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

6 months to
20 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 0 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,169 4,520 6,908
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.30% 18.61% 18.98%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.95% 59.08% 61.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,394 3,001 4,557
10th Percentile £375 £340 £353
25th Percentile £450 £450 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £529 £550
% change year-on-year -0.76% -3.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 740 277 482
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.66 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £47.81 £56.15
Median % change year-on-year +15.05% -14.85% -6.43%
75th Percentile £74.00 £67.50 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £80.00 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £40.00 £55.80
% change year-on-year +37.50% -28.32% -7.00%

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 13,107 7,650 11,201
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.88% 31.50% 30.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,817 4,861 6,958
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 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £532
% change year-on-year - -1.32% -3.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 953 439 971
10th Percentile £17.00 £18.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.33 £22.40 £17.94
Median hourly rate £47.54 £40.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.85% - -23.81%
75th Percentile £72.50 £67.50 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.25 £81.48 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £47.80 £37.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +27.45% -6.25% -27.25%

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 May 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 May 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 May 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 3,267 £525 - 444
South East +1 2,199 £550 - 543
South West 0 1,290 £538 -6.52% 341
North of England 0 906 £500 - 256
Midlands +3 860 £472 -10.10% 141
West Midlands +3 731 £472 -10.10% 104
North West -1 515 £500 - 144
East of England +2 374 £550 +10.00% 145
Yorkshire -9 227 £478 -4.40% 50
North East +1 200 £475 -1.04% 64
East Midlands -4 122 £450 -5.26% 37
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
1 341 (3.72%) Confluence
2 205 (2.24%) SharePoint
3 121 (1.32%) Microsoft Exchange
4 110 (1.20%) SAS
5 81 (0.88%) Apache Spark
6 69 (0.75%) Apache
7 56 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
8 33 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 29 (0.32%) nginx
10 25 (0.27%) Jupyter
11 17 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
12 16 (0.17%) IIS
13 15 (0.16%) Tomcat
14 14 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
14 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
15 13 (0.14%) Skype for Business
16 12 (0.13%) CMS
17 8 (0.087%) Apache Superset
17 8 (0.087%) NetWeaver
17 8 (0.087%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 176 (1.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 175 (1.91%) Microsoft Office
3 98 (1.07%) Microsoft Project
4 83 (0.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 36 (0.39%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.13%) Simulink
8 7 (0.076%) AutoCAD
9 6 (0.065%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.055%) Notepad++
10 5 (0.055%) Revit
11 4 (0.044%) Siemens NX
12 3 (0.033%) Chatbot
12 3 (0.033%) Windchill
13 2 (0.022%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.022%) CATIA
13 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.022%) Lectora
13 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.022%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 85 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
3 38 (0.41%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 30 (0.33%) Teamcenter
5 26 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
5 26 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
6 15 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.15%) Maximo
7 14 (0.15%) SAP PSCD
8 13 (0.14%) Findur
8 13 (0.14%) iTrent
8 13 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
9 12 (0.13%) Temenos T24
10 10 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
11 9 (0.098%) Integrated Workplace Management System
11 9 (0.098%) SAP ERP
11 9 (0.098%) SAP HCM
12 8 (0.087%) SAP BRIM
