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

6 months to
28 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 55 46
Rank change year-on-year +19 -9 -11
Permanent jobs citing SC Cleared 3,290 1,490 2,265
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 3.82% 4.33% 4.21%
As % of the Qualifications category 22.74% 11.83% 15.25%
Number of salaries quoted 2,152 923 1,463
10th Percentile £44,452 £28,858 £39,125
25th Percentile £53,750 £42,500 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £56,000 £56,525
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -0.93% -1.70%
75th Percentile £80,313 £73,750 £72,500
90th Percentile £95,000 £87,500 £87,200
UK median annual salary £70,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +16.67% - -

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 14,469 12,600 14,857
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 16.81% 36.62% 27.63%
Number of salaries quoted 7,967 4,939 6,337
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £30,000
25th Percentile £42,000 £33,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £48,500 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year +18.56% -7.62% -
75th Percentile £75,000 £65,000 £68,750
90th Percentile £90,000 £80,000 £82,500
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £57,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% -3.51% -2.57%

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 28 September 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 28 September 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 East -3 867 £70,000 +27.27% 544
South West -3 827 £75,000 +33.00% 317
North of England +120 705 £66,805 +7.75% 471
Midlands +23 454 £65,000 +9.19% 256
North West +119 413 £70,000 +7.69% 261
West Midlands +7 307 £70,000 +0.89% 166
East of England +24 188 £55,000 +15.79% 225
Wales -1 166 £63,500 -7.31% 39
North East +30 152 £60,000 -7.69% 133
East Midlands +22 147 £60,000 +103.39% 89
Yorkshire +27 146 £66,805 +40.64% 80
Scotland +57 87 £70,000 +4.18% 192
Northern Ireland -70 21 £74,654 -13.60% 26
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 96 (2.92%) Microsoft Exchange
2 52 (1.58%) SharePoint
3 41 (1.25%) Apache Spark
4 40 (1.22%) Confluence
5 38 (1.16%) Apache
6 18 (0.55%) Apache Airflow
7 17 (0.52%) Jupyter
8 16 (0.49%) SAS
9 11 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
10 10 (0.30%) nginx
11 8 (0.24%) Documentum
12 7 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 7 (0.21%) Skype for Business
13 6 (0.18%) OpenStack
14 2 (0.061%) CMS
14 2 (0.061%) IIS
14 2 (0.061%) Palantir Foundry
14 2 (0.061%) Tomcat
15 1 (0.030%) Oracle HTTP Server
15 1 (0.030%) Site Server
Applications
1 69 (2.10%) Microsoft Office
2 55 (1.67%) Microsoft Excel
3 40 (1.22%) Microsoft Project
4 34 (1.03%) Simulink
5 12 (0.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 10 (0.30%) MS Visio
7 7 (0.21%) SOLIDWORKS
8 4 (0.12%) Mathcad
8 4 (0.12%) Mathematica
8 4 (0.12%) Stateflow
8 4 (0.12%) Windchill
9 2 (0.061%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.061%) InDesign
9 2 (0.061%) Spreadsheet
9 2 (0.061%) UserZoom
10 1 (0.030%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.030%) CATIA
