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

6 months to
28 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,537 4,663 7,051
As % of all contract jobs in England 21.93% 18.31% 18.88%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.54% 58.94% 61.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,707 3,051 4,597
10th Percentile £380 £335 £356
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 £713 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 746 347 542
10th Percentile £18.25 £18.45 £14.50
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +151.03% -56.26% -4.17%
75th Percentile £75.30 £64.13 £72.50
90th Percentile £87.08 £77.50 £83.75
UK median hourly rate £61.67 £25.15 £56.49
% change year-on-year +145.21% -55.48% -5.85%

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 13,715 7,911 11,409
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.54% 31.06% 30.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,261 4,980 7,039
10th Percentile £350 £281 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £645
90th Percentile £715 £715 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +0.91% -0.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,031 517 1,006
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.16
25th Percentile £24.22 £20.15 £20.56
Median hourly rate £53.00 £29.27 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +81.07% -31.13% -22.73%
75th Percentile £74.00 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.40 £77.50 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £51.00 £28.55 £40.94
% change year-on-year +78.63% -30.26% -26.47%

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 June 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 June 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 June 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 +7 3,391 £528 +0.48% 512
South East +1 2,304 £550 - 492
South West 0 1,299 £538 -4.44% 336
North of England +2 999 £500 - 251
Midlands +2 918 £469 -8.49% 144
West Midlands +2 794 £470 -10.48% 95
North West 0 534 £525 +5.00% 151
East of England +2 350 £550 +10.00% 120
Yorkshire -2 264 £500 +1.63% 58
North East +1 231 £475 -1.04% 45
East Midlands -4 113 £441 -7.24% 48
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
1 331 (3.47%) Confluence
2 211 (2.21%) SharePoint
3 143 (1.50%) SAS
4 122 (1.28%) Microsoft Exchange
5 88 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
6 80 (0.84%) Apache Spark
7 78 (0.82%) Apache
8 39 (0.41%) Jupyter
8 39 (0.41%) nginx
9 29 (0.30%) WebLogic
10 21 (0.22%) Tomcat
11 20 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
12 16 (0.17%) CMS
12 16 (0.17%) IIS
13 15 (0.16%) Oracle Application Server
14 14 (0.15%) Skype for Business
15 12 (0.13%) Tuxedo
16 11 (0.12%) NetWeaver
17 9 (0.094%) Palantir Foundry
18 8 (0.084%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 153 (1.60%) Microsoft Excel
2 124 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
3 75 (0.79%) Microsoft Project
4 68 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 40 (0.42%) MS Visio
6 14 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.14%) Simulink
8 11 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
9 10 (0.10%) AutoCAD
9 10 (0.10%) Revit
10 9 (0.094%) Chatbot
11 5 (0.052%) Notepad++
12 4 (0.042%) Adobe XD
