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

6 months to
20 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 45 71 61
Rank change year-on-year +26 -10 +4
Permanent jobs citing SC Cleared 2,179 1,204 2,905
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 3.22% 4.00% 3.65%
As % of the Qualifications category 16.83% 9.56% 14.90%
Number of salaries quoted 1,636 824 2,124
10th Percentile £41,055 £35,000 £32,500
25th Percentile £50,000 £47,500 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £58,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% +6.36% -4.35%
75th Percentile £80,000 £73,750 £67,125
90th Percentile £90,000 £83,750 £79,225
UK median annual salary £67,500 £60,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year +12.50% +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 12,946 12,589 19,492
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 19.11% 41.86% 24.50%
Number of salaries quoted 6,448 5,029 12,343
10th Percentile £28,750 £27,500 £27,370
25th Percentile £39,000 £35,000 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £50,393 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.14% +0.79% -4.76%
75th Percentile £72,500 £66,254 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £78,750 £80,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £53,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% +3.77% -11.67%

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 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 20 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 +14 591 £70,000 +13.14% 183
South East -8 547 £70,000 +21.74% 284
North of England +105 432 £60,850 +10.64% 169
Midlands +36 308 £57,500 -11.54% 83
North West +114 242 £65,000 +10.17% 93
West Midlands +11 199 £60,000 -11.11% 60
Yorkshire +17 130 £62,500 +38.89% 43
Wales +5 125 £55,000 - 36
East of England +4 108 £65,000 +18.18% 45
East Midlands +28 107 £52,500 +0.96% 23
Scotland +48 67 £75,000 +20.00% 26
North East 0 60 £55,000 -20.73% 36
Northern Ireland -30 7 £63,500 -25.43% 22
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
1 108 (4.96%) Microsoft Exchange
2 47 (2.16%) SharePoint
3 20 (0.92%) Apache
4 18 (0.83%) SAS
5 15 (0.69%) Apache Spark
6 13 (0.60%) Apache Airflow
7 10 (0.46%) Confluence
7 10 (0.46%) Jupyter
8 8 (0.37%) Skype for Business
9 7 (0.32%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 3 (0.14%) OpenStack
11 2 (0.092%) Exchange Server 2013
12 1 (0.046%) Apache Qpid
12 1 (0.046%) Appian
12 1 (0.046%) JBoss
12 1 (0.046%) Site Server
Applications
1 87 (3.99%) Microsoft Office
2 30 (1.38%) Microsoft Excel
3 10 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 9 (0.41%) Simulink
5 4 (0.18%) Windchill
6 3 (0.14%) Stateflow
7 1 (0.046%) CATIA
7 1 (0.046%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.046%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 7 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
2 6 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.046%) Integrated Workplace Management System
3 1 (0.046%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (0.046%) SAP BPC
3 1 (0.046%) SAP EWM
3 1 (0.046%) SAP GRC
3 1 (0.046%) SAP HCM
3 1 (0.046%) SAP MM
3 1 (0.046%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 499 (22.90%) Azure
2 300 (13.77%) AWS
3 271 (12.44%) Microsoft 365
4 81 (3.72%) Entra ID
5 78 (3.58%) GCP
6 47 (2.16%) Serverless
7 45 (2.07%) GitHub
7 45 (2.07%) Power Platform
8 44 (2.02%) SaaS
9 43 (1.97%) Dynamics 365
10 41 (1.88%) Azure DevOps
11 35 (1.61%) Amazon S3
12 32 (1.47%) Azure Sentinel
13 31 (1.42%) AWS CloudFormation
14 25 (1.15%) Amazon EC2
15 24 (1.10%) AWS Lambda
16 22 (1.01%) PaaS
17 21 (0.96%) Amazon ECS
17 21 (0.96%) Amazon EKS
18 19 (0.87%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 140 (6.42%) DNS
2 129 (5.92%) Firewall
3 116 (5.32%) DHCP
4 69 (3.17%) WAN
5 64 (2.94%) VPN
6 51 (2.34%) LAN
6 51 (2.34%) Network Security
7 50 (2.29%) TCP/IP
