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

6 months to
2 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 8 8 9
Rank change year-on-year 0 +1 +7
Contract jobs citing SC Cleared 4,227 5,108 6,942
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 13.63% 11.77% 12.44%
As % of the Qualifications category 44.12% 39.47% 46.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,733 3,487 4,775
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 £630 £650
90th Percentile £688 £706 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £524 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.24% -4.55% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 336 412 383
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% +6.96%
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 9,581 12,940 14,982
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 30.89% 29.82% 26.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,919 7,996 9,928
10th Percentile £275 £313 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £620 £638 £650
90th Percentile £703 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £528 £525
% change year-on-year -5.30% +0.57% +5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 641 1,112 731
10th Percentile £17.87 £14.00 £15.25
25th Percentile £20.00 £19.81 £22.50
Median hourly rate £28.00 £40.94 £55.85
Median % change year-on-year -31.61% -26.70% +25.51%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £68.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.24 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.28 £43.00 £54.11
% change year-on-year -38.88% -20.54% +50.31%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 3,611 £525 - 4,983
UK excluding London -4 2,092 £524 -0.24% 3,821
London +2 1,420 £525 - 1,471
Work from Home 0 1,387 £525 -2.33% 2,906
South West 0 584 £550 - 738
South East -2 501 £513 -10.87% 1,022
North of England +4 480 £500 - 717
North West 0 317 £525 +4.17% 446
Midlands -4 283 £500 - 512
West Midlands -4 204 £500 +1.73% 334
East of England +4 166 £350 +1.45% 458
Yorkshire +8 112 £492 -1.60% 213
Scotland -31 80 £431 +12.01% 252
East Midlands -4 76 £469 -9.86% 175
North East +3 57 £480 +15.66% 62
Wales -5 25 £500 - 112
Northern Ireland -5 22 £500 +6.67% 50

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
1 167 (3.95%) Confluence
2 95 (2.25%) SharePoint
3 55 (1.30%) Apache
4 53 (1.25%) Microsoft Exchange
5 32 (0.76%) Apache Airflow
6 27 (0.64%) Apache Spark
6 27 (0.64%) nginx
7 19 (0.45%) CMS
8 18 (0.43%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 14 (0.33%) IIS
10 13 (0.31%) Camunda
10 13 (0.31%) Skype for Business
11 12 (0.28%) WebLogic
12 11 (0.26%) WebSphere
13 10 (0.24%) 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 (2.39%) Microsoft Office
2 84 (1.99%) Microsoft Excel
3 41 (0.97%) Microsoft Project
4 25 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 22 (0.52%) Spreadsheet
6 14 (0.33%) Oracle Smart View
7 10 (0.24%) Simulink
8 9 (0.21%) Siemens NX
8 9 (0.21%) Sketch
9 7 (0.17%) Trello
9 7 (0.17%) Windchill
10 5 (0.12%) InfoPath
11 4 (0.095%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.095%) InVision
