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 20 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,221 5,206 6,029
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.07% 18.74% 18.30%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.86% 59.40% 61.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,164 3,418 3,893
10th Percentile £400 £350 £356
25th Percentile £463 £450 £455
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 £548 £537 £550
% change year-on-year +2.05% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 794 520 358
10th Percentile £20.50 £18.50 £20.30
25th Percentile £35.00 £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 £78.65 £40.16 £72.50
90th Percentile £91.22 £72.50 £83.99
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +158.45% -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 14,844 8,764 9,784
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.05% 31.55% 29.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,933 5,581 6,019
10th Percentile £350 £303 £325
25th Percentile £443 £415 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £528 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year +0.48% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £715 £738
UK median daily rate £527 £525 £525
% change year-on-year +0.29% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,219 691 570
10th Percentile £18.24 £17.96 £17.46
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £27.00
Median hourly rate £52.50 £25.15 £54.00
Median % change year-on-year +108.75% -53.43% -
75th Percentile £74.00 £45.00 £69.94
90th Percentile £89.08 £73.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £47.54 £25.15 £49.00
% change year-on-year +89.03% -48.67% -9.26%

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 20 September 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 20 September 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 20 September 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 3,606 £550 +2.33% 1,643
South East +1 2,306 £564 +4.98% 952
South West 0 1,417 £550 - 814
North of England +3 1,267 £516 -0.72% 684
Midlands 0 948 £481 -6.60% 336
West Midlands +1 810 £481 -7.23% 223
North West +1 740 £530 -3.64% 416
East of England 0 404 £550 - 463
Yorkshire +2 297 £492 +0.41% 132
North East 0 251 £475 -1.04% 140
East Midlands -1 131 £450 -2.70% 113
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
1 328 (3.21%) Confluence
2 251 (2.46%) SharePoint
3 153 (1.50%) SAS
4 119 (1.16%) Microsoft Exchange
5 99 (0.97%) Apache Airflow
6 87 (0.85%) Apache Spark
7 84 (0.82%) Apache
8 34 (0.33%) nginx
9 31 (0.30%) Jupyter
10 26 (0.25%) WebLogic
11 23 (0.23%) Oracle Application Server
12 22 (0.22%) Skype for Business
13 21 (0.21%) CMS
14 17 (0.17%) Tomcat
15 16 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
16 12 (0.12%) IIS
16 12 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
17 11 (0.11%) JBoss
17 11 (0.11%) NetWeaver
18 10 (0.098%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 185 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 137 (1.34%) Microsoft Office
3 90 (0.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 90 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 29 (0.28%) MS Visio
5 26 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
6 19 (0.19%) AutoCAD
7 18 (0.18%) Revit
8 17 (0.17%) SOLIDWORKS
9 14 (0.14%) Windchill
10 9 (0.088%) Simulink
11 8 (0.078%) Adobe XD
11 8 (0.078%) Chatbot
12 7 (0.068%) Sketch
13 5 (0.049%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 5 (0.049%) Notepad++
14 4 (0.039%) Trello
15 3 (0.029%) OrCAD
16 2 (0.020%) Houdini
16 2 (0.020%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 132 (1.29%) SAP S/4HANA
2 78 (0.76%) Remedy ITSM
3 52 (0.51%) Oracle ERP
4 35 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
5 30 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 30 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 26 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
7 25 (0.24%) SAP PSCD
8 24 (0.23%) Oracle Payroll
9 17 (0.17%) SAP FI
9 17 (0.17%) SAP HR
10 14 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
10 14 (0.14%) Primavera
11 13 (0.13%) SAP CO
12 12 (0.12%) iTrent
12 12 (0.12%) Maximo
12 12 (0.12%) NetSuite
12 12 (0.12%) SAP GRC
12 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
13 11 (0.11%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 1,843 (18.03%) Azure
2 1,675 (16.39%) AWS
3 439 (4.30%) Azure DevOps
4 429 (4.20%) Power Platform
5 401 (3.92%) GitHub
6 381 (3.73%) GCP
7 300 (2.94%) Microsoft 365
