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 21 February 2026.

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

6 months to
21 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 233 276 308
Rank change year-on-year +43 +32 -77
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 473 272 314
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.15% 0.89% 0.70%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.26% 0.95% 0.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 274 157 198
10th Percentile £400 £382 £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 £617 £638 £673
90th Percentile £683 £700 £768
UK excluding London median daily rate £540 £525 £550
% change year-on-year +2.86% -4.55% +2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 4 20
10th Percentile - £42.38 £50.32
25th Percentile - £44.06 £78.69
Median hourly rate £85.40 £59.16 £83.40
Median % change year-on-year +44.37% -29.07% +0.11%
75th Percentile - £79.62 -
90th Percentile £92.50 £81.90 £83.41
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.40 £78.36 £83.40
% change year-on-year +8.98% -6.04% +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 37,575 28,553 41,560
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.74% 92.90% 93.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,586 17,823 27,337
10th Percentile £306 £288 £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 £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +1.05% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,283 827 2,341
10th Percentile £14.61 £16.25 £13.16
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £16.50
Median hourly rate £31.49 £34.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -7.38% -2.86% -10.26%
75th Percentile £63.75 £63.75 £60.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £35.95
% change year-on-year -7.69% -9.60% +0.42%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 +35 414 £538 -2.27% 311
UK excluding London +15 213 £540 +2.86% 271
London +26 206 £525 -8.70% 95
Work from Home +30 147 £537 -2.36% 77
North of England -27 70 £575 +6.98% 78
North West -1 52 £579 +5.23% 54
South East -13 45 £475 +5.56% 82
Midlands -28 42 £488 -7.14% 36
West Midlands -34 36 £510 -2.86% 26
South West +2 32 £537 -2.36% 20
Scotland +18 25 £632 +12.36% 21
Yorkshire -56 15 £540 +60.00% 16
East of England -17 12 £525 +90.91% 31
East Midlands - 6 £450 - 10
Northern Ireland - 5 - - 2
North East -22 3 £400 -23.81% 8
Wales -2 1 £600 - 7

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

For the 6 months to 21 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.

1 181 (38.27%) Azure
2 160 (33.83%) Cybersecurity
3 142 (30.02%) AWS
4 128 (27.06%) Cloud Security
5 121 (25.58%) Firewall
6 115 (24.31%) SIEM
7 114 (24.10%) Microsoft
8 112 (23.68%) Security Cleared
9 96 (20.30%) Python
10 94 (19.87%) Network Security
11 89 (18.82%) CI/CD
12 88 (18.60%) SC Cleared
13 82 (17.34%) NIST
14 80 (16.91%) PowerShell
15 79 (16.70%) Incident Response
16 78 (16.49%) Security Operations
17 73 (15.43%) Infrastructure as Code
18 72 (15.22%) CISSP
19 66 (13.95%) DevOps
19 66 (13.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
20 62 (13.11%) Cisco
21 58 (12.26%) Vulnerability Management
22 57 (12.05%) Degree
23 56 (11.84%) GCP
23 56 (11.84%) Threat Modelling
24 54 (11.42%) Entra ID
24 54 (11.42%) VPN
24 54 (11.42%) Windows
25 51 (10.78%) Kubernetes
25 51 (10.78%) Linux

