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 5 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
5 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 8 8 18
Rank change year-on-year 0 +10 -2
Contract jobs citing SC Cleared 5,172 7,629 7,681
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 11.98% 12.91% 8.66%
As % of the Qualifications category 39.25% 47.32% 40.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,525 5,374 5,333
10th Percentile £350 £381 £400
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 -2.27% +4.76% +14.75%
Number of hourly rates quoted 379 425 336
10th Percentile £13.25 £19.06 £20.00
25th Percentile £21.37 £36.25 £38.39
Median hourly rate £50.00 £60.00 £54.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% +11.11% +21.35%
75th Percentile £70.00 £70.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £81.90 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £56.89 £57.50 £54.98
% change year-on-year -1.07% +4.59% +37.44%

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 13,178 16,121 19,056
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 30.53% 27.29% 21.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,130 10,752 12,590
10th Percentile £300 £330 £330
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 £626
90th Percentile £744 £743 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £530 £530 £500
% change year-on-year - +6.00% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,075 841 765
10th Percentile £13.86 £15.25 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.84 £20.00 £19.52
Median hourly rate £40.00 £54.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -25.93% +27.06% +12.88%
75th Percentile £61.60 £68.25 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.25 £80.00 £66.86
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.94 £49.72 £34.38
% change year-on-year -17.66% +44.65% -0.48%

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 5 May 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 5 May 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 5 May 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 4,437 £535 -2.73% 1,145
UK excluding London +1 2,905 £538 -2.27% 969
Work from Home +1 1,783 £550 - 527
London 0 1,647 £525 -8.70% 234
South East 0 858 £564 +8.47% 292
South West -1 786 £538 -7.65% 253
North of England -1 492 £525 -4.55% 177
North West -1 375 £525 - 137
Midlands +10 345 £485 -10.19% 95
West Midlands +11 248 £450 -18.18% 66
Scotland +21 228 £550 +22.22% 81
East of England -6 159 £358 -31.58% 70
East Midlands +5 97 £545 +3.81% 28
Yorkshire -2 89 £525 -12.50% 25
Wales -7 50 £615 +11.82% 15
North East -10 30 £500 -11.70% 16
Northern Ireland +14 8 £525 +5.00% 15

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
1 218 (4.22%) Confluence
2 190 (3.67%) SharePoint
3 112 (2.17%) Microsoft Exchange
4 51 (0.99%) Apache
5 33 (0.64%) nginx
6 15 (0.29%) Skype for Business
7 14 (0.27%) Apache Spark
7 14 (0.27%) SAS
8 11 (0.21%) CICS
9 10 (0.19%) CMS
10 9 (0.17%) IIS
10 9 (0.17%) OpenStack
11 8 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2003
12 7 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2007
12 7 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2010
