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

6 months to
9 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,201 5,130 6,060
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.02% 18.59% 18.59%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.95% 59.25% 62.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,204 3,327 3,937
10th Percentile £390 £350 £360
25th Percentile £459 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £549 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.14% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £643
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £540 £535 £550
% change year-on-year +0.93% -2.73% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 755 503 364
10th Percentile £20.50 £18.50 £20.24
25th Percentile £33.84 £18.87 £37.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +158.45% -59.17% +2.67%
75th Percentile £78.88 £43.75 £72.50
90th Percentile £90.60 £73.75 £81.05
UK median hourly rate £64.09 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +154.83% -58.08% -

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 14,794 8,658 9,742
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.94% 31.37% 29.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,964 5,469 6,048
10th Percentile £350 £304 £325
25th Percentile £440 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £633 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £525
% change year-on-year - - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,151 674 590
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.15 £17.07
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £27.00
Median hourly rate £52.50 £25.15 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +108.75% -54.27% -
75th Percentile £74.41 £50.00 £69.45
90th Percentile £88.74 £73.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £47.54 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +89.03% -49.70% -9.09%

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 9 September 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 9 September 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 9 September 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 3,624 £550 +3.29% 1,468
South East +1 2,334 £564 +4.98% 789
South West 0 1,418 £550 -0.23% 668
North of England +3 1,270 £516 +3.25% 570
Midlands 0 931 £475 -7.77% 266
West Midlands +1 792 £475 -7.77% 184
North West +2 748 £530 - 372
East of England 0 359 £550 - 401
Yorkshire +3 303 £500 +2.15% 115
North East 0 240 £475 -2.56% 104
East Midlands -1 130 £450 -5.26% 82
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
1 340 (3.33%) Confluence
2 254 (2.49%) SharePoint
3 152 (1.49%) SAS
4 119 (1.17%) Microsoft Exchange
5 92 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
6 91 (0.89%) Apache
7 88 (0.86%) Apache Spark
8 33 (0.32%) nginx
9 31 (0.30%) Jupyter
10 24 (0.24%) WebLogic
11 23 (0.23%) Oracle Application Server
12 22 (0.22%) Skype for Business
13 19 (0.19%) IIS
13 19 (0.19%) Tomcat
14 18 (0.18%) CMS
15 17 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
16 13 (0.13%) JBoss
16 13 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
17 9 (0.088%) Documentum
17 9 (0.088%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 185 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 142 (1.39%) Microsoft Office
3 99 (0.97%) Microsoft Project
4 94 (0.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 29 (0.28%) MS Visio
