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

6 months to
6 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 2
Rank change year-on-year +1 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,025 4,570 7,155
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.34% 18.75% 19.16%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.84% 60.00% 61.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,200 3,056 4,657
10th Percentile £363 £325 £350
25th Percentile £447 £450 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% -2.14%
75th Percentile £625 £627 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £534 £550
% change year-on-year -1.59% -3.00% -0.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 771 258 469
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.13 £24.66 £21.46
Median hourly rate £52.50 £57.50 £52.00
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% +10.58% -13.33%
75th Percentile £72.50 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.50 £78.46 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £53.51 £52.50
% change year-on-year -1.88% +1.91% -12.50%

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 12,923 7,617 11,697
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.42% 31.25% 31.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,633 4,892 7,251
10th Percentile £340 £300 £300
25th Percentile £425 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £620 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £743
UK median daily rate £518 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 992 425 923
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.50 £13.99
25th Percentile £20.50 £24.66 £17.72
Median hourly rate £37.92 £50.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -24.17% +33.33% -27.90%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £61.55
90th Percentile £85.40 £82.25 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £45.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year -16.67% +20.00% -30.56%

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 6 April 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 6 April 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 6 April 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 3,153 £525 - 519
South East +1 2,108 £531 -3.44% 548
South West 0 1,350 £538 -4.40% 389
Midlands +4 914 £485 -9.68% 175
North of England -1 841 £488 -2.50% 305
West Midlands +4 758 £489 -11.14% 128
North West -2 519 £500 - 169
East of England +2 361 £492 +15.76% 158
Yorkshire -2 202 £488 -7.14% 72
North East 0 153 £450 -6.25% 65
East Midlands +1 152 £450 -11.11% 46
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
1 348 (3.86%) Confluence
2 213 (2.36%) SharePoint
3 148 (1.64%) SAS
4 127 (1.41%) Microsoft Exchange
5 78 (0.86%) Apache Spark
6 77 (0.85%) Apache
7 53 (0.59%) Apache Airflow
8 40 (0.44%) nginx
9 35 (0.39%) WebLogic
10 21 (0.23%) Jupyter
10 21 (0.23%) Skype for Business
11 16 (0.18%) IIS
12 15 (0.17%) CMS
13 14 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 14 (0.16%) Tuxedo
14 13 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
15 10 (0.11%) Tomcat
16 9 (0.100%) ArcGIS
17 8 (0.089%) Apache Superset
18 6 (0.066%) JBoss
Applications
1 228 (2.53%) Microsoft Office
2 191 (2.12%) Microsoft Excel
3 125 (1.39%) Microsoft Project
4 73 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 45 (0.50%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.13%) Simulink
8 5 (0.055%) Adobe XD
8 5 (0.055%) Siemens NX
8 5 (0.055%) Sketch
9 4 (0.044%) Notepad++
9 4 (0.044%) Windchill
10 3 (0.033%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.022%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.022%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.022%) CATIA
11 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.022%) Lectora
11 2 (0.022%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.022%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 87 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
3 39 (0.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 27 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
4 27 (0.30%) Teamcenter
5 26 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
6 18 (0.20%) Maximo
7 14 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.14%) SAP PP
9 12 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
9 12 (0.13%) Temenos T24
10 11 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
11 10 (0.11%) Findur
12 9 (0.100%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.100%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.100%) SAP PSCD
