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

6 months to
11 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,308 5,406 5,855
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.28% 19.26% 18.13%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.93% 60.18% 61.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,186 3,501 3,680
10th Percentile £400 £338 £350
25th Percentile £463 £450 £450
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 £725
UK median daily rate £550 £537 £550
% change year-on-year +2.42% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 822 567 340
10th Percentile £20.50 £18.22 £21.36
25th Percentile £29.07 £18.87 £37.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £61.65
Median % change year-on-year +158.45% -59.21% +2.75%
75th Percentile £78.70 £37.13 £72.50
90th Percentile £91.31 £71.00 £81.48
UK median hourly rate £64.09 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +154.83% -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 14,955 8,983 9,594
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.33% 32.00% 29.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,944 5,707 5,820
10th Percentile £353 £300 £313
25th Percentile £448 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £525 £526
Median % change year-on-year +1.90% -0.19% -4.36%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £734
UK median daily rate £533 £525 £525
% change year-on-year +1.43% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,301 751 513
10th Percentile £17.25 £17.87 £19.04
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £30.41
Median hourly rate £49.50 £25.15 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +96.82% -52.10% -2.02%
75th Percentile £74.00 £43.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £72.50 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £47.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -47.05% -11.49%

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 11 October 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 11 October 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 11 October 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 +5 3,687 £550 - 1,850
South East +1 2,271 £571 +8.76% 1,128
South West 0 1,377 £550 - 873
North of England +2 1,302 £512 -1.50% 866
Midlands 0 940 £475 -8.39% 444
North West +2 791 £525 -4.55% 543
West Midlands 0 791 £475 -8.65% 285
East of England 0 447 £550 - 537
Yorkshire +1 292 £488 -0.91% 161
North East 0 237 £470 -10.48% 182
East Midlands +1 141 £500 +8.11% 158
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
1 331 (3.21%) Confluence
2 239 (2.32%) SharePoint
3 136 (1.32%) SAS
4 106 (1.03%) Microsoft Exchange
5 97 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
6 94 (0.91%) Apache Spark
7 93 (0.90%) Apache
8 40 (0.39%) nginx
9 38 (0.37%) CMS
10 31 (0.30%) Jupyter
11 29 (0.28%) WebLogic
12 22 (0.21%) Skype for Business
13 20 (0.19%) Tomcat
14 17 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
15 15 (0.15%) IIS
15 15 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
16 11 (0.11%) JBoss
16 11 (0.11%) NetWeaver
16 11 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 9 (0.087%) Documentum
Applications
1 188 (1.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 126 (1.22%) Microsoft Office
3 93 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
4 91 (0.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 29 (0.28%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
