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

6 months to
29 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 505 412 456
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 15.76% 21.40% 16.50%
As % of the Qualifications category 55.68% 58.61% 54.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 327 238 296
10th Percentile £358 £250 £356
25th Percentile £419 £419 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £638 £588 £665
90th Percentile £751 £650 £725
England median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 17 61
10th Percentile £24.16 £25.26 -
25th Percentile £32.75 £37.80 £10.95
Median hourly rate £60.61 £60.00 £14.50
Median % change year-on-year +1.02% +313.79% -61.33%
75th Percentile £74.26 £76.25 £48.00
90th Percentile £78.07 £85.87 £73.75
England median hourly rate £55.00 £56.40 £57.29
% change year-on-year -2.47% -1.55% -4.53%

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 907 703 834
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 28.30% 36.52% 30.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 596 401 477
10th Percentile £325 £230 £247
25th Percentile £400 £390 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £496 £513
Median % change year-on-year -4.14% -3.32% -1.25%
75th Percentile £588 £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 82 42 124
10th Percentile £25.15 £17.70 £10.95
25th Percentile £35.14 £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 £71.50 £60.00 £39.54
90th Percentile £83.53 £83.13 £62.50
England median hourly rate £47.50 £46.90 £40.00
% change year-on-year +1.28% +17.25% -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 29 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 29 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 29 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 -5 169 £500 - 98
Cumbria 0 119 £481 -10.88% 22
Lancashire +3 106 £700 +56.60% 27
Cheshire -5 76 £445 +27.21% 7
Merseyside -14 29 £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 24 (4.75%) Microsoft Exchange
2 9 (1.78%) SharePoint
2 9 (1.78%) Skype for Business
3 7 (1.39%) Confluence
4 6 (1.19%) Apache Spark
5 4 (0.79%) Apache
5 4 (0.79%) Jupyter
6 2 (0.40%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 2 (0.40%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.40%) CICS
6 2 (0.40%) SAS
7 1 (0.20%) CMS
7 1 (0.20%) IIS
7 1 (0.20%) nginx
7 1 (0.20%) OpenStack
Applications
1 18 (3.56%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (1.98%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (1.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.59%) 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 (0.59%) Remedy ITSM
1 3 (0.59%) 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 83 (16.44%) AWS
2 56 (11.09%) Azure
3 25 (4.95%) Microsoft 365
4 17 (3.37%) GCP
5 15 (2.97%) Power Platform
5 15 (2.97%) Serverless
6 13 (2.57%) SaaS
7 11 (2.18%) Entra ID
7 11 (2.18%) GitHub
8 8 (1.58%) Amazon EKS
8 8 (1.58%) Azure DevOps
8 8 (1.58%) Google Workspace
9 7 (1.39%) Amazon S3
9 7 (1.39%) OCI
10 5 (0.99%) Azure Monitor
10 5 (0.99%) Google Drive
11 4 (0.79%) AWS CloudFormation
11 4 (0.79%) AWS Lambda
11 4 (0.79%) GitHub Actions
11 4 (0.79%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 57 (11.29%) Firewall
2 36 (7.13%) VLAN
3 27 (5.35%) DNS
3 27 (5.35%) WAN
4 24 (4.75%) Network Security
5 23 (4.55%) Wi-Fi
6 18 (3.56%) DHCP
6 18 (3.56%) LAN
7 12 (2.38%) VPN
7 12 (2.38%) Wireless
