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

6 months to
20 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 516 438 461
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 17.04% 21.82% 16.37%
As % of the Qualifications category 57.33% 60.83% 53.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 337 241 298
10th Percentile £339 £230 £371
25th Percentile £413 £419 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -2.93% -1.89%
75th Percentile £608 £583 £648
90th Percentile £690 £650 £725
England median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -2.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 61 20 68
10th Percentile £22.68 £25.26 -
25th Percentile £28.50 £35.44 £10.95
Median hourly rate £60.61 £60.00 £29.90
Median % change year-on-year +1.02% +100.67% +0.84%
75th Percentile £74.26 £74.38 £46.64
90th Percentile - £85.80 £68.50
England median hourly rate £31.25 £60.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year -47.92% +9.09% -8.33%

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 900 720 869
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 29.71% 35.87% 30.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 596 401 506
10th Percentile £228 £213 £260
25th Percentile £375 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -6.18% -2.44% +2.50%
75th Percentile £579 £580 £650
90th Percentile £667 £650 £720
England median daily rate £520 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 89 44 131
10th Percentile £21.33 £23.10 £10.95
25th Percentile £30.00 £26.00 £12.89
Median hourly rate £45.46 £32.50 £16.06
Median % change year-on-year +39.88% +102.37% -55.39%
75th Percentile £69.25 £60.00 £43.91
90th Percentile £74.26 £82.56 £50.00
England median hourly rate £28.50 £50.00 £37.83
% change year-on-year -43.00% +32.18% -24.35%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -5 157 £475 -5.00% 95
Lancashire +2 120 £550 +23.04% 35
Cumbria 0 114 £496 -2.94% 9
Cheshire -5 88 £450 +28.57% 16
Merseyside -11 28 £563 +2.27% 3
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 24 (4.65%) Microsoft Exchange
2 10 (1.94%) Confluence
3 9 (1.74%) SharePoint
3 9 (1.74%) Skype for Business
4 6 (1.16%) Apache Spark
5 5 (0.97%) Apache
6 4 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
7 3 (0.58%) Jupyter
7 3 (0.58%) MTS
8 2 (0.39%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 2 (0.39%) CICS
8 2 (0.39%) OpenStack
9 1 (0.19%) CMS
9 1 (0.19%) nginx
9 1 (0.19%) SAS
Applications
1 24 (4.65%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (1.94%) 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 15 (2.91%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.97%) SAP MM
2 5 (0.97%) SAP VC
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
5 1 (0.19%) SAP EHS
Cloud Services
1 69 (13.37%) AWS
2 44 (8.53%) Azure
3 26 (5.04%) Microsoft 365
4 17 (3.29%) Power Platform
5 15 (2.91%) GCP
6 14 (2.71%) GitHub
7 12 (2.33%) Azure DevOps
7 12 (2.33%) Entra ID
8 8 (1.55%) Amazon EKS
8 8 (1.55%) Serverless
9 6 (1.16%) Amazon S3
9 6 (1.16%) GitHub Actions
9 6 (1.16%) SaaS
10 5 (0.97%) Azure Monitor
11 4 (0.78%) Amazon EC2
11 4 (0.78%) AWS CloudFormation
11 4 (0.78%) OneDrive
11 4 (0.78%) OpenShift
12 3 (0.58%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 3 (0.58%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 68 (13.18%) Firewall
2 40 (7.75%) VLAN
3 30 (5.81%) WAN
4 29 (5.62%) Wi-Fi
5 24 (4.65%) DNS
6 23 (4.46%) Network Security
7 18 (3.49%) LAN
8 16 (3.10%) VPN
9 15 (2.91%) Wireless
10 14 (2.71%) DHCP
11 13 (2.52%) SAN
12 12 (2.33%) BGP
12 12 (2.33%) TCP/IP
13 10 (1.94%) Cisco ISE
