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

6 months to
17 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 7,286 4,905 6,878
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.80% 18.23% 18.72%
As % of the Qualifications category 66.36% 59.88% 60.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,955 3,104 4,400
10th Percentile £350 £340 £368
25th Percentile £450 £438 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £551
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% -0.23% -3.63%
75th Percentile £626 £638 £655
90th Percentile £725 £713 £730
UK median daily rate £525 £542 £560
% change year-on-year -3.13% -3.22% -1.75%
Number of hourly rates quoted 663 249 441
10th Percentile £17.87 £21.25 £20.00
25th Percentile £19.59 £27.00 £45.88
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% - -
75th Percentile £63.10 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £81.25
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 10,979 8,192 11,367
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.35% 30.44% 30.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,270 4,978 7,137
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £419 £415 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 865 393 733
10th Percentile £16.00 £19.86 £14.50
25th Percentile £18.87 £25.26 £23.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -45.54% -7.64% +11.11%
75th Percentile £60.61 £68.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £75.47 £82.25 £78.29
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £39.50 £50.00
% change year-on-year -36.33% -21.00% +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 17 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 17 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 17 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 +2 2,463 £540 -1.82% 401
South East +1 1,483 £520 -5.45% 558
South West 0 1,248 £550 - 394
North of England -2 804 £500 +5.26% 222
Midlands +4 713 £519 -5.73% 131
West Midlands +3 561 £525 -4.63% 72
North West 0 543 £513 +7.89% 132
East of England +2 325 £488 -4.88% 240
Yorkshire -17 155 £500 +8.11% 64
East Midlands +1 150 £425 -17.48% 59
North East 0 129 £445 -15.24% 27
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
1 267 (3.66%) Confluence
2 185 (2.54%) SharePoint
3 122 (1.67%) Microsoft Exchange
4 114 (1.56%) SAS
5 81 (1.11%) Apache
6 54 (0.74%) Apache Spark
7 47 (0.65%) Apache Airflow
8 38 (0.52%) Skype for Business
9 34 (0.47%) nginx
10 28 (0.38%) WebLogic
11 18 (0.25%) CMS
12 17 (0.23%) IIS
13 14 (0.19%) Jupyter
14 10 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
14 10 (0.14%) SharePoint Server
15 8 (0.11%) OpenStack
16 7 (0.096%) Exchange Server 2010
16 7 (0.096%) Tuxedo
17 6 (0.082%) Documentum
17 6 (0.082%) Tomcat
Applications
1 245 (3.36%) Microsoft Office
2 152 (2.09%) Microsoft Excel
3 103 (1.41%) Microsoft Project
4 60 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 37 (0.51%) MS Visio
6 23 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.15%) Simulink
8 8 (0.11%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 8 (0.11%) Siemens NX
9 5 (0.069%) FrameMaker
9 5 (0.069%) Oracle Smart View
9 5 (0.069%) Sketch
9 5 (0.069%) Windchill
10 4 (0.055%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.055%) Stateflow
10 4 (0.055%) Trello
11 3 (0.041%) Adobe Illustrator
