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 16 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 70 60
Rank change year-on-year +25 -10 +8
Permanent jobs citing SC Cleared 2,133 1,207 2,894
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 3.18% 4.05% 3.67%
As % of the Qualifications category 16.59% 9.60% 14.88%
Number of salaries quoted 1,593 832 2,102
10th Percentile £40,000 £35,050 £32,500
25th Percentile £50,000 £47,500 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £58,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +12.07% +5.45% -4.35%
75th Percentile £80,000 £73,750 £67,500
90th Percentile £90,000 £83,750 £79,563
UK median annual salary £65,288 £60,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year +8.81% +4.35% -8.00%

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 12,860 12,573 19,444
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 19.16% 42.23% 24.67%
Number of salaries quoted 6,374 5,034 12,298
10th Percentile £28,500 £27,500 £27,326
25th Percentile £38,750 £35,500 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £50,945 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.96% +1.89% -4.76%
75th Percentile £72,250 £66,250 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £78,750 £80,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £53,500
% change year-on-year +9.09% +2.80% -10.83%

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 16 June 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 16 June 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 +15 577 £70,000 +12.46% 260
South East -11 532 £70,000 +23.89% 354
North of England +102 417 £60,000 +9.09% 227
Midlands +41 308 £57,500 -11.54% 97
North West +112 234 £65,000 +10.17% 140
West Midlands +8 199 £60,000 -11.11% 74
Yorkshire +15 128 £62,500 +38.89% 45
Wales +6 120 £55,000 - 24
East of England +6 111 £65,000 +18.18% 53
East Midlands +32 107 £52,500 +0.96% 23
Scotland +43 67 £75,000 +20.00% 34
North East 0 55 £55,000 -20.73% 43
Northern Ireland -32 6 £60,625 -28.80% 17
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
1 109 (5.11%) Microsoft Exchange
2 44 (2.06%) SharePoint
3 20 (0.94%) Apache
4 18 (0.84%) SAS
5 15 (0.70%) Apache Spark
6 13 (0.61%) Apache Airflow
7 10 (0.47%) Jupyter
8 8 (0.38%) Skype for Business
9 7 (0.33%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 6 (0.28%) Confluence
11 2 (0.094%) Exchange Server 2013
11 2 (0.094%) OpenStack
12 1 (0.047%) Apache Qpid
12 1 (0.047%) Appian
12 1 (0.047%) JBoss
12 1 (0.047%) Site Server
Applications
1 88 (4.13%) Microsoft Office
2 30 (1.41%) Microsoft Excel
3 10 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.38%) Simulink
5 4 (0.19%) Windchill
6 3 (0.14%) Stateflow
7 1 (0.047%) CATIA
7 1 (0.047%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.047%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
1 6 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.047%) Integrated Workplace Management System
2 1 (0.047%) Salesforce CRM
2 1 (0.047%) SAP BPC
2 1 (0.047%) SAP EWM
2 1 (0.047%) SAP GRC
2 1 (0.047%) SAP HCM
2 1 (0.047%) SAP MM
2 1 (0.047%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 487 (22.83%) Azure
2 296 (13.88%) AWS
3 268 (12.56%) Microsoft 365
4 78 (3.66%) Entra ID
5 76 (3.56%) GCP
6 44 (2.06%) GitHub
6 44 (2.06%) Serverless
7 43 (2.02%) Dynamics 365
8 42 (1.97%) Power Platform
8 42 (1.97%) SaaS
9 35 (1.64%) Azure DevOps
10 34 (1.59%) Amazon S3
11 32 (1.50%) Azure Sentinel
12 31 (1.45%) AWS CloudFormation
13 25 (1.17%) Amazon EC2
14 23 (1.08%) AWS Lambda
15 21 (0.98%) Amazon ECS
15 21 (0.98%) Amazon EKS
15 21 (0.98%) PaaS
16 19 (0.89%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 140 (6.56%) DNS
2 128 (6.00%) Firewall
3 117 (5.49%) DHCP
4 69 (3.23%) WAN
5 62 (2.91%) VPN
6 50 (2.34%) LAN
6 50 (2.34%) Network Security
7 48 (2.25%) TCP/IP
8 34 (1.59%) Wi-Fi
9 30 (1.41%) BGP
9 30 (1.41%) Structured Cabling
10 22 (1.03%) VLAN
