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 8 December 2024, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Dec 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 9 8 14
Rank change year-on-year -1 +6 +8
Contract jobs citing SC Cleared 4,550 5,631 8,171
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 12.97% 12.55% 10.64%
As % of the Qualifications category 43.97% 42.47% 43.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,959 3,755 5,929
10th Percentile £330 £380 £380
25th Percentile £435 £463 £468
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £550 £560
Median % change year-on-year -2.27% -1.79% +6.67%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £700 £713 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £550 £548
% change year-on-year -4.55% +0.40% +9.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 253 386 399
10th Percentile £20.12 £19.99 £19.06
25th Percentile £24.18 £46.05 £22.75
Median hourly rate £48.18 £59.84 £61.18
Median % change year-on-year -19.49% -2.18% +35.94%
75th Percentile £67.50 £70.00 £69.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £83.33 £77.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.19 £59.03 £60.00
% change year-on-year -11.59% -1.62% +23.51%

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 10,348 13,260 18,795
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 29.51% 29.54% 24.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,281 8,373 12,640
10th Percentile £306 £300 £325
25th Percentile £420 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - +6.80%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £740
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £538 £525
% change year-on-year -4.19% +2.38% +10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 497 740 810
10th Percentile £19.51 £17.72 £14.25
25th Percentile £24.18 £27.50 £19.06
Median hourly rate £42.50 £52.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -19.05% +16.67% +42.41%
75th Percentile £66.00 £67.61 £65.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £46.18 £51.89 £45.00
% change year-on-year -11.00% +15.31% +63.64%

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 8 December 2024.

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 8 December 2024.

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 8 December 2024. 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 3,922 £535 -2.73% 972
UK excluding London -1 2,283 £525 -4.55% 705
London 0 1,662 £538 -2.27% 303
Work from Home -1 1,522 £538 -2.18% 546
South East 0 620 £550 -0.90% 241
South West 0 615 £550 -4.35% 152
North of England +7 505 £475 -13.64% 121
North West 0 327 £477 -13.36% 83
Midlands -5 247 £525 +4.22% 87
West Midlands -3 190 £535 +7.00% 68
East of England +2 122 £480 -7.25% 66
Yorkshire +27 121 £475 -13.64% 19
Scotland -12 111 £520 -13.33% 39
Wales +2 92 £500 -18.70% 20
North East +3 66 £450 -15.89% 20
East Midlands -9 57 £438 -16.67% 19
Northern Ireland +12 18 £600 +9.09% 2

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
1 143 (3.14%) Confluence
2 93 (2.04%) SharePoint
3 69 (1.52%) Microsoft Exchange
4 66 (1.45%) SAS
5 37 (0.81%) Apache
6 33 (0.73%) Apache Spark
7 27 (0.59%) nginx
8 14 (0.31%) Apache Airflow
8 14 (0.31%) Appian
9 13 (0.29%) ArcGIS
9 13 (0.29%) MQSeries
9 13 (0.29%) MTS
9 13 (0.29%) Skype for Business
10 12 (0.26%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
