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

6 months to
20 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 7,297 4,803 6,912
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.84% 18.14% 18.77%
As % of the Qualifications category 66.43% 59.74% 60.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,973 3,030 4,417
10th Percentile £350 £345 £363
25th Percentile £450 £441 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -3.51%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £731
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -3.08%
Number of hourly rates quoted 662 250 449
10th Percentile £17.87 £21.25 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.82 £27.00 £42.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £59.50
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% +0.84% -0.83%
75th Percentile £63.75 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £82.36
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £51.50 £59.68
% change year-on-year -51.17% -13.71% -0.53%

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 10,985 8,040 11,415
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.39% 30.36% 31.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,280 4,871 7,153
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £419 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 867 394 752
10th Percentile £16.00 £19.98 £14.29
25th Percentile £19.00 £25.26 £21.46
Median hourly rate £25.15 £47.37 £49.81
Median % change year-on-year -46.91% -4.88% +10.68%
75th Percentile £61.18 £67.94 £67.50
90th Percentile £75.32 £82.25 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £49.94
% change year-on-year -37.13% -19.90% +10.98%

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 20 January 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 20 January 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 20 January 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 2,474 £540 -1.82% 406
South East +1 1,480 £517 -6.00% 545
South West 0 1,261 £550 -0.18% 411
North of England -2 803 £500 +5.26% 237
Midlands +4 710 £515 -6.53% 141
West Midlands +3 561 £520 -5.63% 78
North West 0 538 £513 +7.89% 129
East of England +2 327 £475 -7.32% 244
Yorkshire -13 159 £500 +11.11% 68
East Midlands +1 149 £425 -21.30% 62
North East 0 129 £448 -14.76% 41
South Coast - 2 - -
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
1 270 (3.70%) Confluence
2 186 (2.55%) SharePoint
3 124 (1.70%) Microsoft Exchange
4 114 (1.56%) SAS
5 81 (1.11%) Apache
6 54 (0.74%) Apache Spark
7 47 (0.64%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.53%) Skype for Business
9 36 (0.49%) nginx
10 28 (0.38%) WebLogic
11 17 (0.23%) CMS
11 17 (0.23%) IIS
12 14 (0.19%) Jupyter
13 10 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
13 10 (0.14%) SharePoint Server
14 8 (0.11%) OpenStack
15 7 (0.096%) Exchange Server 2010
15 7 (0.096%) Tuxedo
16 6 (0.082%) Documentum
16 6 (0.082%) Tomcat
Applications
1 245 (3.36%) Microsoft Office
2 150 (2.06%) Microsoft Excel
3 103 (1.41%) Microsoft Project
4 61 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 37 (0.51%) MS Visio
6 23 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.16%) Simulink
8 8 (0.11%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 6 (0.082%) FrameMaker
9 6 (0.082%) Siemens NX
10 5 (0.069%) Oracle Smart View
10 5 (0.069%) Sketch
