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 9 October 2026.

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

6 months to
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 254 223 205
Rank change year-on-year -31 -18 +40
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 564 408 467
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.03% 1.23% 1.23%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.12% 1.35% 1.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 353 234 338
10th Percentile £413 £380 £400
25th Percentile £460 £419 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £638
90th Percentile £700 £700 £729
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -1.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 11 4
10th Percentile - £82.50 £42.38
25th Percentile £73.75 £84.75 £44.06
Median hourly rate £85.00 £91.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.59% +65.45% -34.05%
75th Percentile £89.05 £91.50 £70.63
90th Percentile £92.11 - £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.40 £91.00 £72.50
% change year-on-year -6.15% +25.52% -13.07%

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 50,176 30,117 35,319
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.07% 90.80% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,458 18,999 21,350
10th Percentile £325 £275 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £494
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.85% -1.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4,042 1,639 1,491
10th Percentile £14.32 £13.75 £14.85
25th Percentile £19.36 £17.30 £20.30
Median hourly rate £41.71 £25.15 £41.57
Median % change year-on-year +65.84% -39.49% -6.60%
75th Percentile £67.50 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £68.00 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.71 £25.00 £42.96
% change year-on-year +66.84% -41.80% -3.47%

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 9 October 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 9 October 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 9 October 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 -14 527 £525 - 1,326
UK excluding London -14 271 £525 +5.00% 711
London -53 253 £534 -2.95% 678
Work from Home -16 181 £540 +8.22% 431
North of England +17 138 £540 +8.00% 176
North West +24 117 £533 +8.33% 109
South East -24 59 £500 - 158
Midlands -10 52 £500 +24.22% 90
West Midlands -12 49 £500 +28.21% 55
East of England -36 29 £525 +5.00% 82
Yorkshire -25 18 £600 +11.11% 33
South West -34 12 £525 +2.44% 83
Scotland -37 7 £618 +17.62% 81
East Midlands -18 3 - - 35
Wales -12 2 £733 +22.08% 19
North East -39 2 - - 34

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

For the 6 months to 9 October 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.

1 193 (34.22%) Azure
2 182 (32.27%) Cloud Security
3 175 (31.03%) Cybersecurity
4 150 (26.60%) AWS
5 146 (25.89%) Microsoft
6 127 (22.52%) SIEM
7 119 (21.10%) Python
8 118 (20.92%) Network Security
9 111 (19.68%) Firewall
10 105 (18.62%) Terraform
11 100 (17.73%) Security Cleared
12 98 (17.38%) PowerShell
13 95 (16.84%) Incident Response
14 93 (16.49%) Security Operations
15 89 (15.78%) SC Cleared
16 88 (15.60%) GCP
17 85 (15.07%) CI/CD
18 84 (14.89%) Cisco
19 83 (14.72%) Kubernetes
20 77 (13.65%) CISSP
21 75 (13.30%) Infrastructure as Code
22 70 (12.41%) Palo Alto
23 69 (12.23%) Threat Detection
24 68 (12.06%) DevOps
24 68 (12.06%) Windows
25 67 (11.88%) VPN
26 66 (11.70%) DevSecOps
27 65 (11.52%) Vulnerability Management
28 61 (10.82%) Zero Trust
29 60 (10.64%) NIST

