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 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 3 7 7
Rank change year-on-year +4 0 +10
Contract jobs citing SC Cleared 429 224 237
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 20.06% 11.97% 12.38%
As % of the Qualifications category 52.64% 38.42% 41.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 319 164 169
10th Percentile £363 £364 £325
25th Percentile £463 £455 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £540 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% +8.00% -
75th Percentile £586 £625 £626
90th Percentile £700 £696 £688
England median daily rate £525 £526 £550
% change year-on-year -0.19% -4.36% -1.61%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 3 11
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £62.50
Median hourly rate £18.87 £35.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -46.09% -46.15% -
75th Percentile £25.15 - £68.13
90th Percentile - - £70.00
England median hourly rate £25.15 £58.30 £57.33
% change year-on-year -56.86% +1.69% -4.45%

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 815 583 569
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 38.10% 31.14% 29.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 553 368 354
10th Percentile £266 £302 £313
25th Percentile £421 £420 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% - +6.06%
75th Percentile £581 £613 £609
90th Percentile £675 £725 £700
England median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 16 29
10th Percentile £15.61 £19.74 £17.70
25th Percentile £18.87 £25.07 £23.00
Median hourly rate £25.08 £34.47 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -27.25% -1.53% +44.33%
75th Percentile £34.00 £45.31 £67.50
90th Percentile £50.00 £52.50 £71.50
England median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £53.67
% change year-on-year -49.70% -6.83% +19.26%

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 November 2025.

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 November 2025.

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 November 2025. 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 0 150 £520 +9.01% 19
Birmingham +26 111 £475 -20.83% 25
Worcestershire +14 62 £650 +36.84% 13
Warwickshire -3 59 £485 -18.06% 16
Herefordshire 0 47 £650 +6.21% 10
Solihull -3 8 £450 +0.67% 3
Coventry - 6 £300 -
Staffordshire +1 5 £270 -40.00% 11
Wolverhampton - 2 - -
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 74 (17.25%) SAS
2 35 (8.16%) Confluence
3 14 (3.26%) WebLogic
4 12 (2.80%) Apache
4 12 (2.80%) nginx
5 7 (1.63%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.70%) Oracle Workflow
6 3 (0.70%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.23%) NetWeaver
7 1 (0.23%) SAP EP
7 1 (0.23%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 11 (2.56%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 9 (2.10%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (1.17%) Microsoft Project
4 4 (0.93%) Spreadsheet
5 2 (0.47%) Microsoft Excel
6 1 (0.23%) AutoCAD
6 1 (0.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.23%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 3 (0.70%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.47%) SAP ERP
2 2 (0.47%) SAP PP
2 2 (0.47%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.23%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.23%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 93 (21.68%) Azure
2 80 (18.65%) AWS
3 31 (7.23%) Amazon S3
4 30 (6.99%) Amazon EC2
4 30 (6.99%) GitHub
5 27 (6.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 25 (5.83%) Amazon ELB
6 25 (5.83%) AWS KMS
6 25 (5.83%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 21 (4.90%) Microsoft 365
8 20 (4.66%) OpenShift