8 31 (1.42%) Wi-Fi
9 28 (1.28%) BGP
9 28 (1.28%) Structured Cabling
10 23 (1.06%) VLAN
11 20 (0.92%) HTTP
12 19 (0.87%) SD-WAN
13 18 (0.83%) MPLS
14 17 (0.78%) VoIP
15 16 (0.73%) Cisco Firepower
16 13 (0.60%) Broadband
17 12 (0.55%) ATM
18 11 (0.50%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 84 (3.85%) Amazon RDS
2 38 (1.74%) Power BI
3 31 (1.42%) PostgreSQL
4 23 (1.06%) DynamoDB
5 21 (0.96%) Big Data
6 17 (0.78%) Data Warehouse
7 16 (0.73%) Relational Database
8 15 (0.69%) Amazon Athena
9 14 (0.64%) MongoDB
10 13 (0.60%) NoSQL
11 11 (0.50%) SQL Server
12 10 (0.46%) Elasticsearch
12 10 (0.46%) GIS
12 10 (0.46%) Redis
13 9 (0.41%) Data Lake
14 8 (0.37%) Metadata
15 7 (0.32%) Amazon Redshift
15 7 (0.32%) MySQL
15 7 (0.32%) Pentaho
16 6 (0.28%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 78 (3.58%) Git
2 69 (3.17%) GitLab
3 40 (1.84%) Jenkins
4 32 (1.47%) JIRA
5 22 (1.01%) JUnit
6 17 (0.78%) Maven
6 17 (0.78%) SonarQube
7 15 (0.69%) Cypress.io
7 15 (0.69%) Selenium
7 15 (0.69%) Visual Studio Code
8 13 (0.60%) Mockito
9 9 (0.41%) Burp Suite
9 9 (0.41%) Metasploit
10 8 (0.37%) Cucumber
11 6 (0.28%) JMeter
11 6 (0.28%) Postman
12 5 (0.23%) Artifactory
12 5 (0.23%) Claude Code
12 5 (0.23%) REST Assured
13 3 (0.14%) Bitbucket
General
1 495 (22.72%) Social Skills
2 274 (12.57%) Public Sector
3 226 (10.37%) Analytical Skills
4 133 (6.10%) Finance
5 129 (5.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 55 (2.52%) Telecoms
7 43 (1.97%) Manufacturing
8 42 (1.93%) Aerospace
9 37 (1.70%) Electronics
10 36 (1.65%) Back Office
11 35 (1.61%) Legal
11 35 (1.61%) Military
12 34 (1.56%) Law
12 34 (1.56%) Organisational Skills
13 30 (1.38%) Aviation
14 26 (1.19%) Retail
15 18 (0.83%) Documentation Skills
16 12 (0.55%) Games
16 12 (0.55%) Influencing Skills
17 11 (0.50%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 356 (16.34%) Senior
2 211 (9.68%) Architect
3 183 (8.40%) Developer
4 176 (8.08%) Software Engineer
5 171 (7.85%) Consultant
6 159 (7.30%) Analyst
7 127 (5.83%) Systems Engineer
8 96 (4.41%) Cloud Engineer
8 96 (4.41%) Support Engineer
9 91 (4.18%) Security Consultant
10 90 (4.13%) Data Engineer
11 88 (4.04%) Lead
12 79 (3.63%) Network Engineer
13 75 (3.44%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 73 (3.35%) Senior Developer
15 68 (3.12%) Java Developer
15 68 (3.12%) Security Architect
16 67 (3.07%) IT Engineer
17 65 (2.98%) IT Support
18 56 (2.57%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 58 (2.66%) .NET
2 49 (2.25%) REST
3 39 (1.79%) React
3 39 (1.79%) Spring
4 35 (1.61%) Spring Boot
5 26 (1.19%) AngularJS
6 22 (1.01%) Node.js
7 18 (0.83%) Kafka
8 17 (0.78%) HTML
8 17 (0.78%) RESTful
9 16 (0.73%) PySpark
10 14 (0.64%) CSS
10 14 (0.64%) Playwright
11 13 (0.60%) Elastic Stack
11 13 (0.60%) Jest
12 12 (0.55%) YAML
13 11 (0.50%) RabbitMQ
14 10 (0.46%) SOAP
14 10 (0.46%) Web Services
15 9 (0.41%) ModSecurity
Miscellaneous
1 99 (4.54%) Legacy Systems
2 76 (3.49%) Data Centre
3 73 (3.35%) Onboarding
4 72 (3.30%) Driving Licence
5 69 (3.17%) Cloud Native
6 48 (2.20%) Security Posture
7 45 (2.07%) Product Ownership
8 43 (1.97%) Security Operations Centre
9 41 (1.88%) Self-Motivation
10 38 (1.74%) Management Information System
11 26 (1.19%) Fibre Optics
12 25 (1.15%) CSOC
12 25 (1.15%) Embedded Systems
13 24 (1.10%) Robotics
14 22 (1.01%) PKI
15 20 (0.92%) Algorithms
15 20 (0.92%) Cyber Threat
16 19 (0.87%) Analytical Mindset
17 18 (0.83%) Distributed Systems
18 17 (0.78%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 290 (13.31%) Windows
2 252 (11.56%) Linux
3 140 (6.42%) Windows Server
4 86 (3.95%) Windows Server 2016
5 68 (3.12%) Windows 10
6 24 (1.10%) Unix
7 19 (0.87%) Android
8 17 (0.78%) Mac OS
9 13 (0.60%) CentOS
10 11 (0.50%) Ubuntu
11 7 (0.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 6 (0.28%) Debian
13 5 (0.23%) AIX
13 5 (0.23%) Apple iOS
13 5 (0.23%) Embedded Linux
14 3 (0.14%) Solaris
14 3 (0.14%) VMS
