SC Cleared Contract Job Trends

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 4 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 9 8
Rank change year-on-year +5 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing SC Cleared 8,857 4,382 4,900
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 16.51% 13.56% 12.87%
As % of the Qualifications category 52.55% 43.51% 43.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,336 2,759 3,333
10th Percentile £385 £337 £340
25th Percentile £450 £445 £426
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £537 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.29% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £619 £625
90th Percentile £700 £688 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £525 £525
% change year-on-year - - -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 635 486 300
10th Percentile £21.27 £18.51 £16.43
25th Percentile £26.44 £18.87 £22.22
Median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £55.13
Median % change year-on-year +151.03% -54.38% -3.85%
75th Percentile £75.00 £32.66 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £67.25 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.14 £25.15 £57.38
% change year-on-year +151.03% -56.17% +2.19%

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 16,856 10,071 11,285
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.42% 31.17% 29.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,303 6,240 7,066
10th Percentile £350 £300 £313
25th Percentile £438 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.55%
75th Percentile £629 £622 £638
90th Percentile £715 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,260 801 703
10th Percentile £17.39 £18.13 £15.75
25th Percentile £25.77 £18.87 £22.54
Median hourly rate £47.54 £25.15 £48.56
Median % change year-on-year +89.03% -48.21% -11.71%
75th Percentile £72.54 £50.00 £67.78
90th Percentile £87.02 £71.45 £76.84
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £25.15 £51.72
% change year-on-year +88.87% -51.37% +3.44%

SC Cleared
Job Vacancy Trend

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

SC Cleared job vacancy trend in the UK

SC Cleared
Daily Rate Trend

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SC Cleared

SC Cleared
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SC Cleared over the 6 months to 4 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SC Cleared in the UK

SC Cleared
Hourly Rate Trend

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SC Cleared

SC Cleared
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SC Cleared over the 6 months to 4 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for SC Cleared in the UK

SC Cleared
Top 17 Contract Job 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 4 September 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
England +4 7,534 £537 +2.29% 2,578
UK excluding London +4 4,641 £525 - 2,027
London +10 2,944 £550 +4.76% 903
Work from Home +6 2,661 £528 -1.77% 1,527
South East +3 1,417 £550 +6.80% 555
North of England +4 1,041 £505 -3.81% 407
South West 0 961 £525 -4.55% 374
Midlands +4 776 £475 -5.10% 201
West Midlands +2 659 £474 -7.59% 136
North West +3 590 £525 -4.55% 255
Yorkshire -1 253 £500 +1.63% 87
Scotland +20 216 £500 +1.52% 191
East of England -2 211 £500 - 244
North East -1 203 £463 -11.48% 83
East Midlands +3 109 £500 +8.11% 65
Wales +5 97 £550 +2.33% 31
Northern Ireland +1 23 £650 +4.00% 62

