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

6 months to
1 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 7,097 5,132 6,780
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.39% 18.26% 18.68%
As % of the Qualifications category 65.47% 59.83% 60.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,748 3,267 4,295
10th Percentile £343 £340 £375
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.59%
75th Percentile £629 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £723 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £560
% change year-on-year -4.55% -1.79% -0.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 696 258 431
10th Percentile £17.87 £19.69 £21.00
25th Percentile £19.54 £25.32 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £57.38 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -56.17% -4.38% -
75th Percentile £61.18 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.79 £75.00 £82.17
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 10,840 8,578 11,150
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.19% 30.52% 30.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,125 5,270 7,034
10th Percentile £313 £305 £300
25th Percentile £419 £420 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £626 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £730 £737
UK median daily rate £521 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.86% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 893 415 688
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.51 £16.51
25th Percentile £19.00 £24.50 £26.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £52.35
Median % change year-on-year -45.54% -11.79% +16.34%
75th Percentile £57.50 £68.00 £67.75
90th Percentile £76.58 £79.42 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year -37.13% -23.81% +16.67%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 +4 2,348 £550 - 645
South East +1 1,453 £521 -5.27% 612
South West 0 1,206 £550 -2.48% 475
North of England -2 799 £500 +5.26% 270
Midlands +3 711 £515 -6.53% 176
West Midlands +2 559 £519 -6.58% 126
North West 0 540 £513 +7.89% 177
East of England +2 329 £500 - 306
Yorkshire -15 156 £500 +5.82% 59
East Midlands +1 144 £444 -12.13% 47
North East 0 124 £450 -14.29% 39
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
1 266 (3.75%) Confluence
2 179 (2.52%) SharePoint
3 118 (1.66%) Microsoft Exchange
4 106 (1.49%) SAS
5 77 (1.08%) Apache
6 53 (0.75%) Apache Spark
7 44 (0.62%) Apache Airflow
8 37 (0.52%) Skype for Business
9 35 (0.49%) nginx
10 26 (0.37%) WebLogic
11 20 (0.28%) CMS
12 18 (0.25%) IIS
13 12 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
14 9 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2010
15 8 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
15 8 (0.11%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.11%) OpenStack
15 8 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
16 7 (0.099%) Exchange Server 2003
16 7 (0.099%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 251 (3.54%) Microsoft Office
2 155 (2.18%) Microsoft Excel
3 97 (1.37%) Microsoft Project
4 58 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 35 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 20 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.18%) Siemens NX
7 13 (0.18%) Simulink
8 9 (0.13%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.070%) FrameMaker
9 5 (0.070%) Oracle Smart View
9 5 (0.070%) Sketch
9 5 (0.070%) Stateflow
9 5 (0.070%) Windchill
10 4 (0.056%) PTC Creo
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
Business Applications
1 147 (2.07%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (0.51%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 33 (0.46%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.39%) Oracle ERP
5 27 (0.38%) SAP EWM
5 27 (0.38%) SAP WM
6 18 (0.25%) SAP MM
6 18 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 17 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
8 16 (0.23%) SAP HCM
9 15 (0.21%) Maximo
10 14 (0.20%) SAP QM
11 13 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
12 12 (0.17%) Oracle Assets
12 12 (0.17%) SAP PP
12 12 (0.17%) SAP VC
13 11 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
13 11 (0.15%) SAP EHS
14 10 (0.14%) Primavera
14 10 (0.14%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,179 (16.61%) Azure
2 1,163 (16.39%) AWS
3 318 (4.48%) Microsoft 365
4 313 (4.41%) GitHub
5 301 (4.24%) GCP
6 260 (3.66%) Power Platform
7 257 (3.62%) Azure DevOps
