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 14 February 2026.

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

6 months to
14 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 237 279 299
Rank change year-on-year +42 +20 -62
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 467 272 330
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.16% 0.88% 0.74%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.27% 0.95% 0.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 266 161 211
10th Percentile £400 £400 £413
25th Percentile £463 £425 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £550 £560
Median % change year-on-year -2.27% -1.79% -2.61%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £675
90th Percentile £686 £700 £768
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £525 £550
% change year-on-year +2.38% -4.55% +1.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 3 21
10th Percentile - £42.00 £52.50
25th Percentile - £43.13 £82.17
Median hourly rate £85.40 £45.00 £83.40
Median % change year-on-year +89.78% -46.04% +8.80%
75th Percentile £86.93 £61.68 -
90th Percentile £92.40 £71.69 £83.41
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.40 £73.31 £83.40
% change year-on-year +16.49% -12.10% +0.11%

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 36,763 28,770 41,757
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.61% 92.92% 93.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,120 17,782 27,516
10th Percentile £303 £291 £275
25th Percentile £406 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £477 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +0.42% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,236 824 2,307
10th Percentile £14.61 £16.00 £13.15
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.25 £16.40
Median hourly rate £30.00 £33.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% -5.71% -2.23%
75th Percentile £61.84 £63.75 £60.75
90th Percentile £72.52 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.60 £31.76 £35.00
% change year-on-year -6.80% -9.26% -

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 February 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 February 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 14 February 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 +44 407 £538 -2.27% 334
UK excluding London +27 207 £538 +2.38% 292
London +23 204 £531 -7.61% 91
Work from Home +28 139 £537 -2.36% 91
North of England -34 60 £550 - 74
South East -8 45 £475 +5.56% 86
North West -11 41 £575 +4.55% 45
Midlands -27 41 £500 -2.44% 45
South West +12 35 £537 -6.61% 26
West Midlands -28 35 £555 +8.29% 33
Scotland +16 24 £632 +12.36% 23
Yorkshire -51 16 £540 +60.00% 18
East of England -16 13 £525 +90.91% 36
East Midlands - 6 £450 - 12
Northern Ireland - 5 - - 3
North East -16 3 £400 -23.81% 11
Wales -3 2 £600 - 6

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

For the 6 months to 14 February 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.

1 175 (37.47%) Azure
2 162 (34.69%) Cybersecurity
3 136 (29.12%) AWS
4 122 (26.12%) Cloud Security
5 116 (24.84%) Security Cleared
6 115 (24.63%) Firewall
7 114 (24.41%) SIEM
8 110 (23.55%) Microsoft
9 94 (20.13%) Network Security
10 93 (19.91%) SC Cleared
11 91 (19.49%) Python
12 86 (18.42%) NIST
13 83 (17.77%) CI/CD
14 80 (17.13%) Incident Response
15 79 (16.92%) Security Operations
16 76 (16.27%) PowerShell
17 72 (15.42%) Infrastructure as Code
18 69 (14.78%) CISSP
19 65 (13.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
20 63 (13.49%) DevOps
21 59 (12.63%) Cisco
22 55 (11.78%) GCP
23 54 (11.56%) Degree
24 53 (11.35%) Entra ID
24 53 (11.35%) Threat Modelling
24 53 (11.35%) Vulnerability Management
24 53 (11.35%) Windows
25 52 (11.13%) Linux
26 51 (10.92%) Microsoft 365
26 51 (10.92%) VPN