12 8 (0.087%) SAP HR
12 8 (0.087%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 1,548 (16.88%) Azure
2 1,489 (16.24%) AWS
3 370 (4.04%) GitHub
4 365 (3.98%) GCP
5 341 (3.72%) Azure DevOps
6 334 (3.64%) Power Platform
7 235 (2.56%) Serverless
8 227 (2.48%) Entra ID
9 226 (2.46%) Microsoft 365
10 210 (2.29%) GitHub Actions
11 190 (2.07%) Amazon S3
12 161 (1.76%) AWS Lambda
13 138 (1.51%) Amazon EC2
14 131 (1.43%) PaaS
15 122 (1.33%) OpenShift
16 117 (1.28%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 112 (1.22%) OCI
18 104 (1.13%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 103 (1.12%) IaaS
19 103 (1.12%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 423 (4.61%) Firewall
2 266 (2.90%) DNS
3 213 (2.32%) WAN
4 211 (2.30%) Network Security
5 195 (2.13%) LAN
6 152 (1.66%) VPN
7 142 (1.55%) DHCP
8 141 (1.54%) BGP
9 121 (1.32%) OSPF
10 104 (1.13%) Wi-Fi
11 101 (1.10%) TCP/IP
11 101 (1.10%) VLAN
12 80 (0.87%) Wireless
13 60 (0.65%) MPLS
14 54 (0.59%) SAN
14 54 (0.59%) Structured Cabling
15 53 (0.58%) VXLAN
16 48 (0.52%) IPsec
17 47 (0.51%) SD-WAN
18 46 (0.50%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 256 (2.79%) Power BI
2 215 (2.34%) PostgreSQL
3 198 (2.16%) Data Warehouse
4 187 (2.04%) SQL Server
5 118 (1.29%) Metadata
6 112 (1.22%) Oracle Database
7 105 (1.15%) Amazon RDS
8 87 (0.95%) MongoDB
9 83 (0.91%) NoSQL
10 82 (0.89%) Data Lake
11 81 (0.88%) Relational Database
12 76 (0.83%) Pentaho
13 70 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
14 66 (0.72%) Oracle Reports
15 63 (0.69%) Tableau
16 61 (0.67%) Azure SQL Database
17 60 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
18 59 (0.64%) MySQL
19 52 (0.57%) Amazon Athena
20 47 (0.51%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 534 (5.82%) JIRA
2 403 (4.40%) Git
3 352 (3.84%) Jenkins
4 344 (3.75%) GitLab
5 95 (1.04%) Selenium
6 71 (0.77%) Postman
7 69 (0.75%) JUnit
8 57 (0.62%) SonarQube
9 55 (0.60%) Rational DOORS
10 48 (0.52%) Artifactory
11 44 (0.48%) JMeter
12 43 (0.47%) Bitbucket
13 40 (0.44%) Maven
14 39 (0.43%) Cucumber
15 38 (0.41%) Mockito
16 33 (0.36%) Visual Studio
17 31 (0.34%) Cypress.io
18 30 (0.33%) REST Assured
19 28 (0.31%) Zephyr
20 25 (0.27%) Gatling
General
1 1,967 (21.45%) Public Sector
2 1,907 (20.80%) Social Skills
3 661 (7.21%) Analytical Skills
4 637 (6.95%) Finance
5 328 (3.58%) Military
6 257 (2.80%) Documentation Skills
7 223 (2.43%) Aerospace
8 141 (1.54%) Legal
9 115 (1.25%) Telecoms
10 111 (1.21%) Banking
11 104 (1.13%) Influencing Skills
12 100 (1.09%) Organisational Skills
13 97 (1.06%) Manufacturing
14 86 (0.94%) Law
15 81 (0.88%) Presentation Skills
16 58 (0.63%) Marketing
17 53 (0.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 53 (0.58%) Police
18 46 (0.50%) Electronics
19 39 (0.43%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,350 (14.72%) Architect
2 844 (9.20%) Developer
3 775 (8.45%) Senior
4 647 (7.06%) Lead
5 642 (7.00%) Analyst
6 444 (4.84%) Data Engineer
7 420 (4.58%) DevOps Engineer
8 410 (4.47%) Consultant
9 280 (3.05%) Network Engineer
10 278 (3.03%) Software Engineer
11 261 (2.85%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 261 (2.85%) Technical Architect
12 237 (2.58%) Business Analyst
13 207 (2.26%) Project Manager
14 204 (2.22%) Solutions Architect
15 194 (2.12%) Azure Engineer
16 175 (1.91%) Designer
17 174 (1.90%) Security Architect
18 173 (1.89%) Administrator
19 171 (1.86%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 294 (3.21%) REST
2 215 (2.34%) Spring
3 175 (1.91%) Spring Boot
4 166 (1.81%) Node.js
5 165 (1.80%) React
6 160 (1.75%) Kafka
7 153 (1.67%) .NET
8 139 (1.52%) LDAP
8 139 (1.52%) SOAP
9 133 (1.45%) RESTful
10 112 (1.22%) AngularJS
11 108 (1.18%) JSON
12 101 (1.10%) Web Services
13 97 (1.06%) PySpark
14 87 (0.95%) Oracle Fusion
15 83 (0.91%) OAuth
16 79 (0.86%) HTML
17 75 (0.82%) XML
18 69 (0.75%) Middleware
19 65 (0.71%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 311 (3.39%) Cloud Native
2 297 (3.24%) Product Ownership
3 271 (2.96%) Data Centre
4 253 (2.76%) Onboarding
5 142 (1.55%) Management Information System
6 139 (1.52%) PKI
7 125 (1.36%) Legacy Systems
8 122 (1.33%) Security Posture
9 113 (1.23%) Replication
10 111 (1.21%) Enterprise Software
11 109 (1.19%) Distributed Systems
12 89 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
13 82 (0.89%) Clustering
14 79 (0.86%) Data Structures
15 73 (0.80%) Hybrid Cloud
16 71 (0.77%) Public Cloud
17 69 (0.75%) Security Operations Centre
18 66 (0.72%) Operational Technology
19 63 (0.69%) Virtual Team