7 21 (0.20%) AutoCAD
8 20 (0.19%) Windchill
9 19 (0.18%) Revit
10 18 (0.17%) SOLIDWORKS
11 9 (0.087%) Chatbot
11 9 (0.087%) Simulink
12 7 (0.068%) Adobe XD
13 5 (0.049%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 5 (0.049%) Sketch
14 4 (0.039%) OrCAD
14 4 (0.039%) Trello
15 2 (0.019%) Gliffy
15 2 (0.019%) NUKE
15 2 (0.019%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 132 (1.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 80 (0.78%) Remedy ITSM
3 54 (0.52%) Oracle ERP
4 43 (0.42%) Oracle EBS
5 41 (0.40%) Teamcenter
6 30 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 28 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
7 28 (0.27%) Oracle Payroll
8 26 (0.25%) SAP PSCD
9 22 (0.21%) SAP FI
10 18 (0.17%) SAP HR
11 16 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
12 14 (0.14%) SAP CO
13 13 (0.13%) Maximo
13 13 (0.13%) NetSuite
13 13 (0.13%) Primavera
13 13 (0.13%) SAP BRIM
13 13 (0.13%) SAP Payroll
14 12 (0.12%) SAP PP
14 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,843 (17.88%) Azure
2 1,656 (16.07%) AWS
3 454 (4.40%) Azure DevOps
4 434 (4.21%) Power Platform
5 422 (4.09%) GitHub
6 384 (3.73%) GCP
7 303 (2.94%) Entra ID
8 299 (2.90%) Microsoft 365
9 295 (2.86%) GitHub Actions
10 228 (2.21%) Serverless
11 203 (1.97%) Amazon S3
12 161 (1.56%) AWS Lambda
13 157 (1.52%) OCI
14 144 (1.40%) OpenShift
15 143 (1.39%) Amazon EKS
16 142 (1.38%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 140 (1.36%) SaaS
18 124 (1.20%) Amazon EC2
19 109 (1.06%) PowerApps
20 105 (1.02%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 402 (3.90%) Firewall
2 345 (3.35%) DNS
3 228 (2.21%) Network Security
4 179 (1.74%) VPN
5 167 (1.62%) DHCP
5 167 (1.62%) WAN
6 131 (1.27%) LAN
7 130 (1.26%) TCP/IP
8 115 (1.12%) BGP
9 111 (1.08%) Wi-Fi
10 84 (0.81%) VLAN
11 76 (0.74%) Wireless
12 74 (0.72%) OSPF
13 59 (0.57%) SAN
14 58 (0.56%) MPLS
14 58 (0.56%) SSL
15 57 (0.55%) VSAN
16 56 (0.54%) IPsec
17 49 (0.48%) SD-WAN
18 43 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 303 (2.94%) Power BI
2 237 (2.30%) PostgreSQL
3 229 (2.22%) SQL Server
4 217 (2.11%) Data Warehouse
5 178 (1.73%) Metadata
6 166 (1.61%) Oracle Database
7 121 (1.17%) Relational Database
8 118 (1.14%) Data Lake
9 101 (0.98%) MongoDB
10 97 (0.94%) Amazon RDS
11 96 (0.93%) MySQL
12 87 (0.84%) NoSQL
13 71 (0.69%) Pentaho
14 65 (0.63%) Oracle Reports
15 56 (0.54%) Elasticsearch
16 50 (0.49%) Amazon Athena
17 49 (0.48%) Big Data
18 48 (0.47%) Amazon Aurora
19 38 (0.37%) Tableau
20 37 (0.36%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 529 (5.13%) JIRA
2 491 (4.76%) Git
3 450 (4.37%) GitLab
4 429 (4.16%) Jenkins
5 131 (1.27%) Selenium
6 75 (0.73%) Postman
7 72 (0.70%) SonarQube
8 70 (0.68%) Cucumber
9 69 (0.67%) JUnit
9 69 (0.67%) Maven
10 64 (0.62%) JMeter
11 45 (0.44%) Gradle
12 40 (0.39%) Mockito
13 38 (0.37%) Gatling
14 36 (0.35%) Cypress.io
14 36 (0.35%) REST Assured
14 36 (0.35%) Visual Studio
15 34 (0.33%) Rational DOORS
15 34 (0.33%) Zephyr
16 33 (0.32%) Artifactory
General
1 2,390 (23.19%) Social Skills
2 2,063 (20.01%) Public Sector
3 862 (8.36%) Analytical Skills
4 690 (6.69%) Finance
5 418 (4.06%) Military
6 354 (3.43%) Aerospace
7 255 (2.47%) Documentation Skills
8 218 (2.11%) Influencing Skills
9 185 (1.79%) Organisational Skills
10 168 (1.63%) Manufacturing
11 149 (1.45%) Telecoms
12 138 (1.34%) Legal
13 126 (1.22%) Banking