9 15 (3.50%) SaaS
9 15 (3.50%) Serverless
10 13 (3.03%) Azure Data Factory
10 13 (3.03%) Azure Monitor
10 13 (3.03%) Route 53
11 12 (2.80%) Amazon Glacier
11 12 (2.80%) Power Platform
12 11 (2.56%) Amazon ECS
13 9 (2.10%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 51 (11.89%) Firewall
2 43 (10.02%) DNS
3 37 (8.62%) VPN
4 33 (7.69%) WAN
5 31 (7.23%) IPsec
6 29 (6.76%) SMTP
7 26 (6.06%) MPLS
8 22 (5.13%) BGP
8 22 (5.13%) FTP
9 21 (4.90%) HTTP
9 21 (4.90%) SSH
10 13 (3.03%) Network Security
11 11 (2.56%) IMAP
11 11 (2.56%) OpenLDAP
11 11 (2.56%) SSL
11 11 (2.56%) Wireless
12 9 (2.10%) Cisco IPT
12 9 (2.10%) DMVPN
13 6 (1.40%) DKIM
13 6 (1.40%) DMARC
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (7.93%) Pentaho
1 34 (7.93%) SAS Enterprise Guide
2 31 (7.23%) PostgreSQL
3 28 (6.53%) Amazon RDS
4 27 (6.29%) Oracle Database
5 13 (3.03%) Amazon Aurora
6 12 (2.80%) Elasticsearch
6 12 (2.80%) SAS Visual Analytics
7 11 (2.56%) Metadata
8 9 (2.10%) Data Warehouse
9 8 (1.86%) Redis
10 7 (1.63%) Metadata Repository
11 5 (1.17%) Power BI
12 3 (0.70%) SAS Data Integration Studio
13 2 (0.47%) Data Hub
13 2 (0.47%) DynamoDB
13 2 (0.47%) InfluxDB
13 2 (0.47%) MongoDB
13 2 (0.47%) Oracle Database 12c
13 2 (0.47%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 86 (20.05%) Git
2 76 (17.72%) Jenkins
3 69 (16.08%) JIRA
4 30 (6.99%) GitLab
5 23 (5.36%) Vagrant
6 20 (4.66%) JUnit
7 18 (4.20%) Selenium
8 14 (3.26%) SonarQube
9 7 (1.63%) Mockito
10 6 (1.40%) Maven
11 5 (1.17%) Cucumber
12 4 (0.93%) Bitbucket
12 4 (0.93%) PVCS
13 2 (0.47%) Bitbucket Server
13 2 (0.47%) DbUnit
13 2 (0.47%) jMock
13 2 (0.47%) NeoLoad
13 2 (0.47%) Postman
14 1 (0.23%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 1 (0.23%) TestDirector
General
1 119 (27.74%) Social Skills
2 74 (17.25%) Public Sector
3 33 (7.69%) Analytical Skills
4 14 (3.26%) Telecoms
5 12 (2.80%) Finance
6 9 (2.10%) Aeronautics
6 9 (2.10%) Presentation Skills
7 8 (1.86%) Documentation Skills
8 6 (1.40%) Legal
9 5 (1.17%) Marketing
10 4 (0.93%) Manufacturing
11 2 (0.47%) Aerospace
11 2 (0.47%) Electronics
11 2 (0.47%) General Ledger
11 2 (0.47%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.23%) Advertising
12 1 (0.23%) Automotive
12 1 (0.23%) Banking
12 1 (0.23%) Military
12 1 (0.23%) Police
Job Titles
1 40 (9.32%) Platform Engineer
2 37 (8.62%) Developer
3 32 (7.46%) Senior
4 30 (6.99%) AWS Engineer
4 30 (6.99%) Data Engineer
4 30 (6.99%) DevOps Engineer
5 24 (5.59%) Support Engineer
6 21 (4.90%) Architect
7 20 (4.66%) AWS DevOps
7 20 (4.66%) AWS DevOps Engineer
7 20 (4.66%) Cloud Platform Engineer
8 18 (4.20%) Network Engineer
9 17 (3.96%) Test Specialist
10 16 (3.73%) Release Manager
11 14 (3.26%) 3rd Line Engineer
12 13 (3.03%) 3rd Line Support
12 13 (3.03%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
12 13 (3.03%) Administrator
12 13 (3.03%) Analyst
12 13 (3.03%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (7.69%) REST
2 15 (3.50%) pytest
3 14 (3.26%) LDAP
4 12 (2.80%) YAML
5 11 (2.56%) FastAPI
5 11 (2.56%) Flask
5 11 (2.56%) Spring
5 11 (2.56%) Spring Boot
6 10 (2.33%) Keycloak
7 9 (2.10%) 802.1X
7 9 (2.10%) Kafka
8 8 (1.86%) GraphQL
8 8 (1.86%) React
8 8 (1.86%) WebSockets
9 7 (1.63%) gRPC
9 7 (1.63%) HTML
10 6 (1.40%) JPA
11 5 (1.17%) JSON
11 5 (1.17%) OAuth
11 5 (1.17%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 22 (5.13%) Data Centre
1 22 (5.13%) PKI
1 22 (5.13%) Replication
2 18 (4.20%) Onboarding
3 15 (3.50%) Driving Licence
4 13 (3.03%) Cloud Native
5 12 (2.80%) Hybrid Cloud
6 9 (2.10%) SCADA
7 7 (1.63%) Product Ownership
8 6 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
9 5 (1.17%) Algorithms
9 5 (1.17%) FPGA
9 5 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
9 5 (1.17%) VHDL
10 4 (0.93%) Legacy Systems
11 3 (0.70%) Distributed Systems
