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

6 months to
3 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 7,565 4,701 7,216
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.88% 18.03% 18.84%
As % of the Qualifications category 67.21% 59.56% 60.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,189 2,921 4,610
10th Percentile £350 £340 £360
25th Percentile £447 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -3.08%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £715 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 663 248 491
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.96 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.59 £25.70 £42.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £58.30
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% +2.92% -2.83%
75th Percentile £65.00 £67.63 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.58 £75.00 £83.25
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £53.01 £59.59
% change year-on-year -52.55% -11.05% -0.68%

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 11,255 7,893 11,947
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.04% 30.28% 31.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,482 4,744 7,449
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £417 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £517 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -1.52% -3.67% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 870 384 878
10th Percentile £15.62 £19.87 £14.22
25th Percentile £18.87 £25.26 £21.46
Median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -45.54% - +2.62%
75th Percentile £63.75 £67.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £76.58 £81.75 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £39.52 £46.18
% change year-on-year -36.36% -14.42% +2.62%

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 3 February 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 3 February 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 3 February 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 2,583 £531 -1.62% 540
South East +1 1,544 £513 -6.82% 598
South West 0 1,296 £550 -1.26% 393
North of England -2 811 £500 +2.04% 224
Midlands +3 738 £514 -6.72% 168
West Midlands +2 582 £519 -5.90% 118
North West 0 527 £509 +7.21% 139
East of England +2 337 £497 -4.29% 174
Yorkshire -5 169 £500 +5.82% 48
East Midlands +4 157 £424 -21.93% 50
North East 0 142 £450 -13.46% 38
South Coast - 2 - -
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
1 270 (3.57%) Confluence
2 186 (2.46%) SharePoint
3 131 (1.73%) Microsoft Exchange
4 124 (1.64%) SAS
5 66 (0.87%) Apache
6 56 (0.74%) Apache Spark
7 51 (0.67%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.52%) nginx
9 36 (0.48%) Skype for Business
10 24 (0.32%) WebLogic
11 19 (0.25%) CMS
12 18 (0.24%) Palantir Foundry
13 15 (0.20%) Jupyter
14 13 (0.17%) IIS
15 11 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
16 9 (0.12%) OpenStack
17 7 (0.093%) SharePoint Server
17 7 (0.093%) Tuxedo
18 6 (0.079%) Documentum
19 5 (0.066%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 241 (3.19%) Microsoft Office
2 152 (2.01%) Microsoft Excel
3 108 (1.43%) Microsoft Project
4 62 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 37 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.15%) Simulink
8 6 (0.079%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.066%) Oracle Smart View
9 5 (0.066%) Siemens NX
9 5 (0.066%) Windchill
10 4 (0.053%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.053%) Sketch
10 4 (0.053%) Stateflow
11 3 (0.040%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.040%) Chatbot
11 3 (0.040%) FrameMaker
12 2 (0.026%) Adobe Illustrator
12 2 (0.026%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.026%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 139 (1.84%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (0.48%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 29 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
4 27 (0.36%) SAP WM
5 26 (0.34%) SAP EWM
6 23 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
7 19 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
7 19 (0.25%) SAP MM
8 15 (0.20%) Teamcenter
9 14 (0.19%) Maximo
9 14 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
10 13 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
10 13 (0.17%) SAP QM
11 12 (0.16%) SAP PP
11 12 (0.16%) SAP VC
12 11 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
12 11 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
