SC Cleared Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Security Check (SC) Clearance
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics for permanent job vacancies advertised in the UK excluding London with a requirement for SC Cleared qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the salaries offered over the 6 months leading up to 20 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 61 68 58
Rank change year-on-year +7 -10 +13
Permanent jobs citing SC Cleared 1,966 1,175 2,732
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 2.95% 4.01% 3.94%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.54% 9.20% 15.00%
Number of salaries quoted 1,461 858 2,010
10th Percentile £40,000 £37,275 £31,250
25th Percentile £50,000 £47,500 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £57,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +8.70% +4.55% -0.90%
75th Percentile £80,000 £72,500 £67,500
90th Percentile £90,000 £81,250 £77,500
UK median annual salary £65,000 £60,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year +8.33% +4.35% -7.26%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK excluding London

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 permanent job vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications in the UK excluding London.

Permanent vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 15,673 12,777 18,212
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 23.49% 43.57% 26.28%
Number of salaries quoted 6,096 5,219 12,148
10th Percentile £28,250 £28,750 £27,000
25th Percentile £37,500 £36,925 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £51,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.80% +3.00% -3.85%
75th Percentile £70,000 £66,274 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £78,750 £79,600
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £54,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% +1.85% -9.40%

SC Cleared
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing SC Cleared relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

SC Cleared job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

SC Cleared
Salary Trend in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing SC Cleared.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing SC Cleared

SC Cleared
Salary Histogram in the UK excluding London

Salary distribution for jobs citing SC Cleared in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 20 May 2026.

Salary histogram for SC Cleared in the UK excluding London

SC Cleared
Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing SC Cleared within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 20 May 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
South West +14 532 £65,000 +8.33% 218
South East -16 478 £67,500 +22.73% 369
North of England +87 361 £60,000 +9.09% 208
Midlands +25 299 £57,200 -12.00% 112
North West +90 204 £62,500 +13.64% 115
West Midlands -6 198 £60,000 -7.69% 82
East of England +15 116 £61,500 +6.96% 61
Yorkshire +17 115 £62,500 +39.82% 43
Wales +10 103 £54,000 -1.82% 31
East Midlands +30 97 £55,000 +5.77% 30
Scotland +41 71 £75,000 +20.00% 35
North East -6 42 £55,000 -20.73% 52
Northern Ireland -35 11 £60,000 -29.54% 15
SC Cleared
UK

