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 21 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 7,374 4,848 6,905
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.84% 18.19% 18.73%
As % of the Qualifications category 66.39% 59.83% 60.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,031 3,063 4,408
10th Percentile £350 £349 £363
25th Percentile £450 £447 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -3.51%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £655
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £553
% change year-on-year -4.55% -0.45% -2.21%
Number of hourly rates quoted 665 250 453
10th Percentile £17.87 £21.25 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.79 £27.00 £42.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £58.30
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% +2.92% -2.83%
75th Percentile £63.75 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £81.99
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £53.01 £59.02
% change year-on-year -52.55% -10.18% -1.64%

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 11,107 8,103 11,429
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.40% 30.40% 30.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,370 4,916 7,147
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £419 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £519 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -1.13% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 874 395 773
10th Percentile £16.00 £19.98 £14.25
25th Percentile £19.00 £25.26 £21.46
Median hourly rate £25.15 £47.25 £48.40
Median % change year-on-year -46.77% -2.39% +7.56%
75th Percentile £61.42 £67.88 £66.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.25 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £48.70
% change year-on-year -37.13% -17.86% +8.22%

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 21 January 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 21 January 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 21 January 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 +4 2,504 £538 -2.27% 425
South East +1 1,486 £517 -6.00% 559
South West 0 1,268 £550 -0.18% 401
North of England -2 817 £500 +5.26% 231
Midlands +4 717 £515 -6.53% 149
West Midlands +3 565 £523 -5.17% 88
North West 0 549 £506 +6.53% 125
East of England +2 336 £492 -4.00% 237
Yorkshire -14 161 £500 +11.11% 68
East Midlands +1 152 £425 -20.63% 59
North East 0 130 £448 -14.76% 39
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
1 273 (3.70%) Confluence
2 186 (2.52%) SharePoint
3 124 (1.68%) Microsoft Exchange
4 114 (1.55%) SAS
5 81 (1.10%) Apache
6 55 (0.75%) Apache Spark
7 47 (0.64%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.53%) Skype for Business
9 36 (0.49%) nginx
10 28 (0.38%) WebLogic
11 19 (0.26%) CMS
12 18 (0.24%) IIS
13 14 (0.19%) Jupyter
14 10 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
14 10 (0.14%) SharePoint Server
15 9 (0.12%) OpenStack
16 7 (0.095%) Exchange Server 2010
16 7 (0.095%) Tuxedo
17 6 (0.081%) Documentum
17 6 (0.081%) Tomcat
Applications
1 245 (3.32%) Microsoft Office
2 150 (2.03%) Microsoft Excel
3 103 (1.40%) Microsoft Project
4 61 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 37 (0.50%) MS Visio
6 23 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.16%) Simulink
