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

6 months to
22 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 8,109 4,653 7,068
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.31% 18.00% 18.63%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.14% 59.70% 59.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,538 2,974 4,476
10th Percentile £356 £322 £357
25th Percentile £445 £440 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £548 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.20% -0.36% -2.65%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £701 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £540 £550
% change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 713 246 487
10th Percentile £17.69 £21.25 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.75 £26.31 £40.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% +4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £65.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £79.97 £77.35 £83.40
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £56.75 £58.00
% change year-on-year -55.68% -2.16% -3.34%

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 11,900 7,794 11,788
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.21% 30.15% 31.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,900 4,784 7,269
10th Percentile £325 £294 £294
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.42% -2.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 923 381 893
10th Percentile £16.01 £20.12 £14.25
25th Percentile £19.00 £25.50 £21.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -49.70% +11.11% -2.17%
75th Percentile £65.00 £68.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.63 £82.50 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £40.25 £45.00
% change year-on-year -37.52% -10.56% -5.26%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 2,807 £528 +0.48% 471
South East +1 1,730 £524 -4.82% 572
South West 0 1,302 £550 -2.00% 331
North of England -2 829 £498 +1.53% 202
Midlands +4 821 £500 -9.09% 182
West Midlands +2 646 £500 -9.26% 136
North West 0 534 £500 +5.26% 114
East of England +1 341 £500 - 159
Yorkshire -7 174 £500 -4.76% 44
East Midlands +1 173 £425 -16.05% 46
North East +1 148 £450 -10.00% 45
South Coast - 1 - -
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
1 299 (3.69%) Confluence
2 190 (2.34%) SharePoint
3 132 (1.63%) Microsoft Exchange
4 123 (1.52%) SAS
5 68 (0.84%) Apache
6 65 (0.80%) Apache Spark
7 41 (0.51%) Apache Airflow
8 38 (0.47%) nginx
9 35 (0.43%) WebLogic
10 32 (0.39%) Skype for Business
11 20 (0.25%) Jupyter
12 17 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
13 15 (0.18%) CMS
14 10 (0.12%) Tuxedo
15 8 (0.099%) IIS
15 8 (0.099%) OpenStack
16 7 (0.086%) Oracle Workflow
16 7 (0.086%) Tomcat
17 6 (0.074%) ArcGIS
18 5 (0.062%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 245 (3.02%) Microsoft Office
2 178 (2.20%) Microsoft Excel
3 115 (1.42%) Microsoft Project
4 68 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 40 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
7 9 (0.11%) Simulink
8 5 (0.062%) Windchill
9 4 (0.049%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.049%) Chatbot
9 4 (0.049%) Oracle Smart View
9 4 (0.049%) Siemens NX
9 4 (0.049%) Sketch
10 3 (0.037%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.025%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.025%) CATIA
11 2 (0.025%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 2 (0.025%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.025%) Stateflow
11 2 (0.025%) Trello
Business Applications
1 124 (1.53%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.46%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 28 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
4 24 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
5 21 (0.26%) Teamcenter
6 20 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
7 19 (0.23%) SAP MM
8 15 (0.18%) Maximo
8 15 (0.18%) SAP WM
9 13 (0.16%) SAP EWM
9 13 (0.16%) SAP QM
10 12 (0.15%) Oracle Assets
10 12 (0.15%) SAP PP
10 12 (0.15%) SAP VC
11 11 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
11 11 (0.14%) SAP HCM
12 10 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
12 10 (0.12%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 9 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
13 9 (0.11%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,339 (16.51%) Azure
2 1,337 (16.49%) AWS
3 349 (4.30%) GitHub
