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

6 months to
15 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 8,669 4,583 7,171
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.50% 18.41% 18.93%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.09% 59.60% 60.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,892 2,988 4,609
10th Percentile £358 £325 £350
25th Percentile £445 £450 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £547 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.07% -0.50% -2.65%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 770 254 489
10th Percentile £17.69 £21.25 £14.50
25th Percentile £20.46 £26.31 £21.64
Median hourly rate £27.50 £60.00 £53.50
Median % change year-on-year -54.17% +12.15% -10.83%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.69 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.03 £80.07 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £33.50 £57.50 £54.03
% change year-on-year -41.74% +6.42% -9.95%

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 12,548 7,689 11,822
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.02% 30.89% 31.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,321 4,856 7,322
10th Percentile £330 £285 £300
25th Percentile £423 £416 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £728 £738
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.89% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 985 414 923
10th Percentile £16.30 £19.03 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.72 £25.26 £18.32
Median hourly rate £27.50 £52.00 £39.92
Median % change year-on-year -47.12% +30.26% -20.16%
75th Percentile £67.84 £68.13 £62.50
90th Percentile £84.00 £82.50 £76.47
UK median hourly rate £29.00 £45.00 £38.85
% change year-on-year -35.56% +15.83% -22.30%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 3,020 £530 +0.95% 458
South East +1 1,984 £525 -4.55% 516
South West 0 1,302 £540 -2.00% 387
Midlands +4 864 £492 -10.55% 158
North of England -1 849 £500 - 261
West Midlands +4 696 £492 -10.71% 110
North West 0 548 £500 +0.45% 134
East of England +2 357 £494 -1.30% 168
Yorkshire -5 181 £498 -5.24% 75
East Midlands +2 165 £434 -16.27% 48
North East 0 150 £450 -4.76% 53
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
1 341 (3.93%) Confluence
2 209 (2.41%) SharePoint
3 137 (1.58%) Microsoft Exchange
4 126 (1.45%) SAS
5 74 (0.85%) Apache
6 73 (0.84%) Apache Spark
7 48 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
8 37 (0.43%) nginx
9 34 (0.39%) WebLogic
10 30 (0.35%) Skype for Business
11 21 (0.24%) Jupyter
12 16 (0.18%) CMS
12 16 (0.18%) IIS
12 16 (0.18%) 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 (0.069%) JBoss
Applications
1 250 (2.88%) Microsoft Office
2 197 (2.27%) Microsoft Excel
3 121 (1.40%) Microsoft Project
4 69 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 46 (0.53%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
7 8 (0.092%) Simulink
8 5 (0.058%) Siemens NX
9 4 (0.046%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.046%) Chatbot
9 4 (0.046%) Oracle Smart View
9 4 (0.046%) Sketch
9 4 (0.046%) 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 (1.40%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.47%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 31 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 26 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
4 26 (0.30%) Teamcenter
5 25 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
6 19 (0.22%) SAP MM
7 16 (0.18%) 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 10 (0.12%) Temenos T24
13 8 (0.092%) Oracle Receivables
13 8 (0.092%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 8 (0.092%) Primavera
13 8 (0.092%) SAP ERP
13 8 (0.092%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,429 (16.48%) Azure
2 1,411 (16.28%) AWS
3 390 (4.50%) GitHub
4 368 (4.25%) GCP
5 335 (3.86%) Power Platform
6 328 (3.78%) Azure DevOps
7 296 (3.41%) Microsoft 365
8 244 (2.81%) Serverless
9 236 (2.72%) Entra ID
10 198 (2.28%) GitHub Actions
11 182 (2.10%) Amazon S3
12 168 (1.94%) OpenShift
13 157 (1.81%) AWS Lambda
14 121 (1.40%) Amazon EC2
15 111 (1.28%) PaaS
16 110 (1.27%) AWS CloudFormation
17 108 (1.25%) IaaS