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 16 (3.38%) Confluence
2 10 (2.11%) Microsoft Exchange
3 4 (0.85%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.42%) Apache
4 2 (0.42%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 3 (0.63%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.21%) SAP ERP
1 1 (0.21%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 181 (38.27%) Azure
2 142 (30.02%) AWS
3 56 (11.84%) GCP
4 54 (11.42%) Entra ID
5 51 (10.78%) Microsoft 365
6 43 (9.09%) Azure Sentinel
6 43 (9.09%) Microsoft Purview
7 27 (5.71%) GitHub
8 23 (4.86%) AWS CloudFormation
8 23 (4.86%) OpenShift
9 16 (3.38%) SaaS
10 14 (2.96%) Mimecast
11 13 (2.75%) Amazon GuardDuty
12 12 (2.54%) Amazon ECS
12 12 (2.54%) Azure Key Vault
12 12 (2.54%) GitHub Actions
13 11 (2.33%) Azure Monitor
14 10 (2.11%) AWS KMS
14 10 (2.11%) Azure DevOps
15 9 (1.90%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 121 (25.58%) Firewall
2 94 (19.87%) Network Security
3 54 (11.42%) VPN
4 46 (9.73%) DNS
5 28 (5.92%) BGP
6 18 (3.81%) TCP/IP
6 18 (3.81%) WAN
7 15 (3.17%) Wireless
8 14 (2.96%) DMZ
8 14 (2.96%) Multicast
8 14 (2.96%) SSL
9 11 (2.33%) Cisco ASA
10 9 (1.90%) IPsec
11 8 (1.69%) DHCP
11 8 (1.69%) NGFW
11 8 (1.69%) OSPF
12 7 (1.48%) Cisco IPT
12 7 (1.48%) DMVPN
12 7 (1.48%) Intrusion Detection
12 7 (1.48%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (2.75%) Data Lake
2 5 (1.06%) BigQuery
2 5 (1.06%) Elasticsearch
3 4 (0.85%) Amazon Athena
3 4 (0.85%) Power BI
4 3 (0.63%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (0.42%) Amazon Redshift
5 2 (0.42%) Mixpanel
5 2 (0.42%) OLAP
5 2 (0.42%) OLTP
5 2 (0.42%) SQL Server
6 1 (0.21%) Apache Cassandra
6 1 (0.21%) DynamoDB
6 1 (0.21%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.21%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.21%) PostgreSQL
6 1 (0.21%) RDBMS
6 1 (0.21%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 21 (4.44%) JIRA
2 20 (4.23%) GitLab
3 11 (2.33%) Jenkins
4 10 (2.11%) Snyk
5 7 (1.48%) Git
6 6 (1.27%) SonarQube
7 4 (0.85%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.42%) Artifactory
9 1 (0.21%) Travis CI
General
1 118 (24.95%) Social Skills
2 61 (12.90%) Finance
3 57 (12.05%) Public Sector
4 44 (9.30%) Analytical Skills
5 18 (3.81%) Banking
6 12 (2.54%) Documentation Skills
7 10 (2.11%) Investment Banking
8 9 (1.90%) Telecoms
9 8 (1.69%) Legal
10 6 (1.27%) Military
10 6 (1.27%) Spanish Language
11 5 (1.06%) Cyber-Physical System
11 5 (1.06%) Financial Institution
11 5 (1.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 5 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
12 4 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
12 4 (0.85%) Pharmaceutical
13 3 (0.63%) Local Government
14 2 (0.42%) Retail
15 1 (0.21%) Italian Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (4.44%) REST
2 13 (2.75%) Elastic Stack
2 13 (2.75%) SAML
3 10 (2.11%) LDAP
3 10 (2.11%) OAuth
4 7 (1.48%) 802.1X
4 7 (1.48%) NestJS
4 7 (1.48%) Node.js
4 7 (1.48%) OpenID
5 6 (1.27%) JSON
5 6 (1.27%) Kafka
5 6 (1.27%) Microsoft Graph
6 5 (1.06%) .NET
6 5 (1.06%) SailPoint
7 4 (0.85%) LangChain
7 4 (0.85%) PyTorch
7 4 (0.85%) scikit-learn
7 4 (0.85%) SLSA
7 4 (0.85%) SOAP
8 3 (0.63%) AWS CDK
Miscellaneous
1 59 (12.47%) Security Posture
2 33 (6.98%) Cloud Native
3 26 (5.50%) Data Centre
4 22 (4.65%) Management Information System
5 18 (3.81%) Onboarding
6 15 (3.17%) Data Protection Act
7 11 (2.33%) Cloud Security Posture
8 10 (2.11%) PKI
8 10 (2.11%) Security Operations Centre
9 9 (1.90%) Cyber Defence
9 9 (1.90%) Hybrid Cloud
9 9 (1.90%) Operational Technology
10 8 (1.69%) BYOD
11 7 (1.48%) Public Cloud
12 6 (1.27%) Cyber Security Posture
12 6 (1.27%) Cyber Threat
13 5 (1.06%) Enterprise Software
13 5 (1.06%) Greenfield Project
13 5 (1.06%) Mobile App
14 4 (0.85%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 54 (11.42%) Windows