13 3 (0.031%) Sketch
14 2 (0.021%) CATIA
14 2 (0.021%) CPLEX
14 2 (0.021%) Lectora
14 2 (0.021%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.021%) Siemens NX
14 2 (0.021%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 99 (1.04%) SAP S/4HANA
2 59 (0.62%) Remedy ITSM
3 44 (0.46%) Oracle ERP
4 32 (0.34%) Teamcenter
5 31 (0.33%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 27 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
7 21 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
8 17 (0.18%) SAP PSCD
9 15 (0.16%) Findur
9 15 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
10 13 (0.14%) Primavera
11 12 (0.13%) iTrent
11 12 (0.13%) Maximo
11 12 (0.13%) Siebel CRM
11 12 (0.13%) Temenos T24
12 11 (0.12%) SAP ERP
13 9 (0.094%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 9 (0.094%) Oracle Assets
13 9 (0.094%) Salesforce CRM
13 9 (0.094%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,644 (17.24%) Azure
2 1,620 (16.99%) AWS
3 372 (3.90%) GitHub
4 368 (3.86%) Azure DevOps
5 367 (3.85%) Power Platform
6 347 (3.64%) GCP
7 244 (2.56%) Entra ID
7 244 (2.56%) Serverless
8 243 (2.55%) Microsoft 365
9 233 (2.44%) GitHub Actions
10 211 (2.21%) Amazon S3
11 168 (1.76%) AWS Lambda
12 149 (1.56%) Amazon EC2
13 139 (1.46%) SaaS
14 133 (1.39%) OpenShift
15 131 (1.37%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 129 (1.35%) PaaS
17 127 (1.33%) OCI
18 109 (1.14%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 100 (1.05%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 407 (4.27%) Firewall
2 295 (3.09%) DNS
3 223 (2.34%) Network Security
4 205 (2.15%) WAN
5 183 (1.92%) LAN
6 162 (1.70%) VPN
7 156 (1.64%) DHCP
8 131 (1.37%) BGP
9 110 (1.15%) OSPF
9 110 (1.15%) Wi-Fi
10 105 (1.10%) VLAN
11 94 (0.99%) TCP/IP
12 78 (0.82%) Wireless
13 59 (0.62%) MPLS
13 59 (0.62%) SD-WAN
14 55 (0.58%) VXLAN
15 53 (0.56%) SAN
16 50 (0.52%) BIG-IP
17 48 (0.50%) IPsec
18 46 (0.48%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 277 (2.90%) Power BI
2 240 (2.52%) PostgreSQL
3 221 (2.32%) Data Warehouse
4 218 (2.29%) SQL Server
5 142 (1.49%) Oracle Database
6 121 (1.27%) Metadata
7 107 (1.12%) Data Lake
8 106 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
9 98 (1.03%) Relational Database
10 84 (0.88%) Pentaho
11 82 (0.86%) MongoDB
12 76 (0.80%) MySQL
13 75 (0.79%) Elasticsearch
14 73 (0.77%) Oracle Reports
15 68 (0.71%) Amazon Redshift
16 65 (0.68%) NoSQL
17 62 (0.65%) Amazon Athena
18 59 (0.62%) Tableau
19 43 (0.45%) DynamoDB
20 40 (0.42%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 531 (5.57%) JIRA
2 427 (4.48%) Git
3 409 (4.29%) GitLab
4 371 (3.89%) Jenkins
5 106 (1.11%) Selenium
6 80 (0.84%) JUnit
7 71 (0.74%) SonarQube
8 68 (0.71%) Postman
9 58 (0.61%) Rational DOORS
10 53 (0.56%) JMeter
11 50 (0.52%) Cucumber
12 43 (0.45%) Artifactory
13 42 (0.44%) Mockito
14 41 (0.43%) Maven
15 40 (0.42%) Bitbucket
16 39 (0.41%) REST Assured
17 37 (0.39%) Visual Studio
17 37 (0.39%) Zephyr
18 35 (0.37%) Cypress.io
19 30 (0.31%) WebDriver
General
1 2,031 (21.30%) Public Sector
2 1,928 (20.22%) Social Skills
3 667 (6.99%) Analytical Skills
4 644 (6.75%) Finance
5 319 (3.34%) Military
6 269 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
7 267 (2.80%) Aerospace
8 141 (1.48%) Legal
9 136 (1.43%) Influencing Skills
10 123 (1.29%) Banking
