Security Engineer Contract Job Trends

Security Engineer
UK

The median Security Engineer daily rate in the UK is £525, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 17 September 2026.

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

6 months to
17 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 258 233 203
Rank change year-on-year -25 -30 +40
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 560 384 468
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.02% 1.17% 1.22%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.11% 1.28% 1.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 346 228 348
10th Percentile £413 £370 £404
25th Percentile £463 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -6.36% -8.33%
75th Percentile £610 £638 £638
90th Percentile £696 £725 £741
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 12 2
10th Percentile £72.63 £66.75 £64.25
25th Percentile £73.75 £83.06 £66.88
Median hourly rate £79.70 £90.50 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year -11.93% +24.83% -13.07%
75th Percentile £90.53 £91.50 £76.88
90th Percentile £92.11 - £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £90.00 £90.50 £72.50
% change year-on-year -0.55% +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 50,473 30,002 35,564
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.35% 91.08% 92.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,930 18,956 21,934
10th Percentile £328 £278 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £626 £621 £638
90th Percentile £727 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,805 1,570 1,684
10th Percentile £14.59 £13.75 £14.73
25th Percentile £20.31 £17.30 £20.30
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -2.01%
75th Percentile £67.84 £52.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +5.88%

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 17 September 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 17 September 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 17 September 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 -21 520 £525 +0.96% 1,270
UK excluding London -23 273 £525 +5.00% 721
London -45 242 £535 -2.79% 601
Work from Home +3 186 £525 +7.69% 409
North of England +8 143 £550 +11.79% 187
North West +30 121 £550 +14.58% 123
Midlands -15 55 £500 +25.00% 82
South East -39 54 £500 - 194
West Midlands -20 51 £500 +26.58% 54
East of England -33 31 £510 +2.00% 91
Yorkshire -35 20 £600 +11.11% 38
South West -46 14 £488 -4.88% 86
Scotland -30 8 £593 +7.24% 52
East Midlands -6 4 £338 -18.67% 28
Wales -15 2 £733 +22.08% 12
North East -41 1 - - 26

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

For the 6 months to 17 September 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.

