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

6 months to
30 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 3 3
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +2
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 8,869 4,596 7,210
As % of all contract jobs in England 23.38% 18.80% 19.14%
As % of the Qualifications category 69.42% 60.06% 61.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,042 3,050 4,693
10th Percentile £363 £325 £353
25th Percentile £445 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £630 £650
90th Percentile £725 £700 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £537 £550
% change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -1.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 766 260 470
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.82 £25.26 £21.46
Median hourly rate £47.50 £58.25 £52.77
Median % change year-on-year -18.45% +10.40% -12.06%
75th Percentile £71.50 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.36 £77.59 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £48.72 £54.99 £53.50
% change year-on-year -11.40% +2.79% -10.83%

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 12,776 7,652 11,789
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.68% 31.29% 31.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,492 4,906 7,325
10th Percentile £338 £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 £620 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.89% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 987 434 917
10th Percentile £16.35 £18.50 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.35 £25.25 £17.80
Median hourly rate £35.91 £50.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.18% +33.33% -25.00%
75th Percentile £69.00 £68.00 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.36 £81.88 £75.25
UK median hourly rate £36.00 £42.50 £37.50
% change year-on-year -15.29% +13.33% -28.57%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 3,108 £525 - 519
South East +1 2,080 £525 -4.55% 548
South West 0 1,318 £538 -4.70% 389
Midlands +3 879 £485 -9.68% 175
North of England -1 844 £481 -2.88% 305
West Midlands +2 721 £492 -10.55% 128
North West -2 517 £492 -1.60% 169
East of England 0 358 £492 +9.33% 158
Yorkshire -3 207 £494 -5.95% 72
East Midlands +1 154 £450 -11.11% 46
North East 0 153 £450 -3.74% 65
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
1 354 (3.99%) Confluence
2 204 (2.30%) SharePoint
3 131 (1.48%) SAS
4 123 (1.39%) Microsoft Exchange
5 75 (0.85%) Apache Spark
6 73 (0.82%) Apache
7 48 (0.54%) Apache Airflow
8 39 (0.44%) nginx
9 35 (0.39%) WebLogic
10 24 (0.27%) Skype for Business
11 20 (0.23%) Jupyter
12 16 (0.18%) IIS
13 15 (0.17%) CMS
14 14 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
14 14 (0.16%) Tuxedo
15 11 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
16 10 (0.11%) Tomcat
17 9 (0.10%) ArcGIS
18 6 (0.068%) JBoss
18 6 (0.068%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 233 (2.63%) Microsoft Office
2 189 (2.13%) Microsoft Excel
3 123 (1.39%) Microsoft Project
4 69 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 44 (0.50%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.12%) Simulink
8 5 (0.056%) Adobe XD
8 5 (0.056%) Siemens NX
8 5 (0.056%) Sketch
