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

6 months to
7 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,204 4,491 7,103
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.60% 18.42% 19.16%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.94% 58.88% 61.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,384 2,982 4,677
10th Percentile £363 £338 £351
25th Percentile £449 £450 £458
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 772 269 490
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.25 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £55.00 £57.30
Median % change year-on-year - -4.02% -4.50%
75th Percentile £73.81 £68.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.35 £78.96 £84.40
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £50.00 £57.30
% change year-on-year +10.00% -12.74% -4.50%

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 13,159 7,627 11,574
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.32% 31.29% 31.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,834 4,846 7,145
10th Percentile £340 £290 £308
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £623 £627 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -0.95% -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 975 440 987
10th Percentile £17.07 £18.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £22.27 £18.13
Median hourly rate £47.50 £42.75 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% +6.88% -23.81%
75th Percentile £72.50 £67.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.46 £81.35 £77.19
UK median hourly rate £47.50 £40.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +18.75% - -25.93%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 3,263 £525 - 504
South East +1 2,214 £538 -2.27% 546
South West 0 1,308 £538 -4.44% 338
Midlands +4 909 £475 -9.52% 182
North of England -1 851 £488 -2.50% 339
West Midlands +4 773 £475 -11.55% 131
North West -2 497 £489 -2.23% 183
East of England +2 386 £525 +16.67% 176
Yorkshire -2 210 £476 -9.43% 67
North East +1 177 £475 -5.00% 92
East Midlands -3 130 £450 -5.26% 51
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
1 361 (3.92%) Confluence
2 206 (2.24%) SharePoint
3 125 (1.36%) Microsoft Exchange
4 112 (1.22%) SAS
5 79 (0.86%) Apache Spark
6 70 (0.76%) Apache
7 54 (0.59%) Apache Airflow
8 32 (0.35%) nginx
8 32 (0.35%) WebLogic
9 22 (0.24%) Jupyter
10 16 (0.17%) Tomcat
11 15 (0.16%) IIS
12 14 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
12 14 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
13 13 (0.14%) Skype for Business
14 12 (0.13%) CMS
15 8 (0.087%) Apache Superset
15 8 (0.087%) ArcGIS
15 8 (0.087%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 202 (2.19%) Microsoft Office
2 186 (2.02%) Microsoft Excel
3 119 (1.29%) Microsoft Project
4 81 (0.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 38 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.28%) 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
11 4 (0.043%) Windchill
12 2 (0.022%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.022%) CATIA
12 2 (0.022%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.022%) Lectora
12 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.022%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 83 (0.90%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (0.50%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 43 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
4 27 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
4 27 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
5 26 (0.28%) Teamcenter
6 16 (0.17%) Maximo
7 14 (0.15%) SAP PSCD
8 13 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
8 13 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.14%) Temenos T24
9 12 (0.13%) Findur
9 12 (0.13%) SAP PP
10 10 (0.11%) iTrent
10 10 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
10 10 (0.11%) SAP HCM
11 9 (0.098%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 8 (0.087%) SAP BRIM
12 8 (0.087%) SAP Hybris
12 8 (0.087%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,591 (17.29%) Azure
2 1,497 (16.26%) AWS
3 378 (4.11%) GitHub
4 377 (4.10%) GCP
5 357 (3.88%) Azure DevOps
6 342 (3.72%) Power Platform
7 247 (2.68%) Serverless
8 246 (2.67%) Microsoft 365
9 225 (2.44%) Entra ID
10 214 (2.33%) GitHub Actions
11 190 (2.06%) Amazon S3
12 163 (1.77%) AWS Lambda
13 133 (1.45%) PaaS
14 126 (1.37%) Amazon EC2
