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

6 months to
9 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +4
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 6,658 5,503 6,982
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.50% 18.15% 18.13%
As % of the Qualifications category 63.92% 60.38% 60.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,412 3,502 4,392
10th Percentile £333 £350 £375
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.22%
75th Percentile £634 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 686 283 455
10th Percentile £18.22 £20.44 £20.00
25th Percentile £18.87 £26.75 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £58.30 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -56.86% -2.83% -
75th Percentile £56.00 £68.46 £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 10,416 9,114 11,591
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.64% 30.06% 30.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,809 5,594 7,326
10th Percentile £308 £310 £305
25th Percentile £416 £425 £439
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £627 £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 898 427 699
10th Percentile £17.14 £19.99 £17.72
25th Percentile £18.87 £25.66 £26.77
Median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -49.70% -4.76% +16.67%
75th Percentile £52.45 £68.00 £67.88
90th Percentile £75.24 £75.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £42.50 £52.50
% change year-on-year -40.82% -19.05% +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 9 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 9 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 9 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 +2 2,174 £550 - 471
South East -1 1,309 £520 -5.45% 678
South West 0 1,147 £550 -4.35% 469
North of England -1 777 £513 +7.89% 246
Midlands +2 705 £517 -6.05% 154
West Midlands +2 550 £520 -5.54% 126
North West 0 513 £525 +5.21% 169
East of England +2 301 £500 -2.44% 274
Yorkshire -15 163 £500 +6.38% 41
East Midlands -1 140 £431 -9.21% 28
North East 0 114 £475 -2.61% 41
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
1 257 (3.86%) Confluence
2 174 (2.61%) SharePoint
3 114 (1.71%) Microsoft Exchange
4 96 (1.44%) SAS
5 84 (1.26%) Apache
6 49 (0.74%) Apache Airflow
7 47 (0.71%) Apache Spark
8 43 (0.65%) nginx
9 39 (0.59%) Skype for Business
10 25 (0.38%) WebLogic
11 23 (0.35%) CMS
12 20 (0.30%) IIS
13 15 (0.23%) SharePoint Server
14 12 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2010
15 11 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2013
15 11 (0.17%) 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%) Documentum
Applications
1 237 (3.56%) Microsoft Office
2 154 (2.31%) Microsoft Excel
3 102 (1.53%) Microsoft Project
4 47 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 32 (0.48%) MS Visio
6 21 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.20%) Simulink
8 12 (0.18%) Siemens NX
9 10 (0.15%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 7 (0.11%) Sketch
11 5 (0.075%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.075%) FrameMaker
11 5 (0.075%) Oracle Smart View
11 5 (0.075%) PTC Creo
