SC Cleared Contract Job Trends in the West Midlands

Security Check (SC) Clearance
England > West Midlands

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the West Midlands with a requirement for SC Cleared qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 25 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 7 4
Rank change year-on-year +5 -3 +11
Contract jobs citing SC Cleared 719 217 289
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 20.72% 13.34% 14.92%
As % of the Qualifications category 60.78% 41.65% 43.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 541 152 199
10th Percentile £360 £276 £300
25th Percentile £413 £412 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £467 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -6.63% - -9.09%
75th Percentile £540 £575 £600
90th Percentile £633 £688 £673
England median daily rate £525 £525 £525
% change year-on-year - - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 52 17 5
10th Percentile £16.21 £18.73 £13.55
25th Percentile £51.25 - -
Median hourly rate £63.14 £18.87 £14.00
Median % change year-on-year +234.58% +34.79% -49.09%
75th Percentile £70.32 £25.15 £22.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £31.88 £31.30
England median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £52.35
% change year-on-year +151.03% -51.95% -8.97%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
West Midlands

SC 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 West Midlands.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 1,183 521 666
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 34.09% 32.02% 34.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 846 342 422
10th Percentile £346 £156 £306
25th Percentile £406 £325 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £475 £513
Median % change year-on-year -1.37% -7.36% -5.05%
75th Percentile £544 £581 £625
90th Percentile £650 £650 £724
England median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 84 46 26
10th Percentile £16.45 £18.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £28.64 £20.40 £19.54
Median hourly rate £52.50 £30.00 £36.25
Median % change year-on-year +75.00% -17.24% +34.26%
75th Percentile £67.84 £43.81 £56.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £51.25 £58.75
England median hourly rate £54.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +114.71% -41.51% -23.76%

SC Cleared
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing SC Cleared relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands.

SC Cleared job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

SC Cleared
Daily Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing SC Cleared.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing SC Cleared

SC Cleared
Daily Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SC Cleared in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 25 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SC Cleared in the West Midlands

SC Cleared
Hourly Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing SC Cleared.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing SC Cleared

SC Cleared
Hourly Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SC Cleared in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 25 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for SC Cleared in the West Midlands

SC Cleared
Contract Job Locations in the West Midlands

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SC Cleared within the West Midlands region over the 6 months to 25 July 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
Shropshire +2 440 £468 -9.03% 50
Birmingham -1 101 £475 - 17
Warwickshire -9 60 £450 -10.00% 7
Solihull +3 42 £463 +2.78% 1
Herefordshire 0 24 £663 -17.19% 6
Worcestershire -6 12 £680 -2.86% 2
Coventry -18 8 £425 +54.55% 2
Staffordshire -3 5 £388 -21.72% 3
Walsall - 4 £600 -
SC Cleared
England