6 22 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.17%) AutoCAD
7 17 (0.17%) Revit
8 16 (0.16%) SOLIDWORKS
9 13 (0.13%) Simulink
10 8 (0.078%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.078%) Windchill
11 6 (0.059%) Adobe XD
11 6 (0.059%) Sketch
12 5 (0.049%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 5 (0.049%) Notepad++
13 4 (0.039%) Trello
14 3 (0.029%) OrCAD
15 2 (0.020%) Houdini
15 2 (0.020%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 125 (1.23%) SAP S/4HANA
2 79 (0.77%) Remedy ITSM
3 47 (0.46%) Oracle ERP
4 38 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
5 31 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 28 (0.27%) Teamcenter
7 24 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
8 23 (0.23%) Oracle Payroll
9 22 (0.22%) SAP PSCD
10 16 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
10 16 (0.16%) SAP HR
11 15 (0.15%) Primavera
11 15 (0.15%) SAP FI
12 13 (0.13%) Findur
13 12 (0.12%) iTrent
13 12 (0.12%) SAP GRC
13 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
14 11 (0.11%) NetSuite
14 11 (0.11%) Remedy AR System
14 11 (0.11%) Temenos T24
Cloud Services
1 1,867 (18.30%) Azure
2 1,701 (16.67%) AWS
3 451 (4.42%) Azure DevOps
4 434 (4.25%) Power Platform
5 432 (4.23%) GitHub
6 384 (3.76%) GCP
7 297 (2.91%) Microsoft 365
8 288 (2.82%) GitHub Actions
9 264 (2.59%) Entra ID
10 250 (2.45%) Serverless
11 212 (2.08%) Amazon S3
12 178 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
13 157 (1.54%) SaaS
14 154 (1.51%) OCI
15 142 (1.39%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 134 (1.31%) OpenShift
17 128 (1.25%) Amazon EKS
18 126 (1.24%) Amazon EC2
19 105 (1.03%) AWS CloudFormation
20 104 (1.02%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 420 (4.12%) Firewall
2 346 (3.39%) DNS
3 212 (2.08%) Network Security
4 196 (1.92%) WAN
5 185 (1.81%) VPN
6 173 (1.70%) DHCP
7 155 (1.52%) LAN
8 129 (1.26%) BGP
9 126 (1.24%) TCP/IP
10 118 (1.16%) Wi-Fi
11 99 (0.97%) VLAN
12 90 (0.88%) OSPF
13 83 (0.81%) Wireless
14 65 (0.64%) IPsec
15 64 (0.63%) VSAN
16 63 (0.62%) SSL
17 58 (0.57%) SD-WAN
18 57 (0.56%) MPLS
19 55 (0.54%) SAN
20 45 (0.44%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 314 (3.08%) Power BI
2 253 (2.48%) SQL Server
3 244 (2.39%) PostgreSQL
4 231 (2.26%) Data Warehouse
5 165 (1.62%) Metadata
6 160 (1.57%) Oracle Database
7 123 (1.21%) Relational Database
8 118 (1.16%) Data Lake
9 100 (0.98%) Amazon RDS
10 93 (0.91%) MongoDB
11 91 (0.89%) MySQL
12 90 (0.88%) NoSQL
13 77 (0.75%) Oracle Reports
14 70 (0.69%) Pentaho
15 59 (0.58%) Amazon Athena
16 57 (0.56%) Tableau
17 55 (0.54%) Elasticsearch
18 48 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
19 46 (0.45%) Big Data
20 45 (0.44%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 544 (5.33%) JIRA
2 488 (4.78%) Git
3 431 (4.23%) GitLab
4 399 (3.91%) Jenkins
5 123 (1.21%) Selenium
6 72 (0.71%) SonarQube
7 69 (0.68%) JUnit
7 69 (0.68%) Postman
8 57 (0.56%) Maven
9 56 (0.55%) JMeter
10 51 (0.50%) Cucumber
11 40 (0.39%) Gradle
11 40 (0.39%) Mockito
12 35 (0.34%) Cypress.io
12 35 (0.34%) Zephyr
13 34 (0.33%) REST Assured
14 33 (0.32%) Gatling
15 32 (0.31%) Artifactory
15 32 (0.31%) Rational DOORS
16 29 (0.28%) Bitbucket
General
1 2,259 (22.14%) Social Skills
2 2,037 (19.97%) Public Sector
3 830 (8.14%) Analytical Skills
4 682 (6.69%) Finance
5 382 (3.74%) Military
6 290 (2.84%) Aerospace
7 251 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
8 190 (1.86%) Influencing Skills
