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

6 months to
5 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,696 4,823 7,058
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.99% 18.19% 18.94%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.66% 58.85% 62.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,812 3,149 4,611
10th Percentile £380 £337 £351
25th Percentile £450 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £719 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £527 £550
% change year-on-year -0.43% -4.14% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 756 372 536
10th Percentile £18.29 £18.50 £14.39
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +151.03% -56.26% -4.17%
75th Percentile £75.40 £62.50 £72.50
90th Percentile £87.08 £77.10 £82.40
UK median hourly rate £61.92 £25.15 £56.49
% change year-on-year +146.20% -55.48% -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 13,919 8,195 11,369
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.57% 30.92% 30.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,378 5,169 7,054
10th Percentile £350 £281 £313
25th Percentile £429 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £645
90th Percentile £719 £716 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £521 £525
% change year-on-year +0.77% -0.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,046 545 987
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.16
25th Percentile £24.30 £20.00 £20.75
Median hourly rate £53.90 £28.18 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +91.27% -33.69% -22.73%
75th Percentile £74.00 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.40 £77.38 £77.19
UK median hourly rate £52.00 £27.53 £40.94
% change year-on-year +88.88% -32.76% -25.73%

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 5 July 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 5 July 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 5 July 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 +7 3,441 £536 +2.00% 725
South East +1 2,344 £550 - 640
South West 0 1,307 £538 -6.52% 494
North of England +1 1,038 £500 - 349
Midlands +3 943 £469 -8.04% 201
West Midlands +2 805 £470 -8.21% 154
North West 0 561 £525 +5.00% 211
East of England +2 347 £550 +10.00% 127
Yorkshire 0 273 £500 +1.63% 80
North East +1 234 £475 -3.06% 59
East Midlands -1 126 £418 -12.11% 46
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
1 337 (3.48%) Confluence
2 221 (2.28%) SharePoint
3 145 (1.50%) SAS
4 122 (1.26%) Microsoft Exchange
5 90 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
6 82 (0.85%) Apache Spark
7 80 (0.83%) Apache
8 39 (0.40%) nginx
9 38 (0.39%) Jupyter
10 31 (0.32%) WebLogic
11 21 (0.22%) Tomcat
12 18 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
13 16 (0.17%) CMS
13 16 (0.17%) IIS
13 16 (0.17%) Oracle Application Server
14 14 (0.14%) Skype for Business
15 12 (0.12%) Tuxedo
16 11 (0.11%) NetWeaver
16 11 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
17 9 (0.093%) Documentum
Applications
1 158 (1.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 127 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 81 (0.84%) Microsoft Project
4 64 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 42 (0.43%) MS Visio
6 18 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.13%) Simulink
8 12 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
