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

6 months to
19 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 8 5
Rank change year-on-year +5 -3 +10
Contract jobs citing SC Cleared 627 189 237
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 19.89% 13.57% 12.54%
As % of the Qualifications category 60.58% 42.47% 39.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 470 130 170
10th Percentile £351 £298 £297
25th Percentile £416 £440 £352
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £525 £450
Median % change year-on-year -10.57% +16.67% -21.23%
75th Percentile £529 £635 £538
90th Percentile £626 £700 £645
England median daily rate £525 £525 £525
% change year-on-year - - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 4 6
10th Percentile £18.20 - £13.25
25th Percentile £25.15 £18.51 £13.44
Median hourly rate £63.14 £27.58 £14.00
Median % change year-on-year +128.94% +96.98% -49.09%
75th Percentile £67.84 £46.48 £20.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £54.59 £29.75
England median hourly rate £52.50 £40.00 £48.56
% change year-on-year +31.25% -17.63% -15.55%

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 1,035 445 605
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 32.83% 31.95% 32.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 725 304 384
10th Percentile £325 £150 £275
25th Percentile £408 £312 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -6.00% +5.26% -11.50%
75th Percentile £544 £595 £575
90th Percentile £650 £700 £686
England median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 70 19 34
10th Percentile £18.11 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.55 £18.32 £21.44
Median hourly rate £52.50 £25.00 £27.25
Median % change year-on-year +110.00% -8.26% +39.74%
75th Percentile £67.84 £45.99 £43.44
90th Percentile £75.00 £59.20 £58.75
England median hourly rate £47.54 £39.66 £40.00
% change year-on-year +19.87% -0.85% -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 19 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 19 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 19 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 +2 370 £469 -9.81% 25
Birmingham -5 78 £475 -17.39% 21
Warwickshire -9 65 £394 -21.24% 3
Herefordshire 0 30 £550 -21.43% 4
Solihull +4 29 £463 +6.32%
Worcestershire +4 27 £675 -3.57% 7
Staffordshire +1 4 £388 -21.72% 4
Wolverhampton -6 1 - - 2
Coventry -16 1 £650 - 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 94 (14.99%) SAS
2 93 (14.83%) Confluence
3 24 (3.83%) WebLogic
4 13 (2.07%) Tuxedo
5 9 (1.44%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (1.28%) SharePoint
7 4 (0.64%) Apache
8 3 (0.48%) Oracle Workflow
9 1 (0.16%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.16%) NetWeaver
9 1 (0.16%) SAP EP
Applications
1 9 (1.44%) Microsoft Excel
1 9 (1.44%) Microsoft Project
2 8 (1.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 5 (0.80%) Microsoft Office
4 4 (0.64%) Notepad++
5 2 (0.32%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.16%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 2 (0.32%) SAP PP
1 2 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.16%) SAP CRM
2 1 (0.16%) SAP EWM
2 1 (0.16%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 156 (24.88%) AWS
2 78 (12.44%) Azure
3 36 (5.74%) Amazon S3
4 33 (5.26%) GitHub
5 32 (5.10%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 31 (4.94%) Amazon EC2
7 25 (3.99%) GitHub Actions
8 24 (3.83%) GCP
9 21 (3.35%) Serverless
10 16 (2.55%) AWS KMS
10 16 (2.55%) AWS Lambda
10 16 (2.55%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 15 (2.39%) Power Platform
12 13 (2.07%) Amazon SQS
13 12 (1.91%) Azure DevOps
13 12 (1.91%) OpenShift
13 12 (1.91%) Route 53
14 11 (1.75%) Amazon EKS
14 11 (1.75%) Microsoft 365
