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

6 months to
12 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 7,038 4,843 6,817
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.69% 18.13% 18.72%
As % of the Qualifications category 66.20% 59.53% 60.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,745 3,074 4,343
10th Percentile £349 £338 £369
25th Percentile £450 £439 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.65%
75th Percentile £628 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £719 £730
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £560
% change year-on-year -4.55% -1.79% -0.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 662 238 426
10th Percentile £17.87 £20.96 £20.00
25th Percentile £19.57 £27.00 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% - -
75th Percentile £61.18 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.50 £75.00 £80.63
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -49.70% -16.67% -

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 10,631 8,135 11,234
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.28% 30.45% 30.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,005 4,957 7,069
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £420 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £730 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 855 384 700
10th Percentile £16.17 £19.46 £14.50
25th Percentile £18.87 £25.26 £23.56
Median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -45.54% -7.64% +11.11%
75th Percentile £57.38 £68.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £76.58 £82.25 £78.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £39.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year -35.51% -22.00% +11.11%

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 12 January 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 12 January 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 12 January 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 2,375 £550 - 413
South East +1 1,432 £522 -5.09% 627
South West 0 1,199 £550 -0.18% 422
North of England -2 776 £500 +5.26% 270
Midlands +3 693 £519 -5.90% 189
West Midlands +3 540 £525 -4.72% 98
North West 0 526 £501 +5.52% 136
East of England +2 316 £493 -1.50% 284
Yorkshire -12 152 £500 +8.11% 88
East Midlands +3 150 £438 -12.50% 91
North East -1 119 £450 -14.29% 47
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
1 262 (3.72%) Confluence
2 182 (2.59%) SharePoint
3 119 (1.69%) Microsoft Exchange
4 106 (1.51%) SAS
5 75 (1.07%) Apache
6 52 (0.74%) Apache Spark
7 44 (0.63%) Apache Airflow
8 36 (0.51%) Skype for Business
9 34 (0.48%) nginx
10 25 (0.36%) WebLogic
11 20 (0.28%) CMS
12 17 (0.24%) IIS
13 12 (0.17%) Jupyter
14 11 (0.16%) SharePoint Server
15 9 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
16 8 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2010
16 8 (0.11%) OpenStack
17 7 (0.099%) Exchange Server 2013
17 7 (0.099%) Tuxedo
18 6 (0.085%) Tomcat
Applications
1 241 (3.42%) Microsoft Office
2 148 (2.10%) Microsoft Excel
3 102 (1.45%) Microsoft Project
4 58 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 35 (0.50%) MS Visio
6 21 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.17%) Siemens NX
7 12 (0.17%) Simulink
8 8 (0.11%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.071%) FrameMaker
9 5 (0.071%) Oracle Smart View