8 8 (0.11%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 6 (0.081%) FrameMaker
9 6 (0.081%) Siemens NX
10 5 (0.068%) Oracle Smart View
10 5 (0.068%) Sketch
10 5 (0.068%) Windchill
11 4 (0.054%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.054%) Stateflow
11 4 (0.054%) Trello
12 3 (0.041%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.041%) PTC Creo
13 2 (0.027%) Adobe Illustrator
13 2 (0.027%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 144 (1.95%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.50%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 27 (0.37%) SAP EWM
3 27 (0.37%) SAP WM
4 25 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
5 23 (0.31%) Dynamics CRM
5 23 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
6 18 (0.24%) Maximo
6 18 (0.24%) SAP MM
7 14 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
7 14 (0.19%) SAP QM
8 13 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
8 13 (0.18%) Teamcenter
9 12 (0.16%) SAP HCM
9 12 (0.16%) SAP PP
9 12 (0.16%) SAP VC
10 11 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
10 11 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
10 11 (0.15%) Oracle Receivables
10 11 (0.15%) SAP EHS
Cloud Services
1 1,259 (17.07%) Azure
2 1,218 (16.52%) AWS
3 327 (4.43%) GitHub
4 325 (4.41%) GCP
5 314 (4.26%) Microsoft 365
6 280 (3.80%) Azure DevOps
7 266 (3.61%) Power Platform
8 213 (2.89%) Serverless
9 195 (2.64%) Entra ID
10 163 (2.21%) Amazon S3
10 163 (2.21%) GitHub Actions
11 143 (1.94%) OpenShift
12 127 (1.72%) AWS Lambda
13 108 (1.46%) SaaS
14 102 (1.38%) AWS CloudFormation
15 99 (1.34%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 97 (1.32%) IaaS
17 96 (1.30%) Amazon EC2
18 92 (1.25%) PaaS
19 89 (1.21%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 387 (5.25%) Firewall
2 251 (3.40%) DNS
3 183 (2.48%) Network Security
4 172 (2.33%) VPN
5 168 (2.28%) WAN
6 127 (1.72%) TCP/IP
7 122 (1.65%) LAN
8 111 (1.51%) BGP
9 102 (1.38%) DHCP
10 87 (1.18%) Wireless
11 81 (1.10%) VLAN
12 72 (0.98%) Wi-Fi
13 63 (0.85%) OSPF
13 63 (0.85%) SSL
14 61 (0.83%) MPLS
15 58 (0.79%) IPsec
16 50 (0.68%) SAN
17 46 (0.62%) Skype
18 41 (0.56%) Cisco ISE
19 37 (0.50%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 197 (2.67%) PostgreSQL
2 181 (2.45%) Power BI
3 90 (1.22%) Data Warehouse
4 84 (1.14%) MongoDB
4 84 (1.14%) NoSQL
4 84 (1.14%) SQL Server
5 81 (1.10%) Metadata
6 80 (1.08%) Amazon RDS
7 79 (1.07%) Oracle Database
8 67 (0.91%) Relational Database
9 61 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
10 47 (0.64%) Elasticsearch
11 45 (0.61%) Pentaho
12 43 (0.58%) Big Data
13 41 (0.56%) SAS Enterprise Guide
14 40 (0.54%) Data Lake
15 38 (0.52%) Amazon Athena
16 37 (0.50%) Amazon Redshift
17 35 (0.47%) MySQL
18 34 (0.46%) Redis
Development Applications
1 474 (6.43%) JIRA
2 387 (5.25%) Git
3 346 (4.69%) Jenkins
4 284 (3.85%) GitLab
5 86 (1.17%) Selenium
6 67 (0.91%) Postman
7 59 (0.80%) JUnit
8 56 (0.76%) Cypress.io
9 48 (0.65%) Oracle APEX
10 44 (0.60%) Bitbucket
11 43 (0.58%) Artifactory
12 41 (0.56%) SonarQube
13 36 (0.49%) Maven
14 34 (0.46%) Cucumber
15 33 (0.45%) Mockito
16 27 (0.37%) REST Assured
17 24 (0.33%) MSI
18 23 (0.31%) Metasploit
19 21 (0.28%) Burp Suite
19 21 (0.28%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,936 (26.25%) Public Sector
2 1,887 (25.59%) Social Skills
3 651 (8.83%) Analytical Skills
4 512 (6.94%) Finance
5 293 (3.97%) Military