1 197 (35.18%) Azure
2 176 (31.43%) Cloud Security
3 171 (30.54%) Cybersecurity
4 150 (26.79%) AWS
5 134 (23.93%) Microsoft
6 129 (23.04%) SIEM
7 113 (20.18%) Network Security
7 113 (20.18%) Python
8 109 (19.46%) Firewall
9 95 (16.96%) Incident Response
9 95 (16.96%) Terraform
10 93 (16.61%) PowerShell
11 91 (16.25%) Security Cleared
12 87 (15.54%) Cisco
13 85 (15.18%) CI/CD
13 85 (15.18%) Security Operations
14 84 (15.00%) GCP
15 78 (13.93%) Kubernetes
15 78 (13.93%) SC Cleared
16 72 (12.86%) CISSP
17 71 (12.68%) VPN
18 70 (12.50%) Infrastructure as Code
18 70 (12.50%) Threat Detection
19 69 (12.32%) Palo Alto
20 68 (12.14%) DevSecOps
21 67 (11.96%) Windows
22 63 (11.25%) Vulnerability Management
23 62 (11.07%) DevOps
24 60 (10.71%) Bash
25 59 (10.54%) 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 10 (1.79%) IIS
2 8 (1.43%) Confluence
3 3 (0.54%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.36%) nginx
5 1 (0.18%) Apache
5 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 2 (0.36%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (0.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.18%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
2 1 (0.18%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (1.07%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.36%) Maximo
3 1 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 197 (35.18%) Azure
2 150 (26.79%) AWS
3 84 (15.00%) GCP
4 48 (8.57%) Microsoft 365
5 46 (8.21%) Entra ID
6 38 (6.79%) Microsoft Purview
7 33 (5.89%) Azure Sentinel
8 27 (4.82%) AWS CloudFormation
9 21 (3.75%) GitHub
10 16 (2.86%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 13 (2.32%) Azure DevOps
11 13 (2.32%) Power Platform
11 13 (2.32%) SaaS
11 13 (2.32%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 12 (2.14%) Serverless
13 11 (1.96%) AWS CloudTrail
14 10 (1.79%) Akamai
14 10 (1.79%) Amazon ECS
14 10 (1.79%) Azure AKS
14 10 (1.79%) Mimecast
Communications & Networking
1 113 (20.18%) Network Security
2 109 (19.46%) Firewall
3 71 (12.68%) VPN
4 49 (8.75%) DNS
5 38 (6.79%) BGP
6 30 (5.36%) SSL
7 28 (5.00%) DMZ
7 28 (5.00%) WAN
8 26 (4.64%) Multicast
9 22 (3.93%) TCP/IP
10 20 (3.57%) HTTP
11 16 (2.86%) Internet
11 16 (2.86%) SD-WAN
11 16 (2.86%) Wireless
12 15 (2.68%) Cisco ISE
13 14 (2.50%) Intrusion Detection
14 12 (2.14%) IPsec
15 11 (1.96%) OSPF
16 10 (1.79%) DMVPN
17 9 (1.61%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (1.61%) Power BI
2 5 (0.89%) SQL Server
3 4 (0.71%) PostgreSQL
4 3 (0.54%) Big Data
4 3 (0.54%) Data Lake
4 3 (0.54%) MongoDB
5 2 (0.36%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (0.36%) DynamoDB
5 2 (0.36%) SAP HANA
6 1 (0.18%) Apache Cassandra
6 1 (0.18%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.18%) Db2
6 1 (0.18%) Delta Lake
6 1 (0.18%) Elasticsearch
6 1 (0.18%) Metadata
6 1 (0.18%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.18%) RDBMS
6 1 (0.18%) Redis
6 1 (0.18%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 10 (1.79%) JIRA
2 8 (1.43%) GitLab
3 7 (1.25%) Jenkins
4 6 (1.07%) Git
5 3 (0.54%) Burp Suite
5 3 (0.54%) Claude Code
5 3 (0.54%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.36%) Snyk
7 1 (0.18%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 1 (0.18%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.18%) Browser DevTools
7 1 (0.18%) Maven
7 1 (0.18%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.18%) TruffleHog
General
1 97 (17.32%) Social Skills
2 91 (16.25%) Finance
3 44 (7.86%) Analytical Skills
4 38 (6.79%) Banking
5 19 (3.39%) Public Sector
6 18 (3.21%) Investment Banking
7 16 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
8 9 (1.61%) Military
9 8 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
10 7 (1.25%) Back Office
10 7 (1.25%) Manufacturing
10 7 (1.25%) Marketing
11 6 (1.07%) Legal
11 6 (1.07%) Telecoms
12 5 (0.89%) Retail
13 4 (0.71%) Health Technology
13 4 (0.71%) Influencing Skills
14 3 (0.54%) Digital Health
14 3 (0.54%) Digital Healthcare
14 3 (0.54%) Italian Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 95 (16.96%) Terraform
2 16 (2.86%) JSON
3 11 (1.96%) 802.1X
4 9 (1.61%) SAML
5 8 (1.43%) Regular Expression
6 7 (1.25%) JWT
6 7 (1.25%) LDAP
6 7 (1.25%) OpenID
6 7 (1.25%) REST
7 6 (1.07%) OAuth
8 5 (0.89%) ARM Templates
8 5 (0.89%) OAuth2
9 4 (0.71%) Azure Blueprints
9 4 (0.71%) Elastic Stack
9 4 (0.71%) Microsoft Graph
9 4 (0.71%) SLSA
10 3 (0.54%) SailPoint
11 2 (0.36%) AWS CDK
11 2 (0.36%) Model Context Protocol
