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 20 January 2026.

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

6 months to
20 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 227 243 264
Rank change year-on-year +16 +21 +1
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 455 309 366
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.22% 0.99% 0.84%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.34% 1.06% 0.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 252 185 236
10th Percentile £381 £400 £413
25th Percentile £456 £435 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £550 £595
Median % change year-on-year -2.27% -7.56% +3.48%
75th Percentile £620 £625 £695
90th Percentile £686 £700 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% +2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 3 24
10th Percentile - £42.00 £57.23
25th Percentile - £43.13 £78.69
Median hourly rate £85.40 £45.00 £83.40
Median % change year-on-year +89.78% -46.04% +42.56%
75th Percentile £90.75 £61.68 -
90th Percentile £92.10 £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 34,080 29,041 40,349
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.42% 92.85% 93.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,578 17,726 26,798
10th Percentile £300 £291 £275
25th Percentile £406 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £500
% change year-on-year -1.04% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,009 879 1,867
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.92 £13.87
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £17.75
Median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £40.28
Median % change year-on-year -15.38% -19.30% +15.07%
75th Percentile £60.00 £62.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -22.62% -23.53% +41.67%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 +31 387 £538 -2.27% 408
London +18 202 £540 -6.09% 95
UK excluding London +22 193 £525 - 387
Work from Home +13 130 £537 -2.10% 138
North of England -44 47 £575 +17.95% 79
South East -13 43 £475 -5.00% 112
North West -14 31 £575 +4.55% 47
Midlands -27 31 £475 +12.43% 52
Scotland +24 30 £553 +0.45% 29
South West +19 29 £525 -8.70% 56
West Midlands -24 25 £510 +20.71% 22
East of England -8 17 £525 +90.91% 50
Yorkshire -48 13 £570 +42.50% 22
East Midlands - 6 £450 - 29
Northern Ireland +3 5 - - 3
North East -13 3 £400 -23.81% 10
Wales -4 2 £600 +34.83% 17

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

For the 6 months to 20 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.

