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

6 months to
11 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 7,763 4,663 7,098
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.92% 17.99% 18.75%
As % of the Qualifications category 67.33% 59.74% 60.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,312 2,951 4,516
10th Percentile £350 £325 £356
25th Percentile £447 £449 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.65%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £709 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £540 £550
% change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 679 240 485
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.30 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.68 £25.26 £40.69
Median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £58.00
Median % change year-on-year -58.08% +3.45% -3.33%
75th Percentile £65.00 £67.63 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £83.19
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £58.30
% change year-on-year -49.70% -14.24% -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 11,530 7,805 11,786
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.04% 30.12% 31.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,661 4,753 7,300
10th Percentile £313 £300 £295
25th Percentile £419 £416 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -3.67% -0.91%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £517 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.52% -2.42% -2.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 894 370 875
10th Percentile £15.78 £20.00 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.90 £25.26 £21.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £47.37 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year -46.91% +3.25% +1.96%
75th Percentile £63.75 £67.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £76.34 £82.57 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £45.88
% change year-on-year -37.13% -12.82% +1.96%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 2,660 £530 -1.40% 522
South East +1 1,643 £520 -5.45% 561
South West 0 1,293 £550 - 363
North of England -2 821 £500 +0.91% 228
Midlands +4 741 £508 -7.64% 173
West Midlands +2 575 £519 -5.90% 125
North West 0 536 £500 +4.60% 127
East of England +3 341 £497 -4.29% 173
East Midlands +2 168 £425 -17.07% 48
Yorkshire -9 168 £500 +2.56% 54
North East 0 144 £450 -12.62% 50
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
1 274 (3.53%) Confluence
2 188 (2.42%) SharePoint
3 133 (1.71%) Microsoft Exchange
4 106 (1.37%) SAS
5 69 (0.89%) Apache
6 61 (0.79%) Apache Spark
7 50 (0.64%) Apache Airflow
8 40 (0.52%) nginx
9 34 (0.44%) Skype for Business
10 24 (0.31%) WebLogic
11 18 (0.23%) Jupyter
11 18 (0.23%) Palantir Foundry
12 17 (0.22%) CMS
13 12 (0.15%) IIS
14 9 (0.12%) OpenStack
15 8 (0.10%) Tuxedo
16 6 (0.077%) ArcGIS
16 6 (0.077%) Documentum
16 6 (0.077%) Oracle Workflow
16 6 (0.077%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 245 (3.16%) Microsoft Office
2 158 (2.04%) Microsoft Excel
3 113 (1.46%) Microsoft Project
4 62 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 39 (0.50%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
7 10 (0.13%) Simulink
8 5 (0.064%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 5 (0.064%) Oracle Smart View
8 5 (0.064%) Siemens NX
