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

6 months to
23 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 8 7
Rank change year-on-year +5 -1 +7
Contract jobs citing SC Cleared 551 170 248
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 20.71% 11.98% 13.00%
As % of the Qualifications category 58.18% 38.46% 40.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 425 115 184
10th Percentile £363 £399 £316
25th Percentile £450 £475 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £551 £450
Median % change year-on-year -9.26% +22.44% -16.67%
75th Percentile £575 £689 £578
90th Percentile £665 £725 £649
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 5 11
10th Percentile £17.48 £23.63 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.20 £31.32 £52.50
Median hourly rate £21.46 £35.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -38.69% -46.15% +71.72%
75th Percentile £25.15 - £68.13
90th Percentile - £39.18 £70.00
England median hourly rate £25.15 £60.25 £56.49
% change year-on-year -58.26% +6.66% -5.85%

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 947 442 616
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 35.60% 31.15% 32.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 676 287 375
10th Percentile £311 £180 £263
25th Percentile £425 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £450
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% +14.44% -10.00%
75th Percentile £575 £613 £575
90th Percentile £659 £700 £650
England median daily rate £520 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.78% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 44 17 42
10th Percentile £14.00 £16.97 £17.16
25th Percentile £16.30 £18.50 £23.00
Median hourly rate £19.44 £29.00 £34.75
Median % change year-on-year -32.98% -16.55% +78.21%
75th Percentile £25.15 £35.00 £58.75
90th Percentile £33.50 £46.18 £67.50
England median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -49.70% +12.36% -3.66%

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 23 February 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 23 February 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 23 February 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 +2 255 £495 +0.20% 56
Birmingham +10 99 £480 -30.33% 17
Warwickshire -1 78 £440 -23.48% 8
Worcestershire +9 61 £650 -7.14% 8
Herefordshire +2 45 £625 -10.71% 1
Solihull +1 14 £475 +14.46% 7
Coventry - 5 £488 -
Staffordshire - 3 £350 - 7
Wolverhampton 0 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
1 104 (18.87%) SAS
2 44 (7.99%) Confluence
3 26 (4.72%) WebLogic
4 9 (1.63%) Tuxedo
5 6 (1.09%) Apache
6 3 (0.54%) nginx
7 2 (0.36%) SharePoint
8 1 (0.18%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 9 (1.63%) Microsoft Project
2 8 (1.45%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (1.09%) Microsoft Excel
4 5 (0.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 3 (0.54%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.36%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 2 (0.36%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.18%) AutoCAD
7 1 (0.18%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 2 (0.36%) SAP PP
1 2 (0.36%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
2 1 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.18%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 110 (19.96%) AWS
2 95 (17.24%) Azure
3 31 (5.63%) GitHub
3 31 (5.63%) OpenShift
4 25 (4.54%) GCP
5 23 (4.17%) Amazon S3
6 22 (3.99%) Amazon EC2
7 17 (3.09%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 17 (3.09%) Serverless
8 16 (2.90%) Azure Data Factory
9 13 (2.36%) AWS KMS
10 12 (2.18%) Azure DevOps
10 12 (2.18%) GitHub Actions
10 12 (2.18%) SaaS
11 10 (1.81%) Microsoft 365
