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 16 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 7 8
Rank change year-on-year +3 +1 +1
Contract jobs citing SC Cleared 6,899 3,522 4,299
As % of all contract jobs in England 16.82% 14.52% 11.82%
As % of the Qualifications category 52.47% 46.17% 38.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,841 2,325 2,930
10th Percentile £375 £313 £350
25th Percentile £450 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £614 £638
90th Percentile £706 £689 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £530
% change year-on-year - -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 621 221 343
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.51 £13.26
25th Percentile £21.25 £22.30 £21.37
Median hourly rate £52.50 £42.50 £48.56
Median % change year-on-year +23.53% -12.48% -15.55%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £75.50 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £36.65 £48.56
% change year-on-year +43.27% -24.54% -17.43%

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 13,149 7,628 11,219
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.05% 31.44% 30.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,838 4,861 6,930
10th Percentile £350 £285 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £713 £750
UK median daily rate £522 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -0.57% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 955 433 967
10th Percentile £17.07 £18.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £22.27 £17.88
Median hourly rate £50.00 £40.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% - -23.81%
75th Percentile £73.19 £67.50 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.50 £81.35 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £37.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +33.33% -6.25% -25.93%

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 16 May 2026.

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 16 May 2026.

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 16 May 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
London +10 2,678 £525 - 357
South East +2 1,395 £525 - 341
South West 0 1,004 £525 -4.55% 207
Midlands +5 729 £470 -10.57% 112
North of England -9 648 £500 - 215
West Midlands +5 631 £470 -10.48% 76
North West -7 347 £504 +0.70% 110
East of England +1 242 £475 +35.71% 74
North East +2 167 £475 -1.04% 59
Yorkshire -19 160 £498 -0.50% 48
East Midlands -7 94 £450 -5.26% 36
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
1 292 (4.23%) Confluence
2 151 (2.19%) SharePoint
3 109 (1.58%) SAS
4 92 (1.33%) Microsoft Exchange
5 69 (1.00%) Apache Spark
6 56 (0.81%) Apache
7 45 (0.65%) Apache Airflow
8 32 (0.46%) WebLogic
9 28 (0.41%) nginx
10 23 (0.33%) Jupyter
11 16 (0.23%) Tomcat
12 15 (0.22%) IIS
13 14 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
14 13 (0.19%) Tuxedo
15 11 (0.16%) Skype for Business
16 10 (0.14%) Oracle Application Server
17 9 (0.13%) CMS
18 8 (0.12%) Apache Superset
18 8 (0.12%) NetWeaver
19 6 (0.087%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 150 (2.17%) Microsoft Office
2 136 (1.97%) Microsoft Excel
3 94 (1.36%) Microsoft Project
4 72 (1.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 25 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 13 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.17%) Simulink
