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

6 months to
24 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 10,287 5,236 5,941
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.09% 18.82% 18.24%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.86% 59.48% 61.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,221 3,433 3,807
10th Percentile £400 £350 £356
25th Percentile £463 £450 £454
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 £550 £537 £550
% change year-on-year +2.42% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 802 536 348
10th Percentile £20.58 £18.50 £21.18
25th Percentile £34.26 £18.87 £37.40
Median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +158.45% -59.17% +2.67%
75th Percentile £78.65 £38.80 £72.50
90th Percentile £91.31 £71.35 £83.99
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £25.15 £60.00
% change year-on-year +158.45% -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 14,940 8,803 9,661
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.07% 31.63% 29.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,000 5,599 5,904
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 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £529 £525 £525
% change year-on-year +0.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,236 708 549
10th Percentile £18.25 £17.88 £18.03
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £30.00
Median hourly rate £52.50 £25.15 £54.00
Median % change year-on-year +108.75% -53.43% +0.24%
75th Percentile £74.08 £43.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £89.88 £73.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +88.87% -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 24 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 24 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 24 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 3,652 £550 +2.33% 1,623
South East +1 2,284 £564 +5.07% 1,021
South West 0 1,410 £550 - 838
North of England +2 1,290 £515 -1.90% 733
Midlands 0 950 £481 -6.70% 376
West Midlands 0 812 £480 -7.43% 240
North West +1 755 £530 -3.64% 442
East of England 0 421 £587 +6.73% 422
Yorkshire +2 302 £492 +0.41% 119
North East 0 254 £470 -6.00% 173
East Midlands -2 132 £450 -2.70% 134
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
1 329 (3.20%) Confluence
2 250 (2.43%) SharePoint
3 152 (1.48%) SAS
4 117 (1.14%) 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 31 (0.30%) 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
1 187 (1.82%) 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%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 129 (1.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 80 (0.78%) Remedy ITSM
3 52 (0.51%) Oracle ERP
4 35 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
5 31 (0.30%) Teamcenter
6 30 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 25 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
7 25 (0.24%) SAP PSCD
8 23 (0.22%) Oracle Payroll
9 18 (0.17%) SAP FI
10 17 (0.17%) SAP HR
11 15 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
12 14 (0.14%) Primavera
13 13 (0.13%) Maximo
13 13 (0.13%) SAP CO
14 12 (0.12%) iTrent
14 12 (0.12%) NetSuite
14 12 (0.12%) SAP GRC
14 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
15 11 (0.11%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 1,851 (17.99%) Azure
2 1,686 (16.39%) AWS
3 438 (4.26%) Azure DevOps
4 436 (4.24%) Power Platform
5 403 (3.92%) GitHub
6 388 (3.77%) GCP
7 311 (3.02%) Microsoft 365
8 284 (2.76%) Entra ID
9 277 (2.69%) GitHub Actions
10 235 (2.28%) Serverless
11 203 (1.97%) Amazon S3
12 167 (1.62%) AWS Lambda
13 153 (1.49%) OCI
14 148 (1.44%) SaaS
15 145 (1.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 141 (1.37%) OpenShift
17 134 (1.30%) Amazon EKS
18 118 (1.15%) Amazon EC2
19 103 (1.00%) PowerApps
