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

6 months to
11 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 9,399 4,520 7,092
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.07% 18.47% 18.92%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.60% 58.90% 61.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,559 2,978 4,622
10th Percentile £380 £337 £353
25th Percentile £450 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £714 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 776 303 525
10th Percentile £18.20 £18.25 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.42 £23.28 £21.46
Median hourly rate £60.00 £32.00 £56.89
Median % change year-on-year +87.50% -43.75% -5.19%
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.13 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.43 £80.00 £84.45
UK median hourly rate £57.75 £27.76 £56.15
% change year-on-year +108.03% -50.56% -6.43%

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 13,505 7,674 11,449
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.71% 31.36% 30.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,063 4,834 7,080
10th Percentile £350 £280 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £536
Median % change year-on-year - -2.05% -2.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,032 471 1,012
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.63 £22.16 £18.99
Median hourly rate £50.24 £32.00 £40.29
Median % change year-on-year +57.01% -20.57% -26.75%
75th Percentile £73.46 £65.43 £64.25
90th Percentile £85.35 £80.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £30.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +63.93% -23.75% -27.27%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 3,376 £525 - 536
South East +1 2,261 £550 - 499
South West 0 1,269 £538 -4.44% 421
North of England +1 973 £500 - 305
Midlands +1 888 £469 -10.67% 150
West Midlands +2 767 £469 -10.67% 121
North West 0 540 £520 +4.00% 193
East of England +2 370 £550 +10.00% 122
Yorkshire -3 245 £490 -0.41% 69
North East +1 220 £478 -0.52% 45
East Midlands -5 114 £418 -17.53% 29
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
1 338 (3.60%) Confluence
2 214 (2.28%) SharePoint
3 134 (1.43%) SAS
4 123 (1.31%) Microsoft Exchange
5 80 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
5 80 (0.85%) Apache Spark
6 73 (0.78%) Apache
7 37 (0.39%) nginx
8 36 (0.38%) Jupyter
9 27 (0.29%) WebLogic
10 20 (0.21%) Tomcat
11 19 (0.20%) IIS
12 18 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
13 15 (0.16%) CMS
13 15 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
13 15 (0.16%) Skype for Business
14 13 (0.14%) Tuxedo
15 11 (0.12%) NetWeaver
16 9 (0.096%) ArcGIS
17 8 (0.085%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 156 (1.66%) Microsoft Excel
2 129 (1.37%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 70 (0.74%) Microsoft Project
5 38 (0.40%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.15%) Simulink
8 9 (0.096%) SOLIDWORKS
9 8 (0.085%) AutoCAD
9 8 (0.085%) Chatbot
9 8 (0.085%) Revit
10 5 (0.053%) Notepad++
11 3 (0.032%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.032%) Sketch
11 3 (0.032%) Windchill
12 2 (0.021%) CATIA
12 2 (0.021%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.021%) Lectora
12 2 (0.021%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.021%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 95 (1.01%) SAP S/4HANA
2 56 (0.60%) Remedy ITSM
3 41 (0.44%) Oracle ERP
4 34 (0.36%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 29 (0.31%) Teamcenter
6 26 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
7 17 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
8 15 (0.16%) Findur
9 14 (0.15%) Maximo
9 14 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
10 13 (0.14%) SAP PSCD
11 12 (0.13%) iTrent
11 12 (0.13%) Temenos T24
12 11 (0.12%) Primavera
13 9 (0.096%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 9 (0.096%) Oracle Assets
13 9 (0.096%) Salesforce CRM
13 9 (0.096%) SAP ERP
13 9 (0.096%) SAP HCM
14 8 (0.085%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,639 (17.44%) Azure
2 1,571 (16.71%) AWS
3 381 (4.05%) GitHub
4 366 (3.89%) GCP
5 356 (3.79%) Azure DevOps
6 352 (3.75%) Power Platform
7 235 (2.50%) Serverless
8 234 (2.49%) Microsoft 365
9 229 (2.44%) GitHub Actions
10 228 (2.43%) Entra ID
11 202 (2.15%) Amazon S3
12 164 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
13 145 (1.54%) Amazon EC2
