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

6 months to
25 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 6,430 5,624 7,050
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.10% 18.20% 18.04%
As % of the Qualifications category 63.01% 60.84% 60.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,246 3,535 4,432
10th Percentile £329 £350 £369
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.64% - -1.79%
75th Percentile £631 £638 £650
90th Percentile £718 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £528 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -1.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 665 298 469
10th Percentile £18.54 £21.25 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.05 £31.25 £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 £54.76 £60.00
% change year-on-year -54.07% -8.74% -

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 10,205 9,244 11,700
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.49% 29.92% 29.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,620 5,622 7,435
10th Percentile £306 £313 £306
25th Percentile £416 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £627 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 890 441 707
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.12 £17.72
25th Percentile £19.06 £27.00 £27.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £53.67
Median % change year-on-year -49.70% -6.83% +19.26%
75th Percentile £52.42 £68.18 £69.19
90th Percentile £74.33 £76.25 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £53.85
% change year-on-year -44.11% -16.43% +19.67%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 0 2,121 £550 +1.85% 424
South East -1 1,226 £515 -6.45% 737
South West 0 1,110 £550 -4.35% 471
North of England -1 760 £515 +8.42% 134
Midlands +1 689 £519 -9.04% 157
West Midlands +1 533 £525 -8.70% 135
North West +1 499 £535 +8.52% 96
East of England +2 288 £513 - 230
Yorkshire -11 165 £500 +6.38% 17
East Midlands 0 141 £438 -14.22% 22
North East 0 104 £475 +4.63% 23
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
1 257 (4.00%) Confluence
2 174 (2.71%) SharePoint
3 114 (1.77%) Microsoft Exchange
4 96 (1.49%) SAS
5 84 (1.31%) Apache
6 51 (0.79%) nginx
7 50 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.61%) Skype for Business
9 38 (0.59%) Apache Spark
10 23 (0.36%) CMS
11 21 (0.33%) IIS
12 17 (0.26%) WebLogic
13 15 (0.23%) SharePoint Server
14 12 (0.19%) Exchange Server 2010
15 11 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2013
15 11 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 10 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2003
16 10 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2007
16 10 (0.16%) Office Communications Server
17 8 (0.12%) Documentum
Applications
1 205 (3.19%) Microsoft Office
2 144 (2.24%) Microsoft Excel
3 81 (1.26%) Microsoft Project
4 35 (0.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 34 (0.53%) MS Visio
6 21 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.23%) Siemens NX
8 14 (0.22%) Simulink
9 11 (0.17%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 7 (0.11%) Sketch
11 6 (0.093%) Adobe Illustrator
11 6 (0.093%) Photoshop
