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

6 months to
18 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 0 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,194 4,542 6,909
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.44% 18.56% 18.96%
As % of the Qualifications category 70.05% 58.99% 61.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,413 3,016 4,557
10th Percentile £375 £340 £353
25th Percentile £450 £450 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 745 276 482
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £23.76 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.50 £48.90 £56.15
Median % change year-on-year +13.49% -12.90% -6.43%
75th Percentile £74.26 £67.31 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.45 £79.35 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £40.30 £55.80
% change year-on-year +36.49% -27.79% -7.00%

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 13,125 7,700 11,256
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.03% 31.47% 30.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,829 4,907 6,959
10th Percentile £350 £285 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £533
% change year-on-year - -1.50% -3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 956 438 971
10th Percentile £17.03 £18.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £22.27 £17.94
Median hourly rate £50.50 £39.66 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.33% -0.85% -23.81%
75th Percentile £73.40 £67.50 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.50 £81.35 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £37.25 £40.00
% change year-on-year +34.23% -6.88% -25.93%

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 18 May 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 18 May 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 18 May 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 3,274 £525 - 505
South East +1 2,223 £546 -0.68% 536
South West 0 1,296 £538 -6.52% 356
North of England -1 889 £500 - 291
Midlands +3 864 £472 -10.10% 152
West Midlands +3 734 £474 -9.71% 111
North West -1 516 £500 - 164
East of England +2 376 £550 +10.00% 156
Yorkshire -11 214 £480 -4.00% 53
North East +1 195 £475 -1.04% 75
East Midlands -5 124 £450 -5.26% 41
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 (3.79%) Confluence
2 205 (2.23%) SharePoint
3 124 (1.35%) Microsoft Exchange
4 112 (1.22%) SAS
5 79 (0.86%) Apache Spark
6 67 (0.73%) Apache
7 55 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
8 33 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 29 (0.32%) nginx
10 24 (0.26%) Jupyter
11 17 (0.18%) Tomcat
12 16 (0.17%) IIS
12 16 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
13 14 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
13 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
14 13 (0.14%) CMS
14 13 (0.14%) Skype for Business
15 9 (0.098%) ArcGIS
16 8 (0.087%) Apache Superset
16 8 (0.087%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 183 (1.99%) Microsoft Excel
2 182 (1.98%) Microsoft Office
3 104 (1.13%) Microsoft Project
4 84 (0.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 36 (0.39%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.13%) Simulink
8 7 (0.076%) AutoCAD
9 6 (0.065%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.054%) Notepad++
10 5 (0.054%) Revit
11 4 (0.044%) Siemens NX
11 4 (0.044%) Windchill
12 3 (0.033%) Chatbot
13 2 (0.022%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.022%) CATIA
13 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.022%) Lectora
13 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.022%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 89 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
3 38 (0.41%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 29 (0.32%) Teamcenter
5 26 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
6 25 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
7 15 (0.16%) Maximo
7 15 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
8 14 (0.15%) SAP PSCD
9 13 (0.14%) iTrent
10 12 (0.13%) Findur
10 12 (0.13%) Temenos T24
11 10 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.098%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.098%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.098%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.098%) SAP PP
13 8 (0.087%) SAP HR
13 8 (0.087%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 1,574 (17.12%) Azure
2 1,510 (16.42%) AWS
3 374 (4.07%) GCP
4 373 (4.06%) GitHub