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 12 (2.57%) Confluence
2 10 (2.14%) Microsoft Exchange
3 4 (0.86%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.43%) Apache
4 2 (0.43%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 3 (0.64%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.21%) NetSuite
1 1 (0.21%) SAP ERP
1 1 (0.21%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 175 (37.47%) Azure
2 136 (29.12%) AWS
3 55 (11.78%) GCP
4 53 (11.35%) Entra ID
5 51 (10.92%) Microsoft 365
6 45 (9.64%) Azure Sentinel
7 42 (8.99%) Microsoft Purview
8 28 (6.00%) GitHub
9 23 (4.93%) AWS CloudFormation
10 20 (4.28%) OpenShift
11 16 (3.43%) Amazon GuardDuty
11 16 (3.43%) SaaS
12 14 (3.00%) Mimecast
13 13 (2.78%) Azure Monitor
13 13 (2.78%) GitHub Actions
14 12 (2.57%) Amazon ECS
14 12 (2.57%) Azure Key Vault
15 11 (2.36%) AWS KMS
16 10 (2.14%) AWS CloudTrail
16 10 (2.14%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 115 (24.63%) Firewall
2 94 (20.13%) Network Security
3 51 (10.92%) VPN
4 43 (9.21%) DNS
5 26 (5.57%) BGP
6 18 (3.85%) TCP/IP
7 17 (3.64%) WAN
8 14 (3.00%) Wireless
9 13 (2.78%) SSL
10 12 (2.57%) DMZ
10 12 (2.57%) Multicast
11 11 (2.36%) Cisco ASA
12 8 (1.71%) DHCP
12 8 (1.71%) IPsec
12 8 (1.71%) OSPF
13 7 (1.50%) Cisco IOS
13 7 (1.50%) Intrusion Detection
13 7 (1.50%) NGFW
13 7 (1.50%) Wi-Fi
14 6 (1.28%) Cisco IPT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (2.78%) Data Lake
2 7 (1.50%) Elasticsearch
3 5 (1.07%) BigQuery
4 4 (0.86%) Amazon Athena
4 4 (0.86%) Power BI
5 3 (0.64%) Amazon RDS
6 2 (0.43%) Amazon Redshift
6 2 (0.43%) Mixpanel
6 2 (0.43%) OLAP
6 2 (0.43%) OLTP
7 1 (0.21%) DynamoDB
7 1 (0.21%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 20 (4.28%) GitLab
2 17 (3.64%) JIRA
3 11 (2.36%) Jenkins
4 10 (2.14%) Snyk
5 7 (1.50%) Git
6 6 (1.28%) SonarQube
7 4 (0.86%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.43%) Artifactory
9 1 (0.21%) Travis CI
General
1 119 (25.48%) Social Skills
2 61 (13.06%) Finance
3 58 (12.42%) Public Sector
4 45 (9.64%) Analytical Skills
5 17 (3.64%) Banking
6 14 (3.00%) Documentation Skills
7 9 (1.93%) Investment Banking
7 9 (1.93%) Telecoms
8 8 (1.71%) Legal
8 8 (1.71%) Military
9 6 (1.28%) Spanish Language
10 5 (1.07%) Cyber-Physical System
10 5 (1.07%) Financial Institution
10 5 (1.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 5 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
11 4 (0.86%) Organisational Skills
11 4 (0.86%) Pharmaceutical
12 3 (0.64%) Local Government
13 2 (0.43%) Retail
14 1 (0.21%) Italian Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (4.50%) REST
2 15 (3.21%) Elastic Stack
3 12 (2.57%) SAML
4 10 (2.14%) LDAP
5 9 (1.93%) OAuth
6 7 (1.50%) JSON
6 7 (1.50%) NestJS
6 7 (1.50%) Node.js
7 6 (1.28%) 802.1X
7 6 (1.28%) Kafka
7 6 (1.28%) OpenID
7 6 (1.28%) SailPoint
8 5 (1.07%) .NET
8 5 (1.07%) Microsoft Graph
9 4 (0.86%) SLSA
9 4 (0.86%) SOAP
10 3 (0.64%) AWS CDK
10 3 (0.64%) Regular Expression
10 3 (0.64%) Web Services
11 2 (0.43%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 51 (10.92%) Security Posture
2 26 (5.57%) Data Centre
3 25 (5.35%) Cloud Native
4 20 (4.28%) Onboarding
5 19 (4.07%) Management Information System
6 14 (3.00%) Data Protection Act
7 10 (2.14%) Operational Technology
7 10 (2.14%) PKI
7 10 (2.14%) Security Operations Centre
8 9 (1.93%) Cyber Defence
8 9 (1.93%) Hybrid Cloud
9 8 (1.71%) Cloud Security Posture
10 7 (1.50%) BYOD
11 6 (1.28%) Cyber Security Posture
11 6 (1.28%) Cyber Threat
11 6 (1.28%) Public Cloud
12 5 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
12 5 (1.07%) Mobile App
13 4 (0.86%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
13 4 (0.86%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 53 (11.35%) Windows
2 52 (11.13%) Linux
3 14 (3.00%) Windows Server
