SC Cleared Contract Job Trends in England

Security Check (SC) Clearance
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in England with a requirement for SC Cleared qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 14 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 5 9 8
Rank change year-on-year +4 -1 +6
Contract jobs citing SC Cleared 5,196 3,880 4,826
As % of all contract jobs in England 16.71% 13.23% 12.79%
As % of the Qualifications category 49.36% 43.89% 42.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,439 2,538 3,236
10th Percentile £325 £325 £375
25th Percentile £450 £437 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £629 £649
90th Percentile £725 £706 £713
UK median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.42% -2.18% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 625 212 353
10th Percentile £18.30 £20.30 £19.99
25th Percentile £19.54 £25.26 £43.88
Median hourly rate £25.15 £57.90 £57.33
Median % change year-on-year -56.56% +0.99% -5.24%
75th Percentile £56.69 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £83.10
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £49.28 £59.68
% change year-on-year -48.97% -17.43% -1.90%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
England

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 England.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 10,527 8,840 11,409
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.86% 30.14% 30.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,890 5,454 7,213
10th Percentile £313 £308 £300
25th Percentile £419 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.99% -3.59% -
75th Percentile £627 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 897 421 682
10th Percentile £16.89 £20.00 £17.52
25th Percentile £19.05 £25.50 £26.25
Median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -49.70% -4.76% +16.67%
75th Percentile £56.69 £68.00 £67.70
90th Percentile £76.58 £75.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £41.91 £52.50
% change year-on-year -39.99% -20.17% +16.67%

SC Cleared
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

SC Cleared job vacancy trend in England

SC Cleared
Daily Rate Trend in England

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

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

SC Cleared
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SC Cleared in England over the 6 months to 14 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for SC Cleared in England

SC Cleared
Hourly Rate Trend in England

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

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

SC Cleared
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SC Cleared in England over the 6 months to 14 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for SC Cleared in England

SC Cleared
Contract Job Locations in England

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 England region over the 6 months to 14 December 2025. 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
London +2 1,829 £550 +2.33% 356
South West 0 898 £550 - 254
South East +2 862 £500 -9.09% 354
North of England -5 613 £525 +10.53% 141
Midlands +10 562 £515 -3.74% 107
West Midlands +9 449 £523 -4.13% 81
North West -1 398 £550 +15.79% 89
East of England +4 262 £445 -7.29% 90
Yorkshire -23 123 £490 +3.16% 38
North East 0 107 £473 +5.00% 19
East Midlands +3 99 £433 -6.49% 24
South Coast - 2 - -
SC Cleared
UK