SC Cleared
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the West Midlands 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
1 106 (14.74%) SAS
2 91 (12.66%) Confluence
3 21 (2.92%) WebLogic
4 18 (2.50%) Apache Airflow
5 13 (1.81%) SharePoint
6 10 (1.39%) Tuxedo
7 3 (0.42%) Oracle Workflow
8 2 (0.28%) Apache
8 2 (0.28%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.14%) IIS
9 1 (0.14%) Jupyter
9 1 (0.14%) NetWeaver
9 1 (0.14%) OpenStack
9 1 (0.14%) SAP EP
Applications
1 14 (1.95%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (1.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 9 (1.25%) Microsoft Project
4 6 (0.83%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.56%) Notepad++
6 1 (0.14%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 8 (1.11%) SAP PSCD
2 4 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.28%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.14%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.14%) Oracle Payroll
4 1 (0.14%) SAP BRIM
4 1 (0.14%) SAP CO
4 1 (0.14%) SAP CRM
4 1 (0.14%) SAP EWM
4 1 (0.14%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.14%) SAP FI/CO
4 1 (0.14%) SAP FI-CA
4 1 (0.14%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 185 (25.73%) AWS
2 90 (12.52%) Azure
3 46 (6.40%) GitHub
4 44 (6.12%) Amazon S3
5 40 (5.56%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 38 (5.29%) Amazon EC2
7 36 (5.01%) GitHub Actions
8 25 (3.48%) Serverless
9 23 (3.20%) GCP
9 23 (3.20%) Power Platform
10 21 (2.92%) AWS Lambda
11 20 (2.78%) Azure DevOps
12 19 (2.64%) Microsoft 365
13 18 (2.50%) Amazon ECS
13 18 (2.50%) Amazon EKS
13 18 (2.50%) AWS KMS
13 18 (2.50%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 16 (2.23%) Amazon SQS
15 14 (1.95%) Route 53
16 11 (1.53%) AWS CodePipeline
Communications & Networking
1 23 (3.20%) Firewall
2 10 (1.39%) WAN
3 9 (1.25%) VPN
4 8 (1.11%) DNS
4 8 (1.11%) Intrusion Detection
4 8 (1.11%) SSL
5 7 (0.97%) LAN
6 6 (0.83%) Network Security
7 5 (0.70%) TCP/IP
8 4 (0.56%) BGP
8 4 (0.56%) DHCP
8 4 (0.56%) IPsec
8 4 (0.56%) MPLS
8 4 (0.56%) PuTTY
8 4 (0.56%) SNMP
8 4 (0.56%) VLAN
8 4 (0.56%) WinSCP
9 3 (0.42%) DMVPN
9 3 (0.42%) OSPF
9 3 (0.42%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 76 (10.57%) Data Warehouse
2 73 (10.15%) Pentaho
3 49 (6.82%) PostgreSQL
4 36 (5.01%) Oracle Database
5 31 (4.31%) MySQL
5 31 (4.31%) Oracle Reports
6 27 (3.76%) Amazon RDS
7 21 (2.92%) Data Lake
7 21 (2.92%) Metadata
7 21 (2.92%) SAS Enterprise Guide
8 20 (2.78%) Amazon Redshift
9 18 (2.50%) SAS Visual Analytics
10 17 (2.36%) DynamoDB
11 16 (2.23%) BusinessObjects
11 16 (2.23%) Power BI
12 14 (1.95%) Amazon Aurora
12 14 (1.95%) Base SAS
12 14 (1.95%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
13 12 (1.67%) SQL Server
14 9 (1.25%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 122 (16.97%) JIRA
2 95 (13.21%) Git
3 92 (12.80%) GitLab
4 82 (11.40%) Jenkins
5 40 (5.56%) JUnit
6 31 (4.31%) Zephyr
7 29 (4.03%) Selenium
8 25 (3.48%) Postman
9 23 (3.20%) Maven
10 19 (2.64%) Bitbucket
11 18 (2.50%) Cucumber
11 18 (2.50%) Mockito
11 18 (2.50%) WebDriver
12 15 (2.09%) JMeter
12 15 (2.09%) SonarQube
13 10 (1.39%) Artifactory
13 10 (1.39%) Atlassian Bamboo
13 10 (1.39%) DbUnit
13 10 (1.39%) jMock
14 8 (1.11%) Bitbucket Server
General
1 180 (25.03%) Social Skills
2 151 (21.00%) Public Sector
3 55 (7.65%) Analytical Skills
4 39 (5.42%) Finance
5 14 (1.95%) Organisational Skills
6 13 (1.81%) Influencing Skills
7 12 (1.67%) Documentation Skills
8 11 (1.53%) Presentation Skills
9 10 (1.39%) Telecoms
10 7 (0.97%) Advertising
10 7 (0.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 5 (0.70%) Legal
12 4 (0.56%) Aerospace
13 2 (0.28%) Banking
13 2 (0.28%) Billing
13 2 (0.28%) General Ledger
13 2 (0.28%) Military
Job Titles
1 160 (22.25%) Data Engineer
2 78 (10.85%) Architect
3 63 (8.76%) Developer
4 50 (6.95%) Analyst
4 50 (6.95%) Senior
5 37 (5.15%) Java Developer
5 37 (5.15%) Tester
6 33 (4.59%) Consultant
7 30 (4.17%) Data Architect
8 29 (4.03%) Scrum Master
9 28 (3.89%) Lead
10 22 (3.06%) Software Engineer
11 20 (2.78%) QA Tester
11 20 (2.78%) SAS Engineer
11 20 (2.78%) Test Analyst
12 19 (2.64%) SAS Architect
13 17 (2.36%) Administrator
13 17 (2.36%) Technical Architect
14 16 (2.23%) Project Manager
14 16 (2.23%) SAP Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 51 (7.09%) Spring
2 35 (4.87%) Spring Boot
3 26 (3.62%) REST
4 20 (2.78%) SOAP
5 17 (2.36%) JPA
6 16 (2.23%) ActiveMQ
7 15 (2.09%) AngularJS
7 15 (2.09%) Hibernate
7 15 (2.09%) Spring Cloud
7 15 (2.09%) Web Services
7 15 (2.09%) WireMock
8 14 (1.95%) Node.js
8 14 (1.95%) RESTful
8 14 (1.95%) Spring Batch
8 14 (1.95%) Spring Integration
