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

6 months to
13 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,024 5,094 6,429
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.00% 18.43% 19.28%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.41% 58.65% 63.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,080 3,266 4,281
10th Percentile £380 £350 £358
25th Percentile £453 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £537 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.09% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £634 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £537 £534 £550
% change year-on-year +0.56% -2.91% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 767 477 453
10th Percentile £19.50 £18.51 £15.50
25th Percentile £27.31 £18.87 £24.15
Median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £59.50
Median % change year-on-year +158.45% -57.73% -0.83%
75th Percentile £82.12 £53.75 £72.50
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £63.50 £25.15 £57.07
% change year-on-year +152.49% -55.93% -4.89%

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 14,441 8,686 10,197
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.69% 31.42% 30.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,744 5,449 6,489
10th Percentile £350 £300 £325
25th Percentile £431 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £715 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £525
% change year-on-year - - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,119 667 761
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.13 £15.10
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £21.37
Median hourly rate £55.00 £25.15 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +118.69% -47.05% -13.64%
75th Percentile £75.00 £55.37 £67.75
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £79.17
UK median hourly rate £51.75 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +105.77% -41.51% -21.82%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 3,548 £550 +3.77% 898
South East +1 2,445 £560 +4.19% 654
South West 0 1,344 £538 -6.52% 490
North of England +2 1,143 £501 +0.22% 375
Midlands 0 965 £469 -8.93% 186
West Midlands +1 838 £469 -8.93% 140
North West +2 621 £525 - 229
East of England 0 322 £551 +0.18% 173
Yorkshire +3 306 £492 +0.51% 73
North East 0 240 £475 -5.00% 76
East Midlands -2 115 £438 -10.15% 45
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
1 354 (3.53%) Confluence
2 251 (2.50%) SharePoint
3 171 (1.71%) SAS
4 112 (1.12%) Microsoft Exchange
5 88 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
6 81 (0.81%) Apache Spark
7 78 (0.78%) Apache
8 34 (0.34%) nginx
9 30 (0.30%) Jupyter
10 29 (0.29%) WebLogic
11 23 (0.23%) Oracle Application Server
12 21 (0.21%) Tomcat
13 20 (0.20%) Skype for Business
14 16 (0.16%) CMS
14 16 (0.16%) IIS
14 16 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
15 14 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
16 12 (0.12%) JBoss
17 11 (0.11%) Tuxedo
18 10 (0.100%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 185 (1.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 131 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 95 (0.95%) Microsoft Project
4 80 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 34 (0.34%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.16%) AutoCAD