SC Cleared
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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
1 231 (4.45%) Confluence
2 123 (2.37%) SharePoint
3 92 (1.77%) SAS
4 79 (1.52%) Microsoft Exchange
5 60 (1.15%) Apache
6 41 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
6 41 (0.79%) Apache Spark
7 37 (0.71%) nginx
8 23 (0.44%) WebLogic
9 18 (0.35%) Skype for Business
10 16 (0.31%) CMS
11 14 (0.27%) IIS
12 11 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 6 (0.12%) Tomcat
13 6 (0.12%) Tuxedo
14 5 (0.096%) SharePoint Server
15 4 (0.077%) Jupyter
15 4 (0.077%) NetWeaver
15 4 (0.077%) WebSphere
15 4 (0.077%) WordPress
Applications
1 186 (3.58%) Microsoft Office
2 113 (2.17%) Microsoft Excel
3 82 (1.58%) Microsoft Project
4 37 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 20 (0.38%) MS Visio
6 17 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.23%) Siemens NX
7 12 (0.23%) Simulink
8 10 (0.19%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.096%) FrameMaker
9 5 (0.096%) PTC Creo
9 5 (0.096%) Sketch
9 5 (0.096%) Stateflow
10 4 (0.077%) Trello
11 3 (0.058%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.058%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.058%) Oracle Smart View
11 3 (0.058%) Windchill
12 1 (0.019%) Chatbot
12 1 (0.019%) UXPin
Business Applications
1 121 (2.33%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (0.65%) Remedy ITSM
3 24 (0.46%) Oracle ERP
4 23 (0.44%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 19 (0.37%) SAP EWM
5 19 (0.37%) SAP WM
6 16 (0.31%) SAP MM
7 15 (0.29%) SAP HCM
7 15 (0.29%) Teamcenter
8 12 (0.23%) Maximo
8 12 (0.23%) SAP QM
9 11 (0.21%) Dynamics CRM
9 11 (0.21%) SAP EHS
9 11 (0.21%) SAP PP
9 11 (0.21%) SAP PS
9 11 (0.21%) SAP VC
10 9 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
11 8 (0.15%) SAP HR
11 8 (0.15%) SAP Payroll
12 7 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
Cloud Services
1 892 (17.17%) AWS
2 887 (17.07%) Azure
3 251 (4.83%) Microsoft 365
4 247 (4.75%) GitHub
5 202 (3.89%) GCP
6 195 (3.75%) Azure DevOps
7 190 (3.66%) Power Platform
8 157 (3.02%) Serverless
9 146 (2.81%) Entra ID
10 136 (2.62%) GitHub Actions
11 131 (2.52%) Amazon S3
12 102 (1.96%) OpenShift
13 95 (1.83%) AWS Lambda
14 88 (1.69%) SaaS
15 87 (1.67%) AWS CloudFormation
16 86 (1.66%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 85 (1.64%) Amazon EC2
18 77 (1.48%) Virtual Private Cloud
19 68 (1.31%) IaaS
20 66 (1.27%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 253 (4.87%) Firewall
2 182 (3.50%) DNS
3 124 (2.39%) VPN
4 111 (2.14%) WAN
5 103 (1.98%) Network Security
6 84 (1.62%) Wireless
7 83 (1.60%) TCP/IP
8 70 (1.35%) BGP
9 65 (1.25%) DHCP
9 65 (1.25%) LAN
9 65 (1.25%) SSL
10 56 (1.08%) Wi-Fi
11 45 (0.87%) IPsec
12 42 (0.81%) HTTP
13 40 (0.77%) MPLS
13 40 (0.77%) SMTP
14 38 (0.73%) SAN
14 38 (0.73%) VLAN
15 35 (0.67%) FTP
16 32 (0.62%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 161 (3.10%) PostgreSQL
2 128 (2.46%) Power BI
3 66 (1.27%) Data Warehouse
4 65 (1.25%) Amazon RDS
5 60 (1.15%) MongoDB
6 58 (1.12%) Oracle Database
7 57 (1.10%) SQL Server
8 51 (0.98%) NoSQL
9 47 (0.90%) Metadata
10 43 (0.83%) Relational Database
11 39 (0.75%) Azure SQL Database
12 38 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
13 37 (0.71%) SAS Enterprise Guide
14 36 (0.69%) Pentaho
15 35 (0.67%) Big Data
16 30 (0.58%) Amazon Athena
17 29 (0.56%) Amazon Redshift
18 24 (0.46%) Data Lake
19 21 (0.40%) Redis
20 20 (0.38%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 404 (7.78%) JIRA
2 299 (5.75%) Git
3 274 (5.27%) Jenkins
4 205 (3.95%) GitLab
