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

6 months to
28 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 8,881 4,557 7,198
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.39% 18.79% 19.12%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.33% 60.06% 61.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,050 3,015 4,671
10th Percentile £363 £325 £350
25th Percentile £445 £450 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £631 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £537 £550
% change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -1.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 764 257 470
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.54 £25.26 £21.46
Median hourly rate £47.50 £60.00 £54.25
Median % change year-on-year -20.83% +10.60% -9.58%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.36 £77.84 £80.22
UK median hourly rate £48.05 £55.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year -12.64% - -8.33%

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 12,810 7,587 11,788
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.74% 31.28% 31.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,514 4,857 7,312
10th Percentile £338 £298 £300
25th Percentile £425 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £621 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 987 429 913
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.51 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.35 £25.26 £17.80
Median hourly rate £35.00 £50.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -30.00% +33.33% -25.00%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.00 £63.00
90th Percentile £85.36 £82.13 £76.91
UK median hourly rate £36.00 £42.50 £37.83
% change year-on-year -15.29% +12.35% -27.44%

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 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 28 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 28 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 +6 3,117 £525 - 519
South East +1 2,077 £525 -4.55% 548
South West 0 1,317 £538 -6.52% 389
Midlands +3 880 £486 -9.45% 175
North of England -1 845 £481 -2.88% 305
West Midlands +2 721 £492 -10.55% 128
North West -2 520 £490 -2.00% 169
East of England +1 358 £492 +9.33% 158
Yorkshire 0 206 £498 -5.24% 72
East Midlands +1 155 £450 -11.11% 46
North East 0 152 £450 -3.74% 65
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
1 355 (4.00%) Confluence
2 204 (2.30%) SharePoint
3 132 (1.49%) SAS
4 123 (1.38%) Microsoft Exchange
5 75 (0.84%) Apache Spark
6 74 (0.83%) Apache
7 48 (0.54%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.44%) nginx
9 35 (0.39%) WebLogic
10 24 (0.27%) Skype for Business
11 20 (0.23%) Jupyter
12 16 (0.18%) CMS
12 16 (0.18%) IIS
13 14 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 14 (0.16%) Tuxedo
14 11 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
15 10 (0.11%) Tomcat
16 9 (0.10%) ArcGIS
17 6 (0.068%) JBoss
17 6 (0.068%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 233 (2.62%) Microsoft Office
2 189 (2.13%) Microsoft Excel
3 123 (1.38%) Microsoft Project
4 69 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (0.50%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.12%) Simulink
8 5 (0.056%) Adobe XD
8 5 (0.056%) Siemens NX
8 5 (0.056%) Sketch
8 5 (0.056%) Windchill
9 3 (0.034%) Chatbot
