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

6 months to
28 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 9,269 4,443 6,927
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.20% 18.64% 18.91%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.58% 59.24% 61.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,450 2,948 4,560
10th Percentile £380 £340 £352
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 £719 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £529 £550
% change year-on-year -0.76% -3.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 783 276 493
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £13.99
25th Percentile £22.63 £24.66 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £40.30 £55.80
Median % change year-on-year +36.49% -27.79% -7.00%
75th Percentile £74.26 £67.31 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £80.00 £83.52
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £32.50 £55.08
% change year-on-year +69.23% -40.99% -8.21%

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 13,321 7,500 11,221
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.90% 31.47% 30.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,925 4,777 6,976
10th Percentile £350 £277 £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 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £521 £533
% change year-on-year +0.77% -2.25% -3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,017 428 980
10th Percentile £17.08 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.33 £22.27 £18.29
Median hourly rate £47.50 £35.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.71% -12.50% -25.93%
75th Percentile £73.00 £67.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £81.11 £75.24
UK median hourly rate £47.54 £32.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +46.28% -18.75% -27.27%

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 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 28 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 28 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 +6 3,305 £525 - 518
South East +1 2,230 £550 - 492
South West 0 1,280 £538 -4.44% 384
North of England 0 932 £500 - 281
Midlands +3 871 £470 -10.48% 140
West Midlands +3 746 £470 -10.48% 112
North West -1 526 £513 +2.50% 168
East of England +2 383 £550 +10.00% 132
Yorkshire -9 236 £488 -1.71% 51
North East +1 208 £475 -1.04% 63
East Midlands -2 118 £444 -6.58% 28
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
1 334 (3.60%) Confluence
2 208 (2.24%) SharePoint
3 123 (1.33%) SAS
4 122 (1.32%) Microsoft Exchange
5 76 (0.82%) Apache Spark
6 73 (0.79%) Apache
7 64 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
8 34 (0.37%) nginx
9 33 (0.36%) WebLogic
10 27 (0.29%) Jupyter
11 18 (0.19%) IIS
11 18 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
12 17 (0.18%) Tomcat
13 15 (0.16%) Skype for Business
14 14 (0.15%) CMS
14 14 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
14 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
15 8 (0.086%) Apache Superset
15 8 (0.086%) ArcGIS
15 8 (0.086%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 165 (1.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 164 (1.77%) Microsoft Office
3 83 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
4 76 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 38 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 17 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.14%) Simulink