12 11 (0.15%) Oracle Receivables
12 11 (0.15%) Primavera
12 11 (0.15%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,280 (16.92%) Azure
2 1,221 (16.14%) AWS
3 345 (4.56%) GitHub
4 320 (4.23%) GCP
5 300 (3.97%) Microsoft 365
6 285 (3.77%) Azure DevOps
7 280 (3.70%) Power Platform
8 218 (2.88%) Serverless
9 206 (2.72%) Entra ID
10 168 (2.22%) GitHub Actions
11 161 (2.13%) Amazon S3
12 157 (2.08%) OpenShift
13 136 (1.80%) AWS Lambda
14 103 (1.36%) AWS CloudFormation
15 98 (1.30%) PaaS
16 97 (1.28%) Amazon EC2
16 97 (1.28%) IaaS
17 94 (1.24%) SaaS
18 93 (1.23%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 92 (1.22%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 383 (5.06%) Firewall
2 254 (3.36%) DNS
3 188 (2.49%) Network Security
4 171 (2.26%) VPN
5 161 (2.13%) WAN
6 130 (1.72%) TCP/IP
7 119 (1.57%) LAN
8 117 (1.55%) BGP
9 113 (1.49%) DHCP
10 81 (1.07%) VLAN
11 79 (1.04%) Wireless
12 72 (0.95%) Wi-Fi
13 68 (0.90%) OSPF
14 66 (0.87%) MPLS
15 56 (0.74%) IPsec
16 54 (0.71%) SAN
17 51 (0.67%) SSL
18 46 (0.61%) Skype
19 42 (0.56%) Cisco ISE
20 39 (0.52%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 193 (2.55%) PostgreSQL
1 193 (2.55%) Power BI
2 102 (1.35%) Data Warehouse
3 90 (1.19%) Metadata
4 89 (1.18%) Oracle Database
4 89 (1.18%) SQL Server
5 85 (1.12%) NoSQL
6 83 (1.10%) MongoDB
7 77 (1.02%) Relational Database
8 76 (1.00%) Amazon RDS
9 61 (0.81%) Azure SQL Database
10 54 (0.71%) Elasticsearch
11 50 (0.66%) Pentaho
12 44 (0.58%) SAS Enterprise Guide
13 42 (0.56%) Big Data
14 41 (0.54%) Data Lake
15 39 (0.52%) MySQL
16 36 (0.48%) Amazon Redshift
17 34 (0.45%) Redis
18 33 (0.44%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 468 (6.19%) JIRA
2 386 (5.10%) Git
3 346 (4.57%) Jenkins
4 291 (3.85%) GitLab
5 89 (1.18%) Selenium
6 70 (0.93%) Postman
7 59 (0.78%) JUnit
8 56 (0.74%) Cypress.io
9 46 (0.61%) Oracle APEX
10 45 (0.59%) SonarQube
11 43 (0.57%) Artifactory
11 43 (0.57%) Bitbucket
12 35 (0.46%) Cucumber
12 35 (0.46%) Maven
13 31 (0.41%) REST Assured
14 30 (0.40%) Mockito
15 23 (0.30%) Metasploit
15 23 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
16 22 (0.29%) MSI
17 21 (0.28%) Burp Suite
General
1 1,947 (25.74%) Public Sector
2 1,911 (25.26%) Social Skills
3 663 (8.76%) Analytical Skills
4 540 (7.14%) Finance
5 301 (3.98%) Military
6 224 (2.96%) Documentation Skills
7 189 (2.50%) Telecoms
8 183 (2.42%) Manufacturing
9 133 (1.76%) Aerospace
10 130 (1.72%) Marketing
11 126 (1.67%) Electronics
12 112 (1.48%) Organisational Skills
13 111 (1.47%) Legal
14 98 (1.30%) Presentation Skills
15 90 (1.19%) Influencing Skills
16 87 (1.15%) Banking
17 73 (0.96%) Law
18 46 (0.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 34 (0.45%) Police
20 31 (0.41%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,017 (13.44%) Architect
2 729 (9.64%) Developer
3 631 (8.34%) Senior
4 549 (7.26%) Analyst
5 488 (6.45%) Consultant
6 420 (5.55%) Lead
7 364 (4.81%) DevOps Engineer
8 254 (3.36%) Data Engineer
9 234 (3.09%) Support Engineer
10 228 (3.01%) Network Engineer
11 182 (2.41%) Business Analyst
11 182 (2.41%) Technical Architect
12 176 (2.33%) Software Engineer
13 170 (2.25%) Solutions Architect
14 148 (1.96%) Tester
15 145 (1.92%) Azure Engineer
16 137 (1.81%) AWS Engineer
16 137 (1.81%) Project Manager
17 129 (1.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 129 (1.71%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 313 (4.14%) REST
2 181 (2.39%) Node.js
3 171 (2.26%) React
4 155 (2.05%) Kafka
5 148 (1.96%) Spring
6 144 (1.90%) LDAP
7 142 (1.88%) JSON
8 141 (1.86%) SOAP
9 119 (1.57%) Spring Boot
10 103 (1.36%) HTML
11 96 (1.27%) .NET
11 96 (1.27%) RESTful
11 96 (1.27%) XML
12 94 (1.24%) OAuth
13 93 (1.23%) Oracle Fusion
14 91 (1.20%) CSS
15 85 (1.12%) AngularJS
16 80 (1.06%) PySpark
17 78 (1.03%) SAML
17 78 (1.03%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 239 (3.16%) Data Centre
2 222 (2.93%) Product Ownership
3 211 (2.79%) Cloud Native
4 204 (2.70%) Onboarding
5 190 (2.51%) PKI
6 142 (1.88%) Management Information System
7 125 (1.65%) Security Posture
8 106 (1.40%) Enterprise Software
8 106 (1.40%) Self-Motivation
9 93 (1.23%) Replication
10 92 (1.22%) Legacy Systems
11 73 (0.96%) Cyber Threat
12 69 (0.91%) Driving Licence
13 61 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
14 59 (0.78%) Hybrid Cloud
15 56 (0.74%) Public Cloud
16 48 (0.63%) Private Cloud
17 45 (0.59%) CMDB
18 44 (0.58%) Distributed Systems
19 42 (0.56%) Cyber Defence
Operating Systems
1 816 (10.79%) Windows
2 585 (7.73%) Linux
3 205 (2.71%) Windows Server
4 177 (2.34%) Windows 10
5 100 (1.32%) Unix
