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 8 November 2025.

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

6 months to
8 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 234 206 251
Rank change year-on-year -28 +45 +28
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 439 430 462
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.25% 1.18% 0.98%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.38% 1.27% 1.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 257 308 316
10th Percentile £369 £400 £413
25th Percentile £416 £450 £487
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% -8.33% +9.09%
75th Percentile £632 £628 £700
90th Percentile £700 £700 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £550 £600
% change year-on-year -9.09% -8.33% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 3 28
10th Percentile £82.50 £42.00 £68.17
25th Percentile £84.75 £43.13 £83.09
Median hourly rate £91.00 £45.00 £83.40
Median % change year-on-year +102.22% -46.04% +73.75%
75th Percentile £91.50 £56.25 -
90th Percentile - £63.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £91.00 £65.00 £83.40
% change year-on-year +40.00% -22.06% +71.08%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 31,811 33,985 44,100
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.91% 92.88% 93.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,179 20,513 30,002
10th Percentile £278 £300 £295
25th Percentile £402 £412 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,817 1,273 1,546
10th Percentile £14.03 £15.10 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £36.50 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -31.10% -17.98% +53.98%
75th Percentile £51.25 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.65 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £35.25 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.65% -20.79% +85.42%

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 8 November 2025.

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 8 November 2025.

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 8 November 2025. 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 -10 389 £529 -3.82% 602
London +24 220 £550 - 198
UK excluding London -26 181 £500 -9.09% 504
Work from Home -7 128 £500 -9.09% 214
North of England -33 49 £525 -2.42% 100
North West -13 38 £525 -4.55% 67
East of England +14 37 £500 +73.91% 48
South East -28 25 £500 -4.76% 189
South West +3 24 £531 -15.04% 81
Midlands -30 22 £390 -25.71% 47
Scotland +12 19 £525 -11.39% 24
West Midlands -34 17 £385 -18.95% 34
Yorkshire -37 10 £540 +21.35% 26
Northern Ireland -3 5 - - 4
East Midlands -12 5 £415 -39.42% 10
Wales +1 4 £600 +1.27% 16
North East -10 1 £400 -17.95% 7

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

For the 6 months to 8 November 2025, 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.

1 176 (40.09%) Azure
2 170 (38.72%) Cybersecurity
3 133 (30.30%) Firewall
4 127 (28.93%) Cloud Security
5 121 (27.56%) AWS
6 120 (27.33%) Microsoft
7 119 (27.11%) Security Cleared
8 118 (26.88%) SIEM
9 105 (23.92%) Network Security
10 97 (22.10%) NIST
10 97 (22.10%) SC Cleared
11 95 (21.64%) Incident Response
12 93 (21.18%) Python
13 80 (18.22%) Security Operations
14 79 (18.00%) Infrastructure as Code
15 78 (17.77%) Windows
16 76 (17.31%) CI/CD
17 71 (16.17%) PowerShell
18 70 (15.95%) GCP
19 62 (14.12%) Active Directory
19 62 (14.12%) CISSP
20 59 (13.44%) Microsoft 365
21 58 (13.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
21 58 (13.21%) Linux
22 54 (12.30%) Entra ID
23 51 (11.62%) Cisco
23 51 (11.62%) DevOps
23 51 (11.62%) DevSecOps
24 50 (11.39%) Degree
25 47 (10.71%) Threat Modelling

