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 2 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 7,093 5,082 6,813
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.38% 18.25% 18.65%
As % of the Qualifications category 65.49% 59.76% 60.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,756 3,227 4,320
10th Percentile £343 £337 £375
25th Percentile £450 £446 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.44%
75th Percentile £628 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £723 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £560
% change year-on-year -4.55% -1.79% -0.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 694 258 431
10th Percentile £17.87 £19.69 £21.00
25th Percentile £19.54 £25.32 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £57.38 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -56.17% -4.38% -
75th Percentile £61.18 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.11 £75.00 £82.17
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -49.70% -16.67% -

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 10,831 8,504 11,210
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.18% 30.54% 30.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,125 5,211 7,071
10th Percentile £313 £301 £300
25th Percentile £419 £419 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £730 £738
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 889 415 693
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.51 £16.26
25th Percentile £19.00 £24.50 £26.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £51.90
Median % change year-on-year -45.54% -11.02% +15.33%
75th Percentile £58.00 £68.00 £67.56
90th Percentile £76.58 £79.42 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year -37.13% -23.81% +16.67%

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 2 January 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 2 January 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 2 January 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 +4 2,358 £545 -0.91% 428
South East +1 1,446 £520 -5.45% 524
South West 0 1,201 £550 -1.79% 377
North of England -2 797 £500 +5.26% 167
Midlands +3 712 £515 -6.53% 106
West Midlands +3 559 £519 -6.19% 79
North West 0 540 £513 +7.89% 115
East of England +2 330 £500 - 225
Yorkshire -13 156 £500 +6.38% 21
East Midlands +2 145 £438 -13.37% 27
North East 0 122 £450 -14.29% 31
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
1 269 (3.79%) Confluence
2 181 (2.55%) SharePoint
3 118 (1.66%) Microsoft Exchange
4 106 (1.49%) SAS
5 77 (1.09%) Apache
6 53 (0.75%) Apache Spark
7 44 (0.62%) Apache Airflow
8 37 (0.52%) Skype for Business
9 35 (0.49%) nginx
10 26 (0.37%) WebLogic
11 20 (0.28%) CMS
12 18 (0.25%) IIS
13 12 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
14 9 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2010
14 9 (0.13%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
15 8 (0.11%) OpenStack
15 8 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
16 7 (0.099%) Exchange Server 2003
16 7 (0.099%) Exchange Server 2007
Applications
1 252 (3.55%) Microsoft Office
2 154 (2.17%) Microsoft Excel
3 97 (1.37%) Microsoft Project
4 58 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 35 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 20 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.18%) Siemens NX
7 13 (0.18%) Simulink
8 9 (0.13%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.070%) FrameMaker
9 5 (0.070%) Oracle Smart View
9 5 (0.070%) Sketch
9 5 (0.070%) Stateflow
9 5 (0.070%) Windchill
10 4 (0.056%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.056%) Trello
11 3 (0.042%) Adobe Illustrator
11 3 (0.042%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.042%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.042%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 146 (2.06%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (0.49%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 33 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
4 27 (0.38%) SAP EWM
4 27 (0.38%) SAP WM
5 25 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
6 18 (0.25%) SAP MM
6 18 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 17 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
7 17 (0.24%) Maximo
7 17 (0.24%) SAP HCM
8 14 (0.20%) SAP QM
9 13 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
10 12 (0.17%) Oracle Assets
10 12 (0.17%) SAP PP
10 12 (0.17%) SAP VC
11 11 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
11 11 (0.16%) SAP EHS
