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 17 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 3 2
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 9,087 4,587 7,157
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.09% 18.77% 19.16%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.80% 59.64% 61.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,281 3,064 4,657
10th Percentile £363 £333 £351
25th Percentile £449 £450 £461
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -1.79%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £534 £550
% change year-on-year -1.59% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 766 259 466
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.93
25th Percentile £21.25 £25.15 £21.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £56.75 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.08% +8.10% -12.50%
75th Percentile £73.46 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.31 £78.96 £83.41
UK median hourly rate £54.00 £52.00 £53.00
% change year-on-year +3.85% -1.89% -11.67%

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 13,018 7,691 11,701
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.08% 31.47% 31.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,728 4,919 7,227
10th Percentile £340 £300 £300
25th Percentile £425 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £621 £630 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £745
UK median daily rate £518 £525 £536
% change year-on-year -1.43% -2.05% -2.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 985 430 944
10th Percentile £16.41 £18.20 £13.99
25th Percentile £20.82 £24.54 £17.74
Median hourly rate £45.46 £50.00 £39.44
Median % change year-on-year -9.08% +26.79% -23.80%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.36 £82.25 £75.25
UK median hourly rate £45.46 £42.50 £38.95
% change year-on-year +6.96% +9.11% -26.99%

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 17 April 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 17 April 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 17 April 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 3,177 £525 - 488
South East +1 2,146 £535 -2.73% 513
South West 0 1,335 £538 -4.36% 357
Midlands +4 918 £485 -8.49% 170
North of England -1 859 £488 -2.50% 271
West Midlands +4 776 £485 -9.68% 122
North West -1 526 £500 - 157
East of England +2 366 £500 +17.65% 162
Yorkshire -4 205 £488 -7.14% 55
North East +1 163 £450 -6.25% 61
East Midlands -2 138 £447 -10.63% 48
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
1 363 (3.99%) Confluence
2 205 (2.26%) SharePoint
3 151 (1.66%) SAS
4 137 (1.51%) Microsoft Exchange
5 84 (0.92%) Apache Spark
6 76 (0.84%) Apache
7 54 (0.59%) Apache Airflow
8 43 (0.47%) nginx
9 34 (0.37%) WebLogic
10 22 (0.24%) Jupyter
11 16 (0.18%) Skype for Business
12 15 (0.17%) IIS
13 14 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
13 14 (0.15%) Tuxedo
14 13 (0.14%) Tomcat
15 11 (0.12%) CMS
15 11 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
16 10 (0.11%) Oracle Application Server
17 8 (0.088%) Apache Superset
17 8 (0.088%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 224 (2.47%) Microsoft Office
2 186 (2.05%) Microsoft Excel
3 121 (1.33%) Microsoft Project
4 76 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 43 (0.47%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.13%) Simulink
