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

6 months to
31 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 8,910 4,569 7,211
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.42% 18.82% 19.14%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.55% 60.08% 61.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,087 3,029 4,693
10th Percentile £363 £325 £353
25th Percentile £445 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £543 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.23% -1.36% -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £537 £550
% change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -1.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 767 259 470
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.82 £25.26 £21.46
Median hourly rate £47.50 £57.50 £52.77
Median % change year-on-year -17.39% +8.97% -12.06%
75th Percentile £71.50 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.36 £77.67 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £48.72 £54.75 £53.50
% change year-on-year -11.01% +2.34% -10.83%

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 12,811 7,605 11,790
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.68% 31.33% 31.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,528 4,872 7,324
10th Percentile £336 £300 £300
25th Percentile £425 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.87% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 988 432 918
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.50 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.43 £25.25 £17.80
Median hourly rate £36.85 £50.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -26.30% +33.33% -25.00%
75th Percentile £69.30 £68.00 £62.49
90th Percentile £85.36 £82.03 £75.25
UK median hourly rate £36.70 £42.50 £37.50
% change year-on-year -13.65% +13.33% -28.57%

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 31 March 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 31 March 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 31 March 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 3,109 £525 - 519
South East +1 2,083 £525 -4.55% 548
South West 0 1,330 £538 -5.20% 389
Midlands +3 887 £485 -9.94% 175
North of England -1 853 £481 -2.88% 305
West Midlands +2 728 £492 -10.55% 128
North West -2 524 £500 - 169
East of England +1 360 £484 +7.50% 158
Yorkshire +1 212 £490 -6.67% 72
East Midlands +1 155 £450 -11.11% 46
North East 0 150 £450 -3.74% 65
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
1 354 (3.97%) Confluence
2 205 (2.30%) SharePoint
3 135 (1.52%) SAS
4 125 (1.40%) Microsoft Exchange
5 75 (0.84%) Apache Spark
6 74 (0.83%) Apache
7 50 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
8 40 (0.45%) nginx
9 35 (0.39%) WebLogic
10 23 (0.26%) Skype for Business
11 20 (0.22%) Jupyter
12 16 (0.18%) IIS
13 15 (0.17%) CMS
14 14 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
14 14 (0.16%) Tuxedo
15 12 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
16 11 (0.12%) Tomcat
17 9 (0.10%) ArcGIS
18 8 (0.090%) Apache Superset
19 6 (0.067%) OpenStack
Applications
1 231 (2.59%) Microsoft Office
2 190 (2.13%) Microsoft Excel
3 123 (1.38%) Microsoft Project
4 70 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.12%) Simulink
8 5 (0.056%) Adobe XD
8 5 (0.056%) Siemens NX
8 5 (0.056%) Sketch
9 4 (0.045%) Windchill
