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

6 months to
30 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,306 4,472 6,966
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.15% 18.61% 18.94%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.46% 59.27% 61.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,488 2,963 4,569
10th Percentile £378 £340 £353
25th Percentile £450 £450 £458
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 778 280 508
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.63 £24.66 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £40.00 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year +37.50% -29.19% -5.85%
75th Percentile £74.26 £66.31 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £80.00 £83.94
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 13,397 7,545 11,253
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.89% 31.40% 30.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,988 4,788 6,986
10th Percentile £350 £278 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £624 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £746
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £530
% change year-on-year +0.96% -1.89% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,012 440 996
10th Percentile £17.10 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.33 £22.27 £18.34
Median hourly rate £47.50 £32.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +46.15% -18.75% -27.27%
75th Percentile £73.00 £66.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £85.25 £80.10 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £47.54 £32.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +46.28% -18.75% -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 30 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 30 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 30 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 3,322 £525 - 461
South East +1 2,237 £550 - 448
South West 0 1,274 £538 -4.44% 342
North of England 0 946 £500 - 245
Midlands +4 878 £470 -10.50% 131
West Midlands +3 752 £470 -10.48% 99
North West -1 526 £514 +2.75% 145
East of England +2 382 £550 +10.00% 124
Yorkshire -9 242 £484 -2.47% 53
North East +1 215 £475 -1.04% 48
East Midlands -2 119 £434 -8.55% 32
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
1 334 (3.59%) Confluence
2 210 (2.26%) SharePoint
3 124 (1.33%) SAS
4 122 (1.31%) Microsoft Exchange
5 80 (0.86%) Apache Spark
6 77 (0.83%) Apache
7 69 (0.74%) Apache Airflow
8 34 (0.37%) nginx
9 33 (0.35%) WebLogic
10 31 (0.33%) Jupyter
11 18 (0.19%) IIS
11 18 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
12 17 (0.18%) Tomcat
13 15 (0.16%) Skype for Business
14 14 (0.15%) CMS
14 14 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
14 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
15 9 (0.097%) NetWeaver
16 8 (0.086%) Apache Superset
16 8 (0.086%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 163 (1.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 155 (1.67%) Microsoft Office
3 80 (0.86%) Microsoft Project
4 78 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 38 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 17 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.14%) Simulink
8 9 (0.097%) AutoCAD
9 8 (0.086%) SOLIDWORKS
10 7 (0.075%) Revit
11 5 (0.054%) Notepad++
12 4 (0.043%) Siemens NX
13 3 (0.032%) Adobe XD
13 3 (0.032%) Chatbot
13 3 (0.032%) Sketch
13 3 (0.032%) Windchill
14 2 (0.021%) CATIA
14 2 (0.021%) CPLEX
14 2 (0.021%) Lectora
14 2 (0.021%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 88 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
2 52 (0.56%) Remedy ITSM
3 37 (0.40%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 30 (0.32%) Teamcenter
5 27 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
6 26 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
7 16 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.15%) Maximo
8 14 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.14%) Findur
9 13 (0.14%) SAP PSCD
10 12 (0.13%) iTrent
10 12 (0.13%) Temenos T24
11 9 (0.097%) Integrated Workplace Management System
11 9 (0.097%) Oracle Assets
11 9 (0.097%) Primavera
11 9 (0.097%) SAP ERP
11 9 (0.097%) SAP HCM
12 8 (0.086%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 8 (0.086%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,591 (17.10%) Azure
2 1,529 (16.43%) AWS
3 371 (3.99%) GitHub
4 363 (3.90%) GCP
5 344 (3.70%) Azure DevOps