5 58 (1.12%) Selenium
6 46 (0.89%) Postman
7 45 (0.87%) Oracle APEX
8 39 (0.75%) JUnit
9 37 (0.71%) Cypress.io
10 35 (0.67%) SonarQube
11 28 (0.54%) Bitbucket
12 25 (0.48%) Mockito
13 23 (0.44%) Artifactory
13 23 (0.44%) Cucumber
14 21 (0.40%) MSI
14 21 (0.40%) Rational DOORS
15 20 (0.38%) Metasploit
16 19 (0.37%) REST Assured
16 19 (0.37%) Vagrant
17 18 (0.35%) Burp Suite
General
1 1,381 (26.58%) Social Skills
2 1,257 (24.19%) Public Sector
3 502 (9.66%) Analytical Skills
4 352 (6.77%) Finance
5 195 (3.75%) Military
6 178 (3.43%) Manufacturing
7 176 (3.39%) Telecoms
8 137 (2.64%) Electronics
9 131 (2.52%) Documentation Skills
10 128 (2.46%) Marketing
11 99 (1.91%) Organisational Skills
12 88 (1.69%) Aerospace
13 73 (1.40%) Legal
14 70 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
15 50 (0.96%) Presentation Skills
16 42 (0.81%) Law
17 40 (0.77%) Banking
18 33 (0.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 24 (0.46%) Aviation
20 23 (0.44%) Police
Job Titles
1 625 (12.03%) Architect
2 498 (9.58%) Developer
3 439 (8.45%) Consultant
4 434 (8.35%) Senior
5 355 (6.83%) Analyst
6 311 (5.99%) Lead
7 236 (4.54%) DevOps Engineer
8 178 (3.43%) Support Engineer
9 146 (2.81%) Data Engineer
10 137 (2.64%) Network Engineer
11 127 (2.44%) AWS Engineer
12 123 (2.37%) SAP Consultant
13 120 (2.31%) IT Engineer
14 117 (2.25%) Software Engineer
15 107 (2.06%) Platform Engineer
16 102 (1.96%) IT Support
16 102 (1.96%) Solutions Architect
17 95 (1.83%) Senior Developer
17 95 (1.83%) Tester
18 91 (1.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 219 (4.21%) REST
2 141 (2.71%) React
3 133 (2.56%) Kafka
4 132 (2.54%) Node.js
5 108 (2.08%) JSON
6 104 (2.00%) SOAP
7 91 (1.75%) Spring
8 80 (1.54%) XML
9 78 (1.50%) HTML
9 78 (1.50%) LDAP
10 74 (1.42%) Web Services
11 70 (1.35%) AngularJS
11 70 (1.35%) Spring Boot
12 68 (1.31%) .NET
13 62 (1.19%) CSS
14 61 (1.17%) Oracle Fusion
15 54 (1.04%) OAuth
16 52 (1.00%) RESTful
17 50 (0.96%) PySpark
18 42 (0.81%) SAP Fiori
Miscellaneous
1 177 (3.41%) Data Centre
2 144 (2.77%) Cloud Native
3 142 (2.73%) Onboarding
4 124 (2.39%) Product Ownership
5 99 (1.91%) PKI
6 97 (1.87%) Management Information System
7 90 (1.73%) Self-Motivation
8 60 (1.15%) Driving Licence
8 60 (1.15%) Legacy Systems
9 59 (1.14%) Cyber Threat
10 58 (1.12%) Security Posture
11 49 (0.94%) Analytical Mindset
12 48 (0.92%) CMDB
13 46 (0.89%) Security Operations Centre
14 45 (0.87%) Hybrid Cloud
15 42 (0.81%) Enterprise Software
16 38 (0.73%) Replication
17 36 (0.69%) Distributed Systems
18 34 (0.65%) Cyber Defence
19 28 (0.54%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 512 (9.85%) Windows
2 375 (7.22%) Linux
3 131 (2.52%) Windows 10
4 105 (2.02%) Windows Server
5 87 (1.67%) Android
6 81 (1.56%) Mac OS
7 69 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 59 (1.14%) Unix
9 45 (0.87%) VMS
10 35 (0.67%) Ubuntu
11 22 (0.42%) Amazon Linux
12 20 (0.38%) Windows Server 2012
13 19 (0.37%) Apple iOS
14 14 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (0.23%) CentOS
15 12 (0.23%) Mac OS X
16 10 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
17 7 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
18 6 (0.12%) Kali Linux
18 6 (0.12%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,016 (19.55%) Agile
2 848 (16.32%) DevOps
3 749 (14.41%) CI/CD
4 614 (11.82%) Problem-Solving
5 556 (10.70%) Migration
6 390 (7.51%) Stakeholder Management
7 369 (7.10%) Cybersecurity
8 366 (7.04%) ITIL
9 359 (6.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 346 (6.66%) Infrastructure as Code
11 330 (6.35%) Continuous Improvement
12 325 (6.25%) Service Management