7 16 (0.16%) Revit
8 15 (0.15%) SOLIDWORKS
9 13 (0.13%) Simulink
10 9 (0.090%) Chatbot
11 6 (0.060%) Adobe XD
11 6 (0.060%) Sketch
12 5 (0.050%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 5 (0.050%) Notepad++
13 3 (0.030%) Trello
13 3 (0.030%) Windchill
14 2 (0.020%) CPLEX
14 2 (0.020%) Houdini
14 2 (0.020%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 119 (1.19%) SAP S/4HANA
2 79 (0.79%) Remedy ITSM
3 44 (0.44%) Oracle ERP
4 34 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
5 32 (0.32%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 32 (0.32%) Teamcenter
6 26 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
7 22 (0.22%) SAP PSCD
8 18 (0.18%) Oracle Payroll
9 16 (0.16%) Primavera
10 15 (0.15%) Findur
11 14 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
12 13 (0.13%) SAP HR
12 13 (0.13%) Temenos T24
13 12 (0.12%) iTrent
13 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
14 11 (0.11%) NetSuite
14 11 (0.11%) SAP FI
15 10 (0.100%) Salesforce CRM
15 10 (0.100%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,827 (18.23%) Azure
2 1,673 (16.69%) AWS
3 452 (4.51%) Azure DevOps
4 436 (4.35%) GitHub
5 434 (4.33%) Power Platform
6 382 (3.81%) GCP
7 283 (2.82%) GitHub Actions
8 275 (2.74%) Microsoft 365
9 254 (2.53%) Entra ID
10 248 (2.47%) Serverless
11 208 (2.08%) Amazon S3
12 170 (1.70%) AWS Lambda
13 158 (1.58%) OCI
14 150 (1.50%) SaaS
15 138 (1.38%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 135 (1.35%) OpenShift
17 130 (1.30%) Amazon EC2
18 123 (1.23%) PaaS
19 119 (1.19%) Amazon EKS
20 106 (1.06%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 425 (4.24%) Firewall
2 349 (3.48%) DNS
3 210 (2.09%) WAN
4 203 (2.03%) Network Security
5 183 (1.83%) LAN
6 180 (1.80%) DHCP
7 173 (1.73%) VPN
8 136 (1.36%) BGP
9 129 (1.29%) TCP/IP
10 118 (1.18%) Wi-Fi
11 105 (1.05%) OSPF
12 100 (1.00%) VLAN
13 80 (0.80%) Wireless
14 66 (0.66%) VSAN
15 61 (0.61%) IPsec
16 56 (0.56%) VXLAN
17 55 (0.55%) MPLS
18 54 (0.54%) SD-WAN
18 54 (0.54%) SSL
19 52 (0.52%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 317 (3.16%) Power BI
2 261 (2.60%) SQL Server
3 253 (2.52%) Data Warehouse
4 252 (2.51%) PostgreSQL
5 147 (1.47%) Oracle Database
6 131 (1.31%) Metadata
7 114 (1.14%) Data Lake
8 105 (1.05%) Relational Database
9 101 (1.01%) Amazon RDS
10 92 (0.92%) Pentaho
11 91 (0.91%) Oracle Reports
12 88 (0.88%) MySQL
13 79 (0.79%) MongoDB
13 79 (0.79%) NoSQL
14 60 (0.60%) Amazon Redshift
15 58 (0.58%) Tableau
16 56 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
17 50 (0.50%) Elasticsearch
18 43 (0.43%) Amazon Aurora
18 43 (0.43%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 566 (5.65%) JIRA
2 492 (4.91%) Git
3 410 (4.09%) GitLab
4 408 (4.07%) Jenkins
5 108 (1.08%) Selenium
6 75 (0.75%) SonarQube
7 73 (0.73%) Postman
8 70 (0.70%) JUnit
9 61 (0.61%) JMeter
10 59 (0.59%) Rational DOORS
11 55 (0.55%) Maven
12 49 (0.49%) Cucumber
13 45 (0.45%) Zephyr
14 43 (0.43%) Visual Studio
15 40 (0.40%) Mockito
16 38 (0.38%) Bitbucket
17 35 (0.35%) Cypress.io
18 33 (0.33%) Artifactory
18 33 (0.33%) Gradle
19 32 (0.32%) Gatling
General
1 2,103 (20.98%) Social Skills
2 2,056 (20.51%) Public Sector
3 780 (7.78%) Analytical Skills
4 687 (6.85%) Finance
5 333 (3.32%) Military
6 288 (2.87%) Aerospace
7 243 (2.42%) Documentation Skills
8 160 (1.60%) Influencing Skills
9 141 (1.41%) Organisational Skills