10 2 (0.023%) Adobe Illustrator
10 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.023%) CATIA
10 2 (0.023%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.023%) Lectora
10 2 (0.023%) Oracle Smart View
10 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
10 2 (0.023%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 86 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (0.48%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 38 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
4 27 (0.30%) Teamcenter
5 26 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
6 25 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
7 16 (0.18%) Maximo
8 14 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.15%) SAP PP
10 12 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
10 12 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
10 12 (0.14%) Temenos T24
11 9 (0.10%) Findur
11 9 (0.10%) Primavera
11 9 (0.10%) SAP ERP
11 9 (0.10%) SAP HCM
11 9 (0.10%) SAP MM
12 8 (0.090%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 8 (0.090%) SAP PSCD
12 8 (0.090%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,485 (16.72%) Azure
2 1,446 (16.28%) AWS
3 407 (4.58%) GitHub
4 369 (4.15%) GCP
5 359 (4.04%) Azure DevOps
6 308 (3.47%) Power Platform
7 267 (3.01%) Microsoft 365
8 255 (2.87%) Serverless
9 221 (2.49%) Entra ID
10 212 (2.39%) GitHub Actions
11 193 (2.17%) Amazon S3
12 168 (1.89%) AWS Lambda
12 168 (1.89%) OpenShift
13 133 (1.50%) Amazon EC2
14 118 (1.33%) AWS CloudFormation
14 118 (1.33%) PaaS
15 112 (1.26%) IaaS
16 108 (1.22%) Azure Data Factory
17 100 (1.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 97 (1.09%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 423 (4.76%) Firewall
2 245 (2.76%) DNS
3 214 (2.41%) Network Security
4 207 (2.33%) WAN
5 180 (2.03%) LAN
6 170 (1.91%) VPN
7 143 (1.61%) BGP
8 123 (1.38%) DHCP
9 121 (1.36%) TCP/IP
10 107 (1.20%) OSPF
11 89 (1.00%) VLAN
12 88 (0.99%) Wireless
13 75 (0.84%) Wi-Fi
14 65 (0.73%) MPLS
15 52 (0.59%) SAN
16 49 (0.55%) IPsec
17 48 (0.54%) Cisco ISE
18 41 (0.46%) SSL
19 39 (0.44%) SD-WAN
19 39 (0.44%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 229 (2.58%) PostgreSQL
2 225 (2.53%) Power BI
3 161 (1.81%) SQL Server
4 157 (1.77%) Data Warehouse
5 118 (1.33%) Metadata
6 102 (1.15%) Amazon RDS
7 101 (1.14%) Oracle Database
8 93 (1.05%) NoSQL
9 90 (1.01%) MongoDB
10 85 (0.96%) Relational Database
11 79 (0.89%) Azure SQL Database
12 70 (0.79%) Elasticsearch
13 66 (0.74%) Data Lake
13 66 (0.74%) MySQL
14 63 (0.71%) Pentaho
15 58 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
16 50 (0.56%) Tableau
17 47 (0.53%) Big Data
18 42 (0.47%) Oracle Reports
19 40 (0.45%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 559 (6.29%) JIRA
2 454 (5.11%) Git
3 372 (4.19%) Jenkins
4 314 (3.54%) GitLab
5 102 (1.15%) Selenium
6 84 (0.95%) JUnit
7 72 (0.81%) Postman
8 56 (0.63%) Rational DOORS
9 55 (0.62%) SonarQube
10 53 (0.60%) Bitbucket
11 47 (0.53%) Artifactory
11 47 (0.53%) Maven
12 45 (0.51%) Cypress.io
13 41 (0.46%) Cucumber
13 41 (0.46%) Oracle APEX
14 37 (0.42%) Mockito
15 34 (0.38%) JMeter
16 29 (0.33%) Visual Studio
17 27 (0.30%) REST Assured
18 21 (0.24%) MSI
General
1 2,167 (24.40%) Public Sector
2 2,090 (23.53%) Social Skills
3 761 (8.57%) Analytical Skills
4 659 (7.42%) Finance
5 313 (3.52%) Military
6 250 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