11 11 (0.24%) Exchange Server 2013
11 11 (0.24%) Traefik
11 11 (0.24%) WebLogic
12 9 (0.20%) WebSphere
13 8 (0.18%) IIS
13 8 (0.18%) Mendix
Applications
1 84 (1.85%) Microsoft Office
2 51 (1.12%) Microsoft Excel
3 43 (0.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 27 (0.59%) MS Visio
5 13 (0.29%) Microsoft Project
6 11 (0.24%) Simulink
7 8 (0.18%) Sketch
8 5 (0.11%) Siemens NX
8 5 (0.11%) Windchill
9 3 (0.066%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 3 (0.066%) Spreadsheet
10 2 (0.044%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.044%) Trello
11 1 (0.022%) Camtasia
11 1 (0.022%) Doxygen
11 1 (0.022%) EngageOne
11 1 (0.022%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 53 (1.16%) SAP S/4HANA
2 29 (0.64%) Dynamics CRM
3 18 (0.40%) Teamcenter
4 15 (0.33%) SAP EWM
5 14 (0.31%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 13 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
7 11 (0.24%) SAP PM
8 10 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
9 8 (0.18%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 7 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
10 7 (0.15%) SAP ERP
11 6 (0.13%) SAP SCM
12 5 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
12 5 (0.11%) SAP CO
12 5 (0.11%) SAP FI
12 5 (0.11%) SAP FI/CO
12 5 (0.11%) SAP GTS
12 5 (0.11%) SAP Payroll
13 4 (0.088%) SAP HR
13 4 (0.088%) SAP PP
Cloud Services
1 897 (19.71%) AWS
2 659 (14.48%) Azure
3 179 (3.93%) Microsoft 365
4 154 (3.38%) Power Platform
5 132 (2.90%) GitHub
6 124 (2.73%) Serverless
7 104 (2.29%) Azure DevOps
8 93 (2.04%) AWS Lambda
9 88 (1.93%) SaaS
10 86 (1.89%) Amazon EC2
11 85 (1.87%) Amazon S3
11 85 (1.87%) GCP
12 84 (1.85%) Entra ID
13 71 (1.56%) AWS CloudFormation
14 69 (1.52%) PaaS
15 66 (1.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 58 (1.27%) GitHub Actions
17 54 (1.19%) Dynamics 365
18 53 (1.16%) Amazon EKS
18 53 (1.16%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 219 (4.81%) Firewall
2 123 (2.70%) DNS
3 98 (2.15%) Network Security
4 96 (2.11%) VPN
4 96 (2.11%) WAN
5 74 (1.63%) BGP
6 73 (1.60%) TCP/IP
7 70 (1.54%) LAN
8 61 (1.34%) DHCP
9 58 (1.27%) OSPF
10 42 (0.92%) IPsec
11 41 (0.90%) Cisco ISE
11 41 (0.90%) VoIP
12 38 (0.84%) MPLS
13 35 (0.77%) SAN
14 34 (0.75%) Cisco Firepower
15 33 (0.73%) Wi-Fi
16 32 (0.70%) Cisco ASA
17 31 (0.68%) EIGRP
17 31 (0.68%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 183 (4.02%) PostgreSQL
2 127 (2.79%) SQL Server
3 125 (2.75%) Oracle Database
4 94 (2.07%) Power BI
5 76 (1.67%) Relational Database
6 67 (1.47%) MongoDB
7 62 (1.36%) Data Lake
8 55 (1.21%) Data Warehouse
9 54 (1.19%) MySQL
10 53 (1.16%) Amazon RDS
11 49 (1.08%) RDBMS
12 45 (0.99%) Big Data
13 42 (0.92%) Metadata
14 38 (0.84%) Oracle Database 11g
15 32 (0.70%) Azure SQL Database
16 31 (0.68%) NoSQL
17 29 (0.64%) Amazon Redshift
17 29 (0.64%) Tableau
18 27 (0.59%) Amazon Athena
19 25 (0.55%) Redis
Development Applications
1 222 (4.88%) Jenkins
2 221 (4.86%) JIRA
3 197 (4.33%) Git
4 171 (3.76%) GitLab
5 53 (1.16%) JUnit
6 50 (1.10%) Cucumber
7 46 (1.01%) Selenium
8 39 (0.86%) Visual Studio
9 31 (0.68%) Bitbucket
9 31 (0.68%) MSI
10 28 (0.62%) Postman
11 27 (0.59%) Maven
11 27 (0.59%) SonarQube
12 24 (0.53%) JMeter
13 22 (0.48%) CircleCI
14 18 (0.40%) Jasmine
14 18 (0.40%) Rational DOORS
15 17 (0.37%) Cypress.io
15 17 (0.37%) Eclipse
