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 16 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 7,268 4,927 6,780
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.83% 18.28% 18.76%
As % of the Qualifications category 66.35% 59.90% 60.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,942 3,132 4,334
10th Percentile £350 £330 £369
25th Percentile £450 £436 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £557
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% -1.33% -2.21%
75th Percentile £627 £638 £654
90th Percentile £725 £715 £730
UK median daily rate £525 £548 £562
% change year-on-year -4.20% -2.41% -1.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 658 245 424
10th Percentile £17.82 £21.25 £20.00
25th Percentile £19.54 £27.00 £45.88
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% - -
75th Percentile £61.55 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £80.88
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -49.70% -16.67% -0.83%

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 10,954 8,225 11,192
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.41% 30.51% 30.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,257 5,016 7,024
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £419 £414 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 859 391 696
10th Percentile £15.84 £19.83 £14.50
25th Percentile £18.87 £25.38 £23.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -45.54% -7.64% +11.11%
75th Percentile £60.00 £68.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £75.95 £82.50 £78.36
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £39.50 £50.00
% change year-on-year -36.33% -21.00% +11.11%

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 16 January 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 16 January 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 16 January 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 +3 2,458 £545 -0.91% 444
South East +1 1,479 £517 -6.00% 569
South West 0 1,238 £550 -0.18% 398
North of England -2 800 £500 +5.26% 238
Midlands +3 720 £515 -6.36% 133
West Midlands +3 565 £520 -5.45% 76
North West 0 540 £513 +7.89% 138
East of England +2 323 £481 -6.10% 244
Yorkshire -17 154 £500 +6.38% 65
East Midlands +3 153 £425 -15.00% 56
North East 0 129 £448 -14.76% 37
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
1 266 (3.66%) Confluence
2 185 (2.55%) SharePoint
3 122 (1.68%) Microsoft Exchange
4 113 (1.55%) SAS
5 81 (1.11%) Apache
6 54 (0.74%) Apache Spark
7 47 (0.65%) Apache Airflow
8 38 (0.52%) Skype for Business
9 34 (0.47%) nginx
10 28 (0.39%) WebLogic
11 21 (0.29%) CMS
12 17 (0.23%) IIS
13 14 (0.19%) Jupyter
14 11 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
15 10 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
16 8 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2010
16 8 (0.11%) OpenStack
17 7 (0.096%) Exchange Server 2013
17 7 (0.096%) Tuxedo
18 6 (0.083%) Tomcat
Applications
1 245 (3.37%) Microsoft Office
2 151 (2.08%) Microsoft Excel
3 102 (1.40%) Microsoft Project
4 60 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 37 (0.51%) MS Visio
6 23 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.17%) Simulink
8 10 (0.14%) Siemens NX
9 8 (0.11%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 5 (0.069%) FrameMaker
10 5 (0.069%) Oracle Smart View
10 5 (0.069%) Sketch
