SC Cleared Contracts

Security Check (SC) Clearance
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for SC Cleared qualifications. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months to 27 April 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
27 Apr 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 8 8 19
Rank change year-on-year 0 +11 -4
Contract jobs citing SC Cleared 5,217 7,758 7,660
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 12.05% 12.97% 8.62%
As % of the Qualifications category 39.31% 47.49% 40.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,556 5,468 5,284
10th Percentile £350 £375 £394
25th Percentile £450 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.27% - +10.00%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £550 £525
% change year-on-year -2.18% +4.76% +16.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 376 438 337
10th Percentile £13.25 £19.06 £20.00
25th Percentile £21.37 £36.25 £37.50
Median hourly rate £49.50 £60.00 £54.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.50% +11.11% +20.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £70.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £82.50 £69.43
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.40 £57.50 £54.90
% change year-on-year -3.65% +4.74% +30.20%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK

SC Cleared is in the Academic Qualifications and Professional Certifications category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for academic qualifications or professional certifications.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 13,270 16,337 19,076
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 30.65% 27.32% 21.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,165 10,899 12,575
10th Percentile £300 £325 £325
25th Percentile £425 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.73% +4.76% +8.25%
75th Percentile £650 £650 £625
90th Percentile £738 £743 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £530 £530 £500
% change year-on-year - +6.00% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,067 858 776
10th Percentile £13.86 £15.25 £13.46
25th Percentile £17.80 £20.06 £19.33
Median hourly rate £40.00 £54.00 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year -25.93% +30.12% +5.06%
75th Percentile £61.60 £68.25 £56.31
90th Percentile £75.25 £80.00 £66.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.28 £50.00 £31.89
% change year-on-year -19.45% +56.79% -14.39%

SC Cleared
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing SC Cleared as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for SC Cleared in the UK

SC Cleared
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing SC Cleared.

Daily rate trend for SC Cleared in the UK

SC Cleared
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SC Cleared over the 6 months to 27 April 2024.

Daily rate histogram for SC Cleared in the UK

SC Cleared
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing SC Cleared.

Hourly rate trend for SC Cleared in the UK

SC Cleared
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SC Cleared over the 6 months to 27 April 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for SC Cleared in the UK

SC Cleared
Top 17 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SC Cleared within the UK over the 6 months to 27 April 2024. 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England +1 4,471 £535 -2.73% 1,031
UK excluding London 0 2,916 £538 -2.18% 890
Work from Home +1 1,809 £550 - 461
London +1 1,664 £525 -8.70% 190
South East 0 845 £563 +7.14% 269
South West -1 796 £538 -7.08% 239
North of England -1 503 £525 -4.55% 154
North West -1 389 £525 -2.33% 122
Midlands +10 347 £485 -10.19% 86
West Midlands +10 247 £450 -16.67% 67
Scotland +20 230 £575 +27.78% 71
East of England -6 158 £365 -29.81% 71
East Midlands +7 100 £533 +1.43% 19
Yorkshire +1 88 £525 -11.58% 16
Wales -7 50 £615 +11.82% 12
North East -11 28 £500 -11.46% 16
Northern Ireland +15 8 £525 +5.00% 14