9 10 (1.39%) JSON
9 10 (1.39%) PowerMock
10 9 (1.25%) AWS CDK
11 8 (1.11%) Bootstrap
12 7 (0.97%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 37 (5.15%) Cloud Native
2 36 (5.01%) Product Ownership
3 29 (4.03%) Distributed Systems
4 14 (1.95%) Legacy Systems
4 14 (1.95%) Onboarding
5 13 (1.81%) Data Centre
6 11 (1.53%) Distributed Architecture
6 11 (1.53%) Linux Command Line
7 10 (1.39%) Enterprise Software
8 9 (1.25%) Analytical Mindset
9 7 (0.97%) Enterprise Cloud
9 7 (0.97%) SCADA
10 6 (0.83%) Data Structures
10 6 (0.83%) Private Cloud
11 5 (0.70%) Cyber Threat
11 5 (0.70%) Security Operations Centre
11 5 (0.70%) Self-Motivation
12 4 (0.56%) Autonomous Agent
12 4 (0.56%) CSOC
12 4 (0.56%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 59 (8.21%) Unix
2 55 (7.65%) Linux
3 35 (4.87%) Windows
4 10 (1.39%) Windows Server
5 5 (0.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (0.70%) Solaris
6 4 (0.56%) Android
7 2 (0.28%) AIX
7 2 (0.28%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.28%) Mac OS
8 1 (0.14%) CentOS
8 1 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
8 1 (0.14%) HPUX
8 1 (0.14%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 241 (33.52%) Agile
2 145 (20.17%) CI/CD
3 134 (18.64%) Continuous Improvement
4 133 (18.50%) DevOps
5 132 (18.36%) Test Automation
6 130 (18.08%) ETL
7 123 (17.11%) Scrum
8 113 (15.72%) Problem-Solving
9 111 (15.44%) Migration
10 97 (13.49%) Analytics
11 77 (10.71%) Data Integration
12 76 (10.57%) Containerisation
13 74 (10.29%) Stakeholder Management
14 71 (9.87%) Data Modelling
15 64 (8.90%) Data Pipeline
16 56 (7.79%) Validation
17 54 (7.51%) Microservices
18 51 (7.09%) Business Intelligence
19 50 (6.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 45 (6.26%) End-to-End Testing
Programming Languages
1 209 (29.07%) SQL
2 94 (13.07%) Java
3 53 (7.37%) PL/SQL
4 41 (5.70%) Python
5 25 (3.48%) Shell Script
6 10 (1.39%) Bash
6 10 (1.39%) C
6 10 (1.39%) JavaScript
7 9 (1.25%) ABAP
8 8 (1.11%) C#
9 6 (0.83%) PowerShell
9 6 (0.83%) ProC
10 4 (0.56%) Kotlin
10 4 (0.56%) Kusto Query Language
10 4 (0.56%) Perl
10 4 (0.56%) Scala
11 3 (0.42%) Go
11 3 (0.42%) HiveQL
11 3 (0.42%) TypeScript
11 3 (0.42%) VB
Qualifications
1 719 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 35 (4.87%) BPSS Clearance
3 26 (3.62%) ISTQB
4 18 (2.50%) Microsoft Certification
5 14 (1.95%) DV Cleared
6 11 (1.53%) SAFe Agilist
7 10 (1.39%) AWS Certification
7 10 (1.39%) Degree
8 9 (1.25%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
8 9 (1.25%) Cisco Certification
9 8 (1.11%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 7 (0.97%) Azure Certification
10 7 (0.97%) CISSP
10 7 (0.97%) OCP
10 7 (0.97%) Oracle Certification
11 6 (0.83%) CCNA
12 5 (0.70%) CISM
13 4 (0.56%) MCSE
13 4 (0.56%) RHCA
13 4 (0.56%) SAS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 52 (7.23%) QA
2 43 (5.98%) Data Quality
3 18 (2.50%) Accessibility
4 17 (2.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 11 (1.53%) NIST
6 10 (1.39%) NCSC
7 9 (1.25%) FATCA
7 9 (1.25%) SLA
8 5 (0.70%) GRC
9 4 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials
9 4 (0.56%) GDPR
10 2 (0.28%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.28%) PMO
10 2 (0.28%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.14%) HIPAA
11 1 (0.14%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.14%) P3O
11 1 (0.14%) WCAG
System Software
1 87 (12.10%) Docker
2 15 (2.09%) VMware Infrastructure
3 11 (1.53%) Active Directory
4 10 (1.39%) Postfix
5 8 (1.11%) VMware ESXi
5 8 (1.11%) vSphere
6 6 (0.83%) VMware NSX
7 5 (0.70%) Hyper-V
7 5 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
8 4 (0.56%) Snort
9 3 (0.42%) HDFS
10 1 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 84 (11.68%) Kubernetes
2 55 (7.65%) Grafana
3 27 (3.76%) Terraform
4 25 (3.48%) Prometheus
5 17 (2.36%) Ansible
6 6 (0.83%) Podman
7 4 (0.56%) CSIRT
7 4 (0.56%) PowerCLI
7 4 (0.56%) vCenter Server
7 4 (0.56%) vMotion
8 3 (0.42%) QRadar
9 2 (0.28%) Kibana
9 2 (0.28%) SCCM
9 2 (0.28%) Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.28%) WMI
10 1 (0.14%) Backup Exec
10 1 (0.14%) Control-M
10 1 (0.14%) Data Guard
10 1 (0.14%) Iperf
10 1 (0.14%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 198 (27.54%) Oracle
2 106 (14.74%) Talend
3 63 (8.76%) Microsoft
4 58 (8.07%) Denodo
5 53 (7.37%) Informatica
6 40 (5.56%) SAP
7 26 (3.62%) Atlassian
8 23 (3.20%) ServiceNow
9 21 (2.92%) VMware
10 14 (1.95%) Cisco
10 14 (1.95%) Jaspersoft
11 13 (1.81%) Sage
12 11 (1.53%) Dynatrace
12 11 (1.53%) Splunk
13 8 (1.11%) Databricks
13 8 (1.11%) webMethods
14 6 (0.83%) Cloudera
15 5 (0.70%) F5
16 4 (0.56%) 3PAR
16 4 (0.56%) Veeam