11 3 (0.041%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.041%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.041%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 146 (2.00%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.51%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 27 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
3 27 (0.37%) SAP EWM
3 27 (0.37%) SAP WM
4 24 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
5 18 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
5 18 (0.25%) SAP MM
6 16 (0.22%) Maximo
7 15 (0.21%) SAP HCM
8 14 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
8 14 (0.19%) SAP QM
8 14 (0.19%) Teamcenter
9 13 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
10 12 (0.16%) SAP PP
10 12 (0.16%) SAP VC
11 11 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
11 11 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
11 11 (0.15%) Oracle Receivables
11 11 (0.15%) SAP EHS
Cloud Services
1 1,242 (17.05%) Azure
2 1,215 (16.68%) AWS
3 331 (4.54%) GitHub
4 320 (4.39%) GCP
5 314 (4.31%) Microsoft 365
6 269 (3.69%) Azure DevOps
7 263 (3.61%) Power Platform
8 211 (2.90%) Serverless
9 188 (2.58%) Entra ID
10 167 (2.29%) GitHub Actions
11 164 (2.25%) Amazon S3
12 138 (1.89%) OpenShift
13 128 (1.76%) AWS Lambda
14 107 (1.47%) SaaS
15 104 (1.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 102 (1.40%) AWS CloudFormation
17 98 (1.35%) Amazon EC2
18 97 (1.33%) IaaS
19 91 (1.25%) PaaS
20 85 (1.17%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 380 (5.22%) Firewall
2 248 (3.40%) DNS
3 174 (2.39%) Network Security
4 169 (2.32%) VPN
5 163 (2.24%) WAN
6 126 (1.73%) TCP/IP
7 117 (1.61%) LAN
8 108 (1.48%) BGP
9 100 (1.37%) DHCP
10 86 (1.18%) Wireless
11 78 (1.07%) VLAN
12 71 (0.97%) Wi-Fi
13 64 (0.88%) SSL
14 61 (0.84%) OSPF
15 59 (0.81%) MPLS
16 57 (0.78%) IPsec
17 50 (0.69%) SAN
18 45 (0.62%) Skype
19 41 (0.56%) Cisco ISE
20 37 (0.51%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 194 (2.66%) PostgreSQL
2 181 (2.48%) Power BI
3 89 (1.22%) Data Warehouse
4 83 (1.14%) MongoDB
4 83 (1.14%) SQL Server
5 82 (1.13%) Metadata
5 82 (1.13%) NoSQL
6 77 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
7 76 (1.04%) Oracle Database
8 64 (0.88%) Relational Database
9 60 (0.82%) Azure SQL Database
10 46 (0.63%) Elasticsearch
11 45 (0.62%) Pentaho
12 42 (0.58%) Big Data
13 41 (0.56%) SAS Enterprise Guide
14 38 (0.52%) Amazon Athena
14 38 (0.52%) Data Lake
15 37 (0.51%) Amazon Redshift
16 35 (0.48%) MySQL
17 33 (0.45%) Redis
Development Applications
1 471 (6.46%) JIRA
2 387 (5.31%) Git
3 345 (4.74%) Jenkins
4 280 (3.84%) GitLab
5 84 (1.15%) Selenium
6 64 (0.88%) Postman
7 59 (0.81%) JUnit
8 55 (0.75%) Cypress.io
9 48 (0.66%) Oracle APEX
10 43 (0.59%) Artifactory
10 43 (0.59%) Bitbucket
11 40 (0.55%) SonarQube
12 35 (0.48%) Maven
13 34 (0.47%) Cucumber
14 33 (0.45%) Mockito
15 25 (0.34%) REST Assured
16 24 (0.33%) MSI
17 23 (0.32%) Metasploit
18 22 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
19 21 (0.29%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,919 (26.34%) Public Sector
2 1,867 (25.62%) Social Skills
3 645 (8.85%) Analytical Skills
4 512 (7.03%) Finance
5 295 (4.05%) Military
6 198 (2.72%) Telecoms
7 196 (2.69%) Manufacturing
8 192 (2.64%) Documentation Skills
9 136 (1.87%) Electronics
