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

6 months to
27 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 10,269 5,261 5,946
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.15% 18.84% 18.18%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.93% 59.50% 61.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,208 3,447 3,793
10th Percentile £399 £340 £356
25th Percentile £463 £450 £455
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 £550 £537 £550
% change year-on-year +2.42% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 796 546 348
10th Percentile £20.50 £18.51 £21.25
25th Percentile £31.50 £18.87 £37.30
Median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +158.45% -59.17% +2.67%
75th Percentile £78.70 £38.44 £72.50
90th Percentile £91.31 £71.13 £85.00
UK median hourly rate £64.05 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +154.65% -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 14,898 8,842 9,697
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.13% 31.66% 29.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,977 5,628 5,914
10th Percentile £350 £300 £320
25th Percentile £445 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £530 £525 £525
% change year-on-year +0.95% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,236 718 547
10th Percentile £17.80 £17.87 £18.03
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £28.50
Median hourly rate £52.50 £25.15 £53.00
Median % change year-on-year +108.75% -52.55% -1.43%
75th Percentile £74.00 £43.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £73.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £49.00
% change year-on-year +86.88% -48.67% -9.26%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 3,648 £550 +2.33% 1,555
South East +1 2,270 £564 +7.48% 1,047
South West 0 1,405 £550 - 817
North of England +2 1,283 £515 -1.90% 751
Midlands 0 942 £481 -7.23% 384
West Midlands 0 804 £481 -7.33% 248
North West +1 763 £530 -4.72% 451
East of England 0 429 £587 +6.73% 446
Yorkshire +2 298 £492 +0.20% 130
North East 0 242 £470 -9.62% 173
East Midlands -2 131 £490 +5.95% 134
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
1 324 (3.16%) Confluence
2 251 (2.44%) SharePoint
3 150 (1.46%) SAS
4 119 (1.16%) Microsoft Exchange
5 99 (0.96%) Apache Airflow
6 89 (0.87%) Apache Spark
7 87 (0.85%) Apache
8 35 (0.34%) nginx
9 32 (0.31%) CMS
9 32 (0.31%) Jupyter
10 26 (0.25%) WebLogic
11 22 (0.21%) Skype for Business
12 19 (0.19%) Oracle Application Server
13 17 (0.17%) Tomcat
14 16 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
15 13 (0.13%) IIS
16 12 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
17 11 (0.11%) JBoss
17 11 (0.11%) NetWeaver
18 10 (0.097%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 191 (1.86%) Microsoft Excel
2 138 (1.34%) Microsoft Office
3 94 (0.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 92 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
5 29 (0.28%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
7 21 (0.20%) AutoCAD
8 19 (0.19%) Revit
9 18 (0.18%) SOLIDWORKS
9 18 (0.18%) Windchill
10 8 (0.078%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.078%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.078%) Simulink
11 7 (0.068%) Sketch
12 5 (0.049%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 5 (0.049%) Notepad++
