SC Cleared Contracts

Security Check (SC) Clearance
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for SC Cleared qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 7 8 8
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +11
Contract jobs citing SC Cleared 4,075 5,227 7,736
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 13.92% 12.00% 12.96%
As % of the Qualifications category 45.31% 39.25% 47.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,724 3,565 5,456
10th Percentile £325 £350 £375
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £613 £638 £650
90th Percentile £688 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -2.42% -2.18% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 232 381 432
10th Percentile £18.51 £13.25 £19.06
25th Percentile £21.46 £21.37 £34.44
Median hourly rate £50.00 £50.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year - -16.67% +11.11%
75th Percentile £66.31 £70.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.45 £80.00 £82.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £56.15 £57.50
% change year-on-year -2.04% -2.36% +4.74%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK

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.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 8,993 13,316 16,299
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 30.72% 30.57% 27.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,686 8,190 10,861
10th Percentile £288 £300 £325
25th Percentile £413 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.87% -2.73% +4.76%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £707 £743 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £501 £533 £530
% change year-on-year -6.10% +0.57% +6.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 509 1,076 849
10th Percentile £18.13 £13.87 £15.25
25th Percentile £22.00 £17.88 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £40.00 £54.00
Median % change year-on-year - -25.93% +29.16%
75th Percentile £66.00 £61.60 £68.25
90th Percentile £80.20 £75.24 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £40.94 £49.57
% change year-on-year +3.81% -17.41% +53.14%

SC Cleared
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing SC Cleared as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for SC Cleared in the UK

SC Cleared
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing SC Cleared.

Daily rate trend for SC Cleared in the UK

SC Cleared
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SC Cleared over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for SC Cleared in the UK

SC Cleared
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing SC Cleared.

Hourly rate trend for SC Cleared in the UK

SC Cleared
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SC Cleared over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for SC Cleared in the UK

SC Cleared
Top 17 Contract Locations

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 UK over the 6 months to 1 May 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
England +1 3,530 £525 -1.96% 1,579
UK excluding London -2 1,979 £525 -2.42% 1,368
London +1 1,402 £525 - 366
Work from Home -3 1,384 £525 -4.55% 915
South West +1 576 £550 +2.23% 286
South East -2 492 £540 -4.00% 421
North of England +3 484 £500 -4.76% 266
North West 0 344 £500 -4.76% 164
Midlands -3 238 £525 +8.25% 167
West Midlands -4 175 £525 +16.67% 105
East of England +6 147 £350 -4.11% 165
Yorkshire +4 79 £525 - 73
North East +9 65 £500 -0.05% 31
East Midlands 0 63 £475 -12.84% 49
Scotland -60 46 £431 -25.00% 82
Wales -7 27 £533 -13.41% 30
Northern Ireland -8 8 £500 -4.76% 14

