SOC Engineer Contracts

Security Operations Centre Engineer
UK

The median Security Operations Centre Engineer daily rate in the UK is £615 according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months to 10 May 2024.

The first table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics including a comparison to same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
10 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 528 648 816
Rank change year-on-year +120 +168 -136
Contract jobs requiring a SOC Engineer 54 55 23
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.13% 0.095% 0.026%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.14% 0.10% 0.028%
Number of daily rates quoted 45 44 11
10th Percentile £515 £470 £425
25th Percentile £563 £622 £494
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £615 £688 £525
Median % change year-on-year -10.55% +30.95% +7.69%
75th Percentile £688 £730 £550
90th Percentile £700 £750 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £675 £525
% change year-on-year -11.11% +28.57% -12.50%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

The following table is for comparison with the above and includes summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 39,888 54,783 83,316
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.76% 94.63% 95.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,953 38,247 58,493
10th Percentile £280 £313 £313
25th Percentile £410 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £540 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% +2.86% +10.53%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -2.00% +5.26% +11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,674 1,534 2,048
10th Percentile £12.86 £14.25 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.30 £19.06 £15.75
Median hourly rate £37.34 £45.00 £23.91
Median % change year-on-year -17.02% +88.21% +6.27%
75th Percentile £61.30 £65.75 £49.25
90th Percentile £72.90 £76.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £42.50 £20.00
% change year-on-year -5.88% +112.50% +5.26%

SOC Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured SOC Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for SOC Engineer in the UK

SOC Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing SOC Engineer.

Daily rate trend for SOC Engineer in the UK

SOC Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SOC Engineer over the 6 months to 10 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for SOC Engineer in the UK

SOC Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing SOC Engineer.

Hourly rate trend for SOC Engineer in the UK

SOC Engineer
Top 10 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SOC Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 10 May 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 +90 48 £600 -12.73% 8
UK excluding London +56 34 £600 -11.11% 5
South West +29 22 £600 -17.24%
Work from Home +117 15 £600 -14.29% 4
London +94 14 £650 -7.14% 5
Midlands +27 6 £615 -10.55% 1
West Midlands +20 6 £615 -10.55%
South East +18 5 £590 +25.53%
North of England +22 1 £600 +33.33% 3
North West +14 1 £600 +33.33% 1

SOC Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 10 May 2024, SOC Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring SOC Engineer in the job title.

1 41 (75.93%) SIEM
2 36 (66.67%) Cybersecurity
2 36 (66.67%) Security Operations
3 31 (57.41%) Security Cleared
3 31 (57.41%) Incident Response
4 29 (53.70%) Security Operations Centre
5 20 (37.04%) Analytics
6 19 (35.19%) Degree
6 19 (35.19%) Microsoft
7 18 (33.33%) SC Cleared
8 17 (31.48%) Azure
8 17 (31.48%) DV Cleared
8 17 (31.48%) CISSP
9 16 (29.63%) SOAR
10 15 (27.78%) Security Posture
10 15 (27.78%) Splunk
10 15 (27.78%) Analytical Skills
10 15 (27.78%) Social Skills
11 13 (24.07%) Threat Detection
11 13 (24.07%) Cloud Security
12 11 (20.37%) Computer Science Degree
12 11 (20.37%) Problem-Solving
12 11 (20.37%) Computer Science
12 11 (20.37%) Firewall
13 10 (18.52%) Network Security
13 10 (18.52%) SANS
13 10 (18.52%) CompTIA Security+
14 8 (14.81%) Threat Intelligence
14 8 (14.81%) Time Management
14 8 (14.81%) AWS

