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

6 months to
28 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 9,154 4,545 7,128
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.79% 18.58% 19.28%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.79% 59.33% 61.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,338 3,020 4,647
10th Percentile £363 £330 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 782 268 485
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.66 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £56.75 £56.89
Median % change year-on-year -3.08% -0.24% -5.19%
75th Percentile £73.00 £68.00 £71.75
90th Percentile £85.25 £80.03 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £52.25 £56.89
% change year-on-year +5.26% -8.15% -6.29%

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 13,117 7,660 11,588
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.66% 31.32% 31.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,797 4,869 7,118
10th Percentile £343 £299 £300
25th Percentile £425 £415 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £518 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -1.43% -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 995 440 977
10th Percentile £17.17 £18.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £23.38 £18.00
Median hourly rate £47.50 £47.65 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -0.32% +19.13% -23.81%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.63 £62.47
90th Percentile £85.36 £81.42 £77.19
UK median hourly rate £47.00 £42.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +10.59% +6.25% -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 28 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 28 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 28 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 3,234 £525 - 523
South East +1 2,180 £536 -2.60% 540
South West 0 1,323 £538 -3.10% 375
Midlands +3 892 £475 -9.52% 214
North of England -1 854 £488 -2.50% 383
West Midlands +4 750 £482 -10.22% 169
North West -2 506 £497 -0.70% 228
East of England +2 382 £525 +16.67% 157
Yorkshire -6 215 £488 -7.14% 75
North East +1 166 £450 -10.00% 84
East Midlands -4 136 £450 -5.26% 41
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
1 357 (3.90%) Confluence
2 198 (2.16%) SharePoint
3 129 (1.41%) Microsoft Exchange
4 110 (1.20%) SAS
5 82 (0.90%) Apache Spark
6 70 (0.76%) Apache
7 54 (0.59%) Apache Airflow
8 46 (0.50%) nginx
9 34 (0.37%) WebLogic
10 21 (0.23%) Jupyter
11 16 (0.17%) IIS
12 14 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 14 (0.15%) Skype for Business
12 14 (0.15%) Tomcat
12 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
13 13 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
14 12 (0.13%) CMS
15 9 (0.098%) Palantir Foundry
16 8 (0.087%) Apache Superset
16 8 (0.087%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 214 (2.34%) Microsoft Office
2 184 (2.01%) Microsoft Excel
3 117 (1.28%) Microsoft Project
4 81 (0.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 40 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.13%) Simulink
8 6 (0.066%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.055%) Notepad++
9 5 (0.055%) SOLIDWORKS
10 4 (0.044%) Revit
10 4 (0.044%) Siemens NX
10 4 (0.044%) Windchill
11 2 (0.022%) Adobe XD
11 2 (0.022%) CATIA
11 2 (0.022%) Chatbot
11 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.022%) Lectora
11 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.022%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 82 (0.90%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
3 41 (0.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 29 (0.32%) Dynamics CRM
5 27 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
6 26 (0.28%) Teamcenter
7 18 (0.20%) Maximo
8 13 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
8 13 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.14%) Temenos T24
9 12 (0.13%) SAP PP
9 12 (0.13%) SAP PSCD
10 11 (0.12%) Findur
11 10 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
11 10 (0.11%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.098%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 8 (0.087%) iTrent
13 8 (0.087%) Primavera
13 8 (0.087%) SAP HR
13 8 (0.087%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,556 (17.00%) Azure
2 1,501 (16.40%) AWS
3 387 (4.23%) GitHub
4 376 (4.11%) GCP
5 359 (3.92%) Azure DevOps
6 335 (3.66%) Power Platform
