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 5 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 7,634 4,726 7,111
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.85% 17.98% 18.83%
As % of the Qualifications category 67.30% 59.57% 60.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,222 2,968 4,539
10th Percentile £350 £338 £360
25th Percentile £447 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.65%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £715 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £548 £550
% change year-on-year -4.20% -0.36% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 673 250 486
10th Percentile £17.69 £21.15 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.64 £25.61 £42.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £58.30
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% +2.92% -2.83%
75th Percentile £65.00 £67.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.42 £75.00 £83.33
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £53.01 £59.68
% change year-on-year -52.55% -11.18% -0.53%

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 11,343 7,933 11,782
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.95% 30.19% 31.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,531 4,818 7,340
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £417 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £517 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -1.52% -2.78% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 883 387 874
10th Percentile £15.75 £19.91 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.87 £25.26 £21.27
Median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -45.54% - +2.62%
75th Percentile £63.75 £67.38 £65.00
90th Percentile £76.42 £81.25 £77.85
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £39.04 £46.18
% change year-on-year -35.58% -15.46% +2.62%

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 5 February 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 5 February 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 5 February 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 +5 2,604 £531 -1.16% 535
South East +1 1,581 £517 -6.00% 607
South West 0 1,297 £550 -1.26% 437
North of England -2 812 £500 - 226
Midlands +4 737 £510 -7.44% 164
West Midlands +2 575 £519 -5.90% 114
North West 0 529 £506 +2.95% 143
East of England +2 343 £500 -3.61% 193
Yorkshire -8 168 £500 +5.82% 49
East Midlands +2 163 £424 -19.67% 50
North East 0 142 £450 -13.46% 35
South Coast - 2 - -
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
1 270 (3.54%) Confluence
2 186 (2.44%) SharePoint
3 133 (1.74%) Microsoft Exchange
4 119 (1.56%) SAS
5 68 (0.89%) Apache
6 59 (0.77%) Apache Spark
7 51 (0.67%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.51%) nginx
9 36 (0.47%) Skype for Business
10 23 (0.30%) WebLogic
11 18 (0.24%) CMS
11 18 (0.24%) Palantir Foundry
12 15 (0.20%) Jupyter
13 13 (0.17%) IIS
14 10 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
15 9 (0.12%) OpenStack
16 7 (0.092%) SharePoint Server
16 7 (0.092%) Tuxedo
17 6 (0.079%) ArcGIS
17 6 (0.079%) Documentum
Applications
1 242 (3.17%) Microsoft Office
2 154 (2.02%) Microsoft Excel
3 111 (1.45%) Microsoft Project
4 62 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 38 (0.50%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.16%) Simulink