SC Cleared
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 148 (3.63%) Confluence
2 116 (2.85%) SharePoint
3 59 (1.45%) Microsoft Exchange
4 50 (1.23%) Apache
5 29 (0.71%) Apache Spark
6 28 (0.69%) nginx
7 22 (0.54%) SAS
8 21 (0.52%) Apache Airflow
9 20 (0.49%) Skype for Business
10 19 (0.47%) CMS
11 18 (0.44%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 12 (0.29%) WebLogic
13 11 (0.27%) Camunda
13 11 (0.27%) Traefik
14 10 (0.25%) IIS
15 9 (0.22%) Tomcat
15 9 (0.22%) WebSphere
16 8 (0.20%) Jupyter
16 8 (0.20%) MTS
16 8 (0.20%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 99 (2.43%) Microsoft Office
2 72 (1.77%) Microsoft Excel
3 30 (0.74%) Microsoft Project
4 29 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 18 (0.44%) Spreadsheet
6 14 (0.34%) Oracle Smart View
7 10 (0.25%) Sketch
8 8 (0.20%) Simulink
9 7 (0.17%) Siemens NX
10 6 (0.15%) Trello
11 5 (0.12%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.12%) InfoPath
11 5 (0.12%) Windchill
12 4 (0.098%) MS Visio
13 2 (0.049%) InVision
13 2 (0.049%) ProjectWise
14 1 (0.025%) CATIA
14 1 (0.025%) SPSS
14 1 (0.025%) Stata
Business Applications
1 57 (1.40%) SAP S/4HANA
2 23 (0.56%) Primavera
3 22 (0.54%) Teamcenter
4 14 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
5 12 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
6 11 (0.27%) SAP PP
7 9 (0.22%) Remedy ITSM
7 9 (0.22%) SAP HR
8 8 (0.20%) Oracle Assets
8 8 (0.20%) Oracle Cash Management
8 8 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
8 8 (0.20%) Oracle Payables
8 8 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
8 8 (0.20%) SAP CRM
8 8 (0.20%) SAP PS
9 7 (0.17%) SAP Payroll
10 6 (0.15%) SAP CO
10 6 (0.15%) SAP EWM
11 5 (0.12%) SAP FI
11 5 (0.12%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 887 (21.77%) AWS
2 598 (14.67%) Azure
3 189 (4.64%) Power Platform
4 162 (3.98%) Serverless
5 159 (3.90%) Microsoft 365
6 133 (3.26%) Amazon S3
7 116 (2.85%) AWS Lambda
8 113 (2.77%) GCP
9 105 (2.58%) Azure DevOps
10 100 (2.45%) GitHub
11 96 (2.36%) Entra ID
12 95 (2.33%) AWS CloudFormation
13 91 (2.23%) SaaS
14 69 (1.69%) Amazon EC2
15 64 (1.57%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 64 (1.57%) Amazon EKS
16 58 (1.42%) PaaS
17 56 (1.37%) PowerApps
18 52 (1.28%) Dynamics 365
19 49 (1.20%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 243 (5.96%) Firewall
2 182 (4.47%) DNS
3 126 (3.09%) VPN
4 102 (2.50%) Network Security
5 99 (2.43%) WAN
6 69 (1.69%) BGP
7 65 (1.60%) OSPF
8 63 (1.55%) TCP/IP
9 59 (1.45%) DHCP
10 57 (1.40%) LAN
10 57 (1.40%) Wi-Fi
11 54 (1.33%) Cisco ASA
12 53 (1.30%) IPsec
13 42 (1.03%) Cisco Firepower
14 38 (0.93%) EIGRP
15 37 (0.91%) HSRP
15 37 (0.91%) HTTP
16 34 (0.83%) Cisco ISE
16 34 (0.83%) Wireless
17 32 (0.79%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 193 (4.74%) PostgreSQL
2 140 (3.44%) Power BI
3 114 (2.80%) Relational Database
4 97 (2.38%) MongoDB
5 79 (1.94%) Data Warehouse
6 78 (1.91%) Oracle Database
7 77 (1.89%) SQL Server
8 76 (1.87%) Amazon RDS
9 59 (1.45%) MySQL
10 52 (1.28%) Data Lake
11 47 (1.15%) Tableau
12 41 (1.01%) Oracle Reports
13 38 (0.93%) Big Data
14 37 (0.91%) NoSQL
15 36 (0.88%) Metadata
16 34 (0.83%) Amazon Redshift
17 32 (0.79%) Amazon Athena
18 30 (0.74%) Redis
19 24 (0.59%) Neo4j
20 23 (0.56%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 268 (6.58%) JIRA
2 217 (5.33%) Jenkins
3 212 (5.20%) Git
4 154 (3.78%) GitLab
5 77 (1.89%) JUnit
6 59 (1.45%) Selenium
7 45 (1.10%) Bitbucket
7 45 (1.10%) Cucumber
8 44 (1.08%) SonarQube