10 1 (0.030%) Revit
Business Applications
1 32 (0.97%) SAP EHS
2 31 (0.94%) Primavera
3 12 (0.36%) SAP Oil and Gas
4 11 (0.33%) SAP S/4HANA
5 9 (0.27%) Workday HCM
6 7 (0.21%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.18%) SAP ERP
8 5 (0.15%) Dynamics CRM
8 5 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.15%) SAP R/3
9 4 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
10 3 (0.091%) SAP PSCD
11 2 (0.061%) Oracle Applications
11 2 (0.061%) Siebel CRM
11 2 (0.061%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
12 1 (0.030%) Oracle Cash Management
12 1 (0.030%) Oracle Payables
12 1 (0.030%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 1 (0.030%) SAP GRC
12 1 (0.030%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 644 (19.57%) Azure
2 530 (16.11%) AWS
3 227 (6.90%) Microsoft 365
4 113 (3.43%) GCP
5 89 (2.71%) GitHub
5 89 (2.71%) Serverless
6 81 (2.46%) Entra ID
7 73 (2.22%) Power Platform
8 71 (2.16%) Azure DevOps
9 65 (1.98%) AWS CloudFormation
10 64 (1.95%) Amazon S3
11 56 (1.70%) AWS Lambda
12 54 (1.64%) OpenShift
13 43 (1.31%) Amazon EC2
14 41 (1.25%) GitHub Actions
14 41 (1.25%) SaaS
15 35 (1.06%) dbt
16 34 (1.03%) Azure Sentinel
17 33 (1.00%) Amazon EKS
18 28 (0.85%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 135 (4.10%) DNS
2 134 (4.07%) Firewall
3 94 (2.86%) DHCP
4 73 (2.22%) VPN
5 66 (2.01%) WAN
6 65 (1.98%) TCP/IP
7 62 (1.88%) Network Security
8 49 (1.49%) LAN
9 28 (0.85%) VLAN
10 24 (0.73%) HTTP
11 22 (0.67%) SAN
11 22 (0.67%) SSL
12 19 (0.58%) ATM
13 18 (0.55%) BGP
14 15 (0.46%) Internet
14 15 (0.46%) SD-WAN
15 14 (0.43%) 4G
15 14 (0.43%) Broadband
15 14 (0.43%) Software-Defined Radio
16 13 (0.40%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 76 (2.31%) Amazon RDS
2 55 (1.67%) Power BI
3 51 (1.55%) PostgreSQL
4 39 (1.19%) Data Warehouse
5 35 (1.06%) Big Data
6 29 (0.88%) Relational Database
7 28 (0.85%) Elasticsearch
8 23 (0.70%) MongoDB
9 22 (0.67%) Amazon Athena
9 22 (0.67%) DynamoDB
10 21 (0.64%) Data Lake
11 19 (0.58%) NoSQL
12 18 (0.55%) Hadoop
12 18 (0.55%) SQL Server
13 16 (0.49%) Metadata
14 14 (0.43%) MySQL
15 13 (0.40%) Amazon Redshift
16 11 (0.33%) BigQuery
17 10 (0.30%) Looker
18 9 (0.27%) Geospatial Data
Development Applications
1 156 (4.74%) Git
2 125 (3.80%) GitLab
3 91 (2.77%) Jenkins
4 82 (2.49%) JIRA
5 32 (0.97%) Rational DOORS
6 30 (0.91%) JUnit
7 23 (0.70%) Selenium
8 22 (0.67%) Cypress.io
9 21 (0.64%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 19 (0.58%) LabVIEW
11 16 (0.49%) SonarQube
12 15 (0.46%) Cucumber
12 15 (0.46%) Maven
13 14 (0.43%) Gatling
13 14 (0.43%) JMeter
13 14 (0.43%) Mockito
13 14 (0.43%) Visual Studio Code
14 11 (0.33%) Postman
15 7 (0.21%) Burp Suite
15 7 (0.21%) MSI
General
1 787 (23.92%) Social Skills
2 458 (13.92%) Public Sector
3 361 (10.97%) Analytical Skills
4 358 (10.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 343 (10.43%) Finance
6 322 (9.79%) Aerospace
7 119 (3.62%) Electronics
8 117 (3.56%) Military
9 94 (2.86%) Retail
10 90 (2.74%) Legal
11 81 (2.46%) Manufacturing
11 81 (2.46%) Organisational Skills
12 59 (1.79%) Law
13 50 (1.52%) Aviation
