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 12 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 55 45 34
Rank change year-on-year -10 -11 +30
Permanent jobs citing SC Cleared 1,526 1,710 2,127
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 3.64% 4.75% 6.13%
As % of the Qualifications category 10.95% 12.32% 20.25%
Number of salaries quoted 977 1,090 1,588
10th Percentile £31,250 £40,000 £31,250
25th Percentile £46,160 £47,500 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £58,000 £59,430 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year -2.41% +8.05% -
75th Percentile £75,000 £75,000 £66,250
90th Percentile £87,500 £82,500 £74,946
UK median annual salary £60,000 £62,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year -3.23% +7.83% -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 13,936 13,876 10,505
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 33.21% 38.58% 30.29%
Number of salaries quoted 5,056 5,285 6,893
10th Percentile £28,250 £31,250 £27,965
25th Percentile £31,250 £42,500 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £49,000 £55,000 £51,498
Median % change year-on-year -10.91% +6.80% +3.00%
75th Percentile £65,000 £70,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £81,250 £81,250 £77,500
UK median annual salary £55,000 £59,499 £57,500
% change year-on-year -7.56% +3.48% -

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 12 January 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 12 January 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 +13 499 £60,000 - 245
South East -24 436 £58,000 +0.87% 404
Midlands -3 209 £55,500 -8.26% 161
North of England -17 170 £60,000 +12.15% 197
West Midlands -14 137 £62,500 -3.85% 78
East of England +30 128 £51,000 -11.30% 154
North West -3 101 £62,500 +19.05% 81
East Midlands +36 70 £50,000 +11.11% 83
Yorkshire 0 54 £55,233 +47.29% 82
Wales +15 49 £73,801 +19.48% 62
Scotland -25 32 £75,000 +20.00% 54
North East 0 18 £65,000 +9.37% 35
Northern Ireland -14 17 £74,316 +25.05% 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
1 155 (10.16%) Microsoft Exchange
2 31 (2.03%) SharePoint
3 26 (1.70%) Exchange Server 2003
4 13 (0.85%) Confluence
5 11 (0.72%) Apache
6 7 (0.46%) Skype for Business
7 5 (0.33%) Apache Airflow
7 5 (0.33%) Apache Spark
7 5 (0.33%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 4 (0.26%) Appian
8 4 (0.26%) nginx
9 3 (0.20%) Tomcat
9 3 (0.20%) WebLogic
9 3 (0.20%) WebLogic Portal
10 2 (0.13%) IIS
11 1 (0.066%) Apache Superset
11 1 (0.066%) Camunda
Applications
1 75 (4.91%) Microsoft Office
2 32 (2.10%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.46%) Simulink
5 6 (0.39%) Adobe XD
6 4 (0.26%) AutoCAD
6 4 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.26%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 4 (0.26%) Windchill
7 2 (0.13%) EPLAN
8 1 (0.066%) Abaqus
8 1 (0.066%) CATIA
8 1 (0.066%) InVision
8 1 (0.066%) OrCAD
8 1 (0.066%) Revit
8 1 (0.066%) Sketch
