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

6 months to
27 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 9,120 4,545 7,172
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.78% 18.57% 19.29%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.69% 59.32% 61.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,326 3,020 4,672
10th Percentile £363 £330 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £459
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 768 268 492
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.66 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £56.75 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -3.08% +0.46% -5.85%
75th Percentile £73.46 £68.00 £70.81
90th Percentile £85.25 £80.03 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £52.25 £56.49
% change year-on-year +5.26% -7.51% -7.30%

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 13,087 7,662 11,658
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.69% 31.31% 31.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,790 4,870 7,163
10th Percentile £342 £300 £300
25th Percentile £425 £415 £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 £750
UK median daily rate £518 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -1.43% -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 982 440 983
10th Percentile £17.10 £18.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £23.38 £18.07
Median hourly rate £47.50 £47.65 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -0.32% +19.13% -23.81%
75th Percentile £71.50 £67.63 £62.48
90th Percentile £85.40 £81.42 £77.40
UK median hourly rate £47.50 £42.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +11.76% +6.25% -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 27 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 27 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 27 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 3,226 £525 - 500
South East +1 2,170 £535 -2.73% 513
South West 0 1,325 £538 -3.10% 380
Midlands +3 877 £482 -8.17% 207
North of England -1 850 £488 -2.50% 355
West Midlands +4 735 £484 -9.84% 168
North West -2 509 £497 -0.64% 213
East of England +2 379 £506 +12.50% 156
Yorkshire -7 210 £488 -7.14% 69
North East +1 162 £450 -10.00% 76
East Midlands -4 136 £450 -5.26% 39
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
1 352 (3.86%) Confluence
2 199 (2.18%) SharePoint
3 130 (1.43%) Microsoft Exchange
4 107 (1.17%) SAS
5 82 (0.90%) Apache Spark
6 70 (0.77%) Apache
7 55 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
8 46 (0.50%) nginx
9 34 (0.37%) WebLogic
10 21 (0.23%) Jupyter
11 16 (0.18%) IIS
12 14 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 14 (0.15%) Skype for Business
12 14 (0.15%) Tomcat
12 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
13 13 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
14 12 (0.13%) CMS
15 10 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
16 8 (0.088%) Apache Superset
16 8 (0.088%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 213 (2.34%) Microsoft Office
2 184 (2.02%) Microsoft Excel
3 117 (1.28%) Microsoft Project
4 80 (0.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 41 (0.45%) 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 44 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
3 41 (0.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 28 (0.31%) Dynamics CRM
5 26 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 25 (0.27%) 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 1,551 (17.01%) Azure
2 1,501 (16.46%) AWS
3 382 (4.19%) GitHub
4 381 (4.18%) GCP
5 359 (3.94%) Azure DevOps
6 329 (3.61%) Power Platform
7 262 (2.87%) Serverless
8 245 (2.69%) Microsoft 365
9 221 (2.42%) Entra ID
10 211 (2.31%) GitHub Actions
11 202 (2.21%) Amazon S3
12 176 (1.93%) AWS Lambda
13 130 (1.43%) PaaS
14 127 (1.39%) Amazon EC2
14 127 (1.39%) OpenShift
15 124 (1.36%) AWS CloudFormation
16 115 (1.26%) IaaS
17 113 (1.24%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 104 (1.14%) Azure Data Factory
18 104 (1.14%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 413 (4.53%) Firewall