9 5 (0.071%) Sketch
9 5 (0.071%) Windchill
10 4 (0.057%) Stateflow
10 4 (0.057%) Trello
11 3 (0.043%) Adobe Illustrator
11 3 (0.043%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.043%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.043%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.043%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 146 (2.07%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.53%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 28 (0.40%) Remedy ITSM
4 27 (0.38%) SAP EWM
4 27 (0.38%) SAP WM
5 24 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
6 18 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
6 18 (0.26%) SAP MM
7 17 (0.24%) SAP HCM
7 17 (0.24%) Teamcenter
8 16 (0.23%) Maximo
9 14 (0.20%) SAP QM
10 13 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
10 13 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
11 12 (0.17%) SAP PP
11 12 (0.17%) SAP VC
12 11 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
12 11 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
12 11 (0.16%) SAP EHS
13 10 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
Cloud Services
1 1,192 (16.94%) Azure
2 1,154 (16.40%) AWS
3 316 (4.49%) GitHub
4 312 (4.43%) Microsoft 365
5 299 (4.25%) GCP
6 265 (3.77%) Azure DevOps
7 258 (3.67%) Power Platform
8 206 (2.93%) Serverless
9 179 (2.54%) Entra ID
10 160 (2.27%) Amazon S3
10 160 (2.27%) GitHub Actions
11 134 (1.90%) OpenShift
12 123 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
13 101 (1.44%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 100 (1.42%) SaaS
15 96 (1.36%) Amazon EC2
16 94 (1.34%) AWS CloudFormation
17 92 (1.31%) IaaS
18 87 (1.24%) Power Automate
19 85 (1.21%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 380 (5.40%) Firewall
2 240 (3.41%) DNS
3 173 (2.46%) VPN
4 165 (2.34%) Network Security
5 158 (2.24%) WAN
6 129 (1.83%) TCP/IP
7 110 (1.56%) LAN
8 103 (1.46%) BGP
9 94 (1.34%) DHCP
10 86 (1.22%) Wireless
11 72 (1.02%) VLAN
12 67 (0.95%) Wi-Fi
13 66 (0.94%) SSL
14 59 (0.84%) OSPF
15 57 (0.81%) IPsec
16 54 (0.77%) MPLS
17 49 (0.70%) SAN
18 42 (0.60%) Skype
19 39 (0.55%) Cisco ISE
20 36 (0.51%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 187 (2.66%) PostgreSQL
2 176 (2.50%) Power BI
3 88 (1.25%) Data Warehouse
4 81 (1.15%) SQL Server
5 80 (1.14%) Metadata
6 79 (1.12%) MongoDB
7 75 (1.07%) NoSQL
8 74 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
9 72 (1.02%) Oracle Database
10 65 (0.92%) Relational Database
11 59 (0.84%) Azure SQL Database
12 45 (0.64%) Big Data
13 44 (0.63%) Elasticsearch
14 40 (0.57%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 39 (0.55%) Pentaho
16 35 (0.50%) Amazon Athena
16 35 (0.50%) Data Lake
17 33 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
17 33 (0.47%) Redis
18 31 (0.44%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 465 (6.61%) JIRA
2 368 (5.23%) Git
3 329 (4.67%) Jenkins
4 252 (3.58%) GitLab
5 77 (1.09%) Selenium
6 58 (0.82%) Postman
7 53 (0.75%) JUnit
8 51 (0.72%) Cypress.io
9 48 (0.68%) Oracle APEX
10 44 (0.63%) Bitbucket
11 42 (0.60%) Artifactory
12 39 (0.55%) SonarQube
13 31 (0.44%) Maven
14 30 (0.43%) Cucumber
15 29 (0.41%) Mockito
16 23 (0.33%) MSI
16 23 (0.33%) REST Assured
17 22 (0.31%) Metasploit
18 20 (0.28%) Burp Suite
18 20 (0.28%) Rational DOORS
General
1 1,862 (26.46%) Public Sector
2 1,821 (25.87%) Social Skills