10 137 (1.37%) Legal
11 135 (1.35%) Telecoms
12 132 (1.32%) Banking
13 101 (1.01%) Law
14 96 (0.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 91 (0.91%) Police
16 87 (0.87%) Manufacturing
17 67 (0.67%) Presentation Skills
18 44 (0.44%) Marketing
19 41 (0.41%) Retail
20 34 (0.34%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,483 (14.79%) Architect
2 1,043 (10.41%) Developer
3 945 (9.43%) Senior
4 902 (9.00%) Lead
5 582 (5.81%) Analyst
6 527 (5.26%) Consultant
7 482 (4.81%) Data Engineer
8 389 (3.88%) DevOps Engineer
9 376 (3.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 294 (2.93%) Software Engineer
11 259 (2.58%) Technical Architect
12 241 (2.40%) Solutions Architect
13 236 (2.35%) Network Engineer
14 232 (2.31%) Security Architect
15 214 (2.13%) Data Architect
16 199 (1.99%) Administrator
16 199 (1.99%) Delivery Manager
17 194 (1.94%) Java Developer
18 185 (1.85%) Project Manager
19 182 (1.82%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 375 (3.74%) REST
2 217 (2.16%) Spring
3 195 (1.95%) .NET
4 186 (1.86%) Kafka
5 183 (1.83%) Spring Boot
6 169 (1.69%) React
6 169 (1.69%) RESTful
7 152 (1.52%) SOAP
8 140 (1.40%) Node.js
9 126 (1.26%) JSON
10 121 (1.21%) AngularJS
11 110 (1.10%) Web Services
12 105 (1.05%) HTML
13 103 (1.03%) OAuth
14 88 (0.88%) XML
15 86 (0.86%) PySpark
16 76 (0.76%) CSS
17 74 (0.74%) Oracle Fusion
18 70 (0.70%) Elastic Stack
19 69 (0.69%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 419 (4.18%) Cloud Native
2 351 (3.50%) Onboarding
3 326 (3.25%) Product Ownership
4 269 (2.68%) Data Centre
5 175 (1.75%) Legacy Systems
6 153 (1.53%) Management Information System
7 151 (1.51%) PKI
8 140 (1.40%) Distributed Systems
9 122 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
10 118 (1.18%) CMDB
11 116 (1.16%) Self-Motivation
12 107 (1.07%) Hybrid Cloud
13 103 (1.03%) Clustering
14 101 (1.01%) Replication
15 99 (0.99%) Data Structures
16 83 (0.83%) Public Cloud
17 81 (0.81%) Cyber Threat
18 80 (0.80%) Security Operations Centre
19 76 (0.76%) Operational Technology
20 74 (0.74%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 868 (8.66%) Windows
2 703 (7.01%) Linux
3 300 (2.99%) Windows Server
4 202 (2.02%) Unix
5 139 (1.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 110 (1.10%) Windows 10
7 77 (0.77%) Android
8 65 (0.65%) Solaris
9 43 (0.43%) Mac OS
10 39 (0.39%) Apple iOS
11 38 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
12 34 (0.34%) AIX
13 31 (0.31%) CentOS
14 29 (0.29%) Ubuntu
15 24 (0.24%) Windows 7
16 18 (0.18%) VMS
17 17 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
18 16 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
19 15 (0.15%) Windows Server 2008
20 14 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,122 (21.17%) Agile
2 1,559 (15.55%) DevOps
3 1,464 (14.60%) CI/CD
4 1,185 (11.82%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,130 (11.27%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,052 (10.49%) Problem-Solving
7 935 (9.33%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 813 (8.11%) Migration
9 812 (8.10%) Infrastructure as Code
10 688 (6.86%) Cybersecurity
11 682 (6.80%) ITIL
12 646 (6.44%) Analytics
13 643 (6.41%) Test Automation
14 608 (6.07%) Software Engineering
15 601 (6.00%) Containerisation
16 592 (5.91%) Roadmaps
17 563 (5.62%) AI
18 557 (5.56%) Data Modelling
19 548 (5.47%) Technical Leadership
