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 26 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 2 2 2
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 +4
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 547 425 489
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 21.54% 19.70% 18.29%
As % of the Qualifications category 61.25% 61.51% 58.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 360 215 360
10th Percentile £313 £208 £360
25th Percentile £425 £343 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £475 £550
Median % change year-on-year +9.16% -13.64% +4.76%
75th Percentile £638 £578 £638
90th Percentile £701 £674 £703
England median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.28%
Number of hourly rates quoted 63 32 32
10th Percentile £19.10 £18.04 £34.15
25th Percentile £22.16 £22.22 £45.88
Median hourly rate £41.94 £37.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +13.35% -19.88% +98.97%
75th Percentile £67.84 £56.41 £50.56
90th Percentile £74.26 £80.00 £73.00
England median hourly rate £25.15 £58.38 £60.00
% change year-on-year -56.92% -2.71% -

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 893 691 840
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 35.17% 32.04% 31.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 587 357 555
10th Percentile £228 £212 £255
25th Percentile £389 £356 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £475 £545
Median % change year-on-year +1.05% -12.84% +6.86%
75th Percentile £612 £580 £645
90th Percentile £688 £673 £720
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 91 55 73
10th Percentile £19.00 £19.00 £16.25
25th Percentile £22.39 £23.36 £28.30
Median hourly rate £45.46 £32.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +39.88% -29.62% +81.78%
75th Percentile £65.13 £53.88 £49.00
90th Percentile £73.75 £78.25 £62.00
England median hourly rate £25.15 £47.37 £51.89
% change year-on-year -46.91% -8.71% +15.31%

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 26 December 2025.

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 26 December 2025.

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 26 December 2025. 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 0 192 £500 +11.11% 161
Cheshire +9 116 £600 +41.24% 61
Cumbria 0 116 £504 +0.72% 16
Lancashire 0 88 £550 +69.23% 59
Merseyside -12 23 £500 +143.90% 34
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 (3.11%) Microsoft Exchange
2 10 (1.83%) SharePoint
3 6 (1.10%) Confluence
4 5 (0.91%) Skype for Business
5 4 (0.73%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.55%) Apache
6 3 (0.55%) MTS
6 3 (0.55%) Resin
7 2 (0.37%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 2 (0.37%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.37%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.37%) NetWeaver
8 1 (0.18%) CMS
8 1 (0.18%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.18%) SAS
Applications
1 26 (4.75%) Microsoft Office
2 16 (2.93%) Microsoft Excel
3 11 (2.01%) Siemens NX
4 6 (1.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.55%) PTC Creo
6 1 (0.18%) Adobe Premiere
6 1 (0.18%) Quicktime
6 1 (0.18%) SPSS
6 1 (0.18%) Stata
Business Applications
1 60 (10.97%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (2.01%) Teamcenter
3 10 (1.83%) SAP EHS
3 10 (1.83%) SAP VC
4 9 (1.65%) SAP MM
4 9 (1.65%) SAP QM
5 2 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
5 2 (0.37%) SAP EWM
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
6 1 (0.18%) SAP HCM
6 1 (0.18%) SAP SD
6 1 (0.18%) SAP Travel Management
6 1 (0.18%) SAP WM
Cloud Services
1 67 (12.25%) AWS
2 48 (8.78%) Azure
3 34 (6.22%) Microsoft 365
4 29 (5.30%) SaaS
5 18 (3.29%) GCP
6 17 (3.11%) Google Workspace
7 14 (2.56%) Power Platform
8 11 (2.01%) Entra ID
8 11 (2.01%) GitHub
9 9 (1.65%) Azure DevOps
9 9 (1.65%) Serverless
