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 3 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -2 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 519 420 462
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 16.64% 21.59% 16.49%
As % of the Qualifications category 57.10% 59.66% 54.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 342 241 301
10th Percentile £343 £230 £375
25th Percentile £413 £412 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year - -2.91% -1.90%
75th Percentile £613 £583 £650
90th Percentile £701 £650 £725
England median daily rate £525 £540 £550
% change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 57 20 67
10th Percentile £22.68 £25.26 -
25th Percentile £28.50 £35.44 £10.95
Median hourly rate £60.61 £59.29 £24.19
Median % change year-on-year +2.23% +145.10% -28.33%
75th Percentile £74.26 £74.38 £46.18
90th Percentile £74.87 £85.80 £67.75
England median hourly rate £48.72 £58.04 £53.03
% change year-on-year -16.06% +9.45% -11.62%

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 909 704 852
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 29.14% 36.20% 30.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 602 407 498
10th Percentile £307 £223 £263
25th Percentile £381 £389 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £490 £510
Median % change year-on-year -3.06% -3.92% +1.80%
75th Percentile £582 £578 £650
90th Percentile £675 £653 £725
England median daily rate £520 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 89 45 127
10th Percentile £22.68 £22.59 £10.95
25th Percentile £30.00 £25.26 £11.77
Median hourly rate £45.46 £32.50 £16.06
Median % change year-on-year +39.88% +102.37% -57.17%
75th Percentile £71.50 £60.00 £43.75
90th Percentile £74.57 £82.28 £50.60
England median hourly rate £37.31 £50.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year -25.38% +33.33% -25.00%

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 3 April 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 3 April 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 3 April 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 -7 162 £480 -4.00% 107
Lancashire +2 126 £580 +33.26% 48
Cumbria 0 116 £494 -8.50% 14
Cheshire -3 81 £450 +28.57% 17
Merseyside -19 25 £563 +2.27% 4
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 26 (5.01%) Microsoft Exchange
2 9 (1.73%) Skype for Business
3 8 (1.54%) Confluence
4 7 (1.35%) SharePoint
5 6 (1.16%) Apache Spark
6 5 (0.96%) Apache
7 4 (0.77%) Jupyter
8 3 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
8 3 (0.58%) MTS
9 2 (0.39%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 2 (0.39%) CICS
9 2 (0.39%) OpenStack
10 1 (0.19%) CMS
10 1 (0.19%) nginx
10 1 (0.19%) SAS
Applications
1 21 (4.05%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (1.93%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (1.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.58%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.39%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.39%) Siemens NX
6 1 (0.19%) Adobe Premiere
6 1 (0.19%) Quicktime
Business Applications
1 10 (1.93%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.96%) SAP VC
3 3 (0.58%) SAP MM
3 3 (0.58%) SAP QM
4 2 (0.39%) Oracle Payables
4 2 (0.39%) Primavera
4 2 (0.39%) Remedy ITSM
4 2 (0.39%) Teamcenter
5 1 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 74 (14.26%) AWS
2 45 (8.67%) Azure
3 24 (4.62%) Microsoft 365
4 17 (3.28%) GCP
5 14 (2.70%) Power Platform
6 13 (2.50%) Entra ID
7 12 (2.31%) GitHub
8 11 (2.12%) Serverless
9 9 (1.73%) Azure DevOps
10 8 (1.54%) Amazon EKS
11 7 (1.35%) Amazon S3
12 5 (0.96%) Azure Monitor
13 4 (0.77%) Amazon EC2
13 4 (0.77%) AWS CloudFormation
13 4 (0.77%) AWS Lambda
13 4 (0.77%) GitHub Actions
13 4 (0.77%) OneDrive
13 4 (0.77%) OpenShift
