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 22 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 3 3 4
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +5
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 6,448 5,708 7,098
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.09% 18.26% 17.95%
As % of the Qualifications category 62.95% 61.05% 60.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,250 3,602 4,449
10th Percentile £325 £350 £370
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.64% - -2.22%
75th Percentile £628 £638 £650
90th Percentile £716 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £528 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 676 302 478
10th Percentile £18.22 £21.25 £19.99
25th Percentile £18.97 £30.19 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% - -
75th Percentile £54.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £52.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year -52.10% -12.50% -

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 10,243 9,349 11,779
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.50% 29.90% 29.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,643 5,707 7,485
10th Percentile £305 £313 £308
25th Percentile £415 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £529 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.76% -3.82% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £720 £734 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 903 444 716
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.17 £17.72
25th Percentile £19.00 £26.85 £26.77
Median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £53.67
Median % change year-on-year -49.70% -6.83% +19.26%
75th Percentile £51.84 £67.81 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £42.50 £53.85
% change year-on-year -40.82% -21.08% +19.67%

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 22 November 2025.

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 22 November 2025.

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 22 November 2025. 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 +1 2,131 £550 +1.85% 690
South East -1 1,223 £513 -7.24% 750
South West 0 1,108 £550 -4.35% 525
North of England -2 762 £515 +8.42% 198
Midlands +1 691 £519 -9.83% 191
West Midlands 0 535 £525 -8.70% 152
North West +1 503 £535 +8.52% 140
East of England +2 293 £525 +2.44% 248
Yorkshire -11 163 £500 +6.38% 30
East Midlands +1 141 £438 -13.37% 38
North East 0 103 £475 +4.63% 30
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
1 255 (3.95%) Confluence
2 173 (2.68%) SharePoint
3 116 (1.80%) Microsoft Exchange
4 96 (1.49%) SAS
5 91 (1.41%) Apache
6 52 (0.81%) nginx
7 49 (0.76%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.60%) Skype for Business
9 36 (0.56%) Apache Spark
10 25 (0.39%) IIS
11 23 (0.36%) CMS
12 17 (0.26%) WebLogic
13 15 (0.23%) SharePoint Server
14 11 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2010
14 11 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2013
14 11 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 10 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2003
15 10 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2007
15 10 (0.16%) Office Communications Server
16 8 (0.12%) Documentum
Applications
1 202 (3.13%) Microsoft Office
2 143 (2.22%) Microsoft Excel
