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

6 months to
28 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 9 4
Rank change year-on-year +6 -5 +10
Contract jobs citing SC Cleared 649 175 247
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 20.98% 12.85% 12.83%
As % of the Qualifications category 61.00% 41.87% 39.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 489 121 182
10th Percentile £350 £300 £291
25th Percentile £420 £450 £328
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £537 £450
Median % change year-on-year -10.43% +19.33% -16.67%
75th Percentile £544 £660 £538
90th Percentile £634 £700 £635
England median daily rate £525 £525 £535
% change year-on-year - -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 4 6
10th Percentile £18.20 - £13.25
25th Percentile £22.46 £18.51 £13.44
Median hourly rate £61.32 £27.58 £14.00
Median % change year-on-year +122.35% +96.98% -63.01%
75th Percentile £67.84 £46.48 £20.00
90th Percentile £70.18 £54.59 £29.75
England median hourly rate £47.50 £55.00 £49.00
% change year-on-year -13.64% +12.24% -18.06%

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 1,064 418 630
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 34.40% 30.69% 32.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 751 283 397
10th Percentile £316 £150 £263
25th Percentile £408 £306 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +11.11% -14.29%
75th Percentile £560 £600 £575
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 £28.75 £28.18 £28.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.02% -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 28 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 28 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 28 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 +2 354 £470 -9.62% 41
Birmingham +3 90 £500 -13.04% 53
Warwickshire -5 78 £413 -21.43% 2
Worcestershire +6 41 £675 -3.57% 7
Herefordshire 0 38 £550 -21.43% 4
Solihull +2 24 £463 +10.12% 1
Staffordshire - 3 £350 - 9
Coventry -19 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 96 (14.79%) SAS
2 80 (12.33%) Confluence
3 25 (3.85%) WebLogic
4 13 (2.00%) Tuxedo
5 9 (1.39%) Apache Airflow
6 5 (0.77%) SharePoint
7 4 (0.62%) Apache
8 3 (0.46%) Oracle Workflow
9 1 (0.15%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.15%) NetWeaver
9 1 (0.15%) SAP EP
Applications
1 7 (1.08%) Microsoft Office
1 7 (1.08%) Microsoft Project
2 6 (0.92%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.62%) Notepad++
5 2 (0.31%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.15%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 2 (0.31%) SAP PP
1 2 (0.31%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.15%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.15%) SAP CRM
2 1 (0.15%) SAP EWM
2 1 (0.15%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 147 (22.65%) AWS
2 89 (13.71%) Azure
3 34 (5.24%) Amazon S3
4 31 (4.78%) GitHub
5 29 (4.47%) Amazon EC2
6 28 (4.31%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 26 (4.01%) GCP
8 21 (3.24%) Serverless
9 20 (3.08%) GitHub Actions
10 16 (2.47%) AWS KMS
10 16 (2.47%) Microsoft 365
11 15 (2.31%) Power Platform
12 14 (2.16%) OpenShift
13 13 (2.00%) Amazon SQS
13 13 (2.00%) AWS Lambda
14 12 (1.85%) Azure Data Factory
14 12 (1.85%) Route 53
15 11 (1.69%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 10 (1.54%) Azure DevOps
16 10 (1.54%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 23 (3.54%) Firewall
2 13 (2.00%) Network Security
2 13 (2.00%) WAN
3 12 (1.85%) VPN
4 10 (1.54%) Intrusion Detection
4 10 (1.54%) LAN
5 9 (1.39%) DNS
6 8 (1.23%) BGP
7 7 (1.08%) SSL
7 7 (1.08%) Wireless
8 6 (0.92%) IPsec
8 6 (0.92%) MPLS
8 6 (0.92%) VLAN
9 5 (0.77%) 5G