3 630 (8.95%) Analytical Skills
4 495 (7.03%) Finance
5 288 (4.09%) Military
6 198 (2.81%) Telecoms
7 197 (2.80%) Manufacturing
8 175 (2.49%) Documentation Skills
9 139 (1.97%) Electronics
10 138 (1.96%) Marketing
11 124 (1.76%) Aerospace
12 114 (1.62%) Organisational Skills
13 101 (1.44%) Legal
14 89 (1.26%) Presentation Skills
15 83 (1.18%) Banking
16 76 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
17 66 (0.94%) Law
18 44 (0.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 32 (0.45%) Police
20 30 (0.43%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 973 (13.82%) Architect
2 663 (9.42%) Developer
3 597 (8.48%) Senior
4 504 (7.16%) Consultant
5 497 (7.06%) Analyst
6 413 (5.87%) Lead
7 343 (4.87%) DevOps Engineer
8 239 (3.40%) Support Engineer
9 218 (3.10%) Network Engineer
10 202 (2.87%) Data Engineer
11 174 (2.47%) Solutions Architect
12 156 (2.22%) Technical Architect
13 155 (2.20%) Software Engineer
14 147 (2.09%) Business Analyst
15 140 (1.99%) SAP Consultant
16 129 (1.83%) AWS Engineer
16 129 (1.83%) Tester
17 128 (1.82%) IT Engineer
18 126 (1.79%) Platform Engineer
19 125 (1.78%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 296 (4.21%) REST
2 167 (2.37%) React
3 166 (2.36%) Node.js
4 151 (2.15%) Kafka
5 134 (1.90%) SOAP
6 132 (1.88%) JSON
7 113 (1.61%) Spring
8 105 (1.49%) LDAP
9 104 (1.48%) HTML
10 93 (1.32%) .NET
11 92 (1.31%) Spring Boot
12 91 (1.29%) CSS
13 88 (1.25%) XML
14 85 (1.21%) AngularJS
15 84 (1.19%) RESTful
16 83 (1.18%) Oracle Fusion
17 80 (1.14%) Web Services
18 77 (1.09%) OAuth
19 74 (1.05%) PySpark
20 57 (0.81%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 226 (3.21%) Data Centre
2 193 (2.74%) Product Ownership
3 192 (2.73%) Cloud Native
4 189 (2.69%) PKI
5 174 (2.47%) Onboarding
6 138 (1.96%) Management Information System
7 112 (1.59%) Security Posture
8 103 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
9 100 (1.42%) Self-Motivation
10 89 (1.26%) Legacy Systems
11 75 (1.07%) Cyber Threat
12 69 (0.98%) Driving Licence
13 66 (0.94%) Replication
14 59 (0.84%) Security Operations Centre
15 53 (0.75%) Analytical Mindset
15 53 (0.75%) Hybrid Cloud
16 48 (0.68%) Public Cloud
17 47 (0.67%) CMDB
18 44 (0.63%) Private Cloud
19 42 (0.60%) Cyber Defence
Operating Systems
1 777 (11.04%) Windows
2 538 (7.64%) Linux
3 183 (2.60%) Windows Server
4 177 (2.51%) Windows 10
5 96 (1.36%) Unix
6 94 (1.34%) Android
7 90 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 74 (1.05%) Mac OS
9 44 (0.63%) VMS
10 39 (0.55%) Ubuntu
11 28 (0.40%) Apple iOS
12 21 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
13 20 (0.28%) CentOS
14 18 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
15 17 (0.24%) Amazon Linux
15 17 (0.24%) Windows 7
16 15 (0.21%) Mac OS X
16 15 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
17 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2003
18 12 (0.17%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,350 (19.18%) Agile
2 1,097 (15.59%) DevOps
3 944 (13.41%) CI/CD
4 879 (12.49%) Problem-Solving
5 675 (9.59%) Migration
6 581 (8.26%) Stakeholder Management
7 515 (7.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 481 (6.83%) ITIL
9 468 (6.65%) Continuous Improvement
10 462 (6.56%) Cybersecurity
11 438 (6.22%) Infrastructure as Code
12 389 (5.53%) Business Intelligence
13 384 (5.46%) Service Management
13 384 (5.46%) Test Automation
14 374 (5.31%) Containerisation
