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

6 months to
14 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 8 4
Rank change year-on-year +5 -4 +10
Contract jobs citing SC Cleared 653 184 246
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 21.59% 13.45% 12.87%
As % of the Qualifications category 61.55% 42.69% 40.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 500 129 183
10th Percentile £350 £300 £288
25th Percentile £425 £448 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £537 £450
Median % change year-on-year -9.68% +19.33% -16.67%
75th Percentile £544 £689 £547
90th Percentile £634 £702 £637
England median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 42 5 6
10th Percentile £18.20 - £13.25
25th Percentile £21.46 £18.51 £13.44
Median hourly rate £52.50 £35.00 £14.00
Median % change year-on-year +50.00% +150.00% -63.01%
75th Percentile £67.84 £41.97 £20.00
90th Percentile £70.53 £52.79 £29.75
England median hourly rate £47.50 £57.50 £47.83
% change year-on-year -17.39% +20.22% -20.02%

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 1,061 431 612
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 35.07% 31.51% 32.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 759 295 388
10th Percentile £324 £150 £263
25th Percentile £412 £313 £359
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £477 £450
Median % change year-on-year +1.68% +6.00% -14.29%
75th Percentile £560 £600 £575
90th Percentile £641 £700 £675
England median daily rate £520 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 61 17 36
10th Percentile £14.00 £16.97 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.20 £18.50 £22.24
Median hourly rate £25.15 £28.18 £28.50
Median % change year-on-year -10.75% -1.12% +42.50%
75th Percentile £67.84 £35.00 £46.56
90th Percentile £77.25 £46.18 £58.75
England median hourly rate £45.46 £50.00 £37.83
% change year-on-year -9.08% +32.18% -27.44%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 +2 360 £483 -5.29% 26
Birmingham +5 92 £500 -13.04% 20
Warwickshire -2 76 £413 -25.14% 5
Worcestershire +4 46 £675 -3.57% 2
Herefordshire +1 39 £550 -21.43% 6
Solihull +2 19 £456 +8.63% 1
Staffordshire - 3 £331 - 12
Coventry -24 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
1 132 (20.21%) SAS
2 68 (10.41%) Confluence
3 25 (3.83%) WebLogic
4 13 (1.99%) Tuxedo
5 9 (1.38%) Apache Airflow
6 5 (0.77%) SharePoint
7 3 (0.46%) Apache
7 3 (0.46%) Oracle Workflow
8 1 (0.15%) NetWeaver
8 1 (0.15%) SAP EP
Applications
1 7 (1.07%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
3 5 (0.77%) Microsoft Excel
4 4 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.61%) 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
1 135 (20.67%) AWS
2 92 (14.09%) Azure
3 32 (4.90%) GitHub
4 31 (4.75%) OpenShift
5 26 (3.98%) Amazon S3
5 26 (3.98%) GCP
6 24 (3.68%) Amazon EC2
7 20 (3.06%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 18 (2.76%) GitHub Actions
9 17 (2.60%) Serverless
10 14 (2.14%) AWS KMS
10 14 (2.14%) Azure Data Factory
11 13 (1.99%) Microsoft 365
12 11 (1.68%) Amazon SQS
12 11 (1.68%) SaaS
13 10 (1.53%) Azure DevOps
13 10 (1.53%) Power Platform
13 10 (1.53%) Route 53
14 9 (1.38%) Datadog
15 8 (1.23%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 24 (3.68%) Firewall
2 15 (2.30%) WAN
3 14 (2.14%) VPN
4 13 (1.99%) Network Security
5 10 (1.53%) BGP
5 10 (1.53%) Intrusion Detection
5 10 (1.53%) LAN
6 9 (1.38%) DNS
7 8 (1.23%) IPsec
7 8 (1.23%) MPLS
8 7 (1.07%) SSL
8 7 (1.07%) Wireless
9 6 (0.92%) VLAN
