SC Cleared Contract Job Trends in the West Midlands

Security Check (SC) Clearance
England > West Midlands

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the West Midlands with a requirement for SC Cleared qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 25 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 8 7
Rank change year-on-year +5 -1 +6
Contract jobs citing SC Cleared 610 187 246
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 21.20% 14.15% 12.50%
As % of the Qualifications category 59.45% 44.21% 39.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 483 130 183
10th Percentile £350 £328 £288
25th Percentile £425 £450 £347
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £545 £450
Median % change year-on-year -11.01% +21.11% -16.67%
75th Percentile £551 £689 £556
90th Percentile £639 £710 £644
England median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.42% -2.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 5 9
10th Percentile £17.75 - £13.25
25th Percentile £18.20 £18.51 £14.00
Median hourly rate £24.36 £35.00 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year -30.39% +59.09% -60.00%
75th Percentile £55.38 - £67.50
90th Percentile £67.62 £39.18 £69.96
England median hourly rate £25.77 £60.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year -57.05% +20.00% -14.94%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
West Midlands

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 in the West Midlands.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 1,026 423 625
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 35.65% 32.00% 31.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 744 289 395
10th Percentile £315 £159 £263
25th Percentile £408 £328 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £493 £450
Median % change year-on-year -1.62% +9.56% -14.29%
75th Percentile £560 £600 £575
90th Percentile £644 £700 £663
England median daily rate £520 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 17 39
10th Percentile £14.00 £16.97 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.53 £18.50 £22.33
Median hourly rate £22.26 £23.60 £28.50
Median % change year-on-year -5.70% -17.19% +42.50%
75th Percentile £28.01 £35.00 £55.63
90th Percentile £70.00 £39.14 £60.50
England median hourly rate £35.00 £50.00 £38.75
% change year-on-year -30.00% +29.03% -22.50%

SC Cleared
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

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

SC Cleared job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

SC Cleared
Daily Rate Trend in the West Midlands

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

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

SC Cleared
Daily Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SC Cleared in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 25 March 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SC Cleared in the West Midlands

SC Cleared
Hourly Rate Trend in the West Midlands

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

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

SC Cleared
Hourly Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SC Cleared in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 25 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for SC Cleared in the West Midlands

SC Cleared
Contract Job Locations in the West Midlands

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 West Midlands region over the 6 months to 25 March 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
Shropshire +1 316 £483 -5.29% 39
Birmingham +5 100 £475 -22.76% 26
Warwickshire -5 75 £426 -22.64% 3
Worcestershire +4 50 £675 -3.57% 5
Herefordshire 0 38 £600 -14.29% 5
Solihull +1 18 £456 +8.63% 1
Wolverhampton -5 2 - - 1
Coventry -27 2 £488 - 1
Staffordshire - 2 £350 - 11
SC Cleared
England

