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 July 2026.

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

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 234 255 248
Rank change year-on-year +21 -7 -31
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 554 340 411
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.05% 1.05% 0.96%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.14% 1.14% 1.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 359 215 310
10th Percentile £413 £368 £413
25th Percentile £475 £411 £439
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £515 £569
Median % change year-on-year +4.37% -9.45% +0.66%
75th Percentile £610 £638 £650
90th Percentile £688 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £540 £500 £560
% change year-on-year +8.00% -10.71% +1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 9 2
10th Percentile £71.50 £63.50 £64.25
25th Percentile £73.75 £82.50 £66.88
Median hourly rate £77.50 £85.00 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year -8.82% +17.24% -13.02%
75th Percentile £85.40 £91.50 £76.88
90th Percentile £85.82 - £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £84.70 £85.00 £72.50
% change year-on-year -0.35% +17.24% -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 48,692 29,793 39,772
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.54% 91.81% 93.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,483 18,982 25,593
10th Percentile £325 £288 £288
25th Percentile £419 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,276 1,398 2,720
10th Percentile £15.93 £13.75 £13.00
25th Percentile £21.35 £17.44 £17.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £26.45 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +70.13% -33.88% -5.88%
75th Percentile £67.84 £56.19 £63.41
90th Percentile £80.07 £73.75 £73.78
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.56 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +81.13% -37.13% +6.67%

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 15 July 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 July 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 15 July 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 -1 506 £530 +5.91% 388
UK excluding London -18 268 £540 +8.00% 329
London +10 245 £525 -1.50% 106
Work from Home +4 207 £540 +8.00% 147
North of England +2 132 £569 +13.75% 86
North West +14 109 £558 +11.39% 53
Midlands -11 60 £500 - 38
West Midlands -21 58 £500 -8.05% 19
South East -47 48 £500 +11.11% 106
South West -27 22 £525 +7.69% 30
Yorkshire -38 22 £600 +20.00% 24
Scotland +5 20 £625 +13.64% 20
East of England -31 19 £525 +5.00% 45
East Midlands -11 2 £338 -18.67% 19
Wales -11 2 £733 +46.50% 4
North East -43 1 - - 9

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

For the 6 months to 15 July 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.

1 188 (33.94%) Azure
2 171 (30.87%) Cybersecurity
3 160 (28.88%) Cloud Security
4 148 (26.71%) AWS
5 127 (22.92%) Firewall
6 126 (22.74%) SIEM
7 123 (22.20%) Python
8 120 (21.66%) Microsoft
8 120 (21.66%) Network Security
9 102 (18.41%) CI/CD
10 95 (17.15%) Cisco
11 94 (16.97%) Security Cleared
12 86 (15.52%) PowerShell
13 84 (15.16%) Incident Response
14 80 (14.44%) SC Cleared
15 78 (14.08%) VPN
16 75 (13.54%) Security Operations
17 71 (12.82%) Security Architecture
18 68 (12.27%) Terraform
19 67 (12.09%) CISSP
19 67 (12.09%) GCP
20 63 (11.37%) Threat Modelling
20 63 (11.37%) Vulnerability Management
21 62 (11.19%) NIST
22 61 (11.01%) DevSecOps
22 61 (11.01%) DNS
23 60 (10.83%) DevOps
23 60 (10.83%) F5
24 59 (10.65%) Data Loss Prevention
24 59 (10.65%) Windows

