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 26 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 8,295 4,663 6,978
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.46% 18.10% 18.72%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.28% 59.80% 60.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,672 2,989 4,432
10th Percentile £357 £318 £356
25th Percentile £445 £440 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £545 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.58% -1.00% -3.51%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £703 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 722 248 473
10th Percentile £17.69 £21.25 £19.99
25th Percentile £20.07 £26.13 £38.39
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% +6.21% -5.85%
75th Percentile £65.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £80.08 £77.28 £83.40
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £57.12 £57.29
% change year-on-year -55.97% -0.28% -4.53%

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 12,148 7,798 11,599
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.35% 30.27% 31.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,081 4,802 7,156
10th Percentile £325 £293 £290
25th Percentile £421 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £517 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.58% -2.42% -2.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 934 387 881
10th Percentile £16.09 £20.00 £14.25
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.26 £20.51
Median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -49.70% +17.65% -8.60%
75th Percentile £65.00 £68.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £82.50 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year -37.13% -5.88% -10.90%

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 26 February 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 26 February 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 26 February 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 2,871 £530 +0.95% 384
South East +1 1,786 £525 -4.55% 435
South West 0 1,322 £550 -2.22% 267
Midlands +4 851 £495 -10.00% 143
North of England -2 827 £500 +2.04% 170
West Midlands +2 676 £500 -9.26% 104
North West 0 533 £500 +5.26% 103
East of England +1 346 £498 -0.50% 125
Yorkshire -5 174 £500 -4.76% 31
East Midlands 0 173 £425 -16.05% 39
North East +1 147 £450 -10.00% 37
South Coast - 1 - -
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
1 312 (3.76%) Confluence
2 202 (2.44%) SharePoint
3 134 (1.62%) Microsoft Exchange
4 131 (1.58%) SAS
5 68 (0.82%) Apache
6 65 (0.78%) Apache Spark
7 41 (0.49%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.47%) nginx
9 35 (0.42%) WebLogic
10 33 (0.40%) Skype for Business
11 20 (0.24%) Jupyter
12 18 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
13 16 (0.19%) CMS
14 12 (0.14%) Tuxedo
15 8 (0.096%) IIS
15 8 (0.096%) OpenStack
16 7 (0.084%) Oracle Workflow
16 7 (0.084%) Tomcat
17 6 (0.072%) ArcGIS
18 5 (0.060%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 247 (2.98%) Microsoft Office
2 180 (2.17%) Microsoft Excel
3 116 (1.40%) Microsoft Project
4 68 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 40 (0.48%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
7 9 (0.11%) Simulink
8 6 (0.072%) Oracle Smart View
9 5 (0.060%) Siemens NX
9 5 (0.060%) Windchill
