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 3 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,302 5,306 5,900
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.14% 18.93% 18.18%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.86% 59.73% 61.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,200 3,450 3,741
10th Percentile £400 £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 813 552 341
10th Percentile £20.50 £18.51 £21.25
25th Percentile £30.38 £18.87 £37.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +158.45% -59.17% +2.67%
75th Percentile £78.25 £36.31 £72.50
90th Percentile £91.31 £71.00 £85.00
UK median hourly rate £63.48 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +152.41% -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 14,960 8,884 9,649
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.16% 31.70% 29.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,980 5,639 5,867
10th Percentile £350 £300 £318
25th Percentile £447 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.43% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £734
UK median daily rate £530 £525 £525
% change year-on-year +0.95% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,272 733 532
10th Percentile £17.63 £17.87 £18.13
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £30.00
Median hourly rate £51.25 £25.15 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +103.78% -52.10% -0.94%
75th Percentile £73.81 £43.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £73.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £46.80 £25.15 £48.18
% change year-on-year +86.08% -47.80% -10.08%

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 3 October 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 3 October 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 3 October 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 3,668 £550 +1.85% 1,818
South East +1 2,269 £565 +7.62% 1,181
South West 0 1,396 £550 - 914
North of England +2 1,313 £515 -1.90% 859
Midlands 0 937 £475 -8.39% 477
North West +1 793 £530 -4.72% 499
West Midlands 0 793 £475 -8.57% 293
East of England 0 439 £552 +0.36% 539
Yorkshire 0 295 £492 - 164
North East 0 245 £466 -15.23% 203
East Midlands -1 136 £500 +8.11% 183
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
1 331 (3.21%) Confluence
2 244 (2.37%) SharePoint
3 139 (1.35%) SAS
4 110 (1.07%) Microsoft Exchange
5 94 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
6 90 (0.87%) Apache Spark
7 88 (0.85%) Apache
8 33 (0.32%) CMS
8 33 (0.32%) nginx
9 31 (0.30%) Jupyter
10 29 (0.28%) WebLogic
11 22 (0.21%) Skype for Business
12 20 (0.19%) Tomcat
13 19 (0.18%) Oracle Application Server
14 16 (0.16%) IIS
14 16 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
15 11 (0.11%) JBoss
15 11 (0.11%) NetWeaver
15 11 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 9 (0.087%) Documentum
Applications
1 186 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 133 (1.29%) Microsoft Office
3 93 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
4 89 (0.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 28 (0.27%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
7 21 (0.20%) AutoCAD
8 19 (0.18%) Revit
8 19 (0.18%) Windchill
9 18 (0.17%) SOLIDWORKS
10 9 (0.087%) Chatbot
10 9 (0.087%) Simulink
11 7 (0.068%) Adobe XD
12 6 (0.058%) Sketch
