Security Engineer Contract Job Trends

Security Engineer
UK

The median Security Engineer daily rate in the UK is £537, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 January 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 234 249 276
Rank change year-on-year +15 +27 -14
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 449 334 364
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.21% 1.01% 0.85%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.33% 1.09% 0.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 257 213 235
10th Percentile £380 £400 £413
25th Percentile £456 £450 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £537 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year -2.36% -8.33% +6.19%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £700
90th Percentile £702 £700 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £525 £600
% change year-on-year - -12.50% +17.07%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 3 26
10th Percentile - £42.00 £61.63
25th Percentile - £43.13 £82.48
Median hourly rate £85.40 £45.00 £83.40
Median % change year-on-year +89.78% -46.04% +43.79%
75th Percentile £91.50 £61.68 -
90th Percentile - £71.69 £83.41
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.40 £73.31 £83.40
% change year-on-year +16.49% -12.10% +58.86%

All Contract IT Job Roles
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides 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 33,835 30,753 40,099
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.20% 92.71% 93.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,431 18,857 26,859
10th Percentile £300 £298 £281
25th Percentile £405 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £485 £500
% change year-on-year -2.06% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,964 949 1,554
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.50 £14.43
25th Percentile £18.24 £21.05 £19.25
Median hourly rate £26.00 £32.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% -27.78% +41.93%
75th Percentile £58.75 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.50 £73.75 £77.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.52 £46.18
% change year-on-year -20.21% -31.75% +80.14%

Security Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Security Engineer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Security Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Security Engineer
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Security Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Security Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Security Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Security Engineer over the 6 months to 1 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Security Engineer in the UK

Security Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Security Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Security Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Security Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Security Engineer over the 6 months to 1 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Security Engineer in the UK

Security Engineer
Top 17 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Security Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 1 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England +20 390 £538 -2.27% 336
London +27 209 £548 -4.78% 108
UK excluding London 0 183 £525 - 276
Work from Home +12 127 £525 -0.71% 116
North of England -43 48 £575 +10.31% 65
South East -12 41 £475 -9.52% 65
North West -16 32 £588 +6.82% 41
Midlands -27 27 £488 +15.38% 42
South West +11 26 £522 -16.52% 43
West Midlands -25 23 £543 +28.40% 28
Scotland +19 22 £525 -6.67% 23
East of England -4 21 £500 +81.82% 27
Yorkshire -52 13 £570 +42.50% 15
Northern Ireland -2 5 - - 5
East Midlands - 4 £413 - 14
North East -6 3 £400 - 9
Wales -1 2 £600 +34.83% 11

Security Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 1 January 2026, Security Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Security Engineer in the job title.

1 169 (37.64%) Azure
1 169 (37.64%) Cybersecurity
2 132 (29.40%) SIEM
3 122 (27.17%) AWS
3 122 (27.17%) Microsoft
4 119 (26.50%) Firewall
5 108 (24.05%) Cloud Security
6 101 (22.49%) Security Cleared
7 95 (21.16%) Incident Response
8 94 (20.94%) Network Security
9 86 (19.15%) Python
10 80 (17.82%) SC Cleared
11 79 (17.59%) NIST
12 75 (16.70%) Security Operations
13 72 (16.04%) PowerShell
14 71 (15.81%) Windows
15 68 (15.14%) Infrastructure as Code
16 67 (14.92%) CI/CD
17 64 (14.25%) CISSP
17 64 (14.25%) Linux
18 58 (12.92%) Active Directory
19 57 (12.69%) GCP
20 55 (12.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
21 54 (12.03%) DevOps
22 53 (11.80%) Microsoft 365
23 51 (11.36%) Entra ID
24 48 (10.69%) Degree
24 48 (10.69%) Problem-Solving
25 47 (10.47%) Vulnerability Management
26 46 (10.24%) Azure Sentinel

