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 1 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 2 3 4
Rank change year-on-year +1 +1 +4
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 6,502 5,510 6,995
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.35% 18.01% 18.06%
As % of the Qualifications category 63.71% 60.25% 60.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,302 3,491 4,398
10th Percentile £325 £350 £370
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -1.61%
75th Percentile £633 £638 £650
90th Percentile £724 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -1.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 676 286 459
10th Percentile £18.70 £20.52 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.21 £26.63 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £58.17 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -56.77% -3.05% -
75th Percentile £56.69 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.63 £75.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -49.70% -16.67% -

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 10,206 9,145 11,629
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.51% 29.89% 30.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,655 5,591 7,361
10th Percentile £306 £313 £306
25th Percentile £415 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £531 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.04% -3.55% -
75th Percentile £627 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 887 426 701
10th Percentile £17.58 £20.00 £17.72
25th Percentile £18.94 £25.81 £26.78
Median hourly rate £25.15 £49.50 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -49.19% -5.71% +16.67%
75th Percentile £54.25 £68.00 £68.00
90th Percentile £76.11 £75.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £41.71 £53.50
% change year-on-year -39.70% -22.05% +18.89%

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 1 December 2025.

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 1 December 2025.

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 1 December 2025. 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 +2 2,124 £550 - 410
South East -1 1,265 £517 -6.00% 710
South West 0 1,125 £550 -4.35% 493
North of England -1 772 £506 +6.53% 248
Midlands +2 690 £519 -5.73% 126
West Midlands +2 538 £525 -7.33% 98
North West +1 508 £525 +5.85% 171
East of England +2 292 £525 +2.44% 279
Yorkshire -10 163 £500 +9.59% 47
East Midlands -1 137 £431 -9.21% 27
North East 0 109 £475 - 33
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
1 258 (3.97%) Confluence
2 173 (2.66%) SharePoint
3 111 (1.71%) Microsoft Exchange
4 95 (1.46%) SAS
5 82 (1.26%) Apache
6 51 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
7 44 (0.68%) nginx
8 43 (0.66%) Apache Spark
9 39 (0.60%) Skype for Business
10 23 (0.35%) CMS
11 20 (0.31%) IIS
12 17 (0.26%) WebLogic
13 15 (0.23%) SharePoint Server
14 12 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2010
15 11 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2013
15 11 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 10 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2003
16 10 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2007
16 10 (0.15%) Office Communications Server
17 8 (0.12%) Documentum
Applications
1 219 (3.37%) Microsoft Office
2 154 (2.37%) Microsoft Excel
