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

6 months to
13 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,166 5,181 6,106
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.01% 18.67% 18.54%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.93% 59.35% 62.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,159 3,385 3,969
10th Percentile £397 £350 £358
25th Percentile £460 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.33% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £545 £535 £550
% change year-on-year +1.87% -2.73% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 757 504 368
10th Percentile £21.30 £18.50 £20.19
25th Percentile £35.00 £18.87 £36.81
Median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +158.45% -59.17% +2.67%
75th Percentile £78.75 £40.16 £72.50
90th Percentile £91.13 £72.50 £81.94
UK median hourly rate £64.09 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +154.83% -58.08% -

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 14,748 8,730 9,847
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.93% 31.46% 29.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,908 5,534 6,107
10th Percentile £350 £304 £325
25th Percentile £440 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £525
% change year-on-year - - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,162 676 593
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.13 £17.08
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £27.00
Median hourly rate £52.50 £25.15 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +108.75% -54.27% -
75th Percentile £74.00 £47.80 £69.69
90th Percentile £88.66 £73.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +88.87% -49.70% -9.09%

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 13 September 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 13 September 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 13 September 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 3,591 £550 +3.29% 1,227
South East +1 2,330 £568 +5.58% 759
South West 0 1,410 £550 - 575
North of England +3 1,261 £515 +3.00% 455
Midlands 0 930 £475 -7.77% 268
West Midlands +1 795 £475 -8.39% 167
North West +2 737 £530 - 272
East of England 0 373 £550 - 355
Yorkshire +4 304 £500 +2.15% 92
North East 0 241 £475 -3.80% 99
East Midlands -1 128 £450 -2.70% 100
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
1 335 (3.30%) Confluence
2 257 (2.53%) SharePoint
3 151 (1.49%) SAS
4 116 (1.14%) Microsoft Exchange
5 89 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
6 84 (0.83%) Apache
7 83 (0.82%) Apache Spark
8 35 (0.34%) nginx
9 30 (0.30%) Jupyter
10 24 (0.24%) WebLogic
11 23 (0.23%) Oracle Application Server
12 22 (0.22%) Skype for Business
13 19 (0.19%) Tomcat
14 18 (0.18%) CMS
15 16 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
16 13 (0.13%) IIS
16 13 (0.13%) NetWeaver
17 12 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
18 11 (0.11%) JBoss
19 10 (0.098%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 184 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 140 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
3 95 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
4 92 (0.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 28 (0.28%) MS Visio
6 23 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.17%) AutoCAD
7 17 (0.17%) Revit
8 16 (0.16%) SOLIDWORKS
9 11 (0.11%) Simulink
10 8 (0.079%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.079%) Windchill
11 6 (0.059%) Adobe XD
11 6 (0.059%) Sketch
12 5 (0.049%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 5 (0.049%) Notepad++
13 4 (0.039%) Trello
14 3 (0.030%) OrCAD
15 2 (0.020%) Houdini
15 2 (0.020%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 128 (1.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 77 (0.76%) Remedy ITSM
3 50 (0.49%) Oracle ERP
4 36 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
5 30 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 28 (0.28%) Teamcenter
7 25 (0.25%) SAP PSCD
8 24 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
9 23 (0.23%) Oracle Payroll
10 18 (0.18%) SAP HR
11 16 (0.16%) SAP FI
12 14 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
12 14 (0.14%) Primavera
13 13 (0.13%) Findur
14 12 (0.12%) iTrent
14 12 (0.12%) SAP CO
14 12 (0.12%) SAP GRC
14 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
15 11 (0.11%) NetSuite
15 11 (0.11%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 1,851 (18.21%) Azure
2 1,676 (16.49%) AWS
3 444 (4.37%) Azure DevOps
4 427 (4.20%) Power Platform
5 415 (4.08%) GitHub
6 383 (3.77%) GCP
