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

6 months to
25 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 7,028 5,209 6,805
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.16% 18.12% 18.55%
As % of the Qualifications category 65.24% 59.68% 60.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,679 3,328 4,306
10th Percentile £345 £334 £367
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.31%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £553
% change year-on-year -4.55% -0.45% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 706 259 432
10th Percentile £17.87 £20.30 £20.00
25th Percentile £19.54 £25.87 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £58.38 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -56.92% -2.71% -
75th Percentile £61.07 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £81.13
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 10,772 8,728 11,220
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.97% 30.37% 30.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,050 5,374 7,087
10th Percentile £313 £305 £300
25th Percentile £419 £420 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £626 £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 910 416 676
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.67 £17.06
25th Percentile £19.01 £25.26 £26.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £47.37 £52.05
Median % change year-on-year -46.91% -8.99% +15.67%
75th Percentile £56.69 £68.00 £67.52
90th Percentile £76.58 £79.25 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year -37.13% -23.81% +16.67%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 +4 2,318 £543 -1.28% 637
South East +1 1,442 £522 -5.05% 823
South West 0 1,178 £550 -4.35% 599
North of England -2 808 £500 +5.26% 439
Midlands +3 706 £515 -6.87% 347
West Midlands +3 554 £519 -9.11% 213
North West 0 545 £519 +9.16% 255
East of England +2 326 £500 +5.26% 461
Yorkshire -12 161 £500 +5.26% 138
East Midlands +1 142 £444 -12.13% 118
North East 0 121 £450 -13.46% 51
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
1 259 (3.69%) Confluence
2 175 (2.49%) SharePoint
3 116 (1.65%) Microsoft Exchange
4 101 (1.44%) SAS
5 80 (1.14%) Apache
6 53 (0.75%) Apache Spark
7 50 (0.71%) Apache Airflow
8 37 (0.53%) Skype for Business
9 35 (0.50%) nginx
10 26 (0.37%) WebLogic
11 20 (0.28%) CMS
12 19 (0.27%) IIS
13 12 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
14 9 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2010
15 8 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
15 8 (0.11%) OpenStack
15 8 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 7 (0.100%) Exchange Server 2007
16 7 (0.100%) Jupyter
16 7 (0.100%) Office Communications Server
Applications
1 246 (3.50%) Microsoft Office
2 157 (2.23%) Microsoft Excel
3 96 (1.37%) Microsoft Project
4 53 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 35 (0.50%) MS Visio
6 20 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.18%) Siemens NX
8 12 (0.17%) Simulink
9 9 (0.13%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 5 (0.071%) FrameMaker
10 5 (0.071%) Oracle Smart View
10 5 (0.071%) PTC Creo
10 5 (0.071%) Sketch
10 5 (0.071%) Stateflow
11 4 (0.057%) Trello
11 4 (0.057%) Windchill
12 3 (0.043%) Adobe Illustrator
