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 12 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,413 4,513 7,095
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.07% 18.41% 18.93%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.65% 58.94% 61.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,569 2,963 4,638
10th Percentile £380 £338 £356
25th Percentile £450 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £715 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 776 308 526
10th Percentile £18.20 £18.33 £14.00
25th Percentile £24.13 £22.05 £21.46
Median hourly rate £60.00 £32.00 £56.89
Median % change year-on-year +87.50% -43.75% -5.19%
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.62 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.43 £80.30 £84.45
UK median hourly rate £59.25 £27.63 £55.80
% change year-on-year +114.44% -50.48% -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 13,514 7,657 11,448
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.69% 31.23% 30.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,068 4,820 7,093
10th Percentile £350 £281 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £521 £525
% change year-on-year +0.82% -0.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,032 473 1,010
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.63 £21.30 £19.25
Median hourly rate £51.22 £32.00 £40.29
Median % change year-on-year +60.06% -20.57% -26.75%
75th Percentile £73.46 £65.75 £64.25
90th Percentile £85.35 £81.01 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £30.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +63.93% -23.75% -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 12 June 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 12 June 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 12 June 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 3,379 £525 - 415
South East +1 2,255 £550 - 465
South West 0 1,273 £538 -4.44% 345
North of England +2 981 £500 - 248
Midlands +2 888 £469 -10.67% 108
West Midlands +2 768 £469 -10.67% 80
North West 0 542 £520 +4.00% 147
East of England +2 371 £550 +10.00% 111
Yorkshire -2 246 £494 -1.25% 62
North East +1 226 £475 -1.04% 43
East Midlands -5 113 £418 -17.53% 28
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
1 340 (3.61%) Confluence
2 215 (2.28%) SharePoint
3 135 (1.43%) SAS
4 124 (1.32%) Microsoft Exchange
5 81 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
5 81 (0.86%) Apache Spark
6 74 (0.79%) Apache
7 37 (0.39%) Jupyter
7 37 (0.39%) nginx
8 28 (0.30%) WebLogic
9 20 (0.21%) Tomcat
10 18 (0.19%) IIS
10 18 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
11 15 (0.16%) CMS
11 15 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
11 15 (0.16%) Skype for Business
12 13 (0.14%) Tuxedo
13 11 (0.12%) NetWeaver
14 9 (0.096%) ArcGIS
15 8 (0.085%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 155 (1.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 128 (1.36%) Microsoft Office
3 73 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 71 (0.75%) Microsoft Project
5 38 (0.40%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.15%) Simulink
8 10 (0.11%) SOLIDWORKS
9 9 (0.096%) AutoCAD
9 9 (0.096%) Revit
10 8 (0.085%) Chatbot
11 5 (0.053%) Notepad++
12 3 (0.032%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.032%) Sketch
12 3 (0.032%) Windchill
13 2 (0.021%) CATIA
13 2 (0.021%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.021%) Lectora
13 2 (0.021%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.021%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 95 (1.01%) SAP S/4HANA
2 56 (0.59%) Remedy ITSM
3 40 (0.42%) Oracle ERP
4 33 (0.35%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 30 (0.32%) Teamcenter
6 26 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
7 17 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
8 15 (0.16%) Findur
9 14 (0.15%) Maximo
9 14 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
10 13 (0.14%) SAP PSCD
11 12 (0.13%) iTrent
11 12 (0.13%) Temenos T24
12 11 (0.12%) Primavera
13 9 (0.096%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 9 (0.096%) Oracle Assets
13 9 (0.096%) Salesforce CRM
13 9 (0.096%) SAP ERP
13 9 (0.096%) SAP HCM
14 8 (0.085%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,644 (17.47%) Azure
2 1,579 (16.77%) AWS
3 378 (4.02%) GitHub
4 365 (3.88%) GCP
5 358 (3.80%) Power Platform
6 357 (3.79%) Azure DevOps
7 239 (2.54%) Serverless
8 234 (2.49%) Microsoft 365
9 228 (2.42%) Entra ID
10 227 (2.41%) GitHub Actions
