Security Cleared Job Trends

Security Clearance
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for permanent job vacancies with a requirement for Security Cleared qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the salaries offered over the 6 months leading up to 15 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 33 22 20
Rank change year-on-year -11 -2 +21
Permanent jobs citing Security Cleared 3,628 3,881 4,762
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 6.02% 7.24% 8.59%
As % of the Qualifications category 18.87% 19.81% 29.48%
Number of salaries quoted 2,232 2,324 3,265
10th Percentile £38,293 £41,229 £32,500
25th Percentile £50,000 £47,500 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £61,572 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +1.51% +7.08% -
75th Percentile £80,000 £77,500 £71,250
90th Percentile £90,000 £87,500 £85,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year - +9.09% +4.76%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK

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.

Permanent vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 19,231 19,593 16,154
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 31.90% 36.56% 29.13%
Number of salaries quoted 7,799 7,678 10,906
10th Percentile £28,250 £32,750 £30,000
25th Percentile £36,250 £45,000 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £59,908 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year -8.19% +4.19% -
75th Percentile £75,900 £77,500 £75,000
90th Percentile £90,000 £92,500 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £50,000 £55,000 £51,128
% change year-on-year -9.09% +7.57% +2.26%

Security Cleared
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Security Cleared job vacancy trend in the UK

Security Cleared
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Security Cleared.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Security Cleared

Security Cleared
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Security Cleared over the 6 months to 15 January 2026.

Salary histogram for Security Cleared in the UK

Security Cleared
Top 17 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Security Cleared within the UK over the 6 months to 15 January 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
England -11 3,185 £60,000 - 1,819
UK excluding London -13 2,595 £60,000 - 1,618
Work from Home +13 1,332 £62,500 -3.85% 813
South West +4 874 £60,000 - 401
South East -14 719 £58,000 -3.33% 563
London 0 606 £70,000 - 423
East of England +15 307 £52,500 -12.50% 252
Midlands -9 294 £58,250 -2.92% 139
North of England -19 257 £62,733 +4.56% 241
West Midlands -21 202 £62,500 -3.85% 80
North West -21 162 £65,000 +8.33% 145
East Midlands +19 89 £38,250 -10.00% 59
Yorkshire +3 74 £55,233 +29.96% 61
Wales +4 60 £65,000 - 46
Scotland -13 58 £73,801 +18.08% 47
Northern Ireland +8 38 £46,500 -21.76% 9
North East -2 24 £65,000 - 36

