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

6 months to
26 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,302 5,263 5,960
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.13% 18.84% 18.20%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.91% 59.53% 61.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,232 3,451 3,810
10th Percentile £399 £350 £356
25th Percentile £463 £450 £454
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.33% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £725
UK median daily rate £550 £537 £550
% change year-on-year +2.42% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 798 545 349
10th Percentile £20.50 £18.51 £21.20
25th Percentile £33.76 £18.87 £37.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +158.45% -59.17% +2.67%
75th Percentile £78.74 £37.50 £72.50
90th Percentile £91.31 £71.15 £85.00
UK median hourly rate £64.09 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +154.83% -58.08% -

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 14,951 8,841 9,711
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.11% 31.64% 29.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,014 5,630 5,932
10th Percentile £350 £300 £325
25th Percentile £445 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% -1.50% -3.09%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £530 £525 £525
% change year-on-year +0.95% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,239 716 549
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.93 £18.03
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £27.00
Median hourly rate £52.50 £25.15 £53.00
Median % change year-on-year +108.75% -52.55% -1.24%
75th Percentile £74.16 £43.06 £70.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £73.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £49.00
% change year-on-year +88.87% -48.67% -9.26%

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 26 September 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 26 September 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 26 September 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 +6 3,662 £550 +2.33% 1,690
South East +1 2,275 £564 +7.48% 1,078
South West 0 1,409 £550 - 859
North of England +2 1,288 £515 -1.90% 797
Midlands 0 948 £481 -7.23% 392
West Midlands 0 809 £481 -7.23% 250
North West +1 766 £530 -4.50% 496
East of England 0 428 £587 +6.73% 467
Yorkshire +2 300 £492 +0.20% 132
North East 0 242 £470 -6.00% 175
East Midlands -2 132 £470 +1.62% 140
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
1 325 (3.15%) Confluence
2 252 (2.45%) SharePoint
3 151 (1.47%) SAS
4 119 (1.16%) Microsoft Exchange
5 99 (0.96%) Apache Airflow
6 89 (0.86%) Apache Spark
7 87 (0.84%) Apache
8 35 (0.34%) nginx
9 32 (0.31%) CMS
9 32 (0.31%) Jupyter
10 26 (0.25%) WebLogic
11 22 (0.21%) Skype for Business
12 19 (0.18%) Oracle Application Server
13 17 (0.17%) Tomcat
14 16 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
15 13 (0.13%) IIS
16 12 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
17 11 (0.11%) JBoss
17 11 (0.11%) NetWeaver
18 10 (0.097%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 189 (1.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 138 (1.34%) Microsoft Office
3 94 (0.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 90 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
5 29 (0.28%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
7 21 (0.20%) AutoCAD