14 126 (1.37%) OpenShift
15 111 (1.21%) AWS CloudFormation
16 110 (1.20%) IaaS
17 109 (1.18%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 108 (1.17%) OCI
19 103 (1.12%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 421 (4.57%) Firewall
2 264 (2.87%) DNS
3 212 (2.30%) Network Security
4 209 (2.27%) WAN
5 191 (2.08%) LAN
6 154 (1.67%) VPN
7 141 (1.53%) BGP
8 137 (1.49%) DHCP
9 121 (1.31%) OSPF
10 104 (1.13%) TCP/IP
11 97 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
12 89 (0.97%) VLAN
13 78 (0.85%) Wireless
14 61 (0.66%) MPLS
15 52 (0.56%) SAN
16 50 (0.54%) VXLAN
17 48 (0.52%) IPsec
18 47 (0.51%) SD-WAN
19 44 (0.48%) Ethernet VPN
20 43 (0.47%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 262 (2.85%) Power BI
2 214 (2.33%) PostgreSQL
3 197 (2.14%) Data Warehouse
4 182 (1.98%) SQL Server
5 118 (1.28%) Metadata
6 102 (1.11%) Oracle Database
7 101 (1.10%) Amazon RDS
8 85 (0.92%) NoSQL
9 82 (0.89%) Relational Database
10 81 (0.88%) MongoDB
11 80 (0.87%) Data Lake
12 76 (0.83%) Pentaho
13 71 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
14 67 (0.73%) Azure SQL Database
15 66 (0.72%) Oracle Reports
16 61 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
16 61 (0.66%) Tableau
17 60 (0.65%) MySQL
18 51 (0.55%) Amazon Athena
19 48 (0.52%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 571 (6.20%) JIRA
2 423 (4.60%) Git
3 352 (3.82%) Jenkins
4 334 (3.63%) GitLab
5 86 (0.93%) Selenium
6 76 (0.83%) Postman
7 71 (0.77%) JUnit
8 57 (0.62%) SonarQube
9 51 (0.55%) Rational DOORS
10 47 (0.51%) Artifactory
11 45 (0.49%) Bitbucket
12 41 (0.45%) Maven
13 40 (0.43%) JMeter
14 38 (0.41%) Mockito
15 37 (0.40%) Cucumber
16 33 (0.36%) Visual Studio
17 32 (0.35%) Cypress.io
18 28 (0.30%) Zephyr
19 24 (0.26%) REST Assured
20 23 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,993 (21.65%) Public Sector
2 1,992 (21.64%) Social Skills
3 718 (7.80%) Analytical Skills
4 654 (7.11%) Finance
5 331 (3.60%) Military
6 257 (2.79%) Documentation Skills
7 219 (2.38%) Aerospace
8 146 (1.59%) Legal
9 123 (1.34%) Telecoms
10 113 (1.23%) Influencing Skills
11 109 (1.18%) Banking
11 109 (1.18%) Manufacturing
12 104 (1.13%) Organisational Skills
13 91 (0.99%) Presentation Skills
14 86 (0.93%) Law
15 58 (0.63%) Police
16 57 (0.62%) Marketing
17 55 (0.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 51 (0.55%) Electronics
19 38 (0.41%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,359 (14.77%) Architect
2 860 (9.34%) Developer
3 781 (8.49%) Senior
4 654 (7.11%) Analyst
5 638 (6.93%) Lead
6 441 (4.79%) Data Engineer
7 412 (4.48%) Consultant
8 406 (4.41%) DevOps Engineer
9 277 (3.01%) Network Engineer
10 274 (2.98%) Software Engineer
11 257 (2.79%) Technical Architect
12 248 (2.69%) Business Analyst
13 245 (2.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 214 (2.33%) Project Manager
15 199 (2.16%) Azure Engineer
15 199 (2.16%) Solutions Architect
16 177 (1.92%) Security Architect
17 170 (1.85%) Delivery Manager
18 167 (1.81%) Administrator
18 167 (1.81%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 300 (3.26%) REST
2 218 (2.37%) Spring
3 173 (1.88%) Spring Boot
4 168 (1.83%) Kafka
5 166 (1.80%) Node.js
6 155 (1.68%) .NET
6 155 (1.68%) React
7 143 (1.55%) LDAP
8 133 (1.45%) SOAP
9 131 (1.42%) RESTful
10 121 (1.31%) JSON
11 113 (1.23%) AngularJS
12 100 (1.09%) Web Services
13 99 (1.08%) PySpark
14 89 (0.97%) Oracle Fusion
15 81 (0.88%) HTML
15 81 (0.88%) OAuth
16 77 (0.84%) XML
17 72 (0.78%) Elastic Stack
18 64 (0.70%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 318 (3.46%) Product Ownership
2 314 (3.41%) Cloud Native
3 272 (2.96%) Data Centre
4 264 (2.87%) Onboarding
5 162 (1.76%) PKI
6 138 (1.50%) Management Information System
7 123 (1.34%) Legacy Systems
8 119 (1.29%) Security Posture
9 117 (1.27%) Replication
10 114 (1.24%) Enterprise Software
11 104 (1.13%) Distributed Systems
12 98 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
13 79 (0.86%) Clustering
14 74 (0.80%) Data Structures
15 73 (0.79%) Hybrid Cloud
15 73 (0.79%) Public Cloud
16 62 (0.67%) Security Operations Centre
16 62 (0.67%) Virtual Team
17 57 (0.62%) Operational Technology
18 56 (0.61%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 788 (8.56%) Windows
2 633 (6.88%) Linux
3 239 (2.60%) Windows Server
4 155 (1.68%) Unix
5 107 (1.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 98 (1.06%) Windows 10
7 97 (1.05%) Android
8 51 (0.55%) Apple iOS
9 45 (0.49%) Mac OS
