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

6 months to
14 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 9,119 4,470 6,977
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.45% 18.53% 19.09%
As % of the Qualifications category 70.00% 58.84% 61.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,339 2,973 4,578
10th Percentile £369 £340 £353
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 £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 740 270 489
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.20 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £50.00 £57.29
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -12.72% -4.53%
75th Percentile £74.00 £67.44 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.38 £78.39 £83.88
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £42.50 £57.09
% change year-on-year +29.41% -25.55% -4.86%

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 13,027 7,597 11,354
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.07% 31.50% 31.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,745 4,832 6,983
10th Percentile £345 £288 £313
25th Percentile £425 £414 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £533
% change year-on-year -0.95% -1.50% -3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 947 432 976
10th Percentile £17.08 £18.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £22.27 £18.00
Median hourly rate £48.50 £40.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +21.25% - -23.81%
75th Percentile £73.00 £67.50 £61.82
90th Percentile £85.50 £81.35 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £48.72 £37.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +29.92% -6.25% -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 14 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 14 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 14 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 3,247 £525 - 482
South East +1 2,211 £538 -2.27% 508
South West 0 1,291 £538 -6.52% 346
Midlands +4 868 £475 -9.52% 151
North of England -1 861 £488 -2.50% 282
West Midlands +4 737 £475 -11.55% 112
North West -2 500 £500 - 159
East of England +2 375 £550 +10.00% 155
Yorkshire -12 207 £476 -4.90% 49
North East +1 188 £475 -3.06% 75
East Midlands -3 125 £450 -5.26% 39
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
1 352 (3.86%) Confluence
2 206 (2.26%) SharePoint
3 124 (1.36%) Microsoft Exchange
4 114 (1.25%) SAS
5 79 (0.87%) Apache Spark
6 68 (0.75%) Apache
7 56 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
8 32 (0.35%) WebLogic
9 29 (0.32%) nginx
10 24 (0.26%) Jupyter
11 17 (0.19%) Tomcat
12 16 (0.18%) IIS
12 16 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
13 14 (0.15%) Oracle Application Server
13 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
14 13 (0.14%) Skype for Business
15 12 (0.13%) CMS
16 8 (0.088%) Apache Superset
16 8 (0.088%) ArcGIS
16 8 (0.088%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 192 (2.11%) Microsoft Office
2 185 (2.03%) Microsoft Excel
3 110 (1.21%) Microsoft Project
4 83 (0.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 36 (0.39%) MS Visio
6 19 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.12%) Simulink
8 7 (0.077%) AutoCAD
9 6 (0.066%) SOLIDWORKS
10 5 (0.055%) Notepad++
10 5 (0.055%) Revit
11 4 (0.044%) Siemens NX
11 4 (0.044%) Windchill
12 3 (0.033%) Chatbot
13 2 (0.022%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.022%) CATIA
13 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
13 2 (0.022%) Lectora
13 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.022%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 88 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.46%) Remedy ITSM
3 37 (0.41%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 27 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
4 27 (0.30%) Teamcenter
5 24 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
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
9 12 (0.13%) iTrent
10 10 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
11 9 (0.099%) Integrated Workplace Management System
11 9 (0.099%) SAP HCM
11 9 (0.099%) SAP PP
12 8 (0.088%) SAP BRIM
12 8 (0.088%) SAP Hybris
12 8 (0.088%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,564 (17.15%) Azure
2 1,498 (16.43%) AWS
3 376 (4.12%) GCP
4 371 (4.07%) GitHub
5 339 (3.72%) Azure DevOps
6 336 (3.68%) Power Platform
7 235 (2.58%) Microsoft 365
7 235 (2.58%) Serverless
8 228 (2.50%) Entra ID
9 212 (2.32%) GitHub Actions
