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

6 months to
20 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 7 7
Rank change year-on-year +4 0 +6
Contract jobs citing SC Cleared 598 180 242
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 20.96% 13.52% 12.33%
As % of the Qualifications category 59.15% 42.86% 38.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 477 124 183
10th Percentile £350 £340 £288
25th Percentile £425 £459 £347
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £551 £450
Median % change year-on-year -11.98% +22.44% -16.67%
75th Percentile £552 £689 £581
90th Percentile £644 £725 £649
England median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 5 9
10th Percentile £17.48 - £13.25
25th Percentile £18.20 £18.51 £14.00
Median hourly rate £22.50 £35.00 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year -35.71% +59.09% -60.00%
75th Percentile £25.15 - £67.50
90th Percentile £65.25 £39.18 £69.96
England median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year -58.08% +20.00% -16.67%

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 1,011 420 622
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 35.44% 31.56% 31.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 737 284 395
10th Percentile £315 £157 £263
25th Percentile £408 £334 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -3.00% +11.11% -14.29%
75th Percentile £560 £613 £575
90th Percentile £650 £700 £656
England median daily rate £520 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 43 17 40
10th Percentile £14.00 £16.97 £14.00
25th Percentile £16.80 £18.50 £22.33
Median hourly rate £21.46 £23.60 £29.44
Median % change year-on-year -9.07% -19.82% +47.18%
75th Percentile £25.15 £35.00 £55.31
90th Percentile £65.25 £39.14 £59.63
England median hourly rate £28.50 £50.00 £37.83
% change year-on-year -43.00% +32.18% -24.35%

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 20 March 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 20 March 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 20 March 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 +3 308 £483 -2.03% 32
Birmingham +1 97 £475 -21.81% 24
Warwickshire -4 75 £426 -24.76% 3
Worcestershire +7 52 £675 -3.57% 6
Herefordshire +1 40 £613 -12.50% 7
Solihull +2 17 £456 +8.63% 2
Wolverhampton -4 2 - -
Coventry -24 2 £488 -
Staffordshire - 2 £350 - 12
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
1 113 (18.90%) SAS
2 65 (10.87%) Confluence
3 25 (4.18%) WebLogic
4 13 (2.17%) Tuxedo
5 3 (0.50%) Apache
5 3 (0.50%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
7 1 (0.17%) NetWeaver
7 1 (0.17%) nginx
7 1 (0.17%) SAP EP
Applications
1 7 (1.17%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (1.00%) Microsoft Project
3 5 (0.84%) Microsoft Excel
4 4 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.33%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.17%) Camtasia
6 1 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.33%) SAP PP
1 2 (0.33%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.17%) Oracle Assets
2 1 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.17%) SAP CRM
2 1 (0.17%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 117 (19.57%) AWS
2 91 (15.22%) Azure
3 37 (6.19%) GitHub
4 31 (5.18%) OpenShift
5 27 (4.52%) GCP
6 22 (3.68%) Amazon S3
7 21 (3.51%) Amazon EC2
7 21 (3.51%) GitHub Actions
8 20 (3.34%) Serverless
9 16 (2.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 16 (2.68%) Azure Data Factory
10 13 (2.17%) Azure DevOps
10 13 (2.17%) Power Platform
11 11 (1.84%) AWS KMS
11 11 (1.84%) SaaS
12 9 (1.51%) Datadog
12 9 (1.51%) Microsoft 365
13 8 (1.34%) Azure Key Vault