8 5 (0.064%) Windchill
9 4 (0.052%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.052%) Sketch
10 3 (0.039%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.039%) Chatbot
10 3 (0.039%) FrameMaker
10 3 (0.039%) Stateflow
11 2 (0.026%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.026%) CATIA
11 2 (0.026%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 128 (1.65%) SAP S/4HANA
2 38 (0.49%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 28 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
4 22 (0.28%) SAP WM
5 21 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
5 21 (0.27%) SAP EWM
6 19 (0.24%) Remedy ITSM
6 19 (0.24%) SAP MM
7 18 (0.23%) Teamcenter
8 15 (0.19%) Maximo
9 14 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
10 13 (0.17%) SAP QM
11 12 (0.15%) Oracle General Ledger
11 12 (0.15%) SAP HCM
11 12 (0.15%) SAP PP
11 12 (0.15%) SAP VC
12 11 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
12 11 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
12 11 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
12 11 (0.14%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 1,311 (16.89%) Azure
2 1,256 (16.18%) AWS
3 352 (4.53%) GitHub
4 328 (4.23%) GCP
5 297 (3.83%) Azure DevOps
6 293 (3.77%) Microsoft 365
7 280 (3.61%) Power Platform
8 218 (2.81%) Serverless
9 215 (2.77%) Entra ID
10 177 (2.28%) GitHub Actions
11 170 (2.19%) Amazon S3
12 158 (2.04%) OpenShift
13 138 (1.78%) AWS Lambda
14 107 (1.38%) AWS CloudFormation
15 100 (1.29%) Amazon EC2
16 97 (1.25%) IaaS
17 91 (1.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 90 (1.16%) Amazon EKS
18 90 (1.16%) PaaS
19 85 (1.09%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 391 (5.04%) Firewall
2 255 (3.28%) DNS
3 193 (2.49%) Network Security
4 174 (2.24%) VPN
5 161 (2.07%) WAN
6 130 (1.67%) TCP/IP
7 124 (1.60%) LAN
8 120 (1.55%) BGP
9 113 (1.46%) DHCP
10 83 (1.07%) VLAN
11 82 (1.06%) Wireless
12 73 (0.94%) OSPF
13 69 (0.89%) Wi-Fi
14 67 (0.86%) MPLS
15 56 (0.72%) IPsec
16 53 (0.68%) SAN
17 51 (0.66%) SSL
18 43 (0.55%) Skype
19 39 (0.50%) Cisco ISE
20 37 (0.48%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 199 (2.56%) Power BI
2 194 (2.50%) PostgreSQL
3 108 (1.39%) Data Warehouse
4 99 (1.28%) SQL Server
5 94 (1.21%) Metadata
6 90 (1.16%) Oracle Database
7 86 (1.11%) MongoDB
8 85 (1.09%) NoSQL
9 75 (0.97%) Relational Database
10 72 (0.93%) Amazon RDS
11 62 (0.80%) Azure SQL Database
11 62 (0.80%) Elasticsearch
12 46 (0.59%) Data Lake
13 45 (0.58%) Big Data
14 40 (0.52%) MySQL
15 37 (0.48%) Amazon Redshift
15 37 (0.48%) Pentaho
16 36 (0.46%) SAS Enterprise Guide
17 34 (0.44%) Amazon Athena
17 34 (0.44%) Redis
Development Applications
1 469 (6.04%) JIRA
2 371 (4.78%) Git
3 327 (4.21%) Jenkins
4 291 (3.75%) GitLab
5 91 (1.17%) Selenium
6 72 (0.93%) Postman
7 62 (0.80%) JUnit
8 58 (0.75%) Cypress.io
9 48 (0.62%) SonarQube
10 45 (0.58%) Oracle APEX
11 44 (0.57%) Artifactory
12 40 (0.52%) Bitbucket
13 36 (0.46%) Cucumber
14 35 (0.45%) Maven
15 34 (0.44%) Mockito
16 33 (0.43%) REST Assured
17 23 (0.30%) Metasploit
17 23 (0.30%) MSI
18 22 (0.28%) Rational DOORS
19 21 (0.27%) Burp Suite
General
1 1,987 (25.60%) Public Sector
2 1,932 (24.89%) Social Skills
3 677 (8.72%) Analytical Skills
4 555 (7.15%) Finance
5 309 (3.98%) Military
6 231 (2.98%) Documentation Skills
7 182 (2.34%) Telecoms
8 177 (2.28%) Manufacturing
9 142 (1.83%) Aerospace
10 123 (1.58%) Marketing
