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

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 61 72 60
Rank change year-on-year +11 -12 +8
Permanent jobs citing SC Cleared 2,018 1,125 2,803
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK excluding London 2.99% 3.95% 3.93%
As % of the Qualifications category 12.89% 9.05% 15.26%
Number of salaries quoted 1,500 791 2,066
10th Percentile £40,000 £36,250 £31,500
25th Percentile £50,000 £47,500 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £57,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +8.70% +4.55% -2.57%
75th Percentile £80,000 £72,500 £66,500
90th Percentile £90,000 £81,250 £77,910
UK median annual salary £65,000 £60,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year +8.33% +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 15,656 12,434 18,373
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 23.22% 43.68% 25.76%
Number of salaries quoted 6,250 4,868 12,193
10th Percentile £28,250 £28,000 £27,260
25th Percentile £37,500 £36,881 £36,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £51,058 £50,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.72% +2.12% -4.76%
75th Percentile £70,752 £66,253 £65,000
90th Percentile £85,000 £78,750 £80,000
UK median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £54,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% +1.85% -10.00%

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 May 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 May 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 +15 551 £65,000 +8.33% 202
South East -13 492 £67,500 +22.73% 318
North of England +94 381 £60,425 +9.86% 179
Midlands +30 301 £56,900 -12.46% 97
North West +93 215 £65,000 +13.04% 105
West Midlands -5 200 £60,000 -7.69% 78
East of England +6 120 £61,500 +10.31% 43
Yorkshire +8 118 £62,500 +39.35% 38
Wales +4 104 £54,000 -1.82% 26
East Midlands +33 99 £55,000 +5.77% 19
Scotland +48 69 £75,000 +28.76% 35
North East -5 48 £55,000 -20.73% 37
Northern Ireland -36 5 £63,750 -25.13% 7
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 (4.21%) Microsoft Exchange
2 43 (2.13%) SharePoint
3 14 (0.69%) Apache
3 14 (0.69%) SAS
4 11 (0.55%) Apache Spark
5 8 (0.40%) Apache Airflow
5 8 (0.40%) Skype for Business
6 7 (0.35%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 6 (0.30%) Jupyter
8 2 (0.099%) Confluence
8 2 (0.099%) Exchange Server 2013
8 2 (0.099%) OpenStack
9 1 (0.050%) Apache Qpid
9 1 (0.050%) Appian
9 1 (0.050%) JBoss
Applications
1 103 (5.10%) Microsoft Office
2 30 (1.49%) Microsoft Excel
3 10 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.35%) Simulink
5 4 (0.20%) Windchill
6 2 (0.099%) Stateflow
7 1 (0.050%) CATIA
7 1 (0.050%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.050%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 5 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
1 5 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.050%) Integrated Workplace Management System
2 1 (0.050%) Primavera
2 1 (0.050%) Salesforce CRM
2 1 (0.050%) SAP BPC
2 1 (0.050%) SAP EWM
2 1 (0.050%) SAP GRC
2 1 (0.050%) SAP HCM
2 1 (0.050%) SAP MM
2 1 (0.050%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 442 (21.90%) Azure
2 268 (13.28%) AWS
3 247 (12.24%) Microsoft 365
4 73 (3.62%) Entra ID
5 71 (3.52%) GCP
6 50 (2.48%) Dynamics 365
7 39 (1.93%) Serverless
8 38 (1.88%) Power Platform
9 37 (1.83%) SaaS
10 33 (1.64%) GitHub
11 30 (1.49%) Azure DevOps
11 30 (1.49%) Azure Sentinel
12 28 (1.39%) Amazon S3
13 25 (1.24%) AWS CloudFormation
14 22 (1.09%) Amazon EKS
15 20 (0.99%) Amazon ECS
16 19 (0.94%) AWS Lambda
16 19 (0.94%) PaaS
17 17 (0.84%) Amazon EC2
18 16 (0.79%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 118 (5.85%) Firewall
2 116 (5.75%) DNS
3 98 (4.86%) DHCP
4 66 (3.27%) WAN
5 60 (2.97%) VPN
6 51 (2.53%) Network Security
7 48 (2.38%) LAN
8 45 (2.23%) TCP/IP
9 35 (1.73%) Wi-Fi
10 29 (1.44%) Structured Cabling