10 3 (0.034%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.022%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.022%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.022%) CATIA
11 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.022%) Lectora
11 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.022%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.022%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 85 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
2 40 (0.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 39 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
4 27 (0.30%) Teamcenter
5 26 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
6 25 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
7 16 (0.18%) Maximo
8 14 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.15%) SAP PP
10 12 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
10 12 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
10 12 (0.13%) Temenos T24
11 9 (0.10%) Findur
11 9 (0.10%) SAP HCM
11 9 (0.10%) SAP MM
11 9 (0.10%) SAP PSCD
12 8 (0.090%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 8 (0.090%) Primavera
12 8 (0.090%) SAP ERP
12 8 (0.090%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,485 (16.67%) Azure
2 1,456 (16.34%) AWS
3 405 (4.55%) GitHub
4 368 (4.13%) GCP
5 355 (3.98%) Azure DevOps
6 305 (3.42%) Power Platform
7 265 (2.97%) Microsoft 365
8 255 (2.86%) Serverless
9 222 (2.49%) Entra ID
10 210 (2.36%) GitHub Actions
11 192 (2.15%) Amazon S3
12 167 (1.87%) AWS Lambda
12 167 (1.87%) OpenShift
13 131 (1.47%) Amazon EC2
14 123 (1.38%) PaaS
15 117 (1.31%) AWS CloudFormation
16 115 (1.29%) IaaS
17 107 (1.20%) Azure Data Factory
18 101 (1.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 98 (1.10%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 425 (4.77%) Firewall
2 250 (2.81%) DNS
3 212 (2.38%) Network Security
4 205 (2.30%) WAN
5 181 (2.03%) LAN
6 170 (1.91%) VPN
7 142 (1.59%) BGP
8 125 (1.40%) DHCP
9 120 (1.35%) TCP/IP
10 108 (1.21%) OSPF
11 92 (1.03%) VLAN
12 88 (0.99%) Wireless
13 75 (0.84%) Wi-Fi
14 64 (0.72%) MPLS
15 53 (0.59%) SAN
16 49 (0.55%) IPsec
17 47 (0.53%) Cisco ISE
18 41 (0.46%) SSL
19 39 (0.44%) SD-WAN
19 39 (0.44%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 227 (2.55%) PostgreSQL
2 224 (2.51%) Power BI
3 161 (1.81%) Data Warehouse
4 160 (1.80%) SQL Server
5 119 (1.34%) Metadata
6 103 (1.16%) Oracle Database
7 102 (1.14%) Amazon RDS
8 93 (1.04%) NoSQL
9 90 (1.01%) MongoDB
10 86 (0.97%) Relational Database
11 79 (0.89%) Azure SQL Database
12 70 (0.79%) Elasticsearch
13 66 (0.74%) MySQL
14 65 (0.73%) Pentaho
15 63 (0.71%) Data Lake
16 60 (0.67%) Amazon Redshift
17 53 (0.59%) Tableau
18 47 (0.53%) Big Data
19 43 (0.48%) Oracle Reports
20 40 (0.45%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 560 (6.29%) JIRA
2 459 (5.15%) Git
3 374 (4.20%) Jenkins
4 315 (3.54%) GitLab
5 102 (1.14%) Selenium
6 83 (0.93%) JUnit
7 72 (0.81%) Postman
8 55 (0.62%) Rational DOORS
8 55 (0.62%) SonarQube
9 52 (0.58%) Bitbucket
10 47 (0.53%) Maven
11 46 (0.52%) Artifactory
12 45 (0.51%) Cypress.io
13 41 (0.46%) Cucumber
13 41 (0.46%) Oracle APEX
14 37 (0.42%) Mockito
15 34 (0.38%) JMeter
16 28 (0.31%) Visual Studio
17 27 (0.30%) REST Assured
18 21 (0.24%) MSI
General
1 2,159 (24.23%) Public Sector
2 2,073 (23.27%) Social Skills
3 757 (8.50%) Analytical Skills
4 656 (7.36%) Finance
5 318 (3.57%) Military
