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 9 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 3 3 4
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +6
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 6,034 5,581 7,115
As % of all contract jobs in England 20.50% 18.09% 17.78%
As % of the Qualifications category 62.01% 60.85% 60.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,961 3,523 4,452
10th Percentile £335 £350 £363
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £537 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.36% - -1.43%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £711 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £537 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -2.36% - -0.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 620 285 471
10th Percentile £18.22 £21.10 £19.99
25th Percentile £18.87 £30.41 £45.88
Median hourly rate £25.15 £58.49 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -57.00% -2.52% -
75th Percentile £43.81 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £72.00 £75.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £55.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -54.27% -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 9,730 9,171 11,789
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.05% 29.73% 29.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,272 5,621 7,541
10th Percentile £300 £313 £306
25th Percentile £418 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £529 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.76% -3.82% -
75th Percentile £626 £638 £650
90th Percentile £716 £733 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 844 415 712
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.17 £17.72
25th Percentile £18.87 £27.00 £26.24
Median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -49.70% -4.76% +16.67%
75th Percentile £45.46 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £79.98
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year -44.11% -14.29% +16.67%

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 9 November 2025.

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 9 November 2025.

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 9 November 2025. 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 +1 2,010 £550 - 907
South East -1 1,095 £513 -6.68% 1,216
South West 0 1,037 £550 -4.35% 684
North of England -1 760 £516 +9.86% 329
Midlands +1 634 £519 -9.83% 217
North West +1 494 £550 +15.79% 231
West Midlands 0 484 £525 -8.70% 156
East of England +1 266 £548 +4.29% 320
Yorkshire -4 172 £500 +11.11% 53
East Midlands 0 133 £444 -11.25% 48
North East 0 101 £475 +5.56% 46
South Coast -1 2 - -
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
1 228 (3.78%) Confluence
2 164 (2.72%) SharePoint
3 111 (1.84%) Microsoft Exchange
4 90 (1.49%) SAS
5 89 (1.47%) Apache
6 52 (0.86%) nginx
7 49 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.65%) Skype for Business
9 31 (0.51%) Apache Spark
10 26 (0.43%) IIS
11 21 (0.35%) CMS
12 18 (0.30%) WebLogic
13 15 (0.25%) SharePoint Server
14 11 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2013
14 11 (0.18%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 10 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2003
15 10 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2007
15 10 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2010
