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 27 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 3 3 4
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +4
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 6,511 5,674 6,966
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.17% 18.18% 18.10%
As % of the Qualifications category 63.18% 60.71% 60.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,299 3,568 4,380
10th Percentile £328 £350 £369
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £526 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.36% - -1.79%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £650
90th Percentile £719 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -1.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 671 306 466
10th Percentile £18.50 £21.13 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.02 £30.00 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% - -
75th Percentile £55.50 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £52.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year -52.10% -12.50% -

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 10,306 9,346 11,553
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.51% 29.94% 30.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,688 5,685 7,341
10th Percentile £306 £313 £308
25th Percentile £415 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £626 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £737 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 896 450 703
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.11 £17.72
25th Percentile £19.04 £26.44 £27.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £53.67
Median % change year-on-year -49.70% -6.83% +19.26%
75th Percentile £53.75 £68.00 £69.19
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.49 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £42.94 £53.68
% change year-on-year -41.43% -20.01% +19.29%

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 27 November 2025.

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 27 November 2025.

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 27 November 2025. 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 0 2,148 £550 +1.85% 456
South East -1 1,249 £515 -6.66% 754
South West 0 1,125 £550 -4.35% 496
North of England -1 771 £515 +8.42% 137
Midlands +1 693 £519 -8.76% 157
West Midlands +1 535 £525 -8.70% 126
North West +1 503 £530 +7.51% 104
East of England +2 287 £513 - 240
Yorkshire -11 165 £500 +7.24% 17
East Midlands -1 143 £444 -11.25% 29
North East 0 111 £475 +1.06% 18
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
1 257 (3.95%) Confluence
2 175 (2.69%) SharePoint
3 114 (1.75%) Microsoft Exchange
4 96 (1.47%) SAS
5 85 (1.31%) Apache
6 51 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
7 49 (0.75%) nginx
8 40 (0.61%) Apache Spark
9 39 (0.60%) Skype for Business
10 23 (0.35%) CMS
11 21 (0.32%) IIS
12 17 (0.26%) WebLogic
13 15 (0.23%) SharePoint Server
14 12 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2010
15 11 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2013
15 11 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 10 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2003
16 10 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2007
16 10 (0.15%) Office Communications Server
17 8 (0.12%) Documentum
