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

6 months to
26 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 9 4
Rank change year-on-year +6 -5 +11
Contract jobs citing SC Cleared 634 175 247
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 20.69% 12.86% 12.79%
As % of the Qualifications category 60.61% 41.97% 39.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 477 121 182
10th Percentile £350 £300 £291
25th Percentile £420 £450 £328
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £537 £450
Median % change year-on-year -10.06% +19.33% -16.67%
75th Percentile £544 £660 £538
90th Percentile £635 £700 £635
England median daily rate £525 £525 £535
% change year-on-year - -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 4 6
10th Percentile £18.20 - £13.25
25th Percentile £22.12 £18.51 £13.44
Median hourly rate £59.50 £27.58 £14.00
Median % change year-on-year +115.76% +96.98% -63.01%
75th Percentile £67.84 £46.48 £20.00
90th Percentile £70.23 £54.59 £29.75
England median hourly rate £47.77 £55.00 £48.78
% change year-on-year -13.15% +12.75% -18.70%

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 1,046 417 630
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 34.13% 30.64% 32.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 737 283 398
10th Percentile £325 £150 £263
25th Percentile £408 £306 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -3.80% +11.11% -14.29%
75th Percentile £565 £600 £569
90th Percentile £650 £700 £675
England median daily rate £520 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 66 17 35
10th Percentile £15.82 £16.97 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.34 £18.50 £22.16
Median hourly rate £26.64 £28.18 £28.50
Median % change year-on-year -5.48% -1.12% +50.00%
75th Percentile £67.84 £41.97 £49.38
90th Percentile £73.92 £59.40 £58.75
England median hourly rate £47.50 £47.65 £40.00
% change year-on-year -0.32% +19.13% -23.81%

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 26 April 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 26 April 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 26 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
Shropshire +2 346 £470 -9.62% 30
Birmingham +3 90 £500 -13.04% 21
Warwickshire -3 74 £413 -21.43% 4
Worcestershire +6 41 £675 -3.57% 7
Herefordshire 0 37 £550 -21.43% 5
Solihull +2 22 £456 +8.63% 1
Staffordshire - 3 £350 - 13
Coventry -20 2 £488 -
Wolverhampton -5 1 - -
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 95 (14.98%) SAS
2 74 (11.67%) Confluence
3 25 (3.94%) WebLogic
4 13 (2.05%) Tuxedo
5 9 (1.42%) Apache Airflow
6 5 (0.79%) SharePoint
7 4 (0.63%) Apache
8 3 (0.47%) Oracle Workflow
9 1 (0.16%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.16%) NetWeaver
9 1 (0.16%) SAP EP
Applications
1 7 (1.10%) Microsoft Office
1 7 (1.10%) Microsoft Project
2 6 (0.95%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.63%) Notepad++
5 2 (0.32%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.16%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 2 (0.32%) SAP PP
1 2 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.16%) SAP CRM
2 1 (0.16%) SAP EWM
2 1 (0.16%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 144 (22.71%) AWS
2 89 (14.04%) Azure
3 31 (4.89%) Amazon S3
4 28 (4.42%) GitHub
5 27 (4.26%) Amazon EC2
6 26 (4.10%) GCP
7 25 (3.94%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 19 (3.00%) Serverless
9 18 (2.84%) GitHub Actions
10 16 (2.52%) AWS KMS
11 15 (2.37%) Microsoft 365
12 14 (2.21%) OpenShift
12 14 (2.21%) Power Platform
13 13 (2.05%) Amazon SQS
14 12 (1.89%) Azure Data Factory
14 12 (1.89%) Route 53
15 11 (1.74%) AWS Lambda
16 10 (1.58%) Azure DevOps
16 10 (1.58%) SaaS
17 9 (1.42%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 23 (3.63%) Firewall