20 60 (0.65%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 751 (8.19%) Windows
2 634 (6.91%) Linux
3 228 (2.49%) Windows Server
4 163 (1.78%) Unix
5 110 (1.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 84 (0.92%) Android
7 79 (0.86%) Windows 10
8 51 (0.56%) Apple iOS
9 41 (0.45%) Solaris
10 38 (0.41%) Mac OS
11 33 (0.36%) Ubuntu
12 25 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 24 (0.26%) AIX
14 23 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
15 22 (0.24%) VMS
16 21 (0.23%) CentOS
17 14 (0.15%) Windows 7
18 11 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
19 9 (0.098%) Windows Server 2003
19 9 (0.098%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,782 (19.44%) Agile
2 1,406 (15.33%) DevOps
3 1,219 (13.29%) CI/CD
4 984 (10.73%) Problem-Solving
5 885 (9.65%) Stakeholder Management
6 809 (8.82%) Continuous Improvement
7 753 (8.21%) Migration
8 663 (7.23%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 615 (6.71%) Infrastructure as Code
10 591 (6.45%) ITIL
11 551 (6.01%) Cybersecurity
12 524 (5.71%) Software Engineering
13 522 (5.69%) Test Automation
14 509 (5.55%) Analytics
15 500 (5.45%) Roadmaps
16 488 (5.32%) Containerisation
17 471 (5.14%) Data Modelling
18 437 (4.77%) Decision-Making
19 415 (4.53%) Scrum
20 397 (4.33%) AI
Programming Languages
1 968 (10.56%) Python
2 838 (9.14%) SQL
3 560 (6.11%) Java
4 488 (5.32%) PowerShell
5 279 (3.04%) JavaScript
6 197 (2.15%) C#
7 176 (1.92%) Bash
8 138 (1.51%) TypeScript
9 93 (1.01%) PL/SQL
10 89 (0.97%) C++
11 84 (0.92%) Shell Script
12 64 (0.70%) Go
13 63 (0.69%) Scala
14 56 (0.61%) C
15 53 (0.58%) Ruby
16 51 (0.56%) Bicep
17 42 (0.46%) Apex Code
18 40 (0.44%) Ada
19 36 (0.39%) MATLAB
19 36 (0.39%) R
Qualifications
1 6,884 (75.08%) SC Cleared
2 1,762 (19.22%) DV Cleared
3 397 (4.33%) Degree
4 258 (2.81%) BPSS Clearance
5 183 (2.00%) Cisco Certification
6 148 (1.61%) CISSP
7 120 (1.31%) Azure Certification
8 116 (1.27%) CCNP
9 99 (1.08%) CISM
10 96 (1.05%) AWS Certification
11 88 (0.96%) Microsoft Certification
12 78 (0.85%) CCNA
13 69 (0.75%) PMP
14 61 (0.67%) PMI Certification
15 57 (0.62%) Computer Science Degree
16 56 (0.61%) ISTQB
16 56 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
17 50 (0.55%) TOGAF Certification
18 49 (0.53%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 48 (0.52%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 343 (3.74%) QA
2 274 (2.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 273 (2.98%) NIST
4 264 (2.88%) Data Quality
5 179 (1.95%) NCSC
6 164 (1.79%) Accessibility
7 154 (1.68%) PMO
8 151 (1.65%) GDPR
9 95 (1.04%) SLA
10 62 (0.68%) GRC
11 58 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 54 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials
13 37 (0.40%) NIST 800
13 37 (0.40%) WCAG
14 30 (0.33%) COBIT
15 29 (0.32%) Def Stans
15 29 (0.32%) PCI DSS
16 25 (0.27%) RMADS
17 21 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 19 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 565 (6.16%) Docker
2 423 (4.61%) Active Directory
3 261 (2.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 98 (1.07%) VMware ESXi
5 86 (0.94%) VMware NSX
6 73 (0.80%) vSphere
7 72 (0.79%) Hyper-V
8 65 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
9 34 (0.37%) Firmware
10 27 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
11 24 (0.26%) Virtual Desktop
12 20 (0.22%) NFS
13 19 (0.21%) BitLocker
14 18 (0.20%) vCloud
15 16 (0.17%) Postfix
15 16 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 15 (0.16%) Squid
17 8 (0.087%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.065%) Corosync
18 6 (0.065%) KVM
Systems Management
1 715 (7.80%) Kubernetes
2 696 (7.59%) Terraform
3 321 (3.50%) Ansible
4 231 (2.52%) Grafana
5 186 (2.03%) Prometheus
6 101 (1.10%) vCenter Server
7 82 (0.89%) Single Sign-On
8 69 (0.75%) SCCM
9 55 (0.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 51 (0.56%) Microsoft Intune
11 47 (0.51%) FortiGate
12 46 (0.50%) Argo
13 38 (0.41%) Puppet
14 37 (0.40%) Podman
15 32 (0.35%) Oracle RMAN
16 31 (0.34%) Progress Chef
17 30 (0.33%) Nagios
18 29 (0.32%) SCOM
19 22 (0.24%) Packer
19 22 (0.24%) WSUS
Vendors
1 934 (10.19%) Microsoft
2 570 (6.22%) Oracle
3 455 (4.96%) VMware
4 366 (3.99%) ServiceNow
5 327 (3.57%) Cisco
6 317 (3.46%) SAP
7 215 (2.34%) Splunk
8 179 (1.95%) Databricks
9 149 (1.63%) Red Hat
10 144 (1.57%) Google
11 118 (1.29%) Palo Alto
12 113 (1.23%) Talend
13 111 (1.21%) Salesforce
14 108 (1.18%) IBM
15 100 (1.09%) Juniper
16 90 (0.98%) CyberArk
17 82 (0.89%) Informatica
18 81 (0.88%) Atlassian
18 81 (0.88%) F5
19 77 (0.84%) Fortinet