Applications
1 209 (3.21%) Microsoft Office
2 151 (2.32%) Microsoft Excel
3 85 (1.31%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 34 (0.52%) MS Visio
6 21 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.23%) Siemens NX
8 14 (0.22%) Simulink
9 11 (0.17%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 7 (0.11%) Sketch
11 6 (0.092%) Adobe Illustrator
11 6 (0.092%) Photoshop
12 5 (0.077%) Adobe XD
12 5 (0.077%) FrameMaker
12 5 (0.077%) Oracle Smart View
12 5 (0.077%) PTC Creo
12 5 (0.077%) Stateflow
12 5 (0.077%) Trello
12 5 (0.077%) Windchill
13 2 (0.031%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 145 (2.23%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (0.52%) Remedy ITSM
3 27 (0.41%) SAP WM
4 26 (0.40%) SAP EWM
5 25 (0.38%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 21 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
7 19 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
8 18 (0.28%) Teamcenter
9 17 (0.26%) Primavera
9 17 (0.26%) SAP MM
10 16 (0.25%) SAP HCM
11 15 (0.23%) Maximo
12 13 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
13 12 (0.18%) SAP PS
13 12 (0.18%) SAP QM
13 12 (0.18%) SAP VC
14 11 (0.17%) SAP EHS
15 10 (0.15%) SAP HR
15 10 (0.15%) SAP Payroll
16 9 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,088 (16.71%) AWS
2 1,039 (15.96%) Azure
3 311 (4.78%) Microsoft 365
4 305 (4.68%) GitHub
5 244 (3.75%) Power Platform
6 231 (3.55%) GCP
7 229 (3.52%) Azure DevOps
8 195 (2.99%) Serverless
9 167 (2.56%) Amazon S3
10 153 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
11 147 (2.26%) Entra ID
12 130 (2.00%) SaaS
13 123 (1.89%) OpenShift
14 111 (1.70%) AWS Lambda
15 108 (1.66%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 108 (1.66%) Amazon EC2
16 104 (1.60%) AWS CloudFormation
17 81 (1.24%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 79 (1.21%) Amazon EKS
18 79 (1.21%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 349 (5.36%) Firewall
2 248 (3.81%) DNS
3 169 (2.60%) VPN
4 141 (2.17%) Network Security
5 126 (1.94%) WAN
6 106 (1.63%) TCP/IP
7 93 (1.43%) BGP
8 91 (1.40%) DHCP
9 90 (1.38%) Wireless
10 89 (1.37%) LAN
11 70 (1.08%) SSL
12 64 (0.98%) Wi-Fi
13 62 (0.95%) SAN
14 58 (0.89%) MPLS
15 55 (0.84%) VLAN
16 52 (0.80%) IPsec
17 51 (0.78%) Cisco ISE
18 45 (0.69%) HTTP
19 41 (0.63%) Skype
19 41 (0.63%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 200 (3.07%) PostgreSQL
2 164 (2.52%) Power BI
3 82 (1.26%) Amazon RDS
3 82 (1.26%) MongoDB
4 75 (1.15%) SQL Server
5 74 (1.14%) Oracle Database
6 71 (1.09%) Data Warehouse
7 70 (1.08%) Relational Database
8 67 (1.03%) Metadata
9 66 (1.01%) NoSQL
10 44 (0.68%) Big Data
11 41 (0.63%) Azure SQL Database
12 40 (0.61%) Pentaho
13 37 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
14 36 (0.55%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 35 (0.54%) Data Lake
16 33 (0.51%) Amazon Redshift
16 33 (0.51%) MySQL
17 32 (0.49%) Amazon Athena
18 31 (0.48%) Redis
Development Applications
1 465 (7.14%) JIRA
2 374 (5.74%) Git
3 359 (5.51%) Jenkins
4 255 (3.92%) GitLab
5 70 (1.08%) Selenium
6 58 (0.89%) JUnit
7 54 (0.83%) Cypress.io
8 51 (0.78%) SonarQube
9 50 (0.77%) Bitbucket
10 48 (0.74%) Postman
11 45 (0.69%) Oracle APEX
12 35 (0.54%) Artifactory
13 33 (0.51%) Maven
14 32 (0.49%) Mockito
15 30 (0.46%) Cucumber
16 22 (0.34%) Rational DOORS
16 22 (0.34%) Vagrant
17 21 (0.32%) MSI
