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

6 months to
18 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 7,984 4,652 7,033
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.09% 18.02% 18.65%
As % of the Qualifications category 67.65% 59.79% 60.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,464 2,962 4,438
10th Percentile £353 £325 £358
25th Percentile £445 £440 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £548 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.20% -0.36% -2.65%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.42% -2.18% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 691 238 488
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.30 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.59 £25.26 £40.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £58.00
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% +3.45% -3.33%
75th Percentile £65.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.33 £83.40
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £50.75 £58.30
% change year-on-year -50.44% -12.95% -2.83%

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 11,802 7,780 11,719
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.13% 30.14% 31.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,843 4,754 7,217
10th Percentile £325 £296 £297
25th Percentile £419 £414 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.42% -2.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 906 366 887
10th Percentile £15.93 £19.99 £14.21
25th Percentile £18.87 £25.26 £21.34
Median hourly rate £25.15 £47.50 £45.21
Median % change year-on-year -47.05% +5.07% -0.09%
75th Percentile £63.75 £68.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £76.58 £82.50 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £39.52 £45.00
% change year-on-year -36.36% -12.18% -2.17%

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 18 February 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 18 February 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 18 February 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 2,774 £525 - 502
South East +1 1,681 £525 -4.55% 656
South West 0 1,309 £550 -0.18% 376
North of England -2 839 £500 +2.04% 231
Midlands +4 777 £500 -9.17% 212
West Midlands +3 604 £511 -7.55% 152
North West 0 550 £500 +5.26% 123
East of England +2 336 £495 -3.41% 189
East Midlands +3 174 £424 -17.20% 57
Yorkshire -4 171 £500 -4.76% 58
North East 0 145 £450 -10.09% 52
South Coast - 1 - -
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
1 301 (3.77%) Confluence
2 193 (2.42%) SharePoint
3 132 (1.65%) Microsoft Exchange
4 108 (1.35%) SAS
5 68 (0.85%) Apache
6 65 (0.81%) Apache Spark
7 41 (0.51%) Apache Airflow
8 40 (0.50%) nginx
9 33 (0.41%) Skype for Business
9 33 (0.41%) WebLogic
10 19 (0.24%) Jupyter
11 18 (0.23%) Palantir Foundry
12 15 (0.19%) CMS
13 12 (0.15%) IIS
14 8 (0.10%) OpenStack
14 8 (0.10%) Tuxedo
15 7 (0.088%) Oracle Workflow
16 6 (0.075%) ArcGIS
16 6 (0.075%) SharePoint Server
17 5 (0.063%) Documentum
Applications
1 245 (3.07%) Microsoft Office
2 172 (2.15%) Microsoft Excel
3 115 (1.44%) Microsoft Project
4 65 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 41 (0.51%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
7 10 (0.13%) Simulink
8 5 (0.063%) Siemens NX
8 5 (0.063%) Windchill
9 4 (0.050%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.050%) Chatbot
