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

6 months to
10 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,333 4,520 7,092
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.09% 18.47% 18.92%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.62% 58.90% 61.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,518 2,978 4,622
10th Percentile £380 £337 £353
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 £715 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 766 303 525
10th Percentile £18.04 £18.25 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.16 £23.28 £21.46
Median hourly rate £58.50 £32.00 £56.89
Median % change year-on-year +82.81% -43.75% -5.19%
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.13 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.36 £80.00 £84.45
UK median hourly rate £57.35 £27.76 £56.15
% change year-on-year +106.59% -50.56% -6.43%

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 13,405 7,674 11,449
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.73% 31.36% 30.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,002 4,834 7,080
10th Percentile £350 £280 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £536
Median % change year-on-year - -2.05% -2.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,018 471 1,012
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.31 £22.16 £18.99
Median hourly rate £48.61 £32.00 £40.29
Median % change year-on-year +51.91% -20.57% -26.75%
75th Percentile £73.46 £65.43 £64.25
90th Percentile £85.25 £80.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £48.61 £30.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +59.38% -23.75% -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 10 June 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 10 June 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 10 June 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 +7 3,354 £525 - 426
South East +1 2,244 £550 - 457
South West 0 1,260 £538 -4.44% 349
North of England +1 967 £500 - 245
Midlands +1 882 £469 -10.67% 114
West Midlands +2 762 £469 -10.67% 84
North West 0 538 £520 +4.00% 147
East of England +2 367 £550 +10.00% 115
Yorkshire -3 244 £494 +0.36% 55
North East +1 217 £478 -0.52% 44
East Midlands -5 113 £418 -17.53% 30
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
1 338 (3.62%) Confluence
2 212 (2.27%) SharePoint
3 134 (1.44%) SAS
4 122 (1.31%) Microsoft Exchange
5 79 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
5 79 (0.85%) Apache Spark
6 72 (0.77%) Apache
7 37 (0.40%) nginx
8 35 (0.38%) Jupyter
9 27 (0.29%) WebLogic
10 20 (0.21%) Tomcat
11 19 (0.20%) IIS
12 18 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
13 15 (0.16%) CMS
13 15 (0.16%) Skype for Business
14 14 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
15 12 (0.13%) Tuxedo
16 11 (0.12%) NetWeaver
17 9 (0.096%) ArcGIS
18 8 (0.086%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 156 (1.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 129 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
3 74 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 69 (0.74%) Microsoft Project
5 38 (0.41%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.15%) Simulink
8 9 (0.096%) SOLIDWORKS
9 8 (0.086%) AutoCAD
9 8 (0.086%) Chatbot
9 8 (0.086%) Revit
10 5 (0.054%) Notepad++
11 3 (0.032%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.032%) Sketch
11 3 (0.032%) Windchill
12 2 (0.021%) CATIA
12 2 (0.021%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.021%) Lectora
12 2 (0.021%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.021%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 93 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
2 56 (0.60%) Remedy ITSM
3 39 (0.42%) Oracle ERP
4 34 (0.36%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 29 (0.31%) Teamcenter
6 26 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
7 16 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.15%) Findur
8 14 (0.15%) Maximo
8 14 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.14%) SAP PSCD
10 12 (0.13%) iTrent
10 12 (0.13%) Temenos T24
11 11 (0.12%) Primavera
12 9 (0.096%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.096%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.096%) Salesforce CRM
12 9 (0.096%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.096%) SAP HCM
13 8 (0.086%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,626 (17.42%) Azure
2 1,560 (16.71%) AWS
3 376 (4.03%) GitHub
4 364 (3.90%) GCP
5 353 (3.78%) Azure DevOps
