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 25 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 59 72 60
Rank change year-on-year +13 -12 +10
Permanent jobs citing SC Cleared 1,988 1,132 2,780
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 2.96% 3.97% 3.94%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.74% 9.04% 15.18%
Number of salaries quoted 1,479 804 2,055
10th Percentile £40,000 £36,250 £31,500
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 £80,875 £78,750
UK median annual salary £65,000 £60,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year +8.33% +4.35% -7.93%

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 15,599 12,529 18,308
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 23.26% 43.99% 25.94%
Number of salaries quoted 6,165 4,898 12,168
10th Percentile £28,250 £28,088 £27,250
25th Percentile £37,500 £36,925 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £51,472 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.85% +2.94% -4.76%
75th Percentile £71,106 £66,250 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £78,750 £80,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £54,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% +1.85% -10.00%

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 25 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 25 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 +14 535 £65,000 +8.33% 179
South East -15 487 £67,500 +22.73% 314
North of England +92 369 £60,850 +10.64% 186
Midlands +25 302 £57,500 -11.54% 89
North West +95 209 £65,000 +8.33% 104
West Midlands +1 200 £60,000 -7.69% 71
East of England +11 119 £61,500 +11.82% 49
Yorkshire +7 114 £62,500 +39.82% 40
Wales +4 102 £53,500 -2.73% 19
East Midlands +38 100 £55,000 +5.77% 18
Scotland +45 69 £75,000 +28.76% 23
North East -3 46 £55,000 -20.73% 44
Northern Ireland -38 10 £68,776 -19.23% 14
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 78 (3.92%) Microsoft Exchange
2 44 (2.21%) SharePoint
3 14 (0.70%) Apache
3 14 (0.70%) SAS
4 11 (0.55%) Apache Spark
5 8 (0.40%) Apache Airflow
5 8 (0.40%) Skype for Business
6 7 (0.35%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 6 (0.30%) Jupyter
8 2 (0.10%) Confluence
8 2 (0.10%) Exchange Server 2013
8 2 (0.10%) OpenStack
9 1 (0.050%) Apache Qpid
9 1 (0.050%) Appian
9 1 (0.050%) Camunda
9 1 (0.050%) IIS
9 1 (0.050%) JBoss
Applications
1 103 (5.18%) Microsoft Office
2 29 (1.46%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.35%) Simulink
5 3 (0.15%) Windchill
6 2 (0.10%) Stateflow
7 1 (0.050%) Adobe XD
7 1 (0.050%) CATIA
7 1 (0.050%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.050%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 5 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.050%) Integrated Workplace Management System
3 1 (0.050%) Primavera
3 1 (0.050%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (0.050%) SAP BPC
3 1 (0.050%) SAP EWM
3 1 (0.050%) SAP GRC
3 1 (0.050%) SAP HCM
3 1 (0.050%) SAP MM
3 1 (0.050%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 427 (21.48%) Azure
2 261 (13.13%) AWS
3 237 (11.92%) Microsoft 365
4 72 (3.62%) Entra ID
5 70 (3.52%) GCP
6 49 (2.46%) Dynamics 365
7 39 (1.96%) Serverless
8 38 (1.91%) Power Platform
9 35 (1.76%) SaaS
10 30 (1.51%) GitHub
11 29 (1.46%) Azure DevOps
11 29 (1.46%) Azure Sentinel
12 28 (1.41%) Amazon S3
13 25 (1.26%) AWS CloudFormation
14 22 (1.11%) Amazon EKS
15 20 (1.01%) Amazon ECS
16 19 (0.96%) AWS Lambda
17 17 (0.86%) Amazon EC2
17 17 (0.86%) PaaS
18 16 (0.80%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 115 (5.78%) Firewall
2 107 (5.38%) DNS
3 90 (4.53%) DHCP
4 67 (3.37%) WAN
5 60 (3.02%) VPN
6 49 (2.46%) Network Security
7 48 (2.41%) LAN
8 42 (2.11%) TCP/IP
9 35 (1.76%) Wi-Fi
10 29 (1.46%) Structured Cabling
11 28 (1.41%) BGP
12 21 (1.06%) SD-WAN
13 19 (0.96%) VLAN
14 18 (0.91%) MPLS
