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

6 months to
9 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 8,474 4,569 7,218
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.54% 18.34% 18.96%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.98% 59.59% 60.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,768 2,990 4,605
10th Percentile £356 £313 £350
25th Percentile £444 £450 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £547 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.02% -0.55% -2.44%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £703 £737
UK median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 749 254 507
10th Percentile £17.69 £21.25 £14.63
25th Percentile £20.50 £25.56 £21.82
Median hourly rate £25.77 £60.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -57.05% +9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £67.84 £68.69 £70.00
90th Percentile £83.80 £80.07 £81.62
UK median hourly rate £29.75 £57.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year -48.27% +4.55% -8.33%

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 12,285 7,668 11,892
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.12% 30.79% 31.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,153 4,839 7,332
10th Percentile £325 £285 £295
25th Percentile £423 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £517 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.60% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 957 409 945
10th Percentile £16.22 £19.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.64 £25.26 £18.35
Median hourly rate £25.77 £52.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -50.91% +31.25% -19.80%
75th Percentile £65.88 £68.18 £63.75
90th Percentile £83.00 £83.20 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £28.00 £42.75 £40.00
% change year-on-year -34.50% +6.88% -20.00%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 +5 2,939 £530 +0.95% 439
South East +1 1,907 £525 -4.55% 524
South West 0 1,310 £545 -1.00% 355
Midlands +3 853 £492 -10.55% 149
North of England -1 824 £492 +0.41% 197
West Midlands +3 687 £495 -10.16% 116
North West 0 529 £500 +5.26% 106
East of England +1 346 £492 -1.60% 141
Yorkshire -4 174 £484 -7.86% 46
East Midlands +1 165 £425 -17.07% 33
North East 0 151 £450 -7.69% 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
1 326 (3.85%) Confluence
2 207 (2.44%) SharePoint
3 135 (1.59%) Microsoft Exchange
4 133 (1.57%) SAS
5 66 (0.78%) Apache Spark
6 65 (0.77%) Apache
7 43 (0.51%) Apache Airflow
8 37 (0.44%) nginx
9 34 (0.40%) WebLogic
10 30 (0.35%) Skype for Business
11 20 (0.24%) Jupyter
12 16 (0.19%) CMS
13 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
14 14 (0.17%) Tuxedo
15 10 (0.12%) IIS
16 9 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
17 7 (0.083%) OpenStack
17 7 (0.083%) Tomcat
18 6 (0.071%) ArcGIS
19 5 (0.059%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 245 (2.89%) Microsoft Office
2 191 (2.25%) Microsoft Excel
3 116 (1.37%) Microsoft Project
4 69 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (0.52%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.083%) Simulink
8 5 (0.059%) Oracle Smart View
8 5 (0.059%) Siemens NX
9 4 (0.047%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.047%) Chatbot
9 4 (0.047%) Sketch
9 4 (0.047%) Windchill
10 2 (0.024%) Adobe Illustrator
