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 23 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 0 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,273 4,438 6,823
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.33% 18.63% 18.78%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.99% 59.15% 61.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,450 2,948 4,485
10th Percentile £375 £338 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.28% -2.32% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £527 £550
% change year-on-year -0.38% -4.18% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 766 276 488
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £23.71 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £39.52 £55.80
Median % change year-on-year +39.17% -29.18% -7.00%
75th Percentile £74.00 £66.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £78.53 £83.61
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £32.50 £55.80
% change year-on-year +69.23% -41.76% -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 13,249 7,503 11,129
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.90% 31.49% 30.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,887 4,783 6,899
10th Percentile £350 £278 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £537
Median % change year-on-year - -2.32% -2.28%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £523 £530
% change year-on-year +0.48% -1.42% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 987 427 973
10th Percentile £17.03 £18.02 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.33 £22.27 £18.13
Median hourly rate £47.54 £35.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.83% -12.50% -25.93%
75th Percentile £73.00 £67.25 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.36 £80.00 £75.25
UK median hourly rate £48.05 £33.75 £40.00
% change year-on-year +42.37% -15.63% -27.27%

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 23 May 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 23 May 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 23 May 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 3,306 £525 - 508
South East +1 2,228 £550 - 526
South West 0 1,297 £538 -4.70% 371
North of England 0 924 £500 - 297
Midlands +2 867 £470 -10.48% 139
West Midlands +3 740 £471 -10.29% 105
North West -1 523 £504 +0.70% 168
East of England +2 376 £550 +10.00% 134
Yorkshire -7 232 £488 -1.71% 66
North East +1 206 £475 -3.06% 65
East Midlands -5 120 £450 -5.26% 34
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
1 342 (3.69%) Confluence
2 206 (2.22%) SharePoint
3 121 (1.30%) Microsoft Exchange
4 119 (1.28%) SAS
5 76 (0.82%) Apache Spark
6 68 (0.73%) Apache
7 61 (0.66%) Apache Airflow
8 33 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 30 (0.32%) nginx
10 26 (0.28%) Jupyter
11 17 (0.18%) IIS
11 17 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
12 16 (0.17%) Tomcat
13 14 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
13 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
14 13 (0.14%) Skype for Business
15 12 (0.13%) CMS
16 9 (0.097%) NetWeaver
17 8 (0.086%) Apache Superset
17 8 (0.086%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 173 (1.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 171 (1.84%) Microsoft Office
3 95 (1.02%) Microsoft Project
4 83 (0.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 36 (0.39%) MS Visio
6 18 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.13%) Simulink
8 8 (0.086%) AutoCAD
9 7 (0.075%) SOLIDWORKS
10 6 (0.065%) Revit
11 5 (0.054%) Notepad++
12 4 (0.043%) Siemens NX
13 3 (0.032%) Chatbot
13 3 (0.032%) Windchill
14 2 (0.022%) Adobe XD
14 2 (0.022%) CATIA
14 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
14 2 (0.022%) Lectora
14 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.022%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 86 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
2 49 (0.53%) Remedy ITSM
3 38 (0.41%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 31 (0.33%) Teamcenter
5 28 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
6 26 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
7 15 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.15%) Maximo
8 14 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.14%) Findur
9 13 (0.14%) iTrent
10 12 (0.13%) SAP PSCD
10 12 (0.13%) Temenos T24
11 10 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.097%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.097%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.097%) SAP HCM
13 8 (0.086%) SAP HR
13 8 (0.086%) SAP MM
