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 5 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 2 3 4
Rank change year-on-year +1 +1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 6,670 5,536 6,904
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.41% 18.04% 18.10%
As % of the Qualifications category 63.75% 60.14% 60.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,422 3,513 4,342
10th Percentile £331 £350 £370
25th Percentile £447 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.22%
75th Percentile £631 £638 £650
90th Percentile £723 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 684 282 454
10th Percentile £18.22 £20.34 £20.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £26.31 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £57.77 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -56.47% -3.71% -
75th Percentile £55.25 £68.13 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £80.00
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 10,463 9,205 11,470
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.58% 29.99% 30.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,839 5,639 7,247
10th Percentile £306 £313 £305
25th Percentile £415 £425 £439
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £531 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.04% -3.55% -
75th Percentile £626 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 898 426 697
10th Percentile £17.26 £20.00 £17.72
25th Percentile £18.87 £25.52 £26.78
Median hourly rate £25.15 £48.78 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -48.44% -7.09% +16.67%
75th Percentile £52.45 £68.00 £68.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £41.50 £53.50
% change year-on-year -39.40% -22.43% +18.89%

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 5 December 2025.

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 5 December 2025.

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 5 December 2025. 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 +3 2,178 £550 - 435
South East -1 1,310 £519 -5.73% 709
South West 0 1,150 £550 -4.35% 478
North of England -1 784 £506 +6.53% 248
Midlands +2 703 £517 -6.05% 141
West Midlands +2 548 £520 -7.27% 116
North West +1 518 £525 +6.49% 173
East of England +2 300 £500 -2.44% 291
Yorkshire -10 165 £500 +8.11% 48
East Midlands -1 140 £425 -10.53% 24
North East 0 114 £475 -2.61% 31
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
1 263 (3.94%) Confluence
2 174 (2.61%) SharePoint
3 113 (1.69%) Microsoft Exchange
4 96 (1.44%) SAS
5 84 (1.26%) Apache
6 50 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
7 46 (0.69%) Apache Spark
8 43 (0.64%) nginx
9 39 (0.58%) Skype for Business
10 23 (0.34%) CMS
11 22 (0.33%) WebLogic
12 20 (0.30%) IIS
13 15 (0.22%) SharePoint Server
14 12 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2010
15 11 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2013
15 11 (0.16%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 10 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2003
16 10 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2007
16 10 (0.15%) Office Communications Server
17 8 (0.12%) OpenStack
Applications
1 236 (3.54%) Microsoft Office
2 161 (2.41%) Microsoft Excel
3 103 (1.54%) Microsoft Project
4 47 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 32 (0.48%) MS Visio
