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 27 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 8,311 4,659 7,023
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.45% 18.12% 18.71%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.32% 59.85% 60.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,688 2,992 4,464
10th Percentile £357 £315 £356
25th Percentile £447 £439 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £541 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.00% -1.59% -3.41%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £702 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 723 251 474
10th Percentile £17.69 £21.25 £19.99
25th Percentile £20.30 £25.38 £38.53
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% +6.21% -5.85%
75th Percentile £66.25 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.90 £77.19 £83.40
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £56.75 £57.30
% change year-on-year -55.68% -0.97% -4.50%

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 12,164 7,785 11,679
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.33% 30.28% 31.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,102 4,803 7,209
10th Percentile £325 £290 £290
25th Percentile £423 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £518 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.43% -2.42% -2.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 934 389 889
10th Percentile £16.11 £20.09 £14.25
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.26 £20.51
Median hourly rate £25.15 £49.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -48.67% +15.29% -10.53%
75th Percentile £65.00 £68.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £82.50 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £25.47 £40.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year -36.33% -5.88% -11.46%

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 27 February 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 27 February 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 27 February 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 2,883 £530 +0.95% 362
South East +1 1,797 £525 -4.55% 405
South West 0 1,315 £550 -2.35% 265
Midlands +4 851 £495 -10.00% 140
North of England -2 826 £500 +2.04% 164
West Midlands +2 678 £500 -9.26% 106
North West 0 530 £500 +5.26% 100
East of England +1 347 £498 -0.50% 127
Yorkshire -6 177 £500 -4.76% 31
East Midlands +1 171 £425 -16.05% 34
North East +1 146 £450 -10.00% 34
South Coast - 1 - -
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
1 317 (3.81%) Confluence
2 201 (2.42%) SharePoint
3 134 (1.61%) Microsoft Exchange
4 132 (1.59%) SAS
5 67 (0.81%) Apache
6 65 (0.78%) Apache Spark
7 41 (0.49%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.47%) nginx
9 35 (0.42%) WebLogic
10 33 (0.40%) Skype for Business
11 20 (0.24%) Jupyter
12 18 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
13 15 (0.18%) CMS
14 14 (0.17%) Tuxedo
15 8 (0.096%) IIS
15 8 (0.096%) Oracle Workflow
16 7 (0.084%) OpenStack
16 7 (0.084%) Tomcat
17 6 (0.072%) ArcGIS
18 5 (0.060%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 247 (2.97%) Microsoft Office
2 180 (2.17%) Microsoft Excel
3 116 (1.40%) Microsoft Project
4 68 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 42 (0.51%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
7 9 (0.11%) Simulink
