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 16 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 0 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,101 4,556 7,142
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.18% 18.67% 19.13%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.96% 59.42% 61.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,299 3,047 4,646
10th Percentile £363 £331 £353
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -1.79%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £534 £550
% change year-on-year -1.59% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 764 256 464
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.91
25th Percentile £21.25 £25.03 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £57.50 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +9.52% -12.50%
75th Percentile £73.46 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.33 £79.35 £83.41
UK median hourly rate £54.00 £54.51 £52.50
% change year-on-year -0.94% +3.83% -13.51%

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 13,009 7,668 11,682
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.13% 31.42% 31.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,728 4,902 7,218
10th Percentile £341 £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 £623 £635 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £746
UK median daily rate £519 £525 £537
% change year-on-year -1.23% -2.23% -2.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 985 425 938
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.20 £13.95
25th Percentile £20.82 £24.50 £17.73
Median hourly rate £45.46 £50.00 £39.44
Median % change year-on-year -9.08% +26.79% -24.19%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.36 £82.25 £75.77
UK median hourly rate £45.46 £45.00 £38.95
% change year-on-year +1.02% +15.53% -27.87%

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 16 April 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 16 April 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 16 April 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 3,178 £525 - 464
South East +1 2,151 £534 -2.98% 488
South West 0 1,345 £538 -4.19% 336
Midlands +4 913 £485 -8.96% 149
North of England -1 859 £488 -2.50% 264
West Midlands +4 770 £485 -9.94% 104
North West -1 531 £500 - 147
East of England +2 365 £500 +35.14% 164
Yorkshire -5 203 £488 -7.14% 56
North East +1 160 £450 -6.25% 63
East Midlands -1 139 £450 -7.69% 45
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
1 360 (3.96%) Confluence
2 210 (2.31%) SharePoint
3 151 (1.66%) SAS
4 135 (1.48%) Microsoft Exchange
5 83 (0.91%) Apache Spark
6 75 (0.82%) Apache
7 54 (0.59%) Apache Airflow
8 42 (0.46%) nginx
9 34 (0.37%) WebLogic
10 21 (0.23%) Jupyter
11 17 (0.19%) Skype for Business
12 15 (0.16%) IIS
13 14 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
13 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
14 13 (0.14%) CMS
15 11 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
15 11 (0.12%) Tomcat
16 10 (0.11%) Oracle Application Server
17 8 (0.088%) Apache Superset
17 8 (0.088%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 223 (2.45%) Microsoft Office
2 190 (2.09%) Microsoft Excel
3 124 (1.36%) Microsoft Project
4 76 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 42 (0.46%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.13%) Simulink
8 5 (0.055%) Notepad++
