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

6 months to
11 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 8,542 4,543 7,224
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.53% 18.40% 18.96%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.08% 59.74% 60.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,805 2,974 4,613
10th Percentile £357 £313 £350
25th Percentile £445 £450 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £541 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.00% -1.59% -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £703 £736
UK median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 765 253 505
10th Percentile £17.69 £21.25 £14.59
25th Percentile £20.35 £25.75 £22.00
Median hourly rate £26.00 £60.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -56.67% +9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £84.00 £80.08 £81.80
UK median hourly rate £29.75 £58.25 £55.00
% change year-on-year -48.94% +5.91% -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 12,366 7,604 11,899
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.06% 30.81% 31.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,203 4,806 7,339
10th Percentile £330 £284 £297
25th Percentile £424 £413 £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 £517 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.58% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 974 407 943
10th Percentile £16.27 £19.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.54 £25.26 £18.34
Median hourly rate £26.22 £52.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -50.06% +31.25% -20.00%
75th Percentile £67.50 £68.09 £63.75
90th Percentile £83.75 £82.78 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £28.36 £43.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -34.05% +7.50% -20.00%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 2,968 £533 +1.43% 411
South East +1 1,937 £525 -4.55% 517
South West 0 1,292 £545 -0.91% 360
Midlands +3 866 £492 -10.55% 148
North of England -1 831 £496 +0.14% 208
West Midlands +3 697 £494 -10.39% 112
North West 0 534 £500 +4.17% 107
East of England +2 354 £495 -1.00% 141
Yorkshire -10 178 £484 -7.86% 54
East Midlands 0 166 £425 -17.07% 36
North East 0 149 £450 -4.26% 48
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
1 332 (3.89%) Confluence
2 207 (2.42%) SharePoint
3 137 (1.60%) Microsoft Exchange
4 134 (1.57%) SAS
5 67 (0.78%) Apache Spark
6 66 (0.77%) Apache
7 44 (0.52%) Apache Airflow
8 37 (0.43%) nginx
9 34 (0.40%) WebLogic
10 30 (0.35%) Skype for Business
11 21 (0.25%) Jupyter
12 16 (0.19%) CMS
12 16 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
13 14 (0.16%) Tuxedo
14 11 (0.13%) IIS
15 9 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
16 7 (0.082%) ArcGIS
16 7 (0.082%) OpenStack
16 7 (0.082%) Tomcat
17 5 (0.059%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 247 (2.89%) Microsoft Office
2 194 (2.27%) Microsoft Excel
3 117 (1.37%) Microsoft Project
4 70 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 45 (0.53%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
7 8 (0.094%) Simulink
8 5 (0.059%) 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
1 119 (1.39%) SAP S/4HANA
2 38 (0.44%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 27 (0.32%) 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 14 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.15%) SAP PP
9 13 (0.15%) SAP QM
10 12 (0.14%) SAP VC
11 11 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
12 9 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 9 (0.11%) Primavera
13 8 (0.094%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 8 (0.094%) SAP ERP
13 8 (0.094%) Workday HCM
14 7 (0.082%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 1,405 (16.45%) Azure
2 1,388 (16.25%) AWS
3 375 (4.39%) GitHub
4 363 (4.25%) GCP
5 323 (3.78%) Power Platform
6 319 (3.73%) Azure DevOps
7 305 (3.57%) Microsoft 365
8 237 (2.77%) Serverless
9 236 (2.76%) Entra ID
10 189 (2.21%) GitHub Actions
11 177 (2.07%) Amazon S3
12 168 (1.97%) OpenShift
13 152 (1.78%) AWS Lambda
14 119 (1.39%) Amazon EC2
15 110 (1.29%) AWS CloudFormation
16 103 (1.21%) IaaS
16 103 (1.21%) PaaS
