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 2 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,620 4,714 7,041
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.92% 18.25% 18.86%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.53% 58.98% 61.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,755 3,081 4,602
10th Percentile £380 £338 £353
25th Percentile £450 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £715 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £529 £550
% change year-on-year -0.76% -3.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 752 359 539
10th Percentile £18.31 £18.48 £14.45
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +151.03% -56.26% -4.17%
75th Percentile £75.00 £63.75 £72.50
90th Percentile £86.91 £77.50 £83.59
UK median hourly rate £61.16 £25.15 £55.80
% change year-on-year +143.18% -54.93% -7.00%

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 13,835 7,992 11,392
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.53% 30.95% 30.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,318 5,035 7,040
10th Percentile £350 £281 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £645
90th Percentile £718 £716 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £521 £525
% change year-on-year +0.82% -0.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,038 530 999
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.16
25th Percentile £24.19 £20.00 £20.50
Median hourly rate £52.50 £28.58 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +83.73% -32.76% -22.73%
75th Percentile £73.46 £63.63 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.40 £77.50 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £28.00 £40.94
% change year-on-year +78.57% -31.61% -26.70%

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 2 July 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 2 July 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 2 July 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 +7 3,415 £530 +0.95% 738
South East +1 2,328 £550 - 642
South West 0 1,306 £538 -4.44% 498
North of England +2 1,022 £500 +0.05% 368
Midlands +2 932 £469 -8.49% 202
West Midlands +2 795 £469 -10.20% 156
North West 0 548 £525 +4.90% 225
East of England +2 344 £550 +10.00% 125
Yorkshire -1 268 £500 +1.63% 85
North East +1 234 £475 -1.04% 59
East Midlands -1 126 £418 -12.11% 45
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
1 334 (3.47%) Confluence
2 221 (2.30%) SharePoint
3 142 (1.48%) SAS
4 123 (1.28%) Microsoft Exchange
5 89 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
6 82 (0.85%) Apache Spark
7 79 (0.82%) Apache
8 39 (0.41%) Jupyter
8 39 (0.41%) nginx
9 29 (0.30%) WebLogic
10 21 (0.22%) Tomcat
11 18 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
12 16 (0.17%) CMS
12 16 (0.17%) IIS
13 15 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
14 14 (0.15%) Skype for Business
15 12 (0.12%) Tuxedo
16 11 (0.11%) NetWeaver
17 9 (0.094%) Palantir Foundry
18 8 (0.083%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 155 (1.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 126 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 79 (0.82%) Microsoft Project
4 65 (0.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 40 (0.42%) MS Visio
6 17 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.14%) Simulink
8 12 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
