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

6 months to
20 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 6,396 5,639 6,979
As % of all contract jobs in England 20.99% 18.16% 17.88%
As % of the Qualifications category 62.80% 60.96% 60.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,208 3,553 4,357
10th Percentile £325 £350 £367
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £529 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.82% - -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £715 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £526 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.41% - -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 674 296 474
10th Percentile £18.45 £21.25 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.06 £30.00 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £58.49 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -57.00% -2.52% -
75th Percentile £53.44 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £73.75 £75.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £54.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -53.43% -10.00% -

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 10,185 9,250 11,610
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.42% 29.79% 29.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,589 5,659 7,362
10th Percentile £304 £313 £306
25th Percentile £416 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £528 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.47% -4.09% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £719 £735 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 901 428 708
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.30 £17.72
25th Percentile £19.10 £27.00 £26.85
Median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £53.58
Median % change year-on-year -49.70% -6.69% +19.07%
75th Percentile £50.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £53.67
% change year-on-year -44.11% -16.15% +19.26%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 2,110 £550 - 778
South East -1 1,211 £513 -6.82% 820
South West 0 1,098 £550 -4.35% 615
North of England -2 766 £513 +7.89% 214
Midlands +1 683 £519 -9.83% 180
West Midlands 0 528 £525 -8.70% 141
North West +1 500 £525 +6.49% 147
East of England +2 285 £525 +1.20% 312
Yorkshire -9 167 £500 +7.24% 40
East Midlands 0 140 £450 -10.00% 37
North East 0 106 £475 +5.09% 29
South Coast -1 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 (3.99%) Confluence
2 173 (2.70%) SharePoint
3 116 (1.81%) Microsoft Exchange
4 95 (1.49%) SAS
5 86 (1.34%) Apache
6 54 (0.84%) nginx
7 48 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.61%) Skype for Business
9 31 (0.48%) Apache Spark
10 25 (0.39%) IIS
11 23 (0.36%) CMS
12 17 (0.27%) 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 (0.13%) Documentum
Applications
1 197 (3.08%) Microsoft Office
2 143 (2.24%) Microsoft Excel
3 73 (1.14%) Microsoft Project
4 34 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 34 (0.53%) MS Visio
5 22 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
6 17 (0.27%) Siemens NX
7 14 (0.22%) Simulink
8 11 (0.17%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 7 (0.11%) Sketch
10 6 (0.094%) Adobe Illustrator
10 6 (0.094%) Photoshop
10 6 (0.094%) Windchill
11 5 (0.078%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.078%) FrameMaker
11 5 (0.078%) Oracle Smart View
11 5 (0.078%) PTC Creo
11 5 (0.078%) Stateflow
11 5 (0.078%) Trello
12 4 (0.063%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 143 (2.24%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (0.53%) Remedy ITSM
3 27 (0.42%) SAP WM
4 26 (0.41%) SAP EWM
5 23 (0.36%) Teamcenter
6 22 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
6 22 (0.34%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 20 (0.31%) Maximo
8 18 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
8 18 (0.28%) Primavera
9 16 (0.25%) SAP HCM
9 16 (0.25%) SAP MM
10 15 (0.23%) SAP PS
11 13 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
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 9 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,069 (16.71%) AWS
2 1,036 (16.20%) Azure
3 316 (4.94%) Microsoft 365
4 305 (4.77%) GitHub