13 5 (0.049%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 4 (0.039%) OrCAD
14 4 (0.039%) Trello
15 3 (0.029%) Notepad++
16 2 (0.019%) Gliffy
16 2 (0.019%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 131 (1.27%) SAP S/4HANA
2 80 (0.78%) Remedy ITSM
3 54 (0.52%) Oracle ERP
4 41 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
5 36 (0.35%) Teamcenter
6 29 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 27 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
8 26 (0.25%) SAP PSCD
9 25 (0.24%) Oracle Payroll
10 21 (0.20%) SAP FI
11 18 (0.17%) SAP HR
12 16 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
13 15 (0.15%) Maximo
14 14 (0.14%) SAP CO
15 13 (0.13%) NetSuite
15 13 (0.13%) Primavera
16 12 (0.12%) SAP BRIM
16 12 (0.12%) SAP GRC
16 12 (0.12%) SAP Payroll
16 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,832 (17.78%) Azure
2 1,672 (16.23%) AWS
3 444 (4.31%) Azure DevOps
4 437 (4.24%) Power Platform
5 409 (3.97%) GitHub
6 390 (3.79%) GCP
7 301 (2.92%) Microsoft 365
8 290 (2.81%) GitHub Actions
9 287 (2.79%) Entra ID
10 230 (2.23%) Serverless
11 206 (2.00%) Amazon S3
12 165 (1.60%) AWS Lambda
13 155 (1.50%) OCI
14 144 (1.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 144 (1.40%) Amazon EKS
14 144 (1.40%) SaaS
15 142 (1.38%) OpenShift
16 121 (1.17%) Amazon EC2
17 108 (1.05%) PowerApps
18 104 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 400 (3.88%) Firewall
2 341 (3.31%) DNS
3 222 (2.15%) Network Security
4 174 (1.69%) WAN
5 167 (1.62%) VPN
6 166 (1.61%) DHCP
7 136 (1.32%) LAN
8 125 (1.21%) TCP/IP
9 118 (1.15%) BGP
10 113 (1.10%) Wi-Fi
11 89 (0.86%) VLAN
12 77 (0.75%) OSPF
12 77 (0.75%) Wireless
13 60 (0.58%) SSL
14 59 (0.57%) SAN
14 59 (0.57%) VSAN
15 58 (0.56%) MPLS
16 56 (0.54%) IPsec
17 50 (0.49%) SD-WAN
18 43 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 307 (2.98%) Power BI
2 241 (2.34%) SQL Server
3 238 (2.31%) PostgreSQL
4 221 (2.15%) Data Warehouse
5 181 (1.76%) Metadata
6 160 (1.55%) Oracle Database
7 115 (1.12%) Data Lake
7 115 (1.12%) Relational Database
8 99 (0.96%) MongoDB
9 94 (0.91%) Amazon RDS
9 94 (0.91%) MySQL
10 87 (0.84%) NoSQL
11 70 (0.68%) Oracle Reports
12 65 (0.63%) Pentaho
13 58 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
14 55 (0.53%) Amazon Athena
15 49 (0.48%) Big Data
16 48 (0.47%) Amazon Aurora
17 45 (0.44%) Tableau
18 37 (0.36%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 534 (5.18%) JIRA
2 484 (4.70%) Git
3 449 (4.36%) GitLab
4 411 (3.99%) Jenkins
5 131 (1.27%) Selenium
6 74 (0.72%) Postman
7 71 (0.69%) SonarQube
8 67 (0.65%) Cucumber
8 67 (0.65%) JUnit
8 67 (0.65%) Maven
9 61 (0.59%) JMeter
10 43 (0.42%) Gradle
11 39 (0.38%) Mockito
12 37 (0.36%) REST Assured
13 36 (0.35%) Gatling
14 35 (0.34%) Artifactory
14 35 (0.34%) Cypress.io
14 35 (0.34%) Visual Studio
15 34 (0.33%) Zephyr
16 33 (0.32%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,352 (22.83%) Social Skills
2 2,039 (19.79%) Public Sector
3 849 (8.24%) Analytical Skills
4 681 (6.61%) Finance
5 412 (4.00%) Military
6 332 (3.22%) Aerospace
7 252 (2.45%) Documentation Skills
8 213 (2.07%) Influencing Skills
9 180 (1.75%) Organisational Skills
10 158 (1.53%) Manufacturing
11 147 (1.43%) Telecoms
12 130 (1.26%) Banking
13 129 (1.25%) Legal
14 125 (1.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 111 (1.08%) Law
16 100 (0.97%) Police
17 64 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