9 41 (1.01%) Gradle
10 39 (0.96%) Mockito
11 34 (0.83%) Liquibase
12 33 (0.81%) Cypress.io
13 32 (0.79%) Maven
14 30 (0.74%) REST Assured
15 23 (0.56%) Postman
16 20 (0.49%) JMeter
16 20 (0.49%) MSI
17 18 (0.44%) ScriptRunner
18 17 (0.42%) Eclipse
General
1 1,001 (24.56%) Public Sector
2 990 (24.29%) Social Skills
3 399 (9.79%) Analytical Skills
4 324 (7.95%) Finance
5 115 (2.82%) Military
6 111 (2.72%) Telecoms
7 97 (2.38%) Manufacturing
8 79 (1.94%) Legal
9 73 (1.79%) Electronics
10 69 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 69 (1.69%) Marketing
11 59 (1.45%) Presentation Skills
12 56 (1.37%) Aerospace
12 56 (1.37%) Law
13 50 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
14 34 (0.83%) Influencing Skills
15 30 (0.74%) Police
16 27 (0.66%) Documentation Skills
17 22 (0.54%) Banking
18 17 (0.42%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 603 (14.80%) Architect
2 515 (12.64%) Developer
3 355 (8.71%) Senior
4 293 (7.19%) Analyst
5 239 (5.87%) Lead
6 210 (5.15%) Consultant
7 180 (4.42%) DevOps Engineer
8 172 (4.22%) Data Engineer
9 151 (3.71%) Network Engineer
10 121 (2.97%) Solutions Architect
11 113 (2.77%) Support Engineer
12 112 (2.75%) Java Developer
13 102 (2.50%) Software Engineer
14 98 (2.40%) AWS Engineer
15 90 (2.21%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 89 (2.18%) Technical Architect
17 81 (1.99%) Project Manager
18 78 (1.91%) Business Analyst
18 78 (1.91%) Security Architect
19 76 (1.87%) Network Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 176 (4.32%) Kafka
2 170 (4.17%) React
3 140 (3.44%) Spring
4 137 (3.36%) Spring Boot
5 118 (2.90%) REST
6 106 (2.60%) HTML
7 90 (2.21%) Node.js
8 83 (2.04%) CSS
9 82 (2.01%) .NET
10 79 (1.94%) SOAP
11 70 (1.72%) RESTful
11 70 (1.72%) Web Services
12 64 (1.57%) Swagger
13 61 (1.50%) OpenAPI
14 50 (1.23%) AngularJS
15 47 (1.15%) XML
16 45 (1.10%) PySpark
17 41 (1.01%) Oracle Fusion
18 38 (0.93%) JSON
19 32 (0.79%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 125 (3.07%) Onboarding
2 117 (2.87%) Data Centre
3 108 (2.65%) Management Information System
4 97 (2.38%) PKI
5 66 (1.62%) Driving Licence
6 54 (1.33%) Product Ownership
7 46 (1.13%) Public Cloud
8 45 (1.10%) Hybrid Cloud
9 43 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
10 36 (0.88%) CMDB
10 36 (0.88%) Security Operations Centre
11 35 (0.86%) Security Posture
12 33 (0.81%) Enterprise Software
12 33 (0.81%) Legacy Systems
13 31 (0.76%) Cloud Native
13 31 (0.76%) Linux Command Line
14 26 (0.64%) Cyber Threat
15 25 (0.61%) Replication
15 25 (0.61%) SCADA
16 24 (0.59%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 431 (10.58%) Windows
2 372 (9.13%) Linux
3 140 (3.44%) Windows Server
4 103 (2.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 95 (2.33%) Windows 10
6 59 (1.45%) Unix
7 36 (0.88%) Windows Server 2019
8 33 (0.81%) Android
9 32 (0.79%) CentOS
10 28 (0.69%) Windows Server 2016
11 27 (0.66%) Windows Server 2012
12 24 (0.59%) Mac OS
13 20 (0.49%) Apple iOS
14 19 (0.47%) AIX
14 19 (0.47%) VMS
15 15 (0.37%) Ubuntu
15 15 (0.37%) Windows 7
16 10 (0.25%) Solaris
17 9 (0.22%) Oracle Linux
18 6 (0.15%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 789 (19.36%) Agile
2 643 (15.78%) Problem-Solving
3 578 (14.18%) DevOps
4 467 (11.46%) CI/CD
5 343 (8.42%) Migration
6 307 (7.53%) Microservices
7 292 (7.17%) ITIL
8 277 (6.80%) Stakeholder Management
9 268 (6.58%) Containerisation
10 260 (6.38%) Software Engineering
11 225 (5.52%) Service Management
12 217 (5.33%) Test Automation