Security Cleared
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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
1 169 (4.66%) Microsoft Exchange
2 80 (2.21%) SharePoint
3 45 (1.24%) Confluence
4 32 (0.88%) Apache
5 26 (0.72%) Exchange Server 2003
6 15 (0.41%) Apache Airflow
6 15 (0.41%) Apache Spark
7 8 (0.22%) Skype for Business
8 7 (0.19%) ArcGIS
8 7 (0.19%) Jupyter
9 6 (0.17%) Appian
9 6 (0.17%) nginx
9 6 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 5 (0.14%) WordPress
11 4 (0.11%) GeoServer
11 4 (0.11%) IIS
11 4 (0.11%) Oracle Spatial
12 3 (0.083%) Camunda
12 3 (0.083%) Tomcat
12 3 (0.083%) WebLogic Portal
Applications
1 140 (3.86%) Microsoft Office
2 55 (1.52%) Microsoft Excel
3 38 (1.05%) Adobe XD
4 17 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 12 (0.33%) Sketch
6 11 (0.30%) InVision
7 10 (0.28%) Microsoft Project
8 9 (0.25%) Simulink
9 5 (0.14%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.14%) Windchill
10 4 (0.11%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 4 (0.11%) MS Visio
11 3 (0.083%) Adobe Illustrator
11 3 (0.083%) Chatbot
12 2 (0.055%) Adobe After Effects
12 2 (0.055%) Adobe Captivate
12 2 (0.055%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.055%) Adobe Premiere
12 2 (0.055%) EPLAN
12 2 (0.055%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 53 (1.46%) SAP S/4HANA
2 29 (0.80%) Dynamics CRM
3 17 (0.47%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 13 (0.36%) SAP FI
5 12 (0.33%) SAP CO
5 12 (0.33%) SAP FI/CO
5 12 (0.33%) Workday HCM
6 8 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
7 6 (0.17%) Primavera
7 6 (0.17%) SAP PP
8 5 (0.14%) Maximo
9 4 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
9 4 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
9 4 (0.11%) SAP ERP
9 4 (0.11%) SAP PM
10 3 (0.083%) Teamcenter
11 2 (0.055%) C-CURE
11 2 (0.055%) Integrated Workplace Management System
11 2 (0.055%) SAP IBP
11 2 (0.055%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 629 (17.34%) Azure
2 524 (14.44%) AWS
3 283 (7.80%) Microsoft 365
4 144 (3.97%) GCP
5 107 (2.95%) Entra ID
6 95 (2.62%) Power Platform
7 84 (2.32%) AWS CloudFormation
7 84 (2.32%) Dynamics 365
7 84 (2.32%) Serverless
8 69 (1.90%) Azure DevOps
9 67 (1.85%) GitHub
10 57 (1.57%) Amazon ECS
10 57 (1.57%) AWS Lambda
11 54 (1.49%) Amazon S3
12 51 (1.41%) Amazon EKS
12 51 (1.41%) PaaS
12 51 (1.41%) PowerApps
12 51 (1.41%) SaaS
13 45 (1.24%) Figma
14 43 (1.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 208 (5.73%) DNS
2 176 (4.85%) Firewall
3 159 (4.38%) DHCP
4 84 (2.32%) Network Security
5 83 (2.29%) VPN
6 76 (2.09%) Wi-Fi
7 75 (2.07%) LAN
8 74 (2.04%) WAN
9 64 (1.76%) TCP/IP
10 62 (1.71%) Structured Cabling
11 32 (0.88%) Wireless
12 26 (0.72%) BGP
13 25 (0.69%) SD-WAN
14 22 (0.61%) Cisco IOS
14 22 (0.61%) Cisco ISE
14 22 (0.61%) Junos
14 22 (0.61%) Software-Defined Radio
15 21 (0.58%) Cisco Firepower
15 21 (0.58%) VLAN
16 20 (0.55%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 148 (4.08%) Amazon RDS
2 90 (2.48%) PostgreSQL
3 66 (1.82%) Power BI
4 55 (1.52%) NoSQL
5 46 (1.27%) MongoDB
6 41 (1.13%) Elasticsearch
6 41 (1.13%) Oracle Database
7 36 (0.99%) SQL Server
8 31 (0.85%) Relational Database
9 27 (0.74%) Oracle Database 10g
10 23 (0.63%) Metadata
11 21 (0.58%) Redis
12 20 (0.55%) Big Data
12 20 (0.55%) Data Warehouse
13 18 (0.50%) GIS
13 18 (0.50%) MySQL
13 18 (0.50%) Neo4j
14 13 (0.36%) DynamoDB
15 12 (0.33%) Amazon Redshift
16 11 (0.30%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 147 (4.05%) Git