SC Cleared
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 77 (3.92%) Microsoft Exchange
2 43 (2.19%) SharePoint
3 12 (0.61%) Apache
4 10 (0.51%) SAS
5 9 (0.46%) Apache Spark
6 8 (0.41%) Skype for Business
7 6 (0.31%) Apache Airflow
7 6 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 4 (0.20%) Jupyter
9 2 (0.10%) Confluence
9 2 (0.10%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.10%) OpenStack
10 1 (0.051%) Apache Qpid
10 1 (0.051%) Appian
10 1 (0.051%) Camunda
10 1 (0.051%) IIS
10 1 (0.051%) JBoss
Applications
1 102 (5.19%) Microsoft Office
2 29 (1.48%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.41%) Simulink
5 3 (0.15%) Windchill
6 2 (0.10%) Adobe XD
6 2 (0.10%) CATIA
6 2 (0.10%) Stateflow
7 1 (0.051%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.051%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 5 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.051%) Integrated Workplace Management System
3 1 (0.051%) Primavera
3 1 (0.051%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (0.051%) SAP BPC
3 1 (0.051%) SAP EWM
3 1 (0.051%) SAP GRC
3 1 (0.051%) SAP HCM
3 1 (0.051%) SAP MM
3 1 (0.051%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 414 (21.06%) Azure
2 249 (12.67%) AWS
3 233 (11.85%) Microsoft 365
4 73 (3.71%) Entra ID
5 67 (3.41%) GCP
6 49 (2.49%) Dynamics 365
7 39 (1.98%) Serverless
8 38 (1.93%) Power Platform
9 33 (1.68%) SaaS
10 30 (1.53%) Azure DevOps
10 30 (1.53%) GitHub
11 29 (1.48%) Azure Sentinel
12 26 (1.32%) Amazon S3
13 23 (1.17%) AWS CloudFormation
14 22 (1.12%) Amazon EKS
15 20 (1.02%) Amazon ECS
16 19 (0.97%) AWS Lambda
17 17 (0.86%) PaaS
18 16 (0.81%) PowerApps
19 15 (0.76%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 107 (5.44%) Firewall
2 106 (5.39%) DNS
3 91 (4.63%) DHCP
4 64 (3.26%) WAN
5 57 (2.90%) VPN
6 45 (2.29%) LAN
6 45 (2.29%) Network Security
7 40 (2.03%) TCP/IP
8 35 (1.78%) Wi-Fi
9 28 (1.42%) Structured Cabling
10 27 (1.37%) BGP
11 21 (1.07%) SD-WAN
12 18 (0.92%) MPLS
12 18 (0.92%) VLAN
12 18 (0.92%) VoIP
13 15 (0.76%) Cisco Firepower
14 14 (0.71%) HTTP
15 11 (0.56%) Cisco ASA
16 10 (0.51%) MQTT
16 10 (0.51%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (2.64%) Amazon RDS
2 34 (1.73%) Power BI
3 22 (1.12%) PostgreSQL
4 18 (0.92%) DynamoDB
5 14 (0.71%) Relational Database
6 13 (0.66%) Big Data
7 11 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
8 10 (0.51%) Data Warehouse
8 10 (0.51%) GIS
8 10 (0.51%) MongoDB
8 10 (0.51%) NoSQL
9 9 (0.46%) Amazon Athena
9 9 (0.46%) SQL Server
10 8 (0.41%) Metadata
10 8 (0.41%) Pentaho
11 7 (0.36%) Data Lake
12 6 (0.31%) Amazon Redshift
12 6 (0.31%) Hadoop
12 6 (0.31%) Power Query
12 6 (0.31%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 66 (3.36%) Git
2 48 (2.44%) GitLab
3 28 (1.42%) Jenkins
4 26 (1.32%) JIRA
5 16 (0.81%) SonarQube
6 15 (0.76%) JUnit
6 15 (0.76%) Maven
7 14 (0.71%) Visual Studio Code
8 12 (0.61%) Cypress.io
8 12 (0.61%) Mockito
8 12 (0.61%) Selenium
9 6 (0.31%) Cucumber
10 5 (0.25%) Burp Suite
10 5 (0.25%) Claude Code
10 5 (0.25%) Metasploit
10 5 (0.25%) Rational DOORS
11 4 (0.20%) JMeter
11 4 (0.20%) Postman
11 4 (0.20%) Storybook
12 3 (0.15%) Gradle
General
1 431 (21.92%) Social Skills
2 246 (12.51%) Public Sector
3 155 (7.88%) Analytical Skills
