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

6 months to
3 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,647 4,765 7,060
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.97% 18.26% 18.89%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.56% 59.02% 61.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,776 3,111 4,618
10th Percentile £380 £338 £353
25th Percentile £450 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £716 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 756 362 539
10th Percentile £18.29 £18.50 £14.45
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +151.03% -56.26% -4.17%
75th Percentile £75.40 £63.44 £72.50
90th Percentile £87.08 £77.47 £83.59
UK median hourly rate £61.67 £25.15 £55.80
% change year-on-year +145.21% -54.93% -7.00%

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 13,869 8,073 11,407
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.58% 30.94% 30.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,346 5,088 7,062
10th Percentile £350 £282 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £645
90th Percentile £718 £717 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £523 £525
% change year-on-year +0.43% -0.43% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,044 535 994
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.16
25th Percentile £24.19 £20.07 £20.50
Median hourly rate £53.00 £28.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +85.96% -32.94% -22.73%
75th Percentile £74.00 £63.13 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.40 £77.50 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £51.00 £27.94 £40.94
% change year-on-year +82.53% -31.75% -26.70%

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 July 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 July 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 July 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 +7 3,425 £533 +1.43% 725
South East +1 2,332 £550 - 640
South West 0 1,305 £538 -6.52% 494
North of England +2 1,027 £500 - 349
Midlands +3 935 £469 -8.49% 201
West Midlands +2 797 £469 -9.77% 154
North West 0 552 £525 +5.00% 211
East of England +2 348 £550 +10.00% 127
Yorkshire -2 270 £500 +1.63% 80
North East +1 233 £475 -3.06% 59
East Midlands -1 126 £418 -12.11% 46
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
1 336 (3.48%) Confluence
2 219 (2.27%) SharePoint
3 144 (1.49%) SAS
4 123 (1.28%) Microsoft Exchange
5 90 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
6 82 (0.85%) Apache Spark
7 79 (0.82%) Apache
8 39 (0.40%) nginx
9 38 (0.39%) Jupyter
10 30 (0.31%) WebLogic
11 21 (0.22%) Tomcat
12 18 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
13 16 (0.17%) CMS
13 16 (0.17%) IIS
14 15 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
15 14 (0.15%) Skype for Business
16 12 (0.12%) Tuxedo
17 11 (0.11%) NetWeaver
18 10 (0.10%) Palantir Foundry
19 9 (0.093%) Documentum
Applications
1 156 (1.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 126 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 79 (0.82%) Microsoft Project
4 65 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 41 (0.43%) MS Visio
6 17 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.13%) Simulink
8 12 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
9 11 (0.11%) AutoCAD