8 278 (2.72%) Entra ID
9 276 (2.70%) GitHub Actions
10 235 (2.30%) Serverless
11 202 (1.98%) Amazon S3
12 168 (1.64%) AWS Lambda
13 156 (1.53%) OCI
14 147 (1.44%) SaaS
15 142 (1.39%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 141 (1.38%) OpenShift
17 131 (1.28%) Amazon EKS
18 122 (1.19%) Amazon EC2
19 100 (0.98%) PowerApps
20 99 (0.97%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 409 (4.00%) Firewall
2 347 (3.39%) DNS
3 215 (2.10%) Network Security
4 186 (1.82%) WAN
5 173 (1.69%) VPN
6 171 (1.67%) DHCP
7 144 (1.41%) LAN
8 125 (1.22%) TCP/IP
9 122 (1.19%) BGP
10 115 (1.13%) Wi-Fi
11 100 (0.98%) VLAN
12 83 (0.81%) OSPF
13 81 (0.79%) Wireless
14 61 (0.60%) VSAN
15 59 (0.58%) IPsec
15 59 (0.58%) SSL
16 57 (0.56%) MPLS
17 55 (0.54%) SD-WAN
18 54 (0.53%) SAN
19 43 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 305 (2.98%) Power BI
2 241 (2.36%) SQL Server
3 236 (2.31%) Data Warehouse
3 236 (2.31%) PostgreSQL
4 177 (1.73%) Metadata
5 164 (1.60%) Oracle Database
6 118 (1.15%) Relational Database
7 116 (1.13%) Data Lake
8 94 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
9 92 (0.90%) MongoDB
10 91 (0.89%) MySQL
11 88 (0.86%) NoSQL
12 77 (0.75%) Oracle Reports
13 67 (0.66%) Pentaho
14 60 (0.59%) Elasticsearch
15 58 (0.57%) Amazon Athena
16 51 (0.50%) Tableau
17 46 (0.45%) Amazon Aurora
18 44 (0.43%) Big Data
19 43 (0.42%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 539 (5.27%) JIRA
2 491 (4.80%) Git
3 435 (4.26%) GitLab
4 404 (3.95%) Jenkins
5 118 (1.15%) Selenium
6 77 (0.75%) SonarQube
7 71 (0.69%) Postman
8 66 (0.65%) JUnit
9 61 (0.60%) Maven
10 52 (0.51%) Cucumber
11 51 (0.50%) JMeter
12 41 (0.40%) Gradle
12 41 (0.40%) Mockito
13 36 (0.35%) Zephyr
14 34 (0.33%) Cypress.io
14 34 (0.33%) Visual Studio
15 33 (0.32%) REST Assured
16 32 (0.31%) Artifactory
17 31 (0.30%) Gatling
18 30 (0.29%) MSI
General
1 2,303 (22.53%) Social Skills
2 2,000 (19.57%) Public Sector
3 832 (8.14%) Analytical Skills
4 678 (6.63%) Finance
5 402 (3.93%) Military
6 307 (3.00%) Aerospace
7 252 (2.47%) Documentation Skills
8 202 (1.98%) Influencing Skills
9 167 (1.63%) Organisational Skills
10 148 (1.45%) Telecoms
11 136 (1.33%) Manufacturing
12 135 (1.32%) Legal
13 129 (1.26%) Banking
14 120 (1.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 115 (1.13%) Law
16 97 (0.95%) Police
17 63 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
18 47 (0.46%) Marketing
19 44 (0.43%) Local Government
19 44 (0.43%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,599 (15.64%) Architect
2 975 (9.54%) Developer
3 952 (9.31%) Senior
4 933 (9.13%) Lead
5 582 (5.69%) Consultant
6 556 (5.44%) Analyst
7 432 (4.23%) Data Engineer
8 416 (4.07%) DevOps Engineer
9 380 (3.72%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 268 (2.62%) Technical Architect
11 255 (2.49%) Software Engineer
11 255 (2.49%) Solutions Architect
12 250 (2.45%) Data Architect
13 241 (2.36%) Security Architect
14 226 (2.21%) Network Engineer
15 206 (2.02%) Administrator
16 198 (1.94%) Cloud Engineer
17 188 (1.84%) Java Developer
18 186 (1.82%) Designer
19 181 (1.77%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 874 (8.55%) Terraform
2 395 (3.86%) REST
3 213 (2.08%) Spring
4 207 (2.03%) Kafka
5 193 (1.89%) Spring Boot
6 165 (1.61%) .NET
6 165 (1.61%) React
7 163 (1.59%) RESTful
8 157 (1.54%) SOAP
9 134 (1.31%) Node.js
10 128 (1.25%) JSON
11 113 (1.11%) OAuth
12 110 (1.08%) HTML
13 104 (1.02%) AngularJS
14 102 (1.00%) XML
15 100 (0.98%) Web Services
16 89 (0.87%) Middleware
17 87 (0.85%) CSS
18 82 (0.80%) LDAP
19 81 (0.79%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 455 (4.45%) Cloud Native
2 390 (3.82%) Onboarding
3 311 (3.04%) Product Ownership
4 260 (2.54%) Data Centre
5 181 (1.77%) Management Information System
6 161 (1.58%) Legacy Systems
6 161 (1.58%) PKI
7 146 (1.43%) Enterprise Software
8 139 (1.36%) CMDB
9 117 (1.14%) Hybrid Cloud
10 114 (1.12%) Distributed Systems
11 108 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
12 107 (1.05%) Cyber Threat
13 103 (1.01%) Replication
14 101 (0.99%) Operational Technology
15 82 (0.80%) Security Operations Centre
15 82 (0.80%) Security Posture
16 81 (0.79%) Clustering
16 81 (0.79%) Public Cloud
17 78 (0.76%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 907 (8.87%) Windows
2 722 (7.06%) Linux
3 350 (3.42%) Windows Server
4 211 (2.06%) Unix
5 153 (1.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 133 (1.30%) Windows 10
7 74 (0.72%) Solaris
8 65 (0.64%) Android
9 45 (0.44%) CentOS
9 45 (0.44%) Mac OS
10 37 (0.36%) Ubuntu
11 36 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 29 (0.28%) AIX