3 75 (1.16%) Microsoft Project
4 34 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 34 (0.53%) MS Visio
5 21 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
6 15 (0.23%) Siemens NX
6 15 (0.23%) Simulink
7 11 (0.17%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 7 (0.11%) Sketch
9 6 (0.093%) Adobe Illustrator
9 6 (0.093%) Photoshop
9 6 (0.093%) Windchill
10 5 (0.078%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.078%) FrameMaker
10 5 (0.078%) Oracle Smart View
10 5 (0.078%) PTC Creo
10 5 (0.078%) Stateflow
10 5 (0.078%) Trello
11 3 (0.047%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 143 (2.22%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (0.53%) Remedy ITSM
3 27 (0.42%) SAP WM
4 26 (0.40%) SAP EWM
5 23 (0.36%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 22 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
7 21 (0.33%) Teamcenter
8 20 (0.31%) Maximo
9 18 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
10 17 (0.26%) Primavera
11 16 (0.25%) SAP HCM
11 16 (0.25%) SAP MM
12 12 (0.19%) Oracle General Ledger
12 12 (0.19%) SAP PS
12 12 (0.19%) SAP QM
12 12 (0.19%) SAP VC
13 11 (0.17%) SAP EHS
14 10 (0.16%) SAP HR
14 10 (0.16%) SAP Payroll
15 8 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
Cloud Services
1 1,078 (16.72%) AWS
2 1,045 (16.21%) Azure
3 313 (4.85%) Microsoft 365
4 307 (4.76%) GitHub
5 247 (3.83%) Power Platform
6 232 (3.60%) Azure DevOps
7 231 (3.58%) GCP
8 187 (2.90%) Serverless
9 171 (2.65%) Amazon S3
10 148 (2.30%) GitHub Actions
11 147 (2.28%) Entra ID
12 137 (2.12%) SaaS
13 122 (1.89%) OpenShift
14 113 (1.75%) Amazon EC2
15 108 (1.67%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 104 (1.61%) AWS CloudFormation
17 103 (1.60%) AWS Lambda
18 81 (1.26%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 78 (1.21%) Power Automate
20 75 (1.16%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 344 (5.33%) Firewall
2 252 (3.91%) DNS
3 171 (2.65%) VPN
4 142 (2.20%) Network Security
5 124 (1.92%) WAN
6 105 (1.63%) TCP/IP
7 95 (1.47%) BGP
8 92 (1.43%) DHCP
9 89 (1.38%) LAN
10 86 (1.33%) Wireless
11 71 (1.10%) SSL
12 62 (0.96%) SAN
13 61 (0.95%) Wi-Fi
14 59 (0.92%) MPLS
15 56 (0.87%) VLAN
16 54 (0.84%) IPsec
17 48 (0.74%) Cisco ISE
18 45 (0.70%) HTTP
19 43 (0.67%) SMTP
20 41 (0.64%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 198 (3.07%) PostgreSQL
2 168 (2.61%) Power BI
3 85 (1.32%) Amazon RDS
4 80 (1.24%) MongoDB
4 80 (1.24%) SQL Server
5 74 (1.15%) Oracle Database
6 71 (1.10%) Relational Database
7 70 (1.09%) Data Warehouse
8 65 (1.01%) Metadata
8 65 (1.01%) NoSQL
9 43 (0.67%) Big Data
10 41 (0.64%) Pentaho
11 40 (0.62%) Azure SQL Database
11 40 (0.62%) Elasticsearch
12 36 (0.56%) SAS Enterprise Guide
13 35 (0.54%) Data Lake
14 34 (0.53%) MySQL
15 31 (0.48%) Amazon Redshift
15 31 (0.48%) Redis
16 30 (0.47%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 462 (7.17%) JIRA
2 368 (5.71%) Git
3 355 (5.51%) Jenkins
4 247 (3.83%) GitLab
5 70 (1.09%) Selenium
6 60 (0.93%) SonarQube
7 57 (0.88%) JUnit
8 54 (0.84%) Cypress.io
9 48 (0.74%) Bitbucket
9 48 (0.74%) Postman
10 45 (0.70%) Oracle APEX
11 34 (0.53%) Artifactory
11 34 (0.53%) Maven
12 32 (0.50%) Mockito
13 30 (0.47%) Cucumber
14 23 (0.36%) Rational DOORS
14 23 (0.36%) Vagrant
15 21 (0.33%) Metasploit
15 21 (0.33%) REST Assured
15 21 (0.33%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,785 (27.68%) Public Sector
