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 5 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 2
Rank change year-on-year +3 -2 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,170 4,514 7,073
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.60% 18.52% 19.18%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.85% 59.10% 61.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,358 2,997 4,647
10th Percentile £363 £336 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £529 £550
% change year-on-year -0.76% -3.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 773 269 488
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.50 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £55.00 £57.30
Median % change year-on-year - -4.02% -4.50%
75th Percentile £73.46 £68.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.34 £80.02 £83.94
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £50.20 £57.30
% change year-on-year +9.57% -12.40% -4.50%

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 13,128 7,638 11,518
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.35% 31.33% 31.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,813 4,846 7,100
10th Percentile £340 £289 £307
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £624 £627 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -0.95% -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 972 440 984
10th Percentile £17.09 £18.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £22.29 £18.10
Median hourly rate £47.50 £44.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.95% +10.00% -23.81%
75th Percentile £72.50 £67.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.49 £81.42 £76.47
UK median hourly rate £47.50 £40.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +18.75% - -25.93%

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 5 May 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 5 May 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 5 May 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 +6 3,251 £525 - 528
South East +1 2,194 £538 -2.27% 521
South West 0 1,309 £538 -4.44% 386
Midlands +4 905 £475 -9.52% 201
North of England -2 842 £488 -2.50% 365
West Midlands +4 769 £475 -11.55% 129
North West -2 497 £493 -1.38% 175
East of England +2 386 £525 +16.67% 205
Yorkshire -5 206 £476 -9.33% 81
North East +1 172 £475 -6.40% 112
East Midlands -3 130 £450 -5.26% 72
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
1 357 (3.89%) Confluence
2 205 (2.24%) SharePoint
3 126 (1.37%) Microsoft Exchange
4 112 (1.22%) SAS
5 79 (0.86%) Apache Spark
6 70 (0.76%) Apache
7 53 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
8 32 (0.35%) nginx
8 32 (0.35%) WebLogic
9 22 (0.24%) Jupyter
10 16 (0.17%) Tomcat
11 15 (0.16%) IIS
12 14 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
13 13 (0.14%) CMS
13 13 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
13 13 (0.14%) Skype for Business
14 9 (0.098%) Palantir Foundry
15 8 (0.087%) Apache Superset
15 8 (0.087%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 206 (2.25%) Microsoft Office
2 186 (2.03%) Microsoft Excel
3 118 (1.29%) Microsoft Project
4 82 (0.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 38 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.13%) Simulink
8 7 (0.076%) AutoCAD
9 6 (0.065%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.055%) Notepad++
10 5 (0.055%) Revit
11 4 (0.044%) Siemens NX
11 4 (0.044%) Windchill
12 2 (0.022%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.022%) CATIA
12 2 (0.022%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.022%) Lectora
12 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.022%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 83 (0.91%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (0.50%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 44 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.31%) Dynamics CRM
5 27 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
6 26 (0.28%) Teamcenter
7 17 (0.19%) Maximo
8 13 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.14%) SAP PSCD
8 13 (0.14%) Temenos T24
9 12 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
9 12 (0.13%) SAP PP
10 11 (0.12%) Findur
11 10 (0.11%) iTrent
11 10 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
11 10 (0.11%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.098%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 8 (0.087%) Primavera
13 8 (0.087%) SAP HR
13 8 (0.087%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,581 (17.24%) Azure
