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 26 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 0 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,259 4,446 6,865
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.30% 18.68% 18.79%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.93% 59.20% 61.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,441 2,948 4,515
10th Percentile £376 £340 £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 -0.85% -3.73% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 770 277 493
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.52 £24.18 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £39.04 £55.80
Median % change year-on-year +40.88% -30.04% -7.00%
75th Percentile £74.26 £65.75 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £79.22 £83.52
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £32.50 £55.08
% change year-on-year +69.23% -40.99% -8.21%

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 13,241 7,510 11,167
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.90% 31.55% 30.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,881 4,785 6,929
10th Percentile £350 £276 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £523 £530
% change year-on-year +0.48% -1.42% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 998 426 982
10th Percentile £17.04 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.33 £22.07 £18.15
Median hourly rate £47.50 £32.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +46.15% -18.75% -26.31%
75th Percentile £73.00 £66.94 £62.28
90th Percentile £85.28 £80.51 £75.24
UK median hourly rate £47.54 £32.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +46.28% -18.75% -27.27%

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 26 May 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 26 May 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 26 May 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 3,291 £525 - 497
South East +1 2,228 £550 - 472
South West 0 1,293 £538 -6.52% 362
North of England 0 930 £500 - 266
Midlands +2 871 £470 -10.49% 125
West Midlands +3 746 £470 -10.48% 98
North West -1 528 £511 +2.20% 158
East of England +2 378 £550 +10.00% 127
Yorkshire -9 234 £488 -1.71% 55
North East +1 206 £475 -1.04% 55
East Midlands -5 118 £450 -5.26% 27
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
1 341 (3.68%) Confluence
2 207 (2.24%) SharePoint
3 123 (1.33%) SAS
4 122 (1.32%) Microsoft Exchange
5 75 (0.81%) Apache Spark
6 70 (0.76%) Apache
7 61 (0.66%) Apache Airflow
8 33 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 32 (0.35%) nginx
10 27 (0.29%) Jupyter
11 18 (0.19%) IIS
11 18 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
12 17 (0.18%) Tomcat
13 15 (0.16%) Skype for Business
14 14 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
14 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
15 12 (0.13%) CMS
16 8 (0.086%) Apache Superset
16 8 (0.086%) ArcGIS
16 8 (0.086%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 168 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 166 (1.79%) Microsoft Office
3 90 (0.97%) Microsoft Project
4 77 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 37 (0.40%) MS Visio
6 18 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.13%) Simulink
8 8 (0.086%) AutoCAD
9 7 (0.076%) SOLIDWORKS
10 6 (0.065%) Revit
11 5 (0.054%) Notepad++
12 4 (0.043%) Siemens NX
13 3 (0.032%) Adobe XD
13 3 (0.032%) Chatbot
13 3 (0.032%) Sketch
13 3 (0.032%) Windchill
14 2 (0.022%) CATIA
14 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
14 2 (0.022%) Lectora
14 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 86 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
2 49 (0.53%) Remedy ITSM
3 39 (0.42%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 31 (0.33%) Teamcenter
5 27 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
6 26 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
7 16 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
8 15 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
9 14 (0.15%) Maximo
10 13 (0.14%) Findur
11 12 (0.13%) iTrent
11 12 (0.13%) SAP PSCD
11 12 (0.13%) Temenos T24
12 10 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
13 9 (0.097%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 9 (0.097%) SAP ERP
13 9 (0.097%) SAP HCM
14 8 (0.086%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
14 8 (0.086%) SAP HR
14 8 (0.086%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,573 (16.99%) Azure
2 1,501 (16.21%) AWS