13 4 (0.039%) OrCAD
13 4 (0.039%) Trello
14 2 (0.019%) Gliffy
14 2 (0.019%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 127 (1.24%) SAP S/4HANA
2 82 (0.80%) Remedy ITSM
3 52 (0.51%) Oracle ERP
4 38 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
5 31 (0.30%) Teamcenter
6 29 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 26 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
8 25 (0.24%) SAP PSCD
9 24 (0.23%) Oracle Payroll
10 18 (0.18%) SAP FI
11 17 (0.17%) SAP HR
12 15 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
13 14 (0.14%) Primavera
14 13 (0.13%) Maximo
14 13 (0.13%) SAP CO
15 12 (0.12%) iTrent
15 12 (0.12%) NetSuite
15 12 (0.12%) SAP GRC
15 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
16 11 (0.11%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 1,840 (17.92%) Azure
2 1,669 (16.25%) AWS
3 436 (4.25%) Power Platform
4 435 (4.24%) Azure DevOps
5 399 (3.89%) GitHub
6 384 (3.74%) GCP
7 314 (3.06%) Microsoft 365
8 287 (2.79%) Entra ID
9 276 (2.69%) GitHub Actions
10 235 (2.29%) Serverless
11 204 (1.99%) Amazon S3
12 169 (1.65%) AWS Lambda
13 151 (1.47%) OCI
14 147 (1.43%) SaaS
15 144 (1.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 136 (1.32%) Amazon EKS
17 134 (1.30%) OpenShift
18 117 (1.14%) Amazon EC2
19 103 (1.00%) PowerApps
20 99 (0.96%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 404 (3.93%) Firewall
2 350 (3.41%) DNS
3 220 (2.14%) Network Security
4 180 (1.75%) WAN
5 172 (1.67%) VPN
6 170 (1.66%) DHCP
7 143 (1.39%) LAN
8 122 (1.19%) TCP/IP
9 119 (1.16%) BGP
10 113 (1.10%) Wi-Fi
11 91 (0.89%) VLAN
12 80 (0.78%) OSPF
13 79 (0.77%) Wireless
14 61 (0.59%) SSL
15 59 (0.57%) VSAN
16 58 (0.56%) IPsec
17 56 (0.55%) MPLS
17 56 (0.55%) SAN
18 52 (0.51%) SD-WAN
19 43 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 307 (2.99%) Power BI
2 241 (2.35%) SQL Server
3 235 (2.29%) PostgreSQL
4 231 (2.25%) Data Warehouse
5 175 (1.70%) Metadata
6 166 (1.62%) Oracle Database
7 116 (1.13%) Data Lake
8 115 (1.12%) Relational Database
9 93 (0.91%) MongoDB
10 92 (0.90%) MySQL
11 89 (0.87%) Amazon RDS
12 86 (0.84%) NoSQL
13 73 (0.71%) Oracle Reports
14 66 (0.64%) Pentaho
15 63 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
16 57 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
17 51 (0.50%) Tableau
18 45 (0.44%) Amazon Aurora
19 44 (0.43%) Big Data
20 37 (0.36%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 536 (5.22%) JIRA
2 488 (4.75%) Git
3 439 (4.28%) GitLab
4 405 (3.94%) Jenkins
5 124 (1.21%) Selenium
6 71 (0.69%) Postman
7 70 (0.68%) SonarQube
8 69 (0.67%) JUnit
9 61 (0.59%) Cucumber
9 61 (0.59%) Maven
10 57 (0.56%) JMeter
11 42 (0.41%) Gradle
12 40 (0.39%) Mockito
13 36 (0.35%) Gatling
13 36 (0.35%) Zephyr
14 35 (0.34%) Cypress.io
14 35 (0.34%) REST Assured
14 35 (0.34%) Visual Studio
15 34 (0.33%) Artifactory
16 32 (0.31%) MSI
General
1 2,322 (22.61%) Social Skills
2 2,025 (19.72%) Public Sector
3 835 (8.13%) Analytical Skills
4 675 (6.57%) Finance
5 411 (4.00%) Military
6 320 (3.12%) Aerospace
7 252 (2.45%) Documentation Skills
8 207 (2.02%) Influencing Skills
9 169 (1.65%) Organisational Skills
10 148 (1.44%) Telecoms
11 142 (1.38%) Manufacturing
12 134 (1.30%) Legal
13 132 (1.29%) Banking
14 125 (1.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 115 (1.12%) Law
16 98 (0.95%) Police
