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

6 months to
23 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 10,291 5,178 5,876
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.11% 18.76% 18.25%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.87% 59.38% 61.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,220 3,393 3,778
10th Percentile £400 £350 £356
25th Percentile £463 £450 £453
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 £549 £537 £550
% change year-on-year +2.23% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 802 527 347
10th Percentile £20.58 £18.50 £21.15
25th Percentile £34.26 £18.87 £37.90
Median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +158.45% -59.17% +2.94%
75th Percentile £78.19 £39.22 £72.50
90th Percentile £91.28 £71.87 £84.13
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 14,943 8,720 9,547
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.11% 31.59% 29.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,993 5,545 5,856
10th Percentile £350 £304 £325
25th Percentile £445 £415 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £714 £738
UK median daily rate £529 £525 £525
% change year-on-year +0.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,235 696 549
10th Percentile £18.25 £17.99 £18.03
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £30.00
Median hourly rate £52.50 £25.15 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +108.75% -54.27% +1.85%
75th Percentile £74.00 £43.81 £70.00
90th Percentile £89.48 £73.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £47.54 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +89.03% -49.70% -7.41%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 3,647 £550 +2.33% 1,731
South East +1 2,299 £565 +5.21% 1,077
South West 0 1,419 £550 - 879
North of England +2 1,281 £515 -1.90% 780
Midlands 0 948 £481 -6.70% 385
West Midlands 0 809 £480 -7.43% 245
North West +1 751 £530 -3.64% 462
East of England 0 418 £570 +3.55% 491
Yorkshire +1 299 £492 +0.41% 144
North East 0 252 £470 -6.00% 178
East Midlands 0 133 £450 -2.70% 138
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
1 330 (3.21%) Confluence
2 249 (2.42%) SharePoint
3 153 (1.49%) SAS
4 119 (1.16%) Microsoft Exchange
5 100 (0.97%) Apache Airflow
6 88 (0.86%) Apache Spark
7 84 (0.82%) Apache
8 35 (0.34%) nginx
9 32 (0.31%) Jupyter
10 30 (0.29%) CMS
11 26 (0.25%) WebLogic
12 23 (0.22%) Oracle Application Server
13 22 (0.21%) Skype for Business
14 17 (0.17%) Tomcat
15 16 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
16 13 (0.13%) IIS
17 12 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
18 11 (0.11%) JBoss
18 11 (0.11%) NetWeaver
19 10 (0.097%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 188 (1.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 137 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
3 92 (0.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 90 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
5 29 (0.28%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
7 19 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 18 (0.17%) Revit
9 17 (0.17%) SOLIDWORKS
10 16 (0.16%) Windchill
11 9 (0.087%) Simulink
12 8 (0.078%) Adobe XD
12 8 (0.078%) Chatbot
13 7 (0.068%) Sketch
14 5 (0.049%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 5 (0.049%) Notepad++
15 4 (0.039%) OrCAD
15 4 (0.039%) Trello
16 2 (0.019%) Gliffy
16 2 (0.019%) Houdini
Business Applications
1 131 (1.27%) SAP S/4HANA
2 81 (0.79%) Remedy ITSM
3 52 (0.51%) Oracle ERP
4 35 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
5 31 (0.30%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 31 (0.30%) Teamcenter
6 26 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
7 25 (0.24%) SAP PSCD
8 23 (0.22%) Oracle Payroll
9 18 (0.17%) SAP FI
9 18 (0.17%) SAP HR
10 15 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
11 14 (0.14%) Primavera
12 13 (0.13%) Maximo
12 13 (0.13%) SAP CO
13 12 (0.12%) iTrent
13 12 (0.12%) NetSuite
13 12 (0.12%) SAP GRC
13 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
14 11 (0.11%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 1,854 (18.02%) Azure
2 1,685 (16.37%) AWS
3 441 (4.29%) Azure DevOps
4 433 (4.21%) Power Platform
5 405 (3.94%) GitHub
6 386 (3.75%) GCP
7 307 (2.98%) Microsoft 365
8 283 (2.75%) Entra ID
9 278 (2.70%) GitHub Actions
10 236 (2.29%) Serverless
