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

6 months to
13 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 8,596 4,536 7,198
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.53% 18.39% 18.97%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.06% 59.60% 60.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,844 2,953 4,617
10th Percentile £357 £325 £350
25th Percentile £443 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £548 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.11% -0.45% -2.31%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £701 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 768 254 492
10th Percentile £17.69 £21.25 £14.50
25th Percentile £20.43 £26.65 £22.00
Median hourly rate £27.50 £60.00 £53.27
Median % change year-on-year -54.17% +12.64% -11.23%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £84.00 £80.07 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £33.50 £57.50 £54.56
% change year-on-year -41.74% +5.39% -9.07%

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 12,447 7,611 11,853
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.07% 30.85% 31.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,253 4,799 7,327
10th Percentile £328 £285 £298
25th Percentile £421 £416 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.42% -2.18%
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 982 410 929
10th Percentile £16.30 £20.00 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.66 £25.26 £18.32
Median hourly rate £27.50 £52.50 £38.95
Median % change year-on-year -47.62% +34.79% -22.10%
75th Percentile £67.50 £68.13 £62.50
90th Percentile £84.00 £82.55 £76.31
UK median hourly rate £28.50 £45.00 £38.95
% change year-on-year -36.67% +15.53% -22.10%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 +5 2,998 £530 +0.95% 484
South East +1 1,955 £525 -4.55% 544
South West 0 1,298 £540 -2.26% 411
Midlands +4 858 £492 -10.55% 166
North of England -1 841 £500 - 265
West Midlands +4 691 £492 -10.71% 123
North West 0 543 £500 +1.73% 135
East of England +2 357 £494 -1.30% 150
Yorkshire -7 178 £484 -7.86% 71
East Midlands +1 164 £434 -16.27% 41
North East 0 150 £450 -4.26% 60
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
1 340 (3.96%) Confluence
2 207 (2.41%) SharePoint
3 136 (1.58%) Microsoft Exchange
4 126 (1.47%) SAS
5 73 (0.85%) Apache
6 72 (0.84%) Apache Spark
7 48 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
8 37 (0.43%) nginx
9 34 (0.40%) WebLogic
10 30 (0.35%) Skype for Business
11 21 (0.24%) Jupyter
12 16 (0.19%) CMS
12 16 (0.19%) IIS
12 16 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
13 14 (0.16%) Tuxedo
14 10 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
15 7 (0.081%) ArcGIS
15 7 (0.081%) OpenStack
15 7 (0.081%) Tomcat
16 6 (0.070%) JBoss
Applications
1 248 (2.89%) Microsoft Office
2 196 (2.28%) Microsoft Excel
3 121 (1.41%) Microsoft Project
4 69 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 46 (0.54%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
7 8 (0.093%) Simulink
8 5 (0.058%) Siemens NX
9 4 (0.047%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.047%) Chatbot
9 4 (0.047%) Oracle Smart View
9 4 (0.047%) Sketch
9 4 (0.047%) Windchill
10 2 (0.023%) Adobe Illustrator
10 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.023%) CATIA
