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

6 months to
15 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,169 5,116 6,031
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.99% 18.70% 18.50%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.89% 59.37% 62.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,151 3,337 3,918
10th Percentile £395 £350 £358
25th Percentile £459 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.33% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £734
UK median daily rate £543 £535 £550
% change year-on-year +1.40% -2.73% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 764 506 362
10th Percentile £21.27 £18.50 £20.23
25th Percentile £35.00 £18.87 £36.44
Median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +158.45% -59.17% +2.67%
75th Percentile £78.75 £39.88 £72.50
90th Percentile £91.31 £72.50 £83.32
UK median hourly rate £64.00 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +154.47% -58.08% -

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 14,761 8,617 9,723
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.93% 31.49% 29.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,904 5,456 6,018
10th Percentile £350 £303 £325
25th Percentile £440 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £636 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £525
% change year-on-year - - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,173 674 583
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.15 £17.08
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £26.71
Median hourly rate £52.50 £25.15 £54.00
Median % change year-on-year +108.75% -53.43% -1.42%
75th Percentile £74.00 £47.12 £69.72
90th Percentile £88.75 £73.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +88.87% -49.70% -8.73%

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 15 September 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 15 September 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 15 September 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 3,600 £550 +2.42% 1,965
South East +1 2,316 £565 +5.12% 1,022
South West 0 1,412 £550 - 958
North of England +3 1,260 £515 +3.00% 880
Midlands 0 935 £475 -7.77% 397
West Midlands +1 800 £475 -8.39% 257
North West +2 736 £530 - 587
East of England 0 377 £550 - 499
Yorkshire +2 303 £500 +2.15% 164
North East 0 242 £475 -5.00% 153
East Midlands -1 128 £450 -2.70% 140
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
1 335 (3.29%) Confluence
2 255 (2.51%) SharePoint
3 152 (1.49%) SAS
4 115 (1.13%) Microsoft Exchange
5 89 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
6 83 (0.82%) Apache
7 82 (0.81%) Apache Spark
8 35 (0.34%) nginx
9 30 (0.30%) Jupyter
10 25 (0.25%) WebLogic
11 23 (0.23%) Oracle Application Server
12 22 (0.22%) Skype for Business
13 19 (0.19%) Tomcat
14 18 (0.18%) CMS
15 16 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
16 13 (0.13%) IIS
16 13 (0.13%) NetWeaver
17 12 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
18 11 (0.11%) JBoss
19 10 (0.098%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 185 (1.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 138 (1.36%) Microsoft Office
3 96 (0.94%) Microsoft Project
4 92 (0.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 28 (0.28%) MS Visio
6 23 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.17%) AutoCAD
7 17 (0.17%) Revit
8 16 (0.16%) SOLIDWORKS
9 11 (0.11%) Simulink
10 10 (0.098%) Windchill
11 8 (0.079%) Chatbot
12 6 (0.059%) Adobe XD
12 6 (0.059%) Sketch
13 5 (0.049%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 5 (0.049%) Notepad++
14 4 (0.039%) Trello
15 3 (0.030%) OrCAD
16 2 (0.020%) Houdini
16 2 (0.020%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 130 (1.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 75 (0.74%) Remedy ITSM
3 50 (0.49%) Oracle ERP
4 36 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
5 28 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 27 (0.27%) Teamcenter
7 25 (0.25%) SAP PSCD
8 24 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
9 23 (0.23%) Oracle Payroll
10 19 (0.19%) SAP HR
11 16 (0.16%) SAP FI
12 14 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
12 14 (0.14%) Primavera
13 13 (0.13%) Findur
14 12 (0.12%) iTrent
14 12 (0.12%) SAP CO
14 12 (0.12%) SAP GRC
14 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
15 11 (0.11%) NetSuite
15 11 (0.11%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 1,853 (18.22%) Azure
2 1,678 (16.50%) AWS
3 443 (4.36%) Azure DevOps
4 429 (4.22%) Power Platform
5 414 (4.07%) GitHub
6 386 (3.80%) GCP
7 299 (2.94%) Microsoft 365