8 6 (0.079%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.065%) Oracle Smart View
9 5 (0.065%) Siemens NX
9 5 (0.065%) Windchill
10 4 (0.052%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.052%) Sketch
10 4 (0.052%) Stateflow
11 3 (0.039%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.039%) Chatbot
11 3 (0.039%) FrameMaker
12 2 (0.026%) Adobe Illustrator
12 2 (0.026%) CATIA
12 2 (0.026%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 139 (1.82%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (0.47%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 29 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
4 27 (0.35%) SAP WM
5 26 (0.34%) SAP EWM
6 22 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
7 19 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
7 19 (0.25%) SAP MM
8 15 (0.20%) Teamcenter
9 14 (0.18%) Maximo
9 14 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
10 13 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
10 13 (0.17%) SAP QM
11 12 (0.16%) SAP HCM
11 12 (0.16%) SAP PP
11 12 (0.16%) SAP VC
12 11 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
12 11 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
12 11 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
12 11 (0.14%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 1,286 (16.85%) Azure
2 1,233 (16.15%) AWS
3 350 (4.58%) GitHub
4 323 (4.23%) GCP
5 299 (3.92%) Microsoft 365
6 288 (3.77%) Azure DevOps
7 281 (3.68%) Power Platform
8 219 (2.87%) Serverless
9 208 (2.72%) Entra ID
10 173 (2.27%) GitHub Actions
11 161 (2.11%) Amazon S3
12 156 (2.04%) OpenShift
13 136 (1.78%) AWS Lambda
14 105 (1.38%) AWS CloudFormation
15 98 (1.28%) Amazon EC2
15 98 (1.28%) PaaS
16 97 (1.27%) IaaS
17 93 (1.22%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 93 (1.22%) SaaS
18 91 (1.19%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 385 (5.04%) Firewall
2 254 (3.33%) DNS
3 189 (2.48%) Network Security
4 170 (2.23%) VPN
5 161 (2.11%) WAN
6 129 (1.69%) TCP/IP
7 120 (1.57%) LAN
8 116 (1.52%) BGP
9 113 (1.48%) DHCP
10 81 (1.06%) VLAN
11 80 (1.05%) Wireless
12 72 (0.94%) Wi-Fi
13 67 (0.88%) OSPF
14 65 (0.85%) MPLS
15 56 (0.73%) IPsec
16 54 (0.71%) SAN
17 51 (0.67%) SSL
18 46 (0.60%) Skype
19 42 (0.55%) Cisco ISE
20 39 (0.51%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 195 (2.55%) PostgreSQL
1 195 (2.55%) Power BI
2 104 (1.36%) Data Warehouse
3 94 (1.23%) Metadata
4 91 (1.19%) SQL Server
5 89 (1.17%) Oracle Database
6 85 (1.11%) NoSQL
7 82 (1.07%) MongoDB
8 76 (1.00%) Relational Database
9 74 (0.97%) Amazon RDS
10 61 (0.80%) Azure SQL Database
11 56 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
12 47 (0.62%) Pentaho
13 45 (0.59%) Data Lake
14 44 (0.58%) Big Data
15 42 (0.55%) MySQL
15 42 (0.55%) SAS Enterprise Guide
16 38 (0.50%) Amazon Redshift
17 34 (0.45%) Redis
18 32 (0.42%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 469 (6.14%) JIRA
2 381 (4.99%) Git
3 340 (4.45%) Jenkins
4 292 (3.82%) GitLab
5 90 (1.18%) Selenium
6 70 (0.92%) Postman
7 60 (0.79%) JUnit
8 56 (0.73%) Cypress.io
9 46 (0.60%) Oracle APEX
10 45 (0.59%) SonarQube
11 44 (0.58%) Artifactory
12 41 (0.54%) Bitbucket
13 36 (0.47%) Cucumber
14 35 (0.46%) Maven
15 32 (0.42%) REST Assured
16 30 (0.39%) Mockito
17 23 (0.30%) Metasploit
17 23 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
18 22 (0.29%) MSI
19 21 (0.28%) Burp Suite
General
1 1,962 (25.70%) Public Sector
2 1,913 (25.06%) Social Skills
3 669 (8.76%) Analytical Skills
