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

6 months to
17 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 10,250 5,212 6,019
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.08% 18.77% 18.41%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.93% 59.60% 61.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,203 3,412 3,901
10th Percentile £398 £350 £358
25th Percentile £460 £450 £456
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 £725
UK median daily rate £545 £537 £550
% change year-on-year +1.49% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 784 515 359
10th Percentile £21.33 £18.50 £20.20
25th Percentile £35.94 £18.87 £36.63
Median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +158.45% -59.17% +2.67%
75th Percentile £78.75 £39.75 £72.50
90th Percentile £91.31 £73.25 £83.84
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +158.45% -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 14,870 8,745 9,726
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.03% 31.50% 29.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,971 5,557 6,003
10th Percentile £350 £304 £325
25th Percentile £442 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £526 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year +0.10% -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 1,200 684 574
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.13 £17.20
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £27.00
Median hourly rate £52.83 £25.15 £54.00
Median % change year-on-year +110.07% -53.43% -0.81%
75th Percentile £74.68 £47.22 £69.94
90th Percentile £89.15 £73.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £48.72 £25.15 £49.50
% change year-on-year +93.72% -49.19% -9.08%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 3,624 £550 +2.33% 1,719
South East +1 2,330 £565 +5.12% 1,005
South West 0 1,416 £550 - 849
North of England +3 1,279 £515 +1.78% 740
Midlands 0 944 £475 -7.77% 378
West Midlands +1 805 £475 -8.39% 246
North West +2 747 £530 -3.64% 446
East of England 0 387 £550 - 477
Yorkshire +2 304 £500 +2.15% 158
North East 0 249 £475 -1.81% 141
East Midlands -1 132 £450 -2.70% 132
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
1 334 (3.26%) Confluence
2 255 (2.49%) SharePoint
3 153 (1.49%) SAS
4 116 (1.13%) Microsoft Exchange
5 93 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
6 86 (0.84%) Apache Spark
7 85 (0.83%) Apache
8 35 (0.34%) nginx
9 30 (0.29%) Jupyter
10 25 (0.24%) WebLogic
11 23 (0.22%) Oracle Application Server
12 22 (0.21%) Skype for Business
13 19 (0.19%) Tomcat
14 18 (0.18%) CMS
15 16 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
16 14 (0.14%) NetWeaver
17 12 (0.12%) IIS
17 12 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
18 11 (0.11%) JBoss
19 10 (0.098%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 185 (1.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 138 (1.35%) Microsoft Office
3 95 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
4 91 (0.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 29 (0.28%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.17%) AutoCAD
7 17 (0.17%) Revit
8 16 (0.16%) SOLIDWORKS
9 14 (0.14%) Windchill
10 11 (0.11%) Simulink
11 8 (0.078%) Adobe XD
11 8 (0.078%) Chatbot
12 7 (0.068%) Sketch
13 5 (0.049%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 5 (0.049%) Notepad++
14 4 (0.039%) Trello
15 3 (0.029%) OrCAD
16 2 (0.020%) Houdini
16 2 (0.020%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 130 (1.27%) SAP S/4HANA
2 76 (0.74%) Remedy ITSM
3 51 (0.50%) Oracle ERP
4 37 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
5 30 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 29 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 26 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
8 25 (0.24%) SAP PSCD
9 24 (0.23%) Oracle Payroll
10 19 (0.19%) SAP HR
11 17 (0.17%) SAP FI
12 14 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
12 14 (0.14%) Primavera
13 13 (0.13%) SAP CO
14 12 (0.12%) Findur
14 12 (0.12%) iTrent
14 12 (0.12%) NetSuite
14 12 (0.12%) SAP GRC
14 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
15 11 (0.11%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 1,865 (18.20%) Azure
2 1,689 (16.48%) AWS
3 443 (4.32%) Azure DevOps
4 431 (4.20%) Power Platform
5 411 (4.01%) GitHub
6 387 (3.78%) GCP
7 300 (2.93%) Microsoft 365
8 281 (2.74%) GitHub Actions
9 276 (2.69%) Entra ID
10 240 (2.34%) Serverless
11 204 (1.99%) Amazon S3