15 2 (0.092%) Mac OS X
15 2 (0.092%) Windows 7
16 1 (0.046%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 317 (14.55%) Cybersecurity
2 305 (14.00%) Problem-Solving
3 304 (13.95%) Agile
4 250 (11.47%) Continuous Improvement
5 245 (11.24%) Software Engineering
6 236 (10.83%) DevOps
7 214 (9.82%) ITIL
8 210 (9.64%) CI/CD
9 158 (7.25%) Mentoring
10 151 (6.93%) Customer Service
11 140 (6.42%) Migration
12 132 (6.06%) Infrastructure as Code
13 124 (5.69%) Analytics
14 123 (5.64%) Customer Experience
15 120 (5.51%) AI
16 117 (5.37%) Infrastructure Engineering
17 113 (5.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 106 (4.86%) Technical Leadership
19 104 (4.77%) Decision-Making
19 104 (4.77%) Vulnerability Remediation
Programming Languages
1 248 (11.38%) Python
2 152 (6.98%) Java
3 110 (5.05%) SQL
4 95 (4.36%) C++
5 83 (3.81%) PowerShell
6 68 (3.12%) Bash
7 59 (2.71%) JavaScript
8 55 (2.52%) C#
9 36 (1.65%) TypeScript
10 35 (1.61%) C
11 19 (0.87%) Groovy
11 19 (0.87%) Rust
12 17 (0.78%) PL/SQL
13 15 (0.69%) MATLAB
13 15 (0.69%) Scala
14 14 (0.64%) Kusto Query Language
15 13 (0.60%) Bicep
16 12 (0.55%) Embedded C
16 12 (0.55%) VBA
17 8 (0.37%) Embedded C++
Qualifications
1 2,179 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 402 (18.45%) DV Cleared
3 216 (9.91%) Degree
4 64 (2.94%) BPSS Clearance
5 51 (2.34%) CISSP
6 46 (2.11%) CTC Cleared
7 45 (2.07%) Cisco Certification
8 37 (1.70%) CISM
9 34 (1.56%) Microsoft Certification
10 30 (1.38%) AWS Certification
10 30 (1.38%) CompTIA Security+
11 29 (1.33%) Azure Certification
12 27 (1.24%) Computer Science Degree
12 27 (1.24%) CREST Certified
12 27 (1.24%) HNC
13 26 (1.19%) Master's Degree
14 22 (1.01%) CCNP
15 18 (0.83%) SANS
16 17 (0.78%) OSCP
17 16 (0.73%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 124 (5.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 120 (5.51%) Cyber Essentials
3 106 (4.86%) PCI DSS
4 77 (3.53%) SLA
5 68 (3.12%) NIST
6 61 (2.80%) QA
7 48 (2.20%) GDPR
8 42 (1.93%) NCSC
9 32 (1.47%) Accessibility
10 31 (1.42%) Data Quality
11 29 (1.33%) JSP 440
12 26 (1.19%) GRC
13 21 (0.96%) ISO 9001
14 20 (0.92%) PMO
15 19 (0.87%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 19 (0.87%) ISO/IEC 20000
16 17 (0.78%) Def Stans
17 13 (0.60%) Actionable Recommendations
18 12 (0.55%) NIST 800
19 11 (0.50%) WCAG
System Software
1 186 (8.54%) Active Directory
2 118 (5.42%) Docker
3 111 (5.09%) Hyper-V
4 80 (3.67%) Terminal Server
5 51 (2.34%) VMware Infrastructure
6 31 (1.42%) Firmware
7 20 (0.92%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.73%) VMware NSX
9 14 (0.64%) vSphere
10 9 (0.41%) Embedded Firmware
11 6 (0.28%) BitLocker
12 5 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
13 4 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
14 1 (0.046%) Citrix Hypervisor
14 1 (0.046%) IAG
14 1 (0.046%) Oracle RAC
14 1 (0.046%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 156 (7.16%) Terraform
2 121 (5.55%) Kubernetes
3 83 (3.81%) Ansible
4 36 (1.65%) Microsoft Intune
5 23 (1.06%) Grafana
6 22 (1.01%) Prometheus
7 19 (0.87%) SCCM
8 16 (0.73%) Proxmox
9 15 (0.69%) Puppet
10 14 (0.64%) Kibana
10 14 (0.64%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
11 12 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
12 11 (0.50%) Nessus
12 11 (0.50%) vCenter Server
13 9 (0.41%) Argo
13 9 (0.41%) Nmap
14 7 (0.32%) HP Fortify
14 7 (0.32%) QRadar
15 6 (0.28%) Graylog
15 6 (0.28%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 423 (19.41%) Microsoft
2 160 (7.34%) VMware
3 115 (5.28%) Cisco
4 112 (5.14%) Splunk
5 91 (4.18%) SolarWinds
6 81 (3.72%) Veeam
7 80 (3.67%) Brocade
7 80 (3.67%) Nimble Storage
7 80 (3.67%) Tanium
8 46 (2.11%) Oracle
8 46 (2.11%) ServiceNow
9 32 (1.47%) Google
10 20 (0.92%) Red Hat
11 19 (0.87%) Fortinet
11 19 (0.87%) HP
12 15 (0.69%) CheckPoint
12 15 (0.69%) Juniper
13 14 (0.64%) Citrix
13 14 (0.64%) Tenable
14 13 (0.60%) Databricks