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

6 months to
21 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 0 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,210 4,497 6,885
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.34% 18.57% 18.91%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.99% 59.02% 61.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,405 2,980 4,535
10th Percentile £375 £349 £353
25th Percentile £450 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.28% -2.32% -
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 751 276 484
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.66 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £43.25 £56.15
Median % change year-on-year +27.17% -22.97% -6.43%
75th Percentile £74.00 £67.25 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £78.53 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £37.25 £55.80
% change year-on-year +47.65% -33.24% -7.00%

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 13,159 7,619 11,185
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.92% 31.46% 30.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,834 4,839 6,942
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 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £530
% change year-on-year - -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 964 437 971
10th Percentile £17.00 £18.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.33 £22.50 £18.00
Median hourly rate £47.52 £37.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +28.43% -7.50% -24.42%
75th Percentile £72.51 £67.50 £62.05
90th Percentile £85.25 £81.15 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £47.80 £35.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +36.56% -12.50% -27.26%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 3,277 £525 - 451
South East +1 2,217 £550 - 521
South West 0 1,300 £538 -6.52% 355
North of England 0 911 £500 - 281
Midlands +3 862 £472 -10.10% 141
West Midlands +2 733 £472 -10.10% 104
North West -1 516 £500 - 167
East of England +2 371 £550 +10.00% 137
Yorkshire -10 229 £480 -4.00% 57
North East +1 203 £478 -2.55% 59
East Midlands -4 122 £450 -5.26% 37
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
1 342 (3.71%) Confluence
2 205 (2.23%) SharePoint
3 121 (1.31%) Microsoft Exchange
4 116 (1.26%) SAS
5 80 (0.87%) Apache Spark
6 66 (0.72%) Apache
7 57 (0.62%) Apache Airflow
8 33 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 30 (0.33%) nginx
10 25 (0.27%) Jupyter
11 17 (0.18%) IIS
11 17 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
12 16 (0.17%) Tomcat
13 14 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
13 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
14 13 (0.14%) Skype for Business
15 12 (0.13%) CMS
16 8 (0.087%) Apache Superset
16 8 (0.087%) ArcGIS
16 8 (0.087%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 176 (1.91%) Microsoft Excel
2 175 (1.90%) Microsoft Office
3 97 (1.05%) Microsoft Project
4 83 (0.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 36 (0.39%) MS Visio
6 18 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.13%) Simulink
8 7 (0.076%) AutoCAD
9 6 (0.065%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.054%) Notepad++
10 5 (0.054%) Revit
11 4 (0.043%) Siemens NX
12 3 (0.033%) Chatbot
12 3 (0.033%) Windchill
13 2 (0.022%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.022%) CATIA
13 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.022%) Lectora
13 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.022%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 86 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
2 47 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
3 37 (0.40%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 31 (0.34%) Teamcenter
5 27 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
6 26 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
7 15 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.15%) Maximo
9 13 (0.14%) Findur
9 13 (0.14%) iTrent
9 13 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
10 12 (0.13%) SAP PSCD
10 12 (0.13%) Temenos T24
11 10 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.098%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.098%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.098%) SAP HCM
13 8 (0.087%) SAP HR
13 8 (0.087%) SAP MM
13 8 (0.087%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,556 (16.89%) Azure
2 1,492 (16.20%) AWS
3 377 (4.09%) GitHub
4 367 (3.98%) GCP