6 336 (3.61%) Power Platform
7 231 (2.48%) Microsoft 365
8 230 (2.47%) Entra ID
8 230 (2.47%) Serverless
9 217 (2.33%) GitHub Actions
10 192 (2.06%) Amazon S3
11 158 (1.70%) AWS Lambda
12 140 (1.50%) Amazon EC2
13 131 (1.41%) PaaS
14 125 (1.34%) OpenShift
15 119 (1.28%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 115 (1.24%) OCI
17 113 (1.21%) SaaS
18 108 (1.16%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 94 (1.01%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 431 (4.63%) Firewall
2 278 (2.99%) DNS
3 224 (2.41%) Network Security
4 219 (2.35%) WAN
5 200 (2.15%) LAN
6 160 (1.72%) VPN
7 151 (1.62%) DHCP
8 143 (1.54%) BGP
9 123 (1.32%) OSPF
10 111 (1.19%) Wi-Fi
11 108 (1.16%) VLAN
12 100 (1.07%) TCP/IP
13 82 (0.88%) Wireless
14 62 (0.67%) MPLS
15 59 (0.63%) SAN
16 56 (0.60%) VXLAN
17 55 (0.59%) Structured Cabling
18 51 (0.55%) SD-WAN
19 50 (0.54%) IPsec
20 47 (0.51%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 253 (2.72%) Power BI
2 218 (2.34%) PostgreSQL
3 203 (2.18%) Data Warehouse
4 192 (2.06%) SQL Server
5 117 (1.26%) Oracle Database
6 114 (1.23%) Metadata
7 103 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
8 92 (0.99%) Data Lake
9 87 (0.93%) MongoDB
10 81 (0.87%) Relational Database
11 77 (0.83%) Pentaho
12 75 (0.81%) NoSQL
13 70 (0.75%) Oracle Reports
14 68 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
15 64 (0.69%) MySQL
16 60 (0.64%) Tableau
17 58 (0.62%) Amazon Redshift
18 54 (0.58%) Amazon Athena
19 51 (0.55%) Azure SQL Database
20 41 (0.44%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 529 (5.68%) JIRA
2 395 (4.24%) Git
3 365 (3.92%) GitLab
4 351 (3.77%) Jenkins
5 100 (1.07%) Selenium
6 74 (0.80%) Postman
7 71 (0.76%) JUnit
8 62 (0.67%) SonarQube
9 59 (0.63%) Rational DOORS
10 52 (0.56%) Artifactory
11 48 (0.52%) JMeter
12 42 (0.45%) Cucumber
13 41 (0.44%) Bitbucket
14 39 (0.42%) Maven
14 39 (0.42%) Mockito
15 35 (0.38%) Visual Studio
16 33 (0.35%) Zephyr
17 32 (0.34%) REST Assured
18 31 (0.33%) Cypress.io
19 24 (0.26%) WebDriver
General
1 1,964 (21.10%) Public Sector
2 1,922 (20.65%) Social Skills
3 651 (7.00%) Analytical Skills
4 629 (6.76%) Finance
5 318 (3.42%) Military
6 267 (2.87%) Documentation Skills
7 240 (2.58%) Aerospace
8 141 (1.52%) Legal
9 113 (1.21%) Banking
9 113 (1.21%) Telecoms
10 108 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
11 102 (1.10%) Organisational Skills
12 91 (0.98%) Manufacturing
13 90 (0.97%) Law
14 77 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
15 55 (0.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 55 (0.59%) Police
16 53 (0.57%) Marketing
17 41 (0.44%) Electronics
18 40 (0.43%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,363 (14.65%) Architect
2 848 (9.11%) Developer
3 788 (8.47%) Senior
4 669 (7.19%) Lead
5 649 (6.97%) Analyst
6 456 (4.90%) Data Engineer
7 416 (4.47%) Consultant
8 413 (4.44%) DevOps Engineer
9 280 (3.01%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 276 (2.97%) Software Engineer
11 274 (2.94%) Network Engineer
12 266 (2.86%) Technical Architect
13 235 (2.53%) Business Analyst
14 215 (2.31%) Project Manager
15 214 (2.30%) Solutions Architect
16 186 (2.00%) Security Architect
17 185 (1.99%) Azure Engineer
18 179 (1.92%) Designer
19 175 (1.88%) Delivery Manager
20 173 (1.86%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 293 (3.15%) REST
2 209 (2.25%) Spring
3 173 (1.86%) Spring Boot
4 168 (1.81%) React
5 156 (1.68%) Node.js
6 154 (1.65%) .NET
7 151 (1.62%) Kafka
8 147 (1.58%) LDAP
9 139 (1.49%) SOAP
10 133 (1.43%) RESTful
11 112 (1.20%) AngularJS
12 110 (1.18%) JSON
13 103 (1.11%) Web Services
14 95 (1.02%) PySpark
15 91 (0.98%) OAuth
16 79 (0.85%) HTML
16 79 (0.85%) Oracle Fusion
16 79 (0.85%) XML
17 70 (0.75%) OpenID
18 69 (0.74%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 328 (3.52%) Cloud Native
2 303 (3.26%) Product Ownership
3 290 (3.12%) Data Centre
4 264 (2.84%) Onboarding
5 146 (1.57%) PKI
6 144 (1.55%) Management Information System
7 130 (1.40%) Legacy Systems
8 119 (1.28%) Security Posture
9 118 (1.27%) Enterprise Software
10 114 (1.23%) Replication
11 113 (1.21%) Distributed Systems
12 92 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
13 86 (0.92%) Clustering
14 81 (0.87%) Data Structures
15 80 (0.86%) Hybrid Cloud
16 74 (0.80%) Public Cloud
17 69 (0.74%) CMDB
17 69 (0.74%) Security Operations Centre
18 67 (0.72%) Operational Technology
19 64 (0.69%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 765 (8.22%) Windows
2 644 (6.92%) Linux
