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 15 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 3 2
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,103 4,556 7,099
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.22% 18.68% 19.14%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.97% 59.49% 61.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,292 3,047 4,614
10th Percentile £363 £329 £351
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -1.79%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £534 £550
% change year-on-year -1.59% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 775 255 461
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.87
25th Percentile £21.25 £24.66 £21.46
Median hourly rate £54.00 £57.50 £52.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.09% +10.58% -13.33%
75th Percentile £73.46 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.32 £79.48 £83.41
UK median hourly rate £53.00 £54.99 £52.50
% change year-on-year -3.62% +4.74% -13.51%

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 13,009 7,659 11,607
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.19% 31.40% 31.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,718 4,898 7,167
10th Percentile £341 £300 £300
25th Percentile £425 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £745
UK median daily rate £518 £525 £537
% change year-on-year -1.43% -2.23% -2.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 995 424 932
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.15 £13.88
25th Percentile £20.82 £24.24 £17.72
Median hourly rate £45.46 £50.00 £38.45
Median % change year-on-year -9.08% +30.03% -26.07%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.36 £82.25 £76.82
UK median hourly rate £43.69 £45.00 £38.16
% change year-on-year -2.91% +17.94% -29.34%

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 15 April 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 15 April 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 15 April 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 3,178 £525 - 445
South East +1 2,145 £532 -3.31% 512
South West 0 1,353 £538 -4.40% 325
Midlands +4 911 £485 -9.68% 149
North of England 0 856 £488 -2.47% 238
West Midlands +4 765 £485 -10.19% 104
North West -1 533 £500 - 134
East of England +2 367 £500 +47.06% 154
Yorkshire -5 199 £484 -7.86% 46
North East +1 159 £450 -6.25% 59
East Midlands -1 142 £450 -10.00% 45
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
1 358 (3.93%) Confluence
2 210 (2.31%) SharePoint
3 150 (1.65%) SAS
4 128 (1.41%) Microsoft Exchange
5 82 (0.90%) Apache Spark
6 74 (0.81%) Apache
7 55 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
8 40 (0.44%) nginx
9 34 (0.37%) WebLogic
10 21 (0.23%) Jupyter
11 17 (0.19%) Skype for Business
12 16 (0.18%) IIS
13 14 (0.15%) CMS
13 14 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
13 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
14 11 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
15 10 (0.11%) Tomcat
16 8 (0.088%) Apache Superset
16 8 (0.088%) ArcGIS
17 7 (0.077%) Oracle Application Server
Applications
1 224 (2.46%) Microsoft Office
2 192 (2.11%) Microsoft Excel
3 127 (1.40%) Microsoft Project
4 77 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 42 (0.46%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.13%) Simulink
8 5 (0.055%) Notepad++
9 4 (0.044%) Siemens NX
9 4 (0.044%) Windchill