4 544 (7.13%) Finance
5 305 (4.00%) Military
6 223 (2.92%) Documentation Skills
7 185 (2.42%) Telecoms
8 182 (2.38%) Manufacturing
9 136 (1.78%) Aerospace
10 126 (1.65%) Marketing
11 124 (1.62%) Electronics
12 114 (1.49%) Legal
13 113 (1.48%) Organisational Skills
14 100 (1.31%) Presentation Skills
15 92 (1.21%) Influencing Skills
16 85 (1.11%) Banking
17 71 (0.93%) Law
18 46 (0.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 34 (0.45%) Police
20 31 (0.41%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,030 (13.49%) Architect
2 735 (9.63%) Developer
3 640 (8.38%) Senior
4 557 (7.30%) Analyst
5 485 (6.35%) Consultant
6 433 (5.67%) Lead
7 366 (4.79%) DevOps Engineer
8 253 (3.31%) Data Engineer
9 236 (3.09%) Support Engineer
10 229 (3.00%) Network Engineer
11 186 (2.44%) Business Analyst
12 183 (2.40%) Technical Architect
13 175 (2.29%) Software Engineer
14 171 (2.24%) Solutions Architect
15 147 (1.93%) Tester
16 145 (1.90%) Azure Engineer
17 139 (1.82%) Project Manager
18 134 (1.76%) AWS Engineer
19 133 (1.74%) Infrastructure Engineer
20 132 (1.73%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 316 (4.14%) REST
2 178 (2.33%) Node.js
3 172 (2.25%) React
4 158 (2.07%) Kafka
5 150 (1.96%) Spring
6 144 (1.89%) JSON
6 144 (1.89%) LDAP
7 141 (1.85%) SOAP
8 121 (1.59%) Spring Boot
9 102 (1.34%) HTML
10 96 (1.26%) .NET
10 96 (1.26%) RESTful
11 95 (1.24%) OAuth
12 94 (1.23%) XML
13 92 (1.21%) Oracle Fusion
14 91 (1.19%) CSS
15 83 (1.09%) AngularJS
16 82 (1.07%) PySpark
17 79 (1.03%) Web Services
18 78 (1.02%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 241 (3.16%) Data Centre
2 221 (2.89%) Product Ownership
3 213 (2.79%) Cloud Native
4 211 (2.76%) Onboarding
5 191 (2.50%) PKI
6 143 (1.87%) Management Information System
7 130 (1.70%) Security Posture
8 110 (1.44%) Self-Motivation
9 107 (1.40%) Enterprise Software
10 93 (1.22%) Replication
11 90 (1.18%) Legacy Systems
12 74 (0.97%) Cyber Threat
13 69 (0.90%) Driving Licence
14 62 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
15 59 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
16 56 (0.73%) Public Cloud
17 48 (0.63%) Private Cloud
18 45 (0.59%) CMDB
18 45 (0.59%) Distributed Systems
19 42 (0.55%) Cyber Defence
Operating Systems
1 820 (10.74%) Windows
2 590 (7.73%) Linux
3 205 (2.69%) Windows Server
4 178 (2.33%) Windows 10
5 99 (1.30%) Unix
6 98 (1.28%) Android
7 92 (1.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 66 (0.86%) Mac OS
9 44 (0.58%) Ubuntu
10 38 (0.50%) VMS
11 33 (0.43%) Apple iOS
12 24 (0.31%) CentOS
13 22 (0.29%) Windows 7
13 22 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
14 16 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
14 16 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
15 14 (0.18%) Mac OS X
16 13 (0.17%) Solaris
17 12 (0.16%) Amazon Linux
18 10 (0.13%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,455 (19.06%) Agile
2 1,198 (15.69%) DevOps
3 1,039 (13.61%) CI/CD
4 987 (12.93%) Problem-Solving
5 681 (8.92%) Migration
6 668 (8.75%) Stakeholder Management
7 540 (7.07%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 537 (7.03%) Continuous Improvement
9 512 (6.71%) Cybersecurity
10 480 (6.29%) Infrastructure as Code
11 471 (6.17%) ITIL
12 443 (5.80%) Test Automation
13 414 (5.42%) Analytics
14 394 (5.16%) Containerisation
15 384 (5.03%) Business Intelligence
16 382 (5.00%) Roadmaps
17 372 (4.87%) Service Management
18 343 (4.49%) Scrum
