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

6 months to
4 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 19 13 10
Rank change year-on-year -6 -3 +2
Permanent jobs citing Security Cleared 1,080 854 1,593
As % of all permanent jobs in the South East 6.51% 9.83% 11.41%
As % of the Qualifications category 31.18% 24.46% 36.75%
Number of salaries quoted 765 507 1,082
10th Percentile £39,000 £37,500 £38,892
25th Percentile £52,500 £46,250 £43,750
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £60,000 £55,500
Median % change year-on-year +16.67% +8.11% +5.71%
75th Percentile £85,000 £78,750 £71,188
90th Percentile £99,500 £87,500 £85,000
England median annual salary £70,000 £60,000 £57,500
% change year-on-year +16.67% +4.35% -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 3,464 3,491 4,335
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the South East 20.89% 40.17% 31.04%
Number of salaries quoted 2,029 1,634 2,609
10th Percentile £30,000 £31,250 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £37,500 £40,625
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £51,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year +17.65% -2.86% -
75th Percentile £76,250 £70,000 £68,750
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 4 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 4 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 -3 543 £75,000 +17.19% 288
Thames Valley +27 337 £67,500 +22.73% 169
Berkshire +24 219 £70,000 +21.74% 103
Surrey -4 133 £51,250 +28.13% 88
Buckinghamshire +33 99 £55,000 +4.76% 39
West Sussex -8 28 £35,000 -6.67% 14
Oxfordshire -13 19 £85,000 +58.88% 30
Kent -31 17 £52,500 -4.55% 13
Sussex 0 9 £85,000 +61.90% 2
East Sussex -13 5 £70,000 +40.00% 2
Middlesex +42 2 £65,000 - 2
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 13 (1.20%) SharePoint
2 10 (0.93%) Apache
3 7 (0.65%) Confluence
4 6 (0.56%) SAS
5 5 (0.46%) nginx
6 3 (0.28%) IIS
7 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.093%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.093%) Oracle Workflow
8 1 (0.093%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 25 (2.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 17 (1.57%) Microsoft Office
2 17 (1.57%) Simulink
3 7 (0.65%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.28%) Mathcad
4 3 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.28%) Solid Edge
4 3 (0.28%) SOLIDWORKS
5 2 (0.19%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.19%) Lectora
6 1 (0.093%) AutoCAD
6 1 (0.093%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 4 (0.37%) Primavera
1 4 (0.37%) Workday HCM
2 2 (0.19%) Oracle Applications
3 1 (0.093%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.093%) SAP MDG
3 1 (0.093%) SAP MM
3 1 (0.093%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.093%) Siebel CRM
3 1 (0.093%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 1 (0.093%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 180 (16.67%) Azure
2 108 (10.00%) AWS
3 53 (4.91%) Microsoft 365
4 37 (3.43%) GCP
5 30 (2.78%) Entra ID
6 22 (2.04%) Serverless
7 21 (1.94%) Power Platform
8 16 (1.48%) GitHub
8 16 (1.48%) OpenShift
9 15 (1.39%) Azure DevOps
10 14 (1.30%) Amazon EKS
11 12 (1.11%) Azure Sentinel
11 12 (1.11%) GitHub Actions
12 11 (1.02%) Azure AKS
13 10 (0.93%) Amazon EC2
13 10 (0.93%) Azure Stack
13 10 (0.93%) PowerApps
14 7 (0.65%) AWS Lambda
15 6 (0.56%) Amazon ECS
15 6 (0.56%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 112 (10.37%) Firewall
2 71 (6.57%) DNS
3 63 (5.83%) WAN
4 51 (4.72%) LAN
5 42 (3.89%) TCP/IP
6 41 (3.80%) VPN
7 35 (3.24%) Network Security
8 21 (1.94%) BGP
9 18 (1.67%) ATM
9 18 (1.67%) HTTP