8 8 (0.086%) AutoCAD
9 7 (0.076%) SOLIDWORKS
10 6 (0.065%) Revit
11 5 (0.054%) Notepad++
12 4 (0.043%) Siemens NX
13 3 (0.032%) Adobe XD
13 3 (0.032%) Chatbot
13 3 (0.032%) Sketch
13 3 (0.032%) Windchill
14 2 (0.022%) CATIA
14 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
14 2 (0.022%) Lectora
14 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 85 (0.92%) SAP S/4HANA
2 50 (0.54%) Remedy ITSM
3 39 (0.42%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 30 (0.32%) Teamcenter
5 27 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
6 26 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
7 16 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.15%) Maximo
8 14 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.14%) Findur
9 13 (0.14%) SAP PSCD
10 12 (0.13%) iTrent
10 12 (0.13%) Temenos T24
11 9 (0.097%) Integrated Workplace Management System
11 9 (0.097%) Oracle Assets
11 9 (0.097%) SAP ERP
11 9 (0.097%) SAP HCM
12 8 (0.086%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 8 (0.086%) Primavera
12 8 (0.086%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,583 (17.08%) Azure
2 1,516 (16.36%) AWS
3 366 (3.95%) GitHub
4 363 (3.92%) GCP
5 342 (3.69%) Azure DevOps
6 337 (3.64%) Power Platform
7 230 (2.48%) Entra ID
8 227 (2.45%) Serverless
9 225 (2.43%) Microsoft 365
10 211 (2.28%) GitHub Actions
11 191 (2.06%) Amazon S3
12 157 (1.69%) AWS Lambda
13 139 (1.50%) Amazon EC2
14 130 (1.40%) PaaS
15 126 (1.36%) OpenShift
16 118 (1.27%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 116 (1.25%) OCI
18 111 (1.20%) SaaS
19 105 (1.13%) Virtual Private Cloud
20 95 (1.02%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 428 (4.62%) Firewall
2 274 (2.96%) DNS
3 221 (2.38%) Network Security
4 217 (2.34%) WAN
5 199 (2.15%) LAN
6 157 (1.69%) VPN
7 148 (1.60%) DHCP
8 144 (1.55%) BGP
9 123 (1.33%) OSPF
10 110 (1.19%) Wi-Fi
11 108 (1.17%) VLAN
12 99 (1.07%) TCP/IP
13 83 (0.90%) Wireless
14 63 (0.68%) MPLS
15 59 (0.64%) SAN
16 56 (0.60%) VXLAN
17 55 (0.59%) Structured Cabling
18 51 (0.55%) SD-WAN
19 50 (0.54%) IPsec
20 47 (0.51%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 256 (2.76%) Power BI
2 215 (2.32%) PostgreSQL
3 204 (2.20%) Data Warehouse
4 194 (2.09%) SQL Server
5 115 (1.24%) Metadata
5 115 (1.24%) Oracle Database
6 104 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
7 92 (0.99%) Data Lake
8 87 (0.94%) MongoDB
9 81 (0.87%) Relational Database
10 76 (0.82%) NoSQL
10 76 (0.82%) Pentaho
11 71 (0.77%) Oracle Reports
12 70 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
13 64 (0.69%) MySQL
14 61 (0.66%) Tableau
15 57 (0.61%) Amazon Redshift
16 56 (0.60%) Azure SQL Database
17 52 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
18 41 (0.44%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 528 (5.70%) JIRA
2 391 (4.22%) Git
3 358 (3.86%) GitLab
4 350 (3.78%) Jenkins
5 99 (1.07%) Selenium
6 75 (0.81%) Postman
7 68 (0.73%) JUnit
8 61 (0.66%) SonarQube
9 59 (0.64%) Rational DOORS
10 51 (0.55%) Artifactory
11 47 (0.51%) JMeter
12 41 (0.44%) Bitbucket
13 40 (0.43%) Cucumber
14 39 (0.42%) Maven
15 38 (0.41%) Mockito
16 35 (0.38%) Visual Studio
17 33 (0.36%) REST Assured
17 33 (0.36%) Zephyr
18 31 (0.33%) Cypress.io
19 25 (0.27%) Gatling
General
1 1,954 (21.08%) Public Sector
2 1,908 (20.58%) Social Skills
3 648 (6.99%) Analytical Skills