15 10 (1.59%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 20 (3.19%) Firewall
2 12 (1.91%) WAN
3 10 (1.59%) LAN
4 9 (1.44%) Network Security
4 9 (1.44%) VPN
5 7 (1.12%) BGP
5 7 (1.12%) Intrusion Detection
5 7 (1.12%) SSL
6 6 (0.96%) VLAN
6 6 (0.96%) Wireless
7 5 (0.80%) DNS
7 5 (0.80%) IPsec
7 5 (0.80%) MPLS
7 5 (0.80%) OSPF
7 5 (0.80%) WLAN
8 4 (0.64%) 5G
8 4 (0.64%) Internet
8 4 (0.64%) PuTTY
8 4 (0.64%) SD-WAN
8 4 (0.64%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 67 (10.69%) Pentaho
2 52 (8.29%) Data Warehouse
3 43 (6.86%) PostgreSQL
4 32 (5.10%) Amazon RDS
5 29 (4.63%) Oracle Database
6 26 (4.15%) MySQL
7 25 (3.99%) Oracle Reports
8 20 (3.19%) Amazon Redshift
9 19 (3.03%) Metadata
10 16 (2.55%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 15 (2.39%) DynamoDB
11 15 (2.39%) Power BI
12 13 (2.07%) BusinessObjects
13 12 (1.91%) Amazon Aurora
14 9 (1.44%) MongoDB
15 8 (1.28%) SAS Visual Analytics
16 6 (0.96%) Relational Database
17 5 (0.80%) Data Lake
17 5 (0.80%) Elasticsearch
17 5 (0.80%) SAS Data Integration Studio
Development Applications
1 117 (18.66%) JIRA
2 82 (13.08%) Git
3 76 (12.12%) GitLab
4 70 (11.16%) Jenkins
5 31 (4.94%) JUnit
6 25 (3.99%) Zephyr
7 24 (3.83%) Selenium
8 23 (3.67%) Postman
9 15 (2.39%) Bitbucket
10 14 (2.23%) Maven
10 14 (2.23%) Mockito
11 13 (2.07%) Cucumber
11 13 (2.07%) JMeter
12 12 (1.91%) SonarQube
12 12 (1.91%) WebDriver
13 9 (1.44%) DbUnit
13 9 (1.44%) jMock
13 9 (1.44%) MSI
14 8 (1.28%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 7 (1.12%) Bitbucket Server
General
1 152 (24.24%) Social Skills
2 95 (15.15%) Public Sector
3 62 (9.89%) Analytical Skills
4 33 (5.26%) Finance
5 17 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
6 8 (1.28%) Organisational Skills
6 8 (1.28%) Presentation Skills
6 8 (1.28%) Telecoms
7 7 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
8 6 (0.96%) Advertising
9 5 (0.80%) Legal
10 4 (0.64%) Aerospace
11 2 (0.32%) Aeronautics
11 2 (0.32%) Electronics
11 2 (0.32%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.16%) Banking
12 1 (0.16%) Military
12 1 (0.16%) Police
12 1 (0.16%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 147 (23.44%) Data Engineer
2 58 (9.25%) Architect
3 49 (7.81%) Analyst
4 41 (6.54%) Developer
4 41 (6.54%) Senior
5 36 (5.74%) Tester
6 28 (4.47%) Java Developer
7 26 (4.15%) Lead
8 22 (3.51%) SAS Engineer
8 22 (3.51%) Support Engineer
9 21 (3.35%) Business Analyst
10 18 (2.87%) Project Manager
11 17 (2.71%) Scrum Master
11 17 (2.71%) Software Engineer
12 16 (2.55%) Administrator
12 16 (2.55%) Consultant
12 16 (2.55%) Data Manager
12 16 (2.55%) Test Analyst
13 15 (2.39%) Delivery Manager
14 14 (2.23%) QA Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 41 (6.54%) Spring
2 30 (4.78%) Spring Boot
3 20 (3.19%) REST
4 14 (2.23%) JPA
5 13 (2.07%) AngularJS
6 12 (1.91%) ActiveMQ
6 12 (1.91%) Hibernate
6 12 (1.91%) SOAP
6 12 (1.91%) Spring Batch
6 12 (1.91%) Spring Cloud
6 12 (1.91%) Spring Integration
6 12 (1.91%) Web Services
6 12 (1.91%) WireMock
7 10 (1.59%) Middleware
7 10 (1.59%) Node.js
8 9 (1.44%) PowerMock
9 8 (1.28%) AWS CDK
10 7 (1.12%) Bootstrap
10 7 (1.12%) RESTful
11 6 (0.96%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 29 (4.63%) Cloud Native
2 21 (3.35%) Distributed Systems
3 19 (3.03%) Product Ownership
4 17 (2.71%) Onboarding
5 14 (2.23%) Data Centre
6 13 (2.07%) Legacy Systems
7 12 (1.91%) Enterprise Software
8 8 (1.28%) Distributed Architecture
9 6 (0.96%) Driving Licence
9 6 (0.96%) Private Cloud
10 5 (0.80%) Analytical Mindset
10 5 (0.80%) Linux Command Line
10 5 (0.80%) Security Operations Centre
11 4 (0.64%) CSOC
11 4 (0.64%) Cyber Threat
11 4 (0.64%) Data Structures
11 4 (0.64%) Robotics
11 4 (0.64%) SCADA
11 4 (0.64%) Security Posture
12 3 (0.48%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 56 (8.93%) Unix