9 5 (0.77%) DHCP
9 5 (0.77%) OSPF
9 5 (0.77%) WLAN
10 4 (0.62%) PuTTY
10 4 (0.62%) SD-WAN
10 4 (0.62%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 67 (10.32%) Pentaho
2 50 (7.70%) Data Warehouse
3 46 (7.09%) PostgreSQL
4 33 (5.08%) Amazon RDS
5 27 (4.16%) Oracle Database
6 26 (4.01%) MySQL
7 24 (3.70%) Oracle Reports
8 20 (3.08%) Amazon Redshift
9 19 (2.93%) Metadata
10 16 (2.47%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 15 (2.31%) DynamoDB
12 12 (1.85%) Amazon Aurora
12 12 (1.85%) Power BI
13 11 (1.69%) BusinessObjects
13 11 (1.69%) MongoDB
14 8 (1.23%) Elasticsearch
14 8 (1.23%) SAS Visual Analytics
15 7 (1.08%) Relational Database
16 5 (0.77%) Data Lake
16 5 (0.77%) SAS Data Integration Studio
Development Applications
1 108 (16.64%) JIRA
2 92 (14.18%) Git
3 70 (10.79%) Jenkins
4 62 (9.55%) GitLab
5 31 (4.78%) JUnit
6 24 (3.70%) Selenium
6 24 (3.70%) Zephyr
7 23 (3.54%) Postman
8 14 (2.16%) Maven
8 14 (2.16%) Mockito
9 13 (2.00%) Cucumber
9 13 (2.00%) JMeter
10 12 (1.85%) SonarQube
10 12 (1.85%) WebDriver
11 11 (1.69%) Bitbucket
12 9 (1.39%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 9 (1.39%) DbUnit
12 9 (1.39%) jMock
12 9 (1.39%) MSI
13 7 (1.08%) Bitbucket Server
General
1 155 (23.88%) Social Skills
2 86 (13.25%) Public Sector
3 70 (10.79%) Analytical Skills
4 33 (5.08%) Finance
5 20 (3.08%) Documentation Skills
6 9 (1.39%) Aeronautics
7 8 (1.23%) Legal
7 8 (1.23%) Presentation Skills
7 8 (1.23%) Telecoms
8 7 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
8 7 (1.08%) Organisational Skills
9 6 (0.92%) Advertising
10 4 (0.62%) Aerospace
11 2 (0.31%) Electronics
11 2 (0.31%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.15%) Banking
12 1 (0.15%) Military
12 1 (0.15%) Police
12 1 (0.15%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 146 (22.50%) Data Engineer
2 53 (8.17%) Architect
3 52 (8.01%) Senior
4 50 (7.70%) Analyst
5 46 (7.09%) Developer
6 35 (5.39%) Tester
7 29 (4.47%) Java Developer
8 26 (4.01%) Support Engineer
9 23 (3.54%) SAS Engineer
10 20 (3.08%) Business Analyst
11 19 (2.93%) Lead
12 18 (2.77%) Administrator
12 18 (2.77%) Project Manager
12 18 (2.77%) Software Engineer
13 17 (2.62%) AWS Engineer
13 17 (2.62%) Data Manager
13 17 (2.62%) Senior Data Engineer
14 16 (2.47%) Platform Engineer
15 15 (2.31%) Test Analyst
16 14 (2.16%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (6.63%) Spring
2 32 (4.93%) Spring Boot
3 24 (3.70%) REST
4 14 (2.16%) JPA
5 13 (2.00%) AngularJS
6 12 (1.85%) ActiveMQ
6 12 (1.85%) Hibernate
6 12 (1.85%) SOAP
6 12 (1.85%) Spring Batch
6 12 (1.85%) Spring Cloud
6 12 (1.85%) Spring Integration
6 12 (1.85%) Web Services
6 12 (1.85%) WireMock
7 11 (1.69%) Middleware
8 10 (1.54%) Node.js
9 9 (1.39%) PowerMock
10 8 (1.23%) RESTful
11 7 (1.08%) Bootstrap
11 7 (1.08%) Kafka
11 7 (1.08%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 30 (4.62%) Cloud Native
2 21 (3.24%) Distributed Systems
3 19 (2.93%) Product Ownership
4 17 (2.62%) Data Centre
5 16 (2.47%) Onboarding
6 15 (2.31%) Legacy Systems
7 13 (2.00%) Enterprise Software
8 8 (1.23%) Distributed Architecture
9 7 (1.08%) Analytical Mindset
9 7 (1.08%) SCADA
10 6 (0.92%) Hybrid Cloud
10 6 (0.92%) Private Cloud
10 6 (0.92%) Security Operations Centre
11 5 (0.77%) Driving Licence
11 5 (0.77%) Linux Command Line
11 5 (0.77%) Security Posture
12 4 (0.62%) CSOC
12 4 (0.62%) Cyber Threat
12 4 (0.62%) Data Structures
12 4 (0.62%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 62 (9.55%) Linux
2 56 (8.63%) Windows
3 47 (7.24%) Unix
4 16 (2.47%) Windows Server
5 10 (1.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 5 (0.77%) Android
7 2 (0.31%) AIX
7 2 (0.31%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.31%) CentOS
7 2 (0.31%) Embedded Linux
