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 4 April 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 65 54 58
Rank change year-on-year -11 +4 +7
Permanent jobs citing SC Cleared 1,677 1,175 2,721
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 2.90% 4.55% 4.23%
As % of the Qualifications category 10.73% 10.74% 15.77%
Number of salaries quoted 1,193 920 2,027
10th Percentile £38,000 £40,000 £30,625
25th Percentile £50,000 £47,000 £42,200
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -
75th Percentile £78,790 £71,842 £66,250
90th Percentile £90,000 £80,000 £75,000
UK median annual salary £65,000 £60,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year +8.33% +4.35% -4.17%

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 15,622 10,940 17,254
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 26.98% 42.34% 26.82%
Number of salaries quoted 5,726 5,100 11,891
10th Percentile £28,250 £30,000 £27,500
25th Percentile £33,406 £40,000 £36,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £51,400 £53,000 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.02% +6.00% -
75th Percentile £68,750 £67,500 £65,000
90th Percentile £83,750 £80,000 £78,750
UK median annual salary £57,500 £57,670 £55,000
% change year-on-year -0.29% +4.85% -4.35%

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 4 April 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 4 April 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 +21 492 £62,500 +4.17% 251
South East -31 434 £65,000 +18.18% 386
North of England -8 257 £60,000 +14.29% 216
Midlands -5 228 £55,500 -14.32% 138
West Midlands -10 153 £60,000 -7.69% 100
North West +5 141 £63,750 +21.43% 106
East of England -7 117 £55,000 -5.17% 81
Yorkshire -16 87 £60,000 +34.23% 68
Scotland +11 72 £75,000 +20.00% 47
East Midlands +2 71 £51,058 -1.81% 37
Wales +4 68 £65,000 +25.00% 27
North East -6 29 £68,076 -1.78% 43
Northern Ireland -34 18 £73,801 +6.48% 7
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
1 121 (7.22%) Microsoft Exchange
2 45 (2.68%) SharePoint
3 21 (1.25%) Exchange Server 2003
4 9 (0.54%) Apache
5 7 (0.42%) SAS
6 6 (0.36%) Apache Spark
6 6 (0.36%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 3 (0.18%) Apache Airflow
7 3 (0.18%) Confluence
7 3 (0.18%) Tomcat
7 3 (0.18%) WebLogic
7 3 (0.18%) WebLogic Portal
8 2 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2013
8 2 (0.12%) IIS
8 2 (0.12%) Skype for Business
9 1 (0.060%) Apache Qpid
9 1 (0.060%) Appian
9 1 (0.060%) Camunda
9 1 (0.060%) JBoss
9 1 (0.060%) OpenStack
Applications
1 105 (6.26%) Microsoft Office
2 30 (1.79%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.30%) Adobe XD
5 4 (0.24%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.12%) CATIA
6 2 (0.12%) Simulink
7 1 (0.060%) Abaqus
7 1 (0.060%) AutoCAD
7 1 (0.060%) EPLAN
7 1 (0.060%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.060%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 14 (0.83%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.30%) Primavera
