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

6 months to
22 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 7,395 4,891 6,857
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.84% 18.23% 18.72%
As % of the Qualifications category 66.44% 59.89% 60.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,047 3,088 4,380
10th Percentile £350 £348 £363
25th Percentile £450 £444 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -3.51%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £655
90th Percentile £725 £713 £735
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £553
% change year-on-year -4.55% -0.45% -2.97%
Number of hourly rates quoted 666 253 449
10th Percentile £17.78 £21.25 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.66 £26.50 £42.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £58.30
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% +2.92% -2.83%
75th Percentile £63.75 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £81.43
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £51.50 £59.50
% change year-on-year -51.17% -13.45% -0.83%

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 11,130 8,166 11,359
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.37% 30.43% 31.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,385 4,958 7,104
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £419 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.48% -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 875 400 768
10th Percentile £15.92 £19.96 £14.22
25th Percentile £18.87 £25.26 £21.46
Median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £48.40
Median % change year-on-year -45.54% -4.59% +7.56%
75th Percentile £62.38 £67.56 £66.25
90th Percentile £75.47 £82.25 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £39.04 £48.40
% change year-on-year -35.58% -19.34% +7.56%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 2,518 £538 -2.27% 423
South East +1 1,490 £515 -6.36% 566
South West 0 1,274 £550 -0.18% 400
North of England -2 818 £500 +5.26% 230
Midlands +4 711 £515 -6.53% 154
West Midlands +3 557 £520 -5.97% 93
North West 0 547 £513 +7.89% 126
East of England +2 342 £492 -4.00% 236
Yorkshire -16 162 £500 +11.11% 65
East Midlands +2 154 £425 -20.63% 58
North East 0 132 £450 -14.29% 40
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
1 270 (3.65%) Confluence
2 184 (2.49%) SharePoint
3 123 (1.66%) Microsoft Exchange
4 114 (1.54%) SAS
5 79 (1.07%) Apache
6 56 (0.76%) Apache Spark
7 48 (0.65%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.53%) Skype for Business
9 36 (0.49%) nginx
10 28 (0.38%) WebLogic
11 19 (0.26%) CMS
12 18 (0.24%) IIS
13 13 (0.18%) Jupyter
14 10 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
14 10 (0.14%) SharePoint Server
15 9 (0.12%) OpenStack
16 7 (0.095%) Exchange Server 2010
16 7 (0.095%) Tuxedo
17 6 (0.081%) Documentum
17 6 (0.081%) Tomcat
Applications
1 245 (3.31%) Microsoft Office
2 150 (2.03%) Microsoft Excel
3 104 (1.41%) Microsoft Project
4 60 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 36 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.16%) Simulink
8 8 (0.11%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 6 (0.081%) FrameMaker
9 6 (0.081%) Siemens NX
10 5 (0.068%) Oracle Smart View
10 5 (0.068%) Sketch
10 5 (0.068%) Windchill
11 4 (0.054%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.054%) Stateflow
12 3 (0.041%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.041%) Trello
13 2 (0.027%) Adobe Illustrator
13 2 (0.027%) Photoshop
13 2 (0.027%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 145 (1.96%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.50%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 27 (0.37%) SAP EWM
3 27 (0.37%) SAP WM
4 26 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
5 23 (0.31%) Dynamics CRM
5 23 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
6 18 (0.24%) Maximo
6 18 (0.24%) SAP MM
7 14 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
7 14 (0.19%) SAP QM
7 14 (0.19%) Teamcenter
8 13 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
9 12 (0.16%) SAP HCM
9 12 (0.16%) SAP PP
9 12 (0.16%) SAP VC
10 11 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
10 11 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
10 11 (0.15%) Oracle Receivables
10 11 (0.15%) SAP EHS
Cloud Services
1 1,270 (17.17%) Azure
2 1,227 (16.59%) AWS
3 328 (4.44%) GitHub
