Security Operations Contracts

Security Operations (SecOps)
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Security Operations skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited Security Operations over the 6 months to 25 April 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
25 Apr 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 239 316 382
Rank change year-on-year +77 +66 +33
Contract jobs citing Security Operations 440 481 573
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 1.01% 0.80% 0.65%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.17% 0.89% 0.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 315 338 396
10th Percentile £425 £411 £425
25th Percentile £500 £513 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £613 £600
Median % change year-on-year -2.04% +2.08% +20.00%
75th Percentile £688 £736 £725
90th Percentile £775 £825 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £570 £610 £568
% change year-on-year -6.56% +7.49% +13.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 5 4
10th Percentile - £33.31 £25.76
25th Percentile - £34.25 £32.50
Median hourly rate £11.25 £76.50 £51.75
Median % change year-on-year -85.29% +47.83% +43.75%
75th Percentile - £93.75 £70.19
90th Percentile - £97.50 £77.73
UK excluding London median hourly rate £11.25 £92.50 £80.50
% change year-on-year -87.84% +14.91% +570.83%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Security Operations is in the Processes and Methodologies category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 37,653 53,977 80,244
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.28% 89.91% 90.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,313 37,392 56,301
10th Percentile £300 £325 £340
25th Percentile £413 £438 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +4.76% +8.25%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% +9.83%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,429 1,779 1,937
10th Percentile £12.75 £11.00 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.00 £16.54 £15.25
Median hourly rate £35.00 £37.50 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.67% +50.00% -
75th Percentile £59.44 £65.00 £49.25
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £63.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.98 £35.90 £20.00
% change year-on-year +0.21% +79.50% -8.09%

Security Operations
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Security Operations as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Security Operations in the UK

Security Operations
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Security Operations.

Daily rate trend for Security Operations in the UK

Security Operations
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Security Operations over the 6 months to 25 April 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Security Operations in the UK

Security Operations
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Security Operations.

Hourly rate trend for Security Operations in the UK

Security Operations
Top 14 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Security Operations within the UK over the 6 months to 25 April 2024. 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England +78 393 £600 -2.04% 180
UK excluding London +107 270 £570 -6.56% 125
London +14 131 £650 - 69
South West +98 127 £570 -8.80% 15
Work from Home +60 117 £550 -15.38% 77
South East +34 50 £500 -16.67% 37
Midlands +31 43 £618 -5.00% 19
West Midlands +34 40 £629 -3.17% 15
Scotland +29 21 £500 - 12
East of England +1 17 £650 +8.33% 9
North of England -9 14 £638 +4.08% 28
North West -23 8 £638 +6.25% 16
Yorkshire +21 6 £784 +43.15% 11
East Midlands +18 3 £567 -13.63% 4