10 4 (0.048%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.048%) Chatbot
10 4 (0.048%) Sketch
11 3 (0.036%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.024%) Adobe Illustrator
12 2 (0.024%) CATIA
12 2 (0.024%) Mozilla Thunderbird
12 2 (0.024%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.024%) Stateflow
12 2 (0.024%) Trello
Business Applications
1 128 (1.54%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 29 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
4 26 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
5 25 (0.30%) Teamcenter
6 20 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
7 19 (0.23%) SAP MM
8 16 (0.19%) Maximo
9 13 (0.16%) SAP QM
9 13 (0.16%) SAP WM
10 12 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
10 12 (0.14%) SAP PP
10 12 (0.14%) SAP VC
11 11 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
11 11 (0.13%) Oracle Payables
11 11 (0.13%) SAP EWM
11 11 (0.13%) SAP HCM
12 10 (0.12%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 9 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
13 9 (0.11%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,365 (16.46%) AWS
2 1,357 (16.36%) Azure
3 353 (4.26%) GitHub
4 346 (4.17%) GCP
5 303 (3.65%) Power Platform
6 300 (3.62%) Azure DevOps
7 298 (3.59%) Microsoft 365
8 230 (2.77%) Serverless
9 218 (2.63%) Entra ID
10 183 (2.21%) Amazon S3
11 175 (2.11%) GitHub Actions
12 171 (2.06%) OpenShift
13 150 (1.81%) AWS Lambda
14 125 (1.51%) Amazon EC2
15 109 (1.31%) AWS CloudFormation
16 108 (1.30%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 101 (1.22%) IaaS
18 99 (1.19%) Amazon EKS
18 99 (1.19%) PaaS
19 98 (1.18%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 407 (4.91%) Firewall
2 272 (3.28%) DNS
3 204 (2.46%) Network Security
4 177 (2.13%) WAN
5 165 (1.99%) VPN
6 142 (1.71%) LAN
7 135 (1.63%) TCP/IP
8 130 (1.57%) BGP
9 128 (1.54%) DHCP
10 92 (1.11%) Wireless
11 89 (1.07%) OSPF
12 88 (1.06%) VLAN
13 72 (0.87%) Wi-Fi
14 66 (0.80%) MPLS
15 54 (0.65%) IPsec
16 52 (0.63%) SAN
17 49 (0.59%) SSL
18 44 (0.53%) Cisco ISE
19 42 (0.51%) Skype
20 37 (0.45%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 225 (2.71%) PostgreSQL
2 217 (2.62%) Power BI
3 139 (1.68%) Data Warehouse
4 124 (1.49%) SQL Server
5 105 (1.27%) Metadata
6 95 (1.15%) Oracle Database
7 89 (1.07%) Amazon RDS
8 85 (1.02%) MongoDB
9 83 (1.00%) NoSQL
10 78 (0.94%) Relational Database
11 71 (0.86%) Elasticsearch
12 64 (0.77%) Azure SQL Database
13 58 (0.70%) Pentaho
14 50 (0.60%) MySQL
15 49 (0.59%) Data Lake
16 47 (0.57%) Big Data
17 43 (0.52%) Tableau
18 40 (0.48%) Amazon Redshift
19 36 (0.43%) DynamoDB
19 36 (0.43%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 518 (6.24%) JIRA
2 423 (5.10%) Git
3 367 (4.42%) Jenkins
4 310 (3.74%) GitLab
5 100 (1.21%) Selenium
6 81 (0.98%) Postman
7 77 (0.93%) JUnit
8 59 (0.71%) Cypress.io
9 52 (0.63%) SonarQube
10 46 (0.55%) Bitbucket
10 46 (0.55%) Maven
11 45 (0.54%) Artifactory
11 45 (0.54%) Oracle APEX
12 41 (0.49%) Cucumber
13 36 (0.43%) Mockito
14 35 (0.42%) REST Assured
15 29 (0.35%) Rational DOORS
16 25 (0.30%) Visual Studio
17 24 (0.29%) JMeter
17 24 (0.29%) Metasploit
General
1 2,106 (25.39%) Public Sector
2 2,034 (24.52%) Social Skills
3 707 (8.52%) Analytical Skills
4 592 (7.14%) Finance
5 319 (3.85%) Military
6 241 (2.91%) Documentation Skills
7 175 (2.11%) Aerospace
8 173 (2.09%) Telecoms
9 172 (2.07%) Manufacturing
10 128 (1.54%) Legal
