Security Engineer Contract Job Trends

Security Engineer
UK

The median Security Engineer daily rate in the UK is £540, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 14 May 2026.

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

6 months to
14 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 221 282 272
Rank change year-on-year +61 -10 -55
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 525 256 365
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.10% 0.88% 0.85%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.20% 0.96% 0.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 328 158 248
10th Percentile £413 £395 £413
25th Percentile £490 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £525 £573
Median % change year-on-year +2.86% -8.30% -0.43%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £686 £738 £754
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +10.00% -9.09% +4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 3 4
10th Percentile £84.00 £65.65 -
25th Percentile - £66.63 £30.70
Median hourly rate £85.40 £73.31 £55.90
Median % change year-on-year +16.49% +31.14% -32.94%
75th Percentile - £80.89 £80.85
90th Percentile £88.24 £82.40 £82.39
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.40 £73.31 £55.90
% change year-on-year +16.49% +31.14% -32.90%

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 43,905 26,796 39,671
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.30% 92.46% 92.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,903 17,460 25,789
10th Percentile £320 £300 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -2.78%
75th Percentile £614 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +4.21% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,866 1,033 2,665
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.20 £16.30
Median hourly rate £43.43 £28.18 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +54.13% -24.85% -16.67%
75th Percentile £66.50 £62.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £73.26
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £27.24 £40.00
% change year-on-year +65.21% -31.91% -4.94%

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 May 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 May 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 May 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 +39 469 £538 +2.38% 304
UK excluding London +10 248 £550 +10.00% 258
London +32 220 £525 -4.28% 86
Work from Home +35 186 £550 +4.76% 83
North of England -2 109 £569 +8.33% 63
North West +23 88 £563 +7.14% 45
Midlands -15 58 £540 +5.37% 35
West Midlands -14 55 £570 +11.22% 21
South East -37 53 £500 +11.11% 84
Scotland +21 22 £675 +22.73% 19
South West -24 22 £525 +6.33% 31
East of England -22 19 £525 +59.09% 23
Yorkshire -43 17 £600 +9.09% 13
North East -21 4 £400 -23.81% 5
East Midlands - 3 £406 - 14
Wales - 2 £733 - 4

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

For the 6 months to 14 May 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.

1 190 (36.19%) Azure
2 156 (29.71%) Cybersecurity
3 145 (27.62%) AWS
4 130 (24.76%) Cloud Security
5 128 (24.38%) Python
6 118 (22.48%) SIEM
7 113 (21.52%) Microsoft
8 104 (19.81%) Firewall
9 102 (19.43%) CI/CD
10 99 (18.86%) Network Security
11 92 (17.52%) Security Cleared
12 84 (16.00%) PowerShell
13 83 (15.81%) Cisco
13 83 (15.81%) Incident Response
14 70 (13.33%) VPN
15 69 (13.14%) SC Cleared
16 67 (12.76%) Vulnerability Management
17 65 (12.38%) DNS
18 63 (12.00%) Data Loss Prevention
18 63 (12.00%) Terraform
19 62 (11.81%) DevOps
20 60 (11.43%) Threat Modelling
21 59 (11.24%) Information Security
21 59 (11.24%) Windows
22 58 (11.05%) NIST
23 57 (10.86%) GCP
23 57 (10.86%) Security Operations
24 56 (10.67%) Infrastructure as Code
25 55 (10.48%) CISSP
26 54 (10.29%) F5

