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

6 months to
9 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 2
Rank change year-on-year +1 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,097 4,562 7,183
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.26% 18.73% 19.17%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.84% 59.77% 61.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,267 3,049 4,679
10th Percentile £363 £328 £350
25th Percentile £448 £450 £461
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% -1.87%
75th Percentile £625 £626 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £534 £550
% change year-on-year -1.59% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 773 255 471
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.25 £24.91 £21.46
Median hourly rate £52.50 £59.00 £51.00
Median % change year-on-year -11.02% +15.69% -15.00%
75th Percentile £73.46 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.47 £79.48 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £55.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year -4.55% +4.76% -12.50%

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 13,026 7,633 11,741
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.30% 31.34% 31.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,722 4,903 7,278
10th Percentile £340 £300 £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 £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £745
UK median daily rate £518 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 994 424 933
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.50 £13.99
25th Percentile £20.75 £24.66 £17.75
Median hourly rate £41.94 £50.75 £38.95
Median % change year-on-year -17.36% +30.30% -24.37%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.39 £82.43 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £39.50 £45.00 £39.92
% change year-on-year -12.22% +12.73% -23.96%

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 April 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 April 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 April 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 3,198 £525 - 519
South East +1 2,129 £531 -3.44% 548
South West 0 1,353 £538 -4.44% 389
Midlands +4 908 £485 -9.68% 175
North of England -1 852 £488 -2.50% 305
West Midlands +4 756 £490 -10.91% 128
North West -2 531 £500 - 169
East of England +2 366 £500 +35.14% 158
Yorkshire -8 198 £480 -8.57% 72
North East +1 158 £450 -6.25% 65
East Midlands -1 148 £450 -12.20% 46
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
1 349 (3.84%) Confluence
2 216 (2.37%) SharePoint
3 148 (1.63%) SAS
4 132 (1.45%) Microsoft Exchange
5 78 (0.86%) Apache Spark
6 75 (0.82%) Apache
7 52 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
8 40 (0.44%) nginx
9 35 (0.38%) WebLogic
10 21 (0.23%) Jupyter
11 19 (0.21%) Skype for Business
12 16 (0.18%) IIS
13 14 (0.15%) CMS
13 14 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
13 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
14 10 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
14 10 (0.11%) Tomcat
15 8 (0.088%) Apache Superset
15 8 (0.088%) ArcGIS
16 6 (0.066%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 229 (2.52%) Microsoft Office
2 192 (2.11%) Microsoft Excel
3 127 (1.40%) Microsoft Project
4 74 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 45 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.13%) Simulink
8 5 (0.055%) Notepad++
9 4 (0.044%) Siemens NX
9 4 (0.044%) Windchill
10 3 (0.033%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.022%) Adobe XD
11 2 (0.022%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.022%) CATIA
11 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.022%) Lectora
11 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.022%) Sketch
12 1 (0.011%) MicroStation
12 1 (0.011%) Trello
Business Applications
1 86 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
3 39 (0.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 27 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
5 26 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
5 26 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 18 (0.20%) Maximo
7 14 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.14%) SAP PP
8 13 (0.14%) Temenos T24
9 12 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
10 11 (0.12%) Findur
10 11 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
11 10 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
12 9 (0.099%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.099%) SAP HCM
13 8 (0.088%) Primavera