10 5 (0.069%) Windchill
11 4 (0.055%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.055%) Stateflow
11 4 (0.055%) Trello
12 3 (0.041%) Adobe Illustrator
12 3 (0.041%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.041%) Photoshop
12 3 (0.041%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 146 (2.01%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.51%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 27 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
3 27 (0.37%) SAP EWM
3 27 (0.37%) SAP WM
4 24 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
5 18 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
5 18 (0.25%) SAP MM
6 16 (0.22%) Maximo
6 16 (0.22%) Teamcenter
7 15 (0.21%) SAP HCM
8 14 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
8 14 (0.19%) SAP QM
9 13 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
10 12 (0.17%) SAP PP
10 12 (0.17%) SAP VC
11 11 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
11 11 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
11 11 (0.15%) Oracle Receivables
11 11 (0.15%) SAP EHS
Cloud Services
1 1,237 (17.02%) Azure
2 1,214 (16.70%) AWS
3 330 (4.54%) GitHub
4 321 (4.42%) GCP
5 316 (4.35%) Microsoft 365
6 268 (3.69%) Azure DevOps
7 263 (3.62%) Power Platform
8 210 (2.89%) Serverless
9 186 (2.56%) Entra ID
10 165 (2.27%) GitHub Actions
11 163 (2.24%) Amazon S3
12 139 (1.91%) OpenShift
13 127 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
14 106 (1.46%) SaaS
15 103 (1.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 100 (1.38%) AWS CloudFormation
17 97 (1.33%) Amazon EC2
18 96 (1.32%) IaaS
19 90 (1.24%) PaaS
20 85 (1.17%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 382 (5.26%) Firewall
2 243 (3.34%) DNS
3 171 (2.35%) Network Security
4 170 (2.34%) VPN
5 167 (2.30%) WAN
6 124 (1.71%) TCP/IP
7 118 (1.62%) LAN
8 107 (1.47%) BGP
9 98 (1.35%) DHCP
10 86 (1.18%) Wireless
11 76 (1.05%) VLAN
12 71 (0.98%) Wi-Fi
13 65 (0.89%) SSL
14 61 (0.84%) OSPF
15 58 (0.80%) IPsec
16 57 (0.78%) MPLS
17 51 (0.70%) SAN
18 44 (0.61%) Skype
19 41 (0.56%) Cisco ISE
20 35 (0.48%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 194 (2.67%) PostgreSQL
2 181 (2.49%) Power BI
3 89 (1.22%) Data Warehouse
4 86 (1.18%) Metadata
5 83 (1.14%) MongoDB
5 83 (1.14%) SQL Server
6 81 (1.11%) NoSQL
7 77 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
8 75 (1.03%) Oracle Database
9 64 (0.88%) Relational Database
10 60 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
11 44 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
11 44 (0.61%) Pentaho
12 42 (0.58%) Big Data
13 41 (0.56%) SAS Enterprise Guide
14 38 (0.52%) Amazon Athena
14 38 (0.52%) Data Lake
15 37 (0.51%) Amazon Redshift
16 35 (0.48%) MySQL
17 33 (0.45%) Redis
Development Applications
1 470 (6.47%) JIRA
2 383 (5.27%) Git
3 344 (4.73%) Jenkins
4 279 (3.84%) GitLab
5 83 (1.14%) Selenium
6 64 (0.88%) Postman
7 58 (0.80%) JUnit
8 53 (0.73%) Cypress.io
9 48 (0.66%) Oracle APEX
10 44 (0.61%) Artifactory
11 43 (0.59%) Bitbucket
12 40 (0.55%) SonarQube
13 35 (0.48%) Maven
14 34 (0.47%) Cucumber
15 33 (0.45%) Mockito
16 25 (0.34%) REST Assured
17 24 (0.33%) MSI
18 23 (0.32%) Metasploit
19 22 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
20 21 (0.29%) Burp Suite
General
1 1,909 (26.27%) Public Sector
2 1,869 (25.72%) Social Skills
3 649 (8.93%) Analytical Skills
4 512 (7.04%) Finance
5 294 (4.05%) Military
