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

6 months to
15 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 9 8
Rank change year-on-year +6 -1 +8
Contract jobs citing SC Cleared 487 169 243
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 18.96% 11.57% 12.76%
As % of the Qualifications category 55.53% 37.72% 40.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 369 115 180
10th Percentile £363 £399 £325
25th Percentile £453 £475 £392
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £551 £450
Median % change year-on-year -6.90% +22.44% -16.67%
75th Percentile £580 £689 £588
90th Percentile £678 £700 £651
England median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 5 13
10th Percentile - £23.63 £19.70
25th Percentile £18.20 £31.32 £62.50
Median hourly rate £21.46 £35.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -38.69% -46.15% +71.72%
75th Percentile £25.15 - £67.50
90th Percentile - £39.18 £69.75
England median hourly rate £25.15 £60.00 £56.49
% change year-on-year -58.08% +6.21% -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 877 448 606
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 34.14% 30.66% 31.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 617 290 365
10th Percentile £305 £192 £275
25th Percentile £425 £400 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £463
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +13.51% -7.50%
75th Percentile £575 £613 £575
90th Percentile £675 £700 £653
England median daily rate £520 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.78% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 44 16 43
10th Percentile £14.00 £16.68 £17.20
25th Percentile £16.30 £18.41 £23.00
Median hourly rate £19.44 £26.30 £34.50
Median % change year-on-year -26.10% -23.77% +76.92%
75th Percentile £25.15 £35.00 £67.50
90th Percentile £33.50 £47.24 £68.50
England median hourly rate £25.15 £47.37 £45.21
% change year-on-year -46.91% +4.78% +0.47%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 +1 212 £500 +1.73% 51
Birmingham +3 92 £475 -31.06% 22
Warwickshire +2 72 £395 -29.56% 9
Worcestershire +10 64 £650 -7.14% 4
Herefordshire +1 47 £625 -10.71% 3
Solihull -2 7 £500 +20.48% 7
Coventry - 5 £488 -
Staffordshire - 4 £270 - 8
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 85 (17.45%) SAS
2 39 (8.01%) Confluence
3 21 (4.31%) WebLogic
4 7 (1.44%) Tuxedo
5 6 (1.23%) Apache
6 4 (0.82%) nginx
7 1 (0.21%) Apache Airflow
7 1 (0.21%) SharePoint
Applications
1 9 (1.85%) Microsoft Project
2 5 (1.03%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (0.82%) Microsoft Excel
4 3 (0.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.62%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 2 (0.41%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.41%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.21%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 2 (0.41%) SAP PP
1 2 (0.41%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.21%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.21%) Oracle Assets
2 1 (0.21%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 93 (19.10%) Azure
2 90 (18.48%) AWS
3 28 (5.75%) GitHub
4 27 (5.54%) OpenShift
5 21 (4.31%) Amazon EC2
5 21 (4.31%) Amazon S3
6 20 (4.11%) GCP
7 17 (3.49%) Serverless
8 16 (3.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 16 (3.29%) Azure Data Factory
9 13 (2.67%) SaaS
10 12 (2.46%) Azure DevOps
11 11 (2.26%) AWS KMS
11 11 (2.26%) Microsoft 365
12 10 (2.05%) Amazon ELB
12 10 (2.05%) Power Platform
12 10 (2.05%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 9 (1.85%) Azure Key Vault
13 9 (1.85%) Datadog