13 8 (1.34%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 7 (1.17%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 19 (3.18%) Firewall
1 19 (3.18%) VPN
2 18 (3.01%) WAN
3 16 (2.68%) BGP
4 14 (2.34%) MPLS
5 13 (2.17%) IPsec
6 11 (1.84%) Network Security
7 10 (1.67%) Intrusion Detection
8 8 (1.34%) LAN
9 7 (1.17%) DNS
9 7 (1.17%) Wireless
10 5 (0.84%) 5G
10 5 (0.84%) OSPF
10 5 (0.84%) VLAN
10 5 (0.84%) Wi-Fi
11 4 (0.67%) SSL
11 4 (0.67%) Unified Communications
11 4 (0.67%) WLAN
12 3 (0.50%) DHCP
12 3 (0.50%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 58 (9.70%) Pentaho
2 48 (8.03%) PostgreSQL
3 34 (5.69%) Data Warehouse
4 32 (5.35%) Oracle Database
4 32 (5.35%) SAS Enterprise Guide
5 23 (3.85%) Amazon RDS
6 22 (3.68%) Metadata
7 21 (3.51%) MySQL
8 14 (2.34%) Oracle Reports
9 13 (2.17%) Amazon Redshift
9 13 (2.17%) Elasticsearch
10 12 (2.01%) Metadata Repository
11 11 (1.84%) MongoDB
12 9 (1.51%) Power BI
13 8 (1.34%) Redis
14 7 (1.17%) Amazon Aurora
14 7 (1.17%) DynamoDB
15 6 (1.00%) Relational Database
16 5 (0.84%) SAS Visual Analytics
16 5 (0.84%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 103 (17.22%) Git
2 93 (15.55%) JIRA
3 84 (14.05%) Jenkins
4 61 (10.20%) GitLab
5 44 (7.36%) JUnit
6 36 (6.02%) Selenium
7 18 (3.01%) Cucumber
8 14 (2.34%) Mockito
9 13 (2.17%) JMeter
9 13 (2.17%) Maven
9 13 (2.17%) Postman
9 13 (2.17%) Zephyr
10 12 (2.01%) WebDriver
11 11 (1.84%) SonarQube
12 9 (1.51%) MSI
13 8 (1.34%) Atlassian Bamboo
13 8 (1.34%) Bitbucket
14 5 (0.84%) DbUnit
14 5 (0.84%) jMock
15 4 (0.67%) CA Gen
General
1 153 (25.59%) Social Skills
2 74 (12.37%) Public Sector
3 54 (9.03%) Analytical Skills
4 31 (5.18%) Finance
5 17 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
6 9 (1.51%) Aeronautics
7 7 (1.17%) Advertising
7 7 (1.17%) Legal
7 7 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
7 7 (1.17%) Presentation Skills
7 7 (1.17%) Telecoms
8 3 (0.50%) Influencing Skills
9 2 (0.33%) Electronics
9 2 (0.33%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.17%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.17%) Automotive
10 1 (0.17%) Banking
10 1 (0.17%) Police
10 1 (0.17%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 104 (17.39%) Data Engineer
2 54 (9.03%) Senior
3 47 (7.86%) Developer
4 46 (7.69%) Architect
5 41 (6.86%) Analyst
6 37 (6.19%) Tester
7 26 (4.35%) Support Engineer
8 25 (4.18%) Java Developer
9 24 (4.01%) Test Specialist
10 19 (3.18%) Business Analyst
10 19 (3.18%) Data Architect
11 18 (3.01%) Platform Engineer
11 18 (3.01%) Senior Data Engineer
12 17 (2.84%) Lead
13 16 (2.68%) Consultant
14 15 (2.51%) Release Manager
14 15 (2.51%) SAS Engineer
15 14 (2.34%) Delivery Manager
16 13 (2.17%) Administrator
16 13 (2.17%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 42 (7.02%) Spring
2 38 (6.35%) REST
3 31 (5.18%) Spring Boot
4 19 (3.18%) pytest
5 13 (2.17%) JPA
5 13 (2.17%) WireMock
6 12 (2.01%) Kafka
6 12 (2.01%) Keycloak
7 11 (1.84%) FastAPI
7 11 (1.84%) Flask
7 11 (1.84%) Middleware
8 9 (1.51%) Node.js
9 8 (1.34%) AngularJS
9 8 (1.34%) GraphQL
9 8 (1.34%) gRPC
9 8 (1.34%) SOAP
9 8 (1.34%) WebSockets
10 7 (1.17%) ActiveMQ
10 7 (1.17%) Spring Cloud
10 7 (1.17%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 24 (4.01%) Cloud Native
2 16 (2.68%) Distributed Systems
3 14 (2.34%) Legacy Systems
3 14 (2.34%) Product Ownership
4 13 (2.17%) Data Centre
4 13 (2.17%) Onboarding
5 12 (2.01%) Enterprise Software
6 11 (1.84%) PKI
7 10 (1.67%) Hybrid Cloud
8 9 (1.51%) SCADA
9 8 (1.34%) Distributed Architecture
9 8 (1.34%) Driving Licence
10 6 (1.00%) Security Operations Centre
11 5 (0.84%) Private Cloud
11 5 (0.84%) Security Posture
12 4 (0.67%) Analytical Mindset
12 4 (0.67%) CSOC
12 4 (0.67%) Robotics
13 3 (0.50%) Data Protection Act
13 3 (0.50%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 49 (8.19%) Linux
