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

6 months to
23 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 7,422 4,894 6,917
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.86% 18.26% 18.70%
As % of the Qualifications category 66.59% 59.90% 60.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,071 3,084 4,423
10th Percentile £350 £346 £363
25th Percentile £450 £444 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -3.85%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £656
90th Percentile £725 £713 £733
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £557
% change year-on-year -4.55% -1.29% -2.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 667 253 453
10th Percentile £17.80 £20.49 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.68 £26.25 £42.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £59.00
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% +1.69% -1.67%
75th Percentile £63.75 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £81.99
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £59.68
% change year-on-year -49.70% -16.22% -0.53%

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 11,145 8,170 11,458
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.33% 30.48% 30.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,401 4,957 7,170
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £419 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.10% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £519 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -1.24% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 875 400 783
10th Percentile £15.92 £19.78 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £25.26 £21.46
Median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £47.75
Median % change year-on-year -45.54% -3.29% +6.11%
75th Percentile £62.50 £67.56 £66.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.25 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £39.52 £47.75
% change year-on-year -36.36% -17.24% +6.11%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 +5 2,528 £538 -2.27% 430
South East +1 1,500 £515 -6.36% 614
South West 0 1,274 £550 -0.18% 433
North of England -2 817 £500 +5.26% 267
Midlands +4 717 £515 -6.53% 190
West Midlands +2 562 £520 -6.06% 99
North West 0 546 £513 +7.89% 146
East of England +2 341 £492 -4.00% 265
Yorkshire -14 161 £500 +11.11% 84
East Midlands +2 155 £425 -20.63% 88
North East 0 133 £450 -13.46% 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
1 274 (3.69%) Confluence
2 185 (2.49%) SharePoint
3 125 (1.68%) Microsoft Exchange
4 115 (1.55%) SAS
5 77 (1.04%) Apache
6 56 (0.75%) Apache Spark
7 48 (0.65%) Apache Airflow
8 41 (0.55%) nginx
9 39 (0.53%) Skype for Business
10 30 (0.40%) WebLogic
11 19 (0.26%) CMS
12 18 (0.24%) IIS
13 13 (0.18%) Jupyter
14 10 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
14 10 (0.13%) SharePoint Server
15 9 (0.12%) OpenStack
16 7 (0.094%) Exchange Server 2010
16 7 (0.094%) Tuxedo
17 6 (0.081%) Documentum
17 6 (0.081%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 245 (3.30%) Microsoft Office
2 149 (2.01%) Microsoft Excel
3 104 (1.40%) Microsoft Project
4 60 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 35 (0.47%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.16%) Simulink
8 8 (0.11%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 6 (0.081%) FrameMaker
10 5 (0.067%) Oracle Smart View
