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

6 months to
2 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 2 8 4
Rank change year-on-year +6 -4 +11
Contract jobs citing SC Cleared 664 175 254
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 21.12% 13.01% 13.02%
As % of the Qualifications category 61.65% 42.17% 39.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 501 120 188
10th Percentile £350 £280 £296
25th Percentile £420 £450 £346
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £450
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% +16.67% -17.43%
75th Percentile £540 £646 £538
90th Percentile £634 £700 £636
England median daily rate £525 £525 £536
% change year-on-year - -2.05% -2.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 4 6
10th Percentile £18.20 - £13.25
25th Percentile £23.38 £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 £71.03 £54.59 £29.75
England median hourly rate £47.50 £54.51 £50.00
% change year-on-year -12.86% +9.02% -13.04%

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 1,077 415 643
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 34.26% 30.86% 32.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 762 280 409
10th Percentile £317 £150 £273
25th Percentile £408 £289 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £494 £450
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +9.78% -15.89%
75th Percentile £558 £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 68 18 35
10th Percentile £15.89 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.34 £18.22 £22.16
Median hourly rate £52.50 £24.09 £28.50
Median % change year-on-year +117.93% -15.47% +50.00%
75th Percentile £67.84 £40.79 £49.38
90th Percentile £75.68 £59.30 £58.75
England median hourly rate £47.50 £45.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +5.56% +12.50% -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 2 May 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 2 May 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 2 May 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 +2 368 £469 -8.93% 28
Birmingham +4 93 £500 -13.04% 26
Warwickshire -4 77 £403 -23.21% 1
Worcestershire +6 38 £678 -3.21% 12
Herefordshire 0 36 £550 -21.43% 3
Solihull +2 26 £463 +10.12%
Staffordshire - 4 £388 - 9
Coventry -23 2 £488 - 1
Wolverhampton -5 1 - - 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 96 (14.46%) SAS
2 86 (12.95%) Confluence
3 25 (3.77%) WebLogic
4 13 (1.96%) Tuxedo
5 9 (1.36%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (1.20%) SharePoint
7 4 (0.60%) Apache
8 3 (0.45%) Oracle Workflow
9 1 (0.15%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.15%) NetWeaver
9 1 (0.15%) SAP EP
Applications
1 10 (1.51%) Microsoft Project
2 7 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (0.90%) Microsoft Excel
4 5 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.60%) Notepad++
6 2 (0.30%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.15%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 2 (0.30%) SAP PP
1 2 (0.30%) 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
1 150 (22.59%) AWS
2 90 (13.55%) Azure
3 35 (5.27%) Amazon S3
4 32 (4.82%) GitHub
5 30 (4.52%) Amazon EC2
6 29 (4.37%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 26 (3.92%) GCP
8 22 (3.31%) GitHub Actions
8 22 (3.31%) Serverless
9 18 (2.71%) Power Platform
10 16 (2.41%) AWS KMS
10 16 (2.41%) Microsoft 365
11 14 (2.11%) AWS Lambda
11 14 (2.11%) OpenShift
12 13 (1.96%) Amazon SQS
13 12 (1.81%) Azure DevOps
13 12 (1.81%) Route 53
13 12 (1.81%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 11 (1.66%) Azure Data Factory
15 9 (1.36%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 24 (3.61%) Firewall
2 13 (1.96%) Network Security
2 13 (1.96%) WAN