5 342 (3.71%) Azure DevOps
6 336 (3.65%) Power Platform
7 232 (2.52%) Serverless
8 229 (2.49%) Entra ID
9 226 (2.45%) Microsoft 365
10 216 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
11 188 (2.04%) Amazon S3
12 160 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
13 136 (1.48%) Amazon EC2
14 131 (1.42%) PaaS
15 124 (1.35%) OpenShift
16 116 (1.26%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 113 (1.23%) OCI
18 105 (1.14%) SaaS
18 105 (1.14%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 101 (1.10%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 428 (4.65%) Firewall
2 266 (2.89%) DNS
3 217 (2.36%) WAN
4 214 (2.32%) Network Security
5 197 (2.14%) LAN
6 156 (1.69%) VPN
7 144 (1.56%) BGP
8 141 (1.53%) DHCP
9 124 (1.35%) OSPF
10 106 (1.15%) Wi-Fi
11 102 (1.11%) VLAN
12 101 (1.10%) TCP/IP
13 83 (0.90%) Wireless
14 61 (0.66%) MPLS
15 55 (0.60%) SAN
15 55 (0.60%) VXLAN
16 54 (0.59%) Structured Cabling
17 50 (0.54%) IPsec
18 49 (0.53%) SD-WAN
19 48 (0.52%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 256 (2.78%) Power BI
2 216 (2.35%) PostgreSQL
3 199 (2.16%) Data Warehouse
4 188 (2.04%) SQL Server
5 117 (1.27%) Metadata
6 113 (1.23%) Oracle Database
7 103 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
8 88 (0.96%) MongoDB
9 83 (0.90%) Data Lake
10 82 (0.89%) NoSQL
11 80 (0.87%) Relational Database
12 76 (0.83%) Pentaho
13 70 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
14 66 (0.72%) Oracle Reports
15 63 (0.68%) Tableau
16 61 (0.66%) Azure SQL Database
16 61 (0.66%) MySQL
17 59 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
18 51 (0.55%) Amazon Athena
19 44 (0.48%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 534 (5.80%) JIRA
2 404 (4.39%) Git
3 356 (3.87%) Jenkins
4 350 (3.80%) GitLab
5 97 (1.05%) Selenium
6 71 (0.77%) Postman
7 69 (0.75%) JUnit
8 61 (0.66%) SonarQube
9 55 (0.60%) Rational DOORS
10 47 (0.51%) Artifactory
11 45 (0.49%) JMeter
12 43 (0.47%) Bitbucket
13 39 (0.42%) Maven
14 38 (0.41%) Cucumber
14 38 (0.41%) Mockito
15 33 (0.36%) Visual Studio
16 32 (0.35%) REST Assured
17 30 (0.33%) Cypress.io
18 28 (0.30%) Zephyr
19 25 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,975 (21.44%) Public Sector
2 1,906 (20.69%) Social Skills
3 662 (7.19%) Analytical Skills
4 637 (6.92%) Finance
5 327 (3.55%) Military
6 258 (2.80%) Documentation Skills
7 231 (2.51%) Aerospace
8 142 (1.54%) Legal
9 112 (1.22%) Banking
9 112 (1.22%) Telecoms
10 106 (1.15%) Influencing Skills
11 102 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
12 94 (1.02%) Manufacturing
13 86 (0.93%) Law
14 80 (0.87%) Presentation Skills
15 55 (0.60%) Marketing
16 54 (0.59%) Police
17 53 (0.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 43 (0.47%) Electronics
19 41 (0.45%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,362 (14.79%) Architect
2 847 (9.20%) Developer
3 777 (8.44%) Senior
4 657 (7.13%) Lead
5 647 (7.02%) Analyst
6 446 (4.84%) Data Engineer
7 423 (4.59%) DevOps Engineer
8 409 (4.44%) Consultant
9 281 (3.05%) Network Engineer
10 276 (3.00%) Software Engineer
11 266 (2.89%) Technical Architect
12 263 (2.86%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 236 (2.56%) Business Analyst
14 208 (2.26%) Project Manager
14 208 (2.26%) Solutions Architect
15 194 (2.11%) Azure Engineer
16 176 (1.91%) Administrator
16 176 (1.91%) Designer
17 174 (1.89%) Security Architect
18 171 (1.86%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 294 (3.19%) REST
2 217 (2.36%) Spring
3 177 (1.92%) Spring Boot
4 165 (1.79%) React
5 164 (1.78%) Node.js
6 161 (1.75%) Kafka
7 152 (1.65%) .NET
8 141 (1.53%) LDAP
9 138 (1.50%) SOAP
10 135 (1.47%) RESTful
11 112 (1.22%) AngularJS
12 108 (1.17%) JSON
13 100 (1.09%) Web Services
14 96 (1.04%) PySpark
15 87 (0.94%) OAuth
15 87 (0.94%) Oracle Fusion
16 81 (0.88%) HTML
17 76 (0.83%) XML
18 69 (0.75%) Elastic Stack
19 68 (0.74%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 311 (3.38%) Cloud Native
2 300 (3.26%) Product Ownership
3 273 (2.96%) Data Centre
4 258 (2.80%) Onboarding
5 144 (1.56%) Management Information System
6 141 (1.53%) PKI
7 125 (1.36%) Legacy Systems
8 124 (1.35%) Security Posture
9 112 (1.22%) Replication
10 111 (1.21%) Distributed Systems
10 111 (1.21%) Enterprise Software
11 90 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
12 82 (0.89%) Clustering
13 80 (0.87%) Data Structures
14 75 (0.81%) Hybrid Cloud
15 71 (0.77%) Public Cloud
16 70 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
17 67 (0.73%) Operational Technology
18 63 (0.68%) Virtual Team
