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 30 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 5 26 8
Rank change year-on-year +21 -18 +41
Contract jobs citing SC Cleared 112 45 98
As % of all contract jobs in Birmingham 15.69% 6.19% 12.88%
As % of the Qualifications category 50.91% 27.95% 41.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 81 28 61
10th Percentile £263 £393 £325
25th Percentile £363 £456 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £600 £450
Median % change year-on-year -20.83% +33.33% +5.88%
75th Percentile £550 £700 £650
90th Percentile £619 £715 £700
West Midlands median daily rate £525 £525 £525
% change year-on-year - - +5.00%
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 220 161 235
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Birmingham 30.81% 22.15% 30.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 146 101 140
10th Percentile £213 £165 £262
25th Percentile £307 £375 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +11.11% -10.00%
75th Percentile £575 £650 £595
90th Percentile £619 £738 £700
West Midlands median daily rate £515 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -1.90% - +5.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 7 12
10th Percentile £16.30 £23.54 £43.75
25th Percentile - £27.28 £60.63
Median hourly rate £18.87 £50.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -62.26% -23.08% -
75th Percentile - £52.50 £67.50
90th Percentile £20.72 £54.40 £68.63
West Midlands median hourly rate £23.58 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -32.64% - +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 30 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 21 (18.75%) Confluence
2 9 (8.04%) nginx
3 2 (1.79%) SAS
Applications
1 9 (8.04%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 4 (3.57%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (1.79%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.89%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 27 (24.11%) AWS
2 24 (21.43%) Amazon S3
3 23 (20.54%) Amazon CloudWatch
3 23 (20.54%) Amazon EC2
4 22 (19.64%) Amazon ELB
4 22 (19.64%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 21 (18.75%) AWS KMS
6 17 (15.18%) Azure
7 12 (10.71%) Microsoft 365
8 11 (9.82%) Amazon Glacier
9 10 (8.93%) Route 53
10 9 (8.04%) Amazon ECS
11 3 (2.68%) Entra ID
12 2 (1.79%) Azure Sentinel
12 2 (1.79%) IaaS
12 2 (1.79%) OpenShift
12 2 (1.79%) Power Platform
13 1 (0.89%) Amazon EMR
13 1 (0.89%) GitHub
13 1 (0.89%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 28 (25.00%) Firewall
2 25 (22.32%) VPN
3 24 (21.43%) DNS
4 22 (19.64%) SMTP
5 21 (18.75%) WAN
6 20 (17.86%) BGP
6 20 (17.86%) FTP
6 20 (17.86%) HTTP
6 20 (17.86%) IPsec
6 20 (17.86%) MPLS
6 20 (17.86%) SSH
7 9 (8.04%) IMAP
7 9 (8.04%) OpenLDAP
8 5 (4.46%) TCP/IP
9 4 (3.57%) Junos
9 4 (3.57%) Unified Communications
10 3 (2.68%) NX-OS
11 2 (1.79%) DKIM
11 2 (1.79%) DMARC
11 2 (1.79%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (18.75%) Amazon RDS
2 11 (9.82%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (8.93%) Amazon Aurora
4 2 (1.79%) Data Hub
4 2 (1.79%) Oracle Database
4 2 (1.79%) Oracle Database 12c
5 1 (0.89%) Amazon Athena
5 1 (0.89%) Amazon Redshift
5 1 (0.89%) DynamoDB
5 1 (0.89%) Metadata
5 1 (0.89%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 25 (22.32%) Git
2 24 (21.43%) Jenkins
2 24 (21.43%) JIRA
3 20 (17.86%) Vagrant
4 2 (1.79%) GitLab
5 1 (0.89%) Bitbucket Server
5 1 (0.89%) DbUnit
5 1 (0.89%) jMock
5 1 (0.89%) JUnit
5 1 (0.89%) Maven
5 1 (0.89%) Mockito
5 1 (0.89%) Postman
5 1 (0.89%) Selenium
5 1 (0.89%) SonarQube
5 1 (0.89%) TestDirector
General
1 39 (34.82%) Public Sector
2 28 (25.00%) Social Skills
3 9 (8.04%) Presentation Skills
4 8 (7.14%) Legal
5 7 (6.25%) Analytical Skills
6 3 (2.68%) Documentation Skills
6 3 (2.68%) Finance
6 3 (2.68%) Telecoms
7 2 (1.79%) Electronics
7 2 (1.79%) Manufacturing
7 2 (1.79%) Marketing
8 1 (0.89%) Military
8 1 (0.89%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 24 (21.43%) DevOps Engineer
2 18 (16.07%) AWS Engineer
3 17 (15.18%) AWS DevOps
3 17 (15.18%) AWS DevOps Engineer
4 16 (14.29%) Cloud Platform Engineer
4 16 (14.29%) Platform Engineer
4 16 (14.29%) Support Engineer
5 12 (10.71%) 3rd Line Engineer
6 11 (9.82%) 3rd Line Support