4 327 (4.42%) GCP
5 312 (4.22%) Microsoft 365
6 281 (3.80%) Azure DevOps
7 273 (3.69%) Power Platform
8 212 (2.87%) Serverless
9 197 (2.66%) Entra ID
10 166 (2.24%) Amazon S3
11 164 (2.22%) GitHub Actions
12 145 (1.96%) OpenShift
13 129 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
14 104 (1.41%) AWS CloudFormation
15 102 (1.38%) SaaS
16 99 (1.34%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 97 (1.31%) Amazon EC2
17 97 (1.31%) IaaS
18 92 (1.24%) PaaS
19 89 (1.20%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 389 (5.26%) Firewall
2 250 (3.38%) DNS
3 182 (2.46%) Network Security
4 171 (2.31%) VPN
5 165 (2.23%) WAN
6 127 (1.72%) TCP/IP
7 119 (1.61%) LAN
8 111 (1.50%) BGP
9 104 (1.41%) DHCP
10 87 (1.18%) Wireless
11 81 (1.10%) VLAN
12 72 (0.97%) Wi-Fi
13 63 (0.85%) OSPF
13 63 (0.85%) SSL
14 60 (0.81%) MPLS
15 58 (0.78%) IPsec
16 50 (0.68%) SAN
17 46 (0.62%) Skype
18 41 (0.55%) Cisco ISE
19 37 (0.50%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 195 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
2 186 (2.52%) Power BI
3 93 (1.26%) Data Warehouse
4 85 (1.15%) MongoDB
4 85 (1.15%) NoSQL
5 83 (1.12%) SQL Server
6 82 (1.11%) Metadata
7 80 (1.08%) Amazon RDS
7 80 (1.08%) Oracle Database
8 68 (0.92%) Relational Database
9 61 (0.82%) Azure SQL Database
10 45 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
10 45 (0.61%) Pentaho
11 42 (0.57%) Data Lake
12 41 (0.55%) Big Data
12 41 (0.55%) SAS Enterprise Guide
13 38 (0.51%) Amazon Athena
13 38 (0.51%) Amazon Redshift
14 35 (0.47%) MySQL
15 34 (0.46%) Redis
Development Applications
1 471 (6.37%) JIRA
2 388 (5.25%) Git
3 347 (4.69%) Jenkins
4 282 (3.81%) GitLab
5 85 (1.15%) Selenium
6 67 (0.91%) Postman
7 58 (0.78%) JUnit
8 56 (0.76%) Cypress.io
9 48 (0.65%) Oracle APEX
10 44 (0.59%) Artifactory
11 43 (0.58%) Bitbucket
12 41 (0.55%) SonarQube
13 36 (0.49%) Maven
14 34 (0.46%) Cucumber
15 32 (0.43%) Mockito
16 27 (0.37%) 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 1,935 (26.17%) Public Sector
2 1,886 (25.50%) Social Skills
3 656 (8.87%) Analytical Skills
4 518 (7.00%) Finance
5 295 (3.99%) Military
6 203 (2.75%) Documentation Skills
7 194 (2.62%) Telecoms
8 189 (2.56%) Manufacturing
9 132 (1.78%) Electronics
10 130 (1.76%) Marketing
11 124 (1.68%) Aerospace
12 109 (1.47%) Organisational Skills
13 105 (1.42%) Legal
14 94 (1.27%) Presentation Skills
15 89 (1.20%) Banking
16 85 (1.15%) Influencing Skills
17 67 (0.91%) Law
18 48 (0.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 31 (0.42%) Police
20 30 (0.41%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,000 (13.52%) Architect
2 718 (9.71%) Developer
3 631 (8.53%) Senior
4 525 (7.10%) Analyst
5 503 (6.80%) Consultant
6 413 (5.58%) Lead
7 364 (4.92%) DevOps Engineer
8 236 (3.19%) Support Engineer
9 235 (3.18%) Data Engineer
10 231 (3.12%) Network Engineer
11 175 (2.37%) Solutions Architect
12 174 (2.35%) Technical Architect
13 170 (2.30%) Business Analyst
13 170 (2.30%) Software Engineer
14 140 (1.89%) AWS Engineer
15 139 (1.88%) Tester
16 135 (1.83%) SAP Consultant
17 132 (1.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 131 (1.77%) Project Manager
19 129 (1.74%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 308 (4.16%) REST
2 178 (2.41%) Node.js
3 172 (2.33%) React
4 157 (2.12%) Kafka
5 140 (1.89%) SOAP
6 138 (1.87%) Spring
7 137 (1.85%) JSON
8 125 (1.69%) LDAP
9 109 (1.47%) HTML
10 108 (1.46%) Spring Boot
11 99 (1.34%) .NET
12 95 (1.28%) CSS
12 95 (1.28%) RESTful
13 94 (1.27%) XML
14 93 (1.26%) OAuth
15 87 (1.18%) AngularJS
16 86 (1.16%) Oracle Fusion
17 81 (1.10%) Web Services
18 80 (1.08%) PySpark
19 75 (1.01%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 240 (3.25%) Data Centre
2 211 (2.85%) Product Ownership
3 206 (2.79%) Cloud Native
4 199 (2.69%) Onboarding
5 194 (2.62%) PKI
6 142 (1.92%) Management Information System
7 117 (1.58%) Security Posture
8 105 (1.42%) Enterprise Software
9 101 (1.37%) Self-Motivation
10 90 (1.22%) Legacy Systems
11 83 (1.12%) Replication
12 77 (1.04%) Cyber Threat
13 69 (0.93%) Driving Licence
14 60 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
15 57 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
16 55 (0.74%) Public Cloud
17 48 (0.65%) Private Cloud
18 47 (0.64%) Distributed Systems
19 44 (0.59%) Analytical Mindset
19 44 (0.59%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 818 (11.06%) Windows
2 579 (7.83%) Linux
3 205 (2.77%) Windows Server