20 100 (0.97%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 405 (3.94%) Firewall
2 348 (3.38%) DNS
3 217 (2.11%) Network Security
4 185 (1.80%) WAN
5 173 (1.68%) VPN
6 169 (1.64%) DHCP
7 142 (1.38%) LAN
8 123 (1.20%) TCP/IP
9 121 (1.18%) BGP
10 114 (1.11%) Wi-Fi
11 99 (0.96%) VLAN
12 82 (0.80%) 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
3 239 (2.32%) PostgreSQL
4 237 (2.30%) Data Warehouse
5 179 (1.74%) Metadata
6 167 (1.62%) Oracle Database
7 118 (1.15%) Relational Database
8 116 (1.13%) Data Lake
9 95 (0.92%) MongoDB
9 95 (0.92%) MySQL
10 92 (0.89%) Amazon RDS
11 88 (0.86%) NoSQL
12 76 (0.74%) Oracle Reports
13 67 (0.65%) Pentaho
14 62 (0.60%) Elasticsearch
15 58 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
16 51 (0.50%) Tableau
17 47 (0.46%) Amazon Aurora
18 44 (0.43%) Big Data
19 40 (0.39%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 539 (5.24%) JIRA
2 498 (4.84%) Git
3 438 (4.26%) GitLab
4 404 (3.93%) Jenkins
5 123 (1.20%) Selenium
6 79 (0.77%) SonarQube
7 75 (0.73%) Postman
8 71 (0.69%) JUnit
9 62 (0.60%) Maven
10 58 (0.56%) 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%) Gatling
15 34 (0.33%) REST Assured
16 33 (0.32%) Artifactory
17 31 (0.30%) MSI
General
1 2,323 (22.58%) Social Skills
2 2,016 (19.60%) Public Sector
3 836 (8.13%) Analytical Skills
4 679 (6.60%) Finance
5 402 (3.91%) Military
6 316 (3.07%) Aerospace
7 252 (2.45%) Documentation Skills
8 203 (1.97%) Influencing Skills
9 168 (1.63%) Organisational Skills
10 151 (1.47%) Telecoms
11 139 (1.35%) Manufacturing
12 134 (1.30%) Legal
13 131 (1.27%) Banking
14 123 (1.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 117 (1.14%) 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 1,603 (15.58%) Architect
2 977 (9.50%) Developer
3 962 (9.35%) Senior
4 953 (9.26%) Lead
5 576 (5.60%) Consultant
6 561 (5.45%) Analyst
7 436 (4.24%) Data Engineer
8 419 (4.07%) DevOps Engineer
9 382 (3.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 267 (2.60%) Technical Architect
11 264 (2.57%) Solutions Architect
12 254 (2.47%) Data Architect
13 252 (2.45%) Software Engineer
14 245 (2.38%) Security Architect
15 225 (2.19%) Network Engineer
16 205 (1.99%) Administrator
17 198 (1.92%) Cloud Engineer
18 192 (1.87%) Designer
19 189 (1.84%) Java Developer
20 183 (1.78%) Delivery Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 877 (8.53%) Terraform
2 405 (3.94%) REST
3 216 (2.10%) Kafka
3 216 (2.10%) Spring
4 195 (1.90%) Spring Boot
5 166 (1.61%) RESTful
6 165 (1.60%) .NET
6 165 (1.60%) React
7 164 (1.59%) SOAP
8 135 (1.31%) Node.js
9 129 (1.25%) JSON
10 115 (1.12%) HTML
10 115 (1.12%) OAuth
11 104 (1.01%) XML
12 101 (0.98%) AngularJS
13 99 (0.96%) Web Services
14 91 (0.88%) Middleware
15 89 (0.87%) CSS
16 84 (0.82%) LDAP
17 80 (0.78%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 457 (4.44%) Cloud Native
2 397 (3.86%) Onboarding
3 322 (3.13%) Product Ownership
4 260 (2.53%) Data Centre
5 183 (1.78%) Management Information System
6 162 (1.57%) Legacy Systems
7 161 (1.57%) PKI
8 150 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
9 140 (1.36%) CMDB
10 118 (1.15%) Hybrid Cloud
11 113 (1.10%) Distributed Systems
12 108 (1.05%) Cyber Threat
12 108 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
13 103 (1.00%) Replication
14 101 (0.98%) Operational Technology
15 83 (0.81%) Security Posture
16 82 (0.80%) Public Cloud
17 81 (0.79%) Clustering
18 80 (0.78%) Security Operations Centre
19 78 (0.76%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 909 (8.84%) Windows
2 719 (6.99%) Linux
3 348 (3.38%) Windows Server
4 216 (2.10%) Unix
5 152 (1.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 133 (1.29%) Windows 10
7 79 (0.77%) 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 30 (0.29%) 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 12 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,154 (20.94%) Agile