13 28 (0.27%) Apple iOS
14 24 (0.23%) Windows 7
15 21 (0.21%) VMS
15 21 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
16 16 (0.16%) Rocky
16 16 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
17 13 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,135 (20.89%) Agile
2 1,528 (14.95%) DevOps
3 1,495 (14.63%) CI/CD
4 1,422 (13.91%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,259 (12.32%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,103 (10.79%) Problem-Solving
7 1,005 (9.83%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 884 (8.65%) Infrastructure as Code
9 832 (8.14%) Migration
10 775 (7.58%) Cybersecurity
11 721 (7.05%) ITIL
12 650 (6.36%) AI
12 650 (6.36%) Test Automation
13 649 (6.35%) Technical Leadership
14 648 (6.34%) Roadmaps
15 633 (6.19%) Containerisation
16 622 (6.09%) Analytics
17 615 (6.02%) Decision-Making
18 600 (5.87%) Software Engineering
19 550 (5.38%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,160 (11.35%) Python
2 941 (9.21%) SQL
3 652 (6.38%) Java
4 538 (5.26%) PowerShell
5 345 (3.38%) JavaScript
6 306 (2.99%) Bash
7 189 (1.85%) C#
8 174 (1.70%) TypeScript
9 134 (1.31%) PL/SQL
10 110 (1.08%) Bicep
11 69 (0.68%) Shell Script
12 63 (0.62%) C++
13 52 (0.51%) C
13 52 (0.51%) Go
14 49 (0.48%) Groovy
15 45 (0.44%) Scala
16 43 (0.42%) Kotlin
17 30 (0.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 26 (0.25%) Apex Code
18 26 (0.25%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 7,643 (74.78%) SC Cleared
2 2,125 (20.79%) DV Cleared
3 430 (4.21%) Degree
4 419 (4.10%) BPSS Clearance
5 200 (1.96%) CISSP
6 175 (1.71%) Azure Certification
7 161 (1.58%) Cisco Certification
8 155 (1.52%) Microsoft Certification
9 140 (1.37%) AWS Certification
10 119 (1.16%) CISM
11 100 (0.98%) PMI Certification
12 91 (0.89%) PMP
13 86 (0.84%) ISTQB
14 81 (0.79%) CCNP
15 63 (0.62%) Computer Science Degree
16 60 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 55 (0.54%) CCNA
18 44 (0.43%) TOGAF Certification
19 43 (0.42%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 42 (0.41%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 461 (4.51%) QA
2 327 (3.20%) Data Quality
3 303 (2.96%) NIST
4 287 (2.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 251 (2.46%) NCSC
6 233 (2.28%) Accessibility
7 216 (2.11%) PMO
8 147 (1.44%) SLA
9 146 (1.43%) GDPR
10 138 (1.35%) GRC
11 70 (0.68%) WCAG
12 55 (0.54%) JSP 440
13 44 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
14 42 (0.41%) NIST 800
15 37 (0.36%) Def Stans
16 25 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 21 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
17 21 (0.21%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 19 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
19 18 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 683 (6.68%) Docker
2 570 (5.58%) Active Directory
3 397 (3.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 144 (1.41%) VMware ESXi
5 133 (1.30%) VMware NSX
6 125 (1.22%) vSphere
7 124 (1.21%) Hyper-V
8 85 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
9 42 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
10 41 (0.40%) Firmware
11 37 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
12 26 (0.25%) vCloud
13 23 (0.23%) BitLocker
14 16 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
15 15 (0.15%) NFS
16 11 (0.11%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 11 (0.11%) Postfix
17 10 (0.098%) KVM
18 9 (0.088%) Embedded Firmware
18 9 (0.088%) Squid
Systems Management
1 825 (8.07%) Kubernetes
2 405 (3.96%) Ansible
3 226 (2.21%) Grafana
4 170 (1.66%) Prometheus
5 132 (1.29%) vCenter Server
6 127 (1.24%) SCCM
7 94 (0.92%) SCOM
8 87 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
9 62 (0.61%) Argo
10 50 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
11 46 (0.45%) Puppet
12 41 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
13 38 (0.37%) Kibana
14 36 (0.35%) Data Guard
15 31 (0.30%) VxRail
16 27 (0.26%) Control-M
16 27 (0.26%) Istio
16 27 (0.26%) Progress Chef
16 27 (0.26%) WSUS
17 26 (0.25%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,357 (13.28%) Microsoft
2 813 (7.95%) Oracle
3 558 (5.46%) VMware
4 473 (4.63%) ServiceNow
5 406 (3.97%) SAP
6 274 (2.68%) Cisco
7 233 (2.28%) Google
8 199 (1.95%) Splunk
9 176 (1.72%) Databricks
10 131 (1.28%) Red Hat
11 114 (1.12%) Salesforce
12 113 (1.11%) Palo Alto
13 97 (0.95%) IBM
14 95 (0.93%) Informatica
15 90 (0.88%) Talend
16 88 (0.86%) CyberArk
16 88 (0.86%) Remedy
17 86 (0.84%) Dynatrace
18 76 (0.74%) SolarWinds
19 72 (0.70%) Citrix