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

6 months to
29 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 35 55 45
Rank change year-on-year +20 -10 -10
Permanent jobs citing SC Cleared 3,307 1,484 2,247
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 3.84% 4.33% 4.23%
As % of the Qualifications category 22.78% 11.77% 15.26%
Number of salaries quoted 2,162 919 1,449
10th Percentile £44,500 £28,750 £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 £80,000 £73,750 £72,500
90th Percentile £95,000 £87,500 £87,500
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 14,515 12,606 14,722
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 16.84% 36.79% 27.70%
Number of salaries quoted 7,989 4,907 6,235
10th Percentile £30,173 £28,250 £30,000
25th Percentile £42,000 £33,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £48,122 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year +19.49% -8.34% -
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% -2.56%

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 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 29 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 -2 867 £70,000 +27.27% 531
South West -3 829 £75,000 +33.00% 315
North of England +117 715 £67,500 +8.00% 450
Midlands +22 459 £65,000 +9.19% 260
North West +120 418 £70,000 +7.69% 248
West Midlands +8 310 £70,000 +0.89% 170
East of England +17 187 £55,000 +15.79% 219
Wales -4 166 £63,500 -8.48% 41
North East +30 158 £60,000 -7.69% 135
East Midlands +22 149 £60,000 +103.39% 89
Yorkshire +26 145 £66,805 +40.64% 70
Scotland +65 88 £70,000 +4.18% 183
Northern Ireland -68 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 (2.90%) Microsoft Exchange
2 52 (1.57%) SharePoint
3 41 (1.24%) Apache Spark
4 40 (1.21%) Confluence
5 38 (1.15%) Apache
6 18 (0.54%) Apache Airflow
7 17 (0.51%) Jupyter
8 16 (0.48%) SAS
9 11 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
10 10 (0.30%) nginx
11 8 (0.24%) Documentum
12 7 (0.21%) OpenStack
12 7 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 7 (0.21%) Skype for Business
13 2 (0.060%) CMS
13 2 (0.060%) IIS
13 2 (0.060%) Palantir Foundry
13 2 (0.060%) Tomcat
14 1 (0.030%) Appian
14 1 (0.030%) WebLogic
Applications
1 68 (2.06%) Microsoft Office
2 56 (1.69%) Microsoft Excel
3 40 (1.21%) Microsoft Project
4 35 (1.06%) Simulink
5 13 (0.39%) 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 (0.060%) AutoCAD
9 2 (0.060%) InDesign
9 2 (0.060%) Spreadsheet
9 2 (0.060%) UserZoom
10 1 (0.030%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.030%) CATIA
10 1 (0.030%) OrCAD
10 1 (0.030%) Revit
Business Applications
1 33 (1.00%) SAP EHS
2 31 (0.94%) Primavera
3 13 (0.39%) SAP Oil and Gas
4 12 (0.36%) 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
9 4 (0.12%) SAP PSCD
10 2 (0.060%) Oracle Applications
10 2 (0.060%) Siebel CRM
10 2 (0.060%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 1 (0.030%) Oracle Cash Management
11 1 (0.030%) Oracle Payables
11 1 (0.030%) SAP BPC
11 1 (0.030%) SAP EWM
11 1 (0.030%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 644 (19.47%) Azure
2 535 (16.18%) AWS
3 227 (6.86%) Microsoft 365
4 113 (3.42%) GCP
5 90 (2.72%) Serverless
6 89 (2.69%) GitHub
7 81 (2.45%) Entra ID
8 74 (2.24%) Power Platform
9 71 (2.15%) Azure DevOps
10 65 (1.97%) AWS CloudFormation
11 64 (1.94%) Amazon S3
12 56 (1.69%) AWS Lambda
13 55 (1.66%) OpenShift
14 46 (1.39%) SaaS
15 43 (1.30%) Amazon EC2
16 41 (1.24%) GitHub Actions
17 35 (1.06%) dbt
18 34 (1.03%) Amazon EKS
18 34 (1.03%) Azure Sentinel
