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

6 months to
12 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 8,569 4,534 7,210
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.52% 18.40% 18.96%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.04% 59.70% 60.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,815 2,962 4,612
10th Percentile £357 £313 £350
25th Percentile £444 £450 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £545 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.67% -0.91% -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £703 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 769 255 503
10th Percentile £17.69 £21.11 £14.54
25th Percentile £20.40 £25.50 £22.00
Median hourly rate £26.44 £60.00 £53.50
Median % change year-on-year -55.93% +12.15% -10.83%
75th Percentile £68.09 £68.34 £70.00
90th Percentile £84.00 £79.34 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £30.87 £57.13 £54.56
% change year-on-year -45.96% +4.70% -9.07%

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 12,412 7,595 11,871
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.07% 30.82% 31.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,222 4,799 7,330
10th Percentile £325 £283 £295
25th Percentile £422 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £516 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.73% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 981 409 941
10th Percentile £16.30 £19.72 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.54 £25.26 £18.32
Median hourly rate £27.50 £51.50 £39.92
Median % change year-on-year -46.60% +29.01% -20.16%
75th Percentile £67.50 £68.00 £63.00
90th Percentile £84.00 £82.50 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £28.50 £42.50 £39.44
% change year-on-year -32.94% +7.77% -21.13%

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 12 March 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 12 March 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 12 March 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 +5 2,989 £530 +0.95% 476
South East +1 1,947 £525 -4.55% 556
South West 0 1,290 £545 -1.09% 404
Midlands +4 859 £492 -10.55% 163
North of England -1 836 £499 +0.20% 241
West Midlands +4 691 £492 -10.71% 123
North West 0 539 £500 +3.09% 129
East of England +2 356 £494 -1.30% 149
Yorkshire -8 178 £484 -7.86% 57
East Midlands 0 165 £434 -15.24% 40
North East 0 149 £450 -4.26% 56
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
1 336 (3.92%) Confluence
2 205 (2.39%) SharePoint
3 136 (1.59%) Microsoft Exchange
4 125 (1.46%) SAS
5 70 (0.82%) Apache
5 70 (0.82%) Apache Spark
6 46 (0.54%) Apache Airflow
7 37 (0.43%) nginx
8 34 (0.40%) WebLogic
9 30 (0.35%) Skype for Business
10 21 (0.25%) Jupyter
11 16 (0.19%) CMS
11 16 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
12 14 (0.16%) IIS
12 14 (0.16%) Tuxedo
13 9 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
14 7 (0.082%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.082%) OpenStack
14 7 (0.082%) Tomcat
15 5 (0.058%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 246 (2.87%) Microsoft Office
2 193 (2.25%) Microsoft Excel
3 119 (1.39%) Microsoft Project
4 67 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (0.51%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
7 8 (0.093%) Simulink
8 5 (0.058%) Siemens NX