10 135 (1.85%) Marketing
11 119 (1.63%) Aerospace
12 111 (1.52%) Organisational Skills
13 104 (1.43%) Legal
14 93 (1.28%) Presentation Skills
15 87 (1.19%) Banking
16 79 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
17 68 (0.93%) Law
18 46 (0.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 33 (0.45%) Police
20 29 (0.40%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 996 (13.67%) Architect
2 699 (9.59%) Developer
3 610 (8.37%) Senior
4 518 (7.11%) Analyst
5 503 (6.90%) Consultant
6 421 (5.78%) Lead
7 360 (4.94%) DevOps Engineer
8 237 (3.25%) Support Engineer
9 226 (3.10%) Data Engineer
9 226 (3.10%) Network Engineer
10 175 (2.40%) Solutions Architect
11 169 (2.32%) Software Engineer
12 165 (2.26%) Technical Architect
13 161 (2.21%) Business Analyst
14 138 (1.89%) SAP Consultant
15 136 (1.87%) AWS Engineer
16 134 (1.84%) Tester
17 132 (1.81%) IT Engineer
18 128 (1.76%) Project Manager
19 127 (1.74%) Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 305 (4.19%) REST
2 175 (2.40%) Node.js
3 167 (2.29%) React
4 158 (2.17%) Kafka
5 139 (1.91%) SOAP
6 136 (1.87%) JSON
7 134 (1.84%) Spring
8 115 (1.58%) LDAP
9 106 (1.45%) HTML
10 105 (1.44%) Spring Boot
11 96 (1.32%) .NET
12 92 (1.26%) XML
13 91 (1.25%) CSS
14 89 (1.22%) RESTful
15 86 (1.18%) OAuth
16 85 (1.17%) Oracle Fusion
17 84 (1.15%) AngularJS
18 82 (1.13%) Web Services
19 78 (1.07%) PySpark
20 61 (0.84%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 233 (3.20%) Data Centre
2 199 (2.73%) Cloud Native
3 198 (2.72%) Product Ownership
4 195 (2.68%) PKI
5 187 (2.57%) Onboarding
6 142 (1.95%) Management Information System
7 115 (1.58%) Security Posture
8 104 (1.43%) Enterprise Software
9 101 (1.39%) Self-Motivation
10 89 (1.22%) Legacy Systems
11 78 (1.07%) Cyber Threat
12 70 (0.96%) Driving Licence
12 70 (0.96%) Replication
13 62 (0.85%) Security Operations Centre
14 56 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
15 51 (0.70%) Public Cloud
16 48 (0.66%) Private Cloud
17 47 (0.65%) Analytical Mindset
18 46 (0.63%) Distributed Systems
19 45 (0.62%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 811 (11.13%) Windows
2 570 (7.82%) Linux
3 198 (2.72%) Windows Server
4 181 (2.48%) Windows 10
5 103 (1.41%) Unix
6 100 (1.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 95 (1.30%) Android
8 70 (0.96%) Mac OS
9 43 (0.59%) VMS
10 42 (0.58%) Ubuntu
11 29 (0.40%) Apple iOS
12 24 (0.33%) CentOS
13 22 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
14 21 (0.29%) Windows 7
15 18 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
16 16 (0.22%) Amazon Linux
16 16 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
17 15 (0.21%) Mac OS X
18 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2003
19 12 (0.16%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,387 (19.04%) Agile
2 1,141 (15.66%) DevOps
3 1,001 (13.74%) CI/CD
4 906 (12.43%) Problem-Solving
5 675 (9.26%) Migration
6 606 (8.32%) Stakeholder Management
7 533 (7.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 494 (6.78%) Continuous Improvement
9 484 (6.64%) Cybersecurity
10 478 (6.56%) ITIL
11 454 (6.23%) Infrastructure as Code
12 409 (5.61%) Test Automation
13 392 (5.38%) Business Intelligence
14 389 (5.34%) Analytics
14 389 (5.34%) Service Management
15 388 (5.33%) Containerisation
16 364 (5.00%) Roadmaps
17 332 (4.56%) Workflow
18 331 (4.54%) Scrum