11 3 (0.70%) Handset
11 3 (0.70%) IoT
11 3 (0.70%) Private Cloud
11 3 (0.70%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 76 (17.72%) Windows
2 69 (16.08%) Linux
3 23 (5.36%) Amazon Linux
3 23 (5.36%) VMS
4 19 (4.43%) Unix
5 13 (3.03%) Windows Server
6 11 (2.56%) Ubuntu
7 9 (2.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 3 (0.70%) Windows 10
9 2 (0.47%) Android
9 2 (0.47%) CentOS
10 1 (0.23%) AIX
10 1 (0.23%) Apple iOS
10 1 (0.23%) Mac OS
10 1 (0.23%) Mac OS X
10 1 (0.23%) Solaris
10 1 (0.23%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 134 (31.24%) DevOps
2 120 (27.97%) CI/CD
3 90 (20.98%) Agile
4 85 (19.81%) Analytics
5 76 (17.72%) Problem-Solving
6 59 (13.75%) Containerisation
6 59 (13.75%) Test Automation
7 56 (13.05%) Business Intelligence
7 56 (13.05%) Continuous Improvement
8 54 (12.59%) Scrum
9 53 (12.35%) Platform Engineering
10 51 (11.89%) Configuration Management
10 51 (11.89%) Data Pipeline
11 50 (11.66%) Data Integration
12 46 (10.72%) Change Management
13 44 (10.26%) ETL
14 43 (10.02%) Migration
15 42 (9.79%) Data Modelling
16 39 (9.09%) Test Strategy
17 36 (8.39%) Cloud Security
Programming Languages
1 85 (19.81%) SQL
2 81 (18.88%) Python
3 39 (9.09%) PowerShell
4 35 (8.16%) Java
5 23 (5.36%) Groovy
6 19 (4.43%) Go
7 13 (3.03%) Perl
8 10 (2.33%) Bash
8 10 (2.33%) Shell Script
9 8 (1.86%) JavaScript
9 8 (1.86%) PL/SQL
10 5 (1.17%) MATLAB
10 5 (1.17%) TypeScript
11 3 (0.70%) ABAP
11 3 (0.70%) C#
12 1 (0.23%) C
12 1 (0.23%) COBOL
12 1 (0.23%) Korn
12 1 (0.23%) Scala
12 1 (0.23%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 429 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 34 (7.93%) DV Cleared
3 25 (5.83%) Azure Certification
4 18 (4.20%) Degree
5 16 (3.73%) AWS Certification
6 12 (2.80%) BPSS Clearance
7 8 (1.86%) Microsoft Certification
8 7 (1.63%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 6 (1.40%) CISSP
10 4 (0.93%) DBS Check
11 3 (0.70%) CCNA
11 3 (0.70%) CEH
11 3 (0.70%) Cisco Certification
11 3 (0.70%) CISM
12 2 (0.47%) CCA
12 2 (0.47%) CCNP
12 2 (0.47%) Computer Science Degree
12 2 (0.47%) GCIH
12 2 (0.47%) OCP
12 2 (0.47%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (6.06%) Data Quality
2 14 (3.26%) NCSC
3 11 (2.56%) QA
4 7 (1.63%) NIST
5 6 (1.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (1.17%) Accessibility
7 4 (0.93%) WCAG
8 2 (0.47%) SLA
9 1 (0.23%) IEC 61131
9 1 (0.23%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 114 (26.57%) Docker
2 30 (6.99%) Active Directory
3 21 (4.90%) DFS Replication
4 19 (4.43%) Postfix
5 15 (3.50%) Dovecot
6 12 (2.80%) VMware Infrastructure
7 11 (2.56%) Squid
8 5 (1.17%) Terminal Services
9 4 (0.93%) Firmware
10 3 (0.70%) VMware NSX
11 2 (0.47%) Hyper-V
11 2 (0.47%) Oracle RAC
12 1 (0.23%) Snort
Systems Management
1 97 (22.61%) Kubernetes
2 51 (11.89%) Terraform
3 40 (9.32%) Grafana
4 37 (8.62%) Prometheus
5 14 (3.26%) Ansible
6 11 (2.56%) Nessus
7 9 (2.10%) Proxmox
8 7 (1.63%) Kibana
9 4 (0.93%) SCCM
10 3 (0.70%) FortiGate
10 3 (0.70%) logstash
10 3 (0.70%) Progress Chef
10 3 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
11 2 (0.47%) Data Guard
11 2 (0.47%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 2 (0.47%) Oracle RMAN
11 2 (0.47%) QRadar
12 1 (0.23%) Fluentd
12 1 (0.23%) NetBackup
12 1 (0.23%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 80 (18.65%) Oracle
2 55 (12.82%) Microsoft
3 47 (10.96%) Cisco
4 42 (9.79%) ServiceNow
5 36 (8.39%) Juniper
6 34 (7.93%) Talend
7 30 (6.99%) Denodo
8 25 (5.83%) Splunk
9 23 (5.36%) Dynatrace
10 16 (3.73%) AppDynamics
11 14 (3.26%) F5
11 14 (3.26%) VMware
12 13 (3.03%) CheckPoint
12 13 (3.03%) Jaspersoft
13 12 (2.80%) SAP
14 10 (2.33%) Atlassian
14 10 (2.33%) Broadcom
15 9 (2.10%) Blue Coat
15 9 (2.10%) CyberArk
16 6 (1.40%) Red Hat