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

6 months to
7 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 8,553 4,694 7,165
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.49% 18.26% 18.75%
As % of the Qualifications category 68.75% 59.52% 60.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,825 3,032 4,559
10th Percentile £356 £313 £351
25th Percentile £444 £450 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £545 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.67% -0.91% -2.59%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £703 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 758 262 499
10th Percentile £17.69 £21.25 £16.74
25th Percentile £20.35 £26.31 £23.63
Median hourly rate £25.77 £60.00 £55.08
Median % change year-on-year -57.05% +8.94% -8.21%
75th Percentile £67.84 £68.42 £70.00
90th Percentile £83.23 £79.84 £83.14
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £57.13 £55.29
% change year-on-year -54.89% +3.32% -7.85%

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 12,440 7,887 11,894
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.16% 30.68% 31.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,257 4,905 7,335
10th Percentile £325 £285 £291
25th Percentile £422 £414 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £730 £738
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 968 415 929
10th Percentile £16.17 £20.00 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.43 £25.26 £19.50
Median hourly rate £25.77 £52.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -50.91% +31.25% -18.37%
75th Percentile £65.06 £68.09 £63.75
90th Percentile £82.48 £82.92 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £26.22 £43.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -39.02% +7.50% -20.00%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 +5 2,977 £530 +0.95% 492
South East +1 1,904 £525 -4.55% 548
South West 0 1,329 £550 -0.72% 371
Midlands +4 864 £492 -10.55% 150
North of England -2 833 £492 +0.41% 218
West Midlands +3 695 £495 -10.16% 108
North West 0 534 £500 +5.26% 128
East of England +1 350 £492 -1.60% 151
Yorkshire -9 176 £484 -7.86% 48
East Midlands +2 167 £425 -17.07% 40
North East +1 153 £450 -10.00% 43
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
1 332 (3.88%) Confluence
2 211 (2.47%) SharePoint
3 137 (1.60%) Microsoft Exchange
4 133 (1.56%) SAS
5 66 (0.77%) Apache
5 66 (0.77%) Apache Spark
6 45 (0.53%) Apache Airflow
7 38 (0.44%) nginx
8 34 (0.40%) WebLogic
9 31 (0.36%) Skype for Business
10 20 (0.23%) Jupyter
11 16 (0.19%) CMS
12 15 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
13 14 (0.16%) Tuxedo
14 10 (0.12%) IIS
15 9 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
16 7 (0.082%) OpenStack
16 7 (0.082%) Tomcat
17 6 (0.070%) ArcGIS
18 5 (0.058%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 247 (2.89%) Microsoft Office
2 188 (2.20%) Microsoft Excel
3 118 (1.38%) Microsoft Project
4 69 (0.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (0.51%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.082%) Simulink
8 5 (0.058%) Oracle Smart View
8 5 (0.058%) Siemens NX
9 4 (0.047%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.047%) Chatbot
9 4 (0.047%) Sketch
9 4 (0.047%) Windchill
10 3 (0.035%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.023%) Adobe Illustrator
