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

6 months to
13 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 3 5 9
Rank change year-on-year +2 +4 +8
Contract jobs citing SC Cleared 416 247 225
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 19.85% 13.03% 11.76%
As % of the Qualifications category 51.87% 40.03% 41.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 310 180 153
10th Percentile £356 £374 £320
25th Percentile £450 £458 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £551 £520
Median % change year-on-year -5.81% +5.87% +4.00%
75th Percentile £581 £635 £626
90th Percentile £675 £688 £688
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 3 12
10th Percentile - - £44.50
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 - £67.81
90th Percentile - - £69.88
England median hourly rate £25.15 £58.17 £56.49
% change year-on-year -56.77% +2.98% -5.85%

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 802 617 545
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 38.26% 32.54% 28.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 542 395 340
10th Percentile £263 £315 £311
25th Percentile £413 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £529 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.65% +0.76% +5.00%
75th Percentile £580 £627 £606
90th Percentile £670 £725 £700
England median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 16 29
10th Percentile £15.84 £20.88 £17.70
25th Percentile £18.87 £25.07 £23.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £34.47 £34.50
Median % change year-on-year -27.03% -0.10% +42.27%
75th Percentile £40.25 £45.31 £67.50
90th Percentile £50.00 £54.88 £71.50
England median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year -49.70% -4.76% +16.67%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 0 142 £520 +9.01% 22
Birmingham +24 111 £475 -20.83% 29
Warwickshire -3 63 £450 -25.86% 9
Worcestershire +13 54 £650 +36.84% 8
Herefordshire 0 43 £650 +6.21% 5
Solihull -2 12 £450 +0.67% 7
Coventry - 6 £300 -
Staffordshire +1 5 £270 -40.00% 13
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 70 (16.83%) SAS
2 35 (8.41%) Confluence
3 15 (3.61%) WebLogic
4 12 (2.88%) Apache
4 12 (2.88%) nginx
5 7 (1.68%) Apache Airflow
6 4 (0.96%) SharePoint
7 3 (0.72%) Oracle Workflow
8 1 (0.24%) NetWeaver
8 1 (0.24%) SAP EP
8 1 (0.24%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 11 (2.64%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 9 (2.16%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (1.20%) Microsoft Project
4 4 (0.96%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.72%) Microsoft Excel
6 1 (0.24%) AutoCAD
6 1 (0.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.24%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 3 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.48%) SAP ERP
3 1 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.24%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 90 (21.63%) Azure
2 82 (19.71%) AWS
3 34 (8.17%) Amazon S3
4 33 (7.93%) Amazon EC2
5 29 (6.97%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 28 (6.73%) GitHub
7 26 (6.25%) AWS KMS
8 25 (6.01%) Amazon ELB
8 25 (6.01%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 21 (5.05%) Microsoft 365
10 20 (4.81%) OpenShift
11 14 (3.37%) Route 53
11 14 (3.37%) Serverless
12 13 (3.13%) Azure Monitor
12 13 (3.13%) Power Platform
12 13 (3.13%) SaaS
13 12 (2.88%) Amazon Glacier
14 11 (2.64%) Amazon ECS
14 11 (2.64%) Azure Data Factory
15 9 (2.16%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 49 (11.78%) Firewall
2 42 (10.10%) DNS
3 37 (8.89%) VPN
4 33 (7.93%) WAN
5 31 (7.45%) IPsec
