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 29 May 2026.

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

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 233 276 272
Rank change year-on-year +43 -4 -52
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 549 265 370
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.12% 0.92% 0.86%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.22% 1.00% 0.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 341 162 262
10th Percentile £413 £384 £413
25th Percentile £475 £420 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.86% -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £686 £738 £749
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £500 £543
% change year-on-year +10.00% -7.83% +3.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 3 4
10th Percentile £80.27 £65.65 -
25th Percentile £84.00 £66.63 £30.70
Median hourly rate £85.40 £73.31 £48.40
Median % change year-on-year +16.49% +51.47% -41.97%
75th Percentile - £80.89 £70.63
90th Percentile £86.82 £82.40 £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.40 £73.31 £48.40
% change year-on-year +16.49% +51.47% -41.94%

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 45,155 26,550 39,743
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.31% 92.33% 92.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,543 17,231 25,865
10th Percentile £325 £290 £280
25th Percentile £413 £405 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.49% -3.81% -2.78%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,003 1,045 2,776
10th Percentile £15.01 £14.00 £12.81
25th Percentile £20.50 £17.87 £16.30
Median hourly rate £42.50 £27.99 £37.18
Median % change year-on-year +51.84% -24.72% -17.38%
75th Percentile £66.38 £59.90 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £73.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.61 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +73.38% -37.13% -5.88%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 +35 495 £538 +2.38% 331
UK excluding London +20 260 £550 +10.00% 300
London +21 234 £525 -4.55% 97
Work from Home +46 199 £550 +4.76% 91
North of England +5 119 £569 +8.33% 64
North West +33 95 £558 +6.19% 39
Midlands -14 58 £519 +3.75% 32
West Midlands -19 55 £539 +7.75% 24
South East -28 55 £500 +11.11% 91
South West -20 24 £525 +6.33% 37
Scotland +10 21 £675 +22.73% 48
Yorkshire -40 21 £600 +14.29% 19
East of England -20 18 £525 +10.53% 25
North East -32 3 £400 -23.81% 6
East Midlands - 3 £406 - 8
Wales - 2 £733 - 3

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

For the 6 months to 29 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.

