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

6 months to
13 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 9,409 4,528 7,116
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.04% 18.41% 18.97%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.58% 58.97% 62.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,570 2,961 4,651
10th Percentile £380 £338 £356
25th Percentile £450 £450 £455
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 774 317 524
10th Percentile £18.20 £18.32 £14.08
25th Percentile £23.89 £18.87 £21.46
Median hourly rate £60.00 £31.64 £56.69
Median % change year-on-year +89.63% -44.19% -5.51%
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.46 £80.00 £84.20
UK median hourly rate £58.50 £27.38 £55.80
% change year-on-year +113.70% -50.94% -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 13,522 7,678 11,468
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.67% 31.22% 30.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,079 4,828 7,097
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 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,035 481 1,007
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.63 £21.01 £20.00
Median hourly rate £50.49 £32.00 £40.33
Median % change year-on-year +57.77% -20.64% -26.68%
75th Percentile £73.42 £65.62 £64.25
90th Percentile £85.32 £81.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £30.27 £40.00
% change year-on-year +65.18% -24.33% -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 13 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 13 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 13 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 3,371 £525 - 517
South East +1 2,256 £550 - 526
South West 0 1,275 £538 -4.44% 439
North of England +2 981 £500 - 326
Midlands +2 892 £469 -10.67% 144
West Midlands +2 773 £469 -10.67% 114
North West 0 543 £520 +3.91% 204
East of England +2 369 £550 +10.00% 124
Yorkshire -1 246 £494 -1.25% 76
North East +1 225 £480 - 50
East Midlands -5 112 £418 -17.53% 30
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
1 339 (3.60%) Confluence
2 217 (2.31%) SharePoint
3 136 (1.45%) SAS
4 125 (1.33%) Microsoft Exchange
5 82 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
6 80 (0.85%) Apache Spark
7 75 (0.80%) Apache
8 38 (0.40%) Jupyter
9 37 (0.39%) nginx
10 28 (0.30%) WebLogic
11 20 (0.21%) Tomcat
12 18 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
13 16 (0.17%) IIS
14 15 (0.16%) CMS
14 15 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
14 15 (0.16%) Skype for Business
15 13 (0.14%) Tuxedo
16 11 (0.12%) NetWeaver
17 9 (0.096%) ArcGIS
18 8 (0.085%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 156 (1.66%) Microsoft Excel
2 131 (1.39%) Microsoft Office
3 75 (0.80%) Microsoft Project
4 73 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 39 (0.41%) 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 96 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
2 56 (0.60%) Remedy ITSM
3 40 (0.43%) Oracle ERP
4 33 (0.35%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 30 (0.32%) Teamcenter
6 26 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
7 18 (0.19%) 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%) Primavera
11 12 (0.13%) Temenos T24
12 9 (0.096%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.096%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.096%) Salesforce CRM
12 9 (0.096%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.096%) SAP HR
13 8 (0.085%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,641 (17.44%) Azure
2 1,579 (16.78%) AWS
3 378 (4.02%) GitHub
4 363 (3.86%) GCP
5 361 (3.84%) Power Platform
6 360 (3.83%) Azure DevOps
7 239 (2.54%) Serverless
8 234 (2.49%) Microsoft 365
9 229 (2.43%) Entra ID
10 227 (2.41%) GitHub Actions
11 205 (2.18%) Amazon S3
12 167 (1.77%) AWS Lambda
13 148 (1.57%) Amazon EC2
14 134 (1.42%) PaaS
15 130 (1.38%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 128 (1.36%) OpenShift
17 124 (1.32%) OCI