SC Cleared
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the West Midlands 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
1 115 (18.85%) SAS
2 66 (10.82%) Confluence
3 25 (4.10%) WebLogic
4 13 (2.13%) Tuxedo
5 4 (0.66%) SharePoint
6 3 (0.49%) Apache
7 2 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
8 1 (0.16%) NetWeaver
8 1 (0.16%) nginx
8 1 (0.16%) SAP EP
Applications
1 7 (1.15%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (0.98%) Microsoft Project
3 5 (0.82%) Microsoft Excel
4 4 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.33%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.16%) Camtasia
Business Applications
1 2 (0.33%) SAP PP
1 2 (0.33%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.16%) Oracle Assets
2 1 (0.16%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.16%) SAP CRM
2 1 (0.16%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 119 (19.51%) AWS
2 90 (14.75%) Azure
3 35 (5.74%) GitHub
4 31 (5.08%) OpenShift
5 27 (4.43%) GCP
6 23 (3.77%) Amazon S3
7 22 (3.61%) Amazon EC2
8 20 (3.28%) GitHub Actions
9 19 (3.11%) Serverless
10 17 (2.79%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 16 (2.62%) Azure Data Factory
12 13 (2.13%) Power Platform
13 12 (1.97%) AWS KMS
13 12 (1.97%) Azure DevOps
14 11 (1.80%) SaaS
15 9 (1.48%) Datadog
15 9 (1.48%) Microsoft 365
16 8 (1.31%) Amazon SQS
16 8 (1.31%) Route 53
16 8 (1.31%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 20 (3.28%) Firewall
2 19 (3.11%) VPN
3 18 (2.95%) WAN
4 16 (2.62%) BGP
5 14 (2.30%) MPLS
6 13 (2.13%) IPsec
7 11 (1.80%) Network Security
8 10 (1.64%) Intrusion Detection
9 8 (1.31%) LAN
10 7 (1.15%) DNS
10 7 (1.15%) Wireless
11 5 (0.82%) 5G
11 5 (0.82%) OSPF
11 5 (0.82%) VLAN
11 5 (0.82%) Wi-Fi
12 4 (0.66%) SSL
12 4 (0.66%) Unified Communications
12 4 (0.66%) WLAN
13 3 (0.49%) DHCP
13 3 (0.49%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 59 (9.67%) Pentaho
2 49 (8.03%) PostgreSQL
3 34 (5.57%) Data Warehouse
4 32 (5.25%) Oracle Database
4 32 (5.25%) SAS Enterprise Guide
5 24 (3.93%) Amazon RDS
6 23 (3.77%) MySQL
7 22 (3.61%) Metadata
8 15 (2.46%) Amazon Redshift
9 14 (2.30%) Oracle Reports
10 13 (2.13%) Elasticsearch
11 12 (1.97%) Metadata Repository
12 11 (1.80%) MongoDB
13 9 (1.48%) Power BI
14 8 (1.31%) Amazon Aurora
14 8 (1.31%) DynamoDB
15 7 (1.15%) Redis
16 6 (0.98%) Relational Database
17 5 (0.82%) SAS Visual Analytics
17 5 (0.82%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 106 (17.38%) Git
2 93 (15.25%) JIRA
3 85 (13.93%) Jenkins
4 61 (10.00%) GitLab
5 45 (7.38%) JUnit
6 36 (5.90%) Selenium
7 18 (2.95%) Cucumber
8 15 (2.46%) Mockito
9 14 (2.30%) Maven
10 13 (2.13%) JMeter
10 13 (2.13%) Postman
10 13 (2.13%) Zephyr
11 12 (1.97%) WebDriver
12 11 (1.80%) SonarQube
13 9 (1.48%) Atlassian Bamboo
13 9 (1.48%) MSI
14 8 (1.31%) Bitbucket
15 6 (0.98%) DbUnit
15 6 (0.98%) jMock
16 4 (0.66%) CA Gen
General
1 153 (25.08%) Social Skills
2 76 (12.46%) Public Sector
3 56 (9.18%) Analytical Skills
4 31 (5.08%) Finance
5 17 (2.79%) Documentation Skills
6 9 (1.48%) Aeronautics
7 7 (1.15%) Advertising
7 7 (1.15%) Legal
7 7 (1.15%) Organisational Skills
7 7 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
7 7 (1.15%) Telecoms
8 3 (0.49%) Influencing Skills
9 2 (0.33%) Aerospace
9 2 (0.33%) Electronics
9 2 (0.33%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.16%) Automotive
10 1 (0.16%) Banking
10 1 (0.16%) Police
10 1 (0.16%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 109 (17.87%) Data Engineer
2 55 (9.02%) Senior
3 48 (7.87%) Architect
4 45 (7.38%) Developer
5 42 (6.89%) Analyst
6 36 (5.90%) Tester
7 28 (4.59%) Support Engineer
8 26 (4.26%) Java Developer
9 25 (4.10%) Test Specialist
10 19 (3.11%) Business Analyst
10 19 (3.11%) Data Architect
10 19 (3.11%) Senior Data Engineer
11 18 (2.95%) Platform Engineer
12 17 (2.79%) Lead
13 16 (2.62%) Consultant
13 16 (2.62%) SAS Engineer
14 15 (2.46%) Release Manager
15 14 (2.30%) Administrator
15 14 (2.30%) Delivery Manager
15 14 (2.30%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (7.05%) Spring
2 38 (6.23%) REST
3 32 (5.25%) Spring Boot
4 19 (3.11%) pytest
5 14 (2.30%) JPA
6 13 (2.13%) WireMock
7 12 (1.97%) Kafka
7 12 (1.97%) Keycloak
8 11 (1.80%) Middleware
9 10 (1.64%) FastAPI
9 10 (1.64%) Flask
10 9 (1.48%) AngularJS
10 9 (1.48%) SOAP
11 8 (1.31%) ActiveMQ
11 8 (1.31%) Hibernate
11 8 (1.31%) Node.js
11 8 (1.31%) Spring Batch
11 8 (1.31%) Spring Cloud
11 8 (1.31%) Spring Integration
