Security Cleared Job Trends in the South East

Security Clearance
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics for permanent job vacancies advertised in the South East with a requirement for Security Cleared qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the salaries offered over the 6 months leading up to 5 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 23 13 11
Rank change year-on-year -10 -2 +10
Permanent jobs citing Security Cleared 803 755 1,833
As % of all permanent jobs in the South East 5.55% 9.70% 10.43%
As % of the Qualifications category 24.33% 19.99% 31.96%
Number of salaries quoted 600 487 1,367
10th Percentile £39,928 £40,750 £34,500
25th Percentile £52,500 £47,500 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £67,500 £58,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +16.38% +5.45% +10.00%
75th Percentile £82,500 £77,500 £70,000
90th Percentile £92,500 £87,500 £83,750
England median annual salary £65,000 £61,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year +6.56% +6.09% -4.17%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
South East

Security 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 South East.

Permanent vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 3,300 3,776 5,735
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the South East 22.81% 48.50% 32.62%
Number of salaries quoted 1,746 1,505 3,654
10th Percentile £31,000 £31,500 £30,000
25th Percentile £41,145 £39,500 £38,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £52,500 £51,926
Median % change year-on-year +14.29% +1.11% +1.12%
75th Percentile £75,000 £67,500 £67,500
90th Percentile £86,790 £80,000 £82,500
England median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £54,700
% change year-on-year +9.09% +0.55% -8.83%

Security Cleared
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Security Cleared relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the South East.

Security Cleared job vacancy trend in the South East

Security Cleared
Salary Trend in the South East

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Security Cleared.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Security Cleared

Security Cleared
Salary Histogram in the South East

Salary distribution for jobs citing Security Cleared in the South East over the 6 months to 5 June 2026.

Salary histogram for Security Cleared in the South East

Security Cleared
Job Locations in the South East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Security Cleared within the South East region over the 6 months to 5 June 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
Hampshire -4 371 £75,000 +29.31% 224
Thames Valley +27 284 £65,000 +12.71% 163
Berkshire +17 185 £67,500 +12.50% 116
Buckinghamshire +36 77 £55,000 - 30
Surrey -11 75 £56,152 +24.78% 48
West Sussex +1 29 £35,000 -6.67% 11
Kent -21 24 £52,500 -19.23% 18
Oxfordshire -10 22 £72,500 +40.10% 28
Sussex - 12 £85,000 - 1
East Sussex -14 4 £70,000 - 2
Home Counties -2 1 - -
Security Cleared
England

