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

6 months to
30 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 10,309 5,232 5,843
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.15% 18.86% 18.20%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.87% 59.57% 61.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,227 3,420 3,710
10th Percentile £398 £340 £356
25th Percentile £463 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.33% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £550 £537 £550
% change year-on-year +2.42% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 800 543 341
10th Percentile £20.50 £18.51 £21.25
25th Percentile £30.12 £18.87 £37.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £61.71
Median % change year-on-year +158.45% -59.24% +2.84%
75th Percentile £78.31 £37.13 £72.50
90th Percentile £91.31 £71.20 £85.00
UK median hourly rate £63.48 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +152.41% -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 14,968 8,783 9,535
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.15% 31.65% 29.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,010 5,591 5,792
10th Percentile £350 £300 £319
25th Percentile £447 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £737
UK median daily rate £530 £525 £525
% change year-on-year +0.95% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,248 717 531
10th Percentile £17.71 £17.87 £18.13
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £30.00
Median hourly rate £51.25 £25.15 £53.00
Median % change year-on-year +103.78% -52.55% -1.09%
75th Percentile £74.00 £43.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £73.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £45.35 £25.15 £49.00
% change year-on-year +80.32% -48.67% -8.69%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 +5 3,667 £550 +2.33% 1,448
South East +1 2,266 £564 +7.48% 913
South West 0 1,401 £550 - 763
North of England +3 1,303 £519 -1.19% 667
Midlands 0 949 £478 -7.60% 357
West Midlands 0 809 £475 -8.39% 237
North West +1 785 £530 -4.07% 388
East of England 0 433 £574 +4.36% 374
Yorkshire +1 294 £500 +1.83% 109
North East 0 244 £466 -10.77% 174
East Midlands 0 133 £495 +7.03% 119
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
1 326 (3.16%) Confluence
2 250 (2.43%) SharePoint
3 147 (1.43%) SAS
4 117 (1.13%) Microsoft Exchange
5 99 (0.96%) Apache Airflow
6 89 (0.86%) Apache Spark
7 88 (0.85%) Apache
8 34 (0.33%) nginx
9 33 (0.32%) CMS
10 32 (0.31%) Jupyter
11 29 (0.28%) WebLogic
12 22 (0.21%) Skype for Business
13 19 (0.18%) Oracle Application Server
14 18 (0.17%) Tomcat
15 16 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
16 15 (0.15%) IIS
17 11 (0.11%) JBoss
17 11 (0.11%) NetWeaver
17 11 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
18 10 (0.097%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 189 (1.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 137 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
3 93 (0.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 92 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
5 29 (0.28%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
7 21 (0.20%) AutoCAD
8 19 (0.18%) Revit
9 18 (0.17%) SOLIDWORKS
9 18 (0.17%) Windchill
10 9 (0.087%) Simulink
11 8 (0.078%) Chatbot
12 7 (0.068%) Adobe XD