8 5 (0.056%) Windchill
9 3 (0.034%) Chatbot
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 85 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.46%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 38 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
4 27 (0.30%) Teamcenter
5 26 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
6 25 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
7 16 (0.18%) Maximo
8 14 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.15%) SAP PP
10 12 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
10 12 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
10 12 (0.14%) Temenos T24
11 9 (0.10%) Findur
11 9 (0.10%) SAP HCM
11 9 (0.10%) SAP MM
11 9 (0.10%) SAP PSCD
12 8 (0.090%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 8 (0.090%) Primavera
12 8 (0.090%) SAP ERP
12 8 (0.090%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,472 (16.60%) Azure
2 1,442 (16.26%) AWS
3 404 (4.56%) GitHub
4 367 (4.14%) GCP
5 353 (3.98%) Azure DevOps
6 303 (3.42%) Power Platform
7 265 (2.99%) Microsoft 365
8 253 (2.85%) Serverless
9 219 (2.47%) Entra ID
10 209 (2.36%) GitHub Actions
11 192 (2.16%) Amazon S3
12 167 (1.88%) AWS Lambda
12 167 (1.88%) OpenShift
13 133 (1.50%) Amazon EC2
14 118 (1.33%) PaaS
15 117 (1.32%) AWS CloudFormation
16 113 (1.27%) IaaS
17 108 (1.22%) Azure Data Factory
18 99 (1.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 97 (1.09%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 421 (4.75%) Firewall
2 245 (2.76%) DNS
3 213 (2.40%) Network Security
4 205 (2.31%) WAN
5 180 (2.03%) LAN
6 169 (1.91%) VPN
7 143 (1.61%) BGP
8 123 (1.39%) DHCP
9 121 (1.36%) TCP/IP
10 107 (1.21%) OSPF
11 89 (1.00%) VLAN
12 88 (0.99%) Wireless
13 75 (0.85%) Wi-Fi
14 64 (0.72%) MPLS
15 52 (0.59%) SAN
16 49 (0.55%) IPsec
17 47 (0.53%) Cisco ISE
18 41 (0.46%) SSL
19 39 (0.44%) SD-WAN
19 39 (0.44%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 229 (2.58%) PostgreSQL
2 222 (2.50%) Power BI
3 160 (1.80%) SQL Server
4 157 (1.77%) Data Warehouse
5 118 (1.33%) Metadata
6 102 (1.15%) Amazon RDS
7 101 (1.14%) Oracle Database
8 93 (1.05%) NoSQL
9 90 (1.01%) MongoDB
10 85 (0.96%) Relational Database
11 79 (0.89%) Azure SQL Database
12 70 (0.79%) Elasticsearch
13 66 (0.74%) Data Lake
13 66 (0.74%) MySQL
14 63 (0.71%) Pentaho
15 58 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
16 50 (0.56%) Tableau
17 47 (0.53%) Big Data
18 42 (0.47%) Oracle Reports
19 40 (0.45%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 557 (6.28%) JIRA
2 451 (5.09%) Git
3 370 (4.17%) Jenkins
4 312 (3.52%) GitLab
5 102 (1.15%) Selenium
6 84 (0.95%) JUnit
7 72 (0.81%) Postman
8 55 (0.62%) Rational DOORS
8 55 (0.62%) SonarQube
9 52 (0.59%) Bitbucket
10 47 (0.53%) Maven
11 46 (0.52%) Artifactory
12 45 (0.51%) Cypress.io
13 41 (0.46%) Cucumber
13 41 (0.46%) Oracle APEX
14 37 (0.42%) Mockito
15 34 (0.38%) JMeter
16 28 (0.32%) Visual Studio
17 27 (0.30%) REST Assured
18 21 (0.24%) MSI
General
1 2,151 (24.25%) Public Sector
2 2,076 (23.41%) Social Skills
3 757 (8.54%) Analytical Skills
4 656 (7.40%) Finance
5 313 (3.53%) Military
6 249 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
7 218 (2.46%) Aerospace
8 157 (1.77%) Telecoms
9 154 (1.74%) Manufacturing
10 152 (1.71%) Legal
11 113 (1.27%) Banking