2 55 (8.77%) Linux
3 42 (6.70%) Windows
4 11 (1.75%) Windows Server
5 6 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 5 (0.80%) Android
7 2 (0.32%) AIX
7 2 (0.32%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.32%) Embedded Linux
7 2 (0.32%) Solaris
8 1 (0.16%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 194 (30.94%) Agile
2 124 (19.78%) CI/CD
3 117 (18.66%) DevOps
4 116 (18.50%) ETL
5 108 (17.22%) Test Automation
6 101 (16.11%) Continuous Improvement
6 101 (16.11%) Scrum
7 81 (12.92%) Analytics
7 81 (12.92%) Migration
7 81 (12.92%) Problem-Solving
7 81 (12.92%) Stakeholder Management
8 63 (10.05%) Data Integration
9 62 (9.89%) Data Modelling
10 60 (9.57%) Data Pipeline
11 56 (8.93%) Business Intelligence
12 51 (8.13%) Containerisation
13 48 (7.66%) Microservices
14 43 (6.86%) Change Management
15 42 (6.70%) Problem Management
16 38 (6.06%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 198 (31.58%) SQL
2 63 (10.05%) Java
3 48 (7.66%) Python
4 44 (7.02%) PL/SQL
5 25 (3.99%) Shell Script
6 17 (2.71%) Bash
7 16 (2.55%) PowerShell
8 10 (1.59%) Go
9 5 (0.80%) Perl
10 4 (0.64%) Kusto Query Language
11 3 (0.48%) C++
11 3 (0.48%) HiveQL
11 3 (0.48%) Kotlin
12 2 (0.32%) Bicep
12 2 (0.32%) C
12 2 (0.32%) SystemVerilog
13 1 (0.16%) ABAP
13 1 (0.16%) C#
13 1 (0.16%) JavaScript
13 1 (0.16%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 627 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 18 (2.87%) BPSS Clearance
3 17 (2.71%) ISTQB
4 14 (2.23%) DV Cleared
5 11 (1.75%) Azure Certification
5 11 (1.75%) Cisco Certification
6 10 (1.59%) SAFe Agilist
7 9 (1.44%) Microsoft Certification
8 8 (1.28%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 7 (1.12%) CCNP
9 7 (1.12%) IIBA
9 7 (1.12%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 6 (0.96%) AWS Certification
10 6 (0.96%) Degree
11 5 (0.80%) CCIE
11 5 (0.80%) CCNA
11 5 (0.80%) CISSP
12 4 (0.64%) CISM
12 4 (0.64%) OCP
12 4 (0.64%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (5.10%) QA
2 30 (4.78%) Data Quality
3 17 (2.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 14 (2.23%) NIST
5 11 (1.75%) Accessibility
6 9 (1.44%) FATCA
6 9 (1.44%) GDPR
7 5 (0.80%) NCSC
8 4 (0.64%) PMO
9 3 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials
9 3 (0.48%) GRC
10 2 (0.32%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.32%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.16%) P3O
11 1 (0.16%) PCI DSS
11 1 (0.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.16%) SLA
11 1 (0.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 87 (13.88%) Docker
2 10 (1.59%) Active Directory
3 9 (1.44%) Postfix
3 9 (1.44%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (0.80%) VMware ESXi
4 5 (0.80%) vSphere
5 4 (0.64%) Hyper-V
5 4 (0.64%) Snort
6 3 (0.48%) HDFS
6 3 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.16%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 87 (13.88%) Kubernetes
2 62 (9.89%) Grafana
3 32 (5.10%) Prometheus
4 26 (4.15%) Terraform
5 20 (3.19%) Ansible
6 6 (0.96%) Progress Chef
7 5 (0.80%) Podman
8 4 (0.64%) CSIRT
8 4 (0.64%) PowerCLI
8 4 (0.64%) vMotion
9 3 (0.48%) Kibana
10 2 (0.32%) Docker Swarm
10 2 (0.32%) QRadar
10 2 (0.32%) SCCM
11 1 (0.16%) Backup Exec
11 1 (0.16%) Control-M
11 1 (0.16%) Data Guard
11 1 (0.16%) Oracle RMAN
11 1 (0.16%) Puppet
11 1 (0.16%) WMI
Vendors
1 162 (25.84%) Oracle
2 99 (15.79%) Talend
3 55 (8.77%) Denodo
4 51 (8.13%) Informatica
5 40 (6.38%) Microsoft
6 22 (3.51%) Atlassian
6 22 (3.51%) ServiceNow
7 21 (3.35%) Splunk
8 18 (2.87%) SAP
9 17 (2.71%) Cisco
9 17 (2.71%) Dynatrace
10 15 (2.39%) VMware
11 12 (1.91%) Jaspersoft
11 12 (1.91%) Sage
12 9 (1.44%) AppDynamics
13 8 (1.28%) Fujitsu
14 7 (1.12%) HP
15 6 (0.96%) Juniper
16 5 (0.80%) Cloudera
16 5 (0.80%) Red Hat