Security Engineer Contract Job Trends

Security Engineer
UK

The median Security Engineer daily rate in the UK is £536, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 6 August 2026.

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

6 months to
6 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 248 237 209
Rank change year-on-year -11 -28 +2
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 540 374 448
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.01% 1.14% 1.15%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.09% 1.24% 1.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 358 231 347
10th Percentile £413 £375 £406
25th Percentile £475 £413 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £536 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.60% -6.82% -2.65%
75th Percentile £610 £644 £638
90th Percentile £688 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +10.00% -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 10 2
10th Percentile £70.38 £64.25 £64.25
25th Percentile £73.75 £82.69 £66.88
Median hourly rate £77.50 £87.50 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year -11.43% +20.69% -13.07%
75th Percentile £85.05 £91.50 £76.88
90th Percentile £86.03 - £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £84.00 £87.50 £72.50
% change year-on-year -4.00% +20.69% -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 49,373 30,106 36,347
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.62% 91.47% 92.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,709 19,120 23,460
10th Percentile £328 £281 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,448 1,496 2,067
10th Percentile £15.13 £13.60 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.89 £53.99 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.25 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.56 £25.15 £43.90
% change year-on-year +73.20% -42.71% +17.07%

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 6 August 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 6 August 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 6 August 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 -6 499 £533 +4.00% 666
UK excluding London -20 257 £550 +10.00% 388
London -19 242 £525 -2.60% 315
Work from Home -7 200 £540 +8.00% 212
North of England +16 141 £600 +20.97% 112
North West +19 120 £579 +17.63% 73
Midlands -13 56 £500 +22.70% 46
West Midlands -16 55 £500 +25.00% 26
South East -33 50 £500 - 102
East of England -31 19 £510 +2.00% 45
Yorkshire -34 19 £600 +14.29% 29
South West -47 12 £481 -1.28% 59
Scotland -5 11 £600 +14.29% 21
Wales -10 2 £733 +46.50% 5
East Midlands -7 1 £338 -18.67% 20
North East -42 1 - - 10

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

For the 6 months to 6 August 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.

1 186 (34.44%) Azure
2 176 (32.59%) Cloud Security
3 158 (29.26%) Cybersecurity
4 146 (27.04%) AWS
5 128 (23.70%) SIEM
6 126 (23.33%) Microsoft
7 115 (21.30%) Firewall
8 113 (20.93%) Python
9 103 (19.07%) Network Security
10 101 (18.70%) CI/CD
11 86 (15.93%) Cisco
11 86 (15.93%) Incident Response
12 85 (15.74%) PowerShell
13 77 (14.26%) Security Cleared
14 76 (14.07%) Terraform
15 72 (13.33%) VPN
16 70 (12.96%) GCP
16 70 (12.96%) Security Operations
17 68 (12.59%) SC Cleared
18 67 (12.41%) CISSP
19 66 (12.22%) Security Architecture
20 65 (12.04%) Vulnerability Management
21 63 (11.67%) Threat Modelling
22 62 (11.48%) DevSecOps
23 61 (11.30%) DNS
23 61 (11.30%) Windows
24 60 (11.11%) F5
25 59 (10.93%) DevOps
26 58 (10.74%) Kubernetes
27 56 (10.37%) Data Loss Prevention