18 46 (0.45%) Local Government
19 42 (0.41%) Marketing
20 38 (0.37%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,597 (15.50%) Architect
2 967 (9.39%) Senior
3 962 (9.34%) Developer
4 952 (9.24%) Lead
5 588 (5.71%) Analyst
6 584 (5.67%) Consultant
7 428 (4.15%) Data Engineer
8 421 (4.09%) DevOps Engineer
9 371 (3.60%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 264 (2.56%) Solutions Architect
11 256 (2.48%) Data Architect
12 254 (2.47%) Technical Architect
13 251 (2.44%) Security Architect
14 232 (2.25%) Software Engineer
15 221 (2.15%) Network Engineer
16 209 (2.03%) Administrator
17 193 (1.87%) Cloud Engineer
18 188 (1.82%) Designer
19 184 (1.79%) Java Developer
20 182 (1.77%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 882 (8.56%) Terraform
2 406 (3.94%) REST
3 214 (2.08%) Kafka
4 206 (2.00%) Spring
5 188 (1.82%) Spring Boot
6 162 (1.57%) SOAP
7 160 (1.55%) React
8 159 (1.54%) .NET
9 157 (1.52%) RESTful
10 127 (1.23%) Node.js
11 126 (1.22%) JSON
12 117 (1.14%) OAuth
13 115 (1.12%) HTML
14 109 (1.06%) XML
15 97 (0.94%) Middleware
16 96 (0.93%) Web Services
17 94 (0.91%) AngularJS
18 89 (0.86%) Oracle Fusion
19 87 (0.84%) CSS
20 85 (0.83%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 461 (4.47%) Cloud Native
2 404 (3.92%) Onboarding
3 326 (3.16%) Product Ownership
4 262 (2.54%) Data Centre
5 181 (1.76%) Management Information System
6 160 (1.55%) Legacy Systems
7 159 (1.54%) PKI
8 156 (1.51%) Enterprise Software
9 147 (1.43%) CMDB
10 121 (1.17%) Hybrid Cloud
11 112 (1.09%) Cyber Threat
12 108 (1.05%) Operational Technology
13 107 (1.04%) Distributed Systems
14 106 (1.03%) Replication
15 103 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
16 86 (0.83%) Security Operations Centre
17 85 (0.83%) Security Posture
18 82 (0.80%) Data Structures
19 79 (0.77%) Clustering
20 78 (0.76%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 905 (8.78%) Windows
2 708 (6.87%) Linux
3 348 (3.38%) Windows Server
4 208 (2.02%) Unix
5 146 (1.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 132 (1.28%) Windows 10
7 81 (0.79%) Solaris
8 66 (0.64%) Android
9 45 (0.44%) Mac OS
10 43 (0.42%) CentOS
11 40 (0.39%) Ubuntu
12 35 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
13 30 (0.29%) Apple iOS
14 27 (0.26%) AIX
15 24 (0.23%) Windows 7
16 21 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
17 20 (0.19%) VMS
18 17 (0.17%) Rocky
19 15 (0.15%) Windows Server 2016
20 10 (0.097%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,143 (20.80%) Agile
2 1,541 (14.96%) DevOps
3 1,523 (14.78%) CI/CD
4 1,479 (14.36%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,300 (12.62%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,120 (10.87%) Problem-Solving
7 1,047 (10.16%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 897 (8.71%) Infrastructure as Code
9 840 (8.15%) Migration
10 803 (7.79%) Cybersecurity
11 716 (6.95%) ITIL
12 671 (6.51%) AI
13 666 (6.46%) Roadmaps
14 665 (6.46%) Test Automation
15 660 (6.41%) Technical Leadership
16 643 (6.24%) Decision-Making
17 636 (6.17%) Containerisation
18 614 (5.96%) Analytics
19 589 (5.72%) Software Engineering
20 553 (5.37%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,175 (11.41%) Python
2 959 (9.31%) SQL
3 651 (6.32%) Java
4 541 (5.25%) PowerShell
5 355 (3.45%) JavaScript
6 310 (3.01%) Bash
7 183 (1.78%) C#
8 178 (1.73%) TypeScript