4 9 (1.93%) Mac OS
4 9 (1.93%) Unix
5 7 (1.50%) Ubuntu
6 6 (1.28%) Android
7 5 (1.07%) Apple iOS
7 5 (1.07%) Windows 10
8 4 (0.86%) VMS
9 3 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 1 (0.21%) Rocky
10 1 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 162 (34.69%) Cybersecurity
2 122 (26.12%) Cloud Security
3 114 (24.41%) SIEM
4 83 (17.77%) CI/CD
5 80 (17.13%) Incident Response
6 79 (16.92%) Security Operations
7 72 (15.42%) Infrastructure as Code
8 63 (13.49%) DevOps
9 53 (11.35%) Threat Modelling
9 53 (11.35%) Vulnerability Management
10 46 (9.85%) Problem-Solving
11 45 (9.64%) Information Security
12 44 (9.42%) DevSecOps
13 43 (9.21%) Agile
14 40 (8.57%) Continuous Improvement
15 39 (8.35%) Threat Detection
16 38 (8.14%) SOAR
17 37 (7.92%) Migration
17 37 (7.92%) Security Monitoring
18 33 (7.07%) Data Loss Prevention
Programming Languages
1 91 (19.49%) Python
2 76 (16.27%) PowerShell
3 28 (6.00%) Bash
4 21 (4.50%) Kusto Query Language
5 16 (3.43%) Java
6 7 (1.50%) Bicep
7 6 (1.28%) JavaScript
8 4 (0.86%) BeanShell
8 4 (0.86%) PHP
8 4 (0.86%) TypeScript
9 3 (0.64%) C#
9 3 (0.64%) Kotlin
9 3 (0.64%) SQL
10 2 (0.43%) C++
10 2 (0.43%) Go
10 2 (0.43%) Ruby
10 2 (0.43%) Rust
11 1 (0.21%) Objective-C
11 1 (0.21%) Search Processing Language
11 1 (0.21%) Swift
Qualifications
1 116 (24.84%) Security Cleared
2 93 (19.91%) SC Cleared
3 69 (14.78%) CISSP
4 54 (11.56%) Degree
5 42 (8.99%) CISM
6 28 (6.00%) DV Cleared
7 23 (4.93%) Cisco Certification
8 17 (3.64%) Azure Certification
8 17 (3.64%) CompTIA Security+
9 15 (3.21%) CEH
10 13 (2.78%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 12 (2.57%) GIAC
12 11 (2.36%) AWS Certification
12 11 (2.36%) SANS
13 9 (1.93%) Microsoft Certification
14 8 (1.71%) CCNP
15 7 (1.50%) CCSP
15 7 (1.50%) Computer Science Degree
16 6 (1.28%) CompTIA CySA+
16 6 (1.28%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 86 (18.42%) NIST
2 65 (13.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 37 (7.92%) GDPR
4 22 (4.71%) Cyber Essentials
5 14 (3.00%) NCSC
6 12 (2.57%) PCI DSS
7 11 (2.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 10 (2.14%) GRC
8 10 (2.14%) HIPAA
9 8 (1.71%) NIST 800
10 7 (1.50%) RMADS
11 6 (1.28%) JSP 440
12 5 (1.07%) SOC 2
13 4 (0.86%) Government Security Classifications
14 3 (0.64%) Actionable Recommendations
14 3 (0.64%) SLA
15 2 (0.43%) Data Quality
15 2 (0.43%) GxP
15 2 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 42001
16 1 (0.21%) EU AI Act
System Software
1 44 (9.42%) Active Directory
2 20 (4.28%) Docker
3 16 (3.43%) Virtual Machines
4 8 (1.71%) VMware Infrastructure
5 7 (1.50%) Hyper-V
6 6 (1.28%) Firmware
6 6 (1.28%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
8 1 (0.21%) GPFS
8 1 (0.21%) Lustre
8 1 (0.21%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 1 (0.21%) Snort
8 1 (0.21%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 49 (10.49%) Terraform
2 46 (9.85%) Kubernetes
3 22 (4.71%) Microsoft Intune
4 19 (4.07%) SCCM
5 13 (2.78%) Fluentd
5 13 (2.78%) Single Sign-On
6 10 (2.14%) Ansible
7 9 (1.93%) CASB
7 9 (1.93%) Kibana
7 9 (1.93%) logstash
8 8 (1.71%) Nessus
9 7 (1.50%) WSUS
10 6 (1.28%) SCOrch
10 6 (1.28%) vCenter Server
11 5 (1.07%) Functional Safety
12 4 (0.86%) AirWatch
12 4 (0.86%) CSIRT
13 3 (0.64%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 3 (0.64%) Icinga
13 3 (0.64%) SCOM
Vendors
1 110 (23.55%) Microsoft
2 59 (12.63%) Cisco
3 42 (8.99%) Splunk
4 33 (7.07%) Palo Alto
5 32 (6.85%) F5
6 28 (6.00%) Tenable
7 23 (4.93%) Fortinet
8 21 (4.50%) CheckPoint
9 19 (4.07%) CrowdStrike
10 15 (3.21%) Google
10 15 (3.21%) ServiceNow
11 14 (3.00%) Juniper
12 12 (2.57%) Cribl.io
12 12 (2.57%) Qualys
12 12 (2.57%) Zscaler
13 9 (1.93%) CyberArk
13 9 (1.93%) VMware
14 8 (1.71%) Ping Identity
15 7 (1.50%) Checkmarx
15 7 (1.50%) Rapid7