8 202 (2.85%) Serverless
9 179 (2.52%) Entra ID
10 164 (2.31%) Amazon S3
11 162 (2.28%) GitHub Actions
12 135 (1.90%) OpenShift
13 122 (1.72%) AWS Lambda
14 103 (1.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 100 (1.41%) AWS CloudFormation
16 99 (1.39%) SaaS
17 98 (1.38%) Amazon EC2
18 87 (1.23%) Power Automate
19 86 (1.21%) IaaS
20 81 (1.14%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 385 (5.42%) Firewall
2 249 (3.51%) DNS
3 176 (2.48%) VPN
4 165 (2.32%) Network Security
5 153 (2.16%) WAN
6 129 (1.82%) TCP/IP
7 111 (1.56%) LAN
8 99 (1.39%) BGP
9 94 (1.32%) DHCP
10 87 (1.23%) Wireless
11 75 (1.06%) SSL
12 73 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
13 69 (0.97%) VLAN
14 57 (0.80%) MPLS
14 57 (0.80%) SAN
15 55 (0.77%) IPsec
15 55 (0.77%) OSPF
16 47 (0.66%) HTTP
17 42 (0.59%) Skype
18 40 (0.56%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 195 (2.75%) PostgreSQL
2 179 (2.52%) Power BI
3 90 (1.27%) Data Warehouse
4 87 (1.23%) SQL Server
5 81 (1.14%) MongoDB
6 80 (1.13%) Metadata
7 74 (1.04%) NoSQL
8 73 (1.03%) Amazon RDS
9 71 (1.00%) Relational Database
10 69 (0.97%) Oracle Database
11 58 (0.82%) Azure SQL Database
12 48 (0.68%) Big Data
13 44 (0.62%) Elasticsearch
14 40 (0.56%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 39 (0.55%) Data Lake
15 39 (0.55%) Pentaho
16 37 (0.52%) Amazon Athena
17 33 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
17 33 (0.46%) Redis
18 30 (0.42%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 485 (6.83%) JIRA
2 382 (5.38%) Git
3 340 (4.79%) Jenkins
4 260 (3.66%) GitLab
5 78 (1.10%) Selenium
6 59 (0.83%) Postman
7 52 (0.73%) Cypress.io
7 52 (0.73%) JUnit
8 46 (0.65%) Artifactory
8 46 (0.65%) Bitbucket
9 45 (0.63%) Oracle APEX
10 41 (0.58%) SonarQube
11 31 (0.44%) Maven
12 29 (0.41%) Cucumber
13 28 (0.39%) Mockito
14 24 (0.34%) MSI
14 24 (0.34%) REST Assured
15 21 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
16 19 (0.27%) Metasploit
17 18 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,900 (26.77%) Public Sector
2 1,865 (26.28%) Social Skills
3 653 (9.20%) Analytical Skills
4 505 (7.12%) Finance
5 285 (4.02%) Military
6 210 (2.96%) Telecoms
7 203 (2.86%) Manufacturing
8 175 (2.47%) Documentation Skills
9 145 (2.04%) Electronics
10 142 (2.00%) Marketing
11 128 (1.80%) Aerospace
12 114 (1.61%) Organisational Skills
13 103 (1.45%) Legal
14 86 (1.21%) Banking
15 84 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
16 75 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
17 66 (0.93%) Law
18 44 (0.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 34 (0.48%) Aviation
20 32 (0.45%) Police
Job Titles
1 978 (13.78%) Architect
2 660 (9.30%) Developer
3 587 (8.27%) Senior
4 523 (7.37%) Consultant
5 510 (7.19%) Analyst
6 413 (5.82%) Lead
7 332 (4.68%) DevOps Engineer
8 239 (3.37%) Support Engineer
9 219 (3.09%) Network Engineer
10 197 (2.78%) Data Engineer
11 170 (2.40%) Solutions Architect
12 149 (2.10%) Software Engineer
13 148 (2.09%) Technical Architect
14 142 (2.00%) SAP Consultant
15 140 (1.97%) Business Analyst
16 131 (1.85%) AWS Engineer
17 129 (1.82%) Platform Engineer
17 129 (1.82%) Tester
18 128 (1.80%) Administrator
19 127 (1.79%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 298 (4.20%) REST
2 173 (2.44%) Node.js
2 173 (2.44%) React
3 152 (2.14%) Kafka
4 140 (1.97%) SOAP
5 138 (1.94%) JSON
6 114 (1.61%) HTML
7 112 (1.58%) Spring
8 107 (1.51%) LDAP
9 97 (1.37%) CSS
10 96 (1.35%) .NET
10 96 (1.35%) AngularJS
10 96 (1.35%) XML
11 90 (1.27%) Spring Boot
12 88 (1.24%) Web Services
13 87 (1.23%) RESTful
14 84 (1.18%) Oracle Fusion
15 76 (1.07%) OAuth
16 70 (0.99%) PySpark
17 58 (0.82%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 220 (3.10%) Data Centre
2 194 (2.73%) Cloud Native
3 187 (2.63%) PKI
4 185 (2.61%) Product Ownership
5 180 (2.54%) Onboarding
6 143 (2.01%) Management Information System
7 107 (1.51%) Security Posture
8 101 (1.42%) Self-Motivation
9 98 (1.38%) Enterprise Software
10 91 (1.28%) Legacy Systems
11 80 (1.13%) Cyber Threat
12 74 (1.04%) Driving Licence
13 67 (0.94%) Replication
13 67 (0.94%) Security Operations Centre
14 59 (0.83%) Analytical Mindset
15 55 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
16 53 (0.75%) CMDB
17 47 (0.66%) Public Cloud
18 46 (0.65%) Distributed Systems
19 45 (0.63%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 792 (11.16%) Windows
2 549 (7.74%) Linux
3 182 (2.56%) Windows Server
4 175 (2.47%) Windows 10
5 99 (1.39%) Android
