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

6 months to
1 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 8,310 4,638 7,107
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.47% 18.17% 18.72%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.42% 59.54% 60.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,670 2,984 4,503
10th Percentile £357 £313 £353
25th Percentile £445 £438 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £541 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.00% -1.59% -3.00%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £703 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 734 253 492
10th Percentile £17.69 £21.25 £18.94
25th Percentile £20.29 £25.50 £33.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% +6.21% -5.85%
75th Percentile £67.25 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £77.44 £83.39
UK median hourly rate £25.58 £56.75 £56.49
% change year-on-year -54.93% +0.45% -5.85%

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 12,145 7,790 11,802
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.30% 30.51% 31.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,076 4,813 7,260
10th Percentile £325 £285 £290
25th Percentile £422 £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 £517 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.52% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 944 395 918
10th Percentile £16.17 £20.19 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.26 £20.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £41.37
Median % change year-on-year -49.70% +20.88% -13.82%
75th Percentile £65.00 £68.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.35 £82.50 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £42.21 £40.94
% change year-on-year -38.94% +3.09% -16.45%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 +5 2,881 £530 +0.95% 499
South East +1 1,809 £525 -4.55% 610
South West 0 1,312 £550 -2.14% 350
Midlands +4 849 £492 -10.55% 169
North of England -2 817 £497 +3.51% 210
West Midlands +3 677 £495 -10.16% 117
North West 0 531 £500 +5.26% 123
East of England +1 347 £498 -0.50% 161
East Midlands +2 170 £425 -16.05% 51
Yorkshire -9 167 £500 -4.76% 46
North East +1 146 £450 -10.00% 42
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
4 131 (1.58%) SAS
5 65 (0.78%) Apache Spark
6 64 (0.77%) Apache
7 42 (0.51%) Apache Airflow
8 38 (0.46%) nginx
9 34 (0.41%) WebLogic
10 31 (0.37%) Skype for Business
11 20 (0.24%) Jupyter
12 15 (0.18%) CMS
12 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
13 14 (0.17%) Tuxedo
14 9 (0.11%) IIS
14 9 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
15 7 (0.084%) OpenStack
15 7 (0.084%) Tomcat
16 6 (0.072%) ArcGIS
17 5 (0.060%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 246 (2.96%) Microsoft Office
2 185 (2.23%) Microsoft Excel
3 118 (1.42%) Microsoft Project
4 68 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 41 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.35%) 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%) Lectora
12 2 (0.024%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.024%) Stateflow
12 2 (0.024%) Trello
Business Applications
1 126 (1.52%) 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 15 (0.18%) 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 1,368 (16.46%) AWS
2 1,364 (16.41%) Azure
3 357 (4.30%) GitHub
4 354 (4.26%) GCP
5 308 (3.71%) Power Platform
6 306 (3.68%) Azure DevOps
7 297 (3.57%) Microsoft 365
8 230 (2.77%) Serverless
9 224 (2.70%) Entra ID
10 184 (2.21%) Amazon S3
11 179 (2.15%) GitHub Actions
12 169 (2.03%) OpenShift
13 149 (1.79%) AWS Lambda
14 124 (1.49%) Amazon EC2
15 110 (1.32%) AWS CloudFormation
16 107 (1.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 100 (1.20%) IaaS
18 99 (1.19%) Amazon EKS
19 98 (1.18%) PaaS
20 97 (1.17%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 403 (4.85%) Firewall
2 267 (3.21%) DNS
3 200 (2.41%) Network Security
4 177 (2.13%) WAN
5 161 (1.94%) VPN
