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

6 months to
4 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 55 46 33
Rank change year-on-year -9 -13 +27
Permanent jobs citing SC Cleared 1,535 1,727 2,105
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 3.67% 4.71% 6.59%
As % of the Qualifications category 10.88% 12.52% 21.01%
Number of salaries quoted 976 1,104 1,581
10th Percentile £31,250 £39,125 £31,250
25th Percentile £45,250 £46,713 £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 £74,250
UK median annual salary £60,000 £61,644 £57,500
% change year-on-year -2.67% +7.21% -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 14,114 13,794 10,021
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 33.75% 37.59% 31.36%
Number of salaries quoted 5,103 5,318 6,676
10th Percentile £28,250 £31,250 £28,000
25th Percentile £31,250 £42,415 £37,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £48,000 £55,000 £51,732
Median % change year-on-year -12.73% +6.32% +3.46%
75th Percentile £65,000 £70,000 £65,000
90th Percentile £81,250 £81,250 £77,500
UK median annual salary £55,000 £59,430 £57,500
% change year-on-year -7.45% +3.36% -

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 4 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 4 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 +14 498 £57,500 -4.17% 190
South East -19 450 £58,000 +0.87% 345
Midlands -3 214 £56,650 -5.58% 125
North of England -11 172 £60,000 +13.21% 139
West Midlands -15 140 £63,750 -1.58% 76
East of England +29 123 £50,500 -12.17% 116
North West -10 100 £60,000 +14.29% 68
East Midlands +42 72 £37,250 -17.22% 45
Yorkshire +6 57 £55,233 +29.96% 48
Wales +19 46 £73,801 +19.48% 26
Scotland -28 31 £75,000 +20.00% 24
North East +1 18 £65,000 +9.37% 23
Northern Ireland -9 17 £74,316 +25.05% 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
1 158 (10.29%) Microsoft Exchange
2 29 (1.89%) SharePoint
3 26 (1.69%) Exchange Server 2003
4 13 (0.85%) Confluence
5 12 (0.78%) Apache
6 7 (0.46%) Skype for Business
7 6 (0.39%) Apache Airflow
8 5 (0.33%) Apache Spark
8 5 (0.33%) Appian
9 4 (0.26%) nginx
9 4 (0.26%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 3 (0.20%) Tomcat
10 3 (0.20%) WebLogic
10 3 (0.20%) WebLogic Portal
11 2 (0.13%) IIS
12 1 (0.065%) Apache Superset
12 1 (0.065%) Camunda
Applications
1 77 (5.02%) Microsoft Office
2 32 (2.08%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (0.78%) 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 (0.065%) Abaqus
8 1 (0.065%) CATIA
8 1 (0.065%) InVision
8 1 (0.065%) OrCAD
8 1 (0.065%) Revit
8 1 (0.065%) Sketch
8 1 (0.065%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 22 (1.43%) Dynamics CRM
2 21 (1.37%) 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 (0.065%) Maximo
7 1 (0.065%) Salesforce CRM
7 1 (0.065%) SAP GTS
7 1 (0.065%) SAP HR
7 1 (0.065%) SAP Payroll
7 1 (0.065%) Teamcenter
7 1 (0.065%) TRIRIGA
Cloud Services
1 315 (20.52%) Azure
2 204 (13.29%) Microsoft 365
3 180 (11.73%) AWS
4 54 (3.52%) Entra ID
5 49 (3.19%) Dynamics 365
5 49 (3.19%) GCP
6 33 (2.15%) Power Platform
7 32 (2.08%) Amazon ECS
8 28 (1.82%) Amazon S3
9 27 (1.76%) SaaS
10 26 (1.69%) AWS CloudFormation
11 22 (1.43%) dbt
11 22 (1.43%) PaaS
12 21 (1.37%) Serverless
13 18 (1.17%) Amazon ECR
14 17 (1.11%) Google Workspace
14 17 (1.11%) PowerApps
14 17 (1.11%) Pulumi
15 16 (1.04%) Amazon EC2
15 16 (1.04%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 160 (10.42%) DNS
2 141 (9.19%) DHCP
3 97 (6.32%) Firewall
4 51 (3.32%) LAN
5 48 (3.13%) VPN
5 48 (3.13%) WAN
6 43 (2.80%) TCP/IP
7 41 (2.67%) Network Security
8 32 (2.08%) Wi-Fi
9 22 (1.43%) Software-Defined Radio