15 10 (0.17%) Office Communications Server
16 8 (0.13%) Documentum
Applications
1 175 (2.90%) Microsoft Office
2 135 (2.24%) Microsoft Excel
3 54 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 33 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 33 (0.55%) MS Visio
5 19 (0.31%) Siemens NX
6 15 (0.25%) Simulink
6 15 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.18%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 7 (0.12%) Sketch
9 6 (0.099%) Adobe Illustrator
9 6 (0.099%) Photoshop
10 5 (0.083%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.083%) FrameMaker
10 5 (0.083%) Oracle Smart View
10 5 (0.083%) PTC Creo
10 5 (0.083%) Stateflow
10 5 (0.083%) Trello
10 5 (0.083%) Windchill
11 4 (0.066%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 140 (2.32%) SAP S/4HANA
2 30 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
3 27 (0.45%) SAP WM
4 26 (0.43%) SAP EWM
4 26 (0.43%) Teamcenter
5 22 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
6 19 (0.31%) Maximo
7 17 (0.28%) SAP HCM
8 16 (0.27%) Primavera
8 16 (0.27%) SAP MM
9 15 (0.25%) SAP PS
10 14 (0.23%) Dynamics CRM
10 14 (0.23%) Oracle General Ledger
11 12 (0.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
12 11 (0.18%) SAP EHS
12 11 (0.18%) SAP QM
12 11 (0.18%) SAP VC
13 10 (0.17%) SAP HR
13 10 (0.17%) SAP Payroll
14 9 (0.15%) Oracle Assets
Cloud Services
1 1,015 (16.82%) AWS
2 932 (15.45%) Azure
3 297 (4.92%) Microsoft 365
4 288 (4.77%) GitHub
5 226 (3.75%) Power Platform
6 206 (3.41%) Azure DevOps
7 201 (3.33%) GCP
8 172 (2.85%) Amazon S3
9 168 (2.78%) Serverless
10 147 (2.44%) Entra ID
11 138 (2.29%) GitHub Actions
11 138 (2.29%) SaaS
12 120 (1.99%) Amazon EC2
13 117 (1.94%) OpenShift
14 104 (1.72%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 95 (1.57%) AWS CloudFormation
16 93 (1.54%) AWS Lambda
17 82 (1.36%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 71 (1.18%) Amazon EKS
19 69 (1.14%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 328 (5.44%) Firewall
2 253 (4.19%) DNS
3 165 (2.73%) VPN
4 131 (2.17%) Network Security
5 120 (1.99%) WAN
6 99 (1.64%) TCP/IP
7 90 (1.49%) BGP
8 85 (1.41%) DHCP
9 84 (1.39%) LAN
10 77 (1.28%) Wireless
11 76 (1.26%) SSL
12 69 (1.14%) SAN
13 57 (0.94%) VLAN
13 57 (0.94%) Wi-Fi
14 53 (0.88%) MPLS
15 51 (0.85%) IPsec
16 47 (0.78%) Cisco ISE
17 42 (0.70%) HTTP
17 42 (0.70%) Skype
18 40 (0.66%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 199 (3.30%) PostgreSQL
2 152 (2.52%) Power BI
3 86 (1.43%) Amazon RDS
4 84 (1.39%) MongoDB
5 81 (1.34%) SQL Server
6 72 (1.19%) Oracle Database
7 67 (1.11%) Data Warehouse
8 63 (1.04%) Relational Database
9 62 (1.03%) NoSQL
10 59 (0.98%) Metadata
11 41 (0.68%) Big Data
12 39 (0.65%) MySQL
13 38 (0.63%) Elasticsearch
14 36 (0.60%) Pentaho
14 36 (0.60%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 33 (0.55%) Data Lake
16 31 (0.51%) Azure SQL Database
17 30 (0.50%) Amazon Redshift
18 29 (0.48%) Redis
19 28 (0.46%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 417 (6.91%) JIRA
2 350 (5.80%) Jenkins
3 348 (5.77%) Git
4 238 (3.94%) GitLab
5 75 (1.24%) Selenium
6 65 (1.08%) SonarQube
7 59 (0.98%) JUnit
8 57 (0.94%) Cypress.io
9 47 (0.78%) Postman
10 44 (0.73%) Bitbucket
11 40 (0.66%) Maven
12 36 (0.60%) Oracle APEX
13 35 (0.58%) Artifactory
14 34 (0.56%) Cucumber
15 33 (0.55%) Mockito
16 28 (0.46%) REST Assured
17 24 (0.40%) Rational DOORS
18 23 (0.38%) Vagrant