2 1,700 (26.36%) Social Skills
3 594 (9.21%) Analytical Skills
4 468 (7.26%) Finance
5 251 (3.89%) Military
6 209 (3.24%) Telecoms
7 193 (2.99%) Manufacturing
8 157 (2.43%) Documentation Skills
9 147 (2.28%) Electronics
10 134 (2.08%) Marketing
11 123 (1.91%) Aerospace
12 99 (1.54%) Legal
13 95 (1.47%) Organisational Skills
14 87 (1.35%) Banking
15 78 (1.21%) Influencing Skills
16 75 (1.16%) Presentation Skills
17 68 (1.05%) Law
18 41 (0.64%) Police
19 40 (0.62%) Aviation
19 40 (0.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 845 (13.10%) Architect
2 636 (9.86%) Developer
3 533 (8.27%) Consultant
4 498 (7.72%) Senior
5 424 (6.58%) Analyst
6 396 (6.14%) Lead
7 268 (4.16%) DevOps Engineer
8 237 (3.68%) Support Engineer
9 195 (3.02%) Network Engineer
10 158 (2.45%) Solutions Architect
11 155 (2.40%) Data Engineer
12 143 (2.22%) SAP Consultant
13 136 (2.11%) AWS Engineer
14 125 (1.94%) IT Engineer
14 125 (1.94%) Platform Engineer
15 120 (1.86%) Technical Architect
16 116 (1.80%) Administrator
16 116 (1.80%) Software Engineer
17 112 (1.74%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 110 (1.71%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 253 (3.92%) REST
2 164 (2.54%) React
3 158 (2.45%) Node.js
4 153 (2.37%) Kafka
5 128 (1.99%) JSON
6 121 (1.88%) SOAP
7 106 (1.64%) HTML
7 106 (1.64%) Spring
8 101 (1.57%) XML
9 95 (1.47%) AngularJS
10 92 (1.43%) Web Services
11 91 (1.41%) RESTful
12 89 (1.38%) CSS
13 87 (1.35%) .NET
14 85 (1.32%) Spring Boot
15 71 (1.10%) OAuth
16 68 (1.05%) LDAP
17 55 (0.85%) SAML
18 54 (0.84%) Elastic Stack
19 50 (0.78%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 199 (3.09%) Data Centre
2 192 (2.98%) Onboarding
3 183 (2.84%) PKI
4 168 (2.61%) Cloud Native
5 149 (2.31%) Management Information System
6 136 (2.11%) Product Ownership
7 104 (1.61%) Self-Motivation
8 78 (1.21%) Legacy Systems
9 75 (1.16%) Driving Licence
10 69 (1.07%) Replication
11 66 (1.02%) Cyber Threat
12 65 (1.01%) Security Operations Centre
13 61 (0.95%) Security Posture
14 60 (0.93%) Hybrid Cloud
15 58 (0.90%) Enterprise Software
16 56 (0.87%) CMDB
17 54 (0.84%) Private Cloud
18 50 (0.78%) Analytical Mindset
19 44 (0.68%) Public Cloud
20 43 (0.67%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 755 (11.71%) Windows
2 508 (7.88%) Linux
3 185 (2.87%) Windows Server
4 174 (2.70%) Windows 10
5 99 (1.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 90 (1.40%) Android
7 86 (1.33%) Mac OS
8 82 (1.27%) Unix
9 47 (0.73%) VMS
10 33 (0.51%) Ubuntu
11 30 (0.47%) Windows Server 2019
12 29 (0.45%) Apple iOS
13 28 (0.43%) Amazon Linux
14 24 (0.37%) CentOS
15 23 (0.36%) Windows 7
16 19 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
16 19 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
17 18 (0.28%) Windows Server 2003
18 15 (0.23%) Mac OS X
19 9 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,298 (20.13%) Agile
2 990 (15.35%) DevOps
3 887 (13.76%) CI/CD
4 807 (12.52%) Problem-Solving
5 637 (9.88%) Migration
6 507 (7.86%) Stakeholder Management
7 448 (6.95%) Cybersecurity
8 444 (6.89%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 434 (6.73%) ITIL
10 418 (6.48%) Infrastructure as Code
11 408 (6.33%) Continuous Improvement
12 389 (6.03%) Service Management
13 381 (5.91%) Business Intelligence
14 353 (5.47%) Test Automation