6 197 (2.67%) Documentation Skills
7 195 (2.64%) Telecoms
8 189 (2.56%) Manufacturing
9 134 (1.82%) Electronics
10 130 (1.76%) Marketing
11 119 (1.61%) Aerospace
12 110 (1.49%) Organisational Skills
13 104 (1.41%) Legal
14 94 (1.27%) Presentation Skills
15 89 (1.21%) Banking
16 83 (1.13%) Influencing Skills
17 67 (0.91%) Law
18 46 (0.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 31 (0.42%) Police
20 29 (0.39%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,006 (13.64%) Architect
2 716 (9.71%) Developer
3 620 (8.41%) Senior
4 520 (7.05%) Analyst
5 502 (6.81%) Consultant
6 411 (5.57%) Lead
7 366 (4.96%) DevOps Engineer
8 235 (3.19%) Support Engineer
9 231 (3.13%) Network Engineer
10 228 (3.09%) Data Engineer
11 175 (2.37%) Solutions Architect
12 174 (2.36%) Technical Architect
13 170 (2.31%) Software Engineer
14 166 (2.25%) Business Analyst
15 139 (1.89%) AWS Engineer
16 138 (1.87%) Tester
17 134 (1.82%) SAP Consultant
18 132 (1.79%) IT Engineer
19 130 (1.76%) Infrastructure Engineer
20 128 (1.74%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 308 (4.18%) REST
2 178 (2.41%) Node.js
3 171 (2.32%) React
4 159 (2.16%) Kafka
5 140 (1.90%) SOAP
6 137 (1.86%) JSON
7 136 (1.84%) Spring
8 120 (1.63%) LDAP
9 109 (1.48%) HTML
10 106 (1.44%) Spring Boot
11 99 (1.34%) .NET
12 95 (1.29%) RESTful
13 94 (1.27%) CSS
13 94 (1.27%) XML
14 92 (1.25%) OAuth
15 87 (1.18%) AngularJS
16 86 (1.17%) Oracle Fusion
17 82 (1.11%) Web Services
18 79 (1.07%) PySpark
19 70 (0.95%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 238 (3.23%) Data Centre
2 209 (2.83%) Product Ownership
3 202 (2.74%) Cloud Native
4 196 (2.66%) PKI
5 195 (2.64%) Onboarding
6 142 (1.93%) Management Information System
7 116 (1.57%) Security Posture
8 106 (1.44%) Enterprise Software
9 101 (1.37%) Self-Motivation
10 89 (1.21%) Legacy Systems
11 81 (1.10%) Replication
12 76 (1.03%) Cyber Threat
13 69 (0.94%) Driving Licence
14 59 (0.80%) Security Operations Centre
15 56 (0.76%) Hybrid Cloud
16 51 (0.69%) Public Cloud
17 48 (0.65%) Distributed Systems
17 48 (0.65%) Private Cloud
18 44 (0.60%) Analytical Mindset
18 44 (0.60%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 822 (11.15%) Windows
2 580 (7.87%) Linux
3 206 (2.79%) Windows Server
4 182 (2.47%) Windows 10
5 103 (1.40%) Unix
6 100 (1.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 93 (1.26%) Android
8 69 (0.94%) Mac OS
9 44 (0.60%) VMS
10 42 (0.57%) Ubuntu
11 29 (0.39%) Apple iOS
12 24 (0.33%) CentOS
13 22 (0.30%) Windows 7
13 22 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
14 18 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
15 16 (0.22%) Amazon Linux
15 16 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
16 15 (0.20%) Mac OS X
17 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2003
18 12 (0.16%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,409 (19.11%) Agile
2 1,164 (15.79%) DevOps
3 1,012 (13.72%) CI/CD
4 920 (12.48%) Problem-Solving
5 657 (8.91%) Migration
6 614 (8.33%) Stakeholder Management
7 536 (7.27%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 506 (6.86%) Continuous Improvement
9 491 (6.66%) Cybersecurity
10 476 (6.46%) ITIL
11 455 (6.17%) Infrastructure as Code
12 418 (5.67%) Test Automation
13 392 (5.32%) Analytics
14 391 (5.30%) Containerisation
15 388 (5.26%) Business Intelligence
16 384 (5.21%) Service Management
17 365 (4.95%) Roadmaps
18 335 (4.54%) Scrum
