SC Cleared Contract Job Trends in Birmingham

Security Check (SC) Clearance
West Midlands > Birmingham

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in Birmingham 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 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 4 26 11
Rank change year-on-year +22 -15 +43
Contract jobs citing SC Cleared 113 43 95
As % of all contract jobs in Birmingham 16.10% 6.02% 12.10%
As % of the Qualifications category 50.90% 27.22% 41.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 83 25 56
10th Percentile £263 £385 £325
25th Percentile £381 £463 £392
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £600 £450
Median % change year-on-year -20.83% +33.33% +5.88%
75th Percentile £563 £700 £617
90th Percentile £619 £730 £700
West Midlands median daily rate £520 £551 £500
% change year-on-year -5.54% +10.10% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 0 10
10th Percentile - - £60.50
25th Percentile - - £62.50
Median hourly rate £18.87 - £65.00
75th Percentile - - £67.50
90th Percentile - - £68.88
West Midlands median hourly rate £18.87 £35.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -46.09% -46.15% -

All Academic and Professional Certifications
Birmingham

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 Birmingham.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 222 158 231
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Birmingham 31.62% 22.13% 29.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 147 95 133
10th Percentile £243 £165 £263
25th Percentile £344 £369 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +11.11% -10.00%
75th Percentile £575 £663 £595
90th Percentile £619 £759 £685
West Midlands median daily rate £515 £530 £525
% change year-on-year -2.74% +0.86% +5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 6 12
10th Percentile £16.30 £23.03 £43.75
25th Percentile - £26.42 £60.63
Median hourly rate £18.87 £39.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -52.23% -39.23% -
75th Percentile - £51.88 £67.50
90th Percentile £44.00 £54.88 £68.63
West Midlands median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -28.14% - +44.33%

SC Cleared
Job Vacancy Trend in Birmingham

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing SC Cleared relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in Birmingham.

SC Cleared job vacancy trend in Birmingham

SC Cleared
Daily Rate Trend in Birmingham

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Birmingham citing SC Cleared.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Birmingham citing SC Cleared

SC Cleared
Daily Rate Histogram in Birmingham

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SC Cleared in Birmingham over the 6 months to 20 November 2025.

Daily rate histogram for SC Cleared in Birmingham

SC Cleared
Hourly Rate Trend in Birmingham

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Birmingham citing SC Cleared.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Birmingham citing SC Cleared