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 (3.81%) Confluence
2 4 (0.76%) Apache Spark
3 3 (0.57%) Microsoft Exchange
4 2 (0.38%) Apache
5 1 (0.19%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (0.57%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 6 (1.14%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.38%) Maximo
3 1 (0.19%) SAP ERP
3 1 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 190 (36.19%) Azure
2 145 (27.62%) AWS
3 57 (10.86%) GCP
4 51 (9.71%) Microsoft 365
5 48 (9.14%) Microsoft Purview
6 37 (7.05%) Entra ID
7 26 (4.95%) Azure Sentinel
8 25 (4.76%) GitHub
9 23 (4.38%) SaaS
10 21 (4.00%) AWS CloudFormation
11 15 (2.86%) Amazon GuardDuty
11 15 (2.86%) Mimecast
12 13 (2.48%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 11 (2.10%) Azure DevOps
13 11 (2.10%) OpenShift
13 11 (2.10%) Serverless
14 10 (1.90%) Amazon ECS
14 10 (1.90%) AWS CloudTrail
14 10 (1.90%) AWS KMS
14 10 (1.90%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 104 (19.81%) Firewall
2 99 (18.86%) Network Security
3 70 (13.33%) VPN
4 65 (12.38%) DNS
5 45 (8.57%) BGP
6 33 (6.29%) DMZ
6 33 (6.29%) Multicast
7 24 (4.57%) TCP/IP
8 23 (4.38%) SSL
9 20 (3.81%) WAN
10 15 (2.86%) SD-WAN
11 14 (2.67%) HTTP
12 11 (2.10%) Internet
13 10 (1.90%) Wireless
14 9 (1.71%) DHCP
14 9 (1.71%) IPsec
14 9 (1.71%) MPLS
14 9 (1.71%) TACACS
15 8 (1.52%) Cisco ASA
15 8 (1.52%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (1.71%) Power BI
2 7 (1.33%) Data Lake
3 5 (0.95%) SQL Server
4 4 (0.76%) Amazon Athena
4 4 (0.76%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
4 4 (0.76%) MongoDB
4 4 (0.76%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.38%) Amazon Redshift
5 2 (0.38%) Apache Cassandra
5 2 (0.38%) Big Data
5 2 (0.38%) BigQuery
5 2 (0.38%) Mixpanel
5 2 (0.38%) NoSQL
5 2 (0.38%) OLAP
5 2 (0.38%) OLTP
5 2 (0.38%) RDBMS
5 2 (0.38%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.19%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.19%) DB2
Development Applications
1 24 (4.57%) JIRA
2 11 (2.10%) GitLab
3 8 (1.52%) Git
4 7 (1.33%) Jenkins
5 6 (1.14%) Snyk
6 2 (0.38%) Browser DevTools
6 2 (0.38%) Burp Suite
6 2 (0.38%) Claude Code
6 2 (0.38%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.19%) Artifactory
7 1 (0.19%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 1 (0.19%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.19%) Metasploit
7 1 (0.19%) sqlmap
7 1 (0.19%) Travis CI
7 1 (0.19%) TruffleHog
General
1 105 (20.00%) Social Skills
2 72 (13.71%) Finance
3 48 (9.14%) Analytical Skills
4 40 (7.62%) Banking
5 32 (6.10%) Public Sector
6 23 (4.38%) Investment Banking
7 13 (2.48%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (1.52%) Legal
8 8 (1.52%) Presentation Skills
8 8 (1.52%) Telecoms
9 5 (0.95%) Cyber-Physical System
9 5 (0.95%) Health Technology
9 5 (0.95%) Marketing
10 3 (0.57%) Aerospace
10 3 (0.57%) Financial Institution
10 3 (0.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (0.57%) Local Government
10 3 (0.57%) Manufacturing
11 2 (0.38%) Military
12 1 (0.19%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (2.86%) Elastic Stack
2 10 (1.90%) LDAP
3 9 (1.71%) REST
4 6 (1.14%) 802.1X
4 6 (1.14%) LangChain
4 6 (1.14%) PyTorch
4 6 (1.14%) SAML
4 6 (1.14%) scikit-learn
5 5 (0.95%) .NET
5 5 (0.95%) JSON
5 5 (0.95%) Kafka
5 5 (0.95%) Microsoft Graph
5 5 (0.95%) SLSA
6 4 (0.76%) OAuth
6 4 (0.76%) SailPoint
7 3 (0.57%) ADO
7 3 (0.57%) AWS CDK
7 3 (0.57%) Node.js
8 2 (0.38%) SOAP
8 2 (0.38%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 64 (12.19%) Security Posture
2 47 (8.95%) Cloud Native
3 25 (4.76%) Management Information System
4 20 (3.81%) Data Centre
5 19 (3.62%) Cloud Security Posture
6 15 (2.86%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 15 (2.86%) Operational Technology
7 11 (2.10%) Data Protection Act
7 11 (2.10%) Hybrid Cloud
7 11 (2.10%) Onboarding
7 11 (2.10%) PKI
8 7 (1.33%) Cyber Defence
8 7 (1.33%) Cyber Threat
8 7 (1.33%) Public Cloud
9 6 (1.14%) AI Agents
9 6 (1.14%) Linux Command Line
10 5 (0.95%) Cyber Kill Chain
10 5 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
