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

6 months to
12 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 10,195 5,207 6,104
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.00% 18.72% 18.51%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.85% 59.37% 61.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,186 3,396 3,969
10th Percentile £393 £350 £360
25th Percentile £459 £450 £456
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 £738
UK median daily rate £543 £534 £550
% change year-on-year +1.59% -2.91% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 757 507 363
10th Percentile £21.33 £18.50 £20.24
25th Percentile £35.00 £18.87 £37.20
Median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +158.45% -59.17% +2.67%
75th Percentile £78.75 £43.38 £72.50
90th Percentile £91.63 £73.75 £83.09
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 14,807 8,771 9,849
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.95% 31.53% 29.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,953 5,557 6,105
10th Percentile £350 £305 £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 1,163 681 589
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.13 £17.06
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 £74.00 £50.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £88.75 £73.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +88.87% -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 12 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 12 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 12 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 +6 3,600 £550 +3.29% 1,188
South East +1 2,331 £565 +5.12% 758
South West 0 1,421 £550 - 569
North of England +3 1,267 £518 +3.60% 448
Midlands 0 931 £475 -7.77% 268
West Midlands +1 796 £475 -8.39% 168
North West +2 742 £530 - 257
East of England 0 372 £551 +0.18% 351
Yorkshire +3 304 £500 +2.15% 100
North East 0 242 £475 -2.56% 99
East Midlands -1 128 £450 -2.70% 99
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 (3.33%) Confluence
2 260 (2.55%) SharePoint
3 152 (1.49%) SAS
4 117 (1.15%) Microsoft Exchange
5 91 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
6 87 (0.85%) Apache
7 85 (0.83%) Apache Spark
8 35 (0.34%) nginx
9 30 (0.29%) Jupyter
10 24 (0.24%) WebLogic
11 23 (0.23%) Oracle Application Server
12 22 (0.22%) Skype for Business
13 19 (0.19%) Tomcat
14 18 (0.18%) CMS
15 16 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
16 15 (0.15%) IIS
17 13 (0.13%) NetWeaver
17 13 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
18 12 (0.12%) JBoss
19 10 (0.098%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 186 (1.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 141 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
3 98 (0.96%) Microsoft Project
4 94 (0.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 30 (0.29%) MS Visio
6 23 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.17%) AutoCAD
7 17 (0.17%) Revit
8 16 (0.16%) SOLIDWORKS
9 11 (0.11%) 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
1 128 (1.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 79 (0.77%) Remedy ITSM
3 49 (0.48%) Oracle ERP
4 37 (0.36%) Oracle EBS
5 31 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 28 (0.27%) Teamcenter
7 26 (0.26%) SAP PSCD
8 24 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
9 23 (0.23%) Oracle Payroll
10 18 (0.18%) SAP HR
11 16 (0.16%) SAP FI
12 15 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
13 14 (0.14%) Primavera
14 13 (0.13%) Findur
15 12 (0.12%) iTrent
15 12 (0.12%) SAP CO
15 12 (0.12%) SAP GRC
15 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
16 11 (0.11%) NetSuite
16 11 (0.11%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 1,865 (18.29%) Azure
2 1,685 (16.53%) AWS
3 451 (4.42%) Azure DevOps
4 434 (4.26%) Power Platform
5 424 (4.16%) GitHub
6 385 (3.78%) GCP
7 298 (2.92%) Microsoft 365
8 287 (2.82%) GitHub Actions
9 268 (2.63%) Entra ID
10 248 (2.43%) Serverless
11 207 (2.03%) Amazon S3
12 177 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
13 156 (1.53%) SaaS
14 153 (1.50%) OCI
15 144 (1.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 138 (1.35%) OpenShift
17 133 (1.30%) Amazon EKS
18 126 (1.24%) Amazon EC2
19 107 (1.05%) AWS CloudFormation