10 2 (0.024%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.024%) CATIA
10 2 (0.024%) Lectora
10 2 (0.024%) Photoshop
10 2 (0.024%) PTC Creo
11 1 (0.012%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 119 (1.40%) SAP S/4HANA
2 38 (0.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 27 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
4 26 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
5 25 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
5 25 (0.30%) Teamcenter
6 19 (0.22%) SAP MM
7 16 (0.19%) Maximo
8 13 (0.15%) SAP PP
8 13 (0.15%) SAP QM
9 12 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
9 12 (0.14%) SAP VC
10 11 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
11 10 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
11 10 (0.12%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 8 (0.094%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 8 (0.094%) Primavera
12 8 (0.094%) SAP ERP
12 8 (0.094%) Workday HCM
13 7 (0.083%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,401 (16.53%) Azure
2 1,375 (16.23%) AWS
3 367 (4.33%) GitHub
4 360 (4.25%) GCP
5 317 (3.74%) Power Platform
6 316 (3.73%) Azure DevOps
7 302 (3.56%) Microsoft 365
8 237 (2.80%) Entra ID
9 234 (2.76%) Serverless
10 184 (2.17%) GitHub Actions
11 173 (2.04%) Amazon S3
12 168 (1.98%) OpenShift
13 149 (1.76%) AWS Lambda
14 118 (1.39%) Amazon EC2
15 109 (1.29%) AWS CloudFormation
16 104 (1.23%) PaaS
17 103 (1.22%) IaaS
18 97 (1.14%) OCI
19 95 (1.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 94 (1.11%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 395 (4.66%) Firewall
2 253 (2.99%) DNS
3 198 (2.34%) Network Security
4 185 (2.18%) WAN
5 159 (1.88%) VPN
6 154 (1.82%) LAN
7 130 (1.53%) BGP
8 125 (1.48%) DHCP
9 121 (1.43%) TCP/IP
10 92 (1.09%) OSPF
10 92 (1.09%) Wireless
11 83 (0.98%) VLAN
12 73 (0.86%) Wi-Fi
13 65 (0.77%) MPLS
14 48 (0.57%) IPsec
14 48 (0.57%) SAN
15 43 (0.51%) Cisco ISE
16 38 (0.45%) Skype
16 38 (0.45%) SSL
17 36 (0.42%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 225 (2.66%) Power BI
2 219 (2.58%) PostgreSQL
3 147 (1.73%) Data Warehouse
4 137 (1.62%) SQL Server
5 107 (1.26%) Metadata
6 96 (1.13%) Oracle Database
7 90 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
8 85 (1.00%) NoSQL
9 83 (0.98%) MongoDB
10 81 (0.96%) Relational Database
11 69 (0.81%) Elasticsearch
12 68 (0.80%) Azure SQL Database
13 61 (0.72%) Pentaho
14 55 (0.65%) MySQL
15 51 (0.60%) Data Lake
16 48 (0.57%) Amazon Redshift
17 46 (0.54%) Big Data
18 45 (0.53%) Tableau
19 36 (0.42%) SAS Enterprise Guide
20 35 (0.41%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 531 (6.27%) JIRA
2 424 (5.00%) Git
3 356 (4.20%) Jenkins
4 306 (3.61%) GitLab
5 101 (1.19%) Selenium
6 77 (0.91%) JUnit
6 77 (0.91%) Postman
7 55 (0.65%) Cypress.io
8 50 (0.59%) Bitbucket
8 50 (0.59%) SonarQube
9 46 (0.54%) Maven
9 46 (0.54%) Rational DOORS
10 44 (0.52%) Artifactory
10 44 (0.52%) Oracle APEX
11 41 (0.48%) Cucumber
12 33 (0.39%) REST Assured
13 32 (0.38%) Mockito
14 30 (0.35%) Visual Studio
15 26 (0.31%) JMeter
16 23 (0.27%) Metasploit
General
1 2,136 (25.21%) Public Sector
2 2,039 (24.06%) Social Skills
3 715 (8.44%) Analytical Skills
4 618 (7.29%) Finance
5 312 (3.68%) Military
6 242 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
7 202 (2.38%) Aerospace
8 172 (2.03%) Manufacturing
9 165 (1.95%) Telecoms