19 342 (4.48%) Software Engineering
20 320 (4.19%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 929 (12.17%) Python
2 595 (7.79%) SQL
3 541 (7.09%) PowerShell
4 410 (5.37%) Java
5 348 (4.56%) JavaScript
6 199 (2.61%) Bash
7 171 (2.24%) TypeScript
8 136 (1.78%) C#
9 88 (1.15%) C++
10 78 (1.02%) Go
11 72 (0.94%) Shell Script
12 67 (0.88%) PL/SQL
13 63 (0.83%) C
14 47 (0.62%) Ada
15 45 (0.59%) Scala
16 44 (0.58%) Ruby
17 36 (0.47%) Bicep
18 35 (0.46%) MATLAB
19 31 (0.41%) ABAP
19 31 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 5,851 (76.64%) SC Cleared
2 1,302 (17.06%) DV Cleared
3 386 (5.06%) Degree
4 227 (2.97%) BPSS Clearance
5 146 (1.91%) CISSP
6 125 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
7 119 (1.56%) Azure Certification
8 115 (1.51%) Microsoft Certification
9 108 (1.41%) CCNP
10 98 (1.28%) AWS Certification
11 89 (1.17%) CISM
12 64 (0.84%) Computer Science Degree
13 63 (0.83%) ITIL Certification
14 55 (0.72%) CCNA
15 50 (0.65%) CEH
16 49 (0.64%) GIAC
16 49 (0.64%) TOGAF Certification
17 42 (0.55%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 40 (0.52%) CHECK Team Member
19 37 (0.48%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 251 (3.29%) QA
2 238 (3.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 230 (3.01%) NIST
4 192 (2.52%) NCSC
5 186 (2.44%) Data Quality
6 159 (2.08%) GDPR
7 141 (1.85%) Accessibility
8 116 (1.52%) SLA
9 76 (1.00%) PMO
10 53 (0.69%) GRC
11 51 (0.67%) JSP 440
12 42 (0.55%) WCAG
13 37 (0.48%) Def Stans
14 35 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
15 30 (0.39%) PCI DSS
16 29 (0.38%) COBIT
16 29 (0.38%) NIST 800
17 20 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 19 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 18 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 550 (7.20%) Docker
2 476 (6.24%) Active Directory
3 231 (3.03%) VMware Infrastructure
4 76 (1.00%) VMware NSX
5 65 (0.85%) vSphere
6 59 (0.77%) VMware ESXi
7 58 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
8 49 (0.64%) Hyper-V
9 27 (0.35%) Firmware
9 27 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
10 17 (0.22%) BitLocker
11 13 (0.17%) NFS
12 12 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 12 (0.16%) Squid
13 11 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
14 9 (0.12%) DFS Replication
14 9 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
14 9 (0.12%) Postfix
15 7 (0.092%) Virtual Servers
16 6 (0.079%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 704 (9.22%) Kubernetes
2 647 (8.48%) Terraform
3 277 (3.63%) Ansible
4 184 (2.41%) Grafana
5 153 (2.00%) Prometheus
6 107 (1.40%) SCCM
7 106 (1.39%) Single Sign-On
8 100 (1.31%) vCenter Server
9 85 (1.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 64 (0.84%) Microsoft Intune
11 58 (0.76%) Argo
12 36 (0.47%) Kibana
13 34 (0.45%) Packer
13 34 (0.45%) Podman
14 33 (0.43%) OPNET
15 27 (0.35%) vRealize
16 26 (0.34%) Progress Chef
16 26 (0.34%) Puppet
17 25 (0.33%) Nmap
18 21 (0.28%) Nessus
Vendors
1 961 (12.59%) Microsoft
2 432 (5.66%) Oracle
3 400 (5.24%) SAP
4 399 (5.23%) VMware
5 398 (5.21%) Cisco
6 319 (4.18%) ServiceNow
7 203 (2.66%) Splunk
8 150 (1.96%) Red Hat
9 130 (1.70%) Palo Alto
10 123 (1.61%) CyberArk
11 119 (1.56%) Juniper
12 115 (1.51%) Google
13 112 (1.47%) Databricks
14 105 (1.38%) Atlassian
15 100 (1.31%) Salesforce
16 98 (1.28%) Dell
17 78 (1.02%) HP
18 68 (0.89%) Dynatrace
19 67 (0.88%) SolarWinds
20 66 (0.86%) Aruba