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 28 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,216 5,229 5,933
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.14% 18.85% 18.19%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.92% 59.59% 61.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,160 3,429 3,779
10th Percentile £399 £340 £356
25th Percentile £463 £450 £454
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.33% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £550 £537 £550
% change year-on-year +2.42% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 796 543 349
10th Percentile £20.50 £18.51 £21.25
25th Percentile £30.31 £18.87 £37.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +158.45% -59.17% +2.67%
75th Percentile £78.55 £37.13 £72.50
90th Percentile £91.31 £71.20 £85.00
UK median hourly rate £63.50 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +152.49% -58.08% -

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 14,824 8,775 9,679
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.13% 31.64% 29.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,914 5,595 5,897
10th Percentile £350 £300 £320
25th Percentile £447 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £525 £528
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% -0.57% -4.00%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £530 £525 £525
% change year-on-year +0.95% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,236 715 545
10th Percentile £17.72 £17.87 £18.07
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £30.00
Median hourly rate £52.25 £25.15 £53.00
Median % change year-on-year +107.75% -52.55% -0.93%
75th Percentile £74.00 £43.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £73.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £46.80 £25.15 £49.00
% change year-on-year +86.08% -48.67% -9.04%

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 28 September 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 28 September 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 28 September 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 3,627 £550 +2.33% 1,391
South East +1 2,257 £564 +7.48% 873
South West 0 1,395 £550 - 731
North of England +2 1,276 £519 -1.24% 673
Midlands 0 941 £481 -6.92% 354
West Midlands 0 803 £475 -8.39% 233
North West +1 761 £530 -4.72% 402
East of England 0 431 £574 +4.36% 370
Yorkshire +2 293 £500 +1.83% 113
North East 0 242 £470 -10.05% 161
East Midlands -1 131 £490 +5.95% 119
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
1 324 (3.17%) Confluence
2 250 (2.45%) SharePoint
3 147 (1.44%) SAS
4 117 (1.15%) Microsoft Exchange
5 97 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
6 88 (0.86%) Apache Spark
7 86 (0.84%) Apache
8 34 (0.33%) nginx
9 32 (0.31%) CMS
9 32 (0.31%) Jupyter
10 25 (0.24%) WebLogic
11 22 (0.22%) Skype for Business
12 19 (0.19%) Oracle Application Server
13 16 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 16 (0.16%) Tomcat
14 13 (0.13%) IIS
15 11 (0.11%) JBoss
15 11 (0.11%) NetWeaver
15 11 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
16 10 (0.098%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 189 (1.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 138 (1.35%) Microsoft Office
3 94 (0.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 92 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