17 96 (1.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 95 (1.11%) Amazon EKS
18 95 (1.11%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 398 (4.66%) Firewall
2 254 (2.97%) DNS
3 201 (2.35%) Network Security
4 190 (2.22%) WAN
5 160 (1.87%) LAN
5 160 (1.87%) VPN
6 133 (1.56%) BGP
7 126 (1.48%) DHCP
8 123 (1.44%) TCP/IP
9 95 (1.11%) OSPF
10 93 (1.09%) Wireless
11 84 (0.98%) VLAN
12 75 (0.88%) Wi-Fi
13 65 (0.76%) MPLS
14 48 (0.56%) IPsec
14 48 (0.56%) SAN
15 44 (0.52%) Cisco ISE
16 39 (0.46%) SSL
17 37 (0.43%) Junos
17 37 (0.43%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 231 (2.70%) Power BI
2 224 (2.62%) PostgreSQL
3 147 (1.72%) Data Warehouse
4 141 (1.65%) SQL Server
5 107 (1.25%) Metadata
6 101 (1.18%) Oracle Database
7 93 (1.09%) Amazon RDS
8 87 (1.02%) NoSQL
9 84 (0.98%) MongoDB
10 80 (0.94%) Relational Database
11 71 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
12 67 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
13 63 (0.74%) Pentaho
14 58 (0.68%) MySQL
15 52 (0.61%) Data Lake
16 50 (0.59%) Big Data
17 49 (0.57%) Amazon Redshift
18 45 (0.53%) Tableau
19 36 (0.42%) DynamoDB
19 36 (0.42%) SAS Enterprise Guide
Development Applications
1 538 (6.30%) JIRA
2 429 (5.02%) Git
3 359 (4.20%) Jenkins
4 308 (3.61%) GitLab
5 105 (1.23%) Selenium
6 78 (0.91%) JUnit
7 75 (0.88%) Postman
8 55 (0.64%) Cypress.io
9 50 (0.59%) Bitbucket
10 49 (0.57%) Rational DOORS
11 48 (0.56%) SonarQube
12 45 (0.53%) Maven
13 44 (0.52%) Oracle APEX
14 43 (0.50%) Artifactory
14 43 (0.50%) Cucumber
15 32 (0.37%) JMeter
15 32 (0.37%) Mockito
15 32 (0.37%) REST Assured
16 30 (0.35%) Visual Studio
17 23 (0.27%) Metasploit
General
1 2,151 (25.18%) Public Sector
2 2,050 (24.00%) Social Skills
3 730 (8.55%) Analytical Skills
4 628 (7.35%) Finance
5 314 (3.68%) Military
6 244 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
7 206 (2.41%) Aerospace
8 173 (2.03%) Manufacturing
9 170 (1.99%) Telecoms
10 135 (1.58%) Legal
11 117 (1.37%) Organisational Skills
12 112 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
13 110 (1.29%) Marketing
14 106 (1.24%) Electronics
15 104 (1.22%) Presentation Skills
16 101 (1.18%) Banking
17 69 (0.81%) Law
18 46 (0.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 46 (0.54%) Police
19 36 (0.42%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,214 (14.21%) Architect
2 823 (9.63%) Developer
3 733 (8.58%) Senior
4 662 (7.75%) Analyst
5 519 (6.08%) Lead
6 489 (5.72%) Consultant
7 349 (4.09%) DevOps Engineer
8 325 (3.80%) Data Engineer
9 249 (2.92%) Network Engineer
10 240 (2.81%) Business Analyst
11 224 (2.62%) Technical Architect
12 223 (2.61%) Support Engineer
13 222 (2.60%) Software Engineer
14 195 (2.28%) Solutions Architect
15 157 (1.84%) Project Manager
16 156 (1.83%) Tester
17 152 (1.78%) Azure Engineer
17 152 (1.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 150 (1.76%) Administrator
19 146 (1.71%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 332 (3.89%) REST
2 192 (2.25%) Spring
3 182 (2.13%) Node.js
4 167 (1.96%) Kafka
5 163 (1.91%) React
6 148 (1.73%) SOAP
7 141 (1.65%) LDAP
7 141 (1.65%) Spring Boot
8 138 (1.62%) JSON
9 129 (1.51%) .NET
10 108 (1.26%) AngularJS
11 107 (1.25%) HTML
12 106 (1.24%) RESTful
13 104 (1.22%) Web Services
14 99 (1.16%) OAuth
15 89 (1.04%) CSS
16 88 (1.03%) Oracle Fusion
16 88 (1.03%) PySpark
17 87 (1.02%) XML
18 80 (0.94%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 280 (3.28%) Data Centre
2 278 (3.25%) Product Ownership
3 240 (2.81%) Cloud Native
4 223 (2.61%) Onboarding
5 192 (2.25%) PKI
6 152 (1.78%) Management Information System
7 130 (1.52%) Security Posture
8 115 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
9 112 (1.31%) Legacy Systems
10 102 (1.19%) Enterprise Software
11 95 (1.11%) Replication
12 71 (0.83%) Hybrid Cloud
12 71 (0.83%) Public Cloud
13 66 (0.77%) Distributed Systems
14 62 (0.73%) Cyber Threat
14 62 (0.73%) Security Operations Centre
15 60 (0.70%) Data Structures
15 60 (0.70%) Driving Licence
16 55 (0.64%) Clustering
17 46 (0.54%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 804 (9.41%) Windows
2 619 (7.25%) Linux
3 213 (2.49%) Windows Server
4 138 (1.62%) Windows 10
5 121 (1.42%) Android
6 109 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 107 (1.25%) Unix
8 69 (0.81%) Mac OS