4 628 (6.78%) Finance
5 322 (3.47%) Military
6 263 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
7 239 (2.58%) Aerospace
8 139 (1.50%) Legal
9 114 (1.23%) Banking
9 114 (1.23%) Telecoms
10 106 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
11 103 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
12 92 (0.99%) Manufacturing
13 90 (0.97%) Law
14 77 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
15 54 (0.58%) Marketing
16 53 (0.57%) Police
17 50 (0.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 42 (0.45%) Electronics
19 41 (0.44%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,362 (14.69%) Architect
2 846 (9.13%) Developer
3 776 (8.37%) Senior
4 666 (7.19%) Lead
5 647 (6.98%) Analyst
6 454 (4.90%) Data Engineer
7 416 (4.49%) Consultant
8 412 (4.44%) DevOps Engineer
9 278 (3.00%) Software Engineer
10 277 (2.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 275 (2.97%) Network Engineer
12 266 (2.87%) Technical Architect
13 234 (2.52%) Business Analyst
14 214 (2.31%) Project Manager
15 212 (2.29%) Solutions Architect
16 187 (2.02%) Azure Engineer
17 182 (1.96%) Security Architect
18 175 (1.89%) Designer
19 173 (1.87%) Administrator
20 172 (1.86%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 291 (3.14%) REST
2 210 (2.27%) Spring
3 174 (1.88%) Spring Boot
4 169 (1.82%) React
5 157 (1.69%) Node.js
6 156 (1.68%) .NET
7 155 (1.67%) Kafka
8 146 (1.58%) LDAP
9 138 (1.49%) SOAP
10 134 (1.45%) RESTful
11 112 (1.21%) AngularJS
12 108 (1.17%) JSON
13 102 (1.10%) Web Services
14 94 (1.01%) PySpark
15 89 (0.96%) OAuth
16 80 (0.86%) Oracle Fusion
17 79 (0.85%) HTML
17 79 (0.85%) XML
18 69 (0.74%) Middleware
19 68 (0.73%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 319 (3.44%) Cloud Native
2 302 (3.26%) Product Ownership
3 286 (3.09%) Data Centre
4 263 (2.84%) Onboarding
5 144 (1.55%) Management Information System
5 144 (1.55%) PKI
6 131 (1.41%) Legacy Systems
7 119 (1.28%) Security Posture
8 116 (1.25%) Enterprise Software
9 114 (1.23%) Replication
10 110 (1.19%) Distributed Systems
11 91 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
12 85 (0.92%) Clustering
13 81 (0.87%) Hybrid Cloud
14 80 (0.86%) Data Structures
15 71 (0.77%) Public Cloud
16 69 (0.74%) Security Operations Centre
17 67 (0.72%) Operational Technology
18 66 (0.71%) CMDB
19 64 (0.69%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 755 (8.15%) Windows
2 641 (6.92%) Linux
3 230 (2.48%) Windows Server
4 175 (1.89%) Unix
5 113 (1.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 84 (0.91%) Android
6 84 (0.91%) Windows 10
7 51 (0.55%) Apple iOS
8 45 (0.49%) Solaris
9 37 (0.40%) Mac OS
10 35 (0.38%) Ubuntu
11 25 (0.27%) AIX
11 25 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
12 23 (0.25%) CentOS
12 23 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
13 20 (0.22%) VMS
14 15 (0.16%) Windows 7
15 12 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
16 9 (0.097%) Windows Server 2003
16 9 (0.097%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,802 (19.44%) Agile
2 1,409 (15.20%) DevOps
3 1,228 (13.25%) CI/CD
4 977 (10.54%) Problem-Solving
5 908 (9.80%) Stakeholder Management
6 841 (9.07%) Continuous Improvement
7 765 (8.25%) Migration
8 697 (7.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 632 (6.82%) Infrastructure as Code
10 581 (6.27%) ITIL
11 580 (6.26%) Cybersecurity
12 537 (5.79%) Test Automation
13 525 (5.66%) Analytics