6 20 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.19%) Simulink
8 12 (0.18%) Siemens NX
9 10 (0.15%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 7 (0.10%) Sketch
11 5 (0.075%) Adobe Illustrator
11 5 (0.075%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.075%) FrameMaker
11 5 (0.075%) Oracle Smart View
11 5 (0.075%) Photoshop
11 5 (0.075%) PTC Creo
11 5 (0.075%) Stateflow
11 5 (0.075%) Windchill
12 4 (0.060%) Trello
13 3 (0.045%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 148 (2.22%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (0.52%) Remedy ITSM
3 30 (0.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 27 (0.40%) SAP WM
5 26 (0.39%) SAP EWM
6 22 (0.33%) Oracle ERP
7 19 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
8 18 (0.27%) SAP MM
9 16 (0.24%) SAP HCM
10 15 (0.22%) Maximo
10 15 (0.22%) Primavera
10 15 (0.22%) Teamcenter
11 13 (0.19%) Oracle General Ledger
12 12 (0.18%) SAP PS
12 12 (0.18%) SAP QM
12 12 (0.18%) SAP VC
13 11 (0.16%) SAP EHS
14 10 (0.15%) SAP HR
14 10 (0.15%) SAP Payroll
15 9 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 1,099 (16.48%) AWS
2 1,065 (15.97%) Azure
3 314 (4.71%) Microsoft 365
4 304 (4.56%) GitHub
5 244 (3.66%) GCP
6 243 (3.64%) Power Platform
7 231 (3.46%) Azure DevOps
8 199 (2.98%) Serverless
9 166 (2.49%) Amazon S3
10 159 (2.38%) Entra ID
11 150 (2.25%) GitHub Actions
12 126 (1.89%) OpenShift
13 125 (1.87%) SaaS
14 111 (1.66%) AWS CloudFormation
14 111 (1.66%) AWS Lambda
15 108 (1.62%) Amazon EC2
16 107 (1.60%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 88 (1.32%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 83 (1.24%) Amazon EKS
19 80 (1.20%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 351 (5.26%) Firewall
2 245 (3.67%) DNS
3 166 (2.49%) VPN
4 136 (2.04%) Network Security
4 136 (2.04%) WAN
5 106 (1.59%) TCP/IP
6 96 (1.44%) LAN
7 92 (1.38%) BGP
8 91 (1.36%) Wireless
9 89 (1.33%) DHCP
10 71 (1.06%) SSL
11 67 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
12 63 (0.94%) SAN
13 57 (0.85%) MPLS
14 55 (0.82%) IPsec
15 52 (0.78%) VLAN
16 51 (0.76%) Cisco ISE
17 45 (0.67%) HTTP
17 45 (0.67%) OSPF
18 41 (0.61%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 197 (2.95%) PostgreSQL
2 162 (2.43%) Power BI
3 85 (1.27%) MongoDB
4 80 (1.20%) Amazon RDS
5 79 (1.18%) SQL Server
6 75 (1.12%) Oracle Database
7 72 (1.08%) NoSQL
8 71 (1.06%) Data Warehouse
9 70 (1.05%) Metadata
9 70 (1.05%) Relational Database
10 47 (0.70%) Big Data
11 45 (0.67%) Azure SQL Database
12 39 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
13 38 (0.57%) Pentaho
14 36 (0.54%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 35 (0.52%) Redis
16 32 (0.48%) Amazon Athena
16 32 (0.48%) Amazon Redshift
16 32 (0.48%) MySQL
17 31 (0.46%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 481 (7.21%) JIRA
2 378 (5.67%) Git
3 357 (5.35%) Jenkins
4 260 (3.90%) GitLab
5 71 (1.06%) Selenium
6 53 (0.79%) Cypress.io
6 53 (0.79%) Postman
7 52 (0.78%) JUnit
8 48 (0.72%) SonarQube
9 46 (0.69%) Bitbucket
10 45 (0.67%) Oracle APEX
11 34 (0.51%) Artifactory
12 30 (0.45%) Cucumber
12 30 (0.45%) Maven
13 29 (0.43%) Mockito
14 24 (0.36%) MSI
15 23 (0.34%) REST Assured
16 21 (0.31%) Rational DOORS
16 21 (0.31%) Vagrant
17 20 (0.30%) Metasploit
General
1 1,854 (27.80%) Public Sector
