Security Engineer Contract Job Trends

Security Engineer
UK

The median Security Engineer daily rate in the UK is £540, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 24 May 2026.

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

6 months to
24 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 222 271 259
Rank change year-on-year +49 -12 -44
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 554 268 361
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.14% 0.93% 0.85%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.23% 1.01% 0.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 343 165 251
10th Percentile £413 £389 £413
25th Percentile £475 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.86% -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £686 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +10.00% -9.09% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 3 4
10th Percentile £83.37 £65.65 -
25th Percentile £84.35 £66.63 £30.70
Median hourly rate £85.40 £73.31 £48.40
Median % change year-on-year +16.49% +51.47% -41.97%
75th Percentile - £80.89 £70.63
90th Percentile £87.53 £82.40 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.40 £73.31 £48.40
% change year-on-year +16.49% +51.47% -41.94%

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 44,870 26,596 39,472
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.31% 92.30% 92.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,419 17,312 25,704
10th Percentile £325 £289 £280
25th Percentile £413 £405 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.99% -3.33% -3.31%
75th Percentile £618 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,946 1,014 2,724
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.83
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.13 £16.30
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.81% -23.30% -18.89%
75th Percentile £66.44 £60.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.69 £26.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +64.87% -33.75% -5.11%

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 24 May 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 24 May 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 24 May 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 +33 498 £538 +2.38% 333
UK excluding London +19 258 £550 +10.00% 291
London +34 238 £525 -4.55% 102
Work from Home +37 198 £550 +4.76% 89
North of England -9 114 £569 +8.33% 69
North West +25 91 £563 +7.14% 46
Midlands -28 58 £539 +5.12% 38
West Midlands -23 55 £555 +8.29% 27
South East -34 55 £500 +11.11% 78
South West -19 25 £525 +6.33% 36
Scotland +14 22 £675 +22.73% 39
East of England -24 19 £525 +7.14% 24
Yorkshire -46 19 £600 +14.29% 18
North East -31 4 £400 -23.81% 5
East Midlands - 3 £406 - 11
Wales - 2 £733 - 5

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

For the 6 months to 24 May 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.

1 198 (35.74%) Azure
2 171 (30.87%) Cybersecurity
3 149 (26.90%) AWS
4 139 (25.09%) Cloud Security
5 130 (23.47%) Python
6 123 (22.20%) SIEM
7 121 (21.84%) Microsoft
8 107 (19.31%) Firewall
8 107 (19.31%) Network Security
9 106 (19.13%) CI/CD
10 95 (17.15%) Security Cleared
11 88 (15.88%) PowerShell
12 87 (15.70%) Incident Response
13 85 (15.34%) Cisco
14 74 (13.36%) SC Cleared
15 71 (12.82%) VPN
16 69 (12.45%) Vulnerability Management
17 67 (12.09%) DNS
18 65 (11.73%) Data Loss Prevention
18 65 (11.73%) DevOps
19 63 (11.37%) NIST
20 61 (11.01%) Security Operations
20 61 (11.01%) Terraform
20 61 (11.01%) Windows
21 60 (10.83%) Information Security
21 60 (10.83%) Threat Modelling
22 58 (10.47%) GCP
22 58 (10.47%) Security Architecture
23 56 (10.11%) CISSP
24 55 (9.93%) F5

