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

6 months to
17 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 24 31 27
Rank change year-on-year +7 -4 +6
Permanent jobs citing Security Cleared 5,074 3,165 6,986
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 5.43% 7.10% 6.44%
As % of the Qualifications category 27.85% 18.32% 25.53%
Number of salaries quoted 3,483 1,771 4,863
10th Percentile £42,674 £40,000 £34,000
25th Percentile £52,125 £49,000 £45,375
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £67,500 £62,500 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +8.00% +8.70% -4.17%
75th Percentile £82,198 £77,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £96,250 £88,750 £87,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £65,000 £60,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +8.33% +9.09% -

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 18,222 17,280 27,364
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 19.49% 38.77% 25.24%
Number of salaries quoted 9,581 7,324 17,232
10th Percentile £30,500 £29,750 £28,750
25th Percentile £42,500 £39,500 £38,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £53,500
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% +2.80% -10.83%
75th Percentile £78,750 £72,500 £70,613
90th Percentile £92,988 £90,000 £87,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £50,890 £50,000
% change year-on-year +8.08% +1.78% -4.76%

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 17 June 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 17 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
England +3 4,419 £67,500 +9.76% 1,900
UK excluding London 0 3,315 £65,000 +8.33% 1,573
Work from Home +19 1,564 £65,000 - 949
London +43 1,189 £74,000 +13.85% 480
South West +3 979 £70,000 +16.67% 425
South East -8 841 £67,500 +13.64% 526
North of England -28 555 £60,000 - 273
Midlands +11 412 £60,000 -7.69% 136
North West -20 321 £65,000 - 159
East of England +30 299 £60,000 - 117
West Midlands -4 288 £60,000 -7.69% 85
Yorkshire +13 159 £62,500 +25.00% 62
Wales +11 135 £55,198 -4.00% 30
East Midlands +25 120 £55,000 +5.77% 51
Scotland +53 89 £72,500 +16.00% 73
North East +10 75 £57,500 -17.13% 55
Northern Ireland -28 11 £53,500 -35.39% 25

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
1 127 (2.50%) Microsoft Exchange
2 97 (1.91%) SharePoint
3 63 (1.24%) Apache
4 50 (0.99%) Confluence
5 42 (0.83%) Apache Spark
6 26 (0.51%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.45%) SAS
8 19 (0.37%) Jupyter
9 12 (0.24%) Palantir Foundry
10 11 (0.22%) IIS
11 8 (0.16%) Skype for Business
12 7 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 4 (0.079%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 4 (0.079%) Anypoint
13 4 (0.079%) ArcGIS
13 4 (0.079%) JBoss
13 4 (0.079%) Mule
13 4 (0.079%) OpenStack
14 3 (0.059%) Apache Solr
14 3 (0.059%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 112 (2.21%) Microsoft Office
2 45 (0.89%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (0.32%) Simulink
4 15 (0.30%) Adobe XD
4 15 (0.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.12%) InVision
5 6 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.12%) Sketch