10 5 (0.069%) Windchill
11 4 (0.055%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.055%) Stateflow
11 4 (0.055%) Trello
12 3 (0.041%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.041%) PTC Creo
13 2 (0.027%) Adobe Illustrator
13 2 (0.027%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 144 (1.97%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.51%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 27 (0.37%) SAP EWM
3 27 (0.37%) SAP WM
4 25 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
5 23 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
6 22 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
7 18 (0.25%) Maximo
7 18 (0.25%) SAP MM
8 14 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
8 14 (0.19%) SAP QM
9 13 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
9 13 (0.18%) Teamcenter
10 12 (0.16%) SAP HCM
10 12 (0.16%) SAP PP
10 12 (0.16%) SAP VC
11 11 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
11 11 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
11 11 (0.15%) Oracle Receivables
11 11 (0.15%) SAP EHS
Cloud Services
1 1,246 (17.08%) Azure
2 1,201 (16.46%) AWS
3 322 (4.41%) GitHub
4 321 (4.40%) GCP
5 313 (4.29%) Microsoft 365
6 275 (3.77%) Azure DevOps
7 265 (3.63%) Power Platform
8 209 (2.86%) Serverless
9 191 (2.62%) Entra ID
10 160 (2.19%) Amazon S3
11 159 (2.18%) GitHub Actions
12 140 (1.92%) OpenShift
13 125 (1.71%) AWS Lambda
14 108 (1.48%) SaaS
15 102 (1.40%) AWS CloudFormation
16 99 (1.36%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 97 (1.33%) IaaS
18 95 (1.30%) Amazon EC2
19 92 (1.26%) PaaS
20 88 (1.21%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 385 (5.28%) Firewall
2 250 (3.43%) DNS
3 181 (2.48%) Network Security
4 170 (2.33%) VPN
5 165 (2.26%) WAN
6 126 (1.73%) TCP/IP
7 121 (1.66%) LAN
8 109 (1.49%) BGP
9 100 (1.37%) DHCP
10 88 (1.21%) Wireless
11 79 (1.08%) VLAN
12 72 (0.99%) Wi-Fi
13 64 (0.88%) SSL
14 62 (0.85%) OSPF
15 59 (0.81%) MPLS
16 57 (0.78%) IPsec
17 50 (0.69%) SAN
18 46 (0.63%) Skype
19 41 (0.56%) Cisco ISE
20 37 (0.51%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 194 (2.66%) PostgreSQL
2 181 (2.48%) Power BI
3 89 (1.22%) Data Warehouse
4 83 (1.14%) MongoDB
5 82 (1.12%) NoSQL
5 82 (1.12%) SQL Server
6 81 (1.11%) Metadata
7 79 (1.08%) Oracle Database
8 78 (1.07%) Amazon RDS
9 66 (0.90%) Relational Database
10 60 (0.82%) Azure SQL Database
11 46 (0.63%) Elasticsearch
12 45 (0.62%) Pentaho
13 42 (0.58%) Big Data
14 41 (0.56%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 38 (0.52%) Data Lake
16 37 (0.51%) Amazon Athena
17 36 (0.49%) Amazon Redshift
18 35 (0.48%) MySQL
19 33 (0.45%) Redis
Development Applications
1 469 (6.43%) JIRA
2 383 (5.25%) Git
3 343 (4.70%) Jenkins
4 279 (3.82%) GitLab
5 84 (1.15%) Selenium
6 64 (0.88%) Postman
7 59 (0.81%) JUnit
8 55 (0.75%) Cypress.io
9 48 (0.66%) Oracle APEX
10 43 (0.59%) Artifactory
10 43 (0.59%) Bitbucket
11 40 (0.55%) SonarQube
12 35 (0.48%) Maven
13 34 (0.47%) Cucumber
14 33 (0.45%) Mockito
15 25 (0.34%) REST Assured
16 24 (0.33%) MSI
17 23 (0.32%) Metasploit
18 21 (0.29%) Burp Suite
18 21 (0.29%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,918 (26.28%) Public Sector
2 1,870 (25.63%) Social Skills
3 645 (8.84%) Analytical Skills
4 505 (6.92%) Finance
5 290 (3.97%) Military
6 194 (2.66%) Telecoms
7 192 (2.63%) Documentation Skills
8 189 (2.59%) Manufacturing
9 133 (1.82%) Electronics
