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

6 months to
7 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 7,636 4,726 7,211
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.93% 18.04% 18.81%
As % of the Qualifications category 67.46% 59.71% 60.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,226 2,968 4,606
10th Percentile £350 £328 £360
25th Percentile £447 £444 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.65%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £540 £550
% change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 676 246 487
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.77 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.62 £25.56 £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 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £83.31
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £55.51 £59.68
% change year-on-year -54.69% -7.00% -0.53%

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 11,320 7,915 11,944
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.99% 30.22% 31.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,519 4,795 7,438
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £418 £414 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -3.67% -0.91%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -1.87% -2.78% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 889 381 879
10th Percentile £15.75 £19.97 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.87 £25.26 £21.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -49.70% +8.27% +2.62%
75th Percentile £63.75 £67.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.25 £77.60
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year -37.13% -13.38% +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 7 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 7 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 7 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 2,611 £534 -0.70% 562
South East +1 1,598 £519 -5.64% 551
South West 0 1,283 £550 - 387
North of England -2 813 £498 +0.05% 224
Midlands +4 732 £505 -8.27% 159
West Midlands +2 569 £515 -6.53% 112
North West 0 531 £500 +3.09% 143
East of England +2 338 £500 -2.44% 169
Yorkshire -6 166 £500 +5.26% 54
East Midlands +3 164 £424 -18.31% 47
North East 0 143 £450 -12.62% 28
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
1 273 (3.58%) Confluence
2 185 (2.42%) SharePoint
3 131 (1.72%) Microsoft Exchange
4 104 (1.36%) SAS
5 69 (0.90%) Apache
6 60 (0.79%) Apache Spark
7 48 (0.63%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.51%) nginx
9 34 (0.45%) Skype for Business
10 25 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 18 (0.24%) Palantir Foundry
12 17 (0.22%) CMS
13 16 (0.21%) Jupyter
14 12 (0.16%) IIS
15 9 (0.12%) OpenStack
16 8 (0.10%) Tuxedo
17 6 (0.079%) ArcGIS
17 6 (0.079%) Documentum
17 6 (0.079%) Oracle Workflow
17 6 (0.079%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 242 (3.17%) Microsoft Office
2 153 (2.00%) Microsoft Excel
3 113 (1.48%) Microsoft Project
4 63 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 38 (0.50%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.14%) Simulink
8 5 (0.065%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 5 (0.065%) Oracle Smart View
8 5 (0.065%) Siemens NX
8 5 (0.065%) Windchill
9 4 (0.052%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.052%) Sketch
9 4 (0.052%) Stateflow
10 3 (0.039%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.039%) Chatbot
10 3 (0.039%) FrameMaker
11 2 (0.026%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.026%) CATIA
11 2 (0.026%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 133 (1.74%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.48%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 28 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
4 27 (0.35%) SAP WM
5 26 (0.34%) SAP EWM
6 21 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
7 19 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
7 19 (0.25%) SAP MM
8 17 (0.22%) Teamcenter
9 15 (0.20%) Maximo
10 14 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
11 13 (0.17%) SAP QM
12 12 (0.16%) Oracle General Ledger
12 12 (0.16%) SAP HCM
12 12 (0.16%) SAP PP
12 12 (0.16%) SAP VC
13 11 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
13 11 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
13 11 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
13 11 (0.14%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 1,285 (16.83%) Azure