11 203 (1.97%) Amazon S3
12 169 (1.64%) AWS Lambda
13 154 (1.50%) OCI
14 148 (1.44%) SaaS
15 145 (1.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 142 (1.38%) OpenShift
17 133 (1.29%) Amazon EKS
18 120 (1.17%) Amazon EC2
19 101 (0.98%) PowerApps
20 100 (0.97%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 408 (3.96%) Firewall
2 351 (3.41%) DNS
3 219 (2.13%) Network Security
4 189 (1.84%) WAN
5 174 (1.69%) VPN
6 172 (1.67%) DHCP
7 147 (1.43%) LAN
8 124 (1.20%) TCP/IP
9 122 (1.19%) BGP
10 115 (1.12%) Wi-Fi
11 100 (0.97%) VLAN
12 83 (0.81%) OSPF
13 81 (0.79%) Wireless
14 61 (0.59%) VSAN
15 60 (0.58%) SSL
16 59 (0.57%) IPsec
17 56 (0.54%) MPLS
17 56 (0.54%) SAN
18 55 (0.53%) SD-WAN
19 43 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 308 (2.99%) Power BI
2 241 (2.34%) SQL Server
3 238 (2.31%) PostgreSQL
4 236 (2.29%) Data Warehouse
5 178 (1.73%) Metadata
6 166 (1.61%) Oracle Database
7 119 (1.16%) Relational Database
8 117 (1.14%) Data Lake
9 94 (0.91%) Amazon RDS
9 94 (0.91%) MongoDB
10 93 (0.90%) MySQL
11 88 (0.86%) NoSQL
12 76 (0.74%) Oracle Reports
13 67 (0.65%) Pentaho
14 61 (0.59%) Elasticsearch
15 58 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
16 52 (0.51%) Tableau
17 47 (0.46%) Amazon Aurora
18 45 (0.44%) Big Data
19 40 (0.39%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 541 (5.26%) JIRA
2 500 (4.86%) Git
3 436 (4.24%) GitLab
4 409 (3.97%) Jenkins
5 122 (1.19%) Selenium
6 78 (0.76%) SonarQube
7 75 (0.73%) Postman
8 70 (0.68%) JUnit
9 62 (0.60%) Maven
10 57 (0.55%) Cucumber
11 55 (0.53%) JMeter
12 42 (0.41%) Gradle
12 42 (0.41%) Mockito
13 36 (0.35%) Zephyr
14 35 (0.34%) Visual Studio
15 34 (0.33%) Cypress.io
15 34 (0.33%) REST Assured
16 33 (0.32%) Artifactory
16 33 (0.32%) Gatling
17 31 (0.30%) MSI
General
1 2,324 (22.58%) Social Skills
2 2,010 (19.53%) Public Sector
3 835 (8.11%) Analytical Skills
4 683 (6.64%) Finance
5 402 (3.91%) Military
6 313 (3.04%) Aerospace
7 253 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
8 202 (1.96%) Influencing Skills
9 167 (1.62%) Organisational Skills
10 151 (1.47%) Telecoms
11 138 (1.34%) Manufacturing
12 136 (1.32%) Legal
13 130 (1.26%) Banking
14 120 (1.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 118 (1.15%) Law
16 102 (0.99%) Police
17 65 (0.63%) Presentation Skills
18 44 (0.43%) Local Government
18 44 (0.43%) Marketing
18 44 (0.43%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,609 (15.64%) Architect
2 977 (9.49%) Developer
3 958 (9.31%) Senior
4 950 (9.23%) Lead
5 577 (5.61%) Consultant
6 561 (5.45%) Analyst
7 434 (4.22%) Data Engineer
8 419 (4.07%) DevOps Engineer
9 379 (3.68%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 270 (2.62%) Technical Architect
11 262 (2.55%) Solutions Architect
12 258 (2.51%) Software Engineer
13 253 (2.46%) Data Architect
14 245 (2.38%) Security Architect
15 227 (2.21%) Network Engineer
16 207 (2.01%) Administrator
17 198 (1.92%) Cloud Engineer
18 190 (1.85%) Designer
19 189 (1.84%) Java Developer
20 184 (1.79%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 880 (8.55%) Terraform
2 403 (3.92%) REST
3 215 (2.09%) Kafka
3 215 (2.09%) Spring
4 195 (1.89%) Spring Boot
5 166 (1.61%) .NET
5 166 (1.61%) RESTful
6 165 (1.60%) React
7 162 (1.57%) SOAP
8 138 (1.34%) Node.js
9 128 (1.24%) JSON
10 115 (1.12%) HTML
11 114 (1.11%) OAuth
12 104 (1.01%) AngularJS
13 103 (1.00%) XML
14 99 (0.96%) Web Services
15 91 (0.88%) Middleware
16 89 (0.86%) CSS
17 84 (0.82%) LDAP
18 80 (0.78%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 460 (4.47%) Cloud Native
2 397 (3.86%) Onboarding
3 316 (3.07%) Product Ownership
4 262 (2.55%) Data Centre
5 181 (1.76%) Management Information System
6 164 (1.59%) PKI
7 162 (1.57%) Legacy Systems
8 147 (1.43%) Enterprise Software
9 139 (1.35%) CMDB
10 117 (1.14%) Hybrid Cloud
11 115 (1.12%) Distributed Systems
12 108 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
13 106 (1.03%) Cyber Threat
14 104 (1.01%) Replication
15 101 (0.98%) Operational Technology
16 83 (0.81%) Clustering
17 82 (0.80%) Security Operations Centre
17 82 (0.80%) Security Posture
18 81 (0.79%) Public Cloud
19 77 (0.75%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 909 (8.83%) Windows
2 723 (7.03%) Linux
3 349 (3.39%) Windows Server
4 216 (2.10%) Unix
5 153 (1.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 133 (1.29%) Windows 10