10 130 (1.78%) Marketing
11 117 (1.60%) Aerospace
12 110 (1.51%) Organisational Skills
13 102 (1.40%) Legal
14 93 (1.27%) Presentation Skills
15 89 (1.22%) Banking
16 81 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
17 66 (0.90%) Law
18 45 (0.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 31 (0.42%) Police
20 29 (0.40%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 997 (13.66%) Architect
2 704 (9.65%) Developer
3 615 (8.43%) Senior
4 517 (7.09%) Analyst
5 500 (6.85%) Consultant
6 408 (5.59%) Lead
7 363 (4.97%) DevOps Engineer
8 233 (3.19%) Support Engineer
9 226 (3.10%) Data Engineer
9 226 (3.10%) Network Engineer
10 174 (2.38%) Solutions Architect
11 171 (2.34%) Technical Architect
12 165 (2.26%) Software Engineer
13 163 (2.23%) Business Analyst
14 136 (1.86%) AWS Engineer
14 136 (1.86%) Tester
15 134 (1.84%) SAP Consultant
16 131 (1.80%) IT Engineer
17 129 (1.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 128 (1.75%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 303 (4.15%) REST
2 175 (2.40%) Node.js
3 166 (2.27%) React
4 158 (2.17%) Kafka
5 140 (1.92%) SOAP
6 136 (1.86%) JSON
7 134 (1.84%) Spring
8 117 (1.60%) LDAP
9 106 (1.45%) HTML
10 105 (1.44%) Spring Boot
11 95 (1.30%) .NET
12 94 (1.29%) XML
13 90 (1.23%) CSS
13 90 (1.23%) OAuth
14 89 (1.22%) RESTful
15 85 (1.16%) AngularJS
15 85 (1.16%) Oracle Fusion
16 82 (1.12%) Web Services
17 78 (1.07%) PySpark
18 66 (0.90%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 236 (3.23%) Data Centre
2 203 (2.78%) Product Ownership
3 197 (2.70%) Cloud Native
4 195 (2.67%) PKI
5 191 (2.62%) Onboarding
6 143 (1.96%) Management Information System
7 115 (1.58%) Security Posture
8 105 (1.44%) Enterprise Software
9 101 (1.38%) Self-Motivation
10 89 (1.22%) Legacy Systems
11 77 (1.06%) Cyber Threat
12 75 (1.03%) Replication
13 70 (0.96%) Driving Licence
14 60 (0.82%) Security Operations Centre
15 56 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
16 51 (0.70%) Public Cloud
17 49 (0.67%) Private Cloud
18 46 (0.63%) Distributed Systems
19 45 (0.62%) Analytical Mindset
20 44 (0.60%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 812 (11.13%) Windows
2 576 (7.89%) Linux
3 200 (2.74%) Windows Server
4 182 (2.49%) Windows 10
5 103 (1.41%) Unix
6 100 (1.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 94 (1.29%) Android
8 70 (0.96%) Mac OS
9 44 (0.60%) VMS
10 42 (0.58%) Ubuntu
11 29 (0.40%) Apple iOS
12 24 (0.33%) CentOS
13 22 (0.30%) Windows 7
13 22 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
14 18 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
15 16 (0.22%) Amazon Linux
15 16 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
16 15 (0.21%) Mac OS X
17 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2003
18 12 (0.16%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,390 (19.05%) Agile
2 1,148 (15.73%) DevOps
3 992 (13.59%) CI/CD
4 910 (12.47%) Problem-Solving
5 656 (8.99%) Migration
6 605 (8.29%) Stakeholder Management
7 532 (7.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 503 (6.89%) Continuous Improvement
9 488 (6.69%) Cybersecurity
10 471 (6.45%) ITIL
11 452 (6.19%) Infrastructure as Code
12 414 (5.67%) Test Automation
13 388 (5.32%) Analytics
13 388 (5.32%) Business Intelligence
14 387 (5.30%) Containerisation
15 383 (5.25%) Service Management
16 362 (4.96%) Roadmaps
17 330 (4.52%) Scrum
18 329 (4.51%) Software Engineering
