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

6 months to
20 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 9 4
Rank change year-on-year +6 -5 +10
Contract jobs citing SC Cleared 660 180 247
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 21.53% 13.24% 12.86%
As % of the Qualifications category 61.40% 42.35% 39.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 501 126 182
10th Percentile £350 £300 £288
25th Percentile £421 £450 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £537 £450
Median % change year-on-year -9.68% +19.33% -16.67%
75th Percentile £544 £674 £543
90th Percentile £634 £700 £635
England median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 45 5 6
10th Percentile £18.20 - £13.25
25th Percentile £21.46 £18.51 £13.44
Median hourly rate £59.50 £35.00 £14.00
Median % change year-on-year +70.00% +150.00% -63.01%
75th Percentile £67.84 £41.97 £20.00
90th Percentile £70.35 £52.79 £29.75
England median hourly rate £47.52 £56.75 £48.56
% change year-on-year -16.26% +16.87% -17.97%

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 1,075 425 619
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 35.06% 31.25% 32.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 762 290 393
10th Percentile £325 £150 £263
25th Percentile £408 £314 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £500 £463
Median % change year-on-year -3.50% +8.11% -11.90%
75th Percentile £553 £600 £575
90th Percentile £644 £700 £675
England median daily rate £520 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 18 35
10th Percentile £14.49 £17.26 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.20 £18.50 £22.16
Median hourly rate £25.46 £28.18 £28.50
Median % change year-on-year -9.65% -1.12% +42.50%
75th Percentile £67.84 £36.69 £49.38
90th Percentile £75.25 £54.45 £58.75
England median hourly rate £47.50 £50.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -5.00% +25.00% -23.08%

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 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 20 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 20 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 +2 367 £481 -6.05% 27
Birmingham +5 92 £500 -15.97% 21
Warwickshire -4 75 £413 -23.61% 2
Worcestershire +5 43 £675 -3.57% 7
Herefordshire +1 38 £550 -21.43% 5
Solihull +3 22 £456 +8.63% 1
Staffordshire - 3 £350 - 16
Coventry -24 2 £488 - 2
Wolverhampton -5 1 - - 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
1 123 (18.64%) SAS
2 73 (11.06%) Confluence
3 25 (3.79%) WebLogic
4 13 (1.97%) Tuxedo
5 9 (1.36%) Apache Airflow
6 5 (0.76%) SharePoint
7 4 (0.61%) 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 7 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
1 7 (1.06%) Microsoft Project
2 6 (0.91%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (0.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (0.61%) Notepad++
5 2 (0.30%) MS Visio
6 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
1 144 (21.82%) AWS
2 91 (13.79%) Azure
3 30 (4.55%) GitHub
4 29 (4.39%) Amazon S3
5 27 (4.09%) Amazon EC2
6 26 (3.94%) GCP
7 24 (3.64%) OpenShift
8 23 (3.48%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 18 (2.73%) GitHub Actions
10 17 (2.58%) Serverless
11 16 (2.42%) AWS KMS
12 14 (2.12%) Azure Data Factory
12 14 (2.12%) Microsoft 365
13 13 (1.97%) Amazon SQS
14 12 (1.82%) Power Platform
14 12 (1.82%) Route 53
15 11 (1.67%) SaaS
16 10 (1.52%) Azure DevOps
17 9 (1.36%) AWS Lambda
17 9 (1.36%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 23 (3.48%) Firewall
2 13 (1.97%) Network Security
2 13 (1.97%) WAN
3 12 (1.82%) VPN
