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

6 months to
8 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 8,506 4,608 7,189
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.54% 18.29% 18.92%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.86% 59.48% 60.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,788 2,987 4,580
10th Percentile £356 £313 £350
25th Percentile £444 £450 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £545 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.67% -0.91% -2.31%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £704 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 761 255 509
10th Percentile £17.69 £21.25 £14.68
25th Percentile £20.35 £25.63 £22.00
Median hourly rate £25.77 £60.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -57.05% +9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £67.84 £68.63 £70.00
90th Percentile £83.75 £80.06 £82.36
UK median hourly rate £26.00 £57.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year -54.78% +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 12,352 7,747 11,861
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.18% 30.75% 31.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,196 4,839 7,311
10th Percentile £325 £285 £295
25th Percentile £422 £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 £515 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 972 410 945
10th Percentile £16.25 £20.00 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.54 £25.26 £18.35
Median hourly rate £25.77 £52.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -50.91% +31.25% -18.78%
75th Percentile £65.25 £68.13 £63.75
90th Percentile £83.00 £83.20 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £27.50 £42.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year -35.29% +6.25% -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 8 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 8 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 8 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 2,950 £530 +0.95% 507
South East +1 1,903 £525 -4.55% 543
South West 0 1,320 £545 -0.91% 372
Midlands +3 860 £492 -10.55% 149
North of England -1 826 £492 +0.41% 222
West Midlands +3 692 £495 -10.16% 115
North West 0 531 £500 +5.26% 128
East of England +1 350 £492 -1.60% 145
Yorkshire -10 173 £488 -7.14% 45
East Midlands +2 166 £425 -17.07% 34
North East 0 152 £450 -7.69% 50
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
1 331 (3.89%) Confluence
2 211 (2.48%) SharePoint
3 137 (1.61%) Microsoft Exchange
4 133 (1.56%) SAS
5 66 (0.78%) Apache Spark
6 65 (0.76%) Apache
7 45 (0.53%) Apache Airflow
8 37 (0.43%) nginx
9 34 (0.40%) WebLogic
10 31 (0.36%) Skype for Business
11 20 (0.24%) Jupyter
12 16 (0.19%) CMS
13 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
14 14 (0.16%) Tuxedo
15 10 (0.12%) IIS
16 9 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
17 7 (0.082%) OpenStack
17 7 (0.082%) Tomcat
18 6 (0.071%) ArcGIS
19 5 (0.059%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 246 (2.89%) Microsoft Office
2 191 (2.25%) Microsoft Excel
3 115 (1.35%) Microsoft Project
4 69 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (0.52%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.082%) 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
10 2 (0.024%) Trello
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 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
5 25 (0.29%) 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 9 (0.11%) SAP WM
13 8 (0.094%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 8 (0.094%) Primavera
13 8 (0.094%) SAP ERP
13 8 (0.094%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,408 (16.55%) Azure
2 1,385 (16.28%) AWS
3 370 (4.35%) GitHub
4 362 (4.26%) GCP
5 319 (3.75%) Power Platform
6 318 (3.74%) Azure DevOps
7 304 (3.57%) Microsoft 365
8 238 (2.80%) Entra ID
9 235 (2.76%) Serverless
10 186 (2.19%) GitHub Actions
11 176 (2.07%) Amazon S3
12 169 (1.99%) OpenShift
13 150 (1.76%) AWS Lambda
14 118 (1.39%) Amazon EC2
15 109 (1.28%) AWS CloudFormation
16 105 (1.23%) PaaS
17 104 (1.22%) IaaS