9 11 (0.11%) AutoCAD
9 11 (0.11%) Revit
10 10 (0.10%) Chatbot
11 5 (0.052%) Notepad++
12 4 (0.041%) Adobe XD
13 3 (0.031%) Sketch
14 2 (0.021%) CATIA
14 2 (0.021%) CPLEX
14 2 (0.021%) Lectora
14 2 (0.021%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.021%) Siemens NX
14 2 (0.021%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 103 (1.06%) SAP S/4HANA
2 61 (0.63%) Remedy ITSM
3 44 (0.45%) Oracle ERP
4 33 (0.34%) Teamcenter
5 30 (0.31%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 26 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
7 24 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
8 23 (0.24%) SAP PSCD
9 15 (0.15%) Findur
9 15 (0.15%) Primavera
9 15 (0.15%) Temenos T24
10 13 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
11 12 (0.12%) iTrent
11 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
12 11 (0.11%) SAP ERP
13 10 (0.10%) Maximo
14 9 (0.093%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 9 (0.093%) Salesforce CRM
14 9 (0.093%) SAP HR
15 8 (0.083%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 1,675 (17.28%) Azure
2 1,625 (16.76%) AWS
3 384 (3.96%) GitHub
4 378 (3.90%) Power Platform
5 371 (3.83%) Azure DevOps
6 343 (3.54%) GCP
7 254 (2.62%) Microsoft 365
8 246 (2.54%) GitHub Actions
9 245 (2.53%) Entra ID
10 237 (2.44%) Serverless
11 216 (2.23%) Amazon S3
12 165 (1.70%) AWS Lambda
13 149 (1.54%) Amazon EC2
14 143 (1.47%) OCI
14 143 (1.47%) SaaS
15 139 (1.43%) OpenShift
16 129 (1.33%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 128 (1.32%) PaaS
18 110 (1.13%) Amazon EKS
19 109 (1.12%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 405 (4.18%) Firewall
2 313 (3.23%) DNS
3 226 (2.33%) Network Security
4 212 (2.19%) WAN
5 189 (1.95%) LAN
6 168 (1.73%) VPN
7 162 (1.67%) DHCP
8 138 (1.42%) BGP
9 116 (1.20%) OSPF
10 110 (1.13%) Wi-Fi
11 105 (1.08%) VLAN
12 97 (1.00%) TCP/IP
13 80 (0.83%) Wireless
14 61 (0.63%) SD-WAN
15 60 (0.62%) MPLS
16 55 (0.57%) VXLAN
17 54 (0.56%) SAN
18 50 (0.52%) BIG-IP
19 48 (0.50%) IPsec
20 46 (0.47%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 283 (2.92%) Power BI
2 240 (2.48%) PostgreSQL
3 223 (2.30%) SQL Server
4 217 (2.24%) Data Warehouse
5 149 (1.54%) Oracle Database
6 115 (1.19%) Metadata
7 105 (1.08%) Amazon RDS
8 101 (1.04%) Data Lake
9 98 (1.01%) Relational Database
10 83 (0.86%) Pentaho
11 82 (0.85%) MongoDB
12 78 (0.80%) MySQL
13 77 (0.79%) Elasticsearch
14 76 (0.78%) Oracle Reports
15 68 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
16 66 (0.68%) NoSQL
17 61 (0.63%) Amazon Athena
18 58 (0.60%) Tableau
19 43 (0.44%) DynamoDB
20 42 (0.43%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 533 (5.50%) JIRA
2 436 (4.50%) Git
3 410 (4.23%) GitLab
4 375 (3.87%) Jenkins
5 105 (1.08%) Selenium
6 80 (0.83%) JUnit
7 72 (0.74%) SonarQube
8 68 (0.70%) Postman
9 59 (0.61%) Rational DOORS
10 53 (0.55%) JMeter
11 49 (0.51%) Cucumber
12 42 (0.43%) Mockito
13 41 (0.42%) Artifactory
13 41 (0.42%) Maven
14 39 (0.40%) Bitbucket
14 39 (0.40%) REST Assured
15 37 (0.38%) Zephyr
16 36 (0.37%) Visual Studio
17 34 (0.35%) Cypress.io
18 29 (0.30%) WebDriver
General
1 2,051 (21.15%) Public Sector
2 1,963 (20.25%) Social Skills
3 692 (7.14%) Analytical Skills
4 665 (6.86%) Finance
5 327 (3.37%) Military
6 269 (2.77%) Aerospace
7 266 (2.74%) Documentation Skills
8 145 (1.50%) Legal
9 144 (1.49%) Influencing Skills