8 6 (0.072%) Oracle Smart View
9 5 (0.060%) Siemens NX
9 5 (0.060%) Windchill
10 4 (0.048%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.048%) Chatbot
10 4 (0.048%) Sketch
11 3 (0.036%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe Illustrator
12 2 (0.024%) CATIA
12 2 (0.024%) Mozilla Thunderbird
12 2 (0.024%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.024%) Stateflow
12 2 (0.024%) Trello
Business Applications
1 129 (1.55%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 29 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
4 26 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
5 25 (0.30%) Teamcenter
6 19 (0.23%) Dynamics CRM
6 19 (0.23%) SAP MM
7 16 (0.19%) Maximo
8 13 (0.16%) Oracle Assets
8 13 (0.16%) SAP PP
8 13 (0.16%) SAP QM
9 12 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
9 12 (0.14%) SAP VC
9 12 (0.14%) SAP WM
10 11 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
10 11 (0.13%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 11 (0.13%) SAP HCM
11 10 (0.12%) SAP EWM
12 9 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
12 9 (0.11%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,369 (16.47%) AWS
2 1,366 (16.44%) Azure
3 358 (4.31%) GitHub
4 351 (4.22%) GCP
5 303 (3.65%) Power Platform
6 302 (3.63%) Azure DevOps
7 297 (3.57%) Microsoft 365
8 230 (2.77%) Serverless
9 220 (2.65%) Entra ID
10 184 (2.21%) Amazon S3
11 178 (2.14%) GitHub Actions
12 169 (2.03%) OpenShift
13 150 (1.80%) AWS Lambda
14 125 (1.50%) Amazon EC2
15 109 (1.31%) AWS CloudFormation
16 108 (1.30%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 100 (1.20%) IaaS
18 98 (1.18%) Amazon EKS
19 97 (1.17%) OCI
19 97 (1.17%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 408 (4.91%) Firewall
2 275 (3.31%) DNS
3 201 (2.42%) Network Security
4 178 (2.14%) WAN
5 163 (1.96%) VPN
6 143 (1.72%) LAN
7 135 (1.62%) TCP/IP
8 130 (1.56%) DHCP
9 129 (1.55%) BGP
10 93 (1.12%) Wireless
11 89 (1.07%) OSPF
12 88 (1.06%) VLAN
13 73 (0.88%) Wi-Fi
14 64 (0.77%) MPLS
15 52 (0.63%) IPsec
16 50 (0.60%) SAN
17 47 (0.57%) SSL
18 46 (0.55%) Cisco ISE
19 42 (0.51%) Skype
20 38 (0.46%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 229 (2.76%) PostgreSQL
2 217 (2.61%) Power BI
3 140 (1.68%) Data Warehouse
4 125 (1.50%) SQL Server
5 105 (1.26%) Metadata
6 95 (1.14%) Oracle Database
7 90 (1.08%) Amazon RDS
8 87 (1.05%) MongoDB
9 84 (1.01%) NoSQL
10 78 (0.94%) Relational Database
11 71 (0.85%) Elasticsearch
12 64 (0.77%) Azure SQL Database
13 59 (0.71%) Pentaho
14 51 (0.61%) MySQL
15 50 (0.60%) Data Lake
16 47 (0.57%) Big Data
17 43 (0.52%) Tableau
18 41 (0.49%) Amazon Redshift
19 36 (0.43%) DynamoDB
19 36 (0.43%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 524 (6.30%) JIRA
2 428 (5.15%) Git
3 371 (4.46%) Jenkins
4 312 (3.75%) GitLab
5 100 (1.20%) Selenium
6 78 (0.94%) JUnit
6 78 (0.94%) Postman
7 58 (0.70%) Cypress.io
8 52 (0.63%) SonarQube
9 45 (0.54%) Bitbucket
9 45 (0.54%) Maven
9 45 (0.54%) Oracle APEX
10 44 (0.53%) Artifactory
11 43 (0.52%) Cucumber
12 37 (0.45%) Mockito
13 35 (0.42%) REST Assured
14 33 (0.40%) Rational DOORS
15 27 (0.32%) Visual Studio
16 25 (0.30%) JMeter
17 24 (0.29%) Metasploit
General
1 2,103 (25.30%) Public Sector
2 2,032 (24.45%) Social Skills
3 711 (8.55%) Analytical Skills
4 597 (7.18%) Finance
5 316 (3.80%) Military
6 239 (2.88%) Documentation Skills
7 179 (2.15%) Aerospace
8 171 (2.06%) Manufacturing
9 170 (2.05%) Telecoms
