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

6 months to
13 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 9,852 4,968 6,987
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.97% 18.20% 19.05%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.45% 58.85% 62.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,939 3,225 4,561
10th Percentile £380 £340 £351
25th Percentile £450 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £528 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.86% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £719 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £530 £530 £550
% change year-on-year - -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 758 418 542
10th Percentile £18.32 £18.51 £15.10
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.50 £25.15 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +152.49% -56.26% -4.17%
75th Percentile £77.50 £62.25 £71.75
90th Percentile £88.00 £76.25 £83.32
UK median hourly rate £62.50 £25.15 £55.80
% change year-on-year +148.51% -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 14,186 8,442 11,240
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.64% 30.93% 30.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,571 5,325 6,992
10th Percentile £350 £285 £313
25th Percentile £430 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £537
Median % change year-on-year - -2.23% -2.36%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £716 £716 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £523 £525
% change year-on-year +0.38% -0.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,060 598 976
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.13 £14.21
25th Percentile £25.75 £19.60 £20.98
Median hourly rate £54.00 £28.00 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +92.86% -34.88% -21.82%
75th Percentile £74.00 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £86.33 £76.53 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £52.25 £27.50 £41.50
% change year-on-year +90.00% -33.73% -24.72%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 3,501 £538 +2.38% 714
South East +1 2,390 £550 - 613
South West 0 1,324 £538 -6.52% 546
North of England +2 1,070 £510 +2.00% 295
Midlands +3 958 £469 -6.20% 174
West Midlands +2 820 £470 -7.00% 126
North West 0 580 £525 +4.79% 168
East of England +2 335 £550 +4.76% 150
Yorkshire +2 282 £500 +1.63% 63
North East +1 238 £475 -5.00% 65
East Midlands 0 125 £418 -12.11% 47
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
1 354 (3.59%) Confluence
2 229 (2.32%) SharePoint
3 150 (1.52%) SAS
4 123 (1.25%) Microsoft Exchange
5 89 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
6 81 (0.82%) Apache Spark
7 80 (0.81%) Apache
8 39 (0.40%) nginx
9 33 (0.33%) Jupyter
10 31 (0.31%) WebLogic
11 21 (0.21%) Tomcat
12 17 (0.17%) CMS
12 17 (0.17%) IIS
12 17 (0.17%) Oracle Application Server
13 16 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
14 14 (0.14%) Skype for Business
15 12 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
15 12 (0.12%) Tuxedo
16 11 (0.11%) NetWeaver
17 9 (0.091%) Documentum
Applications
1 166 (1.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 130 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 85 (0.86%) Microsoft Project
4 67 (0.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 42 (0.43%) MS Visio
6 20 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.14%) Simulink