18 99 (1.14%) Azure Data Factory
19 98 (1.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 97 (1.12%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 408 (4.71%) Firewall
2 258 (2.98%) DNS
3 203 (2.34%) Network Security
4 193 (2.23%) WAN
5 165 (1.90%) LAN
6 163 (1.88%) VPN
7 137 (1.58%) BGP
8 130 (1.50%) DHCP
9 126 (1.45%) TCP/IP
10 99 (1.14%) OSPF
11 93 (1.07%) Wireless
12 84 (0.97%) VLAN
13 76 (0.88%) Wi-Fi
14 66 (0.76%) MPLS
15 51 (0.59%) SAN
16 49 (0.57%) IPsec
17 47 (0.54%) Cisco ISE
18 43 (0.50%) SSL
19 38 (0.44%) Junos
20 37 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 245 (2.83%) Power BI
2 224 (2.58%) PostgreSQL
3 149 (1.72%) Data Warehouse
4 147 (1.70%) SQL Server
5 112 (1.29%) Metadata
6 97 (1.12%) Oracle Database
7 95 (1.10%) Amazon RDS
8 89 (1.03%) NoSQL
9 84 (0.97%) MongoDB
10 82 (0.95%) Relational Database
11 72 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
12 68 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
13 60 (0.69%) MySQL
13 60 (0.69%) Pentaho
14 59 (0.68%) Data Lake
15 52 (0.60%) Amazon Redshift
16 50 (0.58%) Tableau
17 49 (0.57%) Big Data
18 39 (0.45%) Delta Lake
19 36 (0.42%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 542 (6.25%) JIRA
2 430 (4.96%) Git
3 355 (4.10%) Jenkins
4 310 (3.58%) GitLab
5 108 (1.25%) Selenium
6 80 (0.92%) JUnit
7 76 (0.88%) Postman
8 55 (0.63%) Cypress.io
8 55 (0.63%) Rational DOORS
9 50 (0.58%) Bitbucket
10 49 (0.57%) SonarQube
11 45 (0.52%) Cucumber
11 45 (0.52%) Maven
12 43 (0.50%) Artifactory
13 42 (0.48%) Oracle APEX
14 34 (0.39%) JMeter
15 33 (0.38%) Mockito
16 32 (0.37%) REST Assured
17 30 (0.35%) Visual Studio
18 23 (0.27%) Metasploit
General
1 2,178 (25.12%) Public Sector
2 2,064 (23.81%) Social Skills
3 744 (8.58%) Analytical Skills
4 640 (7.38%) Finance
5 318 (3.67%) Military
6 252 (2.91%) Documentation Skills
7 211 (2.43%) Aerospace
8 173 (2.00%) Manufacturing
9 169 (1.95%) Telecoms
10 136 (1.57%) Legal
11 114 (1.32%) Influencing Skills
12 109 (1.26%) Marketing
13 107 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
13 107 (1.23%) Presentation Skills
14 106 (1.22%) Electronics
15 105 (1.21%) Banking
16 71 (0.82%) Law
17 49 (0.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 47 (0.54%) Police
19 35 (0.40%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,246 (14.37%) Architect
2 830 (9.57%) Developer
3 749 (8.64%) Senior
4 669 (7.72%) Analyst
5 531 (6.13%) Lead
6 494 (5.70%) Consultant
7 349 (4.03%) DevOps Engineer
8 337 (3.89%) Data Engineer
9 253 (2.92%) Network Engineer
10 239 (2.76%) Business Analyst
11 230 (2.65%) Technical Architect
12 226 (2.61%) Software Engineer
13 222 (2.56%) Support Engineer
14 204 (2.35%) Solutions Architect
15 164 (1.89%) Project Manager
16 158 (1.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 155 (1.79%) Azure Engineer
17 155 (1.79%) Delivery Manager
18 154 (1.78%) Tester
19 151 (1.74%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 337 (3.89%) REST
2 195 (2.25%) Spring
3 179 (2.06%) Node.js
4 166 (1.91%) Kafka
5 163 (1.88%) React
6 146 (1.68%) SOAP
7 143 (1.65%) Spring Boot
8 141 (1.63%) JSON
8 141 (1.63%) LDAP
9 133 (1.53%) .NET
10 110 (1.27%) RESTful
11 109 (1.26%) AngularJS
12 108 (1.25%) HTML
13 105 (1.21%) Web Services
14 99 (1.14%) OAuth
15 95 (1.10%) PySpark
16 91 (1.05%) Oracle Fusion
17 90 (1.04%) CSS
18 89 (1.03%) XML
19 78 (0.90%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 292 (3.37%) Product Ownership
2 283 (3.26%) Data Centre
3 253 (2.92%) Cloud Native
4 224 (2.58%) Onboarding
5 197 (2.27%) PKI
6 151 (1.74%) Management Information System
7 128 (1.48%) Security Posture
8 121 (1.40%) Self-Motivation
9 119 (1.37%) Legacy Systems
10 106 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
11 98 (1.13%) Replication
12 72 (0.83%) Hybrid Cloud
13 71 (0.82%) Public Cloud
14 70 (0.81%) Distributed Systems
15 65 (0.75%) Data Structures
16 64 (0.74%) Cyber Threat
16 64 (0.74%) Security Operations Centre
17 60 (0.69%) Driving Licence
18 57 (0.66%) Clustering
19 48 (0.55%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 813 (9.38%) Windows
2 629 (7.26%) Linux
3 221 (2.55%) Windows Server
4 139 (1.60%) Windows 10
5 123 (1.42%) Android
6 109 (1.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 109 (1.26%) Unix