11 20 (0.94%) SD-WAN
12 19 (0.89%) HTTP
13 18 (0.84%) MPLS
13 18 (0.84%) VoIP
14 16 (0.75%) Cisco Firepower
15 13 (0.61%) Broadband
16 12 (0.56%) ATM
17 11 (0.52%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 84 (3.94%) Amazon RDS
2 38 (1.78%) Power BI
3 31 (1.45%) PostgreSQL
4 23 (1.08%) DynamoDB
5 20 (0.94%) Big Data
6 16 (0.75%) Data Warehouse
6 16 (0.75%) Relational Database
7 15 (0.70%) Amazon Athena
8 14 (0.66%) MongoDB
9 13 (0.61%) NoSQL
10 11 (0.52%) GIS
10 11 (0.52%) SQL Server
11 10 (0.47%) Elasticsearch
11 10 (0.47%) Redis
12 9 (0.42%) Data Lake
13 8 (0.38%) Pentaho
14 7 (0.33%) Metadata
14 7 (0.33%) MySQL
15 6 (0.28%) Hadoop
15 6 (0.28%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 74 (3.47%) Git
2 68 (3.19%) GitLab
3 40 (1.88%) Jenkins
4 28 (1.31%) JIRA
5 22 (1.03%) JUnit
6 17 (0.80%) Maven
6 17 (0.80%) SonarQube
7 14 (0.66%) Cypress.io
7 14 (0.66%) Selenium
7 14 (0.66%) Visual Studio Code
8 13 (0.61%) Mockito
9 9 (0.42%) Burp Suite
9 9 (0.42%) Metasploit
10 8 (0.38%) Cucumber
11 6 (0.28%) Postman
12 5 (0.23%) Artifactory
12 5 (0.23%) Claude Code
12 5 (0.23%) JMeter
13 4 (0.19%) REST Assured
14 3 (0.14%) Bitbucket
General
1 485 (22.74%) Social Skills
2 273 (12.80%) Public Sector
3 218 (10.22%) Analytical Skills
4 128 (6.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 125 (5.86%) Finance
6 59 (2.77%) Telecoms
7 43 (2.02%) Manufacturing
8 38 (1.78%) Aerospace
9 37 (1.73%) Law
10 36 (1.69%) Back Office
11 35 (1.64%) Electronics
11 35 (1.64%) Military
12 34 (1.59%) Legal
12 34 (1.59%) Organisational Skills
13 30 (1.41%) Aviation
14 26 (1.22%) Retail
15 18 (0.84%) Documentation Skills
16 12 (0.56%) Influencing Skills
17 11 (0.52%) Games
18 10 (0.47%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 350 (16.41%) Senior
2 202 (9.47%) Architect
3 173 (8.11%) Developer
3 173 (8.11%) Software Engineer
4 162 (7.59%) Consultant
5 160 (7.50%) Analyst
6 125 (5.86%) Systems Engineer
7 98 (4.59%) Support Engineer
8 93 (4.36%) Cloud Engineer
9 91 (4.27%) Data Engineer
10 87 (4.08%) Lead
10 87 (4.08%) Security Consultant
11 82 (3.84%) Network Engineer
12 75 (3.52%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 70 (3.28%) Senior Developer
14 68 (3.19%) IT Engineer
14 68 (3.19%) Java Developer
15 67 (3.14%) IT Support
16 62 (2.91%) Security Architect
17 56 (2.63%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 56 (2.63%) .NET
2 47 (2.20%) REST
3 39 (1.83%) React
3 39 (1.83%) Spring
4 35 (1.64%) Spring Boot
5 26 (1.22%) AngularJS
6 20 (0.94%) Node.js
7 17 (0.80%) Kafka
7 17 (0.80%) PySpark
8 15 (0.70%) RESTful
9 13 (0.61%) Elastic Stack
9 13 (0.61%) Jest
9 13 (0.61%) Playwright
10 12 (0.56%) HTML
10 12 (0.56%) YAML
11 11 (0.52%) RabbitMQ
12 10 (0.47%) SOAP
12 10 (0.47%) Web Services
13 9 (0.42%) CSS
13 9 (0.42%) gRPC
Miscellaneous
1 99 (4.64%) Legacy Systems
2 78 (3.66%) Data Centre
3 71 (3.33%) Driving Licence
4 69 (3.23%) Onboarding
5 61 (2.86%) Cloud Native
6 49 (2.30%) Security Posture
7 42 (1.97%) Security Operations Centre
8 41 (1.92%) Product Ownership
9 38 (1.78%) Self-Motivation
10 37 (1.73%) Management Information System
11 28 (1.31%) Fibre Optics
12 25 (1.17%) CSOC
13 24 (1.13%) Embedded Systems
14 23 (1.08%) Robotics
15 21 (0.98%) PKI
16 20 (0.94%) Cyber Threat
17 19 (0.89%) Analytical Mindset
18 18 (0.84%) Algorithms
18 18 (0.84%) Data Structures
18 18 (0.84%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 287 (13.46%) Windows
2 250 (11.72%) Linux
3 139 (6.52%) Windows Server
4 86 (4.03%) Windows Server 2016
5 69 (3.23%) Windows 10
6 23 (1.08%) Unix
7 19 (0.89%) Android
8 16 (0.75%) Mac OS
9 13 (0.61%) CentOS
10 11 (0.52%) Ubuntu
11 7 (0.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 6 (0.28%) Apple iOS
12 6 (0.28%) Debian
13 5 (0.23%) AIX
13 5 (0.23%) Embedded Linux
14 3 (0.14%) Solaris
14 3 (0.14%) VMS
15 2 (0.094%) Mac OS X
15 2 (0.094%) Windows 7
16 1 (0.047%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 306 (14.35%) Cybersecurity