3 91 (1.40%) Microsoft Project
4 41 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 32 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 20 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.22%) Simulink
8 12 (0.18%) Siemens NX
9 11 (0.17%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 7 (0.11%) Sketch
11 5 (0.077%) Adobe Illustrator
11 5 (0.077%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.077%) FrameMaker
11 5 (0.077%) Oracle Smart View
11 5 (0.077%) Photoshop
11 5 (0.077%) PTC Creo
11 5 (0.077%) Stateflow
11 5 (0.077%) Windchill
12 4 (0.062%) Trello
13 2 (0.031%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 148 (2.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (0.54%) Remedy ITSM
3 27 (0.42%) SAP WM
4 26 (0.40%) SAP EWM
4 26 (0.40%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 21 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
6 19 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
7 18 (0.28%) SAP MM
8 16 (0.25%) SAP HCM
8 16 (0.25%) Teamcenter
9 15 (0.23%) Maximo
9 15 (0.23%) Primavera
10 13 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
11 12 (0.18%) SAP PS
11 12 (0.18%) SAP QM
11 12 (0.18%) SAP VC
12 11 (0.17%) SAP EHS
13 10 (0.15%) SAP HR
13 10 (0.15%) SAP Payroll
14 9 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,069 (16.44%) AWS
2 1,044 (16.06%) Azure
3 312 (4.80%) Microsoft 365
4 300 (4.61%) GitHub
5 241 (3.71%) Power Platform
6 238 (3.66%) GCP
7 230 (3.54%) Azure DevOps
8 194 (2.98%) Serverless
9 164 (2.52%) Amazon S3
10 151 (2.32%) Entra ID
11 149 (2.29%) GitHub Actions
12 126 (1.94%) SaaS
13 124 (1.91%) OpenShift
14 109 (1.68%) AWS Lambda
15 108 (1.66%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 108 (1.66%) Amazon EC2
16 104 (1.60%) AWS CloudFormation
17 83 (1.28%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 81 (1.25%) Amazon EKS
19 79 (1.22%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 342 (5.26%) Firewall
2 242 (3.72%) DNS
3 163 (2.51%) VPN
4 136 (2.09%) Network Security
5 130 (2.00%) WAN
6 104 (1.60%) TCP/IP
7 92 (1.41%) LAN
8 91 (1.40%) BGP
9 88 (1.35%) DHCP
9 88 (1.35%) Wireless
10 70 (1.08%) SSL
11 63 (0.97%) Wi-Fi
12 61 (0.94%) SAN
13 54 (0.83%) MPLS
14 52 (0.80%) IPsec
14 52 (0.80%) VLAN
15 49 (0.75%) Cisco ISE
16 46 (0.71%) HTTP
17 42 (0.65%) OSPF
18 41 (0.63%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 197 (3.03%) PostgreSQL
2 160 (2.46%) Power BI
3 82 (1.26%) Amazon RDS
4 80 (1.23%) MongoDB
5 76 (1.17%) SQL Server
6 74 (1.14%) Oracle Database
7 69 (1.06%) NoSQL
7 69 (1.06%) Relational Database
8 68 (1.05%) Metadata
9 66 (1.02%) Data Warehouse
10 46 (0.71%) Big Data
11 43 (0.66%) Azure SQL Database
12 38 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
12 38 (0.58%) Pentaho
13 36 (0.55%) SAS Enterprise Guide
14 34 (0.52%) Redis
15 32 (0.49%) Amazon Athena
16 31 (0.48%) Amazon Redshift
17 29 (0.45%) Data Lake
17 29 (0.45%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 462 (7.11%) JIRA
2 369 (5.68%) Git
3 350 (5.38%) Jenkins
4 252 (3.88%) GitLab
5 70 (1.08%) Selenium
6 53 (0.82%) Cypress.io
6 53 (0.82%) JUnit
7 49 (0.75%) Postman
8 48 (0.74%) SonarQube
9 45 (0.69%) Bitbucket
9 45 (0.69%) Oracle APEX
10 34 (0.52%) Artifactory
11 31 (0.48%) Maven
12 30 (0.46%) Cucumber
12 30 (0.46%) Mockito
13 22 (0.34%) REST Assured
13 22 (0.34%) Vagrant
14 21 (0.32%) Rational DOORS
15 20 (0.31%) MSI