SC Cleared
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 225 (4.31%) Confluence
2 196 (3.76%) SharePoint
3 113 (2.17%) Microsoft Exchange
4 53 (1.02%) Apache
5 26 (0.50%) nginx
6 17 (0.33%) Skype for Business
7 16 (0.31%) Apache Spark
8 14 (0.27%) SAS
9 11 (0.21%) CICS
10 10 (0.19%) IIS
11 9 (0.17%) CMS
11 9 (0.17%) OpenStack
12 8 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2003
13 7 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2007
13 7 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2010
13 7 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
14 6 (0.12%) SharePoint 2013
14 6 (0.12%) Tomcat
15 5 (0.096%) SharePoint Server
15 5 (0.096%) WebSphere
Applications
1 131 (2.51%) Microsoft Office
2 83 (1.59%) Microsoft Excel
3 41 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 38 (0.73%) Microsoft Project
5 29 (0.56%) MS Visio
6 17 (0.33%) Simulink
7 11 (0.21%) Acrobat
8 10 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
9 8 (0.15%) Trello
10 7 (0.13%) Revit
11 4 (0.077%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.077%) AutoCAD
11 4 (0.077%) Sketch
12 3 (0.058%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.058%) Photoshop
13 1 (0.019%) Adobe After Effects
13 1 (0.019%) CATIA
13 1 (0.019%) SPSS
13 1 (0.019%) Stateflow
13 1 (0.019%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 50 (0.96%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 36 (0.69%) SAP S/4HANA
3 31 (0.59%) Teamcenter
4 27 (0.52%) Remedy ITSM
5 22 (0.42%) Primavera
6 20 (0.38%) SAP EWM
6 20 (0.38%) SAP QM
7 11 (0.21%) Distributed Ledger
7 11 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
8 9 (0.17%) SAP HR
9 7 (0.13%) Siebel CRM
10 6 (0.12%) Dynamics CRM
10 6 (0.12%) SAP ERP
10 6 (0.12%) SAP PSCD
11 5 (0.096%) SAP MM
11 5 (0.096%) SAP PM
11 5 (0.096%) SAP PS
12 4 (0.077%) Magento
12 4 (0.077%) Maximo
12 4 (0.077%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 807 (15.47%) AWS
2 666 (12.77%) Azure
3 217 (4.16%) Microsoft 365
4 152 (2.91%) Power Platform
5 110 (2.11%) Serverless
6 102 (1.96%) Amazon S3
7 99 (1.90%) GitHub
8 90 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
8 90 (1.73%) Entra ID
8 90 (1.73%) GCP
9 89 (1.71%) Azure DevOps
10 73 (1.40%) Amazon EC2
11 65 (1.25%) PaaS
12 63 (1.21%) Amazon EKS
13 59 (1.13%) SaaS
14 56 (1.07%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 54 (1.04%) OCI
16 42 (0.81%) IaaS
17 41 (0.79%) OpenShift
17 41 (0.79%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 274 (5.25%) Firewall
2 165 (3.16%) WAN
3 129 (2.47%) VPN
4 125 (2.40%) DNS
5 102 (1.96%) Network Security
6 87 (1.67%) LAN
7 81 (1.55%) DHCP
8 77 (1.48%) Wireless
9 70 (1.34%) BGP
10 66 (1.27%) IPsec
11 64 (1.23%) SAN
12 59 (1.13%) MPLS
13 55 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
14 51 (0.98%) OSPF
15 49 (0.94%) TCP/IP
16 43 (0.82%) SSL
17 41 (0.79%) Cisco ASA
18 39 (0.75%) VoIP
19 34 (0.65%) Cisco ISE
19 34 (0.65%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 159 (3.05%) PostgreSQL
2 114 (2.19%) SQL Server
3 91 (1.74%) Power BI
4 77 (1.48%) Relational Database
5 74 (1.42%) Amazon RDS
6 69 (1.32%) NoSQL
7 66 (1.27%) Oracle Database
8 55 (1.05%) Amazon Redshift
8 55 (1.05%) Metadata
9 51 (0.98%) Data Warehouse
10 49 (0.94%) MongoDB
11 40 (0.77%) Elasticsearch
11 40 (0.77%) Flink
11 40 (0.77%) MySQL
12 38 (0.73%) Data Lake
13 34 (0.65%) Data Vault
13 34 (0.65%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 30 (0.58%) Big Data
15 25 (0.48%) Metadata Repository
16 24 (0.46%) DB2
Development Applications
1 347 (6.65%) JIRA
2 234 (4.49%) Jenkins
3 233 (4.47%) Git
4 138 (2.65%) GitLab