10 131 (1.55%) Legal
11 119 (1.40%) Organisational Skills
12 111 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
12 111 (1.31%) Marketing
13 107 (1.26%) Electronics
14 103 (1.22%) Presentation Skills
15 97 (1.14%) Banking
16 71 (0.84%) Law
17 46 (0.54%) Police
18 44 (0.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 36 (0.42%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,203 (14.20%) Architect
2 815 (9.62%) Developer
3 720 (8.50%) Senior
4 652 (7.69%) Analyst
5 507 (5.98%) Lead
6 491 (5.79%) Consultant
7 348 (4.11%) DevOps Engineer
8 313 (3.69%) Data Engineer
9 243 (2.87%) Network Engineer
10 235 (2.77%) Business Analyst
11 223 (2.63%) Software Engineer
12 222 (2.62%) Support Engineer
13 221 (2.61%) Technical Architect
14 192 (2.27%) Solutions Architect
15 157 (1.85%) Tester
16 156 (1.84%) Project Manager
17 151 (1.78%) Administrator
18 150 (1.77%) Azure Engineer
19 148 (1.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
20 146 (1.72%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 328 (3.87%) REST
2 189 (2.23%) Spring
3 186 (2.19%) Node.js
4 167 (1.97%) React
5 163 (1.92%) Kafka
6 147 (1.73%) SOAP
7 141 (1.66%) LDAP
8 140 (1.65%) Spring Boot
9 136 (1.60%) JSON
10 130 (1.53%) .NET
11 109 (1.29%) AngularJS
12 107 (1.26%) HTML
13 106 (1.25%) RESTful
14 101 (1.19%) Web Services
15 98 (1.16%) OAuth
16 89 (1.05%) CSS
17 88 (1.04%) Oracle Fusion
18 86 (1.01%) PySpark
18 86 (1.01%) XML
19 79 (0.93%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 277 (3.27%) Data Centre
2 272 (3.21%) Product Ownership
3 240 (2.83%) Cloud Native
4 219 (2.58%) Onboarding
5 193 (2.28%) PKI
6 151 (1.78%) Management Information System
7 130 (1.53%) Security Posture
8 113 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
9 109 (1.29%) Legacy Systems
10 102 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
11 94 (1.11%) Replication
12 71 (0.84%) Hybrid Cloud
12 71 (0.84%) Public Cloud
13 64 (0.76%) Cyber Threat
14 63 (0.74%) Distributed Systems
15 62 (0.73%) Security Operations Centre
16 60 (0.71%) Driving Licence
17 56 (0.66%) Data Structures
18 55 (0.65%) Clustering
19 45 (0.53%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 811 (9.57%) Windows
2 623 (7.35%) Linux
3 214 (2.53%) Windows Server
4 146 (1.72%) Windows 10
5 121 (1.43%) Android
6 110 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 106 (1.25%) Unix
8 68 (0.80%) Mac OS
9 46 (0.54%) Apple iOS
10 45 (0.53%) Ubuntu
11 27 (0.32%) VMS
12 26 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
13 24 (0.28%) CentOS
14 20 (0.24%) Windows 7
15 19 (0.22%) Solaris
16 17 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
17 12 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
18 11 (0.13%) AIX
19 9 (0.11%) Windows Server 2003
20 8 (0.094%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,672 (19.73%) Agile
2 1,303 (15.38%) DevOps
3 1,120 (13.22%) CI/CD
4 1,056 (12.46%) Problem-Solving
5 792 (9.35%) Stakeholder Management
6 742 (8.76%) Migration
7 691 (8.15%) Continuous Improvement
8 605 (7.14%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 539 (6.36%) Cybersecurity
10 532 (6.28%) ITIL
11 495 (5.84%) Infrastructure as Code
12 478 (5.64%) Test Automation
13 474 (5.59%) Roadmaps
14 468 (5.52%) Analytics
15 436 (5.15%) Containerisation
16 417 (4.92%) Scrum
17 413 (4.87%) Software Engineering
18 404 (4.77%) Business Intelligence