9 4 (0.047%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.047%) Chatbot
9 4 (0.047%) Oracle Smart View
9 4 (0.047%) Sketch
9 4 (0.047%) Windchill
10 2 (0.023%) Adobe Illustrator
10 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.023%) CATIA
10 2 (0.023%) Lectora
10 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
10 2 (0.023%) PTC Creo
11 1 (0.012%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 120 (1.40%) SAP S/4HANA
2 38 (0.44%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 27 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
4 26 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
5 25 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
5 25 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 19 (0.22%) SAP MM
7 16 (0.19%) Maximo
8 14 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.15%) SAP PP
9 13 (0.15%) SAP QM
10 12 (0.14%) SAP VC
11 11 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
12 10 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
13 9 (0.11%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 9 (0.11%) Primavera
14 8 (0.093%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 8 (0.093%) SAP ERP
14 8 (0.093%) Workday HCM
15 7 (0.082%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,412 (16.48%) Azure
2 1,396 (16.29%) AWS
3 381 (4.45%) GitHub
4 363 (4.24%) GCP
5 327 (3.82%) Power Platform
6 320 (3.73%) Azure DevOps
7 301 (3.51%) Microsoft 365
8 239 (2.79%) Serverless
9 234 (2.73%) Entra ID
10 193 (2.25%) GitHub Actions
11 179 (2.09%) Amazon S3
12 168 (1.96%) OpenShift
13 153 (1.79%) AWS Lambda
14 120 (1.40%) Amazon EC2
15 111 (1.30%) AWS CloudFormation
16 106 (1.24%) PaaS
17 104 (1.21%) IaaS
18 98 (1.14%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 97 (1.13%) OCI
20 95 (1.11%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 399 (4.66%) Firewall
2 253 (2.95%) DNS
3 202 (2.36%) Network Security
4 190 (2.22%) WAN
5 161 (1.88%) LAN
6 157 (1.83%) VPN
7 136 (1.59%) BGP
8 127 (1.48%) DHCP
9 125 (1.46%) TCP/IP
10 98 (1.14%) OSPF
11 93 (1.09%) Wireless
12 84 (0.98%) VLAN
13 76 (0.89%) Wi-Fi
14 65 (0.76%) MPLS
15 49 (0.57%) IPsec
15 49 (0.57%) SAN
16 47 (0.55%) Cisco ISE
17 38 (0.44%) Junos
18 37 (0.43%) Skype
18 37 (0.43%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 236 (2.75%) Power BI
2 222 (2.59%) PostgreSQL
3 148 (1.73%) Data Warehouse
4 146 (1.70%) SQL Server
5 110 (1.28%) Metadata
6 97 (1.13%) Oracle Database
7 94 (1.10%) Amazon RDS
8 88 (1.03%) NoSQL
9 85 (0.99%) MongoDB
10 81 (0.95%) Relational Database
11 71 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
12 67 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
13 58 (0.68%) MySQL
13 58 (0.68%) Pentaho
14 54 (0.63%) Data Lake
15 49 (0.57%) Amazon Redshift
15 49 (0.57%) Big Data
15 49 (0.57%) Tableau
16 36 (0.42%) DynamoDB
16 36 (0.42%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 537 (6.27%) JIRA
2 427 (4.98%) Git
3 355 (4.14%) Jenkins
4 310 (3.62%) GitLab
5 108 (1.26%) Selenium
6 80 (0.93%) JUnit
7 75 (0.88%) Postman
8 55 (0.64%) Cypress.io
9 52 (0.61%) Rational DOORS
10 50 (0.58%) Bitbucket
11 48 (0.56%) SonarQube
12 45 (0.53%) Maven
13 44 (0.51%) Cucumber
13 44 (0.51%) Oracle APEX
14 43 (0.50%) Artifactory
15 34 (0.40%) JMeter
16 33 (0.39%) Mockito
17 32 (0.37%) REST Assured
18 30 (0.35%) Visual Studio
19 23 (0.27%) Metasploit
General
1 2,156 (25.16%) Public Sector
2 2,057 (24.01%) Social Skills
3 734 (8.57%) Analytical Skills