2 1,732 (25.97%) Social Skills
3 613 (9.19%) Analytical Skills
4 487 (7.30%) Finance
5 280 (4.20%) Military
6 210 (3.15%) Telecoms
7 197 (2.95%) Manufacturing
8 160 (2.40%) Documentation Skills
9 141 (2.11%) Electronics
10 135 (2.02%) Marketing
11 124 (1.86%) Aerospace
12 105 (1.57%) Organisational Skills
13 102 (1.53%) Legal
14 84 (1.26%) Banking
15 81 (1.21%) Influencing Skills
16 79 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
17 67 (1.00%) Law
18 40 (0.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 38 (0.57%) Aviation
20 35 (0.52%) Police
Job Titles
1 897 (13.45%) Architect
2 653 (9.79%) Developer
3 533 (7.99%) Senior
4 526 (7.89%) Consultant
5 437 (6.55%) Analyst
6 406 (6.09%) Lead
7 289 (4.33%) DevOps Engineer
8 240 (3.60%) Support Engineer
9 199 (2.98%) Network Engineer
10 165 (2.47%) Solutions Architect
11 164 (2.46%) Data Engineer
12 145 (2.17%) SAP Consultant
13 139 (2.08%) AWS Engineer
14 130 (1.95%) Platform Engineer
14 130 (1.95%) Technical Architect
15 127 (1.90%) IT Engineer
15 127 (1.90%) Software Engineer
16 116 (1.74%) Administrator
17 114 (1.71%) Tester
18 111 (1.66%) IT Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 257 (3.85%) REST
2 167 (2.50%) Node.js
2 167 (2.50%) React
3 161 (2.41%) Kafka
4 135 (2.02%) JSON
5 117 (1.75%) Spring
6 116 (1.74%) SOAP
7 108 (1.62%) HTML
8 99 (1.48%) XML
9 97 (1.45%) AngularJS
10 96 (1.44%) RESTful
11 90 (1.35%) .NET
11 90 (1.35%) Spring Boot
12 89 (1.33%) CSS
13 87 (1.30%) Web Services
14 75 (1.12%) OAuth
15 68 (1.02%) LDAP
16 67 (1.00%) Oracle Fusion
17 57 (0.85%) Elastic Stack
17 57 (0.85%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 207 (3.10%) Data Centre
2 185 (2.77%) Onboarding
3 178 (2.67%) PKI
4 177 (2.65%) Cloud Native
5 156 (2.34%) Product Ownership
6 141 (2.11%) Management Information System
7 100 (1.50%) Self-Motivation
8 81 (1.21%) Legacy Systems
9 78 (1.17%) Driving Licence
10 70 (1.05%) Security Posture
11 69 (1.03%) Replication
12 67 (1.00%) Cyber Threat
13 60 (0.90%) Hybrid Cloud
13 60 (0.90%) Security Operations Centre
14 59 (0.88%) CMDB
15 57 (0.85%) Enterprise Software
16 50 (0.75%) Analytical Mindset
17 49 (0.73%) Private Cloud
18 43 (0.64%) Distributed Systems
19 40 (0.60%) Cyber Defence
Operating Systems
1 769 (11.53%) Windows
2 521 (7.81%) Linux
3 178 (2.67%) Windows Server
4 174 (2.61%) Windows 10
5 97 (1.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 93 (1.39%) Android
7 89 (1.33%) Unix
8 84 (1.26%) Mac OS
9 46 (0.69%) VMS
10 39 (0.58%) Ubuntu
11 27 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
12 26 (0.39%) Apple iOS
13 24 (0.36%) Amazon Linux
13 24 (0.36%) Windows 7
14 21 (0.31%) CentOS
15 20 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
16 19 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
17 16 (0.24%) Windows Server 2003
18 15 (0.22%) Mac OS X
19 9 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,343 (20.13%) Agile
2 1,006 (15.08%) DevOps
3 924 (13.85%) CI/CD
4 828 (12.41%) Problem-Solving
5 642 (9.63%) Migration
6 532 (7.98%) Stakeholder Management
7 467 (7.00%) ITIL
8 465 (6.97%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 445 (6.67%) Cybersecurity
10 423 (6.34%) Continuous Improvement
11 416 (6.24%) Infrastructure as Code
12 395 (5.92%) Service Management
13 375 (5.62%) Business Intelligence
14 369 (5.53%) Containerisation
15 361 (5.41%) Test Automation