16 14 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,150 (25.27%) Public Sector
2 789 (17.34%) Social Skills
3 419 (9.21%) Finance
4 358 (7.87%) Analytical Skills
5 188 (4.13%) Telecoms
6 178 (3.91%) Military
7 165 (3.63%) Manufacturing
8 141 (3.10%) Electronics
8 141 (3.10%) Marketing
9 64 (1.41%) Legal
10 62 (1.36%) Documentation Skills
11 59 (1.30%) Police
12 56 (1.23%) Presentation Skills
13 53 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
14 52 (1.14%) Aerospace
15 41 (0.90%) Banking
16 39 (0.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 33 (0.73%) Law
18 30 (0.66%) Fire and Rescue
18 30 (0.66%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 587 (12.90%) Architect
2 522 (11.47%) Developer
3 448 (9.85%) Senior
4 349 (7.67%) Analyst
5 331 (7.27%) Consultant
6 300 (6.59%) Lead
7 242 (5.32%) DevOps Engineer
8 164 (3.60%) Network Engineer
9 134 (2.95%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 130 (2.86%) Project Manager
11 127 (2.79%) Data Engineer
12 116 (2.55%) Software Engineer
13 113 (2.48%) Technical Architect
14 110 (2.42%) Support Engineer
15 107 (2.35%) Solutions Architect
16 98 (2.15%) Administrator
17 96 (2.11%) Java Developer
18 93 (2.04%) Azure Engineer
19 89 (1.96%) SAP Consultant
20 88 (1.93%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 115 (2.53%) .NET
2 108 (2.37%) React
3 97 (2.13%) Kafka
4 80 (1.76%) REST
4 80 (1.76%) Spring
5 76 (1.67%) Spring Boot
6 75 (1.65%) PySpark
7 73 (1.60%) HTML
8 70 (1.54%) CSS
9 64 (1.41%) RESTful
10 55 (1.21%) Node.js
11 54 (1.19%) AngularJS
12 52 (1.14%) Middleware
13 43 (0.95%) Web Services
14 39 (0.86%) Oracle Fusion
15 36 (0.79%) Swagger
16 33 (0.73%) OpenAPI
16 33 (0.73%) SOAP
17 30 (0.66%) XML
18 29 (0.64%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 145 (3.19%) Onboarding
2 127 (2.79%) Data Centre
3 99 (2.18%) PKI
4 96 (2.11%) Management Information System
5 75 (1.65%) Public Cloud
6 59 (1.30%) Legacy Systems
7 52 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
8 48 (1.05%) Hybrid Cloud
9 45 (0.99%) Cloud Native
10 42 (0.92%) CMDB
10 42 (0.92%) Replication
11 40 (0.88%) Security Operations Centre
12 38 (0.84%) Product Ownership
13 35 (0.77%) Video Conferencing
14 34 (0.75%) Digital Media
15 32 (0.70%) Data Protection Act
15 32 (0.70%) Greenfield Project
16 30 (0.66%) Security Posture
17 28 (0.62%) Clustering
18 25 (0.55%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 564 (12.40%) Windows
2 456 (10.02%) Linux
3 181 (3.98%) Windows Server
4 124 (2.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 110 (2.42%) Windows 10
6 106 (2.33%) Unix
7 40 (0.88%) Windows Server 2012
8 37 (0.81%) Windows Server 2016
9 36 (0.79%) AIX
10 34 (0.75%) CentOS
11 29 (0.64%) zOS
12 28 (0.62%) Windows Server 2019
13 27 (0.59%) Apple iOS
14 25 (0.55%) Android
15 23 (0.51%) VMS
16 17 (0.37%) Mac OS
17 16 (0.35%) Windows 7
18 12 (0.26%) Solaris
19 11 (0.24%) Ubuntu
20 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 757 (16.64%) Agile
2 702 (15.43%) DevOps
3 488 (10.73%) CI/CD
4 472 (10.37%) Problem-Solving
5 302 (6.64%) Stakeholder Management
6 289 (6.35%) Project Management
7 288 (6.33%) Migration
8 271 (5.96%) ITIL
9 270 (5.93%) Software Engineering
10 231 (5.08%) Business Intelligence
11 225 (4.95%) Cybersecurity
12 216 (4.75%) Microservices
13 208 (4.57%) Test Automation
14 207 (4.55%) Roadmaps
15 206 (4.53%) Infrastructure as Code
16 205 (4.51%) Containerisation