18 97 (1.14%) Amazon EKS
18 97 (1.14%) OCI
19 95 (1.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 398 (4.68%) Firewall
2 259 (3.04%) DNS
3 198 (2.33%) Network Security
4 185 (2.17%) WAN
5 160 (1.88%) VPN
6 154 (1.81%) LAN
7 131 (1.54%) BGP
8 127 (1.49%) DHCP
9 122 (1.43%) TCP/IP
10 93 (1.09%) OSPF
11 92 (1.08%) Wireless
12 84 (0.99%) VLAN
13 74 (0.87%) Wi-Fi
14 65 (0.76%) MPLS
15 49 (0.58%) IPsec
16 48 (0.56%) SAN
17 44 (0.52%) Cisco ISE
18 39 (0.46%) Skype
19 38 (0.45%) SSL
20 37 (0.43%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 226 (2.66%) Power BI
2 223 (2.62%) PostgreSQL
3 148 (1.74%) Data Warehouse
4 137 (1.61%) SQL Server
5 107 (1.26%) Metadata
6 96 (1.13%) Oracle Database
7 90 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
8 86 (1.01%) NoSQL
9 83 (0.98%) MongoDB
10 81 (0.95%) 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 49 (0.58%) Amazon Redshift
17 46 (0.54%) Big Data
17 46 (0.54%) Tableau
18 36 (0.42%) SAS Enterprise Guide
19 35 (0.41%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 536 (6.30%) JIRA
2 425 (5.00%) Git
3 358 (4.21%) Jenkins
4 306 (3.60%) GitLab
5 101 (1.19%) Selenium
6 78 (0.92%) JUnit
7 77 (0.91%) Postman
8 57 (0.67%) Cypress.io
9 50 (0.59%) Bitbucket
9 50 (0.59%) SonarQube
10 46 (0.54%) Maven
11 45 (0.53%) Rational DOORS
12 44 (0.52%) Artifactory
12 44 (0.52%) Oracle APEX
13 41 (0.48%) Cucumber
14 33 (0.39%) REST Assured
15 32 (0.38%) Mockito
16 29 (0.34%) Visual Studio
17 26 (0.31%) JMeter
18 23 (0.27%) Metasploit
General
1 2,148 (25.25%) Public Sector
2 2,047 (24.07%) Social Skills
3 719 (8.45%) Analytical Skills
4 617 (7.25%) Finance
5 314 (3.69%) Military
6 242 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
7 201 (2.36%) Aerospace
8 172 (2.02%) Manufacturing
9 165 (1.94%) Telecoms
10 133 (1.56%) Legal
11 121 (1.42%) Organisational Skills
12 111 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
12 111 (1.30%) Marketing
13 107 (1.26%) Electronics
14 105 (1.23%) Presentation Skills
15 97 (1.14%) Banking
16 72 (0.85%) Law
17 46 (0.54%) Police
18 44 (0.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 36 (0.42%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,202 (14.13%) Architect
2 820 (9.64%) Developer
3 720 (8.46%) Senior
4 654 (7.69%) Analyst
5 508 (5.97%) Lead
6 489 (5.75%) Consultant
7 349 (4.10%) DevOps Engineer
8 314 (3.69%) Data Engineer
9 244 (2.87%) Network Engineer
10 235 (2.76%) Business Analyst
11 223 (2.62%) Software Engineer
11 223 (2.62%) Support Engineer
12 220 (2.59%) Technical Architect
13 192 (2.26%) Solutions Architect
14 160 (1.88%) Tester
15 157 (1.85%) Project Manager
16 152 (1.79%) Administrator
17 150 (1.76%) Azure Engineer
18 149 (1.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 145 (1.70%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 328 (3.86%) REST
2 191 (2.25%) Node.js
3 190 (2.23%) Spring
4 173 (2.03%) React
5 163 (1.92%) Kafka
6 147 (1.73%) SOAP
7 141 (1.66%) LDAP
7 141 (1.66%) Spring Boot
8 136 (1.60%) JSON
9 129 (1.52%) .NET
10 110 (1.29%) AngularJS
11 108 (1.27%) HTML
12 105 (1.23%) RESTful
13 102 (1.20%) Web Services
14 98 (1.15%) OAuth
15 89 (1.05%) CSS
16 88 (1.03%) Oracle Fusion
17 86 (1.01%) PySpark
17 86 (1.01%) XML
18 79 (0.93%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 277 (3.26%) Data Centre
2 275 (3.23%) Product Ownership
3 240 (2.82%) Cloud Native
4 220 (2.59%) Onboarding
5 194 (2.28%) PKI
6 153 (1.80%) Management Information System
7 132 (1.55%) Security Posture
8 113 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
9 109 (1.28%) Legacy Systems
10 103 (1.21%) Enterprise Software
11 95 (1.12%) Replication
12 72 (0.85%) Public Cloud
13 71 (0.83%) Hybrid Cloud
14 64 (0.75%) Cyber Threat
15 63 (0.74%) Distributed Systems
16 62 (0.73%) Driving Licence
16 62 (0.73%) Security Operations Centre
17 55 (0.65%) Clustering
17 55 (0.65%) Data Structures
18 45 (0.53%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 818 (9.62%) Windows
2 626 (7.36%) Linux
3 216 (2.54%) Windows Server
4 148 (1.74%) Windows 10
5 122 (1.43%) Android
6 110 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 106 (1.25%) Unix
8 68 (0.80%) Mac OS
