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

6 months to
17 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 8,644 4,544 7,174
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.47% 18.49% 18.93%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.00% 59.73% 60.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,868 2,968 4,613
10th Percentile £358 £325 £350
25th Percentile £443 £450 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £548 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.20% -0.36% -2.31%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 763 255 488
10th Percentile £17.76 £21.25 £14.50
25th Percentile £20.47 £26.38 £21.46
Median hourly rate £27.50 £60.00 £54.03
Median % change year-on-year -54.17% +11.05% -9.95%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.63 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.20 £80.06 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £57.13 £54.56
% change year-on-year -38.73% +4.70% -9.07%

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 12,528 7,607 11,822
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.01% 30.96% 31.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,304 4,821 7,312
10th Percentile £330 £285 £300
25th Percentile £421 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £730 £738
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 978 416 925
10th Percentile £16.30 £19.30 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.73 £25.26 £18.32
Median hourly rate £28.50 £50.75 £38.95
Median % change year-on-year -43.84% +30.30% -22.10%
75th Percentile £67.84 £68.04 £63.00
90th Percentile £84.00 £82.50 £76.42
UK median hourly rate £29.61 £44.00 £38.45
% change year-on-year -32.70% +14.43% -25.33%

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 17 March 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 17 March 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 17 March 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 3,031 £525 - 497
South East +1 1,987 £525 -4.55% 546
South West 0 1,291 £538 -2.45% 384
Midlands +4 859 £490 -10.91% 154
North of England -1 821 £488 -2.47% 275
West Midlands +4 694 £492 -10.71% 114
North West -1 521 £500 - 144
East of England +2 358 £495 -1.00% 155
Yorkshire -7 183 £499 -5.00% 67
East Midlands +1 162 £434 -16.27% 40
North East 0 147 £450 -4.76% 65
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
1 343 (3.97%) Confluence
2 209 (2.42%) SharePoint
3 136 (1.57%) Microsoft Exchange
4 127 (1.47%) SAS
5 74 (0.86%) Apache
6 73 (0.84%) Apache Spark
7 48 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
8 37 (0.43%) nginx
9 34 (0.39%) WebLogic
10 29 (0.34%) Skype for Business
11 21 (0.24%) Jupyter
12 17 (0.20%) IIS
13 16 (0.19%) CMS
13 16 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
14 14 (0.16%) Tuxedo
15 10 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
16 7 (0.081%) ArcGIS
16 7 (0.081%) OpenStack
16 7 (0.081%) Tomcat
17 6 (0.069%) JBoss
Applications
1 246 (2.85%) Microsoft Office
2 199 (2.30%) Microsoft Excel
3 119 (1.38%) Microsoft Project
4 70 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 46 (0.53%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.081%) Simulink
8 5 (0.058%) Siemens NX
8 5 (0.058%) Windchill
9 4 (0.046%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.046%) Chatbot
9 4 (0.046%) Sketch
