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 20 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +3
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 8,732 4,561 7,177
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.51% 18.66% 19.02%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.19% 60.09% 60.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,946 2,979 4,631
10th Percentile £358 £325 £350
25th Percentile £443 £450 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.31%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £655
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 765 255 476
10th Percentile £17.79 £21.11 £14.50
25th Percentile £20.50 £26.38 £21.46
Median hourly rate £31.25 £60.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -47.92% +9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £69.25 £68.34 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.36 £80.06 £80.63
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £56.75 £55.00
% change year-on-year -38.32% +3.18% -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 12,621 7,590 11,798
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.97% 31.06% 31.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,386 4,813 7,315
10th Percentile £331 £288 £300
25th Percentile £423 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £537
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.32% -2.28%
Number of hourly rates quoted 983 420 912
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.62 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.72 £25.26 £18.10
Median hourly rate £28.50 £50.00 £37.83
Median % change year-on-year -43.00% +32.18% -24.35%
75th Percentile £67.84 £68.00 £63.29
90th Percentile £84.80 £82.50 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £29.61 £42.50 £37.50
% change year-on-year -30.33% +13.33% -25.74%

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 20 March 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 20 March 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 20 March 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 3,067 £530 +0.95% 498
South East +1 2,033 £525 -4.55% 565
South West 0 1,294 £538 -3.50% 354
Midlands +3 867 £485 -11.82% 163
North of England -1 826 £486 -2.75% 282
West Midlands +3 704 £492 -10.71% 124
North West -2 516 £492 -1.60% 147
East of England +1 354 £492 +3.58% 153
Yorkshire -8 193 £500 -4.76% 73
East Midlands +1 160 £444 -13.41% 38
North East 0 149 £450 -2.60% 64
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
1 349 (4.00%) Confluence
2 212 (2.43%) SharePoint
3 134 (1.53%) Microsoft Exchange
4 127 (1.45%) SAS
5 74 (0.85%) Apache
6 73 (0.84%) Apache Spark
7 48 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
8 38 (0.44%) nginx
9 34 (0.39%) WebLogic
10 29 (0.33%) Skype for Business
11 21 (0.24%) Jupyter
12 16 (0.18%) CMS
12 16 (0.18%) IIS
13 14 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 14 (0.16%) Tuxedo
14 10 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
15 9 (0.10%) Tomcat
16 7 (0.080%) ArcGIS
17 6 (0.069%) JBoss
17 6 (0.069%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 248 (2.84%) Microsoft Office
2 193 (2.21%) Microsoft Excel
3 126 (1.44%) Microsoft Project
4 70 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 45 (0.52%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
7 9 (0.10%) Simulink
8 5 (0.057%) Siemens NX