3 4 (0.24%) Remedy ITSM
4 3 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
5 2 (0.12%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.060%) Integrated Workplace Management System
6 1 (0.060%) Maximo
6 1 (0.060%) SAP GTS
6 1 (0.060%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 1 (0.060%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 349 (20.81%) Azure
2 246 (14.67%) Microsoft 365
3 196 (11.69%) AWS
4 75 (4.47%) Entra ID
5 59 (3.52%) GCP
6 58 (3.46%) Dynamics 365
7 40 (2.39%) AWS CloudFormation
8 36 (2.15%) Amazon ECS
8 36 (2.15%) Power Platform
9 35 (2.09%) SaaS
10 30 (1.79%) Serverless
11 27 (1.61%) Amazon ECR
11 27 (1.61%) PaaS
12 26 (1.55%) dbt
13 23 (1.37%) Pulumi
14 20 (1.19%) Amazon EKS
14 20 (1.19%) AWS Lambda
15 19 (1.13%) PowerApps
16 18 (1.07%) Azure DevOps
17 16 (0.95%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 139 (8.29%) DNS
2 132 (7.87%) DHCP
3 78 (4.65%) Firewall
4 49 (2.92%) WAN
5 47 (2.80%) TCP/IP
6 43 (2.56%) VPN
7 40 (2.39%) LAN
8 34 (2.03%) Wi-Fi
9 29 (1.73%) Network Security
9 29 (1.73%) Structured Cabling
10 18 (1.07%) BGP
11 17 (1.01%) VoIP
12 16 (0.95%) VLAN
13 15 (0.89%) MPLS
13 15 (0.89%) SD-WAN
14 10 (0.60%) Cisco Firepower
15 9 (0.54%) PBX
16 8 (0.48%) Intrusion Detection
16 8 (0.48%) WebEx
17 7 (0.42%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 93 (5.55%) Amazon RDS
2 32 (1.91%) Power BI
3 31 (1.85%) PostgreSQL
4 30 (1.79%) Oracle Database
5 24 (1.43%) Elasticsearch
6 21 (1.25%) Oracle Database 10g
6 21 (1.25%) Redis
7 14 (0.83%) DynamoDB
8 11 (0.66%) Relational Database
9 10 (0.60%) Metadata
9 10 (0.60%) NoSQL
10 8 (0.48%) SQL Server
11 7 (0.42%) GIS
11 7 (0.42%) Pentaho
12 6 (0.36%) Big Data
12 6 (0.36%) Data Warehouse
12 6 (0.36%) MongoDB
13 5 (0.30%) Amazon Athena
13 5 (0.30%) Snowflake Schema
13 5 (0.30%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 31 (1.85%) Git
2 26 (1.55%) GitLab
2 26 (1.55%) JIRA
3 21 (1.25%) Jenkins
4 13 (0.78%) Maven
5 11 (0.66%) Cucumber
5 11 (0.66%) Cypress.io
5 11 (0.66%) Selenium
5 11 (0.66%) SonarQube
6 9 (0.54%) JUnit
7 8 (0.48%) Balsamiq
7 8 (0.48%) Burp Suite
7 8 (0.48%) Metasploit
8 7 (0.42%) JMeter
8 7 (0.42%) Mockito
9 6 (0.36%) Locust
10 5 (0.30%) Axure RP
10 5 (0.30%) Postman
10 5 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
11 4 (0.24%) Storybook
General
1 465 (27.73%) Social Skills
2 219 (13.06%) Public Sector
3 184 (10.97%) Analytical Skills
4 108 (6.44%) Finance
5 100 (5.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 82 (4.89%) Manufacturing
7 74 (4.41%) Telecoms
8 63 (3.76%) Back Office
9 62 (3.70%) Law
10 49 (2.92%) Electronics
11 43 (2.56%) Marketing
12 27 (1.61%) Aeronautics
13 26 (1.55%) Military
13 26 (1.55%) Retail
14 25 (1.49%) Aerospace
15 22 (1.31%) Legal
16 21 (1.25%) Documentation Skills
17 19 (1.13%) Organisational Skills
18 16 (0.95%) Influencing Skills
19 9 (0.54%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 261 (15.56%) Senior
