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 27 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,529 4,624 7,052
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.92% 18.30% 18.91%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.54% 58.89% 62.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,702 3,022 4,582
10th Percentile £380 £335 £354
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 £713 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 745 343 542
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.41 £14.50
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £25.32 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +149.35% -55.97% -4.17%
75th Percentile £75.40 £64.51 £72.50
90th Percentile £87.10 £77.50 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £61.84 £25.15 £56.50
% change year-on-year +145.88% -55.48% -5.84%

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 13,702 7,852 11,375
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.52% 31.07% 30.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,254 4,938 7,003
10th Percentile £350 £281 £313
25th Percentile £425 £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 £715 £716 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £521 £525
% change year-on-year +0.77% -0.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,030 511 1,006
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.16
25th Percentile £24.21 £20.19 £20.56
Median hourly rate £53.00 £29.27 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +81.07% -31.13% -22.73%
75th Percentile £74.00 £64.13 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.40 £77.50 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £50.74 £28.55 £40.94
% change year-on-year +77.73% -30.26% -26.23%

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 27 June 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 27 June 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 27 June 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 3,389 £528 +0.48% 525
South East +1 2,305 £550 - 488
South West 0 1,301 £538 -4.44% 348
North of England +2 992 £500 - 256
Midlands +2 917 £469 -8.49% 137
West Midlands +2 794 £470 -10.48% 88
North West 0 531 £525 +5.00% 156
East of England +2 349 £550 +10.00% 118
Yorkshire -3 261 £500 +1.63% 59
North East +1 230 £475 -1.04% 45
East Midlands -5 112 £441 -7.24% 48
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
1 331 (3.47%) Confluence
2 211 (2.21%) SharePoint
3 143 (1.50%) SAS
4 122 (1.28%) Microsoft Exchange
5 88 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
6 80 (0.84%) Apache Spark
7 78 (0.82%) Apache
8 39 (0.41%) Jupyter
8 39 (0.41%) nginx
9 29 (0.30%) WebLogic
10 21 (0.22%) Tomcat
11 20 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
12 16 (0.17%) CMS
12 16 (0.17%) IIS
13 15 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
14 14 (0.15%) Skype for Business
15 12 (0.13%) Tuxedo
16 11 (0.12%) NetWeaver
17 9 (0.094%) Palantir Foundry
18 8 (0.084%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 154 (1.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 126 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 75 (0.79%) Microsoft Project
4 69 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 40 (0.42%) MS Visio
6 14 (0.15%) Simulink
6 14 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
8 10 (0.10%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.10%) Revit
9 9 (0.094%) Chatbot
10 5 (0.052%) Notepad++
11 4 (0.042%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.031%) Sketch
13 2 (0.021%) CATIA
13 2 (0.021%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.021%) Lectora
13 2 (0.021%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.021%) Siemens NX
13 2 (0.021%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 98 (1.03%) SAP S/4HANA
2 59 (0.62%) Remedy ITSM
3 44 (0.46%) Oracle ERP
4 32 (0.34%) Teamcenter
5 31 (0.33%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 27 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
7 21 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
8 17 (0.18%) SAP PSCD
9 15 (0.16%) Findur
9 15 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
10 13 (0.14%) Primavera
11 12 (0.13%) iTrent
11 12 (0.13%) Maximo
11 12 (0.13%) Siebel CRM
11 12 (0.13%) Temenos T24
12 11 (0.12%) SAP ERP
13 9 (0.094%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 9 (0.094%) Oracle Assets
13 9 (0.094%) Salesforce CRM
13 9 (0.094%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,644 (17.25%) Azure
2 1,621 (17.01%) AWS