11 5 (0.075%) Stateflow
11 5 (0.075%) Windchill
12 4 (0.060%) Adobe Illustrator
12 4 (0.060%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.060%) Trello
13 3 (0.045%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 147 (2.21%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (0.54%) Remedy ITSM
3 30 (0.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 27 (0.41%) SAP WM
5 26 (0.39%) SAP EWM
6 22 (0.33%) Oracle ERP
7 19 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
8 18 (0.27%) SAP MM
9 16 (0.24%) SAP HCM
10 15 (0.23%) Maximo
10 15 (0.23%) Primavera
10 15 (0.23%) Teamcenter
11 13 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
12 12 (0.18%) SAP QM
12 12 (0.18%) SAP VC
13 11 (0.17%) SAP EHS
13 11 (0.17%) SAP PS
14 10 (0.15%) SAP HR
14 10 (0.15%) SAP Payroll
15 9 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 1,093 (16.42%) AWS
2 1,061 (15.94%) Azure
3 316 (4.75%) Microsoft 365
4 302 (4.54%) GitHub
5 243 (3.65%) GCP
6 240 (3.60%) Power Platform
7 231 (3.47%) Azure DevOps
8 199 (2.99%) Serverless
9 165 (2.48%) Amazon S3
10 159 (2.39%) Entra ID
11 150 (2.25%) GitHub Actions
12 126 (1.89%) OpenShift
13 123 (1.85%) SaaS
14 111 (1.67%) AWS CloudFormation
14 111 (1.67%) AWS Lambda
15 107 (1.61%) Amazon EC2
16 106 (1.59%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 87 (1.31%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 83 (1.25%) Amazon EKS
19 80 (1.20%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 349 (5.24%) Firewall
2 245 (3.68%) DNS
3 166 (2.49%) VPN
4 135 (2.03%) WAN
5 131 (1.97%) Network Security
6 108 (1.62%) TCP/IP
7 95 (1.43%) LAN
8 92 (1.38%) BGP
8 92 (1.38%) Wireless
9 90 (1.35%) DHCP
10 71 (1.07%) SSL
11 67 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
12 65 (0.98%) SAN
13 57 (0.86%) MPLS
14 55 (0.83%) IPsec
15 53 (0.80%) VLAN
16 51 (0.77%) Cisco ISE
17 45 (0.68%) OSPF
18 44 (0.66%) HTTP
19 41 (0.62%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 196 (2.94%) PostgreSQL
2 161 (2.42%) Power BI
3 86 (1.29%) MongoDB
4 79 (1.19%) Amazon RDS
4 79 (1.19%) SQL Server
5 75 (1.13%) Oracle Database
6 73 (1.10%) NoSQL
7 71 (1.07%) Data Warehouse
8 70 (1.05%) Metadata
8 70 (1.05%) Relational Database
9 47 (0.71%) Big Data
10 46 (0.69%) Azure SQL Database
11 39 (0.59%) Elasticsearch
12 38 (0.57%) Pentaho
13 36 (0.54%) SAS Enterprise Guide
14 34 (0.51%) Redis
15 32 (0.48%) Amazon Athena
15 32 (0.48%) Amazon Redshift
15 32 (0.48%) MySQL
16 30 (0.45%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 476 (7.15%) JIRA
2 378 (5.68%) Git
3 354 (5.32%) Jenkins
4 259 (3.89%) GitLab
5 71 (1.07%) Selenium
6 53 (0.80%) Cypress.io
6 53 (0.80%) Postman
7 51 (0.77%) JUnit
8 48 (0.72%) SonarQube
9 46 (0.69%) Bitbucket
10 45 (0.68%) Oracle APEX
11 34 (0.51%) Artifactory
12 30 (0.45%) Cucumber
12 30 (0.45%) Maven
13 28 (0.42%) Mockito
14 25 (0.38%) MSI
15 23 (0.35%) REST Assured
16 22 (0.33%) Rational DOORS
17 20 (0.30%) Metasploit
17 20 (0.30%) Vagrant
General
1 1,844 (27.70%) Public Sector
2 1,718 (25.80%) Social Skills
3 612 (9.19%) Analytical Skills
4 487 (7.31%) Finance
5 278 (4.18%) Military
6 211 (3.17%) Telecoms
7 198 (2.97%) Manufacturing
8 160 (2.40%) Documentation Skills
9 142 (2.13%) Electronics