5 29 (0.28%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
7 21 (0.21%) AutoCAD
8 19 (0.19%) Revit
9 18 (0.18%) SOLIDWORKS
9 18 (0.18%) Windchill
10 8 (0.078%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.078%) Simulink
11 7 (0.069%) Adobe XD
12 6 (0.059%) Sketch
13 5 (0.049%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 5 (0.049%) Notepad++
14 4 (0.039%) OrCAD
14 4 (0.039%) Trello
15 2 (0.020%) Gliffy
15 2 (0.020%) Houdini
Business Applications
1 127 (1.24%) SAP S/4HANA
2 79 (0.77%) Remedy ITSM
3 52 (0.51%) Oracle ERP
4 38 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
5 31 (0.30%) Teamcenter
6 29 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 26 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
8 25 (0.24%) SAP PSCD
9 24 (0.23%) Oracle Payroll
10 18 (0.18%) SAP FI
11 16 (0.16%) SAP HR
12 15 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
13 13 (0.13%) Maximo
13 13 (0.13%) Primavera
13 13 (0.13%) SAP CO
14 12 (0.12%) NetSuite
14 12 (0.12%) SAP GRC
14 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
15 11 (0.11%) iTrent
15 11 (0.11%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 1,829 (17.90%) Azure
2 1,660 (16.25%) AWS
3 434 (4.25%) Azure DevOps
3 434 (4.25%) Power Platform
4 395 (3.87%) GitHub
5 382 (3.74%) GCP
6 312 (3.05%) Microsoft 365
7 287 (2.81%) Entra ID
8 275 (2.69%) GitHub Actions
9 230 (2.25%) Serverless
10 203 (1.99%) Amazon S3
11 165 (1.62%) AWS Lambda
12 151 (1.48%) OCI
13 147 (1.44%) SaaS
14 143 (1.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 136 (1.33%) Amazon EKS
16 134 (1.31%) OpenShift
17 117 (1.15%) Amazon EC2
18 103 (1.01%) PowerApps
19 99 (0.97%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 402 (3.94%) Firewall
2 350 (3.43%) DNS
3 218 (2.13%) Network Security
4 177 (1.73%) WAN
5 172 (1.68%) VPN
6 170 (1.66%) DHCP
7 140 (1.37%) LAN
8 122 (1.19%) TCP/IP
9 119 (1.16%) BGP
10 113 (1.11%) Wi-Fi
11 91 (0.89%) VLAN
12 80 (0.78%) OSPF
13 79 (0.77%) Wireless
14 61 (0.60%) SSL
15 59 (0.58%) VSAN
16 58 (0.57%) IPsec
17 56 (0.55%) MPLS
17 56 (0.55%) SAN
18 52 (0.51%) SD-WAN
19 43 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 305 (2.99%) Power BI
2 235 (2.30%) SQL Server
3 232 (2.27%) PostgreSQL
4 231 (2.26%) Data Warehouse
5 175 (1.71%) Metadata
6 164 (1.61%) Oracle Database
7 116 (1.14%) Data Lake
8 115 (1.13%) Relational Database
9 93 (0.91%) MongoDB
10 92 (0.90%) MySQL
11 88 (0.86%) Amazon RDS
12 86 (0.84%) NoSQL
13 73 (0.71%) Oracle Reports
14 65 (0.64%) Pentaho
15 60 (0.59%) Elasticsearch
16 57 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
17 51 (0.50%) Tableau
18 45 (0.44%) Amazon Aurora
19 44 (0.43%) Big Data
20 37 (0.36%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 533 (5.22%) JIRA
2 479 (4.69%) Git
3 435 (4.26%) GitLab
4 402 (3.94%) Jenkins
5 123 (1.20%) Selenium
6 71 (0.69%) Postman
7 70 (0.69%) SonarQube
8 67 (0.66%) JUnit
9 61 (0.60%) Cucumber
9 61 (0.60%) Maven
10 58 (0.57%) JMeter
11 42 (0.41%) Gradle
12 40 (0.39%) Mockito
13 36 (0.35%) Gatling
13 36 (0.35%) Zephyr
14 35 (0.34%) Cypress.io
14 35 (0.34%) REST Assured
14 35 (0.34%) Visual Studio
15 34 (0.33%) Artifactory
16 31 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,314 (22.65%) Social Skills
2 2,011 (19.68%) Public Sector
3 832 (8.14%) Analytical Skills
4 674 (6.60%) Finance
5 410 (4.01%) Military
6 317 (3.10%) Aerospace
7 251 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
8 207 (2.03%) Influencing Skills