19 28 (0.85%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 135 (4.08%) DNS
2 134 (4.05%) Firewall
3 94 (2.84%) DHCP
4 73 (2.21%) VPN
5 67 (2.03%) WAN
6 65 (1.97%) TCP/IP
7 63 (1.91%) Network Security
8 49 (1.48%) LAN
9 28 (0.85%) VLAN
10 24 (0.73%) HTTP
11 22 (0.67%) SAN
11 22 (0.67%) SSL
12 19 (0.57%) ATM
13 18 (0.54%) BGP
14 15 (0.45%) Internet
14 15 (0.45%) SD-WAN
15 14 (0.42%) 4G
15 14 (0.42%) Broadband
15 14 (0.42%) Software-Defined Radio
15 14 (0.42%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 76 (2.30%) Amazon RDS
2 56 (1.69%) Power BI
3 52 (1.57%) PostgreSQL
4 39 (1.18%) Data Warehouse
5 35 (1.06%) Big Data
6 30 (0.91%) 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 20 (0.60%) NoSQL
12 18 (0.54%) Hadoop
12 18 (0.54%) SQL Server
13 16 (0.48%) Metadata
14 14 (0.42%) MySQL
15 13 (0.39%) Amazon Redshift
16 11 (0.33%) BigQuery
17 10 (0.30%) Looker
18 9 (0.27%) Geospatial Data
Development Applications
1 157 (4.75%) Git
2 125 (3.78%) GitLab
3 92 (2.78%) Jenkins
4 82 (2.48%) JIRA
5 31 (0.94%) 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 20 (0.60%) LabVIEW
11 16 (0.48%) SonarQube
12 15 (0.45%) Cucumber
12 15 (0.45%) Maven
13 14 (0.42%) Gatling
13 14 (0.42%) JMeter
13 14 (0.42%) Mockito
13 14 (0.42%) Visual Studio Code
14 11 (0.33%) Postman
15 7 (0.21%) Burp Suite
15 7 (0.21%) MSI
General
1 791 (23.92%) Social Skills
2 461 (13.94%) Public Sector
3 364 (11.01%) Analytical Skills
4 361 (10.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 346 (10.46%) Finance
6 322 (9.74%) Aerospace
7 118 (3.57%) Electronics
7 118 (3.57%) Military
8 95 (2.87%) Retail
9 90 (2.72%) Legal
10 83 (2.51%) Organisational Skills
11 81 (2.45%) Manufacturing
12 60 (1.81%) Law
13 50 (1.51%) Aviation
14 47 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
15 40 (1.21%) Telecoms
16 37 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
17 32 (0.97%) Documentation Skills
18 31 (0.94%) Police
19 21 (0.64%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 494 (14.94%) Senior
2 356 (10.77%) Systems Engineer
3 346 (10.46%) Architect
4 278 (8.41%) Developer
5 264 (7.98%) Software Engineer
6 246 (7.44%) Lead
7 183 (5.53%) Analyst
8 178 (5.38%) Consultant
9 150 (4.54%) DevOps Engineer
10 128 (3.87%) Cloud Engineer
11 122 (3.69%) Data Engineer
12 112 (3.39%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 108 (3.27%) Senior Developer
14 89 (2.69%) Solutions Architect
15 81 (2.45%) Java Developer
15 81 (2.45%) Software Developer
16 79 (2.39%) Principal Engineer
16 79 (2.39%) Security Architect
17 70 (2.12%) Technical Architect
18 61 (1.84%) Security Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 281 (8.50%) Terraform
2 83 (2.51%) React
3 73 (2.21%) Spring
4 70 (2.12%) REST
5 67 (2.03%) HTML
6 66 (2.00%) CSS
7 63 (1.91%) .NET
8 59 (1.78%) Node.js
9 58 (1.75%) Spring Boot
10 50 (1.51%) Kafka
11 43 (1.30%) AngularJS
12 41 (1.24%) 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 (0.60%) Elastic Stack
17 20 (0.60%) Web Services
18 19 (0.57%) OpenAPI
Miscellaneous
1 206 (6.23%) Cloud Native
2 113 (3.42%) Legacy Systems
3 98 (2.96%) Driving Licence
3 98 (2.96%) Onboarding
4 86 (2.60%) Self-Motivation
5 85 (2.57%) Management Information System
6 78 (2.36%) Product Ownership
7 70 (2.12%) Data Centre
8 62 (1.87%) Security Operations Centre
9 47 (1.42%) Cyber Threat
10 45 (1.36%) FPGA
11 44 (1.33%) Robotics
12 43 (1.30%) Algorithms
12 43 (1.30%) Security Posture
13 41 (1.24%) Distributed Systems
14 39 (1.18%) Hybrid Cloud
15 38 (1.15%) Embedded Systems
16 33 (1.00%) Operational Technology
17 32 (0.97%) PMI