2 1,230 (16.11%) AWS
3 348 (4.56%) GitHub
4 322 (4.22%) GCP
5 297 (3.89%) Microsoft 365
6 290 (3.80%) Azure DevOps
7 282 (3.69%) Power Platform
8 216 (2.83%) Serverless
9 209 (2.74%) Entra ID
10 173 (2.27%) GitHub Actions
11 165 (2.16%) Amazon S3
12 156 (2.04%) OpenShift
13 136 (1.78%) AWS Lambda
14 106 (1.39%) AWS CloudFormation
15 98 (1.28%) Amazon EC2
16 96 (1.26%) IaaS
17 91 (1.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 91 (1.19%) Power Automate
18 88 (1.15%) PaaS
19 87 (1.14%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 385 (5.04%) Firewall
2 253 (3.31%) DNS
3 191 (2.50%) Network Security
4 170 (2.23%) VPN
5 160 (2.10%) WAN
6 131 (1.72%) TCP/IP
7 123 (1.61%) LAN
8 117 (1.53%) BGP
9 112 (1.47%) DHCP
10 83 (1.09%) VLAN
11 82 (1.07%) Wireless
12 70 (0.92%) OSPF
13 69 (0.90%) Wi-Fi
14 65 (0.85%) MPLS
15 54 (0.71%) IPsec
15 54 (0.71%) SAN
16 51 (0.67%) SSL
17 43 (0.56%) Skype
18 40 (0.52%) Cisco ISE
19 39 (0.51%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 195 (2.55%) Power BI
2 193 (2.53%) PostgreSQL
3 105 (1.38%) Data Warehouse
4 92 (1.20%) Metadata
5 91 (1.19%) SQL Server
6 86 (1.13%) Oracle Database
7 84 (1.10%) MongoDB
8 83 (1.09%) NoSQL
9 75 (0.98%) Relational Database
10 72 (0.94%) Amazon RDS
11 61 (0.80%) Azure SQL Database
12 59 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
13 45 (0.59%) Data Lake
14 44 (0.58%) Big Data
15 40 (0.52%) MySQL
16 38 (0.50%) Pentaho
17 37 (0.48%) Amazon Redshift
18 36 (0.47%) SAS Enterprise Guide
19 33 (0.43%) Redis
20 31 (0.41%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 465 (6.09%) JIRA
2 370 (4.85%) Git
3 328 (4.30%) Jenkins
4 291 (3.81%) GitLab
5 91 (1.19%) Selenium
6 72 (0.94%) Postman
7 62 (0.81%) JUnit
8 57 (0.75%) Cypress.io
9 45 (0.59%) Oracle APEX
9 45 (0.59%) SonarQube
10 44 (0.58%) Artifactory
11 39 (0.51%) Bitbucket
12 37 (0.48%) Cucumber
13 35 (0.46%) Maven
14 33 (0.43%) REST Assured
15 32 (0.42%) Mockito
16 23 (0.30%) Metasploit
16 23 (0.30%) MSI
16 23 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
17 21 (0.28%) Burp Suite
General
1 1,956 (25.62%) Public Sector
2 1,911 (25.03%) Social Skills
3 664 (8.70%) Analytical Skills
4 543 (7.11%) Finance
5 305 (3.99%) Military
6 225 (2.95%) Documentation Skills
7 182 (2.38%) Telecoms
8 181 (2.37%) Manufacturing
9 137 (1.79%) Aerospace
10 123 (1.61%) Marketing
11 120 (1.57%) Electronics
12 115 (1.51%) Legal
13 113 (1.48%) Organisational Skills
14 100 (1.31%) Presentation Skills
15 97 (1.27%) Influencing Skills
16 85 (1.11%) Banking
17 71 (0.93%) Law
18 46 (0.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 34 (0.45%) Police
20 31 (0.41%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,026 (13.44%) Architect
2 735 (9.63%) Developer
3 646 (8.46%) Senior
4 561 (7.35%) Analyst
5 481 (6.30%) Consultant
6 437 (5.72%) Lead
7 369 (4.83%) DevOps Engineer
8 250 (3.27%) Data Engineer
9 232 (3.04%) Support Engineer
10 226 (2.96%) Network Engineer
11 187 (2.45%) Business Analyst
12 182 (2.38%) Software Engineer
13 181 (2.37%) Technical Architect
14 171 (2.24%) Solutions Architect
15 148 (1.94%) Tester
16 147 (1.93%) Azure Engineer
17 140 (1.83%) Project Manager
18 133 (1.74%) AWS Engineer
18 133 (1.74%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 131 (1.72%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 317 (4.15%) REST
2 182 (2.38%) Node.js
3 173 (2.27%) React
4 160 (2.10%) Kafka
5 154 (2.02%) Spring
6 145 (1.90%) JSON
7 144 (1.89%) LDAP
7 144 (1.89%) SOAP
8 122 (1.60%) Spring Boot
9 101 (1.32%) HTML
10 98 (1.28%) .NET
11 95 (1.24%) OAuth
12 94 (1.23%) XML
13 91 (1.19%) RESTful
14 90 (1.18%) CSS
15 86 (1.13%) AngularJS
15 86 (1.13%) Oracle Fusion
16 82 (1.07%) PySpark
17 80 (1.05%) Web Services
18 78 (1.02%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 243 (3.18%) Data Centre
2 221 (2.89%) Product Ownership
3 211 (2.76%) Cloud Native
4 208 (2.72%) Onboarding
5 187 (2.45%) PKI
6 140 (1.83%) Management Information System
7 131 (1.72%) Security Posture
8 108 (1.41%) Self-Motivation
9 104 (1.36%) Enterprise Software
10 91 (1.19%) Legacy Systems
10 91 (1.19%) Replication
11 69 (0.90%) Cyber Threat
11 69 (0.90%) Driving Licence
12 62 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
13 61 (0.80%) Hybrid Cloud
14 56 (0.73%) Public Cloud
15 48 (0.63%) Private Cloud
16 45 (0.59%) CMDB
16 45 (0.59%) Distributed Systems
17 40 (0.52%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 816 (10.69%) Windows
2 596 (7.81%) Linux
3 206 (2.70%) Windows Server