4 127 (6.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 121 (6.15%) Finance
6 63 (3.20%) Telecoms
7 57 (2.90%) Manufacturing
8 51 (2.59%) Back Office
9 47 (2.39%) Law
10 36 (1.83%) Electronics
11 34 (1.73%) Organisational Skills
12 33 (1.68%) Aerospace
12 33 (1.68%) Legal
13 28 (1.42%) Military
14 22 (1.12%) Aviation
15 21 (1.07%) Documentation Skills
15 21 (1.07%) Retail
16 17 (0.86%) Marketing
17 13 (0.66%) Influencing Skills
18 11 (0.56%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 330 (16.79%) Senior
2 190 (9.66%) Architect
3 166 (8.44%) Software Engineer
4 161 (8.19%) Developer
5 160 (8.14%) Analyst
6 147 (7.48%) Consultant
7 111 (5.65%) Support Engineer
8 90 (4.58%) Systems Engineer
9 89 (4.53%) Cloud Engineer
10 81 (4.12%) Lead
11 79 (4.02%) Security Consultant
12 72 (3.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 72 (3.66%) Network Engineer
13 68 (3.46%) Data Engineer
14 65 (3.31%) IT Engineer
14 65 (3.31%) IT Support
15 63 (3.20%) Senior Developer
16 62 (3.15%) Java Developer
17 58 (2.95%) Site Engineer
17 58 (2.95%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 57 (2.90%) .NET
2 49 (2.49%) REST
3 35 (1.78%) Spring
4 32 (1.63%) React
5 30 (1.53%) Spring Boot
6 25 (1.27%) AngularJS
7 16 (0.81%) Kafka
7 16 (0.81%) Node.js
8 12 (0.61%) RESTful
8 12 (0.61%) SOAP
9 11 (0.56%) PySpark
9 11 (0.56%) RabbitMQ
10 10 (0.51%) Elastic Stack
10 10 (0.51%) Playwright
11 9 (0.46%) ASP.NET
11 9 (0.46%) gRPC
11 9 (0.46%) Jest
11 9 (0.46%) JSON
11 9 (0.46%) Web Services
11 9 (0.46%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 70 (3.56%) Data Centre
2 66 (3.36%) Legacy Systems
3 62 (3.15%) Onboarding
4 58 (2.95%) Driving Licence
5 41 (2.09%) Security Operations Centre
6 40 (2.03%) Product Ownership
7 38 (1.93%) Management Information System
7 38 (1.93%) Security Posture
8 36 (1.83%) Cloud Native
9 30 (1.53%) Self-Motivation
10 26 (1.32%) Fibre Optics
11 21 (1.07%) CSOC
12 20 (1.02%) Robotics
13 19 (0.97%) PKI
14 18 (0.92%) Algorithms
14 18 (0.92%) Embedded Systems
15 16 (0.81%) Distributed Systems
16 15 (0.76%) Data Structures
17 13 (0.66%) Analytical Mindset
17 13 (0.66%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 254 (12.92%) Windows
2 194 (9.87%) Linux
3 108 (5.49%) Windows Server
4 76 (3.87%) Windows 10
5 55 (2.80%) Windows Server 2016
6 24 (1.22%) Unix
7 17 (0.86%) Android
8 12 (0.61%) Mac OS
9 11 (0.56%) Ubuntu
10 10 (0.51%) Apple iOS
11 9 (0.46%) CentOS
12 7 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 5 (0.25%) Debian
13 5 (0.25%) Solaris
14 3 (0.15%) VMS
15 2 (0.10%) AIX
15 2 (0.10%) Mac OS X
15 2 (0.10%) Windows 7
15 2 (0.10%) Windows Server 2019
16 1 (0.051%) Embedded Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 269 (13.68%) Cybersecurity
2 251 (12.77%) Agile
3 235 (11.95%) Problem-Solving
4 229 (11.65%) Continuous Improvement
5 225 (11.44%) Software Engineering
6 197 (10.02%) ITIL
7 194 (9.87%) DevOps
8 156 (7.93%) CI/CD
9 134 (6.82%) Customer Service
10 125 (6.36%) Mentoring
11 118 (6.00%) Analytics
12 106 (5.39%) Customer Experience
13 102 (5.19%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 100 (5.09%) Migration
15 98 (4.98%) Infrastructure as Code
16 88 (4.48%) AI
17 86 (4.37%) Scrum
18 81 (4.12%) Service Delivery
19 80 (4.07%) Risk Management