9 11 (0.11%) AutoCAD
9 11 (0.11%) Revit
10 10 (0.10%) Chatbot
11 5 (0.052%) Notepad++
12 4 (0.042%) Adobe XD
13 3 (0.031%) Sketch
14 2 (0.021%) CATIA
14 2 (0.021%) CPLEX
14 2 (0.021%) Lectora
14 2 (0.021%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.021%) Siemens NX
14 2 (0.021%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 101 (1.05%) SAP S/4HANA
2 60 (0.62%) Remedy ITSM
3 43 (0.45%) Oracle ERP
4 32 (0.33%) Teamcenter
5 31 (0.32%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 27 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
7 22 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
8 19 (0.20%) SAP PSCD
9 15 (0.16%) Findur
9 15 (0.16%) Temenos T24
10 14 (0.15%) Primavera
11 13 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
12 12 (0.12%) iTrent
12 12 (0.12%) Maximo
12 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
13 11 (0.11%) SAP ERP
14 9 (0.094%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 9 (0.094%) Salesforce CRM
14 9 (0.094%) SAP HR
15 8 (0.083%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 1,662 (17.28%) Azure
2 1,609 (16.73%) AWS
3 376 (3.91%) Power Platform
4 374 (3.89%) GitHub
5 372 (3.87%) Azure DevOps
6 342 (3.56%) GCP
7 247 (2.57%) Microsoft 365
8 244 (2.54%) Entra ID
9 243 (2.53%) Serverless
10 236 (2.45%) GitHub Actions
11 209 (2.17%) Amazon S3
12 167 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
13 151 (1.57%) Amazon EC2
14 140 (1.46%) SaaS
15 138 (1.43%) OpenShift
16 135 (1.40%) OCI
17 130 (1.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 130 (1.35%) PaaS
18 109 (1.13%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 101 (1.05%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 408 (4.24%) Firewall
2 305 (3.17%) DNS
3 225 (2.34%) Network Security
4 212 (2.20%) WAN
5 190 (1.98%) LAN
6 167 (1.74%) VPN
7 161 (1.67%) DHCP
8 139 (1.44%) BGP
9 117 (1.22%) OSPF
10 110 (1.14%) Wi-Fi
11 102 (1.06%) VLAN
12 95 (0.99%) TCP/IP
13 82 (0.85%) Wireless
14 60 (0.62%) MPLS
14 60 (0.62%) SD-WAN
15 55 (0.57%) VXLAN
16 53 (0.55%) SAN
17 50 (0.52%) BIG-IP
17 50 (0.52%) IPsec
18 46 (0.48%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 284 (2.95%) Power BI
2 241 (2.51%) PostgreSQL
3 220 (2.29%) SQL Server
4 217 (2.26%) Data Warehouse
5 146 (1.52%) Oracle Database
6 115 (1.20%) Metadata
7 106 (1.10%) Amazon RDS
8 101 (1.05%) Data Lake
9 98 (1.02%) Relational Database
10 84 (0.87%) MongoDB
11 83 (0.86%) Pentaho
12 79 (0.82%) MySQL
13 75 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
13 75 (0.78%) Oracle Reports
14 68 (0.71%) Amazon Redshift
15 66 (0.69%) NoSQL
16 61 (0.63%) Amazon Athena
17 58 (0.60%) Tableau
18 43 (0.45%) DynamoDB
19 42 (0.44%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 532 (5.53%) JIRA
2 434 (4.51%) Git
3 407 (4.23%) GitLab
4 371 (3.86%) Jenkins
5 105 (1.09%) Selenium
6 80 (0.83%) JUnit
7 73 (0.76%) SonarQube
8 68 (0.71%) Postman
9 58 (0.60%) Rational DOORS
10 53 (0.55%) JMeter
11 50 (0.52%) Cucumber
12 43 (0.45%) Mockito
13 41 (0.43%) Artifactory
13 41 (0.43%) Maven
14 40 (0.42%) Bitbucket
15 39 (0.41%) REST Assured
16 37 (0.38%) Visual Studio
16 37 (0.38%) Zephyr
17 35 (0.36%) Cypress.io
18 29 (0.30%) WebDriver
General
1 2,040 (21.21%) Public Sector
2 1,947 (20.24%) Social Skills
3 677 (7.04%) Analytical Skills
4 661 (6.87%) Finance
5 320 (3.33%) Military
6 272 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