19 21 (0.35%) Metasploit
19 21 (0.35%) MSI
General
1 1,693 (28.06%) Public Sector
2 1,538 (25.49%) Social Skills
3 516 (8.55%) Analytical Skills
4 435 (7.21%) Finance
5 231 (3.83%) Military
6 198 (3.28%) Telecoms
7 186 (3.08%) Manufacturing
8 146 (2.42%) Documentation Skills
9 142 (2.35%) Electronics
10 129 (2.14%) Marketing
11 116 (1.92%) Aerospace
12 92 (1.52%) Organisational Skills
13 82 (1.36%) Legal
14 74 (1.23%) Banking
15 69 (1.14%) Law
16 68 (1.13%) Influencing Skills
17 64 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
18 42 (0.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 39 (0.65%) Aviation
20 35 (0.58%) Police
Job Titles
1 755 (12.51%) Architect
2 586 (9.71%) Developer
3 542 (8.98%) Consultant
4 463 (7.67%) Senior
5 394 (6.53%) Analyst
6 381 (6.31%) Lead
7 257 (4.26%) DevOps Engineer
8 224 (3.71%) Support Engineer
9 184 (3.05%) Network Engineer
10 145 (2.40%) Data Engineer
11 142 (2.35%) Solutions Architect
12 140 (2.32%) SAP Consultant
13 123 (2.04%) AWS Engineer
14 115 (1.91%) Platform Engineer
14 115 (1.91%) Security Engineer
15 112 (1.86%) Administrator
16 111 (1.84%) IT Engineer
17 107 (1.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 101 (1.67%) IT Support
18 101 (1.67%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 242 (4.01%) REST
2 162 (2.68%) React
3 151 (2.50%) Node.js
4 139 (2.30%) Kafka
5 119 (1.97%) JSON
6 117 (1.94%) SOAP
7 107 (1.77%) HTML
8 102 (1.69%) XML
9 96 (1.59%) Spring
10 91 (1.51%) Web Services
11 89 (1.47%) CSS
12 88 (1.46%) AngularJS
13 86 (1.43%) RESTful
14 76 (1.26%) .NET
15 74 (1.23%) Spring Boot
16 63 (1.04%) OAuth
17 61 (1.01%) LDAP
18 51 (0.85%) Elastic Stack
18 51 (0.85%) SAML
19 49 (0.81%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 187 (3.10%) Data Centre
2 186 (3.08%) Onboarding
3 160 (2.65%) PKI
4 154 (2.55%) Management Information System
5 136 (2.25%) Cloud Native
6 107 (1.77%) Product Ownership
7 99 (1.64%) Self-Motivation
8 75 (1.24%) Security Operations Centre
9 73 (1.21%) Driving Licence
10 69 (1.14%) Cyber Threat
11 64 (1.06%) Replication
12 63 (1.04%) Legacy Systems
13 61 (1.01%) Security Posture
14 56 (0.93%) Hybrid Cloud
15 55 (0.91%) CMDB
15 55 (0.91%) Private Cloud
16 54 (0.89%) Enterprise Software
17 44 (0.73%) Analytical Mindset
18 43 (0.71%) CSOC
19 39 (0.65%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 706 (11.70%) Windows
2 483 (8.00%) Linux
3 178 (2.95%) Windows Server
4 159 (2.64%) Windows 10
5 95 (1.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 83 (1.38%) Unix
7 76 (1.26%) Mac OS
8 74 (1.23%) Android
9 46 (0.76%) Windows Server 2019
10 39 (0.65%) VMS
11 35 (0.58%) Windows Server 2016
12 28 (0.46%) Amazon Linux
12 28 (0.46%) Ubuntu
13 26 (0.43%) Apple iOS
14 22 (0.36%) CentOS
15 21 (0.35%) Windows 7
16 19 (0.31%) Windows Server 2003
17 18 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
18 14 (0.23%) Mac OS X
19 9 (0.15%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,183 (19.61%) Agile
2 913 (15.13%) DevOps
3 818 (13.56%) CI/CD
4 733 (12.15%) Problem-Solving
5 585 (9.70%) Migration
6 473 (7.84%) Stakeholder Management
7 423 (7.01%) Cybersecurity
8 389 (6.45%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 381 (6.31%) ITIL
10 378 (6.26%) Infrastructure as Code
11 356 (5.90%) Continuous Improvement
12 355 (5.88%) Business Intelligence
13 349 (5.78%) Service Management
14 323 (5.35%) Test Automation
15 317 (5.25%) Workflow