11 110 (1.15%) Telecoms
12 96 (1.01%) Law
12 96 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
13 77 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
14 74 (0.78%) Manufacturing
15 69 (0.72%) Police
16 65 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 44 (0.46%) Marketing
18 38 (0.40%) Aviation
19 37 (0.39%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,393 (14.61%) Architect
2 948 (9.94%) Developer
3 822 (8.62%) Senior
4 763 (8.00%) Lead
5 614 (6.44%) Analyst
6 457 (4.79%) Data Engineer
7 427 (4.48%) Consultant
8 413 (4.33%) DevOps Engineer
9 307 (3.22%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 301 (3.16%) Software Engineer
11 281 (2.95%) Technical Architect
12 249 (2.61%) Network Engineer
13 230 (2.41%) Solutions Architect
14 212 (2.22%) Security Architect
15 204 (2.14%) Business Analyst
15 204 (2.14%) Project Manager
16 192 (2.01%) Delivery Manager
17 187 (1.96%) Java Developer
18 182 (1.91%) Administrator
19 173 (1.81%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 290 (3.04%) REST
2 230 (2.41%) Spring
3 186 (1.95%) Spring Boot
4 170 (1.78%) React
5 162 (1.70%) .NET
6 153 (1.60%) Node.js
7 151 (1.58%) Kafka
8 144 (1.51%) RESTful
9 122 (1.28%) SOAP
10 115 (1.21%) LDAP
11 111 (1.16%) JSON
12 110 (1.15%) AngularJS
13 95 (1.00%) OAuth
14 93 (0.98%) PySpark
15 89 (0.93%) Web Services
16 83 (0.87%) HTML
17 76 (0.80%) XML
18 75 (0.79%) OpenID
19 69 (0.72%) Playwright
20 68 (0.71%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 376 (3.94%) Cloud Native
2 326 (3.42%) Product Ownership
3 297 (3.11%) Onboarding
4 279 (2.93%) Data Centre
5 152 (1.59%) Legacy Systems
6 148 (1.55%) Management Information System
7 135 (1.42%) PKI
8 132 (1.38%) Distributed Systems
9 107 (1.12%) Replication
10 104 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
11 97 (1.02%) Enterprise Software
12 94 (0.99%) Security Posture
13 90 (0.94%) CMDB
14 87 (0.91%) Clustering
15 86 (0.90%) Data Structures
16 85 (0.89%) Hybrid Cloud
17 75 (0.79%) Public Cloud
18 71 (0.74%) Security Operations Centre
19 68 (0.71%) Virtual Team
20 67 (0.70%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 775 (8.13%) Windows
2 642 (6.73%) Linux
3 247 (2.59%) Windows Server
4 176 (1.85%) Unix
5 124 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 82 (0.86%) Windows 10
7 75 (0.79%) Android
8 49 (0.51%) Solaris
9 47 (0.49%) Apple iOS
10 37 (0.39%) Mac OS
11 32 (0.34%) Ubuntu
12 29 (0.30%) AIX
13 23 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 22 (0.23%) CentOS
15 19 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
16 17 (0.18%) VMS
17 14 (0.15%) Windows 7
18 11 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
18 11 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
18 11 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,937 (20.31%) Agile
2 1,476 (15.48%) DevOps
3 1,326 (13.90%) CI/CD
4 1,001 (10.50%) Problem-Solving
5 992 (10.40%) Stakeholder Management
6 957 (10.03%) Continuous Improvement
7 774 (8.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 764 (8.01%) Migration
9 700 (7.34%) Infrastructure as Code
10 625 (6.55%) Cybersecurity
11 602 (6.31%) ITIL
12 583 (6.11%) Test Automation
13 580 (6.08%) Software Engineering
14 553 (5.80%) Containerisation
15 551 (5.78%) Analytics
16 541 (5.67%) Roadmaps
17 498 (5.22%) Decision-Making