2 47 (7.86%) Windows
3 31 (5.18%) Unix
4 11 (1.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 11 (1.84%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.50%) Android
6 2 (0.33%) AIX
6 2 (0.33%) CentOS
6 2 (0.33%) Solaris
6 2 (0.33%) Ubuntu
6 2 (0.33%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.17%) Embedded Linux
7 1 (0.17%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 182 (30.43%) Agile
2 151 (25.25%) CI/CD
3 132 (22.07%) DevOps
4 99 (16.56%) Scrum
5 97 (16.22%) Continuous Improvement
6 95 (15.89%) Problem-Solving
7 93 (15.55%) Test Automation
8 92 (15.38%) Analytics
9 91 (15.22%) ETL
9 91 (15.22%) Stakeholder Management
10 67 (11.20%) Containerisation
11 62 (10.37%) Data Integration
12 61 (10.20%) Data Pipeline
12 61 (10.20%) Migration
13 60 (10.03%) Data Modelling
14 54 (9.03%) Business Intelligence
15 51 (8.53%) Microservices
16 40 (6.69%) Validation
17 38 (6.35%) Change Management
17 38 (6.35%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 161 (26.92%) SQL
2 73 (12.21%) Python
3 70 (11.71%) Java
4 30 (5.02%) PL/SQL
5 25 (4.18%) Shell Script
6 23 (3.85%) Go
7 17 (2.84%) PowerShell
8 16 (2.68%) Bash
9 6 (1.00%) Perl
10 4 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
11 3 (0.50%) HiveQL
11 3 (0.50%) JavaScript
11 3 (0.50%) Kotlin
12 2 (0.33%) Bicep
12 2 (0.33%) C++
12 2 (0.33%) TypeScript
13 1 (0.17%) C
13 1 (0.17%) C#
13 1 (0.17%) COBOL
13 1 (0.17%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 598 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 22 (3.68%) DV Cleared
3 20 (3.34%) Azure Certification
4 14 (2.34%) BPSS Clearance
5 11 (1.84%) ISTQB
6 10 (1.67%) Microsoft Certification
7 8 (1.34%) AWS Certification
8 7 (1.17%) Cisco Certification
8 7 (1.17%) Degree
8 7 (1.17%) IIBA
9 6 (1.00%) CCNP
10 5 (0.84%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 4 (0.67%) CCIE
11 4 (0.67%) CISSP
11 4 (0.67%) OCP
11 4 (0.67%) Oracle Certification
12 3 (0.50%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 3 (0.50%) CISM
12 3 (0.50%) SAFe Agilist
13 2 (0.33%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (5.35%) Data Quality
2 26 (4.35%) QA
3 13 (2.17%) NIST
4 12 (2.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 12 (2.01%) NCSC
5 8 (1.34%) Accessibility
6 7 (1.17%) GDPR
7 4 (0.67%) WCAG
8 3 (0.50%) FATCA
9 2 (0.33%) PMO
9 2 (0.33%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.17%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.17%) GRC
10 1 (0.17%) PCI DSS
10 1 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 107 (17.89%) Docker
2 14 (2.34%) Active Directory
3 7 (1.17%) Postfix
4 5 (0.84%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (0.67%) Snort
6 3 (0.50%) HDFS
6 3 (0.50%) VMware NSX
7 2 (0.33%) Terminal Services
7 2 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 132 (22.07%) Kubernetes
2 58 (9.70%) Grafana
3 35 (5.85%) Prometheus
4 23 (3.85%) Terraform
5 15 (2.51%) Ansible
6 8 (1.34%) Progress Chef
7 7 (1.17%) Kibana
8 4 (0.67%) CSIRT
9 3 (0.50%) FortiGate
10 2 (0.33%) Docker Swarm
10 2 (0.33%) Podman
10 2 (0.33%) SCCM
11 1 (0.17%) Backup Exec
11 1 (0.17%) Control-M
11 1 (0.17%) Host Intrusion Detection System
11 1 (0.17%) HP ALM
11 1 (0.17%) logstash
11 1 (0.17%) Puppet
11 1 (0.17%) QRadar
11 1 (0.17%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 129 (21.57%) Oracle
2 74 (12.37%) Talend
3 50 (8.36%) Microsoft
4 43 (7.19%) Denodo
5 34 (5.69%) ServiceNow
6 33 (5.52%) Informatica
7 28 (4.68%) Splunk
8 23 (3.85%) Cisco
9 22 (3.68%) Dynatrace
10 15 (2.51%) Atlassian
10 15 (2.51%) Juniper
11 13 (2.17%) AppDynamics
12 10 (1.67%) Sage
13 9 (1.51%) SAP
14 8 (1.34%) CyberArk
14 8 (1.34%) Fujitsu
15 7 (1.17%) HP
15 7 (1.17%) Jaspersoft
15 7 (1.17%) Red Hat
15 7 (1.17%) VMware