7 69 (0.80%) Mac OS
8 45 (0.52%) Apple iOS
8 45 (0.52%) Ubuntu
9 27 (0.31%) VMS
10 24 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
11 22 (0.25%) CentOS
12 20 (0.23%) Windows 7
13 19 (0.22%) Solaris
14 16 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
15 12 (0.14%) AIX
16 11 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
17 10 (0.12%) Windows Server 2003
18 8 (0.092%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,725 (19.90%) Agile
2 1,326 (15.30%) DevOps
3 1,144 (13.20%) CI/CD
4 1,064 (12.27%) Problem-Solving
5 809 (9.33%) Stakeholder Management
6 759 (8.76%) Migration
7 711 (8.20%) Continuous Improvement
8 636 (7.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 560 (6.46%) Cybersecurity
10 555 (6.40%) ITIL
11 505 (5.83%) Infrastructure as Code
12 488 (5.63%) Test Automation
13 487 (5.62%) Analytics
14 478 (5.51%) Roadmaps
15 449 (5.18%) Containerisation
16 424 (4.89%) Software Engineering
17 421 (4.86%) Scrum
18 418 (4.82%) Business Intelligence
19 406 (4.68%) Service Management
20 402 (4.64%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 998 (11.51%) Python
2 761 (8.78%) SQL
3 559 (6.45%) PowerShell
4 481 (5.55%) Java
5 353 (4.07%) JavaScript
6 202 (2.33%) Bash
7 179 (2.06%) C#
8 156 (1.80%) TypeScript
9 103 (1.19%) C++
10 94 (1.08%) Shell Script
11 92 (1.06%) PL/SQL
12 70 (0.81%) Go
13 64 (0.74%) C
14 56 (0.65%) Ruby
15 50 (0.58%) Scala
16 49 (0.57%) Ada
17 40 (0.46%) Bicep
17 40 (0.46%) Kusto Query Language
18 33 (0.38%) Apex Code
19 31 (0.36%) R
Qualifications
1 6,543 (75.48%) SC Cleared
2 1,543 (17.80%) DV Cleared
3 439 (5.06%) Degree
4 259 (2.99%) BPSS Clearance
5 165 (1.90%) CISSP
6 163 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
7 120 (1.38%) Azure Certification
8 118 (1.36%) AWS Certification
9 114 (1.32%) CCNP
10 109 (1.26%) Microsoft Certification
11 103 (1.19%) CISM
12 71 (0.82%) CCNA
13 68 (0.78%) Computer Science Degree
14 65 (0.75%) TOGAF Certification
15 62 (0.72%) ITIL Certification
16 53 (0.61%) PMP
17 47 (0.54%) ISTQB
18 46 (0.53%) GIAC
18 46 (0.53%) PMI Certification
19 45 (0.52%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 303 (3.50%) QA
2 277 (3.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 269 (3.10%) NIST
4 240 (2.77%) Data Quality
5 200 (2.31%) NCSC
6 175 (2.02%) GDPR
7 146 (1.68%) Accessibility
8 113 (1.30%) SLA
9 112 (1.29%) PMO
10 61 (0.70%) JSP 440
11 57 (0.66%) GRC
12 42 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials
12 42 (0.48%) WCAG
13 38 (0.44%) NIST 800
14 33 (0.38%) COBIT
15 32 (0.37%) Def Stans
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
1 579 (6.68%) Docker
2 462 (5.33%) Active Directory
3 231 (2.66%) VMware Infrastructure
4 79 (0.91%) VMware NSX
5 67 (0.77%) vSphere
6 58 (0.67%) VMware ESXi
7 56 (0.65%) Hyper-V
7 56 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
8 26 (0.30%) Firmware
9 21 (0.24%) BitLocker
9 21 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
10 19 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
11 17 (0.20%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 15 (0.17%) NFS
13 10 (0.12%) Postfix
13 10 (0.12%) vCloud
14 9 (0.10%) Squid
15 7 (0.081%) Microsoft App-V
16 6 (0.069%) Terminal Services
17 4 (0.046%) Snort
Systems Management
1 753 (8.69%) Kubernetes
2 671 (7.74%) Terraform
3 290 (3.35%) Ansible
4 215 (2.48%) Grafana
5 173 (2.00%) Prometheus
6 106 (1.22%) Single Sign-On
7 92 (1.06%) SCCM
8 87 (1.00%) vCenter Server
9 80 (0.92%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 64 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
11 61 (0.70%) Argo
12 44 (0.51%) FortiGate
13 38 (0.44%) Podman
14 37 (0.43%) Packer
15 32 (0.37%) Puppet
16 30 (0.35%) OPNET
17 29 (0.33%) Progress Chef
18 26 (0.30%) Kibana
19 24 (0.28%) Nmap
20 21 (0.24%) Consul
Vendors
1 994 (11.47%) Microsoft
2 489 (5.64%) Oracle
3 422 (4.87%) VMware
4 396 (4.57%) Cisco
5 378 (4.36%) ServiceNow
6 370 (4.27%) SAP
7 213 (2.46%) Splunk
8 181 (2.09%) Red Hat
9 142 (1.64%) Databricks
10 136 (1.57%) Google
11 129 (1.49%) Juniper
12 124 (1.43%) Atlassian
13 121 (1.40%) CyberArk
14 118 (1.36%) Palo Alto
15 115 (1.33%) Salesforce
16 103 (1.19%) IBM
17 94 (1.08%) Dell
18 82 (0.95%) HP
18 82 (0.95%) Talend
19 77 (0.89%) Aruba