18 487 (5.11%) Data Modelling
19 478 (5.01%) AI
20 452 (4.74%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 1,001 (10.50%) Python
2 905 (9.49%) SQL
3 624 (6.54%) Java
4 449 (4.71%) PowerShell
5 278 (2.91%) JavaScript
6 203 (2.13%) C#
7 200 (2.10%) Bash
8 147 (1.54%) TypeScript
9 127 (1.33%) PL/SQL
10 88 (0.92%) C++
11 85 (0.89%) Shell Script
12 68 (0.71%) Bicep
13 64 (0.67%) C
14 54 (0.57%) Go
15 46 (0.48%) Ada
16 41 (0.43%) Scala
17 40 (0.42%) Apex Code
18 39 (0.41%) Ruby
19 35 (0.37%) Kotlin
20 31 (0.33%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 7,193 (75.42%) SC Cleared
2 1,862 (19.52%) DV Cleared
3 385 (4.04%) Degree
4 285 (2.99%) BPSS Clearance
5 183 (1.92%) Cisco Certification
6 158 (1.66%) CISSP
7 125 (1.31%) Azure Certification
8 108 (1.13%) Microsoft Certification
9 103 (1.08%) AWS Certification
10 99 (1.04%) CCNP
11 96 (1.01%) CISM
12 79 (0.83%) PMP
13 78 (0.82%) PMI Certification
14 77 (0.81%) CCNA
15 65 (0.68%) ISTQB
16 57 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 56 (0.59%) Computer Science Degree
18 48 (0.50%) ITIL Certification
19 39 (0.41%) GIAC
20 35 (0.37%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 371 (3.89%) QA
2 288 (3.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 286 (3.00%) NIST
4 285 (2.99%) Data Quality
5 211 (2.21%) NCSC
6 184 (1.93%) Accessibility
7 168 (1.76%) GDPR
7 168 (1.76%) PMO
8 99 (1.04%) SLA
9 83 (0.87%) GRC
10 61 (0.64%) JSP 440
11 45 (0.47%) Cyber Essentials
12 43 (0.45%) WCAG
13 40 (0.42%) NIST 800
14 33 (0.35%) Def Stans
15 28 (0.29%) RMADS
16 24 (0.25%) Government Security Classifications
16 24 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 22 (0.23%) COBIT
18 18 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 606 (6.35%) Docker
2 422 (4.42%) Active Directory
3 292 (3.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 113 (1.18%) VMware ESXi
5 107 (1.12%) VMware NSX
6 79 (0.83%) vSphere
7 78 (0.82%) Hyper-V
8 73 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
9 33 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
10 32 (0.34%) Firmware
11 25 (0.26%) Virtual Desktop
12 23 (0.24%) BitLocker
13 21 (0.22%) vCloud
14 19 (0.20%) Postfix
15 18 (0.19%) NFS
16 16 (0.17%) Squid
17 13 (0.14%) Slurm Workload Manager
18 9 (0.094%) Microsoft App-V
19 6 (0.063%) Corosync
19 6 (0.063%) KVM
Systems Management
1 773 (8.11%) Terraform
2 759 (7.96%) Kubernetes
3 335 (3.51%) Ansible
4 225 (2.36%) Grafana
5 184 (1.93%) Prometheus
6 109 (1.14%) vCenter Server
7 79 (0.83%) SCCM
8 73 (0.77%) Single Sign-On
9 60 (0.63%) Microsoft Intune
10 52 (0.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 48 (0.50%) FortiGate
12 47 (0.49%) Argo
13 41 (0.43%) Puppet
13 41 (0.43%) SCOM
14 40 (0.42%) Oracle RMAN
15 33 (0.35%) Podman
16 28 (0.29%) Progress Chef
17 24 (0.25%) Nagios
18 23 (0.24%) Kibana
18 23 (0.24%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,012 (10.61%) Microsoft
2 678 (7.11%) Oracle
3 462 (4.84%) VMware
4 415 (4.35%) ServiceNow
5 308 (3.23%) SAP
6 305 (3.20%) Cisco
7 190 (1.99%) Splunk
8 169 (1.77%) Databricks
9 160 (1.68%) Google
10 141 (1.48%) Red Hat
11 129 (1.35%) Talend
12 124 (1.30%) Salesforce
13 111 (1.16%) IBM
14 104 (1.09%) Informatica
14 104 (1.09%) Palo Alto
15 94 (0.99%) Juniper
16 84 (0.88%) F5
16 84 (0.88%) SolarWinds
17 83 (0.87%) Fortinet
18 77 (0.81%) Citrix