11 205 (2.18%) Amazon S3
12 167 (1.77%) AWS Lambda
13 147 (1.56%) Amazon EC2
14 135 (1.43%) PaaS
15 129 (1.37%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 128 (1.36%) OpenShift
17 122 (1.30%) SaaS
18 121 (1.29%) OCI
19 104 (1.10%) Virtual Private Cloud
20 97 (1.03%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 413 (4.39%) Firewall
2 271 (2.88%) DNS
3 220 (2.34%) Network Security
4 208 (2.21%) WAN
5 189 (2.01%) LAN
6 155 (1.65%) VPN
7 148 (1.57%) DHCP
8 138 (1.47%) BGP
9 117 (1.24%) OSPF
10 110 (1.17%) Wi-Fi
11 103 (1.09%) VLAN
12 90 (0.96%) TCP/IP
13 79 (0.84%) Wireless
14 60 (0.64%) MPLS
15 55 (0.58%) VXLAN
16 54 (0.57%) SD-WAN
17 52 (0.55%) SAN
18 50 (0.53%) Structured Cabling
19 48 (0.51%) Ethernet VPN
19 48 (0.51%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 267 (2.84%) Power BI
2 231 (2.45%) PostgreSQL
3 214 (2.27%) Data Warehouse
4 205 (2.18%) SQL Server
5 132 (1.40%) Oracle Database
6 116 (1.23%) Metadata
7 106 (1.13%) Amazon RDS
8 100 (1.06%) Data Lake
9 93 (0.99%) Relational Database
10 81 (0.86%) Pentaho
11 79 (0.84%) MongoDB
12 76 (0.81%) Oracle Reports
13 72 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
14 69 (0.73%) MySQL
14 69 (0.73%) NoSQL
15 64 (0.68%) Amazon Redshift
16 61 (0.65%) Amazon Athena
17 60 (0.64%) Tableau
18 47 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
19 43 (0.46%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 534 (5.67%) JIRA
2 418 (4.44%) Git
3 381 (4.05%) GitLab
4 357 (3.79%) Jenkins
5 101 (1.07%) Selenium
6 78 (0.83%) JUnit
7 70 (0.74%) Postman
7 70 (0.74%) SonarQube
8 57 (0.61%) Rational DOORS
9 51 (0.54%) JMeter
10 47 (0.50%) Artifactory
11 46 (0.49%) Cucumber
12 41 (0.44%) Bitbucket
13 39 (0.41%) Mockito
14 38 (0.40%) Maven
15 37 (0.39%) Visual Studio
15 37 (0.39%) Zephyr
16 33 (0.35%) Cypress.io
16 33 (0.35%) REST Assured
17 29 (0.31%) WebDriver
General
1 1,981 (21.05%) Public Sector
2 1,916 (20.35%) Social Skills
3 642 (6.82%) Analytical Skills
4 624 (6.63%) Finance
5 313 (3.33%) Military
6 269 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
7 255 (2.71%) Aerospace
8 140 (1.49%) Legal
9 121 (1.29%) Banking
10 113 (1.20%) Influencing Skills
11 101 (1.07%) Telecoms
12 98 (1.04%) Law
13 90 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
14 78 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
15 77 (0.82%) Manufacturing
16 63 (0.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 61 (0.65%) Police
18 46 (0.49%) Marketing
19 39 (0.41%) Retail
20 37 (0.39%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,376 (14.62%) Architect
2 877 (9.32%) Developer
3 810 (8.61%) Senior
4 720 (7.65%) Lead
5 643 (6.83%) Analyst
6 465 (4.94%) Data Engineer
7 423 (4.49%) DevOps Engineer
8 416 (4.42%) Consultant
9 291 (3.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 285 (3.03%) Software Engineer
11 274 (2.91%) Technical Architect
12 261 (2.77%) Network Engineer
13 235 (2.50%) Business Analyst
14 226 (2.40%) Solutions Architect
15 205 (2.18%) Project Manager
16 204 (2.17%) Security Architect
17 188 (2.00%) Administrator
17 188 (2.00%) Azure Engineer
17 188 (2.00%) Delivery Manager
18 176 (1.87%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 297 (3.16%) REST
2 212 (2.25%) Spring
3 178 (1.89%) Spring Boot
4 171 (1.82%) React
5 161 (1.71%) .NET
6 151 (1.60%) Kafka
7 146 (1.55%) Node.js
8 140 (1.49%) LDAP
9 137 (1.46%) RESTful
10 135 (1.43%) SOAP
11 114 (1.21%) AngularJS
12 107 (1.14%) JSON
13 96 (1.02%) Web Services
14 95 (1.01%) PySpark
15 90 (0.96%) OAuth
16 88 (0.93%) HTML
17 73 (0.78%) XML
18 72 (0.76%) OpenID
19 71 (0.75%) Middleware
19 71 (0.75%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 355 (3.77%) Cloud Native
2 315 (3.35%) Product Ownership
3 286 (3.04%) Data Centre
4 279 (2.96%) Onboarding
5 149 (1.58%) Management Information System
6 147 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
7 137 (1.46%) PKI
8 121 (1.29%) Distributed Systems
9 119 (1.26%) Security Posture
10 116 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
11 112 (1.19%) Replication
12 99 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
13 87 (0.92%) Clustering
14 81 (0.86%) Data Structures
15 78 (0.83%) Hybrid Cloud
16 76 (0.81%) CMDB
17 75 (0.80%) Public Cloud
18 72 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
19 71 (0.75%) Operational Technology
20 65 (0.69%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 749 (7.96%) Windows
2 625 (6.64%) Linux
3 247 (2.62%) Windows Server
4 181 (1.92%) Unix
5 111 (1.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 77 (0.82%) Android