6 11 (9.82%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
7 10 (8.93%) Analyst
8 9 (8.04%) AWS Platform Engineer
8 9 (8.04%) WAN Engineer
9 8 (7.14%) 2nd Line Engineer
9 8 (7.14%) DevOps Platform Engineer
10 7 (6.25%) SOC Analyst
11 6 (5.36%) Consultant
11 6 (5.36%) Senior
12 5 (4.46%) Developer
12 5 (4.46%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (9.82%) LDAP
2 3 (2.68%) REST
3 1 (0.89%) .NET
3 1 (0.89%) ActiveMQ
3 1 (0.89%) AngularJS
3 1 (0.89%) ARM Templates
3 1 (0.89%) Azure Blueprints
3 1 (0.89%) Bootstrap
3 1 (0.89%) Hibernate
3 1 (0.89%) JPA
3 1 (0.89%) Middleware
3 1 (0.89%) PowerMock
3 1 (0.89%) RESTful
3 1 (0.89%) SOAP
3 1 (0.89%) Spring
3 1 (0.89%) Spring Batch
3 1 (0.89%) Spring Cloud
3 1 (0.89%) Spring Integration
3 1 (0.89%) Web Services
3 1 (0.89%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 20 (17.86%) PKI
1 20 (17.86%) Replication
2 15 (13.39%) Driving Licence
3 3 (2.68%) Cloud Native
3 3 (2.68%) Data Centre
3 3 (2.68%) Handset
3 3 (2.68%) SCADA
3 3 (2.68%) Security Operations Centre
3 3 (2.68%) Self-Motivation
4 2 (1.79%) Cyber Defence
4 2 (1.79%) Security Posture
5 1 (0.89%) Distributed Systems
5 1 (0.89%) Enterprise Software
5 1 (0.89%) Onboarding
5 1 (0.89%) Product Ownership
5 1 (0.89%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 30 (26.79%) Linux
2 27 (24.11%) Windows
3 20 (17.86%) Amazon Linux
3 20 (17.86%) VMS
4 11 (9.82%) Ubuntu
5 3 (2.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (1.79%) CentOS
6 2 (1.79%) Unix
7 1 (0.89%) Android
7 1 (0.89%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.89%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.89%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 31 (27.68%) DevOps
2 21 (18.75%) Change Management
2 21 (18.75%) Cloud Security
3 20 (17.86%) Configuration Management
3 20 (17.86%) Patch Management
3 20 (17.86%) Platform Engineering
4 18 (16.07%) CI/CD
5 16 (14.29%) Load Balancing
6 12 (10.71%) Break/Fix
7 11 (9.82%) Performance Tuning
7 11 (9.82%) Problem-Solving
8 10 (8.93%) Knowledge Transfer
9 9 (8.04%) Network Design
10 7 (6.25%) SIEM
11 6 (5.36%) Agile
12 5 (4.46%) Containerisation
12 5 (4.46%) Cybersecurity
12 5 (4.46%) High Availability
12 5 (4.46%) Infrastructure as Code
12 5 (4.46%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 32 (28.57%) Python
2 25 (22.32%) PowerShell
3 20 (17.86%) Groovy
4 15 (13.39%) SQL
5 14 (12.50%) Java
6 11 (9.82%) Perl
7 6 (5.36%) Bash
8 2 (1.79%) PL/SQL
9 1 (0.89%) Bicep
9 1 (0.89%) Kusto Query Language
9 1 (0.89%) Search Processing Language
9 1 (0.89%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 112 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 13 (11.61%) Degree
3 11 (9.82%) Azure Certification
4 9 (8.04%) AWS Certification
5 7 (6.25%) DV Cleared
6 4 (3.57%) BPSS Clearance
7 3 (2.68%) CISSP
8 2 (1.79%) OCP
8 2 (1.79%) Oracle Certification
9 1 (0.89%) CEH
9 1 (0.89%) CISM
9 1 (0.89%) Citrix Certification
9 1 (0.89%) CPIM
9 1 (0.89%) CSSLP
9 1 (0.89%) GCIH
9 1 (0.89%) GIAC
9 1 (0.89%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 1 (0.89%) Microsoft Certification
9 1 (0.89%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (2.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 2 (1.79%) NIST
2 2 (1.79%) QA
2 2 (1.79%) SLA
3 1 (0.89%) NCSC
3 1 (0.89%) PMO
System Software
1 28 (25.00%) Docker
2 20 (17.86%) DFS Replication
3 13 (11.61%) Active Directory
4 12 (10.71%) Postfix
5 9 (8.04%) Dovecot
5 9 (8.04%) Squid
6 3 (2.68%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (2.68%) VMware NSX
7 2 (1.79%) Oracle RAC
8 1 (0.89%) Snort
Systems Management
1 28 (25.00%) Terraform
2 21 (18.75%) Grafana
2 21 (18.75%) Prometheus
3 9 (8.04%) Nessus
3 9 (8.04%) Proxmox
4 5 (4.46%) Kubernetes
5 3 (2.68%) Ansible
5 3 (2.68%) FortiGate
6 2 (1.79%) Data Guard
6 2 (1.79%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
6 2 (1.79%) Oracle RMAN
7 1 (0.89%) QRadar
Vendors
1 24 (21.43%) ServiceNow
2 22 (19.64%) Juniper
3 16 (14.29%) Cisco
4 12 (10.71%) Microsoft
5 10 (8.93%) Jaspersoft
6 5 (4.46%) VMware
7 4 (3.57%) CyberArk
8 3 (2.68%) Broadcom
8 3 (2.68%) F5
8 3 (2.68%) Splunk
9 2 (1.79%) CheckPoint
9 2 (1.79%) Google
9 2 (1.79%) IBM
9 2 (1.79%) Oracle
9 2 (1.79%) Palo Alto
9 2 (1.79%) SAP
9 2 (1.79%) Tenable
10 1 (0.89%) Atlassian
10 1 (0.89%) Fortinet
10 1 (0.89%) Foundry