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 1 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 1 4 3
Rank change year-on-year +3 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 10,024 5,031 6,471
As % of all contract jobs in England 22.03% 18.23% 19.17%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.43% 58.53% 63.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,034 3,253 4,319
10th Percentile £381 £340 £352
25th Percentile £450 £450 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £537 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.09% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £635 £625 £644
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £536 £534 £550
% change year-on-year +0.37% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 774 454 467
10th Percentile £19.33 £18.51 £15.39
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.11
Median hourly rate £64.09 £25.15 £58.05
Median % change year-on-year +154.83% -56.67% -3.26%
75th Percentile £80.04 £55.87 £72.33
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £55.08
% change year-on-year +151.03% -54.33% -8.21%

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 14,437 8,595 10,271
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.72% 31.14% 30.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,718 5,421 6,548
10th Percentile £350 £289 £325
25th Percentile £431 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £715 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £525
% change year-on-year - - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,109 642 789
10th Percentile £18.24 £18.13 £14.48
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £21.37
Median hourly rate £54.00 £25.15 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +114.71% -44.11% -18.18%
75th Percentile £75.00 £58.71 £67.50
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.71 £78.15
UK median hourly rate £51.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +102.78% -41.51% -22.22%

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 1 August 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 1 August 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 1 August 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 +7 3,539 £550 +4.76% 850
South East +1 2,470 £557 +3.53% 609
South West 0 1,327 £538 -6.52% 485
North of England +2 1,129 £500 - 396
Midlands +3 972 £469 -6.20% 224
West Midlands +1 834 £469 -6.20% 173
North West 0 607 £525 - 246
East of England 0 325 £552 +3.18% 151
Yorkshire +3 305 £500 +1.63% 82
North East 0 241 £475 -5.00% 70
East Midlands 0 126 £428 -7.57% 51
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
1 358 (3.57%) Confluence
2 246 (2.45%) SharePoint
3 169 (1.69%) SAS
4 112 (1.12%) Microsoft Exchange
5 90 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
6 86 (0.86%) Apache Spark
7 80 (0.80%) Apache
8 36 (0.36%) nginx
9 34 (0.34%) WebLogic
10 31 (0.31%) Jupyter
11 21 (0.21%) Tomcat
12 20 (0.20%) Oracle Application Server
13 16 (0.16%) CMS
13 16 (0.16%) IIS
13 16 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
13 16 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
14 13 (0.13%) Skype for Business
15 12 (0.12%) Tuxedo
16 11 (0.11%) NetWeaver
17 10 (0.100%) JBoss
Applications
1 192 (1.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 128 (1.28%) Microsoft Office
3 99 (0.99%) Microsoft Project