17 66 (0.64%) Presentation Skills
18 44 (0.43%) Local Government
19 42 (0.41%) Marketing
20 40 (0.39%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,597 (15.55%) Architect
2 964 (9.39%) Developer
3 963 (9.38%) Senior
4 955 (9.30%) Lead
5 573 (5.58%) Consultant
6 567 (5.52%) Analyst
7 432 (4.21%) Data Engineer
8 417 (4.06%) DevOps Engineer
9 377 (3.67%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 265 (2.58%) Technical Architect
11 261 (2.54%) Solutions Architect
12 251 (2.44%) Data Architect
13 249 (2.42%) Security Architect
14 243 (2.37%) Software Engineer
15 223 (2.17%) Network Engineer
16 206 (2.01%) Administrator
17 197 (1.92%) Cloud Engineer
18 194 (1.89%) Designer
19 181 (1.76%) Delivery Manager
19 181 (1.76%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 875 (8.52%) Terraform
2 395 (3.85%) REST
3 211 (2.05%) Kafka
3 211 (2.05%) Spring
4 191 (1.86%) Spring Boot
5 168 (1.64%) .NET
6 165 (1.61%) React
7 161 (1.57%) SOAP
8 157 (1.53%) RESTful
9 131 (1.28%) Node.js
10 124 (1.21%) JSON
11 116 (1.13%) OAuth
12 114 (1.11%) HTML
13 104 (1.01%) XML
14 94 (0.92%) Web Services
15 93 (0.91%) AngularJS
16 92 (0.90%) Middleware
17 88 (0.86%) CSS
18 86 (0.84%) Oracle Fusion
19 84 (0.82%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 457 (4.45%) Cloud Native
2 398 (3.88%) Onboarding
3 320 (3.12%) Product Ownership
4 267 (2.60%) Data Centre
5 179 (1.74%) Management Information System
6 160 (1.56%) PKI
7 159 (1.55%) Legacy Systems
8 150 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
9 142 (1.38%) CMDB
10 118 (1.15%) Hybrid Cloud
11 113 (1.10%) Distributed Systems
12 108 (1.05%) Cyber Threat
13 105 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
14 102 (0.99%) Operational Technology
15 101 (0.98%) Replication
16 86 (0.84%) Security Posture
17 82 (0.80%) Clustering
17 82 (0.80%) Public Cloud
18 81 (0.79%) Data Structures
18 81 (0.79%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 916 (8.92%) Windows
2 710 (6.91%) Linux
3 354 (3.45%) Windows Server
4 215 (2.09%) Unix
5 151 (1.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 136 (1.32%) Windows 10
7 82 (0.80%) Solaris
8 65 (0.63%) Android
9 45 (0.44%) CentOS
9 45 (0.44%) Mac OS
10 37 (0.36%) Ubuntu
11 36 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 30 (0.29%) AIX
13 28 (0.27%) Apple iOS
14 24 (0.23%) Windows 7
15 22 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
16 18 (0.18%) VMS
17 16 (0.16%) Rocky
17 16 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
18 12 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,143 (20.87%) Agile
2 1,539 (14.99%) DevOps
3 1,510 (14.70%) CI/CD
4 1,457 (14.19%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,283 (12.49%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,108 (10.79%) Problem-Solving
7 1,025 (9.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 886 (8.63%) Infrastructure as Code
9 846 (8.24%) Migration
10 787 (7.66%) Cybersecurity
11 723 (7.04%) ITIL
12 663 (6.46%) Technical Leadership
13 657 (6.40%) AI
14 656 (6.39%) Roadmaps
15 648 (6.31%) Test Automation
16 633 (6.16%) Containerisation
17 628 (6.12%) Decision-Making
18 617 (6.01%) Analytics
19 589 (5.74%) Software Engineering
20 555 (5.40%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,170 (11.39%) Python
2 940 (9.15%) SQL
3 645 (6.28%) Java
4 536 (5.22%) PowerShell