8 5 (0.057%) Windchill
9 4 (0.046%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.046%) Chatbot
9 4 (0.046%) Sketch
10 2 (0.023%) Adobe Illustrator
10 2 (0.023%) AutoCAD
10 2 (0.023%) CATIA
10 2 (0.023%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.023%) Lectora
10 2 (0.023%) Oracle Smart View
10 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
10 2 (0.023%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 79 (0.90%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.47%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 32 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
4 27 (0.31%) Teamcenter
5 26 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
6 25 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
7 16 (0.18%) Maximo
8 15 (0.17%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.15%) SAP PP
10 12 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
10 12 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
11 11 (0.13%) Temenos T24
12 10 (0.11%) SAP MM
13 9 (0.10%) Findur
13 9 (0.10%) Primavera
13 9 (0.10%) SAP ERP
14 8 (0.092%) Integrated Workplace Management System
14 8 (0.092%) Oracle Receivables
14 8 (0.092%) SAP HCM
14 8 (0.092%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,467 (16.80%) Azure
2 1,433 (16.41%) AWS
3 405 (4.64%) GitHub
4 371 (4.25%) GCP
5 348 (3.99%) Azure DevOps
6 326 (3.73%) Power Platform
7 295 (3.38%) Microsoft 365
8 249 (2.85%) Serverless
9 232 (2.66%) Entra ID
10 208 (2.38%) GitHub Actions
11 186 (2.13%) Amazon S3
12 170 (1.95%) OpenShift
13 163 (1.87%) AWS Lambda
14 127 (1.45%) Amazon EC2
15 117 (1.34%) AWS CloudFormation
16 110 (1.26%) PaaS
17 107 (1.23%) IaaS
18 102 (1.17%) Azure Data Factory
19 100 (1.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 97 (1.11%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 413 (4.73%) Firewall
2 255 (2.92%) DNS
3 212 (2.43%) Network Security
4 198 (2.27%) WAN
5 169 (1.94%) LAN
6 167 (1.91%) VPN
7 140 (1.60%) BGP
8 128 (1.47%) DHCP
9 123 (1.41%) TCP/IP
10 102 (1.17%) OSPF
11 94 (1.08%) Wireless
12 83 (0.95%) VLAN
13 77 (0.88%) Wi-Fi
14 65 (0.74%) MPLS
15 52 (0.60%) SAN
16 51 (0.58%) IPsec
17 49 (0.56%) Cisco ISE
18 42 (0.48%) SSL
19 38 (0.44%) Junos
20 37 (0.42%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 241 (2.76%) Power BI
2 233 (2.67%) PostgreSQL
3 152 (1.74%) SQL Server
4 149 (1.71%) Data Warehouse
5 115 (1.32%) Metadata
6 99 (1.13%) Amazon RDS
7 97 (1.11%) Oracle Database
8 93 (1.07%) NoSQL
9 88 (1.01%) Relational Database
10 87 (1.00%) MongoDB
11 77 (0.88%) Azure SQL Database
12 68 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
13 64 (0.73%) Data Lake
14 62 (0.71%) MySQL
15 61 (0.70%) Pentaho
16 52 (0.60%) Amazon Redshift
17 49 (0.56%) Tableau
18 48 (0.55%) Big Data
19 40 (0.46%) Delta Lake
20 37 (0.42%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 560 (6.41%) JIRA
2 440 (5.04%) Git
3 362 (4.15%) Jenkins
4 308 (3.53%) GitLab
5 102 (1.17%) Selenium
6 81 (0.93%) JUnit
7 69 (0.79%) Postman
8 55 (0.63%) Rational DOORS
9 51 (0.58%) Bitbucket
10 48 (0.55%) Cypress.io
11 46 (0.53%) Artifactory
11 46 (0.53%) Maven
12 45 (0.52%) SonarQube
13 43 (0.49%) Cucumber
14 42 (0.48%) Oracle APEX
15 35 (0.40%) JMeter
15 35 (0.40%) Mockito
16 30 (0.34%) Visual Studio
17 29 (0.33%) REST Assured
18 23 (0.26%) Metasploit
General
1 2,192 (25.10%) Public Sector
2 2,089 (23.92%) Social Skills
3 759 (8.69%) Analytical Skills
4 656 (7.51%) Finance