12 10 (0.14%) Primavera
12 10 (0.14%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,191 (16.79%) Azure
2 1,166 (16.44%) AWS
3 320 (4.51%) Microsoft 365
4 315 (4.44%) GitHub
5 302 (4.26%) GCP
6 264 (3.72%) Azure DevOps
7 261 (3.68%) Power Platform
8 206 (2.90%) Serverless
9 183 (2.58%) Entra ID
10 163 (2.30%) Amazon S3
11 162 (2.28%) GitHub Actions
12 137 (1.93%) OpenShift
13 123 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
14 101 (1.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 99 (1.40%) AWS CloudFormation
15 99 (1.40%) SaaS
16 97 (1.37%) Amazon EC2
17 88 (1.24%) Power Automate
18 87 (1.23%) IaaS
19 80 (1.13%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 386 (5.44%) Firewall
2 247 (3.48%) DNS
3 178 (2.51%) VPN
4 166 (2.34%) Network Security
5 155 (2.19%) WAN
6 129 (1.82%) TCP/IP
7 113 (1.59%) LAN
8 102 (1.44%) BGP
9 94 (1.33%) DHCP
10 87 (1.23%) Wireless
11 75 (1.06%) SSL
12 73 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
13 69 (0.97%) VLAN
14 58 (0.82%) IPsec
14 58 (0.82%) OSPF
15 57 (0.80%) MPLS
16 50 (0.70%) SAN
17 46 (0.65%) HTTP
18 42 (0.59%) Skype
19 40 (0.56%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 191 (2.69%) PostgreSQL
2 180 (2.54%) Power BI
3 90 (1.27%) Data Warehouse
4 87 (1.23%) SQL Server
5 81 (1.14%) Metadata
6 79 (1.11%) MongoDB
7 74 (1.04%) Amazon RDS
7 74 (1.04%) NoSQL
8 71 (1.00%) Relational Database
9 70 (0.99%) Oracle Database
10 59 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
11 48 (0.68%) Big Data
12 44 (0.62%) Elasticsearch
13 40 (0.56%) SAS Enterprise Guide
14 39 (0.55%) Data Lake
14 39 (0.55%) Pentaho
15 37 (0.52%) Amazon Athena
16 33 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
16 33 (0.47%) Redis
17 30 (0.42%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 487 (6.87%) JIRA
2 382 (5.39%) Git
3 338 (4.77%) Jenkins
4 260 (3.67%) GitLab
5 78 (1.10%) Selenium
6 59 (0.83%) Postman
7 53 (0.75%) Cypress.io
7 53 (0.75%) JUnit
8 47 (0.66%) Bitbucket
9 46 (0.65%) Artifactory
10 45 (0.63%) Oracle APEX
11 41 (0.58%) SonarQube
12 32 (0.45%) Maven
13 30 (0.42%) Cucumber
14 29 (0.41%) Mockito
15 24 (0.34%) MSI
15 24 (0.34%) REST Assured
16 21 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
17 19 (0.27%) Metasploit
18 18 (0.25%) Gradle
General
1 1,900 (26.79%) Public Sector
2 1,860 (26.22%) Social Skills
3 654 (9.22%) Analytical Skills
4 506 (7.13%) Finance
5 286 (4.03%) Military
6 210 (2.96%) Telecoms
7 205 (2.89%) Manufacturing
8 178 (2.51%) Documentation Skills
9 146 (2.06%) Electronics
10 143 (2.02%) Marketing
11 128 (1.80%) Aerospace
12 113 (1.59%) Organisational Skills
13 102 (1.44%) Legal
14 86 (1.21%) Banking
15 84 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
16 76 (1.07%) Influencing Skills
17 66 (0.93%) Law
18 45 (0.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 35 (0.49%) Aviation
20 31 (0.44%) Police
Job Titles
1 972 (13.70%) Architect
2 666 (9.39%) Developer
3 591 (8.33%) Senior
4 523 (7.37%) Consultant
5 509 (7.18%) Analyst
6 412 (5.81%) Lead
7 336 (4.74%) DevOps Engineer
8 238 (3.36%) Support Engineer
9 221 (3.12%) Network Engineer
10 198 (2.79%) Data Engineer
11 169 (2.38%) Solutions Architect
12 152 (2.14%) Software Engineer
13 150 (2.11%) Technical Architect
14 141 (1.99%) Business Analyst
14 141 (1.99%) SAP Consultant
15 130 (1.83%) AWS Engineer
15 130 (1.83%) Platform Engineer
16 129 (1.82%) Tester
17 126 (1.78%) IT Engineer
18 122 (1.72%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 299 (4.22%) REST
2 177 (2.50%) React
3 172 (2.42%) Node.js
4 152 (2.14%) Kafka
5 141 (1.99%) SOAP
6 138 (1.95%) JSON
7 115 (1.62%) HTML
8 113 (1.59%) Spring
9 108 (1.52%) LDAP
10 98 (1.38%) .NET
10 98 (1.38%) AngularJS
10 98 (1.38%) CSS
11 96 (1.35%) XML
12 91 (1.28%) Spring Boot
13 88 (1.24%) Web Services
14 86 (1.21%) RESTful
15 85 (1.20%) Oracle Fusion
16 76 (1.07%) OAuth
17 71 (1.00%) PySpark
18 58 (0.82%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 222 (3.13%) Data Centre
2 195 (2.75%) Cloud Native
3 188 (2.65%) PKI
4 184 (2.59%) Product Ownership
5 180 (2.54%) Onboarding
6 142 (2.00%) Management Information System
7 108 (1.52%) Security Posture
8 102 (1.44%) Enterprise Software
9 101 (1.42%) Self-Motivation
10 91 (1.28%) Legacy Systems
11 80 (1.13%) Cyber Threat
12 73 (1.03%) Driving Licence
13 66 (0.93%) Replication
14 65 (0.92%) Security Operations Centre
15 59 (0.83%) Analytical Mindset
16 57 (0.80%) Hybrid Cloud
17 49 (0.69%) CMDB
18 47 (0.66%) Distributed Systems
18 47 (0.66%) Public Cloud
19 45 (0.63%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 786 (11.08%) Windows