9 122 (1.18%) PL/SQL
10 105 (1.02%) Bicep
11 67 (0.65%) Shell Script
12 59 (0.57%) C++
13 55 (0.53%) Go
14 49 (0.48%) Groovy
15 47 (0.46%) C
15 47 (0.46%) Scala
16 44 (0.43%) Kotlin
17 31 (0.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 27 (0.26%) ABAP
18 27 (0.26%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 7,717 (74.91%) SC Cleared
2 2,121 (20.59%) DV Cleared
3 467 (4.53%) BPSS Clearance
4 450 (4.37%) Degree
5 197 (1.91%) CISSP
6 169 (1.64%) Azure Certification
7 153 (1.49%) Cisco Certification
8 152 (1.48%) Microsoft Certification
9 146 (1.42%) AWS Certification
10 115 (1.12%) CISM
11 97 (0.94%) PMI Certification
12 89 (0.86%) PMP
13 86 (0.83%) ISTQB
14 77 (0.75%) CCNP
15 64 (0.62%) Computer Science Degree
16 59 (0.57%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 51 (0.50%) CCNA
18 43 (0.42%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 43 (0.42%) TOGAF Certification
19 41 (0.40%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 469 (4.55%) QA
2 337 (3.27%) Data Quality
3 303 (2.94%) NIST
4 289 (2.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 262 (2.54%) NCSC
6 244 (2.37%) Accessibility
7 218 (2.12%) PMO
8 158 (1.53%) SLA
9 148 (1.44%) GDPR
10 144 (1.40%) GRC
11 70 (0.68%) WCAG
12 49 (0.48%) JSP 440
13 45 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
14 40 (0.39%) NIST 800
15 35 (0.34%) Def Stans
16 31 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 25 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
18 21 (0.20%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 21 (0.20%) ISO 9001
19 19 (0.18%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 686 (6.66%) Docker
2 574 (5.57%) Active Directory
3 403 (3.91%) VMware Infrastructure
4 139 (1.35%) VMware ESXi
5 131 (1.27%) VMware NSX
6 126 (1.22%) vSphere
7 122 (1.18%) Hyper-V
8 84 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
9 42 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
10 39 (0.38%) Firmware
11 34 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
12 25 (0.24%) BitLocker
13 24 (0.23%) vCloud
14 21 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
15 13 (0.13%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 13 (0.13%) NFS
16 11 (0.11%) Microsoft Virtual Server
17 10 (0.097%) KVM
18 9 (0.087%) Squid
19 7 (0.068%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 842 (8.17%) Kubernetes
2 408 (3.96%) Ansible
3 231 (2.24%) Grafana
4 172 (1.67%) Prometheus
5 129 (1.25%) SCCM
6 127 (1.23%) vCenter Server
7 94 (0.91%) SCOM
8 89 (0.86%) Microsoft Intune
9 62 (0.60%) Argo
10 50 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
11 43 (0.42%) Puppet
12 42 (0.41%) Kibana
13 34 (0.33%) Data Guard
13 34 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
14 30 (0.29%) VxRail
15 29 (0.28%) Istio
16 28 (0.27%) Control-M
17 27 (0.26%) NetBackup
18 24 (0.23%) Progress Chef
18 24 (0.23%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,392 (13.51%) Microsoft
2 823 (7.99%) Oracle
3 548 (5.32%) VMware
4 463 (4.49%) ServiceNow
5 393 (3.81%) SAP
6 258 (2.50%) Cisco
7 251 (2.44%) Google
8 197 (1.91%) Splunk
9 166 (1.61%) Databricks
10 120 (1.16%) Red Hat
11 113 (1.10%) Palo Alto
12 109 (1.06%) Salesforce
13 100 (0.97%) Informatica
14 94 (0.91%) IBM
15 91 (0.88%) Remedy
16 90 (0.87%) CyberArk
17 87 (0.84%) Dynatrace
18 85 (0.83%) Talend
19 70 (0.68%) Citrix
19 70 (0.68%) SolarWinds