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

6 months to
5 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,294 4,463 6,986
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.16% 18.53% 18.99%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.65% 59.02% 62.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,482 2,948 4,560
10th Percentile £378 £338 £353
25th Percentile £450 £450 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.14% -2.45% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 770 288 517
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.33 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.68 £24.66 £21.46
Median hourly rate £57.43 £35.82 £56.50
Median % change year-on-year +60.30% -36.60% -5.83%
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.65 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.26 £80.00 £84.45
UK median hourly rate £57.35 £32.00 £56.15
% change year-on-year +79.22% -43.00% -6.43%

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 13,344 7,562 11,261
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.81% 31.40% 30.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,954 4,775 6,961
10th Percentile £350 £279 £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 £650
90th Percentile £721 £713 £745
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £530
% change year-on-year +0.96% -1.89% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,010 452 1,004
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.33 £22.45 £18.93
Median hourly rate £50.74 £32.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +56.13% -18.75% -27.27%
75th Percentile £73.46 £65.81 £63.75
90th Percentile £85.26 £80.90 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £32.31 £40.00
% change year-on-year +54.75% -19.23% -27.27%

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 5 June 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 5 June 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 5 June 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 3,338 £525 - 549
South East +1 2,234 £550 - 543
South West 0 1,249 £538 -4.44% 443
North of England 0 958 £500 - 289
Midlands +3 883 £469 -10.67% 145
West Midlands +3 760 £470 -10.49% 106
North West -1 529 £514 +2.75% 169
East of England +2 374 £550 +10.00% 145
Yorkshire -5 246 £488 -1.71% 60
North East +1 217 £475 -1.04% 61
East Midlands -3 116 £421 -17.93% 39
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
1 333 (3.58%) Confluence
2 212 (2.28%) SharePoint
3 135 (1.45%) SAS
4 123 (1.32%) Microsoft Exchange
5 80 (0.86%) Apache Spark
6 79 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
7 78 (0.84%) Apache
8 37 (0.40%) nginx
9 35 (0.38%) Jupyter
10 28 (0.30%) WebLogic
11 20 (0.22%) Tomcat
12 18 (0.19%) IIS
12 18 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
13 16 (0.17%) CMS
14 15 (0.16%) Skype for Business
15 14 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
16 10 (0.11%) NetWeaver
17 8 (0.086%) Apache Superset
17 8 (0.086%) ArcGIS
17 8 (0.086%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 155 (1.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 136 (1.46%) Microsoft Office
3 73 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 66 (0.71%) Microsoft Project
5 39 (0.42%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.15%) Simulink
8 9 (0.097%) SOLIDWORKS
9 8 (0.086%) AutoCAD
