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

6 months to
29 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 23 12 11
Rank change year-on-year -11 -1 +8
Permanent jobs citing Security Cleared 905 796 1,875
As % of all permanent jobs in the South East 5.95% 9.83% 10.42%
As % of the Qualifications category 27.85% 21.74% 32.66%
Number of salaries quoted 670 503 1,371
10th Percentile £41,110 £40,000 £35,000
25th Percentile £52,625 £47,500 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £60,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +16.67% +9.09% +10.00%
75th Percentile £85,000 £78,750 £70,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £87,500 £83,750
England median annual salary £67,500 £62,500 £57,500
% change year-on-year +8.00% +8.70% -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 3,250 3,662 5,741
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the South East 21.36% 45.24% 31.92%
Number of salaries quoted 1,880 1,562 3,623
10th Percentile £30,750 £31,250 £30,000
25th Percentile £41,250 £37,500 £38,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £52,500 £51,000
Median % change year-on-year +14.29% +2.94% -2.49%
75th Percentile £75,000 £68,750 £67,500
90th Percentile £88,825 £81,925 £82,500
England median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £54,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% +1.85% -10.00%

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 29 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 29 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 -4 432 £75,000 +22.95% 207
Thames Valley +22 312 £67,500 +17.22% 117
Berkshire +18 213 £67,500 +8.87% 75
Surrey +2 85 £60,000 +33.33% 30
Buckinghamshire +35 79 £52,500 - 31
West Sussex -2 30 £35,000 -6.67% 13
Kent -23 23 £52,500 -12.50% 8
Oxfordshire -14 20 £82,500 +59.42% 15
Sussex +2 13 £85,000 +61.90% 4
East Sussex -12 4 £70,000 +40.00% 1
Middlesex +43 2 £65,000 - 1
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 23 (2.54%) SharePoint
2 7 (0.77%) SAS
3 6 (0.66%) Confluence
4 4 (0.44%) Apache
4 4 (0.44%) Microsoft Exchange
5 2 (0.22%) IIS
6 1 (0.11%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.11%) Apache Qpid
6 1 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 22 (2.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 20 (2.21%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (1.33%) Simulink
4 2 (0.22%) Lectora
5 1 (0.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 1 (0.11%) Primavera
1 1 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
1 1 (0.11%) SAP MDG
1 1 (0.11%) SAP MM
1 1 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
1 1 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 129 (14.25%) Azure
2 74 (8.18%) AWS
3 48 (5.30%) Microsoft 365
4 37 (4.09%) GCP
5 21 (2.32%) Serverless
6 20 (2.21%) Entra ID
7 19 (2.10%) Power Platform
8 16 (1.77%) Amazon EKS
8 16 (1.77%) Azure DevOps
9 15 (1.66%) OpenShift
10 12 (1.33%) Azure AKS
10 12 (1.33%) GitHub
10 12 (1.33%) PowerApps
11 11 (1.22%) Amazon EC2
12 10 (1.10%) GitHub Actions
13 9 (0.99%) Azure Sentinel
13 9 (0.99%) Azure Stack
14 7 (0.77%) AWS Lambda
15 6 (0.66%) Amazon ECS
15 6 (0.66%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 88 (9.72%) Firewall
2 61 (6.74%) DNS
3 49 (5.41%) WAN
4 38 (4.20%) LAN
5 34 (3.76%) VPN
6 28 (3.09%) TCP/IP
7 24 (2.65%) BGP
8 17 (1.88%) HTTP
9 16 (1.77%) Structured Cabling
10 15 (1.66%) Network Security
11 12 (1.33%) OSPF
12 11 (1.22%) DHCP
12 11 (1.22%) MQTT
12 11 (1.22%) NetScaler
13 10 (1.10%) ATM
13 10 (1.10%) SSL
14 9 (0.99%) MPLS
14 9 (0.99%) SAN