7 78 (0.76%) 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 31 (0.30%) AIX
13 28 (0.27%) Apple iOS
14 24 (0.23%) Windows 7
15 21 (0.20%) VMS
15 21 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
16 16 (0.16%) Rocky
16 16 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
17 13 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,157 (20.96%) Agile
2 1,541 (14.97%) DevOps
3 1,511 (14.68%) CI/CD
4 1,440 (13.99%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,273 (12.37%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,111 (10.80%) Problem-Solving
7 1,022 (9.93%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 889 (8.64%) Infrastructure as Code
9 848 (8.24%) Migration
10 782 (7.60%) Cybersecurity
11 721 (7.01%) ITIL
12 666 (6.47%) Test Automation
13 662 (6.43%) Technical Leadership
14 656 (6.37%) AI
15 652 (6.34%) Roadmaps
16 640 (6.22%) Containerisation
17 625 (6.07%) Analytics
18 624 (6.06%) Decision-Making
19 607 (5.90%) Software Engineering
20 554 (5.38%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,174 (11.41%) Python
2 946 (9.19%) SQL
3 660 (6.41%) Java
4 537 (5.22%) PowerShell
5 356 (3.46%) JavaScript
6 303 (2.94%) Bash
7 191 (1.86%) C#
8 179 (1.74%) TypeScript
9 133 (1.29%) PL/SQL
10 110 (1.07%) Bicep
11 72 (0.70%) Shell Script
12 63 (0.61%) C++
13 52 (0.51%) C
13 52 (0.51%) Go
14 49 (0.48%) Groovy
15 45 (0.44%) Scala
16 43 (0.42%) Kotlin
17 30 (0.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 26 (0.25%) Kusto Query Language
18 26 (0.25%) R
Qualifications
1 7,703 (74.85%) SC Cleared
2 2,133 (20.73%) DV Cleared
3 432 (4.20%) Degree
4 427 (4.15%) BPSS Clearance
5 200 (1.94%) CISSP
6 173 (1.68%) Azure Certification
7 166 (1.61%) Cisco Certification
8 155 (1.51%) Microsoft Certification
9 142 (1.38%) AWS Certification
10 120 (1.17%) CISM
11 101 (0.98%) PMI Certification
12 92 (0.89%) PMP
13 86 (0.84%) 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 44 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 44 (0.43%) TOGAF Certification
19 42 (0.41%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 463 (4.50%) QA
2 326 (3.17%) Data Quality
3 303 (2.94%) NIST
4 287 (2.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 257 (2.50%) NCSC
6 238 (2.31%) Accessibility
7 218 (2.12%) PMO
8 148 (1.44%) SLA
9 146 (1.42%) GDPR
10 143 (1.39%) GRC
11 71 (0.69%) WCAG
12 54 (0.52%) JSP 440
13 44 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
14 41 (0.40%) NIST 800
15 36 (0.35%) Def Stans
16 25 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 23 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
18 21 (0.20%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 19 (0.18%) Government Security Classifications
20 18 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 689 (6.70%) Docker
2 572 (5.56%) Active Directory
3 409 (3.97%) VMware Infrastructure
4 144 (1.40%) VMware ESXi
5 134 (1.30%) VMware NSX
6 126 (1.22%) vSphere
7 123 (1.20%) Hyper-V
8 85 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
9 44 (0.43%) Firmware
10 42 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
11 37 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
12 26 (0.25%) vCloud
13 23 (0.22%) BitLocker
14 17 (0.17%) Virtual Servers
15 15 (0.15%) NFS
16 11 (0.11%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 11 (0.11%) Postfix
17 10 (0.097%) KVM
18 9 (0.087%) Embedded Firmware
18 9 (0.087%) Squid
Systems Management
1 832 (8.08%) Kubernetes
2 402 (3.91%) Ansible
3 228 (2.22%) Grafana
4 172 (1.67%) Prometheus
5 132 (1.28%) vCenter Server
6 127 (1.23%) SCCM
7 94 (0.91%) SCOM
8 87 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
9 63 (0.61%) Argo
10 50 (0.49%) Single Sign-On
11 43 (0.42%) Puppet
12 41 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
13 38 (0.37%) Kibana
14 36 (0.35%) Data Guard
15 31 (0.30%) VxRail
16 28 (0.27%) Control-M
17 27 (0.26%) Istio
17 27 (0.26%) NetBackup
17 27 (0.26%) WSUS
18 25 (0.24%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 1,367 (13.28%) Microsoft
2 814 (7.91%) Oracle
3 568 (5.52%) VMware
4 473 (4.60%) ServiceNow
5 398 (3.87%) SAP
6 281 (2.73%) Cisco
7 241 (2.34%) Google
8 201 (1.95%) Splunk
9 172 (1.67%) Databricks
10 129 (1.25%) Red Hat
11 114 (1.11%) Salesforce
12 113 (1.10%) Palo Alto
13 101 (0.98%) IBM
14 95 (0.92%) Informatica
15 91 (0.88%) Remedy
16 89 (0.86%) CyberArk
16 89 (0.86%) Talend
17 87 (0.85%) Dynatrace
18 76 (0.74%) SolarWinds
19 72 (0.70%) Citrix