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

6 months to
20 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +4
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 6,935 5,241 6,824
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.02% 18.15% 18.34%
As % of the Qualifications category 64.90% 59.79% 60.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,598 3,350 4,327
10th Percentile £343 £340 £363
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.58%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 706 259 436
10th Percentile £17.87 £20.30 £20.00
25th Percentile £19.66 £25.66 £46.18
Median hourly rate £25.15 £57.25 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -56.07% -4.58% -
75th Percentile £60.61 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £81.25
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -49.70% -16.67% -

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 10,686 8,766 11,308
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.94% 30.35% 30.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,971 5,409 7,165
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £419 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 915 411 677
10th Percentile £16.51 £19.30 £17.08
25th Percentile £19.38 £25.25 £26.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -45.54% -12.04% +16.67%
75th Percentile £56.00 £67.50 £67.56
90th Percentile £75.95 £75.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year -37.13% -23.81% +16.67%

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 December 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 December 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 December 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 +4 2,279 £545 -0.91% 385
South East +1 1,400 £520 -5.54% 557
South West 0 1,166 £550 -4.35% 404
North of England -1 809 £501 +5.44% 196
Midlands +3 706 £515 -6.45% 108
West Midlands +3 551 £520 -8.49% 84
North West 0 544 £520 +9.47% 141
East of England +1 321 £500 +5.26% 247
Yorkshire -15 163 £500 +5.26% 35
East Midlands +1 146 £444 -12.13% 24
North East 0 119 £450 -12.62% 25
South Coast - 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
1 251 (3.62%) Confluence
2 175 (2.52%) SharePoint
3 114 (1.64%) Microsoft Exchange
4 98 (1.41%) SAS
5 82 (1.18%) Apache
6 53 (0.76%) Apache Spark
7 50 (0.72%) Apache Airflow
8 38 (0.55%) Skype for Business
9 36 (0.52%) nginx
10 26 (0.37%) WebLogic
11 20 (0.29%) CMS
12 19 (0.27%) IIS
13 13 (0.19%) SharePoint Server
14 10 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2010
15 9 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
15 9 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 8 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2003
16 8 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2007
16 8 (0.12%) Office Communications Server
16 8 (0.12%) OpenStack
Applications
1 243 (3.50%) Microsoft Office
2 157 (2.26%) Microsoft Excel
3 96 (1.38%) Microsoft Project
4 51 (0.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 34 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 20 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.19%) Siemens NX
7 13 (0.19%) Simulink
8 10 (0.14%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.072%) FrameMaker
9 5 (0.072%) Oracle Smart View
9 5 (0.072%) PTC Creo