3 372 (3.90%) GitHub
4 367 (3.85%) Azure DevOps
4 367 (3.85%) Power Platform
5 350 (3.67%) GCP
6 244 (2.56%) Serverless
7 243 (2.55%) Entra ID
7 243 (2.55%) Microsoft 365
8 233 (2.45%) GitHub Actions
9 211 (2.21%) Amazon S3
10 168 (1.76%) AWS Lambda
11 149 (1.56%) Amazon EC2
12 139 (1.46%) SaaS
13 133 (1.40%) OpenShift
14 130 (1.36%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 129 (1.35%) PaaS
16 127 (1.33%) OCI
17 109 (1.14%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 100 (1.05%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 407 (4.27%) Firewall
2 295 (3.10%) DNS
3 223 (2.34%) Network Security
4 205 (2.15%) WAN
5 183 (1.92%) LAN
6 162 (1.70%) VPN
7 156 (1.64%) DHCP
8 131 (1.37%) BGP
9 110 (1.15%) OSPF
9 110 (1.15%) Wi-Fi
10 105 (1.10%) VLAN
11 94 (0.99%) TCP/IP
12 78 (0.82%) Wireless
13 59 (0.62%) MPLS
13 59 (0.62%) SD-WAN
14 55 (0.58%) VXLAN
15 53 (0.56%) SAN
16 50 (0.52%) BIG-IP
17 48 (0.50%) IPsec
18 46 (0.48%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 277 (2.91%) Power BI
2 240 (2.52%) PostgreSQL
3 221 (2.32%) Data Warehouse
4 217 (2.28%) SQL Server
5 142 (1.49%) Oracle Database
6 121 (1.27%) Metadata
7 107 (1.12%) Data Lake
8 106 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
9 98 (1.03%) Relational Database
10 84 (0.88%) Pentaho
11 82 (0.86%) MongoDB
12 75 (0.79%) Elasticsearch
12 75 (0.79%) MySQL
13 73 (0.77%) Oracle Reports
14 68 (0.71%) Amazon Redshift
15 65 (0.68%) NoSQL
16 62 (0.65%) Amazon Athena
17 59 (0.62%) Tableau
18 43 (0.45%) DynamoDB
19 40 (0.42%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 531 (5.57%) JIRA
2 426 (4.47%) Git
3 409 (4.29%) GitLab
4 371 (3.89%) Jenkins
5 106 (1.11%) Selenium
6 80 (0.84%) JUnit
7 71 (0.75%) SonarQube
8 68 (0.71%) Postman
9 58 (0.61%) Rational DOORS
10 53 (0.56%) JMeter
11 50 (0.52%) Cucumber
12 43 (0.45%) Artifactory
13 42 (0.44%) Mockito
14 41 (0.43%) Maven
15 40 (0.42%) Bitbucket
16 39 (0.41%) REST Assured
17 37 (0.39%) Visual Studio
17 37 (0.39%) Zephyr
18 35 (0.37%) Cypress.io
19 30 (0.31%) WebDriver
General
1 2,028 (21.28%) Public Sector
2 1,930 (20.25%) Social Skills
3 667 (7.00%) Analytical Skills
4 644 (6.76%) Finance
5 319 (3.35%) Military
6 269 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
7 267 (2.80%) Aerospace
8 141 (1.48%) Legal
9 136 (1.43%) Influencing Skills
10 123 (1.29%) Banking
11 110 (1.15%) Telecoms
12 96 (1.01%) Law
12 96 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
13 77 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
14 74 (0.78%) Manufacturing
15 69 (0.72%) Police
16 65 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 44 (0.46%) Marketing
18 38 (0.40%) Aviation
19 37 (0.39%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,393 (14.62%) Architect
2 947 (9.94%) Developer
3 821 (8.62%) Senior
4 764 (8.02%) Lead
5 613 (6.43%) Analyst
6 457 (4.80%) Data Engineer
7 426 (4.47%) Consultant
8 412 (4.32%) DevOps Engineer
9 306 (3.21%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 299 (3.14%) Software Engineer
11 281 (2.95%) Technical Architect
12 248 (2.60%) Network Engineer
13 230 (2.41%) Solutions Architect
14 211 (2.21%) Security Architect
15 205 (2.15%) Business Analyst
16 204 (2.14%) Project Manager
17 192 (2.01%) Delivery Manager
18 186 (1.95%) Java Developer
19 180 (1.89%) Administrator
20 173 (1.82%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 293 (3.07%) REST
2 229 (2.40%) Spring
3 185 (1.94%) Spring Boot
4 170 (1.78%) React
5 162 (1.70%) .NET
6 153 (1.61%) Node.js
7 151 (1.58%) Kafka
8 144 (1.51%) RESTful
9 125 (1.31%) SOAP
10 118 (1.24%) LDAP
11 111 (1.16%) JSON
12 110 (1.15%) AngularJS
13 95 (1.00%) OAuth
14 93 (0.98%) PySpark
15 89 (0.93%) Web Services
16 83 (0.87%) HTML
17 76 (0.80%) XML
18 75 (0.79%) OpenID
19 69 (0.72%) Playwright
20 68 (0.71%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 375 (3.94%) Cloud Native
2 327 (3.43%) Product Ownership
3 297 (3.12%) Onboarding
4 279 (2.93%) Data Centre
5 152 (1.60%) Legacy Systems
6 148 (1.55%) Management Information System
7 135 (1.42%) PKI
8 132 (1.39%) Distributed Systems
9 107 (1.12%) Replication
10 104 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
11 100 (1.05%) Enterprise Software
12 97 (1.02%) Security Posture
13 90 (0.94%) CMDB
14 87 (0.91%) Clustering
15 86 (0.90%) Data Structures
16 85 (0.89%) Hybrid Cloud
17 75 (0.79%) Public Cloud
18 71 (0.75%) Security Operations Centre
19 68 (0.71%) Virtual Team
20 67 (0.70%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 774 (8.12%) Windows
2 640 (6.72%) Linux
3 246 (2.58%) Windows Server
4 175 (1.84%) Unix