7 268 (2.79%) Aerospace
8 142 (1.48%) Influencing Skills
9 139 (1.44%) Legal
10 125 (1.30%) Banking
11 113 (1.17%) Telecoms
12 99 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
13 93 (0.97%) Law
14 77 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
15 76 (0.79%) Manufacturing
16 75 (0.78%) Police
17 64 (0.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 41 (0.43%) Marketing
19 38 (0.40%) Aviation
20 36 (0.37%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,403 (14.58%) Architect
2 981 (10.20%) Developer
3 825 (8.58%) Senior
4 777 (8.08%) Lead
5 615 (6.39%) Analyst
6 454 (4.72%) Data Engineer
7 433 (4.50%) Consultant
8 411 (4.27%) DevOps Engineer
9 314 (3.26%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 306 (3.18%) Software Engineer
11 279 (2.90%) Technical Architect
12 248 (2.58%) Network Engineer
13 228 (2.37%) Solutions Architect
14 218 (2.27%) Security Architect
15 203 (2.11%) Business Analyst
16 201 (2.09%) Project Manager
17 193 (2.01%) Java Developer
18 192 (2.00%) Delivery Manager
19 181 (1.88%) Administrator
20 173 (1.80%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 305 (3.17%) REST
2 231 (2.40%) Spring
3 187 (1.94%) Spring Boot
4 168 (1.75%) React
5 167 (1.74%) .NET
6 159 (1.65%) Kafka
7 153 (1.59%) Node.js
8 148 (1.54%) RESTful
9 128 (1.33%) SOAP
10 114 (1.19%) JSON
11 112 (1.16%) AngularJS
12 110 (1.14%) LDAP
13 97 (1.01%) OAuth
14 92 (0.96%) PySpark
15 89 (0.93%) Web Services
16 85 (0.88%) HTML
17 76 (0.79%) XML
18 75 (0.78%) OpenID
19 68 (0.71%) Playwright
19 68 (0.71%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 378 (3.93%) Cloud Native
2 317 (3.30%) Product Ownership
3 299 (3.11%) Onboarding
4 280 (2.91%) Data Centre
5 152 (1.58%) Legacy Systems
6 144 (1.50%) Management Information System
7 137 (1.42%) PKI
8 132 (1.37%) Distributed Systems
9 109 (1.13%) Replication
10 106 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
11 98 (1.02%) CMDB
12 93 (0.97%) Enterprise Software
13 92 (0.96%) Security Posture
14 90 (0.94%) Data Structures
15 88 (0.91%) Clustering
16 87 (0.90%) Hybrid Cloud
17 76 (0.79%) Public Cloud
18 71 (0.74%) Security Operations Centre
19 70 (0.73%) Virtual Team
20 66 (0.69%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 794 (8.25%) Windows
2 651 (6.77%) Linux
3 254 (2.64%) Windows Server
4 179 (1.86%) Unix
5 126 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 83 (0.86%) Windows 10
7 77 (0.80%) Android
8 49 (0.51%) Solaris
9 47 (0.49%) Apple iOS
10 38 (0.40%) Mac OS
11 32 (0.33%) Ubuntu
12 29 (0.30%) AIX
13 25 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
14 23 (0.24%) CentOS
15 19 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
16 15 (0.16%) VMS
17 14 (0.15%) Windows 7
18 11 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
18 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
18 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,956 (20.33%) Agile
2 1,487 (15.46%) DevOps
3 1,332 (13.85%) CI/CD
4 1,004 (10.44%) Problem-Solving
5 999 (10.38%) Stakeholder Management
6 968 (10.06%) Continuous Improvement
7 789 (8.20%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 759 (7.89%) Migration
9 701 (7.29%) Infrastructure as Code
10 630 (6.55%) Cybersecurity
11 629 (6.54%) ITIL
12 588 (6.11%) Software Engineering
13 586 (6.09%) Test Automation
14 557 (5.79%) Containerisation
15 545 (5.67%) Analytics
15 545 (5.67%) Roadmaps
16 506 (5.26%) Decision-Making