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 (2.13%) IIS
2 7 (1.24%) Confluence
3 2 (0.35%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.35%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.35%) nginx
4 1 (0.18%) Apache
4 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 2 (0.35%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (0.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.18%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
2 1 (0.18%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (0.71%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.35%) Maximo
3 1 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 193 (34.22%) Azure
2 150 (26.60%) AWS
3 88 (15.60%) GCP
4 57 (10.11%) Entra ID
5 44 (7.80%) Microsoft 365
6 38 (6.74%) Azure Sentinel
7 35 (6.21%) Microsoft Purview
8 27 (4.79%) AWS CloudFormation
9 21 (3.72%) GitHub
10 16 (2.84%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 14 (2.48%) Azure DevOps
12 13 (2.30%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 12 (2.13%) SaaS
14 11 (1.95%) Akamai
14 11 (1.95%) Power Platform
14 11 (1.95%) Serverless
15 10 (1.77%) AWS CloudTrail
15 10 (1.77%) Azure AKS
15 10 (1.77%) Azure Monitor
15 10 (1.77%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 118 (20.92%) Network Security
2 111 (19.68%) Firewall
3 67 (11.88%) VPN
4 43 (7.62%) DNS
5 33 (5.85%) BGP
6 28 (4.96%) SSL
7 27 (4.79%) WAN
8 23 (4.08%) DMZ
9 21 (3.72%) Multicast
10 20 (3.55%) HTTP
11 19 (3.37%) TCP/IP
12 16 (2.84%) Cisco ISE
12 16 (2.84%) Internet
12 16 (2.84%) Wireless
13 15 (2.66%) Intrusion Detection
14 14 (2.48%) SD-WAN
15 12 (2.13%) IPsec
15 12 (2.13%) OSPF
16 9 (1.60%) Cisco ASA
16 9 (1.60%) Cisco IPT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (1.24%) Power BI
2 4 (0.71%) SQL Server
3 3 (0.53%) MongoDB
3 3 (0.53%) PostgreSQL
4 2 (0.35%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (0.35%) Big Data
4 2 (0.35%) DynamoDB
4 2 (0.35%) SAP HANA
5 1 (0.18%) Apache Cassandra
5 1 (0.18%) BigQuery
5 1 (0.18%) Data Lake
5 1 (0.18%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (0.18%) Delta Lake
5 1 (0.18%) Elasticsearch
5 1 (0.18%) Metadata
5 1 (0.18%) NoSQL
5 1 (0.18%) RDBMS
5 1 (0.18%) Redis
5 1 (0.18%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 10 (1.77%) Git
2 7 (1.24%) JIRA
3 6 (1.06%) GitLab
3 6 (1.06%) Jenkins
4 3 (0.53%) Burp Suite
5 2 (0.35%) JUnit
5 2 (0.35%) Snyk
5 2 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
6 1 (0.18%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 1 (0.18%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.18%) Claude Code
6 1 (0.18%) Maven
General
1 101 (17.91%) Social Skills
2 98 (17.38%) Finance
3 49 (8.69%) Analytical Skills
4 42 (7.45%) Banking
5 20 (3.55%) Public Sector
6 17 (3.01%) Documentation Skills
7 16 (2.84%) Investment Banking
8 10 (1.77%) Presentation Skills
9 9 (1.60%) Military
10 7 (1.24%) Back Office
10 7 (1.24%) Manufacturing
10 7 (1.24%) Marketing
11 6 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
11 6 (1.06%) Retail
12 5 (0.89%) Legal
12 5 (0.89%) Telecoms
13 4 (0.71%) Financial Institution
13 4 (0.71%) Health Technology
13 4 (0.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 3 (0.53%) Digital Health
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 105 (18.62%) Terraform
2 18 (3.19%) JSON
3 15 (2.66%) REST
4 11 (1.95%) 802.1X
5 10 (1.77%) OAuth
6 9 (1.60%) OpenID
7 8 (1.42%) JWT
7 8 (1.42%) Regular Expression
7 8 (1.42%) SAML
8 7 (1.24%) LDAP
9 6 (1.06%) OAuth2
10 5 (0.89%) ARM Templates
11 4 (0.71%) Azure Blueprints
11 4 (0.71%) Microsoft Graph
11 4 (0.71%) Model Context Protocol
12 3 (0.53%) AWS CDK
12 3 (0.53%) pytest
12 3 (0.53%) SLSA
12 3 (0.53%) SOAP
13 2 (0.35%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 98 (17.38%) Security Posture
2 62 (10.99%) Cloud Native
3 40 (7.09%) Management Information System
4 34 (6.03%) Cloud Security Posture
5 32 (5.67%) Onboarding
6 27 (4.79%) Cyber Threat
7 24 (4.26%) Enterprise Cloud
8 19 (3.37%) Data Centre
9 18 (3.19%) AI Agents
10 17 (3.01%) Cyber Defence
11 14 (2.48%) PKI
12 13 (2.30%) Operational Technology
13 12 (2.13%) Security Operations Centre