6 5 (0.099%) MS Visio
7 4 (0.079%) Windchill
8 3 (0.059%) Siemens NX
8 3 (0.059%) Stateflow
9 2 (0.039%) Chatbot
9 2 (0.039%) Lectora
9 2 (0.039%) Weka
10 1 (0.020%) Acrobat
10 1 (0.020%) CATIA
10 1 (0.020%) EngageOne
10 1 (0.020%) Trello
10 1 (0.020%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 37 (0.73%) SAP S/4HANA
2 13 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
3 11 (0.22%) Maximo
4 7 (0.14%) Primavera
4 7 (0.14%) SAP ERP
5 6 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
5 6 (0.12%) Teamcenter
6 5 (0.099%) SAP FSCM
7 4 (0.079%) SAP FI
8 3 (0.059%) Elite 3E
8 3 (0.059%) SAP CO
8 3 (0.059%) SAP FI/CO
8 3 (0.059%) SAP HCM
8 3 (0.059%) SAP PSCD
9 2 (0.039%) Dynamics CRM
9 2 (0.039%) SAP MDG
9 2 (0.039%) SAP Payroll
9 2 (0.039%) SAP QM
10 1 (0.020%) Oracle Applications
10 1 (0.020%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 967 (19.06%) Azure
2 880 (17.34%) AWS
3 353 (6.96%) Microsoft 365
4 241 (4.75%) GCP
5 136 (2.68%) Entra ID
6 121 (2.38%) Serverless
7 115 (2.27%) Power Platform
8 108 (2.13%) GitHub
9 93 (1.83%) AWS CloudFormation
10 84 (1.66%) Amazon S3
10 84 (1.66%) Azure DevOps
11 81 (1.60%) AWS Lambda
12 75 (1.48%) SaaS
13 70 (1.38%) Dynamics 365
14 49 (0.97%) OpenShift
14 49 (0.97%) PaaS
15 46 (0.91%) Amazon EKS
16 43 (0.85%) Azure Sentinel
17 42 (0.83%) Amazon EC2
17 42 (0.83%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 260 (5.12%) Firewall
2 228 (4.49%) DNS
3 148 (2.92%) DHCP
4 133 (2.62%) WAN
5 112 (2.21%) Network Security
6 107 (2.11%) VPN
7 102 (2.01%) LAN
8 70 (1.38%) TCP/IP
9 50 (0.99%) BGP
10 46 (0.91%) SD-WAN
11 45 (0.89%) SAN
12 39 (0.77%) Wi-Fi
13 36 (0.71%) Structured Cabling
14 31 (0.61%) MPLS
14 31 (0.61%) VLAN
14 31 (0.61%) VoIP
15 27 (0.53%) Broadband
16 26 (0.51%) HTTP
17 22 (0.43%) 4G
17 22 (0.43%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 96 (1.89%) Amazon RDS
2 94 (1.85%) Power BI
3 89 (1.75%) PostgreSQL
4 54 (1.06%) NoSQL
5 45 (0.89%) MongoDB
6 43 (0.85%) Big Data
7 38 (0.75%) Data Warehouse
7 38 (0.75%) Metadata
8 36 (0.71%) DynamoDB
8 36 (0.71%) SQL Server
9 34 (0.67%) Data Lake
10 32 (0.63%) Relational Database
11 31 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
12 24 (0.47%) Amazon Redshift
12 24 (0.47%) Tableau
13 23 (0.45%) Amazon Athena
13 23 (0.45%) GIS
14 22 (0.43%) MySQL
15 18 (0.35%) Redis
16 16 (0.32%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 207 (4.08%) Git
2 178 (3.51%) GitLab
3 147 (2.90%) Jenkins
4 112 (2.21%) JIRA
5 36 (0.71%) Maven
6 32 (0.63%) SonarQube
7 27 (0.53%) JUnit
7 27 (0.53%) Selenium
8 26 (0.51%) Cucumber
8 26 (0.51%) Cypress.io
9 14 (0.28%) Bitbucket
9 14 (0.28%) JMeter
9 14 (0.28%) Mockito
9 14 (0.28%) Subversion
9 14 (0.28%) Visual Studio Code
10 13 (0.26%) Vite
11 11 (0.22%) Axure RP
12 10 (0.20%) Gradle
12 10 (0.20%) Postman
12 10 (0.20%) Robot Framework
General
1 1,023 (20.16%) Social Skills
2 801 (15.79%) Public Sector
3 558 (11.00%) Finance
4 445 (8.77%) Analytical Skills
5 336 (6.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 174 (3.43%) Law
7 152 (3.00%) Aerospace
8 84 (1.66%) Telecoms
9 77 (1.52%) Influencing Skills
9 77 (1.52%) Legal
10 76 (1.50%) Manufacturing
11 72 (1.42%) Military