5 318 (3.64%) Military
6 247 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
7 210 (2.40%) Aerospace
8 167 (1.91%) Manufacturing
9 166 (1.90%) Telecoms
10 142 (1.63%) Legal
11 114 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
12 112 (1.28%) Banking
13 107 (1.23%) Marketing
14 106 (1.21%) Electronics
15 105 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
16 104 (1.19%) Presentation Skills
17 72 (0.82%) Law
18 49 (0.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 48 (0.55%) Police
20 33 (0.38%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,264 (14.48%) Architect
2 826 (9.46%) Developer
3 756 (8.66%) Senior
4 665 (7.62%) Analyst
5 545 (6.24%) Lead
6 467 (5.35%) Consultant
7 350 (4.01%) DevOps Engineer
8 340 (3.89%) Data Engineer
9 259 (2.97%) Network Engineer
10 240 (2.75%) Business Analyst
11 238 (2.73%) Technical Architect
12 236 (2.70%) Software Engineer
13 208 (2.38%) Support Engineer
14 205 (2.35%) Solutions Architect
15 176 (2.02%) Project Manager
16 161 (1.84%) Delivery Manager
17 160 (1.83%) Azure Engineer
18 159 (1.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 156 (1.79%) Tester
20 155 (1.78%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 336 (3.85%) REST
2 197 (2.26%) Spring
3 181 (2.07%) Node.js
4 170 (1.95%) React
5 166 (1.90%) Kafka
6 146 (1.67%) Spring Boot
7 145 (1.66%) JSON
8 144 (1.65%) SOAP
9 141 (1.61%) LDAP
10 138 (1.58%) .NET
11 114 (1.31%) RESTful
12 108 (1.24%) AngularJS
13 104 (1.19%) HTML
14 97 (1.11%) PySpark
15 96 (1.10%) OAuth
16 95 (1.09%) Web Services
17 90 (1.03%) Oracle Fusion
18 87 (1.00%) XML
19 86 (0.98%) CSS
20 77 (0.88%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 304 (3.48%) Product Ownership
2 277 (3.17%) Data Centre
3 260 (2.98%) Cloud Native
4 220 (2.52%) Onboarding
5 200 (2.29%) PKI
6 151 (1.73%) Management Information System
7 128 (1.47%) Security Posture
8 118 (1.35%) Legacy Systems
9 117 (1.34%) Self-Motivation
10 108 (1.24%) Enterprise Software
11 106 (1.21%) Replication
12 81 (0.93%) Distributed Systems
13 74 (0.85%) Hybrid Cloud
14 73 (0.84%) Public Cloud
15 69 (0.79%) Cyber Threat
15 69 (0.79%) Data Structures
16 66 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
17 58 (0.66%) Clustering
18 56 (0.64%) Driving Licence
19 51 (0.58%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 815 (9.33%) Windows
2 632 (7.24%) Linux
3 226 (2.59%) Windows Server
4 133 (1.52%) Windows 10
5 124 (1.42%) Android
6 108 (1.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 108 (1.24%) Unix
7 69 (0.79%) Mac OS
8 45 (0.52%) Apple iOS
9 42 (0.48%) Ubuntu
10 28 (0.32%) VMS
11 25 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
12 21 (0.24%) CentOS
13 20 (0.23%) Windows 7
14 19 (0.22%) Solaris
15 17 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
16 14 (0.16%) AIX
17 12 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
18 10 (0.11%) Windows Server 2003
19 8 (0.092%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,769 (20.26%) Agile
2 1,344 (15.39%) DevOps
3 1,164 (13.33%) CI/CD
4 1,082 (12.39%) Problem-Solving
5 814 (9.32%) Stakeholder Management
6 765 (8.76%) Migration
7 739 (8.46%) Continuous Improvement
8 650 (7.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 573 (6.56%) ITIL
10 567 (6.49%) Cybersecurity
11 528 (6.05%) Infrastructure as Code
12 496 (5.68%) Analytics
13 491 (5.62%) Test Automation
14 484 (5.54%) Roadmaps
15 462 (5.29%) Containerisation
