SC Cleared Contracts

Security Check (SC) Clearance
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for SC Cleared qualifications. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months to 7 December 2023 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
7 Dec 2023
Same period 2022 Same period 2021
Rank 8 14 22
Rank change year-on-year +6 +8 -11
Contract jobs citing SC Cleared 5,631 8,171 6,613
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 12.55% 10.64% 7.38%
As % of the Qualifications category 42.48% 43.48% 36.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,755 5,929 4,326
10th Percentile £380 £380 £363
25th Percentile £463 £468 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £560 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.79% +6.67% +9.38%
75th Percentile £650 £650 £625
90th Percentile £713 £725 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £548 £500
% change year-on-year +0.40% +9.56% +8.93%
Number of hourly rates quoted 386 399 254
10th Percentile £19.99 £19.06 £16.02
25th Percentile £46.05 £22.75 £19.52
Median hourly rate £59.84 £61.18 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.18% +35.94% -5.76%
75th Percentile £70.00 £69.25 £61.31
90th Percentile £83.33 £77.70 £73.42
UK excluding London median hourly rate £59.03 £60.00 £48.58
% change year-on-year -1.62% +23.51% +7.96%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK

SC Cleared is in the Academic Qualifications and Professional Certifications category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for academic qualifications or professional certifications.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 13,255 18,792 18,363
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 29.53% 24.48% 20.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,370 12,639 11,916
10th Percentile £300 £325 £313
25th Percentile £425 £450 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £515
Median % change year-on-year - +6.80% +8.42%
75th Percentile £650 £650 £608
90th Percentile £725 £740 £699
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £525 £475
% change year-on-year +2.38% +10.53% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 740 810 723
10th Percentile £17.72 £14.25 £12.75
25th Percentile £27.50 £19.06 £16.25
Median hourly rate £52.50 £45.00 £31.60
Median % change year-on-year +16.67% +42.41% -21.00%
75th Percentile £67.61 £65.75 £53.73
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £66.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £51.89 £45.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year +15.31% +63.64% -18.52%

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 7 December 2023.

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 7 December 2023.

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 7 December 2023. 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 +6 4,873 £550 -1.79% 1,162
UK excluding London +4 3,102 £550 +0.40% 875
Work from Home +5 2,142 £550 - 538
London +24 1,832 £550 -8.33% 304
South West 0 1,027 £575 +1.32% 217
South East -1 835 £555 +5.71% 297
North of England +3 488 £550 -2.22% 126
North West +8 396 £550 - 94
Midlands +11 359 £504 +0.75% 109
West Midlands +9 248 £500 - 82
Scotland +43 236 £600 +33.33% 55
East of England -5 176 £518 -5.91% 66
East Midlands +16 116 £525 +6.33% 27
Yorkshire -5 80 £550 -5.17% 23
Wales -3 76 £615 +7.89% 25
North East -3 27 £535 -6.96% 9
Northern Ireland +7 3 £550 -12.00% 4

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
1 283 (5.03%) Confluence
2 149 (2.65%) SharePoint
3 38 (0.67%) Apache
3 38 (0.67%) nginx
4 33 (0.59%) MS Exchange
5 25 (0.44%) Skype for Business
6 23 (0.41%) CMS
7 18 (0.32%) IIS
7 18 (0.32%) SAS
8 13 (0.23%) Apache Spark
8 13 (0.23%) WordPress
9 12 (0.21%) Red Hat Fuse
10 11 (0.20%) Apache Airflow
10 11 (0.20%) OpenStack
11 9 (0.16%) GeoServer
11 9 (0.16%) JBoss
11 9 (0.16%) SharePoint Server
12 7 (0.12%) Joomla!