12 5 (0.078%) Adobe XD
12 5 (0.078%) FrameMaker
12 5 (0.078%) Oracle Smart View
12 5 (0.078%) PTC Creo
12 5 (0.078%) Stateflow
12 5 (0.078%) Trello
12 5 (0.078%) Windchill
13 2 (0.031%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 143 (2.22%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (0.53%) Remedy ITSM
3 27 (0.42%) SAP WM
4 26 (0.40%) SAP EWM
5 23 (0.36%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 21 (0.33%) Oracle ERP
7 18 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
7 18 (0.28%) Teamcenter
8 17 (0.26%) Primavera
9 16 (0.25%) SAP HCM
9 16 (0.25%) SAP MM
10 15 (0.23%) Maximo
11 12 (0.19%) Oracle General Ledger
11 12 (0.19%) SAP PS
11 12 (0.19%) SAP QM
11 12 (0.19%) SAP VC
12 11 (0.17%) SAP EHS
13 10 (0.16%) SAP HR
13 10 (0.16%) SAP Payroll
14 8 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,072 (16.67%) AWS
2 1,029 (16.00%) Azure
3 312 (4.85%) Microsoft 365
4 305 (4.74%) GitHub
5 243 (3.78%) Power Platform
6 229 (3.56%) Azure DevOps
7 225 (3.50%) GCP
8 192 (2.99%) Serverless
9 171 (2.66%) Amazon S3
10 154 (2.40%) GitHub Actions
11 145 (2.26%) Entra ID
12 136 (2.12%) SaaS
13 121 (1.88%) OpenShift
14 112 (1.74%) Amazon EC2
15 109 (1.70%) AWS Lambda
16 108 (1.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 107 (1.66%) AWS CloudFormation
18 81 (1.26%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 77 (1.20%) Power Automate
20 76 (1.18%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 344 (5.35%) Firewall
2 251 (3.90%) DNS
3 172 (2.67%) VPN
4 142 (2.21%) Network Security
5 124 (1.93%) WAN
6 104 (1.62%) TCP/IP
7 95 (1.48%) BGP
8 90 (1.40%) DHCP
8 90 (1.40%) LAN
9 86 (1.34%) Wireless
10 70 (1.09%) SSL
11 62 (0.96%) SAN
12 61 (0.95%) MPLS
12 61 (0.95%) Wi-Fi
13 55 (0.86%) IPsec
13 55 (0.86%) VLAN
14 48 (0.75%) Cisco ISE
15 45 (0.70%) HTTP
16 42 (0.65%) SMTP
17 41 (0.64%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 198 (3.08%) PostgreSQL
2 164 (2.55%) Power BI
3 82 (1.28%) Amazon RDS
4 80 (1.24%) MongoDB
5 75 (1.17%) SQL Server
6 73 (1.14%) Oracle Database
7 70 (1.09%) Data Warehouse
7 70 (1.09%) Relational Database
8 65 (1.01%) Metadata
9 64 (1.00%) NoSQL
10 43 (0.67%) Big Data
11 41 (0.64%) Azure SQL Database
12 40 (0.62%) Pentaho
13 37 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
14 36 (0.56%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 35 (0.54%) Data Lake
16 33 (0.51%) MySQL
17 32 (0.50%) Amazon Athena
17 32 (0.50%) Amazon Redshift
18 31 (0.48%) Redis
Development Applications
1 464 (7.22%) JIRA
2 372 (5.79%) Git
3 357 (5.55%) Jenkins
4 250 (3.89%) GitLab
5 70 (1.09%) Selenium
6 56 (0.87%) JUnit
7 54 (0.84%) Cypress.io
8 52 (0.81%) SonarQube
9 48 (0.75%) Bitbucket
9 48 (0.75%) Postman
10 45 (0.70%) Oracle APEX
11 34 (0.53%) Artifactory
12 33 (0.51%) Maven
13 31 (0.48%) Mockito
14 30 (0.47%) Cucumber
15 23 (0.36%) Vagrant
16 22 (0.34%) Rational DOORS
17 21 (0.33%) MSI
17 21 (0.33%) REST Assured
18 20 (0.31%) CircleCI
General
1 1,778 (27.65%) Public Sector
2 1,688 (26.25%) Social Skills
3 600 (9.33%) Analytical Skills
4 469 (7.29%) Finance
5 256 (3.98%) Military
6 206 (3.20%) Telecoms
7 190 (2.95%) Manufacturing
8 159 (2.47%) Documentation Skills
9 142 (2.21%) Electronics