8 19 (0.18%) Revit
9 18 (0.17%) SOLIDWORKS
9 18 (0.17%) Windchill
10 8 (0.078%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.078%) Chatbot
10 8 (0.078%) Simulink
11 7 (0.068%) Sketch
12 5 (0.049%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 5 (0.049%) Notepad++
13 4 (0.039%) OrCAD
13 4 (0.039%) Trello
14 2 (0.019%) Gliffy
14 2 (0.019%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 130 (1.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 82 (0.80%) Remedy ITSM
3 52 (0.50%) Oracle ERP
4 38 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
5 31 (0.30%) Teamcenter
6 29 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 26 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
8 25 (0.24%) SAP PSCD
9 24 (0.23%) Oracle Payroll
10 18 (0.17%) SAP FI
11 17 (0.17%) SAP HR
12 15 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
13 14 (0.14%) Primavera
14 13 (0.13%) Maximo
14 13 (0.13%) SAP CO
15 12 (0.12%) iTrent
15 12 (0.12%) NetSuite
15 12 (0.12%) SAP GRC
15 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
16 11 (0.11%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 1,850 (17.96%) Azure
2 1,682 (16.33%) AWS
3 439 (4.26%) Azure DevOps
4 437 (4.24%) Power Platform
5 399 (3.87%) GitHub
6 386 (3.75%) GCP
7 315 (3.06%) Microsoft 365
8 289 (2.81%) Entra ID
9 276 (2.68%) GitHub Actions
10 236 (2.29%) Serverless
11 204 (1.98%) Amazon S3
12 169 (1.64%) AWS Lambda
13 151 (1.47%) OCI
14 147 (1.43%) SaaS
15 144 (1.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 136 (1.32%) Amazon EKS
17 134 (1.30%) OpenShift
18 117 (1.14%) Amazon EC2
19 103 (1.00%) PowerApps
20 99 (0.96%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 406 (3.94%) Firewall
2 350 (3.40%) DNS
3 219 (2.13%) Network Security
4 183 (1.78%) WAN
5 173 (1.68%) VPN
6 170 (1.65%) DHCP
7 146 (1.42%) LAN
8 123 (1.19%) TCP/IP
9 119 (1.16%) BGP
10 113 (1.10%) Wi-Fi
11 93 (0.90%) VLAN
12 80 (0.78%) OSPF
13 79 (0.77%) Wireless
14 61 (0.59%) SSL
15 60 (0.58%) VSAN
16 58 (0.56%) IPsec
17 56 (0.54%) SAN
18 55 (0.53%) MPLS
19 52 (0.50%) SD-WAN
20 43 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 308 (2.99%) Power BI
2 242 (2.35%) SQL Server
3 238 (2.31%) PostgreSQL
4 232 (2.25%) Data Warehouse
5 175 (1.70%) Metadata
6 169 (1.64%) Oracle Database
7 118 (1.15%) Relational Database
8 117 (1.14%) Data Lake
9 93 (0.90%) MongoDB
9 93 (0.90%) MySQL
10 90 (0.87%) Amazon RDS
11 87 (0.84%) NoSQL
12 73 (0.71%) Oracle Reports
13 66 (0.64%) Pentaho
14 63 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
15 57 (0.55%) Amazon Athena
16 51 (0.50%) Tableau
17 46 (0.45%) Amazon Aurora
18 44 (0.43%) Big Data
19 38 (0.37%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 536 (5.20%) JIRA
2 490 (4.76%) Git
3 440 (4.27%) GitLab
4 405 (3.93%) Jenkins
5 124 (1.20%) Selenium
6 71 (0.69%) Postman
7 70 (0.68%) SonarQube
8 69 (0.67%) JUnit
9 61 (0.59%) Cucumber
9 61 (0.59%) Maven
10 57 (0.55%) JMeter
11 42 (0.41%) Gradle
12 40 (0.39%) Mockito
13 36 (0.35%) Gatling
13 36 (0.35%) Zephyr
14 35 (0.34%) Cypress.io
14 35 (0.34%) REST Assured
14 35 (0.34%) Visual Studio
15 34 (0.33%) Artifactory
16 32 (0.31%) MSI
General
1 2,332 (22.64%) Social Skills
2 2,030 (19.70%) Public Sector
3 838 (8.13%) Analytical Skills
4 676 (6.56%) Finance
5 411 (3.99%) Military
6 320 (3.11%) Aerospace
7 252 (2.45%) Documentation Skills
8 208 (2.02%) Influencing Skills
9 169 (1.64%) Organisational Skills
10 149 (1.45%) Telecoms
11 141 (1.37%) Manufacturing