20 102 (1.00%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 412 (4.04%) Firewall
2 346 (3.39%) DNS
3 214 (2.10%) Network Security
4 189 (1.85%) WAN
5 183 (1.79%) VPN
6 171 (1.68%) DHCP
7 146 (1.43%) LAN
8 124 (1.22%) TCP/IP
9 122 (1.20%) BGP
10 115 (1.13%) Wi-Fi
11 99 (0.97%) VLAN
12 83 (0.81%) OSPF
13 79 (0.77%) Wireless
14 64 (0.63%) SSL
15 63 (0.62%) VSAN
16 61 (0.60%) IPsec
17 58 (0.57%) MPLS
18 56 (0.55%) SD-WAN
19 55 (0.54%) SAN
20 41 (0.40%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 311 (3.05%) Power BI
2 248 (2.43%) SQL Server
3 244 (2.39%) PostgreSQL
4 234 (2.30%) Data Warehouse
5 169 (1.66%) Metadata
6 160 (1.57%) Oracle Database
7 128 (1.26%) Relational Database
8 119 (1.17%) Data Lake
9 100 (0.98%) Amazon RDS
10 96 (0.94%) MongoDB
11 93 (0.91%) MySQL
12 90 (0.88%) NoSQL
13 79 (0.77%) Oracle Reports
14 69 (0.68%) Pentaho
15 57 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
15 57 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
16 53 (0.52%) Tableau
17 46 (0.45%) Amazon Redshift
18 45 (0.44%) Amazon Aurora
19 43 (0.42%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 545 (5.35%) JIRA
2 490 (4.81%) Git
3 434 (4.26%) GitLab
4 404 (3.96%) Jenkins
5 118 (1.16%) Selenium
6 78 (0.77%) SonarQube
7 70 (0.69%) Postman
8 67 (0.66%) JUnit
9 59 (0.58%) Maven
10 49 (0.48%) Cucumber
10 49 (0.48%) JMeter
11 41 (0.40%) Gradle
11 41 (0.40%) Mockito
12 36 (0.35%) Artifactory
12 36 (0.35%) Zephyr
13 34 (0.33%) Cypress.io
13 34 (0.33%) REST Assured
14 33 (0.32%) Visual Studio
15 32 (0.31%) Gatling
16 30 (0.29%) MSI
General
1 2,293 (22.49%) Social Skills
2 2,028 (19.89%) Public Sector
3 832 (8.16%) Analytical Skills
4 693 (6.80%) Finance
5 396 (3.88%) Military
6 293 (2.87%) Aerospace
7 245 (2.40%) Documentation Skills
8 195 (1.91%) Influencing Skills
9 165 (1.62%) Organisational Skills
10 148 (1.45%) Telecoms
11 138 (1.35%) Legal
12 137 (1.34%) Banking
13 115 (1.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 115 (1.13%) Law
14 112 (1.10%) Manufacturing
15 95 (0.93%) Police
16 61 (0.60%) Presentation Skills
17 46 (0.45%) Marketing
18 43 (0.42%) Retail
19 41 (0.40%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,584 (15.54%) Architect
2 978 (9.59%) Developer
3 947 (9.29%) Lead
4 939 (9.21%) Senior
5 575 (5.64%) Consultant
6 562 (5.51%) Analyst
7 441 (4.33%) Data Engineer
8 419 (4.11%) DevOps Engineer
9 378 (3.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 271 (2.66%) Technical Architect
11 265 (2.60%) Software Engineer
12 260 (2.55%) Solutions Architect
13 249 (2.44%) Data Architect
14 230 (2.26%) Security Architect
15 225 (2.21%) Network Engineer
16 201 (1.97%) Administrator
17 194 (1.90%) Cloud Engineer
18 188 (1.84%) Delivery Manager
19 181 (1.78%) Azure Engineer
19 181 (1.78%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 888 (8.71%) Terraform
2 385 (3.78%) REST
3 212 (2.08%) Spring
4 203 (1.99%) Kafka
5 192 (1.88%) Spring Boot
6 177 (1.74%) React
7 173 (1.70%) .NET
8 169 (1.66%) RESTful
9 153 (1.50%) SOAP
10 137 (1.34%) Node.js
11 134 (1.31%) JSON
12 111 (1.09%) HTML
13 107 (1.05%) AngularJS
13 107 (1.05%) OAuth
14 101 (0.99%) XML
15 97 (0.95%) Web Services
16 87 (0.85%) CSS
17 85 (0.83%) Oracle Fusion
17 85 (0.83%) PySpark
18 82 (0.80%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 459 (4.50%) Cloud Native
2 382 (3.75%) Onboarding
3 313 (3.07%) Product Ownership
4 266 (2.61%) Data Centre
5 175 (1.72%) Management Information System
6 167 (1.64%) Legacy Systems
7 160 (1.57%) PKI
8 149 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
9 139 (1.36%) CMDB
10 122 (1.20%) Distributed Systems
11 117 (1.15%) Hybrid Cloud
12 112 (1.10%) Replication
12 112 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
13 100 (0.98%) Cyber Threat
14 94 (0.92%) Operational Technology
15 84 (0.82%) Clustering
15 84 (0.82%) Public Cloud
15 84 (0.82%) Security Operations Centre
16 81 (0.79%) Data Structures
17 80 (0.78%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 912 (8.95%) Windows
2 720 (7.06%) Linux
3 350 (3.43%) Windows Server
4 208 (2.04%) Unix
5 146 (1.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 135 (1.32%) Windows 10
7 69 (0.68%) Solaris
8 65 (0.64%) Android
9 46 (0.45%) Mac OS
10 42 (0.41%) CentOS
11 36 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 35 (0.34%) Ubuntu
13 30 (0.29%) AIX
