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 30 April 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 7 8 8
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +11
Contract jobs citing SC Cleared 4,076 5,249 7,739
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 13.94% 12.04% 12.97%
As % of the Qualifications category 45.34% 39.28% 47.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,723 3,578 5,460
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 233 381 432
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 £67.25 £70.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.40 £80.00 £82.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £55.80 £57.50
% change year-on-year -1.43% -2.96% +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 8,989 13,363 16,304
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 30.75% 30.65% 27.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,678 8,219 10,866
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 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £501 £530 £530
% change year-on-year -5.57% - +6.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 516 1,077 849
10th Percentile £18.13 £13.87 £15.25
25th Percentile £22.00 £17.88 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.72 £40.00 £54.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.79% -25.93% +29.75%
75th Percentile £66.00 £61.60 £68.25
90th Percentile £80.34 £75.25 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £40.94 £49.57
% change year-on-year +9.92% -17.41% +55.44%

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 30 April 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 30 April 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 30 April 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 3,532 £525 -1.87% 1,155
UK excluding London -2 1,980 £525 -2.42% 920
London +1 1,404 £525 - 293
Work from Home -3 1,385 £525 -4.55% 687
South West +1 573 £550 +2.23% 214
South East -2 495 £540 -4.00% 271
North of England +3 484 £500 -4.76% 184
North West 0 345 £500 -4.76% 126
Midlands -3 238 £525 +8.25% 98
West Midlands -4 175 £525 +16.67% 74
East of England +6 148 £350 -4.11% 84
Yorkshire +7 79 £525 - 41
North East +11 64 £500 -0.05% 19
East Midlands -1 63 £475 -10.80% 24
Scotland -63 44 £425 -26.09% 57
Wales -5 29 £533 -13.41% 19
Northern Ireland -8 8 £500 -4.76% 8

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
1 146 (3.58%) Confluence
2 117 (2.87%) SharePoint
3 58 (1.42%) Microsoft Exchange
4 48 (1.18%) Apache
5 29 (0.71%) Apache Spark
6 28 (0.69%) nginx
7 22 (0.54%) SAS
8 21 (0.52%) Apache Airflow
9 19 (0.47%) CMS
9 19 (0.47%) Skype for Business
10 18 (0.44%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 12 (0.29%) WebLogic
12 11 (0.27%) Traefik
13 10 (0.25%) IIS
14 9 (0.22%) Camunda
14 9 (0.22%) Tomcat
14 9 (0.22%) WebSphere
15 8 (0.20%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.20%) MTS
15 8 (0.20%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 98 (2.40%) 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 7 (0.17%) Siemens NX
8 7 (0.17%) Simulink
9 6 (0.15%) Trello
10 5 (0.12%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.12%) InfoPath
10 5 (0.12%) Windchill
11 4 (0.098%) MS Visio
12 2 (0.049%) InVision
12 2 (0.049%) ProjectWise
13 1 (0.025%) CATIA
13 1 (0.025%) SPSS
13 1 (0.025%) Stata
Business Applications
1 57 (1.40%) SAP S/4HANA
2 25 (0.61%) 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
1 886 (21.74%) AWS
2 600 (14.72%) Azure
3 190 (4.66%) Power Platform
4 161 (3.95%) Serverless
5 159 (3.90%) Microsoft 365
6 133 (3.26%) Amazon S3
7 116 (2.85%) AWS Lambda
8 113 (2.77%) GCP
9 107 (2.63%) Azure DevOps
10 101 (2.48%) GitHub
11 96 (2.36%) Entra ID
12 95 (2.33%) AWS CloudFormation
13 93 (2.28%) SaaS
14 69 (1.69%) Amazon EC2
15 65 (1.59%) Amazon EKS
