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

6 months to
16 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 10,156 5,212 6,019
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.03% 18.77% 18.41%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.88% 59.60% 61.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,130 3,412 3,901
10th Percentile £396 £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 777 515 359
10th Percentile £21.30 £18.50 £20.20
25th Percentile £35.00 £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 £64.55 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +156.64% -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 14,745 8,745 9,726
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.98% 31.50% 29.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,874 5,557 6,003
10th Percentile £350 £304 £325
25th Percentile £440 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -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 1,192 684 574
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.13 £17.20
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £27.00
Median hourly rate £52.52 £25.15 £54.00
Median % change year-on-year +108.82% -53.43% -0.81%
75th Percentile £74.68 £47.22 £69.94
90th Percentile £89.08 £73.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £48.00 £25.15 £49.50
% change year-on-year +90.85% -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 16 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 16 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 16 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 3,582 £550 +2.33% 2,059
South East +1 2,316 £565 +5.12% 1,080
South West 0 1,409 £550 - 974
North of England +3 1,264 £515 +1.78% 919
Midlands 0 936 £475 -7.77% 436
West Midlands +1 800 £475 -8.39% 279
North West +2 738 £530 -3.64% 603
East of England 0 380 £550 - 534
Yorkshire +2 304 £500 +2.15% 186
North East 0 243 £475 -1.81% 153
East Midlands -1 129 £450 -2.70% 157
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
1 333 (3.28%) Confluence
2 253 (2.49%) SharePoint
3 152 (1.50%) SAS
4 115 (1.13%) Microsoft Exchange
5 90 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
6 84 (0.83%) Apache
6 84 (0.83%) Apache Spark
7 35 (0.34%) nginx
8 30 (0.30%) Jupyter
9 25 (0.25%) WebLogic
10 23 (0.23%) Oracle Application Server
11 22 (0.22%) Skype for Business
12 19 (0.19%) Tomcat
13 18 (0.18%) CMS
14 16 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
15 14 (0.14%) NetWeaver
16 12 (0.12%) IIS
16 12 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
17 11 (0.11%) JBoss
18 10 (0.098%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 184 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 138 (1.36%) Microsoft Office
3 95 (0.94%) Microsoft Project
4 91 (0.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 29 (0.29%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.17%) AutoCAD
7 17 (0.17%) Revit
8 16 (0.16%) SOLIDWORKS
9 11 (0.11%) Simulink
9 11 (0.11%) Windchill
10 8 (0.079%) Chatbot
11 7 (0.069%) Adobe XD
12 6 (0.059%) Sketch
13 5 (0.049%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 5 (0.049%) Notepad++
14 4 (0.039%) Trello
15 3 (0.030%) OrCAD
16 2 (0.020%) Houdini
16 2 (0.020%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 129 (1.27%) SAP S/4HANA
2 75 (0.74%) Remedy ITSM
3 50 (0.49%) Oracle ERP
4 37 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
5 29 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 27 (0.27%) Teamcenter
7 25 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
7 25 (0.25%) SAP PSCD
8 23 (0.23%) Oracle Payroll
9 19 (0.19%) SAP HR
10 16 (0.16%) SAP FI
11 14 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
11 14 (0.14%) Primavera
12 12 (0.12%) Findur
12 12 (0.12%) iTrent
12 12 (0.12%) NetSuite
12 12 (0.12%) SAP CO
12 12 (0.12%) SAP GRC
12 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
13 11 (0.11%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 1,844 (18.16%) Azure
2 1,672 (16.46%) AWS
3 440 (4.33%) Azure DevOps
4 427 (4.20%) Power Platform
5 409 (4.03%) GitHub
6 384 (3.78%) GCP
7 298 (2.93%) Microsoft 365
8 279 (2.75%) GitHub Actions
9 267 (2.63%) Entra ID
10 240 (2.36%) Serverless
11 202 (1.99%) Amazon S3
12 170 (1.67%) AWS Lambda
13 155 (1.53%) OCI
14 148 (1.46%) SaaS