14 27 (0.26%) Apple iOS
15 24 (0.24%) Windows 7
16 22 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
17 20 (0.20%) VMS
18 17 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
19 16 (0.16%) Rocky
20 14 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,145 (21.04%) Agile
2 1,549 (15.19%) DevOps
3 1,503 (14.74%) CI/CD
4 1,383 (13.57%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,246 (12.22%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,103 (10.82%) Problem-Solving
7 1,003 (9.84%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 897 (8.80%) Infrastructure as Code
9 837 (8.21%) Migration
10 772 (7.57%) Cybersecurity
11 734 (7.20%) ITIL
12 658 (6.45%) Test Automation
13 642 (6.30%) Roadmaps
14 638 (6.26%) Technical Leadership
15 636 (6.24%) Containerisation
16 634 (6.22%) AI
17 632 (6.20%) Analytics
18 605 (5.93%) Software Engineering
19 596 (5.85%) Decision-Making
20 556 (5.45%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,175 (11.53%) Python
2 950 (9.32%) SQL
3 662 (6.49%) Java
4 551 (5.40%) PowerShell
5 349 (3.42%) JavaScript
6 307 (3.01%) Bash
7 193 (1.89%) C#
8 175 (1.72%) TypeScript
9 134 (1.31%) PL/SQL
10 111 (1.09%) Bicep
11 66 (0.65%) Shell Script
12 64 (0.63%) C++
13 54 (0.53%) C
14 51 (0.50%) Go
15 47 (0.46%) Groovy
16 41 (0.40%) Scala
17 40 (0.39%) Kotlin
18 31 (0.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 28 (0.27%) Apex Code
20 27 (0.26%) R
Qualifications
1 7,641 (74.95%) SC Cleared
2 2,115 (20.75%) DV Cleared
3 423 (4.15%) Degree
4 400 (3.92%) BPSS Clearance
5 194 (1.90%) CISSP
6 166 (1.63%) Azure Certification
7 156 (1.53%) Microsoft Certification
8 155 (1.52%) Cisco Certification
9 139 (1.36%) AWS Certification
10 117 (1.15%) CISM
11 101 (0.99%) PMI Certification
12 96 (0.94%) PMP
13 82 (0.80%) ISTQB
14 76 (0.75%) CCNP
15 64 (0.63%) Computer Science Degree
16 61 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 53 (0.52%) CCNA
18 42 (0.41%) TOGAF Certification
19 41 (0.40%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 41 (0.40%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 463 (4.54%) QA
2 326 (3.20%) Data Quality
3 291 (2.85%) NIST
4 284 (2.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 244 (2.39%) NCSC
6 223 (2.19%) Accessibility
7 218 (2.14%) PMO
8 150 (1.47%) GDPR
9 146 (1.43%) SLA
10 131 (1.28%) GRC
11 71 (0.70%) WCAG
12 58 (0.57%) JSP 440
13 44 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
14 43 (0.42%) NIST 800
15 36 (0.35%) Def Stans
16 26 (0.26%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 23 (0.23%) 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
1 686 (6.73%) Docker
2 563 (5.52%) Active Directory
3 396 (3.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 144 (1.41%) VMware ESXi
5 136 (1.33%) VMware NSX
6 125 (1.23%) Hyper-V
7 119 (1.17%) vSphere
8 84 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
9 43 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
10 41 (0.40%) Firmware
11 37 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
12 27 (0.26%) vCloud
13 25 (0.25%) BitLocker
14 15 (0.15%) NFS
15 13 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
16 11 (0.11%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 11 (0.11%) Postfix
17 10 (0.098%) Squid
18 9 (0.088%) Embedded Firmware
18 9 (0.088%) KVM
Systems Management
1 828 (8.12%) Kubernetes
2 412 (4.04%) Ansible
3 224 (2.20%) Grafana
4 176 (1.73%) Prometheus
5 136 (1.33%) vCenter Server
6 130 (1.28%) SCCM
7 90 (0.88%) Microsoft Intune
7 90 (0.88%) SCOM
8 62 (0.61%) Argo
9 49 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
10 48 (0.47%) Puppet
11 42 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
12 36 (0.35%) Data Guard
13 29 (0.28%) Kibana
13 29 (0.28%) Progress Chef
14 28 (0.27%) Control-M
14 28 (0.27%) VxRail
15 27 (0.26%) WSUS
16 26 (0.26%) Istio
17 25 (0.25%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,358 (13.32%) Microsoft
2 811 (7.95%) Oracle
3 559 (5.48%) VMware
4 479 (4.70%) ServiceNow
5 402 (3.94%) SAP
6 274 (2.69%) Cisco
7 231 (2.27%) Google
8 198 (1.94%) Splunk
9 182 (1.79%) Databricks
10 132 (1.29%) Red Hat
11 118 (1.16%) Salesforce
12 113 (1.11%) Palo Alto
13 98 (0.96%) IBM
14 97 (0.95%) Informatica
15 92 (0.90%) Talend
16 89 (0.87%) Remedy
17 86 (0.84%) Dynatrace
18 84 (0.82%) CyberArk
19 74 (0.73%) SolarWinds
20 73 (0.72%) Citrix