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 17 December 2025.

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

6 months to
17 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 225 241 266
Rank change year-on-year +16 +25 +1
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 456 366 387
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.24% 1.06% 0.88%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.36% 1.15% 0.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 273 245 249
10th Percentile £376 £400 £450
25th Percentile £425 £463 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% -8.33% +6.67%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £700
90th Percentile £700 £700 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £516 £550 £600
% change year-on-year -6.27% -8.33% +17.07%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 3 26
10th Percentile £82.07 £42.00 £68.26
25th Percentile £85.40 £43.13 -
Median hourly rate £87.50 £45.00 £83.40
Median % change year-on-year +94.44% -46.04% +43.79%
75th Percentile £91.50 £61.68 -
90th Percentile - £71.69 £83.41
UK excluding London median hourly rate £87.50 £73.31 £83.40
% change year-on-year +19.36% -12.10% +58.86%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 33,474 31,919 40,968
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.98% 92.77% 93.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,192 19,646 27,547
10th Percentile £290 £300 £288
25th Percentile £404 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £644
90th Percentile £720 £738 £740
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,966 1,020 1,459
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.48 £15.16
25th Percentile £18.00 £21.00 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £33.52 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -24.97% -25.51% +50.00%
75th Percentile £57.50 £62.59 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.00 £72.53 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -22.62% -27.78% +80.00%

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 17 December 2025.

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 17 December 2025.

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 17 December 2025. 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 +17 402 £537 -2.32% 290
London +38 227 £545 -5.22% 76
UK excluding London -19 182 £516 -6.27% 277
Work from Home -5 127 £513 -6.82% 188
North of England -38 50 £545 +1.40% 61
North West -18 35 £575 +4.55% 41
South East -27 34 £513 -2.38% 101
Midlands -24 27 £475 +3.26% 23
South West +15 26 £522 -16.52% 34
East of England +4 26 £500 +81.82% 23
West Midlands -32 22 £543 +17.93% 15
Scotland +12 19 £525 -10.06% 35
Yorkshire -46 12 £540 +21.35% 12
Northern Ireland -4 5 - - 1
East Midlands - 5 £415 - 8
North East -5 3 £400 -20.00% 9
Wales +1 2 £600 +15.66% 7

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

For the 6 months to 17 December 2025, 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.

1 171 (37.50%) Cybersecurity
2 168 (36.84%) Azure
3 130 (28.51%) Firewall
3 130 (28.51%) SIEM
4 129 (28.29%) AWS
5 121 (26.54%) Cloud Security
6 119 (26.10%) Microsoft
7 107 (23.46%) Network Security
8 105 (23.03%) Security Cleared
9 99 (21.71%) Incident Response
10 93 (20.39%) Python
11 89 (19.52%) NIST
12 83 (18.20%) SC Cleared
12 83 (18.20%) Security Operations
13 74 (16.23%) Infrastructure as Code
14 73 (16.01%) CI/CD
14 73 (16.01%) Windows
15 72 (15.79%) PowerShell
16 70 (15.35%) GCP
17 67 (14.69%) Linux
18 62 (13.60%) CISSP
19 60 (13.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
20 59 (12.94%) Active Directory
21 53 (11.62%) DevOps
22 51 (11.18%) Microsoft 365
23 49 (10.75%) Cisco
24 48 (10.53%) Degree
24 48 (10.53%) DevSecOps
24 48 (10.53%) Entra ID
25 47 (10.31%) Azure Sentinel