10 2 (0.023%) Lectora
10 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
10 2 (0.023%) PTC Creo
11 1 (0.012%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 121 (1.41%) SAP S/4HANA
2 39 (0.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 29 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
4 26 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
5 25 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
5 25 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 19 (0.22%) SAP MM
7 16 (0.19%) Maximo
8 15 (0.17%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.15%) SAP PP
9 13 (0.15%) SAP QM
10 12 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
10 12 (0.14%) SAP VC
11 11 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
12 9 (0.10%) Temenos T24
13 8 (0.093%) Oracle Receivables
13 8 (0.093%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 8 (0.093%) Primavera
13 8 (0.093%) SAP ERP
13 8 (0.093%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,419 (16.51%) Azure
2 1,403 (16.32%) AWS
3 388 (4.51%) GitHub
4 365 (4.25%) GCP
5 333 (3.87%) Power Platform
6 326 (3.79%) Azure DevOps
7 295 (3.43%) Microsoft 365
8 241 (2.80%) Serverless
9 234 (2.72%) Entra ID
10 196 (2.28%) GitHub Actions
11 180 (2.09%) Amazon S3
12 168 (1.95%) OpenShift
13 155 (1.80%) AWS Lambda
14 120 (1.40%) Amazon EC2
15 109 (1.27%) AWS CloudFormation
16 108 (1.26%) PaaS
17 105 (1.22%) IaaS
18 98 (1.14%) Azure Data Factory
19 97 (1.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 97 (1.13%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 402 (4.68%) Firewall
2 256 (2.98%) DNS
3 202 (2.35%) Network Security
4 192 (2.23%) WAN
5 163 (1.90%) LAN
6 160 (1.86%) VPN
7 137 (1.59%) BGP
8 129 (1.50%) DHCP
9 126 (1.47%) TCP/IP
10 99 (1.15%) OSPF
11 93 (1.08%) Wireless
12 84 (0.98%) VLAN
13 76 (0.88%) Wi-Fi
14 66 (0.77%) MPLS
15 51 (0.59%) SAN
16 49 (0.57%) IPsec
17 47 (0.55%) Cisco ISE
18 38 (0.44%) Junos
19 37 (0.43%) Skype
19 37 (0.43%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 243 (2.83%) Power BI
2 223 (2.59%) PostgreSQL
3 149 (1.73%) Data Warehouse
4 146 (1.70%) SQL Server
5 112 (1.30%) Metadata
6 97 (1.13%) Oracle Database
7 93 (1.08%) Amazon RDS
8 88 (1.02%) NoSQL
9 83 (0.97%) MongoDB
10 82 (0.95%) Relational Database
11 72 (0.84%) Azure SQL Database
12 67 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
13 58 (0.67%) Data Lake
13 58 (0.67%) MySQL
13 58 (0.67%) Pentaho
14 50 (0.58%) Amazon Redshift
14 50 (0.58%) Tableau
15 49 (0.57%) Big Data
16 38 (0.44%) Delta Lake
17 36 (0.42%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 541 (6.29%) JIRA
2 428 (4.98%) Git
3 354 (4.12%) Jenkins
4 309 (3.59%) GitLab
5 108 (1.26%) Selenium
6 80 (0.93%) JUnit
7 75 (0.87%) Postman
8 55 (0.64%) Cypress.io
9 52 (0.60%) Rational DOORS
10 50 (0.58%) Bitbucket
11 48 (0.56%) SonarQube
12 45 (0.52%) Maven
13 44 (0.51%) Cucumber
14 43 (0.50%) Artifactory
15 42 (0.49%) Oracle APEX
16 34 (0.40%) JMeter
17 33 (0.38%) Mockito
18 32 (0.37%) REST Assured
19 30 (0.35%) Visual Studio
20 23 (0.27%) Metasploit
General
1 2,166 (25.20%) Public Sector
2 2,051 (23.86%) Social Skills
3 739 (8.60%) Analytical Skills
4 636 (7.40%) Finance
5 316 (3.68%) Military
6 251 (2.92%) Documentation Skills
7 206 (2.40%) Aerospace
8 173 (2.01%) Manufacturing
9 169 (1.97%) Telecoms