8 1 (0.066%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 22 (1.44%) Dynamics CRM
2 19 (1.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 6 (0.39%) Primavera
4 5 (0.33%) SAP S/4HANA
5 4 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.13%) C-CURE
6 2 (0.13%) Integrated Workplace Management System
6 2 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
7 1 (0.066%) Maximo
7 1 (0.066%) Salesforce CRM
7 1 (0.066%) SAP GTS
7 1 (0.066%) SAP HR
7 1 (0.066%) SAP Payroll
7 1 (0.066%) Teamcenter
7 1 (0.066%) TRIRIGA
Cloud Services
1 306 (20.05%) Azure
2 206 (13.50%) Microsoft 365
3 178 (11.66%) AWS
4 52 (3.41%) Entra ID
5 50 (3.28%) Dynamics 365
6 48 (3.15%) GCP
7 32 (2.10%) Amazon ECS
7 32 (2.10%) Power Platform
8 27 (1.77%) Amazon S3
8 27 (1.77%) SaaS
9 25 (1.64%) AWS CloudFormation
10 22 (1.44%) dbt
11 21 (1.38%) PaaS
11 21 (1.38%) Serverless
12 18 (1.18%) Amazon ECR
12 18 (1.18%) Google Workspace
13 17 (1.11%) PowerApps
13 17 (1.11%) Pulumi
14 16 (1.05%) Amazon EC2
14 16 (1.05%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 159 (10.42%) DNS
2 140 (9.17%) DHCP
3 95 (6.23%) Firewall
4 51 (3.34%) LAN
5 48 (3.15%) VPN
6 47 (3.08%) WAN
7 42 (2.75%) TCP/IP
8 40 (2.62%) Network Security
9 33 (2.16%) Wi-Fi
10 20 (1.31%) Wireless
11 19 (1.25%) Software-Defined Radio
12 15 (0.98%) VSAT
13 14 (0.92%) BGP
13 14 (0.92%) Cisco ASA
13 14 (0.92%) SMTP
14 13 (0.85%) Intrusion Detection
14 13 (0.85%) VLAN
15 12 (0.79%) IPsec
15 12 (0.79%) Junos
15 12 (0.79%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 125 (8.19%) Amazon RDS
2 36 (2.36%) Oracle Database
3 26 (1.70%) Oracle Database 10g
4 24 (1.57%) PostgreSQL
5 21 (1.38%) Power BI
6 19 (1.25%) Elasticsearch
7 17 (1.11%) SQL Server
8 16 (1.05%) Redis
9 14 (0.92%) NoSQL
10 11 (0.72%) Big Data
11 10 (0.66%) MongoDB
11 10 (0.66%) Relational Database
12 9 (0.59%) Metadata
13 8 (0.52%) DynamoDB
13 8 (0.52%) Hadoop
14 7 (0.46%) GIS
15 5 (0.33%) Neo4j
16 4 (0.26%) Airbyte
16 4 (0.26%) Amazon Aurora
17 3 (0.20%) Cloudera CDH
Development Applications
1 36 (2.36%) Git
2 31 (2.03%) JIRA
3 30 (1.97%) Jenkins
4 14 (0.92%) GitLab
5 13 (0.85%) Selenium
6 11 (0.72%) Burp Suite
6 11 (0.72%) Metasploit
7 9 (0.59%) Maven
7 9 (0.59%) Vagrant
8 8 (0.52%) Balsamiq
8 8 (0.52%) Cucumber
8 8 (0.52%) JUnit
8 8 (0.52%) Mockito
9 7 (0.46%) Cypress.io
9 7 (0.46%) JMeter
10 6 (0.39%) Axure RP
10 6 (0.39%) Locust
10 6 (0.39%) Rational Rhapsody
11 5 (0.33%) Robot Framework
11 5 (0.33%) Snyk
General
1 494 (32.37%) Social Skills
2 240 (15.73%) Analytical Skills
3 187 (12.25%) Public Sector
4 179 (11.73%) Finance
5 117 (7.67%) Manufacturing
6 109 (7.14%) Law
7 96 (6.29%) Marketing
8 83 (5.44%) Electronics
9 77 (5.05%) Telecoms
10 47 (3.08%) Organisational Skills
11 45 (2.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 40 (2.62%) Aerospace
13 31 (2.03%) Aviation
14 30 (1.97%) Aeronautics
15 28 (1.83%) Back Office
16 26 (1.70%) Military
17 23 (1.51%) Presentation Skills
18 21 (1.38%) Documentation Skills
18 21 (1.38%) Retail