SC Cleared
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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
1 329 (3.71%) Confluence
2 200 (2.26%) SharePoint
3 166 (1.87%) SAS
4 93 (1.05%) Apache Spark
5 90 (1.02%) Apache
6 83 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
6 83 (0.94%) Microsoft Exchange
7 38 (0.43%) Jupyter
8 34 (0.38%) nginx
9 29 (0.33%) WebLogic
10 24 (0.27%) IIS
11 21 (0.24%) Tomcat
12 19 (0.21%) Oracle Application Server
13 17 (0.19%) Skype for Business
14 16 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
15 14 (0.16%) CMS
15 14 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
16 12 (0.14%) JBoss
16 12 (0.14%) NetWeaver
17 10 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 136 (1.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 126 (1.42%) Microsoft Office
3 67 (0.76%) Microsoft Project
4 61 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 27 (0.30%) MS Visio
6 15 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.16%) Simulink
8 11 (0.12%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.12%) Revit
8 11 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
9 8 (0.090%) Windchill
10 6 (0.068%) Chatbot
10 6 (0.068%) Notepad++
11 4 (0.045%) Sketch
11 4 (0.045%) Trello
12 3 (0.034%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.034%) OrCAD
13 2 (0.023%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.023%) Houdini
13 2 (0.023%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 135 (1.52%) SAP S/4HANA
2 49 (0.55%) Remedy ITSM
3 36 (0.41%) Oracle EBS
4 25 (0.28%) SAP GRC
5 22 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
5 22 (0.25%) Oracle Payroll
6 20 (0.23%) SAP PSCD
7 15 (0.17%) Primavera
7 15 (0.17%) SAP HR
8 13 (0.15%) Findur
8 13 (0.15%) SAP FI
8 13 (0.15%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 12 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
9 12 (0.14%) Siebel CRM
9 12 (0.14%) Teamcenter
10 11 (0.12%) NetSuite
10 11 (0.12%) Temenos T24
11 10 (0.11%) SAP MM
12 9 (0.10%) iTrent
12 9 (0.10%) SAP CO
Cloud Services
1 1,759 (19.86%) AWS
2 1,735 (19.59%) Azure
3 470 (5.31%) GitHub
4 432 (4.88%) Azure DevOps
5 366 (4.13%) Power Platform
6 341 (3.85%) GCP
7 309 (3.49%) GitHub Actions
8 256 (2.89%) Microsoft 365
9 238 (2.69%) Serverless
10 234 (2.64%) Entra ID
11 215 (2.43%) Amazon S3
12 178 (2.01%) AWS Lambda
13 152 (1.72%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 140 (1.58%) Amazon EKS
15 135 (1.52%) SaaS
16 128 (1.45%) OCI
17 126 (1.42%) Amazon EC2
18 115 (1.30%) OpenShift
19 107 (1.21%) AWS CloudFormation
20 97 (1.10%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 336 (3.79%) Firewall
2 209 (2.36%) DNS
3 168 (1.90%) Network Security
4 154 (1.74%) VPN
5 148 (1.67%) WAN
6 109 (1.23%) LAN
7 105 (1.19%) Wi-Fi
8 99 (1.12%) DHCP
9 83 (0.94%) BGP
9 83 (0.94%) TCP/IP
10 76 (0.86%) OSPF
10 76 (0.86%) Wireless
11 72 (0.81%) VLAN
12 54 (0.61%) SSL
13 46 (0.52%) SD-WAN
14 41 (0.46%) SAN
15 37 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
15 37 (0.42%) VSAN
16 34 (0.38%) IPsec
17 31 (0.35%) EIGRP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 268 (3.03%) Power BI
2 264 (2.98%) PostgreSQL
3 232 (2.62%) Data Warehouse
4 218 (2.46%) SQL Server
5 143 (1.61%) Metadata
6 138 (1.56%) Oracle Database
7 113 (1.28%) Relational Database
8 112 (1.26%) Data Lake
9 94 (1.06%) MongoDB
10 91 (1.03%) Amazon RDS
11 90 (1.02%) MySQL
12 79 (0.89%) Oracle Reports
13 70 (0.79%) Pentaho
14 65 (0.73%) NoSQL
15 64 (0.72%) Amazon Athena
16 54 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
17 52 (0.59%) Amazon Redshift
18 47 (0.53%) Tableau
19 46 (0.52%) Big Data
20 44 (0.50%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 507 (5.72%) JIRA