2 145 (4.00%) Jenkins
3 130 (3.58%) JIRA
4 69 (1.90%) GitLab
5 40 (1.10%) Selenium
6 30 (0.83%) Axure RP
7 29 (0.80%) Balsamiq
8 26 (0.72%) Robot Framework
9 23 (0.63%) JMeter
10 21 (0.58%) JUnit
10 21 (0.58%) Mockito
11 19 (0.52%) Cypress.io
12 17 (0.47%) Snyk
13 16 (0.44%) Cucumber
14 15 (0.41%) Subversion
15 12 (0.33%) Burp Suite
15 12 (0.33%) Maven
15 12 (0.33%) Metasploit
16 11 (0.30%) Oracle APEX
16 11 (0.30%) webpack
General
1 980 (27.01%) Social Skills
2 540 (14.88%) Public Sector
3 439 (12.10%) Finance
4 437 (12.05%) Analytical Skills
5 225 (6.20%) Law
6 224 (6.17%) Manufacturing
7 174 (4.80%) Marketing
8 157 (4.33%) Electronics
9 154 (4.24%) Telecoms
10 152 (4.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 106 (2.92%) Organisational Skills
12 102 (2.81%) Aerospace
13 72 (1.98%) Legal
14 64 (1.76%) Military
15 60 (1.65%) Presentation Skills
16 49 (1.35%) Back Office
17 40 (1.10%) Documentation Skills
18 33 (0.91%) Aviation
19 32 (0.88%) Influencing Skills
20 30 (0.83%) Aeronautics
Job Titles
1 393 (10.83%) Senior
2 382 (10.53%) Architect
3 326 (8.99%) Systems Engineer
4 311 (8.57%) Consultant
5 252 (6.95%) Lead
6 239 (6.59%) Developer
7 221 (6.09%) Analyst
8 199 (5.49%) Software Engineer
9 188 (5.18%) Support Engineer
10 111 (3.06%) Data Engineer
10 111 (3.06%) Solutions Architect
11 98 (2.70%) Business Analyst
12 95 (2.62%) DevOps Engineer
13 89 (2.45%) Cloud Engineer
13 89 (2.45%) Security Consultant
14 84 (2.32%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 79 (2.18%) Network Engineer
16 74 (2.04%) Administrator
17 66 (1.82%) Business Manager
18 65 (1.79%) IT Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 131 (3.61%) React
2 87 (2.40%) HTML
3 80 (2.21%) AngularJS
3 80 (2.21%) REST
4 70 (1.93%) CSS
4 70 (1.93%) Spring
5 58 (1.60%) Node.js
6 56 (1.54%) Spring Boot
7 49 (1.35%) .NET
8 40 (1.10%) Vue
9 36 (0.99%) SOAP
10 33 (0.91%) Django
11 31 (0.85%) Elastic Stack
11 31 (0.85%) RESTful
12 30 (0.83%) Web Services
13 28 (0.77%) Kafka
14 25 (0.69%) JSON
14 25 (0.69%) Middleware
15 24 (0.66%) SAP CAF
15 24 (0.66%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 121 (3.34%) Cloud Native
2 116 (3.20%) Driving Licence
3 112 (3.09%) Legacy Systems
4 95 (2.62%) Onboarding
5 93 (2.56%) e-Learning
6 86 (2.37%) Product Ownership
7 77 (2.12%) Self-Motivation
8 76 (2.09%) Data Centre
9 65 (1.79%) Management Information System
10 58 (1.60%) Robotics
11 56 (1.54%) PKI
12 46 (1.27%) Security Posture
13 37 (1.02%) Analytical Mindset
14 32 (0.88%) Distributed Systems
14 32 (0.88%) Hybrid Cloud
15 30 (0.83%) Security Operations Centre
16 29 (0.80%) Embedded Systems
17 28 (0.77%) Enterprise Software
18 27 (0.74%) Algorithms
19 26 (0.72%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 435 (11.99%) Windows
2 416 (11.47%) Linux
3 213 (5.87%) Windows Server
4 112 (3.09%) Unix
5 108 (2.98%) Windows Server 2016
6 60 (1.65%) Windows 10
7 49 (1.35%) Android
8 41 (1.13%) Solaris
9 35 (0.96%) Apple iOS
10 32 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 29 (0.80%) Ubuntu
12 26 (0.72%) HPUX
12 26 (0.72%) Windows 7
12 26 (0.72%) Windows Server 2003
13 23 (0.63%) Windows Server 2008
14 17 (0.47%) VMS
15 16 (0.44%) CentOS
16 14 (0.39%) Debian
17 10 (0.28%) Embedded Linux
18 8 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 622 (17.14%) Problem-Solving
2 621 (17.12%) Agile
3 413 (11.38%) Continuous Improvement
4 401 (11.05%) Software Engineering
5 376 (10.36%) DevOps
6 322 (8.88%) Cybersecurity
7 320 (8.82%) CI/CD
8 312 (8.60%) AI