9 45 (0.53%) Apple iOS
9 45 (0.53%) Ubuntu
10 27 (0.32%) VMS
11 24 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
12 23 (0.27%) CentOS
13 20 (0.23%) Windows 7
14 19 (0.22%) Solaris
15 16 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
16 11 (0.13%) AIX
16 11 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
17 9 (0.11%) Windows Server 2003
18 8 (0.094%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,685 (19.73%) Agile
2 1,310 (15.34%) DevOps
3 1,132 (13.25%) CI/CD
4 1,055 (12.35%) Problem-Solving
5 792 (9.27%) Stakeholder Management
6 742 (8.69%) Migration
7 700 (8.19%) Continuous Improvement
8 617 (7.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 540 (6.32%) ITIL
10 538 (6.30%) Cybersecurity
11 495 (5.79%) Infrastructure as Code
12 480 (5.62%) Test Automation
13 476 (5.57%) Analytics
14 472 (5.53%) Roadmaps
15 438 (5.13%) Containerisation
16 420 (4.92%) Scrum
17 414 (4.85%) Software Engineering
18 409 (4.79%) Business Intelligence
19 396 (4.64%) Service Management
20 390 (4.57%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 984 (11.52%) Python
2 745 (8.72%) SQL
3 549 (6.43%) PowerShell
4 474 (5.55%) Java
5 357 (4.18%) JavaScript
6 201 (2.35%) Bash
7 176 (2.06%) C#
8 162 (1.90%) TypeScript
9 102 (1.19%) C++
10 94 (1.10%) Shell Script
11 92 (1.08%) PL/SQL
12 73 (0.85%) Go
13 63 (0.74%) C
14 52 (0.61%) Ruby
15 49 (0.57%) Ada
16 48 (0.56%) Scala
17 40 (0.47%) Kusto Query Language
18 38 (0.44%) Bicep
19 32 (0.37%) Apex Code
20 30 (0.35%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 6,468 (75.72%) SC Cleared
2 1,501 (17.57%) DV Cleared
3 431 (5.05%) Degree
4 261 (3.06%) BPSS Clearance
5 162 (1.90%) Cisco Certification
6 159 (1.86%) CISSP
7 122 (1.43%) Azure Certification
8 115 (1.35%) AWS Certification
8 115 (1.35%) CCNP
9 109 (1.28%) Microsoft Certification
10 99 (1.16%) CISM
11 72 (0.84%) Computer Science Degree
12 71 (0.83%) CCNA
13 63 (0.74%) ITIL Certification
13 63 (0.74%) TOGAF Certification
14 48 (0.56%) PMP
15 46 (0.54%) ISTQB
16 45 (0.53%) GIAC
17 44 (0.52%) CEH
18 43 (0.50%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 299 (3.50%) QA
2 272 (3.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 260 (3.04%) NIST
4 236 (2.76%) Data Quality
5 195 (2.28%) NCSC
6 174 (2.04%) GDPR
7 144 (1.69%) Accessibility
8 114 (1.33%) SLA
9 108 (1.26%) PMO
10 62 (0.73%) GRC
11 57 (0.67%) JSP 440
12 42 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
13 40 (0.47%) WCAG
14 36 (0.42%) Def Stans
15 35 (0.41%) NIST 800
16 31 (0.36%) COBIT
16 31 (0.36%) PCI DSS
17 23 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 23 (0.27%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 19 (0.22%) RMADS
System Software
1 579 (6.78%) Docker
2 462 (5.41%) Active Directory
3 225 (2.63%) VMware Infrastructure
4 76 (0.89%) VMware NSX
5 64 (0.75%) vSphere
6 55 (0.64%) Virtual Machines
6 55 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
7 53 (0.62%) Hyper-V
8 26 (0.30%) Firmware
9 22 (0.26%) Oracle RAC
10 19 (0.22%) BitLocker
10 19 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
11 17 (0.20%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 15 (0.18%) NFS
13 10 (0.12%) Postfix
14 9 (0.11%) Squid
14 9 (0.11%) vCloud
15 5 (0.059%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.059%) Terminal Services
16 4 (0.047%) Snort
Systems Management
1 756 (8.85%) Kubernetes
2 664 (7.77%) Terraform
3 284 (3.32%) Ansible
4 215 (2.52%) Grafana
5 173 (2.03%) Prometheus
6 106 (1.24%) Single Sign-On
7 91 (1.07%) SCCM
8 83 (0.97%) vCenter Server
9 80 (0.94%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 63 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
11 62 (0.73%) Argo
12 43 (0.50%) FortiGate
13 39 (0.46%) Packer
14 38 (0.44%) Podman
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 (0.25%) Consul
Vendors
1 991 (11.60%) Microsoft
2 489 (5.72%) Oracle
3 411 (4.81%) VMware
4 391 (4.58%) Cisco
5 369 (4.32%) SAP
6 368 (4.31%) ServiceNow
7 211 (2.47%) Splunk
8 178 (2.08%) Red Hat
9 135 (1.58%) Databricks
10 133 (1.56%) Google
11 127 (1.49%) Juniper
12 122 (1.43%) Atlassian
13 120 (1.40%) CyberArk
14 116 (1.36%) Palo Alto
15 115 (1.35%) Salesforce
16 97 (1.14%) IBM
17 93 (1.09%) Dell
18 85 (1.00%) Talend
19 80 (0.94%) HP
20 77 (0.90%) Aruba