10 5 (0.067%) Siemens NX
10 5 (0.067%) Sketch
10 5 (0.067%) Windchill
11 4 (0.054%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.054%) Stateflow
12 3 (0.040%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.040%) Chatbot
13 2 (0.027%) Adobe Illustrator
13 2 (0.027%) Photoshop
13 2 (0.027%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 144 (1.94%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.50%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 27 (0.36%) SAP EWM
3 27 (0.36%) SAP WM
4 26 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
5 23 (0.31%) Dynamics CRM
6 21 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
7 18 (0.24%) Maximo
7 18 (0.24%) SAP MM
8 14 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
8 14 (0.19%) SAP QM
9 13 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
9 13 (0.18%) Teamcenter
10 12 (0.16%) SAP HCM
10 12 (0.16%) SAP PP
10 12 (0.16%) SAP VC
11 11 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
11 11 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
11 11 (0.15%) Oracle Receivables
11 11 (0.15%) SAP EHS
Cloud Services
1 1,270 (17.11%) Azure
2 1,230 (16.57%) AWS
3 332 (4.47%) GitHub
4 325 (4.38%) GCP
5 310 (4.18%) Microsoft 365
6 282 (3.80%) Azure DevOps
7 275 (3.71%) Power Platform
8 221 (2.98%) Serverless
9 198 (2.67%) Entra ID
10 174 (2.34%) Amazon S3
11 165 (2.22%) GitHub Actions
12 147 (1.98%) OpenShift
13 137 (1.85%) AWS Lambda
14 104 (1.40%) Amazon EC2
14 104 (1.40%) AWS CloudFormation
15 102 (1.37%) SaaS
16 98 (1.32%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 97 (1.31%) IaaS
18 93 (1.25%) PaaS
19 90 (1.21%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 394 (5.31%) Firewall
2 257 (3.46%) DNS
3 183 (2.47%) Network Security
4 176 (2.37%) VPN
5 163 (2.20%) WAN
6 131 (1.77%) TCP/IP
7 117 (1.58%) LAN
8 111 (1.50%) BGP
9 106 (1.43%) DHCP
10 86 (1.16%) Wireless
11 81 (1.09%) VLAN
12 72 (0.97%) Wi-Fi
13 63 (0.85%) OSPF
14 62 (0.84%) SSL
15 60 (0.81%) MPLS
16 58 (0.78%) IPsec
17 50 (0.67%) SAN
18 46 (0.62%) Skype
19 41 (0.55%) Cisco ISE
20 37 (0.50%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 194 (2.61%) PostgreSQL
2 188 (2.53%) Power BI
3 93 (1.25%) Data Warehouse
4 84 (1.13%) MongoDB
4 84 (1.13%) NoSQL
5 83 (1.12%) SQL Server
6 82 (1.10%) Metadata
7 80 (1.08%) Amazon RDS
8 79 (1.06%) Oracle Database
9 68 (0.92%) Relational Database
10 61 (0.82%) Azure SQL Database
11 50 (0.67%) Elasticsearch
12 45 (0.61%) Pentaho
13 42 (0.57%) Data Lake
14 41 (0.55%) Big Data
14 41 (0.55%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 38 (0.51%) Amazon Athena
15 38 (0.51%) Amazon Redshift
16 35 (0.47%) MySQL
17 34 (0.46%) Redis
Development Applications
1 472 (6.36%) JIRA
2 388 (5.23%) Git
3 348 (4.69%) Jenkins
4 282 (3.80%) GitLab
5 85 (1.15%) Selenium
6 67 (0.90%) Postman
7 58 (0.78%) JUnit
8 56 (0.75%) Cypress.io
9 48 (0.65%) Bitbucket
10 47 (0.63%) Oracle APEX
11 45 (0.61%) SonarQube
12 44 (0.59%) Artifactory
13 36 (0.49%) Maven
14 34 (0.46%) Cucumber
15 32 (0.43%) Mockito
16 27 (0.36%) REST Assured
17 24 (0.32%) MSI
18 23 (0.31%) Metasploit
18 23 (0.31%) Rational DOORS
19 21 (0.28%) Burp Suite
General
1 1,936 (26.08%) Public Sector
2 1,893 (25.51%) Social Skills
3 654 (8.81%) Analytical Skills
4 524 (7.06%) Finance
5 296 (3.99%) Military
6 210 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
7 196 (2.64%) Telecoms
8 188 (2.53%) Manufacturing
9 132 (1.78%) Electronics