10 5 (0.77%) 5G
10 5 (0.77%) DHCP
10 5 (0.77%) OSPF
10 5 (0.77%) WLAN
11 4 (0.61%) PuTTY
11 4 (0.61%) SD-WAN
11 4 (0.61%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 61 (9.34%) Pentaho
2 48 (7.35%) PostgreSQL
3 41 (6.28%) Data Warehouse
4 38 (5.82%) SAS Enterprise Guide
5 35 (5.36%) Oracle Database
6 28 (4.29%) Amazon RDS
7 26 (3.98%) MySQL
8 25 (3.83%) Metadata
9 17 (2.60%) Amazon Redshift
9 17 (2.60%) Oracle Reports
10 11 (1.68%) Elasticsearch
10 11 (1.68%) Metadata Repository
10 11 (1.68%) MongoDB
10 11 (1.68%) SAS Visual Analytics
11 10 (1.53%) Amazon Aurora
11 10 (1.53%) DynamoDB
12 7 (1.07%) BusinessObjects
12 7 (1.07%) Power BI
12 7 (1.07%) Relational Database
13 5 (0.77%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 110 (16.85%) Git
2 98 (15.01%) JIRA
3 88 (13.48%) Jenkins
4 68 (10.41%) GitLab
5 44 (6.74%) JUnit
6 35 (5.36%) Selenium
7 16 (2.45%) Zephyr
8 15 (2.30%) Cucumber
8 15 (2.30%) Postman
9 14 (2.14%) Maven
9 14 (2.14%) Mockito
10 13 (1.99%) JMeter
11 12 (1.84%) WebDriver
12 11 (1.68%) SonarQube
13 9 (1.38%) Atlassian Bamboo
13 9 (1.38%) MSI
14 8 (1.23%) Bitbucket
15 7 (1.07%) DbUnit
15 7 (1.07%) jMock
16 5 (0.77%) Bitbucket Server
General
1 163 (24.96%) Social Skills
2 81 (12.40%) Public Sector
3 62 (9.49%) Analytical Skills
4 32 (4.90%) Finance
5 20 (3.06%) Documentation Skills
6 9 (1.38%) Aeronautics
7 8 (1.23%) Telecoms
8 7 (1.07%) Advertising
8 7 (1.07%) Organisational Skills
8 7 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
9 6 (0.92%) Legal
10 4 (0.61%) Aerospace
11 3 (0.46%) Influencing Skills
12 2 (0.31%) Electronics
12 2 (0.31%) Manufacturing
13 1 (0.15%) Banking
13 1 (0.15%) Police
13 1 (0.15%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 132 (20.21%) Data Engineer
2 55 (8.42%) Senior
3 54 (8.27%) Architect
4 45 (6.89%) Developer
5 43 (6.58%) Analyst
6 36 (5.51%) Tester
7 27 (4.13%) Java Developer
7 27 (4.13%) Support Engineer
8 26 (3.98%) Test Specialist
9 24 (3.68%) SAS Engineer
10 20 (3.06%) Business Analyst
11 19 (2.91%) Platform Engineer
12 18 (2.76%) Data Architect
12 18 (2.76%) Project Manager
12 18 (2.76%) Senior Data Engineer
13 17 (2.60%) Data Manager
13 17 (2.60%) Lead
13 17 (2.60%) Release Manager
13 17 (2.60%) Software Engineer
14 15 (2.30%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (6.58%) Spring
2 39 (5.97%) REST
3 32 (4.90%) Spring Boot
4 19 (2.91%) pytest
5 14 (2.14%) JPA
6 12 (1.84%) WireMock
7 11 (1.68%) AngularJS
7 11 (1.68%) Middleware
8 10 (1.53%) ActiveMQ
8 10 (1.53%) Hibernate
8 10 (1.53%) Kafka
8 10 (1.53%) Keycloak
8 10 (1.53%) SOAP
8 10 (1.53%) Spring Batch
8 10 (1.53%) Spring Cloud
8 10 (1.53%) Spring Integration
8 10 (1.53%) Web Services
9 9 (1.38%) Node.js
10 8 (1.23%) FastAPI
10 8 (1.23%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 26 (3.98%) Cloud Native
2 19 (2.91%) Distributed Systems
3 16 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
3 16 (2.45%) Product Ownership
4 15 (2.30%) Onboarding
5 13 (1.99%) Data Centre
5 13 (1.99%) Enterprise Software
6 9 (1.38%) Hybrid Cloud
7 8 (1.23%) Distributed Architecture
7 8 (1.23%) Driving Licence
8 7 (1.07%) SCADA
9 6 (0.92%) Analytical Mindset
9 6 (0.92%) Private Cloud
9 6 (0.92%) Security Operations Centre
10 5 (0.77%) Linux Command Line
10 5 (0.77%) PKI
10 5 (0.77%) Security Posture
11 4 (0.61%) CSOC
11 4 (0.61%) Cyber Threat
11 4 (0.61%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 59 (9.04%) Linux
2 55 (8.42%) Windows
3 45 (6.89%) Unix
4 15 (2.30%) Windows Server
5 10 (1.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (0.46%) Android