9 8 (0.086%) Revit
10 5 (0.054%) Notepad++
11 4 (0.043%) Siemens NX
12 3 (0.032%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.032%) Chatbot
12 3 (0.032%) Sketch
12 3 (0.032%) Windchill
13 2 (0.022%) CATIA
13 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.022%) Lectora
13 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 91 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
2 56 (0.60%) Remedy ITSM
3 33 (0.36%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 32 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
5 30 (0.32%) Teamcenter
6 27 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
7 15 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.15%) Findur
8 14 (0.15%) Maximo
8 14 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.14%) SAP PSCD
10 12 (0.13%) iTrent
10 12 (0.13%) Temenos T24
11 9 (0.097%) Integrated Workplace Management System
11 9 (0.097%) Oracle Assets
11 9 (0.097%) Primavera
11 9 (0.097%) SAP ERP
11 9 (0.097%) SAP HCM
12 8 (0.086%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 8 (0.086%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,608 (17.30%) Azure
2 1,544 (16.61%) AWS
3 374 (4.02%) GitHub
4 363 (3.91%) GCP
5 348 (3.74%) Azure DevOps
6 345 (3.71%) Power Platform
7 234 (2.52%) Serverless
8 232 (2.50%) Microsoft 365
9 228 (2.45%) Entra ID
10 224 (2.41%) GitHub Actions
11 198 (2.13%) Amazon S3
12 164 (1.76%) AWS Lambda
13 144 (1.55%) Amazon EC2
14 141 (1.52%) PaaS
15 128 (1.38%) OpenShift
16 124 (1.33%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 121 (1.30%) SaaS
18 118 (1.27%) OCI
19 104 (1.12%) Virtual Private Cloud
20 97 (1.04%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 424 (4.56%) Firewall
2 283 (3.04%) DNS
3 229 (2.46%) Network Security
4 215 (2.31%) WAN
5 196 (2.11%) LAN
6 162 (1.74%) VPN
7 154 (1.66%) DHCP
8 142 (1.53%) BGP
9 121 (1.30%) OSPF
10 109 (1.17%) VLAN
11 108 (1.16%) Wi-Fi
12 97 (1.04%) TCP/IP
13 79 (0.85%) Wireless
14 60 (0.65%) MPLS
15 56 (0.60%) SAN
15 56 (0.60%) VXLAN
16 52 (0.56%) SD-WAN
17 50 (0.54%) Structured Cabling
18 48 (0.52%) Ethernet VPN
18 48 (0.52%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 258 (2.78%) Power BI
2 222 (2.39%) PostgreSQL
3 208 (2.24%) Data Warehouse
4 193 (2.08%) SQL Server
5 125 (1.34%) Oracle Database
6 114 (1.23%) Metadata
7 107 (1.15%) Amazon RDS
8 96 (1.03%) Data Lake
9 81 (0.87%) MongoDB
10 80 (0.86%) Pentaho
10 80 (0.86%) Relational Database
11 74 (0.80%) Oracle Reports
12 72 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
13 71 (0.76%) NoSQL
14 65 (0.70%) MySQL
15 61 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
16 58 (0.62%) Tableau
17 57 (0.61%) Amazon Athena
18 48 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
19 43 (0.46%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 524 (5.64%) JIRA
2 405 (4.36%) Git
3 375 (4.03%) GitLab
4 357 (3.84%) Jenkins
5 105 (1.13%) Selenium
6 77 (0.83%) JUnit
7 74 (0.80%) Postman
8 62 (0.67%) SonarQube
9 58 (0.62%) Rational DOORS
10 52 (0.56%) Artifactory
11 50 (0.54%) JMeter
12 46 (0.49%) Cucumber
13 42 (0.45%) Bitbucket
14 39 (0.42%) Maven
14 39 (0.42%) Mockito
15 37 (0.40%) Zephyr
16 35 (0.38%) Visual Studio
17 32 (0.34%) REST Assured
18 31 (0.33%) Cypress.io
19 29 (0.31%) WebDriver
General
1 1,969 (21.19%) Public Sector
2 1,907 (20.52%) Social Skills
3 649 (6.98%) Analytical Skills
4 620 (6.67%) Finance
5 309 (3.32%) Military