6 98 (1.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 97 (1.37%) Unix
8 79 (1.11%) Mac OS
9 48 (0.68%) VMS
10 40 (0.56%) Ubuntu
11 29 (0.41%) Apple iOS
12 23 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
13 22 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
14 21 (0.30%) CentOS
15 19 (0.27%) Amazon Linux
15 19 (0.27%) Windows Server 2012
16 16 (0.23%) Windows 7
17 15 (0.21%) Mac OS X
18 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2003
19 10 (0.14%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,377 (19.40%) Agile
2 1,100 (15.50%) DevOps
3 963 (13.57%) CI/CD
4 888 (12.51%) Problem-Solving
5 683 (9.62%) Migration
6 583 (8.21%) Stakeholder Management
7 521 (7.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 497 (7.00%) ITIL
9 473 (6.66%) Continuous Improvement
10 462 (6.51%) Cybersecurity
11 446 (6.28%) Infrastructure as Code
12 399 (5.62%) Business Intelligence
13 395 (5.57%) Service Management
14 387 (5.45%) Test Automation
15 384 (5.41%) Containerisation
16 376 (5.30%) Analytics
17 348 (4.90%) Roadmaps
18 335 (4.72%) Workflow
19 330 (4.65%) Scrum
20 309 (4.35%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 923 (13.01%) Python
2 549 (7.74%) SQL
3 494 (6.96%) PowerShell
4 379 (5.34%) Java
5 350 (4.93%) JavaScript
6 213 (3.00%) Bash
7 166 (2.34%) TypeScript
8 128 (1.80%) C#
9 89 (1.25%) C++
9 89 (1.25%) Go
10 68 (0.96%) Shell Script
11 65 (0.92%) C
11 65 (0.92%) PL/SQL
12 43 (0.61%) Ruby
13 40 (0.56%) Scala
14 39 (0.55%) ABAP
15 35 (0.49%) Perl
16 29 (0.41%) Ada
16 29 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
16 29 (0.41%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 5,478 (77.19%) SC Cleared
2 1,164 (16.40%) DV Cleared
3 373 (5.26%) Degree
4 237 (3.34%) BPSS Clearance
5 134 (1.89%) CISSP
6 119 (1.68%) Cisco Certification
6 119 (1.68%) Microsoft Certification
7 116 (1.63%) Azure Certification
8 99 (1.39%) CCNP
9 97 (1.37%) AWS Certification
10 78 (1.10%) CISM
11 60 (0.85%) Computer Science Degree
12 57 (0.80%) ITIL Certification
13 54 (0.76%) CCNA
14 48 (0.68%) TOGAF Certification
15 47 (0.66%) CEH
16 39 (0.55%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 37 (0.52%) CHECK Team Member
18 36 (0.51%) CTC Cleared
18 36 (0.51%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 216 (3.04%) QA
2 205 (2.89%) NIST
3 198 (2.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 162 (2.28%) NCSC
5 149 (2.10%) Data Quality
6 140 (1.97%) GDPR
7 125 (1.76%) SLA
8 117 (1.65%) Accessibility
9 70 (0.99%) PMO
10 46 (0.65%) JSP 440
11 42 (0.59%) WCAG
12 39 (0.55%) GRC
13 30 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
13 30 (0.42%) Def Stans
13 30 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 29 (0.41%) NIST 800
15 27 (0.38%) COBIT
16 26 (0.37%) PCI DSS
17 18 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 15 (0.21%) RMADS
System Software
1 540 (7.61%) Docker
2 451 (6.35%) Active Directory
3 202 (2.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 67 (0.94%) VMware NSX
5 63 (0.89%) vSphere
6 56 (0.79%) VMware ESXi
7 50 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
8 35 (0.49%) Hyper-V
9 34 (0.48%) Firmware
10 30 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
11 16 (0.23%) DFS Replication
12 15 (0.21%) Postfix
13 13 (0.18%) Dovecot
14 12 (0.17%) BitLocker
15 10 (0.14%) NFS
15 10 (0.14%) Squid
15 10 (0.14%) Terminal Services
16 9 (0.13%) ISA Server
17 8 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
18 7 (0.099%) Brightmail
Systems Management
1 652 (9.19%) Kubernetes
2 610 (8.60%) Terraform
3 289 (4.07%) Ansible
4 174 (2.45%) Grafana
5 145 (2.04%) Prometheus
6 103 (1.45%) SCCM
7 91 (1.28%) Single Sign-On
8 84 (1.18%) vCenter Server
9 72 (1.01%) Microsoft Intune
10 63 (0.89%) Argo
11 57 (0.80%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 36 (0.51%) Packer
13 35 (0.49%) Kibana
14 33 (0.46%) OPNET
15 28 (0.39%) Podman
16 26 (0.37%) Puppet
17 25 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
17 25 (0.35%) Nessus
17 25 (0.35%) vRealize
18 24 (0.34%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 917 (12.92%) Microsoft
2 447 (6.30%) SAP
3 405 (5.71%) Cisco
4 388 (5.47%) Oracle
5 359 (5.06%) VMware
6 330 (4.65%) ServiceNow
7 196 (2.76%) Splunk
8 154 (2.17%) Red Hat
9 134 (1.89%) Juniper
10 127 (1.79%) Palo Alto
11 110 (1.55%) Google
12 104 (1.47%) Atlassian
13 100 (1.41%) CyberArk
14 97 (1.37%) Dell
15 96 (1.35%) Salesforce
16 95 (1.34%) HP
17 93 (1.31%) Databricks
18 78 (1.10%) Remedy
19 69 (0.97%) CheckPoint
19 69 (0.97%) Dynatrace