5 340 (3.70%) Azure DevOps
6 336 (3.65%) Power Platform
7 236 (2.57%) Serverless
8 233 (2.53%) Microsoft 365
9 229 (2.49%) Entra ID
10 212 (2.31%) GitHub Actions
11 189 (2.06%) Amazon S3
12 160 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
13 135 (1.47%) Amazon EC2
14 132 (1.44%) PaaS
15 124 (1.35%) OpenShift
16 114 (1.24%) OCI
17 113 (1.23%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 104 (1.13%) AWS CloudFormation
19 103 (1.12%) IaaS
19 103 (1.12%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 426 (4.63%) Firewall
2 268 (2.91%) DNS
3 214 (2.33%) WAN
4 211 (2.29%) Network Security
5 196 (2.13%) LAN
6 154 (1.68%) VPN
7 144 (1.57%) DHCP
8 141 (1.53%) BGP
9 121 (1.32%) OSPF
10 108 (1.17%) TCP/IP
11 99 (1.08%) VLAN
12 96 (1.04%) Wi-Fi
13 81 (0.88%) Wireless
14 60 (0.65%) MPLS
15 55 (0.60%) SAN
16 53 (0.58%) Structured Cabling
17 51 (0.55%) VXLAN
18 48 (0.52%) IPsec
19 47 (0.51%) SD-WAN
20 45 (0.49%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 258 (2.81%) Power BI
2 212 (2.31%) PostgreSQL
3 198 (2.15%) Data Warehouse
4 187 (2.03%) SQL Server
5 116 (1.26%) Metadata
6 110 (1.20%) Oracle Database
7 102 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
8 89 (0.97%) MongoDB
9 84 (0.91%) Relational Database
10 83 (0.90%) NoSQL
11 79 (0.86%) Data Lake
12 78 (0.85%) Pentaho
13 70 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
14 68 (0.74%) Oracle Reports
15 63 (0.69%) Tableau
16 61 (0.66%) Azure SQL Database
17 60 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
18 59 (0.64%) MySQL
19 52 (0.57%) Amazon Athena
20 47 (0.51%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 547 (5.95%) JIRA
2 408 (4.44%) Git
3 350 (3.81%) Jenkins
4 341 (3.71%) GitLab
5 94 (1.02%) Selenium
6 72 (0.78%) Postman
7 66 (0.72%) JUnit
8 54 (0.59%) Rational DOORS
8 54 (0.59%) SonarQube
9 49 (0.53%) Artifactory
10 44 (0.48%) JMeter
11 43 (0.47%) Bitbucket
12 39 (0.42%) Cucumber
13 38 (0.41%) Maven
14 36 (0.39%) Mockito
15 33 (0.36%) Visual Studio
16 30 (0.33%) Cypress.io
16 30 (0.33%) REST Assured
17 28 (0.30%) Zephyr
18 25 (0.27%) Gatling
General
1 1,977 (21.50%) Public Sector
2 1,933 (21.02%) Social Skills
3 673 (7.32%) Analytical Skills
4 643 (6.99%) Finance
5 329 (3.58%) Military
6 266 (2.89%) Documentation Skills
7 225 (2.45%) Aerospace
8 145 (1.58%) Legal
9 116 (1.26%) Telecoms
10 113 (1.23%) Banking
11 107 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
12 103 (1.12%) Organisational Skills
13 100 (1.09%) Manufacturing
14 85 (0.92%) Law
15 81 (0.88%) Presentation Skills
16 58 (0.63%) Marketing
17 53 (0.58%) Police
18 52 (0.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 47 (0.51%) Electronics
20 39 (0.42%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,359 (14.78%) Architect
2 846 (9.20%) Developer
3 771 (8.39%) Senior
4 654 (7.11%) Lead
5 646 (7.03%) Analyst
6 447 (4.86%) Data Engineer
7 415 (4.51%) DevOps Engineer
8 413 (4.49%) Consultant
9 280 (3.05%) Network Engineer
10 275 (2.99%) Software Engineer
11 263 (2.86%) Technical Architect
12 256 (2.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 243 (2.64%) Business Analyst
14 211 (2.29%) Project Manager
14 211 (2.29%) Solutions Architect
15 196 (2.13%) Azure Engineer
16 174 (1.89%) Administrator
17 173 (1.88%) Designer
17 173 (1.88%) Security Architect
18 169 (1.84%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 293 (3.19%) REST
2 217 (2.36%) Spring
3 177 (1.93%) Spring Boot
4 164 (1.78%) Kafka
4 164 (1.78%) React
5 163 (1.77%) Node.js
6 156 (1.70%) .NET
7 144 (1.57%) LDAP
8 136 (1.48%) SOAP
9 128 (1.39%) RESTful
10 113 (1.23%) AngularJS
11 110 (1.20%) JSON
12 99 (1.08%) Web Services
13 97 (1.06%) PySpark
14 89 (0.97%) Oracle Fusion
15 84 (0.91%) OAuth
16 79 (0.86%) HTML
17 76 (0.83%) XML
18 67 (0.73%) Elastic Stack
18 67 (0.73%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 319 (3.47%) Cloud Native
2 305 (3.32%) Product Ownership
3 274 (2.98%) Data Centre
4 255 (2.77%) Onboarding
5 144 (1.57%) PKI
6 143 (1.56%) Management Information System
7 125 (1.36%) Legacy Systems
8 123 (1.34%) Security Posture
9 115 (1.25%) Replication
10 111 (1.21%) Enterprise Software
11 105 (1.14%) Distributed Systems
12 90 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
13 82 (0.89%) Clustering
14 80 (0.87%) Data Structures
15 75 (0.82%) Hybrid Cloud
16 73 (0.79%) Public Cloud
17 70 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
18 63 (0.69%) Virtual Team
19 61 (0.66%) Operational Technology
20 60 (0.65%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 762 (8.29%) Windows