14 138 (1.47%) PaaS
15 126 (1.34%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 126 (1.34%) OpenShift
16 124 (1.32%) OCI
17 123 (1.31%) SaaS
18 103 (1.10%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 98 (1.04%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 414 (4.40%) Firewall
2 271 (2.88%) DNS
3 217 (2.31%) Network Security
4 208 (2.21%) WAN
5 189 (2.01%) LAN
6 155 (1.65%) VPN
7 148 (1.57%) DHCP
8 138 (1.47%) BGP
9 117 (1.24%) OSPF
10 111 (1.18%) Wi-Fi
11 104 (1.11%) VLAN
12 91 (0.97%) TCP/IP
13 78 (0.83%) Wireless
14 60 (0.64%) MPLS
15 55 (0.59%) VXLAN
16 53 (0.56%) SD-WAN
17 52 (0.55%) SAN
18 51 (0.54%) Structured Cabling
19 48 (0.51%) Ethernet VPN
19 48 (0.51%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 263 (2.80%) Power BI
2 229 (2.44%) PostgreSQL
3 210 (2.23%) Data Warehouse
4 203 (2.16%) SQL Server
5 128 (1.36%) Oracle Database
6 115 (1.22%) Metadata
7 107 (1.14%) Amazon RDS
8 99 (1.05%) Data Lake
9 90 (0.96%) Relational Database
10 81 (0.86%) Pentaho
11 79 (0.84%) MongoDB
12 76 (0.81%) Oracle Reports
13 70 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
14 69 (0.73%) MySQL
14 69 (0.73%) NoSQL
15 61 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
16 60 (0.64%) Tableau
17 58 (0.62%) Amazon Athena
18 47 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
19 43 (0.46%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 530 (5.64%) JIRA
2 409 (4.35%) Git
3 374 (3.98%) GitLab
4 359 (3.82%) Jenkins
5 101 (1.07%) Selenium
6 78 (0.83%) JUnit
7 73 (0.78%) Postman
8 66 (0.70%) SonarQube
9 57 (0.61%) Rational DOORS
10 50 (0.53%) JMeter
11 48 (0.51%) Artifactory
12 46 (0.49%) Cucumber
13 41 (0.44%) Bitbucket
14 39 (0.41%) Mockito
15 38 (0.40%) Maven
16 37 (0.39%) Zephyr
17 35 (0.37%) Visual Studio
18 33 (0.35%) Cypress.io
18 33 (0.35%) REST Assured
19 29 (0.31%) WebDriver
General
1 1,978 (21.04%) Public Sector
2 1,908 (20.30%) Social Skills
3 641 (6.82%) Analytical Skills
4 625 (6.65%) Finance
5 314 (3.34%) Military
6 271 (2.88%) Documentation Skills
7 255 (2.71%) Aerospace
8 140 (1.49%) Legal
9 119 (1.27%) Banking
10 112 (1.19%) Influencing Skills
11 103 (1.10%) Telecoms
12 98 (1.04%) Law
13 90 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
14 78 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
15 77 (0.82%) Manufacturing
16 63 (0.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 60 (0.64%) Police
18 47 (0.50%) Marketing
19 38 (0.40%) Retail
20 37 (0.39%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,374 (14.62%) Architect
2 867 (9.22%) Developer
3 802 (8.53%) Senior
4 716 (7.62%) Lead
5 646 (6.87%) Analyst
6 461 (4.90%) Data Engineer
7 423 (4.50%) DevOps Engineer
8 418 (4.45%) Consultant
9 289 (3.07%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 281 (2.99%) Software Engineer
11 274 (2.92%) Technical Architect
12 258 (2.74%) Network Engineer
13 237 (2.52%) Business Analyst
14 224 (2.38%) Solutions Architect
15 207 (2.20%) Project Manager
16 201 (2.14%) Security Architect
17 188 (2.00%) Azure Engineer
17 188 (2.00%) Delivery Manager
18 185 (1.97%) Administrator
19 176 (1.87%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 298 (3.17%) REST
2 210 (2.23%) Spring
3 177 (1.88%) Spring Boot
4 171 (1.82%) React
5 159 (1.69%) .NET
6 150 (1.60%) Kafka
7 145 (1.54%) Node.js
8 143 (1.52%) LDAP
9 137 (1.46%) SOAP
10 135 (1.44%) RESTful
11 112 (1.19%) AngularJS
12 109 (1.16%) JSON
13 98 (1.04%) Web Services
14 93 (0.99%) OAuth
15 92 (0.98%) PySpark
16 88 (0.94%) HTML
17 76 (0.81%) XML
18 74 (0.79%) Oracle Fusion
19 73 (0.78%) OpenID
20 71 (0.76%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 352 (3.75%) Cloud Native
2 311 (3.31%) Product Ownership
3 288 (3.06%) Data Centre
4 274 (2.92%) Onboarding
5 149 (1.59%) Management Information System
6 145 (1.54%) Legacy Systems
7 138 (1.47%) PKI
8 122 (1.30%) Security Posture
9 121 (1.29%) Distributed Systems
10 117 (1.24%) Enterprise Software
11 112 (1.19%) Replication
12 97 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
13 87 (0.93%) Clustering
14 81 (0.86%) Data Structures
15 79 (0.84%) Hybrid Cloud
16 76 (0.81%) Public Cloud
17 74 (0.79%) CMDB
18 73 (0.78%) Security Operations Centre
19 71 (0.76%) Operational Technology
20 65 (0.69%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 752 (8.00%) Windows
2 627 (6.67%) Linux
3 247 (2.63%) Windows Server
4 180 (1.92%) Unix
5 112 (1.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 77 (0.82%) Windows 10