11 116 (1.40%) Organisational Skills
12 114 (1.37%) Marketing
13 109 (1.31%) Electronics
14 107 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
15 106 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
16 86 (1.04%) Banking
17 69 (0.83%) Law
18 45 (0.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 41 (0.49%) Police
20 33 (0.40%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,164 (14.03%) Architect
2 788 (9.50%) Developer
3 703 (8.47%) Senior
4 628 (7.57%) Analyst
5 492 (5.93%) Consultant
6 471 (5.68%) Lead
7 367 (4.42%) DevOps Engineer
8 299 (3.60%) Data Engineer
9 239 (2.88%) Network Engineer
10 225 (2.71%) Support Engineer
11 222 (2.68%) Business Analyst
12 217 (2.62%) Software Engineer
13 206 (2.48%) Technical Architect
14 184 (2.22%) Solutions Architect
15 167 (2.01%) Tester
16 148 (1.78%) Azure Engineer
17 143 (1.72%) Project Manager
18 142 (1.71%) Administrator
19 141 (1.70%) AWS Engineer
19 141 (1.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 327 (3.94%) REST
2 191 (2.30%) Node.js
3 185 (2.23%) Spring
4 174 (2.10%) React
5 168 (2.03%) Kafka
6 144 (1.74%) JSON
7 142 (1.71%) SOAP
7 142 (1.71%) Spring Boot
8 141 (1.70%) LDAP
9 112 (1.35%) .NET
10 104 (1.25%) HTML
11 102 (1.23%) AngularJS
12 101 (1.22%) RESTful
13 96 (1.16%) Web Services
14 94 (1.13%) OAuth
14 94 (1.13%) Oracle Fusion
15 90 (1.08%) CSS
16 89 (1.07%) XML
17 87 (1.05%) PySpark
18 77 (0.93%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 270 (3.25%) Data Centre
2 246 (2.97%) Product Ownership
3 232 (2.80%) Cloud Native
4 219 (2.64%) Onboarding
5 198 (2.39%) PKI
6 148 (1.78%) Management Information System
7 131 (1.58%) Security Posture
8 109 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
9 108 (1.30%) Legacy Systems
10 107 (1.29%) Enterprise Software
11 95 (1.15%) Replication
12 71 (0.86%) Hybrid Cloud
13 67 (0.81%) Public Cloud
14 66 (0.80%) Cyber Threat
14 66 (0.80%) Driving Licence
15 65 (0.78%) Security Operations Centre
16 61 (0.74%) Distributed Systems
17 48 (0.58%) Clustering
18 45 (0.54%) Analytical Mindset
18 45 (0.54%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 815 (9.83%) Windows
2 637 (7.68%) Linux
3 210 (2.53%) Windows Server
4 154 (1.86%) Windows 10
5 119 (1.43%) Android
6 113 (1.36%) Unix
7 109 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 65 (0.78%) Mac OS
9 47 (0.57%) Apple iOS
10 44 (0.53%) Ubuntu
11 35 (0.42%) VMS
12 24 (0.29%) CentOS
12 24 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
13 21 (0.25%) Windows 7
14 19 (0.23%) Solaris
15 17 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
16 12 (0.14%) Mac OS X
16 12 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
17 8 (0.096%) Windows Server 2003
17 8 (0.096%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,614 (19.46%) Agile
2 1,268 (15.29%) DevOps
3 1,111 (13.39%) CI/CD
4 1,059 (12.77%) Problem-Solving
5 756 (9.11%) Stakeholder Management
6 730 (8.80%) Migration
7 645 (7.78%) Continuous Improvement
8 568 (6.85%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 542 (6.53%) Cybersecurity
10 513 (6.18%) ITIL
11 504 (6.08%) Infrastructure as Code
12 482 (5.81%) Test Automation
13 451 (5.44%) Roadmaps
14 445 (5.36%) Analytics
15 436 (5.26%) Containerisation
16 409 (4.93%) Software Engineering
17 406 (4.89%) Scrum
18 401 (4.83%) Business Intelligence
18 401 (4.83%) Service Management
19 365 (4.40%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 988 (11.91%) Python