4 631 (7.36%) Finance
5 317 (3.70%) Military
6 251 (2.93%) Documentation Skills
7 206 (2.40%) Aerospace
8 173 (2.02%) Manufacturing
9 169 (1.97%) Telecoms
10 135 (1.58%) Legal
11 113 (1.32%) Influencing Skills
12 112 (1.31%) Organisational Skills
13 109 (1.27%) Marketing
14 106 (1.24%) Electronics
15 105 (1.23%) Presentation Skills
16 102 (1.19%) Banking
17 69 (0.81%) Law
18 47 (0.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 47 (0.55%) Police
19 35 (0.41%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,223 (14.27%) Architect
2 823 (9.60%) Developer
3 740 (8.64%) Senior
4 660 (7.70%) Analyst
5 525 (6.13%) Lead
6 490 (5.72%) Consultant
7 345 (4.03%) DevOps Engineer
8 329 (3.84%) Data Engineer
9 250 (2.92%) Network Engineer
10 236 (2.75%) Business Analyst
11 226 (2.64%) Technical Architect
12 223 (2.60%) Software Engineer
13 221 (2.58%) Support Engineer
14 197 (2.30%) Solutions Architect
15 160 (1.87%) Project Manager
16 156 (1.82%) Tester
17 152 (1.77%) Azure Engineer
17 152 (1.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 150 (1.75%) Administrator
19 149 (1.74%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 336 (3.92%) REST
2 193 (2.25%) Spring
3 178 (2.08%) Node.js
4 167 (1.95%) Kafka
5 161 (1.88%) React
6 148 (1.73%) SOAP
7 141 (1.65%) Spring Boot
8 140 (1.63%) JSON
8 140 (1.63%) LDAP
9 133 (1.55%) .NET
10 109 (1.27%) AngularJS
10 109 (1.27%) RESTful
11 107 (1.25%) HTML
12 106 (1.24%) Web Services
13 98 (1.14%) OAuth
14 90 (1.05%) PySpark
15 89 (1.04%) CSS
15 89 (1.04%) Oracle Fusion
16 87 (1.02%) XML
17 78 (0.91%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 281 (3.28%) Product Ownership
2 278 (3.24%) Data Centre
3 244 (2.85%) Cloud Native
4 224 (2.61%) Onboarding
5 193 (2.25%) PKI
6 152 (1.77%) Management Information System
7 127 (1.48%) Security Posture
8 117 (1.37%) Self-Motivation
9 114 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
10 102 (1.19%) Enterprise Software
11 96 (1.12%) Replication
12 71 (0.83%) Hybrid Cloud
12 71 (0.83%) Public Cloud
13 68 (0.79%) Distributed Systems
14 64 (0.75%) Cyber Threat
14 64 (0.75%) Data Structures
14 64 (0.75%) Security Operations Centre
15 59 (0.69%) Driving Licence
16 56 (0.65%) Clustering
17 46 (0.54%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 807 (9.42%) Windows
2 621 (7.25%) Linux
3 216 (2.52%) Windows Server
4 140 (1.63%) Windows 10
5 122 (1.42%) Android
6 109 (1.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 107 (1.25%) Unix
8 69 (0.81%) Mac OS
9 45 (0.53%) Ubuntu
10 44 (0.51%) Apple iOS
11 27 (0.32%) VMS
12 24 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
13 23 (0.27%) CentOS
14 20 (0.23%) Windows 7
15 19 (0.22%) Solaris
16 16 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
17 11 (0.13%) AIX
17 11 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
18 9 (0.11%) Windows Server 2003
19 8 (0.093%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,692 (19.75%) Agile
2 1,309 (15.28%) DevOps
3 1,128 (13.16%) CI/CD
4 1,055 (12.31%) Problem-Solving
5 800 (9.34%) Stakeholder Management
6 747 (8.72%) Migration
7 698 (8.15%) Continuous Improvement
8 624 (7.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 544 (6.35%) Cybersecurity
10 542 (6.33%) ITIL
11 497 (5.80%) Infrastructure as Code
12 478 (5.58%) Test Automation
13 476 (5.55%) Analytics
14 468 (5.46%) Roadmaps
15 443 (5.17%) Containerisation
16 419 (4.89%) Software Engineering