9 22 (1.43%) Wireless
10 18 (1.17%) VSAT
11 15 (0.98%) SMTP
12 14 (0.91%) BGP
12 14 (0.91%) Cisco ASA
13 13 (0.85%) Intrusion Detection
13 13 (0.85%) IPsec
13 13 (0.85%) Junos
13 13 (0.85%) VLAN
14 12 (0.78%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 125 (8.14%) Amazon RDS
2 36 (2.35%) Oracle Database
3 26 (1.69%) Oracle Database 10g
4 25 (1.63%) PostgreSQL
5 21 (1.37%) Power BI
6 20 (1.30%) Elasticsearch
7 17 (1.11%) SQL Server
8 16 (1.04%) Redis
9 15 (0.98%) NoSQL
10 11 (0.72%) Big Data
10 11 (0.72%) MongoDB
11 10 (0.65%) 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%) Airbyte
15 5 (0.33%) Neo4j
16 4 (0.26%) Amazon Aurora
17 3 (0.20%) Cloudera CDH
Development Applications
1 36 (2.35%) Git
2 31 (2.02%) Jenkins
2 31 (2.02%) JIRA
3 14 (0.91%) GitLab
3 14 (0.91%) Selenium
4 10 (0.65%) Burp Suite
4 10 (0.65%) Metasploit
5 9 (0.59%) Vagrant
6 8 (0.52%) Balsamiq
6 8 (0.52%) Cucumber
6 8 (0.52%) Maven
7 7 (0.46%) Cypress.io
7 7 (0.46%) JMeter
7 7 (0.46%) JUnit
7 7 (0.46%) Mockito
8 6 (0.39%) Axure RP
8 6 (0.39%) Locust
8 6 (0.39%) Rational Rhapsody
8 6 (0.39%) Robot Framework
8 6 (0.39%) Snyk
General
1 501 (32.64%) Social Skills
2 243 (15.83%) Analytical Skills
3 186 (12.12%) Finance
4 176 (11.47%) Public Sector
5 114 (7.43%) Manufacturing
6 113 (7.36%) Law
7 98 (6.38%) Marketing
8 84 (5.47%) Electronics
9 77 (5.02%) Telecoms
10 51 (3.32%) Organisational Skills
11 45 (2.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 41 (2.67%) Aerospace
13 31 (2.02%) Aviation
14 30 (1.95%) Aeronautics
15 28 (1.82%) Back Office
16 26 (1.69%) Military
17 24 (1.56%) Documentation Skills
18 22 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
19 20 (1.30%) Retail
20 15 (0.98%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 168 (10.94%) Systems Engineer
2 159 (10.36%) Senior
3 142 (9.25%) Architect
4 141 (9.19%) Consultant
5 116 (7.56%) Analyst
6 105 (6.84%) Support Engineer
7 76 (4.95%) Lead
8 75 (4.89%) Software Engineer
9 57 (3.71%) Developer
10 53 (3.45%) 2nd Line Support
10 53 (3.45%) Business Manager
11 50 (3.26%) Business Systems Manager
11 50 (3.26%) Systems Manager
12 48 (3.13%) Security Consultant
13 45 (2.93%) Administrator
13 45 (2.93%) IT Support
13 45 (2.93%) Network Engineer
14 43 (2.80%) Support Analyst
15 42 (2.74%) 3rd Line Support
15 42 (2.74%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (2.41%) React
2 25 (1.63%) REST
3 24 (1.56%) SAP CAF
4 22 (1.43%) Django
5 20 (1.30%) .NET
6 18 (1.17%) Spring
7 17 (1.11%) AngularJS
7 17 (1.11%) Node.js
8 15 (0.98%) Spring Boot
9 12 (0.78%) Middleware
10 10 (0.65%) HTML
10 10 (0.65%) Kafka
11 9 (0.59%) CSS
11 9 (0.59%) SOAP
12 8 (0.52%) Vue
13 7 (0.46%) EDI
13 7 (0.46%) Web Services
14 6 (0.39%) ASP.NET
14 6 (0.39%) Gherkin
14 6 (0.39%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 103 (6.71%) Legacy Systems
2 85 (5.54%) e-Learning
3 55 (3.58%) Robotics
4 41 (2.67%) Data Centre
5 35 (2.28%) Cloud Native
6 34 (2.21%) Driving Licence
7 32 (2.08%) Onboarding
8 30 (1.95%) Management Information System
9 25 (1.63%) Security Operations Centre
9 25 (1.63%) Self-Motivation
10 24 (1.56%) Embedded Systems
11 20 (1.30%) Security Posture
12 19 (1.24%) Algorithms
12 19 (1.24%) Operational Technology
13 15 (0.98%) Linux Command Line
14 14 (0.91%) PKI
15 13 (0.85%) Cyber Threat
15 13 (0.85%) Renewable Energy
15 13 (0.85%) SCADA
16 12 (0.78%) MicroBlaze
Operating Systems
1 276 (17.98%) Windows
2 251 (16.35%) Linux
3 161 (10.49%) Windows Server
4 100 (6.51%) Windows Server 2016
5 85 (5.54%) Unix
6 40 (2.61%) Android
6 40 (2.61%) Windows 10
7 34 (2.21%) Solaris
8 33 (2.15%) Apple iOS
9 26 (1.69%) Windows Server 2003
10 25 (1.63%) HPUX
