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

6 months to
6 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,349 4,476 6,984
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.17% 18.51% 18.90%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.69% 58.98% 61.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,519 2,954 4,558
10th Percentile £377 £338 £353
25th Percentile £450 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 772 289 517
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.35 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.68 £24.66 £21.46
Median hourly rate £57.75 £35.00 £56.50
Median % change year-on-year +65.00% -38.05% -5.83%
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.62 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £80.00 £84.45
UK median hourly rate £57.35 £32.00 £55.80
% change year-on-year +79.22% -42.65% -7.00%

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 13,415 7,589 11,291
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.81% 31.39% 30.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,002 4,788 6,981
10th Percentile £350 £278 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £721 £713 £743
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £530
% change year-on-year +0.96% -1.89% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,013 453 1,004
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.33 £22.50 £18.93
Median hourly rate £51.44 £32.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +58.28% -18.75% -27.27%
75th Percentile £73.46 £65.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £85.25 £80.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £32.05 £40.00
% change year-on-year +56.01% -19.88% -27.27%

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 6 June 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 6 June 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 6 June 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 +7 3,361 £525 - 558
South East +1 2,249 £550 - 546
South West 0 1,251 £538 -4.44% 444
North of England 0 967 £500 - 284
Midlands +3 886 £469 -10.67% 146
West Midlands +3 762 £470 -10.49% 103
North West -1 534 £515 +3.00% 169
East of England +2 374 £550 +10.00% 143
Yorkshire -5 247 £488 -1.71% 52
North East +1 220 £475 -1.04% 64
East Midlands -2 117 £421 -17.93% 43
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
1 339 (3.63%) Confluence
2 214 (2.29%) SharePoint
3 137 (1.47%) SAS
4 123 (1.32%) Microsoft Exchange
5 80 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
5 80 (0.86%) Apache Spark
6 78 (0.83%) Apache
7 37 (0.40%) nginx
8 35 (0.37%) Jupyter
9 27 (0.29%) WebLogic
10 20 (0.21%) Tomcat
11 18 (0.19%) IIS
11 18 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
12 16 (0.17%) CMS
13 15 (0.16%) Skype for Business
14 14 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
15 11 (0.12%) NetWeaver
16 8 (0.086%) Apache Superset
16 8 (0.086%) ArcGIS
16 8 (0.086%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 156 (1.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 137 (1.47%) Microsoft Office
3 73 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 69 (0.74%) Microsoft Project
5 39 (0.42%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.15%) Simulink
8 9 (0.096%) SOLIDWORKS
9 8 (0.086%) AutoCAD
9 8 (0.086%) Revit
10 5 (0.053%) Notepad++
11 4 (0.043%) Chatbot
11 4 (0.043%) Siemens NX
12 3 (0.032%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.032%) Sketch
12 3 (0.032%) Windchill
13 2 (0.021%) CATIA
13 2 (0.021%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.021%) Lectora
13 2 (0.021%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 93 (0.99%) SAP S/4HANA
2 56 (0.60%) Remedy ITSM
3 33 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
3 33 (0.35%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 30 (0.32%) Teamcenter
5 27 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
6 15 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.15%) Findur
7 14 (0.15%) Maximo
7 14 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.14%) SAP PSCD
9 12 (0.13%) iTrent
9 12 (0.13%) Temenos T24
10 10 (0.11%) Primavera
11 9 (0.096%) Integrated Workplace Management System
11 9 (0.096%) Oracle Assets
11 9 (0.096%) Salesforce CRM
11 9 (0.096%) SAP ERP
11 9 (0.096%) SAP HCM
12 8 (0.086%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,619 (17.32%) Azure
2 1,558 (16.66%) AWS
3 376 (4.02%) GitHub
4 367 (3.93%) GCP
5 349 (3.73%) Azure DevOps
5 349 (3.73%) Power Platform
6 234 (2.50%) Serverless