12 7 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2013
13 6 (0.12%) SharePoint 2013
13 6 (0.12%) Tomcat
13 6 (0.12%) WordPress
14 5 (0.097%) Drupal
Applications
1 132 (2.55%) Microsoft Office
2 87 (1.68%) Microsoft Excel
3 44 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 39 (0.75%) Microsoft Project
5 28 (0.54%) MS Visio
6 16 (0.31%) Simulink
7 11 (0.21%) Acrobat
8 9 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
9 8 (0.15%) Trello
10 7 (0.14%) 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 47 (0.91%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 32 (0.62%) Teamcenter
3 28 (0.54%) Remedy ITSM
3 28 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
4 24 (0.46%) Primavera
5 22 (0.43%) SAP EWM
6 21 (0.41%) SAP QM
7 11 (0.21%) Distributed Ledger
7 11 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
8 9 (0.17%) SAP HR
9 7 (0.14%) Siebel CRM
10 6 (0.12%) Dynamics CRM
10 6 (0.12%) SAP PSCD
11 5 (0.097%) Magento
11 5 (0.097%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 5 (0.097%) SAP MM
11 5 (0.097%) SAP PM
11 5 (0.097%) SAP PS
12 4 (0.077%) Oracle Financials
12 4 (0.077%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 806 (15.58%) AWS
2 663 (12.82%) Azure
3 214 (4.14%) Microsoft 365
4 153 (2.96%) Power Platform
5 110 (2.13%) Serverless
6 102 (1.97%) Amazon S3
7 96 (1.86%) GitHub
8 92 (1.78%) GCP
9 89 (1.72%) Entra ID
10 88 (1.70%) AWS Lambda
11 86 (1.66%) Azure DevOps
12 73 (1.41%) Amazon EC2
13 67 (1.30%) PaaS
14 66 (1.28%) Amazon EKS
15 56 (1.08%) OCI
15 56 (1.08%) SaaS
15 56 (1.08%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 42 (0.81%) Dynamics 365
17 41 (0.79%) OpenShift
17 41 (0.79%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 266 (5.14%) Firewall
2 152 (2.94%) WAN
3 127 (2.46%) VPN
4 122 (2.36%) DNS
5 90 (1.74%) Network Security
6 83 (1.60%) DHCP
7 76 (1.47%) LAN
8 72 (1.39%) Wireless
9 70 (1.35%) BGP
10 67 (1.30%) SAN
11 65 (1.26%) IPsec
12 59 (1.14%) MPLS
13 54 (1.04%) Wi-Fi
14 51 (0.99%) OSPF
15 49 (0.95%) TCP/IP
16 44 (0.85%) SSL
17 41 (0.79%) Cisco ASA
18 36 (0.70%) VoIP
19 34 (0.66%) Cisco ISE
20 33 (0.64%) Cisco Firepower
Database & Business Intelligence
1 160 (3.09%) PostgreSQL
2 115 (2.22%) SQL Server
3 91 (1.76%) Power BI
4 74 (1.43%) Amazon RDS
4 74 (1.43%) Relational Database
5 70 (1.35%) NoSQL
6 66 (1.28%) Oracle Database
7 59 (1.14%) Amazon Redshift
8 55 (1.06%) Metadata
9 53 (1.02%) Data Warehouse
10 48 (0.93%) MongoDB
11 45 (0.87%) MySQL
12 40 (0.77%) Data Lake
13 39 (0.75%) Elasticsearch
13 39 (0.75%) Flink
14 35 (0.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 34 (0.66%) Data Vault
16 31 (0.60%) Big Data
17 25 (0.48%) Metadata Repository
18 24 (0.46%) DB2
Development Applications
1 336 (6.50%) JIRA
2 238 (4.60%) Git
3 231 (4.47%) Jenkins
4 135 (2.61%) GitLab
5 91 (1.76%) Selenium
6 79 (1.53%) Visual Studio
7 66 (1.28%) Cucumber
8 58 (1.12%) PVCS
9 57 (1.10%) JUnit
10 52 (1.01%) Bitbucket
11 49 (0.95%) Rational DOORS
12 48 (0.93%) SonarQube
13 41 (0.79%) REST Assured
14 30 (0.58%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 30 (0.58%) JMeter
15 24 (0.46%) Maven
16 20 (0.39%) Postman
16 20 (0.39%) SoapUI
16 20 (0.39%) TestNG
17 18 (0.35%) WebDriver
General
1 1,162 (22.47%) Public Sector
2 929 (17.96%) Social Skills