13 8 (0.086%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,574 (16.97%) Azure
2 1,509 (16.27%) AWS
3 376 (4.05%) GitHub
4 373 (4.02%) GCP
5 343 (3.70%) Azure DevOps
6 334 (3.60%) Power Platform
7 233 (2.51%) Entra ID
8 231 (2.49%) Serverless
9 225 (2.43%) Microsoft 365
10 218 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
11 189 (2.04%) Amazon S3
12 160 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
13 138 (1.49%) Amazon EC2
14 132 (1.42%) PaaS
15 126 (1.36%) OpenShift
16 117 (1.26%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 114 (1.23%) OCI
18 108 (1.16%) SaaS
19 105 (1.13%) Virtual Private Cloud
20 102 (1.10%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 432 (4.66%) Firewall
2 271 (2.92%) DNS
3 218 (2.35%) Network Security
3 218 (2.35%) WAN
4 197 (2.12%) LAN
5 156 (1.68%) VPN
6 144 (1.55%) BGP
7 143 (1.54%) DHCP
8 125 (1.35%) OSPF
9 106 (1.14%) Wi-Fi
10 104 (1.12%) VLAN
11 101 (1.09%) TCP/IP
12 86 (0.93%) Wireless
13 60 (0.65%) MPLS
14 57 (0.61%) SAN
14 57 (0.61%) Structured Cabling
15 55 (0.59%) VXLAN
16 49 (0.53%) IPsec
16 49 (0.53%) SD-WAN
17 48 (0.52%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 252 (2.72%) Power BI
2 217 (2.34%) PostgreSQL
3 204 (2.20%) Data Warehouse
4 192 (2.07%) SQL Server
5 115 (1.24%) Metadata
6 113 (1.22%) Oracle Database
7 103 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
8 89 (0.96%) MongoDB
9 88 (0.95%) Data Lake
10 79 (0.85%) NoSQL
11 78 (0.84%) Relational Database
12 76 (0.82%) Pentaho
13 69 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
14 68 (0.73%) Oracle Reports
15 62 (0.67%) Tableau
16 61 (0.66%) MySQL
17 59 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
18 58 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
19 52 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
20 44 (0.47%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 533 (5.75%) JIRA
2 399 (4.30%) Git
3 356 (3.84%) GitLab
4 355 (3.83%) Jenkins
5 99 (1.07%) Selenium
6 72 (0.78%) Postman
7 70 (0.75%) JUnit
8 61 (0.66%) SonarQube
9 55 (0.59%) Rational DOORS
10 48 (0.52%) Artifactory
11 45 (0.49%) JMeter
12 43 (0.46%) Bitbucket
13 40 (0.43%) Cucumber
14 39 (0.42%) Maven
14 39 (0.42%) Mockito
15 33 (0.36%) Visual Studio
16 32 (0.35%) Cypress.io
16 32 (0.35%) REST Assured
17 30 (0.32%) Zephyr
18 25 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,977 (21.32%) Public Sector
2 1,912 (20.62%) Social Skills
3 656 (7.07%) Analytical Skills
4 636 (6.86%) Finance
5 329 (3.55%) Military
6 261 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
7 237 (2.56%) Aerospace
8 136 (1.47%) Legal
9 113 (1.22%) Telecoms
10 112 (1.21%) Banking
11 107 (1.15%) Influencing Skills
12 103 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
13 95 (1.02%) Manufacturing
14 87 (0.94%) Law
15 79 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
16 55 (0.59%) Marketing
17 54 (0.58%) Police
18 53 (0.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 42 (0.45%) Electronics
20 41 (0.44%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,361 (14.68%) Architect
2 851 (9.18%) Developer
3 784 (8.45%) Senior
4 662 (7.14%) Lead
5 651 (7.02%) Analyst
6 451 (4.86%) Data Engineer
7 421 (4.54%) DevOps Engineer
8 412 (4.44%) Consultant
9 283 (3.05%) Network Engineer
10 278 (3.00%) Software Engineer
11 268 (2.89%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 265 (2.86%) Technical Architect
13 236 (2.55%) Business Analyst
14 214 (2.31%) Project Manager
15 212 (2.29%) Solutions Architect
16 192 (2.07%) Azure Engineer
17 179 (1.93%) Administrator
17 179 (1.93%) Security Architect
18 176 (1.90%) Designer
19 171 (1.84%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 297 (3.20%) REST
2 217 (2.34%) Spring
3 177 (1.91%) Spring Boot
4 166 (1.79%) React
5 165 (1.78%) Node.js
6 157 (1.69%) Kafka
7 153 (1.65%) .NET
8 145 (1.56%) LDAP
9 138 (1.49%) SOAP
10 135 (1.46%) RESTful
11 112 (1.21%) AngularJS
12 108 (1.16%) JSON
13 100 (1.08%) Web Services
14 95 (1.02%) PySpark
15 89 (0.96%) OAuth
16 87 (0.94%) Oracle Fusion
17 82 (0.88%) HTML
18 77 (0.83%) XML
19 69 (0.74%) Elastic Stack
20 68 (0.73%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 316 (3.41%) Cloud Native
2 301 (3.25%) Product Ownership
3 282 (3.04%) Data Centre
4 267 (2.88%) Onboarding
5 145 (1.56%) Management Information System
6 140 (1.51%) PKI
7 127 (1.37%) Legacy Systems
8 124 (1.34%) Security Posture
9 114 (1.23%) Replication
10 113 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
11 109 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
12 90 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
13 84 (0.91%) Clustering
14 80 (0.86%) Data Structures
15 77 (0.83%) Hybrid Cloud