Security Cleared
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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 22 (2.74%) SharePoint
2 6 (0.75%) Confluence
2 6 (0.75%) SAS
3 4 (0.50%) Microsoft Exchange
4 3 (0.37%) Apache
5 1 (0.12%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.12%) Apache Qpid
5 1 (0.12%) IIS
5 1 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 21 (2.62%) Microsoft Office
2 19 (2.37%) Microsoft Excel
3 11 (1.37%) Simulink
4 2 (0.25%) Lectora
Business Applications
1 1 (0.12%) Primavera
1 1 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.12%) SAP MM
1 1 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 118 (14.69%) Azure
2 72 (8.97%) AWS
3 41 (5.11%) Microsoft 365
4 37 (4.61%) GCP
5 20 (2.49%) Serverless
6 18 (2.24%) Power Platform
7 16 (1.99%) Amazon EKS
8 15 (1.87%) Azure DevOps
9 14 (1.74%) OpenShift
10 13 (1.62%) Entra ID
11 12 (1.49%) Dynamics 365
12 11 (1.37%) Amazon EC2
12 11 (1.37%) Azure AKS
13 10 (1.25%) PowerApps
14 9 (1.12%) GitHub
15 8 (1.00%) Azure Stack
16 7 (0.87%) AWS Lambda
16 7 (0.87%) Azure Sentinel
16 7 (0.87%) GitHub Actions
17 6 (0.75%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 80 (9.96%) Firewall
2 56 (6.97%) DNS
3 41 (5.11%) WAN
4 31 (3.86%) VPN
5 30 (3.74%) LAN
6 26 (3.24%) BGP
7 21 (2.62%) TCP/IP
8 18 (2.24%) Structured Cabling
9 16 (1.99%) HTTP
10 15 (1.87%) Network Security
11 12 (1.49%) OSPF
12 11 (1.37%) DHCP
12 11 (1.37%) NetScaler
13 10 (1.25%) Cisco Firepower
13 10 (1.25%) MQTT
14 9 (1.12%) MPLS
14 9 (1.12%) SAN
14 9 (1.12%) SSL
14 9 (1.12%) Wireshark
15 8 (1.00%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (2.24%) PostgreSQL
2 16 (1.99%) Power BI
3 10 (1.25%) Relational Database
3 10 (1.25%) SQL Server
4 4 (0.50%) GIS
4 4 (0.50%) MySQL
4 4 (0.50%) Redis
5 3 (0.37%) Elasticsearch
5 3 (0.37%) Oracle Database
6 2 (0.25%) Metadata
6 2 (0.25%) MongoDB
6 2 (0.25%) NoSQL
7 1 (0.12%) Big Data
7 1 (0.12%) Data Lake
7 1 (0.12%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.12%) Geospatial Data
7 1 (0.12%) Oracle Database 11g
7 1 (0.12%) Oracle Database 12c
7 1 (0.12%) SAS Visual Analytics
7 1 (0.12%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 62 (7.72%) Git
2 53 (6.60%) GitLab
3 20 (2.49%) Jenkins
4 19 (2.37%) JIRA
5 14 (1.74%) Visual Studio Code
6 11 (1.37%) SonarQube
7 6 (0.75%) Artifactory
7 6 (0.75%) Selenium
8 5 (0.62%) Cucumber
8 5 (0.62%) JUnit
9 4 (0.50%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 3 (0.37%) Android Studio
10 3 (0.37%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.37%) JMeter
10 3 (0.37%) Rational DOORS
10 3 (0.37%) Subversion
10 3 (0.37%) Visual Studio
11 2 (0.25%) Mockito
11 2 (0.25%) MSTest
11 2 (0.25%) Snyk
General
1 169 (21.05%) Social Skills
2 79 (9.84%) Public Sector
3 75 (9.34%) Finance
4 61 (7.60%) Analytical Skills
5 38 (4.73%) Electronics
6 26 (3.24%) Military
7 23 (2.86%) Aerospace
8 22 (2.74%) Aviation
9 21 (2.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 20 (2.49%) Law
10 20 (2.49%) Manufacturing
11 17 (2.12%) Telecoms
12 16 (1.99%) Organisational Skills
13 15 (1.87%) Documentation Skills
14 11 (1.37%) Banking
15 10 (1.25%) Aeronautics
16 9 (1.12%) Games
17 8 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
17 8 (1.00%) Retail
18 5 (0.62%) French Language
Job Titles
1 128 (15.94%) Senior
2 106 (13.20%) Architect
3 70 (8.72%) Developer
4 65 (8.09%) Software Engineer
5 49 (6.10%) Analyst
6 45 (5.60%) Lead
7 42 (5.23%) Network Engineer
8 35 (4.36%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 34 (4.23%) Applications Architect
9 34 (4.23%) Security Architect
10 32 (3.99%) Data Engineer
11 31 (3.86%) Consultant
11 31 (3.86%) Systems Engineer
12 27 (3.36%) Java Developer
13 25 (3.11%) Azure Engineer
14 23 (2.86%) DevOps Engineer
14 23 (2.86%) Support Engineer
15 22 (2.74%) Senior Software Engineer
16 21 (2.62%) IT Engineer
16 21 (2.62%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (3.86%) .NET
2 23 (2.86%) React
2 23 (2.86%) REST
3 19 (2.37%) LDAP
3 19 (2.37%) Regular Expression
4 15 (1.87%) Spring
4 15 (1.87%) XMPP
5 12 (1.49%) Elastic Stack
5 12 (1.49%) JSON
5 12 (1.49%) Kafka
6 10 (1.25%) SOAP
7 8 (1.00%) RabbitMQ
7 8 (1.00%) RESTful
8 7 (0.87%) ARM Templates
8 7 (0.87%) Middleware
8 7 (0.87%) Spring Boot
8 7 (0.87%) YAML
9 6 (0.75%) JPA
9 6 (0.75%) Web Services
9 6 (0.75%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 29 (3.61%) Product Ownership
2 28 (3.49%) Algorithms
3 25 (3.11%) Data Centre
4 20 (2.49%) Cloud Native