6 27 (6.49%) MPLS
6 27 (6.49%) SMTP
7 22 (5.29%) BGP
7 22 (5.29%) FTP
8 21 (5.05%) HTTP
8 21 (5.05%) SSH
9 12 (2.88%) Network Security
10 11 (2.64%) IMAP
10 11 (2.64%) OpenLDAP
10 11 (2.64%) SSL
10 11 (2.64%) Wireless
11 9 (2.16%) Cisco IPT
11 9 (2.16%) DMVPN
12 5 (1.20%) Junos
12 5 (1.20%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (8.17%) SAS Enterprise Guide
2 33 (7.93%) PostgreSQL
3 31 (7.45%) Amazon RDS
4 30 (7.21%) Pentaho
5 26 (6.25%) Oracle Database
6 17 (4.09%) Amazon Aurora
7 12 (2.88%) SAS Visual Analytics
8 11 (2.64%) Metadata
9 10 (2.40%) Elasticsearch
10 9 (2.16%) Data Warehouse
11 8 (1.92%) Redis
12 7 (1.68%) Metadata Repository
13 6 (1.44%) Power BI
14 4 (0.96%) DynamoDB
15 3 (0.72%) SAS Data Integration Studio
16 2 (0.48%) Data Hub
16 2 (0.48%) DataStage
16 2 (0.48%) MongoDB
16 2 (0.48%) Oracle Database 12c
16 2 (0.48%) SAP BW
Development Applications
1 87 (20.91%) Git
2 76 (18.27%) Jenkins
3 69 (16.59%) JIRA
4 30 (7.21%) GitLab
5 23 (5.53%) JUnit
5 23 (5.53%) Vagrant
6 18 (4.33%) Selenium
7 17 (4.09%) SonarQube
8 10 (2.40%) Maven
8 10 (2.40%) Mockito
9 5 (1.20%) Cucumber
10 4 (0.96%) Bitbucket
10 4 (0.96%) PVCS
11 3 (0.72%) Bitbucket Server
11 3 (0.72%) DbUnit
11 3 (0.72%) jMock
12 2 (0.48%) NeoLoad
12 2 (0.48%) Postman
13 1 (0.24%) Atlassian Bamboo
13 1 (0.24%) ClearCase
General
1 120 (28.85%) Social Skills
2 79 (18.99%) Public Sector
3 32 (7.69%) Analytical Skills
4 14 (3.37%) Finance
4 14 (3.37%) Telecoms
5 9 (2.16%) Presentation Skills
6 6 (1.44%) Documentation Skills
7 5 (1.20%) Aeronautics
7 5 (1.20%) Legal
7 5 (1.20%) Marketing
8 2 (0.48%) Aerospace
8 2 (0.48%) Electronics
8 2 (0.48%) General Ledger
8 2 (0.48%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (0.48%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.24%) Advertising
9 1 (0.24%) Automotive
9 1 (0.24%) Banking
9 1 (0.24%) Military
9 1 (0.24%) Police
Job Titles
1 40 (9.62%) Developer
2 33 (7.93%) Platform Engineer
3 30 (7.21%) DevOps Engineer
4 29 (6.97%) Senior
5 28 (6.73%) AWS Engineer
6 24 (5.77%) Data Engineer
7 23 (5.53%) Support Engineer
8 20 (4.81%) AWS DevOps
8 20 (4.81%) AWS DevOps Engineer
8 20 (4.81%) Cloud Platform Engineer
9 19 (4.57%) Architect
10 18 (4.33%) Network Engineer
11 17 (4.09%) Test Specialist
12 16 (3.85%) Release Manager
13 14 (3.37%) 3rd Line Engineer
13 14 (3.37%) Administrator
13 14 (3.37%) Analyst
14 13 (3.13%) 3rd Line Support
14 13 (3.13%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
15 12 (2.88%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (8.65%) REST
2 15 (3.61%) pytest
2 15 (3.61%) Spring
2 15 (3.61%) Spring Boot
3 13 (3.13%) LDAP
4 12 (2.88%) YAML
5 11 (2.64%) FastAPI
5 11 (2.64%) Flask
6 9 (2.16%) 802.1X
6 9 (2.16%) JPA
7 8 (1.92%) GraphQL
7 8 (1.92%) Keycloak
7 8 (1.92%) React
7 8 (1.92%) SOAP
7 8 (1.92%) WebSockets
8 7 (1.68%) gRPC
8 7 (1.68%) HTML
8 7 (1.68%) Kafka
9 6 (1.44%) ActiveMQ
9 6 (1.44%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 22 (5.29%) PKI
1 22 (5.29%) Replication
2 20 (4.81%) Data Centre
3 19 (4.57%) Onboarding
4 15 (3.61%) Driving Licence
5 10 (2.40%) Cloud Native
5 10 (2.40%) Hybrid Cloud
5 10 (2.40%) SCADA
6 8 (1.92%) Product Ownership
7 6 (1.44%) Data Protection Act
8 5 (1.20%) Algorithms
8 5 (1.20%) Distributed Systems
8 5 (1.20%) FPGA
8 5 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
8 5 (1.20%) VHDL
9 4 (0.96%) Legacy Systems
10 3 (0.72%) Handset
10 3 (0.72%) IoT
10 3 (0.72%) Private Cloud
11 2 (0.48%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 72 (17.31%) Windows
2 68 (16.35%) Linux
3 23 (5.53%) Amazon Linux
3 23 (5.53%) VMS
4 20 (4.81%) Unix
5 11 (2.64%) Windows Server
6 9 (2.16%) Ubuntu