6 199 (2.74%) Telecoms
7 196 (2.70%) Manufacturing
8 190 (2.61%) Documentation Skills
9 136 (1.87%) Electronics
9 136 (1.87%) Marketing
10 119 (1.64%) Aerospace
11 112 (1.54%) Organisational Skills
12 106 (1.46%) Legal
13 92 (1.27%) Presentation Skills
14 88 (1.21%) Banking
15 79 (1.09%) Influencing Skills
16 69 (0.95%) Law
17 46 (0.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 34 (0.47%) Police
19 29 (0.40%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 999 (13.75%) Architect
2 690 (9.49%) Developer
3 607 (8.35%) Senior
4 518 (7.13%) Analyst
5 504 (6.93%) Consultant
6 422 (5.81%) Lead
7 355 (4.88%) DevOps Engineer
8 239 (3.29%) Support Engineer
9 226 (3.11%) Network Engineer
10 224 (3.08%) Data Engineer
11 178 (2.45%) Solutions Architect
12 168 (2.31%) Software Engineer
13 163 (2.24%) Technical Architect
14 160 (2.20%) Business Analyst
15 138 (1.90%) SAP Consultant
16 134 (1.84%) Tester
17 133 (1.83%) AWS Engineer
18 131 (1.80%) IT Engineer
19 128 (1.76%) Project Manager
20 126 (1.73%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 304 (4.18%) REST
2 178 (2.45%) Node.js
3 170 (2.34%) React
4 157 (2.16%) Kafka
5 139 (1.91%) SOAP
6 135 (1.86%) JSON
7 130 (1.79%) Spring
8 110 (1.51%) LDAP
9 106 (1.46%) HTML
10 101 (1.39%) Spring Boot
11 96 (1.32%) .NET
12 92 (1.27%) XML
13 91 (1.25%) CSS
14 87 (1.20%) RESTful
15 85 (1.17%) AngularJS
15 85 (1.17%) OAuth
15 85 (1.17%) Oracle Fusion
16 82 (1.13%) Web Services
17 77 (1.06%) PySpark
18 60 (0.83%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 234 (3.22%) Data Centre
2 198 (2.72%) Cloud Native
3 197 (2.71%) Product Ownership
4 195 (2.68%) PKI
5 186 (2.56%) Onboarding
6 145 (2.00%) Management Information System
7 115 (1.58%) Security Posture
8 104 (1.43%) Enterprise Software
9 102 (1.40%) Self-Motivation
10 90 (1.24%) Legacy Systems
11 77 (1.06%) Cyber Threat
12 71 (0.98%) Driving Licence
13 69 (0.95%) Replication
14 59 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
15 56 (0.77%) Hybrid Cloud
16 51 (0.70%) Public Cloud
17 50 (0.69%) Analytical Mindset
18 48 (0.66%) Private Cloud
19 46 (0.63%) Distributed Systems
20 45 (0.62%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 809 (11.13%) Windows
2 561 (7.72%) Linux
3 195 (2.68%) Windows Server
4 180 (2.48%) Windows 10
5 102 (1.40%) Unix
6 97 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 95 (1.31%) Android
8 71 (0.98%) Mac OS
9 42 (0.58%) VMS
10 40 (0.55%) Ubuntu
11 30 (0.41%) Apple iOS
12 22 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
13 21 (0.29%) CentOS
14 20 (0.28%) Windows 7
15 18 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
16 16 (0.22%) Amazon Linux
16 16 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
17 15 (0.21%) Mac OS X
18 14 (0.19%) Windows Server 2003
19 12 (0.17%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,389 (19.11%) Agile
2 1,132 (15.58%) DevOps
3 1,001 (13.77%) CI/CD
4 910 (12.52%) Problem-Solving
5 681 (9.37%) Migration
6 605 (8.32%) Stakeholder Management
7 537 (7.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 490 (6.74%) Continuous Improvement
9 480 (6.60%) ITIL
10 478 (6.58%) Cybersecurity
11 452 (6.22%) Infrastructure as Code
12 406 (5.59%) Test Automation
13 393 (5.41%) Business Intelligence
14 388 (5.34%) Containerisation
14 388 (5.34%) Service Management
15 386 (5.31%) Analytics
16 364 (5.01%) Roadmaps
17 332 (4.57%) Workflow
18 331 (4.55%) Software Engineering