14 123 (1.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 110 (1.07%) Law
16 109 (1.06%) Police
17 62 (0.60%) Presentation Skills
18 50 (0.49%) Local Government
19 41 (0.40%) Aviation
19 41 (0.40%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,602 (15.54%) Architect
2 980 (9.51%) Senior
3 961 (9.32%) Developer
4 941 (9.13%) Lead
5 615 (5.97%) Analyst
6 591 (5.73%) Consultant
7 430 (4.17%) Data Engineer
8 422 (4.09%) DevOps Engineer
9 362 (3.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 272 (2.64%) Solutions Architect
11 258 (2.50%) Security Architect
12 256 (2.48%) Data Architect
13 253 (2.45%) Technical Architect
14 221 (2.14%) Software Engineer
15 216 (2.10%) Administrator
16 215 (2.09%) Network Engineer
17 186 (1.80%) Cloud Engineer
18 185 (1.79%) Delivery Manager
19 182 (1.77%) Designer
20 179 (1.74%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 903 (8.76%) Terraform
2 420 (4.07%) REST
3 214 (2.08%) Kafka
4 197 (1.91%) Spring
5 180 (1.75%) Spring Boot
6 167 (1.62%) React
7 165 (1.60%) SOAP
8 161 (1.56%) RESTful
9 150 (1.46%) .NET
10 126 (1.22%) Node.js
11 125 (1.21%) OAuth
12 122 (1.18%) JSON
13 119 (1.15%) HTML
14 108 (1.05%) XML
15 102 (0.99%) Middleware
16 95 (0.92%) Web Services
17 94 (0.91%) AngularJS
18 93 (0.90%) Oracle Fusion
19 90 (0.87%) CSS
19 90 (0.87%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 462 (4.48%) Cloud Native
2 410 (3.98%) Onboarding
3 334 (3.24%) Product Ownership
4 264 (2.56%) Data Centre
5 191 (1.85%) Management Information System
6 165 (1.60%) Enterprise Software
7 162 (1.57%) PKI
8 160 (1.55%) Legacy Systems
9 150 (1.46%) CMDB
10 126 (1.22%) Hybrid Cloud
11 115 (1.12%) Cyber Threat
12 111 (1.08%) Operational Technology
13 110 (1.07%) Replication
14 104 (1.01%) Distributed Systems
15 100 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
16 86 (0.83%) Security Posture
17 84 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
18 82 (0.80%) Data Structures
19 76 (0.74%) Clustering
19 76 (0.74%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 905 (8.78%) Windows
2 705 (6.84%) Linux
3 350 (3.40%) Windows Server
4 194 (1.88%) Unix
5 144 (1.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 135 (1.31%) Windows 10
7 79 (0.77%) Solaris
8 60 (0.58%) Android
9 44 (0.43%) CentOS
10 43 (0.42%) macOS
11 41 (0.40%) Ubuntu
12 36 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
13 25 (0.24%) AIX
13 25 (0.24%) Apple iOS
14 24 (0.23%) Windows 7
15 23 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
16 21 (0.20%) VMS
17 18 (0.17%) Rocky
18 15 (0.15%) Windows Server 2016
19 10 (0.097%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,129 (20.65%) Agile
2 1,552 (15.06%) DevOps
3 1,545 (14.99%) CI/CD
4 1,506 (14.61%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,321 (12.82%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,133 (10.99%) Problem-Solving
7 1,045 (10.14%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 917 (8.90%) Infrastructure as Code
9 841 (8.16%) Migration
10 818 (7.94%) Cybersecurity
11 732 (7.10%) ITIL
12 692 (6.71%) Roadmaps
13 680 (6.60%) Test Automation
14 675 (6.55%) AI
15 663 (6.43%) Technical Leadership
16 652 (6.33%) Containerisation
17 644 (6.25%) Decision-Making
18 628 (6.09%) Analytics
19 589 (5.71%) Software Engineering
20 576 (5.59%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 1,183 (11.48%) Python
2 952 (9.24%) SQL
3 640 (6.21%) Java
4 548 (5.32%) PowerShell
