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

6 months to
30 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 7 8 8
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 +9
Contract jobs citing SC Cleared 4,050 5,036 7,235
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 14.00% 11.74% 12.88%
As % of the Qualifications category 45.01% 39.22% 47.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,675 3,452 5,055
10th Percentile £325 £340 £381
25th Percentile £450 £438 £461
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £613 £638 £650
90th Percentile £688 £716 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £535 £550
% change year-on-year -1.87% -2.73% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 246 381 381
10th Percentile £18.51 £13.25 £19.06
25th Percentile £23.31 £21.37 £36.75
Median hourly rate £27.63 £48.56 £58.59
Median % change year-on-year -43.10% -17.12% +8.50%
75th Percentile £65.00 £70.00 £68.75
90th Percentile £75.25 £78.00 £80.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.27 £55.00 £57.33
% change year-on-year -46.78% -4.06% +6.17%

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 8,998 12,842 15,296
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.10% 29.93% 27.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,631 8,004 10,201
10th Percentile £275 £310 £338
25th Percentile £413 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £531 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.98% -3.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £618 £645 £650
90th Percentile £700 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £535 £525
% change year-on-year -6.54% +1.90% +5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 521 1,092 756
10th Percentile £17.80 £13.85 £14.91
25th Percentile £21.50 £18.00 £21.24
Median hourly rate £32.50 £40.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.75% -27.27% +24.36%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.13 £68.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.25 £79.47
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.03 £40.94 £52.50
% change year-on-year -21.78% -22.02% +50.00%

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 May 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 May 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 May 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 3,475 £525 - 5,549
UK excluding London -2 2,004 £525 -1.87% 5,665
London +1 1,356 £525 - 547
Work from Home 0 1,354 £525 -4.55% 3,179
South West 0 576 £550 +1.80% 861
North of England +4 485 £500 -2.91% 1,139
South East 0 478 £525 -8.70% 1,520
North West +1 337 £500 -2.91% 523
Midlands -2 256 £513 +1.39% 1,031
West Midlands -3 191 £525 +5.00% 559
East of England +6 147 £483 +40.03% 818
Yorkshire +13 98 £500 -0.10% 467
Scotland -40 69 £431 -7.26% 247
East Midlands -2 65 £475 -10.80% 400
North East +6 56 £480 +10.34% 149
Wales -10 21 £350 -41.67% 194
Northern Ireland -4 15 £475 -9.52% 73

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
1 144 (3.56%) Confluence
2 108 (2.67%) SharePoint
3 62 (1.53%) Microsoft Exchange
4 53 (1.31%) Apache
5 28 (0.69%) Apache Spark
6 24 (0.59%) Apache Airflow
7 19 (0.47%) nginx
7 19 (0.47%) Skype for Business
8 18 (0.44%) CMS
9 15 (0.37%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 14 (0.35%) IIS
11 12 (0.30%) Camunda
12 11 (0.27%) SAS
12 11 (0.27%) WebLogic