3 369 (3.99%) GitHub
4 367 (3.96%) GCP
5 343 (3.70%) Azure DevOps
6 335 (3.62%) Power Platform
7 233 (2.52%) Entra ID
8 226 (2.44%) Microsoft 365
9 224 (2.42%) Serverless
10 213 (2.30%) GitHub Actions
11 187 (2.02%) Amazon S3
12 153 (1.65%) AWS Lambda
13 138 (1.49%) Amazon EC2
14 132 (1.43%) PaaS
15 127 (1.37%) OpenShift
16 116 (1.25%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 114 (1.23%) OCI
18 110 (1.19%) SaaS
19 105 (1.13%) Virtual Private Cloud
20 101 (1.09%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 430 (4.64%) Firewall
2 271 (2.93%) DNS
3 220 (2.38%) WAN
4 219 (2.37%) Network Security
5 198 (2.14%) LAN
6 155 (1.67%) VPN
7 146 (1.58%) BGP
8 144 (1.56%) DHCP
9 126 (1.36%) OSPF
10 110 (1.19%) Wi-Fi
11 107 (1.16%) VLAN
12 100 (1.08%) TCP/IP
13 84 (0.91%) Wireless
14 61 (0.66%) MPLS
15 59 (0.64%) SAN
15 59 (0.64%) Structured Cabling
16 55 (0.59%) VXLAN
17 51 (0.55%) IPsec
17 51 (0.55%) SD-WAN
18 48 (0.52%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 253 (2.73%) Power BI
2 212 (2.29%) PostgreSQL
3 203 (2.19%) Data Warehouse
4 193 (2.08%) SQL Server
5 114 (1.23%) Metadata
5 114 (1.23%) Oracle Database
6 102 (1.10%) Amazon RDS
7 90 (0.97%) Data Lake
8 88 (0.95%) MongoDB
9 79 (0.85%) Relational Database
10 76 (0.82%) NoSQL
10 76 (0.82%) Pentaho
11 70 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
11 70 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
12 62 (0.67%) MySQL
13 61 (0.66%) Tableau
14 57 (0.62%) Amazon Redshift
14 57 (0.62%) Azure SQL Database
15 52 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
16 43 (0.46%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 532 (5.75%) JIRA
2 391 (4.22%) Git
3 360 (3.89%) GitLab
4 353 (3.81%) Jenkins
5 98 (1.06%) Selenium
6 72 (0.78%) Postman
7 70 (0.76%) JUnit
8 61 (0.66%) SonarQube
9 59 (0.64%) Rational DOORS
10 51 (0.55%) Artifactory
11 45 (0.49%) JMeter
12 42 (0.45%) Bitbucket
13 40 (0.43%) Cucumber
14 39 (0.42%) Maven
14 39 (0.42%) Mockito
15 34 (0.37%) Visual Studio
16 32 (0.35%) REST Assured
17 31 (0.33%) Cypress.io
17 31 (0.33%) Zephyr
18 25 (0.27%) Gatling
General
1 1,967 (21.24%) Public Sector
2 1,905 (20.57%) Social Skills
3 650 (7.02%) Analytical Skills
4 631 (6.81%) Finance
5 325 (3.51%) Military
6 260 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
7 236 (2.55%) Aerospace
8 136 (1.47%) Legal
9 113 (1.22%) Banking
10 112 (1.21%) Telecoms
11 107 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
12 103 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
13 95 (1.03%) Manufacturing
14 89 (0.96%) Law
15 78 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
16 54 (0.58%) Police
17 53 (0.57%) Marketing
18 52 (0.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 41 (0.44%) Electronics
19 41 (0.44%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,354 (14.62%) Architect
2 845 (9.13%) Developer
3 780 (8.42%) Senior
4 660 (7.13%) Lead
5 646 (6.98%) Analyst
6 453 (4.89%) Data Engineer
7 417 (4.50%) DevOps Engineer
8 415 (4.48%) Consultant
9 281 (3.03%) Network Engineer
10 279 (3.01%) Software Engineer
11 269 (2.91%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 263 (2.84%) Technical Architect
13 234 (2.53%) Business Analyst
14 214 (2.31%) Project Manager
15 209 (2.26%) Solutions Architect
16 192 (2.07%) Azure Engineer
17 182 (1.97%) Security Architect
18 176 (1.90%) Administrator
19 175 (1.89%) Designer
20 172 (1.86%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 292 (3.15%) REST
2 210 (2.27%) Spring
3 174 (1.88%) Spring Boot
4 166 (1.79%) React
5 159 (1.72%) Node.js
6 155 (1.67%) Kafka
7 154 (1.66%) .NET
8 148 (1.60%) LDAP
9 138 (1.49%) SOAP
10 133 (1.44%) RESTful
11 112 (1.21%) AngularJS
12 108 (1.17%) JSON
13 100 (1.08%) Web Services
14 95 (1.03%) PySpark
15 90 (0.97%) OAuth
16 86 (0.93%) Oracle Fusion
17 80 (0.86%) HTML
18 79 (0.85%) XML
19 68 (0.73%) Middleware
19 68 (0.73%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 312 (3.37%) Cloud Native
2 300 (3.24%) Product Ownership
3 288 (3.11%) Data Centre
4 268 (2.89%) Onboarding
5 144 (1.56%) Management Information System
6 140 (1.51%) PKI
7 129 (1.39%) Legacy Systems
8 120 (1.30%) Security Posture
9 114 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
9 114 (1.23%) Replication
10 109 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
11 90 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
12 84 (0.91%) Clustering
13 81 (0.87%) Data Structures
14 78 (0.84%) Hybrid Cloud
15 69 (0.75%) Public Cloud
15 69 (0.75%) Security Operations Centre
16 67 (0.72%) Operational Technology
