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

6 months to
25 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 9,244 4,472 6,857
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.33% 18.65% 18.79%
As % of the Qualifications category 70.05% 59.20% 61.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,431 2,966 4,510
10th Percentile £375 £340 £351
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 £529 £550
% change year-on-year -0.76% -3.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 766 280 492
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.50 £13.99
25th Percentile £21.33 £24.23 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £40.00 £55.53
Median % change year-on-year +37.50% -27.96% -7.46%
75th Percentile £74.00 £66.00 £72.50
90th Percentile £85.25 £78.83 £83.54
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £32.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year +69.23% -40.91% -8.33%

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 13,197 7,554 11,159
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.88% 31.51% 30.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,855 4,814 6,924
10th Percentile £350 £278 £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 £523 £530
% change year-on-year +0.38% -1.32% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 989 430 981
10th Percentile £17.00 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.33 £22.27 £18.13
Median hourly rate £47.50 £35.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.71% -12.50% -25.93%
75th Percentile £73.00 £67.25 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.36 £80.10 £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 25 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 25 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 25 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 3,297 £525 - 472
South East +1 2,222 £550 - 484
South West 0 1,291 £538 -4.57% 338
North of England 0 920 £500 - 263
Midlands +2 864 £470 -10.48% 129
West Midlands +3 738 £470 -10.48% 100
North West -1 521 £511 +2.20% 158
East of England +2 375 £550 +10.00% 123
Yorkshire -8 230 £488 -1.71% 51
North East +1 205 £478 -2.55% 56
East Midlands -4 119 £450 -5.26% 29
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
1 339 (3.67%) Confluence
2 207 (2.24%) SharePoint
3 120 (1.30%) Microsoft Exchange
4 119 (1.29%) SAS
5 74 (0.80%) Apache Spark
6 68 (0.74%) Apache
7 60 (0.65%) Apache Airflow
8 33 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 30 (0.32%) nginx
10 26 (0.28%) Jupyter
11 17 (0.18%) IIS
11 17 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
12 16 (0.17%) Tomcat
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 (0.087%) Apache Superset
16 8 (0.087%) ArcGIS
16 8 (0.087%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 172 (1.86%) Microsoft Excel
2 168 (1.82%) Microsoft Office
3 91 (0.98%) Microsoft Project
4 82 (0.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 36 (0.39%) MS Visio
6 18 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.13%) Simulink
8 8 (0.087%) 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%) Chatbot
13 3 (0.032%) Windchill
14 2 (0.022%) Adobe XD
14 2 (0.022%) CATIA
14 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
14 2 (0.022%) Lectora
14 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.022%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 86 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
2 49 (0.53%) Remedy ITSM
3 39 (0.42%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 31 (0.34%) Teamcenter
5 28 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
6 26 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
7 15 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.15%) Maximo
8 14 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.14%) Findur
9 13 (0.14%) iTrent
10 12 (0.13%) SAP PSCD
10 12 (0.13%) Temenos T24
11 10 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.097%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.097%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.097%) SAP HCM
13 8 (0.087%) SAP HR
13 8 (0.087%) SAP MM
13 8 (0.087%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,572 (17.01%) Azure
2 1,498 (16.21%) AWS
3 369 (3.99%) GCP
3 369 (3.99%) GitHub
4 342 (3.70%) Azure DevOps
5 334 (3.61%) Power Platform
6 232 (2.51%) Entra ID
7 225 (2.43%) Microsoft 365
8 224 (2.42%) Serverless