14 11 (1.95%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
15 10 (1.77%) Hybrid Cloud
16 9 (1.60%) Public Cloud
17 8 (1.42%) CCTV
18 7 (1.24%) Data Protection Act
18 7 (1.24%) Mobile App
19 5 (0.89%) Embedded Systems
Operating Systems
1 68 (12.06%) Windows
2 48 (8.51%) Linux
3 19 (3.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 17 (3.01%) Windows Server
5 10 (1.77%) Apple iOS
6 7 (1.24%) Android
7 5 (0.89%) Windows 10
8 3 (0.53%) Mac OS
8 3 (0.53%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.18%) Unix
9 1 (0.18%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 182 (32.27%) Cloud Security
2 175 (31.03%) Cybersecurity
3 127 (22.52%) SIEM
4 95 (16.84%) Incident Response
5 93 (16.49%) Security Operations
6 85 (15.07%) CI/CD
7 75 (13.30%) Infrastructure as Code
8 69 (12.23%) Threat Detection
9 68 (12.06%) DevOps
10 66 (11.70%) DevSecOps
11 65 (11.52%) Vulnerability Management
12 61 (10.82%) Zero Trust
13 59 (10.46%) Security Architecture
14 57 (10.11%) Security Monitoring
15 55 (9.75%) AI
16 54 (9.57%) Identity Access Management
17 53 (9.40%) Infrastructure Engineering
18 52 (9.22%) Continuous Improvement
19 51 (9.04%) Problem-Solving
19 51 (9.04%) Threat Modelling
Programming Languages
1 119 (21.10%) Python
2 98 (17.38%) PowerShell
3 59 (10.46%) Bash
4 25 (4.43%) Java
5 21 (3.72%) Bicep
6 9 (1.60%) Go
7 8 (1.42%) Kusto Query Language
7 8 (1.42%) SQL
8 4 (0.71%) Search Processing Language
9 3 (0.53%) C#
9 3 (0.53%) Perl
10 1 (0.18%) JavaScript
10 1 (0.18%) Korn
10 1 (0.18%) PHP
10 1 (0.18%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.18%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 100 (17.73%) Security Cleared
2 89 (15.78%) SC Cleared
3 77 (13.65%) CISSP
4 48 (8.51%) Degree
5 44 (7.80%) Cisco Certification
6 29 (5.14%) AWS Certification
7 28 (4.96%) CISM
8 25 (4.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 22 (3.90%) DV Cleared
10 21 (3.72%) Azure Certification
11 19 (3.37%) CCNP
12 18 (3.19%) CCSP
13 16 (2.84%) CEH
14 14 (2.48%) OSCP
15 13 (2.30%) GIAC
16 11 (1.95%) CISA
16 11 (1.95%) Microsoft Certification
17 9 (1.60%) CompTIA Security+
18 8 (1.42%) CCIE
19 7 (1.24%) GSEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 60 (10.64%) NIST
2 58 (10.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 28 (4.96%) PCI DSS
4 19 (3.37%) GDPR
5 14 (2.48%) NCSC
6 13 (2.30%) Cyber Essentials
7 10 (1.77%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 9 (1.60%) GRC
9 6 (1.06%) HIPAA
10 5 (0.89%) ISO 31000
10 5 (0.89%) ISO 9001
10 5 (0.89%) ISO/IEC 27005
10 5 (0.89%) NIST 800
11 4 (0.71%) SOC 2
12 3 (0.53%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 3 (0.53%) QA
13 2 (0.35%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 2 (0.35%) COBIT
13 2 (0.35%) JSP 440
14 1 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 50 (8.87%) Active Directory
2 24 (4.26%) Docker
3 12 (2.13%) Virtual Machines
4 10 (1.77%) VMware Infrastructure
5 7 (1.24%) Hyper-V
5 7 (1.24%) NFS
6 5 (0.89%) ISA Server
7 4 (0.71%) Virtual Servers
8 3 (0.53%) Firmware
8 3 (0.53%) vSphere
9 2 (0.35%) Squid
9 2 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.35%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 83 (14.72%) Kubernetes
2 27 (4.79%) Ansible
3 19 (3.37%) Progress Chef
4 15 (2.66%) Microsoft Intune
5 12 (2.13%) FortiGate
6 9 (1.60%) Single Sign-On
7 8 (1.42%) Grafana
8 7 (1.24%) Istio
9 6 (1.06%) CASB
10 5 (0.89%) linkerd
11 4 (0.71%) QRadar
12 2 (0.35%) Prometheus
12 2 (0.35%) SCCM
13 1 (0.18%) Argo
13 1 (0.18%) CSIRT
13 1 (0.18%) Host Intrusion Detection System
13 1 (0.18%) McAfee ePO
13 1 (0.18%) Nessus
13 1 (0.18%) Network Intrusion Detection System
13 1 (0.18%) VxRail
Vendors
1 146 (25.89%) Microsoft
2 84 (14.89%) Cisco
3 70 (12.41%) Palo Alto
4 50 (8.87%) F5
5 47 (8.33%) Zscaler
6 38 (6.74%) CrowdStrike
6 38 (6.74%) Splunk
7 34 (6.03%) CheckPoint
8 27 (4.79%) Fortinet
9 24 (4.26%) Google
10 23 (4.08%) CyberArk
11 20 (3.55%) Red Hat
12 18 (3.19%) ServiceNow
13 15 (2.66%) Blue Coat
13 15 (2.66%) VMware
14 14 (2.48%) Qualys
15 12 (2.13%) Juniper
16 10 (1.77%) AlgoSec
16 10 (1.77%) Netskope
17 9 (1.60%) Databricks