12 3 (0.043%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.043%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.043%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 147 (2.09%) SAP S/4HANA
2 35 (0.50%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 33 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
4 27 (0.38%) SAP EWM
4 27 (0.38%) SAP WM
5 25 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
6 18 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
6 18 (0.26%) SAP MM
7 17 (0.24%) Teamcenter
8 15 (0.21%) SAP HCM
9 14 (0.20%) SAP QM
10 13 (0.18%) Maximo
10 13 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
11 12 (0.17%) SAP PP
11 12 (0.17%) SAP VC
12 11 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
12 11 (0.16%) SAP EHS
13 10 (0.14%) Primavera
13 10 (0.14%) SAP Payroll
13 10 (0.14%) SAP PS
Cloud Services
1 1,163 (16.55%) Azure
2 1,147 (16.32%) AWS
3 319 (4.54%) Microsoft 365
4 318 (4.52%) GitHub
5 294 (4.18%) GCP
6 252 (3.59%) Power Platform
7 244 (3.47%) Azure DevOps
8 198 (2.82%) Serverless
9 174 (2.48%) Entra ID
10 169 (2.40%) GitHub Actions
11 163 (2.32%) Amazon S3
12 136 (1.94%) OpenShift
13 122 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
14 113 (1.61%) SaaS
15 105 (1.49%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 102 (1.45%) AWS CloudFormation
17 101 (1.44%) Amazon EC2
18 88 (1.25%) Amazon EKS
19 87 (1.24%) IaaS
19 87 (1.24%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 381 (5.42%) Firewall
2 257 (3.66%) DNS
3 180 (2.56%) VPN
4 166 (2.36%) Network Security
5 153 (2.18%) WAN
6 125 (1.78%) TCP/IP
7 115 (1.64%) LAN
8 100 (1.42%) BGP
9 96 (1.37%) DHCP
10 88 (1.25%) Wireless
11 78 (1.11%) SSL
12 75 (1.07%) Wi-Fi
13 66 (0.94%) VLAN
14 61 (0.87%) SAN
15 59 (0.84%) MPLS
16 54 (0.77%) IPsec
16 54 (0.77%) OSPF
17 48 (0.68%) HTTP
18 44 (0.63%) Cisco ISE
19 42 (0.60%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 194 (2.76%) PostgreSQL
2 170 (2.42%) Power BI
3 85 (1.21%) Data Warehouse
4 84 (1.20%) SQL Server
5 80 (1.14%) MongoDB
6 76 (1.08%) Amazon RDS
7 74 (1.05%) NoSQL
8 73 (1.04%) Metadata
9 70 (1.00%) Relational Database
10 69 (0.98%) Oracle Database
11 51 (0.73%) Azure SQL Database
12 48 (0.68%) Big Data
13 44 (0.63%) Elasticsearch
14 39 (0.55%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 38 (0.54%) Pentaho
16 37 (0.53%) Data Lake
17 36 (0.51%) Amazon Athena
18 34 (0.48%) Amazon Redshift
18 34 (0.48%) Redis
19 29 (0.41%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 478 (6.80%) JIRA
2 384 (5.46%) Git
3 350 (4.98%) Jenkins
4 268 (3.81%) GitLab
5 77 (1.10%) Selenium
6 59 (0.84%) Postman
7 51 (0.73%) JUnit
8 50 (0.71%) Cypress.io
9 45 (0.64%) Bitbucket
9 45 (0.64%) Oracle APEX
10 44 (0.63%) Artifactory
11 41 (0.58%) SonarQube
12 30 (0.43%) Maven
13 29 (0.41%) Cucumber
14 27 (0.38%) Mockito
15 24 (0.34%) MSI
15 24 (0.34%) REST Assured
16 21 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
17 18 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
18 17 (0.24%) Metasploit
General
1 1,882 (26.78%) Public Sector
2 1,844 (26.24%) Social Skills
3 658 (9.36%) Analytical Skills
4 502 (7.14%) Finance
5 281 (4.00%) Military
6 212 (3.02%) Telecoms
7 205 (2.92%) Manufacturing
8 168 (2.39%) Documentation Skills
9 145 (2.06%) Electronics
10 140 (1.99%) Marketing