14 18 (0.91%) VoIP
15 17 (0.86%) Cisco Firepower
16 16 (0.80%) HTTP
17 12 (0.60%) Cisco ASA
18 10 (0.50%) MQTT
18 10 (0.50%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (2.62%) Amazon RDS
2 34 (1.71%) Power BI
3 22 (1.11%) PostgreSQL
4 19 (0.96%) DynamoDB
5 14 (0.70%) Big Data
5 14 (0.70%) Relational Database
6 11 (0.55%) Amazon Athena
6 11 (0.55%) Data Warehouse
6 11 (0.55%) Elasticsearch
6 11 (0.55%) GIS
7 10 (0.50%) MongoDB
7 10 (0.50%) NoSQL
8 9 (0.45%) SQL Server
9 8 (0.40%) Data Lake
9 8 (0.40%) Metadata
9 8 (0.40%) Pentaho
10 6 (0.30%) Amazon Redshift
10 6 (0.30%) Hadoop
10 6 (0.30%) Power Query
10 6 (0.30%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 67 (3.37%) Git
2 52 (2.62%) GitLab
3 30 (1.51%) Jenkins
4 24 (1.21%) JIRA
5 18 (0.91%) JUnit
6 17 (0.86%) Maven
7 16 (0.80%) SonarQube
8 14 (0.70%) Mockito
8 14 (0.70%) Visual Studio Code
9 12 (0.60%) Cypress.io
9 12 (0.60%) Selenium
10 7 (0.35%) Cucumber
11 5 (0.25%) Burp Suite
11 5 (0.25%) Claude Code
11 5 (0.25%) Metasploit
12 4 (0.20%) JMeter
12 4 (0.20%) Postman
12 4 (0.20%) Storybook
13 3 (0.15%) Gradle
13 3 (0.15%) Rational DOORS
General
1 442 (22.23%) Social Skills
2 257 (12.93%) Public Sector
3 165 (8.30%) Analytical Skills
4 126 (6.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 121 (6.09%) Finance
6 61 (3.07%) Telecoms
7 53 (2.67%) Manufacturing
8 51 (2.57%) Back Office
9 47 (2.36%) Law
10 35 (1.76%) Aerospace
10 35 (1.76%) Electronics
10 35 (1.76%) Legal
11 34 (1.71%) Organisational Skills
12 31 (1.56%) Military
13 24 (1.21%) Aviation
14 21 (1.06%) Retail
15 19 (0.96%) Documentation Skills
16 14 (0.70%) Influencing Skills
16 14 (0.70%) Marketing
17 10 (0.50%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 335 (16.85%) Senior
2 185 (9.31%) Architect
3 165 (8.30%) Developer
4 163 (8.20%) Analyst
5 162 (8.15%) Software Engineer
6 146 (7.34%) Consultant
7 112 (5.63%) Support Engineer
8 92 (4.63%) Cloud Engineer
9 89 (4.48%) Systems Engineer
10 79 (3.97%) Security Consultant
11 78 (3.92%) Network Engineer
12 76 (3.82%) Data Engineer
13 75 (3.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 74 (3.72%) Lead
15 66 (3.32%) IT Engineer
15 66 (3.32%) IT Support
15 66 (3.32%) Java Developer
15 66 (3.32%) Senior Developer
16 59 (2.97%) Site Engineer
17 56 (2.82%) Security Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 57 (2.87%) .NET
2 50 (2.52%) REST
3 38 (1.91%) Spring
4 34 (1.71%) React
5 31 (1.56%) Spring Boot
6 25 (1.26%) AngularJS
7 16 (0.80%) Kafka
7 16 (0.80%) Node.js
8 13 (0.65%) PySpark
8 13 (0.65%) RESTful
9 12 (0.60%) SOAP
10 11 (0.55%) Elastic Stack
10 11 (0.55%) RabbitMQ
11 10 (0.50%) Playwright
12 9 (0.45%) gRPC
12 9 (0.45%) Jest
12 9 (0.45%) JSON
12 9 (0.45%) Web Services
12 9 (0.45%) YAML
13 8 (0.40%) ASP.NET
Miscellaneous
1 72 (3.62%) Data Centre
2 66 (3.32%) Legacy Systems
3 65 (3.27%) Driving Licence
4 62 (3.12%) Onboarding
5 42 (2.11%) Security Operations Centre
6 41 (2.06%) Cloud Native
7 40 (2.01%) Security Posture
8 39 (1.96%) Product Ownership
9 38 (1.91%) Management Information System
10 31 (1.56%) Self-Motivation
11 26 (1.31%) Fibre Optics
12 22 (1.11%) CSOC
13 21 (1.06%) Robotics
14 20 (1.01%) PKI
15 19 (0.96%) Embedded Systems
16 18 (0.91%) Algorithms
17 17 (0.86%) Distributed Systems
18 16 (0.80%) Analytical Mindset
18 16 (0.80%) Data Structures
19 13 (0.65%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 261 (13.13%) Windows
2 199 (10.01%) Linux
3 110 (5.53%) Windows Server
4 78 (3.92%) Windows 10
5 55 (2.77%) Windows Server 2016
6 23 (1.16%) Unix
7 17 (0.86%) Android
8 13 (0.65%) Mac OS
9 11 (0.55%) Ubuntu
10 10 (0.50%) Apple iOS
10 10 (0.50%) CentOS
11 6 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 5 (0.25%) Debian
13 4 (0.20%) Solaris
14 3 (0.15%) VMS
15 2 (0.10%) AIX
15 2 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
15 2 (0.10%) Mac OS X
15 2 (0.10%) Windows 7
