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

6 months to
29 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 62 60 60
Rank change year-on-year -2 0 +8
Permanent jobs citing SC Cleared 1,826 1,138 2,751
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 2.80% 4.18% 4.06%
As % of the Qualifications category 10.75% 9.65% 15.21%
Number of salaries quoted 1,325 887 2,034
10th Percentile £39,468 £38,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £50,000 £47,000 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £56,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.19% +2.73% -
75th Percentile £78,790 £70,000 £67,500
90th Percentile £90,000 £80,000 £76,175
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 16,989 11,788 18,081
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 26.09% 43.27% 26.66%
Number of salaries quoted 5,913 5,171 12,124
10th Percentile £28,250 £29,500 £27,000
25th Percentile £35,663 £37,742 £35,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £52,500 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year - +5.00% -0.34%
75th Percentile £70,000 £66,500 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £78,750 £78,750
UK median annual salary £60,000 £57,500 £54,273
% change year-on-year +4.35% +5.95% -6.43%

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 29 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 29 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 +14 508 £65,000 +8.33% 158
South East -28 459 £65,000 +18.18% 273
North of England +33 295 £60,000 +13.21% 187
Midlands +3 264 £56,400 -9.76% 103
West Midlands -12 176 £60,000 -7.69% 81
North West +30 166 £65,000 +18.18% 95
East of England +16 126 £57,500 -0.86% 45
Yorkshire -19 96 £60,000 +34.23% 42
Wales +10 93 £55,000 +5.77% 25
East Midlands +1 84 £51,058 -1.81% 22
Scotland +15 73 £75,000 +20.00% 19
North East -13 33 £58,750 -9.18% 54
Northern Ireland -31 13 £60,000 -31.43% 6
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 85 (4.65%) Microsoft Exchange
2 47 (2.57%) SharePoint
3 8 (0.44%) SAS
4 6 (0.33%) Apache
4 6 (0.33%) Apache Spark
4 6 (0.33%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 6 (0.33%) Skype for Business
5 2 (0.11%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2003
5 2 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
5 2 (0.11%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.055%) Apache Qpid
6 1 (0.055%) Appian
6 1 (0.055%) Camunda
6 1 (0.055%) Confluence
6 1 (0.055%) IIS
6 1 (0.055%) JBoss
Applications
1 107 (5.86%) Microsoft Office
2 29 (1.59%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.27%) Adobe XD
4 5 (0.27%) Simulink
5 2 (0.11%) CATIA
6 1 (0.055%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.055%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 5 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.22%) Remedy ITSM
2 4 (0.22%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.055%) Integrated Workplace Management System
3 1 (0.055%) Primavera
3 1 (0.055%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (0.055%) SAP BPC
3 1 (0.055%) SAP EWM
3 1 (0.055%) SAP GRC
3 1 (0.055%) SAP GTS
3 1 (0.055%) SAP HCM
3 1 (0.055%) SAP MM
3 1 (0.055%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 355 (19.44%) Azure
2 244 (13.36%) Microsoft 365
3 196 (10.73%) AWS
4 71 (3.89%) Entra ID
5 50 (2.74%) GCP
6 48 (2.63%) Dynamics 365
7 36 (1.97%) Power Platform
8 31 (1.70%) SaaS
9 30 (1.64%) Serverless
10 26 (1.42%) Azure Sentinel
11 24 (1.31%) Azure DevOps
12 23 (1.26%) AWS CloudFormation
13 20 (1.10%) Amazon EKS
13 20 (1.10%) AWS Lambda
14 19 (1.04%) Amazon S3
15 18 (0.99%) Amazon ECS
15 18 (0.99%) PowerApps
16 17 (0.93%) GitHub
17 15 (0.82%) PaaS
18 13 (0.71%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 113 (6.19%) DNS
2 100 (5.48%) DHCP
3 86 (4.71%) Firewall
4 58 (3.18%) WAN
5 52 (2.85%) VPN
6 40 (2.19%) LAN
7 38 (2.08%) Network Security
8 37 (2.03%) TCP/IP
