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

6 months to
3 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 11 8
Rank change year-on-year +8 -3 +7
Contract jobs citing SC Cleared 496 168 243
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 19.98% 11.10% 12.72%
As % of the Qualifications category 57.54% 35.37% 40.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 385 115 186
10th Percentile £363 £399 £325
25th Percentile £453 £477 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £550 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.73% +10.00% -7.41%
75th Percentile £580 £655 £600
90th Percentile £688 £700 £658
England median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 5 12
10th Percentile - £23.63 £44.50
25th Percentile £18.20 £31.32 £62.50
Median hourly rate £20.17 £35.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -42.39% -46.15% +71.72%
75th Percentile £25.15 - £67.81
90th Percentile - £39.18 £69.88
England median hourly rate £25.15 £58.38 £56.89
% change year-on-year -56.92% +2.62% -5.59%

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 862 475 607
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 34.73% 31.39% 31.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 615 304 373
10th Percentile £306 £195 £271
25th Percentile £427 £404 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £523 £475
Median % change year-on-year -1.91% +10.00% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £603 £585
90th Percentile £675 £700 £659
England median daily rate £520 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 42 19 44
10th Percentile £14.00 £17.55 £18.68
25th Percentile £16.30 £18.51 £23.00
Median hourly rate £18.87 £26.13 £31.50
Median % change year-on-year -27.77% -17.06% +61.54%
75th Percentile £25.15 £35.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £34.08 £52.50 £68.38
England median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £46.18
% change year-on-year -45.54% - +2.62%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 +1 222 £513 +4.37% 33
Birmingham +9 93 £475 -31.06% 21
Warwickshire +2 72 £395 -28.83% 11
Worcestershire +12 64 £650 +85.71% 8
Herefordshire +2 48 £638 +15.91% 5
Solihull -4 5 £425 +6.25% 1
Staffordshire +6 4 £270 -55.00% 9
Coventry - 4 £325 -
Wolverhampton +1 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
1 103 (20.77%) SAS
2 34 (6.85%) Confluence
3 18 (3.63%) WebLogic
4 8 (1.61%) Apache
4 8 (1.61%) Apache Airflow
5 7 (1.41%) nginx
6 6 (1.21%) Tuxedo
7 3 (0.60%) Oracle Workflow
8 1 (0.20%) NetWeaver
8 1 (0.20%) SAP EP
8 1 (0.20%) SharePoint
Applications
1 6 (1.21%) Microsoft Project
1 6 (1.21%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 4 (0.81%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (0.60%) Microsoft Excel
4 2 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.20%) AutoCAD
5 1 (0.20%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.40%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.40%) SAP ERP
1 2 (0.40%) SAP PP
1 2 (0.40%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.20%) Oracle Assets
2 1 (0.20%) SAP CRM
2 1 (0.20%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 95 (19.15%) Azure
2 85 (17.14%) AWS
3 30 (6.05%) GitHub
4 27 (5.44%) OpenShift
5 18 (3.63%) Amazon EC2
5 18 (3.63%) Amazon S3
6 17 (3.43%) GCP
6 17 (3.43%) Microsoft 365
6 17 (3.43%) Serverless
7 16 (3.23%) Azure Data Factory
8 13 (2.62%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 13 (2.62%) SaaS
9 11 (2.22%) Amazon ELB
9 11 (2.22%) Power Platform
9 11 (2.22%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 10 (2.02%) Azure DevOps
11 9 (1.81%) AWS KMS
11 9 (1.81%) Azure Key Vault
11 9 (1.81%) Datadog