8 10 (1.98%) SAN
9 9 (1.78%) BGP
9 9 (1.78%) Skype
9 9 (1.78%) TCP/IP
10 8 (1.58%) OSPF
11 7 (1.39%) BIG-IP
11 7 (1.39%) Cisco IOS
11 7 (1.39%) Ethernet VPN
11 7 (1.39%) Structured Cabling
11 7 (1.39%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (3.96%) PostgreSQL
2 14 (2.77%) Power BI
3 12 (2.38%) SQL Server
4 11 (2.18%) MySQL
4 11 (2.18%) Oracle Database
5 10 (1.98%) MongoDB
6 9 (1.78%) Elasticsearch
6 9 (1.78%) Relational Database
7 8 (1.58%) NoSQL
8 7 (1.39%) Metadata
9 6 (1.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 5 (0.99%) Oracle Database 12c
11 4 (0.79%) Hadoop
11 4 (0.79%) Tableau
12 3 (0.59%) Data Lake
12 3 (0.59%) 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 28 (5.54%) GitLab
2 18 (3.56%) Git
3 13 (2.57%) JIRA
4 7 (1.39%) Jenkins
5 6 (1.19%) MSI
6 4 (0.79%) Postman
6 4 (0.79%) Selenium
7 3 (0.59%) 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
1 158 (31.29%) Public Sector
2 101 (20.00%) Social Skills
3 30 (5.94%) Finance
4 24 (4.75%) Analytical Skills
4 24 (4.75%) Military
5 23 (4.55%) Documentation Skills
6 14 (2.77%) Legal
7 12 (2.38%) Aerospace
7 12 (2.38%) Banking
8 7 (1.39%) Manufacturing
8 7 (1.39%) Presentation Skills
9 4 (0.79%) Aviation
9 4 (0.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (0.59%) Influencing Skills
11 2 (0.40%) Corporate Banking
11 2 (0.40%) Law
11 2 (0.40%) Marketing
11 2 (0.40%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.40%) Retail
11 2 (0.40%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 70 (13.86%) Architect
2 54 (10.69%) Developer
3 52 (10.30%) Lead
4 35 (6.93%) Network Engineer
5 34 (6.73%) Senior
6 31 (6.14%) Analyst
7 30 (5.94%) Administrator
8 20 (3.96%) DBA
8 20 (3.96%) Technical Architect
9 19 (3.76%) Lead Architect
10 17 (3.37%) Wintel Engineer
11 16 (3.17%) Consultant
11 16 (3.17%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
12 15 (2.97%) Coordinator
12 15 (2.97%) Data Engineer
13 14 (2.77%) DevOps Engineer
13 14 (2.77%) Unix Engineer
14 13 (2.57%) Business Analyst
14 13 (2.57%) Java Developer
14 13 (2.57%) Security Assurance Coordinator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (5.74%) Spring
2 25 (4.95%) Spring Boot
3 16 (3.17%) Node.js
4 13 (2.57%) Kafka
5 12 (2.38%) RESTful
6 11 (2.18%) 802.1X
7 10 (1.98%) OAuth
8 7 (1.39%) HTML
8 7 (1.39%) JSON
8 7 (1.39%) Playwright
8 7 (1.39%) REST
8 7 (1.39%) XML
9 6 (1.19%) CSS
9 6 (1.19%) Hibernate
9 6 (1.19%) React
10 5 (0.99%) Middleware
10 5 (0.99%) OAuth2
10 5 (0.99%) OpenID
10 5 (0.99%) Spring MVC
10 5 (0.99%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 33 (6.53%) Data Centre
2 26 (5.15%) Product Ownership
3 22 (4.36%) Replication
4 21 (4.16%) Clustering
5 16 (3.17%) Onboarding
6 14 (2.77%) Cloud Native
7 10 (1.98%) Operational Technology
8 8 (1.58%) Cyber Threat
8 8 (1.58%) Enterprise Software
9 6 (1.19%) Management Information System
10 5 (0.99%) Fat Client
10 5 (0.99%) Mobile App
10 5 (0.99%) Private Cloud
10 5 (0.99%) Security Posture
10 5 (0.99%) Thin Client
11 4 (0.79%) Data Protection Act
11 4 (0.79%) Distributed Systems
11 4 (0.79%) Hybrid Cloud
11 4 (0.79%) Legacy Systems
12 3 (0.59%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 55 (10.89%) Windows
2 25 (4.95%) Linux
3 22 (4.36%) Windows Server
4 20 (3.96%) Unix
5 19 (3.76%) Windows 10
6 15 (2.97%) Solaris
7 9 (1.78%) Windows 7
8 4 (0.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 3 (0.59%) AIX
9 3 (0.59%) Android
9 3 (0.59%) Apple iOS