13 6 (0.058%) Sketch
14 5 (0.049%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 5 (0.049%) Notepad++
15 4 (0.039%) OrCAD
15 4 (0.039%) Trello
16 2 (0.019%) Gliffy
16 2 (0.019%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 128 (1.24%) SAP S/4HANA
2 79 (0.77%) Remedy ITSM
3 54 (0.52%) Oracle ERP
4 40 (0.39%) Oracle EBS
5 34 (0.33%) Teamcenter
6 29 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 27 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
8 26 (0.25%) SAP PSCD
9 24 (0.23%) Oracle Payroll
10 20 (0.19%) SAP FI
11 17 (0.16%) SAP HR
12 15 (0.15%) Maximo
12 15 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
13 13 (0.13%) Primavera
13 13 (0.13%) SAP CO
14 12 (0.12%) NetSuite
14 12 (0.12%) SAP BRIM
14 12 (0.12%) SAP GRC
14 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
15 11 (0.11%) iTrent
Cloud Services
1 1,842 (17.87%) Azure
2 1,682 (16.32%) AWS
3 442 (4.29%) Power Platform
4 436 (4.23%) Azure DevOps
5 400 (3.88%) GitHub
6 387 (3.75%) GCP
7 312 (3.03%) Microsoft 365
8 287 (2.78%) Entra ID
9 278 (2.70%) GitHub Actions
10 234 (2.27%) Serverless
11 205 (1.99%) Amazon S3
12 169 (1.64%) AWS Lambda
13 152 (1.47%) OCI
14 148 (1.44%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 147 (1.43%) SaaS
16 138 (1.34%) Amazon EKS
17 134 (1.30%) OpenShift
18 121 (1.17%) Amazon EC2
19 107 (1.04%) PowerApps
20 102 (0.99%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 406 (3.94%) Firewall
2 351 (3.40%) DNS
3 221 (2.14%) Network Security
4 179 (1.74%) WAN
5 173 (1.68%) VPN
6 170 (1.65%) DHCP
7 141 (1.37%) LAN
8 123 (1.19%) TCP/IP
9 119 (1.15%) BGP
10 113 (1.10%) Wi-Fi
11 91 (0.88%) VLAN
12 80 (0.78%) OSPF
13 79 (0.77%) Wireless
14 62 (0.60%) SSL
15 59 (0.57%) VSAN
16 58 (0.56%) IPsec
17 57 (0.55%) MPLS
18 56 (0.54%) SAN
19 52 (0.50%) SD-WAN
20 43 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 312 (3.03%) Power BI
2 236 (2.29%) SQL Server
3 234 (2.27%) PostgreSQL
4 231 (2.24%) Data Warehouse
5 175 (1.70%) Metadata
6 164 (1.59%) Oracle Database
7 116 (1.13%) Data Lake
8 115 (1.12%) Relational Database
9 93 (0.90%) MongoDB
9 93 (0.90%) MySQL
10 90 (0.87%) Amazon RDS
11 86 (0.83%) NoSQL
12 73 (0.71%) Oracle Reports
13 65 (0.63%) Pentaho
14 60 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
15 58 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
16 52 (0.50%) Tableau
17 46 (0.45%) Amazon Aurora
18 45 (0.44%) Big Data
19 38 (0.37%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 535 (5.19%) JIRA
2 485 (4.70%) Git
3 443 (4.30%) GitLab
4 410 (3.98%) Jenkins
5 126 (1.22%) Selenium
6 71 (0.69%) Postman
6 71 (0.69%) SonarQube
7 68 (0.66%) JUnit
8 67 (0.65%) Maven
9 63 (0.61%) Cucumber
10 59 (0.57%) JMeter
11 42 (0.41%) Gradle
12 40 (0.39%) Mockito
13 37 (0.36%) REST Assured
14 36 (0.35%) Gatling
14 36 (0.35%) Zephyr
15 35 (0.34%) Artifactory
15 35 (0.34%) Cypress.io
15 35 (0.34%) Visual Studio
16 31 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,327 (22.57%) Social Skills
2 2,032 (19.71%) Public Sector
3 843 (8.18%) Analytical Skills
4 682 (6.62%) Finance
5 410 (3.98%) Military
6 322 (3.12%) Aerospace
7 255 (2.47%) Documentation Skills
8 209 (2.03%) Influencing Skills
9 175 (1.70%) Organisational Skills
10 150 (1.46%) Telecoms
11 149 (1.45%) Manufacturing
12 133 (1.29%) Legal
13 131 (1.27%) Banking
14 125 (1.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 112 (1.09%) Law