7 265 (2.89%) Serverless
8 246 (2.69%) Microsoft 365
9 223 (2.44%) Entra ID
10 215 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
11 204 (2.23%) Amazon S3
12 179 (1.96%) AWS Lambda
13 130 (1.42%) PaaS
14 128 (1.40%) Amazon EC2
14 128 (1.40%) OpenShift
15 125 (1.37%) AWS CloudFormation
16 116 (1.27%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 113 (1.23%) IaaS
18 106 (1.16%) SaaS
19 104 (1.14%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 419 (4.58%) Firewall
2 265 (2.89%) DNS
3 214 (2.34%) Network Security
4 211 (2.31%) WAN
5 192 (2.10%) LAN
6 163 (1.78%) VPN
7 139 (1.52%) DHCP
8 138 (1.51%) BGP
9 120 (1.31%) OSPF
10 103 (1.13%) TCP/IP
11 93 (1.02%) VLAN
12 83 (0.91%) Wi-Fi
13 78 (0.85%) Wireless
14 59 (0.64%) MPLS
15 53 (0.58%) SAN
16 47 (0.51%) VXLAN
17 46 (0.50%) IPsec
18 45 (0.49%) SD-WAN
19 43 (0.47%) Structured Cabling
20 42 (0.46%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 257 (2.81%) Power BI
2 228 (2.49%) PostgreSQL
3 197 (2.15%) Data Warehouse
4 180 (1.97%) SQL Server
5 122 (1.33%) Metadata
6 107 (1.17%) Amazon RDS
7 103 (1.13%) Oracle Database
8 95 (1.04%) NoSQL
9 85 (0.93%) Relational Database
10 83 (0.91%) MongoDB
11 76 (0.83%) Pentaho
12 75 (0.82%) Data Lake
13 71 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
14 69 (0.75%) Azure SQL Database
15 66 (0.72%) MySQL
16 65 (0.71%) Amazon Redshift
17 63 (0.69%) Oracle Reports
17 63 (0.69%) Tableau
18 51 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
19 48 (0.52%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 570 (6.23%) JIRA
2 440 (4.81%) Git
3 343 (3.75%) Jenkins
4 316 (3.45%) GitLab
5 85 (0.93%) Selenium
6 72 (0.79%) Postman
7 67 (0.73%) JUnit
8 58 (0.63%) SonarQube
9 50 (0.55%) Bitbucket
10 49 (0.54%) Rational DOORS
11 41 (0.45%) Artifactory
11 41 (0.45%) Maven
12 36 (0.39%) Cucumber
12 36 (0.39%) Mockito
13 35 (0.38%) Oracle APEX
14 34 (0.37%) Cypress.io
14 34 (0.37%) JMeter
15 31 (0.34%) Visual Studio
16 27 (0.29%) Zephyr
17 24 (0.26%) MSI
General
1 2,054 (22.44%) Public Sector
2 2,017 (22.03%) Social Skills
3 734 (8.02%) Analytical Skills
4 651 (7.11%) Finance
5 330 (3.60%) Military
6 256 (2.80%) Documentation Skills
7 217 (2.37%) Aerospace
8 143 (1.56%) Legal
9 135 (1.47%) Telecoms
10 125 (1.37%) Manufacturing
11 122 (1.33%) Influencing Skills
12 110 (1.20%) Banking
13 101 (1.10%) Organisational Skills
14 96 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
15 83 (0.91%) Law
16 71 (0.78%) Marketing
17 63 (0.69%) Electronics
18 56 (0.61%) Police
19 53 (0.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 35 (0.38%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,356 (14.81%) Architect
2 897 (9.80%) Developer
3 787 (8.60%) Senior
4 656 (7.17%) Analyst
5 623 (6.81%) Lead
6 421 (4.60%) Data Engineer
7 418 (4.57%) Consultant
8 398 (4.35%) DevOps Engineer
9 274 (2.99%) Software Engineer
10 270 (2.95%) Network Engineer
11 266 (2.91%) Technical Architect
12 247 (2.70%) Business Analyst
13 233 (2.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 203 (2.22%) Project Manager
15 201 (2.20%) Solutions Architect
16 198 (2.16%) Azure Engineer
17 172 (1.88%) Administrator
18 170 (1.86%) Delivery Manager
19 167 (1.82%) Security Architect
20 160 (1.75%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 312 (3.41%) REST
2 208 (2.27%) Spring
3 174 (1.90%) Node.js
4 163 (1.78%) Kafka
5 161 (1.76%) Spring Boot
6 158 (1.73%) .NET
6 158 (1.73%) React
7 138 (1.51%) LDAP
7 138 (1.51%) SOAP
8 136 (1.49%) JSON
9 132 (1.44%) RESTful
10 113 (1.23%) AngularJS
11 104 (1.14%) Web Services
12 101 (1.10%) PySpark
13 89 (0.97%) Oracle Fusion
14 86 (0.94%) OAuth
15 85 (0.93%) HTML
16 84 (0.92%) XML
17 70 (0.76%) Elastic Stack
18 65 (0.71%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 310 (3.39%) Product Ownership
2 305 (3.33%) Cloud Native
3 270 (2.95%) Data Centre
4 247 (2.70%) Onboarding
5 172 (1.88%) PKI
6 144 (1.57%) Management Information System
7 120 (1.31%) Enterprise Software
7 120 (1.31%) Security Posture
8 119 (1.30%) Replication
9 116 (1.27%) Legacy Systems
10 114 (1.25%) Self-Motivation
11 107 (1.17%) Distributed Systems
12 78 (0.85%) Data Structures
13 77 (0.84%) Clustering
14 74 (0.81%) Public Cloud
15 72 (0.79%) Hybrid Cloud
16 66 (0.72%) Security Operations Centre
17 60 (0.66%) Virtual Team
18 55 (0.60%) CMDB
18 55 (0.60%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 776 (8.48%) Windows
2 643 (7.02%) Linux
3 230 (2.51%) Windows Server
4 141 (1.54%) Unix
5 106 (1.16%) Windows 10
