Security Engineer Contract Job Trends

Security Engineer
UK

The median Security Engineer daily rate in the UK is £533, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 21 August 2026.

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

6 months to
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 261 231 205
Rank change year-on-year -30 -26 +22
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 532 381 470
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.99% 1.16% 1.21%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.07% 1.27% 1.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 346 230 359
10th Percentile £413 £374 £411
25th Percentile £463 £413 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £514 £550
Median % change year-on-year +3.75% -6.59% -3.51%
75th Percentile £609 £638 £638
90th Percentile £688 £738 £740
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +7.50% -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 12 2
10th Percentile £70.38 £66.75 £64.25
25th Percentile £73.75 £83.06 £66.88
Median hourly rate £77.50 £90.50 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year -14.36% +24.83% -13.07%
75th Percentile £85.05 £91.50 £76.88
90th Percentile £86.03 - £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £84.00 £90.50 £72.50
% change year-on-year -7.18% +24.83% -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 49,522 29,914 36,178
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.46% 91.26% 92.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,686 18,901 23,122
10th Percentile £325 £280 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.69%
75th Percentile £625 £620 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,509 1,556 1,977
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.60 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.53 £17.30 £19.59
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -41.51% +2.38%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.99 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.25 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +14.67%

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 August 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 21 August 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 21 August 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 -30 489 £529 +2.72% 333
UK excluding London -14 260 £538 +7.50% 269
London -41 227 £525 - 96
Work from Home 0 197 £538 +9.25% 72
North of England +15 147 £563 +13.41% 51
North West +29 125 £550 +13.17% 30
South East -37 51 £500 - 87
Midlands -18 49 £500 +20.48% 37
West Midlands -20 48 £500 +11.11% 25
Yorkshire -28 20 £600 +11.11% 16
East of England -29 20 £510 +2.00% 32
South West -50 13 £488 -3.70% 60
Scotland -20 10 £600 +14.29% 5
Wales -17 2 £733 +33.18% 1
East Midlands -18 1 £338 -18.67% 12
North East -38 1 - - 5

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

For the 6 months to 21 August 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.

1 189 (35.53%) Azure
2 176 (33.08%) Cloud Security
3 155 (29.14%) Cybersecurity
4 148 (27.82%) AWS
5 131 (24.62%) Microsoft
6 126 (23.68%) SIEM
7 111 (20.86%) Python
8 105 (19.74%) Firewall
9 103 (19.36%) Network Security
10 92 (17.29%) CI/CD
11 88 (16.54%) Incident Response
12 85 (15.98%) PowerShell
13 83 (15.60%) Cisco
13 83 (15.60%) Terraform
14 80 (15.04%) GCP
15 73 (13.72%) Security Cleared
16 70 (13.16%) Security Operations
17 69 (12.97%) CISSP
17 69 (12.97%) VPN
18 67 (12.59%) Kubernetes
19 65 (12.22%) DevSecOps
20 63 (11.84%) Infrastructure as Code
21 61 (11.47%) SC Cleared
22 59 (11.09%) Vulnerability Management
23 58 (10.90%) F5
23 58 (10.90%) Windows
24 57 (10.71%) Bash
24 57 (10.71%) DevOps
24 57 (10.71%) Security Architecture
25 55 (10.34%) Zero Trust