9 4 (0.044%) Siemens NX
9 4 (0.044%) Windchill
10 2 (0.022%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.022%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.022%) CATIA
10 2 (0.022%) Chatbot
10 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.022%) Lectora
10 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
10 2 (0.022%) Sketch
11 1 (0.011%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.011%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 81 (0.89%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.46%) Remedy ITSM
3 39 (0.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 28 (0.31%) Dynamics CRM
5 26 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
5 26 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 18 (0.20%) Maximo
7 13 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
7 13 (0.14%) SAP PP
7 13 (0.14%) Temenos T24
8 12 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
9 11 (0.12%) Findur
9 11 (0.12%) SAP PSCD
10 10 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
11 9 (0.099%) Integrated Workplace Management System
11 9 (0.099%) SAP HCM
12 8 (0.088%) iTrent
12 8 (0.088%) Workday HCM
13 7 (0.077%) SAP ERP
13 7 (0.077%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 1,524 (16.75%) Azure
2 1,499 (16.47%) AWS
3 385 (4.23%) GCP
4 382 (4.20%) GitHub
5 351 (3.86%) Azure DevOps
6 323 (3.55%) Power Platform
7 266 (2.92%) Serverless
8 261 (2.87%) Microsoft 365
9 222 (2.44%) Entra ID
10 203 (2.23%) GitHub Actions
11 202 (2.22%) Amazon S3
12 180 (1.98%) AWS Lambda
13 152 (1.67%) OpenShift
14 133 (1.46%) PaaS
15 126 (1.38%) IaaS
16 123 (1.35%) Amazon EC2
17 122 (1.34%) AWS CloudFormation
18 107 (1.18%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 107 (1.18%) Azure Data Factory
19 98 (1.08%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 431 (4.74%) Firewall
2 265 (2.91%) DNS
3 214 (2.35%) Network Security
4 213 (2.34%) WAN
5 190 (2.09%) LAN
6 164 (1.80%) VPN
7 143 (1.57%) BGP
8 136 (1.49%) DHCP
9 115 (1.26%) OSPF
10 110 (1.21%) TCP/IP
11 99 (1.09%) VLAN
12 84 (0.92%) Wireless
13 74 (0.81%) Wi-Fi
14 60 (0.66%) MPLS
15 54 (0.59%) SAN
16 47 (0.52%) IPsec
17 46 (0.51%) Cisco ISE
18 43 (0.47%) SD-WAN
18 43 (0.47%) Structured Cabling
18 43 (0.47%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 248 (2.72%) Power BI
2 235 (2.58%) PostgreSQL
3 191 (2.10%) Data Warehouse
4 177 (1.94%) SQL Server
5 130 (1.43%) Metadata
6 108 (1.19%) Oracle Database
7 101 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
8 99 (1.09%) NoSQL
9 84 (0.92%) MongoDB
9 84 (0.92%) Relational Database
10 76 (0.84%) Azure SQL Database
11 74 (0.81%) Pentaho
12 72 (0.79%) Elasticsearch
13 70 (0.77%) MySQL
14 68 (0.75%) Data Lake
15 67 (0.74%) Tableau
16 65 (0.71%) Amazon Redshift
17 59 (0.65%) Oracle Reports
18 51 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
19 47 (0.52%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 570 (6.26%) JIRA
2 460 (5.05%) Git
3 366 (4.02%) Jenkins
4 317 (3.48%) GitLab
5 109 (1.20%) Selenium
6 80 (0.88%) JUnit
6 80 (0.88%) Postman
7 55 (0.60%) SonarQube
8 50 (0.55%) Bitbucket
8 50 (0.55%) Rational DOORS
9 44 (0.48%) Artifactory
10 43 (0.47%) Maven
11 42 (0.46%) Oracle APEX
12 40 (0.44%) Cypress.io
13 37 (0.41%) Cucumber
14 36 (0.40%) Mockito
15 34 (0.37%) JMeter
16 28 (0.31%) REST Assured
17 26 (0.29%) Visual Studio
18 24 (0.26%) Zephyr
General
1 2,099 (23.06%) Public Sector
2 2,041 (22.43%) Social Skills