15 141 (1.39%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 139 (1.37%) OpenShift
17 130 (1.28%) Amazon EKS
18 122 (1.20%) Amazon EC2
19 103 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
20 101 (0.99%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 403 (3.97%) Firewall
2 341 (3.36%) DNS
3 209 (2.06%) Network Security
4 187 (1.84%) WAN
5 175 (1.72%) VPN
6 168 (1.65%) DHCP
7 144 (1.42%) LAN
8 123 (1.21%) TCP/IP
9 121 (1.19%) BGP
10 116 (1.14%) Wi-Fi
11 99 (0.97%) VLAN
12 82 (0.81%) OSPF
13 81 (0.80%) Wireless
14 63 (0.62%) VSAN
15 59 (0.58%) IPsec
16 58 (0.57%) SSL
17 57 (0.56%) MPLS
18 54 (0.53%) SD-WAN
19 53 (0.52%) SAN
20 41 (0.40%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 304 (2.99%) Power BI
2 247 (2.43%) SQL Server
3 241 (2.37%) PostgreSQL
4 234 (2.30%) Data Warehouse
5 169 (1.66%) Metadata
6 162 (1.60%) Oracle Database
7 124 (1.22%) Relational Database
8 112 (1.10%) Data Lake
9 96 (0.95%) Amazon RDS
10 94 (0.93%) MongoDB
11 92 (0.91%) MySQL
12 87 (0.86%) NoSQL
13 79 (0.78%) Oracle Reports
14 67 (0.66%) Pentaho
15 57 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
15 57 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
16 52 (0.51%) Tableau
17 46 (0.45%) Amazon Aurora
18 43 (0.42%) Big Data
19 42 (0.41%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 542 (5.34%) JIRA
2 488 (4.81%) Git
3 433 (4.26%) GitLab
4 400 (3.94%) Jenkins
5 118 (1.16%) Selenium
6 77 (0.76%) SonarQube
7 69 (0.68%) Postman
8 65 (0.64%) JUnit
9 63 (0.62%) Maven
10 50 (0.49%) JMeter
11 48 (0.47%) Cucumber
12 40 (0.39%) Gradle
13 39 (0.38%) Mockito
14 36 (0.35%) Artifactory
14 36 (0.35%) Zephyr
15 34 (0.33%) Cypress.io
15 34 (0.33%) REST Assured
16 33 (0.32%) Gatling
16 33 (0.32%) Visual Studio
17 30 (0.30%) MSI
General
1 2,300 (22.65%) Social Skills
2 2,003 (19.72%) Public Sector
3 826 (8.13%) Analytical Skills
4 691 (6.80%) Finance
5 395 (3.89%) Military
6 298 (2.93%) Aerospace
7 246 (2.42%) Documentation Skills
8 198 (1.95%) Influencing Skills
9 168 (1.65%) Organisational Skills
10 147 (1.45%) Telecoms
11 139 (1.37%) Legal
12 132 (1.30%) Banking
13 117 (1.15%) Manufacturing
14 113 (1.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 113 (1.11%) Law
15 95 (0.94%) Police
16 59 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
17 47 (0.46%) Marketing
18 44 (0.43%) Retail
19 41 (0.40%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,587 (15.63%) Architect
2 972 (9.57%) Developer
3 943 (9.29%) Lead
4 940 (9.26%) Senior
5 581 (5.72%) Consultant
6 561 (5.52%) Analyst
7 428 (4.21%) Data Engineer
8 418 (4.12%) DevOps Engineer
9 376 (3.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 268 (2.64%) Technical Architect
11 258 (2.54%) Software Engineer
12 255 (2.51%) Solutions Architect
13 251 (2.47%) Data Architect
14 233 (2.29%) Security Architect
15 220 (2.17%) Network Engineer
16 208 (2.05%) Administrator
17 196 (1.93%) Cloud Engineer
18 185 (1.82%) Java Developer
19 182 (1.79%) Delivery Manager
20 179 (1.76%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 882 (8.68%) Terraform
2 388 (3.82%) REST
3 212 (2.09%) Spring
4 201 (1.98%) Kafka
5 192 (1.89%) Spring Boot
6 171 (1.68%) .NET
6 171 (1.68%) React
7 167 (1.64%) RESTful
8 156 (1.54%) SOAP
9 136 (1.34%) Node.js
10 133 (1.31%) JSON
11 108 (1.06%) HTML
11 108 (1.06%) OAuth
12 105 (1.03%) AngularJS
13 103 (1.01%) XML
14 100 (0.98%) Web Services
15 86 (0.85%) CSS
16 84 (0.83%) Middleware
17 83 (0.82%) LDAP
17 83 (0.82%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 453 (4.46%) Cloud Native
2 385 (3.79%) Onboarding
3 303 (2.98%) Product Ownership
4 261 (2.57%) Data Centre
5 175 (1.72%) Management Information System
6 161 (1.59%) Legacy Systems
7 155 (1.53%) PKI
8 149 (1.47%) Enterprise Software
9 138 (1.36%) CMDB
10 123 (1.21%) Distributed Systems
11 116 (1.14%) Hybrid Cloud
12 110 (1.08%) Replication
13 108 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
14 103 (1.01%) Cyber Threat
15 94 (0.93%) Operational Technology
16 85 (0.84%) Security Operations Centre
17 84 (0.83%) Public Cloud
18 81 (0.80%) Clustering
19 79 (0.78%) Data Structures
20 77 (0.76%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 903 (8.89%) Windows
2 712 (7.01%) Linux
3 346 (3.41%) Windows Server
4 207 (2.04%) Unix
5 145 (1.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 134 (1.32%) Windows 10