19 394 (4.65%) Service Management
20 379 (4.47%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 971 (11.46%) Python
2 731 (8.63%) SQL
3 551 (6.50%) PowerShell
4 468 (5.52%) Java
5 356 (4.20%) JavaScript
6 200 (2.36%) Bash
7 178 (2.10%) C#
8 168 (1.98%) TypeScript
9 101 (1.19%) C++
10 93 (1.10%) Shell Script
11 92 (1.09%) PL/SQL
12 73 (0.86%) Go
13 63 (0.74%) C
14 52 (0.61%) Ruby
15 50 (0.59%) Ada
16 48 (0.57%) Scala
17 40 (0.47%) Kusto Query Language
18 39 (0.46%) Bicep
19 31 (0.37%) Apex Code
20 30 (0.35%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 6,418 (75.74%) SC Cleared
2 1,492 (17.61%) DV Cleared
3 424 (5.00%) Degree
4 255 (3.01%) BPSS Clearance
5 161 (1.90%) CISSP
6 159 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
7 119 (1.40%) Azure Certification
8 114 (1.35%) CCNP
9 112 (1.32%) AWS Certification
10 108 (1.27%) Microsoft Certification
11 100 (1.18%) CISM
12 72 (0.85%) Computer Science Degree
13 69 (0.81%) CCNA
14 62 (0.73%) ITIL Certification
15 61 (0.72%) TOGAF Certification
16 48 (0.57%) PMP
17 45 (0.53%) GIAC
17 45 (0.53%) ISTQB
18 44 (0.52%) CEH
19 43 (0.51%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 294 (3.47%) QA
2 272 (3.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 260 (3.07%) NIST
4 225 (2.66%) Data Quality
5 198 (2.34%) NCSC
6 170 (2.01%) GDPR
7 149 (1.76%) Accessibility
8 114 (1.35%) SLA
9 104 (1.23%) PMO
10 65 (0.77%) GRC
11 57 (0.67%) JSP 440
12 41 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials
13 40 (0.47%) WCAG
14 38 (0.45%) Def Stans
15 34 (0.40%) NIST 800
16 31 (0.37%) COBIT
16 31 (0.37%) PCI DSS
17 23 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 22 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 19 (0.22%) RMADS
System Software
1 573 (6.76%) Docker
2 466 (5.50%) Active Directory
3 226 (2.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 77 (0.91%) VMware NSX
5 64 (0.76%) vSphere
6 56 (0.66%) Virtual Machines
6 56 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
7 53 (0.63%) Hyper-V
8 23 (0.27%) Firmware
9 21 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
10 20 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
11 19 (0.22%) BitLocker
12 16 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 15 (0.18%) NFS
14 10 (0.12%) Postfix
15 9 (0.11%) Squid
15 9 (0.11%) vCloud
16 6 (0.071%) Microsoft App-V
17 5 (0.059%) Terminal Services
18 4 (0.047%) Snort
Systems Management
1 751 (8.86%) Kubernetes
2 665 (7.85%) Terraform
3 285 (3.36%) Ansible
4 210 (2.48%) Grafana
5 166 (1.96%) Prometheus
6 104 (1.23%) Single Sign-On
7 94 (1.11%) SCCM
8 84 (0.99%) vCenter Server
9 81 (0.96%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 64 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
11 62 (0.73%) Argo
12 42 (0.50%) FortiGate
13 39 (0.46%) Packer
14 37 (0.44%) Podman
15 31 (0.37%) Puppet
16 30 (0.35%) OPNET
17 29 (0.34%) Kibana
17 29 (0.34%) Progress Chef
18 24 (0.28%) Nmap
19 21 (0.25%) Consul
Vendors
1 992 (11.71%) Microsoft
2 482 (5.69%) Oracle
3 413 (4.87%) VMware
4 391 (4.61%) Cisco
5 365 (4.31%) SAP
6 361 (4.26%) ServiceNow
7 205 (2.42%) Splunk
8 178 (2.10%) Red Hat
9 129 (1.52%) Databricks
9 129 (1.52%) Google
10 126 (1.49%) Juniper
11 123 (1.45%) Atlassian
12 120 (1.42%) CyberArk
13 116 (1.37%) Palo Alto
14 111 (1.31%) Salesforce
15 93 (1.10%) Dell
16 91 (1.07%) IBM
17 83 (0.98%) Talend
18 80 (0.94%) HP
19 76 (0.90%) Aruba