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

6 months to
28 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 3 9 7
Rank change year-on-year +6 -2 +10
Contract jobs citing SC Cleared 436 213 237
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 20.26% 11.36% 12.63%
As % of the Qualifications category 53.24% 36.98% 42.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 324 155 170
10th Percentile £351 £360 £325
25th Percentile £462 £445 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £510
Median % change year-on-year - +2.94% +2.00%
75th Percentile £585 £612 £626
90th Percentile £700 £700 £688
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -1.43%
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 £57.50 £57.33
% change year-on-year -56.26% +0.30% -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 819 576 564
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 38.06% 30.72% 30.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 554 362 353
10th Percentile £268 £292 £313
25th Percentile £413 £414 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% - +6.06%
75th Percentile £581 £613 £606
90th Percentile £675 £725 £698
England median daily rate £525 £528 £550
% change year-on-year -0.47% -4.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 15 29
10th Percentile £15.61 £19.58 £17.70
25th Percentile £18.87 £24.58 £23.00
Median hourly rate £25.08 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.36% - +44.33%
75th Percentile £34.00 £46.88 £67.50
90th Percentile £50.00 £52.50 £71.50
England median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £53.50
% change year-on-year -49.70% -6.54% +18.89%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 0 153 £520 +9.01% 19
Birmingham +23 112 £475 -20.83% 23
Worcestershire +14 62 £650 +36.84% 12
Warwickshire +1 62 £450 -22.95% 15
Herefordshire 0 47 £650 +6.21% 11
Solihull -2 8 £450 +0.67% 4
Coventry - 6 £300 -
Staffordshire 0 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 (16.97%) SAS
2 35 (8.03%) Confluence
3 14 (3.21%) WebLogic
4 12 (2.75%) Apache
4 12 (2.75%) nginx
5 7 (1.61%) Apache Airflow
6 4 (0.92%) SharePoint
7 3 (0.69%) Oracle Workflow
8 1 (0.23%) NetWeaver
8 1 (0.23%) SAP EP
8 1 (0.23%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 11 (2.52%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 10 (2.29%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (1.38%) Microsoft Project
4 4 (0.92%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.69%) Microsoft Excel
6 2 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.23%) AutoCAD
7 1 (0.23%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 3 (0.69%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.46%) SAP ERP
2 2 (0.46%) SAP PP
2 2 (0.46%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.23%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.23%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 95 (21.79%) Azure
2 80 (18.35%) AWS
3 30 (6.88%) Amazon S3
3 30 (6.88%) GitHub
4 29 (6.65%) Amazon EC2
5 26 (5.96%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 24 (5.50%) Amazon ELB
6 24 (5.50%) AWS KMS
6 24 (5.50%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 21 (4.82%) Microsoft 365
7 21 (4.82%) OpenShift
8 15 (3.44%) SaaS
8 15 (3.44%) Serverless
9 13 (2.98%) Azure Data Factory
9 13 (2.98%) Azure Monitor
9 13 (2.98%) Route 53
10 12 (2.75%) Power Platform
11 11 (2.52%) Amazon ECS
11 11 (2.52%) Amazon Glacier
12 9 (2.06%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 51 (11.70%) Firewall
2 42 (9.63%) DNS
3 37 (8.49%) VPN
4 33 (7.57%) WAN