7 2 (0.31%) Solaris
7 2 (0.31%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.31%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.15%) Mac OS
8 1 (0.15%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 184 (28.35%) Agile
2 127 (19.57%) CI/CD
3 122 (18.80%) DevOps
4 112 (17.26%) ETL
5 101 (15.56%) Scrum
6 99 (15.25%) Continuous Improvement
7 97 (14.95%) Test Automation
8 92 (14.18%) Problem-Solving
9 86 (13.25%) Analytics
10 82 (12.63%) Migration
11 78 (12.02%) Stakeholder Management
12 59 (9.09%) Data Integration
13 57 (8.78%) Data Pipeline
14 56 (8.63%) Business Intelligence
15 54 (8.32%) Data Modelling
16 52 (8.01%) Containerisation
17 48 (7.40%) Microservices
18 47 (7.24%) Change Management
19 41 (6.32%) Observability
20 40 (6.16%) Problem Management
Programming Languages
1 197 (30.35%) SQL
2 72 (11.09%) Java
3 59 (9.09%) Python
4 41 (6.32%) PL/SQL
5 29 (4.47%) Shell Script
6 20 (3.08%) PowerShell
7 18 (2.77%) Bash
8 14 (2.16%) Go
9 6 (0.92%) Perl
10 4 (0.62%) Kusto Query Language
11 3 (0.46%) C++
11 3 (0.46%) HiveQL
11 3 (0.46%) Kotlin
12 2 (0.31%) Bicep
12 2 (0.31%) C
12 2 (0.31%) SystemVerilog
13 1 (0.15%) C#
13 1 (0.15%) COBOL
13 1 (0.15%) JavaScript
13 1 (0.15%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 649 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 17 (2.62%) DV Cleared
3 16 (2.47%) Azure Certification
3 16 (2.47%) ISTQB
4 14 (2.16%) BPSS Clearance
5 12 (1.85%) Microsoft Certification
6 11 (1.69%) Cisco Certification
7 9 (1.39%) AWS Certification
8 7 (1.08%) CCNP
8 7 (1.08%) IIBA
8 7 (1.08%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 6 (0.92%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 6 (0.92%) Degree
9 6 (0.92%) SAFe Agilist
10 5 (0.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 5 (0.77%) CCIE
10 5 (0.77%) CCNA
10 5 (0.77%) CISSP
11 4 (0.62%) OCP
11 4 (0.62%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (4.93%) QA
2 31 (4.78%) Data Quality
3 18 (2.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 15 (2.31%) NIST
5 9 (1.39%) FATCA
5 9 (1.39%) GDPR
6 6 (0.92%) Accessibility
7 5 (0.77%) NCSC
8 4 (0.62%) PMO
9 3 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.46%) GRC
10 2 (0.31%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.31%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.15%) P3O
11 1 (0.15%) PCI DSS
11 1 (0.15%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.15%) WCAG
System Software
1 92 (14.18%) Docker
2 16 (2.47%) Active Directory
3 11 (1.69%) Postfix
3 11 (1.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (0.62%) Hyper-V
4 4 (0.62%) Snort
4 4 (0.62%) VMware ESXi
4 4 (0.62%) vSphere
5 3 (0.46%) HDFS
5 3 (0.46%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (0.46%) VMware NSX
6 2 (0.31%) Terminal Services
7 1 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 99 (15.25%) Kubernetes
2 63 (9.71%) Grafana
3 33 (5.08%) Prometheus
4 28 (4.31%) Terraform
5 23 (3.54%) Ansible
6 8 (1.23%) Progress Chef
7 5 (0.77%) Podman
8 4 (0.62%) CSIRT
8 4 (0.62%) PowerCLI
8 4 (0.62%) vMotion
9 3 (0.46%) FortiGate
9 3 (0.46%) Kibana
10 2 (0.31%) Docker Swarm
10 2 (0.31%) QRadar
10 2 (0.31%) SCCM
11 1 (0.15%) Host Intrusion Detection System
11 1 (0.15%) HP ALM
11 1 (0.15%) Iperf
11 1 (0.15%) logstash
11 1 (0.15%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 151 (23.27%) Oracle
2 89 (13.71%) Talend
3 52 (8.01%) Denodo
4 50 (7.70%) Microsoft
5 46 (7.09%) Informatica
6 34 (5.24%) ServiceNow
7 25 (3.85%) Splunk
8 23 (3.54%) Atlassian
9 22 (3.39%) Dynatrace
10 21 (3.24%) Cisco
11 19 (2.93%) SAP
12 18 (2.77%) VMware
13 13 (2.00%) Sage
14 12 (1.85%) Jaspersoft
15 10 (1.54%) AppDynamics
16 8 (1.23%) Fujitsu
16 8 (1.23%) Juniper
17 7 (1.08%) HP
18 6 (0.92%) Red Hat
19 5 (0.77%) Dell