9 11 (0.11%) Revit
10 10 (0.10%) Chatbot
11 5 (0.052%) Notepad++
12 4 (0.041%) Adobe XD
13 3 (0.031%) Sketch
14 2 (0.021%) CATIA
14 2 (0.021%) CPLEX
14 2 (0.021%) Lectora
14 2 (0.021%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.021%) Siemens NX
14 2 (0.021%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 102 (1.06%) SAP S/4HANA
2 61 (0.63%) Remedy ITSM
3 43 (0.45%) Oracle ERP
4 33 (0.34%) Teamcenter
5 31 (0.32%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 27 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
7 24 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
8 20 (0.21%) SAP PSCD
9 15 (0.16%) Findur
9 15 (0.16%) Primavera
9 15 (0.16%) Temenos T24
10 13 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
11 12 (0.12%) iTrent
11 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
12 11 (0.11%) SAP ERP
13 10 (0.10%) Maximo
14 9 (0.093%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 9 (0.093%) Salesforce CRM
14 9 (0.093%) SAP HR
15 8 (0.083%) SAP BRIM
Cloud Services
1 1,673 (17.34%) Azure
2 1,620 (16.79%) AWS
3 381 (3.95%) GitHub
4 379 (3.93%) Power Platform
5 369 (3.83%) Azure DevOps
6 344 (3.57%) GCP
7 248 (2.57%) Microsoft 365
8 244 (2.53%) GitHub Actions
9 241 (2.50%) Entra ID
10 239 (2.48%) Serverless
11 216 (2.24%) Amazon S3
12 166 (1.72%) AWS Lambda
13 150 (1.55%) Amazon EC2
14 143 (1.48%) SaaS
15 142 (1.47%) OCI
16 136 (1.41%) OpenShift
17 130 (1.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 127 (1.32%) PaaS
19 109 (1.13%) Amazon EKS
19 109 (1.13%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 407 (4.22%) Firewall
2 307 (3.18%) DNS
3 225 (2.33%) Network Security
4 210 (2.18%) WAN
5 187 (1.94%) LAN
6 167 (1.73%) VPN
7 161 (1.67%) DHCP
8 138 (1.43%) BGP
9 116 (1.20%) OSPF
10 110 (1.14%) Wi-Fi
11 105 (1.09%) VLAN
12 94 (0.97%) TCP/IP
13 82 (0.85%) Wireless
14 60 (0.62%) MPLS
14 60 (0.62%) SD-WAN
15 55 (0.57%) VXLAN
16 54 (0.56%) SAN
17 50 (0.52%) BIG-IP
18 47 (0.49%) IPsec
19 46 (0.48%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 285 (2.95%) Power BI
2 240 (2.49%) PostgreSQL
3 221 (2.29%) SQL Server
4 217 (2.25%) Data Warehouse
5 147 (1.52%) Oracle Database
6 114 (1.18%) Metadata
7 104 (1.08%) Amazon RDS
8 101 (1.05%) Data Lake
9 97 (1.01%) Relational Database
10 83 (0.86%) Pentaho
11 82 (0.85%) MongoDB
12 78 (0.81%) MySQL
13 76 (0.79%) Elasticsearch
14 75 (0.78%) Oracle Reports
15 68 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
16 67 (0.69%) NoSQL
17 61 (0.63%) Amazon Athena
18 58 (0.60%) Tableau
19 43 (0.45%) DynamoDB
20 42 (0.44%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 530 (5.49%) JIRA
2 433 (4.49%) Git
3 409 (4.24%) GitLab
4 371 (3.85%) Jenkins
5 105 (1.09%) Selenium
6 79 (0.82%) JUnit
7 73 (0.76%) SonarQube
8 68 (0.70%) Postman
9 58 (0.60%) Rational DOORS
10 53 (0.55%) JMeter
11 49 (0.51%) Cucumber
12 42 (0.44%) Mockito
13 41 (0.43%) Artifactory
14 40 (0.41%) Maven
15 39 (0.40%) Bitbucket
15 39 (0.40%) REST Assured
16 37 (0.38%) Zephyr
17 36 (0.37%) Visual Studio
18 34 (0.35%) Cypress.io
19 29 (0.30%) WebDriver
General
1 2,043 (21.18%) Public Sector
2 1,958 (20.30%) Social Skills
3 684 (7.09%) Analytical Skills
4 657 (6.81%) Finance
5 323 (3.35%) Military
6 269 (2.79%) Documentation Skills
7 268 (2.78%) Aerospace
8 141 (1.46%) Influencing Skills
8 141 (1.46%) Legal
9 125 (1.30%) Banking
10 113 (1.17%) Telecoms