9 36 (1.97%) Wi-Fi
10 29 (1.59%) Structured Cabling
11 24 (1.31%) BGP
12 20 (1.10%) SD-WAN
12 20 (1.10%) VLAN
13 18 (0.99%) MPLS
14 17 (0.93%) VoIP
15 11 (0.60%) HTTP
16 10 (0.55%) Cisco Firepower
17 8 (0.44%) PBX
17 8 (0.44%) WebEx
18 7 (0.38%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 61 (3.34%) Amazon RDS
2 32 (1.75%) Power BI
3 17 (0.93%) PostgreSQL
4 14 (0.77%) DynamoDB
5 11 (0.60%) NoSQL
5 11 (0.60%) Relational Database
6 10 (0.55%) Metadata
7 9 (0.49%) MongoDB
8 8 (0.44%) Big Data
8 8 (0.44%) Elasticsearch
8 8 (0.44%) Pentaho
8 8 (0.44%) SQL Server
9 7 (0.38%) Data Warehouse
10 6 (0.33%) GIS
10 6 (0.33%) Oracle Database
11 5 (0.27%) Amazon Redshift
11 5 (0.27%) Hadoop
11 5 (0.27%) Redis
11 5 (0.27%) Snowflake Schema
11 5 (0.27%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 51 (2.79%) Git
2 37 (2.03%) GitLab
3 24 (1.31%) JIRA
4 19 (1.04%) Jenkins
5 13 (0.71%) Maven
5 13 (0.71%) Visual Studio Code
6 11 (0.60%) JUnit
6 11 (0.60%) SonarQube
7 9 (0.49%) Mockito
7 9 (0.49%) Selenium
8 8 (0.44%) Cypress.io
9 7 (0.38%) Balsamiq
10 6 (0.33%) Burp Suite
10 6 (0.33%) Metasploit
11 5 (0.27%) Axure RP
11 5 (0.27%) Claude Code
11 5 (0.27%) Cucumber
11 5 (0.27%) Rational DOORS
12 4 (0.22%) Postman
12 4 (0.22%) Storybook
General
1 453 (24.81%) Social Skills
2 229 (12.54%) Public Sector
3 170 (9.31%) Analytical Skills
4 123 (6.74%) Finance
5 116 (6.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 70 (3.83%) Telecoms
7 67 (3.67%) Manufacturing
8 63 (3.45%) Back Office
9 60 (3.29%) Law
10 35 (1.92%) Electronics
11 34 (1.86%) Organisational Skills
12 29 (1.59%) Legal
13 28 (1.53%) Aerospace
13 28 (1.53%) Military
14 26 (1.42%) Marketing
15 25 (1.37%) Retail
16 22 (1.20%) Documentation Skills
17 19 (1.04%) Aeronautics
18 14 (0.77%) Aviation
19 12 (0.66%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 305 (16.70%) Senior
2 173 (9.47%) Architect
3 168 (9.20%) Consultant
4 148 (8.11%) Analyst
5 144 (7.89%) Software Engineer
6 138 (7.56%) Developer
7 119 (6.52%) Support Engineer
8 89 (4.87%) Systems Engineer
9 84 (4.60%) Security Consultant
10 71 (3.89%) Lead
11 69 (3.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 66 (3.61%) Cloud Engineer
13 64 (3.50%) Desktop Engineer
14 63 (3.45%) Desktop Support
14 63 (3.45%) Site Engineer
15 62 (3.40%) Desktop Support Engineer
16 61 (3.34%) IT Engineer
16 61 (3.34%) IT Support
17 57 (3.12%) Data Engineer
18 54 (2.96%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 57 (3.12%) .NET
2 47 (2.57%) REST
3 28 (1.53%) React
4 27 (1.48%) Spring
5 24 (1.31%) AngularJS
6 23 (1.26%) Spring Boot
7 16 (0.88%) SOAP
8 15 (0.82%) Node.js
9 12 (0.66%) Middleware
10 11 (0.60%) RabbitMQ
10 11 (0.60%) SAP CAF
11 10 (0.55%) JSON
12 9 (0.49%) ASP.NET
12 9 (0.49%) RESTful
13 8 (0.44%) Elastic Stack
13 8 (0.44%) Vue
14 7 (0.38%) Jest
14 7 (0.38%) Lightning Web Components
14 7 (0.38%) Qt
14 7 (0.38%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 72 (3.94%) Legacy Systems
2 58 (3.18%) Onboarding
3 56 (3.07%) Data Centre
4 49 (2.68%) Driving Licence
5 41 (2.25%) Management Information System
6 36 (1.97%) Product Ownership
6 36 (1.97%) Security Operations Centre
7 35 (1.92%) Security Posture
8 32 (1.75%) Cloud Native
9 29 (1.59%) Robotics
10 21 (1.15%) PKI
11 19 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
12 17 (0.93%) CSOC
12 17 (0.93%) Fibre Optics
13 16 (0.88%) Algorithms
13 16 (0.88%) Distributed Systems
14 14 (0.77%) Data Structures
14 14 (0.77%) Operational Technology
15 13 (0.71%) Low-Code
16 12 (0.66%) Embedded Systems
Operating Systems
1 254 (13.91%) Windows
2 176 (9.64%) Linux
3 117 (6.41%) Windows Server
4 80 (4.38%) Windows 10
5 61 (3.34%) Windows Server 2016
6 26 (1.42%) Unix
7 14 (0.77%) Android
8 11 (0.60%) Apple iOS
9 9 (0.49%) Mac OS
9 9 (0.49%) Ubuntu
10 7 (0.38%) CentOS
10 7 (0.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 6 (0.33%) Solaris
12 4 (0.22%) Debian