7 298 (2.93%) Microsoft 365
8 283 (2.78%) GitHub Actions
9 265 (2.61%) Entra ID
10 246 (2.42%) Serverless
11 205 (2.02%) Amazon S3
12 175 (1.72%) AWS Lambda
13 154 (1.51%) OCI
13 154 (1.51%) SaaS
14 144 (1.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 138 (1.36%) OpenShift
16 133 (1.31%) Amazon EKS
17 125 (1.23%) Amazon EC2
18 107 (1.05%) AWS CloudFormation
19 100 (0.98%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 409 (4.02%) Firewall
2 342 (3.36%) DNS
3 214 (2.11%) Network Security
4 187 (1.84%) WAN
5 180 (1.77%) VPN
6 169 (1.66%) DHCP
7 144 (1.42%) LAN
8 123 (1.21%) TCP/IP
9 121 (1.19%) BGP
10 115 (1.13%) Wi-Fi
11 99 (0.97%) VLAN
12 82 (0.81%) OSPF
13 79 (0.78%) Wireless
14 64 (0.63%) SSL
15 63 (0.62%) VSAN
16 61 (0.60%) IPsec
17 57 (0.56%) MPLS
18 54 (0.53%) SD-WAN
19 53 (0.52%) SAN
20 41 (0.40%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 304 (2.99%) Power BI
2 248 (2.44%) SQL Server
3 243 (2.39%) PostgreSQL
4 233 (2.29%) Data Warehouse
5 167 (1.64%) Metadata
6 159 (1.56%) Oracle Database
7 127 (1.25%) Relational Database
8 115 (1.13%) Data Lake
9 99 (0.97%) Amazon RDS
10 96 (0.94%) MongoDB
11 93 (0.91%) MySQL
12 90 (0.89%) NoSQL
13 79 (0.78%) Oracle Reports
14 69 (0.68%) Pentaho
15 58 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
16 57 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
17 52 (0.51%) Tableau
18 45 (0.44%) Amazon Aurora
18 45 (0.44%) Amazon Redshift
19 43 (0.42%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 542 (5.33%) JIRA
2 488 (4.80%) Git
3 433 (4.26%) GitLab
4 404 (3.97%) Jenkins
5 118 (1.16%) Selenium
6 78 (0.77%) SonarQube
7 70 (0.69%) Postman
8 67 (0.66%) JUnit
9 59 (0.58%) Maven
10 49 (0.48%) Cucumber
10 49 (0.48%) JMeter
11 41 (0.40%) Gradle
11 41 (0.40%) Mockito
12 36 (0.35%) Artifactory
12 36 (0.35%) Zephyr
13 34 (0.33%) Cypress.io
13 34 (0.33%) REST Assured
14 33 (0.32%) Visual Studio
15 32 (0.31%) Gatling
16 30 (0.30%) MSI
General
1 2,288 (22.51%) Social Skills
2 2,011 (19.78%) Public Sector
3 828 (8.14%) Analytical Skills
4 687 (6.76%) Finance
5 393 (3.87%) Military
6 293 (2.88%) Aerospace
7 245 (2.41%) Documentation Skills
8 194 (1.91%) Influencing Skills
9 164 (1.61%) Organisational Skills
10 147 (1.45%) Telecoms
11 138 (1.36%) Legal
12 136 (1.34%) Banking
13 115 (1.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 114 (1.12%) Law
14 114 (1.12%) Manufacturing
15 95 (0.93%) Police
16 60 (0.59%) Presentation Skills
17 46 (0.45%) Marketing
18 43 (0.42%) Retail
19 41 (0.40%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,578 (15.52%) Architect
2 975 (9.59%) Developer
3 945 (9.30%) Lead
4 940 (9.25%) Senior
5 575 (5.66%) Consultant
6 558 (5.49%) Analyst
7 436 (4.29%) Data Engineer
8 415 (4.08%) DevOps Engineer
9 378 (3.72%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 269 (2.65%) Technical Architect
11 265 (2.61%) Software Engineer
12 260 (2.56%) Solutions Architect
13 249 (2.45%) Data Architect
14 230 (2.26%) Security Architect
15 225 (2.21%) Network Engineer
16 204 (2.01%) Administrator
17 195 (1.92%) Cloud Engineer
18 185 (1.82%) Delivery Manager
19 181 (1.78%) Java Developer
20 178 (1.75%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 885 (8.71%) Terraform
2 383 (3.77%) REST
3 212 (2.09%) Spring
4 203 (2.00%) Kafka
5 192 (1.89%) Spring Boot
6 177 (1.74%) React
7 173 (1.70%) .NET
8 169 (1.66%) RESTful
9 153 (1.51%) SOAP
10 137 (1.35%) Node.js
11 134 (1.32%) JSON
12 110 (1.08%) HTML
13 107 (1.05%) AngularJS
14 106 (1.04%) OAuth
15 99 (0.97%) XML
16 97 (0.95%) Web Services
17 86 (0.85%) CSS
18 83 (0.82%) Oracle Fusion
19 82 (0.81%) Middleware
19 82 (0.81%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 452 (4.45%) Cloud Native
2 381 (3.75%) Onboarding
3 308 (3.03%) Product Ownership
4 263 (2.59%) Data Centre
5 174 (1.71%) Management Information System
6 163 (1.60%) Legacy Systems
7 159 (1.56%) PKI
8 148 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
9 138 (1.36%) CMDB
10 120 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
11 117 (1.15%) Hybrid Cloud
12 110 (1.08%) Replication
13 108 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
14 100 (0.98%) Cyber Threat
15 94 (0.92%) Operational Technology
16 84 (0.83%) Public Cloud
16 84 (0.83%) Security Operations Centre
17 83 (0.82%) Clustering
18 81 (0.80%) Data Structures
19 80 (0.79%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 907 (8.92%) Windows
2 714 (7.02%) Linux
3 347 (3.41%) Windows Server
4 205 (2.02%) Unix
5 146 (1.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 134 (1.32%) Windows 10
7 69 (0.68%) Solaris
8 64 (0.63%) Android
9 46 (0.45%) Mac OS
10 42 (0.41%) CentOS
