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 3 July 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 9 8 9
Rank change year-on-year -1 +1 +7
Contract jobs citing SC Cleared 4,268 5,131 6,943
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 13.62% 11.80% 12.44%
As % of the Qualifications category 44.10% 39.58% 46.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,759 3,508 4,776
10th Percentile £325 £325 £381
25th Percentile £447 £425 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £613 £628 £650
90th Percentile £688 £706 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 339 412 383
10th Percentile £18.51 £13.88 £19.06
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £37.42
Median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £57.76
Median % change year-on-year -49.70% -13.43% +6.72%
75th Percentile £60.00 £70.00 £69.38
90th Percentile £73.75 £77.38 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £55.00 £56.89
% change year-on-year -54.27% -3.31% +5.34%

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 9,677 12,964 14,983
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 30.89% 29.82% 26.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,985 8,024 9,929
10th Percentile £278 £313 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.48% -4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £706 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £530 £525
% change year-on-year -5.66% +0.95% +5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 647 1,107 731
10th Percentile £17.87 £14.00 £15.25
25th Percentile £20.19 £20.00 £22.50
Median hourly rate £27.94 £40.94 £55.85
Median % change year-on-year -31.75% -26.70% +25.51%
75th Percentile £59.95 £65.00 £68.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.25 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.32 £43.00 £54.11
% change year-on-year -41.12% -20.54% +53.73%

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 3 July 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 3 July 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 3 July 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 0 3,648 £525 - 2,033
UK excluding London -4 2,119 £525 - 1,633
London +2 1,430 £525 - 529
Work from Home +1 1,401 £525 -2.05% 998
South West 0 591 £550 - 345
South East -2 512 £513 -10.87% 483
North of England +4 486 £500 - 271
North West +1 318 £525 +4.17% 165
Midlands -3 285 £500 - 208
West Midlands -4 206 £500 +1.73% 137
East of England +4 166 £350 +2.19% 197
Yorkshire +9 112 £492 -1.60% 77
Scotland -34 81 £438 +2.94% 104
East Midlands -4 76 £469 -9.86% 68
North East +5 62 £500 +20.48% 33
Wales -7 25 £500 -2.44% 48
Northern Ireland -6 22 £500 +2.56% 20

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
1 169 (3.96%) Confluence
2 95 (2.23%) SharePoint
3 55 (1.29%) Apache
4 53 (1.24%) Microsoft Exchange
5 32 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
6 27 (0.63%) Apache Spark
6 27 (0.63%) nginx
7 19 (0.45%) CMS
8 18 (0.42%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 14 (0.33%) IIS
10 13 (0.30%) Camunda
10 13 (0.30%) Skype for Business
11 12 (0.28%) WebLogic
12 11 (0.26%) WebSphere
13 10 (0.23%) Anypoint
14 9 (0.21%) WordPress
15 8 (0.19%) Alfresco
15 8 (0.19%) MTS
15 8 (0.19%) SAS
15 8 (0.19%) Tomcat
Applications
1 101 (2.37%) Microsoft Office
2 85 (1.99%) Microsoft Excel