11 28 (1.39%) BGP
12 20 (0.99%) SD-WAN
13 19 (0.94%) VLAN
13 19 (0.94%) VoIP
14 18 (0.89%) MPLS
15 17 (0.84%) Cisco Firepower
16 16 (0.79%) HTTP
17 12 (0.59%) Cisco ASA
18 10 (0.50%) MQTT
18 10 (0.50%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 60 (2.97%) Amazon RDS
2 34 (1.68%) Power BI
3 23 (1.14%) PostgreSQL
4 19 (0.94%) Big Data
4 19 (0.94%) DynamoDB
5 16 (0.79%) Data Warehouse
6 13 (0.64%) Relational Database
7 11 (0.55%) Amazon Athena
7 11 (0.55%) Elasticsearch
7 11 (0.55%) GIS
8 10 (0.50%) MongoDB
8 10 (0.50%) NoSQL
9 9 (0.45%) SQL Server
10 8 (0.40%) Data Lake
10 8 (0.40%) Metadata
10 8 (0.40%) Pentaho
10 8 (0.40%) Redis
11 6 (0.30%) Amazon Redshift
11 6 (0.30%) Hadoop
11 6 (0.30%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 71 (3.52%) Git
2 57 (2.82%) GitLab
3 31 (1.54%) Jenkins
4 24 (1.19%) JIRA
5 20 (0.99%) JUnit
6 16 (0.79%) Maven
6 16 (0.79%) SonarQube
7 14 (0.69%) Visual Studio Code
8 13 (0.64%) Mockito
8 13 (0.64%) Selenium
9 12 (0.59%) Cypress.io
10 8 (0.40%) Cucumber
11 6 (0.30%) Burp Suite
11 6 (0.30%) Metasploit
11 6 (0.30%) Postman
12 5 (0.25%) Claude Code
13 4 (0.20%) Artifactory
13 4 (0.20%) JMeter
14 3 (0.15%) Bitbucket
14 3 (0.15%) Rational DOORS
General
1 460 (22.79%) Social Skills
2 262 (12.98%) Public Sector
3 179 (8.87%) Analytical Skills
4 125 (6.19%) Finance
5 123 (6.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 61 (3.02%) Telecoms
7 53 (2.63%) Manufacturing
8 51 (2.53%) Back Office
9 45 (2.23%) Law
10 40 (1.98%) Electronics
11 38 (1.88%) Aerospace
12 35 (1.73%) Organisational Skills
13 34 (1.68%) Legal
14 32 (1.59%) Military
15 27 (1.34%) Aviation
16 21 (1.04%) Retail
17 19 (0.94%) Documentation Skills
18 14 (0.69%) Marketing
19 12 (0.59%) Advertising
19 12 (0.59%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 338 (16.75%) Senior
2 186 (9.22%) Architect
3 166 (8.23%) Software Engineer
4 164 (8.13%) Developer
5 163 (8.08%) Analyst
6 153 (7.58%) Consultant
7 111 (5.50%) Support Engineer
8 99 (4.91%) Systems Engineer
9 90 (4.46%) Cloud Engineer
10 82 (4.06%) Security Consultant
11 81 (4.01%) Data Engineer
12 78 (3.87%) Lead
13 77 (3.82%) Network Engineer
14 73 (3.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 66 (3.27%) IT Engineer
15 66 (3.27%) IT Support
15 66 (3.27%) Java Developer
15 66 (3.27%) Senior Developer
16 60 (2.97%) Site Engineer
17 56 (2.78%) Security Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 60 (2.97%) .NET
2 48 (2.38%) REST
3 37 (1.83%) Spring
4 34 (1.68%) React
5 30 (1.49%) Spring Boot
6 25 (1.24%) AngularJS
7 16 (0.79%) Kafka
7 16 (0.79%) Node.js
8 14 (0.69%) RESTful
9 13 (0.64%) PySpark
10 12 (0.59%) Playwright
10 12 (0.59%) SOAP
11 11 (0.55%) Elastic Stack
11 11 (0.55%) RabbitMQ
11 11 (0.55%) YAML
12 10 (0.50%) Jest
13 9 (0.45%) gRPC
14 8 (0.40%) ASP.NET
14 8 (0.40%) OpenAPI
14 8 (0.40%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 74 (3.67%) Data Centre
1 74 (3.67%) Legacy Systems
2 66 (3.27%) Driving Licence
3 65 (3.22%) Onboarding
4 42 (2.08%) Cloud Native
4 42 (2.08%) Security Operations Centre
4 42 (2.08%) Security Posture
5 39 (1.93%) Product Ownership
6 37 (1.83%) Management Information System
7 33 (1.64%) Self-Motivation
8 26 (1.29%) Fibre Optics
9 23 (1.14%) CSOC
9 23 (1.14%) Embedded Systems
10 22 (1.09%) Robotics
11 20 (0.99%) PKI
12 18 (0.89%) Algorithms
12 18 (0.89%) Distributed Systems
13 16 (0.79%) Analytical Mindset
14 15 (0.74%) Data Structures
14 15 (0.74%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 271 (13.43%) Windows
2 215 (10.65%) Linux
3 118 (5.85%) Windows Server
4 78 (3.87%) Windows 10
5 62 (3.07%) Windows Server 2016
6 24 (1.19%) Unix
7 17 (0.84%) Android
8 14 (0.69%) Mac OS
9 12 (0.59%) CentOS
10 11 (0.55%) Ubuntu
11 9 (0.45%) Apple iOS
12 8 (0.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 6 (0.30%) Debian
14 4 (0.20%) Solaris
15 3 (0.15%) Embedded Linux
15 3 (0.15%) VMS
16 2 (0.099%) AIX
16 2 (0.099%) Mac OS X
16 2 (0.099%) Windows 7