6 254 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
7 220 (2.47%) Aerospace
8 156 (1.75%) Telecoms
9 154 (1.73%) Manufacturing
10 153 (1.72%) Legal
11 115 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
12 112 (1.26%) Banking
13 105 (1.18%) Organisational Skills
13 105 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
14 100 (1.12%) Marketing
15 95 (1.07%) Electronics
16 79 (0.89%) Law
17 52 (0.58%) Police
18 48 (0.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 31 (0.35%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,320 (14.81%) Architect
2 842 (9.45%) Developer
3 780 (8.75%) Senior
4 662 (7.43%) Analyst
5 562 (6.31%) Lead
6 471 (5.29%) Consultant
7 362 (4.06%) DevOps Engineer
8 361 (4.05%) Data Engineer
9 267 (3.00%) Network Engineer
10 257 (2.88%) Software Engineer
11 248 (2.78%) Technical Architect
12 240 (2.69%) Business Analyst
13 210 (2.36%) Solutions Architect
14 184 (2.07%) Project Manager
14 184 (2.07%) Support Engineer
15 176 (1.98%) Azure Engineer
16 169 (1.90%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 168 (1.89%) Delivery Manager
18 162 (1.82%) Security Architect
19 155 (1.74%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 347 (3.89%) REST
2 191 (2.14%) Spring
3 179 (2.01%) Node.js
4 172 (1.93%) Kafka
5 164 (1.84%) React
6 150 (1.68%) JSON
7 149 (1.67%) Spring Boot
8 147 (1.65%) .NET
9 144 (1.62%) SOAP
10 143 (1.60%) LDAP
11 126 (1.41%) RESTful
12 111 (1.25%) AngularJS
13 102 (1.14%) Web Services
14 99 (1.11%) PySpark
15 96 (1.08%) OAuth
16 95 (1.07%) HTML
17 89 (1.00%) Oracle Fusion
18 87 (0.98%) XML
19 78 (0.88%) CSS
20 76 (0.85%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 316 (3.55%) Product Ownership
2 271 (3.04%) Data Centre
3 265 (2.97%) Cloud Native
4 225 (2.53%) Onboarding
5 193 (2.17%) PKI
6 156 (1.75%) Management Information System
7 127 (1.43%) Security Posture
8 123 (1.38%) Self-Motivation
9 117 (1.31%) Legacy Systems
10 110 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
11 109 (1.22%) Replication
12 91 (1.02%) Distributed Systems
13 75 (0.84%) Public Cloud
14 72 (0.81%) Data Structures
14 72 (0.81%) Hybrid Cloud
15 68 (0.76%) Cyber Threat
16 65 (0.73%) Security Operations Centre
17 61 (0.68%) Clustering
18 57 (0.64%) Virtual Team
19 55 (0.62%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 798 (8.96%) Windows
2 648 (7.27%) Linux
3 225 (2.53%) Windows Server
4 121 (1.36%) Windows 10
5 117 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 112 (1.26%) Android
6 112 (1.26%) Unix
7 57 (0.64%) Mac OS
8 44 (0.49%) Apple iOS
9 39 (0.44%) Ubuntu
10 31 (0.35%) VMS
11 24 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
12 22 (0.25%) CentOS
13 20 (0.22%) Solaris
14 18 (0.20%) Windows 7
14 18 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
15 16 (0.18%) AIX
16 12 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
17 8 (0.090%) Embedded Linux
18 7 (0.079%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,817 (20.39%) Agile
2 1,360 (15.26%) DevOps
3 1,186 (13.31%) CI/CD
4 1,074 (12.05%) Problem-Solving
5 846 (9.49%) Stakeholder Management
6 762 (8.55%) Continuous Improvement
7 759 (8.52%) Migration
8 664 (7.45%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 597 (6.70%) ITIL
10 575 (6.45%) Cybersecurity
11 549 (6.16%) Infrastructure as Code
12 527 (5.91%) Analytics
13 515 (5.78%) Test Automation
14 501 (5.62%) Roadmaps
15 470 (5.27%) Containerisation