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 20 (4.56%) SharePoint
2 17 (3.87%) Microsoft Exchange
3 4 (0.91%) Confluence
4 2 (0.46%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 5 (1.14%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.91%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.23%) 1Password
Business Applications
1 2 (0.46%) NetSuite
2 1 (0.23%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 176 (40.09%) Azure
2 121 (27.56%) AWS
3 70 (15.95%) GCP
4 59 (13.44%) Microsoft 365
5 54 (12.30%) Entra ID
6 46 (10.48%) Azure Sentinel
7 36 (8.20%) GitHub
8 33 (7.52%) Microsoft Purview
9 19 (4.33%) OpenShift
10 16 (3.64%) Amazon GuardDuty
11 15 (3.42%) AWS CloudFormation
12 13 (2.96%) Azure Monitor
13 11 (2.51%) AWS CloudTrail
14 10 (2.28%) GitHub Actions
15 8 (1.82%) Amazon EKS
16 7 (1.59%) Amazon Macie
16 7 (1.59%) AWS KMS
16 7 (1.59%) Azure Logic Apps
16 7 (1.59%) Mimecast
17 6 (1.37%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 133 (30.30%) Firewall
2 105 (23.92%) Network Security
3 34 (7.74%) VPN
4 31 (7.06%) DNS
5 25 (5.69%) WAN
6 20 (4.56%) SSL
7 18 (4.10%) Intrusion Detection
8 16 (3.64%) Wireless
9 13 (2.96%) BGP
9 13 (2.96%) OSPF
10 11 (2.51%) TCP/IP
11 10 (2.28%) DMVPN
12 9 (2.05%) Internet
13 8 (1.82%) IPsec
13 8 (1.82%) SD-WAN
13 8 (1.82%) VLAN
14 7 (1.59%) Cisco IPT
14 7 (1.59%) DHCP
14 7 (1.59%) NGFW
14 7 (1.59%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (2.05%) Data Lake
2 8 (1.82%) BigQuery
3 7 (1.59%) Oracle Database
4 3 (0.68%) Big Data
4 3 (0.68%) Elasticsearch
5 2 (0.46%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
5 2 (0.46%) Data Warehouse
5 2 (0.46%) Power BI
6 1 (0.23%) Amazon RDS
6 1 (0.23%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 18 (4.10%) SonarQube
2 17 (3.87%) GitLab
3 14 (3.19%) Burp Suite
3 14 (3.19%) Metasploit
4 12 (2.73%) Jenkins
5 11 (2.51%) JIRA
6 6 (1.37%) ClearCase
7 4 (0.91%) Bitbucket
7 4 (0.91%) Snyk
8 2 (0.46%) Git
9 1 (0.23%) Artifactory
9 1 (0.23%) Fiddler
9 1 (0.23%) Postman
General
1 123 (28.02%) Social Skills
2 58 (13.21%) Finance
3 53 (12.07%) Public Sector
4 33 (7.52%) Analytical Skills
5 24 (5.47%) Military
6 14 (3.19%) Banking
7 13 (2.96%) Documentation Skills
8 10 (2.28%) Legal
8 10 (2.28%) Telecoms
9 7 (1.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 5 (1.14%) Manufacturing
10 5 (1.14%) Pharmaceutical
10 5 (1.14%) Spanish Language
11 4 (0.91%) Law
11 4 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (0.68%) Aerospace
12 3 (0.68%) Financial Institution
13 2 (0.46%) Influencing Skills
13 2 (0.46%) Retail
13 2 (0.46%) Social Housing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (2.73%) SAML
2 10 (2.28%) REST
3 9 (2.05%) OAuth
4 8 (1.82%) 802.1X
5 6 (1.37%) OpenID
6 4 (0.91%) Elastic Stack
6 4 (0.91%) SailPoint
7 3 (0.68%) JSON
7 3 (0.68%) LDAP
7 3 (0.68%) Middleware
7 3 (0.68%) NestJS
7 3 (0.68%) React
7 3 (0.68%) Smart Contracts
7 3 (0.68%) YAML
8 2 (0.46%) Jinja
8 2 (0.46%) Microsoft Graph
8 2 (0.46%) OAuth2
8 2 (0.46%) Oracle Fusion
8 2 (0.46%) Regular Expression
9 1 (0.23%) Flutter
Miscellaneous
1 48 (10.93%) Security Posture
2 29 (6.61%) Data Centre
3 26 (5.92%) Management Information System
4 23 (5.24%) Onboarding
5 18 (4.10%) Cyber Threat
6 17 (3.87%) Cloud Native
7 15 (3.42%) Data Protection Act
8 12 (2.73%) Cyber Defence
9 9 (2.05%) Operational Technology
10 8 (1.82%) Hybrid Cloud
11 7 (1.59%) Cloud Security Posture
11 7 (1.59%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 7 (1.59%) Security Operations Centre
12 6 (1.37%) BYOD
12 6 (1.37%) Cyber Security Posture
13 5 (1.14%) Cyber Kill Chain
13 5 (1.14%) Life Science
13 5 (1.14%) PKI
14 4 (0.91%) Enterprise Software
14 4 (0.91%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 78 (17.77%) Windows