13 10 (0.25%) Tomcat
14 9 (0.22%) WordPress
15 8 (0.20%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.20%) MTS
15 8 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
15 8 (0.20%) WebSphere
Applications
1 111 (2.74%) Microsoft Office
2 72 (1.78%) Microsoft Excel
3 34 (0.84%) Microsoft Project
4 24 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 20 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
6 14 (0.35%) Oracle Smart View
7 9 (0.22%) Simulink
8 8 (0.20%) Siemens NX
8 8 (0.20%) Sketch
9 7 (0.17%) Trello
10 6 (0.15%) Windchill
11 5 (0.12%) InfoPath
12 4 (0.099%) Adobe XD
13 3 (0.074%) InVision
13 3 (0.074%) MS Visio
14 2 (0.049%) ProjectWise
15 1 (0.025%) CATIA
15 1 (0.025%) Photoshop
15 1 (0.025%) SPSS
15 1 (0.025%) Stata
Business Applications
1 52 (1.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 28 (0.69%) Teamcenter
3 25 (0.62%) Primavera
4 14 (0.35%) Dynamics CRM
5 13 (0.32%) Oracle EBS
6 11 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
6 11 (0.27%) SAP PP
6 11 (0.27%) SAP PS
7 10 (0.25%) Oracle General Ledger
7 10 (0.25%) Oracle Payables
7 10 (0.25%) Oracle Receivables
8 9 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
8 9 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
8 9 (0.22%) SAP HR
9 8 (0.20%) Oracle Cash Management
9 8 (0.20%) SAP CRM
9 8 (0.20%) SAP HCM
10 7 (0.17%) SAP Payroll
11 6 (0.15%) SAP CO
11 6 (0.15%) SAP GTS
Cloud Services
1 846 (20.89%) AWS
2 594 (14.67%) Azure
3 176 (4.35%) Power Platform
4 167 (4.12%) Microsoft 365
5 159 (3.93%) Serverless
6 143 (3.53%) Amazon S3
7 120 (2.96%) GCP
8 112 (2.77%) AWS Lambda
9 109 (2.69%) GitHub
10 103 (2.54%) Azure DevOps
11 100 (2.47%) SaaS
12 93 (2.30%) Entra ID
13 83 (2.05%) Amazon EC2
14 82 (2.02%) AWS CloudFormation
15 64 (1.58%) Amazon EKS
16 59 (1.46%) Amazon SQS
17 57 (1.41%) OCI
18 53 (1.31%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 53 (1.31%) GitHub Actions
19 52 (1.28%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 245 (6.05%) Firewall
2 174 (4.30%) DNS
3 125 (3.09%) VPN
4 111 (2.74%) Network Security
5 91 (2.25%) WAN
6 69 (1.70%) BGP
7 57 (1.41%) DHCP
7 57 (1.41%) OSPF
8 56 (1.38%) IPsec
9 54 (1.33%) TCP/IP
10 50 (1.23%) LAN
11 49 (1.21%) Wi-Fi
12 48 (1.19%) Cisco ASA
13 44 (1.09%) Cisco Firepower
14 36 (0.89%) Cisco ISE
15 35 (0.86%) Cisco Nexus
16 34 (0.84%) HSRP
17 32 (0.79%) EIGRP
17 32 (0.79%) HTTP
17 32 (0.79%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 165 (4.07%) PostgreSQL
2 127 (3.14%) Power BI
3 104 (2.57%) Relational Database
4 87 (2.15%) Amazon RDS
5 72 (1.78%) MongoDB
6 70 (1.73%) Data Warehouse
6 70 (1.73%) SQL Server
7 54 (1.33%) Oracle Database
8 48 (1.19%) MySQL
9 44 (1.09%) Oracle Reports
10 43 (1.06%) NoSQL
11 42 (1.04%) Tableau
12 35 (0.86%) Big Data
13 31 (0.77%) Amazon Redshift
13 31 (0.77%) Data Lake
14 29 (0.72%) Amazon Athena
14 29 (0.72%) Metadata
15 28 (0.69%) Redis
16 27 (0.67%) Amazon Aurora
16 27 (0.67%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 269 (6.64%) JIRA
2 226 (5.58%) Jenkins
3 211 (5.21%) Git
4 151 (3.73%) GitLab
5 73 (1.80%) JUnit
6 66 (1.63%) SonarQube
7 63 (1.56%) Selenium
8 45 (1.11%) Mockito
9 44 (1.09%) Gradle
10 41 (1.01%) Cypress.io
11 40 (0.99%) Maven
12 39 (0.96%) Bitbucket
13 38 (0.94%) Liquibase
14 34 (0.84%) Cucumber
15 31 (0.77%) REST Assured
16 27 (0.67%) MSI
17 26 (0.64%) JMeter
18 24 (0.59%) Postman
19 23 (0.57%) CircleCI
20 19 (0.47%) ScriptRunner