17 65 (0.70%) CMDB
17 65 (0.70%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 755 (8.15%) Windows
2 636 (6.87%) Linux
3 229 (2.47%) Windows Server
4 175 (1.89%) Unix
5 112 (1.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 85 (0.92%) Android
6 85 (0.92%) Windows 10
7 51 (0.55%) Apple iOS
8 44 (0.48%) Solaris
9 37 (0.40%) Mac OS
10 34 (0.37%) Ubuntu
11 26 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
12 24 (0.26%) AIX
13 23 (0.25%) CentOS
13 23 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
14 21 (0.23%) VMS
15 15 (0.16%) Windows 7
16 12 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
17 9 (0.097%) Windows Server 2003
17 9 (0.097%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,800 (19.44%) Agile
2 1,408 (15.21%) DevOps
3 1,227 (13.25%) CI/CD
4 983 (10.62%) Problem-Solving
5 902 (9.74%) Stakeholder Management
6 840 (9.07%) Continuous Improvement
7 756 (8.17%) Migration
8 690 (7.45%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 622 (6.72%) Infrastructure as Code
10 583 (6.30%) ITIL
11 581 (6.27%) Cybersecurity
12 531 (5.73%) Test Automation
13 524 (5.66%) Software Engineering
14 523 (5.65%) Analytics
15 504 (5.44%) Roadmaps
16 492 (5.31%) Containerisation
17 476 (5.14%) Data Modelling
18 437 (4.72%) Decision-Making
19 412 (4.45%) Scrum
20 409 (4.42%) AI
Programming Languages
1 969 (10.47%) Python
2 851 (9.19%) SQL
3 559 (6.04%) Java
4 495 (5.35%) PowerShell
5 278 (3.00%) JavaScript
6 193 (2.08%) C#
7 179 (1.93%) Bash
8 137 (1.48%) TypeScript
9 100 (1.08%) PL/SQL
10 89 (0.96%) C++
11 85 (0.92%) Shell Script
12 63 (0.68%) Go
13 59 (0.64%) Scala
14 56 (0.60%) C
15 54 (0.58%) Bicep
16 48 (0.52%) Ruby
17 42 (0.45%) Ada
18 41 (0.44%) Apex Code
19 35 (0.38%) MATLAB
19 35 (0.38%) R
Qualifications
1 6,955 (75.12%) SC Cleared
2 1,785 (19.28%) DV Cleared
3 400 (4.32%) Degree
4 255 (2.75%) BPSS Clearance
5 190 (2.05%) Cisco Certification
6 159 (1.72%) CISSP
7 119 (1.29%) Azure Certification
7 119 (1.29%) CCNP
8 102 (1.10%) CISM
9 93 (1.00%) AWS Certification
10 91 (0.98%) Microsoft Certification
11 81 (0.87%) CCNA
12 73 (0.79%) PMP
13 63 (0.68%) PMI Certification
14 60 (0.65%) Computer Science Degree
15 58 (0.63%) ISTQB
16 51 (0.55%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 50 (0.54%) ITIL Certification
18 48 (0.52%) GIAC
19 42 (0.45%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 345 (3.73%) QA
2 276 (2.98%) NIST
3 273 (2.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 263 (2.84%) Data Quality
5 191 (2.06%) NCSC
6 165 (1.78%) Accessibility
7 155 (1.67%) GDPR
8 152 (1.64%) PMO
9 103 (1.11%) SLA
10 65 (0.70%) GRC
11 60 (0.65%) JSP 440
12 54 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials
13 38 (0.41%) NIST 800
14 36 (0.39%) WCAG
15 30 (0.32%) Def Stans
16 28 (0.30%) RMADS
17 25 (0.27%) PCI DSS
18 21 (0.23%) COBIT
18 21 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 20 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 558 (6.03%) Docker
2 433 (4.68%) Active Directory
3 263 (2.84%) VMware Infrastructure
4 101 (1.09%) VMware ESXi
5 88 (0.95%) VMware NSX
6 76 (0.82%) vSphere
7 73 (0.79%) Hyper-V
8 63 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
9 35 (0.38%) Firmware
10 27 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
11 24 (0.26%) Virtual Desktop
12 21 (0.23%) BitLocker
13 20 (0.22%) NFS
13 20 (0.22%) vCloud
14 19 (0.21%) Postfix
15 16 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 15 (0.16%) Squid
17 8 (0.086%) Microsoft App-V
18 7 (0.076%) KVM
19 6 (0.065%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 711 (7.68%) Kubernetes
2 704 (7.60%) Terraform
3 329 (3.55%) Ansible
4 232 (2.51%) Grafana
5 189 (2.04%) Prometheus
6 106 (1.14%) vCenter Server
7 83 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
8 71 (0.77%) SCCM
9 59 (0.64%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 50 (0.54%) Microsoft Intune
11 47 (0.51%) FortiGate
12 46 (0.50%) Argo
13 39 (0.42%) Podman
13 39 (0.42%) Puppet
14 33 (0.36%) Oracle RMAN
14 33 (0.36%) SCOM
15 30 (0.32%) Progress Chef
16 29 (0.31%) Nagios
17 22 (0.24%) Packer
17 22 (0.24%) WSUS
Vendors
1 952 (10.28%) Microsoft
2 590 (6.37%) Oracle
3 456 (4.92%) VMware
4 372 (4.02%) ServiceNow
5 336 (3.63%) Cisco
6 308 (3.33%) SAP
7 208 (2.25%) Splunk
8 178 (1.92%) Databricks
9 156 (1.68%) Red Hat
10 148 (1.60%) Google
11 121 (1.31%) Palo Alto
11 121 (1.31%) Talend
12 112 (1.21%) IBM
12 112 (1.21%) Salesforce
13 102 (1.10%) Juniper
14 94 (1.02%) CyberArk
15 86 (0.93%) F5
15 86 (0.93%) Informatica
16 80 (0.86%) Fortinet
17 73 (0.79%) Citrix