2 698 (8.41%) SQL
3 544 (6.56%) PowerShell
4 481 (5.80%) Java
5 363 (4.38%) JavaScript
6 217 (2.62%) Bash
7 171 (2.06%) TypeScript
8 159 (1.92%) C#
9 96 (1.16%) C++
10 92 (1.11%) PL/SQL
11 88 (1.06%) Shell Script
12 78 (0.94%) Go
13 59 (0.71%) C
14 51 (0.61%) Ada
15 48 (0.58%) Scala
16 47 (0.57%) Ruby
17 39 (0.47%) Bicep
18 36 (0.43%) Kusto Query Language
19 31 (0.37%) ABAP
19 31 (0.37%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 6,324 (76.24%) SC Cleared
2 1,445 (17.42%) DV Cleared
3 405 (4.88%) Degree
4 252 (3.04%) BPSS Clearance
5 159 (1.92%) Cisco Certification
6 157 (1.89%) CISSP
7 122 (1.47%) Azure Certification
8 120 (1.45%) CCNP
9 117 (1.41%) Microsoft Certification
10 114 (1.37%) AWS Certification
11 96 (1.16%) CISM
12 71 (0.86%) Computer Science Degree
13 70 (0.84%) CCNA
14 62 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
15 60 (0.72%) TOGAF Certification
16 46 (0.55%) ISTQB
17 45 (0.54%) GIAC
17 45 (0.54%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 44 (0.53%) CEH
18 44 (0.53%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 288 (3.47%) QA
2 267 (3.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 252 (3.04%) NIST
4 212 (2.56%) Data Quality
5 192 (2.31%) NCSC
6 165 (1.99%) GDPR
7 151 (1.82%) Accessibility
8 114 (1.37%) SLA
9 94 (1.13%) PMO
10 57 (0.69%) GRC
11 52 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 45 (0.54%) WCAG
13 42 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
14 39 (0.47%) Def Stans
15 32 (0.39%) NIST 800
15 32 (0.39%) PCI DSS
16 30 (0.36%) COBIT
17 23 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 23 (0.28%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 21 (0.25%) RMADS
System Software
1 580 (6.99%) Docker
2 469 (5.65%) Active Directory
3 236 (2.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 78 (0.94%) VMware NSX
5 65 (0.78%) vSphere
6 59 (0.71%) VMware ESXi
7 58 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
8 57 (0.69%) Hyper-V
9 24 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
10 22 (0.27%) Firmware
11 19 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
12 18 (0.22%) BitLocker
13 16 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 15 (0.18%) NFS
15 11 (0.13%) Postfix
15 11 (0.13%) Squid
16 8 (0.096%) vCloud
17 7 (0.084%) Virtual Servers
18 5 (0.060%) Microsoft Virtual Server
18 5 (0.060%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 749 (9.03%) Kubernetes
2 682 (8.22%) Terraform
3 291 (3.51%) Ansible
4 207 (2.50%) Grafana
5 167 (2.01%) Prometheus
6 106 (1.28%) Single Sign-On
7 96 (1.16%) SCCM
8 93 (1.12%) vCenter Server
9 82 (0.99%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 66 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
11 65 (0.78%) Argo
12 39 (0.47%) Podman
13 38 (0.46%) FortiGate
14 36 (0.43%) Packer
15 31 (0.37%) Kibana
15 31 (0.37%) Puppet
16 30 (0.36%) OPNET
17 28 (0.34%) Progress Chef
18 26 (0.31%) Nmap
19 23 (0.28%) vRealize
Vendors
1 987 (11.90%) Microsoft
2 486 (5.86%) Oracle
3 423 (5.10%) VMware
4 408 (4.92%) Cisco
5 376 (4.53%) SAP
6 360 (4.34%) ServiceNow
7 208 (2.51%) Splunk
8 175 (2.11%) Red Hat
9 132 (1.59%) Palo Alto
10 130 (1.57%) Juniper
11 125 (1.51%) Databricks
12 124 (1.49%) Google
13 121 (1.46%) CyberArk
14 114 (1.37%) Atlassian
15 108 (1.30%) Salesforce
16 90 (1.08%) Dell
17 76 (0.92%) SolarWinds
17 76 (0.92%) Talend
18 75 (0.90%) HP
19 74 (0.89%) Aruba