4 10 (1.52%) Intrusion Detection
4 10 (1.52%) LAN
5 9 (1.36%) DNS
6 8 (1.21%) BGP
7 7 (1.06%) SSL
7 7 (1.06%) Wireless
8 6 (0.91%) IPsec
8 6 (0.91%) MPLS
8 6 (0.91%) VLAN
9 5 (0.76%) 5G
9 5 (0.76%) DHCP
9 5 (0.76%) OSPF
9 5 (0.76%) WLAN
10 4 (0.61%) PuTTY
10 4 (0.61%) SD-WAN
10 4 (0.61%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 67 (10.15%) Pentaho
2 48 (7.27%) Data Warehouse
2 48 (7.27%) PostgreSQL
3 37 (5.61%) Oracle Database
3 37 (5.61%) SAS Enterprise Guide
4 30 (4.55%) Amazon RDS
5 26 (3.94%) MySQL
6 24 (3.64%) Oracle Reports
7 23 (3.48%) Metadata
8 17 (2.58%) Amazon Redshift
9 12 (1.82%) Amazon Aurora
9 12 (1.82%) DynamoDB
10 11 (1.67%) Metadata Repository
10 11 (1.67%) MongoDB
11 10 (1.52%) Elasticsearch
11 10 (1.52%) SAS Visual Analytics
12 9 (1.36%) Power BI
13 7 (1.06%) BusinessObjects
13 7 (1.06%) Relational Database
14 5 (0.76%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 110 (16.67%) Git
2 106 (16.06%) JIRA
3 84 (12.73%) Jenkins
4 67 (10.15%) GitLab
5 42 (6.36%) JUnit
6 35 (5.30%) Selenium
7 24 (3.64%) Zephyr
8 23 (3.48%) Postman
9 16 (2.42%) Maven
9 16 (2.42%) Mockito
10 15 (2.27%) Cucumber
11 13 (1.97%) JMeter
12 12 (1.82%) SonarQube
12 12 (1.82%) WebDriver
13 9 (1.36%) Atlassian Bamboo
13 9 (1.36%) Bitbucket
13 9 (1.36%) DbUnit
13 9 (1.36%) jMock
13 9 (1.36%) MSI
14 7 (1.06%) Bitbucket Server
General
1 161 (24.39%) Social Skills
2 87 (13.18%) Public Sector
3 66 (10.00%) Analytical Skills
4 33 (5.00%) Finance
5 20 (3.03%) Documentation Skills
6 9 (1.36%) Aeronautics
7 8 (1.21%) Presentation Skills
7 8 (1.21%) Telecoms
8 7 (1.06%) Advertising
8 7 (1.06%) Legal
8 7 (1.06%) Organisational Skills
9 6 (0.91%) Influencing Skills
10 4 (0.61%) Aerospace
11 2 (0.30%) Electronics
11 2 (0.30%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.15%) Banking
12 1 (0.15%) Police
12 1 (0.15%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 139 (21.06%) Data Engineer
2 56 (8.48%) Architect
3 53 (8.03%) Senior
4 51 (7.73%) Analyst
5 46 (6.97%) Developer
6 36 (5.45%) Tester
7 29 (4.39%) Java Developer
8 26 (3.94%) Support Engineer
9 24 (3.64%) SAS Engineer
10 20 (3.03%) Business Analyst
11 19 (2.88%) Test Specialist
12 18 (2.73%) Data Architect
12 18 (2.73%) Platform Engineer
12 18 (2.73%) Project Manager
13 17 (2.58%) Data Manager
13 17 (2.58%) Lead
13 17 (2.58%) Senior Data Engineer
13 17 (2.58%) Software Engineer
14 16 (2.42%) Release Manager
15 15 (2.27%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (6.82%) Spring
2 34 (5.15%) REST
2 34 (5.15%) Spring Boot
3 16 (2.42%) JPA
4 14 (2.12%) pytest
5 13 (1.97%) AngularJS
6 12 (1.82%) ActiveMQ
6 12 (1.82%) Hibernate
6 12 (1.82%) SOAP
6 12 (1.82%) Spring Batch
6 12 (1.82%) Spring Cloud
6 12 (1.82%) Spring Integration
6 12 (1.82%) Web Services
6 12 (1.82%) WireMock
7 11 (1.67%) Middleware
8 10 (1.52%) Node.js
9 9 (1.36%) Kafka
9 9 (1.36%) Keycloak
9 9 (1.36%) PowerMock
10 8 (1.21%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 27 (4.09%) Cloud Native
2 21 (3.18%) Distributed Systems
3 17 (2.58%) Product Ownership
4 16 (2.42%) Onboarding
5 15 (2.27%) Legacy Systems
6 13 (1.97%) Data Centre
6 13 (1.97%) Enterprise Software
7 8 (1.21%) Distributed Architecture
7 8 (1.21%) Driving Licence
7 8 (1.21%) Hybrid Cloud
8 7 (1.06%) SCADA
9 6 (0.91%) Analytical Mindset
9 6 (0.91%) Private Cloud
9 6 (0.91%) Security Operations Centre
10 5 (0.76%) Linux Command Line
10 5 (0.76%) Security Posture
11 4 (0.61%) CSOC
11 4 (0.61%) Cyber Threat
11 4 (0.61%) Robotics
12 3 (0.45%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 60 (9.09%) Linux
2 55 (8.33%) Windows
3 45 (6.82%) Unix
4 15 (2.27%) Windows Server
