Government Security Classifications Contract Job Trends in the South West

Government Security Classifications (GSC)
England > South West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the South West requiring Government Security Classifications skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 26 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 140 114 127
Rank change year-on-year -26 +13 -
Contract jobs citing Government Security Classifications 4 5 23
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 0.14% 0.28% 0.74%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 0.88% 1.79% 4.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 2 0 22
10th Percentile - - £460
25th Percentile - - £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 - £500
75th Percentile - - £525
90th Percentile - - £575
England median daily rate £525 £475 £525
% change year-on-year +10.53% -9.52% -26.06%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
South West

Government Security Classifications falls under the Quality Assurance and Compliance category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring quality assurance or compliance skills in the South West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 457 280 501
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 16.19% 15.61% 16.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 236 149 293
10th Percentile £319 £212 £308
25th Percentile £413 £409 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -3.67% +6.34%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £625
90th Percentile £681 £700 £706
England median daily rate £501 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +0.10% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 84 31 54
10th Percentile £17.69 £19.83 £12.53
25th Percentile £33.50 £61.25 £22.79
Median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +44.44% -27.42%
75th Percentile £65.00 £68.13 £68.75
90th Percentile £67.25 £75.00 £83.40
England median hourly rate £25.77 £31.76 £26.24
% change year-on-year -18.86% +21.04% -25.03%

Government Security Classifications
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Government Security Classifications relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West.

Government Security Classifications job vacancy trend in the South West

Government Security Classifications
Daily Rate Trend in the South West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Government Security Classifications.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Government Security Classifications

Government Security Classifications
Contract Job Locations in the South West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Government Security Classifications within the South West region over the 6 months to 26 February 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
Somerset - 3 £550 -
Bristol -18 1 - - 1
Government Security Classifications
England

Government Security Classifications
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South 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:

Business Applications
1 1 (25.00%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 3 (75.00%) Azure
2 2 (50.00%) AWS
3 1 (25.00%) AWS CloudFormation
3 1 (25.00%) Azure API Management
3 1 (25.00%) Azure DevOps
3 1 (25.00%) Azure Event Grid
3 1 (25.00%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 1 (25.00%) DHCP
1 1 (25.00%) DNS
1 1 (25.00%) MPLS
1 1 (25.00%) NAS
1 1 (25.00%) SAN
1 1 (25.00%) SD-WAN
1 1 (25.00%) TCP/IP
1 1 (25.00%) VPN
1 1 (25.00%) WAN
General
1 1 (25.00%) Finance
1 1 (25.00%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 3 (75.00%) Architect
2 2 (50.00%) Azure Architect
2 2 (50.00%) Infrastructure Architect
3 1 (25.00%) AWS Architect
3 1 (25.00%) AWS Infrastructure Architect
3 1 (25.00%) Delivery Manager
3 1 (25.00%) DevOps Architect
3 1 (25.00%) MODAF Architect
3 1 (25.00%) Network Infrastructure Architect
3 1 (25.00%) Network Security Architect
3 1 (25.00%) Security Architect
3 1 (25.00%) Solutions Architect
3 1 (25.00%) Storage Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (25.00%) ADO
Miscellaneous
1 1 (25.00%) CMDB
1 1 (25.00%) Product Ownership
1 1 (25.00%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 1 (25.00%) Linux
1 1 (25.00%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 4 (100.00%) Scrum
2 3 (75.00%) Agile
2 3 (75.00%) MODAF
2 3 (75.00%) User Experience
2 3 (75.00%) UX Research
3 2 (50.00%) CI/CD
3 2 (50.00%) DevOps
3 2 (50.00%) Infrastructure as Code
3 2 (50.00%) Observability
3 2 (50.00%) Performance Tuning
3 2 (50.00%) TOGAF
3 2 (50.00%) Zero Trust
4 1 (25.00%) Capacity Planning
4 1 (25.00%) Cybersecurity
4 1 (25.00%) Infrastructure Automation
4 1 (25.00%) Microservices
4 1 (25.00%) Project Governance
4 1 (25.00%) SIEM
4 1 (25.00%) Technology Roadmap
4 1 (25.00%) Vulnerability Management
Programming Languages
1 1 (25.00%) Bicep
1 1 (25.00%) PowerShell
1 1 (25.00%) Python
Qualifications
1 4 (100.00%) SC Cleared
1 4 (100.00%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (75.00%) NCSC
2 1 (25.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (25.00%) NIST
System Software
1 1 (25.00%) Active Directory
1 1 (25.00%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 1 (25.00%) Ansible
1 1 (25.00%) Single Sign-On
1 1 (25.00%) Terraform
Vendors
1 1 (25.00%) VMware