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

6 months to
31 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 2 2
Rank change year-on-year -2 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 524 427 461
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 16.83% 21.76% 16.35%
As % of the Qualifications category 57.33% 59.89% 53.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 343 239 300
10th Percentile £344 £230 £374
25th Percentile £413 £412 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year - -2.91% -1.90%
75th Percentile £612 £579 £649
90th Percentile £701 £650 £725
England median daily rate £525 £543 £550
% change year-on-year -3.23% -1.36% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 19 67
10th Percentile £22.68 £25.26 -
25th Percentile £28.50 £33.88 £10.95
Median hourly rate £60.61 £60.00 £24.19
Median % change year-on-year +1.02% +148.04% -28.33%
75th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £46.18
90th Percentile £74.57 £85.82 £67.75
England median hourly rate £47.50 £57.50 £52.77
% change year-on-year -17.39% +8.97% -12.06%

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 914 713 854
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 29.36% 36.34% 30.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 606 405 497
10th Percentile £284 £211 £261
25th Percentile £380 £388 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £510
Median % change year-on-year -0.11% -6.86% +1.90%
75th Percentile £581 £575 £650
90th Percentile £675 £650 £725
England median daily rate £520 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 90 45 129
10th Percentile £22.56 £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 £70.99 £60.00 £43.75
90th Percentile £74.41 £82.28 £50.30
England median hourly rate £36.85 £50.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year -26.30% +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 31 March 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 31 March 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 31 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
Manchester -6 163 £476 -4.90% 107
Lancashire +2 126 £580 +33.26% 48
Cumbria 0 117 £494 -6.24% 14
Cheshire -6 82 £450 +28.57% 17
Merseyside -10 27 £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 (4.96%) Microsoft Exchange
2 9 (1.72%) Confluence
2 9 (1.72%) Skype for Business
3 8 (1.53%) SharePoint
4 6 (1.15%) Apache Spark
5 5 (0.95%) Apache
6 3 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.57%) Jupyter
6 3 (0.57%) MTS
7 2 (0.38%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 2 (0.38%) CICS
7 2 (0.38%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.19%) CMS
8 1 (0.19%) nginx
8 1 (0.19%) SAS
Applications
1 21 (4.01%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (1.91%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (1.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.57%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.38%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.38%) Siemens NX
6 1 (0.19%) Adobe Premiere
6 1 (0.19%) Quicktime
Business Applications
1 11 (2.10%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.95%) SAP VC
3 4 (0.76%) SAP MM
4 3 (0.57%) SAP QM
5 2 (0.38%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.38%) Primavera
5 2 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
5 2 (0.38%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 71 (13.55%) AWS
2 43 (8.21%) Azure
3 24 (4.58%) Microsoft 365
4 15 (2.86%) GCP
4 15 (2.86%) Power Platform
5 12 (2.29%) Entra ID
5 12 (2.29%) GitHub
6 10 (1.91%) Azure DevOps
6 10 (1.91%) Serverless
7 8 (1.53%) Amazon EKS
8 6 (1.15%) Amazon S3
9 5 (0.95%) Azure Monitor
10 4 (0.76%) Amazon EC2
10 4 (0.76%) AWS CloudFormation