18 29 (0.88%) CSOC
Operating Systems
1 365 (11.04%) Linux
2 301 (9.10%) Windows
3 152 (4.60%) Windows Server
4 81 (2.45%) Windows Server 2016
5 54 (1.63%) Unix
6 48 (1.45%) Windows 10
7 36 (1.09%) CentOS
7 36 (1.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 30 (0.91%) Android
9 16 (0.48%) Mac OS
10 15 (0.45%) Ubuntu
11 13 (0.39%) 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
1 646 (19.53%) Agile
2 509 (15.39%) Problem-Solving
3 490 (14.82%) DevOps
4 476 (14.39%) Continuous Improvement
5 445 (13.46%) Software Engineering
6 437 (13.21%) CI/CD
7 403 (12.19%) Cybersecurity
8 361 (10.92%) Validation
9 340 (10.28%) Mentoring
10 297 (8.98%) AI
11 283 (8.56%) Technical Leadership
12 278 (8.41%) Infrastructure as Code
13 258 (7.80%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 255 (7.71%) Stakeholder Management
15 242 (7.32%) Verification and Validation
16 230 (6.95%) Decision-Making
17 223 (6.74%) ITIL
18 194 (5.87%) Analytics
19 174 (5.26%) Containerisation
20 172 (5.20%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 375 (11.34%) Python
2 235 (7.11%) Java
3 147 (4.45%) C++
4 146 (4.41%) SQL
5 145 (4.38%) JavaScript
6 110 (3.33%) PowerShell
7 97 (2.93%) Bash
8 94 (2.84%) C#
9 71 (2.15%) TypeScript
10 56 (1.69%) MATLAB
11 43 (1.30%) C
12 28 (0.85%) Go
13 26 (0.79%) Kusto Query Language
14 25 (0.76%) Rust
15 23 (0.70%) Scala
16 22 (0.67%) Bicep
17 20 (0.60%) Ruby
18 19 (0.57%) Ada
18 19 (0.57%) PL/SQL
19 16 (0.48%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 3,307 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 625 (18.90%) DV Cleared
3 396 (11.97%) Degree
4 239 (7.23%) BPSS Clearance
5 76 (2.30%) CISSP
6 66 (2.00%) Azure Certification
7 60 (1.81%) Master's Degree
8 50 (1.51%) CISM
9 47 (1.42%) AWS Certification
10 46 (1.39%) Cisco Certification
10 46 (1.39%) Microsoft Certification
11 43 (1.30%) PMI Certification
12 41 (1.24%) Computer Science Degree
13 36 (1.09%) HNC
14 34 (1.03%) 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 (5.41%) Accessibility
2 153 (4.63%) QA
3 133 (4.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 108 (3.27%) Cyber Essentials
5 80 (2.42%) PCI DSS
6 79 (2.39%) NIST
7 64 (1.94%) Data Quality
8 59 (1.78%) NCSC
9 57 (1.72%) 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 (0.54%) PMO
18 17 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
19 14 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 213 (6.44%) Docker
2 204 (6.17%) Active Directory
3 113 (3.42%) Hyper-V
4 78 (2.36%) VMware Infrastructure
5 72 (2.18%) Terminal Server
6 62 (1.87%) Firmware
7 21 (0.64%) vSphere
8 19 (0.57%) 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 (0.060%) NFS
16 1 (0.030%) IAG
16 1 (0.030%) Oracle RAC
16 1 (0.030%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 261 (7.89%) Kubernetes
2 142 (4.29%) Ansible
3 52 (1.57%) Microsoft Intune
4 36 (1.09%) SCCM
5 33 (1.00%) Grafana
6 24 (0.73%) Prometheus
7 21 (0.64%) Puppet
8 20 (0.60%) Kibana
9 16 (0.48%) Argo
10 15 (0.45%) 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%) Graylog
15 7 (0.21%) Kustomize
15 7 (0.21%) Nagios
15 7 (0.21%) WSUS
Vendors
1 456 (13.79%) Microsoft
2 176 (5.32%) VMware
3 103 (3.11%) Splunk
4 91 (2.75%) Veeam
5 83 (2.51%) SolarWinds
6 82 (2.48%) Thales
7 80 (2.42%) SAP
8 75 (2.27%) Oracle
9 73 (2.21%) Brocade
10 72 (2.18%) Nimble Storage
10 72 (2.18%) Tanium
11 71 (2.15%) ServiceNow
12 60 (1.81%) Cisco
13 48 (1.45%) Google
14 34 (1.03%) Red Hat
15 27 (0.82%) EMC
16 25 (0.76%) YouTube
17 24 (0.73%) Databricks
17 24 (0.73%) Fortinet
18 21 (0.64%) OpenText