11 127 (1.81%) Aerospace
12 114 (1.62%) Organisational Skills
13 101 (1.44%) Legal
14 88 (1.25%) Banking
15 83 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
16 78 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
17 60 (0.85%) Law
18 44 (0.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 36 (0.51%) Aviation
20 33 (0.47%) Police
Job Titles
1 969 (13.79%) Architect
2 651 (9.26%) Developer
3 580 (8.25%) Senior
4 522 (7.43%) Consultant
5 496 (7.06%) Analyst
6 401 (5.71%) Lead
7 330 (4.70%) DevOps Engineer
8 242 (3.44%) Support Engineer
9 212 (3.02%) Network Engineer
10 189 (2.69%) Data Engineer
11 173 (2.46%) Solutions Architect
12 144 (2.05%) Software Engineer
13 143 (2.03%) Technical Architect
14 142 (2.02%) SAP Consultant
15 138 (1.96%) AWS Engineer
16 133 (1.89%) Administrator
17 132 (1.88%) Business Analyst
18 131 (1.86%) Platform Engineer
19 129 (1.84%) IT Engineer
20 126 (1.79%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 289 (4.11%) REST
2 172 (2.45%) Node.js
3 171 (2.43%) React
4 154 (2.19%) Kafka
5 138 (1.96%) JSON
6 136 (1.94%) SOAP
7 112 (1.59%) Spring
8 110 (1.57%) HTML
9 100 (1.42%) XML
10 95 (1.35%) LDAP
11 93 (1.32%) CSS
12 92 (1.31%) .NET
12 92 (1.31%) AngularJS
13 90 (1.28%) Spring Boot
13 90 (1.28%) Web Services
14 88 (1.25%) RESTful
15 80 (1.14%) Oracle Fusion
16 79 (1.12%) OAuth
17 68 (0.97%) PySpark
18 58 (0.83%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 217 (3.09%) Data Centre
2 195 (2.77%) PKI
3 191 (2.72%) Cloud Native
4 175 (2.49%) Onboarding
5 173 (2.46%) Product Ownership
6 136 (1.94%) Management Information System
7 103 (1.47%) Self-Motivation
8 96 (1.37%) Security Posture
9 88 (1.25%) Legacy Systems
10 83 (1.18%) Enterprise Software
11 80 (1.14%) Cyber Threat
12 77 (1.10%) Driving Licence
13 68 (0.97%) Replication
13 68 (0.97%) Security Operations Centre
14 62 (0.88%) Hybrid Cloud
15 60 (0.85%) Analytical Mindset
16 55 (0.78%) CMDB
17 49 (0.70%) Private Cloud
18 46 (0.65%) Public Cloud
19 45 (0.64%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 789 (11.23%) Windows
2 544 (7.74%) Linux
3 187 (2.66%) Windows Server
4 175 (2.49%) Windows 10
5 99 (1.41%) Android
6 96 (1.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 96 (1.37%) Unix
7 82 (1.17%) Mac OS
8 48 (0.68%) VMS
9 39 (0.55%) Ubuntu
10 29 (0.41%) Apple iOS
11 24 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
13 20 (0.28%) Amazon Linux
13 20 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
14 19 (0.27%) CentOS
15 17 (0.24%) Windows 7
16 15 (0.21%) Mac OS X
17 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2003
18 9 (0.13%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,369 (19.48%) Agile
2 1,081 (15.38%) DevOps
3 964 (13.72%) CI/CD
4 881 (12.54%) Problem-Solving
5 683 (9.72%) Migration
6 558 (7.94%) Stakeholder Management
7 500 (7.11%) ITIL
7 500 (7.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 459 (6.53%) Continuous Improvement
9 458 (6.52%) Cybersecurity
10 450 (6.40%) Infrastructure as Code
11 404 (5.75%) Service Management
12 389 (5.54%) Business Intelligence
13 383 (5.45%) Containerisation
14 381 (5.42%) Test Automation
15 363 (5.17%) Analytics
16 346 (4.92%) Roadmaps
17 337 (4.80%) Workflow
18 329 (4.68%) Scrum
19 301 (4.28%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 923 (13.13%) Python