14 524 (5.65%) Software Engineering
15 511 (5.51%) Roadmaps
16 487 (5.25%) Containerisation
17 479 (5.17%) Data Modelling
18 443 (4.78%) Decision-Making
19 419 (4.52%) Scrum
20 406 (4.38%) AI
Programming Languages
1 968 (10.44%) Python
2 856 (9.24%) SQL
3 564 (6.08%) Java
4 491 (5.30%) PowerShell
5 276 (2.98%) JavaScript
6 195 (2.10%) C#
7 181 (1.95%) Bash
8 139 (1.50%) TypeScript
9 101 (1.09%) PL/SQL
10 89 (0.96%) C++
11 86 (0.93%) Shell Script
12 62 (0.67%) Go
13 58 (0.63%) Scala
14 56 (0.60%) C
15 53 (0.57%) Bicep
16 47 (0.51%) Ruby
17 44 (0.47%) Ada
18 41 (0.44%) Apex Code
19 36 (0.39%) MATLAB
20 35 (0.38%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 6,972 (75.22%) SC Cleared
2 1,785 (19.26%) DV Cleared
3 402 (4.34%) Degree
4 252 (2.72%) BPSS Clearance
5 189 (2.04%) Cisco Certification
6 160 (1.73%) CISSP
7 120 (1.29%) Azure Certification
8 118 (1.27%) CCNP
9 103 (1.11%) CISM
10 92 (0.99%) AWS Certification
11 91 (0.98%) Microsoft Certification
12 79 (0.85%) CCNA
13 74 (0.80%) PMP
14 66 (0.71%) PMI Certification
15 60 (0.65%) Computer Science Degree
16 59 (0.64%) ISTQB
17 54 (0.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 51 (0.55%) ITIL Certification
19 48 (0.52%) GIAC
20 40 (0.43%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 343 (3.70%) QA
2 277 (2.99%) NIST
3 273 (2.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 268 (2.89%) Data Quality
5 191 (2.06%) NCSC
6 166 (1.79%) Accessibility
7 157 (1.69%) GDPR
8 152 (1.64%) PMO
9 104 (1.12%) SLA
10 64 (0.69%) GRC
11 60 (0.65%) JSP 440
12 54 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials
13 38 (0.41%) NIST 800
14 36 (0.39%) WCAG
15 32 (0.35%) Def Stans
16 28 (0.30%) RMADS
17 25 (0.27%) PCI DSS
18 21 (0.23%) COBIT
18 21 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
18 21 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 557 (6.01%) Docker
2 432 (4.66%) Active Directory
3 270 (2.91%) VMware Infrastructure
4 103 (1.11%) VMware ESXi
5 94 (1.01%) VMware NSX
6 77 (0.83%) vSphere
7 73 (0.79%) Hyper-V
8 63 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
9 35 (0.38%) Firmware
10 28 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
11 24 (0.26%) Virtual Desktop
12 21 (0.23%) BitLocker
13 20 (0.22%) vCloud
14 19 (0.20%) NFS
14 19 (0.20%) Postfix
15 16 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 16 (0.17%) Squid
16 8 (0.086%) Microsoft App-V
17 7 (0.076%) KVM
18 6 (0.065%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 707 (7.63%) Kubernetes
2 705 (7.61%) Terraform
3 334 (3.60%) Ansible
4 232 (2.50%) Grafana
5 189 (2.04%) Prometheus
6 109 (1.18%) vCenter Server
7 82 (0.88%) Single Sign-On
8 70 (0.76%) SCCM
9 59 (0.64%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 50 (0.54%) Microsoft Intune
11 47 (0.51%) FortiGate
12 46 (0.50%) Argo
13 38 (0.41%) Puppet
14 37 (0.40%) Podman
15 34 (0.37%) Oracle RMAN
16 33 (0.36%) SCOM
17 31 (0.33%) Progress Chef
18 29 (0.31%) Nagios
19 22 (0.24%) Packer
19 22 (0.24%) WSUS
Vendors
1 953 (10.28%) Microsoft
2 592 (6.39%) Oracle
3 462 (4.98%) VMware
4 368 (3.97%) ServiceNow
5 335 (3.61%) Cisco
6 306 (3.30%) SAP
7 210 (2.27%) Splunk
8 179 (1.93%) Databricks
9 154 (1.66%) Red Hat
10 147 (1.59%) Google
11 121 (1.31%) Talend
12 120 (1.29%) Palo Alto
13 115 (1.24%) Salesforce
14 111 (1.20%) IBM
15 103 (1.11%) Juniper
16 93 (1.00%) CyberArk
17 86 (0.93%) Informatica
18 84 (0.91%) F5
18 84 (0.91%) Fortinet
19 75 (0.81%) SolarWinds