10 3 (0.035%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.023%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.023%) CATIA
11 2 (0.023%) Lectora
11 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.023%) PTC Creo
12 1 (0.012%) Autodesk Inventor
Business Applications
1 91 (1.05%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.47%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 31 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 27 (0.31%) Teamcenter
5 26 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
6 25 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
7 16 (0.19%) Maximo
8 15 (0.17%) Oracle Payables
9 14 (0.16%) SAP MM
10 13 (0.15%) SAP PP
11 12 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
12 10 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
12 10 (0.12%) Temenos T24
13 9 (0.10%) Primavera
14 8 (0.093%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 8 (0.093%) Oracle Receivables
14 8 (0.093%) SAP ERP
14 8 (0.093%) Workday HCM
15 7 (0.081%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
15 7 (0.081%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 1,434 (16.59%) Azure
2 1,407 (16.28%) AWS
3 394 (4.56%) GitHub
4 363 (4.20%) GCP
5 337 (3.90%) Azure DevOps
6 334 (3.86%) Power Platform
7 294 (3.40%) Microsoft 365
8 246 (2.85%) Serverless
9 235 (2.72%) Entra ID
10 201 (2.33%) GitHub Actions
11 184 (2.13%) Amazon S3
12 169 (1.96%) OpenShift
13 160 (1.85%) AWS Lambda
14 124 (1.43%) Amazon EC2
15 113 (1.31%) AWS CloudFormation
16 110 (1.27%) PaaS
17 108 (1.25%) IaaS
18 102 (1.18%) Azure Data Factory
19 99 (1.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 98 (1.13%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 408 (4.72%) Firewall
2 253 (2.93%) DNS
3 208 (2.41%) Network Security
4 194 (2.24%) WAN
5 166 (1.92%) VPN
6 164 (1.90%) LAN
7 137 (1.58%) BGP
8 127 (1.47%) DHCP
9 124 (1.43%) TCP/IP
10 99 (1.15%) OSPF
11 92 (1.06%) Wireless
12 83 (0.96%) VLAN
13 75 (0.87%) Wi-Fi
14 64 (0.74%) MPLS
15 51 (0.59%) IPsec
15 51 (0.59%) SAN
16 49 (0.57%) Cisco ISE
17 40 (0.46%) SSL
18 38 (0.44%) Junos
19 37 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 247 (2.86%) Power BI
2 227 (2.63%) PostgreSQL
3 150 (1.74%) Data Warehouse
4 148 (1.71%) SQL Server
5 113 (1.31%) Metadata
6 98 (1.13%) Oracle Database
7 96 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
8 92 (1.06%) NoSQL
9 85 (0.98%) MongoDB
9 85 (0.98%) Relational Database
10 77 (0.89%) Azure SQL Database
11 68 (0.79%) Elasticsearch
12 64 (0.74%) Data Lake
13 61 (0.71%) MySQL
13 61 (0.71%) Pentaho
14 52 (0.60%) Amazon Redshift
15 51 (0.59%) Tableau
16 49 (0.57%) Big Data
17 40 (0.46%) Delta Lake
18 36 (0.42%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 545 (6.30%) JIRA
2 435 (5.03%) Git
3 359 (4.15%) Jenkins
4 310 (3.59%) GitLab
5 102 (1.18%) Selenium
6 81 (0.94%) JUnit
7 70 (0.81%) Postman
8 55 (0.64%) Rational DOORS
9 52 (0.60%) Bitbucket
10 49 (0.57%) Cypress.io
11 46 (0.53%) SonarQube
12 45 (0.52%) Maven
13 43 (0.50%) Artifactory
13 43 (0.50%) Cucumber
14 42 (0.49%) Oracle APEX
15 36 (0.42%) Mockito
16 34 (0.39%) JMeter
17 30 (0.35%) Visual Studio
18 28 (0.32%) REST Assured
19 23 (0.27%) Metasploit
General
1 2,175 (25.16%) Public Sector
2 2,061 (23.84%) Social Skills
3 750 (8.68%) Analytical Skills
4 641 (7.42%) Finance
5 319 (3.69%) Military
6 252 (2.92%) Documentation Skills