13 318 (6.12%) Business Intelligence
14 300 (5.77%) Workflow
15 298 (5.74%) Analytics
16 294 (5.66%) Containerisation
17 284 (5.47%) Test Automation
18 254 (4.89%) Scrum
19 252 (4.85%) Roadmaps
20 249 (4.79%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 707 (13.61%) Python
2 385 (7.41%) SQL
3 344 (6.62%) PowerShell
4 296 (5.70%) JavaScript
5 295 (5.68%) Java
6 179 (3.44%) Bash
7 133 (2.56%) TypeScript
8 95 (1.83%) C#
9 84 (1.62%) C++
10 79 (1.52%) Go
11 60 (1.15%) PL/SQL
12 58 (1.12%) C
13 46 (0.89%) Shell Script
14 37 (0.71%) Perl
14 37 (0.71%) Ruby
15 33 (0.64%) ABAP
15 33 (0.64%) Scala
16 28 (0.54%) Ada
16 28 (0.54%) Kusto Query Language
17 26 (0.50%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 5,196 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 337 (6.49%) DV Cleared
3 282 (5.43%) Degree
4 188 (3.62%) BPSS Clearance
5 101 (1.94%) Azure Certification
6 90 (1.73%) CISSP
7 83 (1.60%) AWS Certification
8 75 (1.44%) Cisco Certification
9 72 (1.39%) Microsoft Certification
10 65 (1.25%) CCNP
11 44 (0.85%) ITIL Certification
12 43 (0.83%) CISM
12 43 (0.83%) TOGAF Certification
13 37 (0.71%) CHECK Team Member
13 37 (0.71%) Computer Science Degree
14 33 (0.64%) CEH
15 32 (0.62%) CCNA
16 28 (0.54%) CHECK Team Leader
17 25 (0.48%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 24 (0.46%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 170 (3.27%) QA
2 156 (3.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 148 (2.85%) NIST
4 130 (2.50%) NCSC
5 102 (1.96%) GDPR
6 93 (1.79%) SLA
7 92 (1.77%) Data Quality
8 86 (1.66%) Accessibility
9 39 (0.75%) PMO
10 31 (0.60%) JSP 440
11 30 (0.58%) WCAG
12 27 (0.52%) Def Stans
12 27 (0.52%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 26 (0.50%) GRC
14 24 (0.46%) NIST 800
15 22 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
16 19 (0.37%) COBIT
17 15 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 14 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
18 14 (0.27%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 426 (8.20%) Docker
2 283 (5.45%) Active Directory
3 131 (2.52%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
5 29 (0.56%) Firmware
6 27 (0.52%) VMware NSX
7 26 (0.50%) vSphere
8 25 (0.48%) Hyper-V
8 25 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
9 18 (0.35%) DFS Replication
10 16 (0.31%) Postfix
10 16 (0.31%) VMware ESXi
11 14 (0.27%) Dovecot
12 10 (0.19%) Squid
13 7 (0.13%) BitLocker
13 7 (0.13%) Terminal Services
13 7 (0.13%) UAG
14 6 (0.12%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.096%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 5 (0.096%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 523 (10.07%) Kubernetes
2 486 (9.35%) Terraform
3 191 (3.68%) Ansible
4 126 (2.42%) Grafana
5 109 (2.10%) Prometheus
6 78 (1.50%) SCCM
7 66 (1.27%) Single Sign-On
8 60 (1.15%) Microsoft Intune
9 51 (0.98%) Argo
10 40 (0.77%) Packer
11 34 (0.65%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 33 (0.64%) Kibana
13 32 (0.62%) OPNET
14 28 (0.54%) Jamf Pro
15 25 (0.48%) vCenter Server
16 21 (0.40%) Nessus
17 18 (0.35%) Nmap
18 17 (0.33%) FortiGate
19 16 (0.31%) NetBackup
19 16 (0.31%) WSUS
Vendors
1 643 (12.37%) Microsoft
2 369 (7.10%) SAP
3 313 (6.02%) Cisco
4 291 (5.60%) Oracle
5 277 (5.33%) ServiceNow
6 203 (3.91%) VMware
7 113 (2.17%) Red Hat
7 113 (2.17%) Splunk
8 99 (1.91%) Atlassian
9 95 (1.83%) Google
10 89 (1.71%) HP
11 82 (1.58%) Juniper
12 80 (1.54%) Palo Alto
13 78 (1.50%) Dell
14 76 (1.46%) Remedy
15 69 (1.33%) Databricks
16 68 (1.31%) Apple
17 67 (1.29%) CyberArk
18 55 (1.06%) F5
18 55 (1.06%) Salesforce