14 46 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
15 40 (1.22%) Telecoms
16 35 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
17 32 (0.97%) Documentation Skills
18 31 (0.94%) Police
19 21 (0.64%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 490 (14.89%) Senior
2 355 (10.79%) Systems Engineer
3 347 (10.55%) Architect
4 278 (8.45%) Developer
5 264 (8.02%) Software Engineer
6 239 (7.26%) Lead
7 183 (5.56%) Analyst
8 178 (5.41%) Consultant
9 148 (4.50%) DevOps Engineer
10 128 (3.89%) Cloud Engineer
11 121 (3.68%) Data Engineer
12 109 (3.31%) Senior Developer
13 107 (3.25%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 89 (2.71%) Solutions Architect
15 81 (2.46%) Software Developer
16 80 (2.43%) Java Developer
16 80 (2.43%) Security Architect
17 79 (2.40%) Principal Engineer
18 70 (2.13%) Technical Architect
19 61 (1.85%) Security Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 280 (8.51%) Terraform
2 83 (2.52%) React
3 71 (2.16%) Spring
4 69 (2.10%) REST
5 67 (2.04%) HTML
6 66 (2.01%) CSS
7 64 (1.95%) .NET
8 59 (1.79%) Node.js
9 56 (1.70%) Spring Boot
10 50 (1.52%) Kafka
11 43 (1.31%) AngularJS
12 40 (1.22%) RESTful
13 33 (1.00%) PySpark
14 31 (0.94%) Playwright
15 22 (0.67%) .NET Core
15 22 (0.67%) LDAP
16 21 (0.64%) Jest
17 20 (0.61%) Elastic Stack
18 19 (0.58%) OpenAPI
18 19 (0.58%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 204 (6.20%) Cloud Native
2 113 (3.43%) Legacy Systems
3 98 (2.98%) Onboarding
4 97 (2.95%) Driving Licence
5 86 (2.61%) Self-Motivation
6 84 (2.55%) Management Information System
7 77 (2.34%) Product Ownership
8 69 (2.10%) Data Centre
9 62 (1.88%) Security Operations Centre
10 47 (1.43%) Cyber Threat
11 46 (1.40%) FPGA
12 45 (1.37%) Robotics
13 43 (1.31%) Security Posture
14 42 (1.28%) Algorithms
15 40 (1.22%) Distributed Systems
16 39 (1.19%) Embedded Systems
16 39 (1.19%) Hybrid Cloud
17 33 (1.00%) Operational Technology
18 32 (0.97%) PMI
19 29 (0.88%) CSOC
Operating Systems
1 365 (11.09%) Linux
2 302 (9.18%) Windows
3 152 (4.62%) Windows Server
4 81 (2.46%) Windows Server 2016
5 54 (1.64%) Unix
6 49 (1.49%) Windows 10
7 36 (1.09%) CentOS
7 36 (1.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 30 (0.91%) Android
9 16 (0.49%) Mac OS
10 15 (0.46%) Ubuntu
11 13 (0.40%) AIX
12 10 (0.30%) Debian
13 9 (0.27%) Solaris
14 7 (0.21%) Apple iOS
14 7 (0.21%) Embedded Linux
15 6 (0.18%) Rocky
15 6 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
16 5 (0.15%) VMS
16 5 (0.15%) VxWorks
Processes & Methodologies
1 643 (19.54%) Agile
2 508 (15.44%) Problem-Solving
3 480 (14.59%) DevOps
4 472 (14.35%) Continuous Improvement
5 446 (13.56%) Software Engineering
6 432 (13.13%) CI/CD
7 402 (12.22%) Cybersecurity
8 361 (10.97%) Validation
9 339 (10.30%) Mentoring
10 292 (8.88%) AI
11 277 (8.42%) Technical Leadership
12 272 (8.27%) Infrastructure as Code
13 257 (7.81%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 254 (7.72%) Stakeholder Management
15 242 (7.36%) Verification and Validation
16 229 (6.96%) Decision-Making
17 221 (6.72%) ITIL
18 193 (5.87%) Analytics
19 173 (5.26%) Containerisation
20 171 (5.20%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 371 (11.28%) Python