3 12 (1.81%) VPN
4 10 (1.51%) Intrusion Detection
4 10 (1.51%) LAN
5 9 (1.36%) DNS
6 8 (1.20%) BGP
7 7 (1.05%) SSL
7 7 (1.05%) Wireless
8 6 (0.90%) IPsec
8 6 (0.90%) MPLS
8 6 (0.90%) VLAN
9 5 (0.75%) 5G
9 5 (0.75%) DHCP
9 5 (0.75%) OSPF
9 5 (0.75%) WLAN
10 4 (0.60%) PuTTY
10 4 (0.60%) SD-WAN
10 4 (0.60%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 66 (9.94%) Pentaho
2 50 (7.53%) Data Warehouse
3 45 (6.78%) PostgreSQL
4 34 (5.12%) Amazon RDS
5 28 (4.22%) Oracle Database
6 26 (3.92%) MySQL
7 24 (3.61%) Oracle Reports
8 20 (3.01%) Amazon Redshift
9 19 (2.86%) Metadata
10 16 (2.41%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 15 (2.26%) DynamoDB
11 15 (2.26%) Power BI
12 13 (1.96%) BusinessObjects
13 12 (1.81%) Amazon Aurora
14 11 (1.66%) MongoDB
15 8 (1.20%) SAS Visual Analytics
16 7 (1.05%) Elasticsearch
16 7 (1.05%) Relational Database
17 5 (0.75%) Data Lake
17 5 (0.75%) SAS Data Integration Studio
Development Applications
1 114 (17.17%) JIRA
2 92 (13.86%) Git
3 72 (10.84%) Jenkins
4 64 (9.64%) GitLab
5 31 (4.67%) JUnit
6 24 (3.61%) Selenium
6 24 (3.61%) Zephyr
7 23 (3.46%) Postman
8 14 (2.11%) Maven
8 14 (2.11%) Mockito
9 13 (1.96%) Cucumber
9 13 (1.96%) JMeter
10 12 (1.81%) Bitbucket
10 12 (1.81%) SonarQube
10 12 (1.81%) WebDriver
11 9 (1.36%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 9 (1.36%) DbUnit
11 9 (1.36%) jMock
11 9 (1.36%) MSI
12 7 (1.05%) Bitbucket Server
General
1 156 (23.49%) Social Skills
2 89 (13.40%) Public Sector
3 71 (10.69%) Analytical Skills
4 35 (5.27%) Finance
5 21 (3.16%) Documentation Skills
6 9 (1.36%) Aeronautics
6 9 (1.36%) Telecoms
7 8 (1.20%) Legal
7 8 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
7 8 (1.20%) Presentation Skills
8 7 (1.05%) Influencing Skills
9 6 (0.90%) Advertising
10 4 (0.60%) Aerospace
11 2 (0.30%) Electronics
11 2 (0.30%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.15%) Banking
12 1 (0.15%) Military
12 1 (0.15%) Police
12 1 (0.15%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 148 (22.29%) Data Engineer
2 54 (8.13%) Architect
3 51 (7.68%) Analyst
4 50 (7.53%) Senior
5 47 (7.08%) Developer
6 35 (5.27%) Tester
7 29 (4.37%) Java Developer
8 27 (4.07%) Lead
9 26 (3.92%) Support Engineer
10 23 (3.46%) SAS Engineer
11 21 (3.16%) Business Analyst
12 19 (2.86%) Administrator
13 18 (2.71%) AWS Engineer
13 18 (2.71%) Project Manager
13 18 (2.71%) Software Engineer
14 17 (2.56%) Data Manager
15 16 (2.41%) Senior Data Engineer
16 15 (2.26%) Consultant
16 15 (2.26%) Platform Engineer
16 15 (2.26%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (6.48%) Spring
2 32 (4.82%) Spring Boot
3 24 (3.61%) REST
4 14 (2.11%) JPA
5 13 (1.96%) AngularJS
6 12 (1.81%) ActiveMQ
6 12 (1.81%) Hibernate
6 12 (1.81%) SOAP
6 12 (1.81%) Spring Batch
6 12 (1.81%) Spring Cloud
6 12 (1.81%) Spring Integration
6 12 (1.81%) Web Services
6 12 (1.81%) WireMock
7 11 (1.66%) Middleware
8 10 (1.51%) Node.js
9 9 (1.36%) PowerMock
10 8 (1.20%) RESTful
11 7 (1.05%) Bootstrap
11 7 (1.05%) Flask
11 7 (1.05%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 32 (4.82%) Cloud Native
2 21 (3.16%) Distributed Systems
3 20 (3.01%) Onboarding
3 20 (3.01%) Product Ownership
4 18 (2.71%) Data Centre
5 15 (2.26%) Legacy Systems
6 13 (1.96%) Enterprise Software
7 8 (1.20%) Distributed Architecture
8 7 (1.05%) Analytical Mindset
8 7 (1.05%) SCADA
9 6 (0.90%) Driving Licence
9 6 (0.90%) Private Cloud
9 6 (0.90%) Security Operations Centre
10 5 (0.75%) Hybrid Cloud
10 5 (0.75%) Linux Command Line
10 5 (0.75%) Security Posture
11 4 (0.60%) Cyber Threat
11 4 (0.60%) Data Protection Act
11 4 (0.60%) Data Structures
11 4 (0.60%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 63 (9.49%) Linux
2 54 (8.13%) Windows
3 49 (7.38%) Unix
4 14 (2.11%) Windows Server