Security Operations
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 12 (2.73%) CMS
2 5 (1.14%) Confluence
3 1 (0.23%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.23%) WebSphere
Applications
1 5 (1.14%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.23%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 3 (0.68%) Dynamics GP
1 3 (0.68%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.23%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 77 (17.50%) Azure
2 33 (7.50%) Azure Sentinel
3 23 (5.23%) AWS
4 22 (5.00%) Microsoft 365
5 14 (3.18%) Power Platform
6 6 (1.36%) Entra ID
6 6 (1.36%) IaaS
7 5 (1.14%) SaaS
8 4 (0.91%) Azure DevOps
8 4 (0.91%) GCP
8 4 (0.91%) PaaS
9 3 (0.68%) GitHub
9 3 (0.68%) Mimecast
10 2 (0.45%) AWS CloudTrail
10 2 (0.45%) Azure Stack
10 2 (0.45%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 2 (0.45%) Microsoft Purview
11 1 (0.23%) Amazon GuardDuty
11 1 (0.23%) AWS KMS
11 1 (0.23%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 58 (13.18%) Network Security
2 57 (12.95%) Firewall
3 24 (5.45%) Intrusion Detection
4 13 (2.95%) TCP/IP
5 7 (1.59%) DNS
6 5 (1.14%) Internet
7 4 (0.91%) LAN
7 4 (0.91%) tcpdump
7 4 (0.91%) Wireshark
8 3 (0.68%) Broadband
8 3 (0.68%) Cisco ISE
8 3 (0.68%) HTTP
8 3 (0.68%) SSL
8 3 (0.68%) VPN
8 3 (0.68%) WAN
9 2 (0.45%) DHCP
9 2 (0.45%) SD-WAN
9 2 (0.45%) VoIP
9 2 (0.45%) Wireless
10 1 (0.23%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (2.95%) Big Data
2 10 (2.27%) Power BI
3 9 (2.05%) Elasticsearch
4 3 (0.68%) Apache Hive
4 3 (0.68%) Hadoop
4 3 (0.68%) Tableau
5 2 (0.45%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
5 2 (0.45%) Azure SQL Database
5 2 (0.45%) Data Warehouse
5 2 (0.45%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.23%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 5 (1.14%) Git
1 5 (1.14%) JIRA
2 3 (0.68%) Burp Suite
2 3 (0.68%) GitLab
2 3 (0.68%) IDA Disassembler
2 3 (0.68%) Jenkins
2 3 (0.68%) Metasploit
2 3 (0.68%) Rational DOORS
3 2 (0.45%) Bitbucket
General
1 84 (19.09%) Analytical Skills
2 77 (17.50%) Social Skills
3 56 (12.73%) Finance
4 35 (7.95%) Public Sector
5 27 (6.14%) Banking
6 16 (3.64%) Manufacturing
7 11 (2.50%) Military
8 8 (1.82%) Telecoms
9 7 (1.59%) Financial Institution
9 7 (1.59%) Influencing Skills
10 6 (1.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 5 (1.14%) Law
11 5 (1.14%) Legal
12 3 (0.68%) Marketing
13 2 (0.45%) Documentation Skills
13 2 (0.45%) Electronics
13 2 (0.45%) Retail Banking
14 1 (0.23%) Back Office
14 1 (0.23%) Games
14 1 (0.23%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 161 (36.59%) Analyst
2 93 (21.14%) SOC Analyst
3 44 (10.00%) Architect
4 43 (9.77%) SOC Engineer
5 41 (9.32%) Senior
6 37 (8.41%) Security Analyst
7 33 (7.50%) Threat Intelligence Analyst
8 30 (6.82%) Security Engineer
9 28 (6.36%) Lead
10 24 (5.45%) Security Specialist
11 21 (4.77%) Security Architect
11 21 (4.77%) Security Manager
12 20 (4.55%) Cyber Threat Analyst
12 20 (4.55%) Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst
13 15 (3.41%) Operations Analyst
13 15 (3.41%) Security Operations Analyst
13 15 (3.41%) Senior Analyst
14 14 (3.18%) SOC Manager
15 13 (2.95%) Consultant
15 13 (2.95%) Cybersecurity Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (2.95%) Apache NiFi
2 9 (2.05%) Elastic Stack
3 5 (1.14%) CSS
4 4 (0.91%) AngularJS
4 4 (0.91%) HTML
4 4 (0.91%) LDAP
4 4 (0.91%) XML
4 4 (0.91%) YAML
5 3 (0.68%) JSON
5 3 (0.68%) OLE
5 3 (0.68%) SAML
5 3 (0.68%) SOAP
6 2 (0.45%) PySpark
6 2 (0.45%) Web Services
7 1 (0.23%) JSF
7 1 (0.23%) OAuth
7 1 (0.23%) OAuth2
7 1 (0.23%) Regular Expression
7 1 (0.23%) REST
7 1 (0.23%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 164 (37.27%) Security Operations Centre
2 82 (18.64%) Management Information System
3 76 (17.27%) Cyber Threat
4 51 (11.59%) Security Posture
5 49 (11.14%) CSOC
6 43 (9.77%) Cyber Defence
7 23 (5.23%) Cyber Kill Chain
8 21 (4.77%) Cyberattack