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 (2.26%) Confluence
2 3 (0.56%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.38%) nginx
4 1 (0.19%) Apache
4 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 1 (0.19%) Chatbot
1 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 6 (1.13%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.38%) Maximo
3 1 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 189 (35.53%) Azure
2 148 (27.82%) AWS
3 80 (15.04%) GCP
4 46 (8.65%) Microsoft 365
4 46 (8.65%) Microsoft Purview
5 41 (7.71%) Entra ID
6 27 (5.08%) AWS CloudFormation
6 27 (5.08%) Azure Sentinel
7 19 (3.57%) SaaS
8 18 (3.38%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 18 (3.38%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 15 (2.82%) Akamai
9 15 (2.82%) GitHub
10 14 (2.63%) Serverless
11 12 (2.26%) AWS CloudTrail
11 12 (2.26%) Azure DevOps
12 11 (2.07%) Amazon GuardDuty
12 11 (2.07%) Mimecast
13 10 (1.88%) Power Platform
14 9 (1.69%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 105 (19.74%) Firewall
2 103 (19.36%) Network Security
3 69 (12.97%) VPN
4 53 (9.96%) DNS
5 40 (7.52%) BGP
6 32 (6.02%) DMZ
7 30 (5.64%) Multicast
8 27 (5.08%) SSL
9 26 (4.89%) WAN
10 24 (4.51%) TCP/IP
11 19 (3.57%) SD-WAN
12 18 (3.38%) HTTP
13 16 (3.01%) Internet
14 15 (2.82%) Cisco ISE
15 13 (2.44%) Intrusion Detection
16 11 (2.07%) Wireless
17 9 (1.69%) OSPF
17 9 (1.69%) VLAN
18 8 (1.50%) IPsec
19 6 (1.13%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (1.50%) Power BI
2 6 (1.13%) SQL Server
3 5 (0.94%) PostgreSQL
4 4 (0.75%) Data Lake
5 3 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
5 3 (0.56%) Big Data
5 3 (0.56%) MongoDB
6 2 (0.38%) Data Warehouse
6 2 (0.38%) DynamoDB
6 2 (0.38%) Metadata
6 2 (0.38%) SAP HANA
7 1 (0.19%) Apache Cassandra
7 1 (0.19%) Db2
7 1 (0.19%) Delta Lake
7 1 (0.19%) Elasticsearch
7 1 (0.19%) NoSQL
7 1 (0.19%) RDBMS
7 1 (0.19%) Redis
7 1 (0.19%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 15 (2.82%) JIRA
2 9 (1.69%) GitLab
3 7 (1.32%) Jenkins
4 4 (0.75%) Burp Suite
5 3 (0.56%) Claude Code
5 3 (0.56%) Git
6 2 (0.38%) Browser DevTools
6 2 (0.38%) Snyk
6 2 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.19%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 1 (0.19%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.19%) Metasploit
7 1 (0.19%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.19%) sqlmap
7 1 (0.19%) TruffleHog
General
1 94 (17.67%) Social Skills
2 91 (17.11%) Finance
3 47 (8.83%) Analytical Skills
4 41 (7.71%) Banking
5 21 (3.95%) Documentation Skills
6 20 (3.76%) Investment Banking
7 15 (2.82%) Public Sector
8 7 (1.32%) Marketing
9 6 (1.13%) Legal
9 6 (1.13%) Manufacturing
9 6 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
10 5 (0.94%) Retail
10 5 (0.94%) Telecoms
11 4 (0.75%) Health Technology
11 4 (0.75%) Military
12 3 (0.56%) Aerospace
12 3 (0.56%) Digital Health
12 3 (0.56%) Digital Healthcare
12 3 (0.56%) Financial Institution
12 3 (0.56%) Italian Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 83 (15.60%) Terraform
2 8 (1.50%) SAML
3 7 (1.32%) 802.1X
4 5 (0.94%) REST
5 4 (0.75%) ARM Templates
5 4 (0.75%) Elastic Stack
5 4 (0.75%) Microsoft Graph
5 4 (0.75%) SLSA
6 3 (0.56%) Azure Blueprints
6 3 (0.56%) JWT
6 3 (0.56%) LangChain
6 3 (0.56%) SailPoint
7 2 (0.38%) JSON
7 2 (0.38%) Model Context Protocol
7 2 (0.38%) OAuth
7 2 (0.38%) OpenID
7 2 (0.38%) PyTorch
7 2 (0.38%) scikit-learn
8 1 (0.19%) RESTful
8 1 (0.19%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 99 (18.61%) Security Posture
2 61 (11.47%) Cloud Native
3 39 (7.33%) Cloud Security Posture
4 36 (6.77%) Management Information System
5 22 (4.14%) Enterprise Cloud
6 19 (3.57%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 17 (3.20%) AI Agents
7 17 (3.20%) Onboarding
8 14 (2.63%) Cyber Threat
9 13 (2.44%) Operational Technology
10 12 (2.26%) Hybrid Cloud
11 11 (2.07%) Data Centre
12 10 (1.88%) Data Protection Act
13 8 (1.50%) Cyber Defence
14 7 (1.32%) Security Operations Centre
