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

6 months to
26 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 8,798 4,566 7,194
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.43% 18.82% 19.08%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.29% 60.21% 61.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,986 3,015 4,666
10th Percentile £359 £325 £353
25th Percentile £444 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £545 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.67% -0.91% -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £656
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £537 £550
% change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -1.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 758 255 476
10th Percentile £17.87 £19.15 £14.14
25th Percentile £20.54 £25.26 £21.46
Median hourly rate £47.50 £60.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.83% +9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.36 £78.02 £81.71
UK median hourly rate £47.50 £55.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year -13.64% - -8.33%

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 12,698 7,583 11,794
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.81% 31.25% 31.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,429 4,847 7,323
10th Percentile £336 £296 £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 £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 978 427 918
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.51 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.35 £25.26 £17.85
Median hourly rate £35.00 £50.00 £38.85
Median % change year-on-year -30.00% +28.70% -22.30%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.00 £63.29
90th Percentile £85.00 £82.16 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £42.50 £38.45
% change year-on-year -17.65% +10.53% -25.70%

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 26 March 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 26 March 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 26 March 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 3,079 £525 - 519
South East +1 2,068 £525 -4.55% 548
South West 0 1,301 £538 -4.70% 389
Midlands +4 875 £485 -9.68% 175
North of England -1 833 £481 -3.75% 305
West Midlands +3 717 £492 -10.55% 128
North West -2 515 £490 -2.00% 169
East of England +2 356 £484 +7.50% 158
Yorkshire 0 199 £500 -4.76% 72
East Midlands +1 154 £447 -12.80% 46
North East 0 152 £450 -4.26% 65
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
1 356 (4.05%) Confluence
2 205 (2.33%) SharePoint
3 128 (1.45%) SAS
4 126 (1.43%) Microsoft Exchange
5 74 (0.84%) Apache Spark
6 73 (0.83%) Apache
7 46 (0.52%) Apache Airflow
8 38 (0.43%) nginx
9 34 (0.39%) WebLogic
10 24 (0.27%) Skype for Business
11 20 (0.23%) Jupyter
12 16 (0.18%) CMS
12 16 (0.18%) IIS
13 14 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 14 (0.16%) Tuxedo
14 10 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
15 9 (0.10%) Tomcat
16 8 (0.091%) ArcGIS
17 6 (0.068%) JBoss
17 6 (0.068%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 236 (2.68%) Microsoft Office
2 188 (2.14%) Microsoft Excel
3 123 (1.40%) Microsoft Project
4 69 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (0.50%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.13%) Simulink
8 5 (0.057%) Siemens NX
8 5 (0.057%) Windchill
9 4 (0.045%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.045%) Sketch
10 3 (0.034%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.023%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.023%) CATIA
11 2 (0.023%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.023%) Lectora
11 2 (0.023%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.023%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 83 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (0.49%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 36 (0.41%) Remedy ITSM
4 27 (0.31%) Teamcenter
5 26 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
6 25 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
7 16 (0.18%) Maximo
8 15 (0.17%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.15%) Oracle Assets
9 13 (0.15%) SAP PP
10 12 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
10 12 (0.14%) Temenos T24
11 9 (0.10%) Findur
11 9 (0.10%) SAP ERP
11 9 (0.10%) SAP HCM
11 9 (0.10%) SAP MM
12 8 (0.091%) Oracle Receivables
12 8 (0.091%) Primavera
12 8 (0.091%) SAP PSCD
12 8 (0.091%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,474 (16.75%) Azure
