Security Cleared Contract Job Trends in the North West

Security Clearance
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the North West with a requirement for Security Cleared qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 13 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 2 2
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 +4
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 525 396 493
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 21.14% 19.35% 18.31%
As % of the Qualifications category 61.12% 60.09% 59.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 355 214 361
10th Percentile £313 £288 £360
25th Percentile £425 £388 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £475 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.52% -13.64% +4.76%
75th Percentile £626 £575 £643
90th Percentile £700 £684 £701
England median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 55 19 36
10th Percentile £16.85 £29.65 £14.50
25th Percentile £22.39 £37.00 £37.48
Median hourly rate £50.00 £49.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% +6.11% +53.93%
75th Percentile £67.96 £74.16 £54.56
90th Percentile £74.26 £85.82 £73.75
England median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year -58.08% - -

All Academic and Professional Certifications
North West

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 the North West.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 859 659 833
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 34.60% 32.21% 30.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 576 354 542
10th Percentile £217 £250 £251
25th Percentile £380 £378 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -12.04% +5.88%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £645
90th Percentile £688 £675 £720
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 82 39 70
10th Percentile £18.88 £23.74 £16.08
25th Percentile £25.15 £31.25 £28.73
Median hourly rate £45.46 £37.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +22.86% -19.88% +59.24%
75th Percentile £66.75 £56.63 £49.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £81.63 £65.13
England median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £50.00
% change year-on-year -45.54% -7.64% +11.11%

Security Cleared
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Security Cleared relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Security Cleared job vacancy trend in the North West

Security Cleared
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Security Cleared.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Security Cleared

Security Cleared
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Security Cleared in the North West over the 6 months to 13 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Security Cleared in the North West

Security Cleared
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Security Cleared.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Security Cleared

Security Cleared
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Security Cleared in the North West over the 6 months to 13 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Security Cleared in the North West

Security Cleared
Contract Job Locations in the North West

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 North West region over the 6 months to 13 January 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
Manchester -2 169 £500 +8.70% 72
Cumbria 0 122 £500 - 18
Cheshire +9 116 £598 +40.71% 13
Lancashire 0 86 £550 +34.47% 40
Merseyside -4 23 £500 +143.90% 3
Security Cleared
England

