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 14 September 2026.

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

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 251 235 207
Rank change year-on-year -16 -28 +35
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 551 383 463
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.02% 1.17% 1.21%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.10% 1.29% 1.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 336 229 344
10th Percentile £413 £371 £413
25th Percentile £463 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -6.36% -6.78%
75th Percentile £611 £638 £638
90th Percentile £696 £728 £746
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -1.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 12 2
10th Percentile - £66.75 £64.25
25th Percentile £73.75 £83.06 £66.88
Median hourly rate £81.90 £90.50 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year -9.50% +24.83% -13.07%
75th Percentile £90.00 £91.50 £76.88
90th Percentile £92.11 - £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £87.74 £90.50 £72.50
% change year-on-year -3.05% +24.83% -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 49,990 29,768 35,726
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.35% 91.07% 93.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,655 18,799 22,146
10th Percentile £325 £278 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £625 £620 £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 3,750 1,555 1,711
10th Percentile £14.59 £13.69 £14.73
25th Percentile £20.27 £17.00 £20.50
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% -1.71%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.72 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +8.43%

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 14 September 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 14 September 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 14 September 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 -12 511 £525 +1.94% 1,249
UK excluding London -15 271 £525 +5.00% 693
London -37 236 £546 -0.68% 608
Work from Home -11 183 £525 +7.69% 437
North of England +10 140 £550 +11.79% 186
North West +18 119 £550 +14.58% 127
South East -22 55 £500 - 173
Midlands -15 54 £500 +25.00% 87
West Midlands -15 50 £500 +26.58% 55
East of England -33 32 £510 +2.00% 92
Yorkshire -23 19 £600 +11.11% 37
South West -49 14 £488 -4.88% 78
Scotland -28 8 £593 +7.24% 49
East Midlands -15 4 £338 -18.67% 31
Wales -14 2 £733 +22.08% 11
North East -39 1 - - 23

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

For the 6 months to 14 September 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.

1 191 (34.66%) Azure
2 170 (30.85%) Cybersecurity
3 169 (30.67%) Cloud Security
4 144 (26.13%) AWS
5 132 (23.96%) Microsoft
6 125 (22.69%) SIEM
7 113 (20.51%) Network Security
7 113 (20.51%) Python
8 107 (19.42%) Firewall
9 93 (16.88%) PowerShell
9 93 (16.88%) Security Cleared
10 91 (16.52%) Incident Response
10 91 (16.52%) Terraform
11 88 (15.97%) Cisco
12 83 (15.06%) CI/CD
13 82 (14.88%) GCP
13 82 (14.88%) Security Operations
14 80 (14.52%) SC Cleared
15 74 (13.43%) Kubernetes
16 73 (13.25%) CISSP
17 72 (13.07%) VPN
18 68 (12.34%) Infrastructure as Code
19 67 (12.16%) DevSecOps
19 67 (12.16%) Threat Detection
19 67 (12.16%) Windows
20 66 (11.98%) Palo Alto
21 61 (11.07%) Vulnerability Management
22 60 (10.89%) DevOps
22 60 (10.89%) F5
23 59 (10.71%) Bash

