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 28 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 3 3 4
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +4
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 6,542 5,622 7,005
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.28% 18.06% 18.09%
As % of the Qualifications category 63.40% 60.44% 60.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,325 3,529 4,405
10th Percentile £326 £350 £369
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £526 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.45% - -1.79%
75th Percentile £633 £638 £650
90th Percentile £723 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -1.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 668 305 470
10th Percentile £18.56 £21.10 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.04 £27.13 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% - -
75th Percentile £55.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £52.35 £60.00
% change year-on-year -51.95% -12.76% -

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 10,318 9,302 11,620
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.56% 29.88% 30.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,708 5,644 7,380
10th Percentile £306 £313 £306
25th Percentile £415 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £528 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.47% -4.09% -
75th Percentile £627 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £736
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 889 449 709
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.09 £17.72
25th Percentile £19.00 £26.42 £26.99
Median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £53.50
Median % change year-on-year -49.70% -6.54% +18.89%
75th Percentile £52.50 £68.00 £68.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.57 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £42.88 £53.67
% change year-on-year -41.35% -20.10% +19.26%

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 28 November 2025.

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 28 November 2025.

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 28 November 2025. 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 +1 2,149 £550 +1.48% 481
South East -1 1,270 £517 -6.00% 743
South West 0 1,127 £550 -4.35% 471
North of England -1 778 £513 +7.89% 146
Midlands +2 698 £519 -5.81% 152
West Midlands +2 540 £525 -8.38% 122
North West +1 509 £525 +6.49% 103
East of England +2 287 £513 - 246
Yorkshire -11 167 £500 +8.11% 22
East Midlands +1 143 £450 -7.69% 30
North East 0 110 £475 +0.53% 24
South Coast - 2 - -
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
1 258 (3.94%) Confluence
2 175 (2.68%) SharePoint
3 114 (1.74%) Microsoft Exchange
4 96 (1.47%) SAS
5 85 (1.30%) Apache
6 51 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
7 48 (0.73%) nginx
8 42 (0.64%) Apache Spark
9 39 (0.60%) Skype for Business
10 23 (0.35%) CMS
11 21 (0.32%) IIS
12 17 (0.26%) WebLogic
13 15 (0.23%) SharePoint Server
14 12 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2010
15 11 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2013
15 11 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 10 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2003
16 10 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2007
16 10 (0.15%) Office Communications Server