20 79 (4.02%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 202 (10.27%) Python
2 128 (6.51%) Java
3 96 (4.88%) SQL
4 85 (4.32%) C++
5 62 (3.15%) PowerShell
6 59 (3.00%) Bash
7 50 (2.54%) C#
8 46 (2.34%) JavaScript
9 32 (1.63%) C
10 28 (1.42%) TypeScript
11 19 (0.97%) Rust
12 15 (0.76%) Groovy
12 15 (0.76%) PL/SQL
13 12 (0.61%) MATLAB
13 12 (0.61%) VBA
14 10 (0.51%) Embedded C
15 9 (0.46%) Bicep
15 9 (0.46%) Kusto Query Language
16 8 (0.41%) Kotlin
17 7 (0.36%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,966 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 361 (18.36%) DV Cleared
3 222 (11.29%) Degree
4 61 (3.10%) CTC Cleared
5 50 (2.54%) BPSS Clearance
6 36 (1.83%) CISSP
7 35 (1.78%) Microsoft Certification
8 33 (1.68%) Cisco Certification
9 30 (1.53%) AWS Certification
10 28 (1.42%) Computer Science Degree
11 27 (1.37%) CompTIA Security+
12 26 (1.32%) CISM
13 25 (1.27%) Master's Degree
14 23 (1.17%) HNC
15 22 (1.12%) Azure Certification
16 20 (1.02%) CREST Certified
17 18 (0.92%) CCNP
18 17 (0.86%) DBS Check
19 13 (0.66%) A+ Certification
19 13 (0.66%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 95 (4.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 83 (4.22%) SLA
3 79 (4.02%) Cyber Essentials
4 70 (3.56%) PCI DSS
5 59 (3.00%) NIST
6 49 (2.49%) QA
7 41 (2.09%) GDPR
8 25 (1.27%) Accessibility
9 22 (1.12%) NCSC
10 20 (1.02%) JSP 440
11 19 (0.97%) GRC
12 18 (0.92%) Data Quality
12 18 (0.92%) ISO 9001
12 18 (0.92%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 17 (0.86%) PMO
14 14 (0.71%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 11 (0.56%) Def Stans
16 9 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
17 8 (0.41%) HIPAA
17 8 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 144 (7.32%) Active Directory
2 92 (4.68%) Docker
3 66 (3.36%) Hyper-V
4 49 (2.49%) Terminal Server
5 46 (2.34%) VMware Infrastructure
6 23 (1.17%) Firmware
7 15 (0.76%) Virtual Desktop
7 15 (0.76%) VMware NSX
8 8 (0.41%) vSphere
9 5 (0.25%) Embedded Firmware
10 4 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
10 4 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
11 3 (0.15%) BitLocker
11 3 (0.15%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 2 (0.10%) Lustre
13 1 (0.051%) Citrix Hypervisor
13 1 (0.051%) IAG
13 1 (0.051%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 124 (6.31%) Terraform
2 90 (4.58%) Kubernetes
3 81 (4.12%) Ansible
4 30 (1.53%) Microsoft Intune
5 23 (1.17%) SCCM
6 18 (0.92%) Grafana
7 17 (0.86%) Prometheus
8 15 (0.76%) Puppet
9 11 (0.56%) vCenter Server
10 10 (0.51%) Kibana
10 10 (0.51%) Proxmox
11 9 (0.46%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
12 7 (0.36%) Nessus
12 7 (0.36%) Podman
12 7 (0.36%) Single Sign-On
13 6 (0.31%) Endace
13 6 (0.31%) HP Fortify
13 6 (0.31%) Jamf Pro
13 6 (0.31%) QRadar
14 5 (0.25%) Nmap
Vendors
1 361 (18.36%) Microsoft
2 135 (6.87%) Cisco
3 124 (6.31%) VMware
4 76 (3.87%) Splunk
5 61 (3.10%) SolarWinds
6 49 (2.49%) Veeam
7 48 (2.44%) Brocade
7 48 (2.44%) Nimble Storage
7 48 (2.44%) Tanium
8 39 (1.98%) Oracle
9 36 (1.83%) Google
10 32 (1.63%) ServiceNow
11 22 (1.12%) Red Hat
12 20 (1.02%) SAP
13 19 (0.97%) Juniper
14 18 (0.92%) CheckPoint
14 18 (0.92%) HP
15 16 (0.81%) Citrix
16 15 (0.76%) Fortinet
16 15 (0.76%) Salesforce