10 129 (1.55%) Legal
11 119 (1.43%) Organisational Skills
12 113 (1.36%) Marketing
13 107 (1.29%) Electronics
13 107 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
14 106 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
15 89 (1.07%) Banking
16 69 (0.83%) Law
17 44 (0.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 41 (0.49%) Police
19 33 (0.40%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,165 (14.02%) Architect
2 797 (9.59%) Developer
3 703 (8.46%) Senior
4 631 (7.59%) Analyst
5 491 (5.91%) Consultant
6 473 (5.69%) Lead
7 365 (4.39%) DevOps Engineer
8 301 (3.62%) Data Engineer
9 242 (2.91%) Network Engineer
10 226 (2.72%) Support Engineer
11 223 (2.68%) Business Analyst
12 217 (2.61%) Software Engineer
13 205 (2.47%) Technical Architect
14 187 (2.25%) Solutions Architect
15 167 (2.01%) Tester
16 149 (1.79%) Azure Engineer
17 146 (1.76%) Project Manager
18 143 (1.72%) Administrator
19 142 (1.71%) AWS Engineer
20 139 (1.67%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 323 (3.89%) REST
2 193 (2.32%) Node.js
3 189 (2.27%) Spring
4 175 (2.11%) React
5 169 (2.03%) Kafka
6 144 (1.73%) Spring Boot
7 142 (1.71%) LDAP
8 139 (1.67%) JSON
9 138 (1.66%) SOAP
10 118 (1.42%) .NET
11 107 (1.29%) AngularJS
11 107 (1.29%) HTML
12 102 (1.23%) RESTful
13 95 (1.14%) Web Services
14 93 (1.12%) Oracle Fusion
15 92 (1.11%) OAuth
16 88 (1.06%) CSS
17 87 (1.05%) PySpark
18 86 (1.03%) XML
19 78 (0.94%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 268 (3.22%) Data Centre
2 249 (3.00%) Product Ownership
3 234 (2.82%) Cloud Native
4 219 (2.64%) Onboarding
5 198 (2.38%) PKI
6 149 (1.79%) Management Information System
7 131 (1.58%) Security Posture
8 108 (1.30%) Self-Motivation
9 107 (1.29%) Legacy Systems
10 106 (1.28%) Enterprise Software
11 95 (1.14%) Replication
12 71 (0.85%) Hybrid Cloud
13 68 (0.82%) Public Cloud
14 66 (0.79%) Cyber Threat
14 66 (0.79%) Security Operations Centre
15 65 (0.78%) Driving Licence
16 63 (0.76%) Distributed Systems
17 50 (0.60%) Clustering
18 45 (0.54%) Analytical Mindset
19 44 (0.53%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 817 (9.83%) Windows
2 631 (7.59%) Linux
3 210 (2.53%) Windows Server
4 154 (1.85%) Windows 10
5 122 (1.47%) Android
6 114 (1.37%) Unix
7 108 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 65 (0.78%) Mac OS
9 48 (0.58%) Apple iOS
10 44 (0.53%) Ubuntu
11 35 (0.42%) VMS
12 24 (0.29%) CentOS
12 24 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
13 21 (0.25%) Windows 7
14 19 (0.23%) Solaris
15 17 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
16 12 (0.14%) Mac OS X
16 12 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
17 8 (0.096%) Windows Server 2003
17 8 (0.096%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,636 (19.68%) Agile
2 1,273 (15.32%) DevOps
3 1,119 (13.46%) CI/CD
4 1,063 (12.79%) Problem-Solving
5 762 (9.17%) Stakeholder Management
6 729 (8.77%) Migration
7 656 (7.89%) Continuous Improvement
8 572 (6.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 543 (6.53%) Cybersecurity
10 517 (6.22%) ITIL
11 504 (6.06%) Infrastructure as Code
12 482 (5.80%) Test Automation
13 453 (5.45%) Roadmaps
14 444 (5.34%) Analytics
15 437 (5.26%) Containerisation
16 409 (4.92%) Scrum
17 408 (4.91%) Software Engineering
18 401 (4.82%) Service Management
19 396 (4.76%) Business Intelligence
20 366 (4.40%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 986 (11.86%) Python