11 9 (1.81%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 31 (6.25%) Firewall
2 29 (5.85%) VPN
3 27 (5.44%) WAN
4 23 (4.64%) IPsec
5 21 (4.23%) BGP
5 21 (4.23%) MPLS
6 19 (3.83%) DNS
7 13 (2.62%) Network Security
8 11 (2.22%) SMTP
9 10 (2.02%) Wireless
10 9 (1.81%) FTP
10 9 (1.81%) HTTP
10 9 (1.81%) SSH
11 8 (1.61%) Intrusion Detection
12 6 (1.21%) IMAP
12 6 (1.21%) LAN
12 6 (1.21%) OpenLDAP
12 6 (1.21%) SSL
13 5 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
14 4 (0.81%) Cisco IPT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 47 (9.48%) Pentaho
2 42 (8.47%) SAS Enterprise Guide
3 34 (6.85%) Oracle Database
4 28 (5.65%) PostgreSQL
5 19 (3.83%) Amazon RDS
5 19 (3.83%) Metadata
6 16 (3.23%) Elasticsearch
7 15 (3.02%) Data Warehouse
8 12 (2.42%) SAS Visual Analytics
9 11 (2.22%) Metadata Repository
10 9 (1.81%) Redis
11 7 (1.41%) MongoDB
12 6 (1.21%) Amazon Aurora
12 6 (1.21%) Relational Database
13 5 (1.01%) MySQL
13 5 (1.01%) Power BI
14 4 (0.81%) InfluxDB
15 3 (0.60%) SAS Data Integration Studio
16 2 (0.40%) Amazon Redshift
16 2 (0.40%) Data Hub
Development Applications
1 75 (15.12%) Git
2 71 (14.31%) Jenkins
3 68 (13.71%) JIRA
4 39 (7.86%) GitLab
5 21 (4.23%) JUnit
6 20 (4.03%) Selenium
7 12 (2.42%) SonarQube
8 9 (1.81%) Vagrant
9 7 (1.41%) Mockito
10 6 (1.21%) Cucumber
10 6 (1.21%) Maven
10 6 (1.21%) MSI
11 3 (0.60%) NeoLoad
12 2 (0.40%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 2 (0.40%) Postman
13 1 (0.20%) Bitbucket
13 1 (0.20%) JMeter
13 1 (0.20%) TestDirector
13 1 (0.20%) Zephyr
General
1 121 (24.40%) Social Skills
2 62 (12.50%) Public Sector
3 42 (8.47%) Analytical Skills
4 22 (4.44%) Finance
5 14 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
6 10 (2.02%) Telecoms
7 9 (1.81%) Aeronautics
8 7 (1.41%) Legal
9 6 (1.21%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (0.40%) Electronics
10 2 (0.40%) General Ledger
10 2 (0.40%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (0.40%) Manufacturing
10 2 (0.40%) Marketing
11 1 (0.20%) Advertising
11 1 (0.20%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.20%) Automotive
11 1 (0.20%) Banking
11 1 (0.20%) Military
11 1 (0.20%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 57 (11.49%) Data Engineer
2 42 (8.47%) Senior
3 36 (7.26%) Architect
4 31 (6.25%) Developer
5 27 (5.44%) Analyst
5 27 (5.44%) Platform Engineer
6 23 (4.64%) Support Engineer
7 20 (4.03%) Release Manager
8 18 (3.63%) Test Specialist
9 17 (3.43%) AWS Engineer
10 16 (3.23%) Data Architect
11 15 (3.02%) Tester
12 14 (2.82%) Business Analyst
13 13 (2.62%) Consultant
13 13 (2.62%) DevOps Engineer
13 13 (2.62%) Senior Data Engineer
13 13 (2.62%) Senior Developer
14 12 (2.42%) Python Developer
15 11 (2.22%) Lead
15 11 (2.22%) WAN Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (6.25%) REST
2 16 (3.23%) pytest
3 15 (3.02%) Spring
3 15 (3.02%) Spring Boot
4 13 (2.62%) Keycloak
5 12 (2.42%) FastAPI
5 12 (2.42%) Flask
5 12 (2.42%) Kafka
5 12 (2.42%) LDAP
5 12 (2.42%) YAML
6 10 (2.02%) Middleware
7 9 (1.81%) GraphQL
7 9 (1.81%) WebSockets
8 8 (1.61%) gRPC
8 8 (1.61%) React
9 7 (1.41%) JSON
10 6 (1.21%) Elastic Stack
10 6 (1.21%) JPA
10 6 (1.21%) OAuth
10 6 (1.21%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 23 (4.64%) Cloud Native
2 19 (3.83%) Onboarding
2 19 (3.83%) PKI
3 14 (2.82%) Data Centre
4 11 (2.22%) Driving Licence
4 11 (2.22%) Enterprise Software
4 11 (2.22%) Hybrid Cloud
5 10 (2.02%) Replication
6 8 (1.61%) Legacy Systems
6 8 (1.61%) SCADA
7 7 (1.41%) FPGA
7 7 (1.41%) Product Ownership
8 6 (1.21%) VHDL
9 5 (1.01%) Algorithms
9 5 (1.01%) Data Protection Act
9 5 (1.01%) Security Operations Centre
9 5 (1.01%) Security Posture
10 4 (0.81%) Management Information System