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 10 (1.81%) IIS
2 8 (1.45%) Confluence
3 3 (0.54%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.36%) nginx
5 1 (0.18%) Apache
5 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 2 (0.36%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (0.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.18%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
2 1 (0.18%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (1.09%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.36%) Maximo
3 1 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 191 (34.66%) Azure
2 144 (26.13%) AWS
3 82 (14.88%) GCP
4 46 (8.35%) Microsoft 365
5 42 (7.62%) Entra ID
6 38 (6.90%) Microsoft Purview
7 31 (5.63%) Azure Sentinel
8 27 (4.90%) AWS CloudFormation
9 20 (3.63%) GitHub
10 16 (2.90%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 13 (2.36%) Azure DevOps
11 13 (2.36%) SaaS
11 13 (2.36%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 12 (2.18%) Serverless
13 11 (2.00%) AWS CloudTrail
13 11 (2.00%) Power Platform
14 10 (1.81%) Akamai
14 10 (1.81%) Amazon ECS
14 10 (1.81%) Azure AKS
14 10 (1.81%) Mimecast
Communications & Networking
1 113 (20.51%) Network Security
2 107 (19.42%) Firewall
3 72 (13.07%) VPN
4 49 (8.89%) DNS
5 37 (6.72%) BGP
6 29 (5.26%) SSL
6 29 (5.26%) WAN
7 28 (5.08%) DMZ
8 26 (4.72%) Multicast
9 21 (3.81%) TCP/IP
10 20 (3.63%) HTTP
11 17 (3.09%) Internet
11 17 (3.09%) SD-WAN
12 16 (2.90%) Cisco ISE
12 16 (2.90%) Wireless
13 14 (2.54%) Intrusion Detection
13 14 (2.54%) IPsec
14 10 (1.81%) DMVPN
14 10 (1.81%) OSPF
15 9 (1.63%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (1.45%) Power BI
2 5 (0.91%) SQL Server
3 4 (0.73%) PostgreSQL
4 3 (0.54%) Big Data
4 3 (0.54%) Data Lake
4 3 (0.54%) MongoDB
5 2 (0.36%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (0.36%) DynamoDB
5 2 (0.36%) SAP HANA
6 1 (0.18%) Apache Cassandra
6 1 (0.18%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.18%) Db2
6 1 (0.18%) Delta Lake
6 1 (0.18%) Elasticsearch
6 1 (0.18%) Metadata
6 1 (0.18%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.18%) RDBMS
6 1 (0.18%) Redis
6 1 (0.18%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 10 (1.81%) JIRA
2 8 (1.45%) GitLab
3 7 (1.27%) Jenkins
4 5 (0.91%) Git
5 3 (0.54%) Burp Suite
5 3 (0.54%) Claude Code
5 3 (0.54%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.36%) Snyk
7 1 (0.18%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 1 (0.18%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.18%) Browser DevTools
7 1 (0.18%) Maven
7 1 (0.18%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.18%) TruffleHog
General
1 97 (17.60%) Social Skills
2 89 (16.15%) Finance
3 44 (7.99%) Analytical Skills
4 37 (6.72%) Banking
5 19 (3.45%) Public Sector
6 18 (3.27%) Investment Banking
7 17 (3.09%) Documentation Skills
8 9 (1.63%) Military
9 8 (1.45%) Presentation Skills
10 7 (1.27%) Back Office
10 7 (1.27%) Manufacturing
10 7 (1.27%) Marketing
11 6 (1.09%) Legal
11 6 (1.09%) Telecoms
12 5 (0.91%) Retail
13 4 (0.73%) Health Technology
13 4 (0.73%) Influencing Skills
14 3 (0.54%) Digital Health
14 3 (0.54%) Digital Healthcare
14 3 (0.54%) Italian Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 91 (16.52%) Terraform
2 13 (2.36%) JSON
3 11 (2.00%) 802.1X
4 9 (1.63%) SAML
5 8 (1.45%) LDAP
5 8 (1.45%) Regular Expression
6 7 (1.27%) REST
7 6 (1.09%) JWT
7 6 (1.09%) OpenID
8 5 (0.91%) ARM Templates
8 5 (0.91%) OAuth
9 4 (0.73%) Azure Blueprints
9 4 (0.73%) Elastic Stack
9 4 (0.73%) OAuth2
9 4 (0.73%) SLSA
10 3 (0.54%) Microsoft Graph
10 3 (0.54%) SailPoint
11 2 (0.36%) AWS CDK
11 2 (0.36%) Model Context Protocol
12 1 (0.18%) LangChain
Miscellaneous
1 96 (17.42%) Security Posture
2 58 (10.53%) Cloud Native
3 40 (7.26%) Management Information System
4 34 (6.17%) Cloud Security Posture
5 23 (4.17%) Cyber Threat
6 22 (3.99%) Enterprise Cloud
7 21 (3.81%) Onboarding
8 18 (3.27%) AI Agents
9 17 (3.09%) Data Centre
10 14 (2.54%) Operational Technology
11 12 (2.18%) Cyber Defence
11 12 (2.18%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 9 (1.63%) Hybrid Cloud
