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

6 months to
30 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 498 412 462
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 15.61% 21.11% 16.64%
As % of the Qualifications category 55.33% 58.44% 54.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 322 239 301
10th Percentile £358 £250 £363
25th Percentile £421 £416 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £638 £588 £653
90th Percentile £751 £650 £725
England median daily rate £525 £537 £550
% change year-on-year -2.23% -2.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 17 61
10th Percentile £23.92 £25.26 -
25th Percentile £31.62 £37.80 £10.95
Median hourly rate £60.31 £60.00 £14.50
Median % change year-on-year +0.51% +313.79% -61.33%
75th Percentile £74.26 £76.25 £48.00
90th Percentile £78.64 £85.87 £73.75
England median hourly rate £55.00 £55.52 £57.33
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.15% -4.46%

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 900 705 841
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 28.20% 36.12% 30.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 592 404 482
10th Percentile £329 £230 £248
25th Percentile £400 £393 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £490 £513
Median % change year-on-year -3.06% -4.39% -1.44%
75th Percentile £590 £575 £650
90th Percentile £688 £650 £725
England median daily rate £520 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 80 42 124
10th Percentile £24.90 £17.70 £10.95
25th Percentile £34.87 £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 £72.19 £60.00 £39.54
90th Percentile £86.49 £83.13 £62.50
England median hourly rate £47.50 £46.30 £40.00
% change year-on-year +2.59% +15.75% -23.51%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 -7 165 £500 - 89
Cumbria 0 120 £481 -10.88% 23
Lancashire +3 105 £735 +64.43% 25
Cheshire 0 75 £445 +27.21% 8
Merseyside -15 27 £625 +13.64% 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 23 (4.62%) Microsoft Exchange
2 9 (1.81%) SharePoint
2 9 (1.81%) Skype for Business
3 7 (1.41%) Confluence
4 5 (1.00%) Apache Spark
5 3 (0.60%) Apache
5 3 (0.60%) Jupyter
6 2 (0.40%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 2 (0.40%) CICS
6 2 (0.40%) SAS
7 1 (0.20%) Apache Airflow
7 1 (0.20%) CMS
7 1 (0.20%) IIS
7 1 (0.20%) nginx
7 1 (0.20%) OpenStack
Applications
1 16 (3.21%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (2.01%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (1.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.60%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.40%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.40%) Siemens NX
6 1 (0.20%) Adobe Premiere
6 1 (0.20%) Quicktime
Business Applications
1 3 (0.60%) Remedy ITSM
1 3 (0.60%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.40%) Oracle Payables
2 2 (0.40%) Primavera
2 2 (0.40%) SAP MM
2 2 (0.40%) SAP VC
2 2 (0.40%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.20%) Dynamics AX
3 1 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.20%) SAP QM
Cloud Services
1 81 (16.27%) AWS
2 55 (11.04%) Azure
3 23 (4.62%) Microsoft 365
4 17 (3.41%) GCP
5 15 (3.01%) Power Platform
5 15 (3.01%) Serverless
6 14 (2.81%) SaaS
7 11 (2.21%) GitHub
8 10 (2.01%) Entra ID
9 8 (1.61%) Azure DevOps
9 8 (1.61%) Google Workspace
9 8 (1.61%) OCI
10 7 (1.41%) Amazon EKS
10 7 (1.41%) Amazon S3
11 5 (1.00%) Google Drive
12 4 (0.80%) AWS CloudFormation
12 4 (0.80%) AWS Lambda
12 4 (0.80%) Azure Monitor
12 4 (0.80%) GitHub Actions
12 4 (0.80%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 57 (11.45%) Firewall
2 36 (7.23%) VLAN
3 28 (5.62%) WAN
4 26 (5.22%) DNS
5 24 (4.82%) Network Security
5 24 (4.82%) Wi-Fi
6 18 (3.61%) DHCP
6 18 (3.61%) LAN