10 16 (1.48%) VLAN
11 14 (1.30%) VoIP
12 13 (1.20%) OSPF
13 12 (1.11%) MQTT
13 12 (1.11%) NGFW
13 12 (1.11%) SAN
13 12 (1.11%) SD-WAN
14 11 (1.02%) NAS
14 11 (1.02%) NetScaler
15 10 (0.93%) VSAT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (2.41%) PostgreSQL
2 20 (1.85%) Power BI
3 19 (1.76%) Relational Database
4 15 (1.39%) SQL Server
5 13 (1.20%) MySQL
6 5 (0.46%) Elasticsearch
7 4 (0.37%) GIS
7 4 (0.37%) Oracle Database
7 4 (0.37%) Redis
8 3 (0.28%) MongoDB
9 2 (0.19%) Data Warehouse
9 2 (0.19%) Metadata
9 2 (0.19%) Oracle Database 11g
9 2 (0.19%) Oracle Database 12c
9 2 (0.19%) RDBMS
9 2 (0.19%) Tableau
10 1 (0.093%) Geospatial Data
10 1 (0.093%) NoSQL
10 1 (0.093%) Siebel EIM
Development Applications
1 71 (6.57%) Git
2 50 (4.63%) GitLab
3 29 (2.69%) JIRA
4 24 (2.22%) Jenkins
5 14 (1.30%) Visual Studio Code
6 10 (0.93%) SonarQube
7 8 (0.74%) Rational DOORS
8 6 (0.56%) Artifactory
9 5 (0.46%) Cucumber
9 5 (0.46%) JMeter
9 5 (0.46%) JUnit
10 4 (0.37%) Bitbucket
10 4 (0.37%) Selenium
11 3 (0.28%) Android Studio
11 3 (0.28%) LabVIEW
12 2 (0.19%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 2 (0.19%) Cypress.io
12 2 (0.19%) LoadRunner
12 2 (0.19%) Subversion
12 2 (0.19%) Visual Studio
General
1 250 (23.15%) Social Skills
2 119 (11.02%) Analytical Skills
3 105 (9.72%) Finance
4 101 (9.35%) Public Sector
5 78 (7.22%) Aerospace
6 56 (5.19%) Electronics
7 47 (4.35%) Military
8 46 (4.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 30 (2.78%) Manufacturing
10 28 (2.59%) Organisational Skills
11 26 (2.41%) Aviation
12 23 (2.13%) Documentation Skills
12 23 (2.13%) Telecoms
13 22 (2.04%) Law
14 11 (1.02%) Aeronautics
14 11 (1.02%) Games
15 10 (0.93%) Banking
15 10 (0.93%) Influencing Skills
16 8 (0.74%) Advertising
16 8 (0.74%) Retail
Job Titles
1 157 (14.54%) Architect
2 155 (14.35%) Senior
3 120 (11.11%) Software Engineer
4 75 (6.94%) Lead
5 66 (6.11%) Analyst
6 63 (5.83%) Developer
7 52 (4.81%) Security Architect
8 46 (4.26%) Systems Engineer
9 45 (4.17%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 42 (3.89%) Consultant
11 39 (3.61%) Network Engineer
12 35 (3.24%) Applications Architect
12 35 (3.24%) Senior Software Engineer
13 28 (2.59%) Azure Engineer
14 27 (2.50%) Solutions Architect
15 26 (2.41%) Support Engineer
16 25 (2.31%) Security Engineer
17 24 (2.22%) Data Engineer
17 24 (2.22%) SOC Analyst
18 22 (2.04%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (2.87%) LDAP
2 30 (2.78%) .NET
2 30 (2.78%) React
3 23 (2.13%) Regular Expression
4 19 (1.76%) XMPP
5 18 (1.67%) ModSecurity
6 17 (1.57%) REST
7 16 (1.48%) Kafka
7 16 (1.48%) Spring
8 13 (1.20%) JSON
9 12 (1.11%) Elastic Stack
9 12 (1.11%) Web Services
10 11 (1.02%) ARM Templates
11 10 (0.93%) AngularJS
11 10 (0.93%) HTML
11 10 (0.93%) YAML
12 9 (0.83%) CSS
12 9 (0.83%) Spring Boot
13 8 (0.74%) RabbitMQ
13 8 (0.74%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 40 (3.70%) Cloud Native
2 36 (3.33%) Onboarding
3 35 (3.24%) Data Centre
3 35 (3.24%) Driving Licence
4 31 (2.87%) Algorithms
5 29 (2.69%) Product Ownership
5 29 (2.69%) Social Media
6 25 (2.31%) Self-Motivation
7 23 (2.13%) Cyber Threat
7 23 (2.13%) Embedded Systems
7 23 (2.13%) FPGA
8 21 (1.94%) PKI
9 20 (1.85%) Management Information System
10 19 (1.76%) Cyber Defence
10 19 (1.76%) Robotics
10 19 (1.76%) Security Operations Centre
11 17 (1.57%) Analytical Mindset
11 17 (1.57%) Legacy Systems
11 17 (1.57%) Private Cloud
12 15 (1.39%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 191 (17.69%) Linux
2 141 (13.06%) Windows
3 82 (7.59%) Windows Server
4 34 (3.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 19 (1.76%) Ubuntu
6 16 (1.48%) CentOS
7 10 (0.93%) Windows Server 2016