4 74 (0.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 36 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.14%) AutoCAD
7 14 (0.14%) Revit
7 14 (0.14%) SOLIDWORKS
8 13 (0.13%) Simulink
9 9 (0.090%) Chatbot
10 6 (0.060%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.060%) Sketch
11 5 (0.050%) Notepad++
12 4 (0.040%) Trello
13 3 (0.030%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 2 (0.020%) Houdini
14 2 (0.020%) InDesign
14 2 (0.020%) Oracle Smart View
14 2 (0.020%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 123 (1.23%) SAP S/4HANA
2 72 (0.72%) Remedy ITSM
3 43 (0.43%) Oracle ERP
4 35 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
5 34 (0.34%) Teamcenter
6 31 (0.31%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 23 (0.23%) SAP PSCD
8 21 (0.21%) Dynamics CRM
9 16 (0.16%) Primavera
10 15 (0.15%) Findur
11 14 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
11 14 (0.14%) Oracle Payroll
12 13 (0.13%) Temenos T24
13 12 (0.12%) iTrent
13 12 (0.12%) Siebel CRM
14 11 (0.11%) NetSuite
14 11 (0.11%) SAP HR
15 10 (0.100%) Integrated Workplace Management System
15 10 (0.100%) SAP ERP
15 10 (0.100%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 1,798 (17.94%) Azure
2 1,679 (16.75%) AWS
3 434 (4.33%) Azure DevOps
4 424 (4.23%) Power Platform
5 422 (4.21%) GitHub
6 375 (3.74%) GCP
7 271 (2.70%) Microsoft 365
8 269 (2.68%) GitHub Actions
9 250 (2.49%) Serverless
10 248 (2.47%) Entra ID
11 225 (2.24%) Amazon S3
12 174 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
13 153 (1.53%) OCI
14 147 (1.47%) Amazon EC2
15 145 (1.45%) SaaS
16 141 (1.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 134 (1.34%) OpenShift
18 128 (1.28%) PaaS
19 121 (1.21%) Amazon EKS
20 111 (1.11%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 428 (4.27%) Firewall
2 336 (3.35%) DNS
3 207 (2.07%) WAN
4 206 (2.06%) Network Security
5 180 (1.80%) LAN
6 170 (1.70%) VPN
7 168 (1.68%) DHCP
8 140 (1.40%) BGP
9 122 (1.22%) TCP/IP
10 113 (1.13%) Wi-Fi
11 111 (1.11%) OSPF
12 100 (1.00%) VLAN
13 84 (0.84%) Wireless
14 63 (0.63%) IPsec
15 62 (0.62%) VSAN
16 58 (0.58%) MPLS
17 56 (0.56%) SD-WAN
17 56 (0.56%) VXLAN
18 54 (0.54%) SAN
19 53 (0.53%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 317 (3.16%) Power BI
2 249 (2.48%) SQL Server
3 246 (2.45%) PostgreSQL
4 235 (2.34%) Data Warehouse
5 145 (1.45%) Oracle Database
6 127 (1.27%) Metadata
7 111 (1.11%) Data Lake
8 98 (0.98%) Amazon RDS
9 97 (0.97%) Relational Database
10 87 (0.87%) Pentaho
11 84 (0.84%) Oracle Reports
12 82 (0.82%) MySQL
13 73 (0.73%) MongoDB
13 73 (0.73%) NoSQL
14 63 (0.63%) Amazon Redshift
14 63 (0.63%) Elasticsearch
15 57 (0.57%) Amazon Athena
15 57 (0.57%) Tableau
16 44 (0.44%) Big Data
17 43 (0.43%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 568 (5.67%) JIRA
2 475 (4.74%) Git
3 399 (3.98%) GitLab
4 388 (3.87%) Jenkins
5 101 (1.01%) Selenium
6 77 (0.77%) SonarQube
7 76 (0.76%) JUnit
8 59 (0.59%) Postman
9 58 (0.58%) Maven
10 55 (0.55%) Rational DOORS
11 52 (0.52%) JMeter
12 47 (0.47%) Cucumber
13 44 (0.44%) Mockito
14 39 (0.39%) Visual Studio
15 38 (0.38%) Bitbucket
15 38 (0.38%) Zephyr
16 35 (0.35%) Artifactory
17 34 (0.34%) Cypress.io
18 33 (0.33%) REST Assured
19 31 (0.31%) Gradle
General
1 2,108 (21.03%) Public Sector
2 2,073 (20.68%) Social Skills
3 762 (7.60%) Analytical Skills
4 709 (7.07%) Finance
5 345 (3.44%) Military
6 276 (2.75%) Aerospace