Security Engineer Skill Set
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 11 (2.45%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (1.11%) SharePoint
3 4 (0.89%) Confluence
4 2 (0.45%) Apache
4 2 (0.45%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.22%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 5 (1.11%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.45%) NetSuite
2 1 (0.22%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 169 (37.64%) Azure
2 122 (27.17%) AWS
3 57 (12.69%) GCP
4 53 (11.80%) Microsoft 365
5 51 (11.36%) Entra ID
6 46 (10.24%) Azure Sentinel
7 34 (7.57%) Microsoft Purview
8 26 (5.79%) GitHub
9 17 (3.79%) OpenShift
10 16 (3.56%) AWS CloudFormation
11 15 (3.34%) Azure Monitor
12 11 (2.45%) GitHub Actions
13 10 (2.23%) Azure Key Vault
13 10 (2.23%) Mimecast
13 10 (2.23%) SaaS
14 9 (2.00%) Amazon GuardDuty
15 7 (1.56%) Amazon EKS
15 7 (1.56%) Azure DevOps
15 7 (1.56%) Serverless
16 6 (1.34%) AWS CloudTrail
Communications & Networking
1 119 (26.50%) Firewall
2 94 (20.94%) Network Security
3 36 (8.02%) VPN
4 35 (7.80%) DNS
5 21 (4.68%) WAN
6 16 (3.56%) SSL
6 16 (3.56%) TCP/IP
6 16 (3.56%) Wireless
7 13 (2.90%) BGP
8 11 (2.45%) Intrusion Detection
9 10 (2.23%) IPsec
9 10 (2.23%) OSPF
10 8 (1.78%) Cisco IPT
10 8 (1.78%) DMVPN
11 7 (1.56%) DHCP
11 7 (1.56%) Wi-Fi
12 5 (1.11%) Cisco ASA
12 5 (1.11%) Internet
12 5 (1.11%) SD-WAN
13 4 (0.89%) DMARC
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (2.45%) Data Lake
2 9 (2.00%) BigQuery
3 7 (1.56%) Oracle Database
4 5 (1.11%) Elasticsearch
5 4 (0.89%) Power BI
6 3 (0.67%) Amazon Athena
6 3 (0.67%) Big Data
7 2 (0.45%) Amazon RDS
7 2 (0.45%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.45%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.45%) Mixpanel
7 2 (0.45%) OLAP
7 2 (0.45%) OLTP
8 1 (0.22%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.22%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 15 (3.34%) GitLab
2 10 (2.23%) JIRA
3 7 (1.56%) Jenkins
3 7 (1.56%) SonarQube
4 6 (1.34%) ClearCase
5 5 (1.11%) Snyk
6 4 (0.89%) Bitbucket
7 3 (0.67%) Artifactory
8 2 (0.45%) Git
9 1 (0.22%) Travis CI
General
1 113 (25.17%) Social Skills
2 59 (13.14%) Finance
3 42 (9.35%) Public Sector
4 36 (8.02%) Analytical Skills
5 15 (3.34%) Documentation Skills
6 14 (3.12%) Banking
7 13 (2.90%) Military
8 11 (2.45%) Telecoms
9 10 (2.23%) Legal
10 8 (1.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 6 (1.34%) Spanish Language
12 5 (1.11%) Financial Institution
12 5 (1.11%) Manufacturing
13 4 (0.89%) Investment Banking
13 4 (0.89%) Organisational Skills
13 4 (0.89%) Pharmaceutical
14 2 (0.45%) Aerospace
14 2 (0.45%) Cyber-Physical System
14 2 (0.45%) Local Government
14 2 (0.45%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (4.45%) REST
2 11 (2.45%) Elastic Stack
3 10 (2.23%) SAML
4 9 (2.00%) 802.1X
5 7 (1.56%) JSON
5 7 (1.56%) Node.js
5 7 (1.56%) OAuth
5 7 (1.56%) SailPoint
6 6 (1.34%) OpenID
7 5 (1.11%) Kafka
7 5 (1.11%) NestJS
8 4 (0.89%) Microsoft Graph
8 4 (0.89%) Regular Expression
8 4 (0.89%) SOAP
9 3 (0.67%) LDAP
9 3 (0.67%) Smart Contracts
9 3 (0.67%) YAML
10 2 (0.45%) ADO
10 2 (0.45%) ARM Templates
10 2 (0.45%) gRPC
Miscellaneous
1 52 (11.58%) Security Posture
2 27 (6.01%) Data Centre
3 24 (5.35%) Onboarding
4 23 (5.12%) Management Information System
5 20 (4.45%) Cloud Native
6 13 (2.90%) Cyber Threat
6 13 (2.90%) Data Protection Act
7 10 (2.23%) Cyber Defence
7 10 (2.23%) Operational Technology
8 8 (1.78%) Cloud Security Posture
9 7 (1.56%) Hybrid Cloud
9 7 (1.56%) Security Operations Centre
10 6 (1.34%) BYOD
10 6 (1.34%) Cyber Kill Chain
10 6 (1.34%) Cyber Security Posture
11 5 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
11 5 (1.11%) Life Science
11 5 (1.11%) Mobile App
11 5 (1.11%) YARA
12 4 (0.89%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 71 (15.81%) Windows
2 64 (14.25%) Linux
3 14 (3.12%) Windows Server