9 4 (0.050%) Oracle Smart View
9 4 (0.050%) Sketch
10 3 (0.038%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.038%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 3 (0.038%) Stateflow
11 2 (0.025%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.025%) CATIA
11 2 (0.025%) FrameMaker
11 2 (0.025%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 132 (1.65%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.46%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 26 (0.33%) Oracle ERP
4 21 (0.26%) SAP WM
5 20 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
5 20 (0.25%) SAP EWM
5 20 (0.25%) Teamcenter
6 19 (0.24%) Remedy ITSM
6 19 (0.24%) SAP MM
7 15 (0.19%) Maximo
8 13 (0.16%) SAP QM
9 12 (0.15%) Oracle Assets
9 12 (0.15%) SAP PP
9 12 (0.15%) SAP VC
10 11 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
10 11 (0.14%) Primavera
10 11 (0.14%) SAP EHS
10 11 (0.14%) SAP HCM
11 9 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
11 9 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
Cloud Services
1 1,339 (16.77%) Azure
2 1,309 (16.40%) AWS
3 354 (4.43%) GitHub
4 338 (4.23%) GCP
5 294 (3.68%) Azure DevOps
6 290 (3.63%) Power Platform
7 286 (3.58%) Microsoft 365
8 229 (2.87%) Serverless
9 211 (2.64%) Entra ID
10 178 (2.23%) Amazon S3
11 176 (2.20%) GitHub Actions
12 163 (2.04%) OpenShift
13 149 (1.87%) AWS Lambda
14 116 (1.45%) Amazon EC2
15 109 (1.37%) AWS CloudFormation
16 105 (1.32%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 96 (1.20%) Amazon EKS
17 96 (1.20%) IaaS
18 92 (1.15%) PaaS
18 92 (1.15%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 395 (4.95%) Firewall
2 266 (3.33%) DNS
3 197 (2.47%) Network Security
4 171 (2.14%) WAN
5 170 (2.13%) VPN
6 137 (1.72%) LAN
7 131 (1.64%) BGP
8 125 (1.57%) DHCP
8 125 (1.57%) TCP/IP
9 87 (1.09%) OSPF
10 82 (1.03%) VLAN
11 81 (1.01%) Wireless
12 68 (0.85%) Wi-Fi
13 67 (0.84%) MPLS
14 54 (0.68%) IPsec
14 54 (0.68%) SAN
15 49 (0.61%) SSL
16 46 (0.58%) Cisco ISE
17 41 (0.51%) Skype
18 38 (0.48%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 209 (2.62%) Power BI
2 201 (2.52%) PostgreSQL
3 119 (1.49%) Data Warehouse
4 103 (1.29%) SQL Server
5 101 (1.27%) Metadata
6 87 (1.09%) MongoDB
6 87 (1.09%) Oracle Database
7 85 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
8 84 (1.05%) NoSQL
9 75 (0.94%) Relational Database
10 68 (0.85%) Elasticsearch
11 62 (0.78%) Azure SQL Database
12 50 (0.63%) Data Lake
13 46 (0.58%) Big Data
14 41 (0.51%) Pentaho
15 40 (0.50%) MySQL
16 38 (0.48%) Tableau
17 37 (0.46%) Amazon Redshift
18 36 (0.45%) Amazon Athena
19 35 (0.44%) Redis
Development Applications
1 487 (6.10%) JIRA
2 380 (4.76%) Git
3 336 (4.21%) Jenkins
4 292 (3.66%) GitLab
5 94 (1.18%) Selenium
6 70 (0.88%) Postman
7 65 (0.81%) JUnit
8 60 (0.75%) Cypress.io
9 50 (0.63%) SonarQube
10 45 (0.56%) Oracle APEX
11 44 (0.55%) Artifactory
12 42 (0.53%) Bitbucket
13 39 (0.49%) Maven
14 37 (0.46%) Cucumber
15 34 (0.43%) REST Assured
16 32 (0.40%) Mockito
17 24 (0.30%) Metasploit
18 22 (0.28%) Burp Suite
18 22 (0.28%) MSI
18 22 (0.28%) Rational DOORS
General
1 2,030 (25.43%) Public Sector
2 1,978 (24.77%) Social Skills
3 692 (8.67%) Analytical Skills
4 558 (6.99%) Finance
5 316 (3.96%) Military
6 240 (3.01%) Documentation Skills
7 178 (2.23%) Telecoms
8 173 (2.17%) Manufacturing
9 150 (1.88%) Aerospace
10 124 (1.55%) Legal