2 174 (10.38%) Architect
3 162 (9.66%) Consultant
4 121 (7.22%) Support Engineer
5 119 (7.10%) Analyst
6 109 (6.50%) Software Engineer
7 99 (5.90%) Systems Engineer
8 91 (5.43%) Developer
9 81 (4.83%) Lead
10 79 (4.71%) Security Consultant
11 65 (3.88%) Desktop Engineer
12 64 (3.82%) Desktop Support
12 64 (3.82%) Site Engineer
13 63 (3.76%) Desktop Support Engineer
14 60 (3.58%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 59 (3.52%) IT Support
16 54 (3.22%) Data Engineer
17 53 (3.16%) IT Engineer
18 50 (2.98%) Solutions Architect
19 44 (2.62%) Senior Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (2.62%) REST
2 39 (2.33%) .NET
3 32 (1.91%) React
4 27 (1.61%) Django
5 23 (1.37%) AngularJS
6 19 (1.13%) Spring
6 19 (1.13%) Spring Boot
7 17 (1.01%) Node.js
8 15 (0.89%) SAP CAF
8 15 (0.89%) SOAP
9 12 (0.72%) Gherkin
9 12 (0.72%) Web Services
10 11 (0.66%) JSON
10 11 (0.66%) Middleware
10 11 (0.66%) RabbitMQ
11 9 (0.54%) ASP.NET
12 8 (0.48%) Elastic Stack
12 8 (0.48%) Kafka
12 8 (0.48%) Visualforce
12 8 (0.48%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 87 (5.19%) Legacy Systems
2 52 (3.10%) Data Centre
3 45 (2.68%) Onboarding
4 40 (2.39%) Driving Licence
5 34 (2.03%) Robotics
6 32 (1.91%) Management Information System
7 31 (1.85%) Security Operations Centre
8 28 (1.67%) Security Posture
9 26 (1.55%) Cloud Native
10 25 (1.49%) Product Ownership
11 20 (1.19%) Distributed Systems
12 18 (1.07%) PKI
13 17 (1.01%) Fibre Optics
13 17 (1.01%) Linux Command Line
14 14 (0.83%) Self-Motivation
15 12 (0.72%) Data Structures
15 12 (0.72%) Operational Technology
16 11 (0.66%) Low-Code
17 10 (0.60%) Cyberattack
18 9 (0.54%) Embedded Systems
Operating Systems
1 284 (16.94%) Windows
2 192 (11.45%) Linux
3 135 (8.05%) Windows Server
4 78 (4.65%) Windows 10
5 77 (4.59%) Windows Server 2016
6 59 (3.52%) Unix
7 25 (1.49%) Solaris
8 24 (1.43%) Android
9 22 (1.31%) Windows 7
10 21 (1.25%) Apple iOS
10 21 (1.25%) HPUX
10 21 (1.25%) Windows Server 2003
11 20 (1.19%) Windows Server 2008
12 10 (0.60%) Ubuntu
13 7 (0.42%) CentOS
13 7 (0.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 6 (0.36%) Mac OS
15 4 (0.24%) Debian
16 2 (0.12%) Mac OS X
16 2 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 232 (13.83%) Problem-Solving
2 219 (13.06%) Cybersecurity
3 212 (12.64%) Agile
4 204 (12.16%) Continuous Improvement
5 171 (10.20%) Software Engineering
6 170 (10.14%) ITIL
7 167 (9.96%) Customer Service
8 149 (8.88%) DevOps
9 141 (8.41%) Customer Experience
10 137 (8.17%) Migration
11 110 (6.56%) CI/CD
12 106 (6.32%) Analytics
13 104 (6.20%) Risk Management
14 96 (5.72%) Mentoring
15 92 (5.49%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 84 (5.01%) Vulnerability Remediation
17 81 (4.83%) AI
17 81 (4.83%) Infrastructure as Code
18 79 (4.71%) Kalman Filter
18 79 (4.71%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 168 (10.02%) Python
2 94 (5.61%) Java
3 75 (4.47%) SQL
4 65 (3.88%) PowerShell