13 8 (0.088%) Workday HCM
14 7 (0.077%) SAP HR
14 7 (0.077%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 1,536 (16.88%) Azure
2 1,501 (16.50%) AWS
3 387 (4.25%) GitHub
4 373 (4.10%) GCP
5 360 (3.96%) Azure DevOps
6 321 (3.53%) Power Platform
7 270 (2.97%) Microsoft 365
8 259 (2.85%) Serverless
9 232 (2.55%) Entra ID
10 199 (2.19%) GitHub Actions
11 197 (2.17%) Amazon S3
12 175 (1.92%) AWS Lambda
13 158 (1.74%) OpenShift
14 133 (1.46%) PaaS
15 127 (1.40%) Amazon EC2
16 126 (1.39%) IaaS
17 119 (1.31%) AWS CloudFormation
18 107 (1.18%) Azure Data Factory
19 105 (1.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 99 (1.09%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 438 (4.81%) Firewall
2 260 (2.86%) DNS
3 216 (2.37%) Network Security
4 215 (2.36%) WAN
5 189 (2.08%) LAN
6 173 (1.90%) VPN
7 144 (1.58%) BGP
8 134 (1.47%) DHCP
9 117 (1.29%) TCP/IP
10 114 (1.25%) OSPF
11 97 (1.07%) VLAN
12 88 (0.97%) Wireless
13 74 (0.81%) Wi-Fi
14 62 (0.68%) MPLS
15 57 (0.63%) SAN
16 49 (0.54%) IPsec
17 48 (0.53%) Cisco ISE
18 44 (0.48%) SD-WAN
19 42 (0.46%) SSL
20 41 (0.45%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 245 (2.69%) Power BI
2 230 (2.53%) PostgreSQL
3 175 (1.92%) Data Warehouse
4 174 (1.91%) SQL Server
5 127 (1.40%) Metadata
6 106 (1.17%) Oracle Database
7 101 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
8 91 (1.00%) NoSQL
9 86 (0.95%) Relational Database
10 81 (0.89%) MongoDB
11 76 (0.84%) Azure SQL Database
12 71 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
12 71 (0.78%) MySQL
13 66 (0.73%) Pentaho
14 65 (0.71%) Data Lake
15 64 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
15 64 (0.70%) Tableau
16 51 (0.56%) Oracle Reports
17 46 (0.51%) Amazon Athena
18 43 (0.47%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 557 (6.12%) JIRA
2 459 (5.05%) Git
3 361 (3.97%) Jenkins
4 318 (3.50%) GitLab
5 105 (1.15%) Selenium
6 84 (0.92%) JUnit
7 75 (0.82%) Postman
8 54 (0.59%) SonarQube
9 53 (0.58%) Rational DOORS
10 50 (0.55%) Bitbucket
11 46 (0.51%) Artifactory
12 44 (0.48%) Maven
13 41 (0.45%) Cypress.io
13 41 (0.45%) Oracle APEX
14 39 (0.43%) Cucumber
15 38 (0.42%) Mockito
16 34 (0.37%) JMeter
17 28 (0.31%) REST Assured
18 27 (0.30%) Visual Studio
19 22 (0.24%) MSI
General
1 2,121 (23.32%) Public Sector
2 2,078 (22.84%) Social Skills
3 768 (8.44%) Analytical Skills
4 669 (7.35%) Finance
5 326 (3.58%) Military
6 261 (2.87%) Documentation Skills
7 220 (2.42%) Aerospace
8 156 (1.71%) Telecoms
9 153 (1.68%) Legal
10 146 (1.60%) Manufacturing
11 119 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
12 117 (1.29%) Banking
13 102 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
14 100 (1.10%) Organisational Skills
15 94 (1.03%) Marketing
16 86 (0.95%) Electronics
17 83 (0.91%) Law
18 57 (0.63%) Police
19 51 (0.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 31 (0.34%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,370 (15.06%) Architect
2 856 (9.41%) Developer
3 791 (8.70%) Senior
4 664 (7.30%) Analyst
5 584 (6.42%) Lead
6 445 (4.89%) Consultant
7 391 (4.30%) Data Engineer
8 372 (4.09%) DevOps Engineer
9 273 (3.00%) Network Engineer
10 263 (2.89%) Technical Architect
11 261 (2.87%) Software Engineer
12 243 (2.67%) Business Analyst
13 206 (2.26%) Solutions Architect
14 201 (2.21%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 197 (2.17%) Project Manager
16 193 (2.12%) Azure Engineer
17 172 (1.89%) Delivery Manager
18 170 (1.87%) Support Engineer
19 167 (1.84%) Security Architect
20 158 (1.74%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 342 (3.76%) REST
2 202 (2.22%) Spring
3 177 (1.95%) Node.js
4 164 (1.80%) React
5 163 (1.79%) Kafka
6 155 (1.70%) Spring Boot
7 152 (1.67%) .NET
8 148 (1.63%) JSON
9 140 (1.54%) LDAP
10 139 (1.53%) SOAP
11 124 (1.36%) RESTful
12 108 (1.19%) AngularJS
13 106 (1.17%) PySpark
14 105 (1.15%) Web Services
15 95 (1.04%) OAuth
16 88 (0.97%) Oracle Fusion
17 87 (0.96%) HTML
18 85 (0.93%) XML
19 75 (0.82%) SAML
20 71 (0.78%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 319 (3.51%) Product Ownership
2 282 (3.10%) Data Centre
3 278 (3.06%) Cloud Native
4 233 (2.56%) Onboarding
5 192 (2.11%) PKI
6 154 (1.69%) Management Information System
7 126 (1.39%) Self-Motivation
8 122 (1.34%) Security Posture
9 119 (1.31%) Legacy Systems
10 117 (1.29%) Enterprise Software
11 109 (1.20%) Replication
12 96 (1.06%) Distributed Systems
13 80 (0.88%) Public Cloud
14 77 (0.85%) Data Structures
15 73 (0.80%) Hybrid Cloud
16 67 (0.74%) Clustering
17 65 (0.71%) Security Operations Centre
18 61 (0.67%) Cyber Threat
19 57 (0.63%) Private Cloud
19 57 (0.63%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 806 (8.86%) Windows