12 7 (0.12%) NServiceBus
12 7 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 146 (2.59%) Microsoft Office
2 57 (1.01%) Microsoft Excel
3 35 (0.62%) Microsoft Project
4 33 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 29 (0.52%) MS Visio
6 24 (0.43%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.27%) Simulink
8 8 (0.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.12%) Oracle Smart View
9 7 (0.12%) Sketch
9 7 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
9 7 (0.12%) SPSS
9 7 (0.12%) Stata
10 5 (0.089%) CATIA
11 4 (0.071%) Adobe Premiere
11 4 (0.071%) Chatbot
11 4 (0.071%) Fusion 360
11 4 (0.071%) Trello
12 3 (0.053%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.053%) InVision
Business Applications
1 53 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
2 45 (0.80%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 24 (0.43%) Primavera
4 21 (0.37%) Oracle EBS
5 15 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
6 13 (0.23%) SAP HR
6 13 (0.23%) SAP WM
7 12 (0.21%) Oracle General Ledger
7 12 (0.21%) SAP HCM
8 10 (0.18%) SAP PS
9 8 (0.14%) IBM Planning Analytics
9 8 (0.14%) Oracle BPM
10 7 (0.12%) Magento
11 6 (0.11%) ENOVIA
11 6 (0.11%) Maximo
11 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
11 6 (0.11%) SAP Payroll
11 6 (0.11%) SAP PM
11 6 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
11 6 (0.11%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 828 (14.70%) AWS
2 710 (12.61%) Azure
3 173 (3.07%) Microsoft 365
4 158 (2.81%) Azure DevOps
5 133 (2.36%) GitHub
6 107 (1.90%) Entra ID
7 105 (1.86%) Serverless
8 102 (1.81%) Power Platform
9 92 (1.63%) SaaS
10 86 (1.53%) GCP
11 74 (1.31%) AWS Lambda
12 68 (1.21%) Amazon S3
13 63 (1.12%) Cloud Computing
14 62 (1.10%) PaaS
15 53 (0.94%) AWS CloudFormation
16 44 (0.78%) Amazon EKS
16 44 (0.78%) Azure Monitor
17 42 (0.75%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 42 (0.75%) Amazon EC2
17 42 (0.75%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 377 (6.70%) Firewall
2 193 (3.43%) WAN
3 167 (2.97%) LAN
4 163 (2.89%) DNS
5 148 (2.63%) Network Security
6 124 (2.20%) VPN
7 92 (1.63%) TCP/IP
8 86 (1.53%) Wireless
9 81 (1.44%) DHCP
10 77 (1.37%) BGP
11 76 (1.35%) VLAN
12 67 (1.19%) Internet
13 65 (1.15%) OSPF
14 64 (1.14%) SAN
15 60 (1.07%) Skype
16 57 (1.01%) Cisco ASA
16 57 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
17 54 (0.96%) IPsec
18 52 (0.92%) Intrusion Detection
19 51 (0.91%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 133 (2.36%) PostgreSQL
2 100 (1.78%) SQL Server
3 81 (1.44%) Relational Database
4 69 (1.23%) Power BI
5 68 (1.21%) Oracle Database
6 59 (1.05%) MySQL
7 58 (1.03%) Amazon RDS
8 39 (0.69%) Oracle Reports
9 38 (0.67%) Metadata
10 35 (0.62%) Big Data
10 35 (0.62%) NoSQL
11 33 (0.59%) MongoDB
12 28 (0.50%) Data Warehouse
13 27 (0.48%) Data Lake
13 27 (0.48%) DynamoDB
13 27 (0.48%) Elasticsearch
13 27 (0.48%) Oracle Database 11g
14 22 (0.39%) Oracle BI Publisher
15 21 (0.37%) Amazon Redshift
16 19 (0.34%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 396 (7.03%) JIRA
2 269 (4.78%) Git
3 211 (3.75%) Jenkins
4 124 (2.20%) GitLab
5 99 (1.76%) Rational DOORS
6 74 (1.31%) Bitbucket
7 49 (0.87%) Selenium
8 43 (0.76%) Cucumber
9 35 (0.62%) JUnit
10 30 (0.53%) Oracle APEX
11 28 (0.50%) Visual Studio
12 23 (0.41%) Atlassian Bamboo
13 22 (0.39%) Eclipse
13 22 (0.39%) Maven
14 19 (0.34%) Axure RP
14 19 (0.34%) SonarQube
15 17 (0.30%) Artifactory