8 12 (0.12%) AutoCAD
8 12 (0.12%) Revit
8 12 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
9 10 (0.10%) Chatbot
10 5 (0.051%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.051%) Notepad++
11 4 (0.041%) Sketch
12 2 (0.020%) CATIA
12 2 (0.020%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.020%) Lectora
12 2 (0.020%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.020%) Siemens NX
12 2 (0.020%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 106 (1.08%) SAP S/4HANA
2 62 (0.63%) Remedy ITSM
3 45 (0.46%) Oracle ERP
4 35 (0.36%) Teamcenter
5 29 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 26 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
7 25 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
8 23 (0.23%) SAP PSCD
9 15 (0.15%) Findur
9 15 (0.15%) Primavera
9 15 (0.15%) Temenos T24
10 12 (0.12%) iTrent
10 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
11 11 (0.11%) Oracle Payables
11 11 (0.11%) SAP ERP
12 10 (0.10%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 10 (0.10%) Maximo
12 10 (0.10%) Oracle Payroll
12 10 (0.10%) SAP HR
13 9 (0.091%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,723 (17.49%) Azure
2 1,653 (16.78%) AWS
3 398 (4.04%) Power Platform
4 393 (3.99%) GitHub
5 391 (3.97%) Azure DevOps
6 346 (3.51%) GCP
7 263 (2.67%) Microsoft 365
8 252 (2.56%) GitHub Actions
9 251 (2.55%) Entra ID
10 244 (2.48%) Serverless
11 221 (2.24%) Amazon S3
12 169 (1.72%) AWS Lambda
13 150 (1.52%) Amazon EC2
14 145 (1.47%) OCI
15 142 (1.44%) OpenShift
16 140 (1.42%) SaaS
17 133 (1.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 125 (1.27%) PaaS
19 113 (1.15%) Amazon EKS
20 109 (1.11%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 408 (4.14%) Firewall
2 328 (3.33%) DNS
3 223 (2.26%) Network Security
4 211 (2.14%) WAN
5 187 (1.90%) LAN
6 170 (1.73%) VPN
7 167 (1.70%) DHCP
8 139 (1.41%) BGP
9 115 (1.17%) OSPF
10 111 (1.13%) Wi-Fi
11 107 (1.09%) TCP/IP
12 104 (1.06%) VLAN
13 80 (0.81%) Wireless
14 60 (0.61%) MPLS
14 60 (0.61%) SD-WAN
15 56 (0.57%) SAN
16 53 (0.54%) VXLAN
17 51 (0.52%) IPsec
18 50 (0.51%) BIG-IP
19 45 (0.46%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 299 (3.03%) Power BI
2 249 (2.53%) PostgreSQL
3 236 (2.40%) SQL Server
4 222 (2.25%) Data Warehouse
5 144 (1.46%) Oracle Database
6 121 (1.23%) Metadata
7 106 (1.08%) Relational Database
8 104 (1.06%) Data Lake
9 103 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
10 84 (0.85%) Pentaho
11 81 (0.82%) MySQL
12 78 (0.79%) MongoDB
13 77 (0.78%) Oracle Reports
14 75 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
15 68 (0.69%) Amazon Redshift
16 65 (0.66%) NoSQL
17 61 (0.62%) Amazon Athena
18 58 (0.59%) Tableau
19 42 (0.43%) Big Data
20 41 (0.42%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 552 (5.60%) JIRA
2 453 (4.60%) Git
3 410 (4.16%) GitLab
4 380 (3.86%) Jenkins
5 104 (1.06%) Selenium
6 81 (0.82%) JUnit
7 76 (0.77%) SonarQube
8 68 (0.69%) Postman
9 59 (0.60%) Rational DOORS
10 53 (0.54%) JMeter
11 50 (0.51%) Maven
12 48 (0.49%) Cucumber
13 43 (0.44%) Mockito
14 40 (0.41%) Artifactory
15 39 (0.40%) Bitbucket
15 39 (0.40%) REST Assured
16 37 (0.38%) Visual Studio
16 37 (0.38%) Zephyr
17 36 (0.37%) Cypress.io
18 29 (0.29%) WebDriver
General
1 2,092 (21.23%) Public Sector
2 2,016 (20.46%) Social Skills
3 722 (7.33%) Analytical Skills
4 682 (6.92%) Finance
5 328 (3.33%) Military