2 1,428 (16.23%) AWS
3 403 (4.58%) GitHub
4 369 (4.19%) GCP
5 356 (4.05%) Azure DevOps
6 313 (3.56%) Power Platform
7 273 (3.10%) Microsoft 365
8 250 (2.84%) Serverless
9 223 (2.53%) Entra ID
10 211 (2.40%) GitHub Actions
11 192 (2.18%) Amazon S3
12 168 (1.91%) OpenShift
13 164 (1.86%) AWS Lambda
14 133 (1.51%) Amazon EC2
15 117 (1.33%) AWS CloudFormation
16 115 (1.31%) PaaS
17 110 (1.25%) IaaS
18 106 (1.20%) Azure Data Factory
19 99 (1.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 97 (1.10%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 420 (4.77%) Firewall
2 247 (2.81%) DNS
3 213 (2.42%) Network Security
4 202 (2.30%) WAN
5 174 (1.98%) LAN
6 171 (1.94%) VPN
7 145 (1.65%) BGP
8 125 (1.42%) DHCP
9 121 (1.38%) TCP/IP
10 107 (1.22%) OSPF
11 90 (1.02%) Wireless
12 88 (1.00%) VLAN
13 75 (0.85%) Wi-Fi
14 67 (0.76%) MPLS
15 52 (0.59%) SAN
16 51 (0.58%) IPsec
17 49 (0.56%) Cisco ISE
18 41 (0.47%) SSL
19 39 (0.44%) Junos
19 39 (0.44%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 230 (2.61%) Power BI
2 223 (2.53%) PostgreSQL
3 156 (1.77%) Data Warehouse
4 154 (1.75%) SQL Server
5 119 (1.35%) Metadata
6 100 (1.14%) Amazon RDS
7 96 (1.09%) Oracle Database
8 92 (1.05%) NoSQL
9 90 (1.02%) MongoDB
10 82 (0.93%) Relational Database
11 78 (0.89%) Azure SQL Database
12 67 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
13 65 (0.74%) Data Lake
13 65 (0.74%) MySQL
14 62 (0.70%) Pentaho
15 57 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
16 50 (0.57%) Tableau
17 47 (0.53%) Big Data
18 42 (0.48%) Oracle Reports
19 40 (0.45%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 560 (6.37%) JIRA
2 444 (5.05%) Git
3 370 (4.21%) Jenkins
4 308 (3.50%) GitLab
5 100 (1.14%) Selenium
6 82 (0.93%) JUnit
7 73 (0.83%) Postman
8 56 (0.64%) Rational DOORS
9 55 (0.63%) SonarQube
10 53 (0.60%) Bitbucket
11 47 (0.53%) Artifactory
11 47 (0.53%) Maven
12 46 (0.52%) Cypress.io
13 41 (0.47%) Cucumber
13 41 (0.47%) Oracle APEX
14 37 (0.42%) Mockito
15 34 (0.39%) JMeter
16 30 (0.34%) Visual Studio
17 27 (0.31%) REST Assured
18 20 (0.23%) Metasploit
General
1 2,161 (24.56%) Public Sector
2 2,081 (23.65%) Social Skills
3 757 (8.60%) Analytical Skills
4 661 (7.51%) Finance
5 315 (3.58%) Military
6 249 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
7 211 (2.40%) Aerospace
8 157 (1.78%) Telecoms
9 155 (1.76%) Manufacturing
10 149 (1.69%) Legal
11 117 (1.33%) Banking
12 114 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
13 104 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
14 103 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
15 101 (1.15%) Marketing
16 96 (1.09%) Electronics
17 77 (0.88%) Law
18 51 (0.58%) Police
19 49 (0.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 31 (0.35%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,301 (14.79%) Architect
2 828 (9.41%) Developer
3 765 (8.70%) Senior
4 659 (7.49%) Analyst
5 546 (6.21%) Lead
6 480 (5.46%) Consultant
7 357 (4.06%) DevOps Engineer
8 348 (3.96%) Data Engineer
9 266 (3.02%) Network Engineer
10 242 (2.75%) Software Engineer
10 242 (2.75%) Technical Architect
11 238 (2.71%) Business Analyst
12 206 (2.34%) Solutions Architect
13 189 (2.15%) Support Engineer
14 181 (2.06%) Project Manager
15 169 (1.92%) Azure Engineer
16 167 (1.90%) Delivery Manager
17 162 (1.84%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 159 (1.81%) Security Architect
19 155 (1.76%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 343 (3.90%) REST
2 187 (2.13%) Spring
3 172 (1.95%) Node.js
4 171 (1.94%) Kafka
5 160 (1.82%) React
6 148 (1.68%) JSON
7 145 (1.65%) Spring Boot
8 143 (1.63%) SOAP
9 141 (1.60%) LDAP
10 140 (1.59%) .NET
11 122 (1.39%) RESTful
12 113 (1.28%) AngularJS
13 98 (1.11%) PySpark
13 98 (1.11%) Web Services
14 96 (1.09%) HTML
15 95 (1.08%) OAuth
16 90 (1.02%) Oracle Fusion
17 87 (0.99%) XML
18 78 (0.89%) CSS
19 77 (0.88%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 311 (3.53%) Product Ownership
2 273 (3.10%) Data Centre
3 258 (2.93%) Cloud Native
4 225 (2.56%) Onboarding
5 199 (2.26%) PKI
6 152 (1.73%) Management Information System
7 130 (1.48%) Security Posture
8 119 (1.35%) Legacy Systems
8 119 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
9 111 (1.26%) Replication
10 110 (1.25%) Enterprise Software
11 87 (0.99%) Distributed Systems
12 74 (0.84%) Hybrid Cloud
13 73 (0.83%) Public Cloud
14 71 (0.81%) Data Structures
15 68 (0.77%) Cyber Threat
16 65 (0.74%) Security Operations Centre
17 61 (0.69%) Clustering
18 53 (0.60%) Virtual Team