2 1,491 (16.26%) AWS
3 375 (4.09%) GCP
4 372 (4.06%) GitHub
5 355 (3.87%) Azure DevOps
6 346 (3.77%) Power Platform
7 252 (2.75%) Microsoft 365
7 252 (2.75%) Serverless
8 225 (2.45%) Entra ID
9 208 (2.27%) GitHub Actions
10 196 (2.14%) Amazon S3
11 167 (1.82%) AWS Lambda
12 133 (1.45%) PaaS
13 130 (1.42%) Amazon EC2
14 127 (1.38%) OpenShift
15 113 (1.23%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 111 (1.21%) AWS CloudFormation
17 110 (1.20%) IaaS
18 108 (1.18%) OCI
19 104 (1.13%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 421 (4.59%) Firewall
2 261 (2.85%) DNS
3 213 (2.32%) Network Security
4 210 (2.29%) WAN
5 191 (2.08%) LAN
6 155 (1.69%) VPN
7 141 (1.54%) BGP
8 136 (1.48%) DHCP
9 123 (1.34%) OSPF
10 104 (1.13%) TCP/IP
11 93 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
12 89 (0.97%) VLAN
13 80 (0.87%) Wireless
14 58 (0.63%) MPLS
15 51 (0.56%) SAN
16 50 (0.55%) VXLAN
17 48 (0.52%) SD-WAN
18 46 (0.50%) IPsec
19 44 (0.48%) Ethernet VPN
20 43 (0.47%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 263 (2.87%) Power BI
2 211 (2.30%) PostgreSQL
3 196 (2.14%) Data Warehouse
4 182 (1.98%) SQL Server
5 119 (1.30%) Metadata
6 103 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
6 103 (1.12%) Oracle Database
7 87 (0.95%) NoSQL
8 82 (0.89%) MongoDB
8 82 (0.89%) Relational Database
9 78 (0.85%) Data Lake
10 75 (0.82%) Pentaho
11 71 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
12 68 (0.74%) Azure SQL Database
13 64 (0.70%) Oracle Reports
14 62 (0.68%) Amazon Redshift
15 61 (0.67%) Tableau
16 60 (0.65%) MySQL
17 52 (0.57%) Amazon Athena
18 48 (0.52%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 570 (6.22%) JIRA
2 424 (4.62%) Git
3 344 (3.75%) Jenkins
4 325 (3.54%) GitLab
5 86 (0.94%) Selenium
6 74 (0.81%) Postman
7 70 (0.76%) JUnit
8 57 (0.62%) SonarQube
9 50 (0.55%) Rational DOORS
10 44 (0.48%) Bitbucket
11 43 (0.47%) Artifactory
12 41 (0.45%) Maven
13 39 (0.43%) Cucumber
14 38 (0.41%) JMeter
14 38 (0.41%) Mockito
15 33 (0.36%) Cypress.io
16 32 (0.35%) Visual Studio
17 27 (0.29%) Zephyr
18 23 (0.25%) REST Assured
18 23 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 2,004 (21.85%) Public Sector
2 1,990 (21.70%) Social Skills
3 718 (7.83%) Analytical Skills
4 646 (7.04%) Finance
5 330 (3.60%) Military
6 257 (2.80%) Documentation Skills
7 219 (2.39%) Aerospace
8 144 (1.57%) Legal
9 124 (1.35%) Telecoms
10 114 (1.24%) Influencing Skills
11 111 (1.21%) Manufacturing
12 109 (1.19%) Banking
13 101 (1.10%) Organisational Skills
14 92 (1.00%) Presentation Skills
15 87 (0.95%) Law
16 60 (0.65%) Marketing
17 57 (0.62%) Police
18 56 (0.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 53 (0.58%) Electronics
20 37 (0.40%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,344 (14.66%) Architect
2 874 (9.53%) Developer
3 783 (8.54%) Senior
4 656 (7.15%) Analyst
5 634 (6.91%) Lead
6 437 (4.77%) Data Engineer
7 411 (4.48%) Consultant
8 408 (4.45%) DevOps Engineer
9 279 (3.04%) Network Engineer
10 271 (2.96%) Software Engineer
11 258 (2.81%) Technical Architect
12 248 (2.70%) Business Analyst
13 244 (2.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 211 (2.30%) Project Manager
15 200 (2.18%) Azure Engineer
16 198 (2.16%) Solutions Architect
17 175 (1.91%) Security Architect
18 170 (1.85%) Delivery Manager
19 167 (1.82%) Designer
20 166 (1.81%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 304 (3.32%) REST
2 212 (2.31%) Spring
3 167 (1.82%) Node.js
3 167 (1.82%) Spring Boot
4 164 (1.79%) Kafka
5 155 (1.69%) .NET
6 153 (1.67%) React
7 142 (1.55%) LDAP
8 134 (1.46%) SOAP
9 131 (1.43%) RESTful
10 123 (1.34%) JSON
11 113 (1.23%) AngularJS
12 99 (1.08%) PySpark
12 99 (1.08%) Web Services
13 87 (0.95%) Oracle Fusion
14 86 (0.94%) HTML
15 82 (0.89%) OAuth
16 78 (0.85%) XML
17 71 (0.77%) Elastic Stack
18 65 (0.71%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 314 (3.42%) Product Ownership
2 306 (3.34%) Cloud Native
3 273 (2.98%) Data Centre
4 264 (2.88%) Onboarding
5 164 (1.79%) PKI
6 136 (1.48%) Management Information System
7 120 (1.31%) Legacy Systems
8 119 (1.30%) Security Posture
9 117 (1.28%) Replication
10 115 (1.25%) Enterprise Software
11 104 (1.13%) Distributed Systems
12 103 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
13 78 (0.85%) Clustering
14 73 (0.80%) Data Structures
14 73 (0.80%) Hybrid Cloud
15 72 (0.79%) Public Cloud
16 63 (0.69%) Security Operations Centre
16 63 (0.69%) Virtual Team
17 56 (0.61%) Cyber Threat
17 56 (0.61%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 782 (8.53%) Windows
2 637 (6.95%) Linux
3 233 (2.54%) Windows Server