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 13 (2.85%) Microsoft Exchange
1 13 (2.85%) SharePoint
2 4 (0.88%) Confluence
3 2 (0.44%) Apache
3 2 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.44%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 5 (1.10%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.88%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.44%) NetSuite
2 1 (0.22%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 168 (36.84%) Azure
2 129 (28.29%) AWS
3 70 (15.35%) GCP
4 51 (11.18%) Microsoft 365
5 48 (10.53%) Entra ID
6 47 (10.31%) Azure Sentinel
7 31 (6.80%) Microsoft Purview
8 30 (6.58%) GitHub
9 18 (3.95%) AWS CloudFormation
10 17 (3.73%) OpenShift
11 15 (3.29%) Azure Monitor
12 13 (2.85%) Amazon GuardDuty
13 11 (2.41%) GitHub Actions
14 9 (1.97%) SaaS
15 8 (1.75%) AWS CloudTrail
15 8 (1.75%) Mimecast
16 7 (1.54%) Amazon EKS
16 7 (1.54%) Azure DevOps
16 7 (1.54%) Azure Logic Apps
17 6 (1.32%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 130 (28.51%) Firewall
2 107 (23.46%) Network Security
3 37 (8.11%) VPN
4 35 (7.68%) DNS
5 26 (5.70%) WAN
6 19 (4.17%) Wireless
7 18 (3.95%) SSL
8 15 (3.29%) Intrusion Detection
9 14 (3.07%) TCP/IP
10 13 (2.85%) BGP
11 12 (2.63%) OSPF
12 10 (2.19%) DMVPN
13 9 (1.97%) DHCP
14 8 (1.75%) Cisco IPT
14 8 (1.75%) Internet
14 8 (1.75%) IPsec
14 8 (1.75%) SD-WAN
14 8 (1.75%) Wi-Fi
15 7 (1.54%) VLAN
16 6 (1.32%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (2.41%) Data Lake
2 10 (2.19%) BigQuery
3 7 (1.54%) Oracle Database
4 5 (1.10%) Elasticsearch
5 4 (0.88%) Power BI
6 3 (0.66%) Amazon Athena
6 3 (0.66%) Big Data
7 2 (0.44%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.44%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.44%) Mixpanel
7 2 (0.44%) OLAP
7 2 (0.44%) OLTP
8 1 (0.22%) Amazon RDS
8 1 (0.22%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.22%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 15 (3.29%) GitLab
2 11 (2.41%) JIRA
2 11 (2.41%) SonarQube
3 8 (1.75%) Jenkins
4 6 (1.32%) ClearCase
5 5 (1.10%) Burp Suite
5 5 (1.10%) Metasploit
5 5 (1.10%) Snyk
6 4 (0.88%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.44%) Artifactory
7 2 (0.44%) Git
8 1 (0.22%) Fiddler
8 1 (0.22%) Postman
8 1 (0.22%) Travis CI
General
1 115 (25.22%) Social Skills
2 59 (12.94%) Finance
3 44 (9.65%) Public Sector
4 34 (7.46%) Analytical Skills
5 16 (3.51%) Military
6 15 (3.29%) Documentation Skills
7 13 (2.85%) Banking
8 11 (2.41%) Telecoms
9 9 (1.97%) Legal
10 7 (1.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 6 (1.32%) Pharmaceutical
11 6 (1.32%) Spanish Language
12 5 (1.10%) Manufacturing
13 4 (0.88%) Financial Institution
13 4 (0.88%) Organisational Skills
14 2 (0.44%) Aerospace
14 2 (0.44%) Influencing Skills
14 2 (0.44%) Presentation Skills
14 2 (0.44%) Retail
14 2 (0.44%) Social Housing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (4.39%) REST
2 12 (2.63%) SAML
3 9 (1.97%) 802.1X
3 9 (1.97%) Elastic Stack
3 9 (1.97%) OAuth
4 7 (1.54%) Node.js
4 7 (1.54%) OpenID
4 7 (1.54%) SailPoint
5 6 (1.32%) JSON
6 5 (1.10%) Kafka
6 5 (1.10%) NestJS
7 4 (0.88%) Regular Expression
7 4 (0.88%) SOAP
8 3 (0.66%) LDAP
8 3 (0.66%) Microsoft Graph
8 3 (0.66%) Smart Contracts
8 3 (0.66%) YAML
9 2 (0.44%) ARM Templates
9 2 (0.44%) Great Expectations
9 2 (0.44%) gRPC
Miscellaneous
1 53 (11.62%) Security Posture
2 32 (7.02%) Data Centre
3 26 (5.70%) Onboarding
4 23 (5.04%) Management Information System
5 19 (4.17%) Cloud Native
6 16 (3.51%) Data Protection Act
7 15 (3.29%) Cyber Threat
8 11 (2.41%) Cyber Defence
9 10 (2.19%) Operational Technology
10 9 (1.97%) Cloud Security Posture
11 8 (1.75%) Hybrid Cloud
12 7 (1.54%) Security Operations Centre
13 6 (1.32%) BYOD
13 6 (1.32%) Cyber Kill Chain
13 6 (1.32%) Cyber Security Posture
14 5 (1.10%) Life Science
14 5 (1.10%) Mobile App
14 5 (1.10%) YARA
15 4 (0.88%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
