Security Engineer Contract Job Trends

Security Engineer
UK

The median Security Engineer daily rate in the UK is £538, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 10 July 2026.

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

6 months to
10 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 249 254 242
Rank change year-on-year +5 -12 -32
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 552 342 419
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.05% 1.06% 0.97%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.13% 1.15% 1.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 355 216 314
10th Percentile £413 £375 £413
25th Percentile £473 £412 £433
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £525 £569
Median % change year-on-year +2.38% -7.69% +0.66%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £686 £731 £746
UK excluding London median daily rate £540 £500 £555
% change year-on-year +8.00% -9.91% +0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 9 2
10th Percentile - £63.50 £64.25
25th Percentile £73.75 £82.50 £66.88
Median hourly rate £79.70 £85.00 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year -6.24% +17.24% -13.07%
75th Percentile £85.05 £91.50 £76.88
90th Percentile £85.40 - £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £84.70 £85.00 £72.50
% change year-on-year -0.35% +17.24% -13.07%

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 48,674 29,733 40,149
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.49% 91.88% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,515 18,978 25,840
10th Percentile £325 £288 £288
25th Percentile £418 £400 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £522 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.40% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,263 1,368 2,770
10th Percentile £15.93 £13.75 £12.88
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £16.79
Median hourly rate £43.50 £26.39 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +64.87% -29.64% -14.05%
75th Percentile £67.50 £56.06 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.40 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% +0.50%

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 10 July 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 10 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Security Engineer in the UK

Security Engineer
Top 16 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 10 July 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 +14 504 £525 - 325
UK excluding London -28 260 £540 +8.00% 256
London +14 251 £525 -4.55% 105
Work from Home +14 207 £540 +8.00% 82
North of England -13 126 £560 +11.94% 66
North West +12 103 £555 +10.89% 41
Midlands -9 62 £500 - 36
West Midlands -22 59 £500 -8.05% 18
South East -45 45 £500 +11.11% 87
South West -25 22 £525 +7.69% 21
Yorkshire -33 22 £600 +14.29% 20
Scotland +2 21 £618 +12.27% 14
East of England -40 19 £525 +7.69% 33
East Midlands -12 3 £406 -2.11% 18
Wales -13 2 £733 +46.50%
North East -42 1 - - 5

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

For the 6 months to 10 July 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.

1 188 (34.06%) Azure
2 170 (30.80%) Cybersecurity
3 159 (28.80%) Cloud Security
4 152 (27.54%) AWS
5 128 (23.19%) Python
6 123 (22.28%) Firewall
6 123 (22.28%) SIEM
7 119 (21.56%) Microsoft
8 118 (21.38%) Network Security
9 105 (19.02%) CI/CD
10 94 (17.03%) Cisco
11 93 (16.85%) Security Cleared
12 86 (15.58%) PowerShell
13 82 (14.86%) Incident Response
14 78 (14.13%) SC Cleared
15 77 (13.95%) VPN
16 71 (12.86%) Security Architecture
16 71 (12.86%) Security Operations
17 70 (12.68%) CISSP
18 69 (12.50%) Terraform
19 68 (12.32%) GCP
20 67 (12.14%) NIST
21 64 (11.59%) Vulnerability Management
22 63 (11.41%) DNS
22 63 (11.41%) Threat Modelling
23 62 (11.23%) Data Loss Prevention
24 61 (11.05%) DevOps
24 61 (11.05%) DevSecOps
24 61 (11.05%) F5
25 59 (10.69%) Windows