General
1 1,055 (26.05%) Social Skills
2 950 (23.46%) Public Sector
3 390 (9.63%) Analytical Skills
4 340 (8.40%) Finance
5 120 (2.96%) Military
6 109 (2.69%) Telecoms
7 101 (2.49%) Manufacturing
8 78 (1.93%) Legal
9 76 (1.88%) Electronics
10 71 (1.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 64 (1.58%) Marketing
12 58 (1.43%) Law
13 57 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
14 53 (1.31%) Aerospace
15 52 (1.28%) Organisational Skills
16 50 (1.23%) Documentation Skills
17 34 (0.84%) Influencing Skills
18 32 (0.79%) Police
19 24 (0.59%) Banking
20 18 (0.44%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 605 (14.94%) Architect
2 478 (11.80%) Developer
3 314 (7.75%) Senior
4 293 (7.23%) Analyst
5 247 (6.10%) Consultant
6 244 (6.02%) Lead
7 163 (4.02%) Data Engineer
8 162 (4.00%) Network Engineer
9 160 (3.95%) DevOps Engineer
10 116 (2.86%) Support Engineer
11 114 (2.81%) Solutions Architect
12 104 (2.57%) Java Developer
13 94 (2.32%) Security Architect
14 90 (2.22%) Technical Architect
15 85 (2.10%) AWS Engineer
15 85 (2.10%) Project Manager
16 82 (2.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 75 (1.85%) Software Engineer
18 74 (1.83%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
19 69 (1.70%) AWS Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 166 (4.10%) Kafka
2 159 (3.93%) React
3 134 (3.31%) Spring
4 129 (3.19%) Spring Boot
5 124 (3.06%) REST
6 108 (2.67%) Node.js
7 99 (2.44%) HTML
8 81 (2.00%) SOAP
9 75 (1.85%) CSS
9 75 (1.85%) Web Services
10 62 (1.53%) RESTful
11 56 (1.38%) .NET
12 52 (1.28%) Swagger
13 50 (1.23%) OpenAPI
14 49 (1.21%) XML
15 46 (1.14%) AngularJS
16 43 (1.06%) Oracle Fusion
17 39 (0.96%) PySpark
18 34 (0.84%) JSON
19 32 (0.79%) Hibernate
Miscellaneous
1 131 (3.23%) Onboarding
2 125 (3.09%) Data Centre
3 105 (2.59%) Management Information System
4 85 (2.10%) PKI
5 77 (1.90%) Driving Licence
6 55 (1.36%) Product Ownership
7 49 (1.21%) Security Operations Centre
8 44 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
9 40 (0.99%) Enterprise Software
10 35 (0.86%) Hybrid Cloud
10 35 (0.86%) Public Cloud
11 34 (0.84%) Cloud Native
11 34 (0.84%) CSOC
11 34 (0.84%) Legacy Systems
11 34 (0.84%) Security Posture
12 33 (0.81%) CMDB
12 33 (0.81%) Linux Command Line
13 31 (0.77%) Cyber Threat
14 30 (0.74%) SCADA
15 26 (0.64%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 451 (11.14%) Windows
2 313 (7.73%) Linux
3 141 (3.48%) Windows Server
4 111 (2.74%) Windows 10
5 60 (1.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 36 (0.89%) Android
7 35 (0.86%) Windows Server 2019
8 33 (0.81%) Unix
9 32 (0.79%) Windows Server 2012
10 27 (0.67%) Windows Server 2016
11 25 (0.62%) Mac OS
12 20 (0.49%) Apple iOS
12 20 (0.49%) VMS
13 14 (0.35%) Windows 7
14 12 (0.30%) CentOS
15 11 (0.27%) AIX
15 11 (0.27%) Ubuntu
16 9 (0.22%) Oracle Linux
17 8 (0.20%) Solaris
18 6 (0.15%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 779 (19.23%) Agile
2 619 (15.28%) Problem-Solving
3 538 (13.28%) DevOps
4 440 (10.86%) CI/CD
5 387 (9.56%) Migration
6 292 (7.21%) Microservices
7 285 (7.04%) Stakeholder Management
8 284 (7.01%) ITIL
9 256 (6.32%) Containerisation
10 244 (6.02%) Service Management
11 213 (5.26%) Cybersecurity
12 211 (5.21%) Software Engineering
13 201 (4.96%) Test Automation
14 195 (4.81%) Infrastructure as Code
15 191 (4.72%) Business Intelligence
16 188 (4.64%) Project Management