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 22 (3.97%) Confluence
2 4 (0.72%) Apache Spark
3 3 (0.54%) Microsoft Exchange
4 2 (0.36%) Apache
5 1 (0.18%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (0.54%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 6 (1.08%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.36%) Maximo
3 1 (0.18%) SAP ERP
3 1 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 198 (35.74%) Azure
2 149 (26.90%) AWS
3 58 (10.47%) GCP
4 53 (9.57%) Microsoft 365
4 53 (9.57%) Microsoft Purview
5 39 (7.04%) Entra ID
6 24 (4.33%) GitHub
7 23 (4.15%) Azure Sentinel
8 21 (3.79%) SaaS
9 20 (3.61%) AWS CloudFormation
10 17 (3.07%) Mimecast
11 16 (2.89%) Amazon GuardDuty
12 15 (2.71%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 11 (1.99%) AWS CloudTrail
13 11 (1.99%) Azure DevOps
13 11 (1.99%) OpenShift
13 11 (1.99%) Serverless
14 10 (1.81%) Akamai
14 10 (1.81%) AWS KMS
14 10 (1.81%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 107 (19.31%) Firewall
1 107 (19.31%) Network Security
2 71 (12.82%) VPN
3 67 (12.09%) DNS
4 45 (8.12%) BGP
5 34 (6.14%) DMZ
6 33 (5.96%) Multicast
7 27 (4.87%) TCP/IP
8 26 (4.69%) SSL
9 21 (3.79%) WAN
10 17 (3.07%) HTTP
11 16 (2.89%) SD-WAN
12 11 (1.99%) Internet
12 11 (1.99%) Wireless
13 9 (1.62%) DHCP
13 9 (1.62%) IPsec
13 9 (1.62%) MPLS
13 9 (1.62%) NGFW
13 9 (1.62%) TACACS
14 8 (1.44%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (1.62%) Power BI
2 7 (1.26%) Data Lake
3 5 (0.90%) SQL Server
4 4 (0.72%) Amazon Athena
4 4 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (0.72%) Elasticsearch
4 4 (0.72%) MongoDB
4 4 (0.72%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.36%) Amazon Redshift
5 2 (0.36%) Apache Cassandra
5 2 (0.36%) Big Data
5 2 (0.36%) BigQuery
5 2 (0.36%) Mixpanel
5 2 (0.36%) NoSQL
5 2 (0.36%) OLAP
5 2 (0.36%) OLTP
5 2 (0.36%) RDBMS
5 2 (0.36%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.18%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.18%) DB2
Development Applications
1 25 (4.51%) JIRA
2 12 (2.17%) GitLab
3 7 (1.26%) Git
3 7 (1.26%) Jenkins
4 6 (1.08%) Snyk
5 2 (0.36%) Browser DevTools
5 2 (0.36%) Burp Suite
5 2 (0.36%) Claude Code
5 2 (0.36%) SonarQube
5 2 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
6 1 (0.18%) Artifactory
6 1 (0.18%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 1 (0.18%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.18%) Metasploit
6 1 (0.18%) sqlmap
6 1 (0.18%) Travis CI
6 1 (0.18%) TruffleHog
General
1 108 (19.49%) Social Skills
2 77 (13.90%) Finance
3 50 (9.03%) Analytical Skills
4 41 (7.40%) Banking
5 35 (6.32%) Public Sector
6 23 (4.15%) Investment Banking
7 14 (2.53%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (1.44%) Legal
8 8 (1.44%) Telecoms
9 7 (1.26%) Presentation Skills
10 6 (1.08%) Marketing
11 5 (0.90%) Cyber-Physical System
11 5 (0.90%) Manufacturing
12 4 (0.72%) Health Technology
12 4 (0.72%) Local Government
13 3 (0.54%) Aerospace
13 3 (0.54%) Financial Institution
13 3 (0.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 3 (0.54%) Military
14 1 (0.18%) Back Office
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (2.71%) Elastic Stack
2 10 (1.81%) LDAP
3 6 (1.08%) 802.1X
3 6 (1.08%) LangChain
3 6 (1.08%) Microsoft Graph
3 6 (1.08%) PyTorch
3 6 (1.08%) REST
3 6 (1.08%) SAML
3 6 (1.08%) scikit-learn
4 5 (0.90%) SLSA
5 4 (0.72%) .NET
5 4 (0.72%) JSON
5 4 (0.72%) Kafka
5 4 (0.72%) OAuth
6 3 (0.54%) ADO
6 3 (0.54%) AWS CDK
6 3 (0.54%) Node.js
6 3 (0.54%) SailPoint
7 2 (0.36%) GraphQL
7 2 (0.36%) NestJS
Miscellaneous
1 71 (12.82%) Security Posture
2 48 (8.66%) Cloud Native
3 27 (4.87%) Management Information System
4 22 (3.97%) Cloud Security Posture
4 22 (3.97%) Data Centre
5 18 (3.25%) Operational Technology
6 17 (3.07%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 15 (2.71%) Onboarding
8 12 (2.17%) Hybrid Cloud
8 12 (2.17%) PKI
9 11 (1.99%) Data Protection Act
10 10 (1.81%) Cyber Threat
11 8 (1.44%) AI Agents
11 8 (1.44%) Public Cloud
12 7 (1.26%) Cyber Defence
13 6 (1.08%) Linux Command Line
14 5 (0.90%) Cyber Kill Chain
14 5 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