12 70 (1.38%) Electronics
12 70 (1.38%) Presentation Skills
13 63 (1.24%) Organisational Skills
14 51 (1.01%) Documentation Skills
15 44 (0.87%) Games
16 40 (0.79%) Retail
17 36 (0.71%) Aviation
17 36 (0.71%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 852 (16.79%) Senior
2 686 (13.52%) Architect
3 477 (9.40%) Consultant
4 396 (7.80%) Developer
5 348 (6.86%) Analyst
6 342 (6.74%) Software Engineer
7 283 (5.58%) Lead
8 209 (4.12%) Data Engineer
9 208 (4.10%) Solutions Architect
10 199 (3.92%) Systems Engineer
11 180 (3.55%) Cloud Engineer
12 178 (3.51%) DevOps Engineer
13 176 (3.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 148 (2.92%) Network Engineer
14 148 (2.92%) Security Architect
14 148 (2.92%) Security Consultant
15 143 (2.82%) Support Engineer
16 132 (2.60%) Senior Consultant
17 129 (2.54%) Senior Developer
18 124 (2.44%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 136 (2.68%) React
2 111 (2.19%) REST
3 108 (2.13%) .NET
4 102 (2.01%) Spring
5 89 (1.75%) Spring Boot
6 77 (1.52%) AngularJS
7 64 (1.26%) Node.js
8 62 (1.22%) Kafka
9 48 (0.95%) HTML
10 45 (0.89%) CSS
10 45 (0.89%) SOAP
11 44 (0.87%) RESTful
12 41 (0.81%) JSON
12 41 (0.81%) PySpark
12 41 (0.81%) Vue
13 37 (0.73%) Elastic Stack
14 35 (0.69%) LDAP
15 32 (0.63%) Apache NiFi
15 32 (0.63%) Middleware
16 30 (0.59%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 217 (4.28%) Cloud Native
2 146 (2.88%) Data Centre
3 136 (2.68%) Legacy Systems
4 127 (2.50%) Product Ownership
5 114 (2.25%) Onboarding
6 101 (1.99%) Driving Licence
7 94 (1.85%) Security Posture
8 93 (1.83%) Self-Motivation
9 90 (1.77%) Management Information System
10 79 (1.56%) PKI
11 69 (1.36%) Security Operations Centre
12 53 (1.04%) Distributed Systems
13 49 (0.97%) Cyber Threat
14 48 (0.95%) Data Structures
15 47 (0.93%) Algorithms
16 44 (0.87%) CMDB
16 44 (0.87%) Hybrid Cloud
17 42 (0.83%) Operational Technology
17 42 (0.83%) Public Cloud
18 41 (0.81%) Cyber Defence
Operating Systems
1 525 (10.35%) Windows
2 508 (10.01%) Linux
3 267 (5.26%) Windows Server
4 108 (2.13%) Windows Server 2016
5 87 (1.71%) Windows 10
6 65 (1.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 47 (0.93%) Android
8 38 (0.75%) Unix
9 35 (0.69%) CentOS
10 31 (0.61%) Ubuntu
11 22 (0.43%) Windows Server 2019
12 17 (0.34%) Mac OS
13 10 (0.20%) Apple iOS
14 9 (0.18%) VMS
15 8 (0.16%) AIX
15 8 (0.16%) Debian
16 7 (0.14%) Embedded Linux
17 5 (0.099%) Windows Server 2008
17 5 (0.099%) Windows Server 2012
18 3 (0.059%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 869 (17.13%) Agile
2 665 (13.11%) DevOps
3 621 (12.24%) Problem-Solving
4 601 (11.84%) Continuous Improvement
5 596 (11.75%) Cybersecurity
6 565 (11.14%) CI/CD
7 536 (10.56%) Software Engineering
8 401 (7.90%) Mentoring
9 392 (7.73%) AI
10 384 (7.57%) Infrastructure as Code
11 357 (7.04%) ITIL
12 312 (6.15%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 297 (5.85%) Analytics
14 270 (5.32%) Containerisation
15 262 (5.16%) Decision-Making
16 257 (5.07%) Stakeholder Management
17 249 (4.91%) Infrastructure Engineering
18 248 (4.89%) Technical Leadership
19 243 (4.79%) Migration
20 235 (4.63%) Collaborative Culture
Programming Languages
1 691 (13.62%) Python
