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 27 May 2026.

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

6 months to
27 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 224 273 268
Rank change year-on-year +49 -5 -41
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 542 266 364
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.11% 0.93% 0.85%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.20% 1.01% 0.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 334 162 253
10th Percentile £408 £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 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +10.00% -9.09% +4.76%
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 44,984 26,371 39,600
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.30% 92.30% 92.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,456 17,159 25,763
10th Percentile £325 £290 £280
25th Percentile £413 £405 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -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 2,981 1,009 2,752
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.04 £16.30
Median hourly rate £42.50 £27.53 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +54.38% -24.58% -18.89%
75th Percentile £66.50 £60.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +70.97% -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 27 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 27 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 27 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 +24 487 £538 +2.38% 333
UK excluding London +9 254 £550 +10.00% 312
London +24 230 £525 -4.55% 93
Work from Home +32 195 £550 +4.76% 90
North of England +1 114 £575 +9.52% 63
North West +24 92 £563 +7.14% 43
Midlands -27 57 £538 +7.50% 38
South East -35 55 £500 +11.11% 88
West Midlands -21 54 £540 +8.00% 27
South West -20 24 £525 +6.33% 42
Scotland +14 21 £675 +22.73% 52
Yorkshire -41 19 £600 +14.29% 15
East of England -20 18 £525 +7.14% 24
North East -29 3 £400 -23.81% 5
East Midlands - 3 £406 - 11
Wales - 2 £733 - 4

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

For the 6 months to 27 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.