16 17 (0.26%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,808 (27.81%) Public Sector
2 1,689 (25.98%) Social Skills
3 604 (9.29%) Analytical Skills
4 464 (7.14%) Finance
5 264 (4.06%) Military
6 204 (3.14%) Telecoms
7 192 (2.95%) Manufacturing
8 156 (2.40%) Documentation Skills
9 138 (2.12%) Electronics
10 130 (2.00%) Marketing
11 124 (1.91%) Aerospace
12 99 (1.52%) Legal
13 96 (1.48%) Organisational Skills
14 84 (1.29%) Banking
15 79 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
16 78 (1.20%) Presentation Skills
17 66 (1.02%) Law
18 39 (0.60%) Aviation
19 38 (0.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 35 (0.54%) Police
Job Titles
1 875 (13.46%) Architect
2 642 (9.87%) Developer
3 521 (8.01%) Consultant
4 516 (7.94%) Senior
5 422 (6.49%) Analyst
6 391 (6.01%) Lead
7 284 (4.37%) DevOps Engineer
8 236 (3.63%) Support Engineer
9 192 (2.95%) Network Engineer
10 165 (2.54%) Solutions Architect
11 158 (2.43%) Data Engineer
12 145 (2.23%) SAP Consultant
13 136 (2.09%) AWS Engineer
14 128 (1.97%) IT Engineer
15 125 (1.92%) Platform Engineer
16 124 (1.91%) Technical Architect
17 122 (1.88%) Software Engineer
18 118 (1.81%) Administrator
19 110 (1.69%) IT Support
20 107 (1.65%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 255 (3.92%) REST
2 165 (2.54%) React
3 162 (2.49%) Node.js
4 157 (2.41%) Kafka
5 130 (2.00%) JSON
6 115 (1.77%) SOAP
7 112 (1.72%) Spring
8 105 (1.61%) HTML
9 96 (1.48%) XML
10 93 (1.43%) AngularJS
10 93 (1.43%) RESTful
11 90 (1.38%) .NET
12 88 (1.35%) CSS
13 85 (1.31%) Spring Boot
14 84 (1.29%) Web Services
15 71 (1.09%) OAuth
16 68 (1.05%) LDAP
17 57 (0.88%) Oracle Fusion
18 56 (0.86%) Elastic Stack
19 54 (0.83%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 201 (3.09%) Data Centre
2 183 (2.81%) Onboarding
3 175 (2.69%) Cloud Native
4 173 (2.66%) PKI
5 150 (2.31%) Product Ownership
6 141 (2.17%) Management Information System
7 100 (1.54%) Self-Motivation
8 80 (1.23%) Legacy Systems
9 76 (1.17%) Driving Licence
10 69 (1.06%) Replication
11 67 (1.03%) Cyber Threat
11 67 (1.03%) Security Posture
12 61 (0.94%) Hybrid Cloud
13 60 (0.92%) Security Operations Centre
14 57 (0.88%) Enterprise Software
15 56 (0.86%) CMDB
16 50 (0.77%) Analytical Mindset
16 50 (0.77%) Private Cloud
17 43 (0.66%) Distributed Systems
18 40 (0.62%) Cyber Defence
Operating Systems
1 746 (11.47%) Windows
2 503 (7.74%) Linux
3 175 (2.69%) Windows 10
3 175 (2.69%) Windows Server
4 95 (1.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 93 (1.43%) Android
6 85 (1.31%) Mac OS
7 82 (1.26%) Unix
8 47 (0.72%) VMS
9 35 (0.54%) Ubuntu
10 27 (0.42%) Apple iOS
10 27 (0.42%) Windows Server 2019
11 25 (0.38%) Amazon Linux
12 24 (0.37%) Windows 7
13 21 (0.32%) CentOS
14 20 (0.31%) Windows Server 2012
15 19 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
16 16 (0.25%) Windows Server 2003
17 15 (0.23%) Mac OS X
18 9 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,300 (19.99%) Agile
2 986 (15.16%) DevOps
3 899 (13.83%) CI/CD
4 807 (12.41%) Problem-Solving
5 635 (9.77%) Migration
6 518 (7.97%) Stakeholder Management
7 456 (7.01%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 449 (6.91%) ITIL
9 440 (6.77%) Cybersecurity
10 413 (6.35%) Continuous Improvement
11 411 (6.32%) Infrastructure as Code
12 387 (5.95%) Service Management
13 368 (5.66%) Business Intelligence
14 360 (5.54%) Containerisation
15 354 (5.44%) Test Automation