16 344 (5.16%) Analytics
17 331 (4.96%) Workflow
18 324 (4.86%) Scrum
19 311 (4.66%) Roadmaps
20 305 (4.57%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 859 (12.88%) Python
2 510 (7.65%) SQL
3 425 (6.37%) PowerShell
4 412 (6.18%) Java
5 345 (5.17%) JavaScript
6 219 (3.28%) Bash
7 162 (2.43%) TypeScript
8 119 (1.78%) C#
9 92 (1.38%) C++
10 84 (1.26%) Go
11 68 (1.02%) PL/SQL
12 66 (0.99%) C
13 63 (0.94%) Shell Script
14 41 (0.61%) Perl
15 38 (0.57%) Ruby
16 37 (0.55%) ABAP
17 30 (0.45%) Groovy
18 29 (0.43%) Bicep
19 27 (0.40%) Scala
20 26 (0.39%) Ada
Qualifications
1 5,109 (76.60%) SC Cleared
2 1,131 (16.96%) DV Cleared
3 345 (5.17%) Degree
4 258 (3.87%) BPSS Clearance
5 125 (1.87%) CISSP
6 117 (1.75%) Microsoft Certification
7 107 (1.60%) Cisco Certification
8 106 (1.59%) Azure Certification
9 99 (1.48%) AWS Certification
10 82 (1.23%) CCNP
11 70 (1.05%) CISM
12 55 (0.82%) ITIL Certification
13 49 (0.73%) Computer Science Degree
14 47 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
15 46 (0.69%) CCNA
16 39 (0.58%) CEH
17 37 (0.55%) CHECK Team Member
18 36 (0.54%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 32 (0.48%) CTC Cleared
20 29 (0.43%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 203 (3.04%) QA
2 199 (2.98%) NIST
3 197 (2.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 159 (2.38%) NCSC
5 133 (1.99%) GDPR
6 124 (1.86%) Data Quality
7 123 (1.84%) SLA
8 105 (1.57%) Accessibility
9 65 (0.97%) PMO
10 50 (0.75%) JSP 440
11 39 (0.58%) NIST 800
12 38 (0.57%) WCAG
13 34 (0.51%) GRC
14 32 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 27 (0.40%) COBIT
15 27 (0.40%) Def Stans
16 24 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
17 22 (0.33%) RMADS
18 21 (0.31%) PCI DSS
19 17 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 539 (8.08%) Docker
2 402 (6.03%) Active Directory
3 198 (2.97%) VMware Infrastructure
4 65 (0.97%) VMware NSX
5 59 (0.88%) vSphere
6 55 (0.82%) VMware ESXi
7 49 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
8 38 (0.57%) Firmware
9 31 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
10 29 (0.43%) Hyper-V
11 20 (0.30%) DFS Replication
12 16 (0.24%) Postfix
13 15 (0.22%) NFS
14 14 (0.21%) Dovecot
15 12 (0.18%) ISA Server
16 10 (0.15%) BitLocker
16 10 (0.15%) Brightmail
16 10 (0.15%) Squid
17 9 (0.13%) Terminal Services
18 7 (0.10%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 631 (9.46%) Kubernetes
2 587 (8.80%) Terraform
3 269 (4.03%) Ansible
4 161 (2.41%) Grafana
5 132 (1.98%) Prometheus
6 102 (1.53%) SCCM
7 91 (1.36%) Single Sign-On
8 72 (1.08%) Microsoft Intune
9 66 (0.99%) vCenter Server
10 59 (0.88%) Argo
11 52 (0.78%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 46 (0.69%) Packer
13 33 (0.49%) Jamf Pro
13 33 (0.49%) OPNET
14 32 (0.48%) Kibana
15 24 (0.36%) Nessus
15 24 (0.36%) SCOM
16 23 (0.34%) Progress Chef
16 23 (0.34%) Puppet
16 23 (0.34%) vRealize
Vendors
1 878 (13.16%) Microsoft
2 448 (6.72%) SAP
3 403 (6.04%) Cisco
4 355 (5.32%) Oracle
5 338 (5.07%) VMware
6 335 (5.02%) ServiceNow
7 176 (2.64%) Splunk
8 149 (2.23%) Juniper
9 137 (2.05%) Red Hat
10 108 (1.62%) Google
11 101 (1.51%) Atlassian
12 97 (1.45%) Palo Alto
13 95 (1.42%) HP
14 94 (1.41%) Dell
15 85 (1.27%) Salesforce
16 80 (1.20%) Remedy
17 71 (1.06%) Apple
18 69 (1.03%) F5
18 69 (1.03%) IBM
18 69 (1.03%) SolarWinds