17 203 (4.46%) Mentoring
17 203 (4.46%) Service Management
18 174 (3.82%) Change Management
19 173 (3.80%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 513 (11.27%) Python
2 443 (9.74%) SQL
3 307 (6.75%) Java
4 209 (4.59%) PowerShell
5 204 (4.48%) JavaScript
6 112 (2.46%) C#
7 111 (2.44%) Bash
8 78 (1.71%) TypeScript
9 74 (1.63%) PL/SQL
10 61 (1.34%) C++
11 53 (1.16%) Shell Script
12 44 (0.97%) ABAP
13 37 (0.81%) Go
14 33 (0.73%) C
15 32 (0.70%) R
16 25 (0.55%) Perl
17 24 (0.53%) Natural
18 21 (0.46%) Bicep
18 21 (0.46%) Ruby
19 20 (0.44%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 4,550 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 452 (9.93%) DV Cleared
3 208 (4.57%) Degree
4 134 (2.95%) Cisco Certification
5 119 (2.62%) BPSS Clearance
6 82 (1.80%) AWS Certification
7 75 (1.65%) CCNP
8 68 (1.49%) Microsoft Certification
9 60 (1.32%) CCNA
10 55 (1.21%) CISSP
11 40 (0.88%) Computer Science Degree
12 39 (0.86%) Azure Certification
13 35 (0.77%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 32 (0.70%) CCIE
15 31 (0.68%) MCSE
16 27 (0.59%) CISM
17 23 (0.51%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
17 23 (0.51%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 23 (0.51%) CTC Cleared
18 22 (0.48%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 153 (3.36%) QA
2 92 (2.02%) NIST
3 81 (1.78%) Data Quality
4 74 (1.63%) SLA
5 71 (1.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 59 (1.30%) NCSC
7 54 (1.19%) Accessibility
8 38 (0.84%) PMO
9 26 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials
10 19 (0.42%) Def Stans
10 19 (0.42%) GDPR
11 14 (0.31%) GRC
11 14 (0.31%) NIST 800
11 14 (0.31%) PCI DSS
12 11 (0.24%) JSP 440
13 8 (0.18%) HIPAA
13 8 (0.18%) ISO 22301
14 7 (0.15%) Government Security Classifications
14 7 (0.15%) WCAG
15 6 (0.13%) IEC 61508
System Software
1 316 (6.95%) Docker
2 303 (6.66%) Active Directory
3 207 (4.55%) VMware Infrastructure
4 68 (1.49%) VMware NSX
5 61 (1.34%) Hyper-V
6 57 (1.25%) VMware ESXi
7 56 (1.23%) Virtual Machines
8 52 (1.14%) vSphere
9 40 (0.88%) Firmware
10 32 (0.70%) Virtual Desktop
11 21 (0.46%) XenApp
12 18 (0.40%) XenDesktop
13 12 (0.26%) KVM
14 11 (0.24%) NFS
15 9 (0.20%) BitLocker
16 8 (0.18%) vCloud
17 7 (0.15%) Samba
18 6 (0.13%) HDFS
18 6 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
18 6 (0.13%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
Systems Management
1 427 (9.38%) Kubernetes
2 371 (8.15%) Terraform
3 213 (4.68%) Ansible
4 131 (2.88%) SCCM
5 114 (2.51%) Grafana
6 87 (1.91%) Prometheus
7 65 (1.43%) Microsoft Intune
8 42 (0.92%) Puppet
9 35 (0.77%) Packer
10 29 (0.64%) vCenter Server
11 26 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
11 26 (0.57%) WSUS
12 25 (0.55%) Progress Chef
13 24 (0.53%) FortiGate
14 23 (0.51%) Consul
14 23 (0.51%) Rancher
15 20 (0.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 20 (0.44%) Kibana
16 19 (0.42%) SCOM
17 18 (0.40%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 648 (14.24%) Microsoft
2 328 (7.21%) SAP
3 323 (7.10%) VMware
4 316 (6.95%) Oracle
5 257 (5.65%) Cisco
6 183 (4.02%) ServiceNow
7 106 (2.33%) Palo Alto
8 93 (2.04%) Splunk
9 84 (1.85%) Databricks
10 78 (1.71%) Citrix
11 72 (1.58%) Google
12 68 (1.49%) IBM
12 68 (1.49%) Red Hat
13 65 (1.43%) F5
14 64 (1.41%) Atlassian
15 62 (1.36%) Juniper
16 56 (1.23%) SolarWinds
17 48 (1.05%) CyberArk
18 36 (0.79%) Apple
18 36 (0.79%) Fortinet