10 189 (2.07%) Amazon S3
11 160 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
12 133 (1.46%) PaaS
13 132 (1.45%) Amazon EC2
14 125 (1.37%) OpenShift
15 114 (1.25%) OCI
16 113 (1.24%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 104 (1.14%) AWS CloudFormation
18 103 (1.13%) IaaS
19 102 (1.12%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 426 (4.67%) Firewall
2 265 (2.91%) DNS
3 210 (2.30%) WAN
4 209 (2.29%) Network Security
5 192 (2.11%) LAN
6 151 (1.66%) VPN
7 140 (1.54%) BGP
7 140 (1.54%) DHCP
8 121 (1.33%) OSPF
9 108 (1.18%) TCP/IP
10 96 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
11 93 (1.02%) VLAN
12 76 (0.83%) Wireless
13 60 (0.66%) MPLS
14 51 (0.56%) SAN
14 51 (0.56%) VXLAN
15 48 (0.53%) SD-WAN
16 47 (0.52%) IPsec
16 47 (0.52%) Structured Cabling
17 45 (0.49%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 259 (2.84%) Power BI
2 213 (2.34%) PostgreSQL
3 197 (2.16%) Data Warehouse
4 184 (2.02%) SQL Server
5 115 (1.26%) Metadata
6 106 (1.16%) Oracle Database
7 100 (1.10%) Amazon RDS
8 83 (0.91%) NoSQL
9 81 (0.89%) MongoDB
9 81 (0.89%) Relational Database
10 80 (0.88%) Pentaho
11 78 (0.86%) Data Lake
12 71 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
13 67 (0.73%) Oracle Reports
14 63 (0.69%) Azure SQL Database
15 61 (0.67%) Amazon Redshift
16 60 (0.66%) Tableau
17 59 (0.65%) MySQL
18 51 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
19 47 (0.52%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 556 (6.10%) JIRA
2 411 (4.51%) Git
3 348 (3.82%) Jenkins
4 336 (3.68%) GitLab
5 87 (0.95%) Selenium
6 74 (0.81%) Postman
7 67 (0.73%) JUnit
8 56 (0.61%) SonarQube
9 54 (0.59%) Rational DOORS
10 49 (0.54%) Artifactory
11 42 (0.46%) Bitbucket
11 42 (0.46%) JMeter
12 38 (0.42%) Cucumber
12 38 (0.42%) Maven
13 36 (0.39%) Mockito
14 35 (0.38%) Visual Studio
15 31 (0.34%) Cypress.io
16 28 (0.31%) Zephyr
17 25 (0.27%) REST Assured
18 23 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,970 (21.60%) Public Sector
2 1,921 (21.07%) Social Skills
3 680 (7.46%) Analytical Skills
4 642 (7.04%) Finance
5 334 (3.66%) Military
6 258 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
7 222 (2.43%) Aerospace
8 144 (1.58%) Legal
9 116 (1.27%) Telecoms
10 107 (1.17%) Banking
11 105 (1.15%) Influencing Skills
12 104 (1.14%) Organisational Skills
13 100 (1.10%) Manufacturing
14 85 (0.93%) Presentation Skills
15 84 (0.92%) Law
16 59 (0.65%) Police
17 53 (0.58%) Marketing
18 49 (0.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 48 (0.53%) Electronics
20 39 (0.43%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,346 (14.76%) Architect
2 828 (9.08%) Developer
3 762 (8.36%) Senior
4 644 (7.06%) Analyst
5 641 (7.03%) Lead
6 449 (4.92%) Data Engineer
7 413 (4.53%) DevOps Engineer
8 408 (4.47%) Consultant
9 277 (3.04%) Network Engineer
10 272 (2.98%) Software Engineer
11 259 (2.84%) Technical Architect
12 248 (2.72%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 239 (2.62%) Business Analyst
14 213 (2.34%) Project Manager
15 206 (2.26%) Solutions Architect
16 194 (2.13%) Azure Engineer
17 172 (1.89%) Designer
17 172 (1.89%) Security Architect
18 168 (1.84%) Administrator
19 167 (1.83%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 288 (3.16%) REST
2 213 (2.34%) Spring
3 173 (1.90%) Spring Boot
4 166 (1.82%) Node.js
5 160 (1.75%) Kafka
5 160 (1.75%) React
6 154 (1.69%) .NET
7 145 (1.59%) LDAP
8 132 (1.45%) SOAP
9 131 (1.44%) RESTful
10 113 (1.24%) JSON
11 111 (1.22%) AngularJS
12 103 (1.13%) Web Services
13 98 (1.07%) PySpark
14 91 (1.00%) Oracle Fusion
15 86 (0.94%) OAuth
16 78 (0.86%) HTML
17 76 (0.83%) XML
18 68 (0.75%) Elastic Stack
19 65 (0.71%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 319 (3.50%) Cloud Native
2 308 (3.38%) Product Ownership
3 273 (2.99%) Data Centre
4 254 (2.79%) Onboarding
5 147 (1.61%) PKI
6 142 (1.56%) Management Information System
7 122 (1.34%) Legacy Systems
7 122 (1.34%) Security Posture
8 115 (1.26%) Replication
9 112 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
10 107 (1.17%) Distributed Systems
11 90 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
12 81 (0.89%) Clustering
13 77 (0.84%) Data Structures
14 74 (0.81%) Hybrid Cloud
15 73 (0.80%) Public Cloud
16 67 (0.73%) Security Operations Centre
17 63 (0.69%) Virtual Team
18 59 (0.65%) Operational Technology
19 57 (0.63%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 765 (8.39%) Windows
2 627 (6.88%) Linux
3 234 (2.57%) Windows Server
4 158 (1.73%) Unix
5 111 (1.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 92 (1.01%) Android