17 8 (0.12%) OpenStack
Applications
1 211 (3.23%) Microsoft Office
2 152 (2.32%) Microsoft Excel
3 89 (1.36%) Microsoft Project
4 41 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 34 (0.52%) MS Visio
6 22 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.23%) Siemens NX
8 14 (0.21%) Simulink
9 11 (0.17%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 7 (0.11%) Sketch
11 5 (0.076%) Adobe Illustrator
11 5 (0.076%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.076%) FrameMaker
11 5 (0.076%) Oracle Smart View
11 5 (0.076%) Photoshop
11 5 (0.076%) PTC Creo
11 5 (0.076%) Stateflow
11 5 (0.076%) Trello
11 5 (0.076%) Windchill
12 2 (0.031%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 146 (2.23%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (0.52%) Remedy ITSM
3 27 (0.41%) SAP WM
4 26 (0.40%) SAP EWM
4 26 (0.40%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 22 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
6 19 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
6 19 (0.29%) Teamcenter
7 17 (0.26%) SAP MM
8 16 (0.24%) Primavera
8 16 (0.24%) SAP HCM
9 15 (0.23%) Maximo
10 13 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
11 12 (0.18%) SAP PS
11 12 (0.18%) SAP QM
11 12 (0.18%) SAP VC
12 11 (0.17%) SAP EHS
13 10 (0.15%) SAP HR
13 10 (0.15%) SAP Payroll
14 9 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,090 (16.66%) AWS
2 1,044 (15.96%) Azure
3 310 (4.74%) Microsoft 365
4 307 (4.69%) GitHub
5 243 (3.71%) Power Platform
6 236 (3.61%) GCP
7 229 (3.50%) Azure DevOps
8 196 (3.00%) Serverless
9 165 (2.52%) Amazon S3
10 154 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
11 147 (2.25%) Entra ID
12 129 (1.97%) SaaS
13 124 (1.90%) OpenShift
14 111 (1.70%) AWS Lambda
15 108 (1.65%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 108 (1.65%) Amazon EC2
16 105 (1.61%) AWS CloudFormation
17 83 (1.27%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 81 (1.24%) Amazon EKS
19 80 (1.22%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 353 (5.40%) Firewall
2 251 (3.84%) DNS
3 171 (2.61%) VPN
4 142 (2.17%) Network Security
5 131 (2.00%) WAN
6 107 (1.64%) TCP/IP
7 98 (1.50%) BGP
8 93 (1.42%) LAN
9 91 (1.39%) DHCP
9 91 (1.39%) Wireless
10 72 (1.10%) SSL
11 63 (0.96%) Wi-Fi
12 61 (0.93%) SAN
13 58 (0.89%) MPLS
14 57 (0.87%) IPsec
15 55 (0.84%) VLAN
16 51 (0.78%) Cisco ISE
17 46 (0.70%) HTTP
18 44 (0.67%) OSPF
19 41 (0.63%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 198 (3.03%) PostgreSQL
2 162 (2.48%) Power BI
3 83 (1.27%) Amazon RDS
4 82 (1.25%) MongoDB
5 75 (1.15%) SQL Server
6 74 (1.13%) Oracle Database
7 70 (1.07%) Relational Database
8 69 (1.05%) Data Warehouse
9 68 (1.04%) Metadata
10 67 (1.02%) NoSQL
11 45 (0.69%) Big Data
12 40 (0.61%) Azure SQL Database
12 40 (0.61%) Pentaho
13 37 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
14 36 (0.55%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 33 (0.50%) Amazon Redshift
16 32 (0.49%) Amazon Athena
16 32 (0.49%) Data Lake
16 32 (0.49%) Redis
17 31 (0.47%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 467 (7.14%) JIRA
2 376 (5.75%) Git
3 358 (5.47%) Jenkins
4 257 (3.93%) GitLab
5 70 (1.07%) Selenium
6 55 (0.84%) JUnit
7 54 (0.83%) Cypress.io
8 50 (0.76%) SonarQube
9 49 (0.75%) Bitbucket
10 48 (0.73%) Postman
11 45 (0.69%) Oracle APEX
12 34 (0.52%) Artifactory
13 32 (0.49%) Maven
14 31 (0.47%) Mockito
15 30 (0.46%) Cucumber
16 22 (0.34%) Vagrant
17 21 (0.32%) MSI