2 707 (8.51%) SQL
3 542 (6.52%) PowerShell
4 480 (5.78%) Java
5 367 (4.42%) JavaScript
6 215 (2.59%) Bash
7 173 (2.08%) TypeScript
8 163 (1.96%) C#
9 97 (1.17%) C++
10 93 (1.12%) PL/SQL
11 90 (1.08%) Shell Script
12 77 (0.93%) Go
13 61 (0.73%) C
14 51 (0.61%) Ada
15 49 (0.59%) Ruby
16 48 (0.58%) Scala
17 39 (0.47%) Bicep
18 35 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
19 31 (0.37%) ABAP
20 29 (0.35%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 6,338 (76.26%) SC Cleared
2 1,444 (17.37%) DV Cleared
3 407 (4.90%) Degree
4 252 (3.03%) BPSS Clearance
5 161 (1.94%) Cisco Certification
6 156 (1.88%) CISSP
7 122 (1.47%) Azure Certification
8 120 (1.44%) CCNP
9 117 (1.41%) Microsoft Certification
10 114 (1.37%) AWS Certification
11 96 (1.16%) CISM
12 71 (0.85%) CCNA
12 71 (0.85%) Computer Science Degree
13 62 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
14 60 (0.72%) TOGAF Certification
15 46 (0.55%) ISTQB
15 46 (0.55%) PMP
16 44 (0.53%) GIAC
16 44 (0.53%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 43 (0.52%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 291 (3.50%) QA
2 266 (3.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 253 (3.04%) NIST
4 214 (2.57%) Data Quality
5 191 (2.30%) NCSC
6 167 (2.01%) GDPR
7 151 (1.82%) Accessibility
8 115 (1.38%) SLA
9 96 (1.16%) PMO
10 58 (0.70%) GRC
11 52 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 44 (0.53%) WCAG
13 41 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
14 39 (0.47%) Def Stans
15 33 (0.40%) NIST 800
16 32 (0.39%) PCI DSS
17 30 (0.36%) COBIT
18 23 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 23 (0.28%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 21 (0.25%) RMADS
System Software
1 582 (7.00%) Docker
2 468 (5.63%) Active Directory
3 233 (2.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 78 (0.94%) VMware NSX
5 63 (0.76%) vSphere
6 59 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
7 57 (0.69%) Hyper-V
7 57 (0.69%) VMware ESXi
8 23 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
9 22 (0.26%) Firmware
10 19 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
11 18 (0.22%) BitLocker
12 16 (0.19%) NFS
12 16 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 12 (0.14%) Postfix
14 11 (0.13%) Squid
15 8 (0.096%) vCloud
16 7 (0.084%) Virtual Servers
17 5 (0.060%) Microsoft Virtual Server
17 5 (0.060%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 747 (8.99%) Kubernetes
2 679 (8.17%) Terraform
3 287 (3.45%) Ansible
4 209 (2.51%) Grafana
5 168 (2.02%) Prometheus
6 106 (1.28%) Single Sign-On
7 96 (1.16%) SCCM
8 91 (1.09%) vCenter Server
9 82 (0.99%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 66 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
11 65 (0.78%) Argo
12 40 (0.48%) FortiGate
13 38 (0.46%) Podman
14 36 (0.43%) Packer
15 30 (0.36%) Kibana
15 30 (0.36%) OPNET
15 30 (0.36%) Puppet
16 27 (0.32%) Progress Chef
17 25 (0.30%) Nmap
18 23 (0.28%) vRealize
Vendors
1 985 (11.85%) Microsoft
2 487 (5.86%) Oracle
3 420 (5.05%) VMware
4 405 (4.87%) Cisco
5 373 (4.49%) SAP
6 362 (4.36%) ServiceNow
7 206 (2.48%) Splunk
8 175 (2.11%) Red Hat
9 131 (1.58%) Juniper
9 131 (1.58%) Palo Alto
10 124 (1.49%) Databricks
10 124 (1.49%) Google
11 122 (1.47%) CyberArk
12 114 (1.37%) Atlassian
13 108 (1.30%) Salesforce
14 90 (1.08%) Dell
15 78 (0.94%) Talend
16 76 (0.91%) SolarWinds
17 75 (0.90%) Aruba
17 75 (0.90%) F5