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 18 (3.33%) Confluence
2 3 (0.56%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 2 (0.37%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.19%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 6 (1.11%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.37%) Maximo
2 2 (0.37%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.19%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 186 (34.44%) Azure
2 146 (27.04%) AWS
3 70 (12.96%) GCP
4 48 (8.89%) Microsoft Purview
5 47 (8.70%) Microsoft 365
6 38 (7.04%) Entra ID
7 24 (4.44%) AWS CloudFormation
8 23 (4.26%) Azure Sentinel
9 22 (4.07%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 21 (3.89%) SaaS
11 17 (3.15%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 14 (2.59%) GitHub
13 13 (2.41%) Akamai
14 12 (2.22%) Amazon GuardDuty
15 11 (2.04%) AWS CloudTrail
15 11 (2.04%) Mimecast
15 11 (2.04%) Serverless
16 10 (1.85%) Azure DevOps
17 8 (1.48%) Amazon EC2
17 8 (1.48%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 115 (21.30%) Firewall
2 103 (19.07%) Network Security
3 72 (13.33%) VPN
4 61 (11.30%) DNS
5 43 (7.96%) BGP
6 34 (6.30%) DMZ
7 32 (5.93%) Multicast
8 29 (5.37%) SSL
9 27 (5.00%) TCP/IP
10 26 (4.81%) WAN
11 19 (3.52%) SD-WAN
12 17 (3.15%) HTTP
13 16 (2.96%) Internet
14 14 (2.59%) Cisco ISE
15 13 (2.41%) Wireless
16 11 (2.04%) VLAN
17 10 (1.85%) Intrusion Detection
18 9 (1.67%) IPsec
18 9 (1.67%) OSPF
19 7 (1.30%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (1.48%) Power BI
1 8 (1.48%) SQL Server
2 6 (1.11%) PostgreSQL
3 4 (0.74%) MongoDB
4 3 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (0.56%) Big Data
4 3 (0.56%) Data Lake
5 2 (0.37%) Apache Cassandra
5 2 (0.37%) Metadata
5 2 (0.37%) NoSQL
5 2 (0.37%) RDBMS
5 2 (0.37%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.19%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.19%) Db2
6 1 (0.19%) DynamoDB
6 1 (0.19%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 21 (3.89%) JIRA
2 9 (1.67%) GitLab
3 7 (1.30%) Jenkins
4 4 (0.74%) Burp Suite
5 3 (0.56%) Claude Code
5 3 (0.56%) Git
6 2 (0.37%) Browser DevTools
6 2 (0.37%) Snyk
6 2 (0.37%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.19%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 1 (0.19%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.19%) Metasploit
7 1 (0.19%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.19%) sqlmap
7 1 (0.19%) TruffleHog
General
1 103 (19.07%) Social Skills
2 91 (16.85%) Finance
3 46 (8.52%) Analytical Skills
4 39 (7.22%) Banking
5 21 (3.89%) Documentation Skills
5 21 (3.89%) Investment Banking
6 20 (3.70%) Public Sector
7 7 (1.30%) Legal
7 7 (1.30%) Marketing
7 7 (1.30%) Telecoms
8 6 (1.11%) Manufacturing
8 6 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
9 5 (0.93%) Retail
10 4 (0.74%) Health Technology
11 3 (0.56%) Aerospace
11 3 (0.56%) Financial Institution
11 3 (0.56%) Italian Language
11 3 (0.56%) Military
12 2 (0.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 2 (0.37%) Law
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (1.67%) SAML
2 8 (1.48%) 802.1X
3 7 (1.30%) LangChain
4 6 (1.11%) PyTorch
4 6 (1.11%) scikit-learn
5 4 (0.74%) Elastic Stack
5 4 (0.74%) Microsoft Graph
5 4 (0.74%) SLSA
6 3 (0.56%) ARM Templates
6 3 (0.56%) LDAP
6 3 (0.56%) OAuth
6 3 (0.56%) REST
6 3 (0.56%) SailPoint
7 2 (0.37%) Azure Blueprints
7 2 (0.37%) JWT
7 2 (0.37%) OpenID
8 1 (0.19%) AWS CDK
8 1 (0.19%) JSON Web Signature
8 1 (0.19%) OAuth2
8 1 (0.19%) SAP Fiori
Miscellaneous
1 98 (18.15%) Security Posture
2 58 (10.74%) Cloud Native
3 39 (7.22%) Cloud Security Posture
3 39 (7.22%) Management Information System
4 21 (3.89%) Enterprise Cloud
5 17 (3.15%) AI Agents
6 16 (2.96%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 16 (2.96%) Onboarding
7 15 (2.78%) Operational Technology
8 13 (2.41%) Data Centre
8 13 (2.41%) Hybrid Cloud
9 12 (2.22%) Cyber Threat