10 132 (2.05%) Marketing
11 123 (1.91%) Aerospace
12 99 (1.54%) Legal
13 94 (1.46%) Organisational Skills
14 87 (1.35%) Banking
15 78 (1.21%) Influencing Skills
16 76 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
17 68 (1.06%) Law
18 40 (0.62%) Aviation
19 39 (0.61%) Police
20 38 (0.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 858 (13.34%) Architect
2 636 (9.89%) Developer
3 526 (8.18%) Consultant
4 503 (7.82%) Senior
5 421 (6.55%) Analyst
6 391 (6.08%) Lead
7 272 (4.23%) DevOps Engineer
8 234 (3.64%) Support Engineer
9 197 (3.06%) Network Engineer
10 158 (2.46%) Solutions Architect
11 153 (2.38%) Data Engineer
12 143 (2.22%) SAP Consultant
13 135 (2.10%) AWS Engineer
14 126 (1.96%) Platform Engineer
15 125 (1.94%) Technical Architect
16 124 (1.93%) IT Engineer
17 116 (1.80%) Administrator
17 116 (1.80%) Software Engineer
18 109 (1.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 109 (1.70%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 253 (3.93%) REST
2 163 (2.53%) React
3 159 (2.47%) Node.js
4 152 (2.36%) Kafka
5 128 (1.99%) JSON
6 116 (1.80%) SOAP
7 107 (1.66%) HTML
7 107 (1.66%) Spring
8 97 (1.51%) XML
9 95 (1.48%) AngularJS
10 90 (1.40%) CSS
10 90 (1.40%) RESTful
11 89 (1.38%) Web Services
12 87 (1.35%) .NET
13 85 (1.32%) Spring Boot
14 71 (1.10%) OAuth
15 66 (1.03%) LDAP
16 55 (0.86%) SAML
17 54 (0.84%) Elastic Stack
18 50 (0.78%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 198 (3.08%) Data Centre
2 189 (2.94%) Onboarding
3 184 (2.86%) PKI
4 169 (2.63%) Cloud Native
5 146 (2.27%) Management Information System
6 141 (2.19%) Product Ownership
7 102 (1.59%) Self-Motivation
8 78 (1.21%) Legacy Systems
9 75 (1.17%) Driving Licence
10 70 (1.09%) Replication
11 67 (1.04%) Cyber Threat
12 65 (1.01%) Security Operations Centre
13 61 (0.95%) Security Posture
14 60 (0.93%) Hybrid Cloud
15 58 (0.90%) Enterprise Software
16 55 (0.86%) CMDB
17 53 (0.82%) Private Cloud
18 50 (0.78%) Analytical Mindset
19 43 (0.67%) Public Cloud
20 42 (0.65%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 746 (11.60%) Windows
2 509 (7.92%) Linux
3 177 (2.75%) Windows Server
4 172 (2.67%) Windows 10
5 97 (1.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 89 (1.38%) Android
7 86 (1.34%) Mac OS
8 82 (1.28%) Unix
9 47 (0.73%) VMS
10 34 (0.53%) Ubuntu
11 28 (0.44%) Amazon Linux
11 28 (0.44%) Apple iOS
11 28 (0.44%) Windows Server 2019
12 24 (0.37%) Windows 7
13 22 (0.34%) CentOS
14 20 (0.31%) Windows Server 2012
15 19 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
16 17 (0.26%) Windows Server 2003
17 15 (0.23%) Mac OS X
18 9 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,301 (20.23%) Agile
2 980 (15.24%) DevOps
3 886 (13.78%) CI/CD
4 798 (12.41%) Problem-Solving
5 639 (9.94%) Migration
6 507 (7.88%) Stakeholder Management
7 445 (6.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 441 (6.86%) Cybersecurity
9 433 (6.73%) ITIL
10 415 (6.45%) Infrastructure as Code
11 411 (6.39%) Continuous Improvement
12 380 (5.91%) Service Management
13 377 (5.86%) Business Intelligence
14 353 (5.49%) Test Automation
15 346 (5.38%) Containerisation
16 337 (5.24%) Analytics
17 334 (5.19%) Workflow
18 323 (5.02%) Scrum
19 299 (4.65%) Roadmaps