15 17 (0.30%) LoadRunner
15 17 (0.30%) Postman
16 16 (0.28%) REST Assured
General
1 1,297 (23.03%) Public Sector
2 939 (16.68%) Social Skills
3 440 (7.81%) Finance
4 412 (7.32%) Analytical Skills
5 170 (3.02%) Military
6 154 (2.73%) Manufacturing
6 154 (2.73%) Telecoms
7 117 (2.08%) Electronics
8 115 (2.04%) Marketing
9 111 (1.97%) Aerospace
10 91 (1.62%) Law
10 91 (1.62%) Presentation Skills
11 87 (1.55%) Police
12 74 (1.31%) Legal
13 72 (1.28%) Organisational Skills
14 70 (1.24%) Influencing Skills
15 62 (1.10%) Documentation Skills
16 56 (0.99%) Banking
17 54 (0.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 36 (0.64%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 720 (12.79%) Architect
2 650 (11.54%) Developer
3 506 (8.99%) Senior
4 415 (7.37%) Analyst
5 358 (6.36%) Consultant
6 337 (5.98%) Lead
7 266 (4.72%) DevOps Engineer
8 211 (3.75%) Project Manager
9 189 (3.36%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 187 (3.32%) Solutions Architect
11 149 (2.65%) Network Engineer
12 142 (2.52%) Software Engineer
13 136 (2.42%) Delivery Manager
14 131 (2.33%) Systems Engineer
15 129 (2.29%) Business Analyst
16 116 (2.06%) Technical Architect
17 108 (1.92%) Security Architect
18 105 (1.86%) Data Engineer
19 98 (1.74%) SC Cleared Project Manager
20 95 (1.69%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 159 (2.82%) REST
2 153 (2.72%) HTML
3 147 (2.61%) .NET
4 138 (2.45%) CSS
5 98 (1.74%) Node.js
6 85 (1.51%) React
7 84 (1.49%) Web Services
8 73 (1.30%) Oracle Fusion
9 71 (1.26%) SOAP
10 69 (1.23%) Spring
11 61 (1.08%) LDAP
12 57 (1.01%) Kafka
13 56 (0.99%) AngularJS
14 54 (0.96%) RESTful
15 52 (0.92%) JSON
16 47 (0.83%) Spring Boot
17 46 (0.82%) 802.1X
18 43 (0.76%) .NET Framework
19 41 (0.73%) YAML
20 40 (0.71%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 205 (3.64%) Management Information System
2 184 (3.27%) Data Centre
3 163 (2.89%) PKI
4 126 (2.24%) Onboarding
4 126 (2.24%) Product Ownership
5 101 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
6 91 (1.62%) Self-Motivation
7 67 (1.19%) Private Cloud
8 66 (1.17%) CMDB
9 52 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
10 49 (0.87%) Cloud Native
11 47 (0.83%) Legacy Systems
12 46 (0.82%) Public Cloud
13 45 (0.80%) Security Operations Centre
13 45 (0.80%) Video Conferencing
14 43 (0.76%) Algorithms
15 41 (0.73%) Cyber Threat
16 36 (0.64%) Cyber Defence
17 31 (0.55%) FPGA
17 31 (0.55%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 649 (11.53%) Linux
2 582 (10.34%) Windows
3 185 (3.29%) Windows Server
4 126 (2.24%) Unix
5 118 (2.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 62 (1.10%) Windows 10
7 46 (0.82%) Windows Server 2012
8 37 (0.66%) Ubuntu
9 35 (0.62%) Android
10 34 (0.60%) Windows 7
11 32 (0.57%) Windows Server 2019
12 29 (0.52%) Windows Server 2016
13 28 (0.50%) CentOS
14 27 (0.48%) Apple iOS
15 25 (0.44%) Solaris
16 20 (0.36%) Debian
16 20 (0.36%) Windows Server 2003
17 18 (0.32%) Mac OS
17 18 (0.32%) Mac OS X
18 17 (0.30%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,109 (19.69%) Agile
2 641 (11.38%) DevOps
3 553 (9.82%) Problem-Solving
4 465 (8.26%) Stakeholder Management
5 458 (8.13%) CI/CD
6 432 (7.67%) Migration
7 417 (7.41%) Cybersecurity
8 353 (6.27%) ITIL
9 331 (5.88%) Project Management
10 289 (5.13%) Software Engineering
11 265 (4.71%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 249 (4.42%) Infrastructure as Code