2 262 (2.87%) DNS
3 213 (2.34%) Network Security
4 209 (2.29%) WAN
5 192 (2.11%) LAN
6 160 (1.75%) VPN
7 139 (1.52%) DHCP
8 135 (1.48%) BGP
9 117 (1.28%) OSPF
10 104 (1.14%) TCP/IP
11 93 (1.02%) VLAN
12 78 (0.86%) Wireless
13 74 (0.81%) Wi-Fi
14 59 (0.65%) MPLS
15 53 (0.58%) SAN
16 46 (0.50%) IPsec
17 43 (0.47%) SD-WAN
17 43 (0.47%) Structured Cabling
17 43 (0.47%) VXLAN
18 42 (0.46%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 251 (2.75%) Power BI
2 229 (2.51%) PostgreSQL
3 194 (2.13%) Data Warehouse
4 179 (1.96%) SQL Server
5 122 (1.34%) Metadata
6 105 (1.15%) Amazon RDS
7 99 (1.09%) Oracle Database
8 95 (1.04%) NoSQL
9 85 (0.93%) Relational Database
10 84 (0.92%) MongoDB
11 74 (0.81%) Pentaho
12 71 (0.78%) Data Lake
12 71 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
13 68 (0.75%) Azure SQL Database
14 67 (0.73%) MySQL
15 63 (0.69%) Amazon Redshift
15 63 (0.69%) Oracle Reports
15 63 (0.69%) Tableau
16 49 (0.54%) Amazon Athena
17 48 (0.53%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 566 (6.21%) JIRA
2 443 (4.86%) Git
3 340 (3.73%) Jenkins
4 309 (3.39%) GitLab
5 87 (0.95%) Selenium
6 72 (0.79%) Postman
7 68 (0.75%) JUnit
8 57 (0.63%) SonarQube
9 49 (0.54%) Bitbucket
9 49 (0.54%) Rational DOORS
10 41 (0.45%) Artifactory
10 41 (0.45%) Maven
11 37 (0.41%) Cucumber
11 37 (0.41%) Oracle APEX
12 36 (0.39%) Mockito
13 35 (0.38%) Cypress.io
13 35 (0.38%) JMeter
14 31 (0.34%) Visual Studio
15 27 (0.30%) Zephyr
16 24 (0.26%) MSI
General
1 2,056 (22.54%) Public Sector
2 2,000 (21.93%) Social Skills
3 732 (8.03%) Analytical Skills
4 651 (7.14%) Finance
5 329 (3.61%) Military
6 257 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
7 218 (2.39%) Aerospace
8 144 (1.58%) Legal
9 136 (1.49%) Telecoms
10 126 (1.38%) Manufacturing
11 121 (1.33%) Influencing Skills
12 111 (1.22%) Banking
13 101 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
14 97 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
15 82 (0.90%) Law
16 71 (0.78%) Marketing
17 64 (0.70%) Electronics
18 54 (0.59%) Police
19 51 (0.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 34 (0.37%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,360 (14.91%) Architect
2 896 (9.82%) Developer
3 781 (8.56%) Senior
4 655 (7.18%) Analyst
5 618 (6.78%) Lead
6 424 (4.65%) Consultant
7 414 (4.54%) Data Engineer
8 395 (4.33%) DevOps Engineer
9 275 (3.02%) Software Engineer
10 269 (2.95%) Network Engineer
11 265 (2.91%) Technical Architect
12 246 (2.70%) Business Analyst
13 227 (2.49%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 203 (2.23%) Project Manager
15 202 (2.21%) Solutions Architect
16 196 (2.15%) Azure Engineer
17 170 (1.86%) Administrator
18 169 (1.85%) Delivery Manager
19 167 (1.83%) Security Architect
20 160 (1.75%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 316 (3.46%) REST
2 209 (2.29%) Spring
3 174 (1.91%) Node.js
4 163 (1.79%) Kafka
5 162 (1.78%) Spring Boot
6 159 (1.74%) .NET
6 159 (1.74%) React
7 139 (1.52%) SOAP
8 138 (1.51%) JSON
8 138 (1.51%) LDAP
9 133 (1.46%) RESTful
10 112 (1.23%) AngularJS
11 105 (1.15%) Web Services
12 101 (1.11%) PySpark
13 89 (0.98%) Oracle Fusion
14 87 (0.95%) OAuth
15 86 (0.94%) HTML
16 84 (0.92%) XML
17 69 (0.76%) Elastic Stack
18 66 (0.72%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 309 (3.39%) Product Ownership
2 301 (3.30%) Cloud Native
3 262 (2.87%) Data Centre
4 245 (2.69%) Onboarding
5 174 (1.91%) PKI
6 146 (1.60%) Management Information System
7 120 (1.32%) Enterprise Software
8 119 (1.30%) Replication
8 119 (1.30%) Security Posture
9 118 (1.29%) Legacy Systems
10 116 (1.27%) Self-Motivation
11 107 (1.17%) Distributed Systems
12 77 (0.84%) Clustering
12 77 (0.84%) Data Structures
13 74 (0.81%) Public Cloud
14 69 (0.76%) Hybrid Cloud
15 66 (0.72%) Security Operations Centre
16 59 (0.65%) Virtual Team
17 55 (0.60%) CMDB
18 53 (0.58%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 776 (8.51%) Windows
2 644 (7.06%) Linux
3 231 (2.53%) Windows Server
4 141 (1.55%) Unix
5 105 (1.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 104 (1.14%) Windows 10
7 101 (1.11%) Android
8 51 (0.56%) Apple iOS
9 46 (0.50%) Mac OS