8 5 (0.055%) Notepad++
9 4 (0.044%) Siemens NX
9 4 (0.044%) Windchill
10 2 (0.022%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.022%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.022%) CATIA
10 2 (0.022%) Chatbot
10 2 (0.022%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.022%) Lectora
10 2 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
10 2 (0.022%) Sketch
11 1 (0.011%) Autodesk Inventor
11 1 (0.011%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 80 (0.88%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.46%) Remedy ITSM
3 40 (0.44%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 28 (0.31%) Dynamics CRM
5 26 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 25 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
7 17 (0.19%) Maximo
8 13 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.14%) SAP PP
8 13 (0.14%) Temenos T24
9 12 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
10 11 (0.12%) Findur
10 11 (0.12%) SAP PSCD
11 10 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.099%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.099%) SAP HCM
13 8 (0.088%) iTrent
13 8 (0.088%) Workday HCM
14 7 (0.077%) SAP ERP
14 7 (0.077%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 1,520 (16.73%) Azure
2 1,493 (16.43%) AWS
3 383 (4.21%) GCP
4 380 (4.18%) GitHub
5 350 (3.85%) Azure DevOps
6 317 (3.49%) Power Platform
7 264 (2.91%) Serverless
8 263 (2.89%) Microsoft 365
9 223 (2.45%) Entra ID
10 203 (2.23%) GitHub Actions
11 201 (2.21%) Amazon S3
12 178 (1.96%) AWS Lambda
13 149 (1.64%) OpenShift
14 131 (1.44%) PaaS
15 123 (1.35%) Amazon EC2
16 122 (1.34%) AWS CloudFormation
17 120 (1.32%) IaaS
18 108 (1.19%) Azure Data Factory
19 105 (1.16%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 98 (1.08%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 425 (4.68%) Firewall
2 261 (2.87%) DNS
3 215 (2.37%) Network Security
4 211 (2.32%) WAN
5 190 (2.09%) LAN
6 161 (1.77%) VPN
7 143 (1.57%) BGP
8 135 (1.49%) DHCP
9 115 (1.27%) OSPF
10 108 (1.19%) TCP/IP
11 99 (1.09%) VLAN
12 84 (0.92%) Wireless
13 70 (0.77%) Wi-Fi
14 61 (0.67%) MPLS
15 53 (0.58%) SAN
16 47 (0.52%) IPsec
17 44 (0.48%) Cisco ISE
18 43 (0.47%) SD-WAN
18 43 (0.47%) Structured Cabling
18 43 (0.47%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 242 (2.66%) Power BI
2 233 (2.56%) PostgreSQL
3 192 (2.11%) Data Warehouse
4 175 (1.93%) SQL Server
5 131 (1.44%) Metadata
6 105 (1.16%) Oracle Database
7 102 (1.12%) Amazon RDS
8 98 (1.08%) NoSQL
9 84 (0.92%) MongoDB
9 84 (0.92%) Relational Database
10 76 (0.84%) Azure SQL Database
11 75 (0.83%) Pentaho
12 72 (0.79%) Elasticsearch
13 69 (0.76%) MySQL
14 68 (0.75%) Data Lake
15 66 (0.73%) Tableau
16 65 (0.72%) Amazon Redshift
17 61 (0.67%) Oracle Reports
18 51 (0.56%) Amazon Athena
19 47 (0.52%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 578 (6.36%) JIRA
2 467 (5.14%) Git
3 362 (3.98%) Jenkins
4 317 (3.49%) GitLab
5 110 (1.21%) Selenium
6 81 (0.89%) JUnit
6 81 (0.89%) Postman
7 56 (0.62%) SonarQube
8 50 (0.55%) Bitbucket
8 50 (0.55%) Rational DOORS
9 43 (0.47%) Artifactory
10 42 (0.46%) Maven
10 42 (0.46%) Oracle APEX
11 40 (0.44%) Cypress.io
12 37 (0.41%) Cucumber
12 37 (0.41%) Mockito
13 34 (0.37%) JMeter
14 28 (0.31%) REST Assured
15 27 (0.30%) Visual Studio
15 27 (0.30%) Zephyr
General
1 2,097 (23.08%) Public Sector