5 243 (3.80%) Power Platform
6 228 (3.56%) Azure DevOps
7 227 (3.55%) GCP
8 181 (2.83%) Serverless
9 168 (2.63%) Amazon S3
10 147 (2.30%) GitHub Actions
11 146 (2.28%) Entra ID
12 137 (2.14%) SaaS
13 120 (1.88%) OpenShift
14 110 (1.72%) Amazon EC2
15 108 (1.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 104 (1.63%) AWS CloudFormation
17 101 (1.58%) AWS Lambda
18 82 (1.28%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 78 (1.22%) Power Automate
20 72 (1.13%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 346 (5.41%) Firewall
2 250 (3.91%) DNS
3 172 (2.69%) VPN
4 142 (2.22%) Network Security
5 124 (1.94%) WAN
6 105 (1.64%) TCP/IP
7 95 (1.49%) BGP
8 90 (1.41%) DHCP
9 89 (1.39%) LAN
10 86 (1.34%) Wireless
11 73 (1.14%) SSL
12 62 (0.97%) SAN
13 61 (0.95%) Wi-Fi
14 60 (0.94%) MPLS
15 56 (0.88%) VLAN
16 54 (0.84%) IPsec
17 48 (0.75%) Cisco ISE
18 45 (0.70%) HTTP
19 43 (0.67%) SMTP
20 41 (0.64%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 202 (3.16%) PostgreSQL
2 164 (2.56%) Power BI
3 85 (1.33%) MongoDB
4 84 (1.31%) Amazon RDS
5 80 (1.25%) SQL Server
6 74 (1.16%) Oracle Database
7 68 (1.06%) Data Warehouse
7 68 (1.06%) Relational Database
8 66 (1.03%) NoSQL
9 61 (0.95%) Metadata
10 41 (0.64%) Big Data
10 41 (0.64%) Pentaho
11 38 (0.59%) Azure SQL Database
11 38 (0.59%) Elasticsearch
11 38 (0.59%) MySQL
12 36 (0.56%) SAS Enterprise Guide
13 35 (0.55%) Data Lake
14 31 (0.48%) Redis
15 30 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
16 29 (0.45%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 458 (7.16%) JIRA
2 369 (5.77%) Git
3 354 (5.53%) Jenkins
4 246 (3.85%) GitLab
5 72 (1.13%) Selenium
6 64 (1.00%) SonarQube
7 57 (0.89%) JUnit
8 55 (0.86%) Cypress.io
9 49 (0.77%) Postman
10 47 (0.73%) Bitbucket
11 44 (0.69%) Oracle APEX
12 36 (0.56%) Artifactory
13 35 (0.55%) Maven
14 32 (0.50%) Mockito
15 31 (0.48%) Cucumber
16 23 (0.36%) Rational DOORS
16 23 (0.36%) REST Assured
16 23 (0.36%) Vagrant
17 21 (0.33%) Metasploit
17 21 (0.33%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,772 (27.70%) Public Sector
2 1,693 (26.47%) Social Skills
3 583 (9.12%) Analytical Skills
4 465 (7.27%) Finance
5 246 (3.85%) Military
6 205 (3.21%) Telecoms
7 191 (2.99%) Manufacturing
8 157 (2.45%) Documentation Skills
9 144 (2.25%) Electronics
10 132 (2.06%) Marketing
11 124 (1.94%) Aerospace
12 96 (1.50%) Organisational Skills
13 93 (1.45%) Legal
14 85 (1.33%) Banking
15 78 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
16 74 (1.16%) Presentation Skills
17 68 (1.06%) Law
18 42 (0.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 41 (0.64%) Police
20 40 (0.63%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 826 (12.91%) Architect
2 640 (10.01%) Developer
3 534 (8.35%) Consultant
4 493 (7.71%) Senior
5 425 (6.64%) Analyst
6 396 (6.19%) Lead
7 266 (4.16%) DevOps Engineer
8 237 (3.71%) Support Engineer
9 194 (3.03%) Network Engineer
10 155 (2.42%) Solutions Architect
11 149 (2.33%) Data Engineer
12 140 (2.19%) SAP Consultant
13 131 (2.05%) AWS Engineer
14 121 (1.89%) IT Engineer
15 120 (1.88%) Technical Architect
16 119 (1.86%) Platform Engineer
17 116 (1.81%) Administrator
18 112 (1.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 112 (1.75%) Software Engineer
19 111 (1.74%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 252 (3.94%) REST
2 163 (2.55%) React
3 161 (2.52%) Node.js
4 145 (2.27%) Kafka
5 127 (1.99%) JSON
6 119 (1.86%) SOAP
7 108 (1.69%) HTML
8 107 (1.67%) Spring
9 100 (1.56%) XML
10 95 (1.49%) AngularJS
11 94 (1.47%) RESTful
12 92 (1.44%) Web Services
13 91 (1.42%) CSS
14 86 (1.34%) Spring Boot
15 84 (1.31%) .NET
16 70 (1.09%) OAuth
17 67 (1.05%) LDAP
18 55 (0.86%) Elastic Stack
19 54 (0.84%) SAML
20 49 (0.77%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 199 (3.11%) Data Centre
2 195 (3.05%) Onboarding
3 184 (2.88%) PKI
4 162 (2.53%) Cloud Native
5 152 (2.38%) Management Information System
6 135 (2.11%) Product Ownership
7 104 (1.63%) Self-Motivation
8 76 (1.19%) Legacy Systems
9 75 (1.17%) Driving Licence
10 68 (1.06%) Replication
11 66 (1.03%) Cyber Threat
12 65 (1.02%) Security Operations Centre
13 61 (0.95%) Security Posture
14 59 (0.92%) Hybrid Cloud
15 58 (0.91%) Enterprise Software
16 56 (0.88%) CMDB
17 54 (0.84%) Private Cloud
18 50 (0.78%) Analytical Mindset