10 4 (0.81%) Self-Motivation
11 3 (0.60%) Handset
Operating Systems
1 54 (10.89%) Linux
1 54 (10.89%) Windows
2 25 (5.04%) Unix
3 9 (1.81%) Amazon Linux
3 9 (1.81%) VMS
4 8 (1.61%) Ubuntu
4 8 (1.61%) Windows Server
5 7 (1.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (0.60%) Windows 10
7 2 (0.40%) CentOS
8 1 (0.20%) AIX
8 1 (0.20%) Android
8 1 (0.20%) Embedded Linux
8 1 (0.20%) Solaris
8 1 (0.20%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 144 (29.03%) CI/CD
2 142 (28.63%) DevOps
3 117 (23.59%) Agile
4 93 (18.75%) Analytics
5 85 (17.14%) Problem-Solving
6 68 (13.71%) Test Automation
7 67 (13.51%) Scrum
8 65 (13.10%) Stakeholder Management
9 64 (12.90%) Continuous Improvement
10 61 (12.30%) Data Integration
10 61 (12.30%) ETL
11 60 (12.10%) Containerisation
12 59 (11.90%) Data Pipeline
13 55 (11.09%) Business Intelligence
14 53 (10.69%) Data Modelling
15 52 (10.48%) Migration
16 43 (8.67%) Configuration Management
17 37 (7.46%) Change Management
18 35 (7.06%) Platform Engineering
19 34 (6.85%) Deployment Automation
Programming Languages
1 115 (23.19%) SQL
2 86 (17.34%) Python
3 34 (6.85%) Java
4 32 (6.45%) PowerShell
5 24 (4.84%) Go
6 19 (3.83%) Shell Script
7 17 (3.43%) Bash
8 9 (1.81%) Groovy
9 8 (1.61%) JavaScript
10 6 (1.21%) MATLAB
10 6 (1.21%) PL/SQL
11 5 (1.01%) Perl
11 5 (1.01%) TypeScript
12 3 (0.60%) ABAP
13 2 (0.40%) C#
13 2 (0.40%) C++
13 2 (0.40%) Kusto Query Language
14 1 (0.20%) C
14 1 (0.20%) COBOL
14 1 (0.20%) R
Qualifications
1 496 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 32 (6.45%) DV Cleared
3 23 (4.64%) Azure Certification
4 16 (3.23%) BPSS Clearance
5 12 (2.42%) Degree
6 11 (2.22%) AWS Certification
7 7 (1.41%) CISSP
7 7 (1.41%) IIBA
8 6 (1.21%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (1.01%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 5 (1.01%) Cisco Certification
10 4 (0.81%) CCIE
10 4 (0.81%) CCNP
10 4 (0.81%) CEH
10 4 (0.81%) CISM
11 2 (0.40%) CCA
11 2 (0.40%) Computer Science Degree
11 2 (0.40%) DBS Check
11 2 (0.40%) GCIH
11 2 (0.40%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (6.25%) Data Quality
2 17 (3.43%) NCSC
3 14 (2.82%) QA
4 13 (2.62%) NIST
5 11 (2.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 8 (1.61%) Accessibility
7 6 (1.21%) GDPR
8 4 (0.81%) WCAG
9 3 (0.60%) FATCA
10 2 (0.40%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.40%) PMO
11 1 (0.20%) IEC 61131
11 1 (0.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.20%) SLA
System Software
1 112 (22.58%) Docker
2 14 (2.82%) Active Directory
3 9 (1.81%) DFS Replication
4 8 (1.61%) Postfix
5 6 (1.21%) Dovecot
5 6 (1.21%) Squid
6 3 (0.60%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.60%) VMware NSX
7 2 (0.40%) Terminal Services
8 1 (0.20%) Firmware
8 1 (0.20%) Snort
Systems Management
1 126 (25.40%) Kubernetes
2 40 (8.06%) Grafana
3 37 (7.46%) Terraform
4 34 (6.85%) Prometheus
5 15 (3.02%) Ansible
6 10 (2.02%) Kibana
7 8 (1.61%) Progress Chef
8 6 (1.21%) Nessus
8 6 (1.21%) Proxmox
9 4 (0.81%) logstash
10 3 (0.60%) FortiGate
11 2 (0.40%) Docker Swarm
11 2 (0.40%) QRadar
12 1 (0.20%) Control-M
12 1 (0.20%) CSIRT
12 1 (0.20%) Host Intrusion Detection System
12 1 (0.20%) HP ALM
12 1 (0.20%) Puppet
12 1 (0.20%) SCCM
12 1 (0.20%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 102 (20.56%) Oracle
2 54 (10.89%) Microsoft
3 51 (10.28%) Talend
4 39 (7.86%) Denodo
5 33 (6.65%) Cisco
5 33 (6.65%) ServiceNow
6 31 (6.25%) Splunk
7 28 (5.65%) Dynatrace
8 27 (5.44%) Juniper
9 18 (3.63%) AppDynamics
10 14 (2.82%) Informatica
11 13 (2.62%) CyberArk
12 12 (2.42%) SAP
13 10 (2.02%) F5
14 9 (1.81%) CheckPoint
15 6 (1.21%) Jaspersoft
16 5 (1.01%) Fujitsu
16 5 (1.01%) Remedy
16 5 (1.01%) VMware
16 5 (1.01%) Xilinx