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

6 months to
9 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 0 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,219 4,505 7,038
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.62% 18.54% 19.11%
As % of the Qualifications category 70.10% 58.99% 61.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,404 2,989 4,632
10th Percentile £363 £340 £351
25th Percentile £450 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £537 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £527 £550
% change year-on-year -0.38% -4.18% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 765 275 489
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.38 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £52.50 £57.29
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% -8.35% -4.53%
75th Percentile £73.75 £67.50 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.36 £78.56 £84.41
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £47.81 £57.29
% change year-on-year +15.05% -16.55% -4.53%

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 13,151 7,637 11,442
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.27% 31.43% 31.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,841 4,850 7,059
10th Percentile £340 £290 £313
25th Percentile £425 £415 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £521 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.86% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £623 £626 £650
90th Percentile £725 £717 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -0.95% -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 964 442 981
10th Percentile £17.09 £18.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £22.27 £18.00
Median hourly rate £47.54 £40.72 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.76% +1.79% -23.81%
75th Percentile £72.50 £67.50 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.50 £81.32 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £47.54 £39.32 £40.00
% change year-on-year +20.91% -1.70% -25.93%

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 9 May 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 9 May 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 9 May 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 3,268 £525 - 465
South East +1 2,229 £538 -2.27% 504
South West 0 1,310 £538 -4.44% 308
Midlands +4 903 £475 -9.52% 151
North of England -1 856 £488 -2.50% 300
West Midlands +4 766 £475 -11.55% 115
North West -2 498 £497 -0.70% 178
East of England +2 383 £525 +13.06% 138
Yorkshire -15 207 £475 -7.32% 51
North East +1 185 £475 -3.06% 74
East Midlands -3 131 £450 -5.26% 36
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
1 361 (3.92%) Confluence
2 207 (2.25%) SharePoint
3 123 (1.33%) Microsoft Exchange
4 113 (1.23%) SAS
5 81 (0.88%) Apache Spark
6 70 (0.76%) Apache
7 56 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
8 32 (0.35%) WebLogic
9 30 (0.33%) nginx
10 24 (0.26%) Jupyter
11 17 (0.18%) Tomcat
12 15 (0.16%) IIS
12 15 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
13 14 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
13 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
14 13 (0.14%) CMS
14 13 (0.14%) Skype for Business
15 8 (0.087%) Apache Superset
15 8 (0.087%) ArcGIS
15 8 (0.087%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 200 (2.17%) Microsoft Office
2 184 (2.00%) Microsoft Excel
3 118 (1.28%) Microsoft Project
4 81 (0.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 38 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.12%) Simulink
8 7 (0.076%) AutoCAD
9 6 (0.065%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.054%) Notepad++
10 5 (0.054%) Revit
11 4 (0.043%) Siemens NX
11 4 (0.043%) Windchill
12 2 (0.022%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.022%) CATIA
12 2 (0.022%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.022%) Lectora
12 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.022%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 88 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
2 44 (0.48%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 43 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
5 27 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
5 27 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 15 (0.16%) Maximo
7 14 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
7 14 (0.15%) SAP PSCD
8 13 (0.14%) Temenos T24
9 12 (0.13%) Findur
10 10 (0.11%) iTrent
10 10 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
11 9 (0.098%) Integrated Workplace Management System
11 9 (0.098%) SAP HCM
