Security Engineer Contract Job Trends

Security Engineer
UK

The median Security Engineer daily rate in the UK is £538, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 15 January 2026.

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

6 months to
15 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 223 245 271
Rank change year-on-year +22 +26 +2
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 453 324 360
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.22% 1.02% 0.85%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.34% 1.10% 0.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 252 204 230
10th Percentile £381 £400 £413
25th Percentile £461 £435 £480
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £550 £595
Median % change year-on-year -2.27% -7.56% +4.85%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £692
90th Percentile £700 £700 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 3 25
10th Percentile - £42.00 £58.80
25th Percentile - £43.13 £82.17
Median hourly rate £85.40 £45.00 £83.40
Median % change year-on-year +89.78% -46.04% +42.56%
75th Percentile £91.13 £61.68 -
90th Percentile £92.20 £71.69 £83.41
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.40 £73.31 £83.40
% change year-on-year +16.49% -12.10% +22.74%

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 33,883 29,520 39,341
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.34% 92.72% 93.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,433 18,105 26,194
10th Percentile £300 £288 £280
25th Percentile £405 £408 £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 £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,985 889 1,660
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.24 £21.05 £18.93
Median hourly rate £26.30 £32.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -19.08% -23.53% +21.43%
75th Percentile £60.00 £62.24 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.29 £45.00
% change year-on-year -19.62% -30.47% +55.17%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 +16 389 £538 -2.27% 366
London +23 212 £550 -4.35% 90
UK excluding London -8 180 £525 - 345
Work from Home +20 132 £537 +0.85% 138
North of England -34 46 £575 +10.31% 71
South East -15 41 £475 -9.52% 101
North West -16 30 £575 +4.55% 44
Midlands -23 30 £475 +12.43% 49
Scotland +18 25 £525 -6.67% 23
South West 0 25 £525 -12.50% 53
West Midlands -25 25 £543 +28.40% 21
East of England -11 17 £525 +90.91% 38
Yorkshire -45 13 £570 +42.50% 18
Northern Ireland 0 5 - - 3
East Midlands - 5 £450 - 28
North East -11 3 £400 -33.33% 9
Wales -2 2 £600 +34.83% 17

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

For the 6 months to 15 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.

1 172 (37.97%) Azure
1 172 (37.97%) Cybersecurity
2 130 (28.70%) SIEM
3 124 (27.37%) Microsoft
4 122 (26.93%) AWS
5 112 (24.72%) Firewall
6 108 (23.84%) Cloud Security
7 102 (22.52%) Security Cleared
8 92 (20.31%) Incident Response
9 89 (19.65%) Network Security
10 88 (19.43%) Python
11 80 (17.66%) SC Cleared
12 77 (17.00%) NIST
13 74 (16.34%) PowerShell
14 73 (16.11%) Security Operations
15 70 (15.45%) Windows
16 67 (14.79%) Infrastructure as Code
17 66 (14.57%) CI/CD
18 63 (13.91%) Linux
19 60 (13.25%) CISSP
20 54 (11.92%) DevOps
20 54 (11.92%) Entra ID
20 54 (11.92%) GCP
20 54 (11.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
20 54 (11.92%) Microsoft 365
21 52 (11.48%) Active Directory
22 50 (11.04%) Degree
23 46 (10.15%) Cisco
23 46 (10.15%) Problem-Solving
24 45 (9.93%) Azure Sentinel

