Security Engineer Contract Job Trends

Security Engineer
UK

The median Security Engineer daily rate in the UK is £535, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 21 December 2025.

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

6 months to
21 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 221 237 268
Rank change year-on-year +16 +31 +5
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 459 351 382
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.25% 1.03% 0.87%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.37% 1.11% 0.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 275 226 245
10th Percentile £380 £400 £450
25th Percentile £425 £450 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year -2.79% -8.33% +6.67%
75th Percentile £628 £625 £700
90th Percentile £703 £700 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £525 £600
% change year-on-year - -12.50% +15.72%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 3 26
10th Percentile £83.74 £42.00 £68.26
25th Percentile £85.40 £43.13 -
Median hourly rate £86.45 £45.00 £83.40
Median % change year-on-year +92.11% -46.04% +43.79%
75th Percentile £91.13 £61.68 -
90th Percentile £91.50 £71.69 £83.41
UK excluding London median hourly rate £86.45 £73.31 £83.40
% change year-on-year +17.92% -12.10% +58.86%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 33,430 31,506 40,926
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.01% 92.78% 93.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,135 19,373 27,542
10th Percentile £291 £300 £285
25th Percentile £404 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £640
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,981 981 1,444
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.53 £15.04
25th Percentile £18.00 £21.05 £19.11
Median hourly rate £25.15 £33.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.79% -26.67% +50.00%
75th Percentile £57.50 £62.56 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.71 £72.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £45.88
% change year-on-year -22.62% -29.16% +83.52%

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 21 December 2025.

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 21 December 2025.

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 21 December 2025. 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 +22 404 £538 -2.27% 189
London +36 227 £543 -5.65% 52
UK excluding London +16 180 £525 - 176
Work from Home +5 128 £525 -2.87% 78
North of England -26 49 £575 +9.52% 36
South East -25 36 £500 -4.76% 60
North West -19 33 £606 +10.18% 24
South West +6 26 £522 -18.16% 29
Midlands -26 26 £475 +12.43% 21
East of England -6 24 £500 +81.82% 17
West Midlands -25 21 £543 +28.40% 15
Scotland +12 19 £525 -8.70% 9
Yorkshire -44 13 £570 +42.50% 9
Northern Ireland -4 5 - - 1
East Midlands - 5 £415 - 6
North East -3 3 £400 - 3
Wales -1 2 £600 +34.83% 9

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

For the 6 months to 21 December 2025, 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.

1 173 (37.69%) Cybersecurity
2 172 (37.47%) Azure
3 133 (28.98%) SIEM
4 131 (28.54%) AWS
4 131 (28.54%) Firewall
5 120 (26.14%) Microsoft
6 118 (25.71%) Cloud Security
7 102 (22.22%) Network Security
8 101 (22.00%) Security Cleared
9 100 (21.79%) Incident Response
10 94 (20.48%) Python
11 87 (18.95%) NIST
12 80 (17.43%) SC Cleared
12 80 (17.43%) Security Operations
13 75 (16.34%) PowerShell
14 73 (15.90%) CI/CD
14 73 (15.90%) Infrastructure as Code
15 72 (15.69%) Windows
16 69 (15.03%) GCP
17 68 (14.81%) Linux
18 65 (14.16%) CISSP
19 61 (13.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
20 59 (12.85%) Active Directory
21 55 (11.98%) DevOps
22 53 (11.55%) Microsoft 365
23 50 (10.89%) Azure Sentinel
23 50 (10.89%) Degree
24 49 (10.68%) Cisco
24 49 (10.68%) Entra ID
25 48 (10.46%) Vulnerability Management