4 176 (2.30%) Windows 10
5 102 (1.34%) Unix
6 99 (1.30%) Android
7 95 (1.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 67 (0.88%) Mac OS
9 43 (0.56%) Ubuntu
10 36 (0.47%) VMS
11 34 (0.45%) Apple iOS
12 24 (0.31%) CentOS
13 22 (0.29%) Windows 7
13 22 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
14 16 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
15 14 (0.18%) Mac OS X
15 14 (0.18%) Solaris
15 14 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
16 10 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
17 9 (0.12%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,447 (18.95%) Agile
2 1,189 (15.57%) DevOps
3 1,025 (13.42%) CI/CD
4 988 (12.94%) Problem-Solving
5 675 (8.84%) Migration
6 671 (8.79%) Stakeholder Management
7 543 (7.11%) Continuous Improvement
8 537 (7.03%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 518 (6.78%) Cybersecurity
10 479 (6.27%) Infrastructure as Code
11 466 (6.10%) ITIL
12 431 (5.64%) Test Automation
13 399 (5.23%) Analytics
14 390 (5.11%) Containerisation
15 383 (5.02%) Roadmaps
16 373 (4.88%) Business Intelligence
17 369 (4.83%) Service Management
18 349 (4.57%) Software Engineering
19 341 (4.47%) Scrum
20 313 (4.10%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 922 (12.07%) Python
2 583 (7.63%) SQL
3 538 (7.05%) PowerShell
4 413 (5.41%) Java
5 347 (4.54%) JavaScript
6 200 (2.62%) Bash
7 173 (2.27%) TypeScript
8 136 (1.78%) C#
9 86 (1.13%) C++
10 78 (1.02%) Go
11 71 (0.93%) Shell Script
12 66 (0.86%) PL/SQL
13 61 (0.80%) C
14 47 (0.62%) Ada
15 45 (0.59%) Scala
16 44 (0.58%) Ruby
17 38 (0.50%) Bicep
18 34 (0.45%) MATLAB
19 31 (0.41%) ABAP
19 31 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 5,848 (76.58%) SC Cleared
2 1,310 (17.16%) DV Cleared
3 387 (5.07%) Degree
4 228 (2.99%) BPSS Clearance
5 143 (1.87%) CISSP
6 127 (1.66%) Cisco Certification
7 120 (1.57%) Azure Certification
8 115 (1.51%) Microsoft Certification
9 109 (1.43%) CCNP
10 102 (1.34%) AWS Certification
11 89 (1.17%) CISM
12 66 (0.86%) Computer Science Degree
13 64 (0.84%) ITIL Certification
14 59 (0.77%) CCNA
15 49 (0.64%) TOGAF Certification
16 48 (0.63%) CEH
17 47 (0.62%) GIAC
18 43 (0.56%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 40 (0.52%) CHECK Team Member
20 38 (0.50%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 255 (3.34%) QA
2 240 (3.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 226 (2.96%) NIST
4 186 (2.44%) NCSC
5 178 (2.33%) Data Quality
6 160 (2.10%) GDPR
7 145 (1.90%) Accessibility
8 116 (1.52%) SLA
9 77 (1.01%) PMO
10 54 (0.71%) GRC
11 49 (0.64%) JSP 440
12 43 (0.56%) WCAG
13 37 (0.48%) Def Stans
14 35 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
15 30 (0.39%) PCI DSS
16 29 (0.38%) COBIT
17 28 (0.37%) 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
1 536 (7.02%) Docker
2 473 (6.19%) Active Directory
3 234 (3.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 77 (1.01%) VMware NSX
5 65 (0.85%) vSphere
6 58 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
7 57 (0.75%) VMware ESXi
8 51 (0.67%) Hyper-V
9 27 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
10 24 (0.31%) Firmware
11 17 (0.22%) BitLocker
12 14 (0.18%) NFS
13 13 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 12 (0.16%) Squid
15 11 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
16 10 (0.13%) Postfix
17 9 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
18 7 (0.092%) DFS Replication
18 7 (0.092%) Virtual Servers
19 6 (0.079%) vCloud
Systems Management
1 697 (9.13%) Kubernetes
2 648 (8.49%) Terraform
3 279 (3.65%) Ansible
4 188 (2.46%) Grafana
5 155 (2.03%) Prometheus
6 107 (1.40%) Single Sign-On
7 105 (1.38%) SCCM
8 98 (1.28%) vCenter Server
9 83 (1.09%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 63 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
11 61 (0.80%) Argo
12 36 (0.47%) Kibana
13 35 (0.46%) Podman
14 34 (0.45%) Packer
15 31 (0.41%) OPNET
16 27 (0.35%) vRealize
17 26 (0.34%) Progress Chef
17 26 (0.34%) Puppet
18 25 (0.33%) Nmap
19 21 (0.28%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 947 (12.40%) Microsoft
2 413 (5.41%) Oracle
3 403 (5.28%) VMware
4 397 (5.20%) Cisco
5 392 (5.13%) SAP
6 314 (4.11%) ServiceNow
7 198 (2.59%) Splunk
8 153 (2.00%) Red Hat
9 128 (1.68%) Palo Alto
10 123 (1.61%) CyberArk
11 119 (1.56%) Google
12 118 (1.55%) Juniper
13 114 (1.49%) Databricks
14 105 (1.38%) Atlassian
15 102 (1.34%) Salesforce
16 98 (1.28%) Dell
17 78 (1.02%) HP
18 68 (0.89%) SolarWinds
19 67 (0.88%) Aruba
20 66 (0.86%) Dynatrace