5 31 (7.11%) IPsec
6 28 (6.42%) SMTP
7 26 (5.96%) MPLS
8 22 (5.05%) BGP
9 21 (4.82%) FTP
10 20 (4.59%) HTTP
10 20 (4.59%) SSH
11 13 (2.98%) Network Security
12 11 (2.52%) IMAP
12 11 (2.52%) OpenLDAP
12 11 (2.52%) SSL
12 11 (2.52%) Wireless
13 9 (2.06%) Cisco IPT
13 9 (2.06%) DMVPN
14 6 (1.38%) DKIM
14 6 (1.38%) DMARC
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (7.80%) Pentaho
1 34 (7.80%) SAS Enterprise Guide
2 31 (7.11%) PostgreSQL
3 27 (6.19%) Amazon RDS
3 27 (6.19%) Oracle Database
4 13 (2.98%) Amazon Aurora
5 12 (2.75%) Elasticsearch
5 12 (2.75%) Metadata
5 12 (2.75%) SAS Visual Analytics
6 9 (2.06%) Data Warehouse
7 8 (1.83%) Redis
8 7 (1.61%) Metadata Repository
9 5 (1.15%) Power BI
10 3 (0.69%) SAS Data Integration Studio
11 2 (0.46%) Data Hub
11 2 (0.46%) DynamoDB
11 2 (0.46%) InfluxDB
11 2 (0.46%) Oracle Database 12c
11 2 (0.46%) Relational Database
11 2 (0.46%) SAP BW
Development Applications
1 85 (19.50%) Git
2 75 (17.20%) Jenkins
3 69 (15.83%) JIRA
4 30 (6.88%) GitLab
5 22 (5.05%) Vagrant
6 20 (4.59%) JUnit
7 18 (4.13%) Selenium
8 14 (3.21%) SonarQube
9 7 (1.61%) Mockito
10 6 (1.38%) Maven
11 5 (1.15%) Cucumber
12 4 (0.92%) Bitbucket
12 4 (0.92%) PVCS
13 2 (0.46%) Bitbucket Server
13 2 (0.46%) DbUnit
13 2 (0.46%) jMock
13 2 (0.46%) NeoLoad
13 2 (0.46%) Postman
14 1 (0.23%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 1 (0.23%) TestDirector
General
1 122 (27.98%) Social Skills
2 73 (16.74%) Public Sector
3 34 (7.80%) Analytical Skills
4 14 (3.21%) Telecoms
5 13 (2.98%) Finance
6 9 (2.06%) Aeronautics
6 9 (2.06%) Documentation Skills
6 9 (2.06%) Presentation Skills
7 7 (1.61%) Legal
8 5 (1.15%) Marketing
9 4 (0.92%) Manufacturing
10 2 (0.46%) Aerospace
10 2 (0.46%) Electronics
10 2 (0.46%) General Ledger
10 2 (0.46%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.23%) Advertising
11 1 (0.23%) Automotive
11 1 (0.23%) Military
11 1 (0.23%) Police
11 1 (0.23%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 40 (9.17%) Platform Engineer
2 37 (8.49%) Developer
3 34 (7.80%) Senior
4 30 (6.88%) AWS Engineer
4 30 (6.88%) Data Engineer
5 29 (6.65%) DevOps Engineer
6 26 (5.96%) Support Engineer
7 21 (4.82%) Architect
8 20 (4.59%) AWS DevOps
8 20 (4.59%) AWS DevOps Engineer
8 20 (4.59%) Cloud Platform Engineer
9 18 (4.13%) Network Engineer
10 17 (3.90%) Test Specialist
11 16 (3.67%) Analyst
11 16 (3.67%) Release Manager
12 14 (3.21%) 3rd Line Engineer
13 13 (2.98%) 3rd Line Support
13 13 (2.98%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
13 13 (2.98%) Consultant
13 13 (2.98%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (7.57%) REST
2 16 (3.67%) LDAP
3 15 (3.44%) pytest
4 12 (2.75%) YAML
5 11 (2.52%) FastAPI
5 11 (2.52%) Flask
5 11 (2.52%) Spring
5 11 (2.52%) Spring Boot
6 10 (2.29%) Keycloak
7 9 (2.06%) 802.1X
7 9 (2.06%) Kafka
8 8 (1.83%) GraphQL
8 8 (1.83%) React
8 8 (1.83%) WebSockets
9 7 (1.61%) gRPC
9 7 (1.61%) HTML
10 6 (1.38%) JPA
10 6 (1.38%) OAuth
11 5 (1.15%) JSON
11 5 (1.15%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 22 (5.05%) Data Centre
1 22 (5.05%) Onboarding
1 22 (5.05%) PKI
2 21 (4.82%) Replication
3 15 (3.44%) Driving Licence
4 13 (2.98%) Cloud Native
5 12 (2.75%) Hybrid Cloud
6 9 (2.06%) SCADA
7 7 (1.61%) Product Ownership
8 6 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
9 5 (1.15%) Algorithms
9 5 (1.15%) FPGA
9 5 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
9 5 (1.15%) VHDL
10 4 (0.92%) Legacy Systems
10 4 (0.92%) Security Operations Centre
11 3 (0.69%) Handset
11 3 (0.69%) IoT
11 3 (0.69%) Private Cloud
11 3 (0.69%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 75 (17.20%) Windows
