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

6 months to
27 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 14 10
Rank change year-on-year +1 -4 +2
Permanent jobs citing Security Cleared 1,238 882 1,686
As % of all permanent jobs in the South East 7.04% 9.73% 12.10%
As % of the Qualifications category 34.69% 24.09% 38.42%
Number of salaries quoted 835 504 1,111
10th Percentile £40,000 £36,250 £39,000
25th Percentile £52,500 £46,250 £43,249
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £59,400 £56,252
Median % change year-on-year +17.85% +5.60% +7.15%
75th Percentile £85,000 £77,500 £73,750
90th Percentile £98,750 £87,500 £86,000
England median annual salary £70,000 £60,000 £58,000
% change year-on-year +16.67% +3.45% -3.33%

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 3,569 3,661 4,388
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the South East 20.30% 40.37% 31.48%
Number of salaries quoted 2,117 1,688 2,536
10th Percentile £30,000 £30,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £42,500 £37,000 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £50,250 £53,156
Median % change year-on-year +19.40% -5.47% +1.25%
75th Percentile £77,500 £68,750 £70,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £82,500 £85,000
England median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.33%

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 27 August 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 27 August 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 -1 655 £75,000 +20.00% 169
Thames Valley +25 360 £68,750 +25.00% 113
Berkshire +25 241 £70,000 +27.27% 80
Surrey -1 161 £50,000 +25.00% 42
Buckinghamshire +18 106 £55,000 - 24
West Sussex -16 23 £35,000 -6.67% 7
Kent -24 17 £52,500 -4.55% 7
Oxfordshire -27 13 £100,000 +21.21% 20
East Sussex -15 6 £70,000 +40.00%
Middlesex +25 3 £65,000 -
Sussex -6 3 £65,000 +23.81% 3
Isle of Wight - 3 £70,000 - 2
Home Counties - 1 £80,000 -
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 12 (0.97%) SharePoint
2 11 (0.89%) Apache
3 6 (0.48%) Confluence
3 6 (0.48%) SAS
4 5 (0.40%) nginx
5 4 (0.32%) IIS
6 2 (0.16%) Microsoft Exchange
6 2 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
6 2 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
7 1 (0.081%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 25 (2.02%) Microsoft Excel
2 18 (1.45%) Simulink
3 15 (1.21%) Microsoft Office
4 12 (0.97%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.40%) Solid Edge
5 5 (0.40%) SOLIDWORKS
6 4 (0.32%) Mathcad
6 4 (0.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 3 (0.24%) Chatbot
8 2 (0.16%) Lectora
8 2 (0.16%) UserZoom
9 1 (0.081%) Adobe XD
9 1 (0.081%) AutoCAD
9 1 (0.081%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (0.65%) Primavera
2 4 (0.32%) Workday HCM
3 2 (0.16%) Oracle Applications
3 2 (0.16%) Siebel CRM
3 2 (0.16%) Teamcenter
4 1 (0.081%) SAP MDG
4 1 (0.081%) SAP MM
4 1 (0.081%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.081%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 202 (16.32%) Azure
2 135 (10.90%) AWS
3 53 (4.28%) Microsoft 365
4 40 (3.23%) Entra ID
5 36 (2.91%) GCP
6 23 (1.86%) Power Platform
7 22 (1.78%) Serverless
8 18 (1.45%) GitHub
9 17 (1.37%) OpenShift
10 14 (1.13%) Amazon EKS
10 14 (1.13%) Azure Sentinel
11 13 (1.05%) GitHub Actions
12 12 (0.97%) Azure DevOps
13 11 (0.89%) Azure AKS
14 10 (0.81%) Amazon EC2
14 10 (0.81%) Cloud Computing
15 9 (0.73%) PowerApps
16 8 (0.65%) SaaS
17 7 (0.57%) AWS Lambda
17 7 (0.57%) Google Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 125 (10.10%) Firewall
2 75 (6.06%) DNS
3 62 (5.01%) WAN
4 53 (4.28%) LAN
5 47 (3.80%) Network Security
6 44 (3.55%) TCP/IP
7 42 (3.39%) VPN