10 135 (1.57%) Legal
11 114 (1.33%) Influencing Skills
12 110 (1.28%) Organisational Skills
13 109 (1.27%) Marketing
14 106 (1.23%) Electronics
14 106 (1.23%) Presentation Skills
15 103 (1.20%) Banking
16 70 (0.81%) Law
17 47 (0.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 47 (0.55%) Police
18 35 (0.41%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,232 (14.33%) Architect
2 824 (9.59%) Developer
3 742 (8.63%) Senior
4 664 (7.72%) Analyst
5 526 (6.12%) Lead
6 492 (5.72%) Consultant
7 349 (4.06%) DevOps Engineer
8 334 (3.89%) Data Engineer
9 250 (2.91%) Network Engineer
10 238 (2.77%) Business Analyst
11 228 (2.65%) Technical Architect
12 223 (2.59%) Software Engineer
13 221 (2.57%) Support Engineer
14 199 (2.32%) Solutions Architect
15 162 (1.88%) Project Manager
16 155 (1.80%) Azure Engineer
16 155 (1.80%) Tester
17 154 (1.79%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 151 (1.76%) Delivery Manager
19 150 (1.74%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 336 (3.91%) REST
2 193 (2.25%) Spring
3 177 (2.06%) Node.js
4 165 (1.92%) Kafka
5 161 (1.87%) React
6 146 (1.70%) SOAP
7 141 (1.64%) Spring Boot
8 140 (1.63%) JSON
8 140 (1.63%) LDAP
9 133 (1.55%) .NET
10 109 (1.27%) AngularJS
10 109 (1.27%) RESTful
11 108 (1.26%) HTML
12 105 (1.22%) Web Services
13 99 (1.15%) OAuth
14 93 (1.08%) PySpark
15 91 (1.06%) Oracle Fusion
16 90 (1.05%) CSS
17 89 (1.04%) XML
18 78 (0.91%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 286 (3.33%) Product Ownership
2 281 (3.27%) Data Centre
3 251 (2.92%) Cloud Native
4 224 (2.61%) Onboarding
5 193 (2.25%) PKI
6 152 (1.77%) Management Information System
7 126 (1.47%) Security Posture
8 120 (1.40%) Self-Motivation
9 118 (1.37%) Legacy Systems
10 103 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
11 97 (1.13%) Replication
12 71 (0.83%) Hybrid Cloud
12 71 (0.83%) Public Cloud
13 70 (0.81%) Distributed Systems
14 64 (0.74%) Cyber Threat
14 64 (0.74%) Data Structures
14 64 (0.74%) Security Operations Centre
15 59 (0.69%) Driving Licence
16 56 (0.65%) Clustering
17 47 (0.55%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 810 (9.42%) Windows
2 625 (7.27%) Linux
3 219 (2.55%) Windows Server
4 139 (1.62%) Windows 10
5 123 (1.43%) Android
6 109 (1.27%) Unix
7 107 (1.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 69 (0.80%) Mac OS
9 45 (0.52%) Apple iOS
9 45 (0.52%) Ubuntu
10 27 (0.31%) VMS
11 24 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
12 22 (0.26%) CentOS
13 20 (0.23%) Windows 7
14 19 (0.22%) Solaris
15 16 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
16 12 (0.14%) AIX
17 11 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
18 9 (0.10%) Windows Server 2003
19 8 (0.093%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,706 (19.85%) Agile
2 1,317 (15.32%) DevOps
3 1,135 (13.20%) CI/CD
4 1,057 (12.30%) Problem-Solving
5 804 (9.35%) Stakeholder Management
6 756 (8.79%) Migration
7 703 (8.18%) Continuous Improvement
8 623 (7.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 548 (6.38%) Cybersecurity
9 548 (6.38%) ITIL
10 498 (5.79%) Infrastructure as Code
11 485 (5.64%) Analytics
12 481 (5.60%) Test Automation
13 471 (5.48%) Roadmaps
14 446 (5.19%) Containerisation
15 420 (4.89%) Software Engineering
16 419 (4.87%) Scrum
17 415 (4.83%) Business Intelligence
18 401 (4.66%) Service Management