10 2 (0.022%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.022%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.022%) CATIA
10 2 (0.022%) Chatbot
10 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.022%) Lectora
10 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
10 2 (0.022%) Sketch
11 1 (0.011%) Camtasia
11 1 (0.011%) InVision
Business Applications
1 81 (0.89%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.46%) Remedy ITSM
3 39 (0.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 29 (0.32%) Dynamics CRM
5 26 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
5 26 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 18 (0.20%) Maximo
7 13 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
7 13 (0.14%) SAP PP
7 13 (0.14%) Temenos T24
8 12 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
9 11 (0.12%) Findur
9 11 (0.12%) SAP PSCD
10 10 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
11 9 (0.099%) Integrated Workplace Management System
11 9 (0.099%) SAP HCM
12 8 (0.088%) Workday HCM
13 7 (0.077%) Primavera
13 7 (0.077%) SAP ERP
13 7 (0.077%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 1,515 (16.64%) Azure
2 1,497 (16.45%) AWS
3 380 (4.17%) GCP
4 379 (4.16%) GitHub
5 351 (3.86%) Azure DevOps
6 327 (3.59%) Power Platform
7 264 (2.90%) Serverless
8 256 (2.81%) Microsoft 365
9 222 (2.44%) Entra ID
10 204 (2.24%) Amazon S3
11 199 (2.19%) GitHub Actions
12 179 (1.97%) AWS Lambda
13 153 (1.68%) OpenShift
14 133 (1.46%) PaaS
15 126 (1.38%) IaaS
16 125 (1.37%) Amazon EC2
17 121 (1.33%) AWS CloudFormation
18 107 (1.18%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 106 (1.16%) Azure Data Factory
20 98 (1.08%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 432 (4.75%) Firewall
2 257 (2.82%) DNS
3 213 (2.34%) Network Security
4 212 (2.33%) WAN
5 191 (2.10%) LAN
6 168 (1.85%) VPN
7 144 (1.58%) BGP
8 133 (1.46%) DHCP
9 116 (1.27%) OSPF
10 112 (1.23%) TCP/IP
11 98 (1.08%) VLAN
12 84 (0.92%) Wireless
13 74 (0.81%) Wi-Fi
14 61 (0.67%) MPLS
15 57 (0.63%) SAN
16 47 (0.52%) Cisco ISE
16 47 (0.52%) IPsec
17 43 (0.47%) SD-WAN
17 43 (0.47%) Structured Cabling
17 43 (0.47%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 251 (2.76%) Power BI
2 230 (2.53%) PostgreSQL
3 186 (2.04%) Data Warehouse
4 177 (1.94%) SQL Server
5 129 (1.42%) Metadata
6 106 (1.16%) Oracle Database
7 103 (1.13%) Amazon RDS
8 97 (1.07%) NoSQL
9 84 (0.92%) MongoDB
9 84 (0.92%) Relational Database
10 76 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
11 71 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
11 71 (0.78%) Pentaho
12 70 (0.77%) MySQL
13 67 (0.74%) Data Lake
13 67 (0.74%) Tableau
14 65 (0.71%) Amazon Redshift
15 56 (0.62%) Oracle Reports
16 51 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
17 46 (0.51%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 566 (6.22%) JIRA
2 463 (5.09%) Git
3 363 (3.99%) Jenkins
4 317 (3.48%) GitLab
5 109 (1.20%) Selenium
6 83 (0.91%) JUnit
7 79 (0.87%) Postman
8 55 (0.60%) SonarQube
9 52 (0.57%) Rational DOORS
10 50 (0.55%) Bitbucket
11 43 (0.47%) Maven
12 42 (0.46%) Artifactory
13 41 (0.45%) Cypress.io
13 41 (0.45%) Oracle APEX
14 37 (0.41%) Cucumber
14 37 (0.41%) Mockito
15 34 (0.37%) JMeter
16 28 (0.31%) REST Assured
17 27 (0.30%) Visual Studio
18 23 (0.25%) Zephyr
General
1 2,101 (23.08%) Public Sector
2 2,050 (22.52%) Social Skills
3 764 (8.39%) Analytical Skills
4 654 (7.18%) Finance
5 323 (3.55%) Military