10 4 (0.76%) GitHub Actions
10 4 (0.76%) OneDrive
10 4 (0.76%) OpenShift
10 4 (0.76%) SaaS
11 3 (0.57%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 3 (0.57%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 70 (13.36%) Firewall
2 41 (7.82%) VLAN
3 30 (5.73%) WAN
4 28 (5.34%) Wi-Fi
5 24 (4.58%) DNS
6 23 (4.39%) Network Security
7 18 (3.44%) LAN
8 16 (3.05%) VPN
9 15 (2.86%) DHCP
10 14 (2.67%) SAN
10 14 (2.67%) Wireless
11 13 (2.48%) BGP
12 12 (2.29%) TCP/IP
13 10 (1.91%) Cisco ISE
13 10 (1.91%) NetScaler
13 10 (1.91%) WebEx
14 9 (1.72%) Skype
15 8 (1.53%) Software-Defined Networking
16 6 (1.15%) Cisco IOS
16 6 (1.15%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (3.24%) PostgreSQL
2 14 (2.67%) Power BI
3 12 (2.29%) SQL Server
4 11 (2.10%) MySQL
5 10 (1.91%) MongoDB
5 10 (1.91%) NoSQL
6 9 (1.72%) Elasticsearch
6 9 (1.72%) Relational Database
7 7 (1.34%) Oracle Database
8 6 (1.15%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 5 (0.95%) Metadata
10 4 (0.76%) Data Warehouse
10 4 (0.76%) Hadoop
10 4 (0.76%) Oracle Database 12c
10 4 (0.76%) Tableau
11 3 (0.57%) Amazon Redshift
11 3 (0.57%) RDBMS
12 2 (0.38%) BigQuery
12 2 (0.38%) Data Lake
12 2 (0.38%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 25 (4.77%) GitLab
2 19 (3.63%) Git
3 15 (2.86%) JIRA
4 8 (1.53%) Jenkins
5 4 (0.76%) MSI
5 4 (0.76%) Postman
6 3 (0.57%) Selenium
7 2 (0.38%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.38%) Gatling
7 2 (0.38%) Jasmine
7 2 (0.38%) JMeter
7 2 (0.38%) Mockito
7 2 (0.38%) REST Assured
7 2 (0.38%) Serenity BDD
7 2 (0.38%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.19%) CircleCI
8 1 (0.19%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.19%) InstallShield
8 1 (0.19%) Mocha
8 1 (0.19%) Rational DOORS
General
1 156 (29.77%) Public Sector
2 119 (22.71%) Social Skills
3 37 (7.06%) Finance
4 34 (6.49%) Analytical Skills
5 21 (4.01%) Documentation Skills
5 21 (4.01%) Military
6 17 (3.24%) Legal
7 12 (2.29%) Aerospace
7 12 (2.29%) Banking
8 10 (1.91%) Manufacturing
9 7 (1.34%) Presentation Skills
10 5 (0.95%) Electronics
10 5 (0.95%) Marketing
10 5 (0.95%) Organisational Skills
10 5 (0.95%) Telecoms
11 4 (0.76%) Aviation
11 4 (0.76%) Influencing Skills
12 3 (0.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 2 (0.38%) Corporate Banking
13 2 (0.38%) Law
Job Titles
1 69 (13.17%) Architect
2 53 (10.11%) Developer
3 45 (8.59%) Network Engineer
4 37 (7.06%) Lead
5 35 (6.68%) Senior
6 33 (6.30%) Analyst
7 27 (5.15%) Consultant
8 26 (4.96%) Administrator
9 22 (4.20%) Platform Engineer
10 21 (4.01%) Technical Architect
11 20 (3.82%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 17 (3.24%) DBA
13 16 (3.05%) Engagement Manager
14 14 (2.67%) Data Engineer
14 14 (2.67%) DevOps Engineer
14 14 (2.67%) Support Engineer
15 13 (2.48%) Software Engineer
16 12 (2.29%) Business Analyst
16 12 (2.29%) Coordinator
16 12 (2.29%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (4.58%) Spring
2 22 (4.20%) Spring Boot
3 16 (3.05%) 802.1X
4 13 (2.48%) Kafka
4 13 (2.48%) RESTful
5 9 (1.72%) HTML
5 9 (1.72%) Node.js
5 9 (1.72%) XMPP
6 8 (1.53%) CSS
6 8 (1.53%) JSON
7 7 (1.34%) Playwright
7 7 (1.34%) XML
8 6 (1.15%) Apache NiFi
8 6 (1.15%) Hibernate
8 6 (1.15%) React
9 5 (0.95%) Jest
9 5 (0.95%) Middleware
9 5 (0.95%) OAuth
9 5 (0.95%) REST
9 5 (0.95%) Spring MVC
Miscellaneous
1 48 (9.16%) Data Centre
2 37 (7.06%) Product Ownership
3 18 (3.44%) Onboarding
4 16 (3.05%) Replication
5 14 (2.67%) Clustering
6 12 (2.29%) Cyber Threat
7 10 (1.91%) Operational Technology
8 7 (1.34%) Cloud Native
8 7 (1.34%) Enterprise Software
9 6 (1.15%) Private Cloud
10 5 (0.95%) Driving Licence
10 5 (0.95%) Fat Client
10 5 (0.95%) Mobile App
10 5 (0.95%) Security Posture
10 5 (0.95%) Thin Client
11 4 (0.76%) Legacy Systems