15 6 (1.13%) PKI
15 6 (1.13%) SCADA
16 5 (0.94%) NHS
16 5 (0.94%) Public Cloud
17 4 (0.75%) CCTV
Operating Systems
1 58 (10.90%) Windows
2 47 (8.83%) Linux
3 18 (3.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 12 (2.26%) Windows Server
5 8 (1.50%) Mac OS
6 7 (1.32%) Apple iOS
7 5 (0.94%) Windows 10
8 2 (0.38%) Android
8 2 (0.38%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.19%) Unix
9 1 (0.19%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 176 (33.08%) Cloud Security
2 155 (29.14%) Cybersecurity
3 126 (23.68%) SIEM
4 92 (17.29%) CI/CD
5 88 (16.54%) Incident Response
6 70 (13.16%) Security Operations
7 65 (12.22%) DevSecOps
8 63 (11.84%) Infrastructure as Code
9 59 (11.09%) Vulnerability Management
10 57 (10.71%) DevOps
10 57 (10.71%) Security Architecture
11 55 (10.34%) Zero Trust
12 54 (10.15%) Load Balancing
12 54 (10.15%) Threat Detection
13 53 (9.96%) Threat Modelling
14 50 (9.40%) Data Loss Prevention
15 44 (8.27%) Agile
15 44 (8.27%) Stakeholder Management
16 42 (7.89%) Data Protection
16 42 (7.89%) Information Security
Programming Languages
1 111 (20.86%) Python
2 85 (15.98%) PowerShell
3 57 (10.71%) Bash
4 20 (3.76%) Bicep
5 18 (3.38%) Java
6 9 (1.69%) Kusto Query Language
7 8 (1.50%) SQL
8 5 (0.94%) Go
9 4 (0.75%) Search Processing Language
10 3 (0.56%) Perl
11 2 (0.38%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.19%) C
12 1 (0.19%) C#
12 1 (0.19%) JavaScript
12 1 (0.19%) Korn
12 1 (0.19%) PHP
12 1 (0.19%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 73 (13.72%) Security Cleared
2 69 (12.97%) CISSP
3 61 (11.47%) SC Cleared
4 40 (7.52%) Degree
5 33 (6.20%) Cisco Certification
6 32 (6.02%) AWS Certification
7 28 (5.26%) CISM
8 21 (3.95%) Azure Certification
8 21 (3.95%) CCNP
9 17 (3.20%) CEH
10 16 (3.01%) DV Cleared
11 14 (2.63%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 13 (2.44%) Microsoft Certification
13 12 (2.26%) OSCP
14 10 (1.88%) CCIE
14 10 (1.88%) GIAC
15 9 (1.69%) Computer Science Degree
16 7 (1.32%) CCSP
16 7 (1.32%) CompTIA Security+
17 6 (1.13%) GCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 50 (9.40%) NIST
2 47 (8.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 24 (4.51%) GDPR
4 18 (3.38%) PCI DSS
5 15 (2.82%) Cyber Essentials
5 15 (2.82%) NCSC
6 12 (2.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 8 (1.50%) HIPAA
8 6 (1.13%) NIST 800
9 5 (0.94%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 5 (0.94%) SLA
10 4 (0.75%) SOC 2
11 3 (0.56%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 3 (0.56%) ISA99
12 2 (0.38%) COBIT
12 2 (0.38%) GRC
12 2 (0.38%) JSP 440
13 1 (0.19%) PMO
13 1 (0.19%) QA
13 1 (0.19%) RMADS
System Software
1 33 (6.20%) Active Directory
2 24 (4.51%) Docker
3 6 (1.13%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (1.13%) VMware NSX
3 6 (1.13%) vSphere
4 4 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (0.56%) Virtual Servers
6 2 (0.38%) Squid
6 2 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.19%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.19%) RACF
Systems Management
1 67 (12.59%) Kubernetes
2 17 (3.20%) Ansible
3 16 (3.01%) Progress Chef
4 12 (2.26%) FortiGate
5 11 (2.07%) Microsoft Intune
6 10 (1.88%) Single Sign-On
7 8 (1.50%) Grafana
8 5 (0.94%) CASB
8 5 (0.94%) Istio
8 5 (0.94%) QRadar
9 4 (0.75%) linkerd
10 2 (0.38%) Prometheus
11 1 (0.19%) Argo
11 1 (0.19%) CSIRT
11 1 (0.19%) Host Intrusion Detection System
11 1 (0.19%) HP Fortify
11 1 (0.19%) Network Intrusion Detection System
11 1 (0.19%) SCCM
11 1 (0.19%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 131 (24.62%) Microsoft
2 83 (15.60%) Cisco
3 58 (10.90%) F5
4 48 (9.02%) Palo Alto
5 38 (7.14%) CrowdStrike
6 33 (6.20%) Zscaler
7 30 (5.64%) Fortinet
8 27 (5.08%) CyberArk
9 25 (4.70%) CheckPoint
10 24 (4.51%) ServiceNow
11 22 (4.14%) Google
11 22 (4.14%) Splunk
12 19 (3.57%) Red Hat
13 14 (2.63%) VMware
14 13 (2.44%) BeyondTrust
14 13 (2.44%) Netskope
15 12 (2.26%) Tenable
16 11 (2.07%) Blue Coat
17 10 (1.88%) Oracle
17 10 (1.88%) Qualys