2 1,541 (14.98%) DevOps
3 1,508 (14.66%) CI/CD
4 1,447 (14.07%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,271 (12.36%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,108 (10.77%) Problem-Solving
7 1,023 (9.94%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 886 (8.61%) Infrastructure as Code
9 847 (8.23%) Migration
10 785 (7.63%) Cybersecurity
11 723 (7.03%) ITIL
12 663 (6.45%) AI
13 661 (6.43%) Test Automation
14 660 (6.42%) Technical Leadership
15 651 (6.33%) Roadmaps
16 639 (6.21%) Containerisation
17 629 (6.11%) Analytics
18 625 (6.08%) Decision-Making
19 604 (5.87%) Software Engineering
20 558 (5.42%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,176 (11.43%) Python
2 943 (9.17%) SQL
3 660 (6.42%) Java
4 537 (5.22%) PowerShell
5 356 (3.46%) JavaScript
6 303 (2.95%) Bash
7 191 (1.86%) C#
8 180 (1.75%) TypeScript
9 132 (1.28%) PL/SQL
10 109 (1.06%) Bicep
11 70 (0.68%) Shell Script
12 62 (0.60%) C++
13 53 (0.52%) Go
14 51 (0.50%) C
15 49 (0.48%) Groovy
16 46 (0.45%) Scala
17 43 (0.42%) Kotlin
18 30 (0.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 27 (0.26%) Kusto Query Language
20 26 (0.25%) R
Qualifications
1 7,717 (75.02%) SC Cleared
2 2,116 (20.57%) DV Cleared
3 435 (4.23%) Degree
4 433 (4.21%) BPSS Clearance
5 199 (1.93%) CISSP
6 173 (1.68%) Azure Certification
7 165 (1.60%) Cisco Certification
8 155 (1.51%) Microsoft Certification
9 142 (1.38%) AWS Certification
10 119 (1.16%) 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 45 (0.44%) TOGAF Certification
19 44 (0.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 42 (0.41%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 462 (4.49%) QA
2 326 (3.17%) Data Quality
3 303 (2.95%) NIST
4 289 (2.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 258 (2.51%) NCSC
6 239 (2.32%) Accessibility
7 216 (2.10%) PMO
8 148 (1.44%) SLA
9 145 (1.41%) GDPR
10 143 (1.39%) GRC
11 72 (0.70%) WCAG
12 52 (0.51%) JSP 440
13 44 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
14 41 (0.40%) NIST 800
15 36 (0.35%) Def Stans
16 27 (0.26%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 24 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
18 21 (0.20%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 19 (0.18%) Government Security Classifications
19 19 (0.18%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 690 (6.71%) Docker
2 574 (5.58%) Active Directory
3 410 (3.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 145 (1.41%) VMware ESXi
5 134 (1.30%) VMware NSX
6 127 (1.23%) vSphere
7 124 (1.21%) 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 25 (0.24%) vCloud
13 23 (0.22%) BitLocker
14 17 (0.17%) Virtual Servers
15 15 (0.15%) NFS
16 12 (0.12%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 11 (0.11%) Postfix
18 10 (0.097%) KVM
19 9 (0.087%) Embedded Firmware
19 9 (0.087%) Squid
Systems Management
1 833 (8.10%) Kubernetes
2 403 (3.92%) Ansible
3 227 (2.21%) Grafana
4 170 (1.65%) Prometheus
5 131 (1.27%) vCenter Server
6 128 (1.24%) 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 42 (0.41%) Puppet
12 41 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
13 38 (0.37%) Kibana
14 36 (0.35%) Data Guard
15 31 (0.30%) VxRail
16 29 (0.28%) Istio
17 28 (0.27%) Control-M
18 27 (0.26%) NetBackup
19 25 (0.24%) WSUS
20 24 (0.23%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,374 (13.36%) Microsoft
2 815 (7.92%) Oracle
3 567 (5.51%) VMware
4 476 (4.63%) ServiceNow
5 388 (3.77%) SAP
6 277 (2.69%) Cisco
7 245 (2.38%) Google
8 197 (1.92%) Splunk
9 171 (1.66%) Databricks
10 128 (1.24%) Red Hat
11 113 (1.10%) Palo Alto
11 113 (1.10%) Salesforce
12 100 (0.97%) IBM
13 92 (0.89%) Informatica
14 90 (0.87%) CyberArk
14 90 (0.87%) Remedy
15 89 (0.87%) Talend
16 88 (0.86%) Dynatrace
17 73 (0.71%) SolarWinds
18 72 (0.70%) Citrix