5 89 (1.71%) Selenium
6 77 (1.48%) Visual Studio
7 66 (1.27%) Cucumber
8 58 (1.11%) PVCS
9 56 (1.07%) JUnit
10 54 (1.04%) Bitbucket
11 48 (0.92%) Rational DOORS
12 46 (0.88%) SonarQube
13 41 (0.79%) REST Assured
14 29 (0.56%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 29 (0.56%) JMeter
15 24 (0.46%) Maven
16 20 (0.38%) Postman
16 20 (0.38%) SoapUI
17 19 (0.36%) TestNG
18 18 (0.35%) WebDriver
General
1 1,180 (22.62%) Public Sector
2 933 (17.88%) Social Skills
3 401 (7.69%) Analytical Skills
3 401 (7.69%) Finance
4 187 (3.58%) Telecoms
5 178 (3.41%) Aerospace
6 138 (2.65%) Manufacturing
7 135 (2.59%) Electronics
8 133 (2.55%) Military
9 94 (1.80%) Marketing
10 90 (1.73%) Presentation Skills
11 75 (1.44%) Law
12 72 (1.38%) Police
13 69 (1.32%) Legal
14 67 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
15 64 (1.23%) Organisational Skills
16 45 (0.86%) Banking
17 30 (0.58%) Retail
18 27 (0.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 27 (0.52%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 829 (15.89%) Architect
2 591 (11.33%) Developer
3 399 (7.65%) Analyst
4 384 (7.36%) Senior
5 336 (6.44%) Lead
6 334 (6.40%) Consultant
7 216 (4.14%) Solutions Architect
8 215 (4.12%) DevOps Engineer
9 184 (3.53%) Project Manager
10 183 (3.51%) Network Engineer
11 167 (3.20%) Data Engineer
12 151 (2.89%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 139 (2.66%) Java Developer
14 105 (2.01%) Lead Architect
14 105 (2.01%) Support Engineer
15 103 (1.97%) Technical Architect
16 102 (1.96%) Delivery Manager
17 100 (1.92%) Service Analyst
18 97 (1.86%) Security Architect
19 95 (1.82%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 141 (2.70%) REST
2 135 (2.59%) Spring
3 126 (2.42%) Spring Boot
4 118 (2.26%) .NET
5 109 (2.09%) React
6 104 (1.99%) Kafka
7 90 (1.73%) Node.js
8 85 (1.63%) HTML
8 85 (1.63%) Web Services
9 78 (1.50%) CSS
10 56 (1.07%) RESTful
11 53 (1.02%) Hibernate
11 53 (1.02%) JPA
11 53 (1.02%) JSON
12 50 (0.96%) ARM Templates
13 42 (0.81%) OpenID
14 37 (0.71%) SAML
15 35 (0.67%) .NET Core
16 33 (0.63%) Elastic Stack
16 33 (0.63%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 149 (2.86%) PKI
2 136 (2.61%) Management Information System
3 110 (2.11%) Data Centre
4 97 (1.86%) Onboarding
5 81 (1.55%) Self-Motivation
6 65 (1.25%) Product Ownership
7 56 (1.07%) Cloud Native
8 55 (1.05%) Public Cloud
9 49 (0.94%) CMDB
10 45 (0.86%) Data Protection Act
11 44 (0.84%) Greenfield Project
12 42 (0.81%) Security Posture
13 39 (0.75%) Private Cloud
14 37 (0.71%) Mainframe
15 36 (0.69%) Analogue Electronics
16 35 (0.67%) Cyber Threat
17 34 (0.65%) Clustering
18 32 (0.61%) Linux Command Line
19 30 (0.58%) Video Conferencing
19 30 (0.58%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 496 (9.51%) Windows
2 458 (8.78%) Linux
3 159 (3.05%) Windows Server
4 108 (2.07%) Windows 10
5 78 (1.50%) Unix
6 64 (1.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 54 (1.04%) Windows 7
8 51 (0.98%) Android
9 49 (0.94%) Windows Server 2012
10 48 (0.92%) Apple iOS
11 46 (0.88%) Windows Server 2019
12 39 (0.75%) Windows Server 2016
13 31 (0.59%) Ubuntu
14 27 (0.52%) Mac OS X
15 20 (0.38%) Debian
16 18 (0.35%) VMS
17 17 (0.33%) AIX
18 15 (0.29%) Windows Vista
18 15 (0.29%) Windows XP
19 13 (0.25%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 942 (18.06%) Agile
2 614 (11.77%) Problem-Solving
3 578 (11.08%) DevOps
4 414 (7.94%) Stakeholder Management
5 413 (7.92%) ITIL
6 384 (7.36%) CI/CD
7 381 (7.30%) Project Management
8 337 (6.46%) Cybersecurity
9 292 (5.60%) Service Management
10 289 (5.54%) Migration
11 247 (4.73%) Software Engineering