1 204 (37.16%) Azure
2 168 (30.60%) Cybersecurity
3 154 (28.05%) AWS
4 139 (25.32%) Cloud Security
5 136 (24.77%) Python
6 127 (23.13%) SIEM
7 121 (22.04%) Microsoft
8 107 (19.49%) CI/CD
9 106 (19.31%) Firewall
10 104 (18.94%) Network Security
11 93 (16.94%) PowerShell
12 90 (16.39%) Security Cleared
13 87 (15.85%) Incident Response
14 82 (14.94%) Cisco
15 70 (12.75%) SC Cleared
15 70 (12.75%) VPN
16 67 (12.20%) Data Loss Prevention
16 67 (12.20%) DevOps
16 67 (12.20%) Vulnerability Management
17 65 (11.84%) Terraform
18 64 (11.66%) DNS
18 64 (11.66%) Windows
19 63 (11.48%) GCP
20 62 (11.29%) NIST
21 60 (10.93%) Security Operations
22 59 (10.75%) CISSP
22 59 (10.75%) Security Architecture
23 57 (10.38%) Information Security
23 57 (10.38%) Threat Modelling
24 54 (9.84%) 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 22 (4.01%) Confluence
2 5 (0.91%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.36%) Apache
3 2 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.18%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (0.55%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 6 (1.09%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.36%) Maximo
3 1 (0.18%) SAP ERP
3 1 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 204 (37.16%) Azure
2 154 (28.05%) AWS
3 63 (11.48%) GCP
4 53 (9.65%) Microsoft Purview
5 52 (9.47%) Microsoft 365
6 39 (7.10%) Entra ID
7 23 (4.19%) Azure Sentinel
7 23 (4.19%) GitHub
8 21 (3.83%) SaaS
9 20 (3.64%) AWS CloudFormation
10 19 (3.46%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 18 (3.28%) Mimecast
12 16 (2.91%) Amazon GuardDuty
13 12 (2.19%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 11 (2.00%) AWS CloudTrail
14 11 (2.00%) OpenShift
15 10 (1.82%) Akamai
15 10 (1.82%) AWS KMS
15 10 (1.82%) Azure DevOps
15 10 (1.82%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 106 (19.31%) Firewall
2 104 (18.94%) Network Security
3 70 (12.75%) VPN
4 64 (11.66%) DNS
5 45 (8.20%) BGP
6 35 (6.38%) DMZ
7 33 (6.01%) Multicast
8 27 (4.92%) TCP/IP
9 26 (4.74%) SSL
10 20 (3.64%) WAN
11 18 (3.28%) HTTP
12 17 (3.10%) SD-WAN
13 11 (2.00%) Internet
14 9 (1.64%) MPLS
14 9 (1.64%) NGFW
14 9 (1.64%) TACACS
14 9 (1.64%) Wireless
15 8 (1.46%) DHCP
15 8 (1.46%) IPsec
15 8 (1.46%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (1.64%) Power BI
2 7 (1.28%) Data Lake
3 5 (0.91%) SQL Server
4 4 (0.73%) Amazon Athena
4 4 (0.73%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
4 4 (0.73%) MongoDB
4 4 (0.73%) PostgreSQL
5 3 (0.55%) Big Data
6 2 (0.36%) Amazon Redshift
6 2 (0.36%) Apache Cassandra
6 2 (0.36%) BigQuery
6 2 (0.36%) Mixpanel
6 2 (0.36%) NoSQL
6 2 (0.36%) OLAP
6 2 (0.36%) OLTP
6 2 (0.36%) RDBMS
6 2 (0.36%) Relational Database
7 1 (0.18%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.18%) DB2
Development Applications
1 25 (4.55%) JIRA
2 11 (2.00%) GitLab
3 7 (1.28%) Git
3 7 (1.28%) Jenkins
4 6 (1.09%) Snyk
5 2 (0.36%) Browser DevTools
5 2 (0.36%) Burp Suite
5 2 (0.36%) Claude Code
5 2 (0.36%) SonarQube
5 2 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
6 1 (0.18%) Artifactory
6 1 (0.18%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 1 (0.18%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.18%) Metasploit
6 1 (0.18%) sqlmap
6 1 (0.18%) Travis CI
6 1 (0.18%) TruffleHog
General
1 105 (19.13%) Social Skills
2 85 (15.48%) Finance
3 50 (9.11%) Analytical Skills
4 42 (7.65%) Banking
5 33 (6.01%) Public Sector
6 23 (4.19%) Investment Banking
7 14 (2.55%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (1.46%) Legal
9 7 (1.28%) Presentation Skills
10 6 (1.09%) Marketing
10 6 (1.09%) Telecoms
11 5 (0.91%) Cyber-Physical System
12 4 (0.73%) Health Technology
12 4 (0.73%) Local Government
12 4 (0.73%) Manufacturing
13 3 (0.55%) Aerospace
13 3 (0.55%) Financial Institution
13 3 (0.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 3 (0.55%) Military
14 1 (0.18%) Back Office
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (2.55%) Elastic Stack
2 10 (1.82%) LDAP
3 7 (1.28%) REST
4 6 (1.09%) LangChain
4 6 (1.09%) PyTorch
4 6 (1.09%) SAML
4 6 (1.09%) scikit-learn
5 5 (0.91%) 802.1X
5 5 (0.91%) Microsoft Graph
5 5 (0.91%) SLSA
6 4 (0.73%) .NET
6 4 (0.73%) Kafka
6 4 (0.73%) OAuth
7 3 (0.55%) ADO
7 3 (0.55%) AWS CDK
7 3 (0.55%) JSON
7 3 (0.55%) SailPoint
8 2 (0.36%) GraphQL
8 2 (0.36%) NestJS
8 2 (0.36%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 74 (13.48%) Security Posture
2 52 (9.47%) Cloud Native
3 31 (5.65%) Management Information System