16 2 (0.099%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 287 (14.22%) Cybersecurity
2 263 (13.03%) Agile
2 263 (13.03%) Problem-Solving
3 245 (12.14%) Continuous Improvement
4 233 (11.55%) Software Engineering
5 208 (10.31%) ITIL
6 200 (9.91%) DevOps
7 172 (8.52%) CI/CD
8 142 (7.04%) Customer Service
9 137 (6.79%) Mentoring
10 129 (6.39%) Analytics
11 114 (5.65%) Customer Experience
12 111 (5.50%) Migration
13 106 (5.25%) Infrastructure as Code
13 106 (5.25%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 102 (5.05%) AI
15 91 (4.51%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 89 (4.41%) Scrum
17 87 (4.31%) Decision-Making
17 87 (4.31%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 216 (10.70%) Python
2 133 (6.59%) Java
3 105 (5.20%) SQL
4 89 (4.41%) C++
5 72 (3.57%) PowerShell
6 67 (3.32%) Bash
7 53 (2.63%) C#
8 49 (2.43%) JavaScript
9 33 (1.64%) C
10 28 (1.39%) TypeScript
11 18 (0.89%) Rust
12 17 (0.84%) PL/SQL
13 15 (0.74%) Groovy
14 13 (0.64%) MATLAB
15 12 (0.59%) VBA
16 11 (0.55%) Embedded C
17 10 (0.50%) Kusto Query Language
18 8 (0.40%) Bicep
18 8 (0.40%) Perl
19 7 (0.35%) Embedded C++
Qualifications
1 2,018 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 383 (18.98%) DV Cleared
3 222 (11.00%) Degree
4 61 (3.02%) CTC Cleared
5 54 (2.68%) BPSS Clearance
6 40 (1.98%) CISSP
7 37 (1.83%) Cisco Certification
8 36 (1.78%) Microsoft Certification
9 29 (1.44%) AWS Certification
9 29 (1.44%) Computer Science Degree
10 28 (1.39%) CompTIA Security+
11 27 (1.34%) CISM
12 26 (1.29%) HNC
13 24 (1.19%) CREST Certified
13 24 (1.19%) Master's Degree
14 21 (1.04%) Azure Certification
14 21 (1.04%) CCNP
15 15 (0.74%) CCNA
15 15 (0.74%) DBS Check
15 15 (0.74%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 103 (5.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 88 (4.36%) Cyber Essentials
3 84 (4.16%) SLA
4 81 (4.01%) PCI DSS
5 65 (3.22%) NIST
6 54 (2.68%) QA
7 44 (2.18%) GDPR
8 27 (1.34%) NCSC
9 26 (1.29%) Accessibility
10 25 (1.24%) Data Quality
11 24 (1.19%) JSP 440
12 20 (0.99%) GRC
13 18 (0.89%) ISO 9001
13 18 (0.89%) ISO/IEC 20000
13 18 (0.89%) PMO
14 14 (0.69%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 14 (0.69%) Def Stans
15 11 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
16 9 (0.45%) NIST 800
17 8 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 158 (7.83%) Active Directory
2 99 (4.91%) Docker
3 77 (3.82%) Hyper-V
4 57 (2.82%) Terminal Server
5 50 (2.48%) VMware Infrastructure
6 28 (1.39%) Firmware
7 17 (0.84%) Virtual Desktop
8 16 (0.79%) VMware NSX
9 10 (0.50%) vSphere
10 9 (0.45%) Embedded Firmware
11 5 (0.25%) Virtual Machines
12 4 (0.20%) BitLocker
12 4 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
13 3 (0.15%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 2 (0.099%) Lustre
15 1 (0.050%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 1 (0.050%) IAG
15 1 (0.050%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 133 (6.59%) Terraform
2 99 (4.91%) Kubernetes
3 83 (4.11%) Ansible
4 32 (1.59%) Microsoft Intune
5 24 (1.19%) SCCM
6 19 (0.94%) Grafana
7 18 (0.89%) Prometheus
8 15 (0.74%) Puppet
9 12 (0.59%) Proxmox
9 12 (0.59%) vCenter Server
10 11 (0.55%) Kibana
10 11 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
10 11 (0.55%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
11 9 (0.45%) Nessus
12 7 (0.35%) QRadar
13 6 (0.30%) HP Fortify
13 6 (0.30%) Nmap
13 6 (0.30%) Podman
14 5 (0.25%) Graylog
14 5 (0.25%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 377 (18.68%) Microsoft
2 137 (6.79%) VMware
3 136 (6.74%) Cisco
4 86 (4.26%) Splunk
5 70 (3.47%) SolarWinds
6 57 (2.82%) Veeam
7 56 (2.78%) Brocade
7 56 (2.78%) Nimble Storage
7 56 (2.78%) Tanium
8 41 (2.03%) Oracle
9 36 (1.78%) ServiceNow
10 35 (1.73%) Google
11 21 (1.04%) HP
11 21 (1.04%) Red Hat
12 18 (0.89%) CheckPoint
13 17 (0.84%) Fortinet
13 17 (0.84%) Juniper
13 17 (0.84%) SAP
14 16 (0.79%) Citrix
15 15 (0.74%) Salesforce