7 84 (0.92%) Windows 10
8 52 (0.57%) Apple iOS
9 43 (0.47%) Mac OS
10 39 (0.43%) Solaris
11 36 (0.39%) Ubuntu
12 25 (0.27%) VMS
13 24 (0.26%) AIX
14 23 (0.25%) CentOS
14 23 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
15 22 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
16 14 (0.15%) Windows 7
17 11 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
18 9 (0.099%) Windows Server 2003
18 9 (0.099%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,794 (19.67%) Agile
2 1,395 (15.30%) DevOps
3 1,221 (13.39%) CI/CD
4 1,001 (10.98%) Problem-Solving
5 885 (9.71%) Stakeholder Management
6 798 (8.75%) Continuous Improvement
7 749 (8.21%) Migration
8 666 (7.30%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 619 (6.79%) Infrastructure as Code
10 604 (6.62%) ITIL
11 550 (6.03%) Cybersecurity
12 525 (5.76%) Test Automation
13 516 (5.66%) Analytics
14 513 (5.63%) Software Engineering
15 499 (5.47%) Roadmaps
16 494 (5.42%) Containerisation
17 462 (5.07%) Data Modelling
18 433 (4.75%) Decision-Making
19 413 (4.53%) Scrum
20 389 (4.27%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 980 (10.75%) Python
2 835 (9.16%) SQL
3 555 (6.09%) Java
4 498 (5.46%) PowerShell
5 275 (3.02%) JavaScript
6 199 (2.18%) C#
7 177 (1.94%) Bash
8 138 (1.51%) TypeScript
9 92 (1.01%) PL/SQL
10 89 (0.98%) C++
11 84 (0.92%) Shell Script
12 66 (0.72%) Go
13 62 (0.68%) Scala
14 56 (0.61%) C
15 51 (0.56%) Bicep
16 49 (0.54%) Ruby
17 40 (0.44%) Apex Code
18 39 (0.43%) Ada
18 39 (0.43%) R
19 36 (0.39%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 6,831 (74.91%) SC Cleared
2 1,755 (19.25%) DV Cleared
3 414 (4.54%) Degree
4 256 (2.81%) BPSS Clearance
5 176 (1.93%) Cisco Certification
6 156 (1.71%) CISSP
7 123 (1.35%) Azure Certification
8 113 (1.24%) CCNP
9 105 (1.15%) CISM
10 103 (1.13%) AWS Certification
11 88 (0.97%) Microsoft Certification
12 74 (0.81%) PMP
13 71 (0.78%) CCNA
14 65 (0.71%) PMI Certification
15 64 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
16 61 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
17 60 (0.66%) ITIL Certification
18 53 (0.58%) ISTQB
19 51 (0.56%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
20 49 (0.54%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 341 (3.74%) QA
2 272 (2.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 268 (2.94%) Data Quality
3 268 (2.94%) NIST
4 179 (1.96%) NCSC
5 162 (1.78%) Accessibility
5 162 (1.78%) PMO
6 148 (1.62%) GDPR
7 98 (1.07%) SLA
8 61 (0.67%) GRC
9 56 (0.61%) JSP 440
10 51 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials
11 36 (0.39%) NIST 800
11 36 (0.39%) WCAG
12 30 (0.33%) COBIT
12 30 (0.33%) Def Stans
13 29 (0.32%) PCI DSS
14 24 (0.26%) RMADS
15 21 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 19 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 565 (6.20%) Docker
2 442 (4.85%) Active Directory
3 266 (2.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 96 (1.05%) VMware ESXi
5 85 (0.93%) VMware NSX
6 74 (0.81%) Hyper-V
7 70 (0.77%) vSphere
8 67 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
9 35 (0.38%) Firmware
10 27 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
11 22 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
12 19 (0.21%) BitLocker
12 19 (0.21%) NFS
13 17 (0.19%) Postfix
13 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 17 (0.19%) vCloud
14 15 (0.16%) Squid
15 8 (0.088%) Microsoft App-V
16 6 (0.066%) Corosync
16 6 (0.066%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 721 (7.91%) Kubernetes
2 703 (7.71%) Terraform
3 321 (3.52%) Ansible
4 224 (2.46%) Grafana
5 181 (1.98%) Prometheus
6 100 (1.10%) vCenter Server
7 87 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
8 71 (0.78%) SCCM
9 57 (0.63%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 51 (0.56%) FortiGate
10 51 (0.56%) Microsoft Intune
11 46 (0.50%) Argo
12 38 (0.42%) Podman
12 38 (0.42%) Puppet
13 32 (0.35%) Progress Chef
14 30 (0.33%) Nagios
14 30 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
15 29 (0.32%) OPNET
16 26 (0.29%) SCOM
17 22 (0.24%) WSUS
Vendors
1 944 (10.35%) Microsoft
2 572 (6.27%) Oracle
3 462 (5.07%) VMware
4 370 (4.06%) ServiceNow
5 330 (3.62%) Cisco
6 323 (3.54%) SAP
7 213 (2.34%) Splunk
8 174 (1.91%) Databricks
9 152 (1.67%) Google
10 151 (1.66%) Red Hat
11 117 (1.28%) Talend
12 116 (1.27%) Palo Alto
13 111 (1.22%) IBM
14 102 (1.12%) Salesforce
15 99 (1.09%) Juniper
16 95 (1.04%) CyberArk
17 91 (1.00%) Atlassian
18 81 (0.89%) Informatica
19 80 (0.88%) F5
20 79 (0.87%) Remedy