7 246 (2.45%) Documentation Skills
8 160 (1.60%) Influencing Skills
9 145 (1.45%) Legal
10 132 (1.32%) Organisational Skills
11 130 (1.30%) Telecoms
12 123 (1.23%) Banking
13 96 (0.96%) Law
14 89 (0.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 88 (0.88%) Police
16 82 (0.82%) Manufacturing
17 76 (0.76%) Presentation Skills
18 41 (0.41%) Marketing
19 38 (0.38%) Retail
20 36 (0.36%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 1,486 (14.82%) Architect
2 1,054 (10.51%) Developer
3 927 (9.25%) Senior
4 888 (8.86%) Lead
5 618 (6.17%) Analyst
6 510 (5.09%) Consultant
7 475 (4.74%) Data Engineer
8 389 (3.88%) DevOps Engineer
9 361 (3.60%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 299 (2.98%) Software Engineer
11 258 (2.57%) Technical Architect
12 240 (2.39%) Network Engineer
13 239 (2.38%) Security Architect
13 239 (2.38%) Solutions Architect
14 205 (2.05%) Data Architect
15 202 (2.02%) Java Developer
16 199 (1.99%) Delivery Manager
17 188 (1.88%) Project Manager
18 187 (1.87%) Administrator
19 185 (1.85%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 369 (3.68%) REST
2 227 (2.26%) Spring
3 191 (1.91%) Spring Boot
4 184 (1.84%) .NET
5 177 (1.77%) Kafka
6 175 (1.75%) React
7 165 (1.65%) RESTful
8 152 (1.52%) SOAP
9 149 (1.49%) Node.js
10 131 (1.31%) JSON
11 126 (1.26%) AngularJS
12 105 (1.05%) Web Services
13 103 (1.03%) OAuth
14 95 (0.95%) HTML
15 89 (0.89%) PySpark
16 84 (0.84%) XML
17 70 (0.70%) CSS
17 70 (0.70%) Oracle Fusion
18 68 (0.68%) Elastic Stack
19 67 (0.67%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 413 (4.12%) Cloud Native
2 349 (3.48%) Onboarding
3 321 (3.20%) Product Ownership
4 283 (2.82%) Data Centre
5 178 (1.78%) Legacy Systems
6 158 (1.58%) Management Information System
7 151 (1.51%) PKI
8 144 (1.44%) Distributed Systems
9 120 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
10 114 (1.14%) CMDB
11 111 (1.11%) Enterprise Software
12 102 (1.02%) Data Structures
13 100 (1.00%) Clustering
13 100 (1.00%) Hybrid Cloud
14 92 (0.92%) Replication
15 82 (0.82%) Public Cloud
16 77 (0.77%) Cyber Threat
17 76 (0.76%) Virtual Team
18 75 (0.75%) Security Operations Centre
18 75 (0.75%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 834 (8.32%) Windows
2 698 (6.96%) Linux
3 287 (2.86%) Windows Server
4 205 (2.05%) Unix
5 142 (1.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 94 (0.94%) Windows 10
7 82 (0.82%) Android
8 65 (0.65%) Solaris
9 44 (0.44%) Mac OS
10 41 (0.41%) Apple iOS
11 37 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
12 35 (0.35%) AIX
13 30 (0.30%) CentOS
14 29 (0.29%) Ubuntu
15 17 (0.17%) VMS
15 17 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
16 15 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
17 14 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
18 12 (0.12%) Rocky
19 11 (0.11%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,108 (21.03%) Agile
2 1,535 (15.31%) DevOps
3 1,427 (14.24%) CI/CD
4 1,136 (11.33%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,113 (11.10%) Continuous Improvement
6 1,071 (10.68%) Problem-Solving
7 906 (9.04%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 778 (7.76%) Infrastructure as Code
9 777 (7.75%) Migration
10 686 (6.84%) Cybersecurity
10 686 (6.84%) ITIL
11 628 (6.26%) Analytics
12 604 (6.03%) Software Engineering
13 603 (6.02%) Test Automation
14 596 (5.95%) Containerisation
15 590 (5.89%) Roadmaps