15 367 (5.21%) Analytics
16 350 (4.97%) Roadmaps
17 328 (4.66%) Workflow
18 320 (4.55%) Scrum
19 319 (4.53%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 912 (12.96%) Python
2 546 (7.76%) SQL
3 492 (6.99%) PowerShell
4 368 (5.23%) Java
5 339 (4.82%) JavaScript
6 199 (2.83%) Bash
7 163 (2.32%) TypeScript
8 123 (1.75%) C#
9 87 (1.24%) Go
10 83 (1.18%) C++
11 69 (0.98%) PL/SQL
12 62 (0.88%) Shell Script
13 59 (0.84%) C
14 41 (0.58%) Ruby
14 41 (0.58%) Scala
15 39 (0.55%) ABAP
16 32 (0.45%) Bicep
16 32 (0.45%) Perl
17 30 (0.43%) MATLAB
18 29 (0.41%) Ada
Qualifications
1 5,438 (77.27%) SC Cleared
2 1,157 (16.44%) DV Cleared
3 369 (5.24%) Degree
4 225 (3.20%) BPSS Clearance
5 130 (1.85%) CISSP
6 116 (1.65%) Cisco Certification
7 114 (1.62%) Azure Certification
7 114 (1.62%) Microsoft Certification
8 100 (1.42%) CCNP
9 91 (1.29%) AWS Certification
10 80 (1.14%) CISM
11 59 (0.84%) Computer Science Degree
12 57 (0.81%) ITIL Certification
13 52 (0.74%) CCNA
14 46 (0.65%) CEH
15 45 (0.64%) TOGAF Certification
16 40 (0.57%) CHECK Team Member
17 38 (0.54%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 36 (0.51%) CTC Cleared
18 36 (0.51%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 214 (3.04%) QA
2 200 (2.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 198 (2.81%) NIST
4 164 (2.33%) NCSC
5 153 (2.17%) Data Quality
6 141 (2.00%) GDPR
7 120 (1.71%) SLA
8 116 (1.65%) Accessibility
9 75 (1.07%) PMO
10 44 (0.63%) JSP 440
11 42 (0.60%) WCAG
12 40 (0.57%) GRC
13 30 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
14 29 (0.41%) Def Stans
14 29 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 29 (0.41%) PCI DSS
15 27 (0.38%) NIST 800
16 26 (0.37%) COBIT
17 17 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 14 (0.20%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 526 (7.47%) Docker
2 451 (6.41%) Active Directory
3 200 (2.84%) VMware Infrastructure
4 67 (0.95%) VMware NSX
5 59 (0.84%) vSphere
6 50 (0.71%) VMware ESXi
7 49 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
8 37 (0.53%) Hyper-V
9 31 (0.44%) Firmware
10 28 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
11 14 (0.20%) DFS Replication
11 14 (0.20%) Postfix
12 13 (0.18%) BitLocker
13 12 (0.17%) Dovecot
14 10 (0.14%) Terminal Services
15 9 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
15 9 (0.13%) Squid
16 8 (0.11%) ISA Server
16 8 (0.11%) NFS
17 7 (0.099%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 644 (9.15%) Kubernetes
2 602 (8.55%) Terraform
3 274 (3.89%) Ansible
4 167 (2.37%) Grafana
5 139 (1.97%) Prometheus
6 101 (1.44%) SCCM
7 87 (1.24%) vCenter Server
8 86 (1.22%) Single Sign-On
9 67 (0.95%) Microsoft Intune
10 61 (0.87%) Argo
11 55 (0.78%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 34 (0.48%) Kibana
12 34 (0.48%) Packer
13 33 (0.47%) OPNET
14 32 (0.45%) Podman
15 25 (0.36%) Puppet
15 25 (0.36%) vRealize
16 24 (0.34%) Nessus
17 23 (0.33%) Jamf Pro
17 23 (0.33%) Nmap
Vendors
1 898 (12.76%) Microsoft
2 434 (6.17%) SAP
3 395 (5.61%) Cisco
4 392 (5.57%) Oracle
5 358 (5.09%) VMware
6 309 (4.39%) ServiceNow
7 189 (2.69%) Splunk
8 150 (2.13%) Red Hat
9 130 (1.85%) Palo Alto
10 129 (1.83%) Juniper
11 107 (1.52%) Atlassian
12 106 (1.51%) CyberArk
12 106 (1.51%) Google
13 94 (1.34%) Databricks
14 93 (1.32%) Salesforce
15 90 (1.28%) Dell
16 78 (1.11%) HP
17 73 (1.04%) Remedy
18 72 (1.02%) CheckPoint
19 70 (0.99%) Dynatrace