13 199 (4.88%) Project Management
14 198 (4.86%) Infrastructure as Code
15 192 (4.71%) Analytics
15 192 (4.71%) Business Intelligence
16 177 (4.34%) Cybersecurity
17 168 (4.12%) Roadmaps
18 155 (3.80%) Technical Leadership
19 150 (3.68%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 511 (12.54%) Python
2 468 (11.48%) SQL
3 343 (8.42%) Java
4 256 (6.28%) JavaScript
5 217 (5.33%) PowerShell
6 161 (3.95%) Bash
7 115 (2.82%) TypeScript
8 111 (2.72%) C#
9 85 (2.09%) PL/SQL
10 48 (1.18%) C++
11 41 (1.01%) ABAP
12 39 (0.96%) Go
13 31 (0.76%) Perl
14 26 (0.64%) Shell Script
15 23 (0.56%) R
16 22 (0.54%) Ada
17 19 (0.47%) Groovy
17 19 (0.47%) Scala
18 16 (0.39%) PHP
19 14 (0.34%) C
Qualifications
1 4,075 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 279 (6.85%) DV Cleared
3 219 (5.37%) Degree
4 138 (3.39%) Cisco Certification
5 114 (2.80%) BPSS Clearance
6 88 (2.16%) AWS Certification
6 88 (2.16%) CCNP
7 68 (1.67%) Microsoft Certification
8 65 (1.60%) CISSP
9 61 (1.50%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 56 (1.37%) CCNA
11 54 (1.33%) Computer Science Degree
12 47 (1.15%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 46 (1.13%) ITIL Certification
14 34 (0.83%) CISM
15 31 (0.76%) Dell Certification
16 27 (0.66%) Azure Certification
16 27 (0.66%) MCSE
17 25 (0.61%) MCSA
18 22 (0.54%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 146 (3.58%) QA
2 100 (2.45%) SLA
3 80 (1.96%) NIST
4 70 (1.72%) Data Quality
5 62 (1.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 59 (1.45%) NCSC
7 57 (1.40%) GDPR
8 42 (1.03%) Accessibility
9 33 (0.81%) PMO
10 28 (0.69%) Def Stans
11 21 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials
12 20 (0.49%) GRC
13 19 (0.47%) HIPAA
14 14 (0.34%) JSP 440
15 12 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 11 (0.27%) WCAG
17 10 (0.25%) PCI DSS
18 9 (0.22%) IEC 61508
19 8 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
19 8 (0.20%) NIST 800
System Software
1 305 (7.48%) Docker
2 227 (5.57%) Active Directory
3 179 (4.39%) VMware Infrastructure
4 54 (1.33%) VMware NSX
5 43 (1.06%) Hyper-V
6 37 (0.91%) Virtual Machines
7 36 (0.88%) VMware ESXi
8 24 (0.59%) vSphere
9 22 (0.54%) Firmware
10 16 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
11 14 (0.34%) BitLocker
11 14 (0.34%) NFS
12 8 (0.20%) Apache ZooKeeper
12 8 (0.20%) Microsoft App-V
12 8 (0.20%) Samba
13 7 (0.17%) vCloud
14 5 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
14 5 (0.12%) VMware Workstation
15 4 (0.098%) IAG
15 4 (0.098%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 373 (9.15%) Kubernetes
2 346 (8.49%) Terraform
3 210 (5.15%) Ansible
4 82 (2.01%) Microsoft Intune
5 73 (1.79%) Grafana
6 72 (1.77%) SCCM
7 69 (1.69%) Prometheus
8 53 (1.30%) Puppet
9 49 (1.20%) vCenter Server
10 47 (1.15%) Progress Chef
11 40 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
12 30 (0.74%) Jamf Pro
12 30 (0.74%) Packer
13 24 (0.59%) FortiGate
13 24 (0.59%) WSUS
14 19 (0.47%) Istio
15 17 (0.42%) Consul
16 16 (0.39%) Kibana
16 16 (0.39%) Rancher
17 13 (0.32%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 531 (13.03%) Microsoft
2 297 (7.29%) Cisco
3 258 (6.33%) VMware
4 253 (6.21%) Oracle
5 232 (5.69%) SAP
6 182 (4.47%) ServiceNow
7 114 (2.80%) Palo Alto
8 95 (2.33%) Databricks
9 94 (2.31%) Google
9 94 (2.31%) HP
10 90 (2.21%) Dell
11 76 (1.87%) Splunk
12 72 (1.77%) Atlassian
12 72 (1.77%) Red Hat
13 64 (1.57%) Juniper
14 55 (1.35%) F5
15 50 (1.23%) SolarWinds
16 44 (1.08%) Apple
17 40 (0.98%) Citrix
18 36 (0.88%) Fortinet