19 42 (0.66%) Public Cloud
20 41 (0.64%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 753 (11.77%) Windows
2 503 (7.86%) Linux
3 179 (2.80%) Windows Server
4 176 (2.75%) Windows 10
5 99 (1.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 91 (1.42%) Android
7 87 (1.36%) Mac OS
8 82 (1.28%) Unix
9 46 (0.72%) VMS
10 33 (0.52%) Ubuntu
11 30 (0.47%) Apple iOS
11 30 (0.47%) Windows Server 2019
12 28 (0.44%) Amazon Linux
13 24 (0.38%) CentOS
14 23 (0.36%) Windows 7
15 19 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
15 19 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
16 18 (0.28%) Windows Server 2003
17 15 (0.23%) Mac OS X
18 9 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,288 (20.14%) Agile
2 977 (15.28%) DevOps
3 880 (13.76%) CI/CD
4 802 (12.54%) Problem-Solving
5 629 (9.83%) Migration
6 500 (7.82%) Stakeholder Management
7 447 (6.99%) Cybersecurity
8 444 (6.94%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 426 (6.66%) ITIL
10 413 (6.46%) Infrastructure as Code
11 408 (6.38%) Continuous Improvement
12 388 (6.07%) Service Management
13 375 (5.86%) Business Intelligence
14 354 (5.53%) Test Automation
15 341 (5.33%) Workflow
16 338 (5.28%) Containerisation
17 333 (5.21%) Analytics
18 322 (5.03%) Scrum
19 291 (4.55%) Roadmaps
20 290 (4.53%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 839 (13.12%) Python
2 505 (7.90%) SQL
3 427 (6.68%) PowerShell
4 410 (6.41%) Java
5 335 (5.24%) JavaScript
6 229 (3.58%) Bash
7 159 (2.49%) TypeScript
8 118 (1.84%) C#
9 91 (1.42%) C++
10 79 (1.24%) Go
11 68 (1.06%) PL/SQL
12 63 (0.98%) C
13 60 (0.94%) Shell Script
14 48 (0.75%) Perl
15 37 (0.58%) ABAP
16 30 (0.47%) Groovy
17 29 (0.45%) Bicep
18 28 (0.44%) Ada
19 26 (0.41%) MATLAB
19 26 (0.41%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 4,907 (76.72%) SC Cleared
2 1,089 (17.03%) DV Cleared
3 315 (4.92%) Degree
4 263 (4.11%) BPSS Clearance
5 127 (1.99%) CISSP
6 123 (1.92%) Microsoft Certification
7 109 (1.70%) Cisco Certification
8 105 (1.64%) Azure Certification
9 93 (1.45%) AWS Certification
10 82 (1.28%) CCNP
11 72 (1.13%) CISM
12 51 (0.80%) Computer Science Degree
12 51 (0.80%) ITIL Certification
13 42 (0.66%) CCNA
14 39 (0.61%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 36 (0.56%) CEH
15 36 (0.56%) CHECK Team Member
16 32 (0.50%) OSCP
17 30 (0.47%) MCSE
18 28 (0.44%) CHECK Team Leader
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 207 (3.24%) QA
2 195 (3.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 193 (3.02%) NIST
4 158 (2.47%) NCSC
5 129 (2.02%) SLA
6 123 (1.92%) GDPR
7 109 (1.70%) Data Quality
8 105 (1.64%) Accessibility
9 52 (0.81%) PMO
10 50 (0.78%) JSP 440
11 39 (0.61%) NIST 800
12 37 (0.58%) WCAG
13 32 (0.50%) GRC
14 31 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 30 (0.47%) Def Stans
16 27 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
17 24 (0.38%) RMADS
18 22 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 18 (0.28%) COBIT
20 15 (0.23%) HIPAA
System Software
1 520 (8.13%) Docker
2 394 (6.16%) Active Directory
3 206 (3.22%) VMware Infrastructure
4 68 (1.06%) VMware ESXi
5 67 (1.05%) vSphere
6 64 (1.00%) VMware NSX
7 49 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
8 40 (0.63%) Firmware
9 33 (0.52%) Hyper-V
10 27 (0.42%) 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
1 603 (9.43%) Kubernetes
2 572 (8.94%) Terraform
3 275 (4.30%) Ansible
4 158 (2.47%) Grafana
5 131 (2.05%) Prometheus
6 107 (1.67%) SCCM
7 88 (1.38%) Single Sign-On
8 77 (1.20%) Microsoft Intune
9 61 (0.95%) vCenter Server
10 54 (0.84%) Argo
11 51 (0.80%) Packer
12 48 (0.75%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 34 (0.53%) Jamf Pro
13 34 (0.53%) Kibana
14 26 (0.41%) FortiGate
14 26 (0.41%) SCOM
15 24 (0.38%) Consul
16 23 (0.36%) Nessus
17 22 (0.34%) Nmap
17 22 (0.34%) vRealize
Vendors
1 866 (13.54%) Microsoft
2 431 (6.74%) SAP
3 415 (6.49%) Cisco
4 346 (5.41%) VMware
5 341 (5.33%) Oracle
6 303 (4.74%) ServiceNow
7 175 (2.74%) Splunk
8 155 (2.42%) Juniper
9 129 (2.02%) Red Hat
10 105 (1.64%) Google
11 95 (1.49%) HP
12 91 (1.42%) Dell
12 91 (1.42%) Palo Alto
13 90 (1.41%) Atlassian
14 81 (1.27%) Salesforce
15 76 (1.19%) IBM
16 73 (1.14%) SolarWinds
17 71 (1.11%) F5
18 70 (1.09%) Apple
19 65 (1.02%) CyberArk