11 10 (1.81%) Power Platform
12 9 (1.63%) Amazon ELB
12 9 (1.63%) Datadog
12 9 (1.63%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 8 (1.45%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 26 (4.72%) Firewall
2 25 (4.54%) VPN
3 23 (4.17%) WAN
4 19 (3.45%) IPsec
5 18 (3.27%) BGP
5 18 (3.27%) MPLS
6 14 (2.54%) DNS
6 14 (2.54%) Network Security
7 10 (1.81%) Intrusion Detection
7 10 (1.81%) Wireless
8 7 (1.27%) LAN
8 7 (1.27%) SSL
9 5 (0.91%) Cisco IPT
9 5 (0.91%) DMVPN
9 5 (0.91%) SMTP
10 4 (0.73%) 5G
10 4 (0.73%) OSPF
10 4 (0.73%) Unified Communications
10 4 (0.73%) VLAN
10 4 (0.73%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 48 (8.71%) Pentaho
2 37 (6.72%) PostgreSQL
3 34 (6.17%) Oracle Database
3 34 (6.17%) SAS Enterprise Guide
4 24 (4.36%) Amazon RDS
5 22 (3.99%) Data Warehouse
5 22 (3.99%) Metadata
6 14 (2.54%) Elasticsearch
7 12 (2.18%) Metadata Repository
8 11 (2.00%) MongoDB
9 8 (1.45%) Amazon Aurora
9 8 (1.45%) Redis
10 7 (1.27%) MySQL
11 6 (1.09%) DynamoDB
11 6 (1.09%) Relational Database
12 5 (0.91%) Oracle Reports
12 5 (0.91%) Power BI
13 4 (0.73%) InfluxDB
13 4 (0.73%) SAS Visual Analytics
14 2 (0.36%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 91 (16.52%) Git
2 76 (13.79%) Jenkins
3 72 (13.07%) JIRA
4 47 (8.53%) GitLab
5 37 (6.72%) JUnit
6 30 (5.44%) Selenium
7 13 (2.36%) Mockito
7 13 (2.36%) SonarQube
8 12 (2.18%) Cucumber
8 12 (2.18%) Maven
9 7 (1.27%) JMeter
9 7 (1.27%) MSI
10 6 (1.09%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 6 (1.09%) WebDriver
11 5 (0.91%) DbUnit
11 5 (0.91%) jMock
11 5 (0.91%) Postman
12 4 (0.73%) Zephyr
13 3 (0.54%) Bitbucket Server
13 3 (0.54%) NeoLoad
General
1 137 (24.86%) Social Skills
2 70 (12.70%) Public Sector
3 49 (8.89%) Analytical Skills
4 22 (3.99%) Finance
5 16 (2.90%) Documentation Skills
6 12 (2.18%) Telecoms
7 9 (1.63%) Aeronautics
8 8 (1.45%) Presentation Skills
9 7 (1.27%) Legal
10 5 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
11 3 (0.54%) Advertising
11 3 (0.54%) Influencing Skills
12 2 (0.36%) Electronics
12 2 (0.36%) Manufacturing
13 1 (0.18%) Aerospace
13 1 (0.18%) Banking
13 1 (0.18%) Marketing
13 1 (0.18%) Military
13 1 (0.18%) Police
13 1 (0.18%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 76 (13.79%) Data Engineer
2 50 (9.07%) Senior
3 47 (8.53%) Developer
4 44 (7.99%) Architect
5 36 (6.53%) Analyst
6 24 (4.36%) Tester
7 23 (4.17%) Java Developer
8 22 (3.99%) Test Specialist
9 21 (3.81%) Platform Engineer
10 19 (3.45%) Data Architect
10 19 (3.45%) Support Engineer
11 17 (3.09%) Business Analyst
12 16 (2.90%) Consultant
13 15 (2.72%) Lead
13 15 (2.72%) Senior Data Engineer
14 14 (2.54%) AWS Engineer
14 14 (2.54%) Release Manager
15 13 (2.36%) Engagement Manager
15 13 (2.36%) Senior Developer
15 13 (2.36%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (6.72%) REST
2 35 (6.35%) Spring
3 30 (5.44%) Spring Boot
4 19 (3.45%) pytest
5 12 (2.18%) JPA
5 12 (2.18%) Kafka
5 12 (2.18%) Keycloak
6 11 (2.00%) FastAPI
6 11 (2.00%) Flask
7 10 (1.81%) Middleware
7 10 (1.81%) Node.js
8 8 (1.45%) GraphQL
8 8 (1.45%) gRPC
8 8 (1.45%) LDAP
8 8 (1.45%) React
8 8 (1.45%) WebSockets
8 8 (1.45%) YAML
9 7 (1.27%) AngularJS
9 7 (1.27%) JSON
9 7 (1.27%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 24 (4.36%) Cloud Native
2 19 (3.45%) Onboarding
3 18 (3.27%) Data Centre
4 14 (2.54%) PKI
5 11 (2.00%) Enterprise Software
6 10 (1.81%) Distributed Systems
6 10 (1.81%) Driving Licence
6 10 (1.81%) Hybrid Cloud
7 9 (1.63%) Legacy Systems
8 8 (1.45%) Product Ownership
8 8 (1.45%) SCADA
9 6 (1.09%) FPGA
9 6 (1.09%) Security Operations Centre
10 5 (0.91%) Data Protection Act
10 5 (0.91%) Private Cloud
10 5 (0.91%) Security Posture
10 5 (0.91%) VHDL
11 4 (0.73%) Algorithms
11 4 (0.73%) CSOC
12 3 (0.54%) Distributed Architecture