16 70 (0.75%) Security Operations Centre
17 69 (0.74%) Public Cloud
18 68 (0.73%) Operational Technology
19 65 (0.70%) Virtual Team
20 64 (0.69%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 759 (8.19%) Windows
2 641 (6.91%) Linux
3 230 (2.48%) Windows Server
4 169 (1.82%) Unix
5 112 (1.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 86 (0.93%) Android
7 81 (0.87%) Windows 10
8 51 (0.55%) Apple iOS
9 43 (0.46%) Solaris
10 38 (0.41%) Mac OS
11 34 (0.37%) Ubuntu
12 25 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 24 (0.26%) AIX
14 23 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
15 22 (0.24%) CentOS
16 21 (0.23%) VMS
17 13 (0.14%) Windows 7
18 12 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
19 9 (0.097%) Windows Server 2003
19 9 (0.097%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,793 (19.34%) Agile
2 1,414 (15.25%) DevOps
3 1,233 (13.30%) CI/CD
4 992 (10.70%) Problem-Solving
5 906 (9.77%) Stakeholder Management
6 832 (8.97%) Continuous Improvement
7 762 (8.22%) Migration
8 687 (7.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 624 (6.73%) Infrastructure as Code
10 584 (6.30%) ITIL
11 583 (6.29%) Cybersecurity
12 531 (5.73%) Test Automation
13 526 (5.67%) Software Engineering
14 519 (5.60%) Analytics
15 504 (5.44%) Roadmaps
16 498 (5.37%) Containerisation
17 473 (5.10%) Data Modelling
18 439 (4.73%) Decision-Making
19 413 (4.45%) Scrum
20 404 (4.36%) AI
Programming Languages
1 970 (10.46%) Python
2 844 (9.10%) SQL
3 564 (6.08%) Java
4 494 (5.33%) PowerShell
5 279 (3.01%) JavaScript
6 193 (2.08%) C#
7 181 (1.95%) Bash
8 139 (1.50%) TypeScript
9 94 (1.01%) PL/SQL
10 89 (0.96%) C++
11 84 (0.91%) Shell Script
12 63 (0.68%) Go
13 61 (0.66%) Scala
14 56 (0.60%) C
15 54 (0.58%) Bicep
16 52 (0.56%) Ruby
17 42 (0.45%) Apex Code
18 40 (0.43%) Ada
19 35 (0.38%) MATLAB
19 35 (0.38%) R
Qualifications
1 6,966 (75.12%) SC Cleared
2 1,784 (19.24%) DV Cleared
3 406 (4.38%) Degree
4 256 (2.76%) BPSS Clearance
5 187 (2.02%) Cisco Certification
6 158 (1.70%) CISSP
7 119 (1.28%) Azure Certification
8 117 (1.26%) CCNP
9 103 (1.11%) CISM
10 93 (1.00%) AWS Certification
11 88 (0.95%) Microsoft Certification
12 79 (0.85%) CCNA
13 72 (0.78%) PMP
14 61 (0.66%) PMI Certification
15 60 (0.65%) Computer Science Degree
16 57 (0.61%) ISTQB
17 51 (0.55%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 50 (0.54%) ITIL Certification
19 49 (0.53%) GIAC
20 46 (0.50%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 346 (3.73%) QA
2 278 (3.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 276 (2.98%) NIST
4 264 (2.85%) Data Quality
5 192 (2.07%) NCSC
6 163 (1.76%) Accessibility
7 156 (1.68%) PMO
8 155 (1.67%) GDPR
9 99 (1.07%) SLA
10 64 (0.69%) GRC
11 60 (0.65%) JSP 440
12 54 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials
13 37 (0.40%) NIST 800
14 35 (0.38%) WCAG
15 30 (0.32%) Def Stans
16 29 (0.31%) PCI DSS
17 28 (0.30%) RMADS
18 21 (0.23%) COBIT
18 21 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 20 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 564 (6.08%) Docker
2 428 (4.62%) Active Directory
3 266 (2.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 101 (1.09%) VMware ESXi
5 89 (0.96%) VMware NSX
6 76 (0.82%) vSphere
7 73 (0.79%) Hyper-V
8 66 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
9 33 (0.36%) Firmware
10 27 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
11 24 (0.26%) Virtual Desktop
12 20 (0.22%) NFS
12 20 (0.22%) vCloud
13 19 (0.20%) BitLocker
14 18 (0.19%) Postfix
15 16 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 15 (0.16%) Squid
17 8 (0.086%) Microsoft App-V
18 7 (0.075%) KVM
19 6 (0.065%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 723 (7.80%) Kubernetes
2 705 (7.60%) Terraform
3 330 (3.56%) Ansible
4 231 (2.49%) Grafana
5 188 (2.03%) Prometheus
6 106 (1.14%) vCenter Server
7 84 (0.91%) Single Sign-On
8 70 (0.75%) SCCM
9 57 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 51 (0.55%) Microsoft Intune
11 47 (0.51%) FortiGate
12 46 (0.50%) Argo
13 40 (0.43%) Puppet
14 38 (0.41%) Podman
15 33 (0.36%) Oracle RMAN
15 33 (0.36%) SCOM
16 31 (0.33%) Progress Chef
17 29 (0.31%) Nagios
18 23 (0.25%) Packer
19 22 (0.24%) WSUS
Vendors
1 946 (10.20%) Microsoft
2 580 (6.25%) Oracle
3 460 (4.96%) VMware
4 374 (4.03%) ServiceNow
5 334 (3.60%) Cisco
6 313 (3.38%) SAP
7 214 (2.31%) Splunk
8 179 (1.93%) Databricks
9 154 (1.66%) Red Hat
10 150 (1.62%) Google
11 121 (1.30%) Palo Alto
12 115 (1.24%) Talend
13 111 (1.20%) IBM
13 111 (1.20%) Salesforce
14 101 (1.09%) Juniper
15 93 (1.00%) CyberArk
16 84 (0.91%) F5
16 84 (0.91%) Informatica
17 80 (0.86%) Fortinet
18 75 (0.81%) Atlassian