6 271 (2.92%) Documentation Skills
7 245 (2.64%) Aerospace
8 140 (1.51%) Legal
9 119 (1.28%) Banking
10 107 (1.15%) Influencing Skills
10 107 (1.15%) Telecoms
11 93 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
12 92 (0.99%) Law
13 86 (0.93%) Manufacturing
14 77 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
15 56 (0.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 56 (0.60%) Police
16 49 (0.53%) Marketing
17 39 (0.42%) Retail
18 37 (0.40%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,350 (14.53%) Architect
2 857 (9.22%) Developer
3 787 (8.47%) Senior
4 686 (7.38%) Lead
5 637 (6.85%) Analyst
6 459 (4.94%) Data Engineer
7 419 (4.51%) DevOps Engineer
8 414 (4.45%) Consultant
9 285 (3.07%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 275 (2.96%) Software Engineer
11 268 (2.88%) Technical Architect
12 264 (2.84%) Network Engineer
13 233 (2.51%) Business Analyst
14 222 (2.39%) Solutions Architect
15 208 (2.24%) Project Manager
16 188 (2.02%) Azure Engineer
17 187 (2.01%) Security Architect
18 182 (1.96%) Delivery Manager
19 180 (1.94%) Administrator
20 176 (1.89%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 297 (3.20%) REST
2 209 (2.25%) Spring
3 173 (1.86%) Spring Boot
4 169 (1.82%) React
5 155 (1.67%) .NET
6 153 (1.65%) Node.js
7 150 (1.61%) Kafka
8 147 (1.58%) LDAP
9 139 (1.50%) SOAP
10 131 (1.41%) RESTful
11 108 (1.16%) AngularJS
11 108 (1.16%) JSON
12 101 (1.09%) Web Services
13 94 (1.01%) PySpark
14 89 (0.96%) OAuth
15 80 (0.86%) HTML
16 77 (0.83%) XML
17 72 (0.77%) Middleware
18 71 (0.76%) Oracle Fusion
19 68 (0.73%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 335 (3.60%) Cloud Native
2 306 (3.29%) Product Ownership
3 286 (3.08%) Data Centre
4 264 (2.84%) Onboarding
5 149 (1.60%) Management Information System
6 145 (1.56%) PKI
7 133 (1.43%) Legacy Systems
8 119 (1.28%) Security Posture
9 117 (1.26%) Enterprise Software
10 115 (1.24%) Distributed Systems
11 113 (1.22%) Replication
12 95 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
13 88 (0.95%) Clustering
14 81 (0.87%) Hybrid Cloud
15 80 (0.86%) Data Structures
16 74 (0.80%) Public Cloud
16 74 (0.80%) Security Operations Centre
17 68 (0.73%) CMDB
17 68 (0.73%) Operational Technology
18 65 (0.70%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 756 (8.13%) Windows
2 636 (6.84%) Linux
3 247 (2.66%) Windows Server
4 174 (1.87%) Unix
5 115 (1.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 83 (0.89%) Windows 10
7 80 (0.86%) Android
8 52 (0.56%) Apple iOS
9 50 (0.54%) Solaris
10 36 (0.39%) Mac OS
11 31 (0.33%) Ubuntu
12 25 (0.27%) AIX
12 25 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 24 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
14 23 (0.25%) CentOS
15 21 (0.23%) VMS
16 15 (0.16%) Windows 7
17 12 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
18 11 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
19 10 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,821 (19.59%) Agile
2 1,430 (15.39%) DevOps
3 1,259 (13.55%) CI/CD
4 967 (10.40%) Problem-Solving
5 926 (9.96%) Stakeholder Management
6 874 (9.40%) Continuous Improvement
7 777 (8.36%) Migration
8 722 (7.77%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 657 (7.07%) Infrastructure as Code
10 597 (6.42%) Cybersecurity
11 570 (6.13%) ITIL
12 558 (6.00%) Test Automation
13 543 (5.84%) Analytics
14 530 (5.70%) Software Engineering
15 523 (5.63%) Roadmaps