5 46 (2.74%) JavaScript
6 42 (2.50%) Bash
6 42 (2.50%) C++
7 27 (1.61%) C
7 27 (1.61%) C#
8 22 (1.31%) Perl
9 19 (1.13%) TypeScript
10 17 (1.01%) PL/SQL
10 17 (1.01%) Rust
10 17 (1.01%) VBA
11 12 (0.72%) Groovy
12 11 (0.66%) Bicep
13 8 (0.48%) Apex Code
14 7 (0.42%) Kotlin
15 6 (0.36%) Go
15 6 (0.36%) Ladder Logic
Qualifications
1 1,677 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 304 (18.13%) DV Cleared
3 244 (14.55%) Degree
4 73 (4.35%) CTC Cleared
5 50 (2.98%) CISSP
6 43 (2.56%) BPSS Clearance
7 40 (2.39%) CISM
8 36 (2.15%) Cisco Certification
9 34 (2.03%) Microsoft Certification
10 30 (1.79%) Master's Degree
11 25 (1.49%) AWS Certification
12 21 (1.25%) CompTIA Security+
13 20 (1.19%) Computer Science Degree
14 19 (1.13%) Azure Certification
15 18 (1.07%) DBS Check
16 17 (1.01%) CCNP
16 17 (1.01%) HNC
17 16 (0.95%) CCNA
17 16 (0.95%) CREST Certified
18 15 (0.89%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 107 (6.38%) SLA
2 103 (6.14%) Cyber Essentials
3 92 (5.49%) PCI DSS
4 88 (5.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 68 (4.05%) NIST
6 46 (2.74%) GDPR
7 45 (2.68%) QA
8 27 (1.61%) GRC
9 24 (1.43%) Accessibility
10 17 (1.01%) NCSC
11 14 (0.83%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 13 (0.78%) WCAG
13 11 (0.66%) Data Quality
13 11 (0.66%) PMO
14 9 (0.54%) JSP 440
15 7 (0.42%) Actionable Recommendations
15 7 (0.42%) HIPAA
15 7 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 6 (0.36%) ISO 9001
16 6 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 177 (10.55%) Active Directory
2 88 (5.25%) Hyper-V
3 85 (5.07%) Docker
4 73 (4.35%) Terminal Server
5 39 (2.33%) VMware Infrastructure
6 17 (1.01%) Firmware
7 13 (0.78%) VMware NSX
8 12 (0.72%) Virtual Desktop
9 9 (0.54%) vSphere
10 5 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
11 4 (0.24%) VMware ESXi
12 3 (0.18%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 2 (0.12%) Lustre
14 1 (0.060%) Citrix Hypervisor
14 1 (0.060%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 101 (6.02%) Terraform
2 70 (4.17%) Kubernetes
3 59 (3.52%) Ansible
4 22 (1.31%) Microsoft Intune
5 21 (1.25%) SCCM
6 18 (1.07%) Jamf Pro
7 16 (0.95%) Grafana
8 14 (0.83%) AWS Copilot
9 10 (0.60%) Prometheus
9 10 (0.60%) vCenter Server
10 9 (0.54%) Puppet
11 8 (0.48%) Nmap
12 7 (0.42%) Endace
12 7 (0.42%) Proxmox
12 7 (0.42%) SCOM
13 6 (0.36%) HP Fortify
13 6 (0.36%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
13 6 (0.36%) WSUS
14 5 (0.30%) Nessus
14 5 (0.30%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 357 (21.29%) Microsoft
2 160 (9.54%) VMware
3 151 (9.00%) Cisco
4 95 (5.66%) Splunk
5 83 (4.95%) SolarWinds
6 76 (4.53%) Veeam
7 72 (4.29%) Brocade
7 72 (4.29%) Nimble Storage
7 72 (4.29%) Tanium
8 58 (3.46%) Oracle
9 53 (3.16%) Google
10 36 (2.15%) SAP
11 33 (1.97%) Salesforce
12 26 (1.55%) ServiceNow
13 23 (1.37%) Red Hat
14 21 (1.25%) Apple
14 21 (1.25%) Juniper
15 18 (1.07%) CheckPoint
15 18 (1.07%) Palo Alto
16 17 (1.01%) Samsung