Security Cleared Job Trends in the Thames Valley

Security Clearance
South East > Thames Valley

The table below provides summary statistics for permanent job vacancies advertised in the Thames Valley with a requirement for Security Cleared qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the salaries offered over the 6 months leading up to 24 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 50 9
Rank change year-on-year +23 -41 +4
Permanent jobs citing Security Cleared 306 186 812
As % of all permanent jobs in the Thames Valley 5.13% 5.39% 11.14%
As % of the Qualifications category 24.60% 11.27% 32.52%
Number of salaries quoted 189 124 531
10th Percentile £39,280 £38,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £50,025 £46,250 £38,940
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £67,500 £57,585 £52,550
Median % change year-on-year +17.22% +9.58% +13.38%
75th Percentile £80,000 £73,750 £61,000
90th Percentile £86,650 £83,750 £75,000
South East median annual salary £70,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +16.67% +9.09% +10.00%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
Thames Valley

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 Thames Valley.

Permanent vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 1,244 1,651 2,497
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the Thames Valley 20.86% 47.86% 34.26%
Number of salaries quoted 718 466 1,467
10th Percentile £33,350 £28,750 £31,000
25th Percentile £42,500 £40,000 £38,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £50,000 £52,500
Median % change year-on-year +20.00% -4.76% +5.00%
75th Percentile £72,500 £67,500 £67,500
90th Percentile £83,750 £82,500 £82,500
South East median annual salary £60,000 £52,500 £51,000
% change year-on-year +14.29% +2.94% -1.11%

Security Cleared
Job Vacancy Trend in the Thames Valley

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

Security Cleared job vacancy trend in the Thames Valley

Security Cleared
Salary Trend in the Thames Valley

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the Thames Valley citing Security Cleared.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the Thames Valley citing Security Cleared

Security Cleared
Salary Histogram in the Thames Valley

Salary distribution for jobs citing Security Cleared in the Thames Valley over the 6 months to 24 June 2026.

Salary histogram for Security Cleared in the Thames Valley

Security Cleared
Job Locations in the Thames Valley

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Security Cleared within the Thames Valley region over the 6 months to 24 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
Berkshire +18 209 £67,500 +12.50% 69
Buckinghamshire +34 76 £52,500 -4.55% 31
Oxfordshire -8 21 £80,000 +54.59% 18
Security Cleared
South East