4 24 (4.37%) Cloud Security Posture
5 19 (3.46%) Data Centre
6 17 (3.10%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 17 (3.10%) Operational Technology
7 13 (2.37%) Onboarding
8 12 (2.19%) Cyber Threat
8 12 (2.19%) Hybrid Cloud
8 12 (2.19%) PKI
9 9 (1.64%) AI Agents
9 9 (1.64%) Data Protection Act
9 9 (1.64%) Public Cloud
10 6 (1.09%) Cyber Defence
10 6 (1.09%) Linux Command Line
10 6 (1.09%) Security Operations Centre
11 5 (0.91%) Cyber Kill Chain
11 5 (0.91%) Enterprise Cloud
11 5 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 64 (11.66%) Windows
2 53 (9.65%) Linux
3 13 (2.37%) Windows Server
4 12 (2.19%) Mac OS
5 10 (1.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (1.46%) Windows 10
7 7 (1.28%) Apple iOS
8 6 (1.09%) Ubuntu
9 4 (0.73%) Unix
10 2 (0.36%) Android
11 1 (0.18%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 168 (30.60%) Cybersecurity
2 139 (25.32%) Cloud Security
3 127 (23.13%) SIEM
4 107 (19.49%) CI/CD
5 87 (15.85%) Incident Response
6 67 (12.20%) Data Loss Prevention
6 67 (12.20%) DevOps
6 67 (12.20%) Vulnerability Management
7 60 (10.93%) Security Operations
8 59 (10.75%) Security Architecture
9 57 (10.38%) Information Security
9 57 (10.38%) Threat Modelling
10 51 (9.29%) DevSecOps
10 51 (9.29%) Infrastructure as Code
10 51 (9.29%) Load Balancing
11 48 (8.74%) Zero Trust
12 46 (8.38%) Continuous Improvement
13 44 (8.01%) Agile
14 42 (7.65%) AI
15 40 (7.29%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 136 (24.77%) Python
2 93 (16.94%) PowerShell
3 51 (9.29%) Bash
4 20 (3.64%) Java
5 18 (3.28%) Kusto Query Language
6 11 (2.00%) SQL
7 5 (0.91%) PHP
8 4 (0.73%) JavaScript
9 3 (0.55%) C#
9 3 (0.55%) Go
9 3 (0.55%) Search Processing Language
9 3 (0.55%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.36%) Bicep
10 2 (0.36%) Perl
10 2 (0.36%) Ruby
10 2 (0.36%) TypeScript
11 1 (0.18%) BeanShell
11 1 (0.18%) C
Qualifications
1 90 (16.39%) Security Cleared
2 70 (12.75%) SC Cleared
3 59 (10.75%) CISSP
4 53 (9.65%) Degree
5 29 (5.28%) Cisco Certification
6 27 (4.92%) CISM
7 25 (4.55%) AWS Certification
8 19 (3.46%) Azure Certification
9 18 (3.28%) DV Cleared
10 14 (2.55%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 14 (2.55%) CCNP
11 12 (2.19%) Computer Science Degree
12 11 (2.00%) CompTIA Security+
13 10 (1.82%) Microsoft Certification
14 7 (1.28%) CEH
14 7 (1.28%) GIAC
15 6 (1.09%) CCSP
16 5 (0.91%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
16 5 (0.91%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
16 5 (0.91%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 62 (11.29%) NIST
2 52 (9.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 34 (6.19%) GDPR
4 29 (5.28%) Cyber Essentials
5 21 (3.83%) PCI DSS
6 17 (3.10%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 10 (1.82%) NCSC
8 8 (1.46%) GRC
8 8 (1.46%) SLA
9 6 (1.09%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 6 (1.09%) HIPAA
9 6 (1.09%) NIST 800
9 6 (1.09%) RMADS
10 5 (0.91%) JSP 440
10 5 (0.91%) SOC 2
11 3 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.55%) Government Security Classifications
11 3 (0.55%) ISA99
12 2 (0.36%) Data Quality
12 2 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 28 (5.10%) Active Directory
2 24 (4.37%) Docker
3 12 (2.19%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (1.46%) Virtual Machines
4 8 (1.46%) VMware ESXi
5 6 (1.09%) VMware NSX
5 6 (1.09%) vSphere
6 3 (0.55%) Firmware
6 3 (0.55%) Virtual Servers
7 2 (0.36%) Hyper-V
7 2 (0.36%) Squid
7 2 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
8 1 (0.18%) RACF
Systems Management
1 65 (11.84%) Terraform
2 51 (9.29%) Kubernetes
3 19 (3.46%) Microsoft Intune
4 17 (3.10%) Ansible
5 10 (1.82%) Single Sign-On
6 8 (1.46%) Progress Chef
7 7 (1.28%) vCenter Server
8 6 (1.09%) CASB
8 6 (1.09%) Nessus
9 5 (0.91%) FortiGate
9 5 (0.91%) Functional Safety
9 5 (0.91%) Kibana
10 4 (0.73%) AirWatch
10 4 (0.73%) logstash
11 3 (0.55%) Grafana
11 3 (0.55%) SCCM
11 3 (0.55%) SCOM
12 2 (0.36%) Icinga
12 2 (0.36%) QRadar
12 2 (0.36%) WSUS
Vendors
1 121 (22.04%) Microsoft
2 82 (14.94%) Cisco
3 54 (9.84%) F5
4 39 (7.10%) CrowdStrike
4 39 (7.10%) Palo Alto
5 29 (5.28%) Fortinet
6 27 (4.92%) Zscaler
7 25 (4.55%) CyberArk
7 25 (4.55%) Google
8 21 (3.83%) ServiceNow
9 19 (3.46%) Netskope
9 19 (3.46%) Tenable
9 19 (3.46%) VMware
10 18 (3.28%) Splunk
11 15 (2.73%) CheckPoint
12 14 (2.55%) Qualys
13 12 (2.19%) BeyondTrust
14 10 (1.82%) Blue Coat
14 10 (1.82%) Red Hat
15 9 (1.64%) Juniper