2 2,029 (22.33%) Social Skills
3 758 (8.34%) Analytical Skills
4 644 (7.09%) Finance
5 328 (3.61%) Military
6 261 (2.87%) Documentation Skills
7 215 (2.37%) Aerospace
8 152 (1.67%) Legal
9 144 (1.58%) Telecoms
10 137 (1.51%) Manufacturing
11 120 (1.32%) Influencing Skills
12 110 (1.21%) Banking
13 99 (1.09%) Organisational Skills
14 97 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
15 84 (0.92%) Marketing
16 82 (0.90%) Law
17 76 (0.84%) Electronics
18 56 (0.62%) Police
19 50 (0.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 31 (0.34%) Retail
Job Titles
1 1,356 (14.92%) Architect
2 868 (9.55%) Developer
3 785 (8.64%) Senior
4 658 (7.24%) Analyst
5 591 (6.50%) Lead
6 430 (4.73%) Consultant
7 408 (4.49%) Data Engineer
8 372 (4.09%) DevOps Engineer
9 267 (2.94%) Software Engineer
10 266 (2.93%) Network Engineer
11 258 (2.84%) Technical Architect
12 244 (2.69%) Business Analyst
13 208 (2.29%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 201 (2.21%) Solutions Architect
15 200 (2.20%) Project Manager
16 193 (2.12%) Azure Engineer
17 171 (1.88%) Delivery Manager
18 165 (1.82%) Security Architect
19 163 (1.79%) Administrator
20 153 (1.68%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 336 (3.70%) REST
2 204 (2.24%) Spring
3 178 (1.96%) Node.js
4 166 (1.83%) Kafka
5 162 (1.78%) React
6 158 (1.74%) .NET
7 156 (1.72%) Spring Boot
8 145 (1.60%) JSON
9 136 (1.50%) SOAP
10 133 (1.46%) LDAP
11 130 (1.43%) RESTful
12 114 (1.25%) AngularJS
13 108 (1.19%) PySpark
14 105 (1.16%) Web Services
15 97 (1.07%) OAuth
16 85 (0.94%) Oracle Fusion
17 84 (0.92%) XML
18 83 (0.91%) HTML
19 74 (0.81%) SAML
20 69 (0.76%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 322 (3.54%) Product Ownership
2 286 (3.15%) Cloud Native
3 273 (3.00%) Data Centre
4 240 (2.64%) Onboarding
5 183 (2.01%) PKI
6 154 (1.69%) Management Information System
7 121 (1.33%) Security Posture
8 120 (1.32%) Self-Motivation
9 119 (1.31%) Enterprise Software
10 115 (1.27%) Legacy Systems
11 113 (1.24%) Replication
12 105 (1.16%) Distributed Systems
13 81 (0.89%) Public Cloud
14 76 (0.84%) Data Structures
15 72 (0.79%) Hybrid Cloud
16 68 (0.75%) Clustering
17 66 (0.73%) Security Operations Centre
18 61 (0.67%) Virtual Team
19 58 (0.64%) Private Cloud
20 55 (0.61%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 779 (8.57%) Windows
2 640 (7.04%) Linux
3 237 (2.61%) Windows Server
4 134 (1.47%) Unix
5 116 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 107 (1.18%) Windows 10
7 106 (1.17%) Android
8 50 (0.55%) Mac OS
9 48 (0.53%) Apple iOS
10 34 (0.37%) Ubuntu
11 29 (0.32%) VMS
12 27 (0.30%) Solaris
13 21 (0.23%) CentOS
13 21 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
14 20 (0.22%) AIX
15 19 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
16 16 (0.18%) Windows 7
17 12 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
18 8 (0.088%) Embedded Linux
18 8 (0.088%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,867 (20.55%) Agile
2 1,375 (15.13%) DevOps
3 1,207 (13.28%) CI/CD
4 1,061 (11.68%) Problem-Solving
5 872 (9.60%) Stakeholder Management
6 805 (8.86%) Migration
7 789 (8.68%) Continuous Improvement
8 686 (7.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 606 (6.67%) ITIL
10 570 (6.27%) Infrastructure as Code
11 544 (5.99%) Cybersecurity
12 543 (5.98%) Analytics
13 538 (5.92%) Test Automation
14 505 (5.56%) Roadmaps