7 76 (0.81%) Android
8 51 (0.54%) Apple iOS
8 51 (0.54%) Solaris
9 34 (0.36%) Mac OS
10 31 (0.33%) Ubuntu
11 26 (0.28%) AIX
11 26 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
12 24 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
13 22 (0.23%) CentOS
14 20 (0.21%) VMS
15 14 (0.15%) Windows 7
16 11 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
16 11 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
17 10 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,844 (19.62%) Agile
2 1,448 (15.41%) DevOps
3 1,270 (13.51%) CI/CD
4 963 (10.25%) Problem-Solving
5 948 (10.09%) Stakeholder Management
6 883 (9.39%) Continuous Improvement
7 787 (8.37%) Migration
8 753 (8.01%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 668 (7.11%) Infrastructure as Code
10 614 (6.53%) Cybersecurity
11 566 (6.02%) ITIL
12 561 (5.97%) Test Automation
13 545 (5.80%) Analytics
14 544 (5.79%) Software Engineering
15 525 (5.59%) Roadmaps
16 510 (5.43%) Containerisation
17 484 (5.15%) Data Modelling
18 464 (4.94%) Decision-Making
19 440 (4.68%) AI
20 436 (4.64%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 990 (10.53%) Python
2 877 (9.33%) SQL
3 577 (6.14%) Java
4 488 (5.19%) PowerShell
5 267 (2.84%) JavaScript
6 205 (2.18%) C#
7 183 (1.95%) Bash
8 142 (1.51%) TypeScript
9 112 (1.19%) PL/SQL
10 84 (0.89%) C++
10 84 (0.89%) Shell Script
11 61 (0.65%) Bicep
12 60 (0.64%) C
13 53 (0.56%) Go
14 51 (0.54%) Scala
15 45 (0.48%) Ada
16 43 (0.46%) Ruby
17 40 (0.43%) Apex Code
18 35 (0.37%) MATLAB
19 32 (0.34%) R
Qualifications
1 7,105 (75.59%) SC Cleared
2 1,773 (18.86%) DV Cleared
3 388 (4.13%) Degree
4 264 (2.81%) BPSS Clearance
5 180 (1.92%) Cisco Certification
6 158 (1.68%) CISSP
7 125 (1.33%) Azure Certification
8 105 (1.12%) CCNP
9 103 (1.10%) CISM
10 100 (1.06%) Microsoft Certification
11 96 (1.02%) AWS Certification
12 76 (0.81%) CCNA
12 76 (0.81%) PMP
13 70 (0.74%) PMI Certification
14 64 (0.68%) ISTQB
15 57 (0.61%) Computer Science Degree
16 56 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 53 (0.56%) ITIL Certification
18 43 (0.46%) GIAC
19 34 (0.36%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 359 (3.82%) QA
2 290 (3.09%) NIST
3 285 (3.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 266 (2.83%) Data Quality
5 198 (2.11%) NCSC
6 178 (1.89%) Accessibility
7 165 (1.76%) PMO
8 161 (1.71%) GDPR
9 107 (1.14%) SLA
10 73 (0.78%) GRC
11 60 (0.64%) JSP 440
12 51 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials
13 43 (0.46%) WCAG
14 41 (0.44%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.35%) Def Stans
16 28 (0.30%) RMADS
17 22 (0.23%) COBIT
17 22 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
17 22 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 21 (0.22%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 571 (6.08%) Docker
2 433 (4.61%) Active Directory
3 287 (3.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 112 (1.19%) VMware ESXi
5 97 (1.03%) VMware NSX
6 79 (0.84%) Hyper-V
7 78 (0.83%) vSphere
8 71 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
9 31 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
10 30 (0.32%) Firmware
11 22 (0.23%) BitLocker
12 20 (0.21%) vCloud
13 19 (0.20%) NFS
13 19 (0.20%) Postfix
14 18 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
15 16 (0.17%) Squid
16 15 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 9 (0.096%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.064%) Corosync
18 6 (0.064%) KVM
Systems Management
1 741 (7.88%) Terraform
2 719 (7.65%) Kubernetes
3 337 (3.59%) Ansible
4 229 (2.44%) Grafana
5 186 (1.98%) Prometheus
6 113 (1.20%) vCenter Server
7 80 (0.85%) Single Sign-On
8 71 (0.76%) SCCM
9 57 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 54 (0.57%) Microsoft Intune
11 47 (0.50%) Argo
11 47 (0.50%) FortiGate
12 38 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
12 38 (0.40%) Puppet
12 38 (0.40%) SCOM
13 36 (0.38%) Podman
14 27 (0.29%) Progress Chef
15 24 (0.26%) Nagios
16 23 (0.24%) vMotion
17 21 (0.22%) WSUS
Vendors
1 972 (10.34%) Microsoft
2 646 (6.87%) Oracle
3 469 (4.99%) VMware
4 377 (4.01%) ServiceNow
5 320 (3.40%) Cisco
6 301 (3.20%) SAP
7 209 (2.22%) Splunk
8 178 (1.89%) Databricks
9 152 (1.62%) Google
10 146 (1.55%) Red Hat
11 125 (1.33%) Talend
12 118 (1.26%) Palo Alto
13 116 (1.23%) Salesforce
14 115 (1.22%) IBM
15 97 (1.03%) Juniper
16 93 (0.99%) CyberArk
17 90 (0.96%) Informatica
18 83 (0.88%) F5
19 82 (0.87%) Fortinet
20 81 (0.86%) Dynatrace