10 8 (1.46%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 7 (1.28%) AWS CloudFormation
12 6 (1.10%) Amazon EKS
12 6 (1.10%) OneDrive
13 5 (0.91%) Amazon EC2
13 5 (0.91%) Amazon S3
13 5 (0.91%) Amazon SQS
13 5 (0.91%) AWS Lambda
13 5 (0.91%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 56 (10.24%) Firewall
2 26 (4.75%) WAN
3 25 (4.57%) Wi-Fi
4 23 (4.20%) VLAN
5 21 (3.84%) DNS
6 16 (2.93%) Network Security
7 15 (2.74%) SAN
8 14 (2.56%) TCP/IP
9 13 (2.38%) BGP
9 13 (2.38%) Cisco ISE
9 13 (2.38%) NetScaler
10 12 (2.19%) LAN
10 12 (2.19%) VPN
11 8 (1.46%) DHCP
11 8 (1.46%) Software-Defined Networking
11 8 (1.46%) Unified Communications
12 7 (1.28%) Internet
12 7 (1.28%) WebEx
12 7 (1.28%) Wireless
13 6 (1.10%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (2.74%) PostgreSQL
2 10 (1.83%) SAP HANA
3 9 (1.65%) NoSQL
3 9 (1.65%) Power BI
3 9 (1.65%) Relational Database
4 8 (1.46%) MySQL
5 7 (1.28%) DynamoDB
5 7 (1.28%) MongoDB
6 6 (1.10%) Data Warehouse
6 6 (1.10%) Redis
7 5 (0.91%) BigQuery
7 5 (0.91%) SQL Server
8 4 (0.73%) Metadata
8 4 (0.73%) RDBMS
9 3 (0.55%) Amazon Aurora
9 3 (0.55%) Amazon Redshift
9 3 (0.55%) Big Data
10 2 (0.37%) Amazon Athena
10 2 (0.37%) Amazon RDS
10 2 (0.37%) Looker
Development Applications
1 27 (4.94%) Git
2 23 (4.20%) GitLab
3 17 (3.11%) JIRA
4 15 (2.74%) Jenkins
5 7 (1.28%) Rational DOORS
6 5 (0.91%) SonarQube
7 3 (0.55%) Artifactory
7 3 (0.55%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.37%) Gradle
8 2 (0.37%) Grunt
8 2 (0.37%) gulp
8 2 (0.37%) Jasmine
8 2 (0.37%) Maven
8 2 (0.37%) Mockito
8 2 (0.37%) MSI
8 2 (0.37%) Postman
8 2 (0.37%) Selenium
8 2 (0.37%) SonarLint
9 1 (0.18%) MLflow
9 1 (0.18%) REST Assured
General
1 172 (31.44%) Public Sector
2 123 (22.49%) Social Skills
3 49 (8.96%) Analytical Skills
4 33 (6.03%) Finance
5 29 (5.30%) Manufacturing
6 21 (3.84%) Military
7 14 (2.56%) Aerospace
7 14 (2.56%) Documentation Skills
8 11 (2.01%) Telecoms
9 10 (1.83%) Electronics
9 10 (1.83%) Legal
10 9 (1.65%) Banking
10 9 (1.65%) Marketing
11 7 (1.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 6 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
13 5 (0.91%) Aviation
13 5 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
14 3 (0.55%) Presentation Skills
15 1 (0.18%) Law
Job Titles
1 76 (13.89%) Consultant
2 69 (12.61%) Architect
3 48 (8.78%) Senior
4 41 (7.50%) Developer
5 39 (7.13%) SAP Consultant
6 37 (6.76%) Network Engineer
7 33 (6.03%) Analyst
8 24 (4.39%) Administrator
9 23 (4.20%) Management Consultant
10 20 (3.66%) Lead
10 20 (3.66%) Technical Architect
11 18 (3.29%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 18 (3.29%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 17 (3.11%) DevOps Engineer
13 16 (2.93%) Platform Engineer
14 14 (2.56%) AWS Engineer
14 14 (2.56%) IT Support
14 14 (2.56%) Support Engineer
15 12 (2.19%) Software Engineer
16 11 (2.01%) Engagement Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (3.84%) SAP Fiori
2 15 (2.74%) JSON
3 14 (2.56%) Web Services
4 13 (2.38%) 802.1X
4 13 (2.38%) Spring Boot
5 12 (2.19%) Node.js
5 12 (2.19%) XML
6 11 (2.01%) HTML
6 11 (2.01%) RESTful
6 11 (2.01%) Spring
7 10 (1.83%) BAPI
7 10 (1.83%) REST
8 9 (1.65%) CSS
9 8 (1.46%) Kafka
10 7 (1.28%) SOAP
11 6 (1.10%) AngularJS
11 6 (1.10%) Playwright
11 6 (1.10%) React
11 6 (1.10%) XMPP
12 5 (0.91%) Jest
Miscellaneous
1 51 (9.32%) Data Centre
2 30 (5.48%) Onboarding
2 30 (5.48%) Product Ownership
3 19 (3.47%) Hybrid Cloud
4 14 (2.56%) Analytical Mindset
5 11 (2.01%) Cyber Threat
6 9 (1.65%) Cloud Native
7 8 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
8 7 (1.28%) Replication
9 6 (1.10%) Driving Licence
10 5 (0.91%) Clustering
10 5 (0.91%) Distributed Systems
10 5 (0.91%) Fibre Optics
10 5 (0.91%) Low-Code
10 5 (0.91%) Video Conferencing
11 4 (0.73%) Legacy Systems
11 4 (0.73%) Mobile App
11 4 (0.73%) Operational Technology
11 4 (0.73%) SCADA