17 21 (0.32%) REST Assured
18 20 (0.31%) CircleCI
General
1 1,796 (27.58%) Public Sector
2 1,711 (26.28%) Social Skills
3 606 (9.31%) Analytical Skills
4 472 (7.25%) Finance
5 258 (3.96%) Military
6 205 (3.15%) Telecoms
7 189 (2.90%) Manufacturing
8 158 (2.43%) Documentation Skills
9 141 (2.17%) Electronics
10 132 (2.03%) Marketing
11 124 (1.90%) Aerospace
12 100 (1.54%) Legal
13 95 (1.46%) Organisational Skills
14 88 (1.35%) Banking
15 79 (1.21%) Influencing Skills
16 77 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
17 68 (1.04%) Law
18 41 (0.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 39 (0.60%) Aviation
20 38 (0.58%) Police
Job Titles
1 864 (13.27%) Architect
2 649 (9.97%) Developer
3 527 (8.09%) Consultant
4 507 (7.79%) Senior
5 429 (6.59%) Analyst
6 399 (6.13%) Lead
7 278 (4.27%) DevOps Engineer
8 237 (3.64%) Support Engineer
9 200 (3.07%) Network Engineer
10 163 (2.50%) Solutions Architect
11 152 (2.33%) Data Engineer
12 143 (2.20%) SAP Consultant
13 137 (2.10%) AWS Engineer
14 127 (1.95%) Technical Architect
15 126 (1.94%) Platform Engineer
16 125 (1.92%) IT Engineer
17 118 (1.81%) Administrator
17 118 (1.81%) Software Engineer
18 110 (1.69%) Senior Developer
19 109 (1.67%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 257 (3.95%) REST
2 165 (2.53%) Node.js
2 165 (2.53%) React
3 155 (2.38%) Kafka
4 128 (1.97%) JSON
5 117 (1.80%) SOAP
6 116 (1.78%) Spring
7 109 (1.67%) HTML
8 98 (1.51%) XML
9 95 (1.46%) AngularJS
10 93 (1.43%) RESTful
11 90 (1.38%) CSS
12 88 (1.35%) .NET
12 88 (1.35%) Spring Boot
12 88 (1.35%) Web Services
13 72 (1.11%) OAuth
14 67 (1.03%) LDAP
15 56 (0.86%) Elastic Stack
15 56 (0.86%) SAML
16 54 (0.83%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 204 (3.13%) Data Centre
2 190 (2.92%) Onboarding
3 180 (2.76%) PKI
4 173 (2.66%) Cloud Native
5 147 (2.26%) Management Information System
6 145 (2.23%) Product Ownership
7 102 (1.57%) Self-Motivation
8 78 (1.20%) Legacy Systems
9 75 (1.15%) Driving Licence
10 69 (1.06%) Replication
11 67 (1.03%) Cyber Threat
12 66 (1.01%) Security Posture
13 61 (0.94%) Security Operations Centre
14 60 (0.92%) Hybrid Cloud
15 58 (0.89%) Enterprise Software
16 55 (0.84%) CMDB
17 53 (0.81%) Private Cloud
18 50 (0.77%) Analytical Mindset
19 45 (0.69%) Public Cloud
20 43 (0.66%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 754 (11.58%) Windows
2 511 (7.85%) Linux
3 178 (2.73%) Windows Server
4 172 (2.64%) Windows 10
5 97 (1.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 90 (1.38%) Android
7 84 (1.29%) Mac OS
8 83 (1.27%) Unix
9 46 (0.71%) VMS
10 34 (0.52%) Ubuntu
11 28 (0.43%) Windows Server 2019
12 27 (0.41%) Amazon Linux
12 27 (0.41%) Apple iOS
13 24 (0.37%) Windows 7
14 22 (0.34%) CentOS
15 20 (0.31%) Windows Server 2012
16 19 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
17 17 (0.26%) Windows Server 2003
18 15 (0.23%) Mac OS X
19 9 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,306 (20.06%) Agile
2 986 (15.14%) DevOps
3 900 (13.82%) CI/CD
4 806 (12.38%) Problem-Solving
5 643 (9.88%) Migration
6 518 (7.96%) Stakeholder Management
7 458 (7.03%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 443 (6.80%) Cybersecurity
9 438 (6.73%) ITIL
10 422 (6.48%) Continuous Improvement
11 416 (6.39%) Infrastructure as Code
12 385 (5.91%) Service Management
13 376 (5.77%) Business Intelligence
14 357 (5.48%) Containerisation