16 437 (5.00%) Software Engineering
17 436 (4.99%) Scrum
18 418 (4.79%) Data Modelling
19 416 (4.76%) Service Management
20 415 (4.75%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 1,015 (11.62%) Python
2 771 (8.83%) SQL
3 569 (6.52%) PowerShell
4 498 (5.70%) Java
5 348 (3.99%) JavaScript
6 206 (2.36%) Bash
7 181 (2.07%) C#
8 160 (1.83%) TypeScript
9 100 (1.15%) C++
10 94 (1.08%) PL/SQL
11 89 (1.02%) Shell Script
12 70 (0.80%) Go
13 61 (0.70%) Ruby
14 59 (0.68%) C
15 53 (0.61%) Scala
16 46 (0.53%) Ada
17 41 (0.47%) Bicep
18 40 (0.46%) Kusto Query Language
19 35 (0.40%) Apex Code
20 34 (0.39%) R
Qualifications
1 6,588 (75.45%) SC Cleared
2 1,570 (17.98%) DV Cleared
3 441 (5.05%) Degree
4 246 (2.82%) BPSS Clearance
5 164 (1.88%) CISSP
6 162 (1.86%) Cisco Certification
7 123 (1.41%) Azure Certification
8 115 (1.32%) AWS Certification
9 113 (1.29%) CCNP
10 108 (1.24%) Microsoft Certification
11 102 (1.17%) CISM
12 70 (0.80%) CCNA
12 70 (0.80%) Computer Science Degree
13 62 (0.71%) ITIL Certification
13 62 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
14 56 (0.64%) PMP
15 48 (0.55%) PMI Certification
16 47 (0.54%) GIAC
17 46 (0.53%) CEH
17 46 (0.53%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 302 (3.46%) QA
2 284 (3.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 273 (3.13%) NIST
4 240 (2.75%) Data Quality
5 202 (2.31%) NCSC
6 172 (1.97%) GDPR
7 146 (1.67%) Accessibility
8 119 (1.36%) PMO
9 112 (1.28%) SLA
10 61 (0.70%) JSP 440
11 58 (0.66%) GRC
12 44 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials
13 43 (0.49%) WCAG
14 37 (0.42%) NIST 800
15 35 (0.40%) COBIT
16 31 (0.36%) Def Stans
16 31 (0.36%) PCI DSS
17 26 (0.30%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 24 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 21 (0.24%) RMADS
System Software
1 589 (6.75%) Docker
2 456 (5.22%) Active Directory
3 240 (2.75%) VMware Infrastructure
4 86 (0.98%) VMware NSX
5 69 (0.79%) vSphere
6 62 (0.71%) VMware ESXi
7 57 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
8 56 (0.64%) Hyper-V
9 25 (0.29%) Firmware
10 22 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
11 21 (0.24%) BitLocker
11 21 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
12 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 15 (0.17%) NFS
14 10 (0.11%) Postfix
14 10 (0.11%) Squid
14 10 (0.11%) vCloud
15 7 (0.080%) Microsoft App-V
16 6 (0.069%) Terminal Services
17 4 (0.046%) Snort
Systems Management
1 765 (8.76%) Kubernetes
2 686 (7.86%) Terraform
3 291 (3.33%) Ansible
4 222 (2.54%) Grafana
5 181 (2.07%) Prometheus
6 106 (1.21%) Single Sign-On
7 95 (1.09%) SCCM
8 89 (1.02%) vCenter Server
9 80 (0.92%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 65 (0.74%) Microsoft Intune
11 62 (0.71%) Argo
12 45 (0.52%) FortiGate
13 37 (0.42%) Packer
13 37 (0.42%) Podman
14 30 (0.34%) OPNET
15 29 (0.33%) Progress Chef
15 29 (0.33%) Puppet
16 25 (0.29%) Kibana
17 24 (0.27%) Nmap
18 21 (0.24%) Consul
Vendors
1 1,003 (11.49%) Microsoft
2 490 (5.61%) Oracle
3 433 (4.96%) VMware
4 398 (4.56%) Cisco
5 366 (4.19%) ServiceNow
6 326 (3.73%) SAP
7 214 (2.45%) Splunk
8 183 (2.10%) Red Hat
9 149 (1.71%) Databricks
10 140 (1.60%) Google
11 129 (1.48%) Juniper
12 124 (1.42%) Atlassian
12 124 (1.42%) Salesforce
13 120 (1.37%) CyberArk
13 120 (1.37%) Palo Alto
14 109 (1.25%) IBM
15 96 (1.10%) Dell
16 86 (0.98%) HP
17 82 (0.94%) Talend
18 77 (0.88%) Aruba