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 1 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,616 4,691 7,000
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.94% 18.30% 18.85%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.55% 59.01% 61.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,752 3,061 4,568
10th Percentile £380 £338 £356
25th Percentile £450 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £713 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £529 £550
% change year-on-year -0.76% -3.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 753 359 540
10th Percentile £18.28 £18.48 £14.48
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +151.03% -56.26% -4.17%
75th Percentile £75.00 £63.75 £72.50
90th Percentile £86.82 £77.50 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £61.33 £25.15 £56.15
% change year-on-year +143.86% -55.21% -6.43%

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 13,827 7,949 11,327
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.55% 31.01% 30.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,320 5,000 6,991
10th Percentile £350 £281 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £645
90th Percentile £715 £715 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,038 529 1,003
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.16
25th Percentile £24.21 £20.00 £20.50
Median hourly rate £52.75 £28.60 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +84.44% -32.71% -22.73%
75th Percentile £73.68 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.40 £77.50 £77.40
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £28.00 £40.94
% change year-on-year +78.57% -31.61% -26.47%

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 1 July 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 1 July 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 1 July 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 +7 3,412 £530 +0.95% 760
South East +1 2,323 £550 - 676
South West 0 1,308 £538 -4.44% 507
North of England +1 1,024 £500 - 375
Midlands +2 930 £469 -8.51% 217
West Midlands +2 793 £469 -10.67% 165
North West 0 551 £525 +5.00% 225
East of England +2 347 £550 +10.00% 130
Yorkshire -1 268 £500 +1.63% 90
North East +1 235 £475 -1.04% 62
East Midlands -1 126 £418 -12.11% 52
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
1 337 (3.50%) Confluence
2 219 (2.28%) SharePoint
3 141 (1.47%) SAS
4 123 (1.28%) Microsoft Exchange
5 89 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
6 82 (0.85%) Apache Spark
7 79 (0.82%) Apache
8 39 (0.41%) Jupyter
8 39 (0.41%) nginx
9 29 (0.30%) WebLogic
10 21 (0.22%) Tomcat
11 20 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
12 16 (0.17%) CMS
12 16 (0.17%) IIS
13 15 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
14 14 (0.15%) Skype for Business
15 12 (0.12%) Tuxedo
16 11 (0.11%) NetWeaver
17 9 (0.094%) Palantir Foundry
18 8 (0.083%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 156 (1.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 125 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
3 78 (0.81%) Microsoft Project
4 67 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 40 (0.42%) MS Visio
6 17 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.14%) Simulink
8 11 (0.11%) SOLIDWORKS
9 10 (0.10%) AutoCAD
9 10 (0.10%) Chatbot
9 10 (0.10%) Revit
10 5 (0.052%) Notepad++
11 4 (0.042%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.031%) Sketch
13 2 (0.021%) CATIA
13 2 (0.021%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.021%) Lectora
13 2 (0.021%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.021%) Siemens NX
13 2 (0.021%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 100 (1.04%) SAP S/4HANA
2 60 (0.62%) Remedy ITSM
3 45 (0.47%) Oracle ERP
4 32 (0.33%) Teamcenter
5 31 (0.32%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 27 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
7 22 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
8 17 (0.18%) SAP PSCD
9 15 (0.16%) Findur
9 15 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
9 15 (0.16%) Temenos T24
10 13 (0.14%) Primavera
11 12 (0.12%) iTrent
11 12 (0.12%) Maximo
11 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
12 11 (0.11%) SAP ERP
13 9 (0.094%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 9 (0.094%) Oracle Assets
13 9 (0.094%) Salesforce CRM
13 9 (0.094%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,662 (17.28%) Azure
2 1,617 (16.82%) AWS
3 376 (3.91%) Power Platform