12 170 (1.66%) AWS Lambda
13 157 (1.53%) OCI
14 148 (1.44%) SaaS
15 143 (1.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 142 (1.39%) OpenShift
17 131 (1.28%) Amazon EKS
18 123 (1.20%) Amazon EC2
19 103 (1.00%) AWS CloudFormation
20 101 (0.99%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 407 (3.97%) Firewall
2 346 (3.38%) DNS
3 212 (2.07%) Network Security
4 187 (1.82%) WAN
5 175 (1.71%) VPN
6 170 (1.66%) DHCP
7 146 (1.42%) LAN
8 126 (1.23%) TCP/IP
9 125 (1.22%) BGP
10 117 (1.14%) Wi-Fi
11 100 (0.98%) VLAN
12 86 (0.84%) OSPF
13 82 (0.80%) Wireless
14 63 (0.61%) VSAN
15 61 (0.60%) SSL
16 59 (0.58%) IPsec
17 57 (0.56%) MPLS
18 54 (0.53%) SD-WAN
19 53 (0.52%) SAN
20 42 (0.41%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 306 (2.99%) Power BI
2 248 (2.42%) SQL Server
3 242 (2.36%) PostgreSQL
4 236 (2.30%) Data Warehouse
5 171 (1.67%) Metadata
6 162 (1.58%) Oracle Database
7 124 (1.21%) Relational Database
8 114 (1.11%) Data Lake
9 96 (0.94%) Amazon RDS
10 94 (0.92%) MongoDB
11 92 (0.90%) MySQL
12 87 (0.85%) NoSQL
13 79 (0.77%) Oracle Reports
14 67 (0.65%) Pentaho
15 58 (0.57%) Amazon Athena
15 58 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
16 53 (0.52%) Tableau
17 46 (0.45%) Amazon Aurora
18 43 (0.42%) Amazon Redshift
18 43 (0.42%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 546 (5.33%) JIRA
2 492 (4.80%) Git
3 437 (4.26%) GitLab
4 406 (3.96%) Jenkins
5 118 (1.15%) Selenium
6 77 (0.75%) SonarQube
7 69 (0.67%) Postman
8 65 (0.63%) JUnit
9 63 (0.61%) Maven
10 50 (0.49%) JMeter
11 48 (0.47%) Cucumber
12 40 (0.39%) Gradle
13 39 (0.38%) Mockito
14 37 (0.36%) Zephyr
15 36 (0.35%) Artifactory
16 34 (0.33%) Cypress.io
16 34 (0.33%) REST Assured
17 33 (0.32%) Gatling
17 33 (0.32%) Visual Studio
18 30 (0.29%) MSI
General
1 2,321 (22.64%) Social Skills
2 2,023 (19.74%) Public Sector
3 831 (8.11%) Analytical Skills
4 696 (6.79%) Finance
5 399 (3.89%) Military
6 302 (2.95%) Aerospace
7 247 (2.41%) Documentation Skills
8 200 (1.95%) Influencing Skills
9 168 (1.64%) Organisational Skills
10 148 (1.44%) Telecoms
11 139 (1.36%) Legal
12 132 (1.29%) Banking
13 127 (1.24%) Manufacturing
14 113 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 113 (1.10%) Law
15 97 (0.95%) Police
16 59 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
17 47 (0.46%) Marketing
18 44 (0.43%) Retail
19 43 (0.42%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,602 (15.63%) Architect
2 977 (9.53%) Developer
3 952 (9.29%) Senior
4 948 (9.25%) Lead
5 592 (5.78%) Consultant
6 564 (5.50%) Analyst
7 431 (4.20%) Data Engineer
8 425 (4.15%) DevOps Engineer
9 377 (3.68%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 268 (2.61%) Technical Architect
11 258 (2.52%) Software Engineer
12 257 (2.51%) Solutions Architect
13 252 (2.46%) Data Architect
14 239 (2.33%) Security Architect
15 224 (2.19%) Network Engineer
16 208 (2.03%) Administrator
17 196 (1.91%) Cloud Engineer
18 185 (1.80%) Delivery Manager
18 185 (1.80%) Java Developer
19 183 (1.79%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 893 (8.71%) Terraform
2 391 (3.81%) REST
3 212 (2.07%) Spring
4 202 (1.97%) Kafka
5 192 (1.87%) Spring Boot
6 171 (1.67%) .NET
6 171 (1.67%) React
7 167 (1.63%) RESTful
8 157 (1.53%) SOAP
9 136 (1.33%) Node.js
10 133 (1.30%) JSON
11 109 (1.06%) OAuth
12 108 (1.05%) HTML
13 105 (1.02%) AngularJS
14 104 (1.01%) XML
15 100 (0.98%) Web Services
16 86 (0.84%) CSS
16 86 (0.84%) Middleware
17 84 (0.82%) Oracle Fusion
18 83 (0.81%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 458 (4.47%) Cloud Native
2 390 (3.80%) Onboarding
3 311 (3.03%) Product Ownership
4 263 (2.57%) Data Centre
5 176 (1.72%) Management Information System
6 162 (1.58%) Legacy Systems
7 157 (1.53%) PKI
8 150 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
9 139 (1.36%) CMDB
10 123 (1.20%) Distributed Systems
11 117 (1.14%) Hybrid Cloud
12 111 (1.08%) Cyber Threat
13 110 (1.07%) Replication
13 110 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
14 100 (0.98%) Operational Technology
15 85 (0.83%) Security Operations Centre
16 84 (0.82%) Public Cloud
17 81 (0.79%) Clustering
18 79 (0.77%) Data Structures
18 79 (0.77%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 912 (8.90%) Windows
2 719 (7.01%) Linux
3 351 (3.42%) Windows Server
4 209 (2.04%) Unix
5 148 (1.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 135 (1.32%) Windows 10
7 71 (0.69%) Solaris
8 64 (0.62%) Android
9 46 (0.45%) Mac OS
10 43 (0.42%) CentOS