11 113 (1.27%) Influencing Skills
12 104 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
12 104 (1.17%) Presentation Skills
13 100 (1.13%) Marketing
14 94 (1.06%) Electronics
15 78 (0.88%) Law
16 52 (0.59%) Police
17 48 (0.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 31 (0.35%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 1,312 (14.79%) Architect
2 836 (9.43%) Developer
3 776 (8.75%) Senior
4 659 (7.43%) Analyst
5 552 (6.22%) Lead
6 481 (5.42%) Consultant
7 357 (4.03%) Data Engineer
8 356 (4.01%) DevOps Engineer
9 265 (2.99%) Network Engineer
10 256 (2.89%) Software Engineer
11 242 (2.73%) Technical Architect
12 239 (2.69%) Business Analyst
13 210 (2.37%) Solutions Architect
14 184 (2.07%) Support Engineer
15 183 (2.06%) Project Manager
16 172 (1.94%) Azure Engineer
17 168 (1.89%) Delivery Manager
18 165 (1.86%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 161 (1.82%) Security Architect
20 154 (1.74%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 347 (3.91%) REST
2 191 (2.15%) Spring
3 177 (2.00%) Node.js
4 174 (1.96%) Kafka
5 166 (1.87%) React
6 151 (1.70%) JSON
7 149 (1.68%) Spring Boot
8 144 (1.62%) .NET
9 143 (1.61%) SOAP
10 141 (1.59%) LDAP
11 126 (1.42%) RESTful
12 111 (1.25%) AngularJS
13 101 (1.14%) Web Services
14 98 (1.10%) PySpark
15 96 (1.08%) OAuth
16 95 (1.07%) HTML
17 88 (0.99%) Oracle Fusion
18 87 (0.98%) XML
19 78 (0.88%) CSS
20 77 (0.87%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 315 (3.55%) Product Ownership
2 270 (3.04%) Data Centre
3 258 (2.91%) Cloud Native
4 227 (2.56%) Onboarding
5 194 (2.19%) PKI
6 155 (1.75%) Management Information System
7 130 (1.47%) Security Posture
8 120 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
9 116 (1.31%) Legacy Systems
10 110 (1.24%) Enterprise Software
11 109 (1.23%) Replication
12 87 (0.98%) Distributed Systems
13 73 (0.82%) Hybrid Cloud
14 72 (0.81%) Public Cloud
15 71 (0.80%) Data Structures
16 68 (0.77%) Cyber Threat
17 66 (0.74%) Security Operations Centre
18 61 (0.69%) Clustering
19 55 (0.62%) CMDB
20 54 (0.61%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 795 (8.96%) Windows
2 644 (7.26%) Linux
3 224 (2.53%) Windows Server
4 118 (1.33%) Windows 10
5 115 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 113 (1.27%) Android
7 112 (1.26%) Unix
8 58 (0.65%) Mac OS
9 44 (0.50%) Apple iOS
10 40 (0.45%) Ubuntu
11 31 (0.35%) VMS
12 25 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
13 20 (0.23%) CentOS
14 19 (0.21%) Solaris
15 18 (0.20%) Windows 7
15 18 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
16 16 (0.18%) AIX
17 11 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
18 8 (0.090%) Embedded Linux
19 7 (0.079%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,801 (20.31%) Agile
2 1,345 (15.17%) DevOps
3 1,172 (13.21%) CI/CD
4 1,072 (12.09%) Problem-Solving
5 838 (9.45%) Stakeholder Management
6 757 (8.54%) Migration
7 751 (8.47%) Continuous Improvement
8 660 (7.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 588 (6.63%) ITIL
10 574 (6.47%) Cybersecurity
11 545 (6.14%) Infrastructure as Code
12 518 (5.84%) Analytics
13 506 (5.71%) Test Automation
14 495 (5.58%) Roadmaps
15 470 (5.30%) Containerisation
16 466 (5.25%) Software Engineering
17 453 (5.11%) Scrum
18 433 (4.88%) Data Modelling