2 542 (7.64%) Linux
3 184 (2.59%) Windows Server
4 175 (2.47%) Windows 10
5 100 (1.41%) Android
6 97 (1.37%) Unix
7 92 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 79 (1.11%) Mac OS
9 47 (0.66%) VMS
10 40 (0.56%) Ubuntu
11 29 (0.41%) Apple iOS
12 21 (0.30%) CentOS
13 19 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
14 18 (0.25%) Amazon Linux
15 16 (0.23%) Windows 7
16 15 (0.21%) Mac OS X
16 15 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
17 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2003
18 10 (0.14%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,377 (19.41%) Agile
2 1,113 (15.69%) DevOps
3 970 (13.68%) CI/CD
4 886 (12.49%) Problem-Solving
5 681 (9.60%) Migration
6 580 (8.18%) Stakeholder Management
7 522 (7.36%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 492 (6.94%) ITIL
9 475 (6.70%) Continuous Improvement
10 461 (6.50%) Cybersecurity
11 452 (6.37%) Infrastructure as Code
12 400 (5.64%) Business Intelligence
13 392 (5.53%) Service Management
14 389 (5.48%) Test Automation
15 387 (5.46%) Containerisation
16 380 (5.36%) Analytics
17 348 (4.91%) Roadmaps
18 332 (4.68%) Workflow
19 331 (4.67%) Scrum
20 314 (4.43%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 927 (13.07%) Python
2 552 (7.78%) SQL
3 496 (6.99%) PowerShell
4 379 (5.34%) Java
5 351 (4.95%) JavaScript
6 211 (2.97%) Bash
7 167 (2.35%) TypeScript
8 131 (1.85%) C#
9 90 (1.27%) Go
10 89 (1.25%) C++
11 65 (0.92%) C
11 65 (0.92%) PL/SQL
12 62 (0.87%) Shell Script
13 43 (0.61%) Ruby
14 40 (0.56%) Scala
15 39 (0.55%) ABAP
16 34 (0.48%) Perl
17 33 (0.47%) Bicep
18 29 (0.41%) Ada
18 29 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 5,478 (77.23%) SC Cleared
2 1,160 (16.35%) DV Cleared
3 373 (5.26%) Degree
4 235 (3.31%) BPSS Clearance
5 134 (1.89%) CISSP
6 122 (1.72%) Cisco Certification
7 121 (1.71%) Microsoft Certification
8 119 (1.68%) Azure Certification
9 102 (1.44%) CCNP
10 97 (1.37%) AWS Certification
11 81 (1.14%) CISM
12 60 (0.85%) Computer Science Degree
13 57 (0.80%) ITIL Certification
14 55 (0.78%) CCNA
15 47 (0.66%) CEH
15 47 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
16 39 (0.55%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 37 (0.52%) CHECK Team Member
18 36 (0.51%) CTC Cleared
19 35 (0.49%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 214 (3.02%) QA
2 206 (2.90%) NIST
3 198 (2.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 165 (2.33%) NCSC
5 150 (2.11%) Data Quality
6 138 (1.95%) GDPR
7 125 (1.76%) SLA
8 118 (1.66%) Accessibility
9 71 (1.00%) PMO
10 46 (0.65%) JSP 440
11 42 (0.59%) WCAG
12 39 (0.55%) GRC
13 31 (0.44%) NIST 800
14 30 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
14 30 (0.42%) Def Stans
14 30 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 27 (0.38%) COBIT
16 26 (0.37%) PCI DSS
17 18 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 15 (0.21%) RMADS
System Software
1 542 (7.64%) Docker
2 453 (6.39%) Active Directory
3 201 (2.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 67 (0.94%) VMware NSX
5 64 (0.90%) vSphere
6 56 (0.79%) VMware ESXi
7 50 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
8 35 (0.49%) Hyper-V
9 34 (0.48%) Firmware
10 30 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
11 15 (0.21%) DFS Replication
11 15 (0.21%) Postfix
12 13 (0.18%) Dovecot
13 12 (0.17%) BitLocker
14 10 (0.14%) NFS
14 10 (0.14%) Squid
14 10 (0.14%) Terminal Services
15 9 (0.13%) ISA Server
16 8 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
17 7 (0.099%) Brightmail
Systems Management
1 657 (9.26%) Kubernetes
2 614 (8.66%) Terraform
3 287 (4.05%) Ansible
4 173 (2.44%) Grafana
5 144 (2.03%) Prometheus
6 103 (1.45%) SCCM
7 93 (1.31%) Single Sign-On
8 85 (1.20%) vCenter Server
9 72 (1.02%) Microsoft Intune
10 62 (0.87%) Argo
11 58 (0.82%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 36 (0.51%) Packer
13 35 (0.49%) Kibana
14 33 (0.47%) OPNET
15 29 (0.41%) Podman
16 26 (0.37%) Puppet
17 25 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
17 25 (0.35%) Nessus
17 25 (0.35%) vRealize
18 23 (0.32%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 921 (12.98%) Microsoft
2 447 (6.30%) SAP
3 406 (5.72%) Cisco
4 386 (5.44%) Oracle
5 358 (5.05%) VMware
6 325 (4.58%) ServiceNow
7 195 (2.75%) Splunk
8 150 (2.11%) Red Hat
9 133 (1.88%) Juniper
10 130 (1.83%) Palo Alto
11 110 (1.55%) Google
12 108 (1.52%) Atlassian
13 102 (1.44%) CyberArk
14 97 (1.37%) Salesforce
15 93 (1.31%) Dell
16 92 (1.30%) Databricks
17 88 (1.24%) HP
18 78 (1.10%) Remedy
19 72 (1.02%) CheckPoint
20 69 (0.97%) Dynatrace