15 2 (0.10%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 280 (14.08%) Cybersecurity
2 262 (13.18%) Agile
3 247 (12.42%) Problem-Solving
4 237 (11.92%) Continuous Improvement
5 226 (11.37%) Software Engineering
6 201 (10.11%) ITIL
7 198 (9.96%) DevOps
8 164 (8.25%) CI/CD
9 132 (6.64%) Customer Service
9 132 (6.64%) Mentoring
10 121 (6.09%) Analytics
11 107 (5.38%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 106 (5.33%) Customer Experience
13 101 (5.08%) Infrastructure as Code
14 100 (5.03%) Migration
15 96 (4.83%) AI
16 89 (4.48%) Scrum
17 85 (4.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 82 (4.12%) Decision-Making
18 82 (4.12%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 208 (10.46%) Python
2 133 (6.69%) Java
3 101 (5.08%) SQL
4 84 (4.23%) C++
5 68 (3.42%) PowerShell
6 65 (3.27%) Bash
7 49 (2.46%) C#
7 49 (2.46%) JavaScript
8 30 (1.51%) C
9 27 (1.36%) TypeScript
10 18 (0.91%) Rust
11 17 (0.86%) PL/SQL
12 15 (0.75%) Groovy
13 12 (0.60%) MATLAB
13 12 (0.60%) VBA
14 10 (0.50%) Embedded C
15 9 (0.45%) Kusto Query Language
16 8 (0.40%) Bicep
16 8 (0.40%) Perl
17 7 (0.35%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,988 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 372 (18.71%) DV Cleared
3 221 (11.12%) Degree
4 61 (3.07%) CTC Cleared
5 54 (2.72%) BPSS Clearance
6 37 (1.86%) Cisco Certification
6 37 (1.86%) CISSP
7 34 (1.71%) Microsoft Certification
8 29 (1.46%) AWS Certification
9 28 (1.41%) CompTIA Security+
9 28 (1.41%) Computer Science Degree
10 25 (1.26%) CISM
10 25 (1.26%) HNC
11 24 (1.21%) Master's Degree
12 22 (1.11%) CREST Certified
13 21 (1.06%) Azure Certification
13 21 (1.06%) CCNP
14 16 (0.80%) DBS Check
15 15 (0.75%) CCNA
16 14 (0.70%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 100 (5.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 83 (4.18%) SLA
3 79 (3.97%) Cyber Essentials
4 72 (3.62%) PCI DSS
5 63 (3.17%) NIST
6 53 (2.67%) QA
7 43 (2.16%) GDPR
8 25 (1.26%) Accessibility
8 25 (1.26%) NCSC
9 23 (1.16%) JSP 440
10 20 (1.01%) Data Quality
11 18 (0.91%) GRC
11 18 (0.91%) ISO 9001
11 18 (0.91%) ISO/IEC 20000
11 18 (0.91%) PMO
12 14 (0.70%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 13 (0.65%) Def Stans
14 10 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
14 10 (0.50%) NIST 800
15 8 (0.40%) HIPAA
System Software
1 147 (7.39%) Active Directory
2 96 (4.83%) Docker
3 68 (3.42%) Hyper-V
4 49 (2.46%) Terminal Server
4 49 (2.46%) VMware Infrastructure
5 24 (1.21%) Firmware
6 16 (0.80%) Virtual Desktop
7 15 (0.75%) VMware NSX
8 9 (0.45%) vSphere
9 6 (0.30%) Embedded Firmware
10 4 (0.20%) BitLocker
10 4 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
10 4 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
11 3 (0.15%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 2 (0.10%) Lustre
13 1 (0.050%) Citrix Hypervisor
13 1 (0.050%) IAG
13 1 (0.050%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 130 (6.54%) Terraform
2 94 (4.73%) Kubernetes
3 82 (4.12%) Ansible
4 30 (1.51%) Microsoft Intune
5 24 (1.21%) SCCM
6 20 (1.01%) Grafana
7 19 (0.96%) Prometheus
8 15 (0.75%) Puppet
9 12 (0.60%) vCenter Server
10 11 (0.55%) Kibana
10 11 (0.55%) Proxmox
11 10 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
11 10 (0.50%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
12 8 (0.40%) Nessus
13 7 (0.35%) QRadar
14 6 (0.30%) HP Fortify
14 6 (0.30%) Jamf Pro
14 6 (0.30%) Podman
15 5 (0.25%) Graylog
15 5 (0.25%) Nmap
Vendors
1 365 (18.36%) Microsoft
2 136 (6.84%) Cisco
3 127 (6.39%) VMware
4 78 (3.92%) Splunk
5 61 (3.07%) SolarWinds
6 49 (2.46%) Veeam
7 48 (2.41%) Brocade
7 48 (2.41%) Nimble Storage
7 48 (2.41%) Tanium
8 41 (2.06%) Oracle
9 36 (1.81%) Google
10 33 (1.66%) ServiceNow
11 22 (1.11%) Red Hat
12 19 (0.96%) HP
13 18 (0.91%) CheckPoint
13 18 (0.91%) Juniper
14 17 (0.86%) SAP
15 16 (0.80%) Citrix
15 16 (0.80%) Fortinet
16 15 (0.75%) Salesforce