7 12 (2.41%) VPN
7 12 (2.41%) Wireless
8 10 (2.01%) SAN
9 9 (1.81%) BGP
9 9 (1.81%) Skype
9 9 (1.81%) TCP/IP
10 8 (1.61%) OSPF
11 7 (1.41%) BIG-IP
11 7 (1.41%) Cisco IOS
11 7 (1.41%) Ethernet VPN
11 7 (1.41%) SD-WAN
11 7 (1.41%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (4.02%) PostgreSQL
2 14 (2.81%) Power BI
3 12 (2.41%) SQL Server
4 11 (2.21%) MySQL
4 11 (2.21%) Oracle Database
5 10 (2.01%) MongoDB
6 9 (1.81%) Elasticsearch
6 9 (1.81%) Relational Database
7 8 (1.61%) NoSQL
8 7 (1.41%) Metadata
9 6 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 5 (1.00%) Oracle Database 12c
11 4 (0.80%) Hadoop
11 4 (0.80%) Tableau
12 3 (0.60%) Data Lake
12 3 (0.60%) RDBMS
13 2 (0.40%) Amazon Redshift
13 2 (0.40%) DataStage
13 2 (0.40%) DynamoDB
13 2 (0.40%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 27 (5.42%) GitLab
2 18 (3.61%) Git
3 13 (2.61%) JIRA
4 7 (1.41%) Jenkins
5 6 (1.20%) MSI
6 4 (0.80%) Postman
6 4 (0.80%) Selenium
7 3 (0.60%) REST Assured
8 2 (0.40%) ClearCase
8 2 (0.40%) Cucumber
8 2 (0.40%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.40%) Gatling
8 2 (0.40%) Jasmine
8 2 (0.40%) JMeter
8 2 (0.40%) Mockito
8 2 (0.40%) Serenity BDD
8 2 (0.40%) SonarQube
9 1 (0.20%) InstallShield
9 1 (0.20%) Rational Robot
9 1 (0.20%) Visual Studio
General
1 154 (30.92%) Public Sector
2 100 (20.08%) Social Skills
3 29 (5.82%) Finance
4 24 (4.82%) Analytical Skills
5 23 (4.62%) Military
6 22 (4.42%) Documentation Skills
7 14 (2.81%) Legal
8 12 (2.41%) Aerospace
8 12 (2.41%) Banking
9 7 (1.41%) Manufacturing
9 7 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
10 4 (0.80%) Aviation
11 3 (0.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.60%) Influencing Skills
12 2 (0.40%) Corporate Banking
12 2 (0.40%) Law
12 2 (0.40%) Marketing
12 2 (0.40%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.40%) Retail
12 2 (0.40%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 70 (14.06%) Architect
2 52 (10.44%) Developer
2 52 (10.44%) Lead
3 35 (7.03%) Network Engineer
4 34 (6.83%) Senior
5 31 (6.22%) Analyst
6 30 (6.02%) Administrator
7 20 (4.02%) DBA
7 20 (4.02%) Technical Architect
8 19 (3.82%) Lead Architect
9 17 (3.41%) Wintel Engineer
10 16 (3.21%) Consultant
10 16 (3.21%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
10 16 (3.21%) Unix Engineer
11 15 (3.01%) Coordinator
11 15 (3.01%) Data Engineer
12 13 (2.61%) Business Analyst
12 13 (2.61%) Java Developer
12 13 (2.61%) Security Assurance Coordinator
13 12 (2.41%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (5.82%) Spring
2 25 (5.02%) Spring Boot
3 16 (3.21%) Node.js
4 13 (2.61%) Kafka
5 12 (2.41%) RESTful
6 11 (2.21%) 802.1X
7 10 (2.01%) OAuth
8 7 (1.41%) HTML
8 7 (1.41%) Playwright
8 7 (1.41%) REST
8 7 (1.41%) XML
9 6 (1.20%) CSS
9 6 (1.20%) Hibernate
9 6 (1.20%) JSON
9 6 (1.20%) React
10 5 (1.00%) Leaflet
10 5 (1.00%) OAuth2
10 5 (1.00%) OpenID
10 5 (1.00%) Spring MVC
10 5 (1.00%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 34 (6.83%) Data Centre
2 26 (5.22%) Product Ownership
3 22 (4.42%) Replication
4 21 (4.22%) Clustering
5 14 (2.81%) Cloud Native
5 14 (2.81%) Onboarding
6 10 (2.01%) Operational Technology
7 8 (1.61%) Cyber Threat
7 8 (1.61%) Enterprise Software
8 6 (1.20%) Management Information System
9 5 (1.00%) Fat Client
9 5 (1.00%) Mobile App
9 5 (1.00%) Private Cloud
9 5 (1.00%) Security Posture
9 5 (1.00%) Thin Client
10 4 (0.80%) Data Protection Act
10 4 (0.80%) Distributed Systems
10 4 (0.80%) Hybrid Cloud
10 4 (0.80%) Legacy Systems
11 3 (0.60%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 53 (10.64%) Windows
2 25 (5.02%) Linux
3 22 (4.42%) Unix
3 22 (4.42%) Windows Server
4 18 (3.61%) Windows 10
5 17 (3.41%) Solaris
6 9 (1.81%) Windows 7
7 4 (0.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 3 (0.60%) AIX
