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 7 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 2 3 2
Rank change year-on-year +1 -1 +6
Contract jobs citing Security Cleared 495 385 483
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 20.48% 16.20% 17.47%
As % of the Qualifications category 56.90% 57.89% 59.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 312 187 340
10th Percentile £303 £258 £387
25th Percentile £431 £350 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £475 £538
Median % change year-on-year +15.79% -11.67% +1.94%
75th Percentile £641 £600 £638
90th Percentile £716 £688 £688
England median daily rate £535 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -2.73% - -1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 65 34 30
10th Percentile £17.79 £18.03 £34.68
25th Percentile £22.16 £22.22 £45.88
Median hourly rate £33.00 £37.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -10.81% -19.88% -23.03%
75th Percentile £67.84 £51.90 £50.19
90th Percentile £74.26 £55.79 £63.75
England median hourly rate £25.15 £58.49 £59.84
% change year-on-year -57.00% -2.26% -0.27%

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 870 665 813
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 36.00% 27.98% 29.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 560 331 536
10th Percentile £207 £259 £260
25th Percentile £400 £394 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% +0.96%
75th Percentile £625 £600 £638
90th Percentile £716 £675 £689
England median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 105 52 73
10th Percentile £15.50 £18.04 £16.25
25th Percentile £21.46 £23.56 £30.00
Median hourly rate £41.94 £37.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +13.35% -19.88% +28.28%
75th Percentile £65.25 £53.19 -
90th Percentile £74.06 £69.59 £55.00
England median hourly rate £25.15 £52.35 £52.50
% change year-on-year -51.95% -0.30% +16.67%

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 7 November 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 7 November 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 7 November 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 +1 177 £500 +11.11% 168
Cheshire +20 108 £625 +20.77% 41
Cumbria 0 93 £515 +1.78% 8
Lancashire 0 89 £550 +69.23% 84
Merseyside -10 19 £633 +216.25% 7
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 16 (3.23%) Microsoft Exchange
2 11 (2.22%) SharePoint
3 7 (1.41%) Confluence
4 5 (1.01%) Apache
4 5 (1.01%) Skype for Business
5 4 (0.81%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.61%) IIS
6 3 (0.61%) MTS
6 3 (0.61%) Resin
7 2 (0.40%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.40%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.40%) NetWeaver
7 2 (0.40%) OpenStack
7 2 (0.40%) WebSphere
Applications
1 25 (5.05%) Microsoft Office
2 19 (3.84%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (2.63%) Siemens NX
4 5 (1.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.61%) PTC Creo
5 3 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.20%) SPSS
6 1 (0.20%) Stata
Business Applications
1 59 (11.92%) SAP S/4HANA
2 13 (2.63%) Teamcenter
3 10 (2.02%) SAP EHS
4 9 (1.82%) SAP MM
4 9 (1.82%) SAP QM
4 9 (1.82%) SAP VC
5 2 (0.40%) Maximo
5 2 (0.40%) SAP EWM
6 1 (0.20%) Primavera
6 1 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
6 1 (0.20%) SAP HCM
6 1 (0.20%) SAP PS
6 1 (0.20%) SAP SD
6 1 (0.20%) SAP Travel Management
6 1 (0.20%) SAP WM
Cloud Services
1 55 (11.11%) AWS
2 45 (9.09%) Azure
3 36 (7.27%) SaaS
4 34 (6.87%) Microsoft 365
5 18 (3.64%) Google Workspace
6 14 (2.83%) Power Platform
7 13 (2.63%) GCP
8 10 (2.02%) Entra ID
9 7 (1.41%) Azure DevOps
10 6 (1.21%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 6 (1.21%) Amazon EC2
10 6 (1.21%) GitHub