8 19 (1.53%) BGP
9 18 (1.45%) VLAN
10 17 (1.37%) HTTP
11 16 (1.29%) ATM
12 14 (1.13%) OSPF
13 13 (1.05%) Intrusion Detection
13 13 (1.05%) VoIP
14 12 (0.97%) NGFW
14 12 (0.97%) SAN
14 12 (0.97%) SD-WAN
15 11 (0.89%) NAS
15 11 (0.89%) NetScaler
15 11 (0.89%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (2.18%) PostgreSQL
2 21 (1.70%) Power BI
2 21 (1.70%) Relational Database
3 15 (1.21%) MySQL
4 13 (1.05%) SQL Server
5 6 (0.48%) Elasticsearch
6 4 (0.32%) GIS
6 4 (0.32%) MongoDB
6 4 (0.32%) Oracle Database
6 4 (0.32%) Redis
7 3 (0.24%) Tableau
8 2 (0.16%) Big Data
8 2 (0.16%) Data Warehouse
8 2 (0.16%) Geospatial Data
8 2 (0.16%) Metadata
8 2 (0.16%) Oracle Database 11g
8 2 (0.16%) Oracle Database 12c
8 2 (0.16%) RDBMS
8 2 (0.16%) Siebel EIM
9 1 (0.081%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 72 (5.82%) Git
2 43 (3.47%) GitLab
3 27 (2.18%) JIRA
4 24 (1.94%) Jenkins
5 14 (1.13%) Visual Studio Code
6 10 (0.81%) SonarQube
7 9 (0.73%) Rational DOORS
8 6 (0.48%) Artifactory
8 6 (0.48%) JMeter
9 5 (0.40%) Cucumber
9 5 (0.40%) JUnit
10 4 (0.32%) Bitbucket
10 4 (0.32%) LabVIEW
10 4 (0.32%) Selenium
11 3 (0.24%) Gatling
11 3 (0.24%) LoadRunner
12 2 (0.16%) Android Studio
12 2 (0.16%) Cypress.io
12 2 (0.16%) Mockito
12 2 (0.16%) MSTest
General
1 290 (23.42%) Social Skills
2 147 (11.87%) Analytical Skills
3 129 (10.42%) Aerospace
4 119 (9.61%) Finance
5 117 (9.45%) Public Sector
6 65 (5.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 64 (5.17%) Military
8 60 (4.85%) Electronics
9 34 (2.75%) Manufacturing
10 31 (2.50%) Organisational Skills
11 29 (2.34%) Aviation
12 26 (2.10%) Law
13 23 (1.86%) Telecoms
14 22 (1.78%) Documentation Skills
15 16 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
16 13 (1.05%) Aeronautics
16 13 (1.05%) Police
17 12 (0.97%) Banking
17 12 (0.97%) Games
17 12 (0.97%) Legal
Job Titles
1 185 (14.94%) Architect
2 172 (13.89%) Senior
3 122 (9.85%) Software Engineer
4 97 (7.84%) Lead
5 83 (6.70%) Analyst
5 83 (6.70%) Systems Engineer
6 71 (5.74%) Security Architect
7 62 (5.01%) Developer
8 49 (3.96%) Consultant
9 47 (3.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 40 (3.23%) Network Engineer
11 35 (2.83%) Applications Architect
11 35 (2.83%) Senior Software Engineer
12 29 (2.34%) Azure Engineer
12 29 (2.34%) Project Manager
12 29 (2.34%) Security Analyst
13 27 (2.18%) SOC Analyst
14 26 (2.10%) Solutions Architect
15 25 (2.02%) Platform Engineer
16 24 (1.94%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 65 (5.25%) Terraform
2 39 (3.15%) ModSecurity
3 38 (3.07%) LDAP
4 33 (2.67%) React
5 31 (2.50%) .NET
6 23 (1.86%) Regular Expression
7 19 (1.53%) XMPP
8 17 (1.37%) Spring
9 16 (1.29%) HTML
10 15 (1.21%) CSS
11 14 (1.13%) Kafka
11 14 (1.13%) REST
12 13 (1.05%) OAuth
12 13 (1.05%) OpenID
12 13 (1.05%) SAML
13 12 (0.97%) AngularJS
13 12 (0.97%) Elastic Stack
13 12 (0.97%) JSON
13 12 (0.97%) Web Services
14 10 (0.81%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 53 (4.28%) Cloud Native
2 45 (3.63%) Data Centre
3 43 (3.47%) Social Media
4 42 (3.39%) Onboarding
5 38 (3.07%) Driving Licence
6 34 (2.75%) Algorithms
7 31 (2.50%) Cyber Threat
8 30 (2.42%) Management Information System
9 29 (2.34%) Product Ownership
9 29 (2.34%) Self-Motivation
10 27 (2.18%) Cyber Defence
10 27 (2.18%) Security Operations Centre
11 24 (1.94%) Embedded Systems
12 22 (1.78%) FPGA
12 22 (1.78%) Robotics
13 20 (1.62%) Enterprise Software
14 19 (1.53%) Hybrid Cloud
14 19 (1.53%) Legacy Systems
14 19 (1.53%) PKI
15 18 (1.45%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 197 (15.91%) Linux
2 145 (11.71%) Windows
3 81 (6.54%) Windows Server
4 33 (2.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 15 (1.21%) Ubuntu
6 11 (0.89%) CentOS