8 4 (0.058%) Notepad++
8 4 (0.058%) Siemens NX
8 4 (0.058%) Windchill
9 2 (0.029%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.029%) CATIA
10 1 (0.014%) Autodesk Inventor
10 1 (0.014%) Camtasia
10 1 (0.014%) Chatbot
10 1 (0.014%) FrameMaker
10 1 (0.014%) Maya
10 1 (0.014%) MicroStation
10 1 (0.014%) SOLIDWORKS
10 1 (0.014%) Trello
Business Applications
1 75 (1.09%) SAP S/4HANA
2 25 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
3 24 (0.35%) Teamcenter
4 22 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
5 16 (0.23%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 14 (0.20%) Dynamics CRM
7 13 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
8 12 (0.17%) Findur
8 12 (0.17%) Maximo
9 11 (0.16%) SAP PSCD
10 10 (0.14%) Temenos T24
11 9 (0.13%) iTrent
11 9 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
11 9 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
11 9 (0.13%) SAP PP
12 8 (0.12%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 8 (0.12%) SAP HR
13 7 (0.10%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 7 (0.10%) SAP ERP
13 7 (0.10%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,322 (19.16%) Azure
2 1,262 (18.29%) AWS
3 309 (4.48%) GCP
4 302 (4.38%) GitHub
5 284 (4.12%) Azure DevOps
6 264 (3.83%) Power Platform
7 194 (2.81%) Entra ID
8 187 (2.71%) Serverless
9 182 (2.64%) Microsoft 365
10 175 (2.54%) GitHub Actions
11 156 (2.26%) Amazon S3
12 136 (1.97%) AWS Lambda
13 119 (1.72%) Amazon EC2
14 98 (1.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 94 (1.36%) OpenShift
16 93 (1.35%) OCI
17 91 (1.32%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 86 (1.25%) AWS CloudFormation
19 84 (1.22%) Amazon EKS
20 83 (1.20%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 312 (4.52%) Firewall
2 175 (2.54%) DNS
3 159 (2.30%) WAN
4 154 (2.23%) Network Security
5 138 (2.00%) LAN
6 116 (1.68%) VPN
7 104 (1.51%) BGP
8 92 (1.33%) DHCP
9 91 (1.32%) OSPF
10 89 (1.29%) TCP/IP
10 89 (1.29%) Wi-Fi
11 82 (1.19%) VLAN
12 76 (1.10%) Wireless
13 49 (0.71%) MPLS
14 43 (0.62%) Structured Cabling
15 39 (0.57%) SD-WAN
16 36 (0.52%) IPsec
17 35 (0.51%) SAN
18 32 (0.46%) Kerberos
19 29 (0.42%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 201 (2.91%) Power BI
2 174 (2.52%) PostgreSQL
3 168 (2.44%) Data Warehouse
4 143 (2.07%) SQL Server
5 88 (1.28%) Oracle Database
6 84 (1.22%) Amazon RDS
6 84 (1.22%) Metadata
7 76 (1.10%) Pentaho
8 64 (0.93%) Relational Database
9 63 (0.91%) Data Lake
10 53 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
10 53 (0.77%) NoSQL
10 53 (0.77%) Oracle Reports
10 53 (0.77%) Tableau
11 49 (0.71%) Amazon Redshift
11 49 (0.71%) MongoDB
12 48 (0.70%) Azure SQL Database
13 46 (0.67%) Amazon Athena
13 46 (0.67%) MySQL
14 35 (0.51%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 429 (6.22%) JIRA
2 349 (5.06%) Git
3 296 (4.29%) Jenkins
4 281 (4.07%) GitLab
5 76 (1.10%) Selenium
6 64 (0.93%) Postman
7 62 (0.90%) JUnit
8 47 (0.68%) SonarQube
9 37 (0.54%) Artifactory
10 36 (0.52%) Bitbucket
10 36 (0.52%) Cucumber
11 34 (0.49%) Mockito
12 33 (0.48%) JMeter
13 30 (0.43%) Maven
13 30 (0.43%) Visual Studio
14 28 (0.41%) Zephyr
15 26 (0.38%) Rational DOORS
16 24 (0.35%) Cypress.io
17 22 (0.32%) REST Assured
18 20 (0.29%) Gatling
General
1 1,471 (21.32%) Social Skills
2 1,336 (19.37%) Public Sector
3 473 (6.86%) Analytical Skills