SOC Engineer Skill Set
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 1 (1.85%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (1.85%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 17 (31.48%) Azure
2 8 (14.81%) AWS
2 8 (14.81%) Azure Sentinel
3 4 (7.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
3 4 (7.41%) AWS CloudTrail
3 4 (7.41%) Azure Monitor
4 1 (1.85%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 11 (20.37%) Firewall
2 10 (18.52%) Network Security
3 1 (1.85%) Internet
3 1 (1.85%) Intrusion Detection
3 1 (1.85%) TCP/IP
Development Applications
1 1 (1.85%) Atlassian Bamboo
1 1 (1.85%) Bitbucket
1 1 (1.85%) Jenkins
1 1 (1.85%) JIRA
General
1 15 (27.78%) Analytical Skills
1 15 (27.78%) Social Skills
2 7 (12.96%) Public Sector
3 1 (1.85%) Finance
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (5.56%) Regular Expression
2 1 (1.85%) .NET
2 1 (1.85%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 29 (53.70%) Security Operations Centre
2 15 (27.78%) Security Posture
3 8 (14.81%) CSOC
4 7 (12.96%) Management Information System
5 6 (11.11%) Cloud Native
6 5 (9.26%) Cyber Threat
7 4 (7.41%) Public Cloud
8 3 (5.56%) Analytical Mindset
9 2 (3.70%) Cyber Kill Chain
9 2 (3.70%) Taxonomies
10 1 (1.85%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 3 (5.56%) Linux
2 2 (3.70%) Windows
3 1 (1.85%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 41 (75.93%) SIEM
2 36 (66.67%) Cybersecurity
2 36 (66.67%) Security Operations
3 31 (57.41%) Incident Response
4 20 (37.04%) Analytics
5 16 (29.63%) SOAR
6 13 (24.07%) Cloud Security
6 13 (24.07%) Threat Detection
7 11 (20.37%) Computer Science
7 11 (20.37%) Problem-Solving
8 8 (14.81%) Threat Intelligence
8 8 (14.81%) Time Management
8 8 (14.81%) Use Case
9 7 (12.96%) Continuous Improvement
9 7 (12.96%) Cyber Threat Intelligence
9 7 (12.96%) Data Analytics
9 7 (12.96%) Identity Access Management
10 6 (11.11%) Root Cause Analysis
11 5 (9.26%) Service Delivery
11 5 (9.26%) Vulnerability Assessment
Programming Languages
1 8 (14.81%) Kusto Query Language
2 5 (9.26%) PowerShell
2 5 (9.26%) Python
3 4 (7.41%) JavaScript
4 1 (1.85%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 31 (57.41%) Security Cleared
2 19 (35.19%) Degree
3 18 (33.33%) SC Cleared
4 17 (31.48%) CISSP
4 17 (31.48%) DV Cleared
5 11 (20.37%) Computer Science Degree
6 10 (18.52%) CompTIA Security+
6 10 (18.52%) SANS
7 8 (14.81%) Microsoft Certification
8 7 (12.96%) Azure Certification
9 6 (11.11%) GIAC
10 4 (7.41%) CEH
11 2 (3.70%) BC Cleared
11 2 (3.70%) CASP
11 2 (3.70%) CREST Certified
11 2 (3.70%) GCED
11 2 (3.70%) GSEC
12 1 (1.85%) BPSS Clearance
12 1 (1.85%) CCNP
12 1 (1.85%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (7.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 4 (7.41%) NCSC
1 4 (7.41%) NIST
Systems Management
1 4 (7.41%) CSIRT
1 4 (7.41%) Trend Micro Deep Security
2 1 (1.85%) Ansible
2 1 (1.85%) PowerCLI
Vendors
1 19 (35.19%) Microsoft
2 15 (27.78%) Splunk
3 6 (11.11%) Palo Alto
4 4 (7.41%) LogRhythm
4 4 (7.41%) TippingPoint
5 3 (5.56%) Trend Micro
6 2 (3.70%) Citrix
7 1 (1.85%) Atlassian
7 1 (1.85%) Carbon Black
7 1 (1.85%) Dell
7 1 (1.85%) HP
7 1 (1.85%) Qualys
7 1 (1.85%) Veracode