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

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,306 5,286 5,914
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.14% 18.89% 18.20%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.87% 59.63% 61.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,210 3,443 3,761
10th Percentile £398 £340 £356
25th Percentile £463 £450 £455
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 811 551 342
10th Percentile £20.50 £18.51 £21.25
25th Percentile £30.88 £18.87 £37.10
Median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £61.75
Median % change year-on-year +158.45% -59.27% +2.92%
75th Percentile £78.60 £37.13 £72.50
90th Percentile £91.31 £71.00 £84.86
UK median hourly rate £63.31 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +151.72% -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 14,965 8,864 9,653
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.15% 31.67% 29.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,990 5,630 5,879
10th Percentile £350 £300 £313
25th Percentile £446 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £530 £525 £525
% change year-on-year +0.95% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,265 732 533
10th Percentile £17.55 £17.87 £18.13
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £30.00
Median hourly rate £51.00 £25.15 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +102.78% -52.10% -
75th Percentile £73.75 £43.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £73.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £45.50 £25.15 £48.56
% change year-on-year +80.91% -48.21% -9.23%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 +6 3,673 £550 +1.85% 1,821
South East +1 2,261 £564 +7.48% 1,171
South West 0 1,394 £550 - 906
North of England +3 1,312 £515 -1.90% 810
Midlands 0 948 £475 -8.39% 447
West Midlands 0 803 £475 -8.57% 286
North West +1 792 £530 -5.36% 488
East of England 0 436 £552 +0.36% 509
Yorkshire 0 295 £492 - 143
North East 0 245 £466 -15.23% 185
East Midlands -1 137 £500 +8.11% 160
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
1 330 (3.20%) Confluence
2 244 (2.37%) SharePoint
3 140 (1.36%) SAS
4 113 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
5 95 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
6 93 (0.90%) Apache Spark
7 91 (0.88%) Apache
8 33 (0.32%) CMS
8 33 (0.32%) nginx
9 32 (0.31%) Jupyter
10 29 (0.28%) WebLogic
11 22 (0.21%) Skype for Business
12 20 (0.19%) Tomcat
13 19 (0.18%) Oracle Application Server
14 16 (0.16%) IIS
14 16 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
15 11 (0.11%) JBoss
15 11 (0.11%) NetWeaver
15 11 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 10 (0.097%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 187 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 134 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
3 93 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
4 90 (0.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 28 (0.27%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
7 21 (0.20%) AutoCAD
8 19 (0.18%) Revit
9 18 (0.17%) SOLIDWORKS
9 18 (0.17%) Windchill
10 9 (0.087%) Chatbot
10 9 (0.087%) Simulink
11 7 (0.068%) Adobe XD
12 6 (0.058%) Sketch
13 5 (0.049%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 5 (0.049%) Notepad++
14 4 (0.039%) OrCAD
14 4 (0.039%) Trello
15 2 (0.019%) Gliffy
15 2 (0.019%) Houdini
Business Applications
1 129 (1.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 79 (0.77%) Remedy ITSM
3 54 (0.52%) Oracle ERP
4 40 (0.39%) Oracle EBS
5 36 (0.35%) Teamcenter
6 29 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 28 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
8 26 (0.25%) SAP PSCD
9 25 (0.24%) Oracle Payroll
10 20 (0.19%) SAP FI
11 18 (0.17%) SAP HR
12 16 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
13 15 (0.15%) Maximo
14 13 (0.13%) Primavera
14 13 (0.13%) SAP CO
15 12 (0.12%) NetSuite
15 12 (0.12%) SAP BRIM
15 12 (0.12%) SAP GRC
15 12 (0.12%) SAP Payroll
15 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,840 (17.85%) Azure
2 1,679 (16.29%) AWS
3 445 (4.32%) Azure DevOps
4 438 (4.25%) Power Platform
5 410 (3.98%) GitHub
6 391 (3.79%) GCP
7 307 (2.98%) Microsoft 365
8 290 (2.81%) Entra ID
8 290 (2.81%) GitHub Actions
9 235 (2.28%) Serverless
10 212 (2.06%) Amazon S3
11 171 (1.66%) AWS Lambda
12 155 (1.50%) OCI