2 58 (13.21%) Linux
3 15 (3.42%) Windows Server
4 10 (2.28%) Mac OS
5 7 (1.59%) Unix
6 3 (0.68%) Android
6 3 (0.68%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 2 (0.46%) VMS
7 2 (0.46%) Windows Server 2012
8 1 (0.23%) CentOS
8 1 (0.23%) Ubuntu
8 1 (0.23%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 170 (38.72%) Cybersecurity
2 127 (28.93%) Cloud Security
3 118 (26.88%) SIEM
4 95 (21.64%) Incident Response
5 80 (18.22%) Security Operations
6 79 (18.00%) Infrastructure as Code
7 76 (17.31%) CI/CD
8 51 (11.62%) DevOps
8 51 (11.62%) DevSecOps
9 47 (10.71%) Threat Modelling
10 43 (9.79%) Vulnerability Management
11 42 (9.57%) Data Protection
12 41 (9.34%) Problem-Solving
12 41 (9.34%) Vulnerability Assessment
13 38 (8.66%) Data Loss Prevention
13 38 (8.66%) SOAR
14 37 (8.43%) Penetration Testing
14 37 (8.43%) Threat Detection
15 36 (8.20%) Security Monitoring
16 33 (7.52%) Information Security
Programming Languages
1 93 (21.18%) Python
2 71 (16.17%) PowerShell
3 31 (7.06%) Bash
4 26 (5.92%) Kusto Query Language
5 16 (3.64%) Java
6 15 (3.42%) SQL
7 6 (1.37%) C
7 6 (1.37%) Perl
7 6 (1.37%) Shell Script
8 5 (1.14%) Bicep
8 5 (1.14%) JavaScript
9 4 (0.91%) C#
9 4 (0.91%) C++
9 4 (0.91%) Kotlin
10 3 (0.68%) Rust
11 2 (0.46%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.23%) BeanShell
12 1 (0.23%) Go
12 1 (0.23%) Objective-C
12 1 (0.23%) Swift
Qualifications
1 119 (27.11%) Security Cleared
2 97 (22.10%) SC Cleared
3 62 (14.12%) CISSP
4 50 (11.39%) Degree
5 30 (6.83%) Cisco Certification
6 26 (5.92%) CISM
7 22 (5.01%) DV Cleared
7 22 (5.01%) OSCP
8 19 (4.33%) CREST Certified
8 19 (4.33%) Microsoft Certification
9 18 (4.10%) Azure Certification
9 18 (4.10%) CCNP
10 14 (3.19%) CEH
11 13 (2.96%) Tigerscheme
12 12 (2.73%) CompTIA Security+
12 12 (2.73%) SANS
13 10 (2.28%) CHECK Team Member
14 9 (2.05%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 9 (2.05%) AWS Certification
15 6 (1.37%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 97 (22.10%) NIST
2 58 (13.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 37 (8.43%) NCSC
4 30 (6.83%) GDPR
5 21 (4.78%) NIST 800
6 17 (3.87%) HIPAA
6 17 (3.87%) JSP 440
7 16 (3.64%) Cyber Essentials
8 11 (2.51%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 7 (1.59%) PCI DSS
10 5 (1.14%) SOC 2
11 4 (0.91%) GRC
12 3 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 3 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 2 (0.46%) Accessibility
13 2 (0.46%) EU AI Act
13 2 (0.46%) GxP
13 2 (0.46%) SLA
14 1 (0.23%) Def Stans
14 1 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 62 (14.12%) Active Directory
2 17 (3.87%) Docker
2 17 (3.87%) Firmware
3 14 (3.19%) Virtual Machines
4 7 (1.59%) Hyper-V
5 3 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.46%) Snort
Systems Management
1 42 (9.57%) Terraform
2 33 (7.52%) Kubernetes
3 16 (3.64%) SCCM
4 14 (3.19%) Ansible
4 14 (3.19%) Nmap
5 12 (2.73%) Microsoft Intune
6 11 (2.51%) CASB
6 11 (2.51%) Fluentd
7 10 (2.28%) Single Sign-On
8 6 (1.37%) QRadar
8 6 (1.37%) SCOrch
8 6 (1.37%) WSUS
9 5 (1.14%) FortiGate
10 4 (0.91%) CSIRT
10 4 (0.91%) Nessus
11 3 (0.68%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 3 (0.68%) Kibana
11 3 (0.68%) logstash
11 3 (0.68%) Progress Chef
12 2 (0.46%) CA Spectrum
Vendors
1 120 (27.33%) Microsoft
2 51 (11.62%) Cisco
3 46 (10.48%) Splunk
4 41 (9.34%) Palo Alto
5 29 (6.61%) Zscaler
6 25 (5.69%) CrowdStrike
7 24 (5.47%) F5
8 23 (5.24%) CheckPoint
8 23 (5.24%) Tenable
9 22 (5.01%) Fortinet
10 19 (4.33%) Google
10 19 (4.33%) Juniper
11 18 (4.10%) Veracode
12 13 (2.96%) Cribl.io
13 12 (2.73%) Qualys
14 11 (2.51%) Oracle
15 10 (2.28%) ServiceNow
15 10 (2.28%) SolarWinds
16 9 (2.05%) Forcepoint
17 8 (1.82%) Blue Coat