20 527 (5.26%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 1,112 (11.09%) Python
2 1,006 (10.04%) SQL
3 675 (6.73%) Java
4 506 (5.05%) PowerShell
5 347 (3.46%) JavaScript
6 279 (2.78%) Bash
7 225 (2.24%) C#
8 152 (1.52%) PL/SQL
9 149 (1.49%) TypeScript
10 96 (0.96%) Bicep
11 85 (0.85%) C++
12 75 (0.75%) Shell Script
13 66 (0.66%) C
14 46 (0.46%) Go
15 43 (0.43%) Groovy
15 43 (0.43%) Kotlin
16 41 (0.41%) Scala
17 36 (0.36%) Ruby
18 35 (0.35%) Apex Code
19 33 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 7,538 (75.20%) SC Cleared
2 2,026 (20.21%) DV Cleared
3 417 (4.16%) Degree
4 366 (3.65%) BPSS Clearance
5 172 (1.72%) CISSP
6 167 (1.67%) Cisco Certification
7 152 (1.52%) Azure Certification
8 141 (1.41%) Microsoft Certification
9 121 (1.21%) AWS Certification
10 104 (1.04%) CISM
11 100 (1.00%) PMI Certification
12 96 (0.96%) PMP
13 83 (0.83%) ISTQB
14 72 (0.72%) CCNP
15 66 (0.66%) CCNA
16 63 (0.63%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 59 (0.59%) Computer Science Degree
18 43 (0.43%) TOGAF Certification
19 40 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
20 38 (0.38%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 407 (4.06%) QA
2 322 (3.21%) Data Quality
3 264 (2.63%) NIST
4 261 (2.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 215 (2.14%) NCSC
6 214 (2.13%) Accessibility
7 212 (2.11%) PMO
8 148 (1.48%) GDPR
9 118 (1.18%) SLA
10 117 (1.17%) GRC
11 65 (0.65%) WCAG
12 58 (0.58%) JSP 440
13 44 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
14 43 (0.43%) NIST 800
15 32 (0.32%) Def Stans
16 29 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 28 (0.28%) Government Security Classifications
18 25 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 19 (0.19%) RMADS
20 18 (0.18%) COBIT
System Software
1 673 (6.71%) Docker
2 477 (4.76%) Active Directory
3 367 (3.66%) VMware Infrastructure
4 141 (1.41%) VMware NSX
5 130 (1.30%) VMware ESXi
6 112 (1.12%) vSphere
7 97 (0.97%) Hyper-V
8 76 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
9 43 (0.43%) Oracle RAC
10 40 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
11 30 (0.30%) Firmware
12 26 (0.26%) BitLocker
13 23 (0.23%) vCloud
14 15 (0.15%) Postfix
15 12 (0.12%) NFS
16 11 (0.11%) Squid
17 9 (0.090%) Virtual Servers
18 8 (0.080%) KVM
19 7 (0.070%) Embedded Firmware
19 7 (0.070%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 865 (8.63%) Terraform
2 803 (8.01%) Kubernetes
3 395 (3.94%) Ansible
4 231 (2.30%) Grafana
5 178 (1.78%) Prometheus
6 129 (1.29%) vCenter Server
7 116 (1.16%) SCCM
8 85 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
9 69 (0.69%) SCOM
10 62 (0.62%) Argo
11 52 (0.52%) Oracle RMAN
12 51 (0.51%) Puppet
13 49 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
14 41 (0.41%) FortiGate
15 36 (0.36%) Data Guard
16 31 (0.31%) Progress Chef
17 28 (0.28%) Nagios
17 28 (0.28%) WSUS
18 26 (0.26%) Control-M
19 24 (0.24%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,247 (12.44%) Microsoft
2 802 (8.00%) Oracle
3 529 (5.28%) VMware
4 485 (4.84%) ServiceNow
5 371 (3.70%) SAP
6 282 (2.81%) Cisco
7 206 (2.06%) Google
8 190 (1.90%) Splunk
9 180 (1.80%) Databricks
10 137 (1.37%) Red Hat
11 129 (1.29%) Salesforce
12 125 (1.25%) IBM
13 118 (1.18%) Talend
14 110 (1.10%) Informatica
15 101 (1.01%) Palo Alto
16 94 (0.94%) Juniper
17 89 (0.89%) Remedy
18 87 (0.87%) F5
18 87 (0.87%) SolarWinds
19 83 (0.83%) Dynatrace