9 212 (2.29%) GitHub Actions
10 187 (2.02%) Amazon S3
11 154 (1.67%) AWS Lambda
12 138 (1.49%) Amazon EC2
13 132 (1.43%) PaaS
14 126 (1.36%) OpenShift
15 115 (1.24%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 113 (1.22%) OCI
17 108 (1.17%) SaaS
18 105 (1.14%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 101 (1.09%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 430 (4.65%) Firewall
2 268 (2.90%) DNS
3 219 (2.37%) WAN
4 218 (2.36%) Network Security
5 198 (2.14%) LAN
6 155 (1.68%) VPN
7 146 (1.58%) BGP
8 143 (1.55%) DHCP
9 126 (1.36%) OSPF
10 106 (1.15%) Wi-Fi
11 105 (1.14%) VLAN
12 101 (1.09%) TCP/IP
13 86 (0.93%) Wireless
14 61 (0.66%) MPLS
15 57 (0.62%) SAN
15 57 (0.62%) Structured Cabling
16 55 (0.59%) VXLAN
17 51 (0.55%) IPsec
18 50 (0.54%) SD-WAN
19 48 (0.52%) Ethernet VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 252 (2.73%) Power BI
2 215 (2.33%) PostgreSQL
3 203 (2.20%) Data Warehouse
4 192 (2.08%) SQL Server
5 115 (1.24%) Metadata
6 113 (1.22%) Oracle Database
7 102 (1.10%) Amazon RDS
8 89 (0.96%) MongoDB
9 88 (0.95%) Data Lake
10 78 (0.84%) NoSQL
10 78 (0.84%) Relational Database
11 76 (0.82%) Pentaho
12 69 (0.75%) Elasticsearch
13 68 (0.74%) Oracle Reports
14 61 (0.66%) MySQL
14 61 (0.66%) Tableau
15 58 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
16 57 (0.62%) Azure SQL Database
17 51 (0.55%) Amazon Athena
18 43 (0.47%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 528 (5.71%) JIRA
2 392 (4.24%) Git
3 352 (3.81%) GitLab
4 351 (3.80%) Jenkins
5 99 (1.07%) Selenium
6 72 (0.78%) Postman
7 70 (0.76%) JUnit
8 61 (0.66%) SonarQube
9 55 (0.59%) Rational DOORS
10 48 (0.52%) Artifactory
11 45 (0.49%) JMeter
12 43 (0.47%) Bitbucket
13 40 (0.43%) Cucumber
14 39 (0.42%) Maven
14 39 (0.42%) Mockito
15 33 (0.36%) Visual Studio
16 32 (0.35%) Cypress.io
16 32 (0.35%) REST Assured
17 30 (0.32%) Zephyr
18 25 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,966 (21.27%) Public Sector
2 1,904 (20.60%) Social Skills
3 650 (7.03%) Analytical Skills
4 631 (6.83%) Finance
5 323 (3.49%) Military
6 260 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
7 236 (2.55%) Aerospace
8 136 (1.47%) Legal
9 112 (1.21%) Banking
9 112 (1.21%) Telecoms
10 107 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
11 102 (1.10%) Organisational Skills
12 94 (1.02%) Manufacturing
13 87 (0.94%) Law
14 79 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
15 54 (0.58%) Marketing
15 54 (0.58%) Police
16 52 (0.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 41 (0.44%) Electronics
17 41 (0.44%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,356 (14.67%) Architect
2 848 (9.17%) Developer
3 777 (8.41%) Senior
4 660 (7.14%) Lead
5 649 (7.02%) Analyst
6 450 (4.87%) Data Engineer
7 417 (4.51%) DevOps Engineer
8 412 (4.46%) Consultant
9 282 (3.05%) Network Engineer
10 277 (3.00%) Software Engineer
11 266 (2.88%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 263 (2.85%) Technical Architect
13 235 (2.54%) Business Analyst
14 213 (2.30%) Project Manager
15 211 (2.28%) Solutions Architect
16 190 (2.06%) Azure Engineer
17 181 (1.96%) Security Architect
18 178 (1.93%) Administrator
19 176 (1.90%) Designer
20 171 (1.85%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 295 (3.19%) REST
2 215 (2.33%) Spring
3 176 (1.90%) Spring Boot
4 166 (1.80%) React
5 161 (1.74%) Node.js
6 156 (1.69%) Kafka
7 153 (1.66%) .NET
8 146 (1.58%) LDAP
9 138 (1.49%) SOAP
10 134 (1.45%) RESTful
11 111 (1.20%) AngularJS
12 108 (1.17%) JSON
13 99 (1.07%) Web Services
14 94 (1.02%) PySpark
15 90 (0.97%) OAuth
16 86 (0.93%) Oracle Fusion
17 81 (0.88%) HTML
18 78 (0.84%) XML
19 68 (0.74%) Middleware
19 68 (0.74%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 314 (3.40%) Cloud Native
2 297 (3.21%) Product Ownership
3 282 (3.05%) Data Centre
4 266 (2.88%) Onboarding
5 144 (1.56%) Management Information System
6 138 (1.49%) PKI
7 129 (1.40%) Legacy Systems
8 124 (1.34%) Security Posture
9 113 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
9 113 (1.22%) Replication
10 109 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
11 89 (0.96%) Self-Motivation
12 84 (0.91%) Clustering
13 80 (0.87%) Data Structures
14 76 (0.82%) Hybrid Cloud
15 70 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
16 69 (0.75%) Public Cloud
17 68 (0.74%) Operational Technology
18 65 (0.70%) Virtual Team
