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 4 January 2026.

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

6 months to
4 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 222 247 277
Rank change year-on-year +25 +30 -18
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 448 328 364
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.22% 1.01% 0.85%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.33% 1.09% 0.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 254 210 235
10th Percentile £380 £400 £413
25th Percentile £456 £441 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £537 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year -2.32% -8.33% +5.96%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £700
90th Percentile £700 £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% +31.34%
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% +43.18%

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 33,575 30,034 40,144
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.24% 92.68% 93.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,287 18,380 26,866
10th Percentile £300 £291 £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 £618 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £500
% change year-on-year -1.04% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,949 935 1,589
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.51 £14.18
25th Percentile £18.25 £21.05 £19.06
Median hourly rate £26.50 £32.50 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.46% -26.97% +36.92%
75th Percentile £60.00 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.00 £73.75 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -20.16% -30.00% +73.08%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 +20 387 £538 -2.27% 454
London +33 206 £545 -5.22% 119
UK excluding London +6 184 £525 - 428
Work from Home +14 126 £535 +1.11% 230
North of England -38 48 £575 +10.31% 90
South East -20 41 £475 -9.52% 123
North West -11 32 £588 +6.82% 50
Midlands -32 27 £488 +15.38% 67
South West +12 26 £522 -16.52% 56
Scotland +12 23 £525 -6.67% 32
West Midlands -36 23 £543 +28.40% 40
East of England 0 21 £500 +81.82% 53
Yorkshire -45 13 £570 +42.50% 29
Northern Ireland -5 5 - - 7
East Midlands - 4 £413 - 25
North East -10 3 £400 - 11
Wales -3 2 £600 +34.83% 14

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

For the 6 months to 4 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 (37.72%) Azure
1 169 (37.72%) Cybersecurity
2 131 (29.24%) SIEM
3 123 (27.46%) Microsoft
4 120 (26.79%) AWS
5 119 (26.56%) Firewall
6 105 (23.44%) Cloud Security
7 101 (22.54%) Security Cleared
8 93 (20.76%) Incident Response
9 92 (20.54%) Network Security
10 83 (18.53%) Python
11 80 (17.86%) SC Cleared
12 78 (17.41%) NIST
13 75 (16.74%) Security Operations
14 71 (15.85%) PowerShell
15 69 (15.40%) Windows
16 67 (14.96%) Infrastructure as Code
17 64 (14.29%) CI/CD
18 63 (14.06%) CISSP
19 61 (13.62%) Linux
20 56 (12.50%) Active Directory
20 56 (12.50%) GCP
21 54 (12.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
22 53 (11.83%) Microsoft 365
23 52 (11.61%) DevOps
23 52 (11.61%) Entra ID
24 49 (10.94%) Degree
25 47 (10.49%) Problem-Solving
26 46 (10.27%) Azure Sentinel
26 46 (10.27%) Splunk

