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

6 months to
5 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 7,089 4,976 6,772
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.52% 18.22% 18.70%
As % of the Qualifications category 65.77% 59.59% 60.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,764 3,159 4,307
10th Percentile £348 £340 £375
25th Percentile £450 £448 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.31%
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 682 254 425
10th Percentile £17.87 £19.13 £20.00
25th Percentile £19.54 £25.32 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £57.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -55.88% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £61.42 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.58 £75.00 £82.37
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 10,779 8,350 11,144
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.24% 30.57% 30.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,107 5,106 7,027
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £419 £419 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 877 411 684
10th Percentile £16.30 £18.51 £16.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £24.50 £24.99
Median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £51.89
Median % change year-on-year -45.54% -11.00% +15.31%
75th Percentile £58.25 £68.00 £68.16
90th Percentile £76.58 £80.59 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £51.89
% change year-on-year -37.13% -22.91% +15.31%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 2,373 £540 -1.82% 488
South East +1 1,445 £520 -5.45% 617
South West 0 1,206 £550 -0.18% 418
North of England -2 788 £500 +5.26% 243
Midlands +3 702 £515 -6.53% 190
West Midlands +3 550 £520 -6.31% 122
North West 0 534 £506 +6.53% 136
East of England +2 328 £500 - 285
Yorkshire -15 154 £500 +7.24% 69
East Midlands 0 146 £438 -12.50% 62
North East -1 120 £450 -14.29% 38
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
1 270 (3.81%) Confluence
2 185 (2.61%) SharePoint
3 118 (1.66%) Microsoft Exchange
4 106 (1.50%) SAS
5 77 (1.09%) Apache
6 53 (0.75%) Apache Spark
7 43 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
8 36 (0.51%) Skype for Business
9 35 (0.49%) nginx
10 26 (0.37%) WebLogic
11 20 (0.28%) CMS
12 18 (0.25%) IIS
13 11 (0.16%) SharePoint Server
14 9 (0.13%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2010
15 8 (0.11%) OpenStack
15 8 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
16 7 (0.099%) Exchange Server 2013
16 7 (0.099%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 7 (0.099%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 247 (3.48%) Microsoft Office
2 155 (2.19%) Microsoft Excel
3 100 (1.41%) Microsoft Project
4 61 (0.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 35 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 20 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.18%) Siemens NX
8 12 (0.17%) Simulink
9 9 (0.13%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 5 (0.071%) FrameMaker
10 5 (0.071%) Oracle Smart View
10 5 (0.071%) Sketch
10 5 (0.071%) Windchill
11 4 (0.056%) Stateflow
11 4 (0.056%) Trello
12 3 (0.042%) Adobe Illustrator
12 3 (0.042%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.042%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.042%) Photoshop
12 3 (0.042%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 146 (2.06%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (0.51%) 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%) Dynamics CRM
6 18 (0.25%) SAP MM
6 18 (0.25%) Teamcenter
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 1,202 (16.96%) Azure
2 1,168 (16.48%) AWS
3 318 (4.49%) Microsoft 365
4 315 (4.44%) GitHub
5 305 (4.30%) GCP
6 268 (3.78%) Azure DevOps
7 264 (3.72%) Power Platform
8 208 (2.93%) Serverless
9 183 (2.58%) Entra ID
10 162 (2.29%) Amazon S3
11 161 (2.27%) GitHub Actions
12 136 (1.92%) OpenShift
13 124 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
