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 24 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 3 2
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,076 4,600 7,178
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.84% 18.70% 19.28%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.68% 59.51% 61.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,287 3,053 4,681
10th Percentile £363 £332 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 766 265 488
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.66 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £56.75 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.08% +3.18% -8.33%
75th Percentile £73.46 £68.00 £70.10
90th Percentile £85.25 £79.48 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £51.50 £55.08
% change year-on-year +6.80% -6.49% -10.45%

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 13,026 7,730 11,673
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.78% 31.43% 31.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,740 4,914 7,197
10th Percentile £343 £300 £300
25th Percentile £425 £416 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £746
UK median daily rate £518 £525 £534
% change year-on-year -1.43% -1.59% -3.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 983 437 971
10th Percentile £17.06 £18.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £23.00 £18.00
Median hourly rate £47.50 £47.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year - +18.75% -23.81%
75th Percentile £70.29 £67.50 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.36 £81.35 £75.25
UK median hourly rate £46.13 £41.38 £40.00
% change year-on-year +11.49% +3.44% -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 24 April 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 24 April 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 24 April 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 3,212 £525 - 379
South East +1 2,155 £535 -2.73% 464
South West 0 1,327 £538 -3.62% 270
Midlands +3 870 £483 -8.00% 157
North of England -1 843 £488 -2.50% 254
West Midlands +3 728 £485 -7.97% 121
North West -2 505 £500 - 139
East of England +2 376 £500 +7.67% 142
Yorkshire -6 209 £488 -7.14% 46
North East +1 160 £450 -10.00% 70
East Midlands -4 136 £450 -7.69% 36
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
1 347 (3.82%) Confluence
2 196 (2.16%) SharePoint
3 130 (1.43%) Microsoft Exchange
4 104 (1.15%) SAS
5 82 (0.90%) Apache Spark
6 70 (0.77%) Apache
7 55 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
8 45 (0.50%) nginx
9 34 (0.37%) WebLogic
10 21 (0.23%) Jupyter
11 15 (0.17%) IIS
11 15 (0.17%) Skype for Business
12 14 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 14 (0.15%) Tomcat
12 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
13 12 (0.13%) CMS
13 12 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
14 10 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
15 8 (0.088%) Apache Superset
15 8 (0.088%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 214 (2.36%) Microsoft Office
2 184 (2.03%) Microsoft Excel
3 118 (1.30%) Microsoft Project
4 79 (0.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 40 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.13%) Simulink
8 6 (0.066%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.055%) Notepad++
9 5 (0.055%) SOLIDWORKS
10 4 (0.044%) Revit
10 4 (0.044%) Siemens NX
10 4 (0.044%) Windchill
11 2 (0.022%) Adobe XD
11 2 (0.022%) CATIA
11 2 (0.022%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.022%) Lectora
11 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.022%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 82 (0.90%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
3 41 (0.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 28 (0.31%) Dynamics CRM
5 26 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 25 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
7 18 (0.20%) Maximo
8 13 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
8 13 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.14%) Temenos T24
9 12 (0.13%) SAP PP
9 12 (0.13%) SAP PSCD
10 11 (0.12%) Findur
11 10 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
11 10 (0.11%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.099%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 8 (0.088%) iTrent
13 8 (0.088%) Primavera
13 8 (0.088%) SAP HR
13 8 (0.088%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,554 (17.12%) Azure
2 1,501 (16.54%) AWS
3 385 (4.24%) GitHub
4 380 (4.19%) GCP