7 209 (2.42%) Aerospace
8 168 (1.94%) Manufacturing
9 165 (1.91%) Telecoms
10 137 (1.58%) Legal
11 112 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
12 108 (1.25%) Marketing
13 107 (1.24%) Banking
14 105 (1.21%) Presentation Skills
15 104 (1.20%) Electronics
16 102 (1.18%) Organisational Skills
17 72 (0.83%) Law
18 49 (0.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 48 (0.56%) Police
20 34 (0.39%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,243 (14.38%) Architect
2 832 (9.63%) Developer
3 748 (8.65%) Senior
4 668 (7.73%) Analyst
5 525 (6.07%) Lead
6 466 (5.39%) Consultant
7 348 (4.03%) DevOps Engineer
8 341 (3.94%) Data Engineer
9 255 (2.95%) Network Engineer
10 237 (2.74%) Business Analyst
11 232 (2.68%) Software Engineer
12 231 (2.67%) Technical Architect
13 221 (2.56%) Support Engineer
14 202 (2.34%) Solutions Architect
15 166 (1.92%) Project Manager
16 158 (1.83%) Azure Engineer
16 158 (1.83%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 155 (1.79%) Delivery Manager
18 153 (1.77%) Security Architect
18 153 (1.77%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 334 (3.86%) REST
2 196 (2.27%) Spring
3 179 (2.07%) Node.js
4 171 (1.98%) Kafka
5 166 (1.92%) React
6 145 (1.68%) SOAP
7 144 (1.67%) Spring Boot
8 141 (1.63%) JSON
9 140 (1.62%) LDAP
10 135 (1.56%) .NET
11 112 (1.30%) RESTful
12 110 (1.27%) AngularJS
13 108 (1.25%) HTML
14 98 (1.13%) Web Services
15 96 (1.11%) OAuth
16 95 (1.10%) PySpark
17 91 (1.05%) Oracle Fusion
18 90 (1.04%) CSS
19 86 (0.99%) XML
20 77 (0.89%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 295 (3.41%) Product Ownership
2 281 (3.25%) Data Centre
3 253 (2.93%) Cloud Native
4 220 (2.55%) Onboarding
5 198 (2.29%) PKI
6 150 (1.74%) Management Information System
7 127 (1.47%) Security Posture
8 120 (1.39%) Legacy Systems
9 117 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
10 105 (1.21%) Enterprise Software
11 98 (1.13%) Replication
12 73 (0.84%) Hybrid Cloud
13 71 (0.82%) Distributed Systems
14 70 (0.81%) Public Cloud
15 66 (0.76%) Data Structures
16 64 (0.74%) Cyber Threat
16 64 (0.74%) Security Operations Centre
17 58 (0.67%) Clustering
18 57 (0.66%) Driving Licence
19 49 (0.57%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 810 (9.37%) Windows
2 626 (7.24%) Linux
3 222 (2.57%) Windows Server
4 135 (1.56%) Windows 10
5 123 (1.42%) Android
6 109 (1.26%) Unix
7 108 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 69 (0.80%) Mac OS
9 46 (0.53%) Ubuntu
10 45 (0.52%) Apple iOS
11 27 (0.31%) VMS
12 25 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
13 22 (0.25%) CentOS
14 20 (0.23%) Windows 7
15 19 (0.22%) Solaris
16 17 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
17 13 (0.15%) AIX
18 11 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
19 10 (0.12%) Windows Server 2003
20 8 (0.093%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,730 (20.01%) Agile
2 1,327 (15.35%) DevOps
3 1,145 (13.25%) CI/CD
4 1,066 (12.33%) Problem-Solving
5 803 (9.29%) Stakeholder Management
6 757 (8.76%) Migration
7 720 (8.33%) Continuous Improvement
8 640 (7.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 556 (6.43%) Cybersecurity
10 555 (6.42%) ITIL
11 511 (5.91%) Infrastructure as Code
12 487 (5.63%) Analytics
13 483 (5.59%) Test Automation
14 478 (5.53%) Roadmaps
15 452 (5.23%) Containerisation