9 5 (0.072%) Sketch
9 5 (0.072%) Stateflow
10 4 (0.058%) Trello
10 4 (0.058%) Windchill
11 3 (0.043%) Adobe Illustrator
11 3 (0.043%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.043%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.043%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 146 (2.11%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (0.49%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 33 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
4 27 (0.39%) SAP WM
5 26 (0.37%) SAP EWM
6 25 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
7 18 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
7 18 (0.26%) SAP MM
8 17 (0.25%) Teamcenter
9 15 (0.22%) SAP HCM
10 14 (0.20%) SAP QM
11 13 (0.19%) Maximo
11 13 (0.19%) Oracle General Ledger
12 12 (0.17%) SAP PP
12 12 (0.17%) SAP VC
13 11 (0.16%) Primavera
13 11 (0.16%) SAP EHS
14 10 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
14 10 (0.14%) SAP Payroll
14 10 (0.14%) SAP PS
Cloud Services
1 1,138 (16.41%) Azure
2 1,129 (16.28%) AWS
3 320 (4.61%) Microsoft 365
4 315 (4.54%) GitHub
5 284 (4.10%) GCP
6 247 (3.56%) Power Platform
7 239 (3.45%) Azure DevOps
8 197 (2.84%) Serverless
9 168 (2.42%) Entra ID
9 168 (2.42%) GitHub Actions
10 159 (2.29%) Amazon S3
11 137 (1.98%) OpenShift
12 119 (1.72%) AWS Lambda
13 115 (1.66%) SaaS
14 106 (1.53%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 103 (1.49%) AWS CloudFormation
16 100 (1.44%) Amazon EC2
17 88 (1.27%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 85 (1.23%) Amazon EKS
19 84 (1.21%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 367 (5.29%) Firewall
2 254 (3.66%) DNS
3 176 (2.54%) VPN
4 157 (2.26%) Network Security
5 147 (2.12%) WAN
6 117 (1.69%) TCP/IP
7 110 (1.59%) LAN
8 99 (1.43%) BGP
9 96 (1.38%) DHCP
10 88 (1.27%) Wireless
11 78 (1.12%) SSL
12 73 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
13 61 (0.88%) SAN
14 60 (0.87%) VLAN
15 59 (0.85%) MPLS
16 54 (0.78%) IPsec
17 53 (0.76%) OSPF
18 48 (0.69%) HTTP
19 44 (0.63%) Cisco ISE
20 42 (0.61%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 197 (2.84%) PostgreSQL
2 165 (2.38%) Power BI
3 84 (1.21%) MongoDB
4 81 (1.17%) Data Warehouse
5 79 (1.14%) SQL Server
6 76 (1.10%) NoSQL
7 75 (1.08%) Amazon RDS
8 72 (1.04%) Metadata
9 71 (1.02%) Relational Database
10 69 (0.99%) Oracle Database
11 51 (0.74%) Big Data
12 49 (0.71%) Azure SQL Database
13 44 (0.63%) Elasticsearch
14 39 (0.56%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 38 (0.55%) Pentaho
16 35 (0.50%) Amazon Athena
17 34 (0.49%) Amazon Redshift
17 34 (0.49%) Data Lake
17 34 (0.49%) Redis
18 30 (0.43%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 467 (6.73%) JIRA
2 384 (5.54%) Git
3 351 (5.06%) Jenkins
4 268 (3.86%) GitLab
5 75 (1.08%) Selenium
6 58 (0.84%) Postman
7 51 (0.74%) JUnit
8 49 (0.71%) Cypress.io
9 45 (0.65%) Bitbucket
9 45 (0.65%) Oracle APEX
10 44 (0.63%) SonarQube
11 43 (0.62%) Artifactory
12 31 (0.45%) Maven
13 29 (0.42%) Cucumber
14 27 (0.39%) Mockito
15 24 (0.35%) MSI
16 23 (0.33%) REST Assured
17 22 (0.32%) Rational DOORS
18 20 (0.29%) Metasploit
19 18 (0.26%) Burp Suite
General
1 1,875 (27.04%) Public Sector
2 1,811 (26.11%) Social Skills
3 655 (9.44%) Analytical Skills
4 505 (7.28%) Finance
5 281 (4.05%) Military
6 222 (3.20%) Telecoms
7 207 (2.98%) Manufacturing
