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

6 months to
22 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 10,238 5,154 5,947
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.12% 18.80% 18.31%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.93% 59.48% 61.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,177 3,382 3,829
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 £549 £537 £550
% change year-on-year +2.23% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 800 520 351
10th Percentile £20.50 £18.50 £21.00
25th Percentile £34.75 £18.87 £37.40
Median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +158.45% -59.17% +2.67%
75th Percentile £78.06 £40.16 £72.50
90th Percentile £91.03 £72.50 £85.00
UK median hourly rate £64.09 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +154.83% -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 14,853 8,665 9,648
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.09% 31.60% 29.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,936 5,511 5,922
10th Percentile £350 £301 £325
25th Percentile £443 £415 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year +0.86% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £715 £738
UK median daily rate £528 £525 £525
% change year-on-year +0.52% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,225 689 557
10th Percentile £18.25 £17.95 £17.88
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% +0.12%
75th Percentile £74.00 £45.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £89.08 £73.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £47.54 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +89.03% -49.70% -7.41%

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 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 22 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 22 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 3,624 £550 +2.33% 1,472
South East +1 2,291 £564 +4.98% 934
South West 0 1,419 £550 - 729
North of England +2 1,271 £515 -1.90% 688
Midlands 0 941 £475 -7.77% 326
West Midlands +1 806 £475 -8.39% 204
North West +1 743 £530 -3.64% 411
East of England 0 417 £570 +3.55% 373
Yorkshire +4 299 £492 +0.20% 129
North East 0 250 £475 -5.00% 151
East Midlands -1 129 £450 -2.70% 121
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
1 327 (3.19%) Confluence
2 249 (2.43%) SharePoint
3 153 (1.49%) SAS
4 119 (1.16%) Microsoft Exchange
5 99 (0.97%) Apache Airflow
6 88 (0.86%) Apache Spark
7 84 (0.82%) Apache
8 34 (0.33%) nginx
9 32 (0.31%) Jupyter
10 30 (0.29%) CMS
11 26 (0.25%) WebLogic
12 23 (0.22%) Oracle Application Server
13 22 (0.21%) Skype for Business
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
1 186 (1.82%) 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 25 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
6 19 (0.19%) AutoCAD
7 18 (0.18%) Revit
8 17 (0.17%) SOLIDWORKS
9 15 (0.15%) 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%) OrCAD
14 4 (0.039%) Trello
15 2 (0.020%) Houdini
15 2 (0.020%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 129 (1.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 80 (0.78%) 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 23 (0.22%) Oracle Payroll
9 18 (0.18%) SAP FI
10 16 (0.16%) SAP HR
11 14 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
11 14 (0.14%) Primavera
12 13 (0.13%) Maximo
12 13 (0.13%) SAP CO
13 12 (0.12%) iTrent
13 12 (0.12%) NetSuite
13 12 (0.12%) SAP GRC
13 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
14 11 (0.11%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 1,842 (17.99%) Azure
2 1,677 (16.38%) AWS
3 438 (4.28%) Azure DevOps
4 431 (4.21%) Power Platform
5 402 (3.93%) GitHub
6 382 (3.73%) GCP
7 303 (2.96%) Microsoft 365
8 279 (2.73%) Entra ID
9 276 (2.70%) GitHub Actions
10 235 (2.30%) Serverless
11 200 (1.95%) Amazon S3
12 168 (1.64%) AWS Lambda
13 154 (1.50%) OCI
14 148 (1.45%) SaaS