11 118 (1.48%) Marketing
12 115 (1.44%) Electronics
12 115 (1.44%) Organisational Skills
13 103 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
14 99 (1.24%) Influencing Skills
15 85 (1.06%) Banking
16 67 (0.84%) Law
17 45 (0.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 37 (0.46%) Police
19 34 (0.43%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,104 (13.83%) Architect
2 747 (9.36%) Developer
3 668 (8.37%) Senior
4 610 (7.64%) Analyst
5 488 (6.11%) Consultant
6 460 (5.76%) Lead
7 373 (4.67%) DevOps Engineer
8 267 (3.34%) Data Engineer
9 233 (2.92%) Support Engineer
10 229 (2.87%) Network Engineer
11 212 (2.66%) Business Analyst
12 196 (2.45%) Software Engineer
13 194 (2.43%) Technical Architect
14 182 (2.28%) Solutions Architect
15 156 (1.95%) Tester
16 151 (1.89%) Azure Engineer
17 140 (1.75%) Project Manager
18 139 (1.74%) AWS Engineer
19 133 (1.67%) Administrator
19 133 (1.67%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 313 (3.92%) REST
2 182 (2.28%) Node.js
3 174 (2.18%) Spring
4 173 (2.17%) React
5 169 (2.12%) Kafka
6 151 (1.89%) JSON
7 142 (1.78%) LDAP
8 140 (1.75%) SOAP
9 135 (1.69%) Spring Boot
10 97 (1.21%) .NET
10 97 (1.21%) HTML
11 95 (1.19%) XML
12 94 (1.18%) OAuth
13 89 (1.11%) AngularJS
13 89 (1.11%) CSS
13 89 (1.11%) RESTful
14 88 (1.10%) Oracle Fusion
14 88 (1.10%) PySpark
15 83 (1.04%) Web Services
16 76 (0.95%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 264 (3.31%) Data Centre
2 234 (2.93%) Product Ownership
3 224 (2.81%) Cloud Native
4 217 (2.72%) Onboarding
5 198 (2.48%) PKI
6 148 (1.85%) Management Information System
7 131 (1.64%) Security Posture
8 110 (1.38%) Self-Motivation
9 107 (1.34%) Enterprise Software
10 103 (1.29%) Legacy Systems
11 91 (1.14%) Replication
12 66 (0.83%) Driving Licence
12 66 (0.83%) Hybrid Cloud
13 65 (0.81%) Cyber Threat
14 61 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
15 60 (0.75%) Public Cloud
16 50 (0.63%) Distributed Systems
17 46 (0.58%) Private Cloud
18 42 (0.53%) Data Protection Act
19 41 (0.51%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 823 (10.31%) Windows
2 611 (7.65%) Linux
3 210 (2.63%) Windows Server
4 172 (2.15%) Windows 10
5 105 (1.32%) Android
6 104 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 103 (1.29%) Unix
8 66 (0.83%) Mac OS
9 41 (0.51%) Ubuntu
10 40 (0.50%) Apple iOS
11 37 (0.46%) VMS
12 23 (0.29%) CentOS
12 23 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
13 22 (0.28%) Windows 7
14 18 (0.23%) Solaris
15 15 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
15 15 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
16 14 (0.18%) Mac OS X
17 9 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
17 9 (0.11%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,502 (18.81%) Agile
2 1,215 (15.22%) DevOps
3 1,048 (13.13%) CI/CD
4 1,040 (13.03%) Problem-Solving
5 712 (8.92%) Stakeholder Management
6 698 (8.74%) Migration
7 590 (7.39%) Continuous Improvement
8 556 (6.96%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 542 (6.79%) Cybersecurity
10 495 (6.20%) Infrastructure as Code
11 493 (6.17%) ITIL
12 443 (5.55%) Test Automation
13 409 (5.12%) Analytics
14 408 (5.11%) Containerisation
15 402 (5.04%) Roadmaps
16 385 (4.82%) Business Intelligence
17 382 (4.78%) Service Management
18 374 (4.68%) Software Engineering
19 358 (4.48%) Scrum
20 332 (4.16%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 957 (11.99%) Python