7 71 (0.70%) Solaris
8 64 (0.63%) 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 (0.28%) AIX
13 26 (0.26%) Apple iOS
14 24 (0.24%) Windows 7
15 22 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
16 20 (0.20%) VMS
17 16 (0.16%) Rocky
17 16 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
18 13 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,127 (20.94%) Agile
2 1,530 (15.06%) DevOps
3 1,491 (14.68%) CI/CD
4 1,393 (13.72%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,244 (12.25%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,100 (10.83%) Problem-Solving
7 999 (9.84%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 885 (8.71%) Infrastructure as Code
9 826 (8.13%) Migration
10 764 (7.52%) Cybersecurity
11 718 (7.07%) ITIL
12 648 (6.38%) Test Automation
13 647 (6.37%) Technical Leadership
14 642 (6.32%) Roadmaps
15 636 (6.26%) AI
16 629 (6.19%) Analytics
16 629 (6.19%) Containerisation
17 606 (5.97%) Decision-Making
18 601 (5.92%) Software Engineering
19 545 (5.37%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,162 (11.44%) Python
2 937 (9.23%) SQL
3 666 (6.56%) Java
4 540 (5.32%) PowerShell
5 350 (3.45%) JavaScript
6 307 (3.02%) Bash
7 191 (1.88%) C#
8 174 (1.71%) TypeScript
9 134 (1.32%) PL/SQL
10 109 (1.07%) Bicep
11 65 (0.64%) Shell Script
12 63 (0.62%) C++
13 53 (0.52%) C
14 51 (0.50%) Go
15 49 (0.48%) Groovy
16 40 (0.39%) Kotlin
17 39 (0.38%) Scala
18 29 (0.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 28 (0.28%) Apex Code
20 25 (0.25%) R
Qualifications
1 7,613 (74.96%) SC Cleared
2 2,105 (20.73%) DV Cleared
3 425 (4.18%) Degree
4 403 (3.97%) BPSS Clearance
5 193 (1.90%) CISSP
6 172 (1.69%) Azure Certification
7 157 (1.55%) Microsoft Certification
8 155 (1.53%) Cisco Certification
9 138 (1.36%) AWS Certification
10 115 (1.13%) CISM
11 100 (0.98%) PMI Certification
12 92 (0.91%) PMP
13 84 (0.83%) ISTQB
14 76 (0.75%) CCNP
15 62 (0.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 61 (0.60%) Computer Science Degree
17 52 (0.51%) CCNA
18 42 (0.41%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 42 (0.41%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 42 (0.41%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 458 (4.51%) QA
2 320 (3.15%) Data Quality
3 287 (2.83%) NIST
4 280 (2.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 244 (2.40%) NCSC
6 223 (2.20%) Accessibility
7 222 (2.19%) PMO
8 147 (1.45%) GDPR
8 147 (1.45%) SLA
9 132 (1.30%) GRC
10 68 (0.67%) WCAG
11 54 (0.53%) JSP 440
12 44 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
13 42 (0.41%) NIST 800
14 34 (0.33%) Def Stans
15 25 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 20000
16 21 (0.21%) 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
1 676 (6.66%) Docker
2 564 (5.55%) Active Directory
3 390 (3.84%) VMware Infrastructure
4 143 (1.41%) VMware ESXi
5 135 (1.33%) VMware NSX
6 121 (1.19%) Hyper-V
7 119 (1.17%) vSphere
8 84 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
9 43 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
10 41 (0.40%) Firmware
11 37 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
12 26 (0.26%) vCloud
13 23 (0.23%) 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 (0.089%) Embedded Firmware
18 9 (0.089%) KVM
Systems Management
1 828 (8.15%) Kubernetes
2 406 (4.00%) Ansible
3 223 (2.20%) Grafana
4 176 (1.73%) Prometheus
5 134 (1.32%) vCenter Server
6 131 (1.29%) SCCM
7 91 (0.90%) SCOM
8 89 (0.88%) Microsoft Intune
9 63 (0.62%) Argo
10 49 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
11 47 (0.46%) Puppet
12 41 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
13 36 (0.35%) Data Guard
14 30 (0.30%) Kibana
15 29 (0.29%) Progress Chef
16 28 (0.28%) Control-M
16 28 (0.28%) VxRail
17 27 (0.27%) Istio
18 26 (0.26%) WSUS
19 25 (0.25%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,359 (13.38%) Microsoft
2 816 (8.03%) Oracle
3 549 (5.41%) VMware
4 468 (4.61%) ServiceNow
5 404 (3.98%) SAP
6 266 (2.62%) Cisco
7 230 (2.26%) Google
8 200 (1.97%) Splunk
9 178 (1.75%) Databricks
10 130 (1.28%) Red Hat
11 120 (1.18%) Salesforce
12 113 (1.11%) Palo Alto
13 94 (0.93%) IBM
14 92 (0.91%) Informatica
15 90 (0.89%) Talend
16 88 (0.87%) CyberArk
17 87 (0.86%) Dynatrace
18 85 (0.84%) Remedy
19 72 (0.71%) SolarWinds
20 71 (0.70%) Citrix