13 4 (0.77%) SaaS
14 3 (0.58%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 71 (13.68%) Firewall
2 42 (8.09%) VLAN
3 30 (5.78%) WAN
4 27 (5.20%) Wi-Fi
5 24 (4.62%) DNS
6 23 (4.43%) Network Security
7 18 (3.47%) LAN
8 16 (3.08%) DHCP
8 16 (3.08%) VPN
9 15 (2.89%) SAN
9 15 (2.89%) Wireless
10 13 (2.50%) BGP
11 12 (2.31%) TCP/IP
12 10 (1.93%) Cisco ISE
12 10 (1.93%) NetScaler
12 10 (1.93%) WebEx
13 9 (1.73%) Skype
14 8 (1.54%) Software-Defined Networking
15 7 (1.35%) Cisco IOS
15 7 (1.35%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (3.66%) PostgreSQL
2 14 (2.70%) Power BI
3 11 (2.12%) MySQL
3 11 (2.12%) SQL Server
4 10 (1.93%) MongoDB
4 10 (1.93%) NoSQL
5 9 (1.73%) Elasticsearch
5 9 (1.73%) Relational Database
6 8 (1.54%) Oracle Database
7 6 (1.16%) Metadata
7 6 (1.16%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 5 (0.96%) Oracle Database 12c
9 4 (0.77%) Data Warehouse
9 4 (0.77%) Hadoop
9 4 (0.77%) Tableau
10 3 (0.58%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (0.58%) Data Lake
10 3 (0.58%) RDBMS
11 2 (0.39%) BigQuery
11 2 (0.39%) DataStage
Development Applications
1 25 (4.82%) GitLab
2 18 (3.47%) Git
3 13 (2.50%) JIRA
4 7 (1.35%) Jenkins
5 4 (0.77%) Postman
5 4 (0.77%) Selenium
6 3 (0.58%) MSI
6 3 (0.58%) REST Assured
7 2 (0.39%) Cucumber
7 2 (0.39%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.39%) Gatling
7 2 (0.39%) Jasmine
7 2 (0.39%) JMeter
7 2 (0.39%) Mockito
7 2 (0.39%) Serenity BDD
7 2 (0.39%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.19%) CircleCI
8 1 (0.19%) InstallShield
8 1 (0.19%) Mocha
8 1 (0.19%) Rational DOORS
General
1 155 (29.87%) Public Sector
2 118 (22.74%) Social Skills
3 38 (7.32%) Finance
4 35 (6.74%) Analytical Skills
5 22 (4.24%) Documentation Skills
6 21 (4.05%) Military
7 17 (3.28%) Legal
8 12 (2.31%) Aerospace
8 12 (2.31%) Banking
9 10 (1.93%) Manufacturing
10 7 (1.35%) Presentation Skills
11 5 (0.96%) Electronics
11 5 (0.96%) Marketing
11 5 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
11 5 (0.96%) Telecoms
12 4 (0.77%) Aviation
12 4 (0.77%) Influencing Skills
13 3 (0.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 2 (0.39%) Corporate Banking
14 2 (0.39%) Law
Job Titles
1 70 (13.49%) Architect
2 53 (10.21%) Developer
3 45 (8.67%) Network Engineer
4 39 (7.51%) Lead
5 34 (6.55%) Senior
6 31 (5.97%) Analyst
7 26 (5.01%) Administrator
8 23 (4.43%) Consultant
9 22 (4.24%) Platform Engineer
10 21 (4.05%) Technical Architect
11 20 (3.85%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 18 (3.47%) DBA
13 14 (2.70%) Data Engineer
13 14 (2.70%) DevOps Engineer
14 13 (2.50%) Engagement Manager
14 13 (2.50%) Software Engineer
14 13 (2.50%) Support Engineer
15 12 (2.31%) Business Analyst
15 12 (2.31%) Coordinator
15 12 (2.31%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (4.82%) Spring
2 22 (4.24%) Spring Boot
3 16 (3.08%) 802.1X
4 13 (2.50%) Kafka
4 13 (2.50%) RESTful
5 10 (1.93%) Node.js
6 9 (1.73%) XMPP
7 7 (1.35%) HTML
7 7 (1.35%) JSON
7 7 (1.35%) Playwright
8 6 (1.16%) Apache NiFi
8 6 (1.16%) CSS
8 6 (1.16%) Hibernate
8 6 (1.16%) OAuth
8 6 (1.16%) React
8 6 (1.16%) REST
8 6 (1.16%) XML
9 5 (0.96%) Jest
9 5 (0.96%) OAuth2
9 5 (0.96%) Spring MVC
Miscellaneous
1 49 (9.44%) Data Centre
2 38 (7.32%) Product Ownership
3 18 (3.47%) Onboarding
4 16 (3.08%) Replication
5 14 (2.70%) Clustering
6 12 (2.31%) Cyber Threat
7 10 (1.93%) Operational Technology
8 8 (1.54%) Cloud Native
9 6 (1.16%) Enterprise Software
9 6 (1.16%) Private Cloud
10 5 (0.96%) Driving Licence
10 5 (0.96%) Fat Client
10 5 (0.96%) Mobile App
10 5 (0.96%) Security Posture
10 5 (0.96%) Thin Client
11 4 (0.77%) Legacy Systems
11 4 (0.77%) Management Information System
12 3 (0.58%) Handset
12 3 (0.58%) PKI
12 3 (0.58%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 60 (11.56%) Windows
2 40 (7.71%) Linux