19 62 (0.67%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 749 (8.13%) Windows
2 635 (6.89%) Linux
3 225 (2.44%) Windows Server
4 164 (1.78%) Unix
5 110 (1.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 84 (0.91%) Android
7 78 (0.85%) Windows 10
8 51 (0.55%) Apple iOS
9 42 (0.46%) Solaris
10 38 (0.41%) Mac OS
11 34 (0.37%) Ubuntu
12 25 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 24 (0.26%) AIX
14 23 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
15 22 (0.24%) CentOS
16 21 (0.23%) VMS
17 14 (0.15%) Windows 7
18 12 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
19 9 (0.098%) Windows Server 2003
19 9 (0.098%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,785 (19.38%) Agile
2 1,412 (15.33%) DevOps
3 1,222 (13.27%) CI/CD
4 985 (10.69%) Problem-Solving
5 898 (9.75%) Stakeholder Management
6 816 (8.86%) Continuous Improvement
7 755 (8.20%) Migration
8 674 (7.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 617 (6.70%) Infrastructure as Code
10 593 (6.44%) ITIL
11 565 (6.13%) Cybersecurity
12 526 (5.71%) Test Automation
13 521 (5.66%) Software Engineering
14 515 (5.59%) Analytics
15 509 (5.53%) Roadmaps
16 496 (5.39%) Containerisation
17 474 (5.15%) Data Modelling
18 441 (4.79%) Decision-Making
19 412 (4.47%) Scrum
20 400 (4.34%) AI
Programming Languages
1 966 (10.49%) Python
2 836 (9.08%) SQL
3 560 (6.08%) Java
4 489 (5.31%) PowerShell
5 277 (3.01%) JavaScript
6 194 (2.11%) C#
7 179 (1.94%) Bash
8 138 (1.50%) TypeScript
9 93 (1.01%) PL/SQL
10 88 (0.96%) C++
11 83 (0.90%) Shell Script
12 64 (0.69%) Go
13 63 (0.68%) Scala
14 55 (0.60%) C
15 51 (0.55%) Bicep
15 51 (0.55%) Ruby
16 42 (0.46%) Apex Code
17 40 (0.43%) Ada
18 36 (0.39%) MATLAB
18 36 (0.39%) R
Qualifications
1 6,918 (75.11%) SC Cleared
2 1,766 (19.17%) DV Cleared
3 404 (4.39%) Degree
4 256 (2.78%) BPSS Clearance
5 185 (2.01%) Cisco Certification
6 151 (1.64%) CISSP
7 119 (1.29%) Azure Certification
8 117 (1.27%) CCNP
9 99 (1.07%) CISM
10 92 (1.00%) AWS Certification
11 86 (0.93%) Microsoft Certification
12 79 (0.86%) CCNA
13 70 (0.76%) PMP
14 61 (0.66%) Computer Science Degree
14 61 (0.66%) PMI Certification
15 56 (0.61%) ISTQB
15 56 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
16 50 (0.54%) TOGAF Certification
16 50 (0.54%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 49 (0.53%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 342 (3.71%) QA
2 275 (2.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 275 (2.99%) NIST
3 264 (2.87%) Data Quality
4 183 (1.99%) NCSC
5 163 (1.77%) Accessibility
6 154 (1.67%) PMO
7 152 (1.65%) GDPR
8 95 (1.03%) SLA
9 62 (0.67%) GRC
10 58 (0.63%) JSP 440
11 54 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials
12 37 (0.40%) NIST 800
13 36 (0.39%) WCAG
14 30 (0.33%) COBIT
15 29 (0.31%) Def Stans
15 29 (0.31%) PCI DSS
16 25 (0.27%) RMADS
17 21 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 19 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 565 (6.13%) Docker
2 422 (4.58%) Active Directory
3 262 (2.84%) VMware Infrastructure
4 98 (1.06%) VMware ESXi
5 88 (0.96%) VMware NSX
6 74 (0.80%) vSphere
7 72 (0.78%) Hyper-V
8 65 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
9 34 (0.37%) Firmware
10 27 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
11 24 (0.26%) Virtual Desktop
12 20 (0.22%) NFS
13 19 (0.21%) BitLocker
13 19 (0.21%) vCloud
14 17 (0.18%) Postfix
15 16 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 15 (0.16%) Squid
17 8 (0.087%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.065%) Corosync
18 6 (0.065%) KVM
Systems Management
1 725 (7.87%) Kubernetes
2 697 (7.57%) Terraform
3 326 (3.54%) Ansible
4 231 (2.51%) Grafana
5 188 (2.04%) Prometheus
6 103 (1.12%) vCenter Server
7 82 (0.89%) Single Sign-On
8 69 (0.75%) SCCM
9 55 (0.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 50 (0.54%) Microsoft Intune
11 47 (0.51%) FortiGate
12 46 (0.50%) Argo
13 40 (0.43%) Puppet
14 38 (0.41%) Podman
15 32 (0.35%) Oracle RMAN
16 31 (0.34%) SCOM
17 30 (0.33%) Progress Chef
18 29 (0.31%) Nagios
19 22 (0.24%) Packer
19 22 (0.24%) WSUS
Vendors
1 933 (10.13%) Microsoft
2 574 (6.23%) Oracle
3 457 (4.96%) VMware
4 371 (4.03%) ServiceNow
5 331 (3.59%) Cisco
6 313 (3.40%) SAP
7 215 (2.33%) Splunk
8 180 (1.95%) Databricks
9 152 (1.65%) Red Hat
10 148 (1.61%) Google
11 121 (1.31%) Palo Alto
12 113 (1.23%) Talend
13 110 (1.19%) Salesforce
14 109 (1.18%) IBM
15 102 (1.11%) Juniper
16 90 (0.98%) CyberArk
17 84 (0.91%) F5
18 82 (0.89%) Informatica
19 79 (0.86%) Atlassian
19 79 (0.86%) Fortinet