11 4 (0.095%) MS Visio
12 3 (0.071%) Adobe Illustrator
12 3 (0.071%) Photoshop
13 2 (0.047%) Mozilla Thunderbird
13 2 (0.047%) ProjectWise
14 1 (0.024%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 41 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
2 29 (0.69%) Teamcenter
3 28 (0.66%) Primavera
4 16 (0.38%) Dynamics CRM
5 14 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
6 13 (0.31%) SAP PS
7 11 (0.26%) SAP HCM
8 10 (0.24%) Oracle ERP
8 10 (0.24%) Oracle General Ledger
8 10 (0.24%) Oracle Payables
8 10 (0.24%) 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 (0.17%) SAP CRM
11 7 (0.17%) SAP Payroll
11 7 (0.17%) SAP PP
Cloud Services
1 865 (20.46%) AWS
2 608 (14.38%) Azure
3 166 (3.93%) Power Platform
4 162 (3.83%) Microsoft 365
5 155 (3.67%) Serverless
6 143 (3.38%) Amazon S3
7 140 (3.31%) GitHub
8 132 (3.12%) GCP
9 120 (2.84%) SaaS
10 101 (2.39%) AWS Lambda
11 100 (2.37%) Azure DevOps
12 95 (2.25%) Amazon EC2
13 91 (2.15%) AWS CloudFormation
14 82 (1.94%) Entra ID
15 73 (1.73%) Amazon EKS
16 62 (1.47%) GitHub Actions
17 59 (1.40%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 58 (1.37%) Amazon SQS
19 57 (1.35%) OCI
20 53 (1.25%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 269 (6.36%) Firewall
2 157 (3.71%) DNS
3 122 (2.89%) VPN
4 112 (2.65%) Network Security
5 95 (2.25%) WAN
6 63 (1.49%) BGP
7 58 (1.37%) LAN
8 53 (1.25%) TCP/IP
9 50 (1.18%) Wi-Fi
10 49 (1.16%) DHCP
11 48 (1.14%) IPsec
12 45 (1.06%) Cisco Firepower
12 45 (1.06%) OSPF
13 44 (1.04%) Cisco ASA
14 43 (1.02%) Cisco ISE
15 41 (0.97%) Cisco Nexus
15 41 (0.97%) Wireless
16 34 (0.80%) HTTP
17 31 (0.73%) MPLS
17 31 (0.73%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 168 (3.97%) PostgreSQL
2 120 (2.84%) Power BI
3 100 (2.37%) Amazon RDS
4 91 (2.15%) Relational Database
5 72 (1.70%) MongoDB
6 70 (1.66%) Data Warehouse
7 68 (1.61%) SQL Server
8 52 (1.23%) MySQL
9 51 (1.21%) Oracle Database
10 44 (1.04%) Oracle Reports
11 39 (0.92%) NoSQL
11 39 (0.92%) Tableau
12 36 (0.85%) Big Data
13 32 (0.76%) Data Lake
14 31 (0.73%) Amazon Aurora
15 30 (0.71%) Redis
16 28 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
17 25 (0.59%) Amazon Athena
17 25 (0.59%) Metadata
18 24 (0.57%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 278 (6.58%) JIRA
2 240 (5.68%) Jenkins
3 207 (4.90%) Git
4 168 (3.97%) GitLab
5 72 (1.70%) JUnit
5 72 (1.70%) SonarQube
6 59 (1.40%) Selenium
7 47 (1.11%) Mockito
8 45 (1.06%) Gradle
9 44 (1.04%) Liquibase
10 42 (0.99%) Maven
11 39 (0.92%) Bitbucket
12 37 (0.88%) Cypress.io
13 31 (0.73%) Cucumber
14 27 (0.64%) REST Assured
15 24 (0.57%) JMeter
16 22 (0.52%) MSI
17 21 (0.50%) CircleCI
17 21 (0.50%) Postman
18 19 (0.45%) ScriptRunner
General
1 1,070 (25.31%) Social Skills
2 991 (23.44%) Public Sector
3 383 (9.06%) Analytical Skills
4 356 (8.42%) Finance
5 135 (3.19%) Military
6 119 (2.82%) Telecoms
7 108 (2.56%) Manufacturing
8 87 (2.06%) Electronics
9 74 (1.75%) Legal
10 73 (1.73%) Marketing
11 62 (1.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 60 (1.42%) Documentation Skills
13 59 (1.40%) Law
14 56 (1.32%) Presentation Skills