8 167 (2.41%) Documentation Skills
9 147 (2.12%) Electronics
10 140 (2.02%) Marketing
11 127 (1.83%) Aerospace
12 113 (1.63%) Organisational Skills
13 108 (1.56%) Legal
14 87 (1.25%) Banking
15 81 (1.17%) Presentation Skills
16 80 (1.15%) Influencing Skills
17 66 (0.95%) Law
18 43 (0.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 35 (0.50%) Aviation
20 34 (0.49%) Police
Job Titles
1 943 (13.60%) Architect
2 645 (9.30%) Developer
3 565 (8.15%) Senior
4 529 (7.63%) Consultant
5 483 (6.96%) Analyst
6 393 (5.67%) Lead
7 322 (4.64%) DevOps Engineer
8 243 (3.50%) Support Engineer
9 206 (2.97%) Network Engineer
10 180 (2.60%) Data Engineer
11 171 (2.47%) Solutions Architect
12 144 (2.08%) SAP Consultant
13 143 (2.06%) Software Engineer
14 139 (2.00%) Technical Architect
15 135 (1.95%) AWS Engineer
16 131 (1.89%) Platform Engineer
17 130 (1.87%) IT Engineer
18 126 (1.82%) Administrator
19 124 (1.79%) Business Analyst
20 121 (1.74%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 283 (4.08%) REST
2 172 (2.48%) Node.js
3 167 (2.41%) React
4 161 (2.32%) Kafka
5 137 (1.98%) JSON
6 131 (1.89%) SOAP
7 112 (1.61%) Spring
8 107 (1.54%) HTML
9 99 (1.43%) XML
10 92 (1.33%) .NET
11 91 (1.31%) RESTful
12 90 (1.30%) CSS
13 89 (1.28%) AngularJS
13 89 (1.28%) LDAP
13 89 (1.28%) Spring Boot
14 88 (1.27%) Web Services
15 79 (1.14%) OAuth
16 78 (1.12%) Oracle Fusion
17 66 (0.95%) PySpark
18 58 (0.84%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 212 (3.06%) Data Centre
2 188 (2.71%) PKI
3 185 (2.67%) Cloud Native
4 177 (2.55%) Onboarding
5 169 (2.44%) Product Ownership
6 132 (1.90%) Management Information System
7 101 (1.46%) Self-Motivation
8 91 (1.31%) Security Posture
9 87 (1.25%) Legacy Systems
10 79 (1.14%) Cyber Threat
11 73 (1.05%) Driving Licence
11 73 (1.05%) Enterprise Software
12 69 (0.99%) Replication
13 68 (0.98%) Security Operations Centre
14 63 (0.91%) Hybrid Cloud
15 60 (0.87%) Analytical Mindset
16 56 (0.81%) CMDB
17 48 (0.69%) Private Cloud
18 45 (0.65%) Distributed Systems
18 45 (0.65%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 778 (11.22%) Windows
2 538 (7.76%) Linux
3 183 (2.64%) Windows Server
4 173 (2.49%) Windows 10
5 98 (1.41%) Android
6 97 (1.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 93 (1.34%) Unix
8 84 (1.21%) Mac OS
9 48 (0.69%) VMS
10 39 (0.56%) Ubuntu
11 28 (0.40%) Apple iOS
12 24 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
13 21 (0.30%) Amazon Linux
13 21 (0.30%) CentOS
14 20 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
15 19 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
16 17 (0.25%) Windows 7
17 15 (0.22%) Mac OS X
18 13 (0.19%) Windows Server 2003
19 9 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,344 (19.38%) Agile
2 1,063 (15.33%) DevOps
3 950 (13.70%) CI/CD
4 875 (12.62%) Problem-Solving
5 672 (9.69%) Migration
6 552 (7.96%) Stakeholder Management
7 494 (7.12%) ITIL
7 494 (7.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 461 (6.65%) Cybersecurity
9 454 (6.55%) Continuous Improvement
10 439 (6.33%) Infrastructure as Code
11 400 (5.77%) Service Management
12 385 (5.55%) Business Intelligence
13 376 (5.42%) Containerisation
14 375 (5.41%) Test Automation
15 360 (5.19%) Analytics
16 342 (4.93%) Workflow
17 339 (4.89%) Roadmaps
18 329 (4.74%) Scrum