Security Cleared
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West 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 17 (3.24%) Microsoft Exchange
2 9 (1.71%) SharePoint
3 7 (1.33%) Confluence
4 5 (0.95%) Skype for Business
5 4 (0.76%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.57%) Apache
6 3 (0.57%) MTS
7 2 (0.38%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 2 (0.38%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.38%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.19%) CMS
8 1 (0.19%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.19%) Resin
8 1 (0.19%) SAS
Applications
1 23 (4.38%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (1.90%) Siemens NX
3 9 (1.71%) Microsoft Excel
4 5 (0.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.19%) Adobe Premiere
5 1 (0.19%) PTC Creo
5 1 (0.19%) Quicktime
5 1 (0.19%) SPSS
5 1 (0.19%) Stata
Business Applications
1 60 (11.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (1.90%) SAP EHS
2 10 (1.90%) SAP VC
2 10 (1.90%) Teamcenter
3 9 (1.71%) SAP MM
3 9 (1.71%) SAP QM
4 2 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
4 2 (0.38%) SAP EWM
5 1 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
5 1 (0.19%) SAP HCM
5 1 (0.19%) SAP SD
5 1 (0.19%) SAP Travel Management
5 1 (0.19%) SAP WM
Cloud Services
1 63 (12.00%) AWS
2 45 (8.57%) Azure
3 30 (5.71%) Microsoft 365
4 18 (3.43%) GCP
4 18 (3.43%) SaaS
5 13 (2.48%) Power Platform
6 11 (2.10%) GitHub
7 10 (1.90%) Entra ID
8 9 (1.71%) Azure DevOps
8 9 (1.71%) Serverless
9 8 (1.52%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 7 (1.33%) Google Workspace
11 6 (1.14%) Amazon EKS
11 6 (1.14%) AWS CloudFormation
12 5 (0.95%) Amazon EC2
12 5 (0.95%) Amazon S3
12 5 (0.95%) Amazon SQS
12 5 (0.95%) AWS Lambda
12 5 (0.95%) GitHub Actions
12 5 (0.95%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 60 (11.43%) Firewall
2 28 (5.33%) VLAN
3 26 (4.95%) WAN
4 25 (4.76%) Wi-Fi
5 22 (4.19%) Network Security
6 19 (3.62%) DNS
7 15 (2.86%) SAN
8 14 (2.67%) TCP/IP
9 13 (2.48%) BGP
9 13 (2.48%) Cisco ISE
9 13 (2.48%) NetScaler
10 12 (2.29%) LAN
10 12 (2.29%) VPN
11 8 (1.52%) Software-Defined Networking
11 8 (1.52%) Unified Communications
12 7 (1.33%) DHCP
12 7 (1.33%) Internet
12 7 (1.33%) WebEx
12 7 (1.33%) Wireless
13 6 (1.14%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (2.86%) PostgreSQL
2 10 (1.90%) SAP HANA
3 9 (1.71%) NoSQL
3 9 (1.71%) Relational Database
4 8 (1.52%) MySQL
4 8 (1.52%) Power BI
5 7 (1.33%) DynamoDB
5 7 (1.33%) MongoDB
6 6 (1.14%) Data Warehouse
6 6 (1.14%) Redis
7 5 (0.95%) BigQuery
7 5 (0.95%) SQL Server
8 4 (0.76%) Metadata
8 4 (0.76%) RDBMS
9 3 (0.57%) Amazon Aurora
9 3 (0.57%) Amazon Redshift
9 3 (0.57%) Big Data
10 2 (0.38%) Amazon Athena
10 2 (0.38%) Amazon RDS
10 2 (0.38%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 26 (4.95%) Git
2 22 (4.19%) GitLab
3 18 (3.43%) JIRA
4 15 (2.86%) Jenkins
5 7 (1.33%) Rational DOORS
6 5 (0.95%) SonarQube
7 3 (0.57%) Artifactory
7 3 (0.57%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.38%) Gradle
8 2 (0.38%) Grunt
8 2 (0.38%) gulp
8 2 (0.38%) Jasmine
8 2 (0.38%) Maven
8 2 (0.38%) Mockito
8 2 (0.38%) MSI
8 2 (0.38%) Postman
8 2 (0.38%) Selenium
8 2 (0.38%) SonarLint
9 1 (0.19%) MLflow
9 1 (0.19%) REST Assured
General
1 167 (31.81%) Public Sector
2 120 (22.86%) Social Skills
3 44 (8.38%) Analytical Skills
4 32 (6.10%) Finance
5 26 (4.95%) Manufacturing
6 18 (3.43%) Military
7 11 (2.10%) Telecoms
8 10 (1.90%) Aerospace
8 10 (1.90%) Banking
8 10 (1.90%) Electronics
8 10 (1.90%) Legal
9 9 (1.71%) Documentation Skills
9 9 (1.71%) Marketing
10 7 (1.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 6 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
12 5 (0.95%) Organisational Skills
13 3 (0.57%) Presentation Skills
14 2 (0.38%) Aviation
15 1 (0.19%) Law
Job Titles
1 72 (13.71%) Consultant
2 68 (12.95%) Architect
3 45 (8.57%) Senior
4 43 (8.19%) Network Engineer
5 40 (7.62%) Developer
6 39 (7.43%) SAP Consultant
7 36 (6.86%) Analyst
8 23 (4.38%) Management Consultant
9 21 (4.00%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
10 20 (3.81%) Technical Architect
11 19 (3.62%) Lead
12 18 (3.43%) Administrator
13 17 (3.24%) DevOps Engineer
14 16 (3.05%) Platform Engineer
15 14 (2.67%) IT Support
15 14 (2.67%) Support Engineer
16 12 (2.29%) AWS Engineer
16 12 (2.29%) Software Engineer
17 11 (2.10%) Business Analyst
17 11 (2.10%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (4.00%) SAP Fiori
2 14 (2.67%) JSON
3 13 (2.48%) 802.1X
3 13 (2.48%) Spring Boot
4 12 (2.29%) Web Services
4 12 (2.29%) XML
5 11 (2.10%) HTML