15 53 (1.25%) Aerospace
16 46 (1.09%) Organisational Skills
17 40 (0.95%) Influencing Skills
18 32 (0.76%) Police
19 31 (0.73%) Banking
20 17 (0.40%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 578 (13.67%) Architect
2 461 (10.91%) Developer
3 313 (7.40%) Senior
4 289 (6.84%) Analyst
5 286 (6.77%) Consultant
6 276 (6.53%) Lead
7 175 (4.14%) DevOps Engineer
8 162 (3.83%) Data Engineer
8 162 (3.83%) Network Engineer
9 112 (2.65%) Support Engineer
10 107 (2.53%) Java Developer
11 105 (2.48%) Solutions Architect
12 101 (2.39%) Security Architect
13 93 (2.20%) Project Manager
14 89 (2.11%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 88 (2.08%) AWS Engineer
16 80 (1.89%) IT Engineer
17 77 (1.82%) Technical Architect
18 75 (1.77%) Software Engineer
19 72 (1.70%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 166 (3.93%) Kafka
2 159 (3.76%) React
3 139 (3.29%) Spring
4 132 (3.12%) Spring Boot
5 119 (2.82%) REST
6 107 (2.53%) Node.js
7 93 (2.20%) HTML
8 81 (1.92%) SOAP
9 76 (1.80%) Web Services
10 68 (1.61%) CSS
11 61 (1.44%) XML
12 56 (1.32%) Swagger
13 55 (1.30%) RESTful
14 53 (1.25%) .NET
14 53 (1.25%) AngularJS
14 53 (1.25%) OpenAPI
15 50 (1.18%) Oracle Fusion
16 39 (0.92%) PySpark
17 38 (0.90%) JSON
18 33 (0.78%) Hibernate
Miscellaneous
1 154 (3.64%) Data Centre
2 137 (3.24%) Onboarding
3 102 (2.41%) Management Information System
4 81 (1.92%) Driving Licence
5 80 (1.89%) PKI
6 57 (1.35%) Product Ownership
7 48 (1.14%) Security Operations Centre
8 44 (1.04%) Hybrid Cloud
8 44 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
9 40 (0.95%) CMDB
10 36 (0.85%) Cloud Native
10 36 (0.85%) Enterprise Software
11 35 (0.83%) Security Posture
12 33 (0.78%) CSOC
13 29 (0.69%) Linux Command Line
13 29 (0.69%) Private Cloud
14 28 (0.66%) Legacy Systems
14 28 (0.66%) Public Cloud
15 27 (0.64%) SCADA
16 26 (0.62%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 453 (10.72%) Windows
2 311 (7.36%) Linux
3 139 (3.29%) Windows Server
4 114 (2.70%) Windows 10
5 56 (1.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 33 (0.78%) Android
7 29 (0.69%) Unix
8 28 (0.66%) Windows Server 2019
9 27 (0.64%) Mac OS
9 27 (0.64%) Windows Server 2012
10 23 (0.54%) VMS
10 23 (0.54%) Windows Server 2016
11 22 (0.52%) Windows 7
12 14 (0.33%) Apple iOS
13 11 (0.26%) Ubuntu
14 10 (0.24%) Amazon Linux
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
1 795 (18.81%) Agile
2 610 (14.43%) Problem-Solving
3 548 (12.96%) DevOps
4 451 (10.67%) CI/CD
5 438 (10.36%) Migration
6 303 (7.17%) Stakeholder Management
7 287 (6.79%) Microservices
8 268 (6.34%) ITIL
9 260 (6.15%) Containerisation
10 242 (5.73%) Service Management
11 232 (5.49%) Cybersecurity
12 223 (5.28%) Infrastructure as Code
13 209 (4.94%) Software Engineering
14 200 (4.73%) Business Intelligence
15 198 (4.68%) Analytics
16 188 (4.45%) Test Automation
17 181 (4.28%) Project Management
18 177 (4.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 168 (3.97%) Roadmaps
20 167 (3.95%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 514 (12.16%) Python
2 398 (9.42%) SQL
3 368 (8.71%) Java
4 236 (5.58%) JavaScript