2 464 (5.24%) Git
3 416 (4.70%) GitLab
4 399 (4.50%) Jenkins
5 116 (1.31%) Selenium
6 74 (0.84%) Postman
7 70 (0.79%) SonarQube
8 67 (0.76%) JMeter
8 67 (0.76%) JUnit
9 62 (0.70%) Maven
10 47 (0.53%) Cucumber
11 45 (0.51%) Cypress.io
12 43 (0.49%) Mockito
13 42 (0.47%) Gradle
14 36 (0.41%) Zephyr
15 35 (0.40%) REST Assured
16 34 (0.38%) Gatling
17 31 (0.35%) Bitbucket
18 30 (0.34%) Visual Studio
19 28 (0.32%) Artifactory
General
1 1,934 (21.84%) Public Sector
2 1,899 (21.44%) Social Skills
3 626 (7.07%) Analytical Skills
4 543 (6.13%) Finance
5 252 (2.85%) Military
6 221 (2.50%) Documentation Skills
7 220 (2.48%) Aerospace
8 160 (1.81%) Influencing Skills
9 146 (1.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 126 (1.42%) Organisational Skills
11 125 (1.41%) Legal
12 115 (1.30%) Banking
13 104 (1.17%) Telecoms
14 90 (1.02%) Law
15 86 (0.97%) Police
16 78 (0.88%) Manufacturing
17 41 (0.46%) Presentation Skills
18 40 (0.45%) Local Government
19 34 (0.38%) Aviation
20 30 (0.34%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 1,407 (15.89%) Architect
2 1,038 (11.72%) Developer
3 804 (9.08%) Senior
4 792 (8.94%) Lead
5 477 (5.39%) Consultant
6 466 (5.26%) DevOps Engineer
7 452 (5.10%) Analyst
8 441 (4.98%) Data Engineer
9 303 (3.42%) Solutions Architect
10 299 (3.38%) Technical Architect
11 273 (3.08%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 242 (2.73%) Data Architect
13 241 (2.72%) Software Engineer
14 188 (2.12%) Azure Engineer
15 187 (2.11%) Java Developer
16 184 (2.08%) Security Architect
17 174 (1.96%) Network Engineer
18 164 (1.85%) Administrator
19 161 (1.82%) AWS Architect
19 161 (1.82%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 814 (9.19%) Terraform
2 350 (3.95%) REST
3 211 (2.38%) Spring
4 198 (2.24%) Kafka
5 192 (2.17%) Spring Boot
6 182 (2.05%) .NET
7 179 (2.02%) RESTful
8 173 (1.95%) React
9 143 (1.61%) Node.js
9 143 (1.61%) SOAP
10 129 (1.46%) JSON
11 110 (1.24%) Web Services
12 104 (1.17%) AngularJS
12 104 (1.17%) HTML
12 104 (1.17%) Middleware
13 99 (1.12%) OAuth
13 99 (1.12%) XML
14 82 (0.93%) PySpark
15 81 (0.91%) Playwright
16 75 (0.85%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 420 (4.74%) Cloud Native
2 327 (3.69%) Onboarding
3 274 (3.09%) Product Ownership
4 209 (2.36%) Data Centre
5 207 (2.34%) Management Information System
6 161 (1.82%) Legacy Systems
7 135 (1.52%) Enterprise Software
8 120 (1.35%) Distributed Systems
9 115 (1.30%) CMDB
10 101 (1.14%) Replication
10 101 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
11 88 (0.99%) Hybrid Cloud
12 82 (0.93%) PKI
13 76 (0.86%) Operational Technology
13 76 (0.86%) Public Cloud
14 74 (0.84%) Data Structures
15 72 (0.81%) Cyber Threat
16 63 (0.71%) Virtual Team
17 60 (0.68%) Greenfield Project
18 58 (0.65%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 602 (6.80%) Windows
2 578 (6.53%) Linux
3 212 (2.39%) Windows Server
4 185 (2.09%) Unix
5 115 (1.30%) Windows 10
6 113 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 66 (0.75%) Android
8 59 (0.67%) Solaris
9 40 (0.45%) Mac OS
10 34 (0.38%) Apple iOS
11 32 (0.36%) CentOS
12 25 (0.28%) Ubuntu
13 21 (0.24%) Windows Server 2016
14 20 (0.23%) AIX
15 18 (0.20%) Windows 7
16 16 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
17 12 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
17 12 (0.14%) Rocky
17 12 (0.14%) VMS
18 10 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,957 (22.10%) Agile
2 1,506 (17.00%) DevOps
3 1,451 (16.38%) CI/CD
4 1,127 (12.72%) Stakeholder Management
5 984 (11.11%) Continuous Improvement
6 879 (9.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 873 (9.86%) Problem-Solving
8 816 (9.21%) Infrastructure as Code
9 766 (8.65%) Migration
10 651 (7.35%) Test Automation