15 345 (5.35%) Containerisation
16 341 (5.29%) Workflow
17 338 (5.24%) Analytics
18 325 (5.04%) Scrum
19 301 (4.67%) Roadmaps
20 292 (4.53%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 847 (13.14%) Python
2 505 (7.83%) SQL
3 429 (6.65%) PowerShell
4 407 (6.31%) Java
5 333 (5.16%) JavaScript
6 226 (3.50%) Bash
7 162 (2.51%) TypeScript
8 121 (1.88%) C#
9 91 (1.41%) C++
10 78 (1.21%) Go
11 68 (1.05%) PL/SQL
12 63 (0.98%) C
13 59 (0.92%) Shell Script
14 43 (0.67%) Perl
15 36 (0.56%) ABAP
16 31 (0.48%) Groovy
17 29 (0.45%) Bicep
17 29 (0.45%) Ruby
18 28 (0.43%) Ada
19 27 (0.42%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 4,940 (76.61%) SC Cleared
2 1,102 (17.09%) DV Cleared
3 320 (4.96%) Degree
4 263 (4.08%) BPSS Clearance
5 127 (1.97%) CISSP
6 125 (1.94%) Microsoft Certification
7 111 (1.72%) Azure Certification
8 108 (1.67%) Cisco Certification
9 97 (1.50%) AWS Certification
10 81 (1.26%) CCNP
11 72 (1.12%) CISM
12 57 (0.88%) ITIL Certification
13 53 (0.82%) Computer Science Degree
14 41 (0.64%) CCNA
15 38 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 36 (0.56%) CEH
16 36 (0.56%) CHECK Team Member
17 32 (0.50%) OSCP
18 31 (0.48%) TOGAF Certification
19 30 (0.47%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 204 (3.16%) QA
2 194 (3.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 192 (2.98%) NIST
4 158 (2.45%) NCSC
5 129 (2.00%) SLA
6 123 (1.91%) GDPR
7 113 (1.75%) Data Quality
8 106 (1.64%) Accessibility
9 52 (0.81%) PMO
10 50 (0.78%) JSP 440
11 39 (0.60%) NIST 800
12 38 (0.59%) WCAG
13 32 (0.50%) GRC
14 31 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 29 (0.45%) Def Stans
16 27 (0.42%) COBIT
16 27 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
17 24 (0.37%) RMADS
18 22 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 15 (0.23%) HIPAA
System Software
1 523 (8.11%) Docker
2 397 (6.16%) Active Directory
3 208 (3.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 69 (1.07%) VMware ESXi
5 66 (1.02%) vSphere
6 63 (0.98%) VMware NSX
7 49 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
8 41 (0.64%) Firmware
9 33 (0.51%) Hyper-V
10 26 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
11 21 (0.33%) DFS Replication
12 20 (0.31%) Postfix
13 16 (0.25%) NFS
14 15 (0.23%) Dovecot
15 11 (0.17%) Squid
16 10 (0.16%) BitLocker
16 10 (0.16%) Brightmail
16 10 (0.16%) ISA Server
17 9 (0.14%) Terminal Services
18 7 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 613 (9.51%) Kubernetes
2 581 (9.01%) Terraform
3 277 (4.30%) Ansible
4 162 (2.51%) Grafana
5 134 (2.08%) Prometheus
6 107 (1.66%) SCCM
7 90 (1.40%) Single Sign-On
8 76 (1.18%) Microsoft Intune
9 61 (0.95%) vCenter Server
10 55 (0.85%) Argo
11 50 (0.78%) Packer
12 49 (0.76%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 34 (0.53%) Jamf Pro
13 34 (0.53%) Kibana
14 26 (0.40%) FortiGate
14 26 (0.40%) SCOM
15 23 (0.36%) Consul
15 23 (0.36%) Nessus
16 22 (0.34%) Nmap
16 22 (0.34%) vRealize
Vendors
1 871 (13.51%) Microsoft
2 434 (6.73%) SAP
3 414 (6.42%) Cisco
4 348 (5.40%) VMware
5 340 (5.27%) Oracle
6 307 (4.76%) ServiceNow
7 177 (2.75%) Splunk
8 155 (2.40%) Juniper
9 130 (2.02%) Red Hat
10 107 (1.66%) Google
11 95 (1.47%) HP
12 94 (1.46%) Atlassian
13 91 (1.41%) Dell
13 91 (1.41%) Palo Alto
14 82 (1.27%) Salesforce
15 75 (1.16%) IBM
16 73 (1.13%) SolarWinds
17 71 (1.10%) F5
18 70 (1.09%) Apple
19 64 (0.99%) CyberArk