12 9 (1.63%) Security Operations Centre
13 8 (1.45%) CCTV
13 8 (1.45%) Data Protection Act
14 7 (1.27%) Public Cloud
15 6 (1.09%) PKI
15 6 (1.09%) SCADA
16 5 (0.91%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 67 (12.16%) Windows
2 44 (7.99%) Linux
3 18 (3.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 16 (2.90%) Windows Server
5 11 (2.00%) Apple iOS
6 7 (1.27%) Mac OS
7 6 (1.09%) Android
8 5 (0.91%) Windows 10
9 2 (0.36%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.18%) Unix
10 1 (0.18%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 170 (30.85%) Cybersecurity
2 169 (30.67%) Cloud Security
3 125 (22.69%) SIEM
4 91 (16.52%) Incident Response
5 83 (15.06%) CI/CD
6 82 (14.88%) Security Operations
7 68 (12.34%) Infrastructure as Code
8 67 (12.16%) DevSecOps
8 67 (12.16%) Threat Detection
9 61 (11.07%) Vulnerability Management
10 60 (10.89%) DevOps
11 53 (9.62%) Security Architecture
12 52 (9.44%) Security Monitoring
12 52 (9.44%) Zero Trust
13 49 (8.89%) AI
13 49 (8.89%) Continuous Improvement
13 49 (8.89%) Threat Modelling
14 45 (8.17%) Information Security
14 45 (8.17%) Load Balancing
14 45 (8.17%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 113 (20.51%) Python
2 93 (16.88%) PowerShell
3 59 (10.71%) Bash
4 23 (4.17%) Java
5 21 (3.81%) Bicep
6 7 (1.27%) Kusto Query Language
6 7 (1.27%) SQL
7 6 (1.09%) Go
8 4 (0.73%) Search Processing Language
9 3 (0.54%) Perl
10 2 (0.36%) C#
11 1 (0.18%) C
11 1 (0.18%) JavaScript
11 1 (0.18%) Korn
11 1 (0.18%) PHP
11 1 (0.18%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.18%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 93 (16.88%) Security Cleared
2 80 (14.52%) SC Cleared
3 73 (13.25%) CISSP
4 45 (8.17%) Degree
5 39 (7.08%) Cisco Certification
6 32 (5.81%) AWS Certification
7 29 (5.26%) CISM
8 24 (4.36%) DV Cleared
9 23 (4.17%) Azure Certification
10 21 (3.81%) CCNP
11 19 (3.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 17 (3.09%) CEH
13 14 (2.54%) CCSP
14 13 (2.36%) OSCP
15 12 (2.18%) GIAC
15 12 (2.18%) Microsoft Certification
16 9 (1.63%) CCIE
16 9 (1.63%) CISA
16 9 (1.63%) Computer Science Degree
17 8 (1.45%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 53 (9.62%) NIST
2 51 (9.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 21 (3.81%) GDPR
4 20 (3.63%) PCI DSS
5 17 (3.09%) NCSC
6 15 (2.72%) Cyber Essentials
7 11 (2.00%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 6 (1.09%) HIPAA
8 6 (1.09%) NIST 800
9 5 (0.91%) GRC
9 5 (0.91%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 3 (0.54%) ISA99
10 3 (0.54%) ISO 31000
10 3 (0.54%) ISO 9001
10 3 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 27005
10 3 (0.54%) SOC 2
11 2 (0.36%) COBIT
11 2 (0.36%) JSP 440
11 2 (0.36%) SLA
12 1 (0.18%) RMADS
System Software
1 43 (7.80%) Active Directory
2 22 (3.99%) Docker
3 12 (2.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 11 (2.00%) Virtual Machines
5 7 (1.27%) Hyper-V
5 7 (1.27%) NFS
6 5 (0.91%) VMware NSX
6 5 (0.91%) vSphere
7 3 (0.54%) Firmware
7 3 (0.54%) ISA Server
7 3 (0.54%) Virtual Servers
8 2 (0.36%) Squid
8 2 (0.36%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.18%) RACF
Systems Management
1 74 (13.43%) Kubernetes
2 22 (3.99%) Ansible
3 16 (2.90%) Progress Chef
4 12 (2.18%) FortiGate
4 12 (2.18%) Microsoft Intune
5 10 (1.81%) Single Sign-On
6 8 (1.45%) Grafana
7 6 (1.09%) Istio
8 5 (0.91%) linkerd
8 5 (0.91%) QRadar
9 4 (0.73%) CASB
10 2 (0.36%) Prometheus
10 2 (0.36%) SCCM
11 1 (0.18%) Argo
11 1 (0.18%) CSIRT
11 1 (0.18%) Host Intrusion Detection System
11 1 (0.18%) Network Intrusion Detection System
11 1 (0.18%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 132 (23.96%) Microsoft
2 88 (15.97%) Cisco
3 66 (11.98%) Palo Alto
4 60 (10.89%) F5
5 45 (8.17%) Zscaler
6 38 (6.90%) CrowdStrike
7 34 (6.17%) CheckPoint
8 33 (5.99%) Splunk
9 31 (5.63%) Fortinet
10 25 (4.54%) CyberArk
11 21 (3.81%) Google
12 19 (3.45%) Red Hat
12 19 (3.45%) ServiceNow
12 19 (3.45%) VMware
13 16 (2.90%) Blue Coat
14 14 (2.54%) Juniper
15 13 (2.36%) BeyondTrust
15 13 (2.36%) Qualys
16 12 (2.18%) Netskope
17 11 (2.00%) Tenable