16 97 (0.94%) Police
17 66 (0.64%) Presentation Skills
18 44 (0.43%) Local Government
19 42 (0.41%) Marketing
20 40 (0.39%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,603 (15.55%) Architect
2 970 (9.41%) Developer
3 958 (9.29%) Senior
4 953 (9.24%) Lead
5 581 (5.64%) Consultant
6 575 (5.58%) Analyst
7 435 (4.22%) Data Engineer
8 421 (4.08%) DevOps Engineer
9 380 (3.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 264 (2.56%) Technical Architect
11 261 (2.53%) Solutions Architect
12 253 (2.45%) Data Architect
13 249 (2.42%) Security Architect
14 234 (2.27%) Software Engineer
15 226 (2.19%) Network Engineer
16 211 (2.05%) Administrator
17 197 (1.91%) Cloud Engineer
18 194 (1.88%) Designer
19 186 (1.80%) Java Developer
20 181 (1.76%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 880 (8.54%) Terraform
2 397 (3.85%) REST
3 211 (2.05%) Kafka
4 210 (2.04%) Spring
5 191 (1.85%) Spring Boot
6 161 (1.56%) .NET
6 161 (1.56%) SOAP
7 160 (1.55%) React
8 158 (1.53%) RESTful
9 130 (1.26%) Node.js
10 122 (1.18%) JSON
11 116 (1.13%) OAuth
12 113 (1.10%) HTML
13 104 (1.01%) XML
14 96 (0.93%) Web Services
15 94 (0.91%) Middleware
16 93 (0.90%) AngularJS
17 88 (0.85%) Oracle Fusion
18 87 (0.84%) CSS
19 86 (0.83%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 464 (4.50%) Cloud Native
2 402 (3.90%) Onboarding
3 323 (3.13%) Product Ownership
4 266 (2.58%) Data Centre
5 178 (1.73%) Management Information System
6 161 (1.56%) PKI
7 160 (1.55%) Legacy Systems
8 153 (1.48%) Enterprise Software
9 140 (1.36%) CMDB
10 119 (1.15%) Hybrid Cloud
11 113 (1.10%) Distributed Systems
12 109 (1.06%) Cyber Threat
13 105 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
14 104 (1.01%) Operational Technology
15 102 (0.99%) Replication
16 86 (0.83%) Security Operations Centre
16 86 (0.83%) Security Posture
17 83 (0.81%) Public Cloud
18 82 (0.80%) Clustering
18 82 (0.80%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 918 (8.90%) Windows
2 710 (6.89%) Linux
3 354 (3.43%) Windows Server
4 213 (2.07%) Unix
5 146 (1.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 135 (1.31%) Windows 10
7 82 (0.80%) Solaris
8 65 (0.63%) Android
9 45 (0.44%) CentOS
9 45 (0.44%) Mac OS
10 37 (0.36%) Ubuntu
11 35 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 29 (0.28%) AIX
12 29 (0.28%) Apple iOS
13 24 (0.23%) Windows 7
14 22 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
15 19 (0.18%) VMS
16 16 (0.16%) Rocky
17 15 (0.15%) Windows Server 2016
18 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,150 (20.86%) Agile
2 1,542 (14.96%) DevOps
3 1,513 (14.68%) CI/CD
4 1,466 (14.22%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,290 (12.51%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,113 (10.80%) Problem-Solving
7 1,029 (9.98%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 896 (8.69%) Infrastructure as Code
9 854 (8.28%) Migration
10 794 (7.70%) Cybersecurity
11 724 (7.02%) ITIL
12 666 (6.46%) Roadmaps
13 663 (6.43%) AI
14 662 (6.42%) Technical Leadership
15 652 (6.32%) Test Automation
16 639 (6.20%) Containerisation
16 639 (6.20%) Decision-Making
17 622 (6.03%) Analytics
18 585 (5.67%) Software Engineering
19 560 (5.43%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,170 (11.35%) Python
2 953 (9.24%) SQL
3 656 (6.36%) Java
4 537 (5.21%) PowerShell