10 37 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 35 (0.38%) Solaris
12 29 (0.32%) VMS
13 25 (0.27%) AIX
14 23 (0.25%) CentOS
14 23 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
15 21 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
16 15 (0.16%) Windows 7
17 12 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
18 10 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
19 8 (0.087%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,833 (19.92%) Agile
2 1,404 (15.25%) DevOps
3 1,226 (13.32%) CI/CD
4 1,025 (11.14%) Problem-Solving
5 882 (9.58%) Stakeholder Management
6 810 (8.80%) Continuous Improvement
7 780 (8.47%) Migration
8 680 (7.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 614 (6.67%) Infrastructure as Code
10 596 (6.48%) ITIL
11 546 (5.93%) Cybersecurity
12 536 (5.82%) Test Automation
13 521 (5.66%) Analytics
14 515 (5.60%) Software Engineering
15 503 (5.47%) Containerisation
16 497 (5.40%) Roadmaps
17 455 (4.94%) Data Modelling
18 420 (4.56%) Decision-Making
18 420 (4.56%) Scrum
19 403 (4.38%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 994 (10.80%) Python
2 849 (9.22%) SQL
3 571 (6.20%) Java
4 513 (5.57%) PowerShell
5 284 (3.09%) JavaScript
6 199 (2.16%) C#
7 173 (1.88%) Bash
8 145 (1.58%) TypeScript
9 100 (1.09%) PL/SQL
10 90 (0.98%) C++
11 84 (0.91%) Shell Script
12 68 (0.74%) Go
13 64 (0.70%) Scala
14 59 (0.64%) C
15 53 (0.58%) Bicep
16 51 (0.55%) Ruby
17 41 (0.45%) Ada
17 41 (0.45%) Apex Code
18 40 (0.43%) R
19 35 (0.38%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 6,908 (75.05%) SC Cleared
2 1,754 (19.06%) DV Cleared
3 420 (4.56%) Degree
4 260 (2.82%) BPSS Clearance
5 171 (1.86%) Cisco Certification
6 155 (1.68%) CISSP
7 127 (1.38%) Azure Certification
8 109 (1.18%) CCNP
9 104 (1.13%) AWS Certification
10 101 (1.10%) CISM
11 92 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
12 71 (0.77%) PMP
13 67 (0.73%) CCNA
13 67 (0.73%) TOGAF Certification
14 61 (0.66%) Computer Science Degree
14 61 (0.66%) ITIL Certification
14 61 (0.66%) PMI Certification
15 55 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 54 (0.59%) ISTQB
17 48 (0.52%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 346 (3.76%) QA
2 269 (2.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 266 (2.89%) Data Quality
3 266 (2.89%) NIST
4 179 (1.94%) NCSC
5 162 (1.76%) PMO
6 158 (1.72%) Accessibility
7 151 (1.64%) GDPR
8 100 (1.09%) SLA
9 62 (0.67%) GRC
10 58 (0.63%) JSP 440
11 50 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials
12 37 (0.40%) NIST 800
13 33 (0.36%) WCAG
14 31 (0.34%) Def Stans
14 31 (0.34%) PCI DSS
15 30 (0.33%) COBIT
16 25 (0.27%) RMADS
17 20 (0.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 19 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 584 (6.35%) Docker
2 447 (4.86%) Active Directory
3 275 (2.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 94 (1.02%) VMware ESXi
5 86 (0.93%) VMware NSX
6 78 (0.85%) Hyper-V
7 73 (0.79%) vSphere
8 68 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
9 38 (0.41%) Firmware
10 26 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
11 22 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
12 20 (0.22%) BitLocker
13 19 (0.21%) NFS
14 17 (0.18%) Postfix
14 17 (0.18%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 15 (0.16%) vCloud
16 10 (0.11%) Squid
17 8 (0.087%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.065%) Corosync
18 6 (0.065%) KVM
Systems Management
1 748 (8.13%) Kubernetes
2 719 (7.81%) Terraform
3 318 (3.46%) Ansible
4 229 (2.49%) Grafana
5 188 (2.04%) Prometheus
6 101 (1.10%) vCenter Server
7 85 (0.92%) Single Sign-On
8 79 (0.86%) SCCM
9 55 (0.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 52 (0.56%) Microsoft Intune
11 51 (0.55%) FortiGate
12 48 (0.52%) Argo
13 38 (0.41%) Puppet
14 36 (0.39%) Podman
15 33 (0.36%) Progress Chef
16 31 (0.34%) OPNET
17 30 (0.33%) Nagios
18 29 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
19 27 (0.29%) Packer
20 24 (0.26%) SCOM
Vendors
1 972 (10.56%) Microsoft
2 570 (6.19%) Oracle
3 473 (5.14%) VMware
4 375 (4.07%) ServiceNow
5 342 (3.72%) Cisco
6 326 (3.54%) SAP
7 212 (2.30%) Splunk
8 172 (1.87%) Databricks
9 151 (1.64%) Google
10 149 (1.62%) Red Hat
11 114 (1.24%) IBM
12 113 (1.23%) Palo Alto
13 112 (1.22%) Talend
14 105 (1.14%) Juniper
15 104 (1.13%) Salesforce
16 100 (1.09%) Atlassian
17 97 (1.05%) CyberArk
18 83 (0.90%) Remedy
19 80 (0.87%) F5
20 77 (0.84%) Informatica