4 345 (4.25%) GCP
5 295 (3.64%) Power Platform
6 294 (3.63%) Azure DevOps
7 288 (3.55%) Microsoft 365
8 227 (2.80%) Serverless
9 211 (2.60%) Entra ID
10 181 (2.23%) Amazon S3
11 175 (2.16%) GitHub Actions
12 168 (2.07%) OpenShift
13 149 (1.84%) AWS Lambda
14 118 (1.46%) Amazon EC2
15 106 (1.31%) AWS CloudFormation
16 105 (1.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 96 (1.18%) Amazon EKS
17 96 (1.18%) IaaS
18 94 (1.16%) OCI
19 93 (1.15%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 398 (4.91%) Firewall
2 261 (3.22%) DNS
3 200 (2.47%) Network Security
4 170 (2.10%) WAN
5 163 (2.01%) VPN
6 134 (1.65%) LAN
7 129 (1.59%) BGP
8 125 (1.54%) TCP/IP
9 122 (1.50%) DHCP
10 87 (1.07%) OSPF
11 84 (1.04%) Wireless
12 81 (1.00%) VLAN
13 68 (0.84%) Wi-Fi
14 66 (0.81%) MPLS
15 55 (0.68%) IPsec
16 51 (0.63%) SAN
17 49 (0.60%) SSL
18 45 (0.55%) Cisco ISE
19 40 (0.49%) Skype
20 36 (0.44%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 213 (2.63%) Power BI
2 209 (2.58%) PostgreSQL
3 128 (1.58%) Data Warehouse
4 111 (1.37%) SQL Server
5 103 (1.27%) Metadata
6 94 (1.16%) Oracle Database
7 88 (1.09%) Amazon RDS
8 85 (1.05%) MongoDB
9 83 (1.02%) NoSQL
10 76 (0.94%) Relational Database
11 69 (0.85%) Elasticsearch
12 62 (0.76%) Azure SQL Database
13 51 (0.63%) Pentaho
14 50 (0.62%) Data Lake
15 47 (0.58%) Big Data
16 44 (0.54%) MySQL
17 43 (0.53%) Tableau
18 36 (0.44%) Amazon Redshift
19 35 (0.43%) SAS Enterprise Guide
20 34 (0.42%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 498 (6.14%) JIRA
2 405 (4.99%) Git
3 350 (4.32%) Jenkins
4 303 (3.74%) GitLab
5 102 (1.26%) Selenium
6 75 (0.92%) JUnit
7 73 (0.90%) Postman
8 59 (0.73%) Cypress.io
9 49 (0.60%) SonarQube
10 45 (0.55%) Oracle APEX
11 44 (0.54%) Artifactory
12 41 (0.51%) Cucumber
12 41 (0.51%) Maven
13 39 (0.48%) Bitbucket
14 34 (0.42%) Mockito
14 34 (0.42%) REST Assured
15 28 (0.35%) Rational DOORS
16 25 (0.31%) JMeter
17 24 (0.30%) Metasploit
18 22 (0.27%) Burp Suite
General
1 2,061 (25.42%) Public Sector
2 1,989 (24.53%) Social Skills
3 694 (8.56%) Analytical Skills
4 575 (7.09%) Finance
5 317 (3.91%) Military
6 237 (2.92%) Documentation Skills
7 175 (2.16%) Telecoms
8 169 (2.08%) Manufacturing
9 168 (2.07%) Aerospace
10 125 (1.54%) Legal
11 116 (1.43%) Marketing
11 116 (1.43%) Organisational Skills
12 111 (1.37%) Electronics
13 102 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
14 101 (1.25%) Presentation Skills
15 83 (1.02%) Banking
16 66 (0.81%) Law
17 44 (0.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 37 (0.46%) Police
19 35 (0.43%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,130 (13.94%) Architect
2 764 (9.42%) Developer
3 683 (8.42%) Senior
4 622 (7.67%) Analyst
5 478 (5.89%) Consultant
6 464 (5.72%) Lead
7 367 (4.53%) DevOps Engineer
8 288 (3.55%) Data Engineer
9 233 (2.87%) Network Engineer
10 224 (2.76%) Support Engineer
11 218 (2.69%) Business Analyst
12 201 (2.48%) Software Engineer
13 198 (2.44%) Technical Architect
14 182 (2.24%) Solutions Architect
15 160 (1.97%) Tester
16 149 (1.84%) Azure Engineer
17 140 (1.73%) Administrator
17 140 (1.73%) AWS Engineer
18 138 (1.70%) Project Manager
19 133 (1.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 318 (3.92%) REST
2 184 (2.27%) Node.js
3 181 (2.23%) Spring
4 173 (2.13%) React
5 166 (2.05%) Kafka
6 144 (1.78%) JSON
7 140 (1.73%) LDAP
8 138 (1.70%) Spring Boot
9 137 (1.69%) SOAP
10 102 (1.26%) .NET
11 96 (1.18%) HTML
12 95 (1.17%) RESTful
13 92 (1.13%) OAuth
14 90 (1.11%) AngularJS
14 90 (1.11%) Oracle Fusion
15 88 (1.09%) CSS
16 87 (1.07%) PySpark
16 87 (1.07%) XML
17 86 (1.06%) Web Services
18 76 (0.94%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 265 (3.27%) Data Centre
2 242 (2.98%) Product Ownership
3 227 (2.80%) Cloud Native
4 213 (2.63%) Onboarding
5 194 (2.39%) PKI
6 146 (1.80%) Management Information System
7 129 (1.59%) Security Posture
8 106 (1.31%) Enterprise Software
8 106 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
9 104 (1.28%) Legacy Systems
10 89 (1.10%) Replication
11 68 (0.84%) Hybrid Cloud
12 67 (0.83%) Driving Licence
13 64 (0.79%) Public Cloud
14 63 (0.78%) Cyber Threat
15 61 (0.75%) Security Operations Centre
16 56 (0.69%) Distributed Systems
17 45 (0.55%) Private Cloud
18 42 (0.52%) Algorithms
18 42 (0.52%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 795 (9.80%) Windows
2 619 (7.63%) Linux
3 205 (2.53%) Windows Server
4 155 (1.91%) Windows 10
5 114 (1.41%) Android
6 110 (1.36%) Unix
7 106 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 65 (0.80%) Mac OS