6 258 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
7 219 (2.41%) Aerospace
8 153 (1.68%) Legal
9 144 (1.58%) Telecoms
10 139 (1.53%) Manufacturing
11 121 (1.33%) Influencing Skills
12 113 (1.24%) Banking
13 101 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
14 96 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
15 88 (0.97%) Marketing
16 82 (0.90%) Law
17 80 (0.88%) Electronics
18 58 (0.64%) Police
19 48 (0.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 32 (0.35%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,371 (15.06%) Architect
2 864 (9.49%) Developer
3 788 (8.66%) Senior
4 657 (7.22%) Analyst
5 589 (6.47%) Lead
6 435 (4.78%) Consultant
7 401 (4.41%) Data Engineer
8 370 (4.06%) DevOps Engineer
9 272 (2.99%) Network Engineer
10 269 (2.96%) Software Engineer
11 263 (2.89%) Technical Architect
12 244 (2.68%) Business Analyst
13 203 (2.23%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 202 (2.22%) Solutions Architect
15 199 (2.19%) Project Manager
16 192 (2.11%) Azure Engineer
17 172 (1.89%) Delivery Manager
18 164 (1.80%) Security Architect
19 160 (1.76%) Support Engineer
20 156 (1.71%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 338 (3.71%) REST
2 205 (2.25%) Spring
3 176 (1.93%) Node.js
4 162 (1.78%) Kafka
5 161 (1.77%) React
6 157 (1.72%) .NET
6 157 (1.72%) Spring Boot
7 146 (1.60%) JSON
8 139 (1.53%) SOAP
9 134 (1.47%) LDAP
10 127 (1.40%) RESTful
11 112 (1.23%) AngularJS
12 107 (1.18%) Web Services
13 106 (1.16%) PySpark
14 92 (1.01%) OAuth
15 87 (0.96%) Oracle Fusion
16 86 (0.94%) XML
17 83 (0.91%) HTML
18 74 (0.81%) SAML
19 69 (0.76%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 320 (3.52%) Product Ownership
2 283 (3.11%) Cloud Native
3 280 (3.08%) Data Centre
4 236 (2.59%) Onboarding
5 185 (2.03%) PKI
6 154 (1.69%) Management Information System
7 125 (1.37%) Self-Motivation
8 121 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
8 121 (1.33%) Security Posture
9 118 (1.30%) Legacy Systems
10 111 (1.22%) Replication
11 103 (1.13%) Distributed Systems
12 82 (0.90%) Public Cloud
13 77 (0.85%) Data Structures
14 71 (0.78%) Hybrid Cloud
15 69 (0.76%) Clustering
16 65 (0.71%) Security Operations Centre
17 59 (0.65%) Virtual Team
18 57 (0.63%) Private Cloud
19 56 (0.62%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 793 (8.71%) Windows
2 652 (7.16%) Linux
3 234 (2.57%) Windows Server
4 130 (1.43%) Unix
5 114 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 112 (1.23%) Windows 10
7 106 (1.16%) Android
8 51 (0.56%) Mac OS
9 49 (0.54%) Apple iOS
10 34 (0.37%) Ubuntu
11 29 (0.32%) VMS
12 22 (0.24%) Solaris
13 21 (0.23%) CentOS
14 20 (0.22%) AIX
15 19 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
16 17 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
17 16 (0.18%) Windows 7
18 12 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
19 8 (0.088%) Embedded Linux
19 8 (0.088%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,854 (20.37%) Agile
2 1,375 (15.10%) DevOps
3 1,207 (13.26%) CI/CD
4 1,059 (11.63%) Problem-Solving
5 865 (9.50%) Stakeholder Management
6 794 (8.72%) Migration
7 778 (8.55%) Continuous Improvement
8 688 (7.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 601 (6.60%) ITIL
10 569 (6.25%) Infrastructure as Code
11 542 (5.95%) Analytics
12 539 (5.92%) Cybersecurity
13 532 (5.84%) Test Automation
14 504 (5.54%) Roadmaps
15 480 (5.27%) Software Engineering
16 477 (5.24%) Containerisation