10 25 (1.63%) Windows 7
11 22 (1.43%) Windows Server 2008
12 15 (0.98%) Ubuntu
13 12 (0.78%) Embedded Linux
13 12 (0.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 9 (0.59%) VMS
15 7 (0.46%) Amazon Linux
15 7 (0.46%) Debian
15 7 (0.46%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 288 (18.76%) Problem-Solving
2 196 (12.77%) Agile
3 184 (11.99%) Software Engineering
4 175 (11.40%) Cybersecurity
5 166 (10.81%) Customer Service
6 145 (9.45%) Continuous Improvement
7 142 (9.25%) AI
8 139 (9.06%) Migration
9 133 (8.66%) Project Management
10 130 (8.47%) DevOps
11 128 (8.34%) Innovative Thinking
12 127 (8.27%) Customer Experience
13 113 (7.36%) Kalman Filter
13 113 (7.36%) Risk Management
14 109 (7.10%) Web Filtering
15 104 (6.78%) Vulnerability Scanning
16 98 (6.38%) ITIL
17 97 (6.32%) Vulnerability Remediation
18 96 (6.25%) Email Filtering
19 95 (6.19%) CI/CD
Programming Languages
1 174 (11.34%) Python
2 91 (5.93%) SQL
3 76 (4.95%) Java
4 69 (4.50%) PowerShell
5 48 (3.13%) JavaScript
6 47 (3.06%) C++
7 41 (2.67%) C
8 32 (2.08%) Bash
9 28 (1.82%) Perl
10 23 (1.50%) C#
11 21 (1.37%) MATLAB
12 20 (1.30%) TypeScript
13 17 (1.11%) Rust
14 12 (0.78%) VBA
15 9 (0.59%) Go
15 9 (0.59%) Groovy
16 8 (0.52%) PL/SQL
17 7 (0.46%) Kotlin
17 7 (0.46%) R
18 6 (0.39%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 1,535 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 281 (18.31%) DV Cleared
3 255 (16.61%) Degree
4 94 (6.12%) Cisco Certification
5 76 (4.95%) BPSS Clearance
6 72 (4.69%) CCNA
7 58 (3.78%) CCNP
7 58 (3.78%) CISSP
8 48 (3.13%) CISM
9 32 (2.08%) CTC Cleared
10 29 (1.89%) Master's Degree
11 28 (1.82%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
12 27 (1.76%) Computer Science Degree
13 25 (1.63%) JNCIA
14 22 (1.43%) AWS Certification
15 21 (1.37%) Microsoft Certification
16 20 (1.30%) Azure Certification
17 18 (1.17%) CompTIA Security+
18 11 (0.72%) CEH
18 11 (0.72%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 109 (7.10%) SLA
2 108 (7.04%) Cyber Essentials
3 99 (6.45%) PCI DSS
4 70 (4.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 67 (4.36%) NIST
6 42 (2.74%) QA
7 32 (2.08%) GRC
8 29 (1.89%) Accessibility
9 23 (1.50%) GDPR
10 14 (0.91%) WCAG
11 11 (0.72%) Data Quality
11 11 (0.72%) NCSC
12 10 (0.65%) ISO 9001
13 9 (0.59%) Def Stans
14 8 (0.52%) JSP 440
14 8 (0.52%) NIST 800
15 6 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
16 5 (0.33%) ISO 13485
16 5 (0.33%) PMO
16 5 (0.33%) RMADS
System Software
1 199 (12.96%) Active Directory
2 110 (7.17%) Hyper-V
3 98 (6.38%) Terminal Server
4 73 (4.76%) Docker
5 44 (2.87%) VMware Infrastructure
6 32 (2.08%) Firmware
7 18 (1.17%) 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 (0.065%) KVM
Systems Management
1 82 (5.34%) Terraform
2 68 (4.43%) Kubernetes
3 44 (2.87%) Ansible
4 32 (2.08%) Jamf Pro
5 24 (1.56%) Grafana
6 22 (1.43%) SCCM
7 17 (1.11%) Prometheus
8 16 (1.04%) SCOM
9 15 (0.98%) Microsoft Intune
10 12 (0.78%) vCenter Server
11 10 (0.65%) AWS Copilot
11 10 (0.65%) Nessus
11 10 (0.65%) Nmap
11 10 (0.65%) WSUS
12 8 (0.52%) Endace
13 6 (0.39%) Nagios
14 5 (0.33%) Puppet
15 4 (0.26%) Docker Swarm
15 4 (0.26%) FortiGate
15 4 (0.26%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 323 (21.04%) Microsoft
2 187 (12.18%) VMware
3 149 (9.71%) Cisco
4 114 (7.43%) Splunk
5 108 (7.04%) SolarWinds
6 100 (6.51%) Veeam
7 96 (6.25%) Brocade
7 96 (6.25%) Nimble Storage
7 96 (6.25%) Tanium
8 59 (3.84%) SAP
9 57 (3.71%) Oracle
10 48 (3.13%) Google
11 38 (2.48%) Juniper
12 32 (2.08%) Apple
13 30 (1.95%) Red Hat
13 30 (1.95%) Salesforce
14 28 (1.82%) ServiceNow
15 27 (1.76%) Samsung
16 21 (1.37%) Sparx
17 18 (1.17%) Computacenter