1 174 (38.24%) Azure
2 172 (37.80%) Cybersecurity
3 122 (26.81%) AWS
3 122 (26.81%) SIEM
4 119 (26.15%) Microsoft
5 108 (23.74%) Cloud Security
5 108 (23.74%) Firewall
6 107 (23.52%) Security Cleared
7 91 (20.00%) Network Security
8 90 (19.78%) Python
9 89 (19.56%) Incident Response
10 83 (18.24%) NIST
10 83 (18.24%) SC Cleared
11 76 (16.70%) PowerShell
12 72 (15.82%) Security Operations
13 71 (15.60%) CI/CD
14 68 (14.95%) Infrastructure as Code
15 67 (14.73%) Windows
16 64 (14.07%) CISSP
17 63 (13.85%) Linux
18 58 (12.75%) DevOps
19 57 (12.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
20 55 (12.09%) Degree
20 55 (12.09%) GCP
20 55 (12.09%) Microsoft 365
21 54 (11.87%) Entra ID
22 50 (10.99%) Active Directory
23 49 (10.77%) Cisco
24 48 (10.55%) Problem-Solving
24 48 (10.55%) 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 11 (2.42%) Microsoft Exchange
2 7 (1.54%) Confluence
3 6 (1.32%) SharePoint
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
1 174 (38.24%) Azure
2 122 (26.81%) AWS
3 55 (12.09%) GCP
3 55 (12.09%) Microsoft 365
4 54 (11.87%) Entra ID
5 45 (9.89%) Azure Sentinel
6 39 (8.57%) Microsoft Purview
7 32 (7.03%) GitHub
8 20 (4.40%) AWS CloudFormation
9 19 (4.18%) OpenShift
10 13 (2.86%) Azure Monitor
10 13 (2.86%) GitHub Actions
10 13 (2.86%) Mimecast
10 13 (2.86%) SaaS
11 12 (2.64%) Azure Key Vault
12 11 (2.42%) Amazon ECS
13 10 (2.20%) Azure DevOps
14 9 (1.98%) Amazon GuardDuty
15 8 (1.76%) Amazon EKS
15 8 (1.76%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 108 (23.74%) Firewall
2 91 (20.00%) Network Security
3 40 (8.79%) VPN
4 32 (7.03%) DNS
5 19 (4.18%) WAN
6 17 (3.74%) BGP
7 15 (3.30%) Wireless
8 14 (3.08%) SSL
8 14 (3.08%) TCP/IP
9 10 (2.20%) Intrusion Detection
9 10 (2.20%) IPsec
10 9 (1.98%) OSPF
11 8 (1.76%) Cisco IPT
11 8 (1.76%) DMVPN
12 7 (1.54%) Cisco ASA
12 7 (1.54%) DHCP
12 7 (1.54%) Wi-Fi
13 5 (1.10%) DMZ
13 5 (1.10%) Multicast
13 5 (1.10%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (2.64%) Data Lake
2 7 (1.54%) BigQuery
2 7 (1.54%) 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 19 (4.18%) GitLab
2 12 (2.64%) JIRA
3 10 (2.20%) Jenkins
4 8 (1.76%) Snyk
5 7 (1.54%) SonarQube
6 6 (1.32%) ClearCase
6 6 (1.32%) Git
7 4 (0.88%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.66%) Artifactory
9 1 (0.22%) Travis CI
General
1 118 (25.93%) Social Skills
2 60 (13.19%) Finance
3 46 (10.11%) Public Sector
4 42 (9.23%) Analytical Skills
5 14 (3.08%) Banking
6 13 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
7 11 (2.42%) Telecoms
8 10 (2.20%) Military
9 9 (1.98%) Legal
10 8 (1.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 6 (1.32%) Financial Institution
11 6 (1.32%) Spanish Language
12 5 (1.10%) Cyber-Physical System
12 5 (1.10%) Investment Banking
13 4 (0.88%) Manufacturing
13 4 (0.88%) Organisational Skills
13 4 (0.88%) Pharmaceutical
13 4 (0.88%) Presentation Skills
14 3 (0.66%) Local Government
15 2 (0.44%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (4.84%) REST
2 11 (2.42%) Elastic Stack
2 11 (2.42%) SAML
3 8 (1.76%) 802.1X
3 8 (1.76%) OAuth
4 7 (1.54%) Node.js
4 7 (1.54%) SailPoint
5 6 (1.32%) JSON
5 6 (1.32%) Kafka
5 6 (1.32%) LDAP
5 6 (1.32%) NestJS
5 6 (1.32%) OpenID
6 5 (1.10%) Microsoft Graph
7 4 (0.88%) .NET
7 4 (0.88%) Regular Expression
7 4 (0.88%) SOAP
8 3 (0.66%) SLSA
9 2 (0.44%) ARM Templates
9 2 (0.44%) Great Expectations
9 2 (0.44%) gRPC
Miscellaneous
1 53 (11.65%) Security Posture
2 26 (5.71%) Data Centre
3 24 (5.27%) Cloud Native
4 23 (5.05%) Management Information System
5 22 (4.84%) Onboarding
6 13 (2.86%) Cyber Threat
7 12 (2.64%) Data Protection Act
7 12 (2.64%) Operational Technology
8 10 (2.20%) Cyber Defence
9 7 (1.54%) Cloud Security Posture
9 7 (1.54%) Cyber Security Posture
9 7 (1.54%) Hybrid Cloud
9 7 (1.54%) PKI
9 7 (1.54%) Security Operations Centre
10 6 (1.32%) BYOD
10 6 (1.32%) Cyber Kill Chain