11 2 (0.023%) CATIA
11 2 (0.023%) Lectora
11 2 (0.023%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.023%) PTC Creo
11 2 (0.023%) Trello
Business Applications
1 122 (1.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 38 (0.44%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 28 (0.33%) Oracle ERP
4 26 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
4 26 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
5 25 (0.29%) Teamcenter
6 19 (0.22%) SAP MM
7 16 (0.19%) Maximo
8 13 (0.15%) Oracle Assets
8 13 (0.15%) SAP PP
8 13 (0.15%) SAP QM
9 12 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
9 12 (0.14%) SAP VC
10 11 (0.13%) SAP WM
11 10 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
11 10 (0.12%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 9 (0.11%) Oracle Receivables
12 9 (0.11%) Primavera
12 9 (0.11%) SAP EWM
13 8 (0.094%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,417 (16.57%) Azure
2 1,395 (16.31%) AWS
3 371 (4.34%) GitHub
4 362 (4.23%) GCP
5 324 (3.79%) Power Platform
6 322 (3.76%) Azure DevOps
7 306 (3.58%) Microsoft 365
8 239 (2.79%) Entra ID
9 235 (2.75%) Serverless
10 187 (2.19%) GitHub Actions
11 179 (2.09%) Amazon S3
12 170 (1.99%) OpenShift
13 150 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
14 120 (1.40%) Amazon EC2
15 109 (1.27%) AWS CloudFormation
16 105 (1.23%) IaaS
16 105 (1.23%) PaaS
17 98 (1.15%) OCI
18 97 (1.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 97 (1.13%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 401 (4.69%) Firewall
2 262 (3.06%) DNS
3 199 (2.33%) Network Security
4 184 (2.15%) WAN
5 163 (1.91%) VPN
6 153 (1.79%) LAN
7 132 (1.54%) BGP
8 127 (1.48%) DHCP
9 124 (1.45%) TCP/IP
10 94 (1.10%) OSPF
11 92 (1.08%) Wireless
12 85 (0.99%) VLAN
13 75 (0.88%) Wi-Fi
14 66 (0.77%) MPLS
15 49 (0.57%) IPsec
16 48 (0.56%) SAN
17 44 (0.51%) Cisco ISE
18 39 (0.46%) Skype
18 39 (0.46%) SSL
19 37 (0.43%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 229 (2.68%) Power BI
2 228 (2.67%) PostgreSQL
3 148 (1.73%) Data Warehouse
4 137 (1.60%) SQL Server
5 107 (1.25%) Metadata
6 98 (1.15%) Oracle Database
7 91 (1.06%) Amazon RDS
8 86 (1.01%) NoSQL
9 84 (0.98%) MongoDB
10 81 (0.95%) Relational Database
11 69 (0.81%) Elasticsearch
12 68 (0.80%) Azure SQL Database
13 61 (0.71%) Pentaho
14 55 (0.64%) MySQL
15 52 (0.61%) Data Lake
16 49 (0.57%) Amazon Redshift
17 46 (0.54%) Big Data
18 45 (0.53%) Tableau
19 36 (0.42%) DynamoDB
19 36 (0.42%) SAS Enterprise Guide
Development Applications
1 538 (6.29%) JIRA
2 428 (5.00%) Git
3 367 (4.29%) Jenkins
4 310 (3.62%) GitLab
5 101 (1.18%) Selenium
6 78 (0.91%) JUnit
7 77 (0.90%) Postman
8 57 (0.67%) Cypress.io
9 50 (0.58%) Bitbucket
9 50 (0.58%) SonarQube
10 46 (0.54%) Maven
11 44 (0.51%) Artifactory
11 44 (0.51%) Oracle APEX
11 44 (0.51%) Rational DOORS
12 42 (0.49%) Cucumber
13 33 (0.39%) REST Assured
14 32 (0.37%) Mockito
15 29 (0.34%) Visual Studio
16 26 (0.30%) JMeter
17 24 (0.28%) Metasploit
General
1 2,161 (25.27%) Public Sector
2 2,066 (24.16%) Social Skills
3 721 (8.43%) Analytical Skills
4 624 (7.30%) Finance
5 316 (3.69%) Military
6 242 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
7 199 (2.33%) Aerospace
8 174 (2.03%) Manufacturing
9 168 (1.96%) Telecoms
10 133 (1.56%) Legal
11 121 (1.41%) Organisational Skills
12 113 (1.32%) Marketing