Operating Systems
1 55 (9.98%) Linux
2 46 (8.35%) Windows
3 26 (4.72%) Unix
4 11 (2.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 7 (1.27%) Windows Server
6 4 (0.73%) Ubuntu
7 3 (0.54%) Amazon Linux
7 3 (0.54%) Android
7 3 (0.54%) VMS
8 2 (0.36%) AIX
8 2 (0.36%) CentOS
8 2 (0.36%) Solaris
8 2 (0.36%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.18%) Embedded Linux
9 1 (0.18%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 152 (27.59%) Agile
2 147 (26.68%) CI/CD
3 131 (23.77%) DevOps
4 94 (17.06%) Problem-Solving
5 88 (15.97%) Stakeholder Management
6 85 (15.43%) Continuous Improvement
7 84 (15.25%) Analytics
8 79 (14.34%) Scrum
9 73 (13.25%) Test Automation
10 71 (12.89%) ETL
11 66 (11.98%) Containerisation
12 61 (11.07%) Data Pipeline
13 59 (10.71%) Data Modelling
14 55 (9.98%) Data Integration
15 54 (9.80%) Business Intelligence
16 52 (9.44%) Migration
17 46 (8.35%) Change Management
18 43 (7.80%) Microservices
19 33 (5.99%) Data Management
19 33 (5.99%) Test Strategy
Programming Languages
1 144 (26.13%) SQL
2 75 (13.61%) Python
3 62 (11.25%) Java
4 25 (4.54%) Shell Script
5 23 (4.17%) Go
5 23 (4.17%) PL/SQL
6 20 (3.63%) PowerShell
7 19 (3.45%) Bash
8 7 (1.27%) Perl
9 6 (1.09%) JavaScript
10 5 (0.91%) MATLAB
11 4 (0.73%) Kusto Query Language
11 4 (0.73%) TypeScript
12 3 (0.54%) Groovy
13 2 (0.36%) Bicep
13 2 (0.36%) C#
13 2 (0.36%) C++
13 2 (0.36%) Kotlin
14 1 (0.18%) R
14 1 (0.18%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 551 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 27 (4.90%) DV Cleared
3 22 (3.99%) Azure Certification
4 14 (2.54%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (1.81%) AWS Certification
6 9 (1.63%) Degree
7 8 (1.45%) Microsoft Certification
8 7 (1.27%) Cisco Certification
8 7 (1.27%) IIBA
9 6 (1.09%) CCNP
9 6 (1.09%) ISTQB
10 5 (0.91%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 4 (0.73%) CCIE
12 3 (0.54%) CISM
12 3 (0.54%) CISSP
13 2 (0.36%) CAPM
13 2 (0.36%) CCNA
13 2 (0.36%) CEH
13 2 (0.36%) OCP
13 2 (0.36%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (5.63%) Data Quality
2 20 (3.63%) QA
3 15 (2.72%) NCSC
4 12 (2.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 12 (2.18%) NIST
5 8 (1.45%) Accessibility
6 7 (1.27%) GDPR
7 4 (0.73%) WCAG
8 3 (0.54%) FATCA
9 2 (0.36%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.36%) PMO
9 2 (0.36%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.18%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.18%) IEC 61131
10 1 (0.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 105 (19.06%) Docker
2 11 (2.00%) Active Directory
3 9 (1.63%) Postfix
4 4 (0.73%) Snort
5 3 (0.54%) DFS Replication
5 3 (0.54%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.54%) VMware NSX
6 2 (0.36%) Dovecot
6 2 (0.36%) Squid
6 2 (0.36%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 129 (23.41%) Kubernetes
2 44 (7.99%) Grafana
3 32 (5.81%) Prometheus
4 28 (5.08%) Terraform
5 14 (2.54%) Ansible
6 8 (1.45%) Kibana
6 8 (1.45%) Progress Chef
7 4 (0.73%) CSIRT
8 3 (0.54%) FortiGate
9 2 (0.36%) Docker Swarm
9 2 (0.36%) logstash
9 2 (0.36%) Nessus
9 2 (0.36%) Podman
9 2 (0.36%) Proxmox
10 1 (0.18%) Control-M
10 1 (0.18%) Host Intrusion Detection System
10 1 (0.18%) HP ALM
10 1 (0.18%) Puppet
10 1 (0.18%) QRadar
10 1 (0.18%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 110 (19.96%) Oracle
2 57 (10.34%) Talend
3 53 (9.62%) Microsoft
4 42 (7.62%) ServiceNow
5 34 (6.17%) Denodo
6 31 (5.63%) Cisco
6 31 (5.63%) Splunk
7 26 (4.72%) Dynatrace
8 25 (4.54%) Informatica
9 22 (3.99%) Juniper
10 16 (2.90%) AppDynamics
11 12 (2.18%) SAP
12 11 (2.00%) F5
13 9 (1.63%) CheckPoint
13 9 (1.63%) CyberArk
14 8 (1.45%) Atlassian
14 8 (1.45%) Jaspersoft
15 7 (1.27%) Red Hat
16 6 (1.09%) Fujitsu
16 6 (1.09%) Remedy