15 4 (0.88%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 73 (16.01%) Windows
2 67 (14.69%) Linux
3 15 (3.29%) Windows Server
4 11 (2.41%) Mac OS
5 7 (1.54%) Unix
6 6 (1.32%) Android
6 6 (1.32%) Apple iOS
7 3 (0.66%) VMS
8 2 (0.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 2 (0.44%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.22%) CentOS
9 1 (0.22%) Rocky
9 1 (0.22%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 171 (37.50%) Cybersecurity
2 130 (28.51%) SIEM
3 121 (26.54%) Cloud Security
4 99 (21.71%) Incident Response
5 83 (18.20%) Security Operations
6 74 (16.23%) Infrastructure as Code
7 73 (16.01%) CI/CD
8 53 (11.62%) DevOps
9 48 (10.53%) DevSecOps
10 45 (9.87%) Threat Detection
10 45 (9.87%) Threat Modelling
11 44 (9.65%) Problem-Solving
12 43 (9.43%) Vulnerability Management
13 41 (8.99%) SOAR
14 40 (8.77%) Data Protection
15 38 (8.33%) Analytics
15 38 (8.33%) Security Monitoring
16 37 (8.11%) Information Security
17 35 (7.68%) Continuous Improvement
18 32 (7.02%) Vulnerability Scanning
Programming Languages
1 93 (20.39%) Python
2 72 (15.79%) PowerShell
3 31 (6.80%) Kusto Query Language
4 28 (6.14%) Bash
5 18 (3.95%) Java
6 15 (3.29%) SQL
7 6 (1.32%) Bicep
7 6 (1.32%) C
7 6 (1.32%) JavaScript
8 5 (1.10%) Shell Script
9 4 (0.88%) BeanShell
9 4 (0.88%) C#
9 4 (0.88%) Kotlin
10 3 (0.66%) C++
10 3 (0.66%) Perl
10 3 (0.66%) Rust
11 2 (0.44%) Go
11 2 (0.44%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.22%) Korn
12 1 (0.22%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 105 (23.03%) Security Cleared
2 83 (18.20%) SC Cleared
3 62 (13.60%) CISSP
4 48 (10.53%) Degree
5 32 (7.02%) CISM
6 30 (6.58%) Cisco Certification
7 24 (5.26%) DV Cleared
8 20 (4.39%) Azure Certification
9 17 (3.73%) CCNP
10 15 (3.29%) CompTIA Security+
11 14 (3.07%) CEH
12 13 (2.85%) Microsoft Certification
13 11 (2.41%) OSCP
14 10 (2.19%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 10 (2.19%) AWS Certification
15 9 (1.97%) SANS
16 8 (1.75%) CREST Certified
17 7 (1.54%) GIAC
18 6 (1.32%) CCSP
18 6 (1.32%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 89 (19.52%) NIST
2 60 (13.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 29 (6.36%) GDPR
4 25 (5.48%) NCSC
5 16 (3.51%) NIST 800
6 13 (2.85%) HIPAA
7 11 (2.41%) Cyber Essentials
7 11 (2.41%) GRC
7 11 (2.41%) JSP 440
8 9 (1.97%) PCI DSS
9 7 (1.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 5 (1.10%) SOC 2
11 3 (0.66%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 3 (0.66%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 2 (0.44%) Data Quality
12 2 (0.44%) EU AI Act
12 2 (0.44%) GxP
12 2 (0.44%) RMADS
12 2 (0.44%) SLA
13 1 (0.22%) Accessibility
System Software
1 59 (12.94%) Active Directory
2 19 (4.17%) Virtual Machines
3 16 (3.51%) Docker
4 14 (3.07%) Firmware
5 6 (1.32%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.66%) VMware Infrastructure
7 2 (0.44%) Snort
8 1 (0.22%) GPFS
8 1 (0.22%) Lustre
8 1 (0.22%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 46 (10.09%) Terraform
2 30 (6.58%) Kubernetes
3 20 (4.39%) SCCM
4 13 (2.85%) Fluentd
4 13 (2.85%) Microsoft Intune
5 11 (2.41%) CASB
6 10 (2.19%) Ansible
6 10 (2.19%) Single Sign-On
7 7 (1.54%) logstash
7 7 (1.54%) SCOrch
7 7 (1.54%) WSUS
8 6 (1.32%) Kibana
8 6 (1.32%) Nmap
8 6 (1.32%) QRadar
9 4 (0.88%) CSIRT
9 4 (0.88%) FortiGate
9 4 (0.88%) Nessus
10 3 (0.66%) Argo
10 3 (0.66%) Icinga
10 3 (0.66%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 119 (26.10%) Microsoft
2 49 (10.75%) Cisco
3 47 (10.31%) Splunk
4 41 (8.99%) Palo Alto
5 31 (6.80%) CrowdStrike
6 26 (5.70%) Tenable
7 25 (5.48%) F5
8 24 (5.26%) CheckPoint
9 23 (5.04%) Google
10 21 (4.61%) Zscaler
11 19 (4.17%) Fortinet
11 19 (4.17%) Juniper
12 14 (3.07%) Qualys
12 14 (3.07%) ServiceNow
13 13 (2.85%) Cribl.io
14 11 (2.41%) Oracle
15 9 (1.97%) Blue Coat
15 9 (1.97%) Forcepoint
15 9 (1.97%) Veracode
16 7 (1.54%) Ping Identity