2 68 (15.60%) Linux
3 22 (5.05%) Amazon Linux
3 22 (5.05%) VMS
4 18 (4.13%) Unix
5 13 (2.98%) Windows Server
6 11 (2.52%) Ubuntu
7 9 (2.06%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 3 (0.69%) Windows 10
9 2 (0.46%) Android
9 2 (0.46%) 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 (30.73%) DevOps
2 121 (27.75%) CI/CD
3 92 (21.10%) Agile
4 85 (19.50%) Analytics
5 77 (17.66%) Problem-Solving
6 59 (13.53%) Containerisation
6 59 (13.53%) Test Automation
7 57 (13.07%) Continuous Improvement
8 56 (12.84%) Business Intelligence
9 54 (12.39%) Scrum
10 52 (11.93%) Platform Engineering
11 51 (11.70%) Data Pipeline
12 50 (11.47%) Configuration Management
12 50 (11.47%) Data Integration
13 47 (10.78%) Change Management
14 44 (10.09%) ETL
14 44 (10.09%) Migration
15 42 (9.63%) Data Modelling
16 39 (8.94%) Test Strategy
17 36 (8.26%) Cloud Security
Programming Languages
1 85 (19.50%) SQL
2 81 (18.58%) Python
3 39 (8.94%) PowerShell
4 34 (7.80%) Java
5 22 (5.05%) Groovy
6 19 (4.36%) Go
7 12 (2.75%) Perl
8 10 (2.29%) Bash
8 10 (2.29%) Shell Script
9 8 (1.83%) JavaScript
9 8 (1.83%) PL/SQL
10 5 (1.15%) MATLAB
10 5 (1.15%) TypeScript
11 3 (0.69%) ABAP
11 3 (0.69%) C#
12 1 (0.23%) Bicep
12 1 (0.23%) C
12 1 (0.23%) COBOL
12 1 (0.23%) Korn
12 1 (0.23%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 436 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 34 (7.80%) DV Cleared
3 25 (5.73%) Azure Certification
4 18 (4.13%) Degree
5 16 (3.67%) AWS Certification
6 14 (3.21%) BPSS Clearance
7 8 (1.83%) Microsoft Certification
8 7 (1.61%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 6 (1.38%) CISSP
10 4 (0.92%) DBS Check
11 3 (0.69%) CCNA
11 3 (0.69%) CEH
11 3 (0.69%) Cisco Certification
11 3 (0.69%) CISM
12 2 (0.46%) CCA
12 2 (0.46%) CCNP
12 2 (0.46%) Computer Science Degree
12 2 (0.46%) GCIH
12 2 (0.46%) OCP
12 2 (0.46%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (5.96%) Data Quality
2 16 (3.67%) NCSC
3 12 (2.75%) QA
4 9 (2.06%) NIST
5 7 (1.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (1.38%) Accessibility
7 4 (0.92%) WCAG
8 2 (0.46%) SLA
9 1 (0.23%) GDPR
9 1 (0.23%) IEC 61131
9 1 (0.23%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.23%) PMO
9 1 (0.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 113 (25.92%) Docker
2 30 (6.88%) Active Directory
3 20 (4.59%) DFS Replication
4 19 (4.36%) Postfix
5 15 (3.44%) Dovecot
6 12 (2.75%) VMware Infrastructure
7 11 (2.52%) Squid
8 5 (1.15%) Terminal Services
9 4 (0.92%) Firmware
10 3 (0.69%) VMware NSX
11 2 (0.46%) Hyper-V
11 2 (0.46%) Oracle RAC
12 1 (0.23%) Snort
Systems Management
1 98 (22.48%) Kubernetes
2 50 (11.47%) Terraform
3 39 (8.94%) Grafana
4 36 (8.26%) Prometheus
5 14 (3.21%) Ansible
6 11 (2.52%) Nessus
7 9 (2.06%) Proxmox
8 7 (1.61%) Kibana
9 4 (0.92%) SCCM
10 3 (0.69%) FortiGate
10 3 (0.69%) logstash
10 3 (0.69%) Progress Chef
10 3 (0.69%) Single Sign-On
11 2 (0.46%) Data Guard
11 2 (0.46%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 2 (0.46%) Oracle RMAN
11 2 (0.46%) QRadar
12 1 (0.23%) NetBackup
12 1 (0.23%) Rsyslog
12 1 (0.23%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 80 (18.35%) Oracle
2 59 (13.53%) Microsoft
3 47 (10.78%) Cisco
4 43 (9.86%) ServiceNow
5 36 (8.26%) Juniper
6 34 (7.80%) Talend
7 30 (6.88%) Denodo
8 24 (5.50%) Splunk
9 23 (5.28%) Dynatrace
10 16 (3.67%) AppDynamics
11 14 (3.21%) F5
11 14 (3.21%) VMware
12 13 (2.98%) CheckPoint
12 13 (2.98%) Jaspersoft
12 13 (2.98%) SAP
13 10 (2.29%) Atlassian
13 10 (2.29%) Broadcom
13 10 (2.29%) CyberArk
14 9 (2.06%) Blue Coat
15 6 (1.38%) Red Hat