13 8 (0.089%) Primavera
13 8 (0.089%) Workday HCM
14 7 (0.078%) SAP MM
14 7 (0.078%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 1,508 (16.71%) Azure
2 1,473 (16.32%) AWS
3 393 (4.35%) GitHub
4 371 (4.11%) GCP
5 354 (3.92%) Azure DevOps
6 315 (3.49%) Power Platform
7 265 (2.94%) Microsoft 365
8 262 (2.90%) Serverless
9 229 (2.54%) Entra ID
10 205 (2.27%) GitHub Actions
11 196 (2.17%) Amazon S3
12 175 (1.94%) AWS Lambda
13 163 (1.81%) OpenShift
14 131 (1.45%) PaaS
15 127 (1.41%) Amazon EC2
16 123 (1.36%) IaaS
17 118 (1.31%) AWS CloudFormation
18 107 (1.19%) Azure Data Factory
19 106 (1.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 98 (1.09%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 432 (4.79%) Firewall
2 258 (2.86%) DNS
3 213 (2.36%) Network Security
4 212 (2.35%) WAN
5 186 (2.06%) LAN
6 175 (1.94%) VPN
7 143 (1.58%) BGP
8 131 (1.45%) DHCP
9 117 (1.30%) TCP/IP
10 112 (1.24%) OSPF
11 95 (1.05%) VLAN
12 88 (0.98%) Wireless
13 73 (0.81%) Wi-Fi
14 62 (0.69%) MPLS
15 54 (0.60%) SAN
16 49 (0.54%) IPsec
17 48 (0.53%) Cisco ISE
18 43 (0.48%) SD-WAN
19 42 (0.47%) SSL
20 40 (0.44%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 237 (2.63%) Power BI
2 230 (2.55%) PostgreSQL
3 171 (1.89%) Data Warehouse
4 164 (1.82%) SQL Server
5 122 (1.35%) Metadata
6 104 (1.15%) Oracle Database
7 103 (1.14%) Amazon RDS
8 94 (1.04%) NoSQL
9 85 (0.94%) Relational Database
10 84 (0.93%) MongoDB
11 77 (0.85%) Azure SQL Database
12 73 (0.81%) Elasticsearch
13 70 (0.78%) MySQL
14 66 (0.73%) Pentaho
15 64 (0.71%) Data Lake
16 62 (0.69%) Amazon Redshift
16 62 (0.69%) Tableau
17 48 (0.53%) Oracle Reports
18 47 (0.52%) Big Data
19 43 (0.48%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 558 (6.18%) JIRA
2 458 (5.07%) Git
3 366 (4.06%) Jenkins
4 319 (3.53%) GitLab
5 104 (1.15%) Selenium
6 84 (0.93%) JUnit
7 74 (0.82%) Postman
8 55 (0.61%) SonarQube
9 53 (0.59%) Rational DOORS
10 50 (0.55%) Bitbucket
11 44 (0.49%) Artifactory
11 44 (0.49%) Maven
12 42 (0.47%) Cypress.io
13 41 (0.45%) Oracle APEX
14 40 (0.44%) Cucumber
15 38 (0.42%) Mockito
16 34 (0.38%) JMeter
17 28 (0.31%) REST Assured
18 27 (0.30%) Visual Studio
19 21 (0.23%) MSI
General
1 2,137 (23.68%) Public Sector
2 2,066 (22.89%) Social Skills
3 761 (8.43%) Analytical Skills
4 665 (7.37%) Finance
5 323 (3.58%) Military
6 257 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
7 219 (2.43%) Aerospace
8 155 (1.72%) Telecoms
9 152 (1.68%) Legal
10 148 (1.64%) Manufacturing
11 117 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
12 114 (1.26%) Banking
13 102 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
14 100 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
15 93 (1.03%) Marketing
16 87 (0.96%) Electronics
17 80 (0.89%) Law
18 54 (0.60%) Police
19 50 (0.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 32 (0.35%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,348 (14.94%) Architect
2 852 (9.44%) Developer
3 785 (8.70%) Senior
4 658 (7.29%) Analyst
5 576 (6.38%) Lead
6 448 (4.96%) Consultant
7 390 (4.32%) Data Engineer
8 365 (4.04%) DevOps Engineer
9 271 (3.00%) Network Engineer
10 263 (2.91%) Software Engineer
11 257 (2.85%) Technical Architect
12 240 (2.66%) Business Analyst
13 209 (2.32%) Solutions Architect
14 189 (2.09%) Project Manager
15 188 (2.08%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 186 (2.06%) Azure Engineer
17 173 (1.92%) Support Engineer
18 171 (1.89%) Delivery Manager
19 168 (1.86%) Security Architect
20 159 (1.76%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 343 (3.80%) REST
2 196 (2.17%) Spring
3 177 (1.96%) Node.js
4 169 (1.87%) Kafka
5 167 (1.85%) React
6 150 (1.66%) Spring Boot
7 149 (1.65%) .NET
8 147 (1.63%) JSON
9 143 (1.58%) LDAP
10 139 (1.54%) SOAP
11 127 (1.41%) RESTful
12 108 (1.20%) AngularJS
13 105 (1.16%) PySpark
14 104 (1.15%) Web Services
15 96 (1.06%) OAuth
16 91 (1.01%) HTML
17 88 (0.98%) Oracle Fusion
18 85 (0.94%) XML
19 78 (0.86%) SAML
20 74 (0.82%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 317 (3.51%) Product Ownership
2 273 (3.02%) Data Centre
3 272 (3.01%) Cloud Native
4 229 (2.54%) Onboarding
5 193 (2.14%) PKI
6 148 (1.64%) Management Information System
7 125 (1.39%) Self-Motivation
8 122 (1.35%) Security Posture
9 117 (1.30%) Legacy Systems
10 111 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
11 108 (1.20%) Replication
12 94 (1.04%) Distributed Systems
13 80 (0.89%) Public Cloud
14 76 (0.84%) Data Structures
15 73 (0.81%) Hybrid Cloud
16 65 (0.72%) Cyber Threat
16 65 (0.72%) Security Operations Centre
17 64 (0.71%) Clustering