11 597 (6.74%) Containerisation
12 588 (6.64%) Cybersecurity
13 569 (6.42%) ITIL
14 567 (6.40%) Analytics
15 563 (6.36%) Software Engineering
16 533 (6.02%) Roadmaps
17 517 (5.84%) AI
18 513 (5.79%) Decision-Making
19 509 (5.75%) Data Modelling
20 498 (5.62%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,091 (12.32%) Python
2 887 (10.01%) SQL
3 669 (7.55%) Java
4 403 (4.55%) PowerShell
5 319 (3.60%) JavaScript
6 250 (2.82%) Bash
7 186 (2.10%) C#
8 181 (2.04%) TypeScript
9 131 (1.48%) PL/SQL
10 101 (1.14%) Bicep
11 62 (0.70%) Shell Script
12 52 (0.59%) C++
13 45 (0.51%) C
14 44 (0.50%) Apex Code
15 42 (0.47%) Groovy
16 41 (0.46%) Kotlin
17 38 (0.43%) Go
18 37 (0.42%) Ruby
19 36 (0.41%) Scala
20 34 (0.38%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8,857 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 711 (8.03%) DV Cleared
3 355 (4.01%) BPSS Clearance
4 318 (3.59%) Degree
5 147 (1.66%) CISSP
6 145 (1.64%) Azure Certification
6 145 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
7 139 (1.57%) Microsoft Certification
8 125 (1.41%) AWS Certification
9 98 (1.11%) CISM
10 77 (0.87%) ISTQB
11 71 (0.80%) PMI Certification
12 68 (0.77%) PMP
13 63 (0.71%) CCNP
14 61 (0.69%) Computer Science Degree
15 59 (0.67%) CCNA
16 43 (0.49%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 42 (0.47%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 36 (0.41%) ITIL Certification
18 36 (0.41%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 403 (4.55%) QA
2 300 (3.39%) Data Quality
3 243 (2.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 220 (2.48%) NIST
5 217 (2.45%) Accessibility
6 216 (2.44%) NCSC
7 147 (1.66%) PMO
8 140 (1.58%) GDPR
9 137 (1.55%) SLA
10 124 (1.40%) GRC
11 74 (0.84%) WCAG
12 45 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
13 39 (0.44%) JSP 440
14 30 (0.34%) Def Stans
15 28 (0.32%) NIST 800
16 21 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 19 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
18 18 (0.20%) HMG Security Policy Framework
19 16 (0.18%) RMADS
20 15 (0.17%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 684 (7.72%) Docker
2 363 (4.10%) Active Directory
3 259 (2.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 81 (0.91%) Hyper-V
5 79 (0.89%) vSphere
6 74 (0.84%) VMware NSX
7 71 (0.80%) Virtual Machines
8 61 (0.69%) VMware ESXi
9 32 (0.36%) Firmware
10 31 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
11 28 (0.32%) Virtual Desktop
12 17 (0.19%) BitLocker
13 13 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
14 11 (0.12%) Postfix
14 11 (0.12%) Squid
15 9 (0.10%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 8 (0.090%) Embedded Firmware
17 7 (0.079%) NFS
18 6 (0.068%) KVM
19 5 (0.056%) Corosync
Systems Management
1 815 (9.20%) Kubernetes
2 307 (3.47%) Ansible
3 225 (2.54%) Grafana
4 180 (2.03%) Prometheus
5 94 (1.06%) SCCM
6 63 (0.71%) Argo
7 58 (0.65%) Microsoft Intune
8 55 (0.62%) Single Sign-On
9 51 (0.58%) vCenter Server
10 39 (0.44%) SCOM
11 38 (0.43%) Oracle RMAN
12 31 (0.35%) Data Guard
13 29 (0.33%) Kibana
13 29 (0.33%) Puppet
14 27 (0.30%) Control-M
15 20 (0.23%) NetBackup
16 19 (0.21%) Packer
17 18 (0.20%) Failover Clustering
17 18 (0.20%) FortiGate
18 17 (0.19%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 1,114 (12.58%) Microsoft
2 743 (8.39%) Oracle
3 398 (4.49%) ServiceNow
4 354 (4.00%) VMware
5 348 (3.93%) SAP
6 228 (2.57%) Cisco
7 192 (2.17%) Google
8 180 (2.03%) Databricks
9 151 (1.70%) Splunk
10 142 (1.60%) Salesforce
11 108 (1.22%) Informatica
12 107 (1.21%) Red Hat
13 103 (1.16%) Palo Alto
14 102 (1.15%) Talend
15 90 (1.02%) Dynatrace
16 80 (0.90%) IBM
17 68 (0.77%) Fortinet
18 62 (0.70%) Denodo
19 59 (0.67%) Citrix
19 59 (0.67%) Remedy