19 64 (0.69%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 755 (8.17%) Windows
2 635 (6.87%) Linux
3 229 (2.48%) Windows Server
4 170 (1.84%) Unix
5 112 (1.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 86 (0.93%) Android
7 80 (0.87%) Windows 10
8 51 (0.55%) Apple iOS
9 44 (0.48%) Solaris
10 37 (0.40%) Mac OS
11 33 (0.36%) Ubuntu
12 25 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 24 (0.26%) AIX
14 23 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
15 22 (0.24%) CentOS
16 21 (0.23%) VMS
17 13 (0.14%) Windows 7
18 12 (0.13%) Embedded Linux
19 9 (0.097%) Windows Server 2003
19 9 (0.097%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,783 (19.29%) Agile
2 1,405 (15.20%) DevOps
3 1,223 (13.23%) CI/CD
4 984 (10.64%) Problem-Solving
5 906 (9.80%) Stakeholder Management
6 834 (9.02%) Continuous Improvement
7 759 (8.21%) Migration
8 685 (7.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 619 (6.70%) Infrastructure as Code
10 582 (6.30%) Cybersecurity
11 580 (6.27%) ITIL
12 526 (5.69%) Test Automation
13 521 (5.64%) Software Engineering
14 517 (5.59%) Analytics
15 505 (5.46%) Roadmaps
16 494 (5.34%) Containerisation
17 471 (5.10%) Data Modelling
18 437 (4.73%) Decision-Making
19 411 (4.45%) Scrum
20 402 (4.35%) AI
Programming Languages
1 963 (10.42%) Python
2 840 (9.09%) SQL
3 562 (6.08%) Java
4 490 (5.30%) PowerShell
5 279 (3.02%) JavaScript
6 193 (2.09%) C#
7 179 (1.94%) Bash
8 136 (1.47%) TypeScript
9 93 (1.01%) PL/SQL
10 89 (0.96%) C++
11 84 (0.91%) Shell Script
12 63 (0.68%) Go
13 59 (0.64%) Scala
14 56 (0.61%) C
15 54 (0.58%) Bicep
16 48 (0.52%) Ruby
17 41 (0.44%) Apex Code
18 40 (0.43%) Ada
19 35 (0.38%) MATLAB
19 35 (0.38%) R
Qualifications
1 6,941 (75.09%) SC Cleared
2 1,780 (19.26%) DV Cleared
3 402 (4.35%) Degree
4 253 (2.74%) BPSS Clearance
5 187 (2.02%) Cisco Certification
6 157 (1.70%) CISSP
7 119 (1.29%) Azure Certification
8 117 (1.27%) CCNP
9 102 (1.10%) CISM
10 93 (1.01%) AWS Certification
11 88 (0.95%) Microsoft Certification
12 79 (0.85%) CCNA
13 72 (0.78%) PMP
14 61 (0.66%) PMI Certification
15 60 (0.65%) Computer Science Degree
16 57 (0.62%) ISTQB
17 51 (0.55%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 50 (0.54%) ITIL Certification
19 48 (0.52%) GIAC
20 43 (0.47%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 346 (3.74%) QA
2 278 (3.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 277 (3.00%) NIST
4 261 (2.82%) Data Quality
5 192 (2.08%) NCSC
6 164 (1.77%) Accessibility
7 156 (1.69%) GDPR
8 154 (1.67%) PMO
9 99 (1.07%) 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 35 (0.38%) WCAG
15 30 (0.32%) Def Stans
16 29 (0.31%) PCI DSS
17 28 (0.30%) RMADS
18 21 (0.23%) COBIT
18 21 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 20 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 560 (6.06%) Docker
2 428 (4.63%) Active Directory
3 265 (2.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 101 (1.09%) VMware ESXi
5 89 (0.96%) VMware NSX
6 76 (0.82%) vSphere
7 73 (0.79%) Hyper-V
8 63 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
9 33 (0.36%) Firmware
10 27 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
11 24 (0.26%) Virtual Desktop
12 20 (0.22%) NFS
12 20 (0.22%) vCloud
13 19 (0.21%) BitLocker
14 18 (0.19%) Postfix
15 16 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 15 (0.16%) Squid
17 8 (0.087%) Microsoft App-V
18 7 (0.076%) KVM
19 6 (0.065%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 714 (7.72%) Kubernetes
2 698 (7.55%) Terraform
3 327 (3.54%) Ansible
4 230 (2.49%) Grafana
5 187 (2.02%) Prometheus
6 106 (1.15%) vCenter Server
7 83 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
8 69 (0.75%) SCCM
9 58 (0.63%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 50 (0.54%) Microsoft Intune
11 47 (0.51%) FortiGate
12 46 (0.50%) Argo
13 39 (0.42%) Puppet
14 38 (0.41%) Podman
15 33 (0.36%) Oracle RMAN
15 33 (0.36%) SCOM
16 30 (0.32%) Progress Chef
17 29 (0.31%) Nagios
18 22 (0.24%) Packer
18 22 (0.24%) WSUS
Vendors
1 942 (10.19%) Microsoft
2 580 (6.27%) Oracle
3 458 (4.95%) VMware
4 370 (4.00%) ServiceNow
5 333 (3.60%) Cisco
6 309 (3.34%) SAP
7 209 (2.26%) Splunk
8 178 (1.93%) Databricks
9 154 (1.67%) Red Hat
10 147 (1.59%) Google
11 120 (1.30%) Palo Alto
12 115 (1.24%) Talend
13 111 (1.20%) IBM
13 111 (1.20%) Salesforce
14 101 (1.09%) Juniper
15 93 (1.01%) CyberArk
16 84 (0.91%) F5
16 84 (0.91%) Informatica
17 80 (0.87%) Fortinet
18 74 (0.80%) Citrix