10 9 (1.67%) Data Protection Act
10 9 (1.67%) Public Cloud
11 8 (1.48%) Cyber Defence
12 6 (1.11%) Linux Command Line
12 6 (1.11%) PKI
12 6 (1.11%) SCADA
12 6 (1.11%) Security Operations Centre
13 4 (0.74%) BYOD
Operating Systems
1 61 (11.30%) Windows
2 50 (9.26%) Linux
3 15 (2.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 14 (2.59%) Windows Server
5 9 (1.67%) Mac OS
6 7 (1.30%) Apple iOS
7 6 (1.11%) Windows 10
8 3 (0.56%) Ubuntu
8 3 (0.56%) Unix
9 2 (0.37%) Android
9 2 (0.37%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 176 (32.59%) Cloud Security
2 158 (29.26%) Cybersecurity
3 128 (23.70%) SIEM
4 101 (18.70%) CI/CD
5 86 (15.93%) Incident Response
6 70 (12.96%) Security Operations
7 66 (12.22%) Security Architecture
8 65 (12.04%) Vulnerability Management
9 63 (11.67%) Threat Modelling
10 62 (11.48%) DevSecOps
11 59 (10.93%) DevOps
12 56 (10.37%) Data Loss Prevention
12 56 (10.37%) Load Balancing
13 53 (9.81%) Infrastructure as Code
14 51 (9.44%) Information Security
15 50 (9.26%) Zero Trust
16 48 (8.89%) Agile
17 46 (8.52%) Threat Detection
18 44 (8.15%) AI
18 44 (8.15%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 113 (20.93%) Python
2 85 (15.74%) PowerShell
3 55 (10.19%) Bash
4 18 (3.33%) Bicep
5 17 (3.15%) Java
6 9 (1.67%) Kusto Query Language
6 9 (1.67%) SQL
7 4 (0.74%) Search Processing Language
8 3 (0.56%) Perl
8 3 (0.56%) Shell Script
9 2 (0.37%) JavaScript
9 2 (0.37%) PHP
10 1 (0.19%) C
10 1 (0.19%) C#
10 1 (0.19%) Go
10 1 (0.19%) Korn
Qualifications
1 77 (14.26%) Security Cleared
2 68 (12.59%) SC Cleared
3 67 (12.41%) CISSP
4 44 (8.15%) Degree
5 35 (6.48%) Cisco Certification
6 30 (5.56%) CISM
7 28 (5.19%) AWS Certification
8 21 (3.89%) Azure Certification
9 17 (3.15%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 17 (3.15%) CCNP
9 17 (3.15%) CEH
10 14 (2.59%) DV Cleared
11 12 (2.22%) Microsoft Certification
12 11 (2.04%) Computer Science Degree
13 9 (1.67%) CompTIA Security+
13 9 (1.67%) GIAC
14 8 (1.48%) CCIE
15 7 (1.30%) OSCP
16 6 (1.11%) CCSP
16 6 (1.11%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 46 (8.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 45 (8.33%) NIST
3 29 (5.37%) GDPR
4 16 (2.96%) Cyber Essentials
4 16 (2.96%) PCI DSS
5 13 (2.41%) NCSC
6 11 (2.04%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 11 (2.04%) HIPAA
7 8 (1.48%) SLA
8 6 (1.11%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 6 (1.11%) NIST 800
9 5 (0.93%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 4 (0.74%) Government Security Classifications
10 4 (0.74%) SOC 2
11 3 (0.56%) ISA99
11 3 (0.56%) JSP 440
12 2 (0.37%) COBIT
12 2 (0.37%) GRC
13 1 (0.19%) QA
13 1 (0.19%) RMADS
System Software
1 31 (5.74%) Active Directory
2 25 (4.63%) Docker
3 7 (1.30%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (1.11%) VMware NSX
4 6 (1.11%) vSphere
5 5 (0.93%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.56%) Virtual Servers
6 3 (0.56%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.37%) Squid
8 1 (0.19%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.19%) RACF
Systems Management
1 76 (14.07%) Terraform
2 58 (10.74%) Kubernetes
3 16 (2.96%) Ansible
4 13 (2.41%) Progress Chef
5 12 (2.22%) FortiGate
5 12 (2.22%) Microsoft Intune
6 11 (2.04%) Single Sign-On
7 6 (1.11%) CASB
8 5 (0.93%) Grafana
9 3 (0.56%) Nessus
10 2 (0.37%) QRadar
10 2 (0.37%) vCenter Server
11 1 (0.19%) CSIRT
11 1 (0.19%) Host Intrusion Detection System
11 1 (0.19%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 126 (23.33%) Microsoft
2 86 (15.93%) Cisco
3 60 (11.11%) F5
4 44 (8.15%) Palo Alto
5 38 (7.04%) CrowdStrike
6 36 (6.67%) Zscaler
7 30 (5.56%) CyberArk
7 30 (5.56%) Fortinet
8 27 (5.00%) ServiceNow
9 25 (4.63%) Google
10 24 (4.44%) CheckPoint
11 18 (3.33%) Splunk
12 16 (2.96%) Red Hat
13 15 (2.78%) VMware
14 14 (2.59%) BeyondTrust
14 14 (2.59%) Blue Coat
14 14 (2.59%) Netskope
14 14 (2.59%) Tenable
15 11 (2.04%) Oracle
15 11 (2.04%) Qualys