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

6 months to
4 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 9,025 4,566 7,185
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.37% 18.74% 19.13%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.76% 59.98% 61.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,196 3,055 4,680
10th Percentile £363 £325 £351
25th Percentile £447 £450 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £628 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £534 £550
% change year-on-year -1.59% -3.00% -0.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 769 256 466
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.82 £25.10 £21.46
Median hourly rate £51.00 £58.04 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -12.13% +10.55% -12.50%
75th Percentile £72.50 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.50 £78.53 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £51.00 £54.99 £52.77
% change year-on-year -7.26% +4.22% -12.06%

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 12,938 7,612 11,750
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.51% 31.24% 31.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,639 4,891 7,290
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 £620 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £743
UK median daily rate £518 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 987 423 916
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.50 £13.99
25th Percentile £20.50 £24.66 £17.74
Median hourly rate £37.50 £50.00 £38.45
Median % change year-on-year -25.00% +30.03% -26.05%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.38 £82.25 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £37.12 £45.00 £38.75
% change year-on-year -17.51% +16.13% -26.19%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 3,149 £525 - 519
South East +1 2,109 £530 -3.64% 548
South West 0 1,351 £538 -4.36% 389
Midlands +4 917 £485 -9.68% 175
North of England -1 843 £483 -3.38% 305
West Midlands +4 759 £490 -10.91% 128
North West -2 519 £500 - 169
East of England +1 360 £485 +14.06% 158
Yorkshire -2 202 £488 -7.14% 72
North East 0 155 £450 -6.25% 65
East Midlands +1 154 £450 -11.11% 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
1 348 (3.86%) Confluence
2 213 (2.36%) SharePoint
3 148 (1.64%) SAS
4 128 (1.42%) Microsoft Exchange
5 79 (0.88%) Apache
6 78 (0.86%) Apache Spark
7 53 (0.59%) Apache Airflow
8 40 (0.44%) nginx
9 35 (0.39%) WebLogic
10 21 (0.23%) Jupyter
10 21 (0.23%) Skype for Business
11 17 (0.19%) IIS
12 15 (0.17%) CMS
13 14 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 14 (0.16%) Tuxedo
14 13 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
15 11 (0.12%) Tomcat
16 9 (0.100%) ArcGIS
17 8 (0.089%) Apache Superset
18 6 (0.066%) JBoss
Applications
1 228 (2.53%) Microsoft Office
2 192 (2.13%) Microsoft Excel
3 125 (1.39%) Microsoft Project
4 74 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 45 (0.50%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.13%) Simulink
8 5 (0.055%) Adobe XD
8 5 (0.055%) Siemens NX
8 5 (0.055%) Sketch
9 4 (0.044%) Notepad++
9 4 (0.044%) Windchill
10 3 (0.033%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.022%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.022%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.022%) CATIA
11 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.022%) Lectora
11 2 (0.022%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.022%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 87 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
3 39 (0.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 27 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
4 27 (0.30%) Teamcenter
5 25 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
6 18 (0.20%) Maximo
7 14 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.14%) SAP PP
9 12 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
9 12 (0.13%) Temenos T24
10 11 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
11 10 (0.11%) Findur
12 9 (0.100%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.100%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.100%) SAP PSCD
13 8 (0.089%) Primavera
13 8 (0.089%) Workday HCM
14 7 (0.078%) SAP MM
14 7 (0.078%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 1,511 (16.74%) Azure
2 1,478 (16.38%) AWS
3 395 (4.38%) GitHub
4 372 (4.12%) GCP