1 196 (36.16%) Azure
2 166 (30.63%) Cybersecurity
3 149 (27.49%) AWS
4 135 (24.91%) Cloud Security
5 131 (24.17%) Python
6 120 (22.14%) SIEM
7 118 (21.77%) Microsoft
8 104 (19.19%) Network Security
9 103 (19.00%) CI/CD
9 103 (19.00%) Firewall
10 92 (16.97%) Security Cleared
11 88 (16.24%) PowerShell
12 86 (15.87%) Incident Response
13 84 (15.50%) Cisco
14 72 (13.28%) SC Cleared
15 70 (12.92%) VPN
16 68 (12.55%) Vulnerability Management
17 65 (11.99%) Data Loss Prevention
17 65 (11.99%) DNS
18 62 (11.44%) DevOps
18 62 (11.44%) NIST
19 61 (11.25%) Terraform
20 60 (11.07%) Windows
21 59 (10.89%) Security Operations
22 58 (10.70%) GCP
23 57 (10.52%) Information Security
23 57 (10.52%) Threat Modelling
24 56 (10.33%) Security Architecture
25 55 (10.15%) CISSP
25 55 (10.15%) 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 (4.06%) Confluence
2 4 (0.74%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.37%) Apache
3 2 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.18%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (0.55%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 6 (1.11%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.37%) Maximo
3 1 (0.18%) SAP ERP
3 1 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 196 (36.16%) Azure
2 149 (27.49%) AWS
3 58 (10.70%) GCP
4 52 (9.59%) Microsoft Purview
5 51 (9.41%) Microsoft 365
6 39 (7.20%) Entra ID
7 24 (4.43%) GitHub
8 22 (4.06%) Azure Sentinel
9 21 (3.87%) SaaS
10 20 (3.69%) AWS CloudFormation
11 17 (3.14%) Mimecast
12 16 (2.95%) Amazon GuardDuty
13 15 (2.77%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 11 (2.03%) AWS CloudTrail
14 11 (2.03%) OpenShift
15 10 (1.85%) Akamai
15 10 (1.85%) AWS KMS
15 10 (1.85%) Azure DevOps
15 10 (1.85%) Azure Key Vault
15 10 (1.85%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 104 (19.19%) Network Security
2 103 (19.00%) Firewall
3 70 (12.92%) VPN
4 65 (11.99%) DNS
5 45 (8.30%) BGP
6 34 (6.27%) DMZ
7 33 (6.09%) Multicast
8 26 (4.80%) SSL
8 26 (4.80%) TCP/IP
9 20 (3.69%) WAN
10 17 (3.14%) HTTP
11 16 (2.95%) SD-WAN
12 11 (2.03%) Internet
12 11 (2.03%) Wireless
13 9 (1.66%) IPsec
13 9 (1.66%) MPLS
13 9 (1.66%) NGFW
13 9 (1.66%) TACACS
14 8 (1.48%) DHCP
14 8 (1.48%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (1.66%) Power BI
2 7 (1.29%) Data Lake
3 5 (0.92%) SQL Server
4 4 (0.74%) Amazon Athena
4 4 (0.74%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (0.74%) Elasticsearch
4 4 (0.74%) MongoDB
4 4 (0.74%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.37%) Amazon Redshift
5 2 (0.37%) Apache Cassandra
5 2 (0.37%) Big Data
5 2 (0.37%) BigQuery
5 2 (0.37%) Mixpanel
5 2 (0.37%) NoSQL
5 2 (0.37%) OLAP
5 2 (0.37%) OLTP
5 2 (0.37%) RDBMS
5 2 (0.37%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.18%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.18%) DB2
Development Applications
1 25 (4.61%) JIRA
2 11 (2.03%) GitLab
3 7 (1.29%) Git
3 7 (1.29%) Jenkins
4 6 (1.11%) Snyk
5 2 (0.37%) Browser DevTools
5 2 (0.37%) Burp Suite
5 2 (0.37%) Claude Code
5 2 (0.37%) SonarQube
5 2 (0.37%) 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
1 104 (19.19%) Social Skills
2 77 (14.21%) Finance
3 50 (9.23%) Analytical Skills
4 42 (7.75%) Banking
5 34 (6.27%) Public Sector
6 23 (4.24%) Investment Banking
7 14 (2.58%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (1.48%) Legal
9 7 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
9 7 (1.29%) Telecoms
10 6 (1.11%) Marketing
11 5 (0.92%) Cyber-Physical System
11 5 (0.92%) Manufacturing
12 4 (0.74%) Health Technology
12 4 (0.74%) Local Government
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 (2.58%) Elastic Stack
2 10 (1.85%) LDAP
3 7 (1.29%) REST
3 7 (1.29%) SAML
4 6 (1.11%) 802.1X
4 6 (1.11%) LangChain
4 6 (1.11%) PyTorch
4 6 (1.11%) scikit-learn
5 5 (0.92%) Microsoft Graph
5 5 (0.92%) SLSA
6 4 (0.74%) .NET
6 4 (0.74%) Kafka
6 4 (0.74%) OAuth
7 3 (0.55%) ADO
7 3 (0.55%) AWS CDK
7 3 (0.55%) JSON
7 3 (0.55%) SailPoint
8 2 (0.37%) Great Expectations
8 2 (0.37%) NestJS
8 2 (0.37%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 69 (12.73%) Security Posture
2 48 (8.86%) Cloud Native
3 27 (4.98%) Management Information System
4 23 (4.24%) Cloud Security Posture
5 20 (3.69%) Data Centre
6 18 (3.32%) Operational Technology
7 17 (3.14%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 14 (2.58%) Onboarding