13 10 (1.94%) NetScaler
13 10 (1.94%) WebEx
14 9 (1.74%) Skype
15 8 (1.55%) Software-Defined Networking
16 6 (1.16%) SNMP
17 5 (0.97%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (3.29%) PostgreSQL
2 15 (2.91%) Power BI
3 12 (2.33%) SQL Server
4 11 (2.13%) MySQL
5 10 (1.94%) MongoDB
5 10 (1.94%) NoSQL
6 9 (1.74%) Elasticsearch
6 9 (1.74%) Relational Database
7 6 (1.16%) Oracle Database
7 6 (1.16%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 5 (0.97%) Metadata
9 4 (0.78%) Data Warehouse
9 4 (0.78%) Hadoop
9 4 (0.78%) Tableau
10 3 (0.58%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (0.58%) DynamoDB
10 3 (0.58%) Oracle Database 12c
10 3 (0.58%) RDBMS
10 3 (0.58%) Redis
10 3 (0.58%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 26 (5.04%) GitLab
2 21 (4.07%) Git
3 16 (3.10%) JIRA
4 9 (1.74%) Jenkins
5 4 (0.78%) Postman
6 3 (0.58%) Selenium
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%) MSI
7 2 (0.39%) REST Assured
7 2 (0.39%) Serenity BDD
7 2 (0.39%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.19%) CircleCI
8 1 (0.19%) ClearCase
8 1 (0.19%) InstallShield
8 1 (0.19%) MLflow
8 1 (0.19%) Rational DOORS
General
1 157 (30.43%) Public Sector
2 118 (22.87%) Social Skills
3 37 (7.17%) Finance
4 34 (6.59%) Analytical Skills
5 18 (3.49%) Documentation Skills
5 18 (3.49%) Military
6 15 (2.91%) Legal
7 13 (2.52%) Manufacturing
8 12 (2.33%) Aerospace
9 11 (2.13%) Banking
10 8 (1.55%) Electronics
11 7 (1.36%) Marketing
11 7 (1.36%) Telecoms
12 5 (0.97%) Organisational Skills
12 5 (0.97%) Presentation Skills
13 4 (0.78%) Aviation
13 4 (0.78%) Influencing Skills
14 3 (0.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 2 (0.39%) Corporate Banking
15 2 (0.39%) Law
Job Titles
1 64 (12.40%) Architect
2 52 (10.08%) Developer
3 45 (8.72%) Network Engineer
4 34 (6.59%) Analyst
5 33 (6.40%) Senior
6 32 (6.20%) Consultant
7 31 (6.01%) Lead
8 27 (5.23%) Administrator
9 22 (4.26%) Platform Engineer
10 20 (3.88%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
11 17 (3.29%) Technical Architect
12 16 (3.10%) DBA
12 16 (3.10%) DevOps Engineer
12 16 (3.10%) Engagement Manager
13 15 (2.91%) Data Engineer
14 14 (2.71%) Support Engineer
15 13 (2.52%) Software Engineer
16 12 (2.33%) Business Analyst
16 12 (2.33%) Java Developer
17 10 (1.94%) Unix Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (4.65%) Spring
2 22 (4.26%) Spring Boot
3 16 (3.10%) 802.1X
4 14 (2.71%) RESTful
5 13 (2.52%) Kafka
6 10 (1.94%) HTML
7 9 (1.74%) JSON
7 9 (1.74%) Node.js
7 9 (1.74%) XMPP
8 8 (1.55%) CSS
8 8 (1.55%) XML
9 7 (1.36%) Playwright
10 6 (1.16%) Apache NiFi
10 6 (1.16%) Hibernate
10 6 (1.16%) React
11 5 (0.97%) AngularJS
11 5 (0.97%) Middleware
11 5 (0.97%) OAuth
11 5 (0.97%) REST
11 5 (0.97%) Spring MVC
Miscellaneous
1 49 (9.50%) Data Centre
2 37 (7.17%) Product Ownership
3 19 (3.68%) Onboarding
4 16 (3.10%) Replication
5 14 (2.71%) Clustering
6 12 (2.33%) Cyber Threat
7 9 (1.74%) Operational Technology
8 8 (1.55%) Enterprise Software
9 7 (1.36%) Cloud Native
10 6 (1.16%) Private Cloud
11 5 (0.97%) Driving Licence
11 5 (0.97%) Fat Client
11 5 (0.97%) Mobile App
11 5 (0.97%) Security Posture
11 5 (0.97%) Thin Client
12 4 (0.78%) Legacy Systems
13 3 (0.58%) Analytical Mindset
13 3 (0.58%) Data Protection Act
13 3 (0.58%) Handset
13 3 (0.58%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 64 (12.40%) Windows
2 42 (8.14%) Linux
3 23 (4.46%) Windows Server
4 20 (3.88%) Windows 10
5 18 (3.49%) Unix
6 14 (2.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 11 (2.13%) Solaris
8 9 (1.74%) Windows 7
9 8 (1.55%) Android