7 9 (0.73%) Windows Server 2016
8 7 (0.57%) Windows Server 2019
9 6 (0.48%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.40%) Android
10 5 (0.40%) Debian
10 5 (0.40%) Unix
11 3 (0.24%) AIX
12 2 (0.16%) Mac OS
12 2 (0.16%) Rocky
13 1 (0.081%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 198 (15.99%) Agile
2 180 (14.54%) Software Engineering
3 178 (14.38%) Continuous Improvement
4 170 (13.73%) Problem-Solving
5 145 (11.71%) Cybersecurity
5 145 (11.71%) Validation
6 132 (10.66%) CI/CD
7 117 (9.45%) DevOps
8 107 (8.64%) Decision-Making
9 102 (8.24%) Mentoring
10 99 (8.00%) AI
11 91 (7.35%) Stakeholder Management
12 88 (7.11%) SIEM
13 87 (7.03%) Technical Leadership
14 82 (6.62%) ITIL
15 72 (5.82%) Incident Response
16 71 (5.74%) Infrastructure Engineering
17 68 (5.49%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 67 (5.41%) Infrastructure as Code
19 66 (5.33%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 154 (12.44%) Python
2 82 (6.62%) C++
3 55 (4.44%) Java
4 51 (4.12%) C#
4 51 (4.12%) PowerShell
5 48 (3.88%) C
6 42 (3.39%) Bash
7 37 (2.99%) JavaScript
8 28 (2.26%) SQL
8 28 (2.26%) TypeScript
9 23 (1.86%) MATLAB
9 23 (1.86%) Rust
10 17 (1.37%) Embedded C
11 16 (1.29%) Shell Script
12 15 (1.21%) Embedded C++
13 14 (1.13%) Go
14 13 (1.05%) PHP
15 11 (0.89%) Ada
15 11 (0.89%) Perl
16 9 (0.73%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 765 (61.79%) SC Cleared
2 494 (39.90%) DV Cleared
3 178 (14.38%) Degree
4 60 (4.85%) BPSS Clearance
4 60 (4.85%) CISSP
5 45 (3.63%) Cisco Certification
6 32 (2.58%) CCNP
6 32 (2.58%) CISM
7 29 (2.34%) Azure Certification
8 26 (2.10%) HNC
9 23 (1.86%) Master's Degree
10 20 (1.62%) CompTIA Security+
11 17 (1.37%) Computer Science Degree
11 17 (1.37%) GIAC
12 16 (1.29%) CREST Certified
13 15 (1.21%) CCNA
14 14 (1.13%) PMI Certification
15 13 (1.05%) GCIA
16 12 (0.97%) CompTIA CySA+
16 12 (0.97%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 42 (3.39%) QA
2 38 (3.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 33 (2.67%) SLA
4 28 (2.26%) NIST
5 25 (2.02%) Accessibility
6 22 (1.78%) NCSC
7 15 (1.21%) ISO 9001
8 14 (1.13%) GDPR
9 12 (0.97%) Def Stans
10 10 (0.81%) ISO/IEC 20000
11 9 (0.73%) NIST 800
11 9 (0.73%) PMO
12 7 (0.57%) MISRA
13 6 (0.48%) GRC
13 6 (0.48%) JSP 440
14 5 (0.40%) NEBOSH
14 5 (0.40%) WCAG
15 4 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
16 3 (0.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 3 (0.24%) ISO 22301
System Software
1 82 (6.62%) Active Directory
2 72 (5.82%) Docker
3 37 (2.99%) vSphere
4 31 (2.50%) VMware Infrastructure
5 23 (1.86%) Firmware
6 18 (1.45%) VMware ESXi
7 17 (1.37%) Virtual Machines
8 12 (0.97%) VMware NSX
9 11 (0.89%) Hyper-V
10 5 (0.40%) Embedded Firmware
10 5 (0.40%) Squid
11 4 (0.32%) KVM
12 2 (0.16%) UAG
13 1 (0.081%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 102 (8.24%) Kubernetes
2 55 (4.44%) Ansible
3 19 (1.53%) Single Sign-On
4 17 (1.37%) Kibana
5 16 (1.29%) Microsoft Intune
6 14 (1.13%) Grafana
7 11 (0.89%) Prometheus
8 10 (0.81%) vCenter Server
9 9 (0.73%) Podman
10 7 (0.57%) Graylog
10 7 (0.57%) Puppet
10 7 (0.57%) QRadar
11 6 (0.48%) Argo
11 6 (0.48%) Kustomize
11 6 (0.48%) Nessus
11 6 (0.48%) Packer
12 5 (0.40%) SCCM
13 4 (0.32%) Docker Swarm
13 4 (0.32%) Istio
13 4 (0.32%) Nagios
Vendors
1 140 (11.31%) Microsoft
2 81 (6.54%) VMware
3 48 (3.88%) Cisco
4 34 (2.75%) Oracle
5 30 (2.42%) Red Hat
6 29 (2.34%) ServiceNow
7 25 (2.02%) Splunk
8 22 (1.78%) Fortinet
9 18 (1.45%) Palo Alto
10 17 (1.37%) SAP
11 15 (1.21%) Google
11 15 (1.21%) McAfee
12 12 (0.97%) AppDynamics
12 12 (0.97%) ForgeRock
12 12 (0.97%) Okta
13 11 (0.89%) Citrix
13 11 (0.89%) EMC
13 11 (0.89%) IBM
14 10 (0.81%) NVIDIA
14 10 (0.81%) Veeam