2 648 (7.12%) Linux
3 234 (2.57%) Windows Server
4 127 (1.40%) Unix
5 116 (1.28%) Windows 10
6 113 (1.24%) Android
7 110 (1.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 57 (0.63%) Mac OS
9 49 (0.54%) Apple iOS
10 35 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 30 (0.33%) VMS
12 22 (0.24%) Solaris
13 21 (0.23%) CentOS
14 20 (0.22%) AIX
15 19 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
16 17 (0.19%) Windows 7
16 17 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
17 12 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
18 8 (0.088%) Embedded Linux
18 8 (0.088%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,867 (20.52%) Agile
2 1,385 (15.22%) DevOps
3 1,204 (13.24%) CI/CD
4 1,075 (11.82%) Problem-Solving
5 875 (9.62%) Stakeholder Management
6 794 (8.73%) Migration
7 790 (8.68%) Continuous Improvement
8 686 (7.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 603 (6.63%) ITIL
10 568 (6.24%) Infrastructure as Code
11 561 (6.17%) Cybersecurity
12 538 (5.91%) Analytics
13 526 (5.78%) Test Automation
14 509 (5.60%) Roadmaps
15 474 (5.21%) Containerisation
15 474 (5.21%) Software Engineering
16 458 (5.03%) Scrum
17 446 (4.90%) Data Modelling
18 436 (4.79%) Service Management
19 412 (4.53%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 1,020 (11.21%) Python
2 832 (9.15%) SQL
3 563 (6.19%) PowerShell
4 524 (5.76%) Java
5 324 (3.56%) JavaScript
6 195 (2.14%) Bash
7 193 (2.12%) C#
8 147 (1.62%) TypeScript
9 107 (1.18%) PL/SQL
10 97 (1.07%) Shell Script
11 95 (1.04%) C++
12 63 (0.69%) Go
13 60 (0.66%) C
14 58 (0.64%) Ruby
15 54 (0.59%) Scala
16 52 (0.57%) Bicep
17 43 (0.47%) Ada
18 40 (0.44%) Apex Code
19 39 (0.43%) R
20 38 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 6,839 (75.18%) SC Cleared
2 1,696 (18.64%) DV Cleared
3 432 (4.75%) Degree
4 262 (2.88%) BPSS Clearance
5 177 (1.95%) Cisco Certification
6 166 (1.82%) CISSP
7 136 (1.49%) Azure Certification
8 120 (1.32%) CCNP
9 109 (1.20%) AWS Certification
10 107 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
11 104 (1.14%) CISM
12 75 (0.82%) CCNA
13 68 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
14 65 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
15 64 (0.70%) PMP
16 62 (0.68%) Computer Science Degree
17 56 (0.62%) PMI Certification
18 50 (0.55%) GIAC
18 50 (0.55%) ISTQB
19 47 (0.52%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 331 (3.64%) QA
2 282 (3.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 271 (2.98%) NIST
4 260 (2.86%) Data Quality
5 193 (2.12%) NCSC
6 161 (1.77%) GDPR
7 145 (1.59%) Accessibility
8 128 (1.41%) PMO
9 105 (1.15%) SLA
10 63 (0.69%) JSP 440
11 62 (0.68%) GRC
12 42 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
13 41 (0.45%) NIST 800
14 39 (0.43%) COBIT
15 37 (0.41%) WCAG
16 35 (0.38%) PCI DSS
17 28 (0.31%) Def Stans
18 26 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 24 (0.26%) RMADS
20 19 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 608 (6.68%) Docker
2 457 (5.02%) Active Directory
3 257 (2.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 89 (0.98%) VMware NSX
5 75 (0.82%) VMware ESXi
6 69 (0.76%) vSphere
7 67 (0.74%) Hyper-V
8 51 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
9 33 (0.36%) Firmware
10 23 (0.25%) BitLocker
10 23 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
11 21 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
12 17 (0.19%) NFS
12 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 14 (0.15%) Postfix
14 12 (0.13%) vCloud
15 10 (0.11%) Squid
16 8 (0.088%) Microsoft App-V
17 5 (0.055%) KVM
17 5 (0.055%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 780 (8.57%) Kubernetes
2 716 (7.87%) Terraform
3 299 (3.29%) Ansible
4 217 (2.39%) Grafana
5 179 (1.97%) Prometheus
6 101 (1.11%) Single Sign-On
7 92 (1.01%) vCenter Server
8 82 (0.90%) SCCM
9 77 (0.85%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 60 (0.66%) Microsoft Intune
11 57 (0.63%) Argo
12 50 (0.55%) FortiGate
13 38 (0.42%) Podman
14 36 (0.40%) Packer
14 36 (0.40%) Puppet
15 34 (0.37%) Progress Chef
16 30 (0.33%) OPNET
17 25 (0.27%) Kibana
17 25 (0.27%) Oracle RMAN
18 24 (0.26%) Nagios
Vendors
1 997 (10.96%) Microsoft
2 549 (6.03%) Oracle
3 460 (5.06%) VMware
4 397 (4.36%) Cisco
5 377 (4.14%) ServiceNow
6 347 (3.81%) SAP
7 215 (2.36%) Splunk
8 177 (1.95%) Databricks
9 173 (1.90%) Red Hat
10 131 (1.44%) Google
11 130 (1.43%) Salesforce
12 125 (1.37%) Juniper
13 124 (1.36%) Atlassian
14 117 (1.29%) IBM
15 116 (1.28%) Palo Alto
16 96 (1.06%) CyberArk
17 92 (1.01%) Talend
18 84 (0.92%) Remedy
19 82 (0.90%) Dell
20 78 (0.86%) Citrix