10 6 (1.16%) 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
13 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 71 (13.76%) Agile
2 65 (12.60%) Problem-Solving
3 54 (10.47%) DevOps
4 50 (9.69%) CI/CD
5 49 (9.50%) ITSM
5 49 (9.50%) Service Management
6 46 (8.91%) Continuous Improvement
6 46 (8.91%) Cybersecurity
7 43 (8.33%) Project Delivery
8 42 (8.14%) Migration
9 41 (7.95%) Stakeholder Management
10 40 (7.75%) High Availability
11 35 (6.78%) Containerisation
12 33 (6.40%) Platform Engineering
12 33 (6.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 31 (6.01%) Disaster Recovery
14 30 (5.81%) Test Automation
15 29 (5.62%) Change Management
15 29 (5.62%) Project Management
15 29 (5.62%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 62 (12.02%) Python
2 54 (10.47%) PowerShell
3 42 (8.14%) Java
4 24 (4.65%) SQL
5 21 (4.07%) Bash
6 15 (2.91%) JavaScript
7 13 (2.52%) Perl
7 13 (2.52%) TypeScript
8 9 (1.74%) VB
8 9 (1.74%) VBScript
9 5 (0.97%) Rust
10 4 (0.78%) Ruby
11 3 (0.58%) C#
11 3 (0.58%) Go
12 2 (0.39%) ABAP
12 2 (0.39%) AWK
12 2 (0.39%) COBOL
12 2 (0.39%) Kotlin
12 2 (0.39%) Kusto Query Language
13 1 (0.19%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 349 (67.64%) SC Cleared
2 64 (12.40%) DV Cleared
3 52 (10.08%) BPSS Clearance
4 40 (7.75%) Degree
5 35 (6.78%) Cisco Certification
6 33 (6.40%) CCNP
7 30 (5.81%) CCNA
8 13 (2.52%) Computer Science Degree
8 13 (2.52%) Microsoft Certification
9 10 (1.94%) CISSP
10 9 (1.74%) AWS Certification
11 8 (1.55%) CCDP
11 8 (1.55%) ITIL Certification
11 8 (1.55%) MCSA
11 8 (1.55%) MCSE
11 8 (1.55%) VCAP
11 8 (1.55%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 7 (1.36%) CISM
13 6 (1.16%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 5 (0.97%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (4.07%) NIST
2 16 (3.10%) Accessibility
3 15 (2.91%) QA
4 12 (2.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 12 (2.33%) SLA
5 9 (1.74%) JSP 440
6 8 (1.55%) NCSC
7 6 (1.16%) Data Quality
8 5 (0.97%) GDPR
8 5 (0.97%) PMO
8 5 (0.97%) WCAG
9 3 (0.58%) GRC
9 3 (0.58%) IFRS
10 2 (0.39%) IFRS 17
10 2 (0.39%) PSD2
11 1 (0.19%) Basel III
11 1 (0.19%) CRD IV
11 1 (0.19%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 1 (0.19%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.19%) SOC 2
System Software
1 33 (6.40%) Docker
2 30 (5.81%) Active Directory
3 20 (3.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 11 (2.13%) vSphere
5 10 (1.94%) Virtual Machines
5 10 (1.94%) VMware ESXi
6 9 (1.74%) BitLocker
7 4 (0.78%) 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 35 (6.78%) Kubernetes
2 31 (6.01%) Terraform
3 20 (3.88%) SCCM
4 14 (2.71%) Ansible
5 9 (1.74%) vCenter Server
6 8 (1.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 8 (1.55%) Microsoft Intune
7 7 (1.36%) Grafana
8 5 (0.97%) Prometheus
9 4 (0.78%) Norton AntiVirus
9 4 (0.78%) Oracle RMAN
10 3 (0.58%) FortiGate
11 2 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
12 1 (0.19%) Cisco CUCM
12 1 (0.19%) Cisco Prime
12 1 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
12 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Clustering
12 1 (0.19%) Nagios
12 1 (0.19%) vRealize
12 1 (0.19%) VxRail
Vendors
1 74 (14.34%) Cisco
2 71 (13.76%) Microsoft
3 38 (7.36%) SAP
4 36 (6.98%) Palo Alto
5 34 (6.59%) Oracle
6 30 (5.81%) ServiceNow
7 26 (5.04%) VMware
8 15 (2.91%) Citrix
9 14 (2.71%) Meraki
10 11 (2.13%) Red Hat
11 9 (1.74%) Dell
11 9 (1.74%) IBM
12 8 (1.55%) Aruba
13 7 (1.36%) HP
14 6 (1.16%) CheckPoint
14 6 (1.16%) CyberArk
14 6 (1.16%) Ekahau
14 6 (1.16%) Splunk
15 5 (0.97%) Apple
15 5 (0.97%) Symantec