17 179 (4.42%) Analytics
18 165 (4.07%) Project Delivery
19 164 (4.05%) Roadmaps
20 160 (3.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 503 (12.42%) Python
2 415 (10.25%) SQL
3 351 (8.67%) Java
4 233 (5.75%) JavaScript
5 215 (5.31%) PowerShell
6 148 (3.65%) Bash
7 122 (3.01%) TypeScript
8 109 (2.69%) C#
9 73 (1.80%) PL/SQL
10 45 (1.11%) C++
11 40 (0.99%) Perl
12 36 (0.89%) ABAP
13 26 (0.64%) Go
14 25 (0.62%) Shell Script
15 23 (0.57%) Groovy
15 23 (0.57%) Kotlin
16 19 (0.47%) R
17 18 (0.44%) PHP
18 17 (0.42%) Scala
18 17 (0.42%) VB
Qualifications
1 4,050 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 267 (6.59%) DV Cleared
3 230 (5.68%) Degree
4 135 (3.33%) Cisco Certification
5 134 (3.31%) BPSS Clearance
6 90 (2.22%) CCNP
7 83 (2.05%) AWS Certification
8 75 (1.85%) CISSP
9 58 (1.43%) Microsoft Certification
9 58 (1.43%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
10 54 (1.33%) Computer Science Degree
11 52 (1.28%) CCNA
12 47 (1.16%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 46 (1.14%) ITIL Certification
14 39 (0.96%) CISM
15 37 (0.91%) Azure Certification
16 31 (0.77%) Dell Certification
17 21 (0.52%) MCSA
17 21 (0.52%) Oracle Certification
18 20 (0.49%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 159 (3.93%) QA
2 111 (2.74%) SLA
3 74 (1.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 69 (1.70%) NIST
5 65 (1.60%) Data Quality
6 60 (1.48%) GDPR
7 52 (1.28%) NCSC
8 46 (1.14%) Accessibility
9 33 (0.81%) PMO
10 26 (0.64%) Def Stans
11 22 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials
11 22 (0.54%) HIPAA
12 20 (0.49%) GRC
13 17 (0.42%) JSP 440
14 14 (0.35%) WCAG
15 13 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 12 (0.30%) PCI DSS
17 10 (0.25%) RMADS
18 8 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
18 8 (0.20%) IEC 61508
System Software
1 309 (7.63%) Docker
2 220 (5.43%) Active Directory
3 171 (4.22%) VMware Infrastructure
4 42 (1.04%) VMware ESXi
5 41 (1.01%) VMware NSX
6 38 (0.94%) Hyper-V
7 32 (0.79%) Virtual Machines
8 24 (0.59%) vSphere
9 20 (0.49%) Firmware
10 16 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
11 14 (0.35%) BitLocker
12 10 (0.25%) NFS
13 8 (0.20%) Apache ZooKeeper
13 8 (0.20%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.17%) Samba
15 6 (0.15%) VMware Workstation
16 5 (0.12%) Postfix
16 5 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
17 4 (0.099%) IAG
17 4 (0.099%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 349 (8.62%) Kubernetes
2 336 (8.30%) Terraform
3 218 (5.38%) Ansible
4 81 (2.00%) Microsoft Intune
5 74 (1.83%) Grafana
6 71 (1.75%) Prometheus
7 66 (1.63%) SCCM
8 48 (1.19%) Puppet
9 47 (1.16%) vCenter Server
10 44 (1.09%) Single Sign-On
11 42 (1.04%) Progress Chef
12 25 (0.62%) WSUS
13 24 (0.59%) FortiGate
14 20 (0.49%) Jamf Pro
15 18 (0.44%) Kibana
16 15 (0.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 15 (0.37%) Data Guard
16 15 (0.37%) Podman
17 14 (0.35%) Packer
18 12 (0.30%) PowerCLI
Vendors
1 539 (13.31%) Microsoft
2 294 (7.26%) Cisco
3 245 (6.05%) SAP
4 241 (5.95%) VMware
5 234 (5.78%) Oracle
6 176 (4.35%) ServiceNow
7 103 (2.54%) Palo Alto
8 94 (2.32%) Dell
8 94 (2.32%) HP
9 91 (2.25%) Google
10 84 (2.07%) Splunk
11 77 (1.90%) Atlassian
12 68 (1.68%) Databricks
13 66 (1.63%) Red Hat
14 62 (1.53%) Juniper
15 56 (1.38%) IBM
16 53 (1.31%) SolarWinds
17 51 (1.26%) F5
18 40 (0.99%) Fortinet
19 37 (0.91%) Apple