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 21 (3.80%) Confluence
2 3 (0.54%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 3 (0.54%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.18%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 6 (1.09%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.36%) Maximo
2 2 (0.36%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.18%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 188 (34.06%) Azure
2 152 (27.54%) AWS
3 68 (12.32%) GCP
4 50 (9.06%) Microsoft Purview
5 45 (8.15%) Microsoft 365
6 31 (5.62%) Entra ID
7 23 (4.17%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 22 (3.99%) SaaS
9 21 (3.80%) AWS CloudFormation
10 20 (3.62%) GitHub
11 19 (3.44%) Amazon GuardDuty
11 19 (3.44%) Azure Sentinel
12 14 (2.54%) AWS CloudTrail
12 14 (2.54%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 14 (2.54%) Mimecast
13 12 (2.17%) Akamai
14 10 (1.81%) Azure DevOps
14 10 (1.81%) OpenShift
14 10 (1.81%) Serverless
15 9 (1.63%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 123 (22.28%) Firewall
2 118 (21.38%) Network Security
3 77 (13.95%) VPN
4 63 (11.41%) DNS
5 51 (9.24%) BGP
6 37 (6.70%) DMZ
7 35 (6.34%) Multicast
8 25 (4.53%) SSL
8 25 (4.53%) TCP/IP
8 25 (4.53%) WAN
9 21 (3.80%) SD-WAN
10 18 (3.26%) HTTP
11 14 (2.54%) Internet
12 13 (2.36%) Cisco ISE
13 12 (2.17%) TACACS
14 11 (1.99%) VLAN
15 10 (1.81%) Cisco ASA
15 10 (1.81%) MPLS
15 10 (1.81%) Wireless
16 9 (1.63%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (1.45%) Power BI
2 6 (1.09%) SQL Server
3 5 (0.91%) Data Lake
3 5 (0.91%) PostgreSQL
4 4 (0.72%) MongoDB
5 3 (0.54%) Amazon RDS
5 3 (0.54%) Big Data
6 2 (0.36%) Apache Cassandra
6 2 (0.36%) Elasticsearch
6 2 (0.36%) Metadata
6 2 (0.36%) NoSQL
6 2 (0.36%) RDBMS
6 2 (0.36%) Relational Database
7 1 (0.18%) Amazon Athena
7 1 (0.18%) Amazon Redshift
7 1 (0.18%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.18%) Db2
7 1 (0.18%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 25 (4.53%) JIRA
2 12 (2.17%) GitLab
3 9 (1.63%) Jenkins
4 8 (1.45%) Git
5 7 (1.27%) Snyk
6 4 (0.72%) Burp Suite
7 2 (0.36%) Browser DevTools
7 2 (0.36%) Claude Code
7 2 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.18%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 1 (0.18%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.18%) Metasploit
8 1 (0.18%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.18%) sqlmap
8 1 (0.18%) TruffleHog
General
1 104 (18.84%) Social Skills
2 85 (15.40%) Finance
3 47 (8.51%) Analytical Skills
4 40 (7.25%) Banking
5 29 (5.25%) Public Sector
6 23 (4.17%) Investment Banking
7 17 (3.08%) Documentation Skills
8 7 (1.27%) Legal
8 7 (1.27%) Marketing
8 7 (1.27%) Presentation Skills
9 5 (0.91%) Telecoms
10 4 (0.72%) Health Technology
10 4 (0.72%) Manufacturing
11 3 (0.54%) Aerospace
11 3 (0.54%) Military
11 3 (0.54%) Retail
12 2 (0.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 2 (0.36%) Law
13 1 (0.18%) Cyber-Physical System
13 1 (0.18%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (1.99%) SAML
2 9 (1.63%) LDAP
3 8 (1.45%) SLSA
4 7 (1.27%) Elastic Stack
4 7 (1.27%) LangChain
4 7 (1.27%) REST
5 6 (1.09%) PyTorch
5 6 (1.09%) scikit-learn
6 5 (0.91%) 802.1X
6 5 (0.91%) Microsoft Graph
7 4 (0.72%) .NET
7 4 (0.72%) OAuth
8 3 (0.54%) AWS CDK
9 2 (0.36%) GraphQL
9 2 (0.36%) JSON
9 2 (0.36%) NestJS
9 2 (0.36%) SailPoint
9 2 (0.36%) Web Services
10 1 (0.18%) JCE
10 1 (0.18%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 85 (15.40%) Security Posture
2 59 (10.69%) Cloud Native
3 34 (6.16%) Management Information System
4 29 (5.25%) Cloud Security Posture
5 21 (3.80%) Data Centre
6 17 (3.08%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 17 (3.08%) Operational Technology
7 14 (2.54%) AI Agents
8 13 (2.36%) Data Protection Act
8 13 (2.36%) Onboarding
9 12 (2.17%) Cyber Threat
9 12 (2.17%) Hybrid Cloud
10 10 (1.81%) Public Cloud
11 9 (1.63%) Enterprise Cloud
11 9 (1.63%) PKI
12 8 (1.45%) Security Operations Centre
13 6 (1.09%) Cyber Defence