13 3 (0.16%) Windows 7
14 2 (0.11%) HPUX
14 2 (0.11%) Mac OS X
14 2 (0.11%) VMS
14 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2003
14 2 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 261 (14.29%) Cybersecurity
2 224 (12.27%) Continuous Improvement
3 215 (11.77%) Agile
4 212 (11.61%) Problem-Solving
5 211 (11.56%) Software Engineering
6 192 (10.51%) ITIL
7 166 (9.09%) DevOps
8 154 (8.43%) Customer Service
9 126 (6.90%) Customer Experience
10 116 (6.35%) Analytics
11 113 (6.19%) CI/CD
12 112 (6.13%) Migration
13 109 (5.97%) Risk Management
14 102 (5.59%) Mentoring
15 100 (5.48%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 88 (4.82%) AI
17 82 (4.49%) Decision-Making
17 82 (4.49%) Service Delivery
18 76 (4.16%) Vulnerability Remediation
19 75 (4.11%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 178 (9.75%) Python
2 116 (6.35%) Java
3 83 (4.55%) SQL
4 64 (3.50%) C++
5 56 (3.07%) PowerShell
6 48 (2.63%) Bash
7 43 (2.35%) JavaScript
8 41 (2.25%) C#
9 27 (1.48%) TypeScript
10 25 (1.37%) C
11 17 (0.93%) Rust
12 16 (0.88%) VBA
13 14 (0.77%) PL/SQL
14 12 (0.66%) Groovy
15 10 (0.55%) Bicep
16 9 (0.49%) Kusto Query Language
17 8 (0.44%) Go
17 8 (0.44%) Kotlin
18 7 (0.38%) Apex Code
19 6 (0.33%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,826 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 324 (17.74%) DV Cleared
3 239 (13.09%) Degree
4 73 (4.00%) CTC Cleared
5 43 (2.35%) CISSP
6 41 (2.25%) BPSS Clearance
7 35 (1.92%) CISM
8 34 (1.86%) Microsoft Certification
9 29 (1.59%) Cisco Certification
9 29 (1.59%) Master's Degree
10 27 (1.48%) AWS Certification
11 25 (1.37%) CompTIA Security+
11 25 (1.37%) Computer Science Degree
12 19 (1.04%) Azure Certification
13 18 (0.99%) CREST Certified
13 18 (0.99%) HNC
14 17 (0.93%) DBS Check
15 14 (0.77%) CCNP
16 13 (0.71%) CCNA
17 12 (0.66%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 88 (4.82%) Cyber Essentials
1 88 (4.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 87 (4.76%) SLA
3 78 (4.27%) PCI DSS
4 63 (3.45%) NIST
5 44 (2.41%) GDPR
6 40 (2.19%) QA
7 25 (1.37%) GRC
8 19 (1.04%) Accessibility
9 18 (0.99%) JSP 440
9 18 (0.99%) NCSC
10 16 (0.88%) PMO
11 15 (0.82%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 11 (0.60%) Data Quality
13 9 (0.49%) ISO 9001
13 9 (0.49%) ISO/IEC 20000
14 8 (0.44%) HIPAA
14 8 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 8 (0.44%) WCAG
15 6 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 148 (8.11%) Active Directory
2 76 (4.16%) Docker
3 73 (4.00%) Hyper-V
4 57 (3.12%) Terminal Server
5 42 (2.30%) VMware Infrastructure
6 17 (0.93%) Firmware
7 14 (0.77%) Virtual Desktop
7 14 (0.77%) VMware NSX
8 9 (0.49%) vSphere
9 6 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
9 6 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
10 3 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 2 (0.11%) Lustre
12 1 (0.055%) Citrix Hypervisor
12 1 (0.055%) IAG
12 1 (0.055%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 87 (4.76%) Terraform
2 70 (3.83%) Kubernetes
3 61 (3.34%) Ansible
4 28 (1.53%) Microsoft Intune
5 20 (1.10%) SCCM
6 13 (0.71%) Grafana
7 12 (0.66%) Prometheus
8 11 (0.60%) vCenter Server
9 10 (0.55%) Puppet
10 9 (0.49%) Proxmox
11 8 (0.44%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
12 7 (0.38%) Endace
12 7 (0.38%) Jamf Pro
12 7 (0.38%) Kibana
13 6 (0.33%) HP Fortify
13 6 (0.33%) Nessus
13 6 (0.33%) Nmap
13 6 (0.33%) Single Sign-On
13 6 (0.33%) WSUS
14 5 (0.27%) SCOM
Vendors
1 349 (19.11%) Microsoft
2 147 (8.05%) Cisco
3 130 (7.12%) VMware
4 83 (4.55%) Splunk
5 69 (3.78%) SolarWinds
6 58 (3.18%) Veeam
7 56 (3.07%) Brocade
7 56 (3.07%) Nimble Storage
7 56 (3.07%) Tanium
8 39 (2.14%) Google
8 39 (2.14%) Oracle
9 26 (1.42%) SAP
9 26 (1.42%) ServiceNow
10 25 (1.37%) Salesforce
11 23 (1.26%) Red Hat
12 18 (0.99%) CheckPoint
12 18 (0.99%) Juniper
13 16 (0.88%) Citrix
14 15 (0.82%) MuleSoft
14 15 (0.82%) Palo Alto