19 428 (4.83%) Service Management
20 396 (4.46%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 1,019 (11.49%) Python
2 783 (8.83%) SQL
3 558 (6.29%) PowerShell
4 508 (5.73%) Java
5 338 (3.81%) JavaScript
6 200 (2.26%) Bash
7 181 (2.04%) C#
8 152 (1.71%) TypeScript
9 99 (1.12%) C++
10 98 (1.10%) PL/SQL
11 93 (1.05%) Shell Script
12 68 (0.77%) Go
13 62 (0.70%) C
14 56 (0.63%) Ruby
15 54 (0.61%) Scala
16 45 (0.51%) Ada
16 45 (0.51%) Bicep
17 40 (0.45%) Kusto Query Language
18 39 (0.44%) Apex Code
19 35 (0.39%) R
Qualifications
1 6,669 (75.19%) SC Cleared
2 1,630 (18.38%) DV Cleared
3 428 (4.83%) Degree
4 251 (2.83%) BPSS Clearance
5 168 (1.89%) Cisco Certification
6 167 (1.88%) CISSP
7 126 (1.42%) Azure Certification
8 116 (1.31%) CCNP
9 110 (1.24%) AWS Certification
10 104 (1.17%) CISM
11 103 (1.16%) Microsoft Certification
12 69 (0.78%) CCNA
13 64 (0.72%) Computer Science Degree
13 64 (0.72%) ITIL Certification
14 63 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
15 57 (0.64%) PMP
16 50 (0.56%) PMI Certification
17 49 (0.55%) GIAC
18 47 (0.53%) ISTQB
19 46 (0.52%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 315 (3.55%) QA
2 289 (3.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 278 (3.13%) NIST
4 251 (2.83%) Data Quality
5 200 (2.26%) NCSC
6 170 (1.92%) GDPR
7 140 (1.58%) Accessibility
8 119 (1.34%) PMO
9 108 (1.22%) SLA
10 65 (0.73%) JSP 440
11 59 (0.67%) GRC
12 45 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
13 41 (0.46%) WCAG
14 38 (0.43%) COBIT
14 38 (0.43%) NIST 800
15 33 (0.37%) Def Stans
16 32 (0.36%) PCI DSS
17 26 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 24 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 22 (0.25%) RMADS
System Software
1 596 (6.72%) Docker
2 436 (4.92%) Active Directory
3 247 (2.78%) VMware Infrastructure
4 88 (0.99%) VMware NSX
5 71 (0.80%) vSphere
6 68 (0.77%) VMware ESXi
7 59 (0.67%) Hyper-V
8 54 (0.61%) Virtual Machines
9 30 (0.34%) Firmware
10 23 (0.26%) Oracle RAC
11 22 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
12 21 (0.24%) BitLocker
13 17 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 14 (0.16%) NFS
15 11 (0.12%) Postfix
15 11 (0.12%) vCloud
16 10 (0.11%) Squid
17 7 (0.079%) Microsoft App-V
18 4 (0.045%) Snort
18 4 (0.045%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 770 (8.68%) Kubernetes
2 691 (7.79%) Terraform
3 297 (3.35%) Ansible
4 223 (2.51%) Grafana
5 184 (2.07%) Prometheus
6 101 (1.14%) Single Sign-On
7 88 (0.99%) vCenter Server
8 85 (0.96%) SCCM
9 76 (0.86%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 61 (0.69%) Argo
10 61 (0.69%) Microsoft Intune
11 47 (0.53%) FortiGate
12 38 (0.43%) Podman
13 37 (0.42%) Packer
14 35 (0.39%) Progress Chef
15 34 (0.38%) Puppet
16 30 (0.34%) OPNET
17 24 (0.27%) Kibana
17 24 (0.27%) Oracle RMAN
18 21 (0.24%) Nagios
Vendors
1 976 (11.00%) Microsoft
2 509 (5.74%) Oracle
3 449 (5.06%) VMware
4 390 (4.40%) Cisco
5 366 (4.13%) ServiceNow
6 338 (3.81%) SAP
7 214 (2.41%) Splunk
8 177 (2.00%) Red Hat
9 169 (1.91%) Databricks
10 135 (1.52%) Google
11 129 (1.45%) Salesforce
12 127 (1.43%) Juniper
13 126 (1.42%) Atlassian
14 120 (1.35%) Palo Alto
15 119 (1.34%) CyberArk
16 116 (1.31%) IBM
17 87 (0.98%) Talend
18 86 (0.97%) Dell
19 83 (0.94%) Remedy
20 77 (0.87%) Aruba