Security Cleared
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the Thames Valley 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 6 (1.96%) SharePoint
2 4 (1.31%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.33%) Confluence
Applications
1 9 (2.94%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (1.31%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (0.33%) Primavera
1 1 (0.33%) SAP MDG
1 1 (0.33%) SAP MM
1 1 (0.33%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 41 (13.40%) Azure
2 32 (10.46%) AWS
3 17 (5.56%) GCP
4 12 (3.92%) Serverless
5 11 (3.59%) Amazon EKS
6 9 (2.94%) Azure Sentinel
6 9 (2.94%) Entra ID
7 7 (2.29%) Amazon EC2
7 7 (2.29%) AWS Lambda
7 7 (2.29%) Microsoft 365
8 6 (1.96%) Amazon ECS
8 6 (1.96%) OpenShift
8 6 (1.96%) Power Platform
9 5 (1.63%) Amazon S3
9 5 (1.63%) Cloudflare
10 4 (1.31%) Azure DevOps
10 4 (1.31%) Google Analytics
10 4 (1.31%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
10 4 (1.31%) Salesforce Service Cloud
11 3 (0.98%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 51 (16.67%) DNS
2 43 (14.05%) Firewall
3 14 (4.58%) TCP/IP
4 12 (3.92%) Structured Cabling
5 11 (3.59%) NetScaler
6 10 (3.27%) HTTP
7 9 (2.94%) VPN
8 8 (2.61%) NAS
8 8 (2.61%) SAN
8 8 (2.61%) Wireshark
9 7 (2.29%) SSL
10 5 (1.63%) Remote Desktop
11 3 (0.98%) Internet
11 3 (0.98%) LAN
11 3 (0.98%) Network Security
11 3 (0.98%) WAN
12 2 (0.65%) FTP
12 2 (0.65%) SMTP
13 1 (0.33%) DHCP
13 1 (0.33%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (3.92%) PostgreSQL
2 9 (2.94%) SQL Server
3 6 (1.96%) Relational Database
4 5 (1.63%) Power BI
5 4 (1.31%) Oracle Database
6 3 (0.98%) MySQL
7 2 (0.65%) Oracle Database 11g
7 2 (0.65%) Oracle Database 12c
8 1 (0.33%) Metadata
8 1 (0.33%) MongoDB
8 1 (0.33%) NoSQL
8 1 (0.33%) Redis
8 1 (0.33%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 12 (3.92%) Jenkins
2 11 (3.59%) Git
3 10 (3.27%) JIRA
4 9 (2.94%) GitLab
5 5 (1.63%) JUnit
5 5 (1.63%) SonarQube
6 4 (1.31%) Cucumber
7 3 (0.98%) Artifactory
8 2 (0.65%) JMeter
8 2 (0.65%) Mockito
8 2 (0.65%) Subversion
9 1 (0.33%) Mocha
9 1 (0.33%) Selenium
9 1 (0.33%) Storybook
9 1 (0.33%) TestDirector
General
1 67 (21.90%) Social Skills
2 43 (14.05%) Public Sector
3 39 (12.75%) Analytical Skills
4 34 (11.11%) Finance
5 16 (5.23%) Manufacturing
6 14 (4.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 13 (4.25%) Law
8 12 (3.92%) Organisational Skills
9 8 (2.61%) Aerospace
9 8 (2.61%) Influencing Skills
10 6 (1.96%) Documentation Skills
10 6 (1.96%) Games
11 5 (1.63%) Banking
11 5 (1.63%) French Language
12 4 (1.31%) Aviation
12 4 (1.31%) Legal
13 3 (0.98%) Military
14 2 (0.65%) Electronics
14 2 (0.65%) Presentation Skills
14 2 (0.65%) Retail
Job Titles
1 64 (20.92%) Architect
2 42 (13.73%) Senior
3 38 (12.42%) Developer
4 36 (11.76%) Analyst
5 33 (10.78%) Applications Architect
6 28 (9.15%) Security Architect
7 27 (8.82%) Lead
8 17 (5.56%) Java Developer
8 17 (5.56%) SOC Analyst
9 13 (4.25%) Senior Developer
10 12 (3.92%) DevOps Engineer
11 11 (3.59%) .NET Developer
11 11 (3.59%) Senior .NET Developer
12 9 (2.94%) Lead Architect
12 9 (2.94%) Security Analyst
13 8 (2.61%) Auditor
13 8 (2.61%) Cyber Threat Analyst
13 8 (2.61%) Cybersecurity Analyst
13 8 (2.61%) Security Auditor
13 8 (2.61%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (7.19%) Regular Expression
2 20 (6.54%) LDAP
3 19 (6.21%) .NET
4 18 (5.88%) XMPP
5 13 (4.25%) REST
6 12 (3.92%) Spring
7 10 (3.27%) JSON
8 9 (2.94%) React
9 8 (2.61%) Elastic Stack
9 8 (2.61%) RabbitMQ
10 7 (2.29%) Spring Boot
11 6 (1.96%) Java EE
11 6 (1.96%) JPA
11 6 (1.96%) JSON Schema
11 6 (1.96%) XML
12 5 (1.63%) AngularJS
12 5 (1.63%) Loki
12 5 (1.63%) Middleware
12 5 (1.63%) RESTful
12 5 (1.63%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 19 (6.21%) Cloud Native
2 18 (5.88%) Cyber Defence
3 17 (5.56%) Cyber Threat
4 11 (3.59%) Onboarding
5 10 (3.27%) Analytical Mindset
5 10 (3.27%) Distributed Systems
5 10 (3.27%) PKI