6 272 (2.76%) Documentation Skills
7 269 (2.73%) Aerospace
8 146 (1.48%) Influencing Skills
9 145 (1.47%) Legal
10 127 (1.29%) Banking
11 122 (1.24%) Telecoms
12 110 (1.12%) Organisational Skills
13 93 (0.94%) Law
14 80 (0.81%) Police
15 77 (0.78%) Manufacturing
16 72 (0.73%) Presentation Skills
17 69 (0.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 41 (0.42%) Marketing
19 37 (0.38%) Aviation
19 37 (0.38%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,430 (14.51%) Architect
2 1,026 (10.41%) Developer
3 856 (8.69%) Senior
4 838 (8.51%) Lead
5 629 (6.38%) Analyst
6 467 (4.74%) Data Engineer
7 453 (4.60%) Consultant
8 414 (4.20%) DevOps Engineer
9 335 (3.40%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 305 (3.10%) Software Engineer
11 279 (2.83%) Technical Architect
12 235 (2.39%) Network Engineer
13 229 (2.32%) Security Architect
14 227 (2.30%) Solutions Architect
15 204 (2.07%) Java Developer
16 202 (2.05%) Business Analyst
17 195 (1.98%) Project Manager
18 193 (1.96%) Delivery Manager
19 186 (1.89%) Administrator
20 178 (1.81%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 331 (3.36%) REST
2 248 (2.52%) Spring
3 201 (2.04%) Spring Boot
4 173 (1.76%) .NET
4 173 (1.76%) React
5 167 (1.70%) Kafka
6 160 (1.62%) RESTful
7 157 (1.59%) Node.js
8 137 (1.39%) SOAP
9 119 (1.21%) JSON
10 113 (1.15%) AngularJS
11 106 (1.08%) OAuth
12 101 (1.03%) LDAP
13 92 (0.93%) HTML
14 91 (0.92%) Web Services
15 90 (0.91%) PySpark
16 78 (0.79%) OpenID
16 78 (0.79%) XML
17 73 (0.74%) Elastic Stack
18 70 (0.71%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 400 (4.06%) Cloud Native
2 325 (3.30%) Onboarding
3 322 (3.27%) Product Ownership
4 272 (2.76%) Data Centre
5 171 (1.74%) Legacy Systems
6 139 (1.41%) Distributed Systems
6 139 (1.41%) Management Information System
7 136 (1.38%) PKI
8 113 (1.15%) Replication
9 110 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
10 104 (1.06%) CMDB
11 94 (0.95%) Enterprise Software
12 89 (0.90%) Clustering
12 89 (0.90%) Data Structures
13 87 (0.88%) Security Posture
14 86 (0.87%) Hybrid Cloud
15 79 (0.80%) Public Cloud
16 76 (0.77%) Security Operations Centre
16 76 (0.77%) Virtual Team
17 72 (0.73%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 816 (8.28%) Windows
2 677 (6.87%) Linux
3 265 (2.69%) Windows Server
4 193 (1.96%) Unix
5 133 (1.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 89 (0.90%) Windows 10
7 79 (0.80%) Android
8 54 (0.55%) Solaris
9 47 (0.48%) Apple iOS
10 43 (0.44%) Mac OS
11 32 (0.32%) Ubuntu
12 31 (0.31%) AIX
13 28 (0.28%) CentOS
13 28 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
14 15 (0.15%) VMS
14 15 (0.15%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (0.12%) Windows 7
16 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
16 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
17 10 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,017 (20.47%) Agile
2 1,530 (15.53%) DevOps
3 1,401 (14.22%) CI/CD
4 1,054 (10.70%) Problem-Solving
5 1,051 (10.67%) Stakeholder Management
6 1,024 (10.39%) Continuous Improvement
7 835 (8.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 752 (7.63%) Migration
9 743 (7.54%) Infrastructure as Code
10 680 (6.90%) Cybersecurity
11 660 (6.70%) ITIL
12 599 (6.08%) Test Automation
13 589 (5.98%) Software Engineering
14 579 (5.88%) Containerisation
15 574 (5.83%) Analytics
16 571 (5.80%) Roadmaps
17 526 (5.34%) Decision-Making