8 282 (2.77%) GitHub Actions
9 266 (2.62%) Entra ID
10 243 (2.39%) Serverless
11 204 (2.01%) Amazon S3
12 173 (1.70%) AWS Lambda
13 155 (1.52%) OCI
14 150 (1.48%) SaaS
15 143 (1.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 140 (1.38%) OpenShift
17 132 (1.30%) Amazon EKS
18 124 (1.22%) Amazon EC2
19 106 (1.04%) AWS CloudFormation
20 101 (0.99%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 405 (3.98%) Firewall
2 340 (3.34%) DNS
3 214 (2.10%) Network Security
4 188 (1.85%) WAN
5 178 (1.75%) VPN
6 168 (1.65%) DHCP
7 144 (1.42%) LAN
8 123 (1.21%) TCP/IP
9 121 (1.19%) BGP
10 116 (1.14%) Wi-Fi
11 99 (0.97%) VLAN
12 82 (0.81%) OSPF
13 81 (0.80%) Wireless
14 64 (0.63%) VSAN
15 61 (0.60%) IPsec
16 58 (0.57%) SSL
17 57 (0.56%) MPLS
18 55 (0.54%) SD-WAN
19 53 (0.52%) SAN
20 41 (0.40%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 306 (3.01%) Power BI
2 249 (2.45%) SQL Server
3 245 (2.41%) PostgreSQL
4 234 (2.30%) Data Warehouse
5 169 (1.66%) Metadata
6 162 (1.59%) Oracle Database
7 128 (1.26%) Relational Database
8 116 (1.14%) Data Lake
9 97 (0.95%) Amazon RDS
10 95 (0.93%) MongoDB
11 93 (0.91%) MySQL
12 90 (0.89%) NoSQL
13 79 (0.78%) Oracle Reports
14 68 (0.67%) Pentaho
15 57 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
15 57 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
16 53 (0.52%) Tableau
17 46 (0.45%) Amazon Aurora
18 43 (0.42%) Amazon Redshift
18 43 (0.42%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 544 (5.35%) JIRA
2 491 (4.83%) Git
3 432 (4.25%) GitLab
4 406 (3.99%) Jenkins
5 118 (1.16%) Selenium
6 77 (0.76%) SonarQube
7 69 (0.68%) Postman
8 67 (0.66%) JUnit
9 61 (0.60%) Maven
10 50 (0.49%) JMeter
11 48 (0.47%) Cucumber
12 42 (0.41%) Gradle
13 41 (0.40%) Mockito
14 36 (0.35%) Artifactory
14 36 (0.35%) Zephyr
15 34 (0.33%) Cypress.io
15 34 (0.33%) REST Assured
16 33 (0.32%) Gatling
16 33 (0.32%) Visual Studio
17 30 (0.30%) MSI
General
1 2,287 (22.49%) Social Skills
2 2,011 (19.78%) Public Sector
3 829 (8.15%) Analytical Skills
4 688 (6.77%) Finance
5 395 (3.88%) Military
6 292 (2.87%) Aerospace
7 248 (2.44%) Documentation Skills
8 196 (1.93%) Influencing Skills
9 165 (1.62%) Organisational Skills
10 147 (1.45%) Telecoms
11 138 (1.36%) Legal
12 134 (1.32%) Banking
13 116 (1.14%) Manufacturing
14 114 (1.12%) Law
15 113 (1.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 96 (0.94%) Police
17 59 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
18 46 (0.45%) Marketing
19 43 (0.42%) Retail
20 41 (0.40%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,584 (15.58%) Architect
2 976 (9.60%) Developer
3 944 (9.28%) Lead
4 943 (9.27%) Senior
5 581 (5.71%) Consultant
6 559 (5.50%) Analyst
7 434 (4.27%) Data Engineer
8 418 (4.11%) DevOps Engineer
9 376 (3.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 267 (2.63%) Technical Architect
11 262 (2.58%) Software Engineer
12 257 (2.53%) Solutions Architect
13 251 (2.47%) Data Architect
14 232 (2.28%) Security Architect
15 224 (2.20%) Network Engineer
16 207 (2.04%) Administrator
17 195 (1.92%) Cloud Engineer
18 184 (1.81%) Java Developer
19 181 (1.78%) Delivery Manager
20 178 (1.75%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 885 (8.70%) Terraform
2 386 (3.80%) REST
3 211 (2.07%) Spring
4 204 (2.01%) Kafka
5 191 (1.88%) Spring Boot
6 175 (1.72%) React
7 173 (1.70%) .NET
8 168 (1.65%) RESTful
9 155 (1.52%) SOAP
10 135 (1.33%) JSON
10 135 (1.33%) Node.js
11 110 (1.08%) HTML
12 108 (1.06%) OAuth
13 107 (1.05%) AngularJS
14 102 (1.00%) XML
15 99 (0.97%) Web Services
16 87 (0.86%) CSS
17 84 (0.83%) Middleware
18 83 (0.82%) LDAP
18 83 (0.82%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 453 (4.45%) Cloud Native
2 383 (3.77%) Onboarding
3 305 (3.00%) Product Ownership
4 263 (2.59%) Data Centre
5 174 (1.71%) Management Information System
6 162 (1.59%) Legacy Systems
7 155 (1.52%) PKI
8 148 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
9 138 (1.36%) CMDB
10 122 (1.20%) Distributed Systems
11 117 (1.15%) Hybrid Cloud
12 110 (1.08%) Replication
13 107 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
14 101 (0.99%) Cyber Threat
15 96 (0.94%) Operational Technology
16 85 (0.84%) Security Operations Centre
17 84 (0.83%) Public Cloud
18 82 (0.81%) Clustering
19 80 (0.79%) Data Structures
20 76 (0.75%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 907 (8.92%) Windows
2 716 (7.04%) Linux
3 346 (3.40%) Windows Server
4 206 (2.03%) Unix
5 144 (1.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 135 (1.33%) Windows 10
7 70 (0.69%) Solaris
8 64 (0.63%) Android
9 46 (0.45%) Mac OS
10 42 (0.41%) CentOS