5 11 (2.10%) Node.js
5 11 (2.10%) RESTful
5 11 (2.10%) Spring
6 10 (1.90%) BAPI
6 10 (1.90%) REST
7 9 (1.71%) CSS
8 8 (1.52%) Kafka
9 7 (1.33%) SOAP
10 6 (1.14%) AngularJS
10 6 (1.14%) Playwright
10 6 (1.14%) React
10 6 (1.14%) XMPP
11 5 (0.95%) Jest
Miscellaneous
1 54 (10.29%) Data Centre
2 31 (5.90%) Product Ownership
3 28 (5.33%) Onboarding
4 12 (2.29%) Analytical Mindset
4 12 (2.29%) Cyber Threat
5 9 (1.71%) Enterprise Software
6 7 (1.33%) Cloud Native
6 7 (1.33%) Replication
7 6 (1.14%) Driving Licence
7 6 (1.14%) Hybrid Cloud
8 5 (0.95%) Clustering
8 5 (0.95%) Distributed Systems
8 5 (0.95%) Fibre Optics
8 5 (0.95%) Low-Code
8 5 (0.95%) Video Conferencing
9 4 (0.76%) Legacy Systems
9 4 (0.76%) Mobile App
9 4 (0.76%) Operational Technology
9 4 (0.76%) SCADA
10 3 (0.57%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 59 (11.24%) Windows
2 36 (6.86%) Linux
3 19 (3.62%) Windows 10
4 18 (3.43%) Windows Server
5 15 (2.86%) Unix
6 11 (2.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 9 (1.71%) Solaris
8 8 (1.52%) Android
9 7 (1.33%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.95%) Windows 7
11 4 (0.76%) Apple iOS
12 2 (0.38%) Mac OS X
13 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 62 (11.81%) Agile
2 61 (11.62%) Problem-Solving
3 50 (9.52%) DevOps
3 50 (9.52%) Stakeholder Management
4 47 (8.95%) Cybersecurity
5 45 (8.57%) CI/CD
6 43 (8.19%) Migration
7 40 (7.62%) Containerisation
8 38 (7.24%) ITSM
9 35 (6.67%) Service Management
10 34 (6.48%) Mentoring
11 31 (5.90%) Continuous Improvement
11 31 (5.90%) Project Delivery
12 30 (5.71%) User Experience
13 29 (5.52%) Change Management
13 29 (5.52%) High Availability
13 29 (5.52%) Validation
14 27 (5.14%) Test Automation
15 26 (4.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 24 (4.57%) Customer Service
Programming Languages
1 66 (12.57%) Python
2 37 (7.05%) PowerShell
3 33 (6.29%) Java
4 24 (4.57%) Bash
5 16 (3.05%) Perl
6 14 (2.67%) SQL
7 12 (2.29%) JavaScript
8 11 (2.10%) ABAP
9 10 (1.90%) TypeScript
10 8 (1.52%) C++
11 5 (0.95%) VB
11 5 (0.95%) VBScript
12 4 (0.76%) C
12 4 (0.76%) Ruby
13 3 (0.57%) Go
14 2 (0.38%) AWK
14 2 (0.38%) C#
14 2 (0.38%) Kusto Query Language
14 2 (0.38%) PHP
14 2 (0.38%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 401 (76.38%) SC Cleared
2 70 (13.33%) BPSS Clearance
3 30 (5.71%) Degree
4 25 (4.76%) CCNP
4 25 (4.76%) Cisco Certification
5 23 (4.38%) DV Cleared
6 19 (3.62%) CCNA
7 9 (1.71%) CCDP
7 9 (1.71%) Computer Science Degree
8 8 (1.52%) Microsoft Certification
9 7 (1.33%) CISM
9 7 (1.33%) CISSP
10 6 (1.14%) CTC Cleared
10 6 (1.14%) ITIL Certification
11 5 (0.95%) Azure Certification
11 5 (0.95%) BC Cleared
11 5 (0.95%) CompTIA Security+
11 5 (0.95%) DBS Check
11 5 (0.95%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 4 (0.76%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (3.43%) NIST
2 14 (2.67%) Accessibility
3 8 (1.52%) SLA
4 7 (1.33%) Data Quality
4 7 (1.33%) NCSC
5 5 (0.95%) QA
6 4 (0.76%) IEC 61508
6 4 (0.76%) ISO 26262
6 4 (0.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (0.76%) WCAG
7 3 (0.57%) IEC 62304
7 3 (0.57%) IFRS
7 3 (0.57%) PMO
8 2 (0.38%) GDPR
8 2 (0.38%) IEC 61131
8 2 (0.38%) IFRS 17
8 2 (0.38%) PSD2
9 1 (0.19%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.19%) ISO 20022
9 1 (0.19%) SEPA
System Software
1 36 (6.86%) Docker
2 27 (5.14%) Active Directory
3 14 (2.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (0.95%) BitLocker
4 5 (0.95%) vSphere
5 4 (0.76%) Firmware
5 4 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (0.76%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.38%) ISA Server
7 1 (0.19%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 36 (6.86%) Kubernetes
2 35 (6.67%) Terraform
3 22 (4.19%) SCCM
4 15 (2.86%) Microsoft Intune
5 14 (2.67%) Ansible
6 6 (1.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 6 (1.14%) vCenter Server
7 5 (0.95%) Norton AntiVirus
8 4 (0.76%) Grafana
8 4 (0.76%) Nessus
8 4 (0.76%) SELinux
9 3 (0.57%) FortiGate
9 3 (0.57%) Podman
9 3 (0.57%) Prometheus
10 2 (0.38%) Packer
11 1 (0.19%) AirWatch
11 1 (0.19%) Cisco CUCM
11 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Clustering
11 1 (0.19%) QRadar
11 1 (0.19%) vRealize
Vendors
1 82 (15.62%) SAP
2 67 (12.76%) Cisco
2 67 (12.76%) Microsoft
3 37 (7.05%) Palo Alto
4 31 (5.90%) Oracle
5 27 (5.14%) ServiceNow
6 20 (3.81%) VMware
7 18 (3.43%) Meraki
8 12 (2.29%) Adobe
9 11 (2.10%) Citrix
9 11 (2.10%) Dell
9 11 (2.10%) Google
9 11 (2.10%) Red Hat
9 11 (2.10%) Siemens
10 8 (1.52%) Splunk
11 7 (1.33%) HP
12 6 (1.14%) Apple
12 6 (1.14%) IBM
12 6 (1.14%) NetApp
12 6 (1.14%) Symantec