13 112 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
14 109 (1.27%) Presentation Skills
15 108 (1.26%) Electronics
16 97 (1.13%) Banking
17 72 (0.84%) Law
18 46 (0.54%) Police
19 45 (0.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 34 (0.40%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,207 (14.11%) Architect
2 822 (9.61%) Developer
3 725 (8.48%) Senior
4 655 (7.66%) Analyst
5 513 (6.00%) Lead
6 501 (5.86%) Consultant
7 358 (4.19%) DevOps Engineer
8 317 (3.71%) Data Engineer
9 245 (2.86%) Network Engineer
10 234 (2.74%) Business Analyst
11 224 (2.62%) Support Engineer
12 223 (2.61%) Software Engineer
13 220 (2.57%) Technical Architect
14 192 (2.24%) Solutions Architect
15 166 (1.94%) Tester
16 157 (1.84%) Project Manager
17 152 (1.78%) Azure Engineer
18 150 (1.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 149 (1.74%) Administrator
20 144 (1.68%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 328 (3.83%) REST
2 195 (2.28%) Node.js
3 190 (2.22%) Spring
4 177 (2.07%) React
5 163 (1.91%) Kafka
6 147 (1.72%) SOAP
7 142 (1.66%) LDAP
8 141 (1.65%) Spring Boot
9 136 (1.59%) JSON
10 130 (1.52%) .NET
11 110 (1.29%) AngularJS
12 109 (1.27%) HTML
13 105 (1.23%) RESTful
14 102 (1.19%) Web Services
15 98 (1.15%) OAuth
16 89 (1.04%) CSS
16 89 (1.04%) PySpark
17 88 (1.03%) Oracle Fusion
18 86 (1.01%) XML
19 79 (0.92%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 276 (3.23%) Data Centre
2 275 (3.22%) Product Ownership
3 241 (2.82%) Cloud Native
4 221 (2.58%) Onboarding
5 194 (2.27%) PKI
6 153 (1.79%) Management Information System
7 133 (1.56%) Security Posture
8 114 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
9 109 (1.27%) Legacy Systems
10 104 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
11 96 (1.12%) Replication
12 71 (0.83%) Hybrid Cloud
12 71 (0.83%) Public Cloud
13 65 (0.76%) Cyber Threat
14 64 (0.75%) Distributed Systems
14 64 (0.75%) Security Operations Centre
15 63 (0.74%) Driving Licence
16 56 (0.65%) Clustering
17 55 (0.64%) Data Structures
18 46 (0.54%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 820 (9.59%) Windows
2 629 (7.35%) Linux
3 216 (2.53%) Windows Server
4 148 (1.73%) Windows 10
5 122 (1.43%) Android
6 112 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 106 (1.24%) Unix
8 68 (0.80%) Mac OS
9 47 (0.55%) Apple iOS
10 45 (0.53%) Ubuntu
11 33 (0.39%) VMS
12 25 (0.29%) CentOS
12 25 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
13 20 (0.23%) Windows 7
14 19 (0.22%) Solaris
15 18 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
16 12 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
17 11 (0.13%) AIX
18 9 (0.11%) Windows Server 2003
19 8 (0.094%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,686 (19.71%) Agile
2 1,322 (15.46%) DevOps
3 1,138 (13.31%) CI/CD
4 1,067 (12.48%) Problem-Solving
5 800 (9.35%) Stakeholder Management
6 752 (8.79%) Migration
7 691 (8.08%) Continuous Improvement
8 608 (7.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 551 (6.44%) Cybersecurity
10 534 (6.24%) ITIL
11 509 (5.95%) Infrastructure as Code
12 482 (5.64%) Test Automation
13 475 (5.55%) Roadmaps
14 469 (5.48%) Analytics
15 441 (5.16%) Containerisation
16 420 (4.91%) Scrum
17 414 (4.84%) Software Engineering
18 410 (4.79%) Business Intelligence
19 398 (4.65%) Service Management