4 463 (6.71%) Finance
5 224 (3.25%) Military
6 198 (2.87%) Documentation Skills
7 128 (1.86%) Aerospace
8 103 (1.49%) Legal
9 90 (1.30%) Organisational Skills
10 89 (1.29%) Telecoms
11 88 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
12 76 (1.10%) Manufacturing
13 72 (1.04%) Banking
14 55 (0.80%) Law
15 47 (0.68%) Police
16 44 (0.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 44 (0.64%) Marketing
16 44 (0.64%) Presentation Skills
17 43 (0.62%) Electronics
18 26 (0.38%) Retail
Job Titles
1 954 (13.83%) Architect
2 712 (10.32%) Developer
3 560 (8.12%) Senior
4 523 (7.58%) Lead
5 485 (7.03%) Analyst
6 405 (5.87%) Data Engineer
7 365 (5.29%) DevOps Engineer
8 308 (4.46%) Consultant
9 211 (3.06%) Software Engineer
10 209 (3.03%) Network Engineer
11 197 (2.86%) Business Analyst
12 186 (2.70%) Azure Engineer
13 182 (2.64%) Technical Architect
14 175 (2.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 162 (2.35%) Project Manager
16 160 (2.32%) Solutions Architect
17 137 (1.99%) Java Developer
18 131 (1.90%) AWS Engineer
19 130 (1.88%) Administrator
20 129 (1.87%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 229 (3.32%) REST
2 184 (2.67%) Spring
3 143 (2.07%) React
4 139 (2.01%) Spring Boot
5 135 (1.96%) LDAP
6 130 (1.88%) Node.js
7 127 (1.84%) .NET
8 124 (1.80%) Kafka
9 123 (1.78%) SOAP
10 96 (1.39%) AngularJS
11 93 (1.35%) RESTful
11 93 (1.35%) Web Services
12 82 (1.19%) JSON
13 79 (1.15%) PySpark
14 66 (0.96%) Oracle Fusion
15 59 (0.86%) OAuth
16 58 (0.84%) XML
17 56 (0.81%) Playwright
18 55 (0.80%) HTML
19 54 (0.78%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 273 (3.96%) Cloud Native
2 208 (3.01%) Product Ownership
3 200 (2.90%) Data Centre
4 189 (2.74%) Onboarding
5 107 (1.55%) Security Posture
6 104 (1.51%) Legacy Systems
7 103 (1.49%) Management Information System
8 97 (1.41%) Enterprise Software
9 92 (1.33%) Distributed Systems
10 91 (1.32%) Replication
11 78 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
12 60 (0.87%) Public Cloud
13 50 (0.72%) Hybrid Cloud
14 49 (0.71%) Operational Technology
14 49 (0.71%) PKI
15 48 (0.70%) Greenfield Project
16 46 (0.67%) Data Protection Act
16 46 (0.67%) Virtual Team
17 45 (0.65%) Cyber Threat
18 40 (0.58%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 488 (7.07%) Windows
2 457 (6.62%) Linux
3 149 (2.16%) Windows Server
4 133 (1.93%) Unix
5 87 (1.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 81 (1.17%) Android
7 68 (0.99%) Windows 10
8 42 (0.61%) Apple iOS
9 36 (0.52%) Solaris
10 35 (0.51%) Mac OS
11 30 (0.43%) Ubuntu
12 19 (0.28%) VMS
12 19 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 18 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
14 16 (0.23%) CentOS
15 15 (0.22%) AIX
16 8 (0.12%) Embedded Linux
16 8 (0.12%) Windows 7
16 8 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
17 7 (0.10%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,363 (19.76%) Agile
2 1,156 (16.76%) DevOps
3 997 (14.45%) CI/CD
4 680 (9.86%) Stakeholder Management
5 674 (9.77%) Problem-Solving
6 627 (9.09%) Migration
7 591 (8.57%) Continuous Improvement
8 533 (7.73%) Infrastructure as Code
9 523 (7.58%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 448 (6.49%) ITIL
11 423 (6.13%) Cybersecurity
12 413 (5.99%) Containerisation
13 410 (5.94%) Analytics
13 410 (5.94%) Test Automation
14 405 (5.87%) Software Engineering
15 373 (5.41%) Roadmaps