16 64 (1.57%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 60 (1.47%) PaaS
18 56 (1.37%) PowerApps
19 52 (1.28%) Dynamics 365
20 49 (1.20%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 243 (5.96%) Firewall
2 181 (4.44%) DNS
3 125 (3.07%) VPN
4 102 (2.50%) Network Security
5 97 (2.38%) WAN
6 66 (1.62%) BGP
7 63 (1.55%) TCP/IP
8 62 (1.52%) OSPF
9 58 (1.42%) DHCP
10 57 (1.40%) LAN
10 57 (1.40%) Wi-Fi
11 54 (1.32%) Cisco ASA
12 53 (1.30%) IPsec
13 42 (1.03%) Cisco Firepower
14 37 (0.91%) HSRP
14 37 (0.91%) HTTP
15 36 (0.88%) EIGRP
16 34 (0.83%) Cisco ISE
16 34 (0.83%) Wireless
17 31 (0.76%) Cisco Nexus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 194 (4.76%) PostgreSQL
2 141 (3.46%) Power BI
3 115 (2.82%) Relational Database
4 96 (2.36%) MongoDB
5 79 (1.94%) Data Warehouse
6 78 (1.91%) Oracle Database
7 77 (1.89%) SQL Server
8 76 (1.86%) Amazon RDS
9 57 (1.40%) MySQL
10 52 (1.28%) Data Lake
11 47 (1.15%) Tableau
12 41 (1.01%) Oracle Reports
13 38 (0.93%) Big Data
13 38 (0.93%) NoSQL
14 36 (0.88%) Metadata
15 34 (0.83%) Amazon Redshift
16 32 (0.79%) Amazon Athena
17 29 (0.71%) Redis
18 24 (0.59%) Neo4j
19 23 (0.56%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 266 (6.53%) JIRA
2 219 (5.37%) Jenkins
3 212 (5.20%) Git
4 155 (3.80%) GitLab
5 75 (1.84%) JUnit
6 59 (1.45%) Selenium
7 45 (1.10%) Cucumber
8 44 (1.08%) Bitbucket
8 44 (1.08%) SonarQube
9 40 (0.98%) Gradle
10 38 (0.93%) Mockito
11 33 (0.81%) Cypress.io
11 33 (0.81%) Liquibase
12 32 (0.79%) Maven
13 30 (0.74%) REST Assured
14 23 (0.56%) Postman
15 20 (0.49%) JMeter
15 20 (0.49%) MSI
16 18 (0.44%) ScriptRunner
17 17 (0.42%) Eclipse
General
1 1,001 (24.56%) Public Sector
2 987 (24.21%) Social Skills
3 396 (9.72%) Analytical Skills
4 322 (7.90%) Finance
5 114 (2.80%) Military
6 109 (2.67%) Telecoms
7 98 (2.40%) Manufacturing
8 79 (1.94%) Legal
9 74 (1.82%) Electronics
10 71 (1.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 69 (1.69%) Marketing
12 59 (1.45%) Presentation Skills
13 56 (1.37%) Law
14 55 (1.35%) Aerospace
15 50 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
16 35 (0.86%) Influencing Skills
17 30 (0.74%) Police
18 29 (0.71%) Documentation Skills
19 22 (0.54%) Banking
20 17 (0.42%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 606 (14.87%) Architect
2 510 (12.51%) Developer
3 357 (8.76%) Senior
4 294 (7.21%) Analyst
5 237 (5.81%) Lead
6 207 (5.08%) Consultant
7 181 (4.44%) DevOps Engineer
8 171 (4.20%) Data Engineer
9 151 (3.70%) Network Engineer
10 121 (2.97%) Solutions Architect
11 113 (2.77%) Support Engineer
12 111 (2.72%) Java Developer
13 102 (2.50%) Software Engineer
14 98 (2.40%) AWS Engineer
15 93 (2.28%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 89 (2.18%) Technical Architect
17 80 (1.96%) Project Manager
17 80 (1.96%) Security Architect
18 78 (1.91%) Business Analyst
19 76 (1.86%) Network Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 176 (4.32%) Kafka
2 169 (4.15%) React
3 140 (3.43%) Spring
4 137 (3.36%) Spring Boot
5 115 (2.82%) REST
6 101 (2.48%) HTML
7 90 (2.21%) Node.js
8 81 (1.99%) .NET
9 80 (1.96%) CSS
10 77 (1.89%) SOAP
11 70 (1.72%) RESTful
11 70 (1.72%) Web Services
12 62 (1.52%) Swagger
13 59 (1.45%) OpenAPI
14 48 (1.18%) AngularJS
15 46 (1.13%) XML
16 45 (1.10%) PySpark
17 41 (1.01%) Oracle Fusion
18 38 (0.93%) JSON
19 33 (0.81%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 125 (3.07%) Onboarding
2 116 (2.85%) Data Centre
3 107 (2.63%) Management Information System
4 97 (2.38%) PKI
5 66 (1.62%) Driving Licence
6 54 (1.32%) Product Ownership
7 46 (1.13%) Public Cloud
8 45 (1.10%) Hybrid Cloud
9 43 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
10 36 (0.88%) CMDB
10 36 (0.88%) Security Operations Centre
11 35 (0.86%) Security Posture
12 33 (0.81%) Cloud Native
12 33 (0.81%) Enterprise Software
12 33 (0.81%) Legacy Systems
13 31 (0.76%) Linux Command Line