20 383 (4.48%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 991 (11.59%) Python
2 742 (8.68%) SQL
3 558 (6.52%) PowerShell
4 473 (5.53%) Java
5 369 (4.31%) JavaScript
6 205 (2.40%) Bash
7 180 (2.10%) C#
8 176 (2.06%) TypeScript
9 101 (1.18%) C++
10 93 (1.09%) PL/SQL
10 93 (1.09%) Shell Script
11 77 (0.90%) Go
12 63 (0.74%) C
13 52 (0.61%) Ruby
14 50 (0.58%) Ada
15 48 (0.56%) Scala
16 40 (0.47%) Kusto Query Language
17 39 (0.46%) Bicep
18 32 (0.37%) Apex Code
19 30 (0.35%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 6,484 (75.81%) SC Cleared
2 1,496 (17.49%) DV Cleared
3 433 (5.06%) Degree
4 255 (2.98%) BPSS Clearance
5 163 (1.91%) Cisco Certification
6 161 (1.88%) CISSP
7 123 (1.44%) Azure Certification
8 118 (1.38%) CCNP
9 113 (1.32%) AWS Certification
9 113 (1.32%) Microsoft Certification
10 100 (1.17%) CISM
11 74 (0.87%) Computer Science Degree
12 71 (0.83%) CCNA
13 63 (0.74%) ITIL Certification
14 61 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
15 48 (0.56%) PMP
16 45 (0.53%) GIAC
16 45 (0.53%) ISTQB
17 44 (0.51%) CEH
18 43 (0.50%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 297 (3.47%) QA
2 273 (3.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 261 (3.05%) NIST
4 225 (2.63%) Data Quality
5 198 (2.31%) NCSC
6 173 (2.02%) GDPR
7 153 (1.79%) Accessibility
8 116 (1.36%) SLA
9 103 (1.20%) PMO
10 65 (0.76%) GRC
11 55 (0.64%) JSP 440
12 42 (0.49%) WCAG
13 41 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials
14 39 (0.46%) Def Stans
15 34 (0.40%) NIST 800
16 31 (0.36%) COBIT
16 31 (0.36%) PCI DSS
17 23 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 23 (0.27%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 19 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 582 (6.80%) Docker
2 475 (5.55%) Active Directory
3 231 (2.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 79 (0.92%) VMware NSX
5 66 (0.77%) vSphere
6 59 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
6 59 (0.69%) VMware ESXi
7 54 (0.63%) Hyper-V
8 23 (0.27%) Firmware
9 22 (0.26%) Oracle RAC
10 21 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
11 19 (0.22%) BitLocker
12 17 (0.20%) NFS
13 16 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 11 (0.13%) Postfix
15 10 (0.12%) Squid
16 9 (0.11%) vCloud
17 6 (0.070%) Microsoft App-V
18 5 (0.058%) Terminal Services
18 5 (0.058%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 762 (8.91%) Kubernetes
2 682 (7.97%) Terraform
3 290 (3.39%) Ansible
4 214 (2.50%) Grafana
5 168 (1.96%) Prometheus
6 106 (1.24%) Single Sign-On
7 97 (1.13%) SCCM
8 87 (1.02%) vCenter Server
9 81 (0.95%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 66 (0.77%) Argo
10 66 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
11 42 (0.49%) FortiGate
12 39 (0.46%) Packer
13 38 (0.44%) Podman
14 31 (0.36%) Puppet
15 30 (0.35%) OPNET
16 29 (0.34%) Kibana
17 28 (0.33%) Progress Chef
18 25 (0.29%) Nmap
19 21 (0.25%) Consul
Vendors
1 1,010 (11.81%) Microsoft
2 487 (5.69%) Oracle
3 421 (4.92%) VMware
4 396 (4.63%) Cisco
5 371 (4.34%) SAP
6 365 (4.27%) ServiceNow
7 209 (2.44%) Splunk
8 179 (2.09%) Red Hat
9 130 (1.52%) Google
10 129 (1.51%) Databricks
11 128 (1.50%) Juniper
12 123 (1.44%) Atlassian
13 120 (1.40%) CyberArk
13 120 (1.40%) Palo Alto
14 113 (1.32%) Salesforce
15 93 (1.09%) Dell
16 88 (1.03%) IBM
17 83 (0.97%) Talend
18 80 (0.94%) HP
19 76 (0.89%) Aruba