17 21 (0.32%) Rational DOORS
17 21 (0.32%) REST Assured
18 20 (0.31%) CircleCI
General
1 1,816 (27.76%) Public Sector
2 1,718 (26.26%) Social Skills
3 609 (9.31%) Analytical Skills
4 472 (7.21%) Finance
5 259 (3.96%) Military
6 206 (3.15%) Telecoms
7 193 (2.95%) Manufacturing
8 159 (2.43%) Documentation Skills
9 141 (2.16%) Electronics
10 132 (2.02%) Marketing
11 124 (1.90%) Aerospace
12 99 (1.51%) Legal
13 94 (1.44%) Organisational Skills
14 87 (1.33%) Banking
15 79 (1.21%) Influencing Skills
16 78 (1.19%) Presentation Skills
17 67 (1.02%) Law
18 40 (0.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 39 (0.60%) Aviation
20 37 (0.57%) Police
Job Titles
1 869 (13.28%) Architect
2 650 (9.94%) Developer
3 527 (8.06%) Consultant
4 520 (7.95%) Senior
5 427 (6.53%) Analyst
6 395 (6.04%) Lead
7 281 (4.30%) DevOps Engineer
8 239 (3.65%) Support Engineer
9 202 (3.09%) Network Engineer
10 164 (2.51%) Solutions Architect
11 155 (2.37%) Data Engineer
12 143 (2.19%) SAP Consultant
13 137 (2.09%) AWS Engineer
14 127 (1.94%) Technical Architect
15 126 (1.93%) IT Engineer
15 126 (1.93%) Platform Engineer
16 120 (1.83%) Administrator
17 118 (1.80%) Software Engineer
18 111 (1.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 110 (1.68%) IT Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 258 (3.94%) REST
2 164 (2.51%) Node.js
2 164 (2.51%) React
3 154 (2.35%) Kafka
4 130 (1.99%) JSON
5 119 (1.82%) SOAP
6 114 (1.74%) Spring
7 108 (1.65%) HTML
8 98 (1.50%) XML
9 94 (1.44%) AngularJS
10 93 (1.42%) RESTful
11 90 (1.38%) CSS
12 88 (1.35%) Spring Boot
13 87 (1.33%) .NET
13 87 (1.33%) Web Services
14 71 (1.09%) OAuth
15 68 (1.04%) LDAP
16 56 (0.86%) Elastic Stack
16 56 (0.86%) Oracle Fusion
17 54 (0.83%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 206 (3.15%) Data Centre
2 191 (2.92%) Onboarding
3 182 (2.78%) PKI
4 173 (2.64%) Cloud Native
5 145 (2.22%) Product Ownership
6 143 (2.19%) Management Information System
7 102 (1.56%) Self-Motivation
8 78 (1.19%) Legacy Systems
9 75 (1.15%) Driving Licence
10 69 (1.05%) Replication
11 67 (1.02%) Cyber Threat
11 67 (1.02%) Security Posture
12 60 (0.92%) Hybrid Cloud
12 60 (0.92%) Security Operations Centre
13 57 (0.87%) Enterprise Software
14 56 (0.86%) CMDB
15 53 (0.81%) Private Cloud
16 50 (0.76%) Analytical Mindset
17 45 (0.69%) Public Cloud
18 44 (0.67%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 756 (11.56%) Windows
2 512 (7.83%) Linux
3 179 (2.74%) Windows Server
4 171 (2.61%) Windows 10
5 97 (1.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 90 (1.38%) Android
7 84 (1.28%) Mac OS
8 82 (1.25%) Unix
9 47 (0.72%) VMS
10 34 (0.52%) Ubuntu
11 29 (0.44%) Windows Server 2019
12 27 (0.41%) Apple iOS
13 26 (0.40%) Amazon Linux
14 24 (0.37%) Windows 7
15 22 (0.34%) CentOS
16 20 (0.31%) Windows Server 2012
17 19 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
18 17 (0.26%) Windows Server 2003
19 15 (0.23%) Mac OS X
20 9 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,318 (20.15%) Agile
2 990 (15.13%) DevOps
3 909 (13.89%) CI/CD
4 814 (12.44%) Problem-Solving
5 643 (9.83%) Migration
6 523 (7.99%) Stakeholder Management
7 458 (7.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 445 (6.80%) ITIL
9 441 (6.74%) Cybersecurity
10 424 (6.48%) Continuous Improvement
11 417 (6.37%) Infrastructure as Code
12 394 (6.02%) Service Management
13 373 (5.70%) Business Intelligence
14 360 (5.50%) Containerisation
15 358 (5.47%) Test Automation