9 164 (1.61%) Organisational Skills
10 150 (1.47%) Telecoms
11 142 (1.39%) Banking
12 137 (1.34%) Legal
13 115 (1.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 111 (1.09%) Law
15 109 (1.07%) Manufacturing
16 93 (0.91%) Police
17 57 (0.56%) Presentation Skills
18 45 (0.44%) Marketing
19 44 (0.43%) Retail
20 41 (0.40%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,567 (15.36%) Architect
2 986 (9.67%) Developer
3 961 (9.42%) Lead
4 950 (9.31%) Senior
5 573 (5.62%) Consultant
6 569 (5.58%) Analyst
7 452 (4.43%) Data Engineer
8 412 (4.04%) DevOps Engineer
9 380 (3.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 269 (2.64%) Technical Architect
11 263 (2.58%) Software Engineer
12 253 (2.48%) Solutions Architect
13 250 (2.45%) Data Architect
14 234 (2.29%) Network Engineer
15 229 (2.24%) Security Architect
16 195 (1.91%) Administrator
17 190 (1.86%) Delivery Manager
18 189 (1.85%) Cloud Engineer
19 184 (1.80%) Java Developer
20 180 (1.76%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 873 (8.56%) Terraform
2 387 (3.79%) REST
3 211 (2.07%) Spring
4 200 (1.96%) Kafka
5 188 (1.84%) Spring Boot
6 179 (1.75%) React
7 177 (1.74%) .NET
8 169 (1.66%) RESTful
9 154 (1.51%) SOAP
10 137 (1.34%) JSON
11 132 (1.29%) Node.js
12 109 (1.07%) HTML
13 106 (1.04%) OAuth
14 105 (1.03%) AngularJS
15 99 (0.97%) Web Services
16 97 (0.95%) XML
17 87 (0.85%) PySpark
18 85 (0.83%) CSS
19 84 (0.82%) Oracle Fusion
20 81 (0.79%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 457 (4.48%) Cloud Native
2 382 (3.74%) Onboarding
3 311 (3.05%) Product Ownership
4 268 (2.63%) Data Centre
5 173 (1.70%) Management Information System
6 169 (1.66%) Legacy Systems
7 155 (1.52%) PKI
8 145 (1.42%) CMDB
8 145 (1.42%) Enterprise Software
9 125 (1.23%) Distributed Systems
10 116 (1.14%) Hybrid Cloud
11 112 (1.10%) Replication
11 112 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
12 99 (0.97%) Cyber Threat
13 92 (0.90%) Operational Technology
14 87 (0.85%) Security Operations Centre
15 86 (0.84%) Clustering
16 84 (0.82%) Data Structures
16 84 (0.82%) Public Cloud
17 78 (0.76%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 904 (8.86%) Windows
2 700 (6.86%) Linux
3 351 (3.44%) Windows Server
4 204 (2.00%) Unix
5 141 (1.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 132 (1.29%) Windows 10
7 65 (0.64%) Solaris
8 63 (0.62%) Android
9 46 (0.45%) Mac OS
10 40 (0.39%) CentOS
11 35 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 34 (0.33%) Ubuntu
13 30 (0.29%) AIX
14 26 (0.25%) Apple iOS
15 24 (0.24%) Windows 7
16 20 (0.20%) VMS
16 20 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
17 17 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
18 16 (0.16%) Rocky
19 14 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,136 (20.94%) Agile
2 1,537 (15.07%) DevOps
3 1,486 (14.57%) CI/CD
4 1,362 (13.35%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,238 (12.14%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,086 (10.65%) Problem-Solving
7 1,000 (9.80%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 876 (8.59%) Infrastructure as Code
9 832 (8.16%) Migration
10 773 (7.58%) Cybersecurity
11 738 (7.23%) ITIL
12 655 (6.42%) Test Automation
13 636 (6.23%) Roadmaps
14 630 (6.18%) Technical Leadership
15 629 (6.17%) Analytics
16 626 (6.14%) Containerisation
17 623 (6.11%) AI
18 597 (5.85%) Software Engineering
19 588 (5.76%) Decision-Making
20 565 (5.54%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,173 (11.50%) Python