7 215 (2.42%) Aerospace
8 158 (1.78%) Telecoms
9 154 (1.73%) Manufacturing
10 152 (1.71%) Legal
11 118 (1.33%) Banking
12 115 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
13 104 (1.17%) Presentation Skills
14 103 (1.16%) Organisational Skills
15 100 (1.13%) Marketing
16 94 (1.06%) Electronics
17 77 (0.87%) Law
18 53 (0.60%) Police
19 48 (0.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 31 (0.35%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,312 (14.77%) Architect
2 839 (9.45%) Developer
3 776 (8.74%) Senior
4 659 (7.42%) Analyst
5 558 (6.28%) Lead
6 482 (5.43%) Consultant
7 359 (4.04%) DevOps Engineer
8 355 (4.00%) Data Engineer
9 267 (3.01%) Network Engineer
10 251 (2.83%) Software Engineer
11 244 (2.75%) Technical Architect
12 239 (2.69%) Business Analyst
13 210 (2.36%) Solutions Architect
14 185 (2.08%) Support Engineer
15 183 (2.06%) Project Manager
16 172 (1.94%) Azure Engineer
17 168 (1.89%) Delivery Manager
18 165 (1.86%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 161 (1.81%) Security Architect
20 155 (1.75%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 349 (3.93%) REST
2 191 (2.15%) Spring
3 177 (1.99%) Node.js
4 174 (1.96%) Kafka
5 166 (1.87%) React
6 151 (1.70%) JSON
7 149 (1.68%) Spring Boot
8 147 (1.66%) .NET
9 143 (1.61%) SOAP
10 141 (1.59%) LDAP
11 126 (1.42%) RESTful
12 113 (1.27%) AngularJS
13 101 (1.14%) Web Services
14 98 (1.10%) PySpark
15 97 (1.09%) HTML
16 96 (1.08%) OAuth
17 89 (1.00%) Oracle Fusion
18 87 (0.98%) XML
19 79 (0.89%) CSS
20 78 (0.88%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 314 (3.54%) Product Ownership
2 272 (3.06%) Data Centre
3 260 (2.93%) Cloud Native
4 228 (2.57%) Onboarding
5 194 (2.18%) PKI
6 155 (1.75%) Management Information System
7 130 (1.46%) Security Posture
8 121 (1.36%) Self-Motivation
9 118 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
10 110 (1.24%) Enterprise Software
10 110 (1.24%) Replication
11 87 (0.98%) Distributed Systems
12 74 (0.83%) Hybrid Cloud
13 73 (0.82%) Public Cloud
14 71 (0.80%) Data Structures
15 68 (0.77%) Cyber Threat
16 66 (0.74%) Security Operations Centre
17 61 (0.69%) Clustering
18 54 (0.61%) CMDB
18 54 (0.61%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 804 (9.05%) Windows
2 651 (7.33%) Linux
3 226 (2.54%) Windows Server
4 120 (1.35%) Windows 10
5 115 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 113 (1.27%) Android
7 112 (1.26%) Unix
8 59 (0.66%) Mac OS
9 44 (0.50%) Apple iOS
10 40 (0.45%) Ubuntu
11 31 (0.35%) VMS
12 25 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
13 20 (0.23%) CentOS
14 19 (0.21%) Solaris
15 18 (0.20%) Windows 7
15 18 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
16 16 (0.18%) AIX
17 11 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
18 8 (0.090%) Embedded Linux
19 7 (0.079%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,803 (20.30%) Agile
2 1,349 (15.19%) DevOps
3 1,178 (13.26%) CI/CD
4 1,082 (12.18%) Problem-Solving
5 845 (9.51%) Stakeholder Management
6 763 (8.59%) Migration
7 755 (8.50%) Continuous Improvement
8 665 (7.49%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 588 (6.62%) ITIL
10 575 (6.47%) Cybersecurity
11 548 (6.17%) Infrastructure as Code
12 517 (5.82%) Analytics
13 508 (5.72%) Test Automation
14 497 (5.60%) Roadmaps
15 473 (5.33%) Containerisation
16 464 (5.22%) Software Engineering