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 12 (2.61%) Microsoft Exchange
1 12 (2.61%) SharePoint
2 5 (1.09%) Confluence
3 2 (0.44%) Apache
3 2 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.44%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 5 (1.09%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.44%) NetSuite
2 1 (0.22%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 172 (37.47%) Azure
2 131 (28.54%) AWS
3 69 (15.03%) GCP
4 53 (11.55%) Microsoft 365
5 50 (10.89%) Azure Sentinel
6 49 (10.68%) Entra ID
7 33 (7.19%) Microsoft Purview
8 30 (6.54%) GitHub
9 18 (3.92%) AWS CloudFormation
10 17 (3.70%) OpenShift
11 15 (3.27%) Azure Monitor
12 12 (2.61%) Amazon GuardDuty
12 12 (2.61%) GitHub Actions
13 11 (2.40%) SaaS
14 8 (1.74%) Amazon EKS
14 8 (1.74%) Mimecast
15 7 (1.53%) AWS CloudTrail
15 7 (1.53%) Azure DevOps
15 7 (1.53%) Azure Logic Apps
15 7 (1.53%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 131 (28.54%) Firewall
2 102 (22.22%) Network Security
3 39 (8.50%) VPN
4 38 (8.28%) DNS
5 25 (5.45%) WAN
6 20 (4.36%) SSL
7 19 (4.14%) Wireless
8 16 (3.49%) TCP/IP
9 13 (2.83%) BGP
9 13 (2.83%) Intrusion Detection
10 12 (2.61%) OSPF
11 11 (2.40%) DHCP
12 10 (2.18%) DMVPN
12 10 (2.18%) IPsec
13 8 (1.74%) Cisco IPT
13 8 (1.74%) SD-WAN
14 7 (1.53%) Internet
14 7 (1.53%) VLAN
14 7 (1.53%) Wi-Fi
15 6 (1.31%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (2.40%) Data Lake
2 10 (2.18%) BigQuery
3 7 (1.53%) Oracle Database
4 5 (1.09%) Elasticsearch
5 4 (0.87%) Power BI
6 3 (0.65%) Amazon Athena
6 3 (0.65%) Big Data
7 2 (0.44%) Amazon RDS
7 2 (0.44%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.44%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.44%) Mixpanel
7 2 (0.44%) OLAP
7 2 (0.44%) OLTP
8 1 (0.22%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.22%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 15 (3.27%) GitLab
2 12 (2.61%) JIRA
3 9 (1.96%) SonarQube
4 8 (1.74%) Jenkins
5 6 (1.31%) ClearCase
6 5 (1.09%) Snyk
7 4 (0.87%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.65%) Artifactory
9 2 (0.44%) Burp Suite
9 2 (0.44%) Git
9 2 (0.44%) Metasploit
10 1 (0.22%) Fiddler
10 1 (0.22%) Postman
10 1 (0.22%) Travis CI
General
1 113 (24.62%) Social Skills
2 58 (12.64%) Finance
3 45 (9.80%) Public Sector
4 36 (7.84%) Analytical Skills
5 15 (3.27%) Documentation Skills
6 13 (2.83%) Banking
6 13 (2.83%) Military
7 12 (2.61%) Telecoms
8 10 (2.18%) Legal
9 8 (1.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 6 (1.31%) Spanish Language
11 5 (1.09%) Manufacturing
11 5 (1.09%) Pharmaceutical
12 4 (0.87%) Financial Institution
12 4 (0.87%) Organisational Skills
13 2 (0.44%) Aerospace
13 2 (0.44%) Influencing Skills
13 2 (0.44%) Presentation Skills
13 2 (0.44%) Retail
13 2 (0.44%) Social Housing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (4.36%) REST
2 12 (2.61%) SAML
3 11 (2.40%) Elastic Stack
4 9 (1.96%) 802.1X
4 9 (1.96%) OAuth
5 7 (1.53%) JSON
5 7 (1.53%) Node.js
5 7 (1.53%) OpenID
5 7 (1.53%) SailPoint
6 5 (1.09%) Kafka
6 5 (1.09%) NestJS
7 4 (0.87%) Microsoft Graph
7 4 (0.87%) Regular Expression
7 4 (0.87%) SOAP
8 3 (0.65%) LDAP
8 3 (0.65%) Smart Contracts
8 3 (0.65%) YAML
9 2 (0.44%) Oracle Fusion
9 2 (0.44%) RESTful
9 2 (0.44%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 53 (11.55%) Security Posture
2 32 (6.97%) Data Centre
3 26 (5.66%) Onboarding
4 22 (4.79%) Management Information System
5 20 (4.36%) Cloud Native
6 15 (3.27%) Cyber Threat
6 15 (3.27%) Data Protection Act
7 11 (2.40%) Cyber Defence
8 10 (2.18%) Operational Technology
9 8 (1.74%) Cloud Security Posture
9 8 (1.74%) Hybrid Cloud
10 7 (1.53%) Security Operations Centre
11 6 (1.31%) BYOD
11 6 (1.31%) Cyber Kill Chain
11 6 (1.31%) Cyber Security Posture
12 5 (1.09%) Enterprise Software
12 5 (1.09%) Life Science
12 5 (1.09%) Mobile App
12 5 (1.09%) YARA