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 21 (3.79%) Confluence
2 3 (0.54%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 3 (0.54%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.18%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 6 (1.08%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.36%) Maximo
2 2 (0.36%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.18%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 188 (33.94%) Azure
2 148 (26.71%) AWS
3 67 (12.09%) GCP
4 49 (8.84%) Microsoft Purview
5 46 (8.30%) Microsoft 365
6 33 (5.96%) Entra ID
7 22 (3.97%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 20 (3.61%) SaaS
9 19 (3.43%) AWS CloudFormation
9 19 (3.43%) Azure Sentinel
10 18 (3.25%) Amazon GuardDuty
11 17 (3.07%) GitHub
12 15 (2.71%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 14 (2.53%) AWS CloudTrail
14 13 (2.35%) Mimecast
15 12 (2.17%) Akamai
16 11 (1.99%) Azure DevOps
17 10 (1.81%) AWS KMS
17 10 (1.81%) Serverless
18 8 (1.44%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 127 (22.92%) Firewall
2 120 (21.66%) Network Security
3 78 (14.08%) VPN
4 61 (11.01%) DNS
5 49 (8.84%) BGP
6 35 (6.32%) DMZ
7 33 (5.96%) Multicast
8 26 (4.69%) TCP/IP
9 25 (4.51%) SSL
9 25 (4.51%) WAN
10 21 (3.79%) SD-WAN
11 17 (3.07%) HTTP
12 14 (2.53%) Cisco ISE
12 14 (2.53%) Internet
13 12 (2.17%) TACACS
14 11 (1.99%) VLAN
15 10 (1.81%) Cisco ASA
15 10 (1.81%) MPLS
15 10 (1.81%) Wireless
16 9 (1.62%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (1.44%) Power BI
2 7 (1.26%) SQL Server
3 6 (1.08%) PostgreSQL
4 5 (0.90%) Data Lake
5 4 (0.72%) MongoDB
6 3 (0.54%) Big Data
7 2 (0.36%) Amazon RDS
7 2 (0.36%) Apache Cassandra
7 2 (0.36%) Elasticsearch
7 2 (0.36%) Metadata
7 2 (0.36%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.36%) RDBMS
7 2 (0.36%) Relational Database
8 1 (0.18%) Data Warehouse
8 1 (0.18%) Db2
8 1 (0.18%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 26 (4.69%) JIRA
2 11 (1.99%) GitLab
3 9 (1.62%) Jenkins
4 6 (1.08%) Snyk
5 5 (0.90%) Git
6 4 (0.72%) Burp Suite
7 2 (0.36%) Browser DevTools
7 2 (0.36%) Claude Code
7 2 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.18%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 1 (0.18%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.18%) Metasploit
8 1 (0.18%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.18%) sqlmap
8 1 (0.18%) TruffleHog
General
1 107 (19.31%) Social Skills
2 86 (15.52%) Finance
3 47 (8.48%) Analytical Skills
4 39 (7.04%) Banking
5 28 (5.05%) Public Sector
6 22 (3.97%) Investment Banking
7 20 (3.61%) Documentation Skills
8 7 (1.26%) Legal
8 7 (1.26%) Marketing
9 5 (0.90%) Presentation Skills
9 5 (0.90%) Telecoms
10 4 (0.72%) Health Technology
10 4 (0.72%) Manufacturing
10 4 (0.72%) Military
11 3 (0.54%) Aerospace
11 3 (0.54%) Retail
12 2 (0.36%) Financial Institution
12 2 (0.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 2 (0.36%) Law
13 1 (0.18%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (1.81%) SAML
2 8 (1.44%) LDAP
2 8 (1.44%) SLSA
3 7 (1.26%) Elastic Stack
3 7 (1.26%) LangChain
4 6 (1.08%) PyTorch
4 6 (1.08%) scikit-learn
5 5 (0.90%) 802.1X
5 5 (0.90%) REST
6 4 (0.72%) Microsoft Graph
7 3 (0.54%) AWS CDK
7 3 (0.54%) OAuth
8 2 (0.36%) .NET
8 2 (0.36%) JSON
8 2 (0.36%) SailPoint
9 1 (0.18%) ADO
9 1 (0.18%) CSS
9 1 (0.18%) JCE
9 1 (0.18%) SOAP
9 1 (0.18%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 87 (15.70%) Security Posture
2 58 (10.47%) Cloud Native
3 35 (6.32%) Management Information System
4 32 (5.78%) Cloud Security Posture
5 20 (3.61%) Data Centre
6 17 (3.07%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 16 (2.89%) Operational Technology
8 14 (2.53%) AI Agents
8 14 (2.53%) Onboarding
9 13 (2.35%) Data Protection Act
10 12 (2.17%) Hybrid Cloud
11 11 (1.99%) Cyber Threat
12 10 (1.81%) Enterprise Cloud
12 10 (1.81%) Public Cloud
13 9 (1.62%) PKI
13 9 (1.62%) Security Operations Centre
14 7 (1.26%) Cyber Defence
15 6 (1.08%) Linux Command Line