16 308 (5.10%) Containerisation
17 307 (5.09%) Analytics
18 303 (5.02%) Scrum
19 275 (4.56%) Microservices
20 267 (4.42%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 790 (13.09%) Python
2 475 (7.87%) SQL
3 420 (6.96%) PowerShell
4 390 (6.46%) Java
5 316 (5.24%) JavaScript
6 222 (3.68%) Bash
7 143 (2.37%) TypeScript
8 108 (1.79%) C#
9 87 (1.44%) C++
10 78 (1.29%) Go
11 61 (1.01%) C
12 59 (0.98%) PL/SQL
13 58 (0.96%) Shell Script
14 49 (0.81%) Perl
15 35 (0.58%) ABAP
16 30 (0.50%) Groovy
17 27 (0.45%) MATLAB
18 26 (0.43%) Ada
19 25 (0.41%) Ruby
20 23 (0.38%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 4,630 (76.73%) SC Cleared
2 1,015 (16.82%) DV Cleared
3 294 (4.87%) Degree
4 258 (4.28%) BPSS Clearance
5 120 (1.99%) Microsoft Certification
6 118 (1.96%) CISSP
7 105 (1.74%) Cisco Certification
8 94 (1.56%) Azure Certification
9 80 (1.33%) CCNP
10 78 (1.29%) AWS Certification
11 64 (1.06%) CISM
12 46 (0.76%) Computer Science Degree
13 44 (0.73%) ITIL Certification
14 41 (0.68%) CCNA
15 36 (0.60%) CHECK Team Member
16 34 (0.56%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 33 (0.55%) CEH
18 31 (0.51%) OSCP
19 29 (0.48%) MCSE
20 28 (0.46%) CHECK Team Leader
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 190 (3.15%) QA
2 185 (3.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 181 (3.00%) NIST
4 152 (2.52%) NCSC
5 127 (2.10%) SLA
6 112 (1.86%) GDPR
7 108 (1.79%) Data Quality
8 107 (1.77%) Accessibility
9 45 (0.75%) JSP 440
10 40 (0.66%) PMO
10 40 (0.66%) WCAG
11 37 (0.61%) NIST 800
12 31 (0.51%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 29 (0.48%) GRC
14 27 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials
14 27 (0.45%) Def Stans
15 24 (0.40%) RMADS
16 22 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 16 (0.27%) COBIT
18 15 (0.25%) HIPAA
System Software
1 492 (8.15%) Docker
2 376 (6.23%) Active Directory
3 193 (3.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 68 (1.13%) VMware ESXi
5 66 (1.09%) vSphere
6 55 (0.91%) VMware NSX
7 44 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
8 40 (0.66%) Firmware
9 30 (0.50%) Hyper-V
10 26 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
11 21 (0.35%) DFS Replication
12 19 (0.31%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 19 (0.31%) Virtual Servers
13 18 (0.30%) Postfix
14 16 (0.27%) NFS
15 15 (0.25%) Dovecot
16 11 (0.18%) Squid
17 10 (0.17%) BitLocker
17 10 (0.17%) Brightmail
17 10 (0.17%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 563 (9.33%) Kubernetes
2 532 (8.82%) Terraform
3 282 (4.67%) Ansible
4 153 (2.54%) Grafana
5 131 (2.17%) Prometheus
6 107 (1.77%) SCCM
7 83 (1.38%) Single Sign-On
8 74 (1.23%) Microsoft Intune
9 55 (0.91%) vCenter Server
10 52 (0.86%) Argo
11 48 (0.80%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 48 (0.80%) Packer
12 32 (0.53%) Kibana
13 31 (0.51%) Jamf Pro
13 31 (0.51%) WSUS
14 24 (0.40%) FortiGate
15 23 (0.38%) Consul
15 23 (0.38%) SCOM
16 22 (0.36%) Nessus
16 22 (0.36%) Nmap
Vendors
1 828 (13.72%) Microsoft
2 421 (6.98%) SAP
3 389 (6.45%) Cisco
4 324 (5.37%) VMware
5 321 (5.32%) Oracle
6 275 (4.56%) ServiceNow
7 197 (3.26%) Splunk
8 150 (2.49%) Juniper
9 125 (2.07%) Red Hat
10 91 (1.51%) Google
11 89 (1.47%) Palo Alto
12 86 (1.43%) HP
13 81 (1.34%) Dell
14 78 (1.29%) Salesforce
15 77 (1.28%) IBM
16 72 (1.19%) Atlassian
17 70 (1.16%) SolarWinds
18 69 (1.14%) F5
19 62 (1.03%) Apple
20 58 (0.96%) Fortinet