4 181 (2.45%) Windows 10
5 103 (1.39%) Unix
6 97 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 94 (1.27%) Android
8 69 (0.93%) Mac OS
9 44 (0.59%) VMS
10 42 (0.57%) Ubuntu
11 30 (0.41%) 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 15 (0.20%) Mac OS X
16 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2003
17 12 (0.16%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,413 (19.11%) Agile
2 1,169 (15.81%) DevOps
3 1,017 (13.75%) CI/CD
4 931 (12.59%) Problem-Solving
5 657 (8.88%) Migration
6 626 (8.47%) Stakeholder Management
7 538 (7.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 509 (6.88%) Continuous Improvement
9 493 (6.67%) Cybersecurity
10 475 (6.42%) ITIL
11 460 (6.22%) Infrastructure as Code
12 421 (5.69%) Test Automation
13 402 (5.44%) Analytics
14 394 (5.33%) Business Intelligence
15 393 (5.31%) Containerisation
16 385 (5.21%) Service Management
17 367 (4.96%) Roadmaps
18 337 (4.56%) Scrum
19 332 (4.49%) Software Engineering
20 324 (4.38%) Workflow
Programming Languages
1 927 (12.54%) Python
2 586 (7.92%) SQL
3 519 (7.02%) PowerShell
4 409 (5.53%) Java
5 349 (4.72%) JavaScript
6 201 (2.72%) Bash
7 167 (2.26%) TypeScript
8 132 (1.78%) C#
9 88 (1.19%) Go
10 86 (1.16%) C++
11 71 (0.96%) Shell Script
12 68 (0.92%) PL/SQL
13 61 (0.82%) C
14 44 (0.59%) Scala
15 43 (0.58%) Ruby
16 41 (0.55%) Ada
17 36 (0.49%) MATLAB
18 34 (0.46%) ABAP
19 32 (0.43%) Bicep
20 31 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 5,681 (76.82%) SC Cleared
2 1,244 (16.82%) DV Cleared
3 381 (5.15%) Degree
4 226 (3.06%) BPSS Clearance
5 138 (1.87%) CISSP
6 121 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
7 120 (1.62%) Azure Certification
8 114 (1.54%) Microsoft Certification
9 103 (1.39%) CCNP
10 96 (1.30%) AWS Certification
11 83 (1.12%) CISM
12 63 (0.85%) Computer Science Degree
13 61 (0.82%) ITIL Certification
14 54 (0.73%) CCNA
15 49 (0.66%) CEH
16 48 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
17 43 (0.58%) GIAC
18 41 (0.55%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 40 (0.54%) CHECK Team Member
20 37 (0.50%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 238 (3.22%) QA
2 226 (3.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 219 (2.96%) NIST
4 178 (2.41%) NCSC
5 171 (2.31%) Data Quality
6 154 (2.08%) GDPR
7 123 (1.66%) Accessibility
8 119 (1.61%) SLA
9 79 (1.07%) PMO
10 50 (0.68%) JSP 440
11 47 (0.64%) GRC
12 42 (0.57%) WCAG
13 36 (0.49%) Def Stans
14 33 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials
15 29 (0.39%) PCI DSS
16 27 (0.37%) COBIT
17 26 (0.35%) NIST 800
18 20 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 20000
19 18 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
20 17 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 553 (7.48%) Docker
2 467 (6.32%) Active Directory
3 211 (2.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 73 (0.99%) VMware NSX
5 62 (0.84%) vSphere
6 54 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
7 53 (0.72%) VMware ESXi
8 41 (0.55%) Hyper-V
9 29 (0.39%) Firmware
10 27 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
11 17 (0.23%) BitLocker
12 13 (0.18%) DFS Replication
13 11 (0.15%) Postfix
14 9 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
14 9 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 9 (0.12%) Squid
15 8 (0.11%) Dovecot
15 8 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
16 7 (0.095%) ISA Server
16 7 (0.095%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 693 (9.37%) Kubernetes
2 624 (8.44%) Terraform
3 280 (3.79%) Ansible
4 171 (2.31%) Grafana
5 142 (1.92%) Prometheus
6 106 (1.43%) SCCM
7 102 (1.38%) Single Sign-On
8 93 (1.26%) vCenter Server
9 73 (0.99%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 67 (0.91%) Microsoft Intune
11 60 (0.81%) Argo
12 37 (0.50%) Kibana
12 37 (0.50%) Packer
13 34 (0.46%) Podman
14 33 (0.45%) OPNET
15 30 (0.41%) vRealize
16 27 (0.37%) Puppet
17 26 (0.35%) Progress Chef
18 25 (0.34%) Nessus
19 24 (0.32%) Nmap
Vendors
1 945 (12.78%) Microsoft
2 423 (5.72%) SAP
3 418 (5.65%) Oracle
4 403 (5.45%) Cisco
5 379 (5.13%) VMware
6 316 (4.27%) ServiceNow
7 202 (2.73%) Splunk
8 148 (2.00%) Red Hat
9 130 (1.76%) Palo Alto
10 126 (1.70%) Juniper
11 117 (1.58%) CyberArk
12 113 (1.53%) Google
13 107 (1.45%) Databricks
14 102 (1.38%) Atlassian
15 95 (1.28%) Dell
15 95 (1.28%) Salesforce
16 80 (1.08%) HP
17 73 (0.99%) Dynatrace
18 70 (0.95%) CheckPoint
19 68 (0.92%) Remedy