6 143 (1.72%) LAN
7 131 (1.58%) TCP/IP
8 129 (1.55%) BGP
9 125 (1.50%) DHCP
10 92 (1.11%) Wireless
11 89 (1.07%) OSPF
12 84 (1.01%) VLAN
13 73 (0.88%) Wi-Fi
14 64 (0.77%) MPLS
15 51 (0.61%) IPsec
16 49 (0.59%) SAN
17 46 (0.55%) Cisco ISE
17 46 (0.55%) SSL
18 40 (0.48%) Skype
19 38 (0.46%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 228 (2.74%) PostgreSQL
2 220 (2.65%) Power BI
3 145 (1.74%) Data Warehouse
4 124 (1.49%) SQL Server
5 105 (1.26%) Metadata
6 93 (1.12%) Oracle Database
7 89 (1.07%) Amazon RDS
8 83 (1.00%) NoSQL
9 82 (0.99%) MongoDB
10 78 (0.94%) Relational Database
11 68 (0.82%) Elasticsearch
12 66 (0.79%) Azure SQL Database
13 58 (0.70%) Pentaho
14 51 (0.61%) Data Lake
14 51 (0.61%) MySQL
15 44 (0.53%) Big Data
16 43 (0.52%) Amazon Redshift
16 43 (0.52%) Tableau
17 36 (0.43%) DynamoDB
17 36 (0.43%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 528 (6.35%) JIRA
2 428 (5.15%) Git
3 368 (4.43%) Jenkins
4 313 (3.77%) GitLab
5 99 (1.19%) Selenium
6 78 (0.94%) JUnit
6 78 (0.94%) Postman
7 58 (0.70%) Cypress.io
8 51 (0.61%) SonarQube
9 49 (0.59%) Bitbucket
10 45 (0.54%) Maven
11 44 (0.53%) Oracle APEX
12 43 (0.52%) Cucumber
13 42 (0.51%) Artifactory
14 34 (0.41%) Rational DOORS
14 34 (0.41%) REST Assured
15 32 (0.39%) Mockito
16 27 (0.32%) Visual Studio
17 26 (0.31%) JMeter
18 24 (0.29%) Metasploit
General
1 2,102 (25.29%) Public Sector
2 2,033 (24.46%) Social Skills
3 707 (8.51%) Analytical Skills
4 598 (7.20%) Finance
5 316 (3.80%) Military
6 237 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
7 183 (2.20%) Aerospace
8 170 (2.05%) Manufacturing
9 169 (2.03%) Telecoms
10 131 (1.58%) Legal
11 120 (1.44%) Organisational Skills
12 113 (1.36%) Marketing
13 107 (1.29%) Electronics
13 107 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
14 105 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
15 90 (1.08%) Banking
16 69 (0.83%) Law
17 45 (0.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 43 (0.52%) Police
19 35 (0.42%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,164 (14.01%) Architect
2 796 (9.58%) Developer
3 700 (8.42%) Senior
4 635 (7.64%) Analyst
5 488 (5.87%) Consultant
6 473 (5.69%) Lead
7 363 (4.37%) DevOps Engineer
8 302 (3.63%) Data Engineer
9 242 (2.91%) Network Engineer
10 225 (2.71%) Business Analyst
11 221 (2.66%) Support Engineer
12 217 (2.61%) Software Engineer
13 204 (2.45%) Technical Architect
14 188 (2.26%) Solutions Architect
15 167 (2.01%) Tester
16 149 (1.79%) Project Manager
17 147 (1.77%) Administrator
17 147 (1.77%) Azure Engineer
18 141 (1.70%) AWS Engineer
19 140 (1.68%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 324 (3.90%) REST
2 195 (2.35%) Node.js
3 189 (2.27%) Spring
4 175 (2.11%) React
5 161 (1.94%) Kafka
6 143 (1.72%) Spring Boot
7 141 (1.70%) LDAP
7 141 (1.70%) SOAP
8 140 (1.68%) JSON
9 120 (1.44%) .NET
10 108 (1.30%) AngularJS
10 108 (1.30%) HTML
11 102 (1.23%) RESTful
12 96 (1.16%) Web Services
13 94 (1.13%) OAuth
14 93 (1.12%) Oracle Fusion
15 88 (1.06%) CSS
16 87 (1.05%) XML
17 86 (1.03%) PySpark
18 79 (0.95%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 269 (3.24%) Data Centre
2 253 (3.04%) Product Ownership
3 235 (2.83%) Cloud Native
4 219 (2.64%) Onboarding
5 196 (2.36%) PKI
6 149 (1.79%) Management Information System
7 129 (1.55%) Security Posture
8 109 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
9 106 (1.28%) Legacy Systems
10 105 (1.26%) Enterprise Software
11 94 (1.13%) Replication
12 70 (0.84%) Hybrid Cloud
13 69 (0.83%) Public Cloud
14 65 (0.78%) Driving Licence
15 63 (0.76%) Cyber Threat
15 63 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
16 62 (0.75%) Distributed Systems
17 50 (0.60%) Clustering
18 44 (0.53%) Data Protection Act
18 44 (0.53%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 808 (9.72%) Windows
2 616 (7.41%) Linux
3 209 (2.52%) Windows Server
4 151 (1.82%) Windows 10
5 122 (1.47%) Android
6 108 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 106 (1.28%) Unix
8 65 (0.78%) Mac OS
9 47 (0.57%) Apple iOS