6 9 (2.94%) Security Operations Centre
7 8 (2.61%) Product Ownership
8 5 (1.63%) Legacy Systems
8 5 (1.63%) Management Information System
9 4 (1.31%) Security Posture
9 4 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
10 3 (0.98%) Arduino
10 3 (0.98%) CSOC
10 3 (0.98%) Hackathon
10 3 (0.98%) Linux Command Line
10 3 (0.98%) Raspberry Pi
11 2 (0.65%) Enterprise Software
11 2 (0.65%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 63 (20.59%) Linux
2 58 (18.95%) Windows
3 36 (11.76%) Windows Server
4 26 (8.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (0.98%) Unix
6 1 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 53 (17.32%) Continuous Improvement
2 52 (16.99%) Cybersecurity
3 43 (14.05%) SIEM
4 35 (11.44%) Agile
5 32 (10.46%) Validation
6 29 (9.48%) DevOps
6 29 (9.48%) Problem-Solving
7 24 (7.84%) CI/CD
8 23 (7.52%) Platform Engineering
9 22 (7.19%) Application Security
9 22 (7.19%) Mentoring
10 18 (5.88%) Containerisation
10 18 (5.88%) ITIL
11 16 (5.23%) Antivirus Management
11 16 (5.23%) Architectural Design
11 16 (5.23%) Pattern Matching
12 15 (4.90%) Change Control
12 15 (4.90%) Service Delivery
12 15 (4.90%) Service Management
12 15 (4.90%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 35 (11.44%) Python
2 25 (8.17%) Java
3 17 (5.56%) SQL
4 11 (3.59%) PowerShell
5 10 (3.27%) Shell Script
6 7 (2.29%) Bash
6 7 (2.29%) JavaScript
6 7 (2.29%) PL/SQL
6 7 (2.29%) Search Processing Language
7 6 (1.96%) C
8 5 (1.63%) C#
8 5 (1.63%) Groovy
9 4 (1.31%) Apex Code
9 4 (1.31%) Ladder Logic
9 4 (1.31%) TypeScript
10 3 (0.98%) C++
10 3 (0.98%) Kusto Query Language
10 3 (0.98%) Pascal
10 3 (0.98%) Perl
11 2 (0.65%) Go
Qualifications
1 183 (59.80%) SC Cleared
2 134 (43.79%) DV Cleared
3 42 (13.73%) Degree
4 13 (4.25%) HNC
5 12 (3.92%) CISSP
6 10 (3.27%) CompTIA Security+
6 10 (3.27%) CREST Certified
6 10 (3.27%) GIAC
7 9 (2.94%) CRISC
7 9 (2.94%) GCIA
7 9 (2.94%) OSCP
8 8 (2.61%) GCIH
8 8 (2.61%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 7 (2.29%) GCED
9 7 (2.29%) ISACA
9 7 (2.29%) SANS
10 4 (1.31%) BPSS Clearance
11 3 (0.98%) CompTIA CySA+
11 3 (0.98%) DBS Check
12 2 (0.65%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (4.25%) GDPR
2 7 (2.29%) NCSC
2 7 (2.29%) QA
3 6 (1.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 6 (1.96%) PMO
4 5 (1.63%) NEBOSH
5 3 (0.98%) Accessibility
5 3 (0.98%) ISO 9001
5 3 (0.98%) MISRA
6 2 (0.65%) ISO 22301
6 2 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 15288
6 2 (0.65%) NIST
7 1 (0.33%) COBIT
7 1 (0.33%) COSO
7 1 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials
7 1 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 1 (0.33%) Data Quality
7 1 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 20000
7 1 (0.33%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.33%) SLA
System Software
1 43 (14.05%) Active Directory
2 26 (8.50%) vSphere
3 13 (4.25%) Docker
4 7 (2.29%) VMware NSX
5 4 (1.31%) Firmware
6 2 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.33%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.33%) Terminal Server
7 1 (0.33%) Virtual Desktop
7 1 (0.33%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 21 (6.86%) Kubernetes
2 14 (4.58%) Kibana
3 10 (3.27%) Terraform
4 9 (2.94%) Ansible
5 6 (1.96%) Graylog
5 6 (1.96%) vRealize
6 5 (1.63%) Argo
6 5 (1.63%) Grafana
6 5 (1.63%) Kustomize
6 5 (1.63%) Prometheus
7 4 (1.31%) Packer
8 3 (0.98%) Istio
8 3 (0.98%) Oracle RMAN
9 2 (0.65%) QRadar
10 1 (0.33%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
10 1 (0.33%) SCCM
10 1 (0.33%) SCOM
Vendors
1 62 (20.26%) Microsoft
2 34 (11.11%) VMware
3 23 (7.52%) Red Hat
4 16 (5.23%) Oracle
5 15 (4.90%) McAfee
5 15 (4.90%) Splunk
6 12 (3.92%) Citrix
7 11 (3.59%) Google
8 9 (2.94%) AppDynamics
9 8 (2.61%) CrowdStrike
9 8 (2.61%) IBM
9 8 (2.61%) NetApp
10 7 (2.29%) Carbon Black
10 7 (2.29%) ServiceNow
11 5 (1.63%) Salesforce
12 3 (0.98%) Cisco
12 3 (0.98%) Motorola
12 3 (0.98%) MuleSoft
12 3 (0.98%) SAP
13 2 (0.65%) CA Agile Central