16 557 (5.56%) AI
17 548 (5.47%) Data Modelling
18 542 (5.41%) Decision-Making
19 520 (5.19%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,094 (10.91%) Python
2 977 (9.75%) SQL
3 680 (6.78%) Java
4 471 (4.70%) PowerShell
5 324 (3.23%) JavaScript
6 261 (2.60%) Bash
7 214 (2.13%) C#
8 150 (1.50%) PL/SQL
9 147 (1.47%) TypeScript
10 90 (0.90%) Bicep
11 83 (0.83%) Shell Script
12 80 (0.80%) C++
13 63 (0.63%) C
14 47 (0.47%) Go
15 44 (0.44%) Kotlin
16 41 (0.41%) Scala
17 40 (0.40%) Apex Code
17 40 (0.40%) Groovy
18 36 (0.36%) Ruby
19 33 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 7,527 (75.09%) SC Cleared
2 2,039 (20.34%) DV Cleared
3 419 (4.18%) Degree
4 354 (3.53%) BPSS Clearance
5 178 (1.78%) Cisco Certification
6 162 (1.62%) CISSP
7 149 (1.49%) Azure Certification
8 135 (1.35%) Microsoft Certification
9 119 (1.19%) AWS Certification
10 101 (1.01%) PMI Certification
11 96 (0.96%) PMP
12 95 (0.95%) CISM
13 83 (0.83%) CCNP
14 75 (0.75%) CCNA
15 73 (0.73%) ISTQB
16 63 (0.63%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 58 (0.58%) Computer Science Degree
18 45 (0.45%) TOGAF Certification
19 43 (0.43%) ITIL Certification
20 38 (0.38%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 387 (3.86%) QA
2 323 (3.22%) Data Quality
3 272 (2.71%) NIST
4 267 (2.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 219 (2.18%) Accessibility
6 210 (2.09%) PMO
7 209 (2.08%) NCSC
8 154 (1.54%) GDPR
9 116 (1.16%) GRC
9 116 (1.16%) SLA
10 65 (0.65%) WCAG
11 58 (0.58%) JSP 440
12 48 (0.48%) NIST 800
13 44 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
14 30 (0.30%) Government Security Classifications
15 28 (0.28%) Def Stans
15 28 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 20000
16 23 (0.23%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 19 (0.19%) RMADS
18 17 (0.17%) COBIT
System Software
1 662 (6.60%) Docker
2 468 (4.67%) Active Directory
3 358 (3.57%) VMware Infrastructure
4 140 (1.40%) VMware NSX
5 132 (1.32%) VMware ESXi
6 107 (1.07%) vSphere
7 91 (0.91%) Hyper-V
8 75 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
9 42 (0.42%) Oracle RAC
10 36 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
11 28 (0.28%) Firmware
12 22 (0.22%) vCloud
13 20 (0.20%) BitLocker
14 18 (0.18%) Postfix
15 14 (0.14%) NFS
16 13 (0.13%) Squid
17 9 (0.090%) KVM
18 8 (0.080%) Microsoft App-V
19 7 (0.070%) UAG
20 6 (0.060%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 842 (8.40%) Terraform
2 786 (7.84%) Kubernetes
3 380 (3.79%) Ansible
4 228 (2.27%) Grafana
5 176 (1.76%) Prometheus
6 131 (1.31%) vCenter Server
7 98 (0.98%) SCCM
8 78 (0.78%) Microsoft Intune
9 67 (0.67%) Argo
10 64 (0.64%) SCOM
11 50 (0.50%) Oracle RMAN
11 50 (0.50%) Puppet
12 48 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
13 42 (0.42%) FortiGate
14 33 (0.33%) Data Guard
15 29 (0.29%) Progress Chef
16 28 (0.28%) Nagios
17 25 (0.25%) Podman
18 24 (0.24%) Control-M
18 24 (0.24%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,174 (11.71%) Microsoft
2 780 (7.78%) Oracle
3 523 (5.22%) VMware
4 499 (4.98%) ServiceNow
5 372 (3.71%) SAP
6 289 (2.88%) Cisco
7 195 (1.95%) Google
8 185 (1.85%) Splunk
9 178 (1.78%) Databricks
10 144 (1.44%) Red Hat
11 136 (1.36%) Salesforce
12 123 (1.23%) Talend
13 112 (1.12%) IBM
13 112 (1.12%) Informatica
14 101 (1.01%) Palo Alto
15 100 (1.00%) Juniper
16 90 (0.90%) SolarWinds
17 86 (0.86%) F5
18 82 (0.82%) Remedy
19 79 (0.79%) Citrix