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 (2.43%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (1.32%) SharePoint
3 4 (0.88%) Confluence
4 2 (0.44%) Apache
4 2 (0.44%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 5 (1.10%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.88%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.44%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 172 (37.97%) Azure
2 122 (26.93%) AWS
3 54 (11.92%) Entra ID
3 54 (11.92%) GCP
3 54 (11.92%) Microsoft 365
4 45 (9.93%) Azure Sentinel
5 39 (8.61%) Microsoft Purview
6 28 (6.18%) GitHub
7 19 (4.19%) AWS CloudFormation
7 19 (4.19%) OpenShift
8 14 (3.09%) Azure Monitor
9 12 (2.65%) Azure Key Vault
9 12 (2.65%) Mimecast
9 12 (2.65%) SaaS
10 10 (2.21%) Amazon ECS
10 10 (2.21%) GitHub Actions
11 9 (1.99%) Amazon GuardDuty
12 8 (1.77%) Amazon EKS
12 8 (1.77%) Serverless
13 7 (1.55%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 112 (24.72%) Firewall
2 89 (19.65%) Network Security
3 37 (8.17%) VPN
4 32 (7.06%) DNS
5 19 (4.19%) WAN
6 16 (3.53%) Wireless
7 15 (3.31%) BGP
8 14 (3.09%) SSL
8 14 (3.09%) TCP/IP
9 10 (2.21%) Intrusion Detection
9 10 (2.21%) IPsec
9 10 (2.21%) OSPF
10 8 (1.77%) Cisco IPT
10 8 (1.77%) DMVPN
11 7 (1.55%) DHCP
11 7 (1.55%) Wi-Fi
12 5 (1.10%) DMZ
12 5 (1.10%) Internet
12 5 (1.10%) Multicast
12 5 (1.10%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (2.43%) Data Lake
2 7 (1.55%) BigQuery
2 7 (1.55%) Oracle Database
3 5 (1.10%) Elasticsearch
4 4 (0.88%) Amazon Athena
4 4 (0.88%) Power BI
5 3 (0.66%) Amazon RDS
6 2 (0.44%) Amazon Redshift
6 2 (0.44%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
6 2 (0.44%) Data Warehouse
6 2 (0.44%) Mixpanel
6 2 (0.44%) OLAP
6 2 (0.44%) OLTP
7 1 (0.22%) Big Data
7 1 (0.22%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 16 (3.53%) GitLab
2 9 (1.99%) JIRA
3 7 (1.55%) Jenkins
3 7 (1.55%) SonarQube
4 6 (1.32%) ClearCase
4 6 (1.32%) Snyk
5 5 (1.10%) Git
6 4 (0.88%) Bitbucket
7 3 (0.66%) Artifactory
8 1 (0.22%) Travis CI
General
1 115 (25.39%) Social Skills
2 62 (13.69%) Finance
3 44 (9.71%) Public Sector
4 39 (8.61%) Analytical Skills
5 17 (3.75%) Banking
6 14 (3.09%) Documentation Skills
7 11 (2.43%) Telecoms
8 10 (2.21%) Military
9 9 (1.99%) Legal
10 8 (1.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 6 (1.32%) Financial Institution
11 6 (1.32%) Spanish Language
12 5 (1.10%) Investment Banking
12 5 (1.10%) Manufacturing
13 4 (0.88%) Cyber-Physical System
13 4 (0.88%) Organisational Skills
13 4 (0.88%) Pharmaceutical
14 3 (0.66%) Local Government
14 3 (0.66%) Presentation Skills
15 2 (0.44%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (4.86%) REST
2 11 (2.43%) Elastic Stack
2 11 (2.43%) SAML
3 9 (1.99%) 802.1X
4 8 (1.77%) OAuth
5 7 (1.55%) Node.js
5 7 (1.55%) SailPoint
6 6 (1.32%) JSON
6 6 (1.32%) Kafka
6 6 (1.32%) NestJS
6 6 (1.32%) OpenID
7 5 (1.10%) Microsoft Graph
8 4 (0.88%) Regular Expression
8 4 (0.88%) SOAP
9 3 (0.66%) .NET
9 3 (0.66%) LDAP
9 3 (0.66%) YAML
10 2 (0.44%) ADO
10 2 (0.44%) Oracle Fusion
10 2 (0.44%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 53 (11.70%) Security Posture
2 27 (5.96%) Data Centre
3 23 (5.08%) Management Information System
4 21 (4.64%) Cloud Native
4 21 (4.64%) Onboarding
5 13 (2.87%) Cyber Threat
6 11 (2.43%) Data Protection Act
6 11 (2.43%) Operational Technology
7 10 (2.21%) Cyber Defence
8 7 (1.55%) Cloud Security Posture
8 7 (1.55%) Cyber Kill Chain
8 7 (1.55%) Greenfield Project
8 7 (1.55%) Hybrid Cloud
8 7 (1.55%) Security Operations Centre
9 6 (1.32%) BYOD
9 6 (1.32%) Cyber Security Posture
10 5 (1.10%) Life Science
10 5 (1.10%) Mobile App
10 5 (1.10%) YARA
11 4 (0.88%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 70 (15.45%) Windows
2 63 (13.91%) Linux
3 13 (2.87%) Windows Server