14 25 (0.61%) Cyber Threat
15 24 (0.59%) Data Structures
15 24 (0.59%) Replication
15 24 (0.59%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 430 (10.55%) Windows
2 370 (9.08%) Linux
3 139 (3.41%) Windows Server
4 104 (2.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 95 (2.33%) Windows 10
6 60 (1.47%) Unix
7 36 (0.88%) Windows Server 2019
8 32 (0.79%) Android
8 32 (0.79%) CentOS
9 28 (0.69%) Windows Server 2016
10 26 (0.64%) Windows Server 2012
11 24 (0.59%) Mac OS
12 20 (0.49%) Apple iOS
13 19 (0.47%) AIX
13 19 (0.47%) VMS
14 15 (0.37%) Ubuntu
14 15 (0.37%) Windows 7
15 10 (0.25%) Solaris
16 9 (0.22%) Oracle Linux
17 6 (0.15%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 783 (19.21%) Agile
2 643 (15.78%) Problem-Solving
3 584 (14.33%) DevOps
4 468 (11.48%) CI/CD
5 343 (8.42%) Migration
6 307 (7.53%) Microservices
7 295 (7.24%) ITIL
8 281 (6.89%) Stakeholder Management
9 267 (6.55%) Containerisation
10 259 (6.35%) Software Engineering
11 225 (5.52%) Service Management
12 217 (5.32%) Test Automation
13 199 (4.88%) Infrastructure as Code
14 196 (4.81%) Project Management
15 193 (4.74%) Analytics
15 193 (4.74%) Business Intelligence
16 178 (4.37%) Cybersecurity
17 167 (4.10%) Roadmaps
18 154 (3.78%) Technical Leadership
19 150 (3.68%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 510 (12.51%) Python
2 467 (11.46%) SQL
3 343 (8.42%) Java
4 253 (6.21%) JavaScript
5 218 (5.35%) PowerShell
6 161 (3.95%) Bash
7 113 (2.77%) TypeScript
8 110 (2.70%) C#
9 84 (2.06%) PL/SQL
10 48 (1.18%) C++
11 41 (1.01%) ABAP
12 39 (0.96%) Go
13 30 (0.74%) 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 15 (0.37%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 4,076 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 280 (6.87%) DV Cleared
3 220 (5.40%) Degree
4 137 (3.36%) Cisco Certification
5 113 (2.77%) BPSS Clearance
6 89 (2.18%) AWS Certification
7 87 (2.13%) CCNP
8 67 (1.64%) Microsoft Certification
9 64 (1.57%) CISSP
10 60 (1.47%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 56 (1.37%) CCNA
12 55 (1.35%) Computer Science Degree
13 47 (1.15%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 47 (1.15%) ITIL Certification
14 34 (0.83%) CISM
15 31 (0.76%) Dell Certification
16 27 (0.66%) Azure Certification
17 26 (0.64%) MCSE
18 24 (0.59%) MCSA
19 22 (0.54%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 147 (3.61%) QA
2 98 (2.40%) SLA
3 80 (1.96%) NIST
4 70 (1.72%) Data Quality
5 61 (1.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 59 (1.45%) NCSC
7 57 (1.40%) GDPR
8 42 (1.03%) Accessibility
9 34 (0.83%) PMO
10 28 (0.69%) Def Stans
11 21 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials
12 20 (0.49%) GRC
13 19 (0.47%) HIPAA
14 13 (0.32%) 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
3 180 (4.42%) VMware Infrastructure
4 57 (1.40%) VMware NSX
5 43 (1.05%) Hyper-V
6 37 (0.91%) Virtual Machines
7 36 (0.88%) VMware ESXi
8 26 (0.64%) vSphere
9 23 (0.56%) Firmware
10 16 (0.39%) Virtual Desktop
11 14 (0.34%) BitLocker
11 14 (0.34%) NFS
12 8 (0.20%) Microsoft App-V
12 8 (0.20%) Samba
12 8 (0.20%) vCloud
13 6 (0.15%) Apache ZooKeeper
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
1 375 (9.20%) Kubernetes
2 351 (8.61%) Terraform
3 214 (5.25%) Ansible
4 82 (2.01%) Microsoft Intune
5 74 (1.82%) 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 14 (0.34%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 530 (13.00%) Microsoft
2 296 (7.26%) Cisco
3 261 (6.40%) VMware
4 255 (6.26%) Oracle
5 229 (5.62%) SAP
6 181 (4.44%) ServiceNow
7 115 (2.82%) Palo Alto
8 94 (2.31%) Databricks
8 94 (2.31%) Google
8 94 (2.31%) HP
9 90 (2.21%) Dell
10 77 (1.89%) Splunk
11 72 (1.77%) Red Hat
12 71 (1.74%) Atlassian
13 64 (1.57%) Juniper
14 55 (1.35%) F5
15 49 (1.20%) SolarWinds
16 44 (1.08%) Apple
17 40 (0.98%) Citrix
18 36 (0.88%) Fortinet