6 96 (1.27%) Android
7 92 (1.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 66 (0.87%) Mac OS
9 44 (0.58%) Ubuntu
10 38 (0.50%) VMS
11 32 (0.42%) Apple iOS
12 24 (0.32%) CentOS
13 22 (0.29%) Windows 7
13 22 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
14 16 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
14 16 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
15 14 (0.19%) Mac OS X
16 13 (0.17%) Solaris
17 12 (0.16%) Amazon Linux
18 10 (0.13%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,439 (19.02%) Agile
2 1,194 (15.78%) DevOps
3 1,037 (13.71%) CI/CD
4 980 (12.95%) Problem-Solving
5 678 (8.96%) Migration
6 657 (8.68%) Stakeholder Management
7 543 (7.18%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 530 (7.01%) Continuous Improvement
9 505 (6.68%) Cybersecurity
10 475 (6.28%) Infrastructure as Code
11 472 (6.24%) ITIL
12 447 (5.91%) Test Automation
13 413 (5.46%) Analytics
14 396 (5.23%) Containerisation
15 390 (5.16%) Business Intelligence
16 380 (5.02%) Roadmaps
17 372 (4.92%) Service Management
18 344 (4.55%) Scrum
19 341 (4.51%) Software Engineering
20 312 (4.12%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 920 (12.16%) Python
2 592 (7.83%) SQL
3 536 (7.09%) PowerShell
4 406 (5.37%) Java
5 344 (4.55%) JavaScript
6 199 (2.63%) Bash
7 170 (2.25%) TypeScript
8 136 (1.80%) C#
9 88 (1.16%) C++
10 77 (1.02%) Go
11 73 (0.96%) Shell Script
12 66 (0.87%) PL/SQL
13 64 (0.85%) C
14 47 (0.62%) Ada
15 45 (0.59%) Scala
16 44 (0.58%) Ruby
17 36 (0.48%) Bicep
17 36 (0.48%) MATLAB
18 32 (0.42%) ABAP
19 27 (0.36%) Perl
Qualifications
1 5,798 (76.64%) SC Cleared
2 1,291 (17.07%) DV Cleared
3 379 (5.01%) Degree
4 224 (2.96%) BPSS Clearance
5 146 (1.93%) CISSP
6 124 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
7 118 (1.56%) Azure Certification
8 114 (1.51%) Microsoft Certification
9 107 (1.41%) CCNP
10 96 (1.27%) AWS Certification
11 89 (1.18%) CISM
12 64 (0.85%) ITIL Certification
13 63 (0.83%) Computer Science Degree
14 55 (0.73%) CCNA
15 50 (0.66%) CEH
16 49 (0.65%) GIAC
16 49 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
17 42 (0.56%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 40 (0.53%) CHECK Team Member
19 39 (0.52%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 248 (3.28%) QA
2 237 (3.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 225 (2.97%) NIST
4 189 (2.50%) NCSC
5 185 (2.45%) Data Quality
6 158 (2.09%) GDPR
7 136 (1.80%) Accessibility
8 114 (1.51%) SLA
9 76 (1.00%) PMO
10 53 (0.70%) GRC
11 51 (0.67%) JSP 440
12 43 (0.57%) WCAG
13 37 (0.49%) Def Stans
14 35 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
15 30 (0.40%) PCI DSS
16 29 (0.38%) COBIT
17 25 (0.33%) NIST 800
18 20 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 19 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
20 18 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 556 (7.35%) Docker
2 473 (6.25%) Active Directory
3 228 (3.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 75 (0.99%) VMware NSX
5 64 (0.85%) vSphere
6 58 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
7 57 (0.75%) VMware ESXi
8 49 (0.65%) Hyper-V
9 27 (0.36%) Firmware
9 27 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
10 17 (0.22%) BitLocker
11 13 (0.17%) NFS
12 12 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 12 (0.16%) Squid
13 11 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
14 9 (0.12%) DFS Replication
14 9 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
14 9 (0.12%) Postfix
15 7 (0.093%) Virtual Servers
16 6 (0.079%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 708 (9.36%) Kubernetes
2 640 (8.46%) Terraform
3 279 (3.69%) Ansible
4 181 (2.39%) Grafana
5 151 (2.00%) Prometheus
6 106 (1.40%) SCCM
6 106 (1.40%) Single Sign-On
7 98 (1.30%) vCenter Server
8 85 (1.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 63 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
10 59 (0.78%) Argo
11 36 (0.48%) Kibana
12 35 (0.46%) Packer
13 34 (0.45%) Podman
14 33 (0.44%) OPNET
15 27 (0.36%) vRealize
16 26 (0.34%) Nmap
16 26 (0.34%) Progress Chef
16 26 (0.34%) Puppet
17 21 (0.28%) Nessus
Vendors
1 956 (12.64%) Microsoft
2 436 (5.76%) Oracle
3 400 (5.29%) SAP
4 397 (5.25%) Cisco
5 392 (5.18%) VMware
6 315 (4.16%) ServiceNow
7 204 (2.70%) Splunk
8 152 (2.01%) Red Hat
9 131 (1.73%) Palo Alto
10 123 (1.63%) CyberArk
11 119 (1.57%) Juniper
12 114 (1.51%) Google
13 113 (1.49%) Databricks
14 105 (1.39%) Atlassian
15 97 (1.28%) Dell
16 96 (1.27%) Salesforce
17 77 (1.02%) HP
18 71 (0.94%) Dynatrace
19 68 (0.90%) SolarWinds
20 66 (0.87%) Aruba