2 962 (9.43%) SQL
3 659 (6.46%) Java
4 545 (5.34%) PowerShell
5 342 (3.35%) JavaScript
6 293 (2.87%) Bash
7 192 (1.88%) C#
8 170 (1.67%) TypeScript
9 134 (1.31%) PL/SQL
10 109 (1.07%) Bicep
11 68 (0.67%) Shell Script
12 62 (0.61%) C++
13 55 (0.54%) C
14 47 (0.46%) Go
14 47 (0.46%) Groovy
15 41 (0.40%) Scala
16 40 (0.39%) Kotlin
17 31 (0.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 30 (0.29%) Apex Code
18 30 (0.29%) R
Qualifications
1 7,651 (75.00%) SC Cleared
2 2,098 (20.57%) DV Cleared
3 429 (4.21%) Degree
4 389 (3.81%) BPSS Clearance
5 191 (1.87%) CISSP
6 160 (1.57%) Azure Certification
7 155 (1.52%) Cisco Certification
8 151 (1.48%) Microsoft Certification
9 135 (1.32%) AWS Certification
10 116 (1.14%) CISM
11 101 (0.99%) PMI Certification
12 96 (0.94%) PMP
13 82 (0.80%) ISTQB
14 76 (0.75%) CCNP
15 63 (0.62%) Computer Science Degree
16 62 (0.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 55 (0.54%) CCNA
18 43 (0.42%) TOGAF Certification
19 41 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
19 41 (0.40%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 462 (4.53%) QA
2 333 (3.26%) Data Quality
3 290 (2.84%) NIST
4 284 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 240 (2.35%) NCSC
6 225 (2.21%) PMO
7 222 (2.18%) Accessibility
8 153 (1.50%) GDPR
9 148 (1.45%) SLA
10 129 (1.26%) GRC
11 69 (0.68%) WCAG
12 58 (0.57%) JSP 440
13 44 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
14 43 (0.42%) NIST 800
15 35 (0.34%) Def Stans
16 26 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 25 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 20 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
19 19 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
19 19 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 682 (6.69%) Docker
2 556 (5.45%) Active Directory
3 394 (3.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 141 (1.38%) VMware ESXi
5 138 (1.35%) VMware NSX
6 122 (1.20%) Hyper-V
6 122 (1.20%) vSphere
7 84 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
8 43 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
9 41 (0.40%) Firmware
10 38 (0.37%) Oracle RAC
11 27 (0.26%) vCloud
12 25 (0.25%) BitLocker
13 15 (0.15%) NFS
14 11 (0.11%) Postfix
14 11 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
15 10 (0.098%) Squid
16 9 (0.088%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 9 (0.088%) KVM
17 8 (0.078%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 819 (8.03%) Kubernetes
2 404 (3.96%) Ansible
3 224 (2.20%) Grafana
4 177 (1.74%) Prometheus
5 136 (1.33%) vCenter Server
6 129 (1.26%) SCCM
7 89 (0.87%) SCOM
8 87 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
9 62 (0.61%) Argo
10 49 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
11 48 (0.47%) Puppet
12 46 (0.45%) Oracle RMAN
13 36 (0.35%) Data Guard
14 29 (0.28%) Kibana
14 29 (0.28%) Progress Chef
15 28 (0.27%) Control-M
16 27 (0.26%) WSUS
17 25 (0.25%) Istio
17 25 (0.25%) Nagios
17 25 (0.25%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,340 (13.14%) Microsoft
2 809 (7.93%) Oracle
3 560 (5.49%) VMware
4 485 (4.75%) ServiceNow
5 392 (3.84%) SAP
6 283 (2.77%) Cisco
7 226 (2.22%) Google
8 203 (1.99%) Splunk
9 188 (1.84%) Databricks
10 129 (1.26%) Red Hat
11 123 (1.21%) Salesforce
12 117 (1.15%) Palo Alto
13 104 (1.02%) IBM
14 98 (0.96%) Informatica
15 94 (0.92%) Talend
16 90 (0.88%) Remedy
17 86 (0.84%) Dynatrace
18 82 (0.80%) CyberArk
19 74 (0.73%) SolarWinds
20 73 (0.72%) Juniper