14 9 (0.99%) VoIP
14 9 (0.99%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (2.32%) PostgreSQL
2 18 (1.99%) Power BI
3 12 (1.33%) Relational Database
4 11 (1.22%) SQL Server
5 7 (0.77%) MySQL
6 5 (0.55%) Oracle Database
6 5 (0.55%) Redis
7 4 (0.44%) GIS
8 3 (0.33%) Elasticsearch
9 2 (0.22%) Metadata
9 2 (0.22%) MongoDB
9 2 (0.22%) NoSQL
9 2 (0.22%) Oracle Database 11g
9 2 (0.22%) Oracle Database 12c
10 1 (0.11%) Big Data
10 1 (0.11%) Data Lake
10 1 (0.11%) Data Warehouse
10 1 (0.11%) Geospatial Data
10 1 (0.11%) SAS Visual Analytics
10 1 (0.11%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 62 (6.85%) Git
2 54 (5.97%) GitLab
3 23 (2.54%) Jenkins
4 20 (2.21%) JIRA
5 15 (1.66%) Visual Studio Code
6 11 (1.22%) SonarQube
7 6 (0.66%) Artifactory
7 6 (0.66%) JUnit
8 5 (0.55%) Cucumber
8 5 (0.55%) Selenium
9 4 (0.44%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 4 (0.44%) Bitbucket
10 3 (0.33%) Android Studio
10 3 (0.33%) JMeter
10 3 (0.33%) Rational DOORS
11 2 (0.22%) Cypress.io
11 2 (0.22%) Mockito
11 2 (0.22%) MSTest
11 2 (0.22%) Subversion
12 1 (0.11%) Mocha
General
1 182 (20.11%) Social Skills
2 85 (9.39%) Finance
3 81 (8.95%) Public Sector
4 64 (7.07%) Analytical Skills
5 39 (4.31%) Electronics
6 32 (3.54%) Aerospace
7 28 (3.09%) Military
8 23 (2.54%) Aviation
9 21 (2.32%) Manufacturing
9 21 (2.32%) Telecoms
10 19 (2.10%) Organisational Skills
11 16 (1.77%) Documentation Skills
11 16 (1.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 14 (1.55%) Law
13 12 (1.33%) Banking
13 12 (1.33%) Games
14 10 (1.10%) Aeronautics
15 8 (0.88%) Influencing Skills
16 7 (0.77%) Advertising
17 5 (0.55%) Legal
Job Titles
1 140 (15.47%) Senior
2 120 (13.26%) Architect
3 93 (10.28%) Software Engineer
4 68 (7.51%) Developer
5 62 (6.85%) Analyst
6 47 (5.19%) Lead
7 45 (4.97%) Security Architect
8 39 (4.31%) Network Engineer
9 38 (4.20%) Data Engineer
10 35 (3.87%) Applications Architect
10 35 (3.87%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 34 (3.76%) Consultant
11 34 (3.76%) Senior Software Engineer
11 34 (3.76%) Systems Engineer
12 28 (3.09%) Azure Engineer
13 27 (2.98%) Java Developer
14 26 (2.87%) SOC Analyst
15 24 (2.65%) Security Engineer
16 23 (2.54%) DevOps Engineer
16 23 (2.54%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (3.09%) .NET
2 26 (2.87%) React
3 22 (2.43%) LDAP
3 22 (2.43%) Regular Expression
3 22 (2.43%) REST
4 18 (1.99%) XMPP
5 15 (1.66%) Spring
6 14 (1.55%) JSON
7 13 (1.44%) Kafka
8 12 (1.33%) Elastic Stack
9 9 (0.99%) SOAP
9 9 (0.99%) Spring Boot
10 8 (0.88%) ARM Templates
10 8 (0.88%) RabbitMQ
10 8 (0.88%) XML
10 8 (0.88%) YAML
11 7 (0.77%) RESTful
12 6 (0.66%) Java EE
12 6 (0.66%) JPA
12 6 (0.66%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 30 (3.31%) Algorithms
1 30 (3.31%) Product Ownership
2 27 (2.98%) Data Centre
3 24 (2.65%) Driving Licence
4 23 (2.54%) PKI
5 21 (2.32%) Cloud Native
5 21 (2.32%) Onboarding
6 19 (2.10%) Cyber Defence
6 19 (2.10%) Cyber Threat
7 18 (1.99%) Embedded Systems
7 18 (1.99%) FPGA
7 18 (1.99%) Self-Motivation
8 16 (1.77%) Robotics
9 15 (1.66%) Security Operations Centre
10 14 (1.55%) Analytical Mindset
11 12 (1.33%) Distributed Systems
12 11 (1.22%) Fibre Optics
13 10 (1.10%) Data Structures
13 10 (1.10%) Management Information System
14 9 (0.99%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 148 (16.35%) Linux
2 110 (12.15%) Windows
3 67 (7.40%) Windows Server
4 33 (3.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 17 (1.88%) Ubuntu
6 14 (1.55%) CentOS
7 9 (0.99%) Windows Server 2016
8 6 (0.66%) Android
8 6 (0.66%) Windows Server 2019