4 375 (3.90%) GitHub
5 373 (3.88%) Azure DevOps
6 344 (3.58%) GCP
7 247 (2.57%) Microsoft 365
8 245 (2.55%) Entra ID
9 243 (2.53%) Serverless
10 235 (2.44%) GitHub Actions
11 210 (2.18%) Amazon S3
12 167 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
13 151 (1.57%) Amazon EC2
14 140 (1.46%) SaaS
15 138 (1.44%) OpenShift
16 132 (1.37%) OCI
17 130 (1.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 130 (1.35%) PaaS
18 109 (1.13%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 100 (1.04%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 411 (4.27%) Firewall
2 300 (3.12%) DNS
3 224 (2.33%) Network Security
4 210 (2.18%) WAN
5 188 (1.96%) LAN
6 166 (1.73%) VPN
7 159 (1.65%) DHCP
8 138 (1.44%) BGP
9 116 (1.21%) OSPF
10 109 (1.13%) Wi-Fi
11 105 (1.09%) VLAN
12 96 (1.00%) TCP/IP
13 81 (0.84%) Wireless
14 60 (0.62%) MPLS
15 59 (0.61%) SD-WAN
16 55 (0.57%) VXLAN
17 53 (0.55%) SAN
18 50 (0.52%) BIG-IP
19 49 (0.51%) IPsec
20 46 (0.48%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 285 (2.96%) Power BI
2 240 (2.50%) PostgreSQL
3 220 (2.29%) Data Warehouse
3 220 (2.29%) SQL Server
4 144 (1.50%) Oracle Database
5 118 (1.23%) Metadata
6 106 (1.10%) Amazon RDS
7 103 (1.07%) Data Lake
8 98 (1.02%) Relational Database
9 84 (0.87%) MongoDB
10 83 (0.86%) Pentaho
11 79 (0.82%) MySQL
12 75 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
13 73 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
14 68 (0.71%) Amazon Redshift
15 66 (0.69%) NoSQL
16 61 (0.63%) Amazon Athena
17 59 (0.61%) Tableau
18 43 (0.45%) DynamoDB
19 42 (0.44%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 536 (5.57%) JIRA
2 434 (4.51%) Git
3 408 (4.24%) GitLab
4 370 (3.85%) Jenkins
5 106 (1.10%) Selenium
6 80 (0.83%) JUnit
7 73 (0.76%) SonarQube
8 68 (0.71%) Postman
9 58 (0.60%) Rational DOORS
10 53 (0.55%) JMeter
11 50 (0.52%) Cucumber
12 43 (0.45%) Mockito
13 42 (0.44%) Artifactory
14 41 (0.43%) Maven
15 40 (0.42%) Bitbucket
16 39 (0.41%) REST Assured
17 37 (0.38%) Visual Studio
17 37 (0.38%) Zephyr
18 36 (0.37%) Cypress.io
19 30 (0.31%) WebDriver
General
1 2,039 (21.20%) Public Sector
2 1,945 (20.23%) Social Skills
3 675 (7.02%) Analytical Skills
4 654 (6.80%) Finance
5 322 (3.35%) Military
6 269 (2.80%) Documentation Skills
7 264 (2.75%) Aerospace
8 140 (1.46%) Legal
9 139 (1.45%) Influencing Skills
10 125 (1.30%) Banking
11 111 (1.15%) Telecoms
12 99 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
13 97 (1.01%) Law
14 77 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
15 75 (0.78%) Manufacturing
16 74 (0.77%) Police
17 64 (0.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 42 (0.44%) Marketing
19 39 (0.41%) Aviation
20 36 (0.37%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,405 (14.61%) Architect
2 978 (10.17%) Developer
3 825 (8.58%) Senior
4 769 (8.00%) Lead
5 616 (6.41%) Analyst
6 456 (4.74%) Data Engineer
7 427 (4.44%) Consultant
8 413 (4.29%) DevOps Engineer
9 313 (3.25%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 306 (3.18%) Software Engineer
11 281 (2.92%) Technical Architect
12 252 (2.62%) Network Engineer
13 231 (2.40%) Solutions Architect
14 217 (2.26%) Security Architect
15 200 (2.08%) Business Analyst
15 200 (2.08%) Project Manager
16 194 (2.02%) Delivery Manager
17 192 (2.00%) Java Developer
18 182 (1.89%) Administrator
19 175 (1.82%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 304 (3.16%) REST
2 231 (2.40%) Spring
3 187 (1.94%) Spring Boot
4 170 (1.77%) React
5 167 (1.74%) .NET
6 159 (1.65%) Kafka
7 153 (1.59%) Node.js
8 148 (1.54%) RESTful
9 127 (1.32%) SOAP
10 114 (1.19%) JSON
11 113 (1.18%) AngularJS
12 111 (1.15%) LDAP
13 97 (1.01%) OAuth
14 92 (0.96%) PySpark
15 89 (0.93%) Web Services
16 85 (0.88%) HTML
17 76 (0.79%) XML
18 75 (0.78%) OpenID
19 69 (0.72%) Playwright
20 68 (0.71%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 380 (3.95%) Cloud Native
2 319 (3.32%) Product Ownership
3 302 (3.14%) Onboarding
4 279 (2.90%) Data Centre
5 152 (1.58%) Legacy Systems
6 147 (1.53%) Management Information System
7 135 (1.40%) PKI
8 132 (1.37%) Distributed Systems
9 109 (1.13%) Replication
10 105 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
11 97 (1.01%) CMDB
11 97 (1.01%) Enterprise Software
12 93 (0.97%) Security Posture
13 90 (0.94%) Data Structures
14 88 (0.92%) Clustering
15 87 (0.90%) Hybrid Cloud
16 76 (0.79%) Public Cloud
17 70 (0.73%) Security Operations Centre
17 70 (0.73%) Virtual Team
18 67 (0.70%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 790 (8.22%) Windows