17 452 (5.09%) Scrum
18 433 (4.88%) Data Modelling
19 430 (4.84%) Service Management
20 396 (4.46%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 1,027 (11.56%) Python
2 788 (8.87%) SQL
3 562 (6.33%) PowerShell
4 507 (5.71%) Java
5 340 (3.83%) JavaScript
6 204 (2.30%) Bash
7 187 (2.11%) C#
8 153 (1.72%) TypeScript
9 99 (1.11%) C++
9 99 (1.11%) PL/SQL
10 92 (1.04%) Shell Script
11 68 (0.77%) Go
12 62 (0.70%) C
13 56 (0.63%) Ruby
14 54 (0.61%) Scala
15 45 (0.51%) Ada
15 45 (0.51%) Bicep
16 40 (0.45%) Kusto Query Language
17 39 (0.44%) Apex Code
18 35 (0.39%) R
Qualifications
1 6,673 (75.14%) SC Cleared
2 1,629 (18.34%) DV Cleared
3 430 (4.84%) Degree
4 252 (2.84%) BPSS Clearance
5 168 (1.89%) Cisco Certification
5 168 (1.89%) CISSP
6 128 (1.44%) Azure Certification
7 116 (1.31%) CCNP
8 114 (1.28%) AWS Certification
9 105 (1.18%) CISM
10 104 (1.17%) Microsoft Certification
11 69 (0.78%) CCNA
12 64 (0.72%) Computer Science Degree
12 64 (0.72%) ITIL Certification
13 63 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
14 58 (0.65%) PMP
15 51 (0.57%) PMI Certification
16 49 (0.55%) GIAC
17 47 (0.53%) ISTQB
18 46 (0.52%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 316 (3.56%) QA
2 291 (3.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 279 (3.14%) NIST
4 251 (2.83%) Data Quality
5 201 (2.26%) NCSC
6 171 (1.93%) GDPR
7 140 (1.58%) Accessibility
8 119 (1.34%) PMO
9 109 (1.23%) SLA
10 65 (0.73%) JSP 440
11 58 (0.65%) GRC
12 45 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
13 42 (0.47%) WCAG
14 38 (0.43%) COBIT
14 38 (0.43%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.37%) Def Stans
16 32 (0.36%) PCI DSS
17 26 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 24 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 22 (0.25%) RMADS
System Software
1 598 (6.73%) Docker
2 438 (4.93%) Active Directory
3 247 (2.78%) VMware Infrastructure
4 90 (1.01%) VMware NSX
5 72 (0.81%) vSphere
6 68 (0.77%) VMware ESXi
7 59 (0.66%) Hyper-V
8 55 (0.62%) Virtual Machines
9 30 (0.34%) Firmware
10 23 (0.26%) Oracle RAC
11 22 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
12 21 (0.24%) BitLocker
13 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 14 (0.16%) NFS
15 11 (0.12%) Postfix
15 11 (0.12%) vCloud
16 10 (0.11%) Squid
17 7 (0.079%) Microsoft App-V
18 4 (0.045%) Snort
18 4 (0.045%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 774 (8.72%) Kubernetes
2 698 (7.86%) Terraform
3 302 (3.40%) Ansible
4 223 (2.51%) Grafana
5 185 (2.08%) Prometheus
6 102 (1.15%) Single Sign-On
7 90 (1.01%) vCenter Server
8 86 (0.97%) SCCM
9 77 (0.87%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 62 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
11 61 (0.69%) Argo
12 47 (0.53%) FortiGate
13 38 (0.43%) Podman
14 37 (0.42%) Packer
15 35 (0.39%) Progress Chef
16 34 (0.38%) Puppet
17 30 (0.34%) OPNET
18 24 (0.27%) Kibana
18 24 (0.27%) Oracle RMAN
19 21 (0.24%) Nagios
Vendors
1 981 (11.05%) Microsoft
2 513 (5.78%) Oracle
3 449 (5.06%) VMware
4 391 (4.40%) Cisco
5 365 (4.11%) ServiceNow
6 339 (3.82%) SAP
7 215 (2.42%) Splunk
8 178 (2.00%) Red Hat
9 170 (1.91%) Databricks
10 135 (1.52%) Google
11 129 (1.45%) Salesforce
12 128 (1.44%) Juniper
13 127 (1.43%) Atlassian
14 120 (1.35%) CyberArk
14 120 (1.35%) Palo Alto
15 116 (1.31%) IBM
16 87 (0.98%) Talend
17 86 (0.97%) Dell
18 83 (0.93%) Remedy
19 77 (0.87%) Aruba