5 355 (3.46%) JavaScript
6 300 (2.92%) Bash
7 193 (1.88%) C#
8 180 (1.75%) TypeScript
9 128 (1.25%) PL/SQL
10 109 (1.06%) Bicep
11 66 (0.64%) Shell Script
12 59 (0.57%) C++
13 53 (0.52%) Go
14 47 (0.46%) C
14 47 (0.46%) Groovy
15 46 (0.45%) Scala
16 43 (0.42%) Kotlin
17 29 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 27 (0.26%) Kusto Query Language
19 26 (0.25%) R
Qualifications
1 7,697 (74.95%) SC Cleared
2 2,122 (20.66%) DV Cleared
3 442 (4.30%) BPSS Clearance
4 438 (4.27%) Degree
5 201 (1.96%) CISSP
6 169 (1.65%) Azure Certification
7 164 (1.60%) Cisco Certification
8 153 (1.49%) Microsoft Certification
9 141 (1.37%) AWS Certification
10 119 (1.16%) CISM
11 98 (0.95%) PMI Certification
12 89 (0.87%) PMP
13 88 (0.86%) ISTQB
14 85 (0.83%) CCNP
15 62 (0.60%) Computer Science Degree
16 60 (0.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 55 (0.54%) CCNA
18 45 (0.44%) TOGAF Certification
19 44 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 41 (0.40%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 458 (4.46%) QA
2 326 (3.17%) Data Quality
3 302 (2.94%) NIST
4 286 (2.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 259 (2.52%) NCSC
6 243 (2.37%) Accessibility
7 216 (2.10%) PMO
8 154 (1.50%) SLA
9 145 (1.41%) GDPR
10 142 (1.38%) GRC
11 70 (0.68%) WCAG
12 52 (0.51%) JSP 440
13 44 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
14 41 (0.40%) NIST 800
15 35 (0.34%) Def Stans
16 29 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 25 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
18 21 (0.20%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 20 (0.19%) ISO 9001
20 19 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 688 (6.70%) Docker
2 586 (5.71%) Active Directory
3 407 (3.96%) VMware Infrastructure
4 141 (1.37%) VMware ESXi
5 131 (1.28%) VMware NSX
6 125 (1.22%) Hyper-V
7 124 (1.21%) vSphere
8 83 (0.81%) Virtual Machines
9 41 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
10 40 (0.39%) Firmware
11 37 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
12 26 (0.25%) BitLocker
13 25 (0.24%) vCloud
14 20 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
15 15 (0.15%) NFS
16 12 (0.12%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 10 (0.097%) KVM
17 10 (0.097%) Microsoft Virtual Server
17 10 (0.097%) Postfix
18 9 (0.088%) Squid
Systems Management
1 822 (8.00%) Kubernetes
2 399 (3.89%) Ansible
3 226 (2.20%) Grafana
4 169 (1.65%) Prometheus
5 129 (1.26%) SCCM
6 128 (1.25%) vCenter Server
7 94 (0.92%) SCOM
8 90 (0.88%) Microsoft Intune
9 55 (0.54%) Argo
10 50 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
11 42 (0.41%) Puppet
12 40 (0.39%) Kibana
13 39 (0.38%) Oracle RMAN
14 36 (0.35%) Data Guard
15 30 (0.29%) VxRail
16 29 (0.28%) Istio
17 28 (0.27%) Control-M
18 27 (0.26%) NetBackup
19 26 (0.25%) Nagios
19 26 (0.25%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,385 (13.49%) Microsoft
2 814 (7.93%) Oracle
3 555 (5.40%) VMware
4 475 (4.63%) ServiceNow
5 385 (3.75%) SAP
6 274 (2.67%) Cisco
7 246 (2.40%) Google
8 198 (1.93%) Splunk
9 161 (1.57%) Databricks
10 123 (1.20%) Red Hat
11 113 (1.10%) Palo Alto
11 113 (1.10%) Salesforce
12 97 (0.94%) IBM
13 93 (0.91%) Remedy
14 92 (0.90%) Informatica
15 90 (0.88%) CyberArk
16 88 (0.86%) Dynatrace
17 86 (0.84%) Talend
18 75 (0.73%) SolarWinds
19 70 (0.68%) Citrix