19 51 (0.58%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 803 (9.13%) Windows
2 640 (7.27%) Linux
3 226 (2.57%) Windows Server
4 122 (1.39%) Windows 10
5 115 (1.31%) Android
6 110 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 107 (1.22%) Unix
8 61 (0.69%) Mac OS
9 44 (0.50%) Apple iOS
10 40 (0.45%) Ubuntu
11 30 (0.34%) VMS
12 24 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
13 20 (0.23%) CentOS
14 19 (0.22%) Windows 7
15 18 (0.20%) Solaris
16 17 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
17 15 (0.17%) AIX
18 12 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
19 8 (0.091%) Embedded Linux
20 7 (0.080%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,792 (20.37%) Agile
2 1,335 (15.17%) DevOps
3 1,161 (13.20%) CI/CD
4 1,076 (12.23%) Problem-Solving
5 830 (9.43%) Stakeholder Management
6 758 (8.62%) Migration
7 747 (8.49%) Continuous Improvement
8 658 (7.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 587 (6.67%) ITIL
10 568 (6.46%) Cybersecurity
11 542 (6.16%) Infrastructure as Code
12 508 (5.77%) Analytics
13 500 (5.68%) Test Automation
14 495 (5.63%) Roadmaps
15 463 (5.26%) Containerisation
16 451 (5.13%) Software Engineering
17 449 (5.10%) Scrum
18 430 (4.89%) Data Modelling
19 425 (4.83%) Service Management
20 398 (4.52%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 1,012 (11.50%) Python
2 775 (8.81%) SQL
3 563 (6.40%) PowerShell
4 499 (5.67%) Java
5 335 (3.81%) JavaScript
6 204 (2.32%) Bash
7 180 (2.05%) C#
8 148 (1.68%) TypeScript
9 100 (1.14%) C++
10 94 (1.07%) PL/SQL
11 89 (1.01%) Shell Script
12 67 (0.76%) Go
13 62 (0.70%) C
14 55 (0.63%) Ruby
15 53 (0.60%) Scala
16 45 (0.51%) Ada
16 45 (0.51%) Bicep
17 40 (0.45%) Kusto Query Language
18 37 (0.42%) Apex Code
19 34 (0.39%) R
Qualifications
1 6,608 (75.11%) SC Cleared
2 1,610 (18.30%) DV Cleared
3 426 (4.84%) Degree
4 252 (2.86%) BPSS Clearance
5 164 (1.86%) CISSP
6 163 (1.85%) Cisco Certification
7 129 (1.47%) Azure Certification
8 113 (1.28%) AWS Certification
9 112 (1.27%) CCNP
10 106 (1.20%) Microsoft Certification
11 102 (1.16%) CISM
12 69 (0.78%) CCNA
13 63 (0.72%) ITIL Certification
14 62 (0.70%) Computer Science Degree
14 62 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
15 57 (0.65%) PMP
16 50 (0.57%) PMI Certification
17 47 (0.53%) GIAC
18 45 (0.51%) ISTQB
19 43 (0.49%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 313 (3.56%) QA
2 286 (3.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 278 (3.16%) NIST
4 249 (2.83%) Data Quality
5 198 (2.25%) NCSC
6 171 (1.94%) GDPR
7 137 (1.56%) Accessibility
8 117 (1.33%) PMO
9 110 (1.25%) SLA
10 65 (0.74%) JSP 440
11 57 (0.65%) GRC
12 45 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
13 41 (0.47%) WCAG
14 37 (0.42%) COBIT
14 37 (0.42%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.38%) Def Stans
16 31 (0.35%) PCI DSS
17 26 (0.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 24 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 22 (0.25%) RMADS
System Software
1 587 (6.67%) Docker
2 444 (5.05%) Active Directory
3 244 (2.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 90 (1.02%) VMware NSX
5 72 (0.82%) vSphere
6 66 (0.75%) VMware ESXi
7 60 (0.68%) Hyper-V
8 55 (0.63%) Virtual Machines
9 30 (0.34%) Firmware
10 23 (0.26%) Virtual Desktop
11 21 (0.24%) BitLocker
11 21 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
12 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 14 (0.16%) NFS
14 11 (0.13%) Postfix
14 11 (0.13%) vCloud
15 10 (0.11%) Squid
16 7 (0.080%) Microsoft App-V
17 4 (0.045%) Snort
17 4 (0.045%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 766 (8.71%) Kubernetes
2 691 (7.85%) Terraform
3 302 (3.43%) Ansible
4 222 (2.52%) Grafana
5 184 (2.09%) Prometheus
6 102 (1.16%) Single Sign-On
7 90 (1.02%) vCenter Server
8 87 (0.99%) SCCM
9 77 (0.88%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 63 (0.72%) Microsoft Intune
11 61 (0.69%) Argo
12 47 (0.53%) FortiGate
13 38 (0.43%) Podman
14 37 (0.42%) Packer
15 34 (0.39%) Progress Chef
15 34 (0.39%) Puppet
16 30 (0.34%) OPNET
17 24 (0.27%) Kibana
18 21 (0.24%) Consul
18 21 (0.24%) Nmap
Vendors
1 981 (11.15%) Microsoft
2 502 (5.71%) Oracle
3 444 (5.05%) VMware
4 395 (4.49%) Cisco
5 361 (4.10%) ServiceNow
6 335 (3.81%) SAP
7 213 (2.42%) Splunk
8 177 (2.01%) Red Hat
9 168 (1.91%) Databricks
10 136 (1.55%) Google
11 132 (1.50%) Juniper
12 127 (1.44%) Atlassian
13 126 (1.43%) Salesforce
14 121 (1.38%) Palo Alto
15 120 (1.36%) CyberArk
16 114 (1.30%) IBM
17 88 (1.00%) Dell
18 85 (0.97%) Talend
19 81 (0.92%) Remedy
20 77 (0.88%) HP