3 41 (0.96%) Microsoft Project
4 25 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 22 (0.52%) Spreadsheet
6 14 (0.33%) Oracle Smart View
7 10 (0.23%) Simulink
8 9 (0.21%) Siemens NX
8 9 (0.21%) Sketch
9 7 (0.16%) Trello
9 7 (0.16%) Windchill
10 5 (0.12%) InfoPath
11 4 (0.094%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.094%) InVision
11 4 (0.094%) MS Visio
12 3 (0.070%) Adobe Illustrator
12 3 (0.070%) Photoshop
13 2 (0.047%) Mozilla Thunderbird
13 2 (0.047%) ProjectWise
14 1 (0.023%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 42 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
2 29 (0.68%) Teamcenter
3 28 (0.66%) Primavera
4 16 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
5 14 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
6 13 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
6 13 (0.30%) SAP PS
7 11 (0.26%) SAP HCM
8 10 (0.23%) Oracle General Ledger
8 10 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
8 10 (0.23%) Oracle Receivables
9 9 (0.21%) Oracle Assets
9 9 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
9 9 (0.21%) SAP HR
10 8 (0.19%) Maximo
10 8 (0.19%) Oracle Cash Management
10 8 (0.19%) SAP GTS
11 7 (0.16%) SAP CRM
11 7 (0.16%) SAP Payroll
11 7 (0.16%) SAP PP
Cloud Services
1 873 (20.45%) AWS
2 610 (14.29%) Azure
3 166 (3.89%) Power Platform
4 162 (3.80%) Microsoft 365
5 155 (3.63%) Serverless
6 145 (3.40%) Amazon S3
7 141 (3.30%) GitHub
8 132 (3.09%) GCP
9 120 (2.81%) SaaS
10 101 (2.37%) AWS Lambda
11 100 (2.34%) Azure DevOps
12 97 (2.27%) Amazon EC2
13 92 (2.16%) AWS CloudFormation
14 82 (1.92%) Entra ID
15 74 (1.73%) Amazon EKS
16 63 (1.48%) GitHub Actions
17 61 (1.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 60 (1.41%) OCI
19 58 (1.36%) Amazon SQS
20 53 (1.24%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 272 (6.37%) Firewall
2 158 (3.70%) DNS
3 121 (2.84%) VPN
4 111 (2.60%) Network Security
5 95 (2.23%) WAN
6 62 (1.45%) BGP
7 58 (1.36%) LAN
8 53 (1.24%) TCP/IP
9 50 (1.17%) Wi-Fi
10 49 (1.15%) DHCP
11 47 (1.10%) IPsec
12 44 (1.03%) Cisco Firepower
12 44 (1.03%) OSPF
13 43 (1.01%) Cisco ASA
13 43 (1.01%) Cisco ISE
14 41 (0.96%) Cisco Nexus
14 41 (0.96%) Wireless
15 35 (0.82%) HTTP
15 35 (0.82%) SAN
16 31 (0.73%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 173 (4.05%) PostgreSQL
2 120 (2.81%) Power BI
3 101 (2.37%) Amazon RDS
4 92 (2.16%) Relational Database
5 76 (1.78%) MongoDB
6 70 (1.64%) Data Warehouse
7 68 (1.59%) SQL Server
8 53 (1.24%) MySQL
9 51 (1.19%) Oracle Database
10 44 (1.03%) Oracle Reports
11 39 (0.91%) NoSQL
11 39 (0.91%) Tableau
12 36 (0.84%) Big Data
13 32 (0.75%) Data Lake
14 31 (0.73%) Amazon Aurora
15 30 (0.70%) Redis
16 28 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
17 25 (0.59%) Amazon Athena
17 25 (0.59%) Metadata
18 24 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 280 (6.56%) JIRA
2 243 (5.69%) Jenkins
3 210 (4.92%) Git
4 168 (3.94%) GitLab
5 72 (1.69%) JUnit
5 72 (1.69%) SonarQube
6 59 (1.38%) Selenium
7 47 (1.10%) Mockito
8 45 (1.05%) Gradle
9 44 (1.03%) Liquibase
10 42 (0.98%) Maven
11 39 (0.91%) Bitbucket
12 37 (0.87%) Cypress.io
13 31 (0.73%) Cucumber
14 27 (0.63%) REST Assured
15 24 (0.56%) JMeter
16 22 (0.52%) MSI
17 21 (0.49%) CircleCI
17 21 (0.49%) Postman
18 19 (0.45%) ScriptRunner
General
1 1,077 (25.23%) Social Skills
2 1,003 (23.50%) Public Sector
3 384 (9.00%) Analytical Skills