6 105 (1.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 101 (1.10%) Android
8 51 (0.56%) Apple iOS
9 46 (0.50%) Mac OS
10 35 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 29 (0.32%) Solaris
11 29 (0.32%) VMS
12 23 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
13 22 (0.24%) CentOS
14 21 (0.23%) AIX
15 20 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
16 15 (0.16%) Windows 7
16 15 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
17 10 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
18 8 (0.087%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,837 (20.07%) Agile
2 1,395 (15.24%) DevOps
3 1,190 (13.00%) CI/CD
4 1,027 (11.22%) Problem-Solving
5 865 (9.45%) Stakeholder Management
6 802 (8.76%) Migration
7 784 (8.56%) Continuous Improvement
8 669 (7.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 612 (6.69%) ITIL
10 602 (6.58%) Infrastructure as Code
11 529 (5.78%) Analytics
12 519 (5.67%) Cybersecurity
13 517 (5.65%) Test Automation
14 507 (5.54%) Software Engineering
15 496 (5.42%) Roadmaps
16 476 (5.20%) Containerisation
17 457 (4.99%) Data Modelling
18 444 (4.85%) Scrum
19 414 (4.52%) Service Management
20 408 (4.46%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 1,003 (10.96%) Python
2 844 (9.22%) SQL
3 559 (6.11%) Java
4 520 (5.68%) PowerShell
5 309 (3.38%) JavaScript
6 199 (2.17%) C#
7 174 (1.90%) Bash
8 149 (1.63%) TypeScript
9 103 (1.13%) PL/SQL
10 95 (1.04%) C++
11 88 (0.96%) Shell Script
12 68 (0.74%) Go
13 64 (0.70%) Scala
14 60 (0.66%) C
15 56 (0.61%) Ruby
16 52 (0.57%) Bicep
17 43 (0.47%) Apex Code
18 40 (0.44%) Ada
18 40 (0.44%) Kusto Query Language
19 39 (0.43%) R
Qualifications
1 6,894 (75.31%) SC Cleared
2 1,710 (18.68%) DV Cleared
3 423 (4.62%) Degree
4 275 (3.00%) BPSS Clearance
5 167 (1.82%) Cisco Certification
6 149 (1.63%) CISSP
7 131 (1.43%) Azure Certification
8 111 (1.21%) AWS Certification
9 110 (1.20%) CCNP
10 96 (1.05%) Microsoft Certification
11 95 (1.04%) CISM
12 70 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
12 70 (0.76%) PMP
13 69 (0.75%) CCNA
14 66 (0.72%) TOGAF Certification
15 62 (0.68%) PMI Certification
16 61 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
17 56 (0.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 51 (0.56%) ISTQB
19 47 (0.51%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 336 (3.67%) QA
2 262 (2.86%) Data Quality
3 261 (2.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 259 (2.83%) NIST
5 179 (1.96%) NCSC
6 151 (1.65%) GDPR
7 149 (1.63%) PMO
8 142 (1.55%) Accessibility
9 102 (1.11%) SLA
10 62 (0.68%) GRC
11 59 (0.64%) JSP 440
12 40 (0.44%) COBIT
12 40 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
13 39 (0.43%) NIST 800
14 33 (0.36%) WCAG
15 31 (0.34%) Def Stans
15 31 (0.34%) PCI DSS
16 25 (0.27%) RMADS
17 24 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 18 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 592 (6.47%) Docker
2 441 (4.82%) Active Directory
3 264 (2.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 91 (0.99%) VMware ESXi
5 82 (0.90%) VMware NSX
6 77 (0.84%) Hyper-V
7 74 (0.81%) vSphere
8 64 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
9 37 (0.40%) Firmware
10 25 (0.27%) Oracle RAC
11 20 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
12 19 (0.21%) BitLocker
13 17 (0.19%) NFS
13 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 16 (0.17%) Postfix
15 12 (0.13%) vCloud
16 10 (0.11%) Squid
17 8 (0.087%) Microsoft App-V
18 5 (0.055%) Corosync
18 5 (0.055%) KVM
Systems Management
1 759 (8.29%) Kubernetes
2 739 (8.07%) Terraform
3 310 (3.39%) Ansible
4 226 (2.47%) Grafana
5 185 (2.02%) Prometheus
6 95 (1.04%) vCenter Server
7 88 (0.96%) Single Sign-On
8 79 (0.86%) SCCM
9 57 (0.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 54 (0.59%) Microsoft Intune
11 52 (0.57%) FortiGate
12 50 (0.55%) Argo
13 39 (0.43%) Packer
14 38 (0.42%) Puppet
15 36 (0.39%) Podman
16 33 (0.36%) Progress Chef
17 30 (0.33%) OPNET
18 28 (0.31%) Oracle RMAN
19 26 (0.28%) Kibana
20 25 (0.27%) Nagios
Vendors
1 975 (10.65%) Microsoft
2 571 (6.24%) Oracle
3 458 (5.00%) VMware
4 381 (4.16%) ServiceNow
5 355 (3.88%) Cisco
6 337 (3.68%) SAP
7 211 (2.31%) Splunk
8 174 (1.90%) Databricks
9 153 (1.67%) Red Hat
10 151 (1.65%) Google
11 115 (1.26%) Atlassian
12 114 (1.25%) Salesforce
13 112 (1.22%) IBM
14 108 (1.18%) Palo Alto
15 106 (1.16%) Juniper
16 103 (1.13%) Talend
17 92 (1.01%) CyberArk
18 84 (0.92%) Remedy
19 77 (0.84%) F5
20 76 (0.83%) Dynatrace