14 102 (1.44%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 99 (1.40%) SaaS
16 98 (1.38%) Amazon EC2
17 97 (1.37%) AWS CloudFormation
18 87 (1.23%) IaaS
19 86 (1.21%) Power Automate
20 80 (1.13%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 386 (5.45%) Firewall
2 245 (3.46%) DNS
3 177 (2.50%) VPN
4 165 (2.33%) Network Security
5 155 (2.19%) WAN
6 128 (1.81%) TCP/IP
7 111 (1.57%) LAN
8 102 (1.44%) BGP
9 92 (1.30%) DHCP
10 88 (1.24%) Wireless
11 75 (1.06%) SSL
12 72 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
13 69 (0.97%) VLAN
14 58 (0.82%) IPsec
14 58 (0.82%) MPLS
14 58 (0.82%) OSPF
15 49 (0.69%) SAN
16 42 (0.59%) HTTP
16 42 (0.59%) Skype
17 40 (0.56%) Cisco ISE
Database & Business Intelligence
1 190 (2.68%) PostgreSQL
2 182 (2.57%) Power BI
3 91 (1.28%) Data Warehouse
4 86 (1.21%) SQL Server
5 80 (1.13%) Metadata
6 79 (1.11%) MongoDB
7 75 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
7 75 (1.06%) NoSQL
8 72 (1.02%) Oracle Database
9 67 (0.95%) Relational Database
10 62 (0.87%) Azure SQL Database
11 46 (0.65%) Big Data
12 44 (0.62%) Elasticsearch
13 40 (0.56%) SAS Enterprise Guide
14 39 (0.55%) Pentaho
15 38 (0.54%) Data Lake
16 35 (0.49%) Amazon Athena
17 33 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
17 33 (0.47%) Redis
18 31 (0.44%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 485 (6.84%) JIRA
2 378 (5.33%) Git
3 337 (4.75%) Jenkins
4 263 (3.71%) 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
9 46 (0.65%) Oracle APEX
10 42 (0.59%) SonarQube
11 32 (0.45%) Maven
12 30 (0.42%) Cucumber
13 29 (0.41%) Mockito
14 24 (0.34%) MSI
14 24 (0.34%) REST Assured
15 22 (0.31%) Metasploit
16 20 (0.28%) Burp Suite
16 20 (0.28%) Rational DOORS
General
1 1,890 (26.66%) Public Sector
2 1,859 (26.22%) Social Skills
3 647 (9.13%) Analytical Skills
4 503 (7.10%) Finance
5 286 (4.03%) Military
6 206 (2.91%) Telecoms
7 201 (2.84%) Manufacturing
8 178 (2.51%) Documentation Skills
9 142 (2.00%) Electronics
10 140 (1.97%) Marketing
11 129 (1.82%) Aerospace
12 113 (1.59%) Organisational Skills
13 100 (1.41%) Legal
14 85 (1.20%) Banking
14 85 (1.20%) Presentation Skills
15 76 (1.07%) Influencing Skills
16 66 (0.93%) Law
17 45 (0.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 33 (0.47%) Aviation
19 31 (0.44%) Police
Job Titles
1 968 (13.65%) Architect
2 668 (9.42%) Developer
3 593 (8.37%) Senior
4 518 (7.31%) Consultant
5 503 (7.10%) Analyst
6 416 (5.87%) Lead
7 339 (4.78%) DevOps Engineer
8 238 (3.36%) Support Engineer
9 223 (3.15%) Network Engineer
10 200 (2.82%) Data Engineer
11 166 (2.34%) Solutions Architect
12 155 (2.19%) Software Engineer
13 150 (2.12%) Technical Architect
14 143 (2.02%) Business Analyst
15 140 (1.97%) SAP Consultant
16 133 (1.88%) Tester
17 130 (1.83%) AWS Engineer
18 129 (1.82%) Platform Engineer
19 125 (1.76%) IT Engineer
19 125 (1.76%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 302 (4.26%) REST
2 172 (2.43%) React
3 171 (2.41%) Node.js
4 153 (2.16%) Kafka
5 140 (1.97%) SOAP
6 138 (1.95%) JSON
7 115 (1.62%) HTML
8 113 (1.59%) Spring
9 112 (1.58%) LDAP
10 100 (1.41%) .NET
11 97 (1.37%) CSS
12 95 (1.34%) AngularJS
13 91 (1.28%) Spring Boot
14 88 (1.24%) XML
15 87 (1.23%) RESTful
15 87 (1.23%) Web Services
16 84 (1.18%) Oracle Fusion
17 76 (1.07%) OAuth
18 74 (1.04%) PySpark
19 58 (0.82%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 223 (3.15%) Data Centre
2 196 (2.76%) Cloud Native
3 187 (2.64%) PKI
4 186 (2.62%) Product Ownership
5 182 (2.57%) Onboarding
6 143 (2.02%) Management Information System
7 113 (1.59%) Security Posture
8 105 (1.48%) Enterprise Software
9 101 (1.42%) Self-Motivation
10 91 (1.28%) Legacy Systems
11 80 (1.13%) Cyber Threat
12 72 (1.02%) Driving Licence
13 65 (0.92%) Replication
13 65 (0.92%) Security Operations Centre
14 59 (0.83%) Analytical Mindset
15 55 (0.78%) Hybrid Cloud
16 49 (0.69%) CMDB
17 48 (0.68%) Public Cloud
18 47 (0.66%) Distributed Systems
19 44 (0.62%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 781 (11.02%) Windows
2 543 (7.66%) Linux