11 35 (0.34%) Ubuntu
11 35 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 28 (0.27%) AIX
13 26 (0.25%) Apple iOS
14 24 (0.23%) Windows 7
15 22 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
16 21 (0.20%) VMS
17 16 (0.16%) Rocky
17 16 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
18 13 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,150 (20.98%) Agile
2 1,546 (15.08%) DevOps
3 1,507 (14.70%) CI/CD
4 1,410 (13.76%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,254 (12.23%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,109 (10.82%) Problem-Solving
7 1,009 (9.84%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 898 (8.76%) Infrastructure as Code
9 834 (8.14%) Migration
10 780 (7.61%) Cybersecurity
11 725 (7.07%) ITIL
12 653 (6.37%) Roadmaps
12 653 (6.37%) Test Automation
13 652 (6.36%) Technical Leadership
14 641 (6.25%) AI
15 637 (6.21%) Containerisation
16 631 (6.16%) Analytics
17 613 (5.98%) Decision-Making
18 607 (5.92%) Software Engineering
19 547 (5.34%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,175 (11.46%) Python
2 946 (9.23%) SQL
3 667 (6.51%) Java
4 546 (5.33%) PowerShell
5 350 (3.41%) JavaScript
6 309 (3.01%) Bash
7 192 (1.87%) C#
8 174 (1.70%) TypeScript
9 136 (1.33%) PL/SQL
10 111 (1.08%) Bicep
11 66 (0.64%) Shell Script
12 63 (0.61%) C++
13 53 (0.52%) C
13 53 (0.52%) Go
14 49 (0.48%) Groovy
15 42 (0.41%) Scala
16 40 (0.39%) Kotlin
17 30 (0.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 28 (0.27%) Apex Code
19 25 (0.24%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 7,684 (74.97%) SC Cleared
2 2,122 (20.70%) DV Cleared
3 430 (4.20%) Degree
4 407 (3.97%) BPSS Clearance
5 196 (1.91%) CISSP
6 178 (1.74%) Azure Certification
7 158 (1.54%) Cisco Certification
7 158 (1.54%) Microsoft Certification
8 139 (1.36%) AWS Certification
9 118 (1.15%) CISM
10 100 (0.98%) PMI Certification
11 92 (0.90%) PMP
12 84 (0.82%) ISTQB
13 79 (0.77%) CCNP
14 63 (0.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 62 (0.60%) Computer Science Degree
16 55 (0.54%) CCNA
17 44 (0.43%) TOGAF Certification
18 42 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 42 (0.41%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 461 (4.50%) QA
2 325 (3.17%) Data Quality
3 301 (2.94%) NIST
4 291 (2.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 252 (2.46%) NCSC
6 229 (2.23%) Accessibility
7 222 (2.17%) PMO
8 147 (1.43%) GDPR
8 147 (1.43%) SLA
9 138 (1.35%) GRC
10 69 (0.67%) WCAG
11 54 (0.53%) JSP 440
12 45 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
13 42 (0.41%) NIST 800
14 34 (0.33%) Def Stans
15 26 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 20000
16 21 (0.20%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 20 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
18 19 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
18 19 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 685 (6.68%) Docker
2 571 (5.57%) Active Directory
3 395 (3.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 144 (1.40%) VMware ESXi
5 136 (1.33%) VMware NSX
6 124 (1.21%) vSphere
7 122 (1.19%) Hyper-V
8 85 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
9 43 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
10 41 (0.40%) Firmware
11 37 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
12 26 (0.25%) vCloud
13 23 (0.22%) 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 (0.088%) Embedded Firmware
18 9 (0.088%) KVM
Systems Management
1 835 (8.15%) Kubernetes
2 409 (3.99%) Ansible
3 227 (2.21%) Grafana
4 176 (1.72%) Prometheus
5 134 (1.31%) vCenter Server
6 132 (1.29%) SCCM
7 92 (0.90%) SCOM
8 90 (0.88%) Microsoft Intune
9 63 (0.61%) Argo
10 50 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
11 47 (0.46%) Puppet
12 41 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
13 36 (0.35%) Data Guard
14 33 (0.32%) Kibana
15 29 (0.28%) Progress Chef
16 28 (0.27%) Control-M
16 28 (0.27%) VxRail
17 27 (0.26%) Istio
18 26 (0.25%) Nagios
18 26 (0.25%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,368 (13.35%) Microsoft
2 821 (8.01%) Oracle
3 555 (5.41%) VMware
4 471 (4.60%) ServiceNow
5 408 (3.98%) SAP
6 271 (2.64%) Cisco
7 232 (2.26%) Google
8 201 (1.96%) Splunk
9 179 (1.75%) Databricks
10 130 (1.27%) Red Hat
11 122 (1.19%) Salesforce
12 113 (1.10%) Palo Alto
13 100 (0.98%) IBM
14 94 (0.92%) Informatica
15 90 (0.88%) Talend
16 88 (0.86%) CyberArk
17 87 (0.85%) Dynatrace
17 87 (0.85%) Remedy
18 75 (0.73%) SolarWinds
19 71 (0.69%) Citrix