13 148 (1.44%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 147 (1.43%) SaaS
15 145 (1.41%) Amazon EKS
16 142 (1.38%) OpenShift
17 124 (1.20%) Amazon EC2
18 109 (1.06%) PowerApps
19 104 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 398 (3.86%) Firewall
2 341 (3.31%) DNS
3 221 (2.14%) Network Security
4 176 (1.71%) WAN
5 168 (1.63%) VPN
6 165 (1.60%) DHCP
7 137 (1.33%) LAN
8 123 (1.19%) TCP/IP
9 117 (1.14%) BGP
10 113 (1.10%) Wi-Fi
11 88 (0.85%) VLAN
12 77 (0.75%) Wireless
13 76 (0.74%) OSPF
14 61 (0.59%) SSL
15 60 (0.58%) VSAN
16 58 (0.56%) MPLS
16 58 (0.56%) SAN
17 57 (0.55%) IPsec
18 50 (0.49%) SD-WAN
19 42 (0.41%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 307 (2.98%) Power BI
2 239 (2.32%) PostgreSQL
2 239 (2.32%) SQL Server
3 227 (2.20%) Data Warehouse
4 182 (1.77%) Metadata
5 161 (1.56%) Oracle Database
6 117 (1.14%) Data Lake
7 115 (1.12%) Relational Database
8 97 (0.94%) MongoDB
9 95 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
10 94 (0.91%) MySQL
11 87 (0.84%) NoSQL
12 73 (0.71%) Oracle Reports
13 64 (0.62%) Pentaho
14 60 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
15 57 (0.55%) Amazon Athena
16 49 (0.48%) Big Data
17 48 (0.47%) Amazon Aurora
17 48 (0.47%) Tableau
18 38 (0.37%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 538 (5.22%) JIRA
2 489 (4.74%) Git
3 451 (4.38%) GitLab
4 414 (4.02%) Jenkins
5 131 (1.27%) Selenium
6 77 (0.75%) Postman
7 72 (0.70%) SonarQube
8 68 (0.66%) JUnit
8 68 (0.66%) Maven
9 67 (0.65%) Cucumber
10 60 (0.58%) JMeter
11 43 (0.42%) Gradle
12 40 (0.39%) Mockito
13 37 (0.36%) REST Assured
13 37 (0.36%) Zephyr
14 36 (0.35%) Gatling
15 35 (0.34%) Artifactory
15 35 (0.34%) Cypress.io
15 35 (0.34%) Visual Studio
16 32 (0.31%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,340 (22.71%) Social Skills
2 2,033 (19.73%) Public Sector
3 848 (8.23%) Analytical Skills
4 680 (6.60%) Finance
5 408 (3.96%) Military
6 330 (3.20%) Aerospace
7 253 (2.45%) Documentation Skills
8 212 (2.06%) Influencing Skills
9 180 (1.75%) Organisational Skills
10 158 (1.53%) Manufacturing
11 150 (1.46%) Telecoms
12 130 (1.26%) Banking
12 130 (1.26%) Legal
13 124 (1.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 111 (1.08%) Law
15 100 (0.97%) Police
16 64 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
17 46 (0.45%) Local Government
18 42 (0.41%) Marketing
19 38 (0.37%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,595 (15.48%) Architect
2 970 (9.41%) Developer
3 962 (9.33%) Senior
4 949 (9.21%) Lead
5 585 (5.68%) Consultant
6 584 (5.67%) Analyst
7 435 (4.22%) Data Engineer
8 419 (4.07%) DevOps Engineer
9 373 (3.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 262 (2.54%) Solutions Architect
11 255 (2.47%) Technical Architect
12 254 (2.46%) Data Architect
13 249 (2.42%) Security Architect
14 234 (2.27%) Software Engineer
15 222 (2.15%) Network Engineer
16 209 (2.03%) Administrator
17 193 (1.87%) Cloud Engineer
18 189 (1.83%) Designer
19 188 (1.82%) Java Developer
20 181 (1.76%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 890 (8.64%) Terraform
2 408 (3.96%) REST
3 215 (2.09%) Kafka
4 210 (2.04%) Spring
5 191 (1.85%) Spring Boot
6 162 (1.57%) SOAP
7 160 (1.55%) .NET
7 160 (1.55%) React
7 160 (1.55%) RESTful
8 128 (1.24%) Node.js
9 126 (1.22%) JSON
10 117 (1.14%) OAuth
11 115 (1.12%) HTML
12 107 (1.04%) XML
13 96 (0.93%) Middleware
13 96 (0.93%) Web Services
14 95 (0.92%) AngularJS
15 88 (0.85%) Oracle Fusion
16 87 (0.84%) CSS
17 85 (0.82%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 462 (4.48%) Cloud Native
2 400 (3.88%) Onboarding
3 326 (3.16%) Product Ownership
4 265 (2.57%) Data Centre
5 176 (1.71%) Management Information System
6 159 (1.54%) Legacy Systems
6 159 (1.54%) PKI
7 155 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
8 145 (1.41%) CMDB
9 121 (1.17%) Hybrid Cloud
10 109 (1.06%) Cyber Threat
10 109 (1.06%) Distributed Systems
11 108 (1.05%) Operational Technology
12 105 (1.02%) Replication
13 102 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
14 85 (0.82%) Security Operations Centre
14 85 (0.82%) Security Posture
15 82 (0.80%) Data Structures
16 78 (0.76%) Clustering
17 77 (0.75%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 910 (8.83%) Windows
2 709 (6.88%) Linux
3 349 (3.39%) Windows Server
4 211 (2.05%) Unix
5 145 (1.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 132 (1.28%) Windows 10
7 81 (0.79%) Solaris
8 66 (0.64%) Android
9 46 (0.45%) Mac OS
10 43 (0.42%) CentOS