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 (2.46%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (1.34%) 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 (1.12%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.45%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 169 (37.72%) Azure
2 120 (26.79%) AWS
3 56 (12.50%) GCP
4 53 (11.83%) Microsoft 365
5 52 (11.61%) Entra ID
6 46 (10.27%) Azure Sentinel
7 34 (7.59%) Microsoft Purview
8 26 (5.80%) GitHub
9 17 (3.79%) OpenShift
10 15 (3.35%) AWS CloudFormation
10 15 (3.35%) Azure Monitor
11 11 (2.46%) Azure Key Vault
11 11 (2.46%) GitHub Actions
12 10 (2.23%) Mimecast
12 10 (2.23%) SaaS
13 8 (1.79%) Amazon GuardDuty
14 7 (1.56%) Amazon EKS
14 7 (1.56%) Azure DevOps
14 7 (1.56%) Serverless
15 6 (1.34%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 119 (26.56%) Firewall
2 92 (20.54%) Network Security
3 36 (8.04%) VPN
4 34 (7.59%) DNS
5 21 (4.69%) WAN
6 16 (3.57%) SSL
6 16 (3.57%) TCP/IP
6 16 (3.57%) Wireless
7 13 (2.90%) BGP
8 11 (2.46%) Intrusion Detection
9 10 (2.23%) IPsec
9 10 (2.23%) OSPF
10 8 (1.79%) Cisco IPT
10 8 (1.79%) DMVPN
11 7 (1.56%) DHCP
11 7 (1.56%) Wi-Fi
12 5 (1.12%) Cisco ASA
12 5 (1.12%) Internet
12 5 (1.12%) SD-WAN
13 4 (0.89%) DMARC
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (2.46%) Data Lake
2 8 (1.79%) BigQuery
3 7 (1.56%) Oracle Database
4 5 (1.12%) Elasticsearch
5 4 (0.89%) Power BI
6 3 (0.67%) Amazon Athena
7 2 (0.45%) Amazon RDS
7 2 (0.45%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.45%) Big Data
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 (3.35%) GitLab
2 9 (2.01%) JIRA
3 7 (1.56%) Jenkins
3 7 (1.56%) SonarQube
4 6 (1.34%) ClearCase
5 5 (1.12%) Snyk
6 4 (0.89%) Bitbucket
7 3 (0.67%) Artifactory
8 2 (0.45%) Git
9 1 (0.22%) Travis CI
General
1 112 (25.00%) Social Skills
2 60 (13.39%) Finance
3 42 (9.38%) Public Sector
4 36 (8.04%) Analytical Skills
5 15 (3.35%) Banking
5 15 (3.35%) Documentation Skills
6 13 (2.90%) Military
7 11 (2.46%) Telecoms
8 9 (2.01%) Legal
9 8 (1.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 6 (1.34%) Financial Institution
10 6 (1.34%) Spanish Language
11 5 (1.12%) Manufacturing
12 4 (0.89%) Investment Banking
12 4 (0.89%) Organisational Skills
12 4 (0.89%) Pharmaceutical
13 3 (0.67%) Cyber-Physical System
13 3 (0.67%) Local Government
14 2 (0.45%) Aerospace
14 2 (0.45%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (4.46%) REST
2 11 (2.46%) Elastic Stack
3 10 (2.23%) SAML
4 9 (2.01%) 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 (1.12%) Kafka
7 5 (1.12%) 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%) YAML
10 2 (0.45%) gRPC
10 2 (0.45%) Oracle Fusion
10 2 (0.45%) RESTful
10 2 (0.45%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 52 (11.61%) Security Posture
2 27 (6.03%) Data Centre
3 24 (5.36%) Onboarding
4 23 (5.13%) Management Information System
5 19 (4.24%) Cloud Native
6 13 (2.90%) Cyber Threat
7 12 (2.68%) Data Protection Act
8 10 (2.23%) Cyber Defence
8 10 (2.23%) Operational Technology
9 8 (1.79%) Cloud Security Posture
10 7 (1.56%) Hybrid Cloud
10 7 (1.56%) Security Operations Centre
11 6 (1.34%) BYOD
11 6 (1.34%) Cyber Kill Chain
11 6 (1.34%) Cyber Security Posture
11 6 (1.34%) Greenfield Project
12 5 (1.12%) Life Science
12 5 (1.12%) Mobile App
12 5 (1.12%) PKI
12 5 (1.12%) YARA
Operating Systems
1 69 (15.40%) Windows
2 61 (13.62%) Linux
3 12 (2.68%) Windows Server
4 10 (2.23%) Mac OS
5 8 (1.79%) Unix
6 6 (1.34%) Android