12 238 (4.56%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 234 (4.49%) Decision-Making
14 228 (4.37%) Scrum
15 221 (4.24%) Analytics
16 216 (4.14%) Configuration Management
17 212 (4.06%) Business Intelligence
18 204 (3.91%) Mentoring
19 203 (3.89%) Test Automation
20 199 (3.81%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 471 (9.03%) Python
2 393 (7.53%) Java
3 364 (6.98%) SQL
4 253 (4.85%) PowerShell
5 190 (3.64%) JavaScript
6 149 (2.86%) C#
7 125 (2.40%) C
8 103 (1.97%) PL/SQL
9 100 (1.92%) Bash
10 82 (1.57%) C++
11 69 (1.32%) TypeScript
12 36 (0.69%) MATLAB
12 36 (0.69%) PHP
13 31 (0.59%) T-SQL
14 28 (0.54%) Go
14 28 (0.54%) Shell Script
15 23 (0.44%) Perl
16 22 (0.42%) Bicep
17 20 (0.38%) Ada
18 19 (0.36%) R
Qualifications
1 5,217 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 591 (11.33%) DV Cleared
3 371 (7.11%) Degree
4 213 (4.08%) BPSS Clearance
5 117 (2.24%) Cisco Certification
6 87 (1.67%) Computer Science Degree
7 83 (1.59%) CCNP
8 82 (1.57%) CISSP
9 77 (1.48%) CCNA
10 74 (1.42%) Microsoft Certification
11 59 (1.13%) PMI Certification
12 58 (1.11%) PMP
13 53 (1.02%) CISM
14 42 (0.81%) Azure Certification
15 31 (0.59%) MCSA
16 30 (0.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 29 (0.56%) Master's Degree
18 28 (0.54%) AWS Certification
18 28 (0.54%) CTC Cleared
19 27 (0.52%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 142 (2.72%) QA
2 122 (2.34%) SLA
3 107 (2.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 96 (1.84%) NIST
5 86 (1.65%) Data Quality
6 76 (1.46%) PMO
7 71 (1.36%) NCSC
8 65 (1.25%) Accessibility
9 39 (0.75%) GDPR
10 31 (0.59%) JSP 440
11 29 (0.56%) Disclosure Scotland
12 21 (0.40%) HIPAA
13 15 (0.29%) Def Stans
14 13 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
14 13 (0.25%) Government Security Classifications
14 13 (0.25%) PCI DSS
15 11 (0.21%) GRC
16 10 (0.19%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 10 (0.19%) COBIT
17 9 (0.17%) WCAG
System Software
1 320 (6.13%) Active Directory
2 228 (4.37%) Docker
3 161 (3.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 60 (1.15%) vSphere
5 59 (1.13%) VMware NSX
6 52 (1.00%) Hyper-V
7 48 (0.92%) VMware ESXi
8 47 (0.90%) Virtual Machines
9 38 (0.73%) Firmware
10 26 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
11 8 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
12 6 (0.12%) KVM
12 6 (0.12%) Terminal Services
12 6 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
13 5 (0.096%) BitLocker
13 5 (0.096%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 5 (0.096%) UAG
14 4 (0.077%) XenApp
14 4 (0.077%) XenDesktop
15 3 (0.058%) iptables
Systems Management
1 329 (6.31%) Kubernetes
2 313 (6.00%) Terraform
3 281 (5.39%) Ansible
4 91 (1.74%) SCCM
5 64 (1.23%) vCenter Server
6 55 (1.05%) Grafana
7 54 (1.04%) Microsoft Intune
8 43 (0.82%) SCOM
9 42 (0.81%) Puppet
9 42 (0.81%) WSUS
10 40 (0.77%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 37 (0.71%) Prometheus
11 37 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
12 29 (0.56%) Kibana
13 26 (0.50%) Packer
13 26 (0.50%) VxRail
14 25 (0.48%) PowerCLI
15 22 (0.42%) NetBackup
16 20 (0.38%) vRealize
17 19 (0.36%) EMC NetWorker
Vendors
1 676 (12.96%) Microsoft
2 290 (5.56%) VMware
3 268 (5.14%) Oracle
4 267 (5.12%) SAP
5 225 (4.31%) Cisco
6 131 (2.51%) Juniper
7 108 (2.07%) ServiceNow
8 103 (1.97%) Atlassian
9 100 (1.92%) Red Hat
10 94 (1.80%) Palo Alto
11 92 (1.76%) IBM
12 71 (1.36%) Dell
13 63 (1.21%) HP
14 62 (1.19%) Splunk
15 60 (1.15%) Sparx
16 56 (1.07%) Google
17 55 (1.05%) Citrix
18 53 (1.02%) SolarWinds
19 51 (0.98%) Fortinet
20 42 (0.81%) F5