4 361 (8.46%) Finance
5 135 (3.16%) Military
6 119 (2.79%) Telecoms
7 108 (2.53%) Manufacturing
8 87 (2.04%) Electronics
9 74 (1.73%) Legal
10 73 (1.71%) Marketing
11 62 (1.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 60 (1.41%) Documentation Skills
12 60 (1.41%) Law
13 56 (1.31%) Presentation Skills
14 54 (1.27%) Aerospace
15 47 (1.10%) Organisational Skills
16 41 (0.96%) Influencing Skills
17 33 (0.77%) Police
18 31 (0.73%) Banking
19 17 (0.40%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 589 (13.80%) Architect
2 462 (10.82%) Developer
3 314 (7.36%) Senior
4 290 (6.79%) Analyst
5 287 (6.72%) Consultant
6 278 (6.51%) Lead
7 178 (4.17%) DevOps Engineer
8 164 (3.84%) Data Engineer
9 162 (3.80%) Network Engineer
10 112 (2.62%) Support Engineer
11 107 (2.51%) Java Developer
12 106 (2.48%) Security Architect
12 106 (2.48%) Solutions Architect
13 95 (2.23%) Project Manager
14 90 (2.11%) AWS Engineer
15 89 (2.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 81 (1.90%) IT Engineer
17 77 (1.80%) Technical Architect
18 75 (1.76%) Software Engineer
19 73 (1.71%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 166 (3.89%) Kafka
2 159 (3.73%) React
3 139 (3.26%) Spring
4 132 (3.09%) Spring Boot
5 119 (2.79%) REST
6 108 (2.53%) Node.js
7 93 (2.18%) HTML
8 81 (1.90%) SOAP
9 76 (1.78%) Web Services
10 68 (1.59%) CSS
11 61 (1.43%) XML
12 56 (1.31%) RESTful
12 56 (1.31%) Swagger
13 53 (1.24%) .NET
13 53 (1.24%) AngularJS
13 53 (1.24%) OpenAPI
14 50 (1.17%) Oracle Fusion
15 39 (0.91%) PySpark
16 38 (0.89%) JSON
17 33 (0.77%) Hibernate
Miscellaneous
1 155 (3.63%) Data Centre
2 137 (3.21%) Onboarding
3 102 (2.39%) Management Information System
4 82 (1.92%) Driving Licence
5 80 (1.87%) PKI
6 59 (1.38%) Product Ownership
7 48 (1.12%) Security Operations Centre
8 44 (1.03%) CMDB
8 44 (1.03%) Hybrid Cloud
8 44 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
9 36 (0.84%) Cloud Native
9 36 (0.84%) Enterprise Software
10 35 (0.82%) Security Posture
11 33 (0.77%) CSOC
12 29 (0.68%) Linux Command Line
12 29 (0.68%) Private Cloud
13 28 (0.66%) Legacy Systems
13 28 (0.66%) Public Cloud
14 27 (0.63%) SCADA
15 26 (0.61%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 459 (10.75%) Windows
2 319 (7.47%) Linux
3 139 (3.26%) Windows Server
4 114 (2.67%) Windows 10
5 61 (1.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 33 (0.77%) Android
7 32 (0.75%) Windows Server 2019
8 31 (0.73%) Windows Server 2012
9 29 (0.68%) Unix
10 27 (0.63%) Mac OS
10 27 (0.63%) Windows Server 2016
11 24 (0.56%) VMS
12 22 (0.52%) Windows 7
13 14 (0.33%) Apple iOS
14 11 (0.26%) Amazon Linux
14 11 (0.26%) Ubuntu
15 9 (0.21%) Oracle Linux
15 9 (0.21%) Windows Server 2003
16 8 (0.19%) AIX
16 8 (0.19%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 799 (18.72%) Agile
2 614 (14.39%) Problem-Solving
3 551 (12.91%) DevOps
4 454 (10.64%) CI/CD
5 443 (10.38%) Migration
6 309 (7.24%) Stakeholder Management
7 291 (6.82%) Microservices
8 273 (6.40%) ITIL
9 261 (6.12%) Containerisation
10 243 (5.69%) Service Management
11 233 (5.46%) Cybersecurity
12 225 (5.27%) Infrastructure as Code
13 210 (4.92%) Software Engineering
14 200 (4.69%) Business Intelligence
15 198 (4.64%) Analytics
16 188 (4.40%) Test Automation
17 182 (4.26%) Project Management
18 179 (4.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 170 (3.98%) Roadmaps