10 131 (1.77%) Marketing
11 124 (1.67%) Aerospace
12 109 (1.47%) Organisational Skills
13 107 (1.44%) Legal
14 95 (1.28%) Presentation Skills
15 89 (1.20%) Banking
16 87 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
17 67 (0.90%) Law
18 48 (0.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 31 (0.42%) Police
20 29 (0.39%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,007 (13.57%) Architect
2 718 (9.67%) Developer
3 636 (8.57%) Senior
4 529 (7.13%) Analyst
5 498 (6.71%) Consultant
6 413 (5.56%) Lead
7 362 (4.88%) DevOps Engineer
8 238 (3.21%) Data Engineer
9 236 (3.18%) Support Engineer
10 231 (3.11%) Network Engineer
11 179 (2.41%) Technical Architect
12 175 (2.36%) Solutions Architect
13 174 (2.34%) Software Engineer
14 171 (2.30%) Business Analyst
15 140 (1.89%) AWS Engineer
16 139 (1.87%) Tester
17 135 (1.82%) SAP Consultant
18 133 (1.79%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 133 (1.79%) Project Manager
19 130 (1.75%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 308 (4.15%) REST
2 177 (2.38%) Node.js
3 170 (2.29%) React
4 156 (2.10%) Kafka
5 141 (1.90%) SOAP
6 137 (1.85%) Spring
7 136 (1.83%) JSON
8 134 (1.81%) LDAP
9 109 (1.47%) Spring Boot
10 107 (1.44%) HTML
11 99 (1.33%) .NET
12 95 (1.28%) XML
13 94 (1.27%) RESTful
14 93 (1.25%) CSS
14 93 (1.25%) OAuth
15 86 (1.16%) Oracle Fusion
16 85 (1.15%) AngularJS
17 81 (1.09%) Web Services
18 80 (1.08%) PySpark
19 77 (1.04%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 241 (3.25%) Data Centre
2 214 (2.88%) Product Ownership
3 210 (2.83%) Cloud Native
4 201 (2.71%) Onboarding
5 194 (2.61%) PKI
6 139 (1.87%) Management Information System
7 118 (1.59%) Security Posture
8 105 (1.41%) Enterprise Software
9 101 (1.36%) Self-Motivation
10 90 (1.21%) Legacy Systems
11 86 (1.16%) Replication
12 76 (1.02%) Cyber Threat
13 69 (0.93%) Driving Licence
14 61 (0.82%) Security Operations Centre
15 57 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
16 56 (0.75%) Public Cloud
17 48 (0.65%) Distributed Systems
18 47 (0.63%) Private Cloud
19 45 (0.61%) CMDB
20 43 (0.58%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 821 (11.06%) Windows
2 579 (7.80%) Linux
3 207 (2.79%) Windows Server
4 181 (2.44%) Windows 10
5 102 (1.37%) Unix
6 96 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 94 (1.27%) Android
8 69 (0.93%) Mac OS
9 43 (0.58%) VMS
10 42 (0.57%) Ubuntu
11 30 (0.40%) Apple iOS
12 24 (0.32%) CentOS
13 22 (0.30%) Windows 7
13 22 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
14 16 (0.22%) Amazon Linux
14 16 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
14 16 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
15 14 (0.19%) Mac OS X
16 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2003
17 12 (0.16%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,419 (19.12%) Agile
2 1,177 (15.86%) DevOps
3 1,020 (13.74%) CI/CD
4 943 (12.71%) Problem-Solving
5 661 (8.91%) Migration
6 635 (8.56%) Stakeholder Management
7 535 (7.21%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 516 (6.95%) Continuous Improvement
9 498 (6.71%) Cybersecurity
10 476 (6.41%) ITIL
11 466 (6.28%) Infrastructure as Code
12 422 (5.69%) Test Automation
13 405 (5.46%) Analytics
14 397 (5.35%) Business Intelligence
15 390 (5.25%) Containerisation
16 381 (5.13%) Service Management
17 375 (5.05%) Roadmaps
18 337 (4.54%) Scrum
19 334 (4.50%) Software Engineering
20 326 (4.39%) Workflow