10 126 (1.30%) Banking
11 117 (1.21%) Telecoms
12 102 (1.05%) Organisational Skills
13 91 (0.94%) Law
14 76 (0.78%) Manufacturing
14 76 (0.78%) Presentation Skills
15 75 (0.77%) Police
16 64 (0.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 40 (0.41%) Marketing
18 37 (0.38%) Aviation
19 36 (0.37%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,418 (14.62%) Architect
2 981 (10.12%) Developer
3 842 (8.68%) Senior
4 796 (8.21%) Lead
5 623 (6.43%) Analyst
6 457 (4.71%) Data Engineer
7 441 (4.55%) Consultant
8 408 (4.21%) DevOps Engineer
9 319 (3.29%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 307 (3.17%) Software Engineer
11 282 (2.91%) Technical Architect
12 244 (2.52%) Network Engineer
13 234 (2.41%) Solutions Architect
14 223 (2.30%) Security Architect
15 202 (2.08%) Business Analyst
16 199 (2.05%) Project Manager
17 195 (2.01%) Java Developer
18 194 (2.00%) Delivery Manager
19 182 (1.88%) Administrator
20 175 (1.80%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 315 (3.25%) REST
2 234 (2.41%) Spring
3 190 (1.96%) Spring Boot
4 166 (1.71%) React
5 163 (1.68%) .NET
6 159 (1.64%) Kafka
7 155 (1.60%) Node.js
8 150 (1.55%) RESTful
9 132 (1.36%) SOAP
10 117 (1.21%) JSON
11 109 (1.12%) AngularJS
12 105 (1.08%) LDAP
13 100 (1.03%) OAuth
14 91 (0.94%) Web Services
15 89 (0.92%) PySpark
16 84 (0.87%) HTML
17 78 (0.80%) XML
18 76 (0.78%) OpenID
19 72 (0.74%) Elastic Stack
20 70 (0.72%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 376 (3.88%) Cloud Native
2 317 (3.27%) Product Ownership
3 303 (3.13%) Onboarding
4 276 (2.85%) Data Centre
5 157 (1.62%) Legacy Systems
6 143 (1.47%) Management Information System
7 139 (1.43%) PKI
8 133 (1.37%) Distributed Systems
9 110 (1.13%) Replication
10 108 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
11 99 (1.02%) CMDB
12 90 (0.93%) Data Structures
12 90 (0.93%) Enterprise Software
13 88 (0.91%) Clustering
14 87 (0.90%) Security Posture
15 86 (0.89%) Hybrid Cloud
16 78 (0.80%) Public Cloud
17 74 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
18 73 (0.75%) Virtual Team
19 70 (0.72%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 798 (8.23%) Windows
2 663 (6.84%) Linux
3 259 (2.67%) Windows Server
4 190 (1.96%) Unix
5 131 (1.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 84 (0.87%) Windows 10
7 78 (0.80%) Android
8 54 (0.56%) Solaris
9 47 (0.48%) Apple iOS
10 42 (0.43%) Mac OS
11 32 (0.33%) Ubuntu
12 30 (0.31%) AIX
13 26 (0.27%) CentOS
13 26 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
14 18 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
15 15 (0.15%) VMS
16 14 (0.14%) Windows 7
17 11 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
17 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
17 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,974 (20.36%) Agile
2 1,489 (15.36%) DevOps
3 1,348 (13.90%) CI/CD
4 1,019 (10.51%) Problem-Solving
5 1,014 (10.46%) Stakeholder Management
6 982 (10.13%) Continuous Improvement
7 810 (8.35%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 760 (7.84%) Migration
9 711 (7.33%) Infrastructure as Code
10 643 (6.63%) Cybersecurity
11 642 (6.62%) ITIL
12 589 (6.07%) Test Automation
13 586 (6.04%) Software Engineering
14 563 (5.81%) Containerisation
15 553 (5.70%) Roadmaps
16 549 (5.66%) Analytics
17 515 (5.31%) Decision-Making
18 494 (5.09%) Data Modelling
19 492 (5.07%) AI