18 331 (4.54%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 928 (12.74%) Python
2 573 (7.86%) SQL
3 503 (6.90%) PowerShell
4 405 (5.56%) Java
5 349 (4.79%) JavaScript
6 202 (2.77%) Bash
7 166 (2.28%) TypeScript
8 127 (1.74%) C#
9 90 (1.24%) Go
10 87 (1.19%) C++
11 70 (0.96%) PL/SQL
12 68 (0.93%) Shell Script
13 59 (0.81%) C
14 43 (0.59%) Ruby
15 42 (0.58%) Scala
16 37 (0.51%) ABAP
17 36 (0.49%) Ada
18 34 (0.47%) MATLAB
19 32 (0.44%) Bicep
20 30 (0.41%) Perl
Qualifications
1 5,606 (76.94%) SC Cleared
2 1,214 (16.66%) DV Cleared
3 372 (5.11%) Degree
4 228 (3.13%) BPSS Clearance
5 135 (1.85%) CISSP
6 118 (1.62%) Cisco Certification
7 117 (1.61%) Azure Certification
8 112 (1.54%) Microsoft Certification
9 102 (1.40%) CCNP
10 91 (1.25%) AWS Certification
11 82 (1.13%) CISM
12 62 (0.85%) Computer Science Degree
13 58 (0.80%) ITIL Certification
14 53 (0.73%) CCNA
15 48 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
16 47 (0.65%) CEH
17 40 (0.55%) CHECK Team Member
18 39 (0.54%) GIAC
18 39 (0.54%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 36 (0.49%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 230 (3.16%) QA
2 221 (3.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 213 (2.92%) NIST
4 171 (2.35%) NCSC
5 168 (2.31%) Data Quality
6 151 (2.07%) GDPR
7 124 (1.70%) SLA
8 122 (1.67%) Accessibility
9 79 (1.08%) PMO
10 51 (0.70%) JSP 440
11 46 (0.63%) GRC
12 43 (0.59%) WCAG
13 32 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
14 31 (0.43%) Def Stans
15 30 (0.41%) PCI DSS
16 26 (0.36%) COBIT
16 26 (0.36%) NIST 800
17 25 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 18 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 17 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 548 (7.52%) Docker
2 467 (6.41%) Active Directory
3 212 (2.91%) VMware Infrastructure
4 68 (0.93%) VMware NSX
5 60 (0.82%) vSphere
6 52 (0.71%) VMware ESXi
7 50 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
8 41 (0.56%) Hyper-V
9 29 (0.40%) Firmware
10 27 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
11 16 (0.22%) BitLocker
12 15 (0.21%) Postfix
13 13 (0.18%) DFS Replication
14 12 (0.16%) Dovecot
15 10 (0.14%) Terminal Services
16 9 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
16 9 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 9 (0.12%) Squid
17 8 (0.11%) NFS
17 8 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 687 (9.43%) Kubernetes
2 621 (8.52%) Terraform
3 281 (3.86%) Ansible
4 171 (2.35%) Grafana
5 144 (1.98%) Prometheus
6 106 (1.45%) SCCM
7 94 (1.29%) Single Sign-On
8 89 (1.22%) vCenter Server
9 68 (0.93%) Microsoft Intune
10 62 (0.85%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 61 (0.84%) Argo
12 36 (0.49%) Podman
13 35 (0.48%) Packer
14 34 (0.47%) Kibana
15 33 (0.45%) OPNET
16 30 (0.41%) vRealize
17 26 (0.36%) Puppet
18 25 (0.34%) Nessus
18 25 (0.34%) Progress Chef
19 24 (0.33%) Nmap
Vendors
1 921 (12.64%) Microsoft
2 429 (5.89%) SAP
3 409 (5.61%) Oracle
4 398 (5.46%) Cisco
5 381 (5.23%) VMware
6 313 (4.30%) ServiceNow
7 194 (2.66%) Splunk
8 154 (2.11%) Red Hat
9 127 (1.74%) Juniper
9 127 (1.74%) Palo Alto
10 110 (1.51%) Google
11 109 (1.50%) CyberArk
12 105 (1.44%) Atlassian
13 101 (1.39%) Databricks
14 96 (1.32%) Dell
15 92 (1.26%) Salesforce
16 81 (1.11%) HP
17 73 (1.00%) Dynatrace
18 69 (0.95%) CheckPoint
18 69 (0.95%) Remedy