16 468 (5.25%) Software Engineering
17 455 (5.11%) Scrum
18 437 (4.90%) Data Modelling
19 434 (4.87%) Service Management
20 400 (4.49%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 1,024 (11.49%) Python
2 787 (8.83%) SQL
3 559 (6.27%) PowerShell
4 511 (5.74%) Java
5 337 (3.78%) JavaScript
6 200 (2.24%) Bash
7 185 (2.08%) C#
8 152 (1.71%) TypeScript
9 100 (1.12%) PL/SQL
10 99 (1.11%) C++
11 95 (1.07%) Shell Script
12 66 (0.74%) Go
13 62 (0.70%) C
14 56 (0.63%) Ruby
15 54 (0.61%) Scala
16 47 (0.53%) Bicep
17 45 (0.51%) Ada
18 40 (0.45%) Apex Code
18 40 (0.45%) Kusto Query Language
19 36 (0.40%) R
Qualifications
1 6,697 (75.16%) SC Cleared
2 1,643 (18.44%) DV Cleared
3 426 (4.78%) Degree
4 252 (2.83%) BPSS Clearance
5 170 (1.91%) CISSP
6 169 (1.90%) Cisco Certification
7 125 (1.40%) Azure Certification
8 116 (1.30%) CCNP
9 110 (1.23%) AWS Certification
10 107 (1.20%) CISM
11 103 (1.16%) Microsoft Certification
12 71 (0.80%) CCNA
13 69 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
14 64 (0.72%) Computer Science Degree
15 63 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
16 57 (0.64%) PMP
17 50 (0.56%) PMI Certification
18 49 (0.55%) GIAC
19 48 (0.54%) CEH
20 47 (0.53%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 319 (3.58%) QA
2 290 (3.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 278 (3.12%) NIST
4 252 (2.83%) Data Quality
5 201 (2.26%) NCSC
6 168 (1.89%) GDPR
7 141 (1.58%) Accessibility
8 119 (1.34%) PMO
9 111 (1.25%) SLA
10 67 (0.75%) JSP 440
11 59 (0.66%) GRC
12 45 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
13 41 (0.46%) WCAG
14 38 (0.43%) COBIT
14 38 (0.43%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.37%) Def Stans
16 32 (0.36%) PCI DSS
17 26 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 24 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 22 (0.25%) RMADS
System Software
1 599 (6.72%) Docker
2 443 (4.97%) Active Directory
3 250 (2.81%) VMware Infrastructure
4 87 (0.98%) VMware NSX
5 71 (0.80%) vSphere
6 69 (0.77%) VMware ESXi
7 60 (0.67%) Hyper-V
8 54 (0.61%) Virtual Machines
9 32 (0.36%) Firmware
10 24 (0.27%) Oracle RAC
11 22 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
12 21 (0.24%) BitLocker
13 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 14 (0.16%) NFS
15 11 (0.12%) Postfix
15 11 (0.12%) vCloud
16 10 (0.11%) Squid
17 7 (0.079%) Microsoft App-V
18 5 (0.056%) KVM
19 4 (0.045%) Snort
Systems Management
1 769 (8.63%) Kubernetes
2 698 (7.83%) Terraform
3 299 (3.36%) Ansible
4 223 (2.50%) Grafana
5 183 (2.05%) Prometheus
6 101 (1.13%) Single Sign-On
7 88 (0.99%) vCenter Server
8 84 (0.94%) SCCM
9 76 (0.85%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 62 (0.70%) Microsoft Intune
11 61 (0.68%) Argo
12 46 (0.52%) FortiGate
13 40 (0.45%) Podman
14 37 (0.42%) Packer
15 35 (0.39%) Progress Chef
16 34 (0.38%) Puppet
17 30 (0.34%) OPNET
18 25 (0.28%) Oracle RMAN
19 24 (0.27%) Kibana
20 21 (0.24%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 983 (11.03%) Microsoft
2 516 (5.79%) Oracle
3 452 (5.07%) VMware
4 394 (4.42%) Cisco
5 370 (4.15%) ServiceNow
6 339 (3.80%) SAP
7 214 (2.40%) Splunk
8 181 (2.03%) Red Hat
9 171 (1.92%) Databricks
10 135 (1.52%) Google
11 130 (1.46%) Salesforce
12 127 (1.43%) Atlassian
13 126 (1.41%) Juniper
14 119 (1.34%) Palo Alto
15 117 (1.31%) IBM
16 112 (1.26%) CyberArk
17 89 (1.00%) Talend
18 84 (0.94%) Dell
19 83 (0.93%) Remedy
20 77 (0.86%) Aruba