9 17 (3.86%) Operational Technology
10 15 (3.41%) Distributed Applications
11 13 (2.95%) Onboarding
12 11 (2.50%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
13 8 (1.82%) CESG
13 8 (1.82%) CMDB
14 5 (1.14%) Cloud Security Posture
15 4 (0.91%) Data Protection Act
15 4 (0.91%) PKI
16 3 (0.68%) Data Centre
16 3 (0.68%) Enterprise Software
16 3 (0.68%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 75 (17.05%) Windows
2 57 (12.95%) Linux
3 16 (3.64%) Unix
4 12 (2.73%) Android
4 12 (2.73%) Apple iOS
5 10 (2.27%) Windows Server
6 3 (0.68%) Kali Linux
7 1 (0.23%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.23%) Mac OS X
7 1 (0.23%) Oracle Linux
7 1 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.23%) Ubuntu
7 1 (0.23%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 271 (61.59%) Cybersecurity
2 206 (46.82%) SIEM
3 188 (42.73%) Incident Response
4 127 (28.86%) Information Security
5 105 (23.86%) Threat Intelligence
6 82 (18.64%) Cyber Threat Intelligence
7 80 (18.18%) Vulnerability Management
8 69 (15.68%) MITRE ATT&CK
9 64 (14.55%) Problem-Solving
10 63 (14.32%) Analytics
11 61 (13.86%) Use Case
12 51 (11.59%) Threat Detection
13 49 (11.14%) SOAR
14 41 (9.32%) Incident Management
15 39 (8.86%) Agile
15 39 (8.86%) Computer Science
15 39 (8.86%) Security Architecture
16 36 (8.18%) Continuous Improvement
17 35 (7.95%) Cloud Security
17 35 (7.95%) Penetration Testing
Programming Languages
1 33 (7.50%) PowerShell
2 25 (5.68%) Python
3 23 (5.23%) Kusto Query Language
4 12 (2.73%) JavaScript
5 5 (1.14%) Bash
5 5 (1.14%) Java
5 5 (1.14%) SQL
6 4 (0.91%) Perl
6 4 (0.91%) Search Processing Language
7 2 (0.45%) C
7 2 (0.45%) C++
7 2 (0.45%) Go
7 2 (0.45%) Ruby
7 2 (0.45%) Shell Script
8 1 (0.23%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 197 (44.77%) Security Cleared
2 122 (27.73%) DV Cleared
3 79 (17.95%) CISSP
4 75 (17.05%) SC Cleared
5 71 (16.14%) Degree
6 32 (7.27%) CISM
7 31 (7.05%) Computer Science Degree
8 28 (6.36%) CompTIA Security+
9 25 (5.68%) Microsoft Certification
9 25 (5.68%) SANS
10 23 (5.23%) CEH
11 17 (3.86%) Azure Certification
12 11 (2.50%) GIAC
13 9 (2.05%) CISA
14 8 (1.82%) CISMP
14 8 (1.82%) ISACA
14 8 (1.82%) ITIL Certification
14 8 (1.82%) SSCP
15 6 (1.36%) BPSS Clearance
15 6 (1.36%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 50 (11.36%) NIST
2 41 (9.32%) GDPR
3 26 (5.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 18 (4.09%) PCI DSS
5 17 (3.86%) NIST 800
6 16 (3.64%) NCSC
7 13 (2.95%) Actionable Recommendations
8 11 (2.50%) HIPAA
9 8 (1.82%) GRC
10 6 (1.36%) Cyber Essentials
11 5 (1.14%) Data Quality
12 4 (0.91%) QA
12 4 (0.91%) SLA
13 3 (0.68%) Disclosure Scotland
14 2 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 2 (0.45%) RMADS
System Software
1 21 (4.77%) Active Directory
2 6 (1.36%) Virtual Machines
3 4 (0.91%) Docker
3 4 (0.91%) Hyper-V
4 3 (0.68%) Snort
4 3 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.45%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 12 (2.73%) Kibana
2 11 (2.50%) Terraform
3 9 (2.05%) logstash
3 9 (2.05%) Nessus
4 8 (1.82%) CSIRT
4 8 (1.82%) Kubernetes
5 5 (1.14%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
5 5 (1.14%) SCCM
6 4 (0.91%) QRadar
6 4 (0.91%) Single Sign-On
7 3 (0.68%) Ansible
7 3 (0.68%) Microsoft Intune
8 2 (0.45%) CASB
8 2 (0.45%) Network Intrusion Detection System
9 1 (0.23%) FortiGate
9 1 (0.23%) Grafana
9 1 (0.23%) Prometheus
9 1 (0.23%) Puppet
9 1 (0.23%) RSA Archer
9 1 (0.23%) WSUS
Vendors
1 114 (25.91%) Microsoft
2 46 (10.45%) Splunk
3 29 (6.59%) LogRhythm
3 29 (6.59%) Qualys
4 19 (4.32%) Varonis
5 16 (3.64%) Forcepoint
6 15 (3.41%) ServiceNow
7 14 (3.18%) Darktrace
8 13 (2.95%) FireEye
8 13 (2.95%) Red Hat
9 10 (2.27%) Cisco
9 10 (2.27%) CrowdStrike
10 9 (2.05%) Palo Alto
11 7 (1.59%) Virgin Media
12 4 (0.91%) ArcSight
12 4 (0.91%) Google
12 4 (0.91%) VMware
13 3 (0.68%) Rapid7
13 3 (0.68%) Sage
13 3 (0.68%) Sun