11 9 (0.098%) SAP PP
12 8 (0.087%) Primavera
12 8 (0.087%) SAP HR
12 8 (0.087%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,600 (17.36%) Azure
2 1,512 (16.40%) AWS
3 378 (4.10%) GCP
4 377 (4.09%) GitHub
5 354 (3.84%) Azure DevOps
6 338 (3.67%) Power Platform
7 244 (2.65%) Serverless
8 242 (2.63%) Microsoft 365
9 229 (2.48%) Entra ID
10 215 (2.33%) GitHub Actions
11 192 (2.08%) Amazon S3
12 164 (1.78%) AWS Lambda
13 133 (1.44%) PaaS
14 129 (1.40%) Amazon EC2
15 127 (1.38%) OpenShift
16 112 (1.21%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 110 (1.19%) OCI
18 109 (1.18%) AWS CloudFormation
19 108 (1.17%) IaaS
20 102 (1.11%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 426 (4.62%) Firewall
2 263 (2.85%) DNS
3 213 (2.31%) Network Security
4 210 (2.28%) WAN
5 193 (2.09%) LAN
6 153 (1.66%) VPN
7 143 (1.55%) BGP
8 138 (1.50%) DHCP
9 122 (1.32%) OSPF
10 105 (1.14%) TCP/IP
11 97 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
12 90 (0.98%) VLAN
13 78 (0.85%) Wireless
14 62 (0.67%) MPLS
15 53 (0.57%) SAN
16 50 (0.54%) VXLAN
17 49 (0.53%) IPsec
18 47 (0.51%) SD-WAN
19 45 (0.49%) Structured Cabling
20 44 (0.48%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 259 (2.81%) Power BI
2 216 (2.34%) PostgreSQL
3 199 (2.16%) Data Warehouse
4 182 (1.97%) SQL Server
5 116 (1.26%) Metadata
6 106 (1.15%) Oracle Database
7 102 (1.11%) Amazon RDS
8 85 (0.92%) NoSQL
9 83 (0.90%) Relational Database
10 81 (0.88%) MongoDB
11 80 (0.87%) Data Lake
12 79 (0.86%) Pentaho
13 71 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
14 67 (0.73%) Azure SQL Database
14 67 (0.73%) Oracle Reports
15 61 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
15 61 (0.66%) Tableau
16 60 (0.65%) MySQL
17 51 (0.55%) Amazon Athena
18 48 (0.52%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 569 (6.17%) JIRA
2 415 (4.50%) Git
3 354 (3.84%) Jenkins
4 337 (3.66%) GitLab
5 86 (0.93%) Selenium
6 76 (0.82%) Postman
7 70 (0.76%) JUnit
8 57 (0.62%) SonarQube
9 54 (0.59%) Rational DOORS
10 46 (0.50%) Artifactory
11 45 (0.49%) Bitbucket
12 41 (0.44%) JMeter
13 39 (0.42%) Maven
14 38 (0.41%) Cucumber
15 37 (0.40%) Mockito
16 34 (0.37%) Visual Studio
17 31 (0.34%) Cypress.io
18 28 (0.30%) Zephyr
19 24 (0.26%) REST Assured
20 23 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,996 (21.65%) Public Sector
2 1,994 (21.63%) Social Skills
3 717 (7.78%) Analytical Skills
4 658 (7.14%) Finance
5 335 (3.63%) Military
6 259 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
7 221 (2.40%) Aerospace
8 146 (1.58%) Legal
9 122 (1.32%) Telecoms
10 111 (1.20%) Banking
10 111 (1.20%) Influencing Skills
11 104 (1.13%) Manufacturing
12 103 (1.12%) Organisational Skills
13 91 (0.99%) Presentation Skills
14 85 (0.92%) Law
15 60 (0.65%) Police
16 56 (0.61%) Marketing
17 51 (0.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 50 (0.54%) Electronics
19 38 (0.41%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,370 (14.86%) Architect
2 851 (9.23%) Developer
3 767 (8.32%) Senior
4 655 (7.10%) Analyst
5 642 (6.96%) Lead
6 443 (4.81%) Data Engineer
7 414 (4.49%) Consultant
8 410 (4.45%) DevOps Engineer
9 278 (3.02%) Network Engineer
10 273 (2.96%) Software Engineer
11 262 (2.84%) Technical Architect
12 251 (2.72%) Business Analyst
13 248 (2.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 216 (2.34%) Project Manager
15 202 (2.19%) Solutions Architect
16 198 (2.15%) Azure Engineer
17 179 (1.94%) Security Architect
18 170 (1.84%) Designer
19 168 (1.82%) Administrator
20 166 (1.80%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 294 (3.19%) REST
2 217 (2.35%) Spring
3 175 (1.90%) Spring Boot
4 166 (1.80%) Kafka
5 165 (1.79%) Node.js
6 158 (1.71%) .NET
6 158 (1.71%) React
7 145 (1.57%) LDAP
8 134 (1.45%) SOAP
9 132 (1.43%) RESTful
10 119 (1.29%) JSON
11 113 (1.23%) AngularJS
12 101 (1.10%) Web Services
13 99 (1.07%) PySpark
14 90 (0.98%) Oracle Fusion
15 83 (0.90%) OAuth
16 80 (0.87%) HTML
17 77 (0.84%) XML
18 70 (0.76%) Elastic Stack
19 64 (0.69%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 323 (3.50%) Cloud Native
2 317 (3.44%) Product Ownership
3 274 (2.97%) Data Centre
4 266 (2.89%) Onboarding
5 160 (1.74%) PKI
6 141 (1.53%) Management Information System
7 129 (1.40%) Legacy Systems
8 121 (1.31%) Security Posture
9 117 (1.27%) Replication
10 113 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
11 108 (1.17%) Distributed Systems
12 96 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
13 79 (0.86%) Clustering
14 75 (0.81%) Data Structures
15 74 (0.80%) Public Cloud
16 72 (0.78%) Hybrid Cloud
17 65 (0.71%) Security Operations Centre
18 62 (0.67%) Virtual Team
19 57 (0.62%) Operational Technology