11 4 (0.76%) Enterprise Cloud
11 4 (0.76%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 59 (11.24%) Windows
2 51 (9.71%) Linux
3 13 (2.48%) Windows Server
4 12 (2.29%) Mac OS
5 9 (1.71%) Apple iOS
6 7 (1.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 7 (1.33%) Ubuntu
7 6 (1.14%) Windows 10
8 4 (0.76%) Android
8 4 (0.76%) Unix
9 1 (0.19%) Rocky
9 1 (0.19%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 156 (29.71%) Cybersecurity
2 130 (24.76%) Cloud Security
3 118 (22.48%) SIEM
4 102 (19.43%) CI/CD
5 83 (15.81%) Incident Response
6 67 (12.76%) Vulnerability Management
7 63 (12.00%) Data Loss Prevention
8 62 (11.81%) DevOps
9 60 (11.43%) Threat Modelling
10 59 (11.24%) Information Security
11 57 (10.86%) Security Operations
12 56 (10.67%) Infrastructure as Code
13 52 (9.90%) DevSecOps
14 49 (9.33%) Security Architecture
15 46 (8.76%) Load Balancing
16 44 (8.38%) AI
16 44 (8.38%) Zero Trust
17 43 (8.19%) Continuous Improvement
18 39 (7.43%) Data Protection
18 39 (7.43%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 128 (24.38%) Python
2 84 (16.00%) PowerShell
3 48 (9.14%) Bash
4 18 (3.43%) Java
4 18 (3.43%) Kusto Query Language
5 11 (2.10%) SQL
6 5 (0.95%) JavaScript
6 5 (0.95%) PHP
7 3 (0.57%) C#
7 3 (0.57%) Go
7 3 (0.57%) Shell Script
8 2 (0.38%) BeanShell
8 2 (0.38%) Bicep
8 2 (0.38%) Ruby
8 2 (0.38%) Search Processing Language
8 2 (0.38%) TypeScript
9 1 (0.19%) C
9 1 (0.19%) Scala
Qualifications
1 92 (17.52%) Security Cleared
2 69 (13.14%) SC Cleared
3 55 (10.48%) CISSP
4 48 (9.14%) Degree
5 30 (5.71%) Cisco Certification
6 29 (5.52%) CISM
7 20 (3.81%) AWS Certification
7 20 (3.81%) DV Cleared
8 15 (2.86%) CCNP
9 14 (2.67%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 14 (2.67%) Azure Certification
10 12 (2.29%) CompTIA Security+
11 11 (2.10%) Computer Science Degree
12 10 (1.90%) Microsoft Certification
13 8 (1.52%) GIAC
14 7 (1.33%) CEH
15 6 (1.14%) CCSP
15 6 (1.14%) CESG Certified Professional
16 5 (0.95%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
16 5 (0.95%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 58 (11.05%) NIST
2 52 (9.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 36 (6.86%) GDPR
4 27 (5.14%) Cyber Essentials
5 23 (4.38%) PCI DSS
6 15 (2.86%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 10 (1.90%) GRC
8 9 (1.71%) NCSC
9 8 (1.52%) SLA
10 7 (1.33%) HIPAA
11 6 (1.14%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 5 (0.95%) NIST 800
12 5 (0.95%) RMADS
12 5 (0.95%) SOC 2
13 3 (0.57%) Actionable Recommendations
13 3 (0.57%) Government Security Classifications
13 3 (0.57%) ISA99
13 3 (0.57%) JSP 440
14 2 (0.38%) Data Quality
14 2 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 27 (5.14%) Active Directory
2 21 (4.00%) Docker
3 11 (2.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (1.71%) Virtual Machines
5 7 (1.33%) VMware ESXi
6 5 (0.95%) VMware NSX
6 5 (0.95%) vSphere
7 4 (0.76%) Firmware
8 3 (0.57%) Virtual Servers
9 2 (0.38%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.38%) Squid
9 2 (0.38%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.19%) GPFS
10 1 (0.19%) Lustre
10 1 (0.19%) RACF
10 1 (0.19%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 63 (12.00%) Terraform
2 51 (9.71%) Kubernetes
3 19 (3.62%) Microsoft Intune
4 16 (3.05%) Ansible
5 9 (1.71%) Single Sign-On
6 7 (1.33%) SCCM
6 7 (1.33%) vCenter Server
7 6 (1.14%) CASB
7 6 (1.14%) Nessus
8 5 (0.95%) FortiGate
8 5 (0.95%) Functional Safety
8 5 (0.95%) Kibana
8 5 (0.95%) logstash
9 4 (0.76%) AirWatch
9 4 (0.76%) Progress Chef
9 4 (0.76%) WSUS
10 3 (0.57%) Icinga
10 3 (0.57%) QRadar
10 3 (0.57%) SCOM
11 1 (0.19%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 113 (21.52%) Microsoft
2 83 (15.81%) Cisco
3 54 (10.29%) F5
4 36 (6.86%) CrowdStrike
5 35 (6.67%) Palo Alto
6 28 (5.33%) Fortinet
7 22 (4.19%) Google
7 22 (4.19%) ServiceNow
7 22 (4.19%) Zscaler
8 20 (3.81%) Splunk
9 19 (3.62%) CyberArk
9 19 (3.62%) Tenable
10 18 (3.43%) VMware
11 17 (3.24%) CheckPoint
12 15 (2.86%) Netskope
12 15 (2.86%) Qualys
13 11 (2.10%) BeyondTrust
13 11 (2.10%) Juniper
14 9 (1.71%) Blue Coat
14 9 (1.71%) Rapid7