5 10 (1.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (0.45%) Android
7 2 (0.30%) AIX
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
1 196 (29.70%) Agile
2 147 (22.27%) CI/CD
3 133 (20.15%) DevOps
4 112 (16.97%) ETL
5 110 (16.67%) Scrum
6 106 (16.06%) Test Automation
7 103 (15.61%) Problem-Solving
8 100 (15.15%) Analytics
9 99 (15.00%) Continuous Improvement
10 88 (13.33%) Stakeholder Management
11 87 (13.18%) Migration
12 72 (10.91%) Data Integration
13 67 (10.15%) Data Pipeline
14 60 (9.09%) Business Intelligence
14 60 (9.09%) Containerisation
14 60 (9.09%) Data Modelling
15 50 (7.58%) Microservices
16 45 (6.82%) Change Management
17 43 (6.52%) Validation
18 40 (6.06%) Problem Management
Programming Languages
1 194 (29.39%) SQL
2 74 (11.21%) Java
3 65 (9.85%) Python
4 39 (5.91%) PL/SQL
5 29 (4.39%) Shell Script
6 19 (2.88%) PowerShell
7 17 (2.58%) Bash
8 16 (2.42%) Go
9 6 (0.91%) Perl
10 4 (0.61%) Kusto Query Language
11 3 (0.45%) C++
11 3 (0.45%) HiveQL
11 3 (0.45%) Kotlin
12 2 (0.30%) Bicep
12 2 (0.30%) C
12 2 (0.30%) SystemVerilog
13 1 (0.15%) C#
13 1 (0.15%) COBOL
13 1 (0.15%) JavaScript
13 1 (0.15%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 660 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 18 (2.73%) Azure Certification
3 16 (2.42%) DV Cleared
3 16 (2.42%) ISTQB
4 15 (2.27%) BPSS Clearance
5 11 (1.67%) Microsoft Certification
6 10 (1.52%) Cisco Certification
7 9 (1.36%) AWS Certification
7 9 (1.36%) Degree
8 7 (1.06%) CCNP
8 7 (1.06%) IIBA
9 5 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 5 (0.76%) CCIE
10 4 (0.61%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 4 (0.61%) CCNA
10 4 (0.61%) CISSP
10 4 (0.61%) OCP
10 4 (0.61%) Oracle Certification
10 4 (0.61%) SAFe Agilist
11 3 (0.45%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (5.30%) Data Quality
2 33 (5.00%) QA
3 16 (2.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 14 (2.12%) NIST
5 8 (1.21%) GDPR
6 6 (0.91%) Accessibility
7 5 (0.76%) FATCA
7 5 (0.76%) NCSC
8 4 (0.61%) PMO
9 3 (0.45%) WCAG
10 2 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials
10 2 (0.30%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.30%) GRC
10 2 (0.30%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.15%) P3O
11 1 (0.15%) PCI DSS
11 1 (0.15%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 105 (15.91%) Docker
2 16 (2.42%) Active Directory
3 11 (1.67%) Postfix
4 10 (1.52%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (0.61%) Snort
6 3 (0.45%) HDFS
6 3 (0.45%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.45%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.45%) VMware NSX
7 2 (0.30%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 117 (17.73%) Kubernetes
2 62 (9.39%) Grafana
3 33 (5.00%) Prometheus
4 22 (3.33%) Terraform
5 18 (2.73%) Ansible
6 8 (1.21%) Progress Chef
7 5 (0.76%) Kibana
8 4 (0.61%) CSIRT
8 4 (0.61%) Podman
9 3 (0.45%) FortiGate
10 2 (0.30%) Docker Swarm
10 2 (0.30%) QRadar
10 2 (0.30%) SCCM
11 1 (0.15%) Control-M
11 1 (0.15%) Host Intrusion Detection System
11 1 (0.15%) HP ALM
11 1 (0.15%) Iperf
11 1 (0.15%) logstash
11 1 (0.15%) Puppet
11 1 (0.15%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 162 (24.55%) Oracle
2 91 (13.79%) Talend
3 54 (8.18%) Denodo
4 52 (7.88%) Microsoft
5 39 (5.91%) Informatica
6 34 (5.15%) ServiceNow
7 27 (4.09%) Splunk
8 22 (3.33%) Atlassian
9 21 (3.18%) Cisco
9 21 (3.18%) Dynatrace
10 18 (2.73%) SAP
11 12 (1.82%) AppDynamics
11 12 (1.82%) Jaspersoft
11 12 (1.82%) VMware
12 10 (1.52%) Sage
13 8 (1.21%) Fujitsu
13 8 (1.21%) Juniper
14 7 (1.06%) HP
15 6 (0.91%) Red Hat
16 5 (0.76%) Dell