10 6 (1.32%) Greenfield Project
11 5 (1.10%) Life Science
11 5 (1.10%) Mobile App
12 4 (0.88%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 67 (14.73%) Windows
2 63 (13.85%) Linux
3 13 (2.86%) Windows Server
4 11 (2.42%) Mac OS
5 7 (1.54%) Unix
6 6 (1.32%) Android
7 5 (1.10%) Apple iOS
8 4 (0.88%) Ubuntu
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%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 172 (37.80%) Cybersecurity
2 122 (26.81%) SIEM
3 108 (23.74%) Cloud Security
4 89 (19.56%) Incident Response
5 72 (15.82%) Security Operations
6 71 (15.60%) CI/CD
7 68 (14.95%) Infrastructure as Code
8 58 (12.75%) DevOps
9 48 (10.55%) Problem-Solving
9 48 (10.55%) Threat Modelling
10 44 (9.67%) Threat Detection
10 44 (9.67%) Vulnerability Management
11 42 (9.23%) DevSecOps
11 42 (9.23%) Information Security
12 41 (9.01%) SOAR
13 38 (8.35%) Agile
14 37 (8.13%) Continuous Improvement
14 37 (8.13%) Security Monitoring
15 35 (7.69%) Data Protection
16 33 (7.25%) Zero Trust
Programming Languages
1 90 (19.78%) Python
2 76 (16.70%) PowerShell
3 30 (6.59%) Kusto Query Language
4 27 (5.93%) Bash
5 20 (4.40%) Java
6 9 (1.98%) 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%) TypeScript
11 2 (0.44%) C++
11 2 (0.44%) Perl
11 2 (0.44%) Rust
12 1 (0.22%) Go
12 1 (0.22%) PHP
12 1 (0.22%) Scala
Qualifications
1 107 (23.52%) Security Cleared
2 83 (18.24%) SC Cleared
3 64 (14.07%) CISSP
4 55 (12.09%) Degree
5 35 (7.69%) CISM
6 26 (5.71%) Cisco Certification
7 24 (5.27%) DV Cleared
8 17 (3.74%) Azure Certification
9 14 (3.08%) CEH
9 14 (3.08%) CompTIA Security+
10 12 (2.64%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 12 (2.64%) AWS Certification
10 12 (2.64%) CCNP
11 11 (2.42%) SANS
12 9 (1.98%) GIAC
12 9 (1.98%) Microsoft Certification
13 8 (1.76%) CCSP
14 6 (1.32%) Computer Science Degree
14 6 (1.32%) Network+ Certification
14 6 (1.32%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 83 (18.24%) NIST
2 57 (12.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 33 (7.25%) GDPR
4 17 (3.74%) Cyber Essentials
4 17 (3.74%) NCSC
5 11 (2.42%) HIPAA
5 11 (2.42%) NIST 800
6 9 (1.98%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 9 (1.98%) GRC
6 9 (1.98%) PCI DSS
7 8 (1.76%) JSP 440
8 7 (1.54%) RMADS
9 5 (1.10%) SOC 2
10 3 (0.66%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 3 (0.66%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 2 (0.44%) Data Quality
11 2 (0.44%) EU AI Act
11 2 (0.44%) GxP
12 1 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.22%) SLA
System Software
1 50 (10.99%) Active Directory
2 18 (3.96%) Docker
2 18 (3.96%) Virtual Machines
3 8 (1.76%) Firmware
4 7 (1.54%) Hyper-V
5 5 (1.10%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.44%) Snort
7 2 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
8 1 (0.22%) GPFS
8 1 (0.22%) Lustre
8 1 (0.22%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 1 (0.22%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 44 (9.67%) Terraform
2 41 (9.01%) Kubernetes
3 21 (4.62%) Microsoft Intune
4 19 (4.18%) SCCM
5 14 (3.08%) Single Sign-On
6 13 (2.86%) Fluentd
7 8 (1.76%) Ansible
7 8 (1.76%) CASB
8 7 (1.54%) Kibana
8 7 (1.54%) logstash
8 7 (1.54%) WSUS
9 6 (1.32%) SCOrch
10 5 (1.10%) Functional Safety
11 4 (0.88%) AirWatch
11 4 (0.88%) CSIRT
11 4 (0.88%) Nessus
12 3 (0.66%) FortiGate
12 3 (0.66%) Icinga
12 3 (0.66%) QRadar
12 3 (0.66%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 119 (26.15%) Microsoft
2 49 (10.77%) Cisco
3 44 (9.67%) Splunk
4 34 (7.47%) Palo Alto
5 28 (6.15%) CrowdStrike
6 27 (5.93%) F5
7 26 (5.71%) Tenable
8 21 (4.62%) CheckPoint
9 19 (4.18%) Google
10 18 (3.96%) Fortinet
11 15 (3.30%) Juniper
11 15 (3.30%) Qualys
12 13 (2.86%) Cribl.io
13 11 (2.42%) ServiceNow
13 11 (2.42%) Zscaler
14 9 (1.98%) Blue Coat
14 9 (1.98%) Oracle
15 8 (1.76%) CyberArk
16 7 (1.54%) Forcepoint
16 7 (1.54%) Ping Identity