11 120 (1.55%) Electronics
11 120 (1.55%) Legal
12 112 (1.44%) Organisational Skills
13 98 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
14 96 (1.24%) Presentation Skills
15 84 (1.08%) Banking
16 73 (0.94%) Law
17 46 (0.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 34 (0.44%) Police
19 31 (0.40%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,057 (13.62%) Architect
2 744 (9.58%) Developer
3 655 (8.44%) Senior
4 574 (7.39%) Analyst
5 481 (6.20%) Consultant
6 444 (5.72%) Lead
7 372 (4.79%) DevOps Engineer
8 254 (3.27%) Data Engineer
9 231 (2.98%) Support Engineer
10 229 (2.95%) Network Engineer
11 195 (2.51%) Business Analyst
12 187 (2.41%) Technical Architect
13 186 (2.40%) Software Engineer
14 179 (2.31%) Solutions Architect
15 152 (1.96%) Tester
16 150 (1.93%) Azure Engineer
17 142 (1.83%) Project Manager
18 136 (1.75%) AWS Engineer
19 134 (1.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
20 132 (1.70%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 320 (4.12%) REST
2 182 (2.34%) Node.js
3 174 (2.24%) React
4 163 (2.10%) Kafka
5 155 (2.00%) Spring
6 147 (1.89%) JSON
7 146 (1.88%) LDAP
8 145 (1.87%) SOAP
9 122 (1.57%) Spring Boot
10 101 (1.30%) HTML
11 98 (1.26%) .NET
12 95 (1.22%) OAuth
13 94 (1.21%) XML
14 93 (1.20%) RESTful
15 90 (1.16%) CSS
16 87 (1.12%) AngularJS
17 86 (1.11%) Oracle Fusion
18 82 (1.06%) PySpark
19 80 (1.03%) Web Services
20 78 (1.00%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 248 (3.19%) Data Centre
2 224 (2.89%) Product Ownership
3 218 (2.81%) Cloud Native
4 212 (2.73%) Onboarding
5 190 (2.45%) PKI
6 146 (1.88%) Management Information System
7 130 (1.67%) Security Posture
8 113 (1.46%) Self-Motivation
9 106 (1.37%) Enterprise Software
10 94 (1.21%) Legacy Systems
11 93 (1.20%) Replication
12 70 (0.90%) Driving Licence
13 69 (0.89%) Cyber Threat
14 63 (0.81%) Hybrid Cloud
15 59 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
16 56 (0.72%) Public Cloud
17 53 (0.68%) Private Cloud
18 46 (0.59%) Distributed Systems
19 44 (0.57%) CMDB
20 42 (0.54%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 823 (10.60%) Windows
2 608 (7.83%) Linux
3 211 (2.72%) Windows Server
4 177 (2.28%) Windows 10
5 107 (1.38%) Unix
6 101 (1.30%) Android
7 98 (1.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 67 (0.86%) Mac OS
9 44 (0.57%) Ubuntu
10 38 (0.49%) VMS
11 36 (0.46%) Apple iOS
12 24 (0.31%) CentOS
13 23 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
14 22 (0.28%) Windows 7
15 16 (0.21%) Mac OS X
15 16 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
16 15 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
17 14 (0.18%) Solaris
18 10 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
18 10 (0.13%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,470 (18.94%) Agile
2 1,206 (15.54%) DevOps
3 1,035 (13.33%) CI/CD
4 1,009 (13.00%) Problem-Solving
5 682 (8.79%) Stakeholder Management
6 674 (8.68%) Migration
7 553 (7.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 552 (7.11%) Continuous Improvement
9 526 (6.78%) Cybersecurity
10 484 (6.23%) Infrastructure as Code
11 473 (6.09%) ITIL
12 437 (5.63%) Test Automation
13 405 (5.22%) Analytics
14 397 (5.11%) Containerisation
15 393 (5.06%) Roadmaps
16 376 (4.84%) Business Intelligence
17 370 (4.77%) Service Management
18 359 (4.62%) Software Engineering
19 346 (4.46%) Scrum