17 493 (5.12%) Data Modelling
18 484 (5.03%) AI
19 462 (4.80%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 1,010 (10.50%) Python
2 903 (9.39%) SQL
3 642 (6.67%) Java
4 450 (4.68%) PowerShell
5 281 (2.92%) JavaScript
6 206 (2.14%) Bash
7 204 (2.12%) C#
8 149 (1.55%) TypeScript
9 129 (1.34%) PL/SQL
10 88 (0.91%) C++
11 85 (0.88%) Shell Script
12 70 (0.73%) Bicep
13 64 (0.67%) C
14 53 (0.55%) Go
15 46 (0.48%) Ada
16 40 (0.42%) Apex Code
16 40 (0.42%) Scala
17 39 (0.41%) Ruby
18 37 (0.38%) Kotlin
19 33 (0.34%) R
Qualifications
1 7,229 (75.15%) SC Cleared
2 1,906 (19.81%) DV Cleared
3 388 (4.03%) Degree
4 298 (3.10%) BPSS Clearance
5 187 (1.94%) Cisco Certification
6 158 (1.64%) CISSP
7 128 (1.33%) Azure Certification
8 110 (1.14%) Microsoft Certification
9 101 (1.05%) AWS Certification
10 99 (1.03%) CCNP
11 96 (1.00%) CISM
12 80 (0.83%) PMP
13 79 (0.82%) CCNA
13 79 (0.82%) PMI Certification
14 65 (0.68%) ISTQB
15 57 (0.59%) Computer Science Degree
15 57 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 48 (0.50%) ITIL Certification
17 38 (0.40%) GIAC
18 35 (0.36%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 373 (3.88%) QA
2 289 (3.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 287 (2.98%) NIST
4 282 (2.93%) Data Quality
5 211 (2.19%) NCSC
6 188 (1.95%) Accessibility
7 171 (1.78%) PMO
8 169 (1.76%) GDPR
9 96 (1.00%) SLA
10 85 (0.88%) GRC
11 61 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 45 (0.47%) WCAG
13 44 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
14 43 (0.45%) NIST 800
15 32 (0.33%) Def Stans
16 26 (0.27%) RMADS
17 23 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
17 23 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 21 (0.22%) COBIT
18 21 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 611 (6.35%) Docker
2 429 (4.46%) Active Directory
3 305 (3.17%) VMware Infrastructure
4 118 (1.23%) VMware ESXi
5 109 (1.13%) VMware NSX
6 81 (0.84%) vSphere
7 79 (0.82%) Hyper-V
8 75 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
9 33 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
10 32 (0.33%) Firmware
11 29 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
12 23 (0.24%) BitLocker
13 21 (0.22%) vCloud
14 20 (0.21%) NFS
15 19 (0.20%) Postfix
16 18 (0.19%) Squid
17 13 (0.14%) Slurm Workload Manager
18 9 (0.094%) Microsoft App-V
19 6 (0.062%) Corosync
19 6 (0.062%) KVM
Systems Management
1 779 (8.10%) Terraform
2 765 (7.95%) Kubernetes
3 339 (3.52%) Ansible
4 224 (2.33%) Grafana
5 182 (1.89%) Prometheus
6 115 (1.20%) vCenter Server
7 80 (0.83%) SCCM
8 72 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
9 62 (0.64%) Microsoft Intune
10 52 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 50 (0.52%) Argo
12 47 (0.49%) FortiGate
12 47 (0.49%) SCOM
13 44 (0.46%) Puppet
14 40 (0.42%) Oracle RMAN
15 32 (0.33%) Podman
16 28 (0.29%) Progress Chef
17 25 (0.26%) Nagios
18 23 (0.24%) vMotion
18 23 (0.24%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,041 (10.82%) Microsoft
2 688 (7.15%) Oracle
3 476 (4.95%) VMware
4 436 (4.53%) ServiceNow
5 311 (3.23%) SAP
6 307 (3.19%) Cisco
7 190 (1.98%) Splunk
8 167 (1.74%) Databricks
9 159 (1.65%) Google
10 143 (1.49%) Red Hat
11 128 (1.33%) Talend
12 125 (1.30%) Salesforce
13 114 (1.19%) IBM
14 104 (1.08%) Informatica
14 104 (1.08%) Palo Alto
15 96 (1.00%) Juniper
16 88 (0.91%) SolarWinds
17 86 (0.89%) F5
18 84 (0.87%) Citrix
19 82 (0.85%) Fortinet