2 13 (2.05%) Network Security
2 13 (2.05%) WAN
3 12 (1.89%) VPN
4 10 (1.58%) Intrusion Detection
4 10 (1.58%) LAN
5 9 (1.42%) DNS
6 8 (1.26%) BGP
7 7 (1.10%) SSL
7 7 (1.10%) Wireless
8 6 (0.95%) IPsec
8 6 (0.95%) MPLS
8 6 (0.95%) VLAN
9 5 (0.79%) 5G
9 5 (0.79%) DHCP
9 5 (0.79%) OSPF
9 5 (0.79%) WLAN
10 4 (0.63%) PuTTY
10 4 (0.63%) SD-WAN
10 4 (0.63%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 66 (10.41%) Pentaho
2 47 (7.41%) Data Warehouse
3 46 (7.26%) PostgreSQL
4 32 (5.05%) Amazon RDS
5 26 (4.10%) MySQL
5 26 (4.10%) Oracle Database
6 24 (3.79%) Oracle Reports
7 19 (3.00%) Amazon Redshift
8 18 (2.84%) Metadata
9 16 (2.52%) SAS Enterprise Guide
10 14 (2.21%) DynamoDB
11 12 (1.89%) Amazon Aurora
12 11 (1.74%) MongoDB
12 11 (1.74%) Power BI
13 9 (1.42%) BusinessObjects
14 8 (1.26%) Elasticsearch
14 8 (1.26%) SAS Visual Analytics
15 7 (1.10%) Relational Database
16 5 (0.79%) Metadata Repository
16 5 (0.79%) SAS Data Integration Studio
Development Applications
1 102 (16.09%) JIRA
2 92 (14.51%) Git
3 68 (10.73%) Jenkins
4 59 (9.31%) GitLab
5 31 (4.89%) JUnit
6 24 (3.79%) Selenium
6 24 (3.79%) Zephyr
7 23 (3.63%) Postman
8 14 (2.21%) Maven
8 14 (2.21%) Mockito
9 13 (2.05%) Cucumber
9 13 (2.05%) JMeter
10 12 (1.89%) SonarQube
10 12 (1.89%) WebDriver
11 9 (1.42%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 9 (1.42%) Bitbucket
11 9 (1.42%) DbUnit
11 9 (1.42%) jMock
11 9 (1.42%) MSI
12 7 (1.10%) Bitbucket Server
General
1 145 (22.87%) Social Skills
2 84 (13.25%) Public Sector
3 66 (10.41%) Analytical Skills
4 33 (5.21%) Finance
5 20 (3.15%) Documentation Skills
6 9 (1.42%) Aeronautics
7 8 (1.26%) Legal
7 8 (1.26%) Presentation Skills
7 8 (1.26%) Telecoms
8 7 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
8 7 (1.10%) Organisational Skills
9 6 (0.95%) Advertising
10 4 (0.63%) Aerospace
11 2 (0.32%) Electronics
11 2 (0.32%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.16%) Banking
12 1 (0.16%) Military
12 1 (0.16%) Police
12 1 (0.16%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 140 (22.08%) Data Engineer
2 52 (8.20%) Architect
3 51 (8.04%) Senior
4 50 (7.89%) Analyst
5 46 (7.26%) Developer
6 35 (5.52%) Tester
7 29 (4.57%) Java Developer
8 26 (4.10%) Support Engineer
9 23 (3.63%) SAS Engineer
10 20 (3.15%) Business Analyst
11 19 (3.00%) Lead
12 18 (2.84%) Project Manager
12 18 (2.84%) Software Engineer
13 17 (2.68%) Administrator
13 17 (2.68%) Data Manager
13 17 (2.68%) Platform Engineer
14 16 (2.52%) AWS Engineer
14 16 (2.52%) Senior Data Engineer
15 15 (2.37%) Test Analyst
16 14 (2.21%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (6.78%) Spring
2 32 (5.05%) Spring Boot
3 24 (3.79%) REST
4 14 (2.21%) JPA
5 13 (2.05%) AngularJS
6 12 (1.89%) ActiveMQ
6 12 (1.89%) Hibernate
6 12 (1.89%) SOAP
6 12 (1.89%) Spring Batch
6 12 (1.89%) Spring Cloud
6 12 (1.89%) Spring Integration
6 12 (1.89%) Web Services
6 12 (1.89%) WireMock
7 11 (1.74%) Middleware
8 10 (1.58%) Node.js
9 9 (1.42%) PowerMock
10 8 (1.26%) RESTful
11 7 (1.10%) Bootstrap
11 7 (1.10%) Flask
11 7 (1.10%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 29 (4.57%) Cloud Native
2 21 (3.31%) Distributed Systems
3 17 (2.68%) Product Ownership
4 16 (2.52%) Onboarding
5 15 (2.37%) Legacy Systems
6 13 (2.05%) Data Centre
6 13 (2.05%) Enterprise Software
7 8 (1.26%) Distributed Architecture
8 7 (1.10%) SCADA
9 6 (0.95%) Analytical Mindset
9 6 (0.95%) Hybrid Cloud
9 6 (0.95%) Private Cloud
9 6 (0.95%) Security Operations Centre
10 5 (0.79%) Driving Licence
10 5 (0.79%) Linux Command Line
10 5 (0.79%) Security Posture
11 4 (0.63%) CSOC
11 4 (0.63%) Cyber Threat
11 4 (0.63%) Robotics
12 3 (0.47%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 61 (9.62%) Linux
2 55 (8.68%) Windows
3 46 (7.26%) Unix
4 15 (2.37%) Windows Server
5 10 (1.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 5 (0.79%) Android