7 5 (1.12%) Apple iOS
8 3 (0.67%) VMS
8 3 (0.67%) Windows 10
9 2 (0.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 1 (0.22%) Rocky
10 1 (0.22%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 169 (37.72%) Cybersecurity
2 131 (29.24%) SIEM
3 105 (23.44%) Cloud Security
4 93 (20.76%) Incident Response
5 75 (16.74%) Security Operations
6 67 (14.96%) Infrastructure as Code
7 64 (14.29%) CI/CD
8 52 (11.61%) DevOps
9 47 (10.49%) Problem-Solving
10 46 (10.27%) Vulnerability Management
11 45 (10.04%) Threat Detection
12 42 (9.38%) SOAR
13 41 (9.15%) DevSecOps
13 41 (9.15%) Threat Modelling
14 38 (8.48%) Information Security
14 38 (8.48%) Security Monitoring
15 36 (8.04%) Analytics
16 35 (7.81%) Continuous Improvement
17 33 (7.37%) Agile
17 33 (7.37%) Vulnerability Scanning
Programming Languages
1 83 (18.53%) Python
2 71 (15.85%) PowerShell
3 32 (7.14%) Kusto Query Language
4 25 (5.58%) Bash
5 15 (3.35%) Java
6 11 (2.46%) SQL
7 6 (1.34%) Bicep
7 6 (1.34%) C
8 5 (1.12%) JavaScript
8 5 (1.12%) Shell Script
9 4 (0.89%) BeanShell
10 3 (0.67%) C#
10 3 (0.67%) Kotlin
10 3 (0.67%) Perl
11 2 (0.45%) C++
11 2 (0.45%) Rust
11 2 (0.45%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.22%) Go
12 1 (0.22%) Scala
12 1 (0.22%) Swift
Qualifications
1 101 (22.54%) Security Cleared
2 80 (17.86%) SC Cleared
3 63 (14.06%) CISSP
4 49 (10.94%) Degree
5 35 (7.81%) CISM
6 26 (5.80%) Cisco Certification
7 23 (5.13%) DV Cleared
8 18 (4.02%) Azure Certification
9 16 (3.57%) CompTIA Security+
10 15 (3.35%) CEH
11 13 (2.90%) CCNP
12 11 (2.46%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 11 (2.46%) AWS Certification
13 10 (2.23%) Microsoft Certification
14 9 (2.01%) 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 78 (17.41%) NIST
2 54 (12.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 29 (6.47%) GDPR
4 20 (4.46%) NCSC
5 14 (3.13%) NIST 800
6 12 (2.68%) Cyber Essentials
7 11 (2.46%) HIPAA
7 11 (2.46%) JSP 440
8 9 (2.01%) GRC
9 6 (1.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 6 (1.34%) PCI DSS
10 5 (1.12%) RMADS
10 5 (1.12%) SOC 2
11 3 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 3 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 2 (0.45%) Data Quality
12 2 (0.45%) EU AI Act
12 2 (0.45%) GxP
13 1 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.22%) SLA
System Software
1 56 (12.50%) Active Directory
2 17 (3.79%) Virtual Machines
3 13 (2.90%) Docker
4 12 (2.68%) Firmware
5 7 (1.56%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.67%) VMware Infrastructure
7 2 (0.45%) Snort
7 2 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
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 44 (9.82%) Terraform
2 32 (7.14%) Kubernetes
3 19 (4.24%) SCCM
4 18 (4.02%) Microsoft Intune
5 13 (2.90%) Fluentd
5 13 (2.90%) Single Sign-On
6 10 (2.23%) Ansible
6 10 (2.23%) CASB
7 7 (1.56%) logstash
7 7 (1.56%) WSUS
8 6 (1.34%) Kibana
8 6 (1.34%) SCOrch
9 5 (1.12%) Nessus
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%) Functional Safety
11 3 (0.67%) Icinga
11 3 (0.67%) QRadar
Vendors
1 123 (27.46%) Microsoft
2 46 (10.27%) Splunk
3 45 (10.04%) Cisco
4 36 (8.04%) Palo Alto
5 28 (6.25%) CrowdStrike
6 26 (5.80%) F5
6 26 (5.80%) Tenable
7 22 (4.91%) CheckPoint
8 19 (4.24%) Fortinet
8 19 (4.24%) Google
8 19 (4.24%) Juniper
9 16 (3.57%) Qualys
10 13 (2.90%) Cribl.io
11 11 (2.46%) ServiceNow
11 11 (2.46%) Zscaler
12 9 (2.01%) Blue Coat
12 9 (2.01%) Oracle
13 8 (1.79%) CyberArk
13 8 (1.79%) Forcepoint
14 6 (1.34%) NetApp