11 8 (1.31%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 23 (3.77%) Cloud Native
2 17 (2.79%) Distributed Systems
3 15 (2.46%) Legacy Systems
4 14 (2.30%) Product Ownership
5 13 (2.13%) Data Centre
5 13 (2.13%) Onboarding
6 12 (1.97%) Enterprise Software
7 11 (1.80%) Hybrid Cloud
7 11 (1.80%) PKI
8 9 (1.48%) SCADA
9 8 (1.31%) Distributed Architecture
9 8 (1.31%) Driving Licence
10 6 (0.98%) Security Operations Centre
11 5 (0.82%) Private Cloud
11 5 (0.82%) Security Posture
12 4 (0.66%) Analytical Mindset
12 4 (0.66%) CSOC
12 4 (0.66%) Cyber Threat
12 4 (0.66%) Robotics
13 3 (0.49%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 52 (8.52%) Linux
2 49 (8.03%) Windows
3 31 (5.08%) Unix
4 12 (1.97%) Windows Server
5 11 (1.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (0.49%) Android
7 2 (0.33%) AIX
7 2 (0.33%) CentOS
7 2 (0.33%) Embedded Linux
7 2 (0.33%) Solaris
7 2 (0.33%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.33%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.16%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 182 (29.84%) Agile
2 148 (24.26%) CI/CD
3 130 (21.31%) DevOps
4 101 (16.56%) Scrum
5 97 (15.90%) Continuous Improvement
6 95 (15.57%) Problem-Solving
7 94 (15.41%) Analytics
8 93 (15.25%) Test Automation
9 92 (15.08%) ETL
9 92 (15.08%) Stakeholder Management
10 66 (10.82%) Containerisation
11 64 (10.49%) Data Integration
12 62 (10.16%) Data Pipeline
13 61 (10.00%) Migration
14 60 (9.84%) Data Modelling
15 54 (8.85%) Business Intelligence
16 51 (8.36%) Microservices
17 41 (6.72%) Validation
18 39 (6.39%) Observability
19 38 (6.23%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 162 (26.56%) SQL
2 73 (11.97%) Python
3 71 (11.64%) Java
4 30 (4.92%) PL/SQL
5 25 (4.10%) Shell Script
6 22 (3.61%) Go
7 18 (2.95%) PowerShell
8 16 (2.62%) Bash
9 6 (0.98%) Perl
10 4 (0.66%) Kusto Query Language
11 3 (0.49%) C++
11 3 (0.49%) HiveQL
11 3 (0.49%) Kotlin
12 2 (0.33%) Bicep
12 2 (0.33%) C
12 2 (0.33%) JavaScript
12 2 (0.33%) SystemVerilog
13 1 (0.16%) C#
13 1 (0.16%) COBOL
13 1 (0.16%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 610 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 20 (3.28%) Azure Certification
2 20 (3.28%) DV Cleared
3 14 (2.30%) BPSS Clearance
4 11 (1.80%) ISTQB
5 10 (1.64%) Microsoft Certification
6 8 (1.31%) AWS Certification
7 7 (1.15%) Cisco Certification
7 7 (1.15%) Degree
7 7 (1.15%) IIBA
8 6 (0.98%) CCNP
9 5 (0.82%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 4 (0.66%) CCIE
10 4 (0.66%) CISSP
10 4 (0.66%) OCP
10 4 (0.66%) Oracle Certification
11 3 (0.49%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 3 (0.49%) CISM
11 3 (0.49%) SAFe Agilist
12 2 (0.33%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (5.25%) Data Quality
2 26 (4.26%) QA
3 15 (2.46%) NIST
4 14 (2.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 11 (1.80%) NCSC
6 7 (1.15%) Accessibility
6 7 (1.15%) GDPR
7 4 (0.66%) WCAG
8 3 (0.49%) FATCA
9 2 (0.33%) PMO
9 2 (0.33%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.16%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.16%) GRC
10 1 (0.16%) PCI DSS
10 1 (0.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 107 (17.54%) Docker
2 15 (2.46%) Active Directory
3 8 (1.31%) Postfix
4 6 (0.98%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (0.66%) Snort
6 3 (0.49%) HDFS
6 3 (0.49%) VMware NSX
7 2 (0.33%) Terminal Services
7 2 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
8 1 (0.16%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 130 (21.31%) Kubernetes
2 60 (9.84%) Grafana
3 35 (5.74%) Prometheus
4 23 (3.77%) Terraform
5 16 (2.62%) Ansible
6 8 (1.31%) Progress Chef
7 7 (1.15%) Kibana
8 4 (0.66%) CSIRT
9 3 (0.49%) FortiGate
10 2 (0.33%) Docker Swarm
10 2 (0.33%) Podman
10 2 (0.33%) QRadar
10 2 (0.33%) SCCM
11 1 (0.16%) Backup Exec
11 1 (0.16%) Control-M
11 1 (0.16%) Host Intrusion Detection System
11 1 (0.16%) HP ALM
11 1 (0.16%) logstash
11 1 (0.16%) Puppet
11 1 (0.16%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 129 (21.15%) Oracle
2 76 (12.46%) Talend
3 51 (8.36%) Microsoft
4 45 (7.38%) Denodo
5 34 (5.57%) ServiceNow
6 33 (5.41%) Informatica
7 29 (4.75%) Splunk
8 23 (3.77%) Cisco
9 22 (3.61%) Dynatrace
10 16 (2.62%) Atlassian
11 15 (2.46%) Juniper
12 13 (2.13%) AppDynamics
13 11 (1.80%) SAP
14 10 (1.64%) Sage
15 8 (1.31%) CyberArk
15 8 (1.31%) Fujitsu
15 8 (1.31%) Jaspersoft
15 8 (1.31%) VMware
16 7 (1.15%) HP
16 7 (1.15%) Red Hat