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 10 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 2
Rank change year-on-year +1 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,128 4,561 7,191
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.27% 18.73% 19.20%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.87% 59.68% 61.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,295 3,044 4,682
10th Percentile £363 £328 £353
25th Percentile £448 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% -1.87%
75th Percentile £625 £626 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £534 £550
% change year-on-year -1.59% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 773 253 474
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.25 £24.66 £21.46
Median hourly rate £52.78 £59.00 £51.50
Median % change year-on-year -10.55% +14.56% -14.17%
75th Percentile £73.46 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.47 £79.74 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £55.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year -4.55% +4.76% -12.50%

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 13,065 7,642 11,747
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.31% 31.39% 31.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,757 4,902 7,274
10th Percentile £340 £300 £300
25th Percentile £425 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £518 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.43% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 993 421 940
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.50 £13.99
25th Percentile £20.79 £24.50 £17.80
Median hourly rate £42.00 £50.00 £39.96
Median % change year-on-year -16.00% +25.13% -22.41%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.39 £82.25 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £40.75 £45.00 £39.96
% change year-on-year -9.44% +12.61% -23.89%

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 10 April 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 10 April 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 10 April 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 3,213 £525 - 519
South East +1 2,142 £531 -3.44% 548
South West 0 1,355 £538 -4.44% 389
Midlands +4 905 £485 -9.68% 175
North of England -1 858 £488 -2.50% 305
West Midlands +4 755 £490 -10.09% 128
North West -2 532 £500 - 169
East of England +2 365 £500 +47.06% 158
Yorkshire -2 200 £480 -8.57% 72
North East +1 161 £450 -6.25% 65
East Midlands -1 146 £447 -12.80% 46
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
1 350 (3.83%) Confluence
2 215 (2.36%) SharePoint
3 148 (1.62%) SAS
4 131 (1.44%) Microsoft Exchange
5 78 (0.85%) Apache Spark
6 74 (0.81%) Apache
7 52 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.43%) nginx
9 35 (0.38%) WebLogic
10 21 (0.23%) Jupyter
11 18 (0.20%) Skype for Business
12 16 (0.18%) IIS
13 14 (0.15%) CMS
13 14 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
13 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
14 11 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
15 10 (0.11%) Tomcat
16 8 (0.088%) Apache Superset
16 8 (0.088%) ArcGIS
17 6 (0.066%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 229 (2.51%) Microsoft Office
2 192 (2.10%) Microsoft Excel
3 128 (1.40%) Microsoft Project
4 74 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (0.48%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.13%) Simulink
8 5 (0.055%) Notepad++
9 4 (0.044%) Siemens NX
9 4 (0.044%) Windchill
10 3 (0.033%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.022%) Adobe XD
11 2 (0.022%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.022%) CATIA
11 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.022%) Lectora
11 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.022%) Sketch
12 1 (0.011%) Adobe Illustrator
12 1 (0.011%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 85 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
2 40 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
3 39 (0.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 28 (0.31%) Dynamics CRM
5 26 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
5 26 (0.28%) Teamcenter
6 18 (0.20%) Maximo
7 14 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.14%) SAP PP
8 13 (0.14%) Temenos T24
9 12 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
10 11 (0.12%) Findur
10 11 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
11 10 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
12 9 (0.099%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.099%) SAP HCM