9 248 (6.84%) Customer Service
10 238 (6.56%) Mentoring
11 223 (6.15%) Infrastructure as Code
12 209 (5.76%) Analytics
13 208 (5.73%) ITIL
14 203 (5.60%) Migration
15 182 (5.02%) Project Management
16 178 (4.91%) Business Intelligence
16 178 (4.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 165 (4.55%) User Experience
18 163 (4.49%) Customer Experience
19 156 (4.30%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 501 (13.81%) Python
2 280 (7.72%) Java
3 228 (6.28%) JavaScript
4 222 (6.12%) SQL
5 169 (4.66%) PowerShell
6 121 (3.34%) Bash
7 114 (3.14%) C#
8 110 (3.03%) TypeScript
9 98 (2.70%) C++
10 74 (2.04%) C
11 38 (1.05%) Go
12 30 (0.83%) Perl
13 27 (0.74%) Bicep
13 27 (0.74%) MATLAB
14 25 (0.69%) Kotlin
15 20 (0.55%) PL/SQL
16 19 (0.52%) Rust
17 18 (0.50%) Shell Script
18 17 (0.47%) Groovy
18 17 (0.47%) R
Qualifications
1 2,203 (60.72%) SC Cleared
2 881 (24.28%) DV Cleared
3 549 (15.13%) Degree
4 133 (3.67%) BPSS Clearance
5 122 (3.36%) Cisco Certification
6 95 (2.62%) CISSP
7 86 (2.37%) Computer Science Degree
8 84 (2.32%) CCNA
9 65 (1.79%) CISM
10 64 (1.76%) Microsoft Certification
11 62 (1.71%) CCNP
12 59 (1.63%) AWS Certification
13 57 (1.57%) Azure Certification
13 57 (1.57%) CTC Cleared
14 47 (1.30%) Master's Degree
15 29 (0.80%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
16 28 (0.77%) CompTIA Security+
17 24 (0.66%) PhD
18 23 (0.63%) CEH
18 23 (0.63%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 174 (4.80%) SLA
2 136 (3.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 133 (3.67%) Accessibility
4 120 (3.31%) Cyber Essentials
4 120 (3.31%) NIST
5 119 (3.28%) PCI DSS
6 115 (3.17%) QA
7 58 (1.60%) GRC
8 52 (1.43%) GDPR
9 41 (1.13%) WCAG
10 40 (1.10%) Data Quality
10 40 (1.10%) NCSC
11 33 (0.91%) Def Stans
12 22 (0.61%) ISO 9001
13 19 (0.52%) JSP 440
14 12 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 11 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
15 11 (0.30%) NIST 800
16 9 (0.25%) PMO
17 8 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 255 (7.03%) Active Directory
2 228 (6.28%) Docker
3 130 (3.58%) Hyper-V
4 97 (2.67%) Terminal Server
4 97 (2.67%) VMware Infrastructure
5 47 (1.30%) Firmware
6 33 (0.91%) VMware NSX
7 24 (0.66%) vSphere
8 17 (0.47%) VMware ESXi
9 14 (0.39%) Virtual Machines
10 13 (0.36%) Embedded Firmware
10 13 (0.36%) KVM
11 5 (0.14%) Dovecot
11 5 (0.14%) Postfix
11 5 (0.14%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 4 (0.11%) DFS Replication
12 4 (0.11%) Lustre
12 4 (0.11%) Squid
12 4 (0.11%) Virtual Desktop
13 2 (0.055%) pfSense
Systems Management
1 258 (7.11%) Kubernetes
2 245 (6.75%) Terraform
3 149 (4.11%) Ansible
4 83 (2.29%) Grafana
5 45 (1.24%) Prometheus
6 33 (0.91%) Jamf Pro
6 33 (0.91%) SCCM
7 28 (0.77%) Microsoft Intune
8 26 (0.72%) vCenter Server
9 24 (0.66%) SCOM
10 20 (0.55%) Kibana
11 19 (0.52%) Argo
12 17 (0.47%) Puppet
13 16 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
14 13 (0.36%) Nessus
14 13 (0.36%) WSUS
15 12 (0.33%) AWS Copilot
15 12 (0.33%) Docker Swarm
15 12 (0.33%) Nmap
16 10 (0.28%) Nagios
Vendors
1 522 (14.39%) Microsoft
2 269 (7.41%) VMware
3 227 (6.26%) Cisco
4 207 (5.71%) SAP
5 147 (4.05%) Splunk
6 127 (3.50%) SolarWinds
7 106 (2.92%) Google
8 102 (2.81%) Veeam
9 100 (2.76%) Oracle
10 96 (2.65%) Brocade
10 96 (2.65%) Nimble Storage
10 96 (2.65%) Tanium
11 68 (1.87%) ServiceNow
12 65 (1.79%) Juniper
13 57 (1.57%) Red Hat
14 55 (1.52%) Salesforce
15 43 (1.19%) Adobe
16 37 (1.02%) Palantir
17 33 (0.91%) Remedy
18 32 (0.88%) Apple