7 2 (0.31%) AIX
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
1 190 (29.10%) Agile
2 153 (23.43%) CI/CD
3 136 (20.83%) DevOps
4 108 (16.54%) Analytics
5 107 (16.39%) Scrum
6 102 (15.62%) ETL
7 100 (15.31%) Continuous Improvement
7 100 (15.31%) Test Automation
8 99 (15.16%) Problem-Solving
9 90 (13.78%) Stakeholder Management
10 76 (11.64%) Migration
11 73 (11.18%) Data Integration
12 67 (10.26%) Containerisation
12 67 (10.26%) Data Pipeline
13 60 (9.19%) Business Intelligence
13 60 (9.19%) Data Modelling
14 49 (7.50%) Microservices
15 46 (7.04%) Validation
16 43 (6.58%) Change Management
17 41 (6.28%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 184 (28.18%) SQL
2 71 (10.87%) Java
2 71 (10.87%) Python
3 39 (5.97%) PL/SQL
4 31 (4.75%) Shell Script
5 19 (2.91%) PowerShell
6 18 (2.76%) Go
7 17 (2.60%) Bash
8 6 (0.92%) Perl
9 4 (0.61%) Kusto Query Language
10 3 (0.46%) C++
10 3 (0.46%) HiveQL
10 3 (0.46%) Kotlin
11 2 (0.31%) Bicep
11 2 (0.31%) C
11 2 (0.31%) SystemVerilog
12 1 (0.15%) C#
12 1 (0.15%) COBOL
12 1 (0.15%) JavaScript
12 1 (0.15%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 653 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 18 (2.76%) Azure Certification
3 17 (2.60%) DV Cleared
4 15 (2.30%) BPSS Clearance
5 13 (1.99%) ISTQB
6 11 (1.68%) Microsoft Certification
7 10 (1.53%) Cisco Certification
8 8 (1.23%) AWS Certification
9 7 (1.07%) CCNP
9 7 (1.07%) Degree
9 7 (1.07%) IIBA
10 5 (0.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 5 (0.77%) CCIE
11 4 (0.61%) CCNA
11 4 (0.61%) OCP
11 4 (0.61%) Oracle Certification
12 3 (0.46%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 3 (0.46%) CISSP
12 3 (0.46%) SAFe Agilist
13 2 (0.31%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (5.05%) Data Quality
2 30 (4.59%) QA
3 16 (2.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 15 (2.30%) NIST
5 8 (1.23%) NCSC
6 7 (1.07%) GDPR
7 5 (0.77%) Accessibility
8 3 (0.46%) FATCA
9 2 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials
9 2 (0.31%) PMO
9 2 (0.31%) SOC 2
9 2 (0.31%) WCAG
10 1 (0.15%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.15%) GRC
10 1 (0.15%) PCI DSS
10 1 (0.15%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 110 (16.85%) Docker
2 16 (2.45%) Active Directory
3 10 (1.53%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (1.38%) Postfix
5 4 (0.61%) Snort
6 3 (0.46%) HDFS
6 3 (0.46%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.46%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.46%) VMware NSX
7 2 (0.31%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 129 (19.75%) Kubernetes
2 61 (9.34%) Grafana
3 33 (5.05%) Prometheus
4 22 (3.37%) Terraform
5 18 (2.76%) Ansible
6 8 (1.23%) Progress Chef
7 5 (0.77%) Kibana
8 4 (0.61%) CSIRT
8 4 (0.61%) Podman
9 3 (0.46%) FortiGate
10 2 (0.31%) Docker Swarm
10 2 (0.31%) QRadar
10 2 (0.31%) SCCM
11 1 (0.15%) Backup Exec
11 1 (0.15%) Control-M
11 1 (0.15%) Host Intrusion Detection System
11 1 (0.15%) Iperf
11 1 (0.15%) logstash
11 1 (0.15%) Puppet
11 1 (0.15%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 151 (23.12%) Oracle
2 82 (12.56%) Talend
3 53 (8.12%) Denodo
4 50 (7.66%) Microsoft
5 37 (5.67%) Informatica
6 34 (5.21%) ServiceNow
7 28 (4.29%) Splunk
8 23 (3.52%) Cisco
9 22 (3.37%) Dynatrace
10 20 (3.06%) Atlassian
11 18 (2.76%) SAP
12 13 (1.99%) AppDynamics
13 11 (1.68%) VMware
14 10 (1.53%) Jaspersoft
14 10 (1.53%) Juniper
14 10 (1.53%) Sage
15 8 (1.23%) Fujitsu
16 7 (1.07%) HP
17 6 (0.92%) Red Hat
18 5 (0.77%) Dell