13 6 (1.09%) Linux Command Line
13 6 (1.09%) SCADA
14 4 (0.72%) BYOD
Operating Systems
1 59 (10.69%) Windows
2 52 (9.42%) Linux
3 12 (2.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 12 (2.17%) Windows Server
4 10 (1.81%) Mac OS
5 7 (1.27%) Apple iOS
6 6 (1.09%) Ubuntu
6 6 (1.09%) Windows 10
7 3 (0.54%) Unix
8 2 (0.36%) Android
8 2 (0.36%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 170 (30.80%) Cybersecurity
2 159 (28.80%) Cloud Security
3 123 (22.28%) SIEM
4 105 (19.02%) CI/CD
5 82 (14.86%) Incident Response
6 71 (12.86%) Security Architecture
6 71 (12.86%) Security Operations
7 64 (11.59%) Vulnerability Management
8 63 (11.41%) Threat Modelling
9 62 (11.23%) Data Loss Prevention
10 61 (11.05%) DevOps
10 61 (11.05%) DevSecOps
11 57 (10.33%) Load Balancing
12 53 (9.60%) Information Security
13 50 (9.06%) Infrastructure as Code
14 47 (8.51%) Agile
15 46 (8.33%) Validation
15 46 (8.33%) Zero Trust
16 45 (8.15%) Continuous Improvement
17 43 (7.79%) Data Protection
Programming Languages
1 128 (23.19%) Python
2 86 (15.58%) PowerShell
3 49 (8.88%) Bash
4 20 (3.62%) Java
5 13 (2.36%) Kusto Query Language
6 9 (1.63%) SQL
7 7 (1.27%) Bicep
8 5 (0.91%) PHP
8 5 (0.91%) Search Processing Language
9 3 (0.54%) Perl
9 3 (0.54%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.36%) Go
10 2 (0.36%) JavaScript
10 2 (0.36%) Ruby
10 2 (0.36%) TypeScript
11 1 (0.18%) C
11 1 (0.18%) C#
11 1 (0.18%) Korn
Qualifications
1 93 (16.85%) Security Cleared
2 78 (14.13%) SC Cleared
3 70 (12.68%) CISSP
4 47 (8.51%) Degree
5 37 (6.70%) Cisco Certification
6 31 (5.62%) CISM
7 26 (4.71%) AWS Certification
8 22 (3.99%) DV Cleared
9 19 (3.44%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 18 (3.26%) Azure Certification
11 17 (3.08%) CCNP
12 13 (2.36%) CEH
12 13 (2.36%) GIAC
13 12 (2.17%) CompTIA Security+
14 11 (1.99%) Computer Science Degree
14 11 (1.99%) Microsoft Certification
15 8 (1.45%) CCIE
15 8 (1.45%) CCSP
15 8 (1.45%) OSCP
16 6 (1.09%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 67 (12.14%) NIST
2 58 (10.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 31 (5.62%) GDPR
4 25 (4.53%) Cyber Essentials
5 21 (3.80%) PCI DSS
6 15 (2.72%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 10 (1.81%) NCSC
8 8 (1.45%) HIPAA
8 8 (1.45%) SLA
9 6 (1.09%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 6 (1.09%) NIST 800
10 5 (0.91%) GRC
10 5 (0.91%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 4 (0.72%) Government Security Classifications
11 4 (0.72%) SOC 2
12 3 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
12 3 (0.54%) ISA99
12 3 (0.54%) JSP 440
13 2 (0.36%) COBIT
13 2 (0.36%) RMADS
System Software
1 30 (5.43%) Active Directory
2 26 (4.71%) Docker
3 12 (2.17%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (1.45%) VMware ESXi
5 6 (1.09%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (1.09%) VMware NSX
5 6 (1.09%) vSphere
6 3 (0.54%) Virtual Servers
7 2 (0.36%) Squid
8 1 (0.18%) Firmware
8 1 (0.18%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.18%) RACF
Systems Management
1 69 (12.50%) Terraform
2 54 (9.78%) Kubernetes
3 19 (3.44%) Ansible
4 12 (2.17%) Single Sign-On
5 11 (1.99%) FortiGate
5 11 (1.99%) Microsoft Intune
6 10 (1.81%) Progress Chef
7 7 (1.27%) vCenter Server
8 6 (1.09%) CASB
9 4 (0.72%) Nessus
10 3 (0.54%) Grafana
10 3 (0.54%) Kibana
10 3 (0.54%) SCOM
11 2 (0.36%) logstash
11 2 (0.36%) QRadar
12 1 (0.18%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 1 (0.18%) AirWatch
12 1 (0.18%) CSIRT
12 1 (0.18%) Host Intrusion Detection System
12 1 (0.18%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 119 (21.56%) Microsoft
2 94 (17.03%) Cisco
3 61 (11.05%) F5
4 44 (7.97%) Palo Alto
5 40 (7.25%) CrowdStrike
6 38 (6.88%) Fortinet
7 31 (5.62%) Zscaler
8 26 (4.71%) Google
9 25 (4.53%) CyberArk
10 23 (4.17%) CheckPoint
10 23 (4.17%) ServiceNow
11 21 (3.80%) Splunk
12 18 (3.26%) VMware
13 16 (2.90%) Tenable
14 15 (2.72%) Netskope
15 12 (2.17%) BeyondTrust
16 11 (1.99%) Blue Coat
16 11 (1.99%) Red Hat
17 10 (1.81%) Qualys
18 9 (1.63%) Oracle