2 648 (6.74%) Linux
3 251 (2.61%) Windows Server
4 177 (1.84%) Unix
5 125 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 83 (0.86%) Windows 10
7 77 (0.80%) Android
8 49 (0.51%) Solaris
9 47 (0.49%) Apple iOS
10 38 (0.40%) Mac OS
11 32 (0.33%) Ubuntu
12 29 (0.30%) AIX
13 23 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 22 (0.23%) CentOS
15 19 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
16 15 (0.16%) VMS
17 14 (0.15%) Windows 7
18 11 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
18 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
18 11 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,961 (20.39%) Agile
2 1,488 (15.47%) DevOps
3 1,336 (13.89%) CI/CD
4 1,005 (10.45%) Problem-Solving
5 994 (10.34%) Stakeholder Management
6 966 (10.05%) Continuous Improvement
7 781 (8.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 760 (7.90%) Migration
9 701 (7.29%) Infrastructure as Code
10 626 (6.51%) Cybersecurity
11 625 (6.50%) ITIL
12 590 (6.14%) Test Automation
13 588 (6.11%) Software Engineering
14 558 (5.80%) Containerisation
15 547 (5.69%) Analytics
16 541 (5.63%) Roadmaps
17 500 (5.20%) Decision-Making
18 496 (5.16%) Data Modelling
19 485 (5.04%) AI
20 461 (4.79%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 1,009 (10.49%) Python
2 903 (9.39%) SQL
3 637 (6.62%) Java
4 451 (4.69%) PowerShell
5 282 (2.93%) JavaScript
6 205 (2.13%) C#
7 204 (2.12%) Bash
8 150 (1.56%) TypeScript
9 129 (1.34%) PL/SQL
10 88 (0.92%) C++
11 84 (0.87%) Shell Script
12 70 (0.73%) Bicep
13 64 (0.67%) C
14 53 (0.55%) Go
15 46 (0.48%) Ada
16 40 (0.42%) Apex Code
16 40 (0.42%) Scala
17 39 (0.41%) Ruby
18 38 (0.40%) Kotlin
19 33 (0.34%) R
Qualifications
1 7,243 (75.32%) SC Cleared
2 1,894 (19.70%) DV Cleared
3 390 (4.06%) Degree
4 290 (3.02%) BPSS Clearance
5 186 (1.93%) Cisco Certification
6 156 (1.62%) CISSP
7 127 (1.32%) Azure Certification
8 111 (1.15%) Microsoft Certification
9 102 (1.06%) AWS Certification
10 100 (1.04%) CCNP
11 94 (0.98%) CISM
12 80 (0.83%) CCNA
13 78 (0.81%) PMP
14 77 (0.80%) PMI Certification
15 65 (0.68%) ISTQB
16 58 (0.60%) Computer Science Degree
17 57 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 48 (0.50%) ITIL Certification
19 38 (0.40%) GIAC
20 35 (0.36%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 374 (3.89%) QA
2 288 (3.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 287 (2.98%) NIST
4 285 (2.96%) Data Quality
5 211 (2.19%) NCSC
6 189 (1.97%) Accessibility
7 170 (1.77%) PMO
8 169 (1.76%) GDPR
9 99 (1.03%) SLA
10 83 (0.86%) GRC
11 60 (0.62%) JSP 440
12 45 (0.47%) WCAG
13 43 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials
14 41 (0.43%) NIST 800
15 32 (0.33%) Def Stans
16 27 (0.28%) RMADS
17 24 (0.25%) Government Security Classifications
17 24 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 21 (0.22%) COBIT
19 20 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 612 (6.36%) Docker
2 424 (4.41%) Active Directory
3 300 (3.12%) VMware Infrastructure
4 116 (1.21%) VMware ESXi
5 108 (1.12%) VMware NSX
6 82 (0.85%) vSphere
7 78 (0.81%) Hyper-V
8 75 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
9 33 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
10 32 (0.33%) Firmware
11 28 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
12 23 (0.24%) BitLocker
13 21 (0.22%) vCloud
14 20 (0.21%) NFS
15 19 (0.20%) Postfix
16 18 (0.19%) Squid
17 13 (0.14%) Slurm Workload Manager
18 9 (0.094%) Microsoft App-V
19 6 (0.062%) Corosync
19 6 (0.062%) KVM
Systems Management
1 779 (8.10%) Terraform
2 766 (7.97%) Kubernetes
3 338 (3.51%) Ansible
4 223 (2.32%) Grafana
5 182 (1.89%) Prometheus
6 113 (1.18%) vCenter Server
7 79 (0.82%) SCCM
8 72 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
9 62 (0.64%) Microsoft Intune
10 52 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 49 (0.51%) Argo
12 48 (0.50%) FortiGate
13 45 (0.47%) SCOM
14 43 (0.45%) Puppet
15 40 (0.42%) Oracle RMAN
16 32 (0.33%) Podman
17 28 (0.29%) Progress Chef
18 25 (0.26%) Nagios
19 23 (0.24%) vMotion
19 23 (0.24%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,036 (10.77%) Microsoft
2 689 (7.17%) Oracle
3 470 (4.89%) VMware
4 430 (4.47%) ServiceNow
5 309 (3.21%) Cisco
6 308 (3.20%) SAP
7 190 (1.98%) Splunk
8 167 (1.74%) Databricks
9 160 (1.66%) Google
10 143 (1.49%) Red Hat
11 128 (1.33%) Talend
12 125 (1.30%) Salesforce
13 114 (1.19%) IBM
14 107 (1.11%) Palo Alto
15 104 (1.08%) Informatica
16 94 (0.98%) Juniper
17 87 (0.90%) F5
18 86 (0.89%) SolarWinds
19 83 (0.86%) Citrix
20 82 (0.85%) Fortinet