5 355 (3.93%) Azure DevOps
6 316 (3.50%) Power Platform
7 266 (2.95%) Microsoft 365
8 261 (2.89%) Serverless
9 229 (2.54%) Entra ID
10 206 (2.28%) GitHub Actions
11 196 (2.17%) Amazon S3
12 175 (1.94%) AWS Lambda
13 164 (1.82%) OpenShift
14 131 (1.45%) PaaS
15 127 (1.41%) Amazon EC2
16 123 (1.36%) IaaS
17 119 (1.32%) AWS CloudFormation
18 107 (1.19%) Azure Data Factory
19 106 (1.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 98 (1.09%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 433 (4.80%) Firewall
2 257 (2.85%) DNS
3 213 (2.36%) Network Security
4 211 (2.34%) WAN
5 185 (2.05%) LAN
6 174 (1.93%) VPN
7 143 (1.58%) BGP
8 130 (1.44%) DHCP
9 117 (1.30%) TCP/IP
10 112 (1.24%) OSPF
11 95 (1.05%) VLAN
12 86 (0.95%) Wireless
13 72 (0.80%) Wi-Fi
14 62 (0.69%) MPLS
15 54 (0.60%) SAN
16 49 (0.54%) IPsec
17 47 (0.52%) Cisco ISE
18 43 (0.48%) SD-WAN
19 42 (0.47%) SSL
20 40 (0.44%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 238 (2.64%) Power BI
2 231 (2.56%) PostgreSQL
3 171 (1.89%) Data Warehouse
4 164 (1.82%) SQL Server
5 123 (1.36%) Metadata
6 104 (1.15%) Oracle Database
7 103 (1.14%) Amazon RDS
8 94 (1.04%) NoSQL
9 85 (0.94%) Relational Database
10 84 (0.93%) MongoDB
11 77 (0.85%) Azure SQL Database
12 73 (0.81%) Elasticsearch
13 70 (0.78%) MySQL
14 67 (0.74%) Pentaho
15 64 (0.71%) Data Lake
16 62 (0.69%) Amazon Redshift
16 62 (0.69%) Tableau
17 48 (0.53%) Oracle Reports
18 47 (0.52%) Big Data
19 43 (0.48%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 557 (6.17%) JIRA
2 460 (5.10%) Git
3 367 (4.07%) Jenkins
4 321 (3.56%) GitLab
5 105 (1.16%) Selenium
6 85 (0.94%) JUnit
7 75 (0.83%) Postman
8 56 (0.62%) SonarQube
9 53 (0.59%) Rational DOORS
10 51 (0.57%) Bitbucket
11 46 (0.51%) Artifactory
12 45 (0.50%) Maven
13 43 (0.48%) Cypress.io
14 41 (0.45%) Oracle APEX
15 40 (0.44%) Cucumber
16 38 (0.42%) Mockito
17 34 (0.38%) JMeter
18 28 (0.31%) REST Assured
19 27 (0.30%) Visual Studio
20 21 (0.23%) MSI
General
1 2,148 (23.80%) Public Sector
2 2,076 (23.00%) Social Skills
3 762 (8.44%) Analytical Skills
4 664 (7.36%) Finance
5 322 (3.57%) Military
6 258 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
7 219 (2.43%) Aerospace
8 155 (1.72%) Telecoms
9 153 (1.70%) Legal
10 148 (1.64%) Manufacturing
11 117 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
12 114 (1.26%) Banking
13 103 (1.14%) Presentation Skills
14 102 (1.13%) Organisational Skills
15 93 (1.03%) Marketing
16 87 (0.96%) Electronics
17 81 (0.90%) Law
18 55 (0.61%) Police
19 50 (0.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 31 (0.34%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,344 (14.89%) Architect
2 851 (9.43%) Developer
3 782 (8.66%) Senior
4 659 (7.30%) Analyst
5 576 (6.38%) Lead
6 454 (5.03%) Consultant
7 390 (4.32%) Data Engineer
8 366 (4.06%) DevOps Engineer
9 268 (2.97%) Network Engineer
10 261 (2.89%) Software Engineer
11 254 (2.81%) Technical Architect
12 242 (2.68%) Business Analyst
13 212 (2.35%) Solutions Architect
14 188 (2.08%) Project Manager
15 187 (2.07%) Azure Engineer
15 187 (2.07%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 173 (1.92%) Support Engineer
17 171 (1.89%) Delivery Manager
18 167 (1.85%) Security Architect
19 159 (1.76%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 346 (3.83%) REST
2 195 (2.16%) Spring
3 178 (1.97%) Node.js
4 169 (1.87%) Kafka
5 168 (1.86%) React
6 149 (1.65%) .NET
6 149 (1.65%) Spring Boot
7 148 (1.64%) JSON
8 143 (1.58%) LDAP
9 139 (1.54%) SOAP
10 128 (1.42%) RESTful
11 108 (1.20%) AngularJS
12 105 (1.16%) PySpark
13 104 (1.15%) Web Services
14 96 (1.06%) OAuth
15 91 (1.01%) HTML
16 88 (0.98%) Oracle Fusion
17 85 (0.94%) XML
18 78 (0.86%) SAML
19 74 (0.82%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 318 (3.52%) Product Ownership
2 273 (3.02%) Cloud Native
3 272 (3.01%) Data Centre
4 230 (2.55%) Onboarding
5 193 (2.14%) PKI
6 148 (1.64%) Management Information System
7 125 (1.39%) Self-Motivation
8 122 (1.35%) Security Posture
9 118 (1.31%) Legacy Systems
10 111 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
11 108 (1.20%) Replication
12 94 (1.04%) Distributed Systems
13 81 (0.90%) Public Cloud
14 76 (0.84%) Data Structures
15 73 (0.81%) Hybrid Cloud
16 65 (0.72%) Cyber Threat
17 64 (0.71%) Clustering
18 63 (0.70%) Security Operations Centre
19 59 (0.65%) Virtual Team
20 51 (0.57%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 800 (8.86%) Windows
2 652 (7.22%) Linux