2 545 (7.75%) SQL
3 490 (6.97%) PowerShell
4 393 (5.59%) Java
5 350 (4.98%) JavaScript
6 216 (3.07%) Bash
7 161 (2.29%) TypeScript
8 127 (1.81%) C#
9 90 (1.28%) C++
10 88 (1.25%) Go
11 67 (0.95%) PL/SQL
12 66 (0.94%) Shell Script
13 65 (0.92%) C
14 42 (0.60%) Ruby
15 39 (0.55%) ABAP
16 37 (0.53%) Perl
16 37 (0.53%) Scala
17 29 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
18 27 (0.38%) Ada
19 25 (0.36%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 5,406 (76.92%) SC Cleared
2 1,167 (16.61%) DV Cleared
3 370 (5.26%) Degree
4 242 (3.44%) BPSS Clearance
5 127 (1.81%) CISSP
6 117 (1.66%) Cisco Certification
7 116 (1.65%) Microsoft Certification
8 114 (1.62%) Azure Certification
9 102 (1.45%) AWS Certification
10 97 (1.38%) CCNP
11 72 (1.02%) CISM
12 60 (0.85%) Computer Science Degree
13 59 (0.84%) ITIL Certification
14 51 (0.73%) CCNA
15 48 (0.68%) TOGAF Certification
16 45 (0.64%) CEH
17 40 (0.57%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 35 (0.50%) CHECK Team Member
18 35 (0.50%) CTC Cleared
19 34 (0.48%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 213 (3.03%) QA
2 200 (2.85%) NIST
3 196 (2.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 157 (2.23%) NCSC
5 139 (1.98%) Data Quality
6 138 (1.96%) GDPR
7 122 (1.74%) SLA
8 113 (1.61%) Accessibility
9 63 (0.90%) PMO
10 44 (0.63%) JSP 440
11 41 (0.58%) WCAG
12 40 (0.57%) GRC
13 32 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 30 (0.43%) Def Stans
15 29 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
16 26 (0.37%) COBIT
16 26 (0.37%) NIST 800
17 23 (0.33%) PCI DSS
18 18 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 15 (0.21%) RMADS
System Software
1 538 (7.66%) Docker
2 441 (6.27%) Active Directory
3 205 (2.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 67 (0.95%) VMware NSX
5 63 (0.90%) vSphere
6 57 (0.81%) VMware ESXi
7 53 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
8 36 (0.51%) Firmware
9 34 (0.48%) Hyper-V
10 30 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
11 17 (0.24%) DFS Replication
12 15 (0.21%) Postfix
13 13 (0.18%) Dovecot
14 12 (0.17%) BitLocker
14 12 (0.17%) NFS
15 10 (0.14%) Squid
15 10 (0.14%) Terminal Services
16 9 (0.13%) ISA Server
17 8 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
18 7 (0.100%) Brightmail
Systems Management
1 653 (9.29%) Kubernetes
2 613 (8.72%) Terraform
3 298 (4.24%) Ansible
4 174 (2.48%) Grafana
5 143 (2.03%) Prometheus
6 105 (1.49%) SCCM
7 92 (1.31%) Single Sign-On
8 82 (1.17%) vCenter Server
9 74 (1.05%) Microsoft Intune
10 62 (0.88%) Argo
11 56 (0.80%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 37 (0.53%) Kibana
13 36 (0.51%) Packer
14 33 (0.47%) OPNET
15 26 (0.37%) Jamf Pro
15 26 (0.37%) Puppet
16 25 (0.36%) Podman
16 25 (0.36%) vRealize
17 24 (0.34%) Nessus
17 24 (0.34%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 901 (12.82%) Microsoft
2 453 (6.45%) SAP
3 412 (5.86%) Cisco
4 382 (5.44%) Oracle
5 359 (5.11%) VMware
6 329 (4.68%) ServiceNow
7 189 (2.69%) Splunk
8 150 (2.13%) Red Hat
9 145 (2.06%) Juniper
10 118 (1.68%) Google
11 117 (1.66%) Palo Alto
12 101 (1.44%) Atlassian
13 96 (1.37%) HP
14 95 (1.35%) Dell
15 94 (1.34%) Salesforce
16 91 (1.29%) Databricks
17 90 (1.28%) CyberArk
18 78 (1.11%) Remedy
19 68 (0.97%) Apple
19 68 (0.97%) CheckPoint