7 6 (1.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 2 (0.48%) Android
8 2 (0.48%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.24%) AIX
9 1 (0.24%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.24%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.24%) Mac OS X
9 1 (0.24%) Solaris
9 1 (0.24%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 130 (31.25%) DevOps
2 117 (28.13%) CI/CD
3 92 (22.12%) Agile
4 80 (19.23%) Analytics
5 73 (17.55%) Problem-Solving
6 61 (14.66%) Containerisation
7 56 (13.46%) Test Automation
8 55 (13.22%) Scrum
9 52 (12.50%) Continuous Improvement
10 51 (12.26%) Business Intelligence
11 50 (12.02%) Configuration Management
12 49 (11.78%) Platform Engineering
13 46 (11.06%) Change Management
13 46 (11.06%) Data Integration
13 46 (11.06%) Data Pipeline
14 42 (10.10%) Migration
15 41 (9.86%) Test Strategy
16 40 (9.62%) Stakeholder Management
17 38 (9.13%) Data Modelling
17 38 (9.13%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 81 (19.47%) SQL
2 76 (18.27%) Python
3 39 (9.38%) PowerShell
4 38 (9.13%) Java
5 23 (5.53%) Groovy
6 16 (3.85%) Go
7 13 (3.13%) Perl
8 9 (2.16%) Bash
8 9 (2.16%) Shell Script
9 8 (1.92%) JavaScript
10 7 (1.68%) PL/SQL
11 5 (1.20%) MATLAB
11 5 (1.20%) TypeScript
12 3 (0.72%) ABAP
12 3 (0.72%) C#
13 1 (0.24%) C
13 1 (0.24%) COBOL
13 1 (0.24%) Korn
13 1 (0.24%) Scala
13 1 (0.24%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 416 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 34 (8.17%) DV Cleared
3 22 (5.29%) Azure Certification
4 20 (4.81%) Degree
5 16 (3.85%) AWS Certification
6 15 (3.61%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (1.68%) Microsoft Certification
8 6 (1.44%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 6 (1.44%) CISSP
9 4 (0.96%) CCNA
9 4 (0.96%) Cisco Certification
9 4 (0.96%) DBS Check
9 4 (0.96%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
10 3 (0.72%) CCNP
10 3 (0.72%) CEH
10 3 (0.72%) CISM
11 2 (0.48%) CCA
11 2 (0.48%) GCIH
11 2 (0.48%) OCP
11 2 (0.48%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (5.53%) Data Quality
2 14 (3.37%) NCSC
3 13 (3.13%) QA
4 6 (1.44%) NIST
5 5 (1.20%) Accessibility
5 5 (1.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (0.96%) WCAG
7 2 (0.48%) SLA
8 1 (0.24%) IEC 61131
8 1 (0.24%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 111 (26.68%) Docker
2 27 (6.49%) Active Directory
3 21 (5.05%) DFS Replication
4 18 (4.33%) Postfix
5 15 (3.61%) Dovecot
6 11 (2.64%) Squid
7 9 (2.16%) VMware Infrastructure
8 4 (0.96%) Firmware
9 3 (0.72%) Terminal Services
10 2 (0.48%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.48%) Oracle RAC
11 1 (0.24%) Snort
Systems Management
1 90 (21.63%) Kubernetes
2 50 (12.02%) Terraform
3 43 (10.34%) Grafana
4 40 (9.62%) Prometheus
5 12 (2.88%) Ansible
6 11 (2.64%) Nessus
7 9 (2.16%) Proxmox
8 7 (1.68%) Kibana
9 4 (0.96%) SCCM
10 3 (0.72%) logstash
10 3 (0.72%) Single Sign-On
11 2 (0.48%) Data Guard
11 2 (0.48%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 2 (0.48%) Oracle RMAN
11 2 (0.48%) Progress Chef
11 2 (0.48%) QRadar
12 1 (0.24%) Fluentd
12 1 (0.24%) NetBackup
12 1 (0.24%) Rsyslog
12 1 (0.24%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 75 (18.03%) Oracle
2 53 (12.74%) Microsoft
3 43 (10.34%) Cisco
4 40 (9.62%) ServiceNow
5 36 (8.65%) Juniper
6 30 (7.21%) Talend
7 26 (6.25%) Denodo
8 21 (5.05%) Splunk
9 19 (4.57%) Dynatrace
10 15 (3.61%) AppDynamics
11 14 (3.37%) F5
11 14 (3.37%) Jaspersoft
12 13 (3.13%) CheckPoint
13 11 (2.64%) Atlassian
13 11 (2.64%) VMware
14 10 (2.40%) CyberArk
14 10 (2.40%) SAP
15 9 (2.16%) Blue Coat
16 7 (1.68%) Broadcom
16 7 (1.68%) Red Hat