15 356 (5.47%) Test Automation
16 339 (5.21%) Analytics
17 335 (5.15%) Workflow
18 323 (4.96%) Scrum
19 306 (4.70%) Microservices
20 305 (4.68%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 841 (12.92%) Python
2 502 (7.71%) SQL
3 424 (6.51%) PowerShell
4 413 (6.34%) Java
5 333 (5.11%) JavaScript
6 216 (3.32%) Bash
7 164 (2.52%) TypeScript
8 122 (1.87%) C#
9 91 (1.40%) C++
10 79 (1.21%) Go
11 70 (1.08%) PL/SQL
12 63 (0.97%) C
13 59 (0.91%) Shell Script
14 42 (0.65%) Perl
15 37 (0.57%) ABAP
16 34 (0.52%) Ruby
17 30 (0.46%) Groovy
18 29 (0.45%) Bicep
19 28 (0.43%) Ada
20 25 (0.38%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 4,993 (76.69%) SC Cleared
2 1,107 (17.00%) DV Cleared
3 325 (4.99%) Degree
4 268 (4.12%) BPSS Clearance
5 125 (1.92%) CISSP
6 123 (1.89%) Microsoft Certification
7 108 (1.66%) Azure Certification
8 105 (1.61%) Cisco Certification
9 95 (1.46%) AWS Certification
10 79 (1.21%) CCNP
11 72 (1.11%) CISM
12 56 (0.86%) ITIL Certification
13 51 (0.78%) Computer Science Degree
14 42 (0.65%) CCNA
15 38 (0.58%) CEH
15 38 (0.58%) TOGAF Certification
16 37 (0.57%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 34 (0.52%) CHECK Team Member
18 29 (0.45%) CTC Cleared
18 29 (0.45%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 201 (3.09%) QA
2 198 (3.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 194 (2.98%) NIST
4 152 (2.33%) NCSC
5 128 (1.97%) GDPR
6 124 (1.90%) SLA
7 114 (1.75%) Data Quality
8 106 (1.63%) Accessibility
9 60 (0.92%) PMO
10 49 (0.75%) JSP 440
11 39 (0.60%) NIST 800
12 38 (0.58%) WCAG
13 33 (0.51%) GRC
14 31 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 29 (0.45%) Def Stans
16 27 (0.41%) COBIT
17 22 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials
17 22 (0.34%) RMADS
18 17 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 16 (0.25%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 529 (8.12%) Docker
2 390 (5.99%) Active Directory
3 203 (3.12%) VMware Infrastructure
4 64 (0.98%) VMware NSX
4 64 (0.98%) vSphere
5 62 (0.95%) VMware ESXi
6 52 (0.80%) Virtual Machines
7 40 (0.61%) Firmware
8 31 (0.48%) Hyper-V
9 26 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
10 20 (0.31%) DFS Replication
11 19 (0.29%) Postfix
12 15 (0.23%) Dovecot
12 15 (0.23%) NFS
13 11 (0.17%) ISA Server
13 11 (0.17%) Squid
14 10 (0.15%) BitLocker
14 10 (0.15%) Brightmail
15 9 (0.14%) Terminal Services
16 7 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 621 (9.54%) Kubernetes
2 583 (8.95%) Terraform
3 275 (4.22%) Ansible
4 162 (2.49%) Grafana
5 134 (2.06%) Prometheus
6 104 (1.60%) SCCM
7 92 (1.41%) Single Sign-On
8 74 (1.14%) Microsoft Intune
9 61 (0.94%) vCenter Server
10 55 (0.84%) Argo
11 49 (0.75%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 48 (0.74%) Packer
13 33 (0.51%) Jamf Pro
13 33 (0.51%) Kibana
14 26 (0.40%) FortiGate
15 24 (0.37%) OPNET
15 24 (0.37%) SCOM
16 23 (0.35%) Nessus
17 22 (0.34%) vRealize
18 21 (0.32%) Podman
Vendors
1 866 (13.30%) Microsoft
2 438 (6.73%) SAP
3 413 (6.34%) Cisco
4 344 (5.28%) Oracle
5 341 (5.24%) VMware
6 314 (4.82%) ServiceNow
7 177 (2.72%) Splunk
8 155 (2.38%) Juniper
9 131 (2.01%) Red Hat
10 108 (1.66%) Google
11 98 (1.51%) Atlassian
12 95 (1.46%) Palo Alto
13 93 (1.43%) HP
14 91 (1.40%) Dell
15 83 (1.27%) Salesforce
16 71 (1.09%) F5
17 70 (1.08%) Apple
17 70 (1.08%) SolarWinds
18 69 (1.06%) IBM
19 68 (1.04%) Remedy