16 339 (5.18%) Analytics
17 334 (5.11%) Workflow
18 323 (4.94%) Scrum
19 309 (4.72%) Microservices
20 307 (4.69%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 847 (12.95%) Python
2 499 (7.63%) SQL
3 426 (6.51%) PowerShell
4 413 (6.31%) Java
5 338 (5.17%) JavaScript
6 216 (3.30%) Bash
7 164 (2.51%) TypeScript
8 120 (1.83%) C#
9 92 (1.41%) C++
10 80 (1.22%) Go
11 69 (1.05%) PL/SQL
12 63 (0.96%) C
13 59 (0.90%) Shell Script
14 42 (0.64%) Perl
15 37 (0.57%) ABAP
16 34 (0.52%) Ruby
17 30 (0.46%) Groovy
18 29 (0.44%) Bicep
19 28 (0.43%) Ada
20 25 (0.38%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 5,009 (76.57%) SC Cleared
2 1,121 (17.14%) DV Cleared
3 329 (5.03%) Degree
4 266 (4.07%) BPSS Clearance
5 123 (1.88%) CISSP
6 120 (1.83%) Microsoft Certification
7 107 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
8 106 (1.62%) Azure Certification
9 96 (1.47%) AWS Certification
10 82 (1.25%) CCNP
11 72 (1.10%) CISM
12 56 (0.86%) ITIL Certification
13 52 (0.79%) Computer Science Degree
14 43 (0.66%) CCNA
15 39 (0.60%) TOGAF Certification
16 38 (0.58%) CEH
17 37 (0.57%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 34 (0.52%) CHECK Team Member
19 29 (0.44%) CTC Cleared
19 29 (0.44%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 201 (3.07%) QA
2 196 (3.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 194 (2.97%) NIST
4 153 (2.34%) NCSC
5 127 (1.94%) GDPR
6 125 (1.91%) SLA
7 117 (1.79%) Data Quality
8 105 (1.61%) Accessibility
9 62 (0.95%) PMO
10 49 (0.75%) JSP 440
11 39 (0.60%) NIST 800
12 38 (0.58%) WCAG
13 34 (0.52%) GRC
14 32 (0.49%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 29 (0.44%) Def Stans
16 27 (0.41%) COBIT
17 22 (0.34%) RMADS
18 21 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
19 17 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
20 16 (0.24%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 533 (8.15%) Docker
2 393 (6.01%) Active Directory
3 205 (3.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 65 (0.99%) VMware NSX
5 64 (0.98%) vSphere
6 63 (0.96%) VMware ESXi
7 51 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
8 40 (0.61%) Firmware
9 31 (0.47%) Hyper-V
10 25 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
11 20 (0.31%) DFS Replication
12 19 (0.29%) Postfix
13 16 (0.24%) NFS
14 15 (0.23%) Dovecot
15 11 (0.17%) ISA Server
15 11 (0.17%) Squid
16 10 (0.15%) BitLocker
16 10 (0.15%) Brightmail
17 9 (0.14%) Terminal Services
18 7 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 627 (9.58%) Kubernetes
2 586 (8.96%) Terraform
3 277 (4.23%) Ansible
4 164 (2.51%) Grafana
5 136 (2.08%) Prometheus
6 104 (1.59%) SCCM
7 90 (1.38%) Single Sign-On
8 74 (1.13%) Microsoft Intune
9 62 (0.95%) vCenter Server
10 55 (0.84%) Argo
11 49 (0.75%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 47 (0.72%) Packer
13 34 (0.52%) Jamf Pro
14 32 (0.49%) Kibana
15 25 (0.38%) FortiGate
15 25 (0.38%) OPNET
15 25 (0.38%) SCOM
16 23 (0.35%) Nessus
16 23 (0.35%) vRealize
17 22 (0.34%) Puppet
Vendors
1 870 (13.30%) Microsoft
2 440 (6.73%) SAP
3 415 (6.34%) Cisco
4 346 (5.29%) VMware
5 343 (5.24%) Oracle
6 320 (4.89%) ServiceNow
7 175 (2.68%) Splunk
8 155 (2.37%) Juniper
9 132 (2.02%) Red Hat
10 109 (1.67%) Google
11 98 (1.50%) Atlassian
12 97 (1.48%) Palo Alto
13 93 (1.42%) HP
14 91 (1.39%) Dell
15 83 (1.27%) Salesforce
16 71 (1.09%) F5
17 70 (1.07%) Apple
17 70 (1.07%) SolarWinds
18 69 (1.05%) IBM
18 69 (1.05%) Remedy