14 5 (0.90%) SCADA
14 5 (0.90%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 61 (11.01%) Windows
2 51 (9.21%) Linux
3 14 (2.53%) Windows Server
4 12 (2.17%) Mac OS
5 8 (1.44%) Apple iOS
5 8 (1.44%) Windows 10
6 7 (1.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 7 (1.26%) Ubuntu
7 4 (0.72%) Unix
8 3 (0.54%) Android
9 1 (0.18%) Rocky
9 1 (0.18%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 171 (30.87%) Cybersecurity
2 139 (25.09%) Cloud Security
3 123 (22.20%) SIEM
4 106 (19.13%) CI/CD
5 87 (15.70%) Incident Response
6 69 (12.45%) Vulnerability Management
7 65 (11.73%) Data Loss Prevention
7 65 (11.73%) DevOps
8 61 (11.01%) Security Operations
9 60 (10.83%) Information Security
9 60 (10.83%) Threat Modelling
10 58 (10.47%) Security Architecture
11 53 (9.57%) DevSecOps
11 53 (9.57%) Infrastructure as Code
12 49 (8.84%) Continuous Improvement
13 47 (8.48%) Load Balancing
13 47 (8.48%) Zero Trust
14 42 (7.58%) AI
14 42 (7.58%) Validation
15 40 (7.22%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 130 (23.47%) Python
2 88 (15.88%) PowerShell
3 47 (8.48%) Bash
4 17 (3.07%) Kusto Query Language
5 16 (2.89%) Java
6 11 (1.99%) SQL
7 5 (0.90%) JavaScript
7 5 (0.90%) PHP
8 3 (0.54%) C#
8 3 (0.54%) Go
8 3 (0.54%) Search Processing Language
8 3 (0.54%) Shell Script
9 2 (0.36%) Bicep
9 2 (0.36%) Ruby
9 2 (0.36%) TypeScript
10 1 (0.18%) BeanShell
10 1 (0.18%) C
10 1 (0.18%) Perl
Qualifications
1 95 (17.15%) Security Cleared
2 74 (13.36%) SC Cleared
3 56 (10.11%) CISSP
4 48 (8.66%) Degree
5 30 (5.42%) Cisco Certification
6 29 (5.23%) CISM
7 21 (3.79%) AWS Certification
8 20 (3.61%) DV Cleared
9 15 (2.71%) Azure Certification
9 15 (2.71%) CCNP
10 14 (2.53%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 13 (2.35%) CompTIA Security+
12 11 (1.99%) Computer Science Degree
13 10 (1.81%) Microsoft Certification
14 8 (1.44%) CEH
14 8 (1.44%) GIAC
15 6 (1.08%) CCSP
15 6 (1.08%) CESG Certified Professional
16 5 (0.90%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
16 5 (0.90%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 63 (11.37%) NIST
2 53 (9.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 35 (6.32%) GDPR
4 28 (5.05%) Cyber Essentials
5 22 (3.97%) PCI DSS
6 16 (2.89%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 11 (1.99%) NCSC
8 10 (1.81%) GRC
9 8 (1.44%) SLA
10 7 (1.26%) HIPAA
11 6 (1.08%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 6 (1.08%) NIST 800
11 6 (1.08%) RMADS
12 5 (0.90%) JSP 440
12 5 (0.90%) SOC 2
13 3 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
13 3 (0.54%) Government Security Classifications
13 3 (0.54%) ISA99
14 2 (0.36%) Data Quality
14 2 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 29 (5.23%) Active Directory
2 20 (3.61%) Docker
3 12 (2.17%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (1.62%) Virtual Machines
5 8 (1.44%) VMware ESXi
6 6 (1.08%) VMware NSX
6 6 (1.08%) vSphere
7 4 (0.72%) Firmware
8 3 (0.54%) Virtual Servers
9 2 (0.36%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.36%) Squid
9 2 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.18%) GPFS
10 1 (0.18%) Lustre
10 1 (0.18%) RACF
10 1 (0.18%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 61 (11.01%) Terraform
2 48 (8.66%) Kubernetes
3 20 (3.61%) Microsoft Intune
4 16 (2.89%) Ansible
5 10 (1.81%) Single Sign-On
6 7 (1.26%) CASB
6 7 (1.26%) SCCM
6 7 (1.26%) vCenter Server
7 6 (1.08%) Nessus
8 5 (0.90%) FortiGate
8 5 (0.90%) Functional Safety
8 5 (0.90%) Kibana
9 4 (0.72%) AirWatch
9 4 (0.72%) logstash
9 4 (0.72%) Progress Chef
9 4 (0.72%) WSUS
10 3 (0.54%) Grafana
10 3 (0.54%) Icinga
10 3 (0.54%) SCOM
11 2 (0.36%) QRadar
Vendors
1 121 (21.84%) Microsoft
2 85 (15.34%) Cisco
3 55 (9.93%) F5
4 39 (7.04%) Palo Alto
5 37 (6.68%) CrowdStrike
6 29 (5.23%) Fortinet
7 25 (4.51%) Zscaler
8 23 (4.15%) CyberArk
9 22 (3.97%) ServiceNow
10 21 (3.79%) Google
11 20 (3.61%) Splunk
11 20 (3.61%) Tenable
12 19 (3.43%) VMware
13 17 (3.07%) Netskope
14 16 (2.89%) CheckPoint
15 15 (2.71%) Qualys
16 12 (2.17%) BeyondTrust
17 10 (1.81%) Blue Coat
17 10 (1.81%) Juniper
18 8 (1.44%) Oracle