9 169 (1.65%) Organisational Skills
10 147 (1.44%) Telecoms
11 144 (1.41%) Manufacturing
12 131 (1.28%) Banking
12 131 (1.28%) Legal
13 125 (1.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 113 (1.11%) Law
15 97 (0.95%) Police
16 66 (0.65%) Presentation Skills
17 44 (0.43%) Local Government
18 42 (0.41%) Marketing
19 40 (0.39%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,594 (15.60%) Architect
2 957 (9.37%) Developer
3 954 (9.34%) Senior
4 944 (9.24%) Lead
5 569 (5.57%) Consultant
6 565 (5.53%) Analyst
7 429 (4.20%) Data Engineer
8 418 (4.09%) DevOps Engineer
9 379 (3.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 263 (2.57%) Technical Architect
11 261 (2.55%) Solutions Architect
12 251 (2.46%) Data Architect
13 248 (2.43%) Security Architect
14 236 (2.31%) Software Engineer
15 224 (2.19%) Network Engineer
16 207 (2.03%) Administrator
17 197 (1.93%) Cloud Engineer
18 192 (1.88%) Designer
19 181 (1.77%) Java Developer
20 180 (1.76%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 870 (8.52%) Terraform
2 392 (3.84%) REST
3 208 (2.04%) Kafka
3 208 (2.04%) Spring
4 188 (1.84%) Spring Boot
5 161 (1.58%) .NET
5 161 (1.58%) SOAP
6 160 (1.57%) React
7 155 (1.52%) RESTful
8 128 (1.25%) Node.js
9 121 (1.18%) JSON
10 115 (1.13%) OAuth
11 113 (1.11%) HTML
12 104 (1.02%) XML
13 93 (0.91%) AngularJS
13 93 (0.91%) Web Services
14 91 (0.89%) Middleware
15 87 (0.85%) CSS
16 86 (0.84%) Oracle Fusion
17 84 (0.82%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 454 (4.44%) Cloud Native
2 397 (3.89%) Onboarding
3 319 (3.12%) Product Ownership
4 265 (2.59%) Data Centre
5 178 (1.74%) Management Information System
6 160 (1.57%) PKI
7 159 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
8 150 (1.47%) Enterprise Software
9 141 (1.38%) CMDB
10 118 (1.16%) Hybrid Cloud
11 113 (1.11%) Distributed Systems
12 108 (1.06%) Cyber Threat
13 105 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
14 102 (1.00%) Operational Technology
15 101 (0.99%) Replication
16 86 (0.84%) Security Posture
17 82 (0.80%) Clustering
17 82 (0.80%) Public Cloud
18 81 (0.79%) Data Structures
19 80 (0.78%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 911 (8.92%) Windows
2 701 (6.86%) Linux
3 353 (3.46%) Windows Server
4 213 (2.08%) Unix
5 147 (1.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 134 (1.31%) Windows 10
7 81 (0.79%) Solaris
8 65 (0.64%) Android
9 45 (0.44%) CentOS
9 45 (0.44%) Mac OS
10 37 (0.36%) Ubuntu
11 35 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 29 (0.28%) AIX
13 28 (0.27%) Apple iOS
14 24 (0.23%) Windows 7
15 22 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
16 18 (0.18%) VMS
17 16 (0.16%) Rocky
18 15 (0.15%) Windows Server 2016
19 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,131 (20.86%) Agile
2 1,529 (14.97%) DevOps
3 1,495 (14.63%) CI/CD
4 1,447 (14.16%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,275 (12.48%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,107 (10.84%) Problem-Solving
7 1,019 (9.97%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 886 (8.67%) Infrastructure as Code
9 842 (8.24%) Migration
10 781 (7.64%) Cybersecurity
11 717 (7.02%) ITIL
12 658 (6.44%) Technical Leadership
13 657 (6.43%) Roadmaps
14 655 (6.41%) AI
15 640 (6.26%) Test Automation
16 625 (6.12%) Containerisation
16 625 (6.12%) Decision-Making
17 611 (5.98%) Analytics
18 580 (5.68%) Software Engineering
19 557 (5.45%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,158 (11.34%) Python