18 513 (5.21%) Data Modelling
19 503 (5.11%) AI
20 477 (4.84%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 1,051 (10.67%) Python
2 939 (9.53%) SQL
3 679 (6.89%) Java
4 458 (4.65%) PowerShell
5 300 (3.05%) JavaScript
6 229 (2.32%) Bash
7 203 (2.06%) C#
8 149 (1.51%) TypeScript
9 137 (1.39%) PL/SQL
10 86 (0.87%) C++
11 84 (0.85%) Shell Script
12 68 (0.69%) Bicep
13 66 (0.67%) C
14 55 (0.56%) Go
15 46 (0.47%) Ada
16 40 (0.41%) Apex Code
16 40 (0.41%) Kotlin
16 40 (0.41%) Ruby
17 39 (0.40%) Scala
18 35 (0.36%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 7,384 (74.95%) SC Cleared
2 1,988 (20.18%) DV Cleared
3 393 (3.99%) Degree
4 328 (3.33%) BPSS Clearance
5 183 (1.86%) Cisco Certification
6 163 (1.65%) CISSP
7 139 (1.41%) Azure Certification
8 120 (1.22%) Microsoft Certification
9 111 (1.13%) AWS Certification
10 93 (0.94%) CCNP
11 92 (0.93%) CISM
12 86 (0.87%) PMP
13 85 (0.86%) PMI Certification
14 77 (0.78%) CCNA
15 69 (0.70%) ISTQB
16 59 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 57 (0.58%) Computer Science Degree
18 48 (0.49%) ITIL Certification
19 44 (0.45%) TOGAF Certification
20 37 (0.38%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 389 (3.95%) QA
2 296 (3.00%) Data Quality
3 291 (2.95%) NIST
4 285 (2.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 217 (2.20%) NCSC
6 203 (2.06%) Accessibility
7 182 (1.85%) PMO
8 170 (1.73%) GDPR
9 99 (1.00%) SLA
10 96 (0.97%) GRC
11 60 (0.61%) JSP 440
12 52 (0.53%) WCAG
13 45 (0.46%) NIST 800
14 43 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
15 34 (0.35%) Def Stans
16 23 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
16 23 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 20000
16 23 (0.23%) RMADS
17 21 (0.21%) COBIT
17 21 (0.21%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 647 (6.57%) Docker
2 444 (4.51%) Active Directory
3 324 (3.29%) VMware Infrastructure
4 124 (1.26%) VMware ESXi
5 120 (1.22%) VMware NSX
6 93 (0.94%) vSphere
7 86 (0.87%) Hyper-V
8 77 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
9 40 (0.41%) Oracle RAC
10 33 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
11 31 (0.31%) Firmware
12 22 (0.22%) BitLocker
13 20 (0.20%) NFS
13 20 (0.20%) vCloud
14 19 (0.19%) Postfix
15 18 (0.18%) Squid
16 8 (0.081%) Microsoft App-V
16 8 (0.081%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 7 (0.071%) KVM
17 7 (0.071%) UAG
Systems Management
1 813 (8.25%) Terraform
2 794 (8.06%) Kubernetes
3 355 (3.60%) Ansible
4 239 (2.43%) Grafana
5 188 (1.91%) Prometheus
6 121 (1.23%) vCenter Server
7 85 (0.86%) SCCM
8 69 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
9 63 (0.64%) Microsoft Intune
10 60 (0.61%) Argo
11 53 (0.54%) SCOM
12 49 (0.50%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 47 (0.48%) FortiGate
14 45 (0.46%) Oracle RMAN
14 45 (0.46%) Puppet
15 29 (0.29%) Progress Chef
16 28 (0.28%) Data Guard
17 25 (0.25%) Kibana
17 25 (0.25%) Nagios
17 25 (0.25%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,111 (11.28%) Microsoft
2 724 (7.35%) Oracle
3 492 (4.99%) VMware
4 467 (4.74%) ServiceNow
5 322 (3.27%) SAP
6 294 (2.98%) Cisco
7 200 (2.03%) Splunk
8 170 (1.73%) Databricks
9 168 (1.71%) Google
10 136 (1.38%) Red Hat
11 129 (1.31%) Talend
12 128 (1.30%) Salesforce
13 112 (1.14%) IBM
14 105 (1.07%) Informatica
15 97 (0.98%) Palo Alto
16 94 (0.95%) Juniper
17 88 (0.89%) SolarWinds
18 85 (0.86%) F5
19 83 (0.84%) Citrix
20 81 (0.82%) Fortinet