10 6 (1.21%) OneDrive
10 6 (1.21%) Serverless
11 5 (1.01%) Amazon S3
11 5 (1.01%) Amazon SQS
11 5 (1.01%) AWS Lambda
11 5 (1.01%) PaaS
12 4 (0.81%) Amazon EMR
12 4 (0.81%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 35 (7.07%) Firewall
2 21 (4.24%) DNS
3 20 (4.04%) Wi-Fi
4 17 (3.43%) WAN
5 16 (3.23%) VLAN
6 11 (2.22%) BGP
6 11 (2.22%) SAN
6 11 (2.22%) TCP/IP
7 10 (2.02%) VPN
8 9 (1.82%) DHCP
8 9 (1.82%) NetScaler
9 8 (1.62%) Cisco ISE
9 8 (1.62%) LAN
9 8 (1.62%) Software-Defined Networking
9 8 (1.62%) Unified Communications
10 7 (1.41%) Network Security
11 6 (1.21%) Wireless
12 5 (1.01%) HTTPS
12 5 (1.01%) Internet
12 5 (1.01%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (2.02%) PostgreSQL
2 8 (1.62%) Power BI
2 8 (1.62%) SAP HANA
3 7 (1.41%) Data Warehouse
3 7 (1.41%) SQL Server
4 6 (1.21%) MongoDB
4 6 (1.21%) MySQL
4 6 (1.21%) Redis
5 5 (1.01%) BigQuery
5 5 (1.01%) DynamoDB
5 5 (1.01%) NoSQL
5 5 (1.01%) Relational Database
6 4 (0.81%) Amazon RDS
7 3 (0.61%) Amazon Aurora
7 3 (0.61%) Amazon Redshift
7 3 (0.61%) Big Data
7 3 (0.61%) Metadata
8 2 (0.40%) Amazon Athena
8 2 (0.40%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (0.40%) Looker
Development Applications
1 20 (4.04%) Git
2 15 (3.03%) JIRA
3 14 (2.83%) GitLab
3 14 (2.83%) Jenkins
4 8 (1.62%) Rational DOORS
5 7 (1.41%) SonarQube
6 4 (0.81%) Artifactory
7 3 (0.61%) Cypress.io
7 3 (0.61%) Gradle
7 3 (0.61%) Grunt
7 3 (0.61%) gulp
7 3 (0.61%) Maven
8 2 (0.40%) Selenium
8 2 (0.40%) SonarLint
9 1 (0.20%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.20%) Browser DevTools
9 1 (0.20%) Gatling
9 1 (0.20%) MLflow
9 1 (0.20%) Rational Rhapsody
9 1 (0.20%) REST Assured
General
1 141 (28.48%) Public Sector
2 116 (23.43%) Social Skills
3 53 (10.71%) Analytical Skills
4 33 (6.67%) Finance
5 27 (5.45%) Manufacturing
6 25 (5.05%) Military
7 19 (3.84%) Documentation Skills
8 14 (2.83%) Aerospace
9 9 (1.82%) Electronics
9 9 (1.82%) Telecoms
10 8 (1.62%) Banking
10 8 (1.62%) Legal
10 8 (1.62%) Marketing
11 7 (1.41%) Organisational Skills
12 6 (1.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 6 (1.21%) Influencing Skills
13 5 (1.01%) Aviation
14 1 (0.20%) Financial Institution
14 1 (0.20%) Law
Job Titles
1 88 (17.78%) Consultant
2 57 (11.52%) Architect
3 42 (8.48%) SAP Consultant
3 42 (8.48%) Senior
4 38 (7.68%) Developer
5 31 (6.26%) Analyst
6 25 (5.05%) Management Consultant
7 23 (4.65%) Lead
8 22 (4.44%) Network Engineer
9 21 (4.24%) Administrator
10 19 (3.84%) Technical Architect
11 18 (3.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 17 (3.43%) IT Support
13 15 (3.03%) Platform Engineer
14 14 (2.83%) Desktop Support
14 14 (2.83%) Software Engineer
15 13 (2.63%) AWS Engineer
15 13 (2.63%) DevOps Engineer
16 11 (2.22%) Support Engineer
16 11 (2.22%) Systems Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (4.04%) SAP Fiori
2 16 (3.23%) Web Services
3 13 (2.63%) XML
4 12 (2.42%) JSON
5 11 (2.22%) Node.js
6 10 (2.02%) BAPI
6 10 (2.02%) SOAP
7 9 (1.82%) 802.1X
8 8 (1.62%) REST
9 7 (1.41%) HTML
9 7 (1.41%) Kafka
10 6 (1.21%) CSS
11 5 (1.01%) JMS
11 5 (1.01%) RESTful
11 5 (1.01%) SAP TM
11 5 (1.01%) XMPP
12 4 (0.81%) AngularJS
12 4 (0.81%) HTML5
12 4 (0.81%) Middleware
12 4 (0.81%) Sass
Miscellaneous
1 40 (8.08%) Data Centre
2 27 (5.45%) Onboarding
3 22 (4.44%) Hybrid Cloud
4 18 (3.64%) Product Ownership
5 14 (2.83%) Analytical Mindset
6 9 (1.82%) Cyber Threat
7 8 (1.62%) Enterprise Software
8 7 (1.41%) Cloud Native
9 6 (1.21%) Low-Code
10 5 (1.01%) Driving Licence
10 5 (1.01%) Fibre Optics
10 5 (1.01%) Management Information System
10 5 (1.01%) Video Conferencing
11 4 (0.81%) CSOC
11 4 (0.81%) Distributed Systems
11 4 (0.81%) Operational Technology
11 4 (0.81%) SCADA
11 4 (0.81%) Security Operations Centre
12 3 (0.61%) Legacy Systems