12 134 (1.30%) Legal
13 132 (1.28%) Banking
14 125 (1.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 115 (1.12%) Law
16 99 (0.96%) Police
17 66 (0.64%) Presentation Skills
18 44 (0.43%) Local Government
19 43 (0.42%) Marketing
20 41 (0.40%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,604 (15.57%) Architect
2 967 (9.39%) Developer
3 964 (9.36%) Senior
4 961 (9.33%) Lead
5 573 (5.56%) Consultant
6 566 (5.49%) Analyst
7 435 (4.22%) Data Engineer
8 419 (4.07%) DevOps Engineer
9 380 (3.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 265 (2.57%) Solutions Architect
10 265 (2.57%) Technical Architect
11 252 (2.45%) Data Architect
12 249 (2.42%) Security Architect
13 246 (2.39%) Software Engineer
14 226 (2.19%) Network Engineer
15 206 (2.00%) Administrator
16 198 (1.92%) Cloud Engineer
17 193 (1.87%) Designer
18 182 (1.77%) Java Developer
19 181 (1.76%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 877 (8.51%) Terraform
2 398 (3.86%) REST
3 212 (2.06%) Spring
4 211 (2.05%) Kafka
5 192 (1.86%) Spring Boot
6 168 (1.63%) .NET
7 166 (1.61%) React
8 161 (1.56%) SOAP
9 159 (1.54%) RESTful
10 133 (1.29%) Node.js
11 124 (1.20%) JSON
12 116 (1.13%) OAuth
13 114 (1.11%) HTML
14 104 (1.01%) XML
15 96 (0.93%) Web Services
16 93 (0.90%) AngularJS
17 91 (0.88%) Middleware
18 88 (0.85%) CSS
19 86 (0.83%) Oracle Fusion
20 84 (0.82%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 457 (4.44%) Cloud Native
2 399 (3.87%) Onboarding
3 322 (3.13%) Product Ownership
4 267 (2.59%) Data Centre
5 182 (1.77%) Management Information System
6 160 (1.55%) Legacy Systems
6 160 (1.55%) PKI
7 149 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
8 142 (1.38%) CMDB
9 118 (1.15%) Hybrid Cloud
10 113 (1.10%) Distributed Systems
11 108 (1.05%) Cyber Threat
12 107 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
13 102 (0.99%) Operational Technology
14 101 (0.98%) Replication
15 86 (0.83%) Security Posture
16 82 (0.80%) Clustering
16 82 (0.80%) Public Cloud
17 81 (0.79%) Security Operations Centre
18 80 (0.78%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 921 (8.94%) Windows
2 714 (6.93%) Linux
3 355 (3.45%) Windows Server
4 218 (2.12%) Unix
5 152 (1.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 136 (1.32%) Windows 10
7 82 (0.80%) Solaris
8 65 (0.63%) Android
9 45 (0.44%) CentOS
9 45 (0.44%) Mac OS
10 37 (0.36%) Ubuntu
11 36 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 30 (0.29%) AIX
13 28 (0.27%) Apple iOS
14 24 (0.23%) Windows 7
15 22 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
16 19 (0.18%) VMS
17 16 (0.16%) Rocky
17 16 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
18 12 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,150 (20.87%) Agile
2 1,547 (15.02%) DevOps
3 1,512 (14.68%) CI/CD
4 1,460 (14.17%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,284 (12.46%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,113 (10.80%) Problem-Solving
7 1,029 (9.99%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 890 (8.64%) Infrastructure as Code
9 851 (8.26%) Migration
10 789 (7.66%) Cybersecurity
11 722 (7.01%) ITIL
12 664 (6.45%) Technical Leadership
13 662 (6.43%) AI
14 657 (6.38%) Roadmaps
15 649 (6.30%) Test Automation
16 634 (6.15%) Containerisation
17 629 (6.11%) Decision-Making
18 621 (6.03%) Analytics
19 594 (5.77%) Software Engineering
20 559 (5.43%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,175 (11.41%) Python
2 947 (9.19%) SQL
