Systems
10 76 (1.07%) Cyber Threat
11 70 (0.99%) Driving Licence
12 66 (0.93%) Replication
13 58 (0.82%) Security Operations Centre
14 54 (0.76%) Hybrid Cloud
15 52 (0.73%) Analytical Mindset
16 49 (0.69%) Public Cloud
17 48 (0.68%) CMDB
18 47 (0.66%) Private Cloud
19 42 (0.59%) Cyber Defence
Operating Systems
1 783 (11.03%) Windows
2 544 (7.66%) Linux
3 184 (2.59%) Windows Server
4 178 (2.51%) Windows 10
5 98 (1.38%) Unix
6 94 (1.32%) Android
7 92 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 74 (1.04%) Mac OS
9 44 (0.62%) VMS
10 39 (0.55%) Ubuntu
11 28 (0.39%) Apple iOS
12 22 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
13 21 (0.30%) CentOS
14 18 (0.25%) Windows 7
14 18 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
15 17 (0.24%) Amazon Linux
16 15 (0.21%) Mac OS X
16 15 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
17 14 (0.20%) Windows Server 2003
18 12 (0.17%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,362 (19.19%) Agile
2 1,104 (15.55%) DevOps
3 956 (13.47%) CI/CD
4 882 (12.43%) Problem-Solving
5 683 (9.62%) Migration
6 588 (8.28%) Stakeholder Management
7 522 (7.35%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 484 (6.82%) ITIL
9 473 (6.66%) Continuous Improvement
10 463 (6.52%) Cybersecurity
11 439 (6.18%) Infrastructure as Code
12 389 (5.48%) Business Intelligence
13 387 (5.45%) Service Management
13 387 (5.45%) Test Automation
14 377 (5.31%) Containerisation
15 372 (5.24%) Analytics
16 353 (4.97%) Roadmaps
17 333 (4.69%) Workflow
18 322 (4.54%) Software Engineering
19 320 (4.51%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 915 (12.89%) Python
2 551 (7.76%) SQL
3 492 (6.93%) PowerShell
4 371 (5.23%) Java
5 341 (4.80%) JavaScript
6 201 (2.83%) Bash
7 163 (2.30%) TypeScript
8 124 (1.75%) C#
9 87 (1.23%) Go
10 85 (1.20%) C++
11 69 (0.97%) PL/SQL
12 64 (0.90%) Shell Script
13 60 (0.85%) C
14 42 (0.59%) Scala
15 41 (0.58%) Ruby
16 39 (0.55%) ABAP
17 33 (0.46%) Bicep
18 32 (0.45%) MATLAB
18 32 (0.45%) Perl
19 29 (0.41%) Ada
Qualifications
1 5,483 (77.25%) SC Cleared
2 1,163 (16.38%) DV Cleared
3 369 (5.20%) Degree
4 226 (3.18%) BPSS Clearance
5 132 (1.86%) CISSP
6 117 (1.65%) Cisco Certification
7 115 (1.62%) Azure Certification
8 114 (1.61%) Microsoft Certification
9 100 (1.41%) CCNP
10 91 (1.28%) AWS Certification
11 82 (1.16%) CISM
12 59 (0.83%) Computer Science Degree
13 57 (0.80%) ITIL Certification
14 52 (0.73%) CCNA
15 47 (0.66%) CEH
16 46 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
17 40 (0.56%) CHECK Team Member
18 38 (0.54%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 37 (0.52%) GIAC
20 36 (0.51%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 215 (3.03%) QA
2 202 (2.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 200 (2.82%) NIST
4 169 (2.38%) NCSC
5 156 (2.20%) Data Quality
6 142 (2.00%) GDPR
7 123 (1.73%) SLA
8 115 (1.62%) Accessibility
9 75 (1.06%) PMO
10 45 (0.63%) JSP 440
11 42 (0.59%) WCAG
12 40 (0.56%) GRC
13 31 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
14 29 (0.41%) Def Stans
14 29 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 29 (0.41%) PCI DSS
15 27 (0.38%) NIST 800
16 26 (0.37%) COBIT
17 17 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 16 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 531 (7.48%) Docker
2 453 (6.38%) Active Directory
3 201 (2.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 67 (0.94%) VMware NSX
5 59 (0.83%) vSphere
6 50 (0.70%) VMware ESXi
7 49 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
8 37 (0.52%) Hyper-V
9 32 (0.45%) Firmware
10 28 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
11 14 (0.20%) DFS Replication
11 14 (0.20%) Postfix
12 13 (0.18%) BitLocker
13 12 (0.17%) Dovecot
14 10 (0.14%) Terminal Services
15 9 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 9 (0.13%) Squid
16 8 (0.11%) ISA Server
16 8 (0.11%) NFS
Systems Management
1 652 (9.19%) Kubernetes
2 607 (8.55%) Terraform
3 277 (3.90%) Ansible
4 168 (2.37%) Grafana
5 140 (1.97%) Prometheus
6 102 (1.44%) SCCM
7 87 (1.23%) vCenter Server
8 86 (1.21%) Single Sign-On
9 68 (0.96%) Microsoft Intune
10 61 (0.86%) Argo
11 55 (0.77%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 35 (0.49%) Podman
13 34 (0.48%) Kibana
13 34 (0.48%) Packer
14 33 (0.46%) OPNET
15 25 (0.35%) Puppet
15 25 (0.35%) vRealize
16 24 (0.34%) Nessus
16 24 (0.34%) Nmap
16 24 (0.34%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 900 (12.68%) Microsoft
2 435 (6.13%) SAP
3 399 (5.62%) Oracle
4 397 (5.59%) Cisco
5 362 (5.10%) VMware
6 310 (4.37%) ServiceNow
7 190 (2.68%) Splunk
8 151 (2.13%) Red Hat
9 131 (1.85%) Palo Alto
10 130 (1.83%) Juniper
11 107 (1.51%) Atlassian
12 106 (1.49%) CyberArk
12 106 (1.49%) Google
13 98 (1.38%) Databricks
14 94 (1.32%) Salesforce
15 91 (1.28%) Dell
16 79 (1.11%) HP
17 73 (1.03%) Remedy
18 72 (1.01%) CheckPoint
18 72 (1.01%) Dynatrace