12 3 (0.61%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 55 (11.11%) Windows
2 33 (6.67%) Linux
3 17 (3.43%) Windows 10
4 14 (2.83%) Windows Server
5 11 (2.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 7 (1.41%) Android
6 7 (1.41%) Windows 7
7 6 (1.21%) Mac OS
8 4 (0.81%) Unix
9 3 (0.61%) Apple iOS
10 2 (0.40%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.20%) Mac OS X
11 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 62 (12.53%) Problem-Solving
2 49 (9.90%) Cybersecurity
3 43 (8.69%) Agile
3 43 (8.69%) Stakeholder Management
4 40 (8.08%) DevOps
5 38 (7.68%) User Experience
6 36 (7.27%) CI/CD
6 36 (7.27%) Service Management
7 35 (7.07%) ITSM
8 31 (6.26%) Migration
9 30 (6.06%) Mentoring
10 29 (5.86%) Customer Service
11 28 (5.66%) Containerisation
12 25 (5.05%) Validation
13 24 (4.85%) Continuous Improvement
13 24 (4.85%) Risk Management
14 23 (4.65%) Analytics
14 23 (4.65%) Change Management
14 23 (4.65%) Logistics
15 22 (4.44%) Mobile Device Management
Programming Languages
1 55 (11.11%) Python
2 31 (6.26%) PowerShell
3 25 (5.05%) Java
4 24 (4.85%) Bash
5 17 (3.43%) Perl
6 15 (3.03%) SQL
7 11 (2.22%) ABAP
7 11 (2.22%) JavaScript
8 8 (1.62%) C++
8 8 (1.62%) TypeScript
9 5 (1.01%) VB
9 5 (1.01%) VBScript
10 4 (0.81%) C
11 3 (0.61%) Go
11 3 (0.61%) Kusto Query Language
11 3 (0.61%) PHP
11 3 (0.61%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.40%) AWK
12 2 (0.40%) C#
12 2 (0.40%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 396 (80.00%) SC Cleared
2 83 (16.77%) BPSS Clearance
3 24 (4.85%) Degree
4 16 (3.23%) DV Cleared
5 10 (2.02%) CCNP
5 10 (2.02%) Cisco Certification
6 9 (1.82%) CCDP
7 8 (1.62%) CCNA
8 6 (1.21%) CTC Cleared
8 6 (1.21%) DBS Check
9 5 (1.01%) Azure Certification
9 5 (1.01%) BC Cleared
9 5 (1.01%) CISM
9 5 (1.01%) CISSP
10 4 (0.81%) Microsoft Certification
11 3 (0.61%) Computer Science Degree
11 3 (0.61%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
12 2 (0.40%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 2 (0.40%) CompTIA Security+
12 2 (0.40%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (3.84%) NIST
2 11 (2.22%) Data Quality
3 8 (1.62%) Accessibility
4 7 (1.41%) QA
5 6 (1.21%) NCSC
6 5 (1.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (1.01%) SLA
7 4 (0.81%) IEC 61508
7 4 (0.81%) ISO 26262
8 3 (0.61%) IEC 62304
8 3 (0.61%) PMO
9 2 (0.40%) COBIT
9 2 (0.40%) GDPR
9 2 (0.40%) IEC 61131
10 1 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials
10 1 (0.20%) WCAG
System Software
1 28 (5.66%) Docker
2 24 (4.85%) Active Directory
3 18 (3.64%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (1.01%) BitLocker
5 4 (0.81%) UAG
6 3 (0.61%) vSphere
7 2 (0.40%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.20%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
8 1 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
8 1 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 30 (6.06%) Terraform
2 27 (5.45%) Kubernetes
3 21 (4.24%) SCCM
4 15 (3.03%) Microsoft Intune
5 11 (2.22%) Ansible
6 7 (1.41%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 4 (0.81%) Grafana
7 4 (0.81%) Nessus
7 4 (0.81%) Norton AntiVirus
7 4 (0.81%) SELinux
8 3 (0.61%) Packer
8 3 (0.61%) Podman
8 3 (0.61%) Single Sign-On
8 3 (0.61%) vCenter Server
9 2 (0.40%) FortiGate
9 2 (0.40%) PowerCLI
9 2 (0.40%) Prometheus
10 1 (0.20%) AirWatch
10 1 (0.20%) QRadar
10 1 (0.20%) vMotion
Vendors
1 87 (17.58%) SAP
2 86 (17.37%) Microsoft
3 32 (6.46%) Cisco
4 25 (5.05%) Google
4 25 (5.05%) ServiceNow
4 25 (5.05%) VMware
5 18 (3.64%) Oracle
6 17 (3.43%) Palo Alto
7 11 (2.22%) Meraki
7 11 (2.22%) Red Hat
8 10 (2.02%) Citrix
8 10 (2.02%) IBM
8 10 (2.02%) Siemens
9 9 (1.82%) Adobe
9 9 (1.82%) Splunk
10 8 (1.62%) Dell
11 6 (1.21%) Apple
11 6 (1.21%) Axway
11 6 (1.21%) CyberArk
11 6 (1.21%) Dynatrace