17 417 (4.87%) Scrum
18 408 (4.76%) Business Intelligence
19 400 (4.67%) Service Management
20 393 (4.59%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 985 (11.49%) Python
2 749 (8.74%) SQL
3 554 (6.47%) PowerShell
4 475 (5.54%) Java
5 353 (4.12%) JavaScript
6 202 (2.36%) Bash
7 178 (2.08%) C#
8 157 (1.83%) TypeScript
9 102 (1.19%) C++
10 93 (1.09%) PL/SQL
10 93 (1.09%) Shell Script
11 72 (0.84%) Go
12 63 (0.74%) C
13 53 (0.62%) Ruby
14 49 (0.57%) Ada
15 48 (0.56%) Scala
16 40 (0.47%) Kusto Query Language
17 38 (0.44%) Bicep
18 33 (0.39%) Apex Code
19 30 (0.35%) R
Qualifications
1 6,480 (75.62%) SC Cleared
2 1,513 (17.66%) DV Cleared
3 436 (5.09%) Degree
4 259 (3.02%) BPSS Clearance
5 162 (1.89%) Cisco Certification
5 162 (1.89%) CISSP
6 120 (1.40%) Azure Certification
7 116 (1.35%) AWS Certification
8 114 (1.33%) CCNP
9 109 (1.27%) Microsoft Certification
10 100 (1.17%) CISM
11 72 (0.84%) Computer Science Degree
12 70 (0.82%) CCNA
13 63 (0.74%) ITIL Certification
13 63 (0.74%) TOGAF Certification
14 49 (0.57%) PMP
15 47 (0.55%) ISTQB
16 45 (0.53%) GIAC
17 44 (0.51%) CEH
18 43 (0.50%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 299 (3.49%) QA
2 274 (3.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 260 (3.03%) NIST
4 234 (2.73%) Data Quality
5 196 (2.29%) NCSC
6 174 (2.03%) GDPR
7 144 (1.68%) Accessibility
8 113 (1.32%) SLA
9 111 (1.30%) PMO
10 61 (0.71%) GRC
11 58 (0.68%) JSP 440
12 42 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
13 39 (0.46%) WCAG
14 36 (0.42%) NIST 800
15 35 (0.41%) Def Stans
16 31 (0.36%) COBIT
16 31 (0.36%) PCI DSS
17 24 (0.28%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 23 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 19 (0.22%) RMADS
System Software
1 572 (6.68%) Docker
2 457 (5.33%) Active Directory
3 227 (2.65%) VMware Infrastructure
4 79 (0.92%) VMware NSX
5 67 (0.78%) vSphere
6 56 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
6 56 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
7 53 (0.62%) Hyper-V
8 26 (0.30%) Firmware
9 22 (0.26%) Oracle RAC
10 19 (0.22%) BitLocker
10 19 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
11 17 (0.20%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 15 (0.18%) NFS
13 10 (0.12%) Postfix
14 9 (0.11%) Squid
14 9 (0.11%) vCloud
15 5 (0.058%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.058%) Terminal Services
16 4 (0.047%) Snort
Systems Management
1 749 (8.74%) Kubernetes
2 666 (7.77%) Terraform
3 286 (3.34%) Ansible
4 215 (2.51%) Grafana
5 174 (2.03%) Prometheus
6 105 (1.23%) Single Sign-On
7 92 (1.07%) SCCM
8 84 (0.98%) vCenter Server
9 80 (0.93%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 63 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
11 62 (0.72%) Argo
12 44 (0.51%) FortiGate
13 39 (0.46%) Packer
14 38 (0.44%) Podman
15 31 (0.36%) Puppet
16 30 (0.35%) OPNET
17 29 (0.34%) Progress Chef
18 26 (0.30%) Kibana
19 24 (0.28%) Nmap
20 21 (0.25%) Consul
Vendors
1 989 (11.54%) Microsoft
2 487 (5.68%) Oracle
3 416 (4.85%) VMware
4 391 (4.56%) Cisco
5 369 (4.31%) ServiceNow
6 367 (4.28%) SAP
7 213 (2.49%) Splunk
8 178 (2.08%) Red Hat
9 137 (1.60%) Databricks
10 134 (1.56%) Google
11 126 (1.47%) Juniper
12 122 (1.42%) Atlassian
13 120 (1.40%) CyberArk
14 118 (1.38%) Palo Alto
15 115 (1.34%) Salesforce
16 99 (1.16%) IBM
17 93 (1.09%) Dell
18 81 (0.95%) HP
19 80 (0.93%) Talend
20 77 (0.90%) Aruba