18 122 (1.30%) SaaS
19 105 (1.12%) Virtual Private Cloud
20 97 (1.03%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 410 (4.36%) Firewall
2 272 (2.89%) DNS
3 223 (2.37%) Network Security
4 206 (2.19%) WAN
5 187 (1.99%) LAN
6 157 (1.67%) VPN
7 148 (1.57%) DHCP
8 136 (1.45%) BGP
9 115 (1.22%) OSPF
10 112 (1.19%) Wi-Fi
11 103 (1.09%) VLAN
12 92 (0.98%) TCP/IP
13 79 (0.84%) Wireless
14 59 (0.63%) MPLS
15 55 (0.58%) VXLAN
16 54 (0.57%) SD-WAN
17 52 (0.55%) SAN
18 48 (0.51%) Ethernet VPN
18 48 (0.51%) Structured Cabling
19 47 (0.50%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 269 (2.86%) Power BI
2 232 (2.47%) PostgreSQL
3 215 (2.29%) Data Warehouse
4 203 (2.16%) SQL Server
5 133 (1.41%) Oracle Database
6 116 (1.23%) Metadata
7 107 (1.14%) Amazon RDS
8 103 (1.09%) Data Lake
9 92 (0.98%) Relational Database
10 82 (0.87%) Pentaho
11 80 (0.85%) MongoDB
12 75 (0.80%) Oracle Reports
13 72 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
14 69 (0.73%) MySQL
15 67 (0.71%) NoSQL
16 64 (0.68%) Amazon Redshift
17 60 (0.64%) Amazon Athena
17 60 (0.64%) Tableau
18 45 (0.48%) Azure SQL Database
19 43 (0.46%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 533 (5.66%) JIRA
2 419 (4.45%) Git
3 385 (4.09%) GitLab
4 356 (3.78%) Jenkins
5 102 (1.08%) Selenium
6 79 (0.84%) JUnit
7 70 (0.74%) SonarQube
8 68 (0.72%) Postman
9 57 (0.61%) Rational DOORS
10 51 (0.54%) JMeter
11 47 (0.50%) Artifactory
11 47 (0.50%) Cucumber
12 41 (0.44%) Bitbucket
13 40 (0.43%) Mockito
14 39 (0.41%) Maven
15 37 (0.39%) Visual Studio
15 37 (0.39%) Zephyr
16 34 (0.36%) Cypress.io
17 33 (0.35%) REST Assured
18 30 (0.32%) WebDriver
General
1 1,980 (21.04%) Public Sector
2 1,913 (20.33%) Social Skills
3 649 (6.90%) Analytical Skills
4 626 (6.65%) Finance
5 310 (3.29%) Military
6 267 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
7 259 (2.75%) Aerospace
8 142 (1.51%) Legal
9 121 (1.29%) Banking
10 112 (1.19%) Influencing Skills
11 99 (1.05%) Law
12 94 (1.00%) Telecoms
13 90 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
14 79 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
15 76 (0.81%) Manufacturing
16 64 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 62 (0.66%) Police
18 45 (0.48%) Marketing
19 39 (0.41%) Retail
20 37 (0.39%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,379 (14.66%) Architect
2 882 (9.37%) Developer
3 813 (8.64%) Senior
4 721 (7.66%) Lead
5 638 (6.78%) Analyst
6 461 (4.90%) Data Engineer
7 422 (4.49%) DevOps Engineer
8 417 (4.43%) Consultant
9 290 (3.08%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 280 (2.98%) Software Engineer
11 273 (2.90%) Technical Architect
12 258 (2.74%) Network Engineer
13 233 (2.48%) Business Analyst
14 230 (2.44%) Solutions Architect
15 208 (2.21%) Project Manager
16 204 (2.17%) Security Architect
17 188 (2.00%) Administrator
18 187 (1.99%) Delivery Manager
19 183 (1.94%) Azure Engineer
20 176 (1.87%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 295 (3.14%) REST
2 213 (2.26%) Spring
3 179 (1.90%) Spring Boot
4 169 (1.80%) React
5 161 (1.71%) .NET
6 152 (1.62%) Kafka
7 146 (1.55%) Node.js
8 137 (1.46%) LDAP
8 137 (1.46%) RESTful
9 133 (1.41%) SOAP
10 112 (1.19%) AngularJS
11 105 (1.12%) JSON
12 95 (1.01%) Web Services
13 94 (1.00%) PySpark
14 90 (0.96%) OAuth
15 88 (0.94%) HTML
16 72 (0.77%) Middleware
16 72 (0.77%) Oracle Fusion
16 72 (0.77%) XML
17 71 (0.75%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 353 (3.75%) Cloud Native
2 314 (3.34%) Product Ownership
3 281 (2.99%) Data Centre
4 280 (2.98%) Onboarding
5 151 (1.60%) Management Information System
6 148 (1.57%) Legacy Systems
7 135 (1.43%) PKI
8 123 (1.31%) Distributed Systems
9 118 (1.25%) Security Posture
10 116 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
11 111 (1.18%) Replication
12 99 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
13 87 (0.92%) Clustering
14 82 (0.87%) Data Structures
15 79 (0.84%) Hybrid Cloud
16 77 (0.82%) CMDB
17 75 (0.80%) Public Cloud
18 73 (0.78%) Security Operations Centre