3 237 (2.55%) Windows Server
4 177 (1.90%) Unix
5 116 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 84 (0.90%) Windows 10
7 81 (0.87%) Android
8 51 (0.55%) Apple iOS
9 48 (0.52%) Solaris
10 36 (0.39%) Mac OS
10 36 (0.39%) Ubuntu
11 25 (0.27%) AIX
11 25 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
12 23 (0.25%) CentOS
12 23 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
13 20 (0.21%) VMS
14 15 (0.16%) Windows 7
15 12 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
16 10 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
17 9 (0.097%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,817 (19.53%) Agile
2 1,420 (15.26%) DevOps
3 1,244 (13.37%) CI/CD
4 976 (10.49%) Problem-Solving
5 913 (9.81%) Stakeholder Management
6 857 (9.21%) Continuous Improvement
7 776 (8.34%) Migration
8 706 (7.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 643 (6.91%) Infrastructure as Code
10 586 (6.30%) Cybersecurity
11 580 (6.23%) ITIL
12 544 (5.85%) Test Automation
13 536 (5.76%) Analytics
14 526 (5.65%) Software Engineering
15 516 (5.54%) Roadmaps
16 493 (5.30%) Containerisation
17 480 (5.16%) Data Modelling
18 451 (4.85%) Decision-Making
19 423 (4.55%) Scrum
20 409 (4.40%) AI
Programming Languages
1 976 (10.49%) Python
2 854 (9.18%) SQL
3 563 (6.05%) Java
4 494 (5.31%) PowerShell
5 277 (2.98%) JavaScript
6 196 (2.11%) C#
7 182 (1.96%) Bash
8 140 (1.50%) TypeScript
9 101 (1.09%) PL/SQL
10 88 (0.95%) C++
11 85 (0.91%) Shell Script
12 61 (0.66%) Go
13 57 (0.61%) Scala
14 55 (0.59%) Bicep
15 54 (0.58%) C
16 48 (0.52%) Ruby
17 45 (0.48%) Ada
18 42 (0.45%) Apex Code
19 36 (0.39%) MATLAB
20 35 (0.38%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 7,007 (75.30%) SC Cleared
2 1,790 (19.23%) DV Cleared
3 401 (4.31%) Degree
4 253 (2.72%) BPSS Clearance
5 189 (2.03%) Cisco Certification
6 159 (1.71%) CISSP
7 120 (1.29%) Azure Certification
8 117 (1.26%) CCNP
9 102 (1.10%) CISM
10 93 (1.00%) AWS Certification
10 93 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
11 79 (0.85%) CCNA
12 74 (0.80%) PMP
13 66 (0.71%) PMI Certification
14 61 (0.66%) Computer Science Degree
15 59 (0.63%) ISTQB
16 55 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 52 (0.56%) ITIL Certification
18 48 (0.52%) GIAC
19 38 (0.41%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 344 (3.70%) QA
2 278 (2.99%) NIST
3 274 (2.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 269 (2.89%) Data Quality
5 188 (2.02%) NCSC
6 168 (1.81%) Accessibility
7 156 (1.68%) GDPR
8 152 (1.63%) PMO
9 104 (1.12%) SLA
10 64 (0.69%) GRC
11 61 (0.66%) JSP 440
12 54 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials
13 38 (0.41%) NIST 800
14 36 (0.39%) WCAG
15 32 (0.34%) Def Stans
16 29 (0.31%) RMADS
17 23 (0.25%) PCI DSS
18 22 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
19 21 (0.23%) COBIT
19 21 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 561 (6.03%) Docker
2 433 (4.65%) Active Directory
3 275 (2.96%) VMware Infrastructure
4 105 (1.13%) VMware ESXi
5 97 (1.04%) VMware NSX
6 77 (0.83%) vSphere
7 73 (0.78%) Hyper-V
8 64 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
9 35 (0.38%) Firmware
10 28 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
11 21 (0.23%) BitLocker
11 21 (0.23%) vCloud
12 20 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
13 19 (0.20%) NFS
13 19 (0.20%) Postfix
14 16 (0.17%) Squid
15 15 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 8 (0.086%) Microsoft App-V
17 7 (0.075%) KVM
18 6 (0.064%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 713 (7.66%) Terraform
2 708 (7.61%) Kubernetes
3 335 (3.60%) Ansible
4 231 (2.48%) Grafana
5 188 (2.02%) Prometheus
6 112 (1.20%) vCenter Server
7 81 (0.87%) Single Sign-On
8 69 (0.74%) SCCM
9 60 (0.64%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 50 (0.54%) Microsoft Intune
11 47 (0.51%) FortiGate
12 45 (0.48%) Argo
13 39 (0.42%) Puppet
14 37 (0.40%) Podman
15 35 (0.38%) SCOM
16 34 (0.37%) Oracle RMAN
17 30 (0.32%) Progress Chef
18 29 (0.31%) Nagios
19 22 (0.24%) Packer
19 22 (0.24%) WSUS
Vendors
1 963 (10.35%) Microsoft
2 600 (6.45%) Oracle
3 466 (5.01%) VMware
4 372 (4.00%) ServiceNow
5 336 (3.61%) Cisco
6 307 (3.30%) SAP
7 212 (2.28%) Splunk
8 182 (1.96%) Databricks
9 154 (1.65%) Red Hat
10 148 (1.59%) Google
11 122 (1.31%) Palo Alto
11 122 (1.31%) Talend
12 115 (1.24%) Salesforce
13 111 (1.19%) IBM
14 102 (1.10%) Juniper
15 94 (1.01%) CyberArk
16 86 (0.92%) Informatica
17 85 (0.91%) F5
18 84 (0.90%) Fortinet
19 78 (0.84%) Dynatrace