5 364 (3.53%) JavaScript
6 321 (3.11%) Bash
7 179 (1.74%) TypeScript
8 176 (1.71%) C#
9 120 (1.16%) PL/SQL
10 119 (1.15%) Bicep
11 68 (0.66%) Shell Script
12 56 (0.54%) C++
12 56 (0.54%) Groovy
13 49 (0.48%) Go
14 47 (0.46%) Scala
15 44 (0.43%) C
15 44 (0.43%) Kotlin
16 33 (0.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 28 (0.27%) ABAP
17 28 (0.27%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 7,718 (74.87%) SC Cleared
2 2,133 (20.69%) DV Cleared
3 485 (4.71%) BPSS Clearance
4 452 (4.38%) Degree
5 199 (1.93%) CISSP
6 167 (1.62%) Azure Certification
7 151 (1.46%) AWS Certification
8 148 (1.44%) Cisco Certification
8 148 (1.44%) Microsoft Certification
9 120 (1.16%) CISM
10 92 (0.89%) PMI Certification
11 89 (0.86%) ISTQB
12 82 (0.80%) PMP
13 74 (0.72%) CCNP
14 69 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
15 52 (0.50%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 49 (0.48%) CCNA
17 47 (0.46%) TOGAF Certification
18 43 (0.42%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 40 (0.39%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 471 (4.57%) QA
2 341 (3.31%) Data Quality
3 296 (2.87%) NIST
4 286 (2.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 265 (2.57%) NCSC
6 243 (2.36%) Accessibility
7 212 (2.06%) PMO
8 161 (1.56%) SLA
9 149 (1.45%) GDPR
10 144 (1.40%) GRC
11 70 (0.68%) WCAG
12 47 (0.46%) JSP 440
13 41 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
14 37 (0.36%) NIST 800
15 36 (0.35%) Def Stans
16 35 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 26 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
18 22 (0.21%) ISO 9001
19 21 (0.20%) HMG Security Policy Framework
20 19 (0.18%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 693 (6.72%) Docker
2 578 (5.61%) Active Directory
3 402 (3.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 132 (1.28%) VMware ESXi
5 125 (1.21%) vSphere
6 124 (1.20%) VMware NSX
7 121 (1.17%) Hyper-V
8 82 (0.80%) Virtual Machines
9 45 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
10 39 (0.38%) Firmware
11 34 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
12 24 (0.23%) BitLocker
12 24 (0.23%) vCloud
13 20 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
14 14 (0.14%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 13 (0.13%) NFS
16 11 (0.11%) Microsoft Virtual Server
17 10 (0.097%) KVM
18 9 (0.087%) Squid
19 8 (0.078%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 856 (8.30%) Kubernetes
2 409 (3.97%) Ansible
3 231 (2.24%) Grafana
4 165 (1.60%) Prometheus
5 137 (1.33%) SCCM
6 120 (1.16%) vCenter Server
7 100 (0.97%) Microsoft Intune
8 92 (0.89%) SCOM
9 60 (0.58%) Argo
10 51 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
11 48 (0.47%) Kibana
12 40 (0.39%) Puppet
13 34 (0.33%) Data Guard
13 34 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
14 31 (0.30%) VxRail
15 28 (0.27%) Control-M
16 27 (0.26%) Istio
16 27 (0.26%) NetBackup
17 24 (0.23%) Nagios
17 24 (0.23%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 1,417 (13.75%) Microsoft
2 816 (7.92%) Oracle
3 543 (5.27%) VMware
4 458 (4.44%) ServiceNow
5 399 (3.87%) SAP
6 256 (2.48%) Google
7 251 (2.44%) Cisco
8 192 (1.86%) Splunk
9 170 (1.65%) Databricks
10 117 (1.14%) Red Hat
11 112 (1.09%) Palo Alto
12 106 (1.03%) Salesforce
13 99 (0.96%) Informatica
14 93 (0.90%) Dynatrace
14 93 (0.90%) IBM
15 92 (0.89%) Remedy
16 88 (0.85%) Talend
17 83 (0.81%) CyberArk
18 70 (0.68%) Citrix
18 70 (0.68%) SolarWinds