15 479 (5.27%) Software Engineering
16 477 (5.25%) Containerisation
17 463 (5.10%) Scrum
18 454 (5.00%) Data Modelling
19 439 (4.83%) Service Management
20 406 (4.47%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 1,030 (11.33%) Python
2 844 (9.29%) SQL
3 542 (5.96%) Java
3 542 (5.96%) PowerShell
4 325 (3.58%) JavaScript
5 195 (2.15%) C#
6 186 (2.05%) Bash
7 147 (1.62%) TypeScript
8 106 (1.17%) PL/SQL
9 91 (1.00%) C++
9 91 (1.00%) Shell Script
10 67 (0.74%) Go
11 62 (0.68%) Scala
12 57 (0.63%) Ruby
13 56 (0.62%) C
14 50 (0.55%) Bicep
15 42 (0.46%) Apex Code
16 41 (0.45%) Ada
16 41 (0.45%) R
17 38 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 6,848 (75.36%) SC Cleared
2 1,689 (18.59%) DV Cleared
3 421 (4.63%) Degree
4 275 (3.03%) BPSS Clearance
5 177 (1.95%) Cisco Certification
6 154 (1.69%) CISSP
7 132 (1.45%) Azure Certification
8 120 (1.32%) CCNP
9 108 (1.19%) AWS Certification
10 102 (1.12%) Microsoft Certification
11 96 (1.06%) CISM
12 75 (0.83%) CCNA
13 67 (0.74%) ITIL Certification
14 66 (0.73%) PMP
15 65 (0.72%) TOGAF Certification
16 60 (0.66%) Computer Science Degree
17 59 (0.65%) PMI Certification
18 52 (0.57%) ISTQB
19 49 (0.54%) GIAC
20 46 (0.51%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 337 (3.71%) QA
2 276 (3.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 271 (2.98%) NIST
4 263 (2.89%) Data Quality
5 193 (2.12%) NCSC
6 153 (1.68%) GDPR
7 136 (1.50%) Accessibility
8 133 (1.46%) PMO
9 99 (1.09%) SLA
10 63 (0.69%) GRC
10 63 (0.69%) JSP 440
11 43 (0.47%) NIST 800
12 40 (0.44%) COBIT
13 39 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
14 34 (0.37%) PCI DSS
15 31 (0.34%) WCAG
16 30 (0.33%) Def Stans
17 26 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 25 (0.28%) RMADS
19 17 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 607 (6.68%) Docker
2 454 (5.00%) Active Directory
3 257 (2.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 84 (0.92%) VMware NSX
5 79 (0.87%) VMware ESXi
6 70 (0.77%) Hyper-V
7 66 (0.73%) vSphere
8 50 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
9 33 (0.36%) Firmware
10 23 (0.25%) Oracle RAC
11 20 (0.22%) BitLocker
11 20 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
12 17 (0.19%) NFS
12 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 16 (0.18%) Postfix
14 12 (0.13%) vCloud
15 10 (0.11%) Squid
16 8 (0.088%) Microsoft App-V
17 5 (0.055%) Sendmail
17 5 (0.055%) UAG
Systems Management
1 777 (8.55%) Kubernetes
2 708 (7.79%) Terraform
3 287 (3.16%) Ansible
4 216 (2.38%) Grafana
5 176 (1.94%) Prometheus
6 99 (1.09%) Single Sign-On
7 90 (0.99%) vCenter Server
8 80 (0.88%) SCCM
9 76 (0.84%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 56 (0.62%) Microsoft Intune
11 53 (0.58%) FortiGate
12 52 (0.57%) Argo
13 37 (0.41%) Puppet
14 36 (0.40%) Packer
14 36 (0.40%) Podman
15 32 (0.35%) Progress Chef
16 30 (0.33%) OPNET
17 26 (0.29%) Kibana
18 25 (0.28%) Oracle RMAN
19 24 (0.26%) Nagios
Vendors
1 978 (10.76%) Microsoft
2 571 (6.28%) Oracle
3 456 (5.02%) VMware
4 378 (4.16%) Cisco
5 374 (4.12%) ServiceNow
6 333 (3.66%) SAP
7 205 (2.26%) Splunk
8 181 (1.99%) Databricks
9 171 (1.88%) Red Hat
10 149 (1.64%) Google
11 126 (1.39%) Atlassian
12 122 (1.34%) Salesforce
13 114 (1.25%) IBM
13 114 (1.25%) Juniper
14 106 (1.17%) Palo Alto
15 105 (1.16%) Talend
16 97 (1.07%) CyberArk
17 84 (0.92%) Remedy
18 78 (0.86%) Citrix
19 75 (0.83%) Dell