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 4 October 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,249 5,343 5,896
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.12% 19.03% 18.19%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.91% 59.71% 61.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,162 3,471 3,732
10th Percentile £400 £340 £356
25th Percentile £463 £450 £452
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.33% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £550 £537 £550
% change year-on-year +2.42% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 814 556 342
10th Percentile £20.50 £18.36 £21.26
25th Percentile £30.63 £18.87 £37.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +158.45% -59.17% +2.67%
75th Percentile £77.50 £36.31 £72.50
90th Percentile £91.31 £71.00 £84.86
UK median hourly rate £63.48 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +152.41% -58.08% -

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 14,874 8,948 9,646
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.11% 31.87% 29.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,921 5,677 5,862
10th Percentile £350 £300 £313
25th Percentile £447 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.43% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £734
UK median daily rate £530 £525 £525
% change year-on-year +0.95% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,272 739 533
10th Percentile £17.63 £17.87 £18.54
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £30.00
Median hourly rate £50.74 £25.15 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +101.76% -52.10% -
75th Percentile £73.46 £43.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £72.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £45.20 £25.15 £48.18
% change year-on-year +79.72% -47.80% -10.08%

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 4 October 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 4 October 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 4 October 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 3,656 £550 +2.33% 1,717
South East +1 2,262 £564 +7.48% 1,131
South West 0 1,383 £550 - 884
North of England +2 1,310 £515 -1.90% 808
Midlands 0 927 £475 -8.08% 466
North West +1 793 £530 -3.64% 454
West Midlands 0 784 £475 -8.43% 291
East of England 0 436 £552 +0.36% 483
Yorkshire +1 295 £492 - 147
North East 0 242 £463 -15.91% 209
East Midlands -1 135 £500 +9.59% 174
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
1 329 (3.21%) Confluence
2 242 (2.36%) SharePoint
3 136 (1.33%) SAS
4 110 (1.07%) Microsoft Exchange
5 93 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
6 90 (0.88%) Apache Spark
7 88 (0.86%) Apache
8 33 (0.32%) CMS
8 33 (0.32%) nginx
9 31 (0.30%) Jupyter
10 29 (0.28%) WebLogic
11 22 (0.21%) Skype for Business
12 20 (0.20%) Tomcat
13 19 (0.19%) Oracle Application Server
14 16 (0.16%) IIS
14 16 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
15 11 (0.11%) JBoss
15 11 (0.11%) NetWeaver
15 11 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 9 (0.088%) Documentum
Applications
1 185 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 131 (1.28%) Microsoft Office
3 93 (0.91%) Microsoft Project
4 88 (0.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 27 (0.26%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
7 21 (0.20%) AutoCAD
8 19 (0.19%) Revit
8 19 (0.19%) Windchill
9 18 (0.18%) SOLIDWORKS