2 233 (7.08%) Java
3 147 (4.47%) C++
4 145 (4.41%) JavaScript
4 145 (4.41%) SQL
5 110 (3.34%) PowerShell
6 96 (2.92%) Bash
7 94 (2.86%) C#
8 71 (2.16%) TypeScript
9 54 (1.64%) MATLAB
10 43 (1.31%) C
11 28 (0.85%) Go
12 25 (0.76%) Kusto Query Language
12 25 (0.76%) Rust
13 23 (0.70%) Scala
14 22 (0.67%) Bicep
15 20 (0.61%) Ruby
16 19 (0.58%) Ada
16 19 (0.58%) PL/SQL
17 16 (0.49%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 3,290 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 625 (19.00%) DV Cleared
3 395 (12.01%) Degree
4 238 (7.23%) BPSS Clearance
5 76 (2.31%) CISSP
6 66 (2.01%) Azure Certification
7 59 (1.79%) Master's Degree
8 50 (1.52%) CISM
9 47 (1.43%) AWS Certification
10 46 (1.40%) Cisco Certification
10 46 (1.40%) Microsoft Certification
11 43 (1.31%) PMI Certification
12 41 (1.25%) Computer Science Degree
13 36 (1.09%) HNC
14 33 (1.00%) Chartered Engineer
15 30 (0.91%) HND
16 28 (0.85%) CREST Certified
17 25 (0.76%) CompTIA Security+
17 25 (0.76%) PhD
18 24 (0.73%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 179 (5.44%) Accessibility
2 153 (4.65%) QA
3 133 (4.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 108 (3.28%) Cyber Essentials
5 80 (2.43%) PCI DSS
6 79 (2.40%) NIST
7 64 (1.95%) Data Quality
8 59 (1.79%) NCSC
9 57 (1.73%) SLA
10 37 (1.12%) Def Stans
11 34 (1.03%) ISO 9001
12 33 (1.00%) GDPR
13 32 (0.97%) GRC
13 32 (0.97%) JSP 440
14 31 (0.94%) WCAG
15 23 (0.70%) NIST 800
16 21 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 20000
17 18 (0.55%) PMO
18 17 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
19 14 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 210 (6.38%) Docker
2 205 (6.23%) Active Directory
3 113 (3.43%) Hyper-V
4 78 (2.37%) VMware Infrastructure
5 72 (2.19%) Terminal Server
6 62 (1.88%) Firmware
7 21 (0.64%) vSphere
8 19 (0.58%) VMware ESXi
9 12 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.33%) BitLocker
11 10 (0.30%) NDS
11 10 (0.30%) VMware NSX
12 9 (0.27%) Embedded Firmware
13 8 (0.24%) Virtual Desktop
14 5 (0.15%) KVM
14 5 (0.15%) Squid
15 2 (0.061%) NFS
16 1 (0.030%) IAG
16 1 (0.030%) Oracle RAC
16 1 (0.030%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 258 (7.84%) Kubernetes
2 140 (4.26%) Ansible
3 52 (1.58%) Microsoft Intune
4 37 (1.12%) SCCM
5 32 (0.97%) Grafana
6 24 (0.73%) Prometheus
7 21 (0.64%) Puppet
8 20 (0.61%) Kibana
9 16 (0.49%) Argo
10 15 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
11 12 (0.36%) Progress Chef
11 12 (0.36%) Proxmox
12 11 (0.33%) Nessus
12 11 (0.33%) vCenter Server
13 9 (0.27%) QRadar
14 8 (0.24%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
15 7 (0.21%) FortiGate
15 7 (0.21%) Graylog
15 7 (0.21%) Nagios
15 7 (0.21%) WSUS
Vendors
1 455 (13.83%) Microsoft
2 176 (5.35%) VMware
3 103 (3.13%) Splunk
4 91 (2.77%) Veeam
5 83 (2.52%) SolarWinds
6 81 (2.46%) Thales
7 78 (2.37%) SAP
8 74 (2.25%) Oracle
9 73 (2.22%) Brocade
10 72 (2.19%) Nimble Storage
10 72 (2.19%) Tanium
11 70 (2.13%) ServiceNow
12 60 (1.82%) Cisco
13 48 (1.46%) Google
14 34 (1.03%) Red Hat
15 27 (0.82%) EMC
16 24 (0.73%) Databricks
16 24 (0.73%) Fortinet
17 22 (0.67%) YouTube
18 21 (0.64%) OpenText