5 124 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 83 (0.87%) Windows 10
7 75 (0.79%) Android
8 49 (0.51%) Solaris
9 47 (0.49%) Apple iOS
10 37 (0.39%) Mac OS
11 32 (0.34%) Ubuntu
12 29 (0.30%) AIX
13 23 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 22 (0.23%) CentOS
15 19 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
16 17 (0.18%) VMS
17 14 (0.15%) Windows 7
18 11 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
18 11 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
18 11 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,936 (20.32%) Agile
2 1,471 (15.44%) DevOps
3 1,325 (13.90%) CI/CD
4 1,005 (10.55%) Problem-Solving
5 993 (10.42%) Stakeholder Management
6 955 (10.02%) Continuous Improvement
7 777 (8.15%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 765 (8.03%) Migration
9 700 (7.35%) Infrastructure as Code
10 625 (6.56%) Cybersecurity
11 603 (6.33%) ITIL
12 582 (6.11%) Test Automation
13 578 (6.07%) Software Engineering
14 553 (5.80%) Containerisation
15 551 (5.78%) Analytics
16 540 (5.67%) Roadmaps
17 497 (5.22%) Decision-Making
18 487 (5.11%) Data Modelling
19 479 (5.03%) AI
20 452 (4.74%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 1,002 (10.52%) Python
2 904 (9.49%) SQL
3 623 (6.54%) Java
4 452 (4.74%) PowerShell
5 278 (2.92%) JavaScript
6 203 (2.13%) C#
7 199 (2.09%) Bash
8 147 (1.54%) TypeScript
9 127 (1.33%) PL/SQL
10 88 (0.92%) C++
11 85 (0.89%) Shell Script
12 68 (0.71%) Bicep
13 65 (0.68%) C
14 54 (0.57%) Go
15 46 (0.48%) Ada
16 41 (0.43%) Scala
17 40 (0.42%) Apex Code
18 39 (0.41%) Ruby
19 34 (0.36%) Kotlin
20 32 (0.34%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 7,187 (75.42%) SC Cleared
2 1,863 (19.55%) DV Cleared
3 386 (4.05%) Degree
4 285 (2.99%) BPSS Clearance
5 183 (1.92%) Cisco Certification
6 158 (1.66%) CISSP
7 125 (1.31%) Azure Certification
8 108 (1.13%) Microsoft Certification
9 103 (1.08%) AWS Certification
10 99 (1.04%) CCNP
11 96 (1.01%) CISM
12 79 (0.83%) PMP
13 78 (0.82%) PMI Certification
14 77 (0.81%) CCNA
15 65 (0.68%) ISTQB
16 57 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 56 (0.59%) Computer Science Degree
18 48 (0.50%) ITIL Certification
19 39 (0.41%) GIAC
20 35 (0.37%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 370 (3.88%) QA
2 288 (3.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 286 (3.00%) NIST
4 285 (2.99%) Data Quality
5 211 (2.21%) NCSC
6 184 (1.93%) Accessibility
7 169 (1.77%) PMO
8 168 (1.76%) GDPR
9 99 (1.04%) SLA
10 83 (0.87%) GRC
11 61 (0.64%) JSP 440
12 45 (0.47%) Cyber Essentials
13 43 (0.45%) WCAG
14 40 (0.42%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.35%) Def Stans
16 28 (0.29%) RMADS
17 24 (0.25%) Government Security Classifications
17 24 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 22 (0.23%) COBIT
19 18 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 606 (6.36%) Docker
2 424 (4.45%) Active Directory
3 291 (3.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 113 (1.19%) VMware ESXi
5 107 (1.12%) VMware NSX
6 78 (0.82%) Hyper-V
6 78 (0.82%) vSphere
7 73 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
8 33 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
9 32 (0.34%) Firmware
10 24 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
11 23 (0.24%) BitLocker
12 21 (0.22%) vCloud
13 19 (0.20%) Postfix
14 18 (0.19%) NFS
15 16 (0.17%) Squid
16 13 (0.14%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 9 (0.094%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.063%) Corosync
18 6 (0.063%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 772 (8.10%) Terraform
2 759 (7.97%) Kubernetes
3 334 (3.51%) Ansible
4 224 (2.35%) Grafana
5 183 (1.92%) Prometheus
6 109 (1.14%) vCenter Server
7 79 (0.83%) SCCM
8 73 (0.77%) Single Sign-On
9 59 (0.62%) Microsoft Intune
10 52 (0.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 48 (0.50%) FortiGate
12 47 (0.49%) Argo
13 41 (0.43%) Puppet
13 41 (0.43%) SCOM
14 40 (0.42%) Oracle RMAN
15 33 (0.35%) Podman
16 28 (0.29%) Progress Chef
17 24 (0.25%) Nagios
18 23 (0.24%) Kibana
18 23 (0.24%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,012 (10.62%) Microsoft
2 676 (7.09%) Oracle
3 461 (4.84%) VMware
4 415 (4.36%) ServiceNow
5 307 (3.22%) SAP
6 305 (3.20%) Cisco
7 190 (1.99%) Splunk
8 169 (1.77%) Databricks
9 160 (1.68%) Google
10 141 (1.48%) Red Hat
11 129 (1.35%) Talend
12 124 (1.30%) Salesforce
13 111 (1.16%) IBM
14 104 (1.09%) Informatica
14 104 (1.09%) Palo Alto
15 94 (0.99%) Juniper
16 84 (0.88%) F5
16 84 (0.88%) SolarWinds
17 83 (0.87%) Fortinet
18 76 (0.80%) Citrix