Programming Languages
1 928 (12.50%) Python
2 586 (7.90%) SQL
3 521 (7.02%) PowerShell
4 409 (5.51%) Java
5 348 (4.69%) JavaScript
6 201 (2.71%) Bash
7 168 (2.26%) TypeScript
8 132 (1.78%) C#
9 88 (1.19%) C++
10 87 (1.17%) Go
11 70 (0.94%) Shell Script
12 68 (0.92%) PL/SQL
13 61 (0.82%) C
14 44 (0.59%) Scala
15 43 (0.58%) Ada
15 43 (0.58%) Ruby
16 36 (0.49%) MATLAB
17 34 (0.46%) ABAP
18 32 (0.43%) Bicep
19 31 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 5,701 (76.81%) SC Cleared
2 1,247 (16.80%) DV Cleared
3 380 (5.12%) Degree
4 228 (3.07%) BPSS Clearance
5 139 (1.87%) CISSP
6 121 (1.63%) Cisco Certification
7 120 (1.62%) Azure Certification
8 115 (1.55%) Microsoft Certification
9 103 (1.39%) CCNP
10 97 (1.31%) AWS Certification
11 83 (1.12%) CISM
12 63 (0.85%) ITIL Certification
13 62 (0.84%) Computer Science Degree
14 54 (0.73%) CCNA
15 50 (0.67%) CEH
16 48 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
17 43 (0.58%) GIAC
18 42 (0.57%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 40 (0.54%) CHECK Team Member
20 37 (0.50%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 236 (3.18%) QA
2 229 (3.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 221 (2.98%) NIST
4 181 (2.44%) NCSC
5 171 (2.30%) Data Quality
6 155 (2.09%) GDPR
7 123 (1.66%) Accessibility
8 119 (1.60%) SLA
9 77 (1.04%) PMO
10 49 (0.66%) JSP 440
11 48 (0.65%) GRC
12 42 (0.57%) WCAG
13 37 (0.50%) Def Stans
14 33 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
15 29 (0.39%) COBIT
15 29 (0.39%) PCI DSS
16 25 (0.34%) NIST 800
17 18 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 18 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 18 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 554 (7.46%) Docker
2 468 (6.31%) Active Directory
3 212 (2.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 73 (0.98%) VMware NSX
5 63 (0.85%) vSphere
6 56 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
7 54 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
8 41 (0.55%) Hyper-V
9 28 (0.38%) Firmware
10 27 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
11 17 (0.23%) BitLocker
12 14 (0.19%) Squid
13 13 (0.18%) DFS Replication
14 11 (0.15%) Postfix
15 10 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
16 9 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
16 9 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 8 (0.11%) Dovecot
18 7 (0.094%) ISA Server
18 7 (0.094%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 698 (9.40%) Kubernetes
2 632 (8.52%) Terraform
3 279 (3.76%) Ansible
4 177 (2.38%) Grafana
5 148 (1.99%) Prometheus
6 107 (1.44%) Single Sign-On
7 106 (1.43%) SCCM
8 94 (1.27%) vCenter Server
9 75 (1.01%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 66 (0.89%) Microsoft Intune
11 61 (0.82%) Argo
12 37 (0.50%) Kibana
12 37 (0.50%) Packer
13 34 (0.46%) Podman
14 33 (0.44%) OPNET
15 30 (0.40%) vRealize
16 27 (0.36%) Puppet
17 26 (0.35%) Progress Chef
18 25 (0.34%) Nessus
19 24 (0.32%) Nmap
Vendors
1 949 (12.79%) Microsoft
2 422 (5.69%) SAP
3 419 (5.65%) Oracle
4 406 (5.47%) Cisco
5 378 (5.09%) VMware
6 313 (4.22%) ServiceNow
7 204 (2.75%) Splunk
8 151 (2.03%) Red Hat
9 130 (1.75%) Palo Alto
10 126 (1.70%) Juniper
11 118 (1.59%) CyberArk
12 115 (1.55%) Google
13 107 (1.44%) Atlassian
13 107 (1.44%) Databricks
14 96 (1.29%) Salesforce
15 95 (1.28%) Dell
16 80 (1.08%) HP
17 77 (1.04%) Dynatrace
18 70 (0.94%) CheckPoint
19 66 (0.89%) Remedy