SC Cleared
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Birmingham 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 22 (19.47%) Confluence
2 9 (7.96%) nginx
3 2 (1.77%) SAS
Applications
1 9 (7.96%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 4 (3.54%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.88%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.88%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 31 (27.43%) AWS
2 27 (23.89%) Amazon CloudWatch
2 27 (23.89%) Amazon S3
3 26 (23.01%) Amazon EC2
4 24 (21.24%) AWS KMS
5 23 (20.35%) Amazon ELB
5 23 (20.35%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 18 (15.93%) Azure
7 12 (10.62%) Amazon Glacier
7 12 (10.62%) Microsoft 365
7 12 (10.62%) Route 53
8 9 (7.96%) Amazon ECS
9 3 (2.65%) Amazon SQS
9 3 (2.65%) OpenShift
10 2 (1.77%) Azure Sentinel
10 2 (1.77%) Entra ID
11 1 (0.88%) AWS CloudFormation
11 1 (0.88%) AWS Lambda
11 1 (0.88%) Azure DevOps
11 1 (0.88%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 30 (26.55%) Firewall
2 26 (23.01%) DNS
3 25 (22.12%) VPN
4 23 (20.35%) SMTP
5 21 (18.58%) FTP
5 21 (18.58%) HTTP
5 21 (18.58%) SSH
5 21 (18.58%) WAN
6 20 (17.70%) BGP
6 20 (17.70%) IPsec
6 20 (17.70%) MPLS
7 9 (7.96%) IMAP
7 9 (7.96%) OpenLDAP
8 5 (4.42%) TCP/IP
9 4 (3.54%) Junos
10 3 (2.65%) NX-OS
10 3 (2.65%) Unified Communications
11 2 (1.77%) DKIM
11 2 (1.77%) DMARC
11 2 (1.77%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (21.24%) Amazon RDS
2 13 (11.50%) PostgreSQL
3 12 (10.62%) Amazon Aurora
4 3 (2.65%) DynamoDB
5 2 (1.77%) Data Hub
5 2 (1.77%) Oracle Database
5 2 (1.77%) Oracle Database 12c
6 1 (0.88%) Amazon Athena
6 1 (0.88%) Amazon Redshift
6 1 (0.88%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 28 (24.78%) Git
2 27 (23.89%) Jenkins
3 26 (23.01%) JIRA
4 21 (18.58%) Vagrant
5 3 (2.65%) Bitbucket Server
5 3 (2.65%) DbUnit
5 3 (2.65%) jMock
5 3 (2.65%) JUnit
5 3 (2.65%) Maven
5 3 (2.65%) Mockito
5 3 (2.65%) SonarQube
6 2 (1.77%) GitLab
7 1 (0.88%) Postman
7 1 (0.88%) Selenium
7 1 (0.88%) TestDirector
General
1 43 (38.05%) Public Sector
2 26 (23.01%) Social Skills
3 9 (7.96%) Presentation Skills
4 6 (5.31%) Analytical Skills
4 6 (5.31%) Legal
5 3 (2.65%) Finance
6 2 (1.77%) Documentation Skills
6 2 (1.77%) Electronics
6 2 (1.77%) Manufacturing
6 2 (1.77%) Marketing
6 2 (1.77%) Telecoms
7 1 (0.88%) Military
Job Titles
1 25 (22.12%) DevOps Engineer
2 18 (15.93%) AWS Engineer
3 17 (15.04%) AWS DevOps
3 17 (15.04%) AWS DevOps Engineer
4 16 (14.16%) Cloud Platform Engineer
4 16 (14.16%) Platform Engineer
4 16 (14.16%) Support Engineer
5 12 (10.62%) 3rd Line Engineer
6 11 (9.73%) 3rd Line Support
6 11 (9.73%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
7 9 (7.96%) AWS Platform Engineer
7 9 (7.96%) WAN Engineer
8 8 (7.08%) 2nd Line Engineer
8 8 (7.08%) Analyst
8 8 (7.08%) DevOps Platform Engineer
9 7 (6.19%) Developer
10 6 (5.31%) Consultant
10 6 (5.31%) SOC Analyst
11 5 (4.42%) SC Cleared Java Developer
11 5 (4.42%) Senior
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (9.73%) LDAP
2 5 (4.42%) REST
3 3 (2.65%) ActiveMQ
3 3 (2.65%) AngularJS
3 3 (2.65%) Bootstrap
3 3 (2.65%) Hibernate
3 3 (2.65%) JPA
3 3 (2.65%) PowerMock
3 3 (2.65%) RESTful
3 3 (2.65%) SOAP
3 3 (2.65%) Spring
3 3 (2.65%) Spring Batch
3 3 (2.65%) Spring Boot
3 3 (2.65%) Spring Cloud
3 3 (2.65%) Spring Integration
3 3 (2.65%) Web Services
4 1 (0.88%) ARM Templates
4 1 (0.88%) Azure Blueprints
4 1 (0.88%) Elastic Stack
4 1 (0.88%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 21 (18.58%) Replication
2 20 (17.70%) PKI