6 350 (3.75%) Power Platform
7 233 (2.50%) Serverless
8 232 (2.49%) Microsoft 365
9 228 (2.44%) Entra ID
10 225 (2.41%) GitHub Actions
11 202 (2.16%) Amazon S3
12 164 (1.76%) AWS Lambda
13 145 (1.55%) Amazon EC2
14 138 (1.48%) PaaS
15 126 (1.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 123 (1.32%) OpenShift
17 122 (1.31%) OCI
17 122 (1.31%) SaaS
18 103 (1.10%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 97 (1.04%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 412 (4.41%) Firewall
2 271 (2.90%) DNS
3 214 (2.29%) Network Security
4 207 (2.22%) WAN
5 188 (2.01%) LAN
6 155 (1.66%) VPN
7 148 (1.59%) DHCP
8 138 (1.48%) BGP
9 117 (1.25%) OSPF
10 110 (1.18%) Wi-Fi
11 104 (1.11%) VLAN
12 91 (0.98%) TCP/IP
13 77 (0.83%) Wireless
14 60 (0.64%) MPLS
15 55 (0.59%) VXLAN
16 52 (0.56%) SAN
16 52 (0.56%) SD-WAN
17 51 (0.55%) Structured Cabling
18 48 (0.51%) Ethernet VPN
18 48 (0.51%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 262 (2.81%) Power BI
2 229 (2.45%) PostgreSQL
3 207 (2.22%) Data Warehouse
4 202 (2.16%) SQL Server
5 127 (1.36%) Oracle Database
6 115 (1.23%) Metadata
7 107 (1.15%) Amazon RDS
8 99 (1.06%) Data Lake
9 87 (0.93%) Relational Database
10 81 (0.87%) Pentaho
11 78 (0.84%) MongoDB
12 74 (0.79%) Oracle Reports
13 70 (0.75%) Elasticsearch
14 69 (0.74%) MySQL
14 69 (0.74%) NoSQL
15 61 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
16 60 (0.64%) Tableau
17 58 (0.62%) Amazon Athena
18 47 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
19 43 (0.46%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 529 (5.67%) JIRA
2 406 (4.35%) Git
3 370 (3.96%) GitLab
4 358 (3.84%) Jenkins
5 101 (1.08%) Selenium
6 76 (0.81%) JUnit
7 73 (0.78%) Postman
8 63 (0.68%) SonarQube
9 57 (0.61%) Rational DOORS
10 50 (0.54%) JMeter
11 48 (0.51%) Artifactory
12 45 (0.48%) Cucumber
13 41 (0.44%) Bitbucket
14 38 (0.41%) Maven
14 38 (0.41%) Mockito
15 37 (0.40%) Zephyr
16 35 (0.38%) Visual Studio
17 33 (0.35%) Cypress.io
18 32 (0.34%) REST Assured
19 29 (0.31%) WebDriver
General
1 1,959 (20.99%) Public Sector
2 1,893 (20.28%) Social Skills
3 636 (6.81%) Analytical Skills
4 619 (6.63%) Finance
5 310 (3.32%) Military
6 271 (2.90%) Documentation Skills
7 253 (2.71%) Aerospace
8 139 (1.49%) Legal
9 119 (1.28%) Banking
10 112 (1.20%) Influencing Skills
11 102 (1.09%) Telecoms
12 97 (1.04%) Law
13 90 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
14 77 (0.83%) Manufacturing
14 77 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
15 62 (0.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 57 (0.61%) Police
17 46 (0.49%) Marketing
18 38 (0.41%) Retail
19 37 (0.40%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,365 (14.63%) Architect
2 854 (9.15%) Developer
3 791 (8.48%) Senior
4 709 (7.60%) Lead
5 643 (6.89%) Analyst
6 460 (4.93%) Data Engineer
7 420 (4.50%) DevOps Engineer
8 415 (4.45%) Consultant
9 286 (3.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 278 (2.98%) Software Engineer
11 272 (2.91%) Technical Architect
12 257 (2.75%) Network Engineer
13 234 (2.51%) Business Analyst
14 223 (2.39%) Solutions Architect
15 207 (2.22%) Project Manager
16 198 (2.12%) Security Architect
17 188 (2.01%) Azure Engineer
18 185 (1.98%) Delivery Manager
19 184 (1.97%) Administrator
20 176 (1.89%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 297 (3.18%) REST
2 208 (2.23%) Spring
3 175 (1.88%) Spring Boot
4 171 (1.83%) React
5 159 (1.70%) .NET
6 148 (1.59%) Kafka
7 145 (1.55%) Node.js
8 143 (1.53%) LDAP
9 136 (1.46%) SOAP
10 134 (1.44%) RESTful
11 109 (1.17%) AngularJS
12 108 (1.16%) JSON
13 98 (1.05%) Web Services
14 92 (0.99%) OAuth
14 92 (0.99%) PySpark
15 88 (0.94%) HTML
16 75 (0.80%) XML
17 74 (0.79%) Oracle Fusion
18 72 (0.77%) OpenID
19 71 (0.76%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 349 (3.74%) Cloud Native
2 309 (3.31%) Product Ownership
3 288 (3.09%) Data Centre
4 272 (2.91%) Onboarding
5 149 (1.60%) Management Information System
6 144 (1.54%) Legacy Systems
7 138 (1.48%) PKI
8 122 (1.31%) Security Posture
9 120 (1.29%) Distributed Systems
10 117 (1.25%) Enterprise Software
11 112 (1.20%) Replication
12 96 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
13 87 (0.93%) Clustering
14 81 (0.87%) Data Structures
15 79 (0.85%) Hybrid Cloud
16 74 (0.79%) Public Cloud
17 73 (0.78%) Security Operations Centre
18 71 (0.76%) CMDB
18 71 (0.76%) Operational Technology
19 63 (0.68%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 750 (8.04%) Windows
2 625 (6.70%) Linux
3 246 (2.64%) Windows Server
4 180 (1.93%) Unix