16 432 (5.00%) Software Engineering
17 424 (4.91%) Scrum
18 417 (4.82%) Business Intelligence
19 408 (4.72%) Data Modelling
20 404 (4.67%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 1,003 (11.60%) Python
2 767 (8.87%) SQL
3 564 (6.52%) PowerShell
4 481 (5.56%) Java
5 352 (4.07%) JavaScript
6 204 (2.36%) Bash
7 180 (2.08%) C#
8 158 (1.83%) TypeScript
9 103 (1.19%) C++
10 93 (1.08%) Shell Script
11 92 (1.06%) PL/SQL
12 69 (0.80%) Go
13 64 (0.74%) C
14 57 (0.66%) Ruby
15 50 (0.58%) Ada
15 50 (0.58%) Scala
16 40 (0.46%) Bicep
16 40 (0.46%) Kusto Query Language
17 33 (0.38%) Apex Code
18 32 (0.37%) R
Qualifications
1 6,514 (75.36%) SC Cleared
2 1,553 (17.97%) DV Cleared
3 435 (5.03%) Degree
4 248 (2.87%) BPSS Clearance
5 164 (1.90%) CISSP
6 162 (1.87%) Cisco Certification
7 119 (1.38%) Azure Certification
8 116 (1.34%) AWS Certification
9 113 (1.31%) CCNP
10 107 (1.24%) Microsoft Certification
11 103 (1.19%) CISM
12 70 (0.81%) CCNA
13 69 (0.80%) Computer Science Degree
14 62 (0.72%) TOGAF Certification
15 61 (0.71%) ITIL Certification
16 54 (0.62%) PMP
17 47 (0.54%) ISTQB
17 47 (0.54%) PMI Certification
18 45 (0.52%) CEH
18 45 (0.52%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 298 (3.45%) QA
2 281 (3.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 270 (3.12%) NIST
4 242 (2.80%) Data Quality
5 201 (2.33%) NCSC
6 174 (2.01%) GDPR
7 144 (1.67%) Accessibility
8 113 (1.31%) SLA
9 112 (1.30%) PMO
10 62 (0.72%) JSP 440
11 57 (0.66%) GRC
12 42 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
12 42 (0.49%) WCAG
13 37 (0.43%) NIST 800
14 33 (0.38%) COBIT
15 31 (0.36%) Def Stans
15 31 (0.36%) PCI DSS
16 26 (0.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 23 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 21 (0.24%) RMADS
System Software
1 583 (6.74%) Docker
2 455 (5.26%) Active Directory
3 233 (2.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 81 (0.94%) VMware NSX
5 68 (0.79%) vSphere
6 58 (0.67%) VMware ESXi
7 56 (0.65%) Hyper-V
8 55 (0.64%) Virtual Machines
9 25 (0.29%) Firmware
10 21 (0.24%) BitLocker
10 21 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
11 19 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
12 17 (0.20%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 15 (0.17%) NFS
14 10 (0.12%) Postfix
14 10 (0.12%) vCloud
15 9 (0.10%) Squid
16 7 (0.081%) Microsoft App-V
17 6 (0.069%) Terminal Services
18 4 (0.046%) Snort
Systems Management
1 755 (8.73%) Kubernetes
2 675 (7.81%) Terraform
3 291 (3.37%) Ansible
4 217 (2.51%) Grafana
5 174 (2.01%) Prometheus
6 106 (1.23%) Single Sign-On
7 90 (1.04%) SCCM
8 86 (0.99%) vCenter Server
9 80 (0.93%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 62 (0.72%) Microsoft Intune
11 61 (0.71%) Argo
12 44 (0.51%) FortiGate
13 38 (0.44%) Podman
14 37 (0.43%) Packer
15 32 (0.37%) Puppet
16 30 (0.35%) OPNET
17 29 (0.34%) Progress Chef
18 25 (0.29%) Kibana
19 24 (0.28%) Nmap
20 21 (0.24%) Consul
Vendors
1 987 (11.42%) Microsoft
2 490 (5.67%) Oracle
3 425 (4.92%) VMware
4 396 (4.58%) Cisco
5 373 (4.32%) ServiceNow
6 330 (3.82%) SAP
7 211 (2.44%) Splunk
8 182 (2.11%) Red Hat
9 144 (1.67%) Databricks
10 136 (1.57%) Google
11 128 (1.48%) Juniper
12 124 (1.43%) Atlassian
13 120 (1.39%) CyberArk
14 118 (1.37%) Palo Alto
15 115 (1.33%) Salesforce
16 105 (1.21%) IBM
17 95 (1.10%) Dell
18 83 (0.96%) HP
18 83 (0.96%) Talend
19 77 (0.89%) Aruba