19 304 (4.38%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 916 (13.21%) Python
2 534 (7.70%) SQL
3 475 (6.85%) PowerShell
4 399 (5.75%) Java
5 348 (5.02%) JavaScript
6 222 (3.20%) Bash
7 159 (2.29%) TypeScript
8 128 (1.85%) C#
9 95 (1.37%) C++
10 89 (1.28%) Go
11 69 (0.99%) C
12 67 (0.97%) PL/SQL
13 66 (0.95%) Shell Script
14 40 (0.58%) Ruby
15 39 (0.56%) ABAP
16 37 (0.53%) Perl
17 36 (0.52%) Scala
18 29 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
19 28 (0.40%) Ada
20 26 (0.37%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 5,332 (76.89%) SC Cleared
2 1,143 (16.48%) DV Cleared
3 365 (5.26%) Degree
4 246 (3.55%) BPSS Clearance
5 126 (1.82%) CISSP
6 117 (1.69%) Microsoft Certification
7 114 (1.64%) Azure Certification
7 114 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
8 101 (1.46%) AWS Certification
9 93 (1.34%) CCNP
10 69 (0.99%) CISM
11 60 (0.87%) ITIL Certification
12 59 (0.85%) Computer Science Degree
13 48 (0.69%) CCNA
13 48 (0.69%) TOGAF Certification
14 44 (0.63%) CEH
15 41 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 37 (0.53%) CHECK Team Member
17 34 (0.49%) CTC Cleared
18 33 (0.48%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 212 (3.06%) QA
2 197 (2.84%) NIST
3 196 (2.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 160 (2.31%) NCSC
5 135 (1.95%) GDPR
6 134 (1.93%) Data Quality
7 121 (1.74%) SLA
8 111 (1.60%) Accessibility
9 62 (0.89%) PMO
10 44 (0.63%) JSP 440
11 40 (0.58%) WCAG
12 39 (0.56%) GRC
13 32 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 29 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
14 29 (0.42%) Def Stans
15 26 (0.37%) COBIT
15 26 (0.37%) NIST 800
16 23 (0.33%) PCI DSS
17 19 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 16 (0.23%) RMADS
System Software
1 528 (7.61%) Docker
2 430 (6.20%) Active Directory
3 204 (2.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 66 (0.95%) VMware NSX
5 61 (0.88%) vSphere
6 54 (0.78%) VMware ESXi
7 53 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
8 36 (0.52%) Firmware
9 31 (0.45%) Hyper-V
9 31 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
10 17 (0.25%) DFS Replication
11 16 (0.23%) Postfix
12 14 (0.20%) Dovecot
13 12 (0.17%) NFS
14 11 (0.16%) BitLocker
14 11 (0.16%) Squid
15 10 (0.14%) ISA Server
15 10 (0.14%) Terminal Services
16 8 (0.12%) Brightmail
17 7 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 647 (9.33%) Kubernetes
2 608 (8.77%) Terraform
3 295 (4.25%) Ansible
4 175 (2.52%) Grafana
5 144 (2.08%) Prometheus
6 103 (1.49%) SCCM
7 88 (1.27%) Single Sign-On
8 76 (1.10%) vCenter Server
9 73 (1.05%) Microsoft Intune
10 62 (0.89%) Argo
11 52 (0.75%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 37 (0.53%) Kibana
12 37 (0.53%) Packer
13 33 (0.48%) OPNET
14 28 (0.40%) Jamf Pro
15 25 (0.36%) Puppet
16 24 (0.35%) Nessus
16 24 (0.35%) Podman
16 24 (0.35%) Progress Chef
16 24 (0.35%) vRealize
Vendors
1 892 (12.86%) Microsoft
2 457 (6.59%) SAP
3 405 (5.84%) Cisco
4 376 (5.42%) Oracle
5 349 (5.03%) VMware
6 325 (4.69%) ServiceNow
7 187 (2.70%) Splunk
8 149 (2.15%) Red Hat
9 146 (2.11%) Juniper
10 117 (1.69%) Google
11 111 (1.60%) Palo Alto
12 101 (1.46%) Atlassian
13 95 (1.37%) HP
14 93 (1.34%) Salesforce
15 92 (1.33%) Dell
16 88 (1.27%) Databricks
17 84 (1.21%) CyberArk
18 78 (1.12%) Remedy
19 69 (0.99%) Apple
20 68 (0.98%) CheckPoint