10 9 (0.088%) Chatbot
10 9 (0.088%) Simulink
11 7 (0.068%) Adobe XD
12 6 (0.059%) Sketch
13 5 (0.049%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 4 (0.039%) OrCAD
14 4 (0.039%) Trello
15 2 (0.020%) Gliffy
15 2 (0.020%) Houdini
15 2 (0.020%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 131 (1.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 78 (0.76%) Remedy ITSM
3 54 (0.53%) Oracle ERP
4 41 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
5 36 (0.35%) Teamcenter
6 29 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 27 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
8 26 (0.25%) SAP PSCD
9 25 (0.24%) Oracle Payroll
10 21 (0.20%) SAP FI
11 18 (0.18%) SAP HR
12 16 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
13 14 (0.14%) SAP CO
14 13 (0.13%) Maximo
14 13 (0.13%) NetSuite
14 13 (0.13%) Primavera
15 12 (0.12%) SAP BRIM
15 12 (0.12%) SAP GRC
15 12 (0.12%) SAP Payroll
15 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,818 (17.74%) Azure
2 1,659 (16.19%) AWS
3 440 (4.29%) Azure DevOps
4 434 (4.23%) Power Platform
5 409 (3.99%) GitHub
6 388 (3.79%) GCP
7 298 (2.91%) Microsoft 365
8 290 (2.83%) GitHub Actions
9 283 (2.76%) Entra ID
10 229 (2.23%) Serverless
11 206 (2.01%) Amazon S3
12 165 (1.61%) AWS Lambda
13 155 (1.51%) OCI
14 144 (1.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 144 (1.41%) Amazon EKS
15 143 (1.40%) SaaS
16 142 (1.39%) OpenShift
17 121 (1.18%) Amazon EC2
18 108 (1.05%) PowerApps
19 102 (1.00%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 396 (3.86%) Firewall
2 339 (3.31%) DNS
3 220 (2.15%) Network Security
4 170 (1.66%) WAN
5 164 (1.60%) DHCP
5 164 (1.60%) VPN
6 134 (1.31%) LAN
7 124 (1.21%) TCP/IP
8 118 (1.15%) BGP
9 112 (1.09%) Wi-Fi
10 87 (0.85%) VLAN
11 77 (0.75%) OSPF
12 76 (0.74%) Wireless
13 59 (0.58%) SAN
13 59 (0.58%) SSL
13 59 (0.58%) VSAN
14 58 (0.57%) MPLS
15 56 (0.55%) IPsec
16 48 (0.47%) SD-WAN
17 43 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 304 (2.97%) Power BI
2 241 (2.35%) SQL Server
3 238 (2.32%) PostgreSQL
4 218 (2.13%) Data Warehouse
5 179 (1.75%) Metadata
6 161 (1.57%) Oracle Database
7 115 (1.12%) Data Lake
7 115 (1.12%) Relational Database
8 99 (0.97%) MongoDB
9 94 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
10 93 (0.91%) MySQL
11 86 (0.84%) NoSQL
12 70 (0.68%) Oracle Reports
13 65 (0.63%) Pentaho
14 58 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
15 55 (0.54%) Amazon Athena
16 49 (0.48%) Big Data
17 48 (0.47%) Amazon Aurora
18 43 (0.42%) Tableau
19 37 (0.36%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 527 (5.14%) JIRA
2 483 (4.71%) Git
3 446 (4.35%) GitLab
4 412 (4.02%) Jenkins
5 130 (1.27%) Selenium
6 74 (0.72%) Postman
7 71 (0.69%) SonarQube
8 67 (0.65%) JUnit
8 67 (0.65%) Maven
9 66 (0.64%) Cucumber
10 61 (0.60%) JMeter
11 43 (0.42%) Gradle
12 39 (0.38%) Mockito
13 36 (0.35%) Gatling
13 36 (0.35%) REST Assured
14 35 (0.34%) Artifactory
14 35 (0.34%) Cypress.io
14 35 (0.34%) Visual Studio
15 34 (0.33%) Zephyr
16 33 (0.32%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,336 (22.79%) Social Skills
2 2,029 (19.80%) Public Sector
3 843 (8.23%) Analytical Skills
4 676 (6.60%) Finance
5 409 (3.99%) Military
6 329 (3.21%) Aerospace
7 251 (2.45%) Documentation Skills
8 212 (2.07%) Influencing Skills
9 180 (1.76%) Organisational Skills
10 157 (1.53%) Manufacturing
11 146 (1.42%) Telecoms
12 130 (1.27%) Banking
13 129 (1.26%) Legal