7 233 (2.49%) Microsoft 365
8 229 (2.45%) Entra ID
9 226 (2.42%) GitHub Actions
10 198 (2.12%) Amazon S3
11 164 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
12 144 (1.54%) Amazon EC2
13 141 (1.51%) PaaS
14 129 (1.38%) OpenShift
15 124 (1.33%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 122 (1.30%) SaaS
17 119 (1.27%) OCI
18 104 (1.11%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 97 (1.04%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 425 (4.55%) Firewall
2 283 (3.03%) DNS
3 229 (2.45%) Network Security
4 215 (2.30%) WAN
5 196 (2.10%) LAN
6 163 (1.74%) VPN
7 154 (1.65%) DHCP
8 142 (1.52%) BGP
9 121 (1.29%) OSPF
10 110 (1.18%) VLAN
11 108 (1.16%) Wi-Fi
12 97 (1.04%) TCP/IP
13 78 (0.83%) Wireless
14 60 (0.64%) MPLS
15 56 (0.60%) SAN
15 56 (0.60%) VXLAN
16 52 (0.56%) SD-WAN
17 50 (0.53%) Structured Cabling
18 48 (0.51%) Ethernet VPN
18 48 (0.51%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 261 (2.79%) Power BI
2 225 (2.41%) PostgreSQL
3 210 (2.25%) Data Warehouse
4 197 (2.11%) SQL Server
5 126 (1.35%) Oracle Database
6 116 (1.24%) Metadata
7 107 (1.14%) Amazon RDS
8 97 (1.04%) Data Lake
9 82 (0.88%) Relational Database
10 81 (0.87%) MongoDB
11 80 (0.86%) Pentaho
12 74 (0.79%) Oracle Reports
13 72 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
14 71 (0.76%) NoSQL
15 66 (0.71%) MySQL
16 61 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
17 59 (0.63%) Tableau
18 57 (0.61%) Amazon Athena
19 48 (0.51%) Azure SQL Database
20 43 (0.46%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 530 (5.67%) JIRA
2 407 (4.35%) Git
3 377 (4.03%) GitLab
4 360 (3.85%) Jenkins
5 105 (1.12%) Selenium
6 77 (0.82%) JUnit
7 74 (0.79%) Postman
8 64 (0.68%) SonarQube
9 58 (0.62%) Rational DOORS
10 52 (0.56%) Artifactory
11 50 (0.53%) JMeter
12 46 (0.49%) Cucumber
13 42 (0.45%) Bitbucket
14 40 (0.43%) Maven
15 39 (0.42%) Mockito
16 37 (0.40%) Zephyr
17 35 (0.37%) Visual Studio
18 32 (0.34%) Cypress.io
18 32 (0.34%) REST Assured
19 29 (0.31%) WebDriver
General
1 1,984 (21.22%) Public Sector
2 1,919 (20.53%) Social Skills
3 657 (7.03%) Analytical Skills
4 620 (6.63%) Finance
5 311 (3.33%) Military
6 272 (2.91%) Documentation Skills
7 248 (2.65%) Aerospace
8 140 (1.50%) Legal
9 119 (1.27%) Banking
10 108 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
11 107 (1.14%) Telecoms
12 94 (1.01%) Law
13 92 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
14 85 (0.91%) Manufacturing
15 78 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
16 57 (0.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 57 (0.61%) Police
17 51 (0.55%) Marketing
18 40 (0.43%) Retail
19 37 (0.40%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,360 (14.55%) Architect
2 862 (9.22%) Developer
3 792 (8.47%) Senior
4 697 (7.46%) Lead
5 641 (6.86%) Analyst
6 460 (4.92%) Data Engineer
7 423 (4.52%) DevOps Engineer
8 417 (4.46%) Consultant
9 288 (3.08%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 278 (2.97%) Software Engineer
11 269 (2.88%) Technical Architect
12 264 (2.82%) Network Engineer
13 234 (2.50%) Business Analyst
14 220 (2.35%) Solutions Architect
15 207 (2.21%) Project Manager
16 192 (2.05%) Security Architect
17 189 (2.02%) Azure Engineer
18 182 (1.95%) Administrator
18 182 (1.95%) Delivery Manager
19 176 (1.88%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 299 (3.20%) REST
2 209 (2.24%) Spring
3 173 (1.85%) Spring Boot
4 171 (1.83%) React
5 156 (1.67%) .NET
6 153 (1.64%) Node.js
7 150 (1.60%) Kafka
8 147 (1.57%) LDAP
9 140 (1.50%) SOAP
10 132 (1.41%) RESTful
11 109 (1.17%) AngularJS
11 109 (1.17%) JSON
12 101 (1.08%) Web Services
13 94 (1.01%) PySpark
14 90 (0.96%) OAuth
15 81 (0.87%) HTML
16 77 (0.82%) XML
17 72 (0.77%) Middleware
17 72 (0.77%) Oracle Fusion
18 69 (0.74%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 336 (3.59%) Cloud Native
2 311 (3.33%) Product Ownership
3 288 (3.08%) Data Centre
4 268 (2.87%) Onboarding
5 150 (1.60%) Management Information System
6 146 (1.56%) PKI
7 133 (1.42%) Legacy Systems
8 120 (1.28%) Security Posture
9 118 (1.26%) Enterprise Software
10 115 (1.23%) Distributed Systems
11 113 (1.21%) Replication
12 95 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
13 88 (0.94%) Clustering
14 81 (0.87%) Hybrid Cloud
15 80 (0.86%) Data Structures
16 75 (0.80%) Security Operations Centre
17 74 (0.79%) Public Cloud
18 69 (0.74%) CMDB
18 69 (0.74%) Operational Technology
19 65 (0.70%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 760 (8.13%) Windows
2 638 (6.82%) Linux