9 47 (0.55%) Apple iOS
10 44 (0.52%) Ubuntu
11 32 (0.38%) VMS
12 25 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
13 24 (0.28%) CentOS
14 20 (0.24%) Windows 7
15 19 (0.22%) Solaris
16 18 (0.21%) 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 1,681 (19.76%) Agile
2 1,309 (15.39%) DevOps
3 1,126 (13.24%) CI/CD
4 1,063 (12.50%) Problem-Solving
5 795 (9.35%) Stakeholder Management
6 746 (8.77%) Migration
7 691 (8.12%) Continuous Improvement
8 604 (7.10%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 543 (6.38%) Cybersecurity
10 535 (6.29%) ITIL
11 498 (5.85%) Infrastructure as Code
12 480 (5.64%) Test Automation
13 475 (5.58%) Roadmaps
14 470 (5.53%) Analytics
15 440 (5.17%) Containerisation
16 418 (4.91%) Scrum
17 413 (4.86%) Software Engineering
18 406 (4.77%) Business Intelligence
19 398 (4.68%) Service Management
20 380 (4.47%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 978 (11.50%) Python
2 736 (8.65%) SQL
3 554 (6.51%) PowerShell
4 470 (5.53%) Java
5 362 (4.26%) JavaScript
6 202 (2.37%) Bash
7 178 (2.09%) C#
8 173 (2.03%) TypeScript
9 101 (1.19%) C++
10 93 (1.09%) Shell Script
11 92 (1.08%) PL/SQL
12 76 (0.89%) Go
13 63 (0.74%) C
14 52 (0.61%) Ruby
15 50 (0.59%) Ada
16 48 (0.56%) Scala
17 40 (0.47%) Kusto Query Language
18 39 (0.46%) Bicep
19 32 (0.38%) Apex Code
20 30 (0.35%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 6,445 (75.77%) SC Cleared
2 1,490 (17.52%) DV Cleared
3 428 (5.03%) Degree
4 257 (3.02%) BPSS Clearance
5 161 (1.89%) Cisco Certification
5 161 (1.89%) CISSP
6 120 (1.41%) Azure Certification
7 116 (1.36%) CCNP
8 113 (1.33%) Microsoft Certification
9 112 (1.32%) AWS Certification
10 100 (1.18%) CISM
11 73 (0.86%) Computer Science Degree
12 70 (0.82%) CCNA
13 63 (0.74%) ITIL Certification
14 61 (0.72%) TOGAF Certification
15 48 (0.56%) PMP
16 45 (0.53%) GIAC
16 45 (0.53%) ISTQB
17 44 (0.52%) CEH
18 43 (0.51%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 295 (3.47%) QA
2 272 (3.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 259 (3.04%) NIST
4 225 (2.65%) Data Quality
5 198 (2.33%) NCSC
6 170 (2.00%) GDPR
7 151 (1.78%) Accessibility
8 116 (1.36%) SLA
9 103 (1.21%) PMO
10 65 (0.76%) GRC
11 56 (0.66%) JSP 440
12 41 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials
12 41 (0.48%) WCAG
13 39 (0.46%) Def Stans
14 34 (0.40%) NIST 800
15 31 (0.36%) COBIT
15 31 (0.36%) PCI DSS
16 23 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 23 (0.27%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 19 (0.22%) RMADS
System Software
1 576 (6.77%) Docker
2 474 (5.57%) Active Directory
3 229 (2.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 79 (0.93%) VMware NSX
5 65 (0.76%) vSphere
6 58 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
6 58 (0.68%) VMware ESXi
7 54 (0.63%) Hyper-V
8 23 (0.27%) Firmware
9 21 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
9 21 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
10 19 (0.22%) BitLocker
11 17 (0.20%) NFS
12 16 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 10 (0.12%) Postfix
14 9 (0.11%) Squid
14 9 (0.11%) vCloud
15 6 (0.071%) Microsoft App-V
16 5 (0.059%) Terminal Services
16 5 (0.059%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 756 (8.89%) Kubernetes
2 668 (7.85%) Terraform
3 286 (3.36%) Ansible
4 212 (2.49%) Grafana
5 166 (1.95%) Prometheus
6 105 (1.23%) Single Sign-On
7 96 (1.13%) SCCM
8 86 (1.01%) vCenter Server
9 81 (0.95%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 65 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
11 64 (0.75%) Argo
12 42 (0.49%) FortiGate
13 39 (0.46%) Packer
14 38 (0.45%) Podman
15 31 (0.36%) 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 1,002 (11.78%) Microsoft
2 483 (5.68%) Oracle
3 417 (4.90%) VMware
4 395 (4.64%) Cisco
5 367 (4.31%) SAP
6 362 (4.26%) ServiceNow
7 208 (2.45%) Splunk
8 178 (2.09%) Red Hat
9 130 (1.53%) Google
10 129 (1.52%) Databricks
11 128 (1.50%) Juniper
12 123 (1.45%) Atlassian
13 120 (1.41%) CyberArk
14 116 (1.36%) Palo Alto
15 113 (1.33%) Salesforce
16 93 (1.09%) Dell
17 89 (1.05%) IBM
18 83 (0.98%) Talend
19 80 (0.94%) HP
20 76 (0.89%) Aruba