14 124 (1.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 111 (1.08%) Law
16 99 (0.97%) Police
17 63 (0.61%) Presentation Skills
18 46 (0.45%) Local Government
19 42 (0.41%) Marketing
20 39 (0.38%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,583 (15.45%) Architect
2 968 (9.44%) Senior
3 961 (9.38%) Developer
4 947 (9.24%) Lead
5 589 (5.75%) Analyst
6 585 (5.71%) Consultant
7 425 (4.15%) Data Engineer
8 420 (4.10%) DevOps Engineer
9 364 (3.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 263 (2.57%) Solutions Architect
11 255 (2.49%) Data Architect
12 252 (2.46%) Technical Architect
13 249 (2.43%) Security Architect
14 231 (2.25%) Software Engineer
15 220 (2.15%) Network Engineer
16 208 (2.03%) Administrator
17 192 (1.87%) Cloud Engineer
18 186 (1.81%) Designer
19 184 (1.80%) Java Developer
20 181 (1.77%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 877 (8.56%) Terraform
2 402 (3.92%) REST
3 214 (2.09%) Kafka
4 204 (1.99%) Spring
5 186 (1.81%) Spring Boot
6 160 (1.56%) SOAP
7 159 (1.55%) React
8 158 (1.54%) .NET
9 156 (1.52%) RESTful
10 126 (1.23%) Node.js
11 124 (1.21%) JSON
12 117 (1.14%) OAuth
13 114 (1.11%) HTML
14 107 (1.04%) XML
15 96 (0.94%) Middleware
16 95 (0.93%) Web Services
17 94 (0.92%) AngularJS
18 88 (0.86%) Oracle Fusion
19 87 (0.85%) CSS
20 85 (0.83%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 459 (4.48%) Cloud Native
2 403 (3.93%) Onboarding
3 323 (3.15%) Product Ownership
4 261 (2.55%) Data Centre
5 182 (1.78%) Management Information System
6 160 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
7 159 (1.55%) PKI
8 155 (1.51%) Enterprise Software
9 146 (1.42%) CMDB
10 120 (1.17%) Hybrid Cloud
11 112 (1.09%) Cyber Threat
12 108 (1.05%) Operational Technology
13 107 (1.04%) Distributed Systems
14 106 (1.03%) Replication
15 102 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
16 86 (0.84%) Security Operations Centre
17 85 (0.83%) Security Posture
18 82 (0.80%) Data Structures
19 79 (0.77%) Clustering
20 76 (0.74%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 897 (8.75%) Windows
2 705 (6.88%) Linux
3 348 (3.40%) Windows Server
4 205 (2.00%) Unix
5 146 (1.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 132 (1.29%) Windows 10
7 81 (0.79%) Solaris
8 66 (0.64%) Android
9 43 (0.42%) CentOS
9 43 (0.42%) Mac OS
10 40 (0.39%) Ubuntu
11 35 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 30 (0.29%) Apple iOS
13 27 (0.26%) AIX
14 24 (0.23%) Windows 7
15 21 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
16 20 (0.20%) VMS
17 17 (0.17%) Rocky
18 15 (0.15%) Windows Server 2016
19 10 (0.098%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,132 (20.80%) Agile
2 1,531 (14.94%) DevOps
3 1,517 (14.80%) CI/CD
4 1,473 (14.37%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,290 (12.59%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,113 (10.86%) Problem-Solving
7 1,034 (10.09%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 893 (8.71%) Infrastructure as Code
9 832 (8.12%) Migration
10 800 (7.81%) Cybersecurity
11 712 (6.95%) ITIL
12 666 (6.50%) AI
13 663 (6.47%) Test Automation
14 661 (6.45%) Roadmaps
15 659 (6.43%) Technical Leadership
16 637 (6.22%) Decision-Making
17 632 (6.17%) Containerisation
18 608 (5.93%) Analytics
19 584 (5.70%) Software Engineering
20 546 (5.33%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 1,172 (11.44%) Python
2 952 (9.29%) SQL
3 646 (6.30%) Java
4 538 (5.25%) PowerShell
5 354 (3.45%) JavaScript