13 4 (0.87%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 72 (15.69%) Windows
2 68 (14.81%) Linux
3 14 (3.05%) Windows Server
4 11 (2.40%) Mac OS
5 7 (1.53%) Unix
6 6 (1.31%) Android
6 6 (1.31%) Apple iOS
7 3 (0.65%) VMS
8 2 (0.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 2 (0.44%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.22%) CentOS
9 1 (0.22%) Rocky
9 1 (0.22%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 173 (37.69%) Cybersecurity
2 133 (28.98%) SIEM
3 118 (25.71%) Cloud Security
4 100 (21.79%) Incident Response
5 80 (17.43%) Security Operations
6 73 (15.90%) CI/CD
6 73 (15.90%) Infrastructure as Code
7 55 (11.98%) DevOps
8 48 (10.46%) Vulnerability Management
9 47 (10.24%) Problem-Solving
10 46 (10.02%) DevSecOps
11 45 (9.80%) Threat Detection
11 45 (9.80%) Threat Modelling
12 44 (9.59%) SOAR
13 39 (8.50%) Information Security
14 38 (8.28%) Analytics
14 38 (8.28%) Data Protection
15 37 (8.06%) Security Monitoring
16 34 (7.41%) Continuous Improvement
17 33 (7.19%) Vulnerability Scanning
Programming Languages
1 94 (20.48%) Python
2 75 (16.34%) PowerShell
3 32 (6.97%) Kusto Query Language
4 28 (6.10%) Bash
5 18 (3.92%) Java
6 15 (3.27%) SQL
7 6 (1.31%) Bicep
7 6 (1.31%) C
7 6 (1.31%) JavaScript
8 5 (1.09%) Shell Script
9 4 (0.87%) BeanShell
9 4 (0.87%) C#
9 4 (0.87%) Kotlin
10 3 (0.65%) C++
10 3 (0.65%) Perl
10 3 (0.65%) Rust
11 2 (0.44%) Go
11 2 (0.44%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.22%) Scala
12 1 (0.22%) Swift
Qualifications
1 101 (22.00%) Security Cleared
2 80 (17.43%) SC Cleared
3 65 (14.16%) CISSP
4 50 (10.89%) Degree
5 35 (7.63%) CISM
6 30 (6.54%) Cisco Certification
7 23 (5.01%) DV Cleared
8 20 (4.36%) Azure Certification
9 17 (3.70%) CCNP
10 16 (3.49%) CompTIA Security+
11 15 (3.27%) CEH
12 13 (2.83%) Microsoft Certification
13 11 (2.40%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 11 (2.40%) AWS Certification
14 9 (1.96%) SANS
15 8 (1.74%) OSCP
16 7 (1.53%) GIAC
17 6 (1.31%) CCSP
17 6 (1.31%) CompTIA CySA+
17 6 (1.31%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 87 (18.95%) NIST
2 61 (13.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 31 (6.75%) GDPR
4 22 (4.79%) NCSC
5 14 (3.05%) NIST 800
6 13 (2.83%) HIPAA
7 11 (2.40%) Cyber Essentials
7 11 (2.40%) GRC
8 9 (1.96%) JSP 440
9 8 (1.74%) PCI DSS
10 6 (1.31%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 6 (1.31%) SOC 2
11 3 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 3 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 3 (0.65%) RMADS
12 2 (0.44%) Data Quality
12 2 (0.44%) EU AI Act
12 2 (0.44%) GxP
12 2 (0.44%) SLA
13 1 (0.22%) Accessibility
System Software
1 59 (12.85%) Active Directory
2 18 (3.92%) Virtual Machines
3 15 (3.27%) Docker
4 12 (2.61%) Firmware
5 7 (1.53%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.65%) VMware Infrastructure
7 2 (0.44%) Snort
8 1 (0.22%) GPFS
8 1 (0.22%) Lustre
8 1 (0.22%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 1 (0.22%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 47 (10.24%) Terraform
2 30 (6.54%) Kubernetes
3 19 (4.14%) SCCM
4 14 (3.05%) Microsoft Intune
5 13 (2.83%) Fluentd
6 11 (2.40%) Single Sign-On
7 10 (2.18%) Ansible
7 10 (2.18%) CASB
8 7 (1.53%) logstash
8 7 (1.53%) WSUS
9 6 (1.31%) Kibana
9 6 (1.31%) SCOrch
10 5 (1.09%) QRadar
11 4 (0.87%) CSIRT
11 4 (0.87%) FortiGate
11 4 (0.87%) Nessus
12 3 (0.65%) Argo
12 3 (0.65%) Icinga
12 3 (0.65%) Nmap
12 3 (0.65%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 120 (26.14%) Microsoft
2 49 (10.68%) Cisco
3 47 (10.24%) Splunk
4 41 (8.93%) Palo Alto
5 30 (6.54%) CrowdStrike
6 27 (5.88%) F5
6 27 (5.88%) Tenable
7 25 (5.45%) CheckPoint
8 23 (5.01%) Google
9 22 (4.79%) Juniper
10 19 (4.14%) Fortinet
11 17 (3.70%) Zscaler
12 16 (3.49%) Qualys
13 14 (3.05%) ServiceNow
14 13 (2.83%) Cribl.io
15 11 (2.40%) Oracle
16 9 (1.96%) Blue Coat
16 9 (1.96%) Forcepoint
17 7 (1.53%) Ping Identity
17 7 (1.53%) SolarWinds