3 15 (13.27%) Driving Licence
4 3 (2.65%) Cloud Native
4 3 (2.65%) Data Centre
4 3 (2.65%) Distributed Systems
4 3 (2.65%) Handset
4 3 (2.65%) SCADA
4 3 (2.65%) Self-Motivation
5 2 (1.77%) Security Operations Centre
6 1 (0.88%) Cyber Defence
6 1 (0.88%) Enterprise Software
6 1 (0.88%) Onboarding
6 1 (0.88%) Product Ownership
6 1 (0.88%) Public Cloud
6 1 (0.88%) Security Posture
6 1 (0.88%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 34 (30.09%) Linux
2 29 (25.66%) Windows
3 21 (18.58%) Amazon Linux
3 21 (18.58%) VMS
4 11 (9.73%) Ubuntu
5 3 (2.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (1.77%) CentOS
6 2 (1.77%) Unix
7 1 (0.88%) Android
7 1 (0.88%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.88%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.88%) Mac OS X
7 1 (0.88%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 34 (30.09%) DevOps
2 23 (20.35%) Cloud Security
3 22 (19.47%) Change Management
4 21 (18.58%) Configuration Management
4 21 (18.58%) Patch Management
4 21 (18.58%) Platform Engineering
5 18 (15.93%) CI/CD
6 17 (15.04%) Load Balancing
7 12 (10.62%) Break/Fix
8 11 (9.73%) Performance Tuning
8 11 (9.73%) Problem-Solving
9 10 (8.85%) Knowledge Transfer
10 9 (7.96%) Network Design
11 8 (7.08%) Agile
11 8 (7.08%) Containerisation
12 7 (6.19%) SIEM
13 6 (5.31%) High Availability
14 5 (4.42%) Cybersecurity
14 5 (4.42%) Infrastructure as Code
14 5 (4.42%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 34 (30.09%) Python
2 27 (23.89%) PowerShell
3 21 (18.58%) Groovy
4 17 (15.04%) Java
4 17 (15.04%) SQL
5 12 (10.62%) Perl
6 7 (6.19%) Bash
7 2 (1.77%) PL/SQL
8 1 (0.88%) Bicep
8 1 (0.88%) Kusto Query Language
8 1 (0.88%) Search Processing Language
8 1 (0.88%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 113 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 13 (11.50%) Degree
3 11 (9.73%) Azure Certification
4 10 (8.85%) AWS Certification
5 8 (7.08%) DV Cleared
6 4 (3.54%) BPSS Clearance
7 3 (2.65%) CISSP
8 2 (1.77%) OCP
8 2 (1.77%) Oracle Certification
9 1 (0.88%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
9 1 (0.88%) CEH
9 1 (0.88%) CISM
9 1 (0.88%) Citrix Certification
9 1 (0.88%) CPIM
9 1 (0.88%) CSSLP
9 1 (0.88%) GCIH
9 1 (0.88%) GIAC
9 1 (0.88%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 1 (0.88%) Microsoft Certification
9 1 (0.88%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (2.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 2 (1.77%) NIST
2 2 (1.77%) QA
2 2 (1.77%) SLA
3 1 (0.88%) NCSC
System Software
1 31 (27.43%) Docker
2 21 (18.58%) DFS Replication
3 14 (12.39%) Active Directory
3 14 (12.39%) Postfix
4 9 (7.96%) Dovecot
4 9 (7.96%) Squid
5 3 (2.65%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (2.65%) VMware NSX
6 2 (1.77%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.88%) Snort
Systems Management
1 29 (25.66%) Terraform
2 25 (22.12%) Grafana
2 25 (22.12%) Prometheus
3 9 (7.96%) Nessus
3 9 (7.96%) Proxmox
4 6 (5.31%) Kubernetes
5 3 (2.65%) Ansible
5 3 (2.65%) FortiGate
6 2 (1.77%) Data Guard
6 2 (1.77%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
6 2 (1.77%) Oracle RMAN
7 1 (0.88%) QRadar
Vendors
1 25 (22.12%) ServiceNow
2 22 (19.47%) Juniper
3 16 (14.16%) Cisco
4 12 (10.62%) Jaspersoft
5 11 (9.73%) Microsoft
6 5 (4.42%) VMware
7 4 (3.54%) CyberArk
8 3 (2.65%) Atlassian
8 3 (2.65%) Broadcom
8 3 (2.65%) F5
8 3 (2.65%) Splunk
9 2 (1.77%) CheckPoint
9 2 (1.77%) Google
9 2 (1.77%) IBM
9 2 (1.77%) Oracle
9 2 (1.77%) Palo Alto
9 2 (1.77%) SAP
10 1 (0.88%) Commvault
10 1 (0.88%) Red Hat
10 1 (0.88%) Tenable