10 43 (0.52%) Ubuntu
11 34 (0.41%) 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%) Windows Server 2012
17 8 (0.096%) Mac OS X
17 8 (0.096%) Windows Server 2003
17 8 (0.096%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,630 (19.61%) Agile
2 1,280 (15.40%) DevOps
3 1,120 (13.48%) CI/CD
4 1,052 (12.66%) Problem-Solving
5 766 (9.22%) Stakeholder Management
6 733 (8.82%) Migration
7 662 (7.97%) Continuous Improvement
8 575 (6.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 540 (6.50%) Cybersecurity
10 514 (6.19%) ITIL
11 501 (6.03%) Infrastructure as Code
12 474 (5.70%) Test Automation
13 457 (5.50%) Roadmaps
14 447 (5.38%) Analytics
15 433 (5.21%) Containerisation
16 408 (4.91%) Scrum
17 405 (4.87%) Software Engineering
18 398 (4.79%) Business Intelligence
19 397 (4.78%) Service Management
20 371 (4.46%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 984 (11.84%) Python
2 706 (8.50%) SQL
3 540 (6.50%) PowerShell
4 469 (5.64%) Java
5 366 (4.40%) JavaScript
6 213 (2.56%) Bash
7 174 (2.09%) TypeScript
8 165 (1.99%) C#
9 97 (1.17%) C++
10 93 (1.12%) PL/SQL
11 90 (1.08%) Shell Script
12 78 (0.94%) Go
13 60 (0.72%) C
14 51 (0.61%) Ada
15 49 (0.59%) Ruby
16 48 (0.58%) Scala
17 40 (0.48%) Bicep
18 37 (0.45%) Kusto Query Language
19 30 (0.36%) ABAP
20 29 (0.35%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 6,321 (76.06%) SC Cleared
2 1,442 (17.35%) DV Cleared
3 407 (4.90%) Degree
4 250 (3.01%) BPSS Clearance
5 160 (1.93%) Cisco Certification
6 156 (1.88%) CISSP
7 119 (1.43%) Azure Certification
7 119 (1.43%) CCNP
8 113 (1.36%) AWS Certification
9 111 (1.34%) Microsoft Certification
10 95 (1.14%) CISM
11 72 (0.87%) Computer Science Degree
12 70 (0.84%) CCNA
13 61 (0.73%) 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
1 294 (3.54%) QA
2 265 (3.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 250 (3.01%) NIST
4 215 (2.59%) Data Quality
5 188 (2.26%) NCSC
6 167 (2.01%) GDPR
7 150 (1.81%) Accessibility
8 115 (1.38%) SLA
9 100 (1.20%) PMO
10 58 (0.70%) GRC
11 52 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 43 (0.52%) WCAG
13 41 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
14 39 (0.47%) Def Stans
15 32 (0.39%) NIST 800
15 32 (0.39%) PCI DSS
16 30 (0.36%) COBIT
17 23 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 23 (0.28%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 21 (0.25%) RMADS
System Software
1 580 (6.98%) Docker
2 465 (5.60%) Active Directory
3 226 (2.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 77 (0.93%) VMware NSX
5 63 (0.76%) vSphere
6 57 (0.69%) VMware ESXi
7 56 (0.67%) Virtual Machines
8 53 (0.64%) Hyper-V
9 22 (0.26%) Firmware
9 22 (0.26%) Virtual Desktop
10 19 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
11 18 (0.22%) BitLocker
12 16 (0.19%) NFS
12 16 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 11 (0.13%) Postfix
14 10 (0.12%) Squid
15 8 (0.096%) vCloud
16 6 (0.072%) Virtual Servers
17 5 (0.060%) Microsoft App-V
17 5 (0.060%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 746 (8.98%) Kubernetes
2 675 (8.12%) Terraform
3 287 (3.45%) Ansible
4 208 (2.50%) Grafana
5 167 (2.01%) Prometheus
6 105 (1.26%) Single Sign-On
7 95 (1.14%) SCCM
8 89 (1.07%) vCenter Server
9 81 (0.97%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 65 (0.78%) Argo
10 65 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
11 40 (0.48%) FortiGate
12 38 (0.46%) Podman
13 36 (0.43%) Packer
14 30 (0.36%) OPNET
14 30 (0.36%) Puppet
15 29 (0.35%) Kibana
16 27 (0.32%) Progress Chef
17 25 (0.30%) Nmap
18 23 (0.28%) vRealize
Vendors
1 980 (11.79%) Microsoft
2 484 (5.82%) Oracle
3 414 (4.98%) VMware
4 398 (4.79%) Cisco
5 373 (4.49%) SAP
6 364 (4.38%) ServiceNow
7 204 (2.45%) Splunk
8 174 (2.09%) Red Hat
9 129 (1.55%) Palo Alto
10 128 (1.54%) Juniper
11 126 (1.52%) Databricks
12 125 (1.50%) Google
13 122 (1.47%) CyberArk
14 115 (1.38%) Atlassian
15 107 (1.29%) Salesforce
16 90 (1.08%) Dell
17 77 (0.93%) Talend
18 75 (0.90%) Aruba
18 75 (0.90%) HP
19 74 (0.89%) SolarWinds