13 8 (0.088%) Primavera
13 8 (0.088%) Workday HCM
14 7 (0.077%) SAP EWM
14 7 (0.077%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 1,540 (16.87%) Azure
2 1,504 (16.48%) AWS
3 386 (4.23%) GitHub
4 378 (4.14%) GCP
5 361 (3.95%) Azure DevOps
6 326 (3.57%) Power Platform
7 269 (2.95%) Microsoft 365
8 260 (2.85%) Serverless
9 230 (2.52%) Entra ID
10 199 (2.18%) Amazon S3
10 199 (2.18%) GitHub Actions
11 176 (1.93%) AWS Lambda
12 158 (1.73%) OpenShift
13 133 (1.46%) PaaS
14 126 (1.38%) IaaS
15 125 (1.37%) Amazon EC2
16 120 (1.31%) AWS CloudFormation
17 107 (1.17%) Azure Data Factory
18 106 (1.16%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 99 (1.08%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 440 (4.82%) Firewall
2 259 (2.84%) DNS
3 217 (2.38%) WAN
4 216 (2.37%) Network Security
5 191 (2.09%) LAN
6 174 (1.91%) VPN
7 145 (1.59%) BGP
8 133 (1.46%) DHCP
9 116 (1.27%) TCP/IP
10 115 (1.26%) OSPF
11 98 (1.07%) VLAN
12 88 (0.96%) Wireless
13 75 (0.82%) Wi-Fi
14 63 (0.69%) MPLS
15 58 (0.64%) SAN
16 49 (0.54%) IPsec
17 48 (0.53%) Cisco ISE
18 45 (0.49%) SD-WAN
19 43 (0.47%) SSL
20 42 (0.46%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 248 (2.72%) Power BI
2 233 (2.55%) PostgreSQL
3 177 (1.94%) Data Warehouse
4 176 (1.93%) SQL Server
5 128 (1.40%) Metadata
6 107 (1.17%) Oracle Database
7 102 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
8 92 (1.01%) NoSQL
9 86 (0.94%) Relational Database
10 82 (0.90%) MongoDB
11 76 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
12 72 (0.79%) Elasticsearch
13 71 (0.78%) MySQL
14 66 (0.72%) Data Lake
14 66 (0.72%) Pentaho
15 65 (0.71%) Tableau
16 64 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
17 51 (0.56%) Oracle Reports
18 48 (0.53%) Amazon Athena
19 43 (0.47%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 559 (6.12%) JIRA
2 467 (5.12%) Git
3 363 (3.98%) Jenkins
4 317 (3.47%) GitLab
5 106 (1.16%) Selenium
6 84 (0.92%) JUnit
7 74 (0.81%) Postman
8 55 (0.60%) SonarQube
9 52 (0.57%) Rational DOORS
10 50 (0.55%) Bitbucket
11 45 (0.49%) Maven
12 44 (0.48%) Artifactory
13 41 (0.45%) Cypress.io
13 41 (0.45%) Oracle APEX
14 39 (0.43%) Cucumber
15 38 (0.42%) Mockito
16 34 (0.37%) JMeter
17 28 (0.31%) REST Assured
18 27 (0.30%) Visual Studio
19 22 (0.24%) MSI
General
1 2,130 (23.33%) Public Sector
2 2,076 (22.74%) Social Skills
3 770 (8.44%) Analytical Skills
4 668 (7.32%) Finance
5 327 (3.58%) Military
6 263 (2.88%) Documentation Skills
7 220 (2.41%) Aerospace
8 156 (1.71%) Telecoms
9 152 (1.67%) Legal
10 145 (1.59%) Manufacturing
11 119 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
12 117 (1.28%) Banking
13 100 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
14 99 (1.08%) Organisational Skills
15 93 (1.02%) Marketing
16 85 (0.93%) Electronics
17 84 (0.92%) Law
18 58 (0.64%) Police
19 51 (0.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 31 (0.34%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,372 (15.03%) Architect
2 865 (9.48%) Developer
3 794 (8.70%) Senior
4 663 (7.26%) Analyst
5 589 (6.45%) Lead
6 447 (4.90%) Consultant
7 392 (4.29%) Data Engineer
8 370 (4.05%) DevOps Engineer
9 275 (3.01%) Network Engineer
10 267 (2.93%) Software Engineer
11 263 (2.88%) Technical Architect
12 242 (2.65%) Business Analyst
13 206 (2.26%) Solutions Architect
14 203 (2.22%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 196 (2.15%) Project Manager
16 194 (2.13%) Azure Engineer
17 172 (1.88%) Delivery Manager
18 168 (1.84%) Security Architect
19 167 (1.83%) Support Engineer
20 157 (1.72%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 344 (3.77%) REST
2 205 (2.25%) Spring
3 180 (1.97%) Node.js
4 166 (1.82%) React
5 162 (1.77%) Kafka
6 158 (1.73%) .NET
7 157 (1.72%) Spring Boot
8 149 (1.63%) JSON
9 140 (1.53%) LDAP
10 139 (1.52%) SOAP
11 127 (1.39%) RESTful
12 109 (1.19%) AngularJS
13 106 (1.16%) PySpark
13 106 (1.16%) Web Services
14 95 (1.04%) OAuth
15 88 (0.96%) Oracle Fusion
16 87 (0.95%) HTML
17 86 (0.94%) XML
18 75 (0.82%) SAML
19 71 (0.78%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 320 (3.51%) Product Ownership
2 282 (3.09%) Data Centre
3 280 (3.07%) Cloud Native
4 236 (2.59%) Onboarding
5 192 (2.10%) PKI
6 153 (1.68%) Management Information System
7 126 (1.38%) Self-Motivation
8 121 (1.33%) Security Posture
9 119 (1.30%) Legacy Systems
10 118 (1.29%) Enterprise Software
11 111 (1.22%) Replication
12 100 (1.10%) Distributed Systems
13 80 (0.88%) Public Cloud
14 77 (0.84%) Data Structures
15 74 (0.81%) Hybrid Cloud
16 68 (0.74%) Clustering
17 65 (0.71%) Security Operations Centre
18 60 (0.66%) Cyber Threat
19 57 (0.62%) Private Cloud