9 4 (0.44%) Debian
10 3 (0.33%) AIX
10 3 (0.33%) Unix
11 1 (0.11%) Mac OS
11 1 (0.11%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 152 (16.80%) Agile
2 127 (14.03%) Software Engineering
3 113 (12.49%) CI/CD
4 103 (11.38%) DevOps
5 96 (10.61%) Cybersecurity
6 89 (9.83%) Problem-Solving
7 88 (9.72%) Continuous Improvement
8 63 (6.96%) SIEM
9 54 (5.97%) Decision-Making
10 53 (5.86%) Mentoring
11 52 (5.75%) AI
11 52 (5.75%) Infrastructure as Code
11 52 (5.75%) ITIL
12 50 (5.52%) Containerisation
12 50 (5.52%) Platform Engineering
12 50 (5.52%) Validation
13 48 (5.30%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 44 (4.86%) Scrum
15 42 (4.64%) Computer Science
16 40 (4.42%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 140 (15.47%) Python
2 63 (6.96%) C++
3 61 (6.74%) Java
4 40 (4.42%) PowerShell
5 38 (4.20%) C
5 38 (4.20%) C#
6 34 (3.76%) SQL
7 26 (2.87%) JavaScript
8 25 (2.76%) Bash
9 22 (2.43%) Rust
10 18 (1.99%) TypeScript
11 17 (1.88%) MATLAB
12 14 (1.55%) Embedded C
12 14 (1.55%) Embedded C++
13 12 (1.33%) Shell Script
13 12 (1.33%) VBA
14 11 (1.22%) Go
15 10 (1.10%) PHP
15 10 (1.10%) PL/SQL
16 7 (0.77%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 574 (63.43%) SC Cleared
2 330 (36.46%) DV Cleared
3 134 (14.81%) Degree
4 26 (2.87%) HNC
5 24 (2.65%) BPSS Clearance
5 24 (2.65%) Master's Degree
6 21 (2.32%) CISSP
7 19 (2.10%) Cisco Certification
8 15 (1.66%) Computer Science Degree
9 14 (1.55%) CCNP
9 14 (1.55%) CREST Certified
10 12 (1.33%) CompTIA Security+
10 12 (1.33%) CRISC
10 12 (1.33%) GIAC
10 12 (1.33%) OSCP
11 9 (0.99%) CISM
11 9 (0.99%) GCIA
12 8 (0.88%) APMP
12 8 (0.88%) GCIH
12 8 (0.88%) MBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (2.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 22 (2.43%) SLA
3 19 (2.10%) NCSC
4 17 (1.88%) GDPR
5 15 (1.66%) QA
6 13 (1.44%) NIST
7 12 (1.33%) ISO 9001
7 12 (1.33%) PMO
8 9 (0.99%) Def Stans
8 9 (0.99%) ISO/IEC 20000
9 6 (0.66%) Accessibility
10 5 (0.55%) NEBOSH
11 4 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
11 4 (0.44%) JSP 440
11 4 (0.44%) MISRA
12 3 (0.33%) GRC
12 3 (0.33%) PCI DSS
13 2 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 2 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 15288
13 2 (0.22%) NIST 800
System Software
1 67 (7.40%) Docker
2 60 (6.63%) Active Directory
3 33 (3.65%) vSphere
4 25 (2.76%) Firmware
5 17 (1.88%) VMware NSX
6 15 (1.66%) VMware Infrastructure
7 10 (1.10%) Virtual Machines
8 5 (0.55%) Embedded Firmware
9 4 (0.44%) Hyper-V
10 3 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
11 2 (0.22%) UAG
12 1 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
12 1 (0.11%) Terminal Server
12 1 (0.11%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 80 (8.84%) Kubernetes
2 63 (6.96%) Terraform
3 52 (5.75%) Ansible
4 15 (1.66%) Grafana
4 15 (1.66%) Prometheus
5 14 (1.55%) Kibana
6 12 (1.33%) vCenter Server
7 9 (0.99%) Microsoft Intune
7 9 (0.99%) Podman
8 8 (0.88%) Nessus
9 7 (0.77%) Nagios
9 7 (0.77%) Puppet
10 6 (0.66%) Graylog
10 6 (0.66%) QRadar
10 6 (0.66%) vRealize
11 5 (0.55%) Argo
11 5 (0.55%) Docker Swarm
11 5 (0.55%) Endace
11 5 (0.55%) Kustomize
11 5 (0.55%) Packer
Vendors
1 117 (12.93%) Microsoft
2 58 (6.41%) VMware
3 32 (3.54%) Cisco
4 31 (3.43%) Splunk
5 30 (3.31%) Red Hat
6 28 (3.09%) Oracle
7 21 (2.32%) ServiceNow
8 15 (1.66%) McAfee
9 13 (1.44%) Google
10 12 (1.33%) Citrix
11 11 (1.22%) Juniper
11 11 (1.22%) Tenable
12 10 (1.10%) NVIDIA
13 9 (0.99%) AppDynamics
13 9 (0.99%) EMC
13 9 (0.99%) IBM
14 8 (0.88%) CheckPoint
14 8 (0.88%) LogRhythm
14 8 (0.88%) NetApp
14 8 (0.88%) Palo Alto