11 4 (0.76%) Management Information System
12 3 (0.57%) Data Protection Act
12 3 (0.57%) Handset
12 3 (0.57%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 63 (12.02%) Windows
2 40 (7.63%) Linux
3 23 (4.39%) Windows Server
4 21 (4.01%) Windows 10
5 17 (3.24%) Unix
6 14 (2.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 11 (2.10%) Solaris
8 9 (1.72%) Windows 7
9 6 (1.15%) Android
10 4 (0.76%) Mac OS
11 3 (0.57%) AIX
11 3 (0.57%) Apple iOS
12 2 (0.38%) Mac OS X
12 2 (0.38%) VMS
13 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 73 (13.93%) Agile
2 64 (12.21%) Problem-Solving
3 51 (9.73%) DevOps
4 50 (9.54%) ITSM
5 49 (9.35%) Service Management
6 48 (9.16%) Continuous Improvement
6 48 (9.16%) Cybersecurity
7 47 (8.97%) CI/CD
8 44 (8.40%) Stakeholder Management
9 43 (8.21%) Project Delivery
10 42 (8.02%) Migration
11 41 (7.82%) High Availability
12 35 (6.68%) Containerisation
13 34 (6.49%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 33 (6.30%) Risk Management
15 32 (6.11%) Platform Engineering
16 31 (5.92%) Disaster Recovery
17 29 (5.53%) Project Management
17 29 (5.53%) Test Automation
18 28 (5.34%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 57 (10.88%) Python
2 54 (10.31%) PowerShell
3 43 (8.21%) Java
4 25 (4.77%) SQL
5 19 (3.63%) Bash
6 17 (3.24%) JavaScript
7 13 (2.48%) Perl
7 13 (2.48%) TypeScript
8 9 (1.72%) VB
8 9 (1.72%) VBScript
9 5 (0.95%) Rust
10 4 (0.76%) Ruby
11 3 (0.57%) C#
11 3 (0.57%) Go
12 2 (0.38%) AWK
12 2 (0.38%) COBOL
12 2 (0.38%) Kotlin
12 2 (0.38%) Kusto Query Language
13 1 (0.19%) ABAP
13 1 (0.19%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 348 (66.41%) SC Cleared
2 71 (13.55%) DV Cleared
3 53 (10.11%) BPSS Clearance
4 38 (7.25%) Degree
5 36 (6.87%) Cisco Certification
6 34 (6.49%) CCNP
7 31 (5.92%) CCNA
8 13 (2.48%) CISSP
8 13 (2.48%) Microsoft Certification
9 12 (2.29%) Computer Science Degree
10 8 (1.53%) AWS Certification
10 8 (1.53%) CCDP
10 8 (1.53%) CISM
10 8 (1.53%) ITIL Certification
10 8 (1.53%) MCSA
10 8 (1.53%) MCSE
10 8 (1.53%) VCAP
10 8 (1.53%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 6 (1.15%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 6 (1.15%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (4.77%) NIST
2 16 (3.05%) Accessibility
3 15 (2.86%) QA
4 13 (2.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 12 (2.29%) SLA
6 11 (2.10%) JSP 440
7 8 (1.53%) NCSC
8 6 (1.15%) Data Quality
9 5 (0.95%) GDPR
9 5 (0.95%) PMO
9 5 (0.95%) WCAG
10 4 (0.76%) GRC
11 3 (0.57%) IFRS
12 2 (0.38%) IFRS 17
12 2 (0.38%) NIST 800
12 2 (0.38%) PSD2
13 1 (0.19%) CRD IV
13 1 (0.19%) FINREP
13 1 (0.19%) ISO 20022
13 1 (0.19%) SOC 2
System Software
1 32 (6.11%) Docker
2 29 (5.53%) Active Directory
3 20 (3.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 11 (2.10%) vSphere
5 10 (1.91%) Virtual Machines
5 10 (1.91%) VMware ESXi
6 9 (1.72%) BitLocker
7 4 (0.76%) Firmware
8 2 (0.38%) 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 33 (6.30%) Kubernetes
2 29 (5.53%) Terraform
3 18 (3.44%) SCCM
4 14 (2.67%) Ansible
5 9 (1.72%) vCenter Server
6 8 (1.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 7 (1.34%) Grafana
7 7 (1.34%) Microsoft Intune
8 5 (0.95%) Oracle RMAN
8 5 (0.95%) Prometheus
9 3 (0.57%) FortiGate
9 3 (0.57%) Norton AntiVirus
10 2 (0.38%) 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 73 (13.93%) Cisco
2 70 (13.36%) Microsoft
3 37 (7.06%) Palo Alto
4 36 (6.87%) SAP
5 33 (6.30%) Oracle
6 32 (6.11%) ServiceNow
7 26 (4.96%) VMware
8 15 (2.86%) Citrix
9 14 (2.67%) Meraki
10 11 (2.10%) Red Hat
11 8 (1.53%) Aruba
12 7 (1.34%) Dell
12 7 (1.34%) IBM
13 6 (1.15%) CheckPoint
13 6 (1.15%) Ekahau
13 6 (1.15%) Splunk
14 5 (0.95%) HP
14 5 (0.95%) Juniper
14 5 (0.95%) SolarWinds
15 4 (0.76%) EMC