19 327 (4.48%) Workflow
Programming Languages
1 920 (12.61%) Python
2 572 (7.84%) SQL
3 513 (7.03%) PowerShell
4 402 (5.51%) Java
5 348 (4.77%) JavaScript
6 199 (2.73%) Bash
7 164 (2.25%) TypeScript
8 129 (1.77%) C#
9 85 (1.16%) Go
10 84 (1.15%) C++
11 70 (0.96%) PL/SQL
12 69 (0.95%) Shell Script
13 58 (0.79%) C
14 43 (0.59%) Ruby
15 42 (0.58%) Scala
16 36 (0.49%) Ada
17 35 (0.48%) MATLAB
18 34 (0.47%) ABAP
19 32 (0.44%) Bicep
20 31 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 5,606 (76.83%) SC Cleared
2 1,231 (16.87%) DV Cleared
3 376 (5.15%) Degree
4 225 (3.08%) BPSS Clearance
5 137 (1.88%) CISSP
6 120 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
7 118 (1.62%) Azure Certification
8 112 (1.53%) Microsoft Certification
9 104 (1.43%) CCNP
10 92 (1.26%) AWS Certification
11 82 (1.12%) CISM
12 63 (0.86%) Computer Science Degree
13 58 (0.79%) ITIL Certification
14 53 (0.73%) CCNA
15 49 (0.67%) CEH
16 48 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
17 42 (0.58%) GIAC
18 40 (0.55%) CHECK Team Member
19 39 (0.53%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
20 36 (0.49%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 233 (3.19%) QA
2 220 (3.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 211 (2.89%) NIST
4 172 (2.36%) NCSC
5 168 (2.30%) Data Quality
6 153 (2.10%) GDPR
7 122 (1.67%) Accessibility
8 120 (1.64%) SLA
9 79 (1.08%) PMO
10 50 (0.69%) JSP 440
11 46 (0.63%) GRC
12 42 (0.58%) WCAG
13 32 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
14 31 (0.42%) Def Stans
15 29 (0.40%) PCI DSS
16 26 (0.36%) COBIT
16 26 (0.36%) NIST 800
17 22 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 18 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 17 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 546 (7.48%) Docker
2 465 (6.37%) Active Directory
3 214 (2.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 72 (0.99%) VMware NSX
5 60 (0.82%) vSphere
6 51 (0.70%) VMware ESXi
7 50 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
8 41 (0.56%) Hyper-V
9 30 (0.41%) Firmware
10 27 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
11 17 (0.23%) BitLocker
12 15 (0.21%) Postfix
13 13 (0.18%) DFS Replication
14 12 (0.16%) Dovecot
15 9 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 9 (0.12%) Squid
16 8 (0.11%) NFS
16 8 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
17 7 (0.096%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 679 (9.31%) Kubernetes
2 617 (8.46%) Terraform
3 278 (3.81%) Ansible
4 169 (2.32%) Grafana
5 140 (1.92%) Prometheus
6 107 (1.47%) SCCM
7 98 (1.34%) Single Sign-On
8 89 (1.22%) vCenter Server
9 69 (0.95%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 67 (0.92%) Microsoft Intune
11 60 (0.82%) Argo
12 37 (0.51%) Kibana
12 37 (0.51%) Packer
13 34 (0.47%) Podman
14 33 (0.45%) OPNET
15 30 (0.41%) vRealize
16 26 (0.36%) Puppet
17 25 (0.34%) Nessus
17 25 (0.34%) Progress Chef
18 24 (0.33%) Nmap
Vendors
1 930 (12.74%) Microsoft
2 422 (5.78%) SAP
3 412 (5.65%) Oracle
4 400 (5.48%) Cisco
5 384 (5.26%) VMware
6 314 (4.30%) ServiceNow
7 196 (2.69%) Splunk
8 153 (2.10%) Red Hat
9 128 (1.75%) Juniper
10 127 (1.74%) Palo Alto
11 111 (1.52%) CyberArk
11 111 (1.52%) Google
12 102 (1.40%) Atlassian
12 102 (1.40%) Databricks
13 96 (1.32%) Dell
14 93 (1.27%) Salesforce
15 81 (1.11%) HP
16 73 (1.00%) Dynatrace
17 70 (0.96%) CheckPoint
18 69 (0.95%) Remedy