15 6 (1.08%) SCADA
16 4 (0.72%) BYOD
Operating Systems
1 59 (10.65%) Windows
2 51 (9.21%) Linux
3 13 (2.35%) Windows Server
4 12 (2.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 9 (1.62%) Mac OS
6 7 (1.26%) Apple iOS
6 7 (1.26%) Ubuntu
7 6 (1.08%) Windows 10
8 3 (0.54%) Unix
9 2 (0.36%) Android
9 2 (0.36%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 171 (30.87%) Cybersecurity
2 160 (28.88%) Cloud Security
3 126 (22.74%) SIEM
4 102 (18.41%) CI/CD
5 84 (15.16%) Incident Response
6 75 (13.54%) Security Operations
7 71 (12.82%) Security Architecture
8 63 (11.37%) Threat Modelling
8 63 (11.37%) Vulnerability Management
9 61 (11.01%) DevSecOps
10 60 (10.83%) DevOps
11 59 (10.65%) Data Loss Prevention
12 56 (10.11%) Load Balancing
13 52 (9.39%) Information Security
14 48 (8.66%) Agile
14 48 (8.66%) Infrastructure as Code
15 47 (8.48%) Continuous Improvement
15 47 (8.48%) Zero Trust
16 45 (8.12%) Validation
17 42 (7.58%) AI
Programming Languages
1 123 (22.20%) Python
2 86 (15.52%) PowerShell
3 50 (9.03%) Bash
4 17 (3.07%) Java
5 11 (1.99%) Kusto Query Language
6 9 (1.62%) Bicep
6 9 (1.62%) SQL
7 5 (0.90%) PHP
7 5 (0.90%) Search Processing Language
8 3 (0.54%) Perl
8 3 (0.54%) Shell Script
9 2 (0.36%) Go
9 2 (0.36%) JavaScript
9 2 (0.36%) Ruby
10 1 (0.18%) C
10 1 (0.18%) C#
10 1 (0.18%) Korn
10 1 (0.18%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 94 (16.97%) Security Cleared
2 80 (14.44%) SC Cleared
3 67 (12.09%) CISSP
4 46 (8.30%) Degree
5 35 (6.32%) Cisco Certification
6 31 (5.60%) CISM
7 26 (4.69%) AWS Certification
8 21 (3.79%) DV Cleared
9 19 (3.43%) Azure Certification
10 17 (3.07%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 17 (3.07%) CCNP
11 13 (2.35%) CEH
11 13 (2.35%) GIAC
12 12 (2.17%) CompTIA Security+
13 11 (1.99%) Microsoft Certification
14 10 (1.81%) Computer Science Degree
15 8 (1.44%) CCIE
16 7 (1.26%) OSCP
17 6 (1.08%) CCSP
17 6 (1.08%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 62 (11.19%) NIST
2 56 (10.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 28 (5.05%) GDPR
4 23 (4.15%) Cyber Essentials
5 19 (3.43%) PCI DSS
6 14 (2.53%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 12 (2.17%) NCSC
8 8 (1.44%) HIPAA
8 8 (1.44%) SLA
9 6 (1.08%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 6 (1.08%) NIST 800
10 5 (0.90%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 4 (0.72%) Government Security Classifications
11 4 (0.72%) GRC
11 4 (0.72%) SOC 2
12 3 (0.54%) ISA99
12 3 (0.54%) JSP 440
13 2 (0.36%) Actionable Recommendations
13 2 (0.36%) COBIT
13 2 (0.36%) RMADS
System Software
1 31 (5.60%) Active Directory
2 23 (4.15%) Docker
3 12 (2.17%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (1.44%) VMware ESXi
5 6 (1.08%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (1.08%) VMware NSX
5 6 (1.08%) vSphere
6 3 (0.54%) Virtual Servers
7 2 (0.36%) Squid
8 1 (0.18%) Firmware
8 1 (0.18%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.18%) RACF
Systems Management
1 68 (12.27%) Terraform
2 52 (9.39%) Kubernetes
3 18 (3.25%) Ansible
4 12 (2.17%) FortiGate
5 11 (1.99%) Progress Chef
5 11 (1.99%) Single Sign-On
6 10 (1.81%) Microsoft Intune
7 7 (1.26%) vCenter Server
8 6 (1.08%) CASB
9 4 (0.72%) Nessus
10 3 (0.54%) Grafana
10 3 (0.54%) Kibana
10 3 (0.54%) SCOM
11 2 (0.36%) logstash
11 2 (0.36%) QRadar
12 1 (0.18%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 1 (0.18%) CSIRT
12 1 (0.18%) Functional Safety
12 1 (0.18%) Host Intrusion Detection System
12 1 (0.18%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 120 (21.66%) Microsoft
2 95 (17.15%) Cisco
3 60 (10.83%) F5
4 45 (8.12%) Palo Alto
5 38 (6.86%) Fortinet
6 37 (6.68%) CrowdStrike
7 31 (5.60%) Zscaler
8 27 (4.87%) ServiceNow
9 25 (4.51%) CyberArk
9 25 (4.51%) Google
10 24 (4.33%) CheckPoint
11 20 (3.61%) Splunk
12 19 (3.43%) VMware
13 15 (2.71%) Tenable
14 14 (2.53%) Netskope
15 13 (2.35%) BeyondTrust
16 12 (2.17%) Red Hat
17 11 (1.99%) Blue Coat
18 10 (1.81%) Oracle
19 9 (1.62%) Qualys