20 292 (4.54%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 840 (13.06%) Python
2 500 (7.78%) SQL
3 427 (6.64%) PowerShell
4 405 (6.30%) Java
5 330 (5.13%) JavaScript
6 218 (3.39%) Bash
7 163 (2.53%) TypeScript
8 121 (1.88%) C#
9 91 (1.42%) C++
10 78 (1.21%) Go
11 69 (1.07%) PL/SQL
12 63 (0.98%) C
13 59 (0.92%) Shell Script
14 43 (0.67%) Perl
15 37 (0.58%) ABAP
16 33 (0.51%) Ruby
17 31 (0.48%) Groovy
18 28 (0.44%) Ada
18 28 (0.44%) Bicep
19 26 (0.40%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 4,929 (76.66%) SC Cleared
2 1,099 (17.09%) DV Cleared
3 321 (4.99%) Degree
4 263 (4.09%) BPSS Clearance
5 127 (1.98%) CISSP
6 123 (1.91%) Microsoft Certification
7 109 (1.70%) Azure Certification
7 109 (1.70%) Cisco Certification
8 95 (1.48%) AWS Certification
9 82 (1.28%) CCNP
10 73 (1.14%) CISM
11 56 (0.87%) ITIL Certification
12 52 (0.81%) Computer Science Degree
13 42 (0.65%) CCNA
14 37 (0.58%) CEH
14 37 (0.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 36 (0.56%) TOGAF Certification
16 30 (0.47%) CHECK Team Member
17 29 (0.45%) MCSE
18 28 (0.44%) CHECK Team Leader
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 196 (3.05%) QA
2 193 (3.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 192 (2.99%) NIST
4 151 (2.35%) NCSC
5 125 (1.94%) SLA
6 124 (1.93%) GDPR
7 114 (1.77%) Data Quality
8 105 (1.63%) Accessibility
9 56 (0.87%) PMO
10 49 (0.76%) JSP 440
11 39 (0.61%) NIST 800
12 38 (0.59%) WCAG
13 32 (0.50%) GRC
14 31 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 29 (0.45%) Def Stans
16 27 (0.42%) COBIT
17 23 (0.36%) RMADS
18 22 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials
19 17 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
20 15 (0.23%) HIPAA
System Software
1 522 (8.12%) Docker
2 389 (6.05%) Active Directory
3 204 (3.17%) VMware Infrastructure
4 65 (1.01%) VMware ESXi
5 64 (1.00%) vSphere
6 63 (0.98%) VMware NSX
7 52 (0.81%) Virtual Machines
8 40 (0.62%) Firmware
9 31 (0.48%) Hyper-V
10 26 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
11 21 (0.33%) DFS Replication
12 19 (0.30%) Postfix
13 15 (0.23%) Dovecot
13 15 (0.23%) NFS
14 11 (0.17%) ISA Server
14 11 (0.17%) Squid
15 10 (0.16%) BitLocker
15 10 (0.16%) Brightmail
16 9 (0.14%) Terminal Services
17 7 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 614 (9.55%) Kubernetes
2 583 (9.07%) Terraform
3 276 (4.29%) Ansible
4 160 (2.49%) Grafana
5 132 (2.05%) Prometheus
6 104 (1.62%) SCCM
7 91 (1.42%) Single Sign-On
8 75 (1.17%) Microsoft Intune
9 61 (0.95%) vCenter Server
10 55 (0.86%) Argo
11 50 (0.78%) Packer
12 49 (0.76%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 35 (0.54%) Jamf Pro
14 33 (0.51%) Kibana
15 26 (0.40%) FortiGate
16 24 (0.37%) Nessus
16 24 (0.37%) SCOM
17 22 (0.34%) Consul
17 22 (0.34%) OPNET
17 22 (0.34%) vRealize
Vendors
1 860 (13.37%) Microsoft
2 434 (6.75%) SAP
3 414 (6.44%) Cisco
4 342 (5.32%) VMware
5 339 (5.27%) Oracle
6 310 (4.82%) ServiceNow
7 182 (2.83%) Splunk
8 155 (2.41%) Juniper
9 129 (2.01%) Red Hat
10 108 (1.68%) Google
11 98 (1.52%) Atlassian
12 94 (1.46%) HP
13 92 (1.43%) Palo Alto
14 91 (1.42%) Dell
15 83 (1.29%) Salesforce
16 71 (1.10%) F5
17 70 (1.09%) Apple
17 70 (1.09%) SolarWinds
18 68 (1.06%) IBM
19 67 (1.04%) Remedy