19 14 (0.92%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 162 (10.62%) Senior
1 162 (10.62%) Systems Engineer
2 144 (9.44%) Consultant
3 138 (9.04%) Architect
4 115 (7.54%) Analyst
5 102 (6.68%) Support Engineer
6 74 (4.85%) Lead
7 73 (4.78%) Software Engineer
8 56 (3.67%) Developer
9 53 (3.47%) Business Manager
10 50 (3.28%) 2nd Line Support
10 50 (3.28%) Business Systems Manager
10 50 (3.28%) Systems Manager
11 49 (3.21%) IT Support
11 49 (3.21%) Security Consultant
12 44 (2.88%) Network Engineer
13 43 (2.82%) 3rd Line Support
13 43 (2.82%) Administrator
14 40 (2.62%) Support Analyst
15 36 (2.36%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (2.42%) React
2 26 (1.70%) REST
3 24 (1.57%) SAP CAF
4 22 (1.44%) Django
5 19 (1.25%) .NET
6 18 (1.18%) Spring
7 17 (1.11%) AngularJS
8 16 (1.05%) Node.js
9 15 (0.98%) Spring Boot
10 12 (0.79%) Middleware
11 10 (0.66%) HTML
12 9 (0.59%) CSS
12 9 (0.59%) Kafka
13 8 (0.52%) SOAP
13 8 (0.52%) Vue
14 7 (0.46%) ASP.NET
14 7 (0.46%) Web Services
15 6 (0.39%) EDI
15 6 (0.39%) Gherkin
15 6 (0.39%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 105 (6.88%) Legacy Systems
2 79 (5.18%) e-Learning
3 55 (3.60%) Robotics
4 42 (2.75%) Data Centre
5 34 (2.23%) Cloud Native
6 33 (2.16%) Driving Licence
7 32 (2.10%) Onboarding
8 30 (1.97%) Management Information System
9 25 (1.64%) Self-Motivation
10 24 (1.57%) Security Operations Centre
11 23 (1.51%) Embedded Systems
12 21 (1.38%) Security Posture
13 19 (1.25%) Algorithms
13 19 (1.25%) Operational Technology
14 15 (0.98%) Linux Command Line
15 14 (0.92%) PKI
16 13 (0.85%) Fibre Optics
16 13 (0.85%) SCADA
17 12 (0.79%) Product Ownership
17 12 (0.79%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 272 (17.82%) Windows
2 247 (16.19%) Linux
3 158 (10.35%) Windows Server
4 100 (6.55%) Windows Server 2016
5 84 (5.50%) Unix
6 40 (2.62%) Android
7 39 (2.56%) Windows 10
8 34 (2.23%) Solaris
9 33 (2.16%) Apple iOS
10 26 (1.70%) Windows Server 2003
11 25 (1.64%) HPUX
12 24 (1.57%) Windows 7
13 22 (1.44%) Windows Server 2008
14 15 (0.98%) Ubuntu
15 12 (0.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
16 11 (0.72%) Embedded Linux
17 9 (0.59%) VMS
18 7 (0.46%) Amazon Linux
18 7 (0.46%) Debian
19 5 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 286 (18.74%) Problem-Solving
2 194 (12.71%) Agile
3 182 (11.93%) Software Engineering
4 174 (11.40%) Cybersecurity
5 164 (10.75%) Customer Service
6 144 (9.44%) Continuous Improvement
7 142 (9.31%) AI
8 140 (9.17%) Migration
9 136 (8.91%) Project Management
10 127 (8.32%) Customer Experience
10 127 (8.32%) DevOps
11 120 (7.86%) Innovative Thinking
12 113 (7.40%) Risk Management
13 112 (7.34%) Kalman Filter
14 108 (7.08%) Web Filtering
15 104 (6.82%) Vulnerability Scanning
16 99 (6.49%) ITIL
17 97 (6.36%) Vulnerability Remediation
18 96 (6.29%) Email Filtering
19 91 (5.96%) CI/CD
Programming Languages
1 174 (11.40%) Python
2 86 (5.64%) SQL
3 77 (5.05%) Java
4 68 (4.46%) PowerShell
5 47 (3.08%) C++
5 47 (3.08%) JavaScript
6 41 (2.69%) C