8 7 (0.65%) Windows Server 2019
9 6 (0.56%) Android
9 6 (0.56%) Windows 10
10 4 (0.37%) Debian
10 4 (0.37%) Unix
11 3 (0.28%) AIX
12 2 (0.19%) Mac OS
13 1 (0.093%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 184 (17.04%) Agile
2 170 (15.74%) Software Engineering
3 144 (13.33%) Problem-Solving
4 142 (13.15%) Continuous Improvement
5 123 (11.39%) CI/CD
5 123 (11.39%) Cybersecurity
6 111 (10.28%) DevOps
7 90 (8.33%) Validation
8 84 (7.78%) Decision-Making
9 80 (7.41%) Mentoring
10 79 (7.31%) AI
11 75 (6.94%) ITIL
12 74 (6.85%) SIEM
12 74 (6.85%) Stakeholder Management
13 68 (6.30%) Technical Leadership
14 62 (5.74%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 61 (5.65%) Containerisation
16 60 (5.56%) Infrastructure as Code
17 56 (5.19%) Platform Engineering
18 53 (4.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 155 (14.35%) Python
2 79 (7.31%) C++
3 56 (5.19%) Java
4 50 (4.63%) PowerShell
5 49 (4.54%) C
6 46 (4.26%) C#
7 38 (3.52%) Bash
8 31 (2.87%) JavaScript
8 31 (2.87%) SQL
9 24 (2.22%) Rust
10 22 (2.04%) TypeScript
11 21 (1.94%) MATLAB
12 16 (1.48%) Embedded C
13 15 (1.39%) Embedded C++
14 14 (1.30%) Shell Script
15 13 (1.20%) PHP
16 12 (1.11%) Go
17 11 (1.02%) Ada
18 10 (0.93%) Perl
18 10 (0.93%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 696 (64.44%) SC Cleared
2 404 (37.41%) DV Cleared
3 162 (15.00%) Degree
4 48 (4.44%) BPSS Clearance
5 39 (3.61%) Cisco Certification
6 38 (3.52%) CISSP
7 28 (2.59%) HNC
8 27 (2.50%) CCNP
9 24 (2.22%) Master's Degree
10 18 (1.67%) Computer Science Degree
11 17 (1.57%) Azure Certification
11 17 (1.57%) CompTIA Security+
12 16 (1.48%) GIAC
13 15 (1.39%) CISM
13 15 (1.39%) CREST Certified
14 14 (1.30%) CCNA
15 12 (1.11%) GCIA
15 12 (1.11%) OSCP
16 11 (1.02%) Microsoft Certification
16 11 (1.02%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (2.96%) QA
2 28 (2.59%) SLA
3 27 (2.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 22 (2.04%) NCSC
5 16 (1.48%) NIST
6 14 (1.30%) Accessibility
6 14 (1.30%) ISO 9001
7 13 (1.20%) GDPR
8 11 (1.02%) PMO
9 10 (0.93%) Def Stans
9 10 (0.93%) ISO/IEC 20000
10 7 (0.65%) MISRA
11 6 (0.56%) JSP 440
12 5 (0.46%) NEBOSH
12 5 (0.46%) NIST 800
13 4 (0.37%) GRC
14 3 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials
14 3 (0.28%) ISO 22301
15 2 (0.19%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 2 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27005
System Software
1 73 (6.76%) Docker
2 72 (6.67%) Active Directory
3 35 (3.24%) vSphere
4 30 (2.78%) VMware Infrastructure
5 23 (2.13%) Firmware
6 14 (1.30%) VMware ESXi
7 12 (1.11%) Virtual Machines
7 12 (1.11%) VMware NSX
8 10 (0.93%) Hyper-V
9 5 (0.46%) Embedded Firmware
9 5 (0.46%) Squid
10 4 (0.37%) KVM
11 2 (0.19%) UAG
12 1 (0.093%) Oracle RAC
12 1 (0.093%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 96 (8.89%) Kubernetes
2 67 (6.20%) Terraform
3 56 (5.19%) Ansible
4 16 (1.48%) Kibana
4 16 (1.48%) Microsoft Intune
5 15 (1.39%) Grafana
6 13 (1.20%) Prometheus
7 11 (1.02%) Single Sign-On
8 10 (0.93%) Podman
8 10 (0.93%) vCenter Server
9 8 (0.74%) Nessus
10 7 (0.65%) Nagios
10 7 (0.65%) Puppet
11 6 (0.56%) Graylog
11 6 (0.56%) QRadar
12 5 (0.46%) Argo
12 5 (0.46%) Docker Swarm
12 5 (0.46%) Kustomize
12 5 (0.46%) Packer
13 4 (0.37%) Istio
Vendors
1 138 (12.78%) Microsoft
2 77 (7.13%) VMware
3 46 (4.26%) Cisco
4 33 (3.06%) Oracle
5 31 (2.87%) Red Hat
6 30 (2.78%) ServiceNow
6 30 (2.78%) Splunk
7 16 (1.48%) Fortinet
7 16 (1.48%) Palo Alto
8 15 (1.39%) McAfee
9 13 (1.20%) Google
10 12 (1.11%) Citrix
10 12 (1.11%) EMC
11 11 (1.02%) AppDynamics
11 11 (1.02%) IBM
11 11 (1.02%) SAP
12 10 (0.93%) NVIDIA
13 8 (0.74%) Juniper
13 8 (0.74%) NetApp
13 8 (0.74%) Veeam