13 9 (1.85%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 27 (5.54%) Firewall
2 25 (5.13%) VPN
3 23 (4.72%) WAN
4 20 (4.11%) BGP
4 20 (4.11%) MPLS
5 19 (3.90%) IPsec
6 14 (2.87%) DNS
7 12 (2.46%) Network Security
8 8 (1.64%) Intrusion Detection
8 8 (1.64%) Wireless
9 7 (1.44%) LAN
9 7 (1.44%) SMTP
10 6 (1.23%) HTTP
11 5 (1.03%) FTP
11 5 (1.03%) SSH
11 5 (1.03%) SSL
12 4 (0.82%) OSPF
12 4 (0.82%) TCP/IP
12 4 (0.82%) Wi-Fi
12 4 (0.82%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (7.19%) Pentaho
2 33 (6.78%) SAS Enterprise Guide
3 32 (6.57%) Oracle Database
4 29 (5.95%) PostgreSQL
5 22 (4.52%) Amazon RDS
6 21 (4.31%) Metadata
7 16 (3.29%) Data Warehouse
7 16 (3.29%) Elasticsearch
8 11 (2.26%) Metadata Repository
9 10 (2.05%) MongoDB
10 9 (1.85%) Redis
11 7 (1.44%) Amazon Aurora
12 6 (1.23%) Relational Database
13 5 (1.03%) MySQL
13 5 (1.03%) Power BI
14 4 (0.82%) DynamoDB
14 4 (0.82%) InfluxDB
15 3 (0.62%) SAS Visual Analytics
16 2 (0.41%) Amazon Redshift
16 2 (0.41%) Data Hub
Development Applications
1 69 (14.17%) Git
2 60 (12.32%) JIRA
3 59 (12.11%) Jenkins
4 36 (7.39%) GitLab
5 25 (5.13%) JUnit
6 20 (4.11%) Selenium
7 14 (2.87%) SonarQube
8 11 (2.26%) Mockito
9 10 (2.05%) Maven
10 7 (1.44%) MSI
11 6 (1.23%) Cucumber
12 5 (1.03%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 5 (1.03%) Vagrant
13 3 (0.62%) DbUnit
13 3 (0.62%) jMock
13 3 (0.62%) NeoLoad
14 2 (0.41%) Postman
15 1 (0.21%) Bitbucket Server
15 1 (0.21%) ERwin
15 1 (0.21%) Zephyr
General
1 120 (24.64%) Social Skills
2 55 (11.29%) Public Sector
3 42 (8.62%) Analytical Skills
4 22 (4.52%) Finance
5 14 (2.87%) Documentation Skills
6 9 (1.85%) Aeronautics
6 9 (1.85%) Telecoms
7 6 (1.23%) Legal
8 5 (1.03%) Presentation Skills
9 2 (0.41%) Electronics
9 2 (0.41%) Manufacturing
9 2 (0.41%) Organisational Skills
10 1 (0.21%) Advertising
10 1 (0.21%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.21%) Automotive
10 1 (0.21%) Banking
10 1 (0.21%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.21%) Marketing
10 1 (0.21%) Military
10 1 (0.21%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 53 (10.88%) Data Engineer
2 45 (9.24%) Senior
3 42 (8.62%) Architect
4 35 (7.19%) Developer
5 31 (6.37%) Analyst
6 23 (4.72%) Platform Engineer
7 21 (4.31%) Support Engineer
8 18 (3.70%) Data Architect
8 18 (3.70%) Test Specialist
9 16 (3.29%) Tester
10 15 (3.08%) AWS Engineer
10 15 (3.08%) Business Analyst
11 14 (2.87%) Consultant
11 14 (2.87%) Release Manager
12 13 (2.67%) Engagement Manager
12 13 (2.67%) Senior Data Engineer
12 13 (2.67%) Senior Developer
13 12 (2.46%) Cloud Engineer
13 12 (2.46%) Lead
13 12 (2.46%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (7.19%) REST
2 22 (4.52%) Spring
2 22 (4.52%) Spring Boot
3 16 (3.29%) pytest
4 13 (2.67%) Keycloak
5 12 (2.46%) FastAPI
5 12 (2.46%) Flask
5 12 (2.46%) Kafka
6 10 (2.05%) JPA
6 10 (2.05%) Middleware
6 10 (2.05%) YAML
7 9 (1.85%) GraphQL
7 9 (1.85%) LDAP
7 9 (1.85%) WebSockets
8 8 (1.64%) gRPC
8 8 (1.64%) Node.js
8 8 (1.64%) React
9 7 (1.44%) JSON
10 6 (1.23%) OAuth
10 6 (1.23%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 22 (4.52%) Cloud Native
2 21 (4.31%) Onboarding
3 17 (3.49%) Data Centre
4 16 (3.29%) PKI
5 11 (2.26%) Enterprise Software
5 11 (2.26%) Hybrid Cloud
6 10 (2.05%) Driving Licence
7 8 (1.64%) Legacy Systems
7 8 (1.64%) SCADA
8 7 (1.44%) FPGA
8 7 (1.44%) Product Ownership
9 6 (1.23%) Private Cloud
9 6 (1.23%) Replication
9 6 (1.23%) VHDL
10 5 (1.03%) Algorithms
10 5 (1.03%) Data Protection Act
10 5 (1.03%) Security Posture
11 4 (0.82%) Distributed Systems
11 4 (0.82%) Management Information System
11 4 (0.82%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 54 (11.09%) Linux