5 229 (5.42%) PowerShell
6 161 (3.81%) Bash
7 124 (2.93%) TypeScript
8 104 (2.46%) C#
9 72 (1.70%) PL/SQL
10 49 (1.16%) C++
11 39 (0.92%) Perl
12 30 (0.71%) Groovy
13 27 (0.64%) ABAP
14 26 (0.62%) Go
15 19 (0.45%) Kotlin
15 19 (0.45%) Scala
16 18 (0.43%) R
17 17 (0.40%) C
17 17 (0.40%) PHP
17 17 (0.40%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 4,227 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 271 (6.41%) DV Cleared
3 221 (5.23%) Degree
4 133 (3.15%) BPSS Clearance
5 129 (3.05%) Cisco Certification
6 88 (2.08%) CCNP
7 82 (1.94%) AWS Certification
8 76 (1.80%) CISSP
9 52 (1.23%) Microsoft Certification
9 52 (1.23%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 51 (1.21%) Computer Science Degree
11 46 (1.09%) CCNA
12 44 (1.04%) Azure Certification
13 41 (0.97%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 40 (0.95%) CISM
15 32 (0.76%) ITIL Certification
16 23 (0.54%) Oracle Certification
17 21 (0.50%) Dell Certification
18 19 (0.45%) PMP
19 18 (0.43%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 161 (3.81%) QA
2 106 (2.51%) SLA
3 85 (2.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 71 (1.68%) NIST
5 69 (1.63%) Data Quality
6 58 (1.37%) GDPR
7 57 (1.35%) NCSC
8 45 (1.06%) Accessibility
9 36 (0.85%) PMO
10 23 (0.54%) JSP 440
11 20 (0.47%) Def Stans
11 20 (0.47%) HIPAA
12 18 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
13 15 (0.35%) GRC
13 15 (0.35%) WCAG
14 13 (0.31%) RMADS
14 13 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 12 (0.28%) NIST 800
16 10 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
17 9 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 336 (7.95%) Docker
2 207 (4.90%) Active Directory
3 160 (3.79%) VMware Infrastructure
4 39 (0.92%) Hyper-V
5 36 (0.85%) VMware ESXi
6 33 (0.78%) VMware NSX
7 32 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
8 25 (0.59%) Firmware
8 25 (0.59%) vSphere
9 10 (0.24%) BitLocker
10 8 (0.19%) Postfix
10 8 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
11 7 (0.17%) Microsoft App-V
12 6 (0.14%) Apache ZooKeeper
13 5 (0.12%) 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 (0.095%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 366 (8.66%) Terraform
2 359 (8.49%) Kubernetes
3 213 (5.04%) Ansible
4 79 (1.87%) Grafana
5 77 (1.82%) Prometheus
6 64 (1.51%) SCCM
7 62 (1.47%) Microsoft Intune
8 45 (1.06%) Puppet
9 44 (1.04%) Single Sign-On
10 41 (0.97%) vCenter Server
11 39 (0.92%) Progress Chef
12 24 (0.57%) FortiGate
13 23 (0.54%) Jamf Pro
14 22 (0.52%) Packer
14 22 (0.52%) WSUS
15 21 (0.50%) Data Guard
16 18 (0.43%) Kibana
17 16 (0.38%) Podman
18 14 (0.33%) Consul
19 13 (0.31%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 522 (12.35%) Microsoft
2 301 (7.12%) Cisco
3 250 (5.91%) SAP
4 231 (5.46%) Oracle
5 229 (5.42%) VMware
6 188 (4.45%) ServiceNow
7 101 (2.39%) Google
8 95 (2.25%) Dell
9 89 (2.11%) Palo Alto
10 88 (2.08%) HP
11 85 (2.01%) Splunk
12 73 (1.73%) Atlassian
12 73 (1.73%) IBM
13 72 (1.70%) Databricks
14 64 (1.51%) Juniper
15 62 (1.47%) Red Hat
16 55 (1.30%) SolarWinds
17 49 (1.16%) F5
18 43 (1.02%) Fortinet
19 38 (0.90%) Salesforce