4 149 (1.62%) Unix
5 108 (1.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 99 (1.08%) Android
7 98 (1.07%) Windows 10
8 51 (0.56%) Apple iOS
9 47 (0.51%) Mac OS
10 36 (0.39%) Ubuntu
11 33 (0.36%) Solaris
12 28 (0.31%) VMS
13 25 (0.27%) AIX
14 23 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
15 22 (0.24%) CentOS
16 21 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
17 15 (0.16%) Windows 7
18 12 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
19 10 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
20 8 (0.087%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,822 (19.87%) Agile
2 1,397 (15.23%) DevOps
3 1,214 (13.24%) CI/CD
4 1,019 (11.11%) Problem-Solving
5 879 (9.59%) Stakeholder Management
6 808 (8.81%) Continuous Improvement
7 776 (8.46%) Migration
8 677 (7.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 606 (6.61%) Infrastructure as Code
10 598 (6.52%) ITIL
11 543 (5.92%) Cybersecurity
12 527 (5.75%) Test Automation
13 521 (5.68%) Analytics
14 511 (5.57%) Software Engineering
15 493 (5.38%) Roadmaps
16 492 (5.37%) Containerisation
17 449 (4.90%) Data Modelling
18 422 (4.60%) Scrum
19 417 (4.55%) Decision-Making
20 406 (4.43%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 990 (10.80%) Python
2 840 (9.16%) SQL
3 567 (6.18%) Java
4 509 (5.55%) PowerShell
5 292 (3.18%) JavaScript
6 200 (2.18%) C#
7 169 (1.84%) Bash
8 144 (1.57%) TypeScript
9 98 (1.07%) PL/SQL
10 92 (1.00%) C++
11 86 (0.94%) Shell Script
12 68 (0.74%) Go
13 64 (0.70%) Scala
14 59 (0.64%) C
15 53 (0.58%) Bicep
15 53 (0.58%) Ruby
16 44 (0.48%) Apex Code
17 41 (0.45%) Ada
18 40 (0.44%) R
19 36 (0.39%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 6,889 (75.13%) SC Cleared
2 1,740 (18.97%) DV Cleared
3 419 (4.57%) Degree
4 264 (2.88%) BPSS Clearance
5 172 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
6 153 (1.67%) CISSP
7 126 (1.37%) Azure Certification
8 110 (1.20%) CCNP
9 105 (1.15%) AWS Certification
10 100 (1.09%) CISM
11 90 (0.98%) Microsoft Certification
12 70 (0.76%) PMP
13 68 (0.74%) CCNA
14 67 (0.73%) TOGAF Certification
15 61 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
15 61 (0.67%) ITIL Certification
16 60 (0.65%) PMI Certification
17 55 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 52 (0.57%) ISTQB
19 47 (0.51%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 342 (3.73%) QA
2 268 (2.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 265 (2.89%) Data Quality
3 265 (2.89%) NIST
4 179 (1.95%) NCSC
5 161 (1.76%) PMO
6 157 (1.71%) Accessibility
7 148 (1.61%) GDPR
8 101 (1.10%) SLA
9 62 (0.68%) GRC
10 57 (0.62%) JSP 440
11 50 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials
12 38 (0.41%) NIST 800
13 34 (0.37%) WCAG
14 31 (0.34%) Def Stans
14 31 (0.34%) PCI DSS
15 30 (0.33%) COBIT
16 26 (0.28%) RMADS
17 19 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
18 18 (0.20%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 582 (6.35%) Docker
2 442 (4.82%) Active Directory
3 269 (2.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 92 (1.00%) VMware ESXi
5 84 (0.92%) VMware NSX
6 76 (0.83%) Hyper-V
7 73 (0.80%) vSphere
8 68 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
9 38 (0.41%) Firmware
10 26 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
11 20 (0.22%) BitLocker
11 20 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
12 17 (0.19%) NFS
12 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 16 (0.17%) Postfix
14 13 (0.14%) vCloud
15 10 (0.11%) Squid
16 8 (0.087%) Microsoft App-V
17 6 (0.065%) Corosync
18 5 (0.055%) KVM
Systems Management
1 751 (8.19%) Kubernetes
2 718 (7.83%) Terraform
3 315 (3.44%) Ansible
4 225 (2.45%) Grafana
5 184 (2.01%) Prometheus
6 97 (1.06%) vCenter Server
7 86 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
8 78 (0.85%) SCCM
9 56 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 52 (0.57%) FortiGate
10 52 (0.57%) Microsoft Intune
11 48 (0.52%) Argo
12 39 (0.43%) Puppet
13 36 (0.39%) Podman
14 33 (0.36%) Progress Chef
15 30 (0.33%) OPNET
16 29 (0.32%) Nagios
16 29 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
17 28 (0.31%) Packer
18 23 (0.25%) WSUS
Vendors
1 977 (10.65%) Microsoft
2 561 (6.12%) Oracle
3 465 (5.07%) VMware
4 378 (4.12%) ServiceNow
5 344 (3.75%) Cisco
6 333 (3.63%) SAP
7 212 (2.31%) Splunk
8 171 (1.86%) Databricks
9 152 (1.66%) Red Hat
10 151 (1.65%) Google
11 116 (1.26%) IBM
12 113 (1.23%) Palo Alto
13 107 (1.17%) Salesforce
14 106 (1.16%) Juniper
14 106 (1.16%) Talend
15 101 (1.10%) Atlassian
16 95 (1.04%) CyberArk
17 84 (0.92%) Remedy
18 81 (0.88%) F5
19 77 (0.84%) SolarWinds