5 366 (4.03%) Azure DevOps
6 327 (3.60%) Power Platform
7 263 (2.90%) Serverless
8 244 (2.69%) Microsoft 365
9 221 (2.43%) Entra ID
10 212 (2.34%) GitHub Actions
11 202 (2.23%) Amazon S3
12 176 (1.94%) AWS Lambda
13 131 (1.44%) PaaS
14 128 (1.41%) OpenShift
15 126 (1.39%) Amazon EC2
16 123 (1.36%) AWS CloudFormation
17 118 (1.30%) IaaS
18 110 (1.21%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 105 (1.16%) Azure Data Factory
20 103 (1.13%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 408 (4.50%) Firewall
2 258 (2.84%) DNS
3 211 (2.32%) Network Security
4 208 (2.29%) WAN
5 191 (2.10%) LAN
6 157 (1.73%) VPN
7 138 (1.52%) DHCP
8 135 (1.49%) BGP
9 117 (1.29%) OSPF
10 105 (1.16%) TCP/IP
11 91 (1.00%) VLAN
12 77 (0.85%) Wireless
13 74 (0.82%) Wi-Fi
14 59 (0.65%) MPLS
15 53 (0.58%) SAN
16 45 (0.50%) IPsec
17 43 (0.47%) SD-WAN
17 43 (0.47%) Structured Cabling
17 43 (0.47%) VXLAN
18 41 (0.45%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 249 (2.74%) Power BI
2 231 (2.55%) PostgreSQL
3 189 (2.08%) Data Warehouse
4 179 (1.97%) SQL Server
5 120 (1.32%) Metadata
6 104 (1.15%) Amazon RDS
7 100 (1.10%) Oracle Database
8 95 (1.05%) NoSQL
9 85 (0.94%) MongoDB
9 85 (0.94%) Relational Database
10 72 (0.79%) Pentaho
11 71 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
12 69 (0.76%) Data Lake
13 68 (0.75%) Azure SQL Database
13 68 (0.75%) MySQL
14 64 (0.71%) Tableau
15 62 (0.68%) Amazon Redshift
15 62 (0.68%) Oracle Reports
16 49 (0.54%) Amazon Athena
16 49 (0.54%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 560 (6.17%) JIRA
2 446 (4.91%) Git
3 339 (3.74%) Jenkins
4 309 (3.40%) GitLab
5 86 (0.95%) Selenium
6 73 (0.80%) Postman
7 66 (0.73%) JUnit
8 57 (0.63%) SonarQube
9 51 (0.56%) Bitbucket
10 49 (0.54%) Rational DOORS
11 43 (0.47%) Artifactory
12 41 (0.45%) Maven
12 41 (0.45%) Oracle APEX
13 36 (0.40%) Cucumber
14 35 (0.39%) JMeter
14 35 (0.39%) Mockito
15 33 (0.36%) Cypress.io
16 31 (0.34%) Visual Studio
17 27 (0.30%) Zephyr
18 24 (0.26%) MSI
General
1 2,056 (22.65%) Public Sector
2 1,992 (21.95%) Social Skills
3 732 (8.07%) Analytical Skills
4 649 (7.15%) Finance
5 331 (3.65%) Military
6 257 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
7 216 (2.38%) Aerospace
8 142 (1.56%) Legal
9 138 (1.52%) Telecoms
10 128 (1.41%) Manufacturing
11 118 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
12 112 (1.23%) Banking
13 101 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
14 97 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
15 82 (0.90%) Law
16 73 (0.80%) Marketing
17 66 (0.73%) Electronics
18 53 (0.58%) Police
19 51 (0.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 34 (0.37%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,356 (14.94%) Architect
2 890 (9.81%) Developer
3 782 (8.62%) Senior
4 654 (7.21%) Analyst
5 611 (6.73%) Lead
6 417 (4.59%) Consultant
7 408 (4.50%) Data Engineer
8 393 (4.33%) DevOps Engineer
9 271 (2.99%) Software Engineer
10 265 (2.92%) Network Engineer
11 263 (2.90%) Technical Architect
12 244 (2.69%) Business Analyst
13 224 (2.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 203 (2.24%) Project Manager
15 199 (2.19%) Solutions Architect
16 197 (2.17%) Azure Engineer
17 169 (1.86%) Delivery Manager
18 166 (1.83%) Administrator
18 166 (1.83%) Security Architect
19 159 (1.75%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 319 (3.51%) REST
2 207 (2.28%) Spring
3 174 (1.92%) Node.js
4 164 (1.81%) Kafka
5 160 (1.76%) Spring Boot
6 159 (1.75%) .NET
7 155 (1.71%) React
8 142 (1.56%) JSON
9 139 (1.53%) SOAP
10 136 (1.50%) LDAP
11 132 (1.45%) RESTful
12 112 (1.23%) AngularJS
13 105 (1.16%) Web Services
14 101 (1.11%) PySpark
15 89 (0.98%) Oracle Fusion
16 88 (0.97%) OAuth
17 86 (0.95%) HTML
18 84 (0.93%) XML
19 72 (0.79%) Elastic Stack
20 66 (0.73%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 309 (3.40%) Product Ownership
2 296 (3.26%) Cloud Native
3 262 (2.89%) Data Centre
4 245 (2.70%) Onboarding
5 175 (1.93%) PKI
6 146 (1.61%) Management Information System
7 120 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
8 119 (1.31%) Enterprise Software
9 118 (1.30%) Replication
9 118 (1.30%) Security Posture
9 118 (1.30%) Self-Motivation
10 107 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
11 77 (0.85%) Clustering
12 76 (0.84%) Data Structures
12 76 (0.84%) Public Cloud
13 70 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
14 66 (0.73%) Security Operations Centre
15 59 (0.65%) Virtual Team
16 55 (0.61%) CMDB
17 54 (0.59%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 774 (8.53%) Windows