3 760 (8.35%) Analytical Skills
4 652 (7.16%) Finance
5 325 (3.57%) Military
6 261 (2.87%) Documentation Skills
7 216 (2.37%) Aerospace
8 152 (1.67%) Legal
9 144 (1.58%) Telecoms
10 139 (1.53%) Manufacturing
11 121 (1.33%) Influencing Skills
12 113 (1.24%) Banking
13 98 (1.08%) Organisational Skills
14 96 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
15 87 (0.96%) Marketing
16 82 (0.90%) Law
17 78 (0.86%) Electronics
18 56 (0.62%) Police
19 48 (0.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 31 (0.34%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,369 (15.04%) Architect
2 867 (9.53%) Developer
3 786 (8.64%) Senior
4 656 (7.21%) Analyst
5 589 (6.47%) Lead
6 430 (4.72%) Consultant
7 405 (4.45%) Data Engineer
8 373 (4.10%) DevOps Engineer
9 271 (2.98%) Network Engineer
10 267 (2.93%) Software Engineer
11 263 (2.89%) Technical Architect
12 243 (2.67%) Business Analyst
13 207 (2.27%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 203 (2.23%) Solutions Architect
15 200 (2.20%) Project Manager
16 193 (2.12%) Azure Engineer
17 172 (1.89%) Delivery Manager
18 164 (1.80%) Security Architect
19 161 (1.77%) Administrator
20 157 (1.73%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 338 (3.71%) REST
2 204 (2.24%) Spring
3 177 (1.94%) Node.js
4 164 (1.80%) Kafka
5 161 (1.77%) React
6 157 (1.73%) .NET
7 156 (1.71%) Spring Boot
8 149 (1.64%) JSON
9 137 (1.51%) SOAP
10 134 (1.47%) LDAP
11 127 (1.40%) RESTful
12 112 (1.23%) AngularJS
13 107 (1.18%) PySpark
14 105 (1.15%) Web Services
15 98 (1.08%) OAuth
16 87 (0.96%) Oracle Fusion
17 85 (0.93%) XML
18 84 (0.92%) HTML
19 75 (0.82%) SAML
20 69 (0.76%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 322 (3.54%) Product Ownership
2 285 (3.13%) Cloud Native
3 277 (3.04%) Data Centre
4 238 (2.62%) Onboarding
5 184 (2.02%) PKI
6 156 (1.71%) Management Information System
7 124 (1.36%) Self-Motivation
8 121 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
8 121 (1.33%) Security Posture
9 117 (1.29%) Legacy Systems
10 112 (1.23%) Replication
11 103 (1.13%) Distributed Systems
12 82 (0.90%) Public Cloud
13 77 (0.85%) Data Structures
14 72 (0.79%) Hybrid Cloud
15 69 (0.76%) Clustering
16 65 (0.71%) Security Operations Centre
17 60 (0.66%) Virtual Team
18 57 (0.63%) Private Cloud
19 56 (0.62%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 789 (8.67%) Windows
2 647 (7.11%) Linux
3 236 (2.59%) Windows Server
4 133 (1.46%) Unix
5 116 (1.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 111 (1.22%) Windows 10
7 107 (1.18%) Android
8 50 (0.55%) Mac OS
9 49 (0.54%) Apple iOS
10 33 (0.36%) Ubuntu
11 29 (0.32%) VMS
12 26 (0.29%) Solaris
13 21 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
14 20 (0.22%) AIX
14 20 (0.22%) CentOS
15 19 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
16 16 (0.18%) Windows 7
17 12 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
18 8 (0.088%) Embedded Linux
18 8 (0.088%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,857 (20.40%) Agile
2 1,383 (15.20%) DevOps
3 1,213 (13.33%) CI/CD
4 1,061 (11.66%) Problem-Solving
5 869 (9.55%) Stakeholder Management
6 804 (8.83%) Migration
7 787 (8.65%) Continuous Improvement
8 687 (7.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 602 (6.61%) ITIL
10 572 (6.29%) Infrastructure as Code
11 548 (6.02%) Analytics
12 543 (5.97%) Cybersecurity
13 531 (5.83%) Test Automation
14 506 (5.56%) Roadmaps
15 481 (5.29%) Containerisation