20 55 (0.60%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 788 (8.55%) Windows
2 631 (6.84%) Linux
3 237 (2.57%) Windows Server
4 158 (1.71%) Unix
5 109 (1.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 97 (1.05%) Android
7 95 (1.03%) Windows 10
8 53 (0.57%) Apple iOS
9 47 (0.51%) Mac OS
10 39 (0.42%) Solaris
11 37 (0.40%) Ubuntu
12 29 (0.31%) VMS
13 25 (0.27%) AIX
14 23 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
15 22 (0.24%) CentOS
15 22 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
16 15 (0.16%) Windows 7
17 11 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
18 10 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
19 8 (0.087%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,835 (19.90%) Agile
2 1,406 (15.25%) DevOps
3 1,229 (13.33%) CI/CD
4 1,029 (11.16%) Problem-Solving
5 892 (9.68%) Stakeholder Management
6 816 (8.85%) Continuous Improvement
7 779 (8.45%) Migration
8 684 (7.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 620 (6.73%) Infrastructure as Code
10 604 (6.55%) ITIL
11 550 (5.97%) Cybersecurity
12 535 (5.80%) Test Automation
13 519 (5.63%) Analytics
14 514 (5.58%) Software Engineering
15 506 (5.49%) Containerisation
16 502 (5.45%) Roadmaps
17 454 (4.92%) Data Modelling
18 426 (4.62%) Decision-Making
19 420 (4.56%) Scrum
20 398 (4.32%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 987 (10.71%) Python
2 848 (9.20%) SQL
3 570 (6.18%) Java
4 504 (5.47%) PowerShell
5 284 (3.08%) JavaScript
6 201 (2.18%) C#
7 173 (1.88%) Bash
8 146 (1.58%) TypeScript
9 101 (1.10%) PL/SQL
10 89 (0.97%) C++
11 85 (0.92%) Shell Script
12 67 (0.73%) Go
13 64 (0.69%) Scala
14 57 (0.62%) C
15 53 (0.57%) Bicep
16 48 (0.52%) Ruby
17 41 (0.44%) Ada
17 41 (0.44%) Apex Code
18 40 (0.43%) R
19 35 (0.38%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 6,924 (75.11%) SC Cleared
2 1,758 (19.07%) DV Cleared
3 421 (4.57%) Degree
4 256 (2.78%) BPSS Clearance
5 175 (1.90%) Cisco Certification
6 157 (1.70%) CISSP
7 130 (1.41%) Azure Certification
8 112 (1.21%) CCNP
9 109 (1.18%) AWS Certification
10 104 (1.13%) CISM
11 92 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
12 72 (0.78%) PMP
13 68 (0.74%) CCNA
13 68 (0.74%) TOGAF Certification
14 62 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
14 62 (0.67%) ITIL Certification
14 62 (0.67%) PMI Certification
15 54 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 52 (0.56%) ISTQB
17 49 (0.53%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 347 (3.76%) QA
2 273 (2.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 269 (2.92%) NIST
4 266 (2.89%) Data Quality
5 183 (1.99%) NCSC
6 161 (1.75%) PMO
7 158 (1.71%) Accessibility
8 155 (1.68%) GDPR
9 101 (1.10%) SLA
10 62 (0.67%) GRC
11 58 (0.63%) JSP 440
12 50 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials
13 37 (0.40%) NIST 800
14 34 (0.37%) WCAG
15 31 (0.34%) Def Stans
15 31 (0.34%) PCI DSS
16 30 (0.33%) COBIT
17 24 (0.26%) RMADS
18 20 (0.22%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 19 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 575 (6.24%) Docker
2 451 (4.89%) Active Directory
3 272 (2.95%) VMware Infrastructure
4 94 (1.02%) VMware ESXi
5 84 (0.91%) VMware NSX
6 78 (0.85%) Hyper-V
7 72 (0.78%) vSphere
8 68 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
9 36 (0.39%) Firmware
10 26 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
11 23 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
12 20 (0.22%) BitLocker
13 19 (0.21%) NFS
14 17 (0.18%) Postfix
14 17 (0.18%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 15 (0.16%) vCloud
16 11 (0.12%) Squid
17 8 (0.087%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.065%) Corosync
18 6 (0.065%) KVM
Systems Management
1 737 (7.99%) Kubernetes
2 713 (7.73%) Terraform
3 318 (3.45%) Ansible
4 227 (2.46%) Grafana
5 187 (2.03%) Prometheus
6 99 (1.07%) vCenter Server
7 85 (0.92%) Single Sign-On
8 80 (0.87%) SCCM
9 56 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 53 (0.57%) Microsoft Intune
11 50 (0.54%) FortiGate
12 48 (0.52%) Argo
13 38 (0.41%) Puppet
14 36 (0.39%) Podman
15 33 (0.36%) Progress Chef
16 31 (0.34%) OPNET
17 30 (0.33%) Nagios
18 29 (0.31%) Oracle RMAN
19 24 (0.26%) SCOM
20 23 (0.25%) Kibana
Vendors
1 967 (10.49%) Microsoft
2 576 (6.25%) Oracle
3 470 (5.10%) VMware
4 372 (4.04%) ServiceNow
5 340 (3.69%) Cisco
6 325 (3.53%) SAP
7 212 (2.30%) Splunk
8 174 (1.89%) Databricks
9 153 (1.66%) Google
10 151 (1.64%) Red Hat
11 117 (1.27%) IBM
12 115 (1.25%) Palo Alto
13 114 (1.24%) Talend
14 104 (1.13%) Juniper
15 102 (1.11%) Salesforce
16 98 (1.06%) Atlassian
17 97 (1.05%) CyberArk
18 83 (0.90%) Remedy
19 80 (0.87%) F5
19 80 (0.87%) Informatica