2 621 (7.78%) SQL
3 537 (6.73%) PowerShell
4 450 (5.64%) Java
5 345 (4.32%) JavaScript
6 203 (2.54%) Bash
7 173 (2.17%) TypeScript
8 137 (1.72%) C#
9 84 (1.05%) C++
10 81 (1.01%) Shell Script
11 77 (0.96%) PL/SQL
12 76 (0.95%) Go
13 60 (0.75%) C
14 47 (0.59%) Ada
14 47 (0.59%) Scala
15 45 (0.56%) Ruby
16 38 (0.48%) Bicep
17 35 (0.44%) Kusto Query Language
18 33 (0.41%) MATLAB
19 31 (0.39%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 6,079 (76.14%) SC Cleared
2 1,406 (17.61%) DV Cleared
3 397 (4.97%) Degree
4 248 (3.11%) BPSS Clearance
5 150 (1.88%) CISSP
6 146 (1.83%) Cisco Certification
7 123 (1.54%) Azure Certification
8 114 (1.43%) Microsoft Certification
9 112 (1.40%) CCNP
10 107 (1.34%) AWS Certification
11 93 (1.16%) CISM
12 68 (0.85%) Computer Science Degree
13 65 (0.81%) ITIL Certification
14 63 (0.79%) CCNA
15 58 (0.73%) TOGAF Certification
16 47 (0.59%) CEH
16 47 (0.59%) GIAC
17 42 (0.53%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 41 (0.51%) CHECK Team Member
19 40 (0.50%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 261 (3.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 259 (3.24%) QA
3 242 (3.03%) NIST
4 198 (2.48%) Data Quality
5 186 (2.33%) NCSC
6 163 (2.04%) GDPR
7 144 (1.80%) Accessibility
8 115 (1.44%) SLA
9 90 (1.13%) PMO
10 56 (0.70%) GRC
11 49 (0.61%) JSP 440
12 43 (0.54%) WCAG
13 37 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
13 37 (0.46%) Def Stans
14 31 (0.39%) PCI DSS
15 30 (0.38%) NIST 800
16 29 (0.36%) COBIT
17 22 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 21 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 18 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 556 (6.96%) Docker
2 474 (5.94%) Active Directory
3 234 (2.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 73 (0.91%) VMware NSX
5 64 (0.80%) vSphere
6 61 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
7 58 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
8 57 (0.71%) Hyper-V
9 25 (0.31%) Virtual Desktop
10 22 (0.28%) Firmware
11 18 (0.23%) BitLocker
12 15 (0.19%) NFS
12 15 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 14 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
14 11 (0.14%) Squid
15 10 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
16 9 (0.11%) Postfix
17 7 (0.088%) vCloud
17 7 (0.088%) Virtual Servers
18 6 (0.075%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 724 (9.07%) Kubernetes
2 671 (8.40%) Terraform
3 277 (3.47%) Ansible
4 193 (2.42%) Grafana
5 161 (2.02%) Prometheus
6 108 (1.35%) Single Sign-On
7 105 (1.32%) SCCM
8 94 (1.18%) vCenter Server
9 83 (1.04%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 65 (0.81%) Argo
11 64 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
12 38 (0.48%) Podman
13 35 (0.44%) FortiGate
13 35 (0.44%) Kibana
14 34 (0.43%) Packer
15 30 (0.38%) OPNET
16 28 (0.35%) Puppet
17 26 (0.33%) Nmap
18 25 (0.31%) Progress Chef
19 24 (0.30%) vRealize
Vendors
1 949 (11.89%) Microsoft
2 424 (5.31%) Oracle
3 406 (5.09%) Cisco
3 406 (5.09%) VMware
4 392 (4.91%) SAP
5 338 (4.23%) ServiceNow
6 209 (2.62%) Splunk
7 166 (2.08%) Red Hat
8 128 (1.60%) Juniper
9 127 (1.59%) Palo Alto
10 124 (1.55%) Databricks
11 122 (1.53%) CyberArk
12 121 (1.52%) Google
13 110 (1.38%) Atlassian
14 106 (1.33%) Salesforce
15 92 (1.15%) Dell
16 78 (0.98%) SolarWinds
17 75 (0.94%) HP
18 70 (0.88%) Aruba
19 67 (0.84%) IBM