12 3 (0.55%) 3D Printing
Operating Systems
1 60 (10.97%) Windows
2 35 (6.40%) Linux
3 19 (3.47%) Windows 10
4 17 (3.11%) Windows Server
5 13 (2.38%) Unix
6 11 (2.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 8 (1.46%) Android
8 7 (1.28%) Mac OS
8 7 (1.28%) Solaris
9 5 (0.91%) Windows 7
10 4 (0.73%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.37%) Mac OS X
12 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 65 (11.88%) Problem-Solving
2 60 (10.97%) Agile
3 52 (9.51%) DevOps
4 50 (9.14%) Cybersecurity
5 49 (8.96%) Stakeholder Management
6 46 (8.41%) CI/CD
7 42 (7.68%) Migration
8 40 (7.31%) Containerisation
9 39 (7.13%) ITSM
9 39 (7.13%) User Experience
10 35 (6.40%) Service Management
11 34 (6.22%) Change Management
11 34 (6.22%) Mentoring
12 33 (6.03%) Continuous Improvement
13 32 (5.85%) Validation
14 27 (4.94%) High Availability
14 27 (4.94%) Infrastructure as Code
14 27 (4.94%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 26 (4.75%) Test Automation
16 25 (4.57%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 65 (11.88%) Python
2 38 (6.95%) PowerShell
3 34 (6.22%) Java
4 24 (4.39%) Bash
5 17 (3.11%) Perl
6 14 (2.56%) SQL
7 12 (2.19%) JavaScript
8 11 (2.01%) ABAP
8 11 (2.01%) TypeScript
9 8 (1.46%) C++
10 5 (0.91%) VB
10 5 (0.91%) VBScript
11 4 (0.73%) C
11 4 (0.73%) Go
11 4 (0.73%) Ruby
12 3 (0.55%) Kusto Query Language
12 3 (0.55%) Shell Script
13 2 (0.37%) AWK
13 2 (0.37%) C#
13 2 (0.37%) PHP
Qualifications
1 421 (76.97%) SC Cleared
2 77 (14.08%) BPSS Clearance
3 33 (6.03%) Degree
4 22 (4.02%) DV Cleared
5 20 (3.66%) CCNP
5 20 (3.66%) Cisco Certification
6 14 (2.56%) CCNA
7 10 (1.83%) Computer Science Degree
8 9 (1.65%) CCDP
9 8 (1.46%) Microsoft Certification
10 6 (1.10%) Azure Certification
10 6 (1.10%) CISM
10 6 (1.10%) CISSP
10 6 (1.10%) CTC Cleared
10 6 (1.10%) ITIL Certification
11 5 (0.91%) BC Cleared
11 5 (0.91%) DBS Check
11 5 (0.91%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 4 (0.73%) CompTIA Security+
12 4 (0.73%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (3.47%) NIST
2 15 (2.74%) Accessibility
3 8 (1.46%) Data Quality
4 7 (1.28%) NCSC
4 7 (1.28%) SLA
5 5 (0.91%) QA
6 4 (0.73%) IEC 61508
6 4 (0.73%) ISO 26262
6 4 (0.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (0.73%) WCAG
7 3 (0.55%) IEC 62304
7 3 (0.55%) PMO
8 2 (0.37%) GDPR
8 2 (0.37%) IEC 61131
8 2 (0.37%) IFRS
8 2 (0.37%) PSD2
9 1 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.18%) IFRS 17
9 1 (0.18%) ISO 20022
9 1 (0.18%) SEPA
System Software
1 36 (6.58%) Docker
2 27 (4.94%) Active Directory
3 18 (3.29%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (1.28%) vSphere
5 5 (0.91%) BitLocker
6 4 (0.73%) Firmware
6 4 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
6 4 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.37%) ISA Server
7 2 (0.37%) UAG
7 2 (0.37%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.18%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 39 (7.13%) Terraform
2 36 (6.58%) Kubernetes
3 22 (4.02%) SCCM
4 17 (3.11%) Ansible
5 16 (2.93%) Microsoft Intune
6 7 (1.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 6 (1.10%) vCenter Server
8 5 (0.91%) Norton AntiVirus
9 4 (0.73%) Grafana
9 4 (0.73%) Nessus
9 4 (0.73%) SELinux
10 3 (0.55%) FortiGate
10 3 (0.55%) Packer
10 3 (0.55%) Podman
10 3 (0.55%) Prometheus
11 2 (0.37%) PowerCLI
11 2 (0.37%) Single Sign-On
12 1 (0.18%) Argo
12 1 (0.18%) Failover Clustering
12 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 89 (16.27%) SAP
2 78 (14.26%) Microsoft
3 58 (10.60%) Cisco
4 32 (5.85%) Palo Alto
5 29 (5.30%) Oracle
5 29 (5.30%) ServiceNow
6 24 (4.39%) VMware
7 21 (3.84%) Google
8 18 (3.29%) Meraki
9 12 (2.19%) Adobe
10 11 (2.01%) Citrix
10 11 (2.01%) Dell
10 11 (2.01%) Red Hat
10 11 (2.01%) Siemens
11 9 (1.65%) Splunk
12 7 (1.28%) HP
13 6 (1.10%) Apple
13 6 (1.10%) IBM
13 6 (1.10%) NetApp
13 6 (1.10%) Symantec