9 12 (2.21%) Hybrid Cloud
9 12 (2.21%) PKI
10 10 (1.85%) Cyber Threat
11 9 (1.66%) Data Protection Act
12 8 (1.48%) AI Agents
12 8 (1.48%) Public Cloud
13 7 (1.29%) Cyber Defence
14 6 (1.11%) Linux Command Line
15 5 (0.92%) Cyber Kill Chain
15 5 (0.92%) Enterprise Cloud
15 5 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
15 5 (0.92%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 60 (11.07%) Windows
2 51 (9.41%) Linux
3 13 (2.40%) Windows Server
4 12 (2.21%) Mac OS
5 8 (1.48%) Windows 10
6 7 (1.29%) Apple iOS
6 7 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 7 (1.29%) Ubuntu
7 4 (0.74%) Unix
8 2 (0.37%) Android
9 1 (0.18%) Rocky
9 1 (0.18%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 166 (30.63%) Cybersecurity
2 135 (24.91%) Cloud Security
3 120 (22.14%) SIEM
4 103 (19.00%) CI/CD
5 86 (15.87%) Incident Response
6 68 (12.55%) Vulnerability Management
7 65 (11.99%) Data Loss Prevention
8 62 (11.44%) DevOps
9 59 (10.89%) Security Operations
10 57 (10.52%) Information Security
10 57 (10.52%) Threat Modelling
11 56 (10.33%) Security Architecture
12 51 (9.41%) DevSecOps
12 51 (9.41%) Infrastructure as Code
13 47 (8.67%) Load Balancing
13 47 (8.67%) Zero Trust
14 46 (8.49%) Continuous Improvement
15 42 (7.75%) AI
16 41 (7.56%) Validation
17 40 (7.38%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 131 (24.17%) Python
2 88 (16.24%) PowerShell
3 47 (8.67%) Bash
4 17 (3.14%) Kusto Query Language
5 16 (2.95%) Java
6 11 (2.03%) SQL
7 5 (0.92%) PHP
8 4 (0.74%) 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 (0.37%) Bicep
10 2 (0.37%) Perl
10 2 (0.37%) Ruby
10 2 (0.37%) TypeScript
11 1 (0.18%) BeanShell
11 1 (0.18%) C
Qualifications
1 92 (16.97%) Security Cleared
2 72 (13.28%) SC Cleared
3 55 (10.15%) CISSP
4 48 (8.86%) Degree
5 30 (5.54%) Cisco Certification
6 28 (5.17%) CISM
7 21 (3.87%) AWS Certification
8 19 (3.51%) DV Cleared
9 15 (2.77%) Azure Certification
9 15 (2.77%) CCNP
10 14 (2.58%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 12 (2.21%) CompTIA Security+
12 11 (2.03%) Computer Science Degree
13 10 (1.85%) Microsoft Certification
14 7 (1.29%) CEH
14 7 (1.29%) GIAC
15 6 (1.11%) CCSP
15 6 (1.11%) CESG Certified Professional
16 5 (0.92%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
16 5 (0.92%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 62 (11.44%) NIST
2 52 (9.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 34 (6.27%) GDPR
4 28 (5.17%) Cyber Essentials
5 21 (3.87%) PCI DSS
6 16 (2.95%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 11 (2.03%) NCSC
8 8 (1.48%) GRC
8 8 (1.48%) SLA
9 6 (1.11%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 6 (1.11%) HIPAA
9 6 (1.11%) NIST 800
9 6 (1.11%) RMADS
10 5 (0.92%) JSP 440
10 5 (0.92%) SOC 2
11 3 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.55%) Government Security Classifications
11 3 (0.55%) ISA99
12 2 (0.37%) Data Quality
12 2 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 28 (5.17%) Active Directory
2 20 (3.69%) Docker
3 12 (2.21%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (1.48%) VMware ESXi
5 7 (1.29%) Virtual Machines
6 6 (1.11%) VMware NSX
6 6 (1.11%) vSphere
7 4 (0.74%) Firmware
8 3 (0.55%) Virtual Servers
9 2 (0.37%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.37%) Squid
9 2 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.18%) GPFS
10 1 (0.18%) Lustre
10 1 (0.18%) RACF
10 1 (0.18%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 61 (11.25%) Terraform
2 48 (8.86%) Kubernetes
3 19 (3.51%) Microsoft Intune
4 17 (3.14%) Ansible
5 10 (1.85%) Single Sign-On
6 7 (1.29%) vCenter Server
7 6 (1.11%) CASB
7 6 (1.11%) Nessus
8 5 (0.92%) FortiGate
8 5 (0.92%) Functional Safety
8 5 (0.92%) Kibana
9 4 (0.74%) AirWatch
9 4 (0.74%) logstash
9 4 (0.74%) Progress Chef
10 3 (0.55%) Grafana
10 3 (0.55%) SCCM
10 3 (0.55%) SCOM
11 2 (0.37%) Icinga
11 2 (0.37%) QRadar
11 2 (0.37%) WSUS
Vendors
1 118 (21.77%) Microsoft
2 84 (15.50%) Cisco
3 55 (10.15%) F5
4 38 (7.01%) CrowdStrike
4 38 (7.01%) Palo Alto
5 29 (5.35%) Fortinet
6 25 (4.61%) Zscaler
7 24 (4.43%) CyberArk
8 21 (3.87%) Google
8 21 (3.87%) ServiceNow
9 19 (3.51%) Tenable
9 19 (3.51%) VMware
10 18 (3.32%) Splunk
11 17 (3.14%) Netskope
12 16 (2.95%) CheckPoint
13 14 (2.58%) Qualys
14 12 (2.21%) BeyondTrust
15 10 (1.85%) Blue Coat
15 10 (1.85%) Juniper
16 8 (1.48%) Oracle