5 353 (3.42%) JavaScript
6 304 (2.95%) Bash
7 187 (1.81%) C#
8 179 (1.74%) TypeScript
9 125 (1.21%) PL/SQL
10 109 (1.06%) Bicep
11 71 (0.69%) Shell Script
12 59 (0.57%) C++
13 53 (0.51%) Go
14 48 (0.47%) C
14 48 (0.47%) Groovy
15 47 (0.46%) Scala
16 44 (0.43%) Kotlin
17 31 (0.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 27 (0.26%) Kusto Query Language
19 25 (0.24%) R
Qualifications
1 7,726 (74.94%) SC Cleared
2 2,122 (20.58%) DV Cleared
3 451 (4.37%) BPSS Clearance
4 439 (4.26%) Degree
5 199 (1.93%) CISSP
6 170 (1.65%) Azure Certification
7 161 (1.56%) Cisco Certification
8 154 (1.49%) Microsoft Certification
9 142 (1.38%) AWS Certification
10 117 (1.13%) CISM
11 97 (0.94%) PMI Certification
12 88 (0.85%) PMP
13 87 (0.84%) ISTQB
14 82 (0.80%) CCNP
15 63 (0.61%) Computer Science Degree
16 59 (0.57%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 55 (0.53%) CCNA
18 44 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 44 (0.43%) TOGAF Certification
19 41 (0.40%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 462 (4.48%) QA
2 330 (3.20%) Data Quality
3 305 (2.96%) NIST
4 285 (2.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 262 (2.54%) NCSC
6 244 (2.37%) Accessibility
7 216 (2.10%) PMO
8 162 (1.57%) SLA
9 147 (1.43%) GDPR
10 141 (1.37%) GRC
11 70 (0.68%) WCAG
12 52 (0.50%) JSP 440
13 44 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
14 41 (0.40%) NIST 800
15 35 (0.34%) Def Stans
16 29 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 25 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
18 21 (0.20%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 20 (0.19%) ISO 9001
20 19 (0.18%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 687 (6.66%) Docker
2 589 (5.71%) Active Directory
3 406 (3.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 139 (1.35%) VMware ESXi
5 130 (1.26%) VMware NSX
6 126 (1.22%) Hyper-V
7 124 (1.20%) vSphere
8 84 (0.81%) Virtual Machines
9 42 (0.41%) Firmware
10 41 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
11 35 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
12 26 (0.25%) BitLocker
13 25 (0.24%) vCloud
14 20 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
15 15 (0.15%) NFS
16 13 (0.13%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 11 (0.11%) KVM
18 10 (0.097%) Microsoft Virtual Server
18 10 (0.097%) Postfix
19 9 (0.087%) Squid
Systems Management
1 830 (8.05%) Kubernetes
2 401 (3.89%) Ansible
3 232 (2.25%) Grafana
4 172 (1.67%) Prometheus
5 128 (1.24%) SCCM
6 127 (1.23%) vCenter Server
7 94 (0.91%) SCOM
8 90 (0.87%) Microsoft Intune
9 57 (0.55%) Argo
10 50 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
11 43 (0.42%) Puppet
12 42 (0.41%) Kibana
13 36 (0.35%) Oracle RMAN
14 34 (0.33%) Data Guard
15 30 (0.29%) VxRail
16 29 (0.28%) Istio
17 28 (0.27%) Control-M
18 27 (0.26%) NetBackup
19 26 (0.25%) WSUS
20 25 (0.24%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,385 (13.43%) Microsoft
2 821 (7.96%) Oracle
3 552 (5.35%) VMware
4 473 (4.59%) ServiceNow
5 391 (3.79%) SAP
6 275 (2.67%) Cisco
7 250 (2.43%) Google
8 199 (1.93%) Splunk
9 165 (1.60%) Databricks
10 121 (1.17%) Red Hat
11 113 (1.10%) Palo Alto
12 109 (1.06%) Salesforce
13 96 (0.93%) IBM
14 92 (0.89%) Informatica
15 90 (0.87%) CyberArk
15 90 (0.87%) Remedy
16 87 (0.84%) Dynatrace
17 85 (0.82%) Talend
18 74 (0.72%) SolarWinds
19 72 (0.70%) Citrix