6 311 (3.03%) Bash
7 181 (1.77%) C#
8 177 (1.73%) TypeScript
9 120 (1.17%) PL/SQL
10 105 (1.02%) Bicep
11 65 (0.63%) Shell Script
12 59 (0.58%) C++
13 55 (0.54%) Go
14 49 (0.48%) Groovy
15 47 (0.46%) C
15 47 (0.46%) Scala
16 44 (0.43%) Kotlin
17 31 (0.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 27 (0.26%) ABAP
18 27 (0.26%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 7,674 (74.88%) SC Cleared
2 2,116 (20.65%) DV Cleared
3 466 (4.55%) BPSS Clearance
4 447 (4.36%) Degree
5 197 (1.92%) CISSP
6 164 (1.60%) Azure Certification
7 153 (1.49%) Cisco Certification
8 152 (1.48%) Microsoft Certification
9 145 (1.41%) AWS Certification
10 116 (1.13%) CISM
11 97 (0.95%) PMI Certification
12 89 (0.87%) PMP
13 86 (0.84%) ISTQB
14 77 (0.75%) CCNP
15 64 (0.62%) Computer Science Degree
16 57 (0.56%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 52 (0.51%) CCNA
18 43 (0.42%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 41 (0.40%) TOGAF Certification
19 41 (0.40%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 467 (4.56%) QA
2 337 (3.29%) Data Quality
3 303 (2.96%) NIST
4 288 (2.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 263 (2.57%) NCSC
6 240 (2.34%) Accessibility
7 216 (2.11%) PMO
8 158 (1.54%) SLA
9 148 (1.44%) GDPR
10 143 (1.40%) GRC
11 70 (0.68%) WCAG
12 49 (0.48%) JSP 440
13 44 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
14 39 (0.38%) NIST 800
15 35 (0.34%) Def Stans
16 31 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 25 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
18 21 (0.20%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 21 (0.20%) ISO 9001
19 19 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 683 (6.66%) Docker
2 567 (5.53%) Active Directory
3 400 (3.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 138 (1.35%) VMware ESXi
5 128 (1.25%) VMware NSX
6 125 (1.22%) vSphere
7 122 (1.19%) Hyper-V
8 82 (0.80%) Virtual Machines
9 42 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
10 38 (0.37%) Firmware
11 34 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
12 24 (0.23%) BitLocker
12 24 (0.23%) vCloud
13 21 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
14 13 (0.13%) Citrix Hypervisor
14 13 (0.13%) NFS
15 11 (0.11%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 10 (0.098%) KVM
17 9 (0.088%) Squid
18 7 (0.068%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 841 (8.21%) Kubernetes
2 406 (3.96%) Ansible
3 231 (2.25%) Grafana
4 172 (1.68%) Prometheus
5 127 (1.24%) SCCM
6 125 (1.22%) vCenter Server
7 93 (0.91%) SCOM
8 87 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
9 62 (0.60%) Argo
10 47 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
11 43 (0.42%) Puppet
12 41 (0.40%) Kibana
13 34 (0.33%) Data Guard
13 34 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
14 30 (0.29%) VxRail
15 29 (0.28%) Istio
16 28 (0.27%) Control-M
17 27 (0.26%) NetBackup
18 24 (0.23%) Nagios
18 24 (0.23%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,383 (13.49%) Microsoft
2 817 (7.97%) Oracle
3 542 (5.29%) VMware
4 459 (4.48%) ServiceNow
5 394 (3.84%) SAP
6 258 (2.52%) Cisco
7 250 (2.44%) Google
8 196 (1.91%) Splunk
9 166 (1.62%) Databricks
10 120 (1.17%) Red Hat
11 113 (1.10%) Palo Alto
12 108 (1.05%) Salesforce
13 98 (0.96%) Informatica
14 93 (0.91%) IBM
15 90 (0.88%) CyberArk
16 89 (0.87%) Remedy
17 87 (0.85%) Dynatrace
18 85 (0.83%) Talend
19 71 (0.69%) SolarWinds
20 68 (0.66%) Citrix