4 11 (2.45%) Mac OS
5 8 (1.78%) Unix
6 6 (1.34%) Android
7 5 (1.11%) Apple iOS
8 3 (0.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 3 (0.67%) VMS
9 2 (0.45%) Ubuntu
9 2 (0.45%) Windows 10
10 1 (0.22%) CentOS
10 1 (0.22%) Rocky
10 1 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 169 (37.64%) Cybersecurity
2 132 (29.40%) SIEM
3 108 (24.05%) Cloud Security
4 95 (21.16%) Incident Response
5 75 (16.70%) Security Operations
6 68 (15.14%) Infrastructure as Code
7 67 (14.92%) CI/CD
8 54 (12.03%) DevOps
9 48 (10.69%) Problem-Solving
10 47 (10.47%) Vulnerability Management
11 45 (10.02%) Threat Detection
12 43 (9.58%) Threat Modelling
13 42 (9.35%) DevSecOps
13 42 (9.35%) SOAR
14 39 (8.69%) Security Monitoring
15 38 (8.46%) Information Security
16 37 (8.24%) Analytics
17 34 (7.57%) Continuous Improvement
17 34 (7.57%) Vulnerability Scanning
18 33 (7.35%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 86 (19.15%) Python
2 72 (16.04%) PowerShell
3 32 (7.13%) Kusto Query Language
4 25 (5.57%) Bash
5 16 (3.56%) Java
6 12 (2.67%) SQL
7 6 (1.34%) Bicep
7 6 (1.34%) C
8 5 (1.11%) JavaScript
8 5 (1.11%) Shell Script
9 4 (0.89%) BeanShell
9 4 (0.89%) Kotlin
10 3 (0.67%) C#
10 3 (0.67%) C++
10 3 (0.67%) Perl
10 3 (0.67%) Rust
11 2 (0.45%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.22%) Go
12 1 (0.22%) Scala
12 1 (0.22%) Swift
Qualifications
1 101 (22.49%) Security Cleared
2 80 (17.82%) SC Cleared
3 64 (14.25%) CISSP
4 48 (10.69%) Degree
5 35 (7.80%) CISM
6 26 (5.79%) Cisco Certification
7 23 (5.12%) DV Cleared
8 18 (4.01%) Azure Certification
9 16 (3.56%) CompTIA Security+
10 15 (3.34%) CEH
11 13 (2.90%) CCNP
12 11 (2.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 11 (2.45%) AWS Certification
13 10 (2.23%) Microsoft Certification
14 9 (2.00%) SANS
15 7 (1.56%) GIAC
16 6 (1.34%) CCSP
16 6 (1.34%) CompTIA CySA+
16 6 (1.34%) Network+ Certification
16 6 (1.34%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 79 (17.59%) NIST
2 55 (12.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 29 (6.46%) GDPR
4 20 (4.45%) NCSC
5 14 (3.12%) NIST 800
6 12 (2.67%) Cyber Essentials
7 11 (2.45%) HIPAA
7 11 (2.45%) JSP 440
8 9 (2.00%) GRC
9 6 (1.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 6 (1.34%) PCI DSS
10 5 (1.11%) SOC 2
11 4 (0.89%) RMADS
12 3 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 3 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 2 (0.45%) Data Quality
13 2 (0.45%) EU AI Act
13 2 (0.45%) GxP
14 1 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 1 (0.22%) SLA
System Software
1 58 (12.92%) Active Directory
2 17 (3.79%) Virtual Machines
3 13 (2.90%) Docker
4 11 (2.45%) Firmware
5 7 (1.56%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.67%) VMware Infrastructure
7 2 (0.45%) Snort
8 1 (0.22%) GPFS
8 1 (0.22%) Lustre
8 1 (0.22%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 1 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
8 1 (0.22%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 45 (10.02%) Terraform
2 31 (6.90%) Kubernetes
3 20 (4.45%) SCCM
4 18 (4.01%) Microsoft Intune
5 13 (2.90%) Fluentd
6 12 (2.67%) Single Sign-On
7 10 (2.23%) Ansible
7 10 (2.23%) CASB
8 7 (1.56%) logstash
8 7 (1.56%) WSUS
9 6 (1.34%) Kibana
9 6 (1.34%) Nessus
9 6 (1.34%) SCOrch
10 4 (0.89%) CSIRT
11 3 (0.67%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 3 (0.67%) Argo
11 3 (0.67%) FortiGate
11 3 (0.67%) Icinga
11 3 (0.67%) Progress Chef
11 3 (0.67%) QRadar
Vendors
1 122 (27.17%) Microsoft
2 46 (10.24%) Cisco
2 46 (10.24%) Splunk
3 36 (8.02%) Palo Alto
4 29 (6.46%) CrowdStrike
5 27 (6.01%) Tenable
6 26 (5.79%) F5
7 22 (4.90%) CheckPoint
8 20 (4.45%) Google
9 19 (4.23%) Fortinet
9 19 (4.23%) Juniper
10 16 (3.56%) Qualys
11 13 (2.90%) Cribl.io
11 13 (2.90%) ServiceNow
12 11 (2.45%) Zscaler
13 10 (2.23%) Oracle
14 9 (2.00%) Blue Coat
14 9 (2.00%) Forcepoint
15 8 (1.78%) CyberArk
16 6 (1.34%) NetApp