7 32 (2.10%) Bash
8 27 (1.77%) Perl
9 24 (1.57%) C#
10 20 (1.31%) TypeScript
11 19 (1.25%) MATLAB
12 17 (1.11%) Rust
13 13 (0.85%) VBA
14 9 (0.59%) Go
14 9 (0.59%) Groovy
14 9 (0.59%) PL/SQL
15 8 (0.52%) R
16 7 (0.46%) Kotlin
17 6 (0.39%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 1,526 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 276 (18.09%) DV Cleared
3 256 (16.78%) Degree
4 89 (5.83%) Cisco Certification
5 76 (4.98%) BPSS Clearance
6 67 (4.39%) CCNA
7 58 (3.80%) CISSP
8 55 (3.60%) CCNP
9 47 (3.08%) CISM
10 32 (2.10%) CTC Cleared
11 30 (1.97%) Master's Degree
12 28 (1.83%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
13 26 (1.70%) Computer Science Degree
14 22 (1.44%) Microsoft Certification
15 21 (1.38%) AWS Certification
15 21 (1.38%) JNCIA
16 18 (1.18%) Azure Certification
16 18 (1.18%) CompTIA Security+
17 12 (0.79%) CEH
17 12 (0.79%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 108 (7.08%) Cyber Essentials
2 106 (6.95%) SLA
3 99 (6.49%) PCI DSS
4 67 (4.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 65 (4.26%) NIST
6 42 (2.75%) QA
7 32 (2.10%) GRC
8 29 (1.90%) Accessibility
9 23 (1.51%) GDPR
10 14 (0.92%) WCAG
11 11 (0.72%) Data Quality
11 11 (0.72%) NCSC
12 10 (0.66%) ISO 9001
13 9 (0.59%) Def Stans
14 8 (0.52%) NIST 800
15 7 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
15 7 (0.46%) JSP 440
16 5 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 5 (0.33%) ISO 13485
16 5 (0.33%) RMADS
System Software
1 194 (12.71%) Active Directory
2 109 (7.14%) Hyper-V
3 97 (6.36%) Terminal Server
4 74 (4.85%) Docker
5 42 (2.75%) VMware Infrastructure
6 28 (1.83%) Firmware
7 15 (0.98%) Embedded Firmware
8 9 (0.59%) vSphere
9 7 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
10 5 (0.33%) VMware NSX
11 4 (0.26%) DFS Replication
11 4 (0.26%) Dovecot
11 4 (0.26%) Postfix
11 4 (0.26%) Squid
11 4 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
12 2 (0.13%) Lustre
12 2 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 1 (0.066%) KVM
13 1 (0.066%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 80 (5.24%) Terraform
2 66 (4.33%) Kubernetes
3 42 (2.75%) Ansible
4 32 (2.10%) Jamf Pro
5 24 (1.57%) Grafana
6 20 (1.31%) SCCM
7 17 (1.11%) Prometheus
8 15 (0.98%) Microsoft Intune
8 15 (0.98%) SCOM
9 12 (0.79%) vCenter Server
10 11 (0.72%) Nmap
11 10 (0.66%) AWS Copilot
11 10 (0.66%) Nessus
11 10 (0.66%) WSUS
12 8 (0.52%) Endace
13 6 (0.39%) Nagios
14 5 (0.33%) Proxmox
14 5 (0.33%) Puppet
15 4 (0.26%) Docker Swarm
15 4 (0.26%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 318 (20.84%) Microsoft
2 184 (12.06%) VMware
3 145 (9.50%) Cisco
4 113 (7.40%) Splunk
5 108 (7.08%) SolarWinds
6 100 (6.55%) Veeam
7 96 (6.29%) Brocade
7 96 (6.29%) Nimble Storage
7 96 (6.29%) Tanium
8 59 (3.87%) SAP
9 57 (3.74%) Oracle
10 49 (3.21%) Google
11 36 (2.36%) Juniper
12 32 (2.10%) Apple
13 31 (2.03%) Salesforce
14 30 (1.97%) Red Hat
15 28 (1.83%) ServiceNow
16 27 (1.77%) Samsung
17 19 (1.25%) Computacenter
17 19 (1.25%) Sparx