19 57 (0.62%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 808 (8.85%) Windows
2 647 (7.09%) Linux
3 235 (2.57%) Windows Server
4 129 (1.41%) Unix
5 116 (1.27%) Windows 10
6 113 (1.24%) Android
7 110 (1.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 57 (0.62%) Mac OS
9 49 (0.54%) Apple iOS
10 35 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 30 (0.33%) VMS
12 22 (0.24%) Solaris
13 21 (0.23%) CentOS
14 20 (0.22%) AIX
15 19 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
16 17 (0.19%) Windows 7
16 17 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
17 12 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
18 8 (0.088%) Embedded Linux
18 8 (0.088%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,874 (20.53%) Agile
2 1,386 (15.18%) DevOps
3 1,213 (13.29%) CI/CD
4 1,070 (11.72%) Problem-Solving
5 874 (9.57%) Stakeholder Management
6 794 (8.70%) Migration
7 793 (8.69%) Continuous Improvement
8 690 (7.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 602 (6.60%) ITIL
10 571 (6.26%) Infrastructure as Code
11 562 (6.16%) Cybersecurity
12 541 (5.93%) Analytics
13 525 (5.75%) Test Automation
14 508 (5.57%) Roadmaps
15 481 (5.27%) Software Engineering
16 478 (5.24%) Containerisation
17 459 (5.03%) Scrum
18 448 (4.91%) Data Modelling
19 436 (4.78%) Service Management
20 413 (4.52%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 1,032 (11.31%) Python
2 837 (9.17%) SQL
3 564 (6.18%) PowerShell
4 529 (5.80%) Java
5 328 (3.59%) JavaScript
6 199 (2.18%) C#
7 195 (2.14%) Bash
8 148 (1.62%) TypeScript
9 107 (1.17%) PL/SQL
10 96 (1.05%) Shell Script
11 95 (1.04%) C++
12 69 (0.76%) Go
13 60 (0.66%) C
14 58 (0.64%) Ruby
15 55 (0.60%) Scala
16 52 (0.57%) Bicep
17 43 (0.47%) Ada
18 41 (0.45%) Apex Code
19 39 (0.43%) R
20 38 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 6,861 (75.16%) SC Cleared
2 1,702 (18.65%) DV Cleared
3 433 (4.74%) Degree
4 264 (2.89%) BPSS Clearance
5 178 (1.95%) Cisco Certification
6 166 (1.82%) CISSP
7 136 (1.49%) Azure Certification
8 121 (1.33%) CCNP
9 109 (1.19%) AWS Certification
10 107 (1.17%) Microsoft Certification
11 104 (1.14%) CISM
12 75 (0.82%) CCNA
13 68 (0.74%) ITIL Certification
14 65 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
15 64 (0.70%) PMP
16 62 (0.68%) Computer Science Degree
17 56 (0.61%) PMI Certification
18 50 (0.55%) GIAC
18 50 (0.55%) ISTQB
19 47 (0.51%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 334 (3.66%) QA
2 283 (3.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 273 (2.99%) NIST
4 261 (2.86%) Data Quality
5 195 (2.14%) NCSC
6 160 (1.75%) GDPR
7 145 (1.59%) Accessibility
8 129 (1.41%) PMO
9 105 (1.15%) SLA
10 64 (0.70%) JSP 440
11 62 (0.68%) GRC
12 41 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials
12 41 (0.45%) NIST 800
13 39 (0.43%) COBIT
14 37 (0.41%) WCAG
15 35 (0.38%) PCI DSS
16 28 (0.31%) Def Stans
17 26 (0.28%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 25 (0.27%) RMADS
19 18 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 613 (6.72%) Docker
2 459 (5.03%) Active Directory
3 259 (2.84%) VMware Infrastructure
4 89 (0.98%) VMware NSX
5 77 (0.84%) VMware ESXi
6 70 (0.77%) vSphere
7 67 (0.73%) Hyper-V
8 51 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
9 33 (0.36%) Firmware
10 23 (0.25%) BitLocker
10 23 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
11 20 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
12 17 (0.19%) NFS
12 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 14 (0.15%) Postfix
14 12 (0.13%) vCloud
15 10 (0.11%) Squid
16 8 (0.088%) Microsoft App-V
17 5 (0.055%) KVM
17 5 (0.055%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 782 (8.57%) Kubernetes
2 715 (7.83%) Terraform
3 301 (3.30%) Ansible
4 217 (2.38%) Grafana
5 178 (1.95%) Prometheus
6 101 (1.11%) Single Sign-On
7 94 (1.03%) vCenter Server
8 82 (0.90%) SCCM
9 77 (0.84%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 60 (0.66%) Microsoft Intune
11 57 (0.62%) Argo
12 51 (0.56%) FortiGate
13 38 (0.42%) Podman
14 36 (0.39%) Packer
14 36 (0.39%) Puppet
15 34 (0.37%) Progress Chef
16 30 (0.33%) OPNET
17 25 (0.27%) Kibana
17 25 (0.27%) Oracle RMAN
18 24 (0.26%) Nagios
Vendors
1 997 (10.92%) Microsoft
2 553 (6.06%) Oracle
3 462 (5.06%) VMware
4 397 (4.35%) Cisco
5 378 (4.14%) ServiceNow
6 346 (3.79%) SAP
7 216 (2.37%) Splunk
8 177 (1.94%) Databricks
9 174 (1.91%) Red Hat
10 134 (1.47%) Google
11 132 (1.45%) Salesforce
12 125 (1.37%) Atlassian
13 123 (1.35%) Juniper
14 116 (1.27%) IBM
15 115 (1.26%) Palo Alto
16 98 (1.07%) CyberArk
17 92 (1.01%) Talend
18 83 (0.91%) Remedy
19 82 (0.90%) Dell
20 77 (0.84%) Citrix