10 2 (0.40%) Mac OS X
10 2 (0.40%) VMS
11 1 (0.20%) Mac OS
11 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 75 (14.85%) Agile
2 58 (11.49%) Project Delivery
3 57 (11.29%) DevOps
4 53 (10.50%) CI/CD
4 53 (10.50%) High Availability
5 52 (10.30%) Migration
5 52 (10.30%) Problem-Solving
6 51 (10.10%) Stakeholder Management
7 44 (8.71%) Continuous Improvement
8 43 (8.51%) ITSM
9 42 (8.32%) Disaster Recovery
10 37 (7.33%) Service Management
11 36 (7.13%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 34 (6.73%) Cybersecurity
13 31 (6.14%) Test Automation
14 30 (5.94%) Microservices
14 30 (5.94%) Risk Management
14 30 (5.94%) Technical Leadership
15 27 (5.35%) Change Management
16 25 (4.95%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 52 (10.30%) Python
2 49 (9.70%) Java
3 45 (8.91%) PowerShell
4 26 (5.15%) SQL
5 21 (4.16%) JavaScript
6 14 (2.77%) TypeScript
7 10 (1.98%) VB
8 9 (1.78%) VBScript
9 5 (0.99%) Go
9 5 (0.99%) Rust
10 4 (0.79%) Ruby
11 3 (0.59%) C#
12 2 (0.40%) AWK
12 2 (0.40%) Bash
12 2 (0.40%) COBOL
12 2 (0.40%) Kotlin
12 2 (0.40%) Kusto Query Language
13 1 (0.20%) Bicep
13 1 (0.20%) Scala
13 1 (0.20%) VB6
Qualifications
1 330 (65.35%) SC Cleared
2 74 (14.65%) DV Cleared
3 39 (7.72%) BPSS Clearance
4 32 (6.34%) Cisco Certification
5 29 (5.74%) CCNP
5 29 (5.74%) Degree
6 26 (5.15%) CCNA
7 21 (4.16%) Microsoft Certification
8 14 (2.77%) MCSA
8 14 (2.77%) MCSE
8 14 (2.77%) VCAP
8 14 (2.77%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 13 (2.57%) CISSP
10 11 (2.18%) Computer Science Degree
11 9 (1.78%) AWS Certification
11 9 (1.78%) Azure Certification
11 9 (1.78%) ITIL Certification
12 7 (1.39%) CISM
13 6 (1.19%) Network+ Certification
13 6 (1.19%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (4.36%) NIST
2 16 (3.17%) QA
3 15 (2.97%) Accessibility
3 15 (2.97%) SLA
4 13 (2.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 12 (2.38%) JSP 440
6 6 (1.19%) Data Quality
6 6 (1.19%) GDPR
7 4 (0.79%) GRC
7 4 (0.79%) NCSC
7 4 (0.79%) PMO
7 4 (0.79%) WCAG
8 3 (0.59%) 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 27 (5.35%) Active Directory
2 26 (5.15%) Docker
3 20 (3.96%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (3.56%) Virtual Machines
4 18 (3.56%) VMware ESXi
5 17 (3.37%) vSphere
6 10 (1.98%) BitLocker
7 4 (0.79%) Firmware
8 2 (0.40%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.40%) ISA Server
9 1 (0.20%) GPFS
9 1 (0.20%) NFS
9 1 (0.20%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 34 (6.73%) Terraform
2 32 (6.34%) Kubernetes
3 25 (4.95%) Ansible
4 17 (3.37%) vCenter Server
5 15 (2.97%) SCCM
6 8 (1.58%) Grafana
7 6 (1.19%) Oracle RMAN
7 6 (1.19%) Prometheus
8 4 (0.79%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 4 (0.79%) Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.40%) Microsoft Clustering
9 2 (0.40%) Microsoft Intune
9 2 (0.40%) Norton AntiVirus
9 2 (0.40%) WSUS
10 1 (0.20%) Cisco CUCM
10 1 (0.20%) Cisco Prime
10 1 (0.20%) Data Guard
10 1 (0.20%) FortiGate
10 1 (0.20%) Nagios
10 1 (0.20%) vMotion
Vendors
1 70 (13.86%) Microsoft
2 63 (12.48%) Cisco
3 39 (7.72%) Oracle
4 34 (6.73%) Palo Alto
5 30 (5.94%) ServiceNow
6 26 (5.15%) SAP
7 21 (4.16%) VMware
8 12 (2.38%) Aruba
9 9 (1.78%) Google
10 8 (1.58%) F5
10 8 (1.58%) Meraki
11 6 (1.19%) CheckPoint
11 6 (1.19%) Citrix
11 6 (1.19%) Ekahau
11 6 (1.19%) IBM
11 6 (1.19%) Splunk
12 5 (0.99%) Arista
12 5 (0.99%) SolarWinds
13 4 (0.79%) RedGate
13 4 (0.79%) Veritas