3 231 (2.56%) Windows Server
4 121 (1.34%) Unix
5 118 (1.31%) Windows 10
6 116 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 110 (1.22%) Android
8 55 (0.61%) Mac OS
9 46 (0.51%) Apple iOS
10 38 (0.42%) Ubuntu
11 31 (0.34%) VMS
12 22 (0.24%) CentOS
13 20 (0.22%) Solaris
13 20 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
14 18 (0.20%) AIX
15 17 (0.19%) Windows 7
15 17 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
16 12 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
17 8 (0.089%) Embedded Linux
17 8 (0.089%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,844 (20.43%) Agile
2 1,371 (15.19%) DevOps
3 1,198 (13.27%) CI/CD
4 1,067 (11.82%) Problem-Solving
5 863 (9.56%) Stakeholder Management
6 791 (8.76%) Migration
7 781 (8.65%) Continuous Improvement
8 680 (7.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 606 (6.71%) ITIL
10 569 (6.30%) Cybersecurity
11 565 (6.26%) Infrastructure as Code
12 536 (5.94%) Analytics
13 522 (5.78%) Test Automation
14 505 (5.60%) Roadmaps
15 476 (5.27%) Software Engineering
16 475 (5.26%) Containerisation
17 453 (5.02%) Scrum
18 443 (4.91%) Data Modelling
19 437 (4.84%) Service Management
20 403 (4.47%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 1,026 (11.37%) Python
2 820 (9.09%) SQL
3 558 (6.18%) PowerShell
4 519 (5.75%) Java
5 329 (3.65%) JavaScript
6 197 (2.18%) Bash
7 193 (2.14%) C#
8 151 (1.67%) TypeScript
9 104 (1.15%) PL/SQL
10 98 (1.09%) Shell Script
11 97 (1.07%) C++
12 66 (0.73%) Go
13 60 (0.66%) C
14 57 (0.63%) Ruby
15 54 (0.60%) Scala
16 52 (0.58%) Bicep
17 43 (0.48%) Ada
18 40 (0.44%) Apex Code
19 39 (0.43%) Kusto Query Language
20 37 (0.41%) R
Qualifications
1 6,788 (75.21%) SC Cleared
2 1,678 (18.59%) DV Cleared
3 428 (4.74%) Degree
4 252 (2.79%) BPSS Clearance
5 173 (1.92%) Cisco Certification
6 167 (1.85%) CISSP
7 133 (1.47%) Azure Certification
8 118 (1.31%) CCNP
9 110 (1.22%) AWS Certification
10 107 (1.19%) CISM
11 104 (1.15%) Microsoft Certification
12 73 (0.81%) CCNA
13 71 (0.79%) ITIL Certification
14 66 (0.73%) TOGAF Certification
15 63 (0.70%) Computer Science Degree
16 59 (0.65%) PMP
17 53 (0.59%) PMI Certification
18 50 (0.55%) ISTQB
19 49 (0.54%) CEH
19 49 (0.54%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 326 (3.61%) QA
2 287 (3.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 272 (3.01%) NIST
4 258 (2.86%) Data Quality
5 203 (2.25%) NCSC
6 161 (1.78%) GDPR
7 145 (1.61%) Accessibility
8 126 (1.40%) PMO
9 109 (1.21%) SLA
10 68 (0.75%) JSP 440
11 61 (0.68%) GRC
12 42 (0.47%) Cyber Essentials
13 39 (0.43%) NIST 800
13 39 (0.43%) WCAG
14 37 (0.41%) COBIT
15 33 (0.37%) PCI DSS
16 29 (0.32%) Def Stans
17 26 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 23 (0.25%) RMADS
19 20 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 605 (6.70%) Docker
2 454 (5.03%) Active Directory
3 255 (2.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 88 (0.98%) VMware NSX
5 72 (0.80%) vSphere
6 71 (0.79%) VMware ESXi
7 64 (0.71%) Hyper-V
8 52 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
9 33 (0.37%) Firmware
10 23 (0.25%) BitLocker
10 23 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
11 20 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
12 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 16 (0.18%) NFS
14 14 (0.16%) Postfix
15 12 (0.13%) vCloud
16 10 (0.11%) Squid
17 8 (0.089%) Microsoft App-V
18 5 (0.055%) KVM
18 5 (0.055%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 782 (8.66%) Kubernetes
2 712 (7.89%) Terraform
3 296 (3.28%) Ansible
4 220 (2.44%) Grafana
5 181 (2.01%) Prometheus
6 104 (1.15%) Single Sign-On
7 90 (1.00%) vCenter Server
8 84 (0.93%) SCCM
9 77 (0.85%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 64 (0.71%) Microsoft Intune
11 60 (0.66%) Argo
12 49 (0.54%) FortiGate
13 39 (0.43%) Podman
14 36 (0.40%) Packer
14 36 (0.40%) Puppet
15 35 (0.39%) Progress Chef
16 30 (0.33%) OPNET
17 25 (0.28%) Kibana
17 25 (0.28%) Oracle RMAN
18 23 (0.25%) Nagios
Vendors
1 988 (10.95%) Microsoft
2 540 (5.98%) Oracle
3 456 (5.05%) VMware
4 395 (4.38%) Cisco
5 371 (4.11%) ServiceNow
6 339 (3.76%) SAP
7 220 (2.44%) Splunk
8 176 (1.95%) Databricks
8 176 (1.95%) Red Hat
9 139 (1.54%) Google
10 130 (1.44%) Salesforce
11 125 (1.39%) Atlassian
12 124 (1.37%) Juniper
13 116 (1.29%) IBM
14 115 (1.27%) Palo Alto
15 95 (1.05%) CyberArk
16 93 (1.03%) Talend
17 84 (0.93%) Remedy
18 80 (0.89%) Dell
19 77 (0.85%) Citrix