2 51 (10.78%) Linux
3 15 (3.17%) Windows Server
4 9 (1.90%) Unix
5 8 (1.69%) Mac OS
6 7 (1.48%) Ubuntu
7 6 (1.27%) Android
8 5 (1.06%) Apple iOS
8 5 (1.06%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 5 (1.06%) Windows 10
9 4 (0.85%) VMS
10 1 (0.21%) Rocky
10 1 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 160 (33.83%) Cybersecurity
2 128 (27.06%) Cloud Security
3 115 (24.31%) SIEM
4 89 (18.82%) CI/CD
5 79 (16.70%) Incident Response
6 78 (16.49%) Security Operations
7 73 (15.43%) Infrastructure as Code
8 66 (13.95%) DevOps
9 58 (12.26%) Vulnerability Management
10 56 (11.84%) Threat Modelling
11 47 (9.94%) Agile
11 47 (9.94%) DevSecOps
12 46 (9.73%) Information Security
13 42 (8.88%) Problem-Solving
14 40 (8.46%) Data Loss Prevention
15 39 (8.25%) Continuous Improvement
16 38 (8.03%) Threat Detection
17 37 (7.82%) Migration
17 37 (7.82%) Security Architecture
18 36 (7.61%) Security Monitoring
Programming Languages
1 96 (20.30%) Python
2 80 (16.91%) PowerShell
3 30 (6.34%) Bash
4 20 (4.23%) Kusto Query Language
5 17 (3.59%) Java
6 7 (1.48%) Bicep
7 6 (1.27%) JavaScript
8 5 (1.06%) SQL
9 4 (0.85%) BeanShell
9 4 (0.85%) PHP
9 4 (0.85%) TypeScript
10 3 (0.63%) C#
11 2 (0.42%) Go
11 2 (0.42%) Kotlin
11 2 (0.42%) Ruby
12 1 (0.21%) Objective-C
12 1 (0.21%) Rust
12 1 (0.21%) Scala
12 1 (0.21%) Search Processing Language
12 1 (0.21%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 112 (23.68%) Security Cleared
2 88 (18.60%) SC Cleared
3 72 (15.22%) CISSP
4 57 (12.05%) Degree
5 44 (9.30%) CISM
6 26 (5.50%) DV Cleared
7 25 (5.29%) Cisco Certification
8 19 (4.02%) Azure Certification
9 16 (3.38%) CompTIA Security+
10 14 (2.96%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 14 (2.96%) CEH
11 12 (2.54%) AWS Certification
11 12 (2.54%) GIAC
12 11 (2.33%) SANS
13 10 (2.11%) Microsoft Certification
14 9 (1.90%) CCNP
15 8 (1.69%) CCSP
16 7 (1.48%) Computer Science Degree
17 6 (1.27%) CompTIA CySA+
17 6 (1.27%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 82 (17.34%) NIST
2 66 (13.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 41 (8.67%) GDPR
4 23 (4.86%) Cyber Essentials
5 13 (2.75%) HIPAA
6 12 (2.54%) NCSC
6 12 (2.54%) PCI DSS
7 11 (2.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 10 (2.11%) GRC
9 7 (1.48%) NIST 800
9 7 (1.48%) RMADS
10 6 (1.27%) SOC 2
11 5 (1.06%) JSP 440
12 4 (0.85%) Government Security Classifications
12 4 (0.85%) SLA
13 3 (0.63%) Actionable Recommendations
13 3 (0.63%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 2 (0.42%) Data Quality
14 2 (0.42%) GxP
15 1 (0.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 41 (8.67%) Active Directory
2 23 (4.86%) Docker
3 16 (3.38%) Virtual Machines
4 8 (1.69%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (1.27%) Hyper-V
5 6 (1.27%) VMware ESXi
6 5 (1.06%) Firmware
7 2 (0.42%) 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 51 (10.78%) Kubernetes
1 51 (10.78%) Terraform
2 22 (4.65%) Microsoft Intune
3 18 (3.81%) SCCM
4 13 (2.75%) Single Sign-On
5 12 (2.54%) Fluentd
6 10 (2.11%) Ansible
7 9 (1.90%) CASB
8 8 (1.69%) Nessus
9 7 (1.48%) Kibana
9 7 (1.48%) logstash
9 7 (1.48%) WSUS
10 6 (1.27%) SCOrch
10 6 (1.27%) vCenter Server
11 5 (1.06%) Functional Safety
12 4 (0.85%) AirWatch
12 4 (0.85%) CSIRT
13 3 (0.63%) Argo
13 3 (0.63%) Icinga
13 3 (0.63%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 114 (24.10%) Microsoft
2 62 (13.11%) Cisco
3 42 (8.88%) Splunk
4 35 (7.40%) F5
5 33 (6.98%) Palo Alto
6 27 (5.71%) Tenable
7 23 (4.86%) CheckPoint
8 22 (4.65%) Fortinet
9 20 (4.23%) Google
10 18 (3.81%) CrowdStrike
11 16 (3.38%) ServiceNow
12 14 (2.96%) Juniper
12 14 (2.96%) Zscaler
13 13 (2.75%) Qualys
14 12 (2.54%) Cribl.io
15 10 (2.11%) CyberArk
16 9 (1.90%) Blue Coat
16 9 (1.90%) VMware
17 8 (1.69%) Ping Identity
18 7 (1.48%) Checkmarx