11 99 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
12 92 (0.95%) Law
13 77 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
14 75 (0.78%) Manufacturing
14 75 (0.78%) Police
15 63 (0.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 40 (0.41%) Marketing
17 37 (0.38%) Aviation
18 36 (0.37%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,407 (14.58%) Architect
2 979 (10.15%) Developer
3 830 (8.60%) Senior
4 788 (8.17%) Lead
5 617 (6.40%) Analyst
6 456 (4.73%) Data Engineer
7 436 (4.52%) Consultant
8 409 (4.24%) DevOps Engineer
9 314 (3.25%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 305 (3.16%) Software Engineer
11 279 (2.89%) Technical Architect
12 246 (2.55%) Network Engineer
13 231 (2.39%) Solutions Architect
14 220 (2.28%) Security Architect
15 202 (2.09%) Business Analyst
16 200 (2.07%) Project Manager
17 195 (2.02%) Java Developer
18 193 (2.00%) Delivery Manager
19 182 (1.89%) Administrator
20 173 (1.79%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 309 (3.20%) REST
2 231 (2.39%) Spring
3 187 (1.94%) Spring Boot
4 165 (1.71%) .NET
5 164 (1.70%) React
6 159 (1.65%) Kafka
7 153 (1.59%) Node.js
8 150 (1.55%) RESTful
9 130 (1.35%) SOAP
10 116 (1.20%) JSON
11 110 (1.14%) AngularJS
12 109 (1.13%) LDAP
13 97 (1.01%) OAuth
14 92 (0.95%) PySpark
15 89 (0.92%) Web Services
16 84 (0.87%) HTML
17 78 (0.81%) XML
18 75 (0.78%) OpenID
19 68 (0.70%) Elastic Stack
19 68 (0.70%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 378 (3.92%) Cloud Native
2 315 (3.27%) Product Ownership
3 304 (3.15%) Onboarding
4 279 (2.89%) Data Centre
5 155 (1.61%) Legacy Systems
6 144 (1.49%) Management Information System
7 138 (1.43%) PKI
8 131 (1.36%) Distributed Systems
9 110 (1.14%) Replication
10 106 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
11 98 (1.02%) CMDB
12 91 (0.94%) Security Posture
13 90 (0.93%) Data Structures
13 90 (0.93%) Enterprise Software
14 88 (0.91%) Clustering
15 86 (0.89%) Hybrid Cloud
16 77 (0.80%) Public Cloud
17 72 (0.75%) Virtual Team
18 71 (0.74%) Security Operations Centre
19 69 (0.72%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 795 (8.24%) Windows
2 656 (6.80%) Linux
3 254 (2.63%) Windows Server
4 184 (1.91%) Unix
5 129 (1.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 83 (0.86%) Windows 10
7 77 (0.80%) Android
8 52 (0.54%) Solaris
9 47 (0.49%) Apple iOS
10 39 (0.40%) Mac OS
11 32 (0.33%) Ubuntu
12 29 (0.30%) AIX
13 26 (0.27%) CentOS
14 25 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
15 18 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
16 15 (0.16%) VMS
17 14 (0.15%) Windows 7
18 11 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
18 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
18 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,959 (20.31%) Agile
2 1,483 (15.37%) DevOps
3 1,338 (13.87%) CI/CD
4 1,010 (10.47%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,009 (10.46%) Problem-Solving
6 972 (10.08%) Continuous Improvement
7 801 (8.30%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 761 (7.89%) Migration
9 706 (7.32%) Infrastructure as Code
10 638 (6.61%) Cybersecurity
11 636 (6.59%) ITIL
12 587 (6.08%) Test Automation
13 585 (6.06%) Software Engineering
14 558 (5.78%) Containerisation
15 550 (5.70%) Roadmaps
16 546 (5.66%) Analytics
17 513 (5.32%) Decision-Making