3 394 (7.62%) Finance
4 386 (7.46%) Analytical Skills
5 187 (3.62%) Telecoms
6 178 (3.44%) Aerospace
7 135 (2.61%) Manufacturing
8 132 (2.55%) Electronics
8 132 (2.55%) Military
9 91 (1.76%) Marketing
10 82 (1.59%) Presentation Skills
11 75 (1.45%) Law
12 69 (1.33%) Legal
13 67 (1.30%) Police
14 65 (1.26%) Organisational Skills
15 52 (1.01%) Influencing Skills
16 47 (0.91%) Banking
17 30 (0.58%) Retail
18 25 (0.48%) Publishing
19 24 (0.46%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 812 (15.70%) Architect
2 595 (11.50%) Developer
3 394 (7.62%) Analyst
4 376 (7.27%) Senior
5 338 (6.54%) Lead
6 332 (6.42%) Consultant
7 224 (4.33%) DevOps Engineer
8 206 (3.98%) Solutions Architect
9 182 (3.52%) Project Manager
10 180 (3.48%) Network Engineer
11 157 (3.04%) Data Engineer
12 148 (2.86%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 141 (2.73%) Java Developer
14 107 (2.07%) Lead Architect
14 107 (2.07%) Support Engineer
15 102 (1.97%) Delivery Manager
15 102 (1.97%) Technical Architect
16 101 (1.95%) Service Analyst
17 95 (1.84%) Software Engineer
18 93 (1.80%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 145 (2.80%) REST
2 136 (2.63%) Spring
3 131 (2.53%) Spring Boot
4 117 (2.26%) .NET
5 114 (2.20%) React
6 102 (1.97%) Kafka
7 92 (1.78%) Node.js
8 89 (1.72%) HTML
9 81 (1.57%) CSS
9 81 (1.57%) Web Services
10 54 (1.04%) Hibernate
11 53 (1.02%) JPA
11 53 (1.02%) RESTful
12 51 (0.99%) ARM Templates
13 50 (0.97%) JSON
14 41 (0.79%) OpenID
15 37 (0.72%) SAML
16 35 (0.68%) .NET Core
17 34 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
18 32 (0.62%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 144 (2.78%) PKI
2 131 (2.53%) Management Information System
3 110 (2.13%) Data Centre
4 100 (1.93%) Onboarding
5 85 (1.64%) Self-Motivation
6 68 (1.31%) Product Ownership
7 56 (1.08%) Public Cloud
8 49 (0.95%) Cloud Native
9 47 (0.91%) CMDB
10 46 (0.89%) Data Protection Act
11 41 (0.79%) Greenfield Project
12 38 (0.73%) Security Posture
13 37 (0.72%) Mainframe
14 36 (0.70%) Analogue Electronics
14 36 (0.70%) Cyber Threat
15 35 (0.68%) Clustering
15 35 (0.68%) Private Cloud
16 32 (0.62%) Linux Command Line
17 31 (0.60%) Virtual Team
18 29 (0.56%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 495 (9.57%) Windows
2 462 (8.93%) Linux
3 158 (3.05%) Windows Server
4 112 (2.17%) Windows 10
5 83 (1.60%) Unix
6 67 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 55 (1.06%) Windows 7
8 50 (0.97%) Android
9 48 (0.93%) Windows Server 2012
10 47 (0.91%) Apple iOS
10 47 (0.91%) Windows Server 2019
11 40 (0.77%) Windows Server 2016
12 31 (0.60%) Ubuntu
13 28 (0.54%) Mac OS X
14 20 (0.39%) Debian
15 18 (0.35%) VMS
16 17 (0.33%) AIX
17 16 (0.31%) Windows XP
18 15 (0.29%) Windows Vista
19 13 (0.25%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 943 (18.23%) Agile
2 603 (11.66%) Problem-Solving
3 580 (11.21%) DevOps
4 415 (8.02%) ITIL
5 407 (7.87%) Stakeholder Management
6 381 (7.37%) CI/CD
7 380 (7.35%) Project Management
8 340 (6.57%) Cybersecurity
9 292 (5.65%) Service Management
10 280 (5.41%) Migration
11 255 (4.93%) Software Engineering
12 235 (4.54%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 231 (4.47%) Scrum
14 227 (4.39%) Decision-Making
15 226 (4.37%) Analytics