19 330 (4.54%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 928 (12.77%) Python
2 572 (7.87%) SQL
3 502 (6.91%) PowerShell
4 393 (5.41%) Java
5 349 (4.80%) JavaScript
6 204 (2.81%) Bash
7 169 (2.33%) TypeScript
8 127 (1.75%) C#
9 91 (1.25%) Go
10 88 (1.21%) C++
11 70 (0.96%) PL/SQL
12 66 (0.91%) Shell Script
13 60 (0.83%) C
14 43 (0.59%) Ruby
15 42 (0.58%) Scala
16 37 (0.51%) ABAP
17 34 (0.47%) MATLAB
18 33 (0.45%) Ada
19 32 (0.44%) Bicep
20 31 (0.43%) Perl
Qualifications
1 5,593 (76.95%) SC Cleared
2 1,214 (16.70%) DV Cleared
3 373 (5.13%) Degree
4 226 (3.11%) BPSS Clearance
5 136 (1.87%) CISSP
6 118 (1.62%) Cisco Certification
7 117 (1.61%) Azure Certification
8 112 (1.54%) Microsoft Certification
9 101 (1.39%) CCNP
10 90 (1.24%) AWS Certification
11 83 (1.14%) CISM
12 61 (0.84%) Computer Science Degree
13 57 (0.78%) ITIL Certification
14 53 (0.73%) CCNA
15 48 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
16 47 (0.65%) CEH
17 40 (0.55%) CHECK Team Member
18 39 (0.54%) GIAC
18 39 (0.54%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 36 (0.50%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 225 (3.10%) QA
2 219 (3.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 212 (2.92%) NIST
4 170 (2.34%) NCSC
5 166 (2.28%) Data Quality
6 151 (2.08%) GDPR
7 123 (1.69%) SLA
8 120 (1.65%) Accessibility
9 77 (1.06%) PMO
10 50 (0.69%) JSP 440
11 45 (0.62%) GRC
12 43 (0.59%) WCAG
13 32 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
14 31 (0.43%) PCI DSS
15 29 (0.40%) Def Stans
16 26 (0.36%) COBIT
16 26 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 20000
16 26 (0.36%) NIST 800
17 18 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 17 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 548 (7.54%) Docker
2 465 (6.40%) Active Directory
3 208 (2.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 68 (0.94%) VMware NSX
5 59 (0.81%) vSphere
6 50 (0.69%) VMware ESXi
7 49 (0.67%) Virtual Machines
8 41 (0.56%) Hyper-V
9 30 (0.41%) Firmware
10 27 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
11 15 (0.21%) BitLocker
12 14 (0.19%) Postfix
13 13 (0.18%) DFS Replication
14 12 (0.17%) Dovecot
15 10 (0.14%) Terminal Services
16 9 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
16 9 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 9 (0.12%) Squid
17 8 (0.11%) ISA Server
17 8 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 687 (9.45%) Kubernetes
2 622 (8.56%) Terraform
3 280 (3.85%) Ansible
4 171 (2.35%) Grafana
5 143 (1.97%) Prometheus
6 105 (1.44%) SCCM
7 94 (1.29%) Single Sign-On
8 87 (1.20%) vCenter Server
9 68 (0.94%) Microsoft Intune
10 62 (0.85%) Argo
11 60 (0.83%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 35 (0.48%) Kibana
12 35 (0.48%) Packer
12 35 (0.48%) Podman
13 33 (0.45%) OPNET
14 30 (0.41%) vRealize
15 25 (0.34%) Nessus
15 25 (0.34%) Puppet
16 24 (0.33%) Nmap
16 24 (0.33%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 920 (12.66%) Microsoft
2 430 (5.92%) SAP
3 407 (5.60%) Oracle
4 398 (5.48%) Cisco
5 377 (5.19%) VMware
6 310 (4.27%) ServiceNow
7 192 (2.64%) Splunk
8 154 (2.12%) Red Hat
9 130 (1.79%) Juniper
10 128 (1.76%) Palo Alto
11 110 (1.51%) Google
12 109 (1.50%) CyberArk
13 106 (1.46%) Atlassian
14 101 (1.39%) Databricks
15 97 (1.33%) Dell
16 93 (1.28%) Salesforce
17 82 (1.13%) HP
18 73 (1.00%) Dynatrace
19 69 (0.95%) CheckPoint
19 69 (0.95%) Remedy