16 502 (5.40%) Containerisation
17 478 (5.14%) Data Modelling
18 454 (4.88%) Decision-Making
19 431 (4.64%) Scrum
20 423 (4.55%) AI
Programming Languages
1 979 (10.53%) Python
2 862 (9.27%) SQL
3 568 (6.11%) Java
4 499 (5.37%) PowerShell
5 272 (2.93%) JavaScript
6 198 (2.13%) C#
7 178 (1.92%) Bash
8 137 (1.47%) TypeScript
9 106 (1.14%) PL/SQL
10 89 (0.96%) C++
11 85 (0.91%) Shell Script
12 57 (0.61%) Go
13 56 (0.60%) C
14 55 (0.59%) Bicep
15 54 (0.58%) Scala
16 45 (0.48%) Ada
17 44 (0.47%) Ruby
18 42 (0.45%) Apex Code
19 36 (0.39%) MATLAB
20 34 (0.37%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 6,997 (75.29%) SC Cleared
2 1,778 (19.13%) DV Cleared
3 386 (4.15%) Degree
4 259 (2.79%) BPSS Clearance
5 183 (1.97%) Cisco Certification
6 158 (1.70%) CISSP
7 124 (1.33%) Azure Certification
8 111 (1.19%) CCNP
9 102 (1.10%) CISM
10 97 (1.04%) Microsoft Certification
11 92 (0.99%) AWS Certification
12 77 (0.83%) CCNA
13 74 (0.80%) PMP
14 67 (0.72%) PMI Certification
15 63 (0.68%) ISTQB
16 61 (0.66%) Computer Science Degree
17 56 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 53 (0.57%) ITIL Certification
19 46 (0.49%) GIAC
20 34 (0.37%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 352 (3.79%) QA
2 276 (2.97%) NIST
3 270 (2.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 267 (2.87%) Data Quality
5 185 (1.99%) NCSC
6 168 (1.81%) Accessibility
7 156 (1.68%) GDPR
8 154 (1.66%) PMO
9 106 (1.14%) SLA
10 63 (0.68%) GRC
11 58 (0.62%) JSP 440
12 52 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials
13 38 (0.41%) NIST 800
14 36 (0.39%) WCAG
15 32 (0.34%) Def Stans
16 28 (0.30%) RMADS
17 22 (0.24%) COBIT
17 22 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
17 22 (0.24%) PCI DSS
18 21 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 568 (6.11%) Docker
2 435 (4.68%) Active Directory
3 285 (3.07%) VMware Infrastructure
4 111 (1.19%) VMware ESXi
5 95 (1.02%) VMware NSX
6 78 (0.84%) Hyper-V
6 78 (0.84%) vSphere
7 67 (0.72%) Virtual Machines
8 34 (0.37%) Firmware
9 29 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
10 23 (0.25%) BitLocker
11 21 (0.23%) vCloud
12 19 (0.20%) NFS
12 19 (0.20%) Postfix
13 18 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
14 16 (0.17%) Squid
15 15 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 10 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
17 7 (0.075%) KVM
18 6 (0.065%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 726 (7.81%) Terraform
2 710 (7.64%) Kubernetes
3 342 (3.68%) Ansible
4 230 (2.47%) Grafana
5 187 (2.01%) Prometheus
6 115 (1.24%) vCenter Server
7 80 (0.86%) Single Sign-On
8 73 (0.79%) SCCM
9 57 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 55 (0.59%) Microsoft Intune
11 47 (0.51%) FortiGate
12 43 (0.46%) Argo
13 41 (0.44%) Puppet
14 39 (0.42%) SCOM
15 37 (0.40%) Podman
16 35 (0.38%) Oracle RMAN
17 30 (0.32%) Nagios
18 29 (0.31%) Progress Chef
19 24 (0.26%) vMotion
20 21 (0.23%) WSUS
Vendors
1 971 (10.45%) Microsoft
2 616 (6.63%) Oracle
3 467 (5.02%) VMware
4 372 (4.00%) ServiceNow
5 327 (3.52%) Cisco
6 301 (3.24%) SAP
7 213 (2.29%) Splunk
8 178 (1.92%) Databricks
9 152 (1.64%) Google
10 146 (1.57%) Red Hat
11 124 (1.33%) Talend
12 119 (1.28%) Palo Alto
13 117 (1.26%) Salesforce
14 114 (1.23%) IBM
15 101 (1.09%) Juniper
16 94 (1.01%) CyberArk
17 89 (0.96%) Informatica
18 84 (0.90%) F5
18 84 (0.90%) Fortinet
19 80 (0.86%) Dynatrace