7 2 (0.32%) AIX
7 2 (0.32%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.32%) CentOS
7 2 (0.32%) Embedded Linux
7 2 (0.32%) Solaris
7 2 (0.32%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.32%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.16%) Mac OS
8 1 (0.16%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 180 (28.39%) Agile
2 124 (19.56%) CI/CD
3 119 (18.77%) DevOps
4 111 (17.51%) ETL
5 98 (15.46%) Continuous Improvement
5 98 (15.46%) Scrum
6 93 (14.67%) Test Automation
7 88 (13.88%) Problem-Solving
8 85 (13.41%) Analytics
9 80 (12.62%) Migration
10 77 (12.15%) Stakeholder Management
11 57 (8.99%) Data Integration
12 54 (8.52%) Business Intelligence
13 53 (8.36%) Data Pipeline
14 51 (8.04%) Data Modelling
15 49 (7.73%) Containerisation
16 48 (7.57%) Microservices
17 47 (7.41%) Change Management
18 41 (6.47%) Observability
19 40 (6.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 195 (30.76%) SQL
2 72 (11.36%) Java
3 56 (8.83%) Python
4 40 (6.31%) PL/SQL
5 29 (4.57%) Shell Script
6 19 (3.00%) PowerShell
7 17 (2.68%) Bash
8 14 (2.21%) Go
9 6 (0.95%) Perl
10 4 (0.63%) Kusto Query Language
11 3 (0.47%) C++
11 3 (0.47%) HiveQL
11 3 (0.47%) Kotlin
12 2 (0.32%) Bicep
12 2 (0.32%) C
12 2 (0.32%) SystemVerilog
13 1 (0.16%) C#
13 1 (0.16%) COBOL
13 1 (0.16%) JavaScript
13 1 (0.16%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 634 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 16 (2.52%) Azure Certification
2 16 (2.52%) DV Cleared
2 16 (2.52%) ISTQB
3 14 (2.21%) BPSS Clearance
4 11 (1.74%) Microsoft Certification
5 10 (1.58%) Cisco Certification
6 9 (1.42%) AWS Certification
7 7 (1.10%) CCNP
7 7 (1.10%) IIBA
8 6 (0.95%) Degree
9 5 (0.79%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 5 (0.79%) CCIE
9 5 (0.79%) CISSP
10 4 (0.63%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 4 (0.63%) CCNA
10 4 (0.63%) CISM
10 4 (0.63%) OCP
10 4 (0.63%) Oracle Certification
10 4 (0.63%) SAFe Agilist
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (4.89%) Data Quality
1 31 (4.89%) QA
2 17 (2.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 15 (2.37%) NIST
4 9 (1.42%) FATCA
4 9 (1.42%) GDPR
5 6 (0.95%) Accessibility
6 5 (0.79%) NCSC
7 4 (0.63%) PMO
8 3 (0.47%) GRC
9 2 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
9 2 (0.32%) Government Security Classifications
9 2 (0.32%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.16%) P3O
10 1 (0.16%) PCI DSS
10 1 (0.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 89 (14.04%) Docker
2 16 (2.52%) Active Directory
3 11 (1.74%) Postfix
4 10 (1.58%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (0.63%) Snort
6 3 (0.47%) HDFS
6 3 (0.47%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.47%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.47%) VMware NSX
7 2 (0.32%) Terminal Services
8 1 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 98 (15.46%) Kubernetes
2 62 (9.78%) Grafana
3 33 (5.21%) Prometheus
4 24 (3.79%) Terraform
5 18 (2.84%) Ansible
6 8 (1.26%) Progress Chef
7 4 (0.63%) CSIRT
7 4 (0.63%) Podman
8 3 (0.47%) FortiGate
8 3 (0.47%) Kibana
9 2 (0.32%) Docker Swarm
9 2 (0.32%) QRadar
9 2 (0.32%) SCCM
10 1 (0.16%) Data Guard
10 1 (0.16%) Host Intrusion Detection System
10 1 (0.16%) HP ALM
10 1 (0.16%) Iperf
10 1 (0.16%) logstash
10 1 (0.16%) Puppet
10 1 (0.16%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 148 (23.34%) Oracle
2 89 (14.04%) Talend
3 50 (7.89%) Denodo
3 50 (7.89%) Microsoft
4 44 (6.94%) Informatica
5 34 (5.36%) ServiceNow
6 26 (4.10%) Splunk
7 22 (3.47%) Atlassian
7 22 (3.47%) Dynatrace
8 21 (3.31%) Cisco
9 18 (2.84%) SAP
10 13 (2.05%) Sage
10 13 (2.05%) VMware
11 12 (1.89%) Jaspersoft
12 11 (1.74%) AppDynamics
13 8 (1.26%) Fujitsu
13 8 (1.26%) Juniper
14 7 (1.10%) HP
15 6 (0.95%) Red Hat
16 5 (0.79%) Dell