18 59 (0.65%) Virtual Team
19 51 (0.57%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 795 (8.81%) Windows
2 652 (7.22%) Linux
3 231 (2.56%) Windows Server
4 121 (1.34%) Unix
5 117 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 117 (1.30%) Windows 10
6 109 (1.21%) Android
7 54 (0.60%) Mac OS
8 45 (0.50%) Apple iOS
9 38 (0.42%) Ubuntu
10 31 (0.34%) VMS
11 22 (0.24%) CentOS
12 20 (0.22%) Solaris
12 20 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
13 18 (0.20%) AIX
14 17 (0.19%) Windows 7
14 17 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
15 12 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
16 8 (0.089%) Embedded Linux
16 8 (0.089%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,848 (20.48%) Agile
2 1,366 (15.14%) DevOps
3 1,193 (13.22%) CI/CD
4 1,063 (11.78%) Problem-Solving
5 860 (9.53%) Stakeholder Management
6 787 (8.72%) Migration
7 775 (8.59%) Continuous Improvement
8 677 (7.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 605 (6.70%) ITIL
10 567 (6.28%) Cybersecurity
11 564 (6.25%) Infrastructure as Code
12 534 (5.92%) Analytics
13 520 (5.76%) Test Automation
14 501 (5.55%) Roadmaps
15 479 (5.31%) Software Engineering
16 474 (5.25%) Containerisation
17 453 (5.02%) Scrum
18 441 (4.89%) Data Modelling
19 439 (4.86%) Service Management
20 403 (4.47%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 1,020 (11.30%) Python
2 820 (9.09%) SQL
3 552 (6.12%) PowerShell
4 522 (5.78%) Java
5 329 (3.65%) JavaScript
6 195 (2.16%) Bash
7 193 (2.14%) C#
8 150 (1.66%) TypeScript
9 104 (1.15%) PL/SQL
10 98 (1.09%) Shell Script
11 97 (1.07%) C++
12 66 (0.73%) Go
13 61 (0.68%) C
14 57 (0.63%) Ruby
15 54 (0.60%) Scala
16 52 (0.58%) Bicep
17 43 (0.48%) Ada
18 40 (0.44%) Apex Code
19 39 (0.43%) Kusto Query Language
20 37 (0.41%) R
Qualifications
1 6,789 (75.22%) SC Cleared
2 1,682 (18.64%) DV Cleared
3 428 (4.74%) Degree
4 252 (2.79%) BPSS Clearance
5 174 (1.93%) Cisco Certification
6 168 (1.86%) CISSP
7 133 (1.47%) Azure Certification
8 118 (1.31%) CCNP
9 110 (1.22%) AWS Certification
10 108 (1.20%) CISM
11 104 (1.15%) Microsoft Certification
12 74 (0.82%) CCNA
13 69 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
14 66 (0.73%) TOGAF Certification
15 63 (0.70%) Computer Science Degree
16 59 (0.65%) PMP
17 53 (0.59%) PMI Certification
18 50 (0.55%) ISTQB
19 49 (0.54%) CEH
19 49 (0.54%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 326 (3.61%) QA
2 285 (3.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 271 (3.00%) NIST
4 256 (2.84%) Data Quality
5 202 (2.24%) NCSC
6 162 (1.80%) GDPR
7 144 (1.60%) Accessibility
8 126 (1.40%) PMO
9 108 (1.20%) SLA
10 68 (0.75%) JSP 440
11 62 (0.69%) GRC
12 42 (0.47%) Cyber Essentials
13 39 (0.43%) NIST 800
14 38 (0.42%) WCAG
15 37 (0.41%) COBIT
16 33 (0.37%) PCI DSS
17 29 (0.32%) Def Stans
18 26 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 23 (0.25%) RMADS
20 20 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 603 (6.68%) Docker
2 454 (5.03%) Active Directory
3 255 (2.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 89 (0.99%) VMware NSX
5 72 (0.80%) vSphere
6 71 (0.79%) VMware ESXi
7 64 (0.71%) Hyper-V
8 52 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
9 33 (0.37%) Firmware
10 23 (0.25%) BitLocker
10 23 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
11 19 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
12 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 16 (0.18%) NFS
14 14 (0.16%) Postfix
15 12 (0.13%) vCloud
16 10 (0.11%) Squid
17 8 (0.089%) Microsoft App-V
18 5 (0.055%) KVM
18 5 (0.055%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 780 (8.64%) Kubernetes
2 710 (7.87%) Terraform
3 294 (3.26%) Ansible
4 219 (2.43%) Grafana
5 180 (1.99%) Prometheus
6 104 (1.15%) Single Sign-On
7 90 (1.00%) vCenter Server
8 82 (0.91%) SCCM
9 77 (0.85%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 63 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
11 60 (0.66%) Argo
12 50 (0.55%) FortiGate
13 38 (0.42%) Podman
14 36 (0.40%) Packer
15 35 (0.39%) Puppet
16 34 (0.38%) Progress Chef
17 30 (0.33%) OPNET
18 25 (0.28%) Kibana
18 25 (0.28%) Oracle RMAN
19 24 (0.27%) Nagios
Vendors
1 984 (10.90%) Microsoft
2 537 (5.95%) Oracle
3 456 (5.05%) VMware
4 393 (4.35%) Cisco
5 372 (4.12%) ServiceNow
6 342 (3.79%) SAP
7 219 (2.43%) Splunk
8 176 (1.95%) Databricks
8 176 (1.95%) Red Hat
9 139 (1.54%) Google
10 130 (1.44%) Salesforce
11 124 (1.37%) Juniper
12 123 (1.36%) Atlassian
13 116 (1.29%) IBM
14 114 (1.26%) Palo Alto
15 94 (1.04%) CyberArk
16 92 (1.02%) Talend
17 84 (0.93%) Remedy
18 80 (0.89%) Dell
19 76 (0.84%) Citrix