2 299 (14.02%) Problem-Solving
3 282 (13.22%) Agile
4 243 (11.39%) Continuous Improvement
5 240 (11.25%) Software Engineering
6 220 (10.31%) DevOps
7 211 (9.89%) ITIL
8 199 (9.33%) CI/CD
9 153 (7.17%) Mentoring
10 152 (7.13%) Customer Service
11 140 (6.56%) Migration
12 130 (6.09%) Infrastructure as Code
13 123 (5.77%) Customer Experience
14 120 (5.63%) Analytics
15 116 (5.44%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 112 (5.25%) AI
17 108 (5.06%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 103 (4.83%) Vulnerability Remediation
19 100 (4.69%) Decision-Making
20 99 (4.64%) Kalman Filter
Programming Languages
1 237 (11.11%) Python
2 146 (6.84%) Java
3 108 (5.06%) SQL
4 91 (4.27%) C++
5 79 (3.70%) PowerShell
6 68 (3.19%) Bash
7 53 (2.48%) JavaScript
8 51 (2.39%) C#
9 33 (1.55%) C
9 33 (1.55%) TypeScript
10 19 (0.89%) Groovy
11 18 (0.84%) Rust
12 17 (0.80%) PL/SQL
13 14 (0.66%) Kusto Query Language
13 14 (0.66%) MATLAB
14 12 (0.56%) VBA
15 11 (0.52%) Embedded C
16 10 (0.47%) Bicep
16 10 (0.47%) Scala
17 8 (0.38%) Perl
Qualifications
1 2,133 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 393 (18.42%) DV Cleared
3 213 (9.99%) Degree
4 64 (3.00%) BPSS Clearance
5 48 (2.25%) CISSP
6 46 (2.16%) CTC Cleared
7 45 (2.11%) Cisco Certification
8 33 (1.55%) CISM
9 32 (1.50%) Microsoft Certification
10 30 (1.41%) AWS Certification
10 30 (1.41%) CompTIA Security+
11 27 (1.27%) Azure Certification
11 27 (1.27%) Computer Science Degree
12 26 (1.22%) CREST Certified
12 26 (1.22%) HNC
13 25 (1.17%) Master's Degree
14 22 (1.03%) CCNP
15 18 (0.84%) SANS
16 17 (0.80%) CCNA
16 17 (0.80%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 118 (5.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 117 (5.49%) Cyber Essentials
3 106 (4.97%) PCI DSS
4 76 (3.56%) SLA
5 64 (3.00%) NIST
6 57 (2.67%) QA
7 46 (2.16%) GDPR
8 37 (1.73%) NCSC
9 30 (1.41%) Data Quality
10 28 (1.31%) Accessibility
10 28 (1.31%) JSP 440
11 23 (1.08%) GRC
12 21 (0.98%) ISO 9001
13 20 (0.94%) PMO
14 19 (0.89%) ISO/IEC 20000
15 18 (0.84%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 17 (0.80%) Def Stans
17 14 (0.66%) Actionable Recommendations
18 12 (0.56%) NIST 800
19 8 (0.38%) HIPAA
System Software
1 181 (8.49%) Active Directory
2 113 (5.30%) Docker
3 108 (5.06%) Hyper-V
4 80 (3.75%) Terminal Server
5 51 (2.39%) VMware Infrastructure
6 31 (1.45%) Firmware
7 19 (0.89%) Virtual Desktop
8 17 (0.80%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.61%) vSphere
10 9 (0.42%) Embedded Firmware
11 6 (0.28%) BitLocker
12 5 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
13 4 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
14 2 (0.094%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 1 (0.047%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 1 (0.047%) IAG
15 1 (0.047%) Lustre
15 1 (0.047%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 152 (7.13%) Terraform
2 114 (5.34%) Kubernetes
3 82 (3.84%) Ansible
4 36 (1.69%) Microsoft Intune
5 23 (1.08%) Grafana
6 22 (1.03%) Prometheus
7 20 (0.94%) SCCM
8 15 (0.70%) Proxmox
8 15 (0.70%) Puppet
9 14 (0.66%) Kibana
10 13 (0.61%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
11 12 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
12 11 (0.52%) Nessus
12 11 (0.52%) vCenter Server
13 9 (0.42%) Argo
13 9 (0.42%) Nmap
14 7 (0.33%) HP Fortify
14 7 (0.33%) QRadar
15 6 (0.28%) Graylog
15 6 (0.28%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 414 (19.41%) Microsoft
2 159 (7.45%) VMware
3 120 (5.63%) Cisco
4 111 (5.20%) Splunk
5 91 (4.27%) SolarWinds
6 80 (3.75%) Brocade
6 80 (3.75%) Nimble Storage
6 80 (3.75%) Tanium
6 80 (3.75%) Veeam
7 46 (2.16%) Oracle
8 44 (2.06%) ServiceNow
9 30 (1.41%) Google
10 21 (0.98%) HP
10 21 (0.98%) Red Hat
11 19 (0.89%) Fortinet
12 18 (0.84%) CheckPoint
13 16 (0.75%) Juniper
14 14 (0.66%) Aruba
14 14 (0.66%) Citrix
14 14 (0.66%) Tenable