2 635 (6.91%) Linux
3 233 (2.53%) Windows Server
4 163 (1.77%) Unix
5 114 (1.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 88 (0.96%) Android
7 82 (0.89%) Windows 10
8 51 (0.55%) Apple iOS
9 41 (0.45%) Solaris
10 39 (0.42%) Mac OS
11 34 (0.37%) Ubuntu
12 24 (0.26%) AIX
12 24 (0.26%) VMS
12 24 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
13 23 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
14 22 (0.24%) CentOS
15 14 (0.15%) Windows 7
16 11 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
17 9 (0.098%) Windows Server 2003
17 9 (0.098%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,786 (19.43%) Agile
2 1,404 (15.27%) DevOps
3 1,228 (13.36%) CI/CD
4 1,001 (10.89%) Problem-Solving
5 885 (9.63%) Stakeholder Management
6 807 (8.78%) Continuous Improvement
7 759 (8.26%) Migration
8 670 (7.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 625 (6.80%) Infrastructure as Code
10 598 (6.50%) ITIL
11 559 (6.08%) Cybersecurity
12 529 (5.75%) Test Automation
13 516 (5.61%) Software Engineering
14 514 (5.59%) Analytics
15 506 (5.50%) Roadmaps
16 494 (5.37%) Containerisation
17 474 (5.16%) Data Modelling
18 435 (4.73%) Decision-Making
19 409 (4.45%) Scrum
20 391 (4.25%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 986 (10.72%) Python
2 839 (9.13%) SQL
3 562 (6.11%) Java
4 501 (5.45%) PowerShell
5 280 (3.05%) JavaScript
6 199 (2.16%) C#
7 180 (1.96%) Bash
8 138 (1.50%) TypeScript
9 93 (1.01%) PL/SQL
10 87 (0.95%) C++
11 85 (0.92%) Shell Script
12 65 (0.71%) Go
13 63 (0.69%) Scala
14 56 (0.61%) C
15 52 (0.57%) Bicep
16 50 (0.54%) Ruby
17 41 (0.45%) Apex Code
18 40 (0.44%) Ada
19 39 (0.42%) R
20 36 (0.39%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 6,901 (75.06%) SC Cleared
2 1,768 (19.23%) DV Cleared
3 406 (4.42%) Degree
4 260 (2.83%) BPSS Clearance
5 179 (1.95%) Cisco Certification
6 154 (1.68%) CISSP
7 122 (1.33%) Azure Certification
8 113 (1.23%) CCNP
9 104 (1.13%) AWS Certification
10 103 (1.12%) CISM
11 90 (0.98%) Microsoft Certification
12 75 (0.82%) CCNA
12 75 (0.82%) PMP
13 65 (0.71%) PMI Certification
14 59 (0.64%) Computer Science Degree
15 58 (0.63%) TOGAF Certification
16 57 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
17 54 (0.59%) ISTQB
18 52 (0.57%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 49 (0.53%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 347 (3.77%) QA
2 271 (2.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 269 (2.93%) NIST
4 268 (2.91%) Data Quality
5 179 (1.95%) NCSC
6 166 (1.81%) Accessibility
7 158 (1.72%) PMO
8 155 (1.69%) GDPR
9 97 (1.06%) SLA
10 63 (0.69%) GRC
11 55 (0.60%) JSP 440
12 52 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials
13 37 (0.40%) NIST 800
13 37 (0.40%) WCAG
14 30 (0.33%) COBIT
14 30 (0.33%) Def Stans
15 29 (0.32%) PCI DSS
16 25 (0.27%) RMADS
17 21 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 19 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 567 (6.17%) Docker
2 436 (4.74%) Active Directory
3 264 (2.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 96 (1.04%) VMware ESXi
5 84 (0.91%) VMware NSX
6 75 (0.82%) Hyper-V
7 71 (0.77%) vSphere
8 67 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
9 34 (0.37%) Firmware
10 27 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
11 24 (0.26%) Virtual Desktop
12 21 (0.23%) NFS
13 19 (0.21%) BitLocker
14 18 (0.20%) vCloud
15 16 (0.17%) Postfix
15 16 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 15 (0.16%) Squid
17 8 (0.087%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.065%) Corosync
18 6 (0.065%) KVM
Systems Management
1 716 (7.79%) Kubernetes
2 706 (7.68%) Terraform
3 326 (3.55%) Ansible
4 228 (2.48%) Grafana
5 185 (2.01%) Prometheus
6 99 (1.08%) vCenter Server
7 85 (0.92%) Single Sign-On
8 71 (0.77%) SCCM
9 57 (0.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 52 (0.57%) Microsoft Intune
11 48 (0.52%) FortiGate
12 46 (0.50%) Argo
13 39 (0.42%) Puppet
14 38 (0.41%) Podman
15 32 (0.35%) Progress Chef
16 31 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
17 30 (0.33%) Nagios
18 28 (0.30%) SCOM
19 23 (0.25%) OPNET
20 22 (0.24%) WSUS
Vendors
1 948 (10.31%) Microsoft
2 576 (6.26%) Oracle
3 460 (5.00%) VMware
4 373 (4.06%) ServiceNow
5 329 (3.58%) Cisco
6 322 (3.50%) SAP
7 215 (2.34%) Splunk
8 181 (1.97%) Databricks
9 154 (1.68%) Red Hat
10 150 (1.63%) Google
11 116 (1.26%) Palo Alto
12 115 (1.25%) Talend
13 111 (1.21%) Salesforce
14 110 (1.20%) IBM
15 99 (1.08%) Juniper
16 94 (1.02%) CyberArk
17 85 (0.92%) Atlassian
18 81 (0.88%) F5
18 81 (0.88%) Informatica
19 76 (0.83%) Fortinet