2 427 (8.42%) Java
3 256 (5.05%) SQL
4 226 (4.45%) JavaScript
5 162 (3.19%) C++
5 162 (3.19%) PowerShell
6 153 (3.02%) Bash
7 130 (2.56%) TypeScript
8 120 (2.36%) C#
9 72 (1.42%) C
10 45 (0.89%) Rust
11 38 (0.75%) Go
12 31 (0.61%) Groovy
13 25 (0.49%) Scala
14 24 (0.47%) Bicep
15 23 (0.45%) Kusto Query Language
15 23 (0.45%) Perl
16 21 (0.41%) Apex Code
16 21 (0.41%) MATLAB
16 21 (0.41%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 3,302 (65.08%) SC Cleared
2 1,356 (26.72%) DV Cleared
3 526 (10.37%) Degree
4 179 (3.53%) BPSS Clearance
5 133 (2.62%) CISSP
6 95 (1.87%) Cisco Certification
7 91 (1.79%) Computer Science Degree
8 83 (1.64%) CISM
9 64 (1.26%) AWS Certification
10 62 (1.22%) Microsoft Certification
11 52 (1.02%) Azure Certification
12 50 (0.99%) CTC Cleared
13 44 (0.87%) CCNP
14 43 (0.85%) Master's Degree
15 41 (0.81%) CREST Certified
16 37 (0.73%) CCNA
17 36 (0.71%) CompTIA Security+
18 35 (0.69%) A+ Certification
18 35 (0.69%) DBS Check
18 35 (0.69%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 215 (4.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 148 (2.92%) NIST
3 138 (2.72%) Cyber Essentials
4 125 (2.46%) SLA
5 124 (2.44%) PCI DSS
5 124 (2.44%) QA
6 93 (1.83%) Accessibility
7 92 (1.81%) GDPR
8 91 (1.79%) NCSC
9 82 (1.62%) Data Quality
10 54 (1.06%) GRC
11 50 (0.99%) JSP 440
12 31 (0.61%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 29 (0.57%) ISO 9001
14 27 (0.53%) PMO
14 27 (0.53%) WCAG
15 22 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 20000
16 20 (0.39%) Def Stans
17 19 (0.37%) Actionable Recommendations
18 18 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 331 (6.52%) Active Directory
2 296 (5.83%) Docker
3 140 (2.76%) VMware Infrastructure
4 138 (2.72%) Hyper-V
5 81 (1.60%) Terminal Server
6 66 (1.30%) vSphere
7 55 (1.08%) Firmware
8 52 (1.02%) VMware NSX
9 26 (0.51%) Virtual Desktop
10 24 (0.47%) Virtual Machines
11 22 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
12 10 (0.20%) Embedded Firmware
13 6 (0.12%) BitLocker
13 6 (0.12%) KVM
14 4 (0.079%) Squid
15 3 (0.059%) UAG
16 2 (0.039%) Slurm Workload Manager
17 1 (0.020%) GPFS
17 1 (0.020%) OpenAM
17 1 (0.020%) OpenIDM
Systems Management
1 402 (7.92%) Terraform
2 350 (6.90%) Kubernetes
3 238 (4.69%) Ansible
4 85 (1.68%) Grafana
5 65 (1.28%) Prometheus
6 58 (1.14%) Microsoft Intune
7 37 (0.73%) SCCM
8 35 (0.69%) Puppet
9 32 (0.63%) Argo
10 29 (0.57%) Kibana
10 29 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
11 26 (0.51%) vCenter Server
12 25 (0.49%) WSUS
13 18 (0.35%) Packer
14 17 (0.34%) Nagios
14 17 (0.34%) Proxmox
15 15 (0.30%) QRadar
16 14 (0.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 14 (0.28%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
17 13 (0.26%) Nessus
Vendors
1 691 (13.62%) Microsoft
2 310 (6.11%) VMware
3 176 (3.47%) Cisco
4 164 (3.23%) Splunk
5 146 (2.88%) ServiceNow
6 133 (2.62%) Oracle
7 96 (1.89%) SolarWinds
8 91 (1.79%) Google
9 84 (1.66%) Red Hat
10 82 (1.62%) Brocade
11 81 (1.60%) Veeam
12 80 (1.58%) Nimble Storage
12 80 (1.58%) Tanium
13 71 (1.40%) SAP
14 64 (1.26%) Databricks
15 49 (0.97%) Salesforce
16 47 (0.93%) Dell
17 38 (0.75%) Fortinet
18 33 (0.65%) HP
18 33 (0.65%) McAfee