19 400 (4.65%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 992 (11.54%) Python
2 757 (8.81%) SQL
3 554 (6.44%) PowerShell
4 477 (5.55%) Java
5 351 (4.08%) JavaScript
6 202 (2.35%) Bash
7 178 (2.07%) C#
8 156 (1.81%) TypeScript
9 102 (1.19%) C++
10 94 (1.09%) Shell Script
11 92 (1.07%) PL/SQL
12 70 (0.81%) Go
13 63 (0.73%) C
14 56 (0.65%) Ruby
15 49 (0.57%) Ada
15 49 (0.57%) Scala
16 40 (0.47%) Kusto Query Language
17 39 (0.45%) Bicep
18 33 (0.38%) Apex Code
19 31 (0.36%) R
Qualifications
1 6,501 (75.63%) SC Cleared
2 1,517 (17.65%) DV Cleared
3 440 (5.12%) Degree
4 260 (3.02%) BPSS Clearance
5 162 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
5 162 (1.88%) CISSP
6 120 (1.40%) Azure Certification
7 117 (1.36%) AWS Certification
8 114 (1.33%) CCNP
9 109 (1.27%) Microsoft Certification
10 100 (1.16%) CISM
11 71 (0.83%) Computer Science Degree
12 70 (0.81%) CCNA
13 64 (0.74%) TOGAF Certification
14 62 (0.72%) ITIL Certification
15 53 (0.62%) PMP
16 47 (0.55%) ISTQB
17 46 (0.54%) PMI Certification
18 45 (0.52%) GIAC
19 44 (0.51%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 302 (3.51%) QA
2 275 (3.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 261 (3.04%) NIST
4 238 (2.77%) Data Quality
5 197 (2.29%) NCSC
6 174 (2.02%) GDPR
7 145 (1.69%) Accessibility
8 113 (1.31%) SLA
9 111 (1.29%) PMO
10 60 (0.70%) GRC
11 59 (0.69%) JSP 440
12 42 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
13 41 (0.48%) WCAG
14 37 (0.43%) NIST 800
15 34 (0.40%) Def Stans
16 31 (0.36%) COBIT
16 31 (0.36%) PCI DSS
17 25 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 23 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 20 (0.23%) RMADS
System Software
1 573 (6.67%) Docker
2 459 (5.34%) Active Directory
3 229 (2.66%) VMware Infrastructure
4 79 (0.92%) VMware NSX
5 67 (0.78%) vSphere
6 57 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
7 56 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
8 55 (0.64%) Hyper-V
9 26 (0.30%) Firmware
10 21 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
11 20 (0.23%) BitLocker
12 19 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
13 17 (0.20%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 15 (0.17%) NFS
15 10 (0.12%) Postfix
16 9 (0.10%) Squid
16 9 (0.10%) vCloud
17 6 (0.070%) Microsoft App-V
17 6 (0.070%) Terminal Services
18 4 (0.047%) Snort
Systems Management
1 747 (8.69%) Kubernetes
2 667 (7.76%) Terraform
3 286 (3.33%) Ansible
4 214 (2.49%) Grafana
5 173 (2.01%) Prometheus
6 104 (1.21%) Single Sign-On
7 92 (1.07%) SCCM
8 85 (0.99%) vCenter Server
9 80 (0.93%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 63 (0.73%) Microsoft Intune
11 61 (0.71%) Argo
12 44 (0.51%) FortiGate
13 38 (0.44%) Podman
14 37 (0.43%) Packer
15 31 (0.36%) Puppet
16 30 (0.35%) OPNET
17 29 (0.34%) Progress Chef
18 26 (0.30%) Kibana
19 24 (0.28%) Nmap
20 21 (0.24%) Consul
Vendors
1 991 (11.53%) Microsoft
2 487 (5.67%) Oracle
3 418 (4.86%) VMware
4 391 (4.55%) Cisco
5 371 (4.32%) ServiceNow
6 369 (4.29%) SAP
7 213 (2.48%) Splunk
8 179 (2.08%) Red Hat
9 140 (1.63%) Databricks
10 136 (1.58%) Google
11 126 (1.47%) Juniper
12 124 (1.44%) Atlassian
13 120 (1.40%) CyberArk
14 118 (1.37%) Palo Alto
15 115 (1.34%) Salesforce
16 101 (1.17%) IBM
17 94 (1.09%) Dell
18 82 (0.95%) HP
19 80 (0.93%) Talend
20 77 (0.90%) Aruba