20 322 (4.15%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 944 (12.16%) Python
2 595 (7.66%) SQL
3 544 (7.01%) PowerShell
4 423 (5.45%) Java
5 351 (4.52%) JavaScript
6 201 (2.59%) Bash
7 175 (2.25%) TypeScript
8 138 (1.78%) C#
9 86 (1.11%) C++
10 79 (1.02%) Go
11 71 (0.91%) Shell Script
12 66 (0.85%) PL/SQL
13 61 (0.79%) C
14 47 (0.61%) Ada
15 45 (0.58%) Scala
16 44 (0.57%) Ruby
17 39 (0.50%) Bicep
18 33 (0.43%) MATLAB
19 32 (0.41%) ABAP
20 31 (0.40%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 5,932 (76.41%) SC Cleared
2 1,351 (17.40%) DV Cleared
3 394 (5.08%) Degree
4 237 (3.05%) BPSS Clearance
5 144 (1.85%) CISSP
6 131 (1.69%) Cisco Certification
7 121 (1.56%) Azure Certification
8 115 (1.48%) Microsoft Certification
9 112 (1.44%) CCNP
10 103 (1.33%) AWS Certification
11 89 (1.15%) CISM
12 67 (0.86%) Computer Science Degree
13 63 (0.81%) ITIL Certification
14 62 (0.80%) CCNA
15 51 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
16 47 (0.61%) CEH
16 47 (0.61%) GIAC
17 43 (0.55%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 40 (0.52%) CHECK Team Member
19 38 (0.49%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 255 (3.28%) QA
2 249 (3.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 237 (3.05%) NIST
4 187 (2.41%) NCSC
5 183 (2.36%) Data Quality
6 160 (2.06%) GDPR
7 146 (1.88%) Accessibility
8 115 (1.48%) SLA
9 78 (1.00%) PMO
10 54 (0.70%) GRC
11 50 (0.64%) JSP 440
12 44 (0.57%) WCAG
13 37 (0.48%) Def Stans
14 36 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
15 30 (0.39%) PCI DSS
16 29 (0.37%) COBIT
16 29 (0.37%) NIST 800
17 21 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 20 (0.26%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 18 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 539 (6.94%) Docker
2 480 (6.18%) Active Directory
3 239 (3.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 76 (0.98%) VMware NSX
5 65 (0.84%) vSphere
6 59 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
6 59 (0.76%) VMware ESXi
7 55 (0.71%) Hyper-V
8 27 (0.35%) Virtual Desktop
9 25 (0.32%) Firmware
10 18 (0.23%) BitLocker
11 15 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 14 (0.18%) NFS
13 13 (0.17%) Squid
14 11 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
15 10 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
15 10 (0.13%) Postfix
16 7 (0.090%) DFS Replication
16 7 (0.090%) vCloud
16 7 (0.090%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 708 (9.12%) Kubernetes
2 658 (8.48%) Terraform
3 284 (3.66%) Ansible
4 189 (2.43%) Grafana
5 156 (2.01%) Prometheus
6 108 (1.39%) Single Sign-On
7 105 (1.35%) SCCM
8 98 (1.26%) vCenter Server
9 83 (1.07%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 64 (0.82%) Argo
11 62 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
12 37 (0.48%) Podman
13 36 (0.46%) Kibana
14 34 (0.44%) Packer
15 31 (0.40%) OPNET
16 27 (0.35%) Puppet
16 27 (0.35%) vRealize
17 26 (0.33%) Progress Chef
18 25 (0.32%) Nmap
19 22 (0.28%) Nessus
Vendors
1 951 (12.25%) Microsoft
2 416 (5.36%) Oracle
3 413 (5.32%) VMware
4 399 (5.14%) Cisco
5 390 (5.02%) SAP
6 320 (4.12%) ServiceNow
7 195 (2.51%) Splunk
8 159 (2.05%) Red Hat
9 131 (1.69%) Palo Alto
10 126 (1.62%) CyberArk
11 121 (1.56%) Google
12 119 (1.53%) Juniper
13 117 (1.51%) Databricks
14 107 (1.38%) Atlassian
15 105 (1.35%) Salesforce
16 97 (1.25%) Dell
17 78 (1.00%) HP
18 70 (0.90%) Aruba
19 68 (0.88%) BeyondTrust
19 68 (0.88%) SolarWinds