17 460 (5.05%) Scrum
18 452 (4.97%) Data Modelling
19 438 (4.81%) Service Management
20 409 (4.49%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 1,031 (11.33%) Python
2 840 (9.23%) SQL
3 549 (6.03%) PowerShell
4 530 (5.82%) Java
5 326 (3.58%) JavaScript
6 198 (2.18%) C#
7 195 (2.14%) Bash
8 147 (1.61%) TypeScript
9 105 (1.15%) PL/SQL
10 94 (1.03%) C++
10 94 (1.03%) Shell Script
11 67 (0.74%) Go
12 59 (0.65%) C
13 58 (0.64%) Scala
14 57 (0.63%) Ruby
15 51 (0.56%) Bicep
16 43 (0.47%) Ada
17 41 (0.45%) Apex Code
17 41 (0.45%) R
18 38 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 6,856 (75.32%) SC Cleared
2 1,696 (18.63%) DV Cleared
3 425 (4.67%) Degree
4 270 (2.97%) BPSS Clearance
5 177 (1.94%) Cisco Certification
6 155 (1.70%) CISSP
7 132 (1.45%) Azure Certification
8 120 (1.32%) CCNP
9 109 (1.20%) AWS Certification
10 104 (1.14%) Microsoft Certification
11 97 (1.07%) CISM
12 75 (0.82%) CCNA
13 68 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
14 66 (0.73%) PMP
15 65 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
16 60 (0.66%) Computer Science Degree
17 59 (0.65%) PMI Certification
18 50 (0.55%) ISTQB
19 49 (0.54%) GIAC
20 45 (0.49%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 333 (3.66%) QA
2 274 (3.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 267 (2.93%) NIST
4 263 (2.89%) Data Quality
5 188 (2.07%) NCSC
6 154 (1.69%) GDPR
7 140 (1.54%) Accessibility
8 134 (1.47%) PMO
9 102 (1.12%) SLA
10 64 (0.70%) JSP 440
11 63 (0.69%) GRC
12 41 (0.45%) NIST 800
13 40 (0.44%) COBIT
14 39 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
15 34 (0.37%) PCI DSS
16 33 (0.36%) WCAG
17 28 (0.31%) Def Stans
18 25 (0.27%) RMADS
19 24 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
20 17 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 614 (6.75%) Docker
2 445 (4.89%) Active Directory
3 259 (2.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 88 (0.97%) VMware NSX
5 76 (0.83%) VMware ESXi
6 69 (0.76%) vSphere
7 66 (0.73%) Hyper-V
8 51 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
9 33 (0.36%) Firmware
10 23 (0.25%) BitLocker
10 23 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
11 20 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
12 17 (0.19%) NFS
12 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 15 (0.16%) Postfix
14 12 (0.13%) vCloud
15 10 (0.11%) Squid
16 8 (0.088%) Microsoft App-V
17 5 (0.055%) KVM
17 5 (0.055%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 777 (8.54%) Kubernetes
2 714 (7.84%) Terraform
3 297 (3.26%) Ansible
4 217 (2.38%) Grafana
5 178 (1.96%) Prometheus
6 97 (1.07%) Single Sign-On
7 93 (1.02%) vCenter Server
8 79 (0.87%) SCCM
9 76 (0.83%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 57 (0.63%) Microsoft Intune
11 55 (0.60%) Argo
12 52 (0.57%) FortiGate
13 37 (0.41%) Packer
14 36 (0.40%) Podman
14 36 (0.40%) Puppet
15 34 (0.37%) Progress Chef
16 30 (0.33%) OPNET
17 26 (0.29%) Kibana
18 25 (0.27%) Oracle RMAN
19 24 (0.26%) Nagios
Vendors
1 972 (10.68%) Microsoft
2 562 (6.17%) Oracle
3 459 (5.04%) VMware
4 386 (4.24%) Cisco
5 376 (4.13%) ServiceNow
6 340 (3.74%) SAP
7 206 (2.26%) Splunk
8 177 (1.94%) Databricks
9 174 (1.91%) Red Hat
10 138 (1.52%) Google
11 129 (1.42%) Salesforce
12 125 (1.37%) Atlassian
13 118 (1.30%) Juniper
14 115 (1.26%) IBM
15 111 (1.22%) Palo Alto
16 100 (1.10%) Talend
17 96 (1.05%) CyberArk
18 85 (0.93%) Remedy
19 78 (0.86%) Citrix
20 76 (0.83%) Dell