10 136 (2.04%) Marketing
11 123 (1.85%) Aerospace
12 102 (1.53%) Legal
12 102 (1.53%) Organisational Skills
13 85 (1.28%) Banking
14 81 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
15 79 (1.19%) Presentation Skills
16 67 (1.01%) Law
17 40 (0.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 38 (0.57%) Aviation
19 34 (0.51%) Police
Job Titles
1 896 (13.46%) Architect
2 652 (9.79%) Developer
3 531 (7.98%) Senior
4 525 (7.89%) Consultant
5 438 (6.58%) Analyst
6 405 (6.08%) Lead
7 289 (4.34%) DevOps Engineer
8 242 (3.63%) Support Engineer
9 199 (2.99%) Network Engineer
10 166 (2.49%) Solutions Architect
11 165 (2.48%) Data Engineer
12 144 (2.16%) SAP Consultant
13 138 (2.07%) AWS Engineer
14 130 (1.95%) Technical Architect
15 129 (1.94%) Platform Engineer
16 128 (1.92%) IT Engineer
17 127 (1.91%) Software Engineer
18 117 (1.76%) Administrator
19 114 (1.71%) Tester
20 112 (1.68%) IT Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 256 (3.84%) REST
2 167 (2.51%) Node.js
3 163 (2.45%) React
4 160 (2.40%) Kafka
5 135 (2.03%) JSON
6 118 (1.77%) Spring
7 117 (1.76%) SOAP
8 108 (1.62%) HTML
9 99 (1.49%) XML
10 96 (1.44%) RESTful
11 95 (1.43%) AngularJS
12 91 (1.37%) Spring Boot
13 89 (1.34%) CSS
14 88 (1.32%) .NET
15 87 (1.31%) Web Services
16 75 (1.13%) OAuth
17 68 (1.02%) Oracle Fusion
18 67 (1.01%) LDAP
19 57 (0.86%) Elastic Stack
19 57 (0.86%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 205 (3.08%) Data Centre
2 183 (2.75%) Onboarding
3 179 (2.69%) PKI
4 177 (2.66%) Cloud Native
5 155 (2.33%) Product Ownership
6 141 (2.12%) Management Information System
7 100 (1.50%) Self-Motivation
8 82 (1.23%) Legacy Systems
9 77 (1.16%) Driving Licence
10 70 (1.05%) Security Posture
11 69 (1.04%) Replication
12 67 (1.01%) Cyber Threat
13 61 (0.92%) Security Operations Centre
14 59 (0.89%) CMDB
14 59 (0.89%) Hybrid Cloud
15 57 (0.86%) Enterprise Software
16 50 (0.75%) Analytical Mindset
17 49 (0.74%) Private Cloud
18 43 (0.65%) Distributed Systems
19 40 (0.60%) Cyber Defence
Operating Systems
1 769 (11.55%) Windows
2 519 (7.80%) Linux
3 178 (2.67%) Windows Server
4 175 (2.63%) Windows 10
5 96 (1.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 94 (1.41%) Android
7 91 (1.37%) Unix
8 85 (1.28%) Mac OS
9 45 (0.68%) VMS
10 40 (0.60%) Ubuntu
11 27 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
12 26 (0.39%) Apple iOS
13 24 (0.36%) Windows 7
14 23 (0.35%) Amazon Linux
15 21 (0.32%) CentOS
16 20 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
17 19 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
18 16 (0.24%) Windows Server 2003
19 15 (0.23%) Mac OS X
20 9 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,334 (20.04%) Agile
2 1,006 (15.11%) DevOps
3 921 (13.83%) CI/CD
4 826 (12.41%) Problem-Solving
5 637 (9.57%) Migration
6 529 (7.95%) Stakeholder Management
7 468 (7.03%) ITIL
8 463 (6.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 444 (6.67%) Cybersecurity
10 425 (6.38%) Continuous Improvement
11 414 (6.22%) Infrastructure as Code
12 391 (5.87%) Service Management
13 373 (5.60%) Business Intelligence
14 367 (5.51%) Containerisation
15 362 (5.44%) Test Automation
16 345 (5.18%) Analytics
17 327 (4.91%) Workflow