13 248 (4.40%) Service Management
14 243 (4.32%) Test Automation
15 242 (4.30%) Roadmaps
16 238 (4.23%) Risk Management
17 236 (4.19%) Scrum
18 232 (4.12%) Change Management
19 226 (4.01%) Mentoring
20 222 (3.94%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 534 (9.48%) Python
2 411 (7.30%) Java
3 373 (6.62%) SQL
4 299 (5.31%) PowerShell
5 275 (4.88%) JavaScript
6 223 (3.96%) C#
7 185 (3.29%) C++
8 159 (2.82%) Bash
9 101 (1.79%) C
10 83 (1.47%) TypeScript
11 78 (1.39%) PL/SQL
12 73 (1.30%) MATLAB
13 67 (1.19%) Go
14 52 (0.92%) Apex Code
15 37 (0.66%) Ruby
16 34 (0.60%) R
17 29 (0.52%) Shell Script
18 26 (0.46%) VB
19 25 (0.44%) Ada
19 25 (0.44%) Rust
Qualifications
1 5,631 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 567 (10.07%) DV Cleared
3 388 (6.89%) Degree
4 199 (3.53%) BPSS Clearance
5 152 (2.70%) Cisco Certification
6 114 (2.02%) CISSP
7 96 (1.70%) CCNA
8 82 (1.46%) Computer Science Degree
9 78 (1.39%) CISM
10 77 (1.37%) CCNP
11 54 (0.96%) CTC Cleared
12 51 (0.91%) Azure Certification
13 44 (0.78%) CESG Certified Professional
14 42 (0.75%) Microsoft Certification
15 41 (0.73%) AWS Certification
16 35 (0.62%) Master's Degree
17 32 (0.57%) PMI Certification
18 26 (0.46%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
18 26 (0.46%) MCP
18 26 (0.46%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 159 (2.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 149 (2.65%) NIST
3 131 (2.33%) QA
4 107 (1.90%) NCSC
5 77 (1.37%) Accessibility
6 74 (1.31%) PMO
7 65 (1.15%) SLA
8 50 (0.89%) RMADS
9 46 (0.82%) Data Quality
10 44 (0.78%) JSP 440
11 37 (0.66%) GDPR
12 25 (0.44%) Def Stans
12 25 (0.44%) GRC
12 25 (0.44%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 23 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
14 20 (0.36%) PCI DSS
15 17 (0.30%) Government Security Classifications
16 15 (0.27%) WCAG
17 12 (0.21%) HIPAA
17 12 (0.21%) ISO 9000
System Software
1 338 (6.00%) Active Directory
2 279 (4.95%) Docker
3 232 (4.12%) VMware Infrastructure
4 79 (1.40%) Firmware
5 64 (1.14%) VMware NSX
6 61 (1.08%) vSphere
7 50 (0.89%) Hyper-V
8 49 (0.87%) Virtual Desktop
9 46 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
10 35 (0.62%) VMware ESXi
11 14 (0.25%) OpenAM
12 13 (0.23%) Microsoft App-V
13 10 (0.18%) KVM
13 10 (0.18%) Postfix
14 9 (0.16%) Embedded Firmware
14 9 (0.16%) NFS
15 8 (0.14%) BitLocker
15 8 (0.14%) Terminal Services
15 8 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
15 8 (0.14%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 390 (6.93%) Terraform
2 337 (5.98%) Kubernetes
3 240 (4.26%) Ansible
4 79 (1.40%) SCCM
5 72 (1.28%) Puppet
6 70 (1.24%) Packer
7 55 (0.98%) Microsoft Intune
8 49 (0.87%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 49 (0.87%) SCOM
9 46 (0.82%) Single Sign-On
10 44 (0.78%) Grafana
11 37 (0.66%) WSUS
12 35 (0.62%) FortiGate
13 32 (0.57%) Prometheus
14 30 (0.53%) VxRail
15 29 (0.52%) Consul
16 28 (0.50%) NetBackup
16 28 (0.50%) vRealize
17 27 (0.48%) ZABBIX
18 26 (0.46%) Nessus
Vendors
1 635 (11.28%) Microsoft
2 407 (7.23%) VMware
3 360 (6.39%) Oracle
4 292 (5.19%) Cisco
5 278 (4.94%) SAP
6 175 (3.11%) ServiceNow
7 152 (2.70%) Red Hat
8 131 (2.33%) Atlassian
9 103 (1.83%) Palo Alto
10 87 (1.55%) HP
11 86 (1.53%) Salesforce
12 85 (1.51%) Splunk
13 82 (1.46%) Juniper
14 75 (1.33%) Google
14 75 (1.33%) IBM
15 58 (1.03%) Dell
15 58 (1.03%) Fortinet
16 55 (0.98%) Remedy
17 52 (0.92%) LogRhythm
18 48 (0.85%) Sparx