18 494 (5.12%) Data Modelling
19 488 (5.06%) AI
20 459 (4.76%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 1,016 (10.53%) Python
2 909 (9.42%) SQL
3 646 (6.70%) Java
4 449 (4.65%) PowerShell
5 284 (2.94%) JavaScript
6 215 (2.23%) Bash
7 201 (2.08%) C#
8 148 (1.53%) TypeScript
9 131 (1.36%) PL/SQL
10 88 (0.91%) C++
11 85 (0.88%) Shell Script
12 66 (0.68%) Bicep
13 64 (0.66%) C
14 52 (0.54%) Go
15 46 (0.48%) Ada
16 40 (0.41%) Apex Code
16 40 (0.41%) Scala
17 38 (0.39%) Kotlin
17 38 (0.39%) Ruby
18 34 (0.35%) R
Qualifications
1 7,249 (75.14%) SC Cleared
2 1,915 (19.85%) DV Cleared
3 390 (4.04%) Degree
4 301 (3.12%) BPSS Clearance
5 185 (1.92%) Cisco Certification
6 156 (1.62%) CISSP
7 126 (1.31%) Azure Certification
8 109 (1.13%) Microsoft Certification
9 102 (1.06%) AWS Certification
10 97 (1.01%) CCNP
11 93 (0.96%) CISM
12 80 (0.83%) PMP
13 79 (0.82%) CCNA
13 79 (0.82%) PMI Certification
14 66 (0.68%) ISTQB
15 58 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 57 (0.59%) Computer Science Degree
17 48 (0.50%) ITIL Certification
18 38 (0.39%) GIAC
19 35 (0.36%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 376 (3.90%) QA
2 291 (3.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 287 (2.98%) NIST
4 283 (2.93%) Data Quality
5 211 (2.19%) NCSC
6 190 (1.97%) Accessibility
7 173 (1.79%) GDPR
8 171 (1.77%) PMO
9 98 (1.02%) SLA
10 85 (0.88%) GRC
11 62 (0.64%) JSP 440
12 47 (0.49%) WCAG
13 45 (0.47%) Cyber Essentials
14 41 (0.43%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.34%) Def Stans
16 26 (0.27%) RMADS
17 23 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
17 23 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 21 (0.22%) COBIT
18 21 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 620 (6.43%) Docker
2 428 (4.44%) Active Directory
3 306 (3.17%) VMware Infrastructure
4 120 (1.24%) VMware ESXi
5 111 (1.15%) VMware NSX
6 81 (0.84%) vSphere
7 79 (0.82%) Hyper-V
8 75 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
9 36 (0.37%) Oracle RAC
10 32 (0.33%) Firmware
11 29 (0.30%) Virtual Desktop
12 23 (0.24%) BitLocker
13 22 (0.23%) vCloud
14 20 (0.21%) NFS
15 19 (0.20%) Postfix
16 18 (0.19%) Squid
17 12 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
18 9 (0.093%) Microsoft App-V
19 6 (0.062%) Corosync
19 6 (0.062%) KVM
Systems Management
1 784 (8.13%) Terraform
2 766 (7.94%) Kubernetes
3 341 (3.53%) Ansible
4 233 (2.42%) Grafana
5 183 (1.90%) Prometheus
6 116 (1.20%) vCenter Server
7 80 (0.83%) SCCM
8 70 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
9 63 (0.65%) Microsoft Intune
10 58 (0.60%) Argo
11 51 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 48 (0.50%) SCOM
13 47 (0.49%) FortiGate
14 44 (0.46%) Puppet
15 42 (0.44%) Oracle RMAN
16 31 (0.32%) Podman
17 28 (0.29%) Progress Chef
18 26 (0.27%) Nagios
19 24 (0.25%) Data Guard
20 23 (0.24%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,051 (10.89%) Microsoft
2 696 (7.21%) Oracle
3 478 (4.95%) VMware
4 440 (4.56%) ServiceNow
5 313 (3.24%) SAP
6 306 (3.17%) Cisco
7 191 (1.98%) Splunk
8 170 (1.76%) Databricks
9 161 (1.67%) Google
10 140 (1.45%) Red Hat
11 128 (1.33%) Talend
12 126 (1.31%) Salesforce
13 112 (1.16%) IBM
14 104 (1.08%) Informatica
15 102 (1.06%) Palo Alto
16 97 (1.01%) Juniper
17 89 (0.92%) SolarWinds
18 86 (0.89%) F5
19 84 (0.87%) Citrix
19 84 (0.87%) Fortinet