9 2 (0.40%) Android
9 2 (0.40%) Apple iOS
9 2 (0.40%) Mac OS X
9 2 (0.40%) VMS
10 1 (0.20%) Mac OS
10 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
10 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 75 (15.06%) Agile
2 60 (12.05%) Project Delivery
3 56 (11.24%) High Availability
4 55 (11.04%) DevOps
5 53 (10.64%) CI/CD
5 53 (10.64%) Migration
6 51 (10.24%) Problem-Solving
6 51 (10.24%) Stakeholder Management
7 44 (8.84%) Continuous Improvement
7 44 (8.84%) Disaster Recovery
8 43 (8.63%) ITSM
9 36 (7.23%) Service Management
9 36 (7.23%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 33 (6.63%) Cybersecurity
11 31 (6.22%) Test Automation
12 30 (6.02%) Microservices
12 30 (6.02%) Risk Management
12 30 (6.02%) Technical Leadership
13 27 (5.42%) Change Management
14 25 (5.02%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 54 (10.84%) Python
2 49 (9.84%) Java
3 44 (8.84%) PowerShell
4 26 (5.22%) SQL
5 21 (4.22%) JavaScript
6 14 (2.81%) TypeScript
7 10 (2.01%) VB
8 9 (1.81%) VBScript
9 5 (1.00%) Go
9 5 (1.00%) Rust
10 4 (0.80%) Ruby
11 3 (0.60%) C#
12 2 (0.40%) Bash
12 2 (0.40%) COBOL
12 2 (0.40%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.20%) ABAP
13 1 (0.20%) Bicep
13 1 (0.20%) Perl
13 1 (0.20%) Scala
13 1 (0.20%) VB6
Qualifications
1 324 (65.06%) SC Cleared
2 74 (14.86%) DV Cleared
3 38 (7.63%) BPSS Clearance
4 32 (6.43%) Cisco Certification
5 29 (5.82%) CCNP
6 28 (5.62%) Degree
7 26 (5.22%) CCNA
8 21 (4.22%) Microsoft Certification
9 14 (2.81%) MCSA
9 14 (2.81%) MCSE
9 14 (2.81%) VCAP
9 14 (2.81%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 13 (2.61%) CISSP
11 11 (2.21%) Computer Science Degree
12 9 (1.81%) AWS Certification
12 9 (1.81%) ITIL Certification
13 8 (1.61%) Azure Certification
14 7 (1.41%) CISM
15 6 (1.20%) Network+ Certification
15 6 (1.20%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (4.22%) NIST
2 16 (3.21%) QA
3 15 (3.01%) Accessibility
3 15 (3.01%) SLA
4 13 (2.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 12 (2.41%) JSP 440
6 6 (1.20%) Data Quality
6 6 (1.20%) GDPR
7 4 (0.80%) GRC
7 4 (0.80%) NCSC
7 4 (0.80%) PMO
7 4 (0.80%) WCAG
8 3 (0.60%) IFRS
9 2 (0.40%) IFRS 17
9 2 (0.40%) NIST 800
9 2 (0.40%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.40%) PSD2
10 1 (0.20%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 1 (0.20%) RMADS
10 1 (0.20%) SOC 2
System Software
1 26 (5.22%) Active Directory
1 26 (5.22%) Docker
2 20 (4.02%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (3.61%) Virtual Machines
3 18 (3.61%) VMware ESXi
4 17 (3.41%) vSphere
5 10 (2.01%) BitLocker
6 4 (0.80%) Firmware
7 2 (0.40%) Hyper-V
7 2 (0.40%) ISA Server
8 1 (0.20%) GPFS
8 1 (0.20%) NFS
8 1 (0.20%) Oracle RAC
8 1 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 32 (6.43%) Terraform
2 31 (6.22%) Kubernetes
3 26 (5.22%) Ansible
4 17 (3.41%) vCenter Server
5 14 (2.81%) SCCM
6 7 (1.41%) Grafana
7 6 (1.20%) Oracle RMAN
8 5 (1.00%) Prometheus
9 4 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
10 3 (0.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 2 (0.40%) Microsoft Clustering
11 2 (0.40%) Norton AntiVirus
11 2 (0.40%) WSUS
12 1 (0.20%) Cisco Prime
12 1 (0.20%) Data Guard
12 1 (0.20%) Failover Clustering
12 1 (0.20%) Nagios
12 1 (0.20%) NetApp OnCommand
12 1 (0.20%) vRealize
12 1 (0.20%) VxRail
Vendors
1 67 (13.45%) Microsoft
2 63 (12.65%) Cisco
3 40 (8.03%) Oracle
4 35 (7.03%) Palo Alto
5 30 (6.02%) ServiceNow
6 26 (5.22%) SAP
7 21 (4.22%) VMware
8 13 (2.61%) Aruba
9 9 (1.81%) Google
10 8 (1.61%) F5
10 8 (1.61%) Meraki
11 6 (1.20%) CheckPoint
11 6 (1.20%) Citrix
11 6 (1.20%) Ekahau
11 6 (1.20%) IBM
12 5 (1.00%) Arista
12 5 (1.00%) SolarWinds
12 5 (1.00%) Splunk
13 4 (0.80%) RedGate
13 4 (0.80%) Veritas