11 39 (0.38%) Ubuntu
12 35 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
13 31 (0.30%) Apple iOS
14 29 (0.28%) AIX
15 24 (0.23%) Windows 7
16 21 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
17 20 (0.19%) VMS
18 16 (0.16%) Rocky
19 15 (0.15%) Windows Server 2016
20 10 (0.097%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,148 (20.84%) Agile
2 1,544 (14.98%) DevOps
3 1,526 (14.81%) CI/CD
4 1,468 (14.24%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,293 (12.55%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,116 (10.83%) Problem-Solving
7 1,040 (10.09%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 903 (8.76%) Infrastructure as Code
9 850 (8.25%) Migration
10 799 (7.75%) Cybersecurity
11 716 (6.95%) ITIL
12 670 (6.50%) AI
13 664 (6.44%) Test Automation
14 662 (6.42%) Roadmaps
14 662 (6.42%) Technical Leadership
15 642 (6.23%) Decision-Making
16 639 (6.20%) Containerisation
17 618 (6.00%) Analytics
18 590 (5.72%) Software Engineering
19 552 (5.36%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,182 (11.47%) Python
2 967 (9.38%) SQL
3 659 (6.39%) Java
4 541 (5.25%) PowerShell
5 353 (3.43%) JavaScript
6 308 (2.99%) Bash
7 186 (1.80%) C#
8 178 (1.73%) TypeScript
9 124 (1.20%) PL/SQL
10 108 (1.05%) Bicep
11 69 (0.67%) Shell Script
12 60 (0.58%) C++
13 55 (0.53%) Go
14 48 (0.47%) C
14 48 (0.47%) Groovy
15 47 (0.46%) Scala
16 43 (0.42%) Kotlin
17 31 (0.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 27 (0.26%) ABAP
18 27 (0.26%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 7,729 (75.00%) SC Cleared
2 2,116 (20.53%) DV Cleared
3 459 (4.45%) BPSS Clearance
4 450 (4.37%) Degree
5 197 (1.91%) CISSP
6 170 (1.65%) Azure Certification
7 154 (1.49%) Cisco Certification
8 152 (1.47%) Microsoft Certification
9 144 (1.40%) AWS Certification
10 114 (1.11%) CISM
11 97 (0.94%) PMI Certification
12 89 (0.86%) PMP
13 88 (0.85%) ISTQB
14 78 (0.76%) CCNP
15 64 (0.62%) Computer Science Degree
16 59 (0.57%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 51 (0.49%) CCNA
18 44 (0.43%) TOGAF Certification
19 43 (0.42%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 41 (0.40%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 467 (4.53%) QA
2 336 (3.26%) Data Quality
3 301 (2.92%) NIST
4 287 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 258 (2.50%) NCSC
6 245 (2.38%) Accessibility
7 217 (2.11%) PMO
8 157 (1.52%) SLA
9 147 (1.43%) GDPR
10 146 (1.42%) GRC
11 70 (0.68%) WCAG
12 49 (0.48%) JSP 440
13 45 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
14 40 (0.39%) NIST 800
15 35 (0.34%) Def Stans
16 30 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 25 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
18 21 (0.20%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 20 (0.19%) ISO 9001
20 19 (0.18%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 689 (6.69%) Docker
2 579 (5.62%) Active Directory
3 403 (3.91%) VMware Infrastructure
4 138 (1.34%) VMware ESXi
5 131 (1.27%) VMware NSX
6 127 (1.23%) vSphere
7 123 (1.19%) Hyper-V
8 84 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
9 42 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
10 39 (0.38%) Firmware
11 34 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
12 25 (0.24%) BitLocker
13 24 (0.23%) vCloud
14 21 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
15 13 (0.13%) 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%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 848 (8.23%) Kubernetes
2 408 (3.96%) Ansible
3 234 (2.27%) Grafana
4 174 (1.69%) Prometheus
5 128 (1.24%) SCCM
6 126 (1.22%) vCenter Server
7 94 (0.91%) SCOM
8 89 (0.86%) Microsoft Intune
9 62 (0.60%) Argo
10 50 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
11 43 (0.42%) Puppet
12 42 (0.41%) Kibana
13 35 (0.34%) Oracle RMAN
14 34 (0.33%) Data Guard
15 30 (0.29%) VxRail
16 29 (0.28%) Istio
17 28 (0.27%) Control-M
18 27 (0.26%) NetBackup
19 25 (0.24%) Nagios
20 24 (0.23%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,392 (13.51%) Microsoft
2 826 (8.01%) Oracle
3 546 (5.30%) VMware
4 463 (4.49%) ServiceNow
5 391 (3.79%) SAP
6 260 (2.52%) Cisco
7 256 (2.48%) Google
8 198 (1.92%) Splunk
9 168 (1.63%) Databricks
10 119 (1.15%) Red Hat
11 113 (1.10%) Palo Alto
12 108 (1.05%) Salesforce
13 99 (0.96%) Informatica
14 96 (0.93%) IBM
15 90 (0.87%) CyberArk
15 90 (0.87%) Remedy
16 87 (0.84%) Dynatrace
17 84 (0.82%) Talend
18 72 (0.70%) SolarWinds
19 70 (0.68%) Citrix