16 331 (5.09%) Analytics
17 330 (5.08%) Workflow
18 320 (4.92%) Scrum
19 300 (4.61%) Roadmaps
20 299 (4.60%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 838 (12.89%) Python
2 496 (7.63%) SQL
3 420 (6.46%) PowerShell
4 403 (6.20%) Java
5 336 (5.17%) JavaScript
6 212 (3.26%) Bash
7 157 (2.41%) TypeScript
8 119 (1.83%) C#
9 92 (1.41%) C++
10 80 (1.23%) Go
11 67 (1.03%) PL/SQL
12 65 (1.00%) C
13 60 (0.92%) Shell Script
14 41 (0.63%) Perl
15 37 (0.57%) ABAP
16 34 (0.52%) Ruby
17 30 (0.46%) Groovy
18 29 (0.45%) Bicep
19 26 (0.40%) Ada
20 25 (0.38%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 4,983 (76.64%) SC Cleared
2 1,094 (16.83%) DV Cleared
3 327 (5.03%) Degree
4 258 (3.97%) BPSS Clearance
5 124 (1.91%) CISSP
6 117 (1.80%) Microsoft Certification
7 104 (1.60%) Azure Certification
8 101 (1.55%) Cisco Certification
9 94 (1.45%) AWS Certification
10 77 (1.18%) CCNP
11 70 (1.08%) CISM
12 55 (0.85%) ITIL Certification
13 51 (0.78%) Computer Science Degree
14 44 (0.68%) CCNA
15 43 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
16 39 (0.60%) CEH
17 35 (0.54%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 34 (0.52%) CHECK Team Member
19 30 (0.46%) CTC Cleared
20 28 (0.43%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 197 (3.03%) QA
2 193 (2.97%) NIST
3 190 (2.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 155 (2.38%) NCSC
5 127 (1.95%) GDPR
6 125 (1.92%) SLA
7 115 (1.77%) Data Quality
8 104 (1.60%) Accessibility
9 60 (0.92%) PMO
10 48 (0.74%) JSP 440
11 39 (0.60%) NIST 800
12 38 (0.58%) WCAG
13 34 (0.52%) GRC
14 32 (0.49%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 27 (0.42%) COBIT
15 27 (0.42%) Def Stans
16 21 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
16 21 (0.32%) RMADS
17 18 (0.28%) PCI DSS
18 17 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 531 (8.17%) Docker
2 393 (6.04%) Active Directory
3 195 (3.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 62 (0.95%) VMware NSX
5 57 (0.88%) vSphere
6 55 (0.85%) VMware ESXi
7 49 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
8 38 (0.58%) Firmware
9 30 (0.46%) Hyper-V
10 28 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
11 20 (0.31%) DFS Replication
12 18 (0.28%) Postfix
13 15 (0.23%) Dovecot
13 15 (0.23%) NFS
14 11 (0.17%) ISA Server
14 11 (0.17%) Squid
15 10 (0.15%) BitLocker
15 10 (0.15%) Brightmail
16 9 (0.14%) Terminal Services
17 7 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 616 (9.47%) Kubernetes
2 577 (8.87%) Terraform
3 265 (4.08%) Ansible
4 158 (2.43%) Grafana
5 130 (2.00%) Prometheus
6 103 (1.58%) SCCM
7 89 (1.37%) Single Sign-On
8 74 (1.14%) Microsoft Intune
9 62 (0.95%) vCenter Server
10 57 (0.88%) Argo
11 49 (0.75%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 45 (0.69%) Packer
13 34 (0.52%) Jamf Pro
14 32 (0.49%) Kibana
15 29 (0.45%) OPNET
16 23 (0.35%) Nessus
16 23 (0.35%) SCOM
16 23 (0.35%) vRealize
17 22 (0.34%) Podman
17 22 (0.34%) Puppet
Vendors
1 866 (13.32%) Microsoft
2 441 (6.78%) SAP
3 397 (6.11%) Cisco
4 340 (5.23%) Oracle
5 331 (5.09%) VMware
6 325 (5.00%) ServiceNow
7 175 (2.69%) Splunk
8 148 (2.28%) Juniper
9 130 (2.00%) Red Hat
10 109 (1.68%) Google
11 97 (1.49%) Atlassian
12 94 (1.45%) HP
12 94 (1.45%) Palo Alto
13 92 (1.41%) Dell
14 84 (1.29%) Salesforce
15 74 (1.14%) Remedy
16 71 (1.09%) Apple
17 69 (1.06%) IBM
18 67 (1.03%) F5
18 67 (1.03%) SolarWinds