11 2 (0.36%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 100 (17.86%) Security Posture
2 63 (11.25%) Cloud Native
3 39 (6.96%) Management Information System
4 36 (6.43%) Cloud Security Posture
5 24 (4.29%) Cyber Threat
5 24 (4.29%) Onboarding
6 23 (4.11%) Enterprise Cloud
7 18 (3.21%) AI Agents
8 17 (3.04%) Data Centre
9 13 (2.32%) Cyber Defence
10 12 (2.14%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 12 (2.14%) Operational Technology
11 10 (1.79%) Hybrid Cloud
12 9 (1.61%) Security Operations Centre
13 8 (1.43%) CCTV
13 8 (1.43%) Data Protection Act
14 7 (1.25%) Public Cloud
15 6 (1.07%) PKI
16 5 (0.89%) Mobile App
16 5 (0.89%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 67 (11.96%) Windows
2 43 (7.68%) Linux
3 18 (3.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 16 (2.86%) Windows Server
5 10 (1.79%) Apple iOS
6 7 (1.25%) Mac OS
7 5 (0.89%) Android
7 5 (0.89%) Windows 10
8 2 (0.36%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.18%) Unix
9 1 (0.18%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 176 (31.43%) Cloud Security
2 171 (30.54%) Cybersecurity
3 129 (23.04%) SIEM
4 95 (16.96%) Incident Response
5 85 (15.18%) CI/CD
5 85 (15.18%) Security Operations
6 70 (12.50%) Infrastructure as Code
6 70 (12.50%) Threat Detection
7 68 (12.14%) DevSecOps
8 63 (11.25%) Vulnerability Management
9 62 (11.07%) DevOps
10 57 (10.18%) Security Architecture
11 56 (10.00%) Zero Trust
12 55 (9.82%) Security Monitoring
13 51 (9.11%) AI
14 50 (8.93%) Threat Modelling
15 49 (8.75%) Continuous Improvement
16 46 (8.21%) Identity Access Management
17 45 (8.04%) Load Balancing
17 45 (8.04%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 113 (20.18%) Python
2 93 (16.61%) PowerShell
3 60 (10.71%) Bash
4 24 (4.29%) Java
5 21 (3.75%) Bicep
6 8 (1.43%) SQL
7 7 (1.25%) Kusto Query Language
8 6 (1.07%) Go
9 4 (0.71%) Search Processing Language
10 3 (0.54%) Perl
11 2 (0.36%) C#
12 1 (0.18%) C
12 1 (0.18%) JavaScript
12 1 (0.18%) Korn
12 1 (0.18%) PHP
12 1 (0.18%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.18%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 91 (16.25%) Security Cleared
2 78 (13.93%) SC Cleared
3 72 (12.86%) CISSP
4 45 (8.04%) Degree
5 39 (6.96%) Cisco Certification
6 32 (5.71%) AWS Certification
7 28 (5.00%) CISM
8 24 (4.29%) DV Cleared
9 23 (4.11%) Azure Certification
10 21 (3.75%) CCNP
11 19 (3.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 17 (3.04%) CEH
13 14 (2.50%) CCSP
14 13 (2.32%) Microsoft Certification
14 13 (2.32%) OSCP
15 12 (2.14%) GIAC
16 9 (1.61%) CCIE
16 9 (1.61%) CISA
16 9 (1.61%) Computer Science Degree
17 8 (1.43%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 54 (9.64%) NIST
2 50 (8.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 20 (3.57%) GDPR
3 20 (3.57%) PCI DSS
4 16 (2.86%) Cyber Essentials
5 14 (2.50%) NCSC
6 12 (2.14%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 6 (1.07%) GRC
7 6 (1.07%) HIPAA
7 6 (1.07%) NIST 800
8 3 (0.54%) ISO 31000
8 3 (0.54%) ISO 9001
8 3 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 3 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 27005
8 3 (0.54%) SOC 2
9 2 (0.36%) COBIT
9 2 (0.36%) JSP 440
9 2 (0.36%) QA
9 2 (0.36%) SLA
10 1 (0.18%) RMADS
System Software
1 43 (7.68%) Active Directory
2 22 (3.93%) Docker
3 11 (1.96%) Virtual Machines
4 10 (1.79%) VMware Infrastructure
5 7 (1.25%) Hyper-V
5 7 (1.25%) NFS
6 5 (0.89%) VMware NSX
6 5 (0.89%) vSphere
7 3 (0.54%) Firmware
7 3 (0.54%) ISA Server
7 3 (0.54%) Virtual Servers
8 2 (0.36%) Squid
8 2 (0.36%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.18%) RACF
Systems Management
1 78 (13.93%) Kubernetes
2 25 (4.46%) Ansible
3 17 (3.04%) Progress Chef
4 13 (2.32%) Microsoft Intune
5 12 (2.14%) FortiGate
6 10 (1.79%) Single Sign-On
7 8 (1.43%) Grafana
8 6 (1.07%) Istio
9 5 (0.89%) linkerd
9 5 (0.89%) QRadar
10 4 (0.71%) CASB
11 2 (0.36%) Prometheus
11 2 (0.36%) SCCM
12 1 (0.18%) Argo
12 1 (0.18%) CSIRT
12 1 (0.18%) Host Intrusion Detection System
12 1 (0.18%) Network Intrusion Detection System
12 1 (0.18%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 134 (23.93%) Microsoft
2 87 (15.54%) Cisco
3 69 (12.32%) Palo Alto
4 59 (10.54%) F5
5 47 (8.39%) Zscaler
6 39 (6.96%) CrowdStrike
7 34 (6.07%) CheckPoint
7 34 (6.07%) Splunk
8 29 (5.18%) Fortinet
9 24 (4.29%) CyberArk
10 21 (3.75%) Google
11 19 (3.39%) Red Hat
11 19 (3.39%) ServiceNow
12 17 (3.04%) VMware
13 16 (2.86%) Blue Coat
14 14 (2.50%) Juniper
15 13 (2.32%) Qualys
16 12 (2.14%) BeyondTrust
16 12 (2.14%) Netskope
17 11 (1.96%) Tenable