3 647 (6.28%) Java
4 538 (5.22%) PowerShell
5 356 (3.46%) JavaScript
6 301 (2.92%) Bash
7 194 (1.88%) C#
8 180 (1.75%) TypeScript
9 131 (1.27%) PL/SQL
10 109 (1.06%) Bicep
11 69 (0.67%) Shell Script
12 59 (0.57%) C++
13 53 (0.51%) Go
14 47 (0.46%) C
14 47 (0.46%) Groovy
15 46 (0.45%) Scala
16 43 (0.42%) Kotlin
17 30 (0.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 27 (0.26%) Kusto Query Language
19 26 (0.25%) R
Qualifications
1 7,723 (74.97%) SC Cleared
2 2,128 (20.66%) DV Cleared
3 441 (4.28%) Degree
4 440 (4.27%) BPSS Clearance
5 202 (1.96%) CISSP
6 169 (1.64%) Azure Certification
7 165 (1.60%) Cisco Certification
8 153 (1.49%) Microsoft Certification
9 143 (1.39%) AWS Certification
10 120 (1.16%) CISM
11 98 (0.95%) PMI Certification
12 89 (0.86%) PMP
13 88 (0.85%) ISTQB
14 85 (0.83%) CCNP
15 64 (0.62%) Computer Science Degree
16 59 (0.57%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 55 (0.53%) CCNA
18 45 (0.44%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 45 (0.44%) TOGAF Certification
19 41 (0.40%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 460 (4.47%) QA
2 326 (3.16%) Data Quality
3 303 (2.94%) NIST
4 289 (2.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 260 (2.52%) NCSC
6 243 (2.36%) Accessibility
7 215 (2.09%) PMO
8 154 (1.49%) SLA
9 145 (1.41%) GDPR
10 142 (1.38%) GRC
11 70 (0.68%) WCAG
12 52 (0.50%) JSP 440
13 44 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
14 42 (0.41%) NIST 800
15 35 (0.34%) Def Stans
16 29 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 25 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
18 21 (0.20%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 20 (0.19%) ISO 9001
20 19 (0.18%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 689 (6.69%) Docker
2 587 (5.70%) Active Directory
3 409 (3.97%) VMware Infrastructure
4 142 (1.38%) VMware ESXi
5 130 (1.26%) VMware NSX
6 125 (1.21%) vSphere
7 124 (1.20%) Hyper-V
8 84 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
9 41 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
10 39 (0.38%) Firmware
11 37 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
12 26 (0.25%) BitLocker
13 25 (0.24%) vCloud
14 19 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
15 15 (0.15%) NFS
16 12 (0.12%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 10 (0.097%) KVM
17 10 (0.097%) Postfix
18 9 (0.087%) Microsoft Virtual Server
18 9 (0.087%) Squid
Systems Management
1 825 (8.01%) Kubernetes
2 400 (3.88%) Ansible
3 226 (2.19%) Grafana
4 169 (1.64%) Prometheus
5 130 (1.26%) SCCM
6 129 (1.25%) vCenter Server
7 94 (0.91%) SCOM
8 91 (0.88%) Microsoft Intune
9 55 (0.53%) Argo
10 50 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
11 42 (0.41%) Puppet
12 41 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
13 40 (0.39%) Kibana
14 36 (0.35%) Data Guard
15 30 (0.29%) VxRail
16 29 (0.28%) Istio
17 28 (0.27%) Control-M
18 27 (0.26%) NetBackup
19 26 (0.25%) Nagios
19 26 (0.25%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,386 (13.45%) Microsoft
2 819 (7.95%) Oracle
3 560 (5.44%) VMware
4 476 (4.62%) ServiceNow
5 386 (3.75%) SAP
6 275 (2.67%) Cisco
7 246 (2.39%) Google
8 198 (1.92%) Splunk
9 163 (1.58%) Databricks
10 123 (1.19%) Red Hat
11 113 (1.10%) Palo Alto
11 113 (1.10%) Salesforce
12 97 (0.94%) IBM
13 93 (0.90%) Remedy
14 92 (0.89%) Informatica
15 90 (0.87%) CyberArk
16 88 (0.85%) Dynatrace
17 87 (0.84%) Talend
18 75 (0.73%) SolarWinds
19 71 (0.69%) Citrix