10 35 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 29 (0.32%) VMS
12 28 (0.31%) Solaris
13 23 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
14 22 (0.24%) CentOS
15 21 (0.23%) AIX
16 20 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
17 15 (0.16%) Windows 7
18 14 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
19 10 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
20 8 (0.088%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,834 (20.11%) Agile
2 1,388 (15.22%) DevOps
3 1,184 (12.98%) CI/CD
4 1,022 (11.21%) Problem-Solving
5 863 (9.46%) Stakeholder Management
6 799 (8.76%) Migration
7 777 (8.52%) Continuous Improvement
8 675 (7.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 607 (6.66%) ITIL
10 595 (6.52%) Infrastructure as Code
11 530 (5.81%) Analytics
12 513 (5.63%) Cybersecurity
12 513 (5.63%) Test Automation
13 504 (5.53%) Software Engineering
14 495 (5.43%) Roadmaps
15 470 (5.15%) Containerisation
16 451 (4.95%) Data Modelling
17 445 (4.88%) Scrum
18 413 (4.53%) Service Management
19 409 (4.48%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 997 (10.93%) Python
2 843 (9.24%) SQL
3 559 (6.13%) Java
4 526 (5.77%) PowerShell
5 312 (3.42%) JavaScript
6 199 (2.18%) C#
7 174 (1.91%) Bash
8 150 (1.64%) TypeScript
9 103 (1.13%) PL/SQL
10 96 (1.05%) C++
11 89 (0.98%) Shell Script
12 68 (0.75%) Go
13 64 (0.70%) Scala
14 60 (0.66%) C
15 55 (0.60%) Ruby
16 52 (0.57%) Bicep
17 44 (0.48%) Apex Code
18 41 (0.45%) Ada
19 39 (0.43%) Kusto Query Language
19 39 (0.43%) R
Qualifications
1 6,870 (75.33%) SC Cleared
2 1,696 (18.60%) DV Cleared
3 420 (4.61%) Degree
4 276 (3.03%) BPSS Clearance
5 166 (1.82%) Cisco Certification
6 150 (1.64%) CISSP
7 131 (1.44%) Azure Certification
8 111 (1.22%) AWS Certification
9 110 (1.21%) CCNP
10 97 (1.06%) Microsoft Certification
11 95 (1.04%) CISM
12 70 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
12 70 (0.77%) PMP
13 68 (0.75%) CCNA
14 67 (0.73%) TOGAF Certification
15 61 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
15 61 (0.67%) PMI Certification
16 52 (0.57%) ISTQB
17 51 (0.56%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 48 (0.53%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 333 (3.65%) QA
2 261 (2.86%) Data Quality
3 260 (2.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 260 (2.85%) NIST
4 178 (1.95%) NCSC
5 152 (1.67%) GDPR
6 147 (1.61%) PMO
7 141 (1.55%) Accessibility
8 101 (1.11%) SLA
9 62 (0.68%) GRC
10 59 (0.65%) JSP 440
11 40 (0.44%) COBIT
12 39 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
12 39 (0.43%) NIST 800
13 33 (0.36%) WCAG
14 32 (0.35%) Def Stans
15 31 (0.34%) PCI DSS
16 25 (0.27%) RMADS
17 24 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 18 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 590 (6.47%) Docker
2 443 (4.86%) Active Directory
3 263 (2.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 87 (0.95%) VMware ESXi
5 82 (0.90%) VMware NSX
6 75 (0.82%) Hyper-V
7 70 (0.77%) vSphere
8 64 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
9 36 (0.39%) Firmware
10 25 (0.27%) 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%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 755 (8.28%) Kubernetes
2 729 (7.99%) Terraform
3 300 (3.29%) Ansible
4 220 (2.41%) Grafana
5 181 (1.98%) Prometheus
6 95 (1.04%) vCenter Server
7 91 (1.00%) Single Sign-On
8 79 (0.87%) SCCM
9 59 (0.65%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 55 (0.60%) Microsoft Intune
11 52 (0.57%) FortiGate
12 49 (0.54%) Argo
13 39 (0.43%) Packer
14 38 (0.42%) Puppet
15 35 (0.38%) Podman
16 33 (0.36%) Progress Chef
17 30 (0.33%) OPNET
18 28 (0.31%) Oracle RMAN
19 25 (0.27%) Kibana
19 25 (0.27%) Nagios
Vendors
1 975 (10.69%) Microsoft
2 564 (6.18%) Oracle
3 453 (4.97%) VMware
4 381 (4.18%) ServiceNow
5 357 (3.91%) Cisco
6 338 (3.71%) SAP
7 208 (2.28%) Splunk
8 174 (1.91%) Databricks
9 153 (1.68%) Red Hat
10 152 (1.67%) Google
11 116 (1.27%) Salesforce
12 114 (1.25%) Atlassian
13 112 (1.23%) IBM
14 106 (1.16%) Juniper
15 104 (1.14%) Palo Alto
16 103 (1.13%) Talend
17 92 (1.01%) CyberArk
18 84 (0.92%) Remedy
19 74 (0.81%) Fortinet
20 73 (0.80%) BeyondTrust