3 182 (2.57%) Windows Server
4 176 (2.48%) Windows 10
5 98 (1.38%) Android
6 97 (1.37%) Unix
7 93 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 78 (1.10%) Mac OS
9 47 (0.66%) VMS
10 41 (0.58%) Ubuntu
11 29 (0.41%) Apple iOS
12 22 (0.31%) 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 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2003
18 10 (0.14%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,374 (19.38%) Agile
2 1,116 (15.74%) DevOps
3 967 (13.64%) CI/CD
4 889 (12.54%) Problem-Solving
5 682 (9.62%) Migration
6 583 (8.22%) Stakeholder Management
7 523 (7.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 486 (6.86%) ITIL
9 476 (6.71%) Continuous Improvement
10 464 (6.55%) Cybersecurity
11 447 (6.31%) Infrastructure as Code
12 398 (5.61%) Business Intelligence
13 388 (5.47%) Service Management
14 387 (5.46%) Test Automation
15 386 (5.45%) Containerisation
16 380 (5.36%) Analytics
17 349 (4.92%) Roadmaps
18 329 (4.64%) Workflow
19 326 (4.60%) Scrum
20 320 (4.51%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 927 (13.08%) Python
2 550 (7.76%) SQL
3 497 (7.01%) PowerShell
4 376 (5.30%) Java
5 352 (4.97%) JavaScript
6 209 (2.95%) Bash
7 168 (2.37%) TypeScript
8 130 (1.83%) C#
9 89 (1.26%) Go
10 87 (1.23%) C++
11 66 (0.93%) PL/SQL
12 62 (0.87%) C
12 62 (0.87%) Shell Script
13 42 (0.59%) Ruby
14 41 (0.58%) Scala
15 39 (0.55%) ABAP
16 33 (0.47%) Bicep
16 33 (0.47%) Perl
17 30 (0.42%) MATLAB
18 29 (0.41%) Ada
Qualifications
1 5,481 (77.32%) SC Cleared
2 1,152 (16.25%) DV Cleared
3 374 (5.28%) Degree
4 234 (3.30%) BPSS Clearance
5 132 (1.86%) CISSP
6 120 (1.69%) Cisco Certification
6 120 (1.69%) Microsoft Certification
7 119 (1.68%) Azure Certification
8 102 (1.44%) CCNP
9 97 (1.37%) AWS Certification
10 80 (1.13%) CISM
11 60 (0.85%) Computer Science Degree
12 56 (0.79%) ITIL Certification
13 53 (0.75%) CCNA
14 47 (0.66%) CEH
14 47 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
15 40 (0.56%) CHECK Team Member
16 39 (0.55%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 36 (0.51%) CTC Cleared
17 36 (0.51%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 213 (3.00%) QA
2 207 (2.92%) NIST
3 200 (2.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 163 (2.30%) NCSC
5 153 (2.16%) Data Quality
6 140 (1.97%) GDPR
7 126 (1.78%) SLA
8 117 (1.65%) Accessibility
9 76 (1.07%) 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%) Def Stans
15 29 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
15 29 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 29 (0.41%) PCI DSS
16 27 (0.38%) COBIT
17 17 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 14 (0.20%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 540 (7.62%) Docker
2 453 (6.39%) Active Directory
3 199 (2.81%) VMware Infrastructure
4 66 (0.93%) VMware NSX
5 63 (0.89%) vSphere
6 56 (0.79%) VMware ESXi
7 50 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
8 35 (0.49%) Hyper-V
9 33 (0.47%) 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 8 (0.11%) ISA Server
15 8 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
16 7 (0.099%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 654 (9.23%) Kubernetes
2 612 (8.63%) Terraform
3 284 (4.01%) Ansible
4 174 (2.45%) Grafana
5 145 (2.05%) Prometheus
6 103 (1.45%) SCCM
7 92 (1.30%) 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 35 (0.49%) Kibana
12 35 (0.49%) Packer
13 33 (0.47%) OPNET
14 30 (0.42%) Podman
15 26 (0.37%) Puppet
16 25 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
16 25 (0.35%) Nessus
16 25 (0.35%) vRealize
17 23 (0.32%) Nmap
Vendors
1 917 (12.94%) Microsoft
2 440 (6.21%) SAP
3 398 (5.61%) Cisco
4 390 (5.50%) Oracle
5 357 (5.04%) VMware
6 321 (4.53%) ServiceNow
7 195 (2.75%) Splunk
8 151 (2.13%) Red Hat
9 131 (1.85%) Juniper
10 130 (1.83%) Palo Alto
11 110 (1.55%) Google
12 108 (1.52%) Atlassian
13 105 (1.48%) CyberArk
14 97 (1.37%) Salesforce
15 95 (1.34%) Databricks
16 93 (1.31%) Dell
17 87 (1.23%) HP
18 78 (1.10%) Remedy
19 72 (1.02%) CheckPoint
20 70 (0.99%) Dynatrace