3 248 (2.65%) Windows Server
4 176 (1.88%) Unix
5 116 (1.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 82 (0.88%) Windows 10
7 79 (0.85%) Android
8 52 (0.56%) Apple iOS
9 50 (0.53%) Solaris
10 35 (0.37%) Mac OS
11 31 (0.33%) Ubuntu
12 25 (0.27%) AIX
12 25 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 24 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
14 23 (0.25%) CentOS
15 21 (0.22%) VMS
16 15 (0.16%) Windows 7
17 12 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
18 11 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
19 10 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,828 (19.55%) Agile
2 1,440 (15.40%) DevOps
3 1,266 (13.54%) CI/CD
4 972 (10.40%) Problem-Solving
5 929 (9.94%) Stakeholder Management
6 878 (9.39%) Continuous Improvement
7 782 (8.36%) Migration
8 733 (7.84%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 659 (7.05%) Infrastructure as Code
10 607 (6.49%) Cybersecurity
11 569 (6.09%) ITIL
12 559 (5.98%) Test Automation
13 549 (5.87%) Analytics
14 535 (5.72%) Software Engineering
15 526 (5.63%) Roadmaps
16 505 (5.40%) Containerisation
17 482 (5.16%) Data Modelling
18 456 (4.88%) Decision-Making
19 437 (4.67%) Scrum
20 426 (4.56%) AI
Programming Languages
1 986 (10.55%) Python
2 864 (9.24%) SQL
3 571 (6.11%) Java
4 502 (5.37%) PowerShell
5 274 (2.93%) JavaScript
6 198 (2.12%) C#
7 179 (1.91%) Bash
8 138 (1.48%) TypeScript
9 106 (1.13%) PL/SQL
10 88 (0.94%) C++
11 85 (0.91%) Shell Script
12 57 (0.61%) Go
13 56 (0.60%) C
14 55 (0.59%) Bicep
15 54 (0.58%) Scala
16 45 (0.48%) Ada
17 44 (0.47%) Ruby
18 42 (0.45%) Apex Code
19 36 (0.39%) MATLAB
20 34 (0.36%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 7,037 (75.27%) SC Cleared
2 1,788 (19.13%) DV Cleared
3 392 (4.19%) Degree
4 260 (2.78%) BPSS Clearance
5 185 (1.98%) Cisco Certification
6 160 (1.71%) CISSP
7 124 (1.33%) Azure Certification
8 111 (1.19%) CCNP
9 103 (1.10%) CISM
10 97 (1.04%) Microsoft Certification
11 92 (0.98%) AWS Certification
12 77 (0.82%) CCNA
13 74 (0.79%) PMP
14 67 (0.72%) PMI Certification
15 63 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
15 63 (0.67%) ISTQB
16 56 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 53 (0.57%) ITIL Certification
18 46 (0.49%) GIAC
19 34 (0.36%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 354 (3.79%) QA
2 280 (2.99%) NIST
3 272 (2.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 269 (2.88%) Data Quality
5 187 (2.00%) NCSC
6 170 (1.82%) Accessibility
7 159 (1.70%) PMO
8 156 (1.67%) GDPR
9 105 (1.12%) SLA
10 66 (0.71%) GRC
11 60 (0.64%) JSP 440
12 52 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials
13 38 (0.41%) NIST 800
13 38 (0.41%) WCAG
14 34 (0.36%) Def Stans
15 29 (0.31%) RMADS
16 22 (0.24%) COBIT
16 22 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
16 22 (0.24%) PCI DSS
17 21 (0.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 570 (6.10%) Docker
2 437 (4.67%) Active Directory
3 286 (3.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 111 (1.19%) VMware ESXi
5 96 (1.03%) VMware NSX
6 79 (0.85%) Hyper-V
7 78 (0.83%) vSphere
8 68 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
9 34 (0.36%) Firmware
10 29 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
11 23 (0.25%) BitLocker
12 21 (0.22%) vCloud
13 19 (0.20%) NFS
13 19 (0.20%) Postfix
14 18 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
15 16 (0.17%) Squid
16 15 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 10 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
18 7 (0.075%) KVM
19 6 (0.064%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 731 (7.82%) Terraform
2 714 (7.64%) Kubernetes
3 344 (3.68%) Ansible
4 231 (2.47%) Grafana
5 188 (2.01%) Prometheus
6 115 (1.23%) vCenter Server
7 81 (0.87%) Single Sign-On
8 72 (0.77%) SCCM
9 57 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 55 (0.59%) Microsoft Intune
11 48 (0.51%) FortiGate
12 43 (0.46%) Argo
13 41 (0.44%) Puppet
14 39 (0.42%) SCOM
15 37 (0.40%) Podman
16 36 (0.39%) Oracle RMAN
17 30 (0.32%) Nagios
18 29 (0.31%) Progress Chef
19 24 (0.26%) vMotion
20 21 (0.22%) WSUS
Vendors
1 977 (10.45%) Microsoft
2 621 (6.64%) Oracle
3 470 (5.03%) VMware
4 371 (3.97%) ServiceNow
5 327 (3.50%) Cisco
6 304 (3.25%) SAP
7 214 (2.29%) Splunk
8 180 (1.93%) Databricks
9 153 (1.64%) Google
10 147 (1.57%) Red Hat
11 124 (1.33%) Talend
12 119 (1.27%) Palo Alto
13 118 (1.26%) Salesforce
14 114 (1.22%) IBM
15 101 (1.08%) Juniper
16 95 (1.02%) CyberArk
17 89 (0.95%) Informatica
18 84 (0.90%) F5
18 84 (0.90%) Fortinet
19 80 (0.86%) Dynatrace