4 20 (2.49%) Onboarding
5 19 (2.37%) PKI
6 17 (2.12%) Cyber Defence
6 17 (2.12%) Driving Licence
6 17 (2.12%) Embedded Systems
7 16 (1.99%) Cyber Threat
8 15 (1.87%) FPGA
9 14 (1.74%) Analytical Mindset
9 14 (1.74%) Robotics
10 13 (1.62%) Distributed Systems
11 12 (1.49%) Self-Motivation
12 10 (1.25%) Data Structures
12 10 (1.25%) Fibre Optics
13 9 (1.12%) Security Operations Centre
13 9 (1.12%) Security Posture
14 8 (1.00%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 131 (16.31%) Linux
2 100 (12.45%) Windows
3 63 (7.85%) Windows Server
4 30 (3.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 16 (1.99%) Ubuntu
6 14 (1.74%) CentOS
7 9 (1.12%) Windows Server 2016
8 7 (0.87%) Android
9 6 (0.75%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (0.37%) AIX
10 3 (0.37%) Debian
11 2 (0.25%) Unix
12 1 (0.12%) Mac OS
12 1 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 147 (18.31%) Agile
2 108 (13.45%) CI/CD
3 98 (12.20%) DevOps
4 97 (12.08%) Software Engineering
5 85 (10.59%) Problem-Solving
6 83 (10.34%) Continuous Improvement
7 72 (8.97%) Cybersecurity
8 51 (6.35%) Infrastructure as Code
9 50 (6.23%) SIEM
10 48 (5.98%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 47 (5.85%) Containerisation
11 47 (5.85%) Mentoring
11 47 (5.85%) Platform Engineering
12 45 (5.60%) AI
12 45 (5.60%) Scrum
13 43 (5.35%) Validation
14 42 (5.23%) Decision-Making
15 41 (5.11%) Computer Science
16 39 (4.86%) Microservices
17 38 (4.73%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 120 (14.94%) Python
2 60 (7.47%) Java
3 51 (6.35%) C++
4 37 (4.61%) C#
5 34 (4.23%) SQL
6 33 (4.11%) C
6 33 (4.11%) PowerShell
7 25 (3.11%) JavaScript
8 21 (2.62%) Bash
9 18 (2.24%) Rust
10 17 (2.12%) TypeScript
11 16 (1.99%) MATLAB
12 13 (1.62%) Embedded C
12 13 (1.62%) Embedded C++
13 11 (1.37%) Go
14 10 (1.25%) PL/SQL
14 10 (1.25%) Shell Script
14 10 (1.25%) VBA
15 8 (1.00%) PHP
16 6 (0.75%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 505 (62.89%) SC Cleared
2 287 (35.74%) DV Cleared
3 128 (15.94%) Degree
4 25 (3.11%) HNC
5 20 (2.49%) Master's Degree
6 16 (1.99%) BPSS Clearance
6 16 (1.99%) Computer Science Degree
7 13 (1.62%) Cisco Certification
7 13 (1.62%) CISSP
8 12 (1.49%) CCNP
8 12 (1.49%) CREST Certified
9 9 (1.12%) CompTIA Security+
9 9 (1.12%) CRISC
9 9 (1.12%) OSCP
10 8 (1.00%) APMP
10 8 (1.00%) MBA
11 7 (0.87%) GCIA
11 7 (0.87%) GCIH
11 7 (0.87%) GIAC
11 7 (0.87%) ISACA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (2.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 18 (2.24%) SLA
3 16 (1.99%) GDPR
3 16 (1.99%) QA
4 13 (1.62%) NCSC
5 12 (1.49%) NIST
5 12 (1.49%) PMO
6 10 (1.25%) ISO 9001
7 9 (1.12%) Def Stans
8 7 (0.87%) Accessibility
9 6 (0.75%) ISO/IEC 20000
10 5 (0.62%) NEBOSH
11 4 (0.50%) JSP 440
12 3 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials
12 3 (0.37%) GRC
13 2 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 2 (0.25%) ISO 22301
13 2 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 15288
13 2 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 27005
13 2 (0.25%) NIST 800
System Software
1 64 (7.97%) Docker
2 55 (6.85%) Active Directory
3 30 (3.74%) vSphere
4 24 (2.99%) Firmware
5 19 (2.37%) VMware NSX
6 18 (2.24%) VMware Infrastructure
7 7 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
8 5 (0.62%) Embedded Firmware
9 4 (0.50%) Hyper-V
10 3 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
11 2 (0.25%) UAG
12 1 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
12 1 (0.12%) Terminal Server
12 1 (0.12%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 77 (9.59%) Kubernetes
2 59 (7.35%) Terraform
3 50 (6.23%) Ansible
4 16 (1.99%) vCenter Server
5 14 (1.74%) Grafana
5 14 (1.74%) Prometheus
6 13 (1.62%) Kibana
7 9 (1.12%) Podman
8 8 (1.00%) Nessus
9 7 (0.87%) Nagios
9 7 (0.87%) Puppet
9 7 (0.87%) vRealize
10 5 (0.62%) Docker Swarm
10 5 (0.62%) Endace
10 5 (0.62%) Graylog
10 5 (0.62%) Microsoft Intune
10 5 (0.62%) Packer
10 5 (0.62%) QRadar
11 4 (0.50%) Kustomize
11 4 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 107 (13.33%) Microsoft
2 56 (6.97%) VMware
3 35 (4.36%) Cisco
4 29 (3.61%) Splunk
5 27 (3.36%) Red Hat
6 26 (3.24%) Oracle
7 17 (2.12%) ServiceNow
8 15 (1.87%) McAfee
9 13 (1.62%) Google
9 13 (1.62%) Juniper
10 12 (1.49%) Citrix
11 11 (1.37%) Tenable
12 10 (1.25%) CheckPoint
12 10 (1.25%) NVIDIA
12 10 (1.25%) SolarWinds
13 9 (1.12%) AppDynamics
14 8 (1.00%) IBM
14 8 (1.00%) NetApp
14 8 (1.00%) Salesforce
15 7 (0.87%) Palo Alto