15 143 (1.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 142 (1.39%) OpenShift
17 132 (1.29%) Amazon EKS
18 120 (1.17%) Amazon EC2
19 100 (0.98%) PowerApps
20 99 (0.97%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 407 (3.98%) Firewall
2 348 (3.40%) DNS
3 215 (2.10%) Network Security
4 189 (1.85%) WAN
5 172 (1.68%) DHCP
5 172 (1.68%) VPN
6 147 (1.44%) LAN
7 124 (1.21%) TCP/IP
8 122 (1.19%) BGP
9 115 (1.12%) Wi-Fi
10 100 (0.98%) VLAN
11 83 (0.81%) OSPF
12 81 (0.79%) Wireless
13 61 (0.60%) VSAN
14 59 (0.58%) IPsec
14 59 (0.58%) SSL
15 56 (0.55%) MPLS
16 55 (0.54%) SD-WAN
17 54 (0.53%) SAN
18 43 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 307 (3.00%) Power BI
2 240 (2.34%) SQL Server
3 237 (2.31%) Data Warehouse
3 237 (2.31%) PostgreSQL
4 179 (1.75%) Metadata
5 165 (1.61%) Oracle Database
6 119 (1.16%) Relational Database
7 117 (1.14%) Data Lake
8 94 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
9 93 (0.91%) MongoDB
10 91 (0.89%) MySQL
11 88 (0.86%) NoSQL
12 77 (0.75%) Oracle Reports
13 67 (0.65%) Pentaho
14 61 (0.60%) Elasticsearch
15 58 (0.57%) Amazon Athena
16 52 (0.51%) Tableau
17 46 (0.45%) Amazon Aurora
18 45 (0.44%) Big Data
19 40 (0.39%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 538 (5.25%) JIRA
2 497 (4.85%) Git
3 433 (4.23%) GitLab
4 406 (3.97%) Jenkins
5 120 (1.17%) Selenium
6 77 (0.75%) SonarQube
7 72 (0.70%) Postman
8 69 (0.67%) JUnit
9 62 (0.61%) Maven
10 55 (0.54%) Cucumber
11 54 (0.53%) JMeter
12 42 (0.41%) Gradle
12 42 (0.41%) Mockito
13 36 (0.35%) Zephyr
14 34 (0.33%) Cypress.io
14 34 (0.33%) Visual Studio
15 33 (0.32%) Gatling
15 33 (0.32%) REST Assured
16 32 (0.31%) Artifactory
17 30 (0.29%) MSI
General
1 2,299 (22.46%) Social Skills
2 1,995 (19.49%) Public Sector
3 835 (8.16%) Analytical Skills
4 676 (6.60%) Finance
5 399 (3.90%) Military
6 311 (3.04%) Aerospace
7 252 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
8 202 (1.97%) Influencing Skills
9 167 (1.63%) Organisational Skills
10 150 (1.47%) Telecoms
11 137 (1.34%) Manufacturing
12 135 (1.32%) Legal
13 126 (1.23%) Banking
14 120 (1.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 116 (1.13%) Law
16 99 (0.97%) Police
17 64 (0.63%) Presentation Skills
18 44 (0.43%) Local Government
18 44 (0.43%) Marketing
18 44 (0.43%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,599 (15.62%) Architect
2 975 (9.52%) Developer
3 954 (9.32%) Senior
4 942 (9.20%) Lead
5 579 (5.66%) Consultant
6 559 (5.46%) Analyst
7 431 (4.21%) Data Engineer
8 416 (4.06%) DevOps Engineer
9 377 (3.68%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 269 (2.63%) Technical Architect
11 258 (2.52%) Solutions Architect
12 255 (2.49%) Software Engineer
13 251 (2.45%) Data Architect
14 242 (2.36%) Security Architect
15 226 (2.21%) Network Engineer
16 205 (2.00%) Administrator
17 197 (1.92%) Cloud Engineer
18 189 (1.85%) Designer
18 189 (1.85%) Java Developer
19 184 (1.80%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 874 (8.54%) Terraform
2 398 (3.89%) REST
3 213 (2.08%) Spring
4 211 (2.06%) Kafka
5 193 (1.89%) Spring Boot
6 165 (1.61%) React
7 164 (1.60%) .NET
8 163 (1.59%) RESTful
9 159 (1.55%) SOAP
10 136 (1.33%) Node.js
11 128 (1.25%) JSON
12 113 (1.10%) OAuth
13 112 (1.09%) HTML
14 104 (1.02%) AngularJS
15 102 (1.00%) XML
16 100 (0.98%) Web Services
17 90 (0.88%) Middleware
18 88 (0.86%) CSS
19 83 (0.81%) LDAP
20 81 (0.79%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 454 (4.43%) Cloud Native
2 395 (3.86%) Onboarding
3 312 (3.05%) Product Ownership
4 260 (2.54%) Data Centre
5 181 (1.77%) Management Information System
6 162 (1.58%) Legacy Systems
7 161 (1.57%) PKI
8 145 (1.42%) Enterprise Software
9 138 (1.35%) CMDB
10 115 (1.12%) Hybrid Cloud
11 114 (1.11%) Distributed Systems
12 107 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
13 106 (1.04%) Cyber Threat
14 101 (0.99%) Operational Technology
14 101 (0.99%) Replication
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
1 902 (8.81%) Windows