16 478 (5.25%) Software Engineering
17 459 (5.04%) Scrum
18 457 (5.02%) Data Modelling
19 439 (4.82%) Service Management
20 406 (4.46%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 1,035 (11.37%) Python
2 842 (9.25%) SQL
3 546 (6.00%) PowerShell
4 536 (5.89%) Java
5 324 (3.56%) JavaScript
6 195 (2.14%) C#
7 194 (2.13%) Bash
8 148 (1.63%) TypeScript
9 106 (1.16%) PL/SQL
10 92 (1.01%) Shell Script
11 91 (1.00%) C++
12 67 (0.74%) Go
13 63 (0.69%) Scala
14 57 (0.63%) Ruby
15 56 (0.62%) C
16 51 (0.56%) Bicep
17 41 (0.45%) Ada
17 41 (0.45%) R
18 40 (0.44%) Apex Code
19 38 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 6,855 (75.32%) SC Cleared
2 1,697 (18.65%) DV Cleared
3 423 (4.65%) Degree
4 274 (3.01%) BPSS Clearance
5 177 (1.94%) Cisco Certification
6 153 (1.68%) CISSP
7 132 (1.45%) Azure Certification
8 120 (1.32%) CCNP
9 109 (1.20%) AWS Certification
10 103 (1.13%) Microsoft Certification
11 96 (1.05%) CISM
12 75 (0.82%) CCNA
13 67 (0.74%) ITIL Certification
14 66 (0.73%) PMP
15 65 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
16 60 (0.66%) Computer Science Degree
17 59 (0.65%) PMI Certification
18 50 (0.55%) ISTQB
19 49 (0.54%) GIAC
20 45 (0.49%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 333 (3.66%) QA
2 273 (3.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 268 (2.94%) NIST
4 263 (2.89%) Data Quality
5 191 (2.10%) NCSC
6 154 (1.69%) GDPR
7 140 (1.54%) Accessibility
8 134 (1.47%) PMO
9 101 (1.11%) SLA
10 64 (0.70%) JSP 440
11 62 (0.68%) GRC
12 42 (0.46%) NIST 800
13 40 (0.44%) COBIT
14 39 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
15 34 (0.37%) PCI DSS
16 33 (0.36%) WCAG
17 28 (0.31%) Def Stans
18 26 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 25 (0.27%) RMADS
20 17 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 615 (6.76%) Docker
2 451 (4.96%) Active Directory
3 260 (2.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 87 (0.96%) VMware NSX
5 78 (0.86%) VMware ESXi
6 70 (0.77%) vSphere
7 68 (0.75%) Hyper-V
8 50 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
9 33 (0.36%) Firmware
10 23 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
11 20 (0.22%) BitLocker
11 20 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
12 17 (0.19%) NFS
12 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 15 (0.16%) Postfix
14 12 (0.13%) vCloud
15 10 (0.11%) Squid
16 8 (0.088%) Microsoft App-V
17 5 (0.055%) KVM
17 5 (0.055%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 783 (8.60%) Kubernetes
2 717 (7.88%) Terraform
3 293 (3.22%) Ansible
4 215 (2.36%) Grafana
5 176 (1.93%) Prometheus
6 100 (1.10%) Single Sign-On
7 93 (1.02%) vCenter Server
8 80 (0.88%) SCCM
9 76 (0.84%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 57 (0.63%) Microsoft Intune
11 55 (0.60%) Argo
12 53 (0.58%) FortiGate
13 37 (0.41%) Packer
13 37 (0.41%) Podman
14 36 (0.40%) Puppet
15 32 (0.35%) Progress Chef
16 30 (0.33%) OPNET
17 27 (0.30%) Kibana
18 25 (0.27%) Oracle RMAN
19 24 (0.26%) Nagios
Vendors
1 978 (10.75%) Microsoft
2 571 (6.27%) Oracle
3 461 (5.07%) VMware
4 384 (4.22%) Cisco
5 375 (4.12%) ServiceNow
6 338 (3.71%) SAP
7 206 (2.26%) Splunk
8 179 (1.97%) Databricks
9 174 (1.91%) Red Hat
10 145 (1.59%) Google
11 125 (1.37%) Atlassian
11 125 (1.37%) Salesforce
12 116 (1.27%) IBM
12 116 (1.27%) Juniper
13 110 (1.21%) Palo Alto
14 103 (1.13%) Talend
15 96 (1.05%) CyberArk
16 85 (0.93%) Remedy
17 78 (0.86%) Citrix
18 76 (0.84%) Dell