16 372 (5.39%) Data Modelling
17 321 (4.65%) Decision-Making
18 317 (4.59%) Scrum
19 301 (4.36%) AI
Programming Languages
1 787 (11.41%) Python
2 674 (9.77%) SQL
3 460 (6.67%) Java
4 374 (5.42%) PowerShell
5 220 (3.19%) JavaScript
6 164 (2.38%) C#
7 143 (2.07%) Bash
8 114 (1.65%) TypeScript
9 75 (1.09%) C++
10 74 (1.07%) PL/SQL
11 72 (1.04%) Shell Script
12 56 (0.81%) Go
13 53 (0.77%) Scala
14 45 (0.65%) Bicep
15 42 (0.61%) C
16 40 (0.58%) Ruby
17 33 (0.48%) R
18 32 (0.46%) Apex Code
19 30 (0.43%) Kusto Query Language
20 27 (0.39%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 6,899 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 539 (7.81%) DV Cleared
3 292 (4.23%) Degree
4 183 (2.65%) BPSS Clearance
5 132 (1.91%) Cisco Certification
6 107 (1.55%) CISSP
7 106 (1.54%) Azure Certification
8 98 (1.42%) CCNP
9 86 (1.25%) AWS Certification
10 73 (1.06%) Microsoft Certification
11 70 (1.01%) CISM
12 57 (0.83%) CCNA
13 56 (0.81%) PMP
13 56 (0.81%) TOGAF Certification
14 46 (0.67%) ITIL Certification
14 46 (0.67%) PMI Certification
15 41 (0.59%) Computer Science Degree
16 40 (0.58%) ISTQB
16 40 (0.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 36 (0.52%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 249 (3.61%) QA
2 216 (3.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 205 (2.97%) Data Quality
4 197 (2.86%) NIST
5 147 (2.13%) NCSC
6 134 (1.94%) Accessibility
7 128 (1.86%) GDPR
8 111 (1.61%) PMO
9 75 (1.09%) SLA
10 48 (0.70%) Cyber Essentials
11 35 (0.51%) GRC
12 34 (0.49%) JSP 440
13 27 (0.39%) WCAG
14 25 (0.36%) Def Stans
14 25 (0.36%) NIST 800
15 22 (0.32%) PCI DSS
16 20 (0.29%) COBIT
17 19 (0.28%) Government Security Classifications
18 17 (0.25%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 16 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 459 (6.65%) Docker
2 309 (4.48%) Active Directory
3 163 (2.36%) VMware Infrastructure
4 56 (0.81%) VMware ESXi
5 53 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
5 53 (0.77%) VMware NSX
6 50 (0.72%) vSphere
7 44 (0.64%) Hyper-V
8 26 (0.38%) Firmware
9 20 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
10 19 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
11 15 (0.22%) Postfix
11 15 (0.22%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 13 (0.19%) Squid
13 11 (0.16%) NFS
14 10 (0.14%) BitLocker
15 5 (0.072%) Corosync
15 5 (0.072%) Sendmail
15 5 (0.072%) Varnish
16 4 (0.058%) KVM
Systems Management
1 591 (8.57%) Kubernetes
2 581 (8.42%) Terraform
3 242 (3.51%) Ansible
4 186 (2.70%) Grafana
5 153 (2.22%) Prometheus
6 63 (0.91%) Single Sign-On
7 46 (0.67%) SCCM
7 46 (0.67%) vCenter Server
8 40 (0.58%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 40 (0.58%) Microsoft Intune
9 39 (0.57%) Argo
10 37 (0.54%) Podman
11 27 (0.39%) OPNET
11 27 (0.39%) Oracle RMAN
12 23 (0.33%) FortiGate
13 22 (0.32%) Packer
13 22 (0.32%) Progress Chef
13 22 (0.32%) Puppet
14 18 (0.26%) Nmap
15 17 (0.25%) Nagios
Vendors
1 740 (10.73%) Microsoft
2 463 (6.71%) Oracle
3 283 (4.10%) VMware
4 280 (4.06%) ServiceNow
5 250 (3.62%) SAP
6 249 (3.61%) Cisco
7 151 (2.19%) Databricks
8 126 (1.83%) Google
9 123 (1.78%) Splunk
10 121 (1.75%) Red Hat
11 111 (1.61%) Talend
12 105 (1.52%) Palo Alto
13 85 (1.23%) Atlassian
13 85 (1.23%) CyberArk
14 81 (1.17%) Salesforce
15 73 (1.06%) Informatica
16 66 (0.96%) Denodo
17 64 (0.93%) BeyondTrust
17 64 (0.93%) Dynatrace
17 64 (0.93%) IBM