4 11 (2.43%) Mac OS
5 7 (1.55%) Unix
6 6 (1.32%) Android
7 5 (1.10%) Apple iOS
8 4 (0.88%) Windows 10
9 3 (0.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 3 (0.66%) VMS
10 1 (0.22%) Rocky
10 1 (0.22%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 172 (37.97%) Cybersecurity
2 130 (28.70%) SIEM
3 108 (23.84%) Cloud Security
4 92 (20.31%) Incident Response
5 73 (16.11%) Security Operations
6 67 (14.79%) Infrastructure as Code
7 66 (14.57%) CI/CD
8 54 (11.92%) DevOps
9 46 (10.15%) Problem-Solving
10 45 (9.93%) Threat Detection
11 44 (9.71%) Vulnerability Management
12 43 (9.49%) Threat Modelling
13 41 (9.05%) DevSecOps
13 41 (9.05%) Information Security
13 41 (9.05%) SOAR
14 39 (8.61%) Security Monitoring
15 36 (7.95%) Agile
16 35 (7.73%) Continuous Improvement
17 33 (7.28%) Analytics
17 33 (7.28%) Data Loss Prevention
Programming Languages
1 88 (19.43%) Python
2 74 (16.34%) PowerShell
3 34 (7.51%) Kusto Query Language
4 26 (5.74%) Bash
5 19 (4.19%) Java
6 9 (1.99%) SQL
7 6 (1.32%) Bicep
7 6 (1.32%) C
8 5 (1.10%) JavaScript
8 5 (1.10%) Shell Script
9 4 (0.88%) BeanShell
10 3 (0.66%) C#
10 3 (0.66%) Kotlin
10 3 (0.66%) Perl
10 3 (0.66%) TypeScript
11 2 (0.44%) C++
11 2 (0.44%) Rust
12 1 (0.22%) Go
12 1 (0.22%) Scala
12 1 (0.22%) Swift
Qualifications
1 102 (22.52%) Security Cleared
2 80 (17.66%) SC Cleared
3 60 (13.25%) CISSP
4 50 (11.04%) Degree
5 32 (7.06%) CISM
6 27 (5.96%) Cisco Certification
7 23 (5.08%) DV Cleared
8 17 (3.75%) Azure Certification
9 14 (3.09%) CompTIA Security+
10 13 (2.87%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 13 (2.87%) CEH
11 12 (2.65%) AWS Certification
11 12 (2.65%) CCNP
12 11 (2.43%) SANS
13 9 (1.99%) Microsoft Certification
14 8 (1.77%) CCSP
15 7 (1.55%) GIAC
16 6 (1.32%) Computer Science Degree
16 6 (1.32%) Network+ Certification
16 6 (1.32%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 77 (17.00%) NIST
2 54 (11.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 32 (7.06%) GDPR
4 17 (3.75%) NCSC
5 16 (3.53%) Cyber Essentials
6 11 (2.43%) HIPAA
6 11 (2.43%) NIST 800
7 9 (1.99%) GRC
8 8 (1.77%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 8 (1.77%) JSP 440
8 8 (1.77%) PCI DSS
9 6 (1.32%) RMADS
10 5 (1.10%) SOC 2
11 3 (0.66%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 3 (0.66%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 2 (0.44%) Data Quality
12 2 (0.44%) EU AI Act
12 2 (0.44%) GxP
13 1 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 1 (0.22%) SLA
System Software
1 52 (11.48%) Active Directory
2 17 (3.75%) Docker
2 17 (3.75%) Virtual Machines
3 8 (1.77%) Firmware
4 7 (1.55%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.44%) Snort
5 2 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (0.44%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.22%) GPFS
6 1 (0.22%) Lustre
6 1 (0.22%) Slurm Workload Manager
6 1 (0.22%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 43 (9.49%) Terraform
2 37 (8.17%) Kubernetes
3 21 (4.64%) Microsoft Intune
4 19 (4.19%) SCCM
5 14 (3.09%) Single Sign-On
6 13 (2.87%) Fluentd
7 9 (1.99%) Ansible
7 9 (1.99%) CASB
8 7 (1.55%) logstash
8 7 (1.55%) WSUS
9 6 (1.32%) Kibana
9 6 (1.32%) SCOrch
10 4 (0.88%) AirWatch
10 4 (0.88%) CSIRT
10 4 (0.88%) Functional Safety
10 4 (0.88%) Nessus
11 3 (0.66%) Argo
11 3 (0.66%) FortiGate
11 3 (0.66%) Icinga
11 3 (0.66%) QRadar
Vendors
1 124 (27.37%) Microsoft
2 46 (10.15%) Cisco
3 44 (9.71%) Splunk
4 35 (7.73%) Palo Alto
5 32 (7.06%) CrowdStrike
6 28 (6.18%) F5
7 24 (5.30%) Tenable
8 21 (4.64%) CheckPoint
9 18 (3.97%) Google
10 17 (3.75%) Fortinet
10 17 (3.75%) Juniper
11 15 (3.31%) Qualys
12 13 (2.87%) Cribl.io
13 11 (2.43%) ServiceNow
13 11 (2.43%) Zscaler
14 9 (1.99%) Blue Coat
14 9 (1.99%) Oracle
15 8 (1.77%) CyberArk
15 8 (1.77%) Forcepoint
16 7 (1.55%) Ping Identity