2 719 (7.02%) Linux
3 347 (3.39%) Windows Server
4 211 (2.06%) Unix
5 152 (1.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 132 (1.29%) Windows 10
7 74 (0.72%) Solaris
8 65 (0.63%) 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 2,139 (20.89%) Agile
2 1,529 (14.93%) DevOps
3 1,496 (14.61%) CI/CD
4 1,429 (13.96%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,261 (12.32%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,101 (10.75%) Problem-Solving
7 1,007 (9.84%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 883 (8.62%) Infrastructure as Code
9 832 (8.13%) Migration
10 780 (7.62%) Cybersecurity
11 717 (7.00%) ITIL
12 657 (6.42%) Technical Leadership
12 657 (6.42%) Test Automation
13 655 (6.40%) AI
14 646 (6.31%) Roadmaps
15 633 (6.18%) Containerisation
16 624 (6.09%) Analytics
17 620 (6.06%) Decision-Making
18 603 (5.89%) Software Engineering
19 552 (5.39%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 1,165 (11.38%) Python
2 942 (9.20%) SQL
3 654 (6.39%) Java
4 534 (5.22%) PowerShell
5 351 (3.43%) JavaScript
6 303 (2.96%) Bash
7 188 (1.84%) C#
8 177 (1.73%) TypeScript
9 134 (1.31%) PL/SQL
10 108 (1.05%) Bicep
11 69 (0.67%) Shell Script
12 62 (0.61%) 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%) Kusto Query Language
19 25 (0.24%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 7,658 (74.80%) SC Cleared
2 2,126 (20.77%) DV Cleared
3 430 (4.20%) Degree
4 420 (4.10%) BPSS Clearance
5 201 (1.96%) CISSP
6 172 (1.68%) Azure Certification
7 165 (1.61%) Cisco Certification
8 155 (1.51%) Microsoft Certification
9 141 (1.38%) AWS Certification
10 120 (1.17%) CISM
11 101 (0.99%) PMI Certification
12 92 (0.90%) PMP
13 86 (0.84%) ISTQB
14 85 (0.83%) CCNP
15 64 (0.63%) 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
1 462 (4.51%) QA
2 326 (3.18%) Data Quality
3 302 (2.95%) NIST
4 285 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 253 (2.47%) NCSC
6 234 (2.29%) Accessibility
7 217 (2.12%) PMO
8 147 (1.44%) SLA
9 146 (1.43%) GDPR
10 141 (1.38%) GRC
11 70 (0.68%) WCAG
12 55 (0.54%) JSP 440
13 44 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
14 41 (0.40%) NIST 800
15 36 (0.35%) Def Stans
16 25 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 22 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
18 21 (0.21%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 19 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
20 18 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 684 (6.68%) Docker
2 567 (5.54%) Active Directory
3 404 (3.95%) VMware Infrastructure
4 144 (1.41%) VMware ESXi
5 133 (1.30%) VMware NSX
6 125 (1.22%) vSphere
7 122 (1.19%) Hyper-V
8 85 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
9 43 (0.42%) Firmware
10 42 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
11 37 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
12 26 (0.25%) vCloud
13 23 (0.22%) 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 (8.06%) Kubernetes
2 400 (3.91%) Ansible
3 225 (2.20%) Grafana
4 169 (1.65%) Prometheus
5 132 (1.29%) vCenter Server
6 126 (1.23%) SCCM
7 94 (0.92%) SCOM
8 86 (0.84%) Microsoft Intune
9 62 (0.61%) Argo
10 50 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
11 42 (0.41%) Puppet
12 41 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
13 38 (0.37%) Kibana
14 36 (0.35%) Data Guard
15 31 (0.30%) VxRail
16 28 (0.27%) Control-M
17 27 (0.26%) WSUS
18 26 (0.25%) Istio
18 26 (0.25%) NetBackup
19 25 (0.24%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,355 (13.24%) Microsoft
2 810 (7.91%) Oracle
3 564 (5.51%) VMware
4 473 (4.62%) ServiceNow
5 395 (3.86%) SAP
6 281 (2.74%) Cisco
7 236 (2.31%) Google
8 199 (1.94%) Splunk
9 173 (1.69%) Databricks
10 129 (1.26%) Red Hat
11 114 (1.11%) Salesforce
12 113 (1.10%) Palo Alto
13 97 (0.95%) IBM
14 95 (0.93%) Informatica
15 90 (0.88%) Remedy
16 89 (0.87%) Talend
17 88 (0.86%) CyberArk
18 87 (0.85%) Dynatrace
19 76 (0.74%) SolarWinds
20 72 (0.70%) Citrix