19 70 (0.74%) Operational Technology
20 65 (0.69%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 751 (7.98%) Windows
2 624 (6.63%) Linux
3 246 (2.61%) Windows Server
4 181 (1.92%) Unix
5 109 (1.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 79 (0.84%) Windows 10
7 74 (0.79%) Android
8 51 (0.54%) Solaris
9 48 (0.51%) Apple iOS
10 32 (0.34%) Mac OS
11 31 (0.33%) Ubuntu
12 27 (0.29%) AIX
13 26 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
14 24 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
15 22 (0.23%) CentOS
16 15 (0.16%) VMS
17 14 (0.15%) Windows 7
18 11 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
18 11 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
19 10 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,858 (19.75%) Agile
2 1,448 (15.39%) DevOps
3 1,282 (13.63%) CI/CD
4 965 (10.26%) Problem-Solving
5 960 (10.20%) Stakeholder Management
6 896 (9.52%) Continuous Improvement
7 787 (8.36%) Migration
8 758 (8.06%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 677 (7.20%) Infrastructure as Code
10 610 (6.48%) Cybersecurity
11 572 (6.08%) Test Automation
12 567 (6.03%) ITIL
13 548 (5.82%) Analytics
14 547 (5.81%) Software Engineering
15 527 (5.60%) Roadmaps
16 516 (5.48%) Containerisation
17 487 (5.18%) Data Modelling
18 470 (5.00%) Decision-Making
19 442 (4.70%) AI
20 441 (4.69%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 987 (10.49%) Python
2 887 (9.43%) SQL
3 584 (6.21%) Java
4 481 (5.11%) PowerShell
5 264 (2.81%) JavaScript
6 203 (2.16%) C#
7 183 (1.94%) Bash
8 141 (1.50%) TypeScript
9 114 (1.21%) PL/SQL
10 86 (0.91%) Shell Script
11 84 (0.89%) C++
12 63 (0.67%) Bicep
13 61 (0.65%) C
14 53 (0.56%) Go
15 49 (0.52%) Scala
16 44 (0.47%) Ada
17 43 (0.46%) Ruby
18 42 (0.45%) Apex Code
19 35 (0.37%) MATLAB
20 33 (0.35%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 7,107 (75.53%) SC Cleared
2 1,793 (19.06%) DV Cleared
3 384 (4.08%) Degree
4 270 (2.87%) BPSS Clearance
5 180 (1.91%) Cisco Certification
6 154 (1.64%) CISSP
7 123 (1.31%) Azure Certification
8 105 (1.12%) CCNP
9 102 (1.08%) Microsoft Certification
10 101 (1.07%) CISM
11 98 (1.04%) AWS Certification
12 78 (0.83%) PMP
13 77 (0.82%) CCNA
14 72 (0.77%) PMI Certification
15 64 (0.68%) ISTQB
16 56 (0.60%) Computer Science Degree
17 55 (0.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 52 (0.55%) ITIL Certification
19 41 (0.44%) GIAC
20 34 (0.36%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 362 (3.85%) QA
2 288 (3.06%) NIST
3 282 (3.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 269 (2.86%) Data Quality
5 198 (2.10%) NCSC
6 181 (1.92%) Accessibility
7 168 (1.79%) PMO
8 160 (1.70%) GDPR
9 106 (1.13%) SLA
10 76 (0.81%) 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
1 577 (6.13%) Docker
2 432 (4.59%) Active Directory
3 287 (3.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 113 (1.20%) VMware ESXi
5 98 (1.04%) 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 21 (0.22%) 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
1 749 (7.96%) Terraform
2 720 (7.65%) Kubernetes
3 332 (3.53%) Ansible
4 232 (2.47%) Grafana
5 188 (2.00%) Prometheus
6 114 (1.21%) vCenter Server
7 79 (0.84%) Single Sign-On
8 73 (0.78%) SCCM
9 57 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 55 (0.58%) Microsoft Intune
11 50 (0.53%) Argo
12 47 (0.50%) FortiGate
13 39 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
13 39 (0.41%) Puppet
13 39 (0.41%) SCOM
14 37 (0.39%) Podman
15 27 (0.29%) Progress Chef
16 24 (0.26%) Nagios
17 23 (0.24%) vMotion
18 21 (0.22%) Packer
Vendors
1 978 (10.39%) Microsoft
2 652 (6.93%) Oracle
3 469 (4.98%) VMware
4 385 (4.09%) ServiceNow
5 318 (3.38%) Cisco
6 298 (3.17%) SAP
7 209 (2.22%) Splunk
8 175 (1.86%) Databricks
9 147 (1.56%) Google
10 145 (1.54%) Red Hat
11 126 (1.34%) Talend
12 117 (1.24%) Salesforce
13 116 (1.23%) Palo Alto
14 114 (1.21%) IBM
15 98 (1.04%) Juniper
16 96 (1.02%) Informatica
17 87 (0.92%) CyberArk
18 84 (0.89%) F5
19 82 (0.87%) Dynatrace
19 82 (0.87%) Fortinet