2 932 (9.12%) SQL
3 640 (6.26%) Java
4 535 (5.24%) PowerShell
5 351 (3.44%) JavaScript
6 300 (2.94%) Bash
7 186 (1.82%) C#
8 175 (1.71%) TypeScript
9 125 (1.22%) PL/SQL
10 109 (1.07%) Bicep
11 66 (0.65%) Shell Script
12 59 (0.58%) C++
13 52 (0.51%) Go
14 47 (0.46%) C
14 47 (0.46%) Groovy
15 45 (0.44%) Scala
16 43 (0.42%) Kotlin
17 29 (0.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 27 (0.26%) Kusto Query Language
19 25 (0.24%) R
Qualifications
1 7,653 (74.91%) SC Cleared
2 2,115 (20.70%) DV Cleared
3 441 (4.32%) BPSS Clearance
4 436 (4.27%) Degree
5 199 (1.95%) CISSP
6 169 (1.65%) Azure Certification
7 161 (1.58%) Cisco Certification
8 153 (1.50%) Microsoft Certification
9 141 (1.38%) AWS Certification
10 117 (1.15%) CISM
11 97 (0.95%) PMI Certification
12 88 (0.86%) PMP
13 86 (0.84%) ISTQB
14 82 (0.80%) CCNP
15 62 (0.61%) Computer Science Degree
16 59 (0.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 55 (0.54%) CCNA
18 44 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 44 (0.43%) TOGAF Certification
19 41 (0.40%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 458 (4.48%) QA
2 323 (3.16%) Data Quality
3 301 (2.95%) NIST
4 283 (2.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 257 (2.52%) NCSC
6 240 (2.35%) Accessibility
7 214 (2.09%) PMO
8 154 (1.51%) SLA
9 145 (1.42%) GDPR
10 141 (1.38%) GRC
11 69 (0.68%) WCAG
12 52 (0.51%) JSP 440
13 44 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
14 41 (0.40%) NIST 800
15 35 (0.34%) Def Stans
16 29 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 25 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
18 21 (0.21%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 20 (0.20%) ISO 9001
20 19 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 678 (6.64%) Docker
2 585 (5.73%) Active Directory
3 404 (3.95%) VMware Infrastructure
4 139 (1.36%) VMware ESXi
5 130 (1.27%) VMware NSX
6 125 (1.22%) Hyper-V
7 124 (1.21%) vSphere
8 83 (0.81%) Virtual Machines
9 41 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
10 40 (0.39%) Firmware
11 35 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
12 26 (0.25%) BitLocker
13 25 (0.24%) vCloud
14 20 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
15 15 (0.15%) NFS
16 12 (0.12%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 10 (0.098%) KVM
17 10 (0.098%) Microsoft Virtual Server
17 10 (0.098%) Postfix
18 9 (0.088%) Squid
Systems Management
1 818 (8.01%) Kubernetes
2 399 (3.91%) Ansible
3 226 (2.21%) Grafana
4 169 (1.65%) Prometheus
5 129 (1.26%) SCCM
6 127 (1.24%) vCenter Server
7 94 (0.92%) SCOM
8 90 (0.88%) Microsoft Intune
9 56 (0.55%) Argo
10 50 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
11 42 (0.41%) Puppet
12 40 (0.39%) Kibana
13 36 (0.35%) Oracle RMAN
14 34 (0.33%) Data Guard
15 30 (0.29%) VxRail
16 29 (0.28%) Istio
17 28 (0.27%) Control-M
18 27 (0.26%) NetBackup
19 26 (0.25%) WSUS
20 25 (0.24%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,380 (13.51%) Microsoft
2 808 (7.91%) Oracle
3 552 (5.40%) VMware
4 471 (4.61%) ServiceNow
5 385 (3.77%) SAP
6 274 (2.68%) Cisco
7 245 (2.40%) Google
8 196 (1.92%) Splunk
9 161 (1.58%) Databricks
10 122 (1.19%) Red Hat
11 113 (1.11%) Palo Alto
12 109 (1.07%) Salesforce
13 95 (0.93%) IBM
14 92 (0.90%) Informatica
15 90 (0.88%) CyberArk
15 90 (0.88%) Remedy
16 87 (0.85%) Dynatrace
17 85 (0.83%) Talend
18 74 (0.72%) SolarWinds
19 71 (0.69%) Citrix