5 10 (1.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 5 (0.75%) Android
7 2 (0.30%) AIX
7 2 (0.30%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.30%) CentOS
7 2 (0.30%) Embedded Linux
7 2 (0.30%) Solaris
7 2 (0.30%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.30%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.15%) Mac OS
8 1 (0.15%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 193 (29.07%) Agile
2 130 (19.58%) CI/CD
3 125 (18.83%) DevOps
4 111 (16.72%) ETL
5 106 (15.96%) Continuous Improvement
6 102 (15.36%) Scrum
7 99 (14.91%) Test Automation
8 96 (14.46%) Problem-Solving
9 87 (13.10%) Analytics
10 82 (12.35%) Migration
11 81 (12.20%) Stakeholder Management
12 62 (9.34%) Data Integration
13 61 (9.19%) Business Intelligence
14 59 (8.89%) Data Pipeline
15 56 (8.43%) Data Modelling
16 52 (7.83%) Containerisation
17 49 (7.38%) Microservices
18 47 (7.08%) Change Management
19 44 (6.63%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 41 (6.17%) Problem Management
Programming Languages
1 201 (30.27%) SQL
2 72 (10.84%) Java
3 58 (8.73%) Python
4 43 (6.48%) PL/SQL
5 29 (4.37%) Shell Script
6 18 (2.71%) Bash
6 18 (2.71%) PowerShell
7 13 (1.96%) Go
8 6 (0.90%) Perl
9 4 (0.60%) Kusto Query Language
10 3 (0.45%) C++
10 3 (0.45%) HiveQL
10 3 (0.45%) Kotlin
11 2 (0.30%) Bicep
11 2 (0.30%) C
11 2 (0.30%) SystemVerilog
12 1 (0.15%) C#
12 1 (0.15%) COBOL
12 1 (0.15%) JavaScript
12 1 (0.15%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 664 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 17 (2.56%) DV Cleared
3 16 (2.41%) ISTQB
4 15 (2.26%) Azure Certification
5 14 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
6 11 (1.66%) Cisco Certification
7 10 (1.51%) Microsoft Certification
8 7 (1.05%) AWS Certification
8 7 (1.05%) CCNP
8 7 (1.05%) IIBA
8 7 (1.05%) SAFe Agilist
8 7 (1.05%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
9 6 (0.90%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 6 (0.90%) Degree
10 5 (0.75%) CCIE
10 5 (0.75%) CCNA
10 5 (0.75%) CISSP
11 4 (0.60%) CISM
11 4 (0.60%) OCP
11 4 (0.60%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (4.97%) Data Quality
2 32 (4.82%) QA
3 18 (2.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 15 (2.26%) NIST
5 13 (1.96%) Accessibility
6 9 (1.36%) FATCA
6 9 (1.36%) GDPR
7 5 (0.75%) NCSC
8 4 (0.60%) PMO
9 3 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.45%) GRC
10 2 (0.30%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.30%) 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 93 (14.01%) Docker
2 14 (2.11%) Active Directory
3 11 (1.66%) Postfix
3 11 (1.66%) VMware Infrastructure
4 4 (0.60%) Hyper-V
4 4 (0.60%) Snort
4 4 (0.60%) VMware ESXi
4 4 (0.60%) vSphere
5 3 (0.45%) HDFS
5 3 (0.45%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (0.45%) VMware NSX
6 2 (0.30%) Terminal Services
7 1 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 99 (14.91%) Kubernetes
2 64 (9.64%) Grafana
3 34 (5.12%) Prometheus
4 29 (4.37%) Terraform
5 24 (3.61%) Ansible
6 8 (1.20%) Progress Chef
7 5 (0.75%) Podman
8 4 (0.60%) CSIRT
8 4 (0.60%) PowerCLI
8 4 (0.60%) vMotion
9 3 (0.45%) FortiGate
9 3 (0.45%) Kibana
10 2 (0.30%) Docker Swarm
10 2 (0.30%) QRadar
10 2 (0.30%) SCCM
11 1 (0.15%) Data Guard
11 1 (0.15%) Host Intrusion Detection System
11 1 (0.15%) Iperf
11 1 (0.15%) logstash
11 1 (0.15%) Puppet
Vendors
1 154 (23.19%) Oracle
2 89 (13.40%) Talend
3 52 (7.83%) Denodo
4 48 (7.23%) Microsoft
5 47 (7.08%) Informatica
6 33 (4.97%) ServiceNow
7 24 (3.61%) Splunk
8 23 (3.46%) Atlassian
9 22 (3.31%) Cisco
10 20 (3.01%) Dynatrace
11 19 (2.86%) SAP
12 18 (2.71%) VMware
13 12 (1.81%) Jaspersoft
13 12 (1.81%) Sage
14 10 (1.51%) AppDynamics
15 8 (1.20%) Fujitsu
15 8 (1.20%) Juniper
16 7 (1.05%) HP
17 6 (0.90%) Red Hat
18 5 (0.75%) Dell