9 43 (0.53%) Apple iOS
10 42 (0.52%) Ubuntu
11 36 (0.44%) VMS
12 23 (0.28%) CentOS
12 23 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
13 21 (0.26%) Windows 7
14 19 (0.23%) Solaris
15 15 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
16 14 (0.17%) Mac OS X
17 12 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
18 8 (0.099%) Amazon Linux
18 8 (0.099%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,545 (19.05%) Agile
2 1,226 (15.12%) DevOps
3 1,069 (13.18%) CI/CD
4 1,042 (12.85%) Problem-Solving
5 732 (9.03%) Stakeholder Management
6 706 (8.71%) Migration
7 626 (7.72%) Continuous Improvement
8 560 (6.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 540 (6.66%) Cybersecurity
10 507 (6.25%) ITIL
11 497 (6.13%) Infrastructure as Code
12 461 (5.69%) Test Automation
13 433 (5.34%) Analytics
13 433 (5.34%) Roadmaps
14 421 (5.19%) Containerisation
15 396 (4.88%) Service Management
16 394 (4.86%) Business Intelligence
17 384 (4.74%) Software Engineering
18 378 (4.66%) Scrum
19 353 (4.35%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 963 (11.88%) Python
2 657 (8.10%) SQL
3 531 (6.55%) PowerShell
4 465 (5.73%) Java
5 346 (4.27%) JavaScript
6 207 (2.55%) Bash
7 168 (2.07%) TypeScript
8 142 (1.75%) C#
9 87 (1.07%) C++
9 87 (1.07%) Shell Script
10 86 (1.06%) PL/SQL
11 75 (0.92%) Go
12 59 (0.73%) C
13 49 (0.60%) Ada
14 47 (0.58%) Scala
15 46 (0.57%) Ruby
16 39 (0.48%) Bicep
17 34 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
18 32 (0.39%) MATLAB
19 31 (0.38%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 6,178 (76.19%) SC Cleared
2 1,414 (17.44%) DV Cleared
3 396 (4.88%) Degree
4 251 (3.10%) BPSS Clearance
5 155 (1.91%) CISSP
6 146 (1.80%) Cisco Certification
7 120 (1.48%) Azure Certification
8 113 (1.39%) Microsoft Certification
9 111 (1.37%) CCNP
10 106 (1.31%) AWS Certification
11 96 (1.18%) CISM
12 68 (0.84%) Computer Science Degree
13 62 (0.76%) CCNA
14 61 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
15 60 (0.74%) TOGAF Certification
16 47 (0.58%) GIAC
17 44 (0.54%) CEH
18 43 (0.53%) PMP
19 41 (0.51%) PMI Certification
19 41 (0.51%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 270 (3.33%) QA
2 262 (3.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 245 (3.02%) NIST
4 205 (2.53%) Data Quality
5 189 (2.33%) NCSC
6 163 (2.01%) GDPR
7 150 (1.85%) Accessibility
8 114 (1.41%) SLA
9 91 (1.12%) PMO
10 56 (0.69%) GRC
11 51 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 44 (0.54%) WCAG
13 41 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
14 38 (0.47%) Def Stans
15 32 (0.39%) PCI DSS
16 30 (0.37%) COBIT
16 30 (0.37%) NIST 800
17 22 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 21 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 18 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 570 (7.03%) Docker
2 462 (5.70%) Active Directory
3 229 (2.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 72 (0.89%) VMware NSX
5 63 (0.78%) vSphere
6 58 (0.72%) Virtual Machines
7 57 (0.70%) VMware ESXi
8 55 (0.68%) Hyper-V
9 24 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
10 22 (0.27%) Firmware
11 18 (0.22%) BitLocker
11 18 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
12 16 (0.20%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 15 (0.18%) NFS
14 10 (0.12%) Postfix
14 10 (0.12%) Squid
15 7 (0.086%) vCloud
15 7 (0.086%) Virtual Servers
16 5 (0.062%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 5 (0.062%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 732 (9.03%) Kubernetes
2 670 (8.26%) Terraform
3 277 (3.42%) Ansible
4 199 (2.45%) Grafana
5 164 (2.02%) Prometheus
6 105 (1.29%) Single Sign-On
7 95 (1.17%) SCCM
8 90 (1.11%) vCenter Server
9 82 (1.01%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 64 (0.79%) Argo
11 62 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
12 38 (0.47%) Podman
13 37 (0.46%) Packer
14 36 (0.44%) FortiGate
15 31 (0.38%) Kibana
16 30 (0.37%) OPNET
17 27 (0.33%) Puppet
18 26 (0.32%) Nmap
19 25 (0.31%) Progress Chef
20 23 (0.28%) vRealize
Vendors
1 951 (11.73%) Microsoft
2 458 (5.65%) Oracle
3 405 (4.99%) Cisco
4 404 (4.98%) VMware
5 377 (4.65%) SAP
6 347 (4.28%) ServiceNow
7 209 (2.58%) Splunk
8 171 (2.11%) Red Hat
9 129 (1.59%) Juniper
9 129 (1.59%) Palo Alto
10 123 (1.52%) Databricks
10 123 (1.52%) Google
11 121 (1.49%) CyberArk
12 110 (1.36%) Atlassian
13 109 (1.34%) Salesforce
14 90 (1.11%) Dell
15 76 (0.94%) SolarWinds
16 75 (0.92%) HP
17 70 (0.86%) Aruba
17 70 (0.86%) Dynatrace