18 320 (4.81%) Scrum
19 312 (4.69%) Roadmaps
20 303 (4.55%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 856 (12.86%) Python
2 515 (7.74%) SQL
3 422 (6.34%) PowerShell
4 410 (6.16%) Java
5 344 (5.17%) JavaScript
6 217 (3.26%) Bash
7 159 (2.39%) TypeScript
8 118 (1.77%) C#
9 93 (1.40%) C++
10 84 (1.26%) Go
11 68 (1.02%) PL/SQL
12 66 (0.99%) C
13 64 (0.96%) Shell Script
14 40 (0.60%) Perl
15 38 (0.57%) Ruby
16 37 (0.56%) ABAP
17 29 (0.44%) Groovy
18 28 (0.42%) Bicep
18 28 (0.42%) Scala
19 26 (0.39%) Ada
Qualifications
1 5,103 (76.64%) SC Cleared
2 1,135 (17.05%) DV Cleared
3 344 (5.17%) Degree
4 252 (3.78%) BPSS Clearance
5 126 (1.89%) CISSP
6 117 (1.76%) Microsoft Certification
7 106 (1.59%) Azure Certification
7 106 (1.59%) Cisco Certification
8 99 (1.49%) AWS Certification
9 81 (1.22%) CCNP
10 69 (1.04%) CISM
11 54 (0.81%) ITIL Certification
12 49 (0.74%) Computer Science Degree
13 47 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
14 45 (0.68%) CCNA
15 40 (0.60%) CEH
16 37 (0.56%) CHECK Team Member
16 37 (0.56%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 32 (0.48%) CTC Cleared
18 29 (0.44%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 201 (3.02%) QA
2 199 (2.99%) NIST
3 194 (2.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 159 (2.39%) NCSC
5 134 (2.01%) GDPR
6 125 (1.88%) SLA
7 124 (1.86%) Data Quality
8 105 (1.58%) Accessibility
9 65 (0.98%) PMO
10 49 (0.74%) JSP 440
11 38 (0.57%) NIST 800
11 38 (0.57%) WCAG
12 35 (0.53%) GRC
13 32 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 27 (0.41%) COBIT
14 27 (0.41%) Def Stans
15 24 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
16 21 (0.32%) PCI DSS
16 21 (0.32%) RMADS
17 17 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 533 (8.01%) Docker
2 401 (6.02%) Active Directory
3 196 (2.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 66 (0.99%) VMware NSX
5 60 (0.90%) vSphere
6 54 (0.81%) VMware ESXi
7 48 (0.72%) Virtual Machines
8 37 (0.56%) Firmware
9 31 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
10 28 (0.42%) Hyper-V
11 19 (0.29%) DFS Replication
12 16 (0.24%) Postfix
13 15 (0.23%) 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 (0.14%) Terminal Services
18 7 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 631 (9.48%) Kubernetes
2 584 (8.77%) Terraform
3 269 (4.04%) Ansible
4 160 (2.40%) Grafana
5 131 (1.97%) Prometheus
6 102 (1.53%) SCCM
7 89 (1.34%) Single Sign-On
8 72 (1.08%) Microsoft Intune
9 66 (0.99%) vCenter Server
10 58 (0.87%) Argo
11 52 (0.78%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 46 (0.69%) Packer
13 33 (0.50%) Jamf Pro
13 33 (0.50%) OPNET
14 32 (0.48%) Kibana
15 24 (0.36%) Nessus
15 24 (0.36%) SCOM
16 23 (0.35%) Podman
16 23 (0.35%) Progress Chef
16 23 (0.35%) Puppet
Vendors
1 872 (13.10%) Microsoft
2 448 (6.73%) SAP
3 402 (6.04%) Cisco
4 360 (5.41%) Oracle
5 335 (5.03%) VMware
6 334 (5.02%) ServiceNow
7 175 (2.63%) Splunk
8 149 (2.24%) Juniper
9 139 (2.09%) Red Hat
10 104 (1.56%) Google
11 101 (1.52%) Atlassian
12 97 (1.46%) Palo Alto
13 96 (1.44%) Dell
13 96 (1.44%) HP
14 87 (1.31%) Salesforce
15 81 (1.22%) Remedy
16 72 (1.08%) Apple
17 71 (1.07%) Databricks
18 69 (1.04%) IBM
18 69 (1.04%) SolarWinds