2 642 (7.07%) Linux
3 231 (2.55%) Windows Server
4 141 (1.55%) Unix
5 106 (1.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 103 (1.13%) Windows 10
7 102 (1.12%) Android
8 51 (0.56%) Apple iOS
9 46 (0.51%) Mac OS
10 35 (0.39%) Ubuntu
11 29 (0.32%) VMS
12 28 (0.31%) Solaris
13 22 (0.24%) CentOS
13 22 (0.24%) Windows Server 2016
14 21 (0.23%) AIX
15 19 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
16 15 (0.17%) Windows 7
17 13 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
18 8 (0.088%) Embedded Linux
18 8 (0.088%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,827 (20.13%) Agile
2 1,390 (15.32%) DevOps
3 1,181 (13.01%) CI/CD
4 1,024 (11.28%) Problem-Solving
5 857 (9.44%) Stakeholder Management
6 798 (8.79%) Migration
7 773 (8.52%) Continuous Improvement
8 675 (7.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 604 (6.65%) ITIL
10 589 (6.49%) Infrastructure as Code
11 525 (5.78%) Analytics
12 513 (5.65%) Test Automation
13 512 (5.64%) Cybersecurity
14 497 (5.48%) Roadmaps
15 494 (5.44%) Software Engineering
16 466 (5.13%) Containerisation
17 446 (4.91%) Scrum
18 445 (4.90%) Data Modelling
19 413 (4.55%) Service Management
20 405 (4.46%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 995 (10.96%) Python
2 848 (9.34%) SQL
3 557 (6.14%) Java
4 531 (5.85%) PowerShell
5 317 (3.49%) JavaScript
6 199 (2.19%) C#
7 177 (1.95%) Bash
8 146 (1.61%) TypeScript
9 107 (1.18%) PL/SQL
10 94 (1.04%) C++
11 90 (0.99%) Shell Script
12 69 (0.76%) Go
13 62 (0.68%) Scala
14 58 (0.64%) C
15 55 (0.61%) Ruby
16 52 (0.57%) Bicep
17 44 (0.48%) Apex Code
18 41 (0.45%) Ada
19 40 (0.44%) R
20 39 (0.43%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 6,841 (75.37%) SC Cleared
2 1,691 (18.63%) DV Cleared
3 417 (4.59%) Degree
4 273 (3.01%) BPSS Clearance
5 166 (1.83%) Cisco Certification
6 149 (1.64%) CISSP
7 133 (1.47%) Azure Certification
8 111 (1.22%) AWS Certification
9 110 (1.21%) CCNP
10 98 (1.08%) Microsoft Certification
11 95 (1.05%) CISM
12 70 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
13 69 (0.76%) PMP
14 67 (0.74%) CCNA
14 67 (0.74%) TOGAF Certification
15 61 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
16 60 (0.66%) PMI Certification
17 52 (0.57%) ISTQB
18 51 (0.56%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 48 (0.53%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 331 (3.65%) QA
2 260 (2.86%) Data Quality
2 260 (2.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 259 (2.85%) NIST
4 178 (1.96%) NCSC
5 151 (1.66%) GDPR
6 146 (1.61%) PMO
7 136 (1.50%) Accessibility
8 99 (1.09%) SLA
9 61 (0.67%) GRC
10 60 (0.66%) JSP 440
11 40 (0.44%) COBIT
12 39 (0.43%) NIST 800
13 38 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
14 31 (0.34%) Def Stans
14 31 (0.34%) PCI DSS
15 30 (0.33%) WCAG
16 25 (0.28%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 25 (0.28%) RMADS
17 18 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 591 (6.51%) Docker
2 440 (4.85%) Active Directory
3 260 (2.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 86 (0.95%) VMware ESXi
5 81 (0.89%) VMware NSX
6 73 (0.80%) Hyper-V
7 70 (0.77%) vSphere
8 63 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
9 34 (0.37%) Firmware
10 25 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
11 20 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
12 19 (0.21%) BitLocker
13 17 (0.19%) NFS
13 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 16 (0.18%) Postfix
15 12 (0.13%) vCloud
16 10 (0.11%) Squid
17 8 (0.088%) Microsoft App-V
18 5 (0.055%) Corosync
18 5 (0.055%) KVM
Systems Management
1 757 (8.34%) Kubernetes
2 729 (8.03%) Terraform
3 302 (3.33%) Ansible
4 218 (2.40%) Grafana
5 181 (1.99%) Prometheus
6 95 (1.05%) vCenter Server
7 91 (1.00%) Single Sign-On
8 79 (0.87%) SCCM
9 59 (0.65%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 55 (0.61%) Microsoft Intune
11 52 (0.57%) FortiGate
12 50 (0.55%) Argo
13 38 (0.42%) Puppet
14 37 (0.41%) Packer
15 35 (0.39%) Podman
16 33 (0.36%) Progress Chef
17 30 (0.33%) OPNET
18 28 (0.31%) Oracle RMAN
19 25 (0.28%) Kibana
19 25 (0.28%) Nagios
Vendors
1 974 (10.73%) Microsoft
2 566 (6.24%) Oracle
3 449 (4.95%) VMware
4 378 (4.16%) ServiceNow
5 360 (3.97%) Cisco
6 332 (3.66%) SAP
7 207 (2.28%) Splunk
8 173 (1.91%) Databricks
9 154 (1.70%) Red Hat
10 150 (1.65%) Google
11 116 (1.28%) Salesforce
12 115 (1.27%) Atlassian
13 113 (1.25%) IBM
14 108 (1.19%) Juniper
15 103 (1.13%) Talend
16 101 (1.11%) Palo Alto
17 93 (1.02%) CyberArk
18 83 (0.91%) Remedy
19 74 (0.82%) BeyondTrust
19 74 (0.82%) Fortinet