11 36 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 35 (0.34%) Ubuntu
13 29 (0.29%) AIX
14 26 (0.26%) Apple iOS
15 24 (0.24%) Windows 7
16 22 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
17 20 (0.20%) VMS
18 17 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
19 16 (0.16%) Rocky
20 14 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,127 (20.92%) Agile
2 1,539 (15.14%) DevOps
3 1,492 (14.68%) CI/CD
4 1,376 (13.54%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,241 (12.21%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,100 (10.82%) Problem-Solving
7 1,000 (9.84%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 894 (8.79%) Infrastructure as Code
9 825 (8.12%) Migration
10 768 (7.55%) Cybersecurity
11 724 (7.12%) ITIL
12 655 (6.44%) Test Automation
13 638 (6.28%) Roadmaps
13 638 (6.28%) Technical Leadership
14 633 (6.23%) AI
14 633 (6.23%) Containerisation
15 623 (6.13%) Analytics
16 604 (5.94%) Software Engineering
17 593 (5.83%) Decision-Making
18 549 (5.40%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,166 (11.47%) Python
2 940 (9.25%) SQL
3 659 (6.48%) Java
4 548 (5.39%) PowerShell
5 348 (3.42%) JavaScript
6 306 (3.01%) Bash
7 193 (1.90%) C#
8 175 (1.72%) TypeScript
9 133 (1.31%) PL/SQL
10 110 (1.08%) Bicep
11 64 (0.63%) C++
12 63 (0.62%) Shell Script
13 54 (0.53%) C
14 51 (0.50%) Go
15 48 (0.47%) Groovy
16 40 (0.39%) Scala
17 39 (0.38%) Kotlin
18 31 (0.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 28 (0.28%) Apex Code
20 27 (0.27%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 7,614 (74.90%) SC Cleared
2 2,115 (20.80%) DV Cleared
3 418 (4.11%) Degree
4 400 (3.93%) BPSS Clearance
5 194 (1.91%) CISSP
6 166 (1.63%) Azure Certification
7 156 (1.53%) Microsoft Certification
8 155 (1.52%) Cisco Certification
9 138 (1.36%) AWS Certification
10 117 (1.15%) CISM
11 98 (0.96%) PMI Certification
12 92 (0.90%) PMP
13 82 (0.81%) ISTQB
14 76 (0.75%) CCNP
15 64 (0.63%) Computer Science Degree
16 61 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 53 (0.52%) CCNA
18 41 (0.40%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 41 (0.40%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 41 (0.40%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 461 (4.53%) QA
2 322 (3.17%) Data Quality
3 290 (2.85%) NIST
4 283 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 242 (2.38%) NCSC
6 220 (2.16%) Accessibility
7 218 (2.14%) PMO
8 148 (1.46%) GDPR
9 145 (1.43%) SLA
10 131 (1.29%) GRC
11 69 (0.68%) WCAG
12 57 (0.56%) JSP 440
13 44 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
14 42 (0.41%) NIST 800
15 36 (0.35%) Def Stans
16 26 (0.26%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 22 (0.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 20 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
19 19 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
20 18 (0.18%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 684 (6.73%) Docker
2 558 (5.49%) Active Directory
3 394 (3.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 143 (1.41%) VMware ESXi
5 136 (1.34%) VMware NSX
6 123 (1.21%) Hyper-V
7 119 (1.17%) vSphere
8 84 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
9 43 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
10 41 (0.40%) Firmware
11 37 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
12 27 (0.27%) vCloud
13 24 (0.24%) BitLocker
14 15 (0.15%) NFS
15 13 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
16 11 (0.11%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 11 (0.11%) Postfix
17 10 (0.098%) Squid
18 9 (0.089%) Embedded Firmware
18 9 (0.089%) KVM
Systems Management
1 829 (8.15%) Kubernetes
2 410 (4.03%) Ansible
3 224 (2.20%) Grafana
4 176 (1.73%) Prometheus
5 135 (1.33%) vCenter Server
6 130 (1.28%) SCCM
7 90 (0.89%) SCOM
8 89 (0.88%) Microsoft Intune
9 63 (0.62%) Argo
10 49 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
11 48 (0.47%) Puppet
12 41 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
13 36 (0.35%) Data Guard
14 29 (0.29%) Kibana
14 29 (0.29%) Progress Chef
15 28 (0.28%) Control-M
15 28 (0.28%) VxRail
16 27 (0.27%) WSUS
17 26 (0.26%) Istio
18 25 (0.25%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,351 (13.29%) Microsoft
2 809 (7.96%) Oracle
3 557 (5.48%) VMware
4 474 (4.66%) ServiceNow
5 401 (3.94%) SAP
6 274 (2.70%) Cisco
7 229 (2.25%) Google
8 197 (1.94%) Splunk
9 179 (1.76%) Databricks
10 131 (1.29%) Red Hat
11 118 (1.16%) Salesforce
12 113 (1.11%) Palo Alto
13 96 (0.94%) IBM
13 96 (0.94%) Informatica
14 92 (0.90%) Talend
15 87 (0.86%) Remedy
16 86 (0.85%) Dynatrace
17 85 (0.84%) CyberArk
18 73 (0.72%) SolarWinds
19 72 (0.71%) Citrix