19 333 (4.52%) Software Engineering
20 327 (4.43%) Workflow
Programming Languages
1 927 (12.57%) Python
2 581 (7.88%) SQL
3 518 (7.02%) PowerShell
4 408 (5.53%) Java
5 350 (4.75%) JavaScript
6 202 (2.74%) Bash
7 166 (2.25%) TypeScript
8 132 (1.79%) C#
9 88 (1.19%) Go
10 85 (1.15%) C++
11 70 (0.95%) PL/SQL
11 70 (0.95%) Shell Script
12 59 (0.80%) C
13 43 (0.58%) Ruby
14 42 (0.57%) Scala
15 38 (0.52%) Ada
16 36 (0.49%) MATLAB
17 34 (0.46%) ABAP
18 32 (0.43%) Bicep
19 31 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 5,665 (76.82%) SC Cleared
2 1,240 (16.82%) DV Cleared
3 378 (5.13%) Degree
4 226 (3.06%) BPSS Clearance
5 138 (1.87%) CISSP
6 121 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
7 118 (1.60%) Azure Certification
8 115 (1.56%) Microsoft Certification
9 104 (1.41%) CCNP
10 92 (1.25%) AWS Certification
11 83 (1.13%) CISM
12 64 (0.87%) Computer Science Degree
13 61 (0.83%) ITIL Certification
14 53 (0.72%) CCNA
15 49 (0.66%) CEH
16 48 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
17 42 (0.57%) GIAC
17 42 (0.57%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 40 (0.54%) CHECK Team Member
19 36 (0.49%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 238 (3.23%) QA
2 222 (3.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 214 (2.90%) NIST
4 174 (2.36%) NCSC
5 169 (2.29%) Data Quality
6 155 (2.10%) GDPR
7 123 (1.67%) Accessibility
8 119 (1.61%) SLA
9 79 (1.07%) PMO
10 50 (0.68%) JSP 440
11 47 (0.64%) GRC
12 42 (0.57%) WCAG
13 33 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials
14 32 (0.43%) Def Stans
15 29 (0.39%) PCI DSS
16 27 (0.37%) COBIT
17 26 (0.35%) NIST 800
18 21 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 20000
19 18 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
20 17 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 550 (7.46%) Docker
2 468 (6.35%) Active Directory
3 218 (2.96%) VMware Infrastructure
4 72 (0.98%) VMware NSX
5 64 (0.87%) vSphere
6 55 (0.75%) VMware ESXi
7 54 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
8 41 (0.56%) Hyper-V
9 31 (0.42%) Firmware
10 27 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
11 17 (0.23%) BitLocker
12 15 (0.20%) Postfix
13 13 (0.18%) DFS Replication
14 12 (0.16%) Dovecot
15 9 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 9 (0.12%) Squid
16 8 (0.11%) NFS
16 8 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
17 7 (0.095%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 688 (9.33%) Kubernetes
2 622 (8.44%) Terraform
3 283 (3.84%) Ansible
4 172 (2.33%) Grafana
5 143 (1.94%) Prometheus
6 107 (1.45%) SCCM
7 102 (1.38%) Single Sign-On
8 93 (1.26%) vCenter Server
9 71 (0.96%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 67 (0.91%) Microsoft Intune
11 60 (0.81%) Argo
12 37 (0.50%) Kibana
12 37 (0.50%) Packer
13 34 (0.46%) Podman
14 33 (0.45%) OPNET
15 30 (0.41%) vRealize
16 27 (0.37%) Puppet
17 26 (0.35%) Progress Chef
18 25 (0.34%) Nessus
19 24 (0.33%) Nmap
Vendors
1 939 (12.73%) Microsoft
2 422 (5.72%) SAP
3 415 (5.63%) Oracle
4 405 (5.49%) Cisco
5 388 (5.26%) VMware
6 317 (4.30%) ServiceNow
7 201 (2.73%) Splunk
8 152 (2.06%) Red Hat
9 130 (1.76%) Juniper
10 129 (1.75%) Palo Alto
11 113 (1.53%) CyberArk
12 112 (1.52%) Google
13 103 (1.40%) Atlassian
13 103 (1.40%) Databricks
14 97 (1.32%) Salesforce
15 95 (1.29%) Dell
16 80 (1.08%) HP
17 73 (0.99%) Dynatrace
18 70 (0.95%) CheckPoint
19 69 (0.94%) Remedy