3 23 (4.43%) Windows Server
4 21 (4.05%) Windows 10
5 16 (3.08%) Unix
6 14 (2.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 11 (2.12%) Solaris
8 9 (1.73%) Windows 7
9 6 (1.16%) Android
10 4 (0.77%) Mac OS
11 3 (0.58%) AIX
11 3 (0.58%) Apple iOS
12 2 (0.39%) Mac OS X
12 2 (0.39%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 71 (13.68%) Agile
2 64 (12.33%) Problem-Solving
3 52 (10.02%) ITSM
4 51 (9.83%) DevOps
5 49 (9.44%) Service Management
6 48 (9.25%) CI/CD
6 48 (9.25%) Continuous Improvement
7 47 (9.06%) Cybersecurity
8 44 (8.48%) Project Delivery
9 43 (8.29%) Migration
10 42 (8.09%) High Availability
10 42 (8.09%) Stakeholder Management
11 36 (6.94%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 34 (6.55%) Containerisation
13 33 (6.36%) Risk Management
14 32 (6.17%) Platform Engineering
15 31 (5.97%) Disaster Recovery
16 29 (5.59%) Test Automation
17 28 (5.39%) Technical Leadership
18 27 (5.20%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 56 (10.79%) Python
2 52 (10.02%) PowerShell
3 44 (8.48%) Java
4 25 (4.82%) SQL
5 19 (3.66%) Bash
6 16 (3.08%) JavaScript
7 13 (2.50%) Perl
8 12 (2.31%) TypeScript
9 9 (1.73%) VB
9 9 (1.73%) VBScript
10 5 (0.96%) Rust
11 4 (0.77%) Ruby
12 3 (0.58%) C#
12 3 (0.58%) Go
13 2 (0.39%) AWK
13 2 (0.39%) COBOL
13 2 (0.39%) Kotlin
13 2 (0.39%) Kusto Query Language
14 1 (0.19%) Bicep
14 1 (0.19%) Scala
Qualifications
1 343 (66.09%) SC Cleared
2 71 (13.68%) DV Cleared
3 52 (10.02%) BPSS Clearance
4 38 (7.32%) Cisco Certification
5 36 (6.94%) Degree
6 35 (6.74%) CCNP
7 32 (6.17%) CCNA
8 14 (2.70%) CISSP
9 13 (2.50%) Microsoft Certification
10 11 (2.12%) Computer Science Degree
11 8 (1.54%) AWS Certification
11 8 (1.54%) CCDP
11 8 (1.54%) CISM
11 8 (1.54%) ITIL Certification
11 8 (1.54%) MCSA
11 8 (1.54%) MCSE
11 8 (1.54%) VCAP
11 8 (1.54%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 6 (1.16%) Network+ Certification
12 6 (1.16%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (5.01%) NIST
2 16 (3.08%) QA
3 15 (2.89%) Accessibility
4 14 (2.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 12 (2.31%) SLA
6 11 (2.12%) JSP 440
7 8 (1.54%) NCSC
8 6 (1.16%) Data Quality
9 5 (0.96%) GDPR
9 5 (0.96%) PMO
10 4 (0.77%) GRC
10 4 (0.77%) WCAG
11 3 (0.58%) IFRS
12 2 (0.39%) IFRS 17
12 2 (0.39%) NIST 800
12 2 (0.39%) PCI DSS
12 2 (0.39%) PSD2
13 1 (0.19%) Basel III
13 1 (0.19%) CRD IV
13 1 (0.19%) RMADS
System Software
1 32 (6.17%) Docker
2 28 (5.39%) Active Directory
3 20 (3.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 11 (2.12%) vSphere
5 10 (1.93%) Virtual Machines
5 10 (1.93%) VMware ESXi
6 9 (1.73%) BitLocker
7 4 (0.77%) Firmware
8 2 (0.39%) ISA Server
9 1 (0.19%) GPFS
9 1 (0.19%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.19%) NFS
9 1 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 32 (6.17%) Kubernetes
2 30 (5.78%) Terraform
3 16 (3.08%) SCCM
4 14 (2.70%) Ansible
5 9 (1.73%) vCenter Server
6 8 (1.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 8 (1.54%) Grafana
7 6 (1.16%) Oracle RMAN
7 6 (1.16%) Prometheus
8 5 (0.96%) Microsoft Intune
9 3 (0.58%) FortiGate
9 3 (0.58%) Norton AntiVirus
10 2 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
11 1 (0.19%) Cisco CUCM
11 1 (0.19%) Cisco Prime
11 1 (0.19%) Data Guard
11 1 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
11 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Clustering
11 1 (0.19%) vRealize
11 1 (0.19%) VxRail
Vendors
1 74 (14.26%) Cisco
2 69 (13.29%) Microsoft
3 37 (7.13%) Palo Alto
4 36 (6.94%) SAP
5 34 (6.55%) Oracle
6 31 (5.97%) ServiceNow
7 25 (4.82%) VMware
8 14 (2.70%) Citrix
8 14 (2.70%) Meraki
9 11 (2.12%) Red Hat
10 8 (1.54%) Aruba
11 7 (1.35%) Dell
12 6 (1.16%) CheckPoint
12 6 (1.16%) Ekahau
12 6 (1.16%) IBM
12 6 (1.16%) Splunk
13 5 (0.96%) HP
13 5 (0.96%) Juniper
13 5 (0.96%) SolarWinds
14 4 (0.77%) EMC