20 168 (3.94%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 518 (12.14%) Python
2 398 (9.33%) SQL
3 370 (8.67%) Java
4 237 (5.55%) JavaScript
5 230 (5.39%) PowerShell
6 163 (3.82%) Bash
7 124 (2.91%) TypeScript
8 104 (2.44%) C#
9 72 (1.69%) PL/SQL
10 49 (1.15%) C++
11 40 (0.94%) Perl
12 31 (0.73%) Groovy
13 27 (0.63%) ABAP
14 26 (0.61%) Go
15 22 (0.52%) Shell Script
16 19 (0.45%) Kotlin
16 19 (0.45%) Scala
17 18 (0.42%) R
18 17 (0.40%) C
18 17 (0.40%) PHP
Qualifications
1 4,268 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 272 (6.37%) DV Cleared
3 222 (5.20%) Degree
4 137 (3.21%) BPSS Clearance
5 128 (3.00%) Cisco Certification
6 88 (2.06%) CCNP
7 82 (1.92%) AWS Certification
8 78 (1.83%) CISSP
9 52 (1.22%) Microsoft Certification
9 52 (1.22%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 51 (1.19%) Computer Science Degree
11 45 (1.05%) CCNA
12 44 (1.03%) Azure Certification
13 41 (0.96%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 40 (0.94%) CISM
15 31 (0.73%) ITIL Certification
16 23 (0.54%) Oracle Certification
17 21 (0.49%) Dell Certification
18 19 (0.45%) PMP
19 18 (0.42%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 162 (3.80%) QA
2 106 (2.48%) SLA
3 87 (2.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 72 (1.69%) NIST
5 69 (1.62%) Data Quality
6 58 (1.36%) GDPR
7 57 (1.34%) NCSC
8 45 (1.05%) Accessibility
9 36 (0.84%) PMO
10 23 (0.54%) JSP 440
11 20 (0.47%) Def Stans
11 20 (0.47%) HIPAA
12 18 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials
13 15 (0.35%) GRC
13 15 (0.35%) WCAG
14 14 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 13 (0.30%) RMADS
16 12 (0.28%) NIST 800
17 10 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
18 9 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 338 (7.92%) Docker
2 208 (4.87%) Active Directory
3 160 (3.75%) VMware Infrastructure
4 39 (0.91%) Hyper-V
5 36 (0.84%) VMware ESXi
6 33 (0.77%) VMware NSX
7 32 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
8 25 (0.59%) Firmware
8 25 (0.59%) vSphere
9 10 (0.23%) BitLocker
10 8 (0.19%) Postfix
10 8 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
11 7 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
12 6 (0.14%) Apache ZooKeeper
12 6 (0.14%) DFS Replication
13 5 (0.12%) NFS
13 5 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 5 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.12%) VMware Workstation
14 4 (0.094%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 370 (8.67%) Terraform
2 361 (8.46%) Kubernetes
3 215 (5.04%) Ansible
4 80 (1.87%) Grafana
5 78 (1.83%) Prometheus
6 64 (1.50%) SCCM
7 62 (1.45%) Microsoft Intune
8 45 (1.05%) Puppet
9 44 (1.03%) Single Sign-On
10 41 (0.96%) vCenter Server
11 40 (0.94%) Progress Chef
12 24 (0.56%) FortiGate
13 23 (0.54%) Jamf Pro
14 22 (0.52%) Packer
14 22 (0.52%) WSUS
15 21 (0.49%) Data Guard
16 19 (0.45%) NetBackup
17 18 (0.42%) Kibana
18 16 (0.37%) Podman
19 14 (0.33%) Consul
Vendors
1 523 (12.25%) Microsoft
2 302 (7.08%) Cisco
3 251 (5.88%) SAP
4 234 (5.48%) Oracle
5 229 (5.37%) VMware
6 193 (4.52%) ServiceNow
7 101 (2.37%) Google
8 97 (2.27%) Dell
9 94 (2.20%) HP
10 88 (2.06%) Palo Alto
11 85 (1.99%) Splunk
12 74 (1.73%) Databricks
13 73 (1.71%) Atlassian
13 73 (1.71%) IBM
14 68 (1.59%) Red Hat
15 65 (1.52%) Juniper
16 55 (1.29%) SolarWinds
17 49 (1.15%) F5
18 43 (1.01%) Fortinet
19 38 (0.89%) Salesforce