11 36 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 35 (0.34%) Ubuntu
13 29 (0.29%) AIX
14 26 (0.26%) Apple iOS
15 24 (0.24%) Windows 7
16 22 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
17 20 (0.20%) VMS
18 17 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
19 16 (0.16%) Rocky
20 13 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,124 (20.89%) Agile
2 1,539 (15.13%) DevOps
3 1,494 (14.69%) CI/CD
4 1,378 (13.55%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,241 (12.20%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,102 (10.84%) Problem-Solving
7 993 (9.76%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 890 (8.75%) Infrastructure as Code
9 829 (8.15%) Migration
10 763 (7.50%) Cybersecurity
11 719 (7.07%) ITIL
12 651 (6.40%) Test Automation
13 639 (6.28%) Technical Leadership
14 636 (6.25%) AI
14 636 (6.25%) Roadmaps
15 634 (6.23%) Containerisation
16 628 (6.18%) Analytics
17 604 (5.94%) Software Engineering
18 596 (5.86%) Decision-Making
19 550 (5.41%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,166 (11.47%) Python
2 945 (9.29%) SQL
3 663 (6.52%) Java
4 547 (5.38%) PowerShell
5 350 (3.44%) JavaScript
6 307 (3.02%) Bash
7 192 (1.89%) C#
8 175 (1.72%) TypeScript
9 134 (1.32%) PL/SQL
10 109 (1.07%) Bicep
11 64 (0.63%) Shell Script
12 63 (0.62%) C++
13 53 (0.52%) C
14 51 (0.50%) Go
15 48 (0.47%) Groovy
16 39 (0.38%) Kotlin
16 39 (0.38%) Scala
17 31 (0.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 28 (0.28%) Apex Code
19 27 (0.27%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 7,628 (75.01%) SC Cleared
2 2,102 (20.67%) DV Cleared
3 422 (4.15%) Degree
4 402 (3.95%) BPSS Clearance
5 191 (1.88%) CISSP
6 168 (1.65%) Azure Certification
7 157 (1.54%) Microsoft Certification
8 154 (1.51%) Cisco Certification
9 138 (1.36%) AWS Certification
10 114 (1.12%) CISM
11 99 (0.97%) PMI Certification
12 93 (0.91%) PMP
13 83 (0.82%) ISTQB
14 76 (0.75%) CCNP
15 64 (0.63%) Computer Science Degree
16 62 (0.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 52 (0.51%) CCNA
18 41 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
18 41 (0.40%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
18 41 (0.40%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 464 (4.56%) QA
2 324 (3.19%) Data Quality
3 286 (2.81%) NIST
4 283 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 241 (2.37%) NCSC
6 220 (2.16%) Accessibility
7 219 (2.15%) PMO
8 147 (1.45%) GDPR
9 145 (1.43%) SLA
10 132 (1.30%) GRC
11 68 (0.67%) WCAG
12 55 (0.54%) JSP 440
13 44 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
14 41 (0.40%) NIST 800
15 35 (0.34%) Def Stans
16 25 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 22 (0.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 20 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
19 19 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
20 18 (0.18%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 682 (6.71%) Docker
2 562 (5.53%) Active Directory
3 393 (3.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 143 (1.41%) VMware ESXi
5 137 (1.35%) VMware NSX
6 122 (1.20%) Hyper-V
7 120 (1.18%) vSphere
8 84 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
9 43 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
10 41 (0.40%) Firmware
11 37 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
12 26 (0.26%) vCloud
13 23 (0.23%) BitLocker
14 15 (0.15%) NFS
15 13 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
16 11 (0.11%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 11 (0.11%) Postfix
17 10 (0.098%) Squid
18 9 (0.089%) Embedded Firmware
18 9 (0.089%) KVM
Systems Management
1 830 (8.16%) Kubernetes
2 407 (4.00%) Ansible
3 226 (2.22%) Grafana
4 178 (1.75%) Prometheus
5 133 (1.31%) vCenter Server
6 132 (1.30%) SCCM
7 90 (0.89%) SCOM
8 89 (0.88%) Microsoft Intune
9 63 (0.62%) Argo
10 49 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
11 47 (0.46%) Puppet
12 41 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
13 36 (0.35%) Data Guard
14 29 (0.29%) Kibana
14 29 (0.29%) Progress Chef
15 28 (0.28%) Control-M
15 28 (0.28%) VxRail
16 27 (0.27%) Istio
16 27 (0.27%) WSUS
17 25 (0.25%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,359 (13.36%) Microsoft
2 815 (8.01%) Oracle
3 554 (5.45%) VMware
4 471 (4.63%) ServiceNow
5 403 (3.96%) SAP
6 270 (2.66%) Cisco
7 230 (2.26%) Google
8 200 (1.97%) Splunk
9 179 (1.76%) Databricks
10 131 (1.29%) Red Hat
11 118 (1.16%) Salesforce
12 113 (1.11%) Palo Alto
13 95 (0.93%) IBM
13 95 (0.93%) Informatica
14 90 (0.89%) Talend
15 88 (0.87%) CyberArk
16 87 (0.86%) Dynatrace
17 85 (0.84%) Remedy
18 73 (0.72%) SolarWinds
19 71 (0.70%) Citrix