6 77 (0.82%) Windows 10
7 51 (0.54%) Apple iOS
7 51 (0.54%) Solaris
8 34 (0.36%) Mac OS
9 31 (0.33%) Ubuntu
10 27 (0.29%) AIX
11 26 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
12 24 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
13 22 (0.23%) CentOS
14 17 (0.18%) VMS
15 14 (0.15%) Windows 7
16 11 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
16 11 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
17 10 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,860 (19.76%) Agile
2 1,446 (15.36%) DevOps
3 1,275 (13.55%) CI/CD
4 962 (10.22%) Problem-Solving
5 954 (10.13%) Stakeholder Management
6 891 (9.47%) Continuous Improvement
7 787 (8.36%) Migration
8 758 (8.05%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 675 (7.17%) Infrastructure as Code
10 609 (6.47%) Cybersecurity
11 570 (6.06%) ITIL
12 569 (6.04%) Test Automation
13 550 (5.84%) Software Engineering
14 548 (5.82%) Analytics
15 524 (5.57%) Roadmaps
16 514 (5.46%) Containerisation
17 485 (5.15%) Data Modelling
18 464 (4.93%) Decision-Making
19 443 (4.71%) AI
20 442 (4.70%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 989 (10.51%) Python
2 885 (9.40%) SQL
3 583 (6.19%) Java
4 480 (5.10%) PowerShell
5 265 (2.82%) JavaScript
6 205 (2.18%) C#
7 182 (1.93%) Bash
8 142 (1.51%) TypeScript
9 114 (1.21%) PL/SQL
10 85 (0.90%) Shell Script
11 84 (0.89%) C++
12 61 (0.65%) Bicep
12 61 (0.65%) C
13 53 (0.56%) Go
14 51 (0.54%) Scala
15 45 (0.48%) Ada
16 43 (0.46%) Ruby
17 41 (0.44%) Apex Code
18 35 (0.37%) MATLAB
19 33 (0.35%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 7,114 (75.58%) SC Cleared
2 1,778 (18.89%) DV Cleared
3 385 (4.09%) Degree
4 269 (2.86%) BPSS Clearance
5 182 (1.93%) Cisco Certification
6 155 (1.65%) CISSP
7 123 (1.31%) Azure Certification
8 107 (1.14%) CCNP
9 102 (1.08%) CISM
10 100 (1.06%) Microsoft Certification
11 98 (1.04%) AWS Certification
12 78 (0.83%) CCNA
13 77 (0.82%) PMP
14 71 (0.75%) PMI Certification
15 64 (0.68%) ISTQB
16 56 (0.59%) Computer Science Degree
17 55 (0.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 54 (0.57%) ITIL Certification
19 42 (0.45%) GIAC
20 34 (0.36%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 359 (3.81%) QA
2 290 (3.08%) NIST
3 282 (3.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 271 (2.88%) Data Quality
5 201 (2.14%) NCSC
6 179 (1.90%) Accessibility
7 166 (1.76%) PMO
8 159 (1.69%) GDPR
9 107 (1.14%) SLA
10 75 (0.80%) GRC
11 60 (0.64%) JSP 440
12 51 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials
13 44 (0.47%) WCAG
14 41 (0.44%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.35%) Def Stans
16 28 (0.30%) RMADS
17 22 (0.23%) COBIT
17 22 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
17 22 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 20 (0.21%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 575 (6.11%) Docker
2 430 (4.57%) Active Directory
3 287 (3.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 112 (1.19%) VMware ESXi
5 97 (1.03%) VMware NSX
6 79 (0.84%) Hyper-V
7 78 (0.83%) vSphere
8 70 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
9 32 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
10 30 (0.32%) Firmware
11 22 (0.23%) BitLocker
12 20 (0.21%) vCloud
13 19 (0.20%) NFS
13 19 (0.20%) Postfix
14 18 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
15 16 (0.17%) Squid
16 15 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 9 (0.096%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.064%) Corosync
18 6 (0.064%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 746 (7.93%) Terraform
2 722 (7.67%) Kubernetes
3 335 (3.56%) Ansible
4 230 (2.44%) Grafana
5 187 (1.99%) Prometheus
6 113 (1.20%) vCenter Server
7 79 (0.84%) Single Sign-On
8 71 (0.75%) SCCM
9 57 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 54 (0.57%) Microsoft Intune
11 50 (0.53%) Argo
12 47 (0.50%) FortiGate
13 39 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
13 39 (0.41%) Puppet
14 38 (0.40%) SCOM
15 37 (0.39%) Podman
16 27 (0.29%) Progress Chef
17 24 (0.25%) Nagios
18 23 (0.24%) vMotion
19 21 (0.22%) WSUS
Vendors
1 974 (10.35%) Microsoft
2 648 (6.88%) Oracle
3 469 (4.98%) VMware
4 380 (4.04%) ServiceNow
5 321 (3.41%) Cisco
6 299 (3.18%) SAP
7 209 (2.22%) Splunk
8 179 (1.90%) Databricks
9 150 (1.59%) Google
10 148 (1.57%) Red Hat
11 125 (1.33%) Talend
12 118 (1.25%) Palo Alto
13 117 (1.24%) Salesforce
14 114 (1.21%) IBM
15 98 (1.04%) Juniper
16 95 (1.01%) Informatica
17 89 (0.95%) CyberArk
18 83 (0.88%) F5
19 82 (0.87%) Fortinet
20 81 (0.86%) Dynatrace