5 112 (1.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 77 (0.83%) Windows 10
7 76 (0.81%) Android
8 51 (0.55%) Apple iOS
8 51 (0.55%) Solaris
9 34 (0.36%) Mac OS
10 31 (0.33%) Ubuntu
11 26 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
12 25 (0.27%) AIX
13 24 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
14 22 (0.24%) CentOS
15 20 (0.21%) VMS
16 14 (0.15%) Windows 7
17 11 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
17 11 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
18 10 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,826 (19.56%) Agile
2 1,437 (15.40%) DevOps
3 1,259 (13.49%) CI/CD
4 955 (10.23%) Problem-Solving
5 937 (10.04%) Stakeholder Management
6 874 (9.36%) Continuous Improvement
7 779 (8.35%) Migration
8 746 (7.99%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 661 (7.08%) Infrastructure as Code
10 609 (6.53%) Cybersecurity
11 564 (6.04%) ITIL
12 555 (5.95%) Test Automation
13 539 (5.78%) Analytics
14 535 (5.73%) Software Engineering
15 522 (5.59%) Roadmaps
16 507 (5.43%) Containerisation
17 480 (5.14%) Data Modelling
18 460 (4.93%) Decision-Making
19 436 (4.67%) AI
20 430 (4.61%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 985 (10.55%) Python
2 870 (9.32%) SQL
3 568 (6.09%) Java
4 486 (5.21%) PowerShell
5 267 (2.86%) JavaScript
6 202 (2.16%) C#
7 182 (1.95%) Bash
8 141 (1.51%) TypeScript
9 111 (1.19%) PL/SQL
10 84 (0.90%) Shell Script
11 83 (0.89%) C++
12 60 (0.64%) Bicep
13 58 (0.62%) C
14 53 (0.57%) Go
15 51 (0.55%) Scala
16 45 (0.48%) Ada
17 43 (0.46%) Ruby
18 40 (0.43%) Apex Code
19 35 (0.38%) MATLAB
20 32 (0.34%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 7,055 (75.59%) SC Cleared
2 1,766 (18.92%) DV Cleared
3 388 (4.16%) Degree
4 264 (2.83%) BPSS Clearance
5 179 (1.92%) Cisco Certification
6 158 (1.69%) CISSP
7 124 (1.33%) Azure Certification
8 104 (1.11%) CCNP
9 103 (1.10%) CISM
10 100 (1.07%) Microsoft Certification
11 95 (1.02%) AWS Certification
12 75 (0.80%) CCNA
12 75 (0.80%) PMP
13 69 (0.74%) PMI Certification
14 63 (0.68%) ISTQB
15 57 (0.61%) Computer Science Degree
16 56 (0.60%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 53 (0.57%) ITIL Certification
18 43 (0.46%) GIAC
19 34 (0.36%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 353 (3.78%) QA
2 289 (3.10%) NIST
3 283 (3.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 265 (2.84%) Data Quality
5 197 (2.11%) NCSC
6 176 (1.89%) Accessibility
7 163 (1.75%) PMO
8 159 (1.70%) GDPR
9 107 (1.15%) SLA
10 71 (0.76%) GRC
11 60 (0.64%) JSP 440
12 51 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials
13 42 (0.45%) WCAG
14 41 (0.44%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.35%) Def Stans
16 28 (0.30%) RMADS
17 22 (0.24%) COBIT
17 22 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
17 22 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 21 (0.23%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 568 (6.09%) Docker
2 431 (4.62%) Active Directory
3 286 (3.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 111 (1.19%) VMware ESXi
5 97 (1.04%) VMware NSX
6 79 (0.85%) Hyper-V
7 77 (0.83%) vSphere
8 70 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
9 30 (0.32%) Firmware
9 30 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
10 22 (0.24%) BitLocker
11 20 (0.21%) vCloud
12 19 (0.20%) NFS
12 19 (0.20%) Postfix
13 17 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
14 16 (0.17%) Squid
15 15 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 9 (0.096%) Microsoft App-V
17 6 (0.064%) Corosync
17 6 (0.064%) KVM
Systems Management
1 733 (7.85%) Terraform
2 712 (7.63%) Kubernetes
3 335 (3.59%) Ansible
4 229 (2.45%) Grafana
5 186 (1.99%) Prometheus
6 112 (1.20%) vCenter Server
7 80 (0.86%) Single Sign-On
8 71 (0.76%) SCCM
9 57 (0.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 54 (0.58%) Microsoft Intune
11 47 (0.50%) FortiGate
12 44 (0.47%) Argo
13 38 (0.41%) Puppet
13 38 (0.41%) SCOM
14 37 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
15 36 (0.39%) Podman
16 27 (0.29%) Progress Chef
17 24 (0.26%) Nagios
18 23 (0.25%) vMotion
19 21 (0.23%) WSUS
Vendors
1 966 (10.35%) Microsoft
2 639 (6.85%) Oracle
3 468 (5.01%) VMware
4 374 (4.01%) ServiceNow
5 319 (3.42%) Cisco
6 298 (3.19%) SAP
7 209 (2.24%) Splunk
8 177 (1.90%) Databricks
9 151 (1.62%) Google
10 143 (1.53%) Red Hat
11 125 (1.34%) Talend
12 118 (1.26%) Palo Alto
13 115 (1.23%) IBM
13 115 (1.23%) Salesforce
14 96 (1.03%) Juniper
15 93 (1.00%) CyberArk
16 90 (0.96%) Informatica
17 83 (0.89%) F5
18 82 (0.88%) Fortinet
19 81 (0.87%) Dynatrace