2 46 (9.45%) Windows
3 21 (4.31%) Unix
4 10 (2.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 8 (1.64%) Windows Server
6 5 (1.03%) Amazon Linux
6 5 (1.03%) Ubuntu
6 5 (1.03%) VMS
7 3 (0.62%) Windows 10
8 2 (0.41%) AIX
8 2 (0.41%) Android
8 2 (0.41%) CentOS
8 2 (0.41%) Solaris
9 1 (0.21%) Embedded Linux
9 1 (0.21%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 130 (26.69%) CI/CD
2 122 (25.05%) Agile
3 121 (24.85%) DevOps
4 78 (16.02%) Problem-Solving
5 76 (15.61%) Stakeholder Management
6 70 (14.37%) Analytics
7 63 (12.94%) Continuous Improvement
8 62 (12.73%) Scrum
9 60 (12.32%) Containerisation
10 52 (10.68%) Test Automation
11 49 (10.06%) ETL
12 48 (9.86%) Migration
13 45 (9.24%) Data Pipeline
14 43 (8.83%) Business Intelligence
14 43 (8.83%) Data Integration
14 43 (8.83%) Data Modelling
15 37 (7.60%) Change Management
16 35 (7.19%) Microservices
17 30 (6.16%) Configuration Management
17 30 (6.16%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 106 (21.77%) SQL
2 78 (16.02%) Python
3 43 (8.83%) Java
4 24 (4.93%) Go
5 23 (4.72%) PowerShell
6 22 (4.52%) Shell Script
7 17 (3.49%) Bash
8 9 (1.85%) PL/SQL
9 7 (1.44%) JavaScript
9 7 (1.44%) Perl
10 6 (1.23%) MATLAB
11 5 (1.03%) Groovy
11 5 (1.03%) TypeScript
12 2 (0.41%) C#
12 2 (0.41%) C++
12 2 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
13 1 (0.21%) Bicep
13 1 (0.21%) COBOL
13 1 (0.21%) Kotlin
13 1 (0.21%) SystemVerilog
Qualifications
1 487 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 31 (6.37%) DV Cleared
3 22 (4.52%) Azure Certification
4 16 (3.29%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (2.05%) AWS Certification
6 9 (1.85%) Degree
7 8 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
8 7 (1.44%) IIBA
9 6 (1.23%) CCNP
9 6 (1.23%) Microsoft Certification
10 5 (1.03%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 4 (0.82%) CCIE
11 4 (0.82%) CISSP
12 3 (0.62%) CCNA
12 3 (0.62%) CEH
12 3 (0.62%) CISM
12 3 (0.62%) ISTQB
13 2 (0.41%) DBS Check
13 2 (0.41%) TOGAF Certification
14 1 (0.21%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (4.72%) Data Quality
2 17 (3.49%) NCSC
2 17 (3.49%) QA
3 12 (2.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 12 (2.46%) NIST
4 8 (1.64%) Accessibility
5 7 (1.44%) GDPR
6 4 (0.82%) WCAG
7 3 (0.62%) FATCA
8 2 (0.41%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.41%) PMO
9 1 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.21%) IEC 61131
9 1 (0.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 95 (19.51%) Docker
2 13 (2.67%) Active Directory
3 8 (1.64%) Postfix
4 5 (1.03%) DFS Replication
5 3 (0.62%) Dovecot
5 3 (0.62%) Squid
5 3 (0.62%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.62%) VMware NSX
6 2 (0.41%) Snort
6 2 (0.41%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 113 (23.20%) Kubernetes
2 40 (8.21%) Grafana
3 30 (6.16%) Prometheus
3 30 (6.16%) Terraform
4 15 (3.08%) Ansible
5 10 (2.05%) Kibana
6 8 (1.64%) Progress Chef
7 4 (0.82%) logstash
8 3 (0.62%) FortiGate
8 3 (0.62%) Nessus
8 3 (0.62%) Proxmox
9 2 (0.41%) CSIRT
9 2 (0.41%) Docker Swarm
10 1 (0.21%) Fluentd
10 1 (0.21%) Host Intrusion Detection System
10 1 (0.21%) HP ALM
10 1 (0.21%) NetBackup
10 1 (0.21%) Podman
10 1 (0.21%) QRadar
10 1 (0.21%) Rsyslog
Vendors
1 86 (17.66%) Oracle
2 47 (9.65%) Microsoft
3 42 (8.62%) Talend
4 38 (7.80%) ServiceNow
5 31 (6.37%) Cisco
6 30 (6.16%) Denodo
7 29 (5.95%) Splunk
8 26 (5.34%) Dynatrace
9 22 (4.52%) Juniper
10 16 (3.29%) AppDynamics
11 14 (2.87%) Informatica
12 12 (2.46%) SAP
13 10 (2.05%) CyberArk
14 9 (1.85%) F5
15 8 (1.64%) CheckPoint
16 7 (1.44%) Jaspersoft
17 6 (1.23%) Atlassian
17 6 (1.23%) Fujitsu
17 6 (1.23%) Red Hat
18 5 (1.03%) Remedy