20 462 (4.76%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 1,020 (10.52%) Python
2 913 (9.42%) SQL
3 653 (6.73%) Java
4 450 (4.64%) PowerShell
5 286 (2.95%) JavaScript
6 218 (2.25%) Bash
7 200 (2.06%) C#
8 147 (1.52%) TypeScript
9 132 (1.36%) PL/SQL
10 89 (0.92%) C++
11 84 (0.87%) Shell Script
12 66 (0.68%) Bicep
12 66 (0.68%) C
13 54 (0.56%) Go
14 46 (0.47%) Ada
15 40 (0.41%) Apex Code
16 39 (0.40%) Kotlin
16 39 (0.40%) Scala
17 38 (0.39%) Ruby
18 34 (0.35%) R
Qualifications
1 7,276 (75.04%) SC Cleared
2 1,938 (19.99%) DV Cleared
3 391 (4.03%) Degree
4 305 (3.15%) BPSS Clearance
5 185 (1.91%) Cisco Certification
6 156 (1.61%) CISSP
7 130 (1.34%) Azure Certification
8 110 (1.13%) Microsoft Certification
9 103 (1.06%) AWS Certification
10 97 (1.00%) CCNP
11 93 (0.96%) CISM
12 80 (0.83%) PMP
13 79 (0.81%) CCNA
13 79 (0.81%) PMI Certification
14 66 (0.68%) ISTQB
15 58 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 57 (0.59%) Computer Science Degree
17 48 (0.50%) ITIL Certification
18 38 (0.39%) GIAC
19 36 (0.37%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 374 (3.86%) QA
2 289 (2.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 289 (2.98%) NIST
3 283 (2.92%) Data Quality
4 216 (2.23%) NCSC
5 193 (1.99%) Accessibility
6 173 (1.78%) PMO
7 169 (1.74%) GDPR
8 99 (1.02%) SLA
9 87 (0.90%) GRC
10 62 (0.64%) JSP 440
11 48 (0.50%) WCAG
12 45 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
13 42 (0.43%) NIST 800
14 33 (0.34%) Def Stans
15 26 (0.27%) RMADS
16 23 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
16 23 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 23 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 21 (0.22%) COBIT
System Software
1 626 (6.46%) Docker
2 430 (4.43%) Active Directory
3 310 (3.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 122 (1.26%) VMware ESXi
5 113 (1.17%) VMware NSX
6 83 (0.86%) vSphere
7 80 (0.83%) Hyper-V
8 75 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
9 40 (0.41%) Oracle RAC
10 32 (0.33%) Firmware
11 30 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
12 23 (0.24%) BitLocker
12 23 (0.24%) vCloud
13 20 (0.21%) NFS
14 19 (0.20%) Postfix
15 18 (0.19%) Squid
16 12 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 9 (0.093%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.062%) Corosync
18 6 (0.062%) KVM
Systems Management
1 789 (8.14%) Terraform
2 772 (7.96%) Kubernetes
3 346 (3.57%) Ansible
4 236 (2.43%) Grafana
5 186 (1.92%) Prometheus
6 119 (1.23%) vCenter Server
7 81 (0.84%) SCCM
8 71 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
9 63 (0.65%) Microsoft Intune
10 57 (0.59%) Argo
11 51 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 50 (0.52%) SCOM
13 47 (0.48%) FortiGate
14 46 (0.47%) Puppet
15 44 (0.45%) Oracle RMAN
16 30 (0.31%) Podman
16 30 (0.31%) Progress Chef
17 28 (0.29%) Data Guard
18 26 (0.27%) Nagios
19 24 (0.25%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,062 (10.95%) Microsoft
2 705 (7.27%) Oracle
3 482 (4.97%) VMware
4 445 (4.59%) ServiceNow
5 318 (3.28%) SAP
6 306 (3.16%) Cisco
7 194 (2.00%) Splunk
8 168 (1.73%) Databricks
9 163 (1.68%) Google
10 137 (1.41%) Red Hat
11 128 (1.32%) Talend
12 127 (1.31%) Salesforce
13 112 (1.16%) IBM
14 104 (1.07%) Informatica
15 102 (1.05%) Palo Alto
16 98 (1.01%) Juniper
17 89 (0.92%) SolarWinds
18 86 (0.89%) F5
19 85 (0.88%) Citrix
20 84 (0.87%) Fortinet