15 226 (4.37%) Configuration Management
16 202 (3.91%) Business Intelligence
17 200 (3.87%) Mentoring
18 199 (3.85%) Test Automation
19 195 (3.77%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 458 (8.86%) Python
2 396 (7.66%) Java
3 355 (6.86%) SQL
4 252 (4.87%) PowerShell
5 192 (3.71%) JavaScript
6 152 (2.94%) C#
7 124 (2.40%) C
8 104 (2.01%) PL/SQL
9 98 (1.89%) Bash
10 81 (1.57%) C++
11 71 (1.37%) TypeScript
12 36 (0.70%) PHP
13 33 (0.64%) MATLAB
14 32 (0.62%) Go
15 30 (0.58%) T-SQL
16 29 (0.56%) Shell Script
17 23 (0.44%) Bicep
17 23 (0.44%) Perl
18 20 (0.39%) Ada
19 17 (0.33%) COBOL
Qualifications
1 5,172 (100.00%) Security Cleared
2 587 (11.35%) DV Cleared
3 381 (7.37%) Degree
4 211 (4.08%) BPSS Clearance
5 116 (2.24%) Cisco Certification
6 89 (1.72%) Computer Science Degree
7 84 (1.62%) CCNP
8 82 (1.59%) CISSP
9 76 (1.47%) CCNA
10 73 (1.41%) Microsoft Certification
11 61 (1.18%) PMI Certification
12 59 (1.14%) PMP
13 53 (1.02%) CISM
14 39 (0.75%) Azure Certification
15 30 (0.58%) MCSA
16 29 (0.56%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 27 (0.52%) CEH
17 27 (0.52%) CTC Cleared
17 27 (0.52%) ISTQB
17 27 (0.52%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 141 (2.73%) QA
2 123 (2.38%) SLA
3 108 (2.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 98 (1.89%) NIST
5 86 (1.66%) Data Quality
6 75 (1.45%) PMO
7 70 (1.35%) NCSC
8 64 (1.24%) Accessibility
9 39 (0.75%) GDPR
10 31 (0.60%) JSP 440
11 29 (0.56%) Disclosure Scotland
12 22 (0.43%) 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 12 (0.23%) GRC
16 11 (0.21%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 10 (0.19%) COBIT
18 9 (0.17%) WCAG
System Software
1 322 (6.23%) Active Directory
2 230 (4.45%) Docker
3 156 (3.02%) VMware Infrastructure
4 59 (1.14%) vSphere
5 56 (1.08%) VMware NSX
6 53 (1.02%) Hyper-V
7 49 (0.95%) Virtual Machines
8 47 (0.91%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.70%) Firmware
10 26 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
11 8 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
12 7 (0.14%) KVM
13 6 (0.12%) Terminal Services
14 5 (0.097%) BitLocker
14 5 (0.097%) Virtual Servers
14 5 (0.097%) XenApp
14 5 (0.097%) XenDesktop
15 4 (0.077%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 4 (0.077%) UAG
16 3 (0.058%) iptables
Systems Management
1 335 (6.48%) Kubernetes
2 316 (6.11%) Terraform
3 277 (5.36%) Ansible
4 96 (1.86%) SCCM
5 63 (1.22%) vCenter Server
6 60 (1.16%) Grafana
7 55 (1.06%) Microsoft Intune
8 45 (0.87%) SCOM
9 44 (0.85%) WSUS
10 40 (0.77%) Prometheus
10 40 (0.77%) Puppet
10 40 (0.77%) Single Sign-On
11 39 (0.75%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 32 (0.62%) Packer
13 29 (0.56%) VxRail
14 27 (0.52%) Kibana
15 25 (0.48%) PowerCLI
16 24 (0.46%) NetBackup
17 23 (0.44%) EMC NetWorker
18 20 (0.39%) vRealize
Vendors
1 679 (13.13%) Microsoft
2 285 (5.51%) VMware
3 264 (5.10%) Oracle
4 253 (4.89%) SAP
5 228 (4.41%) Cisco
6 134 (2.59%) Juniper
7 106 (2.05%) ServiceNow
8 98 (1.89%) Red Hat
9 97 (1.88%) Atlassian
10 93 (1.80%) IBM
11 90 (1.74%) Palo Alto
12 72 (1.39%) Dell
13 64 (1.24%) HP
14 60 (1.16%) Splunk
15 56 (1.08%) Citrix
15 56 (1.08%) Sparx
16 54 (1.04%) Google
17 51 (0.99%) SolarWinds
18 48 (0.93%) Fortinet
19 40 (0.77%) F5