Security Engineer Contract Job Trends

Security Engineer
UK

The median Security Engineer daily rate in the UK is £533, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 11 September 2026.

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

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 253 242 206
Rank change year-on-year -11 -36 +32
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 557 379 465
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.02% 1.15% 1.21%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.11% 1.26% 1.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 341 225 346
10th Percentile £413 £368 £413
25th Percentile £463 £419 £439
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.52% -4.55% -6.78%
75th Percentile £610 £638 £638
90th Percentile £688 £725 £744
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -1.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 12 2
10th Percentile - £66.75 £64.25
25th Percentile £73.75 £83.06 £66.88
Median hourly rate £82.95 £90.50 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year -8.34% +24.83% -13.07%
75th Percentile £89.68 £91.50 £76.88
90th Percentile £92.11 - £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.48 £90.50 £72.50
% change year-on-year -5.55% +24.83% -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 50,390 30,066 35,884
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.29% 91.06% 93.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,936 18,964 22,304
10th Percentile £325 £281 £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 £625 £621 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,743 1,564 1,744
10th Percentile £14.56 £13.69 £14.73
25th Percentile £20.07 £17.06 £20.50
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.60 £52.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £70.16 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +12.50%

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 11 September 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 11 September 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 11 September 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 -7 517 £525 - 751
UK excluding London +3 277 £525 +5.00% 453
London -37 237 £550 - 342
Work from Home -11 187 £540 +10.26% 284
North of England +17 143 £550 +11.79% 110
North West +30 120 £550 +14.58% 67
Midlands -11 57 £500 +25.00% 63
South East -27 54 £500 - 134
West Midlands -12 53 £500 +25.00% 38
East of England -33 33 £510 +2.00% 65
Yorkshire -25 21 £600 +11.11% 26
South West -48 15 £481 -6.10% 53
Scotland -21 9 £600 +8.60% 22
East Midlands -11 4 £338 -10.30% 24
Wales -16 2 £733 +22.08% 7
North East -46 1 - - 17

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

For the 6 months to 11 September 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.

1 189 (33.93%) Azure
2 173 (31.06%) Cloud Security
3 172 (30.88%) Cybersecurity
4 143 (25.67%) AWS
5 130 (23.34%) Microsoft
6 127 (22.80%) SIEM
7 114 (20.47%) Python
8 113 (20.29%) Network Security
9 108 (19.39%) Firewall
10 98 (17.59%) Security Cleared
11 94 (16.88%) PowerShell
12 92 (16.52%) Terraform
13 89 (15.98%) Cisco
13 89 (15.98%) Incident Response
14 85 (15.26%) SC Cleared
15 83 (14.90%) CI/CD
16 82 (14.72%) Security Operations
17 81 (14.54%) GCP
18 74 (13.29%) VPN
19 73 (13.11%) Kubernetes
20 71 (12.75%) CISSP
21 68 (12.21%) Infrastructure as Code
21 68 (12.21%) Threat Detection
22 66 (11.85%) DevSecOps
22 66 (11.85%) Windows
23 65 (11.67%) Palo Alto
24 61 (10.95%) DevOps
24 61 (10.95%) F5
25 59 (10.59%) Vulnerability Management
26 58 (10.41%) Bash

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 9 (1.62%) IIS
2 8 (1.44%) Confluence
3 3 (0.54%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.36%) nginx
5 1 (0.18%) Apache
5 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 2 (0.36%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (0.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.18%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
2 1 (0.18%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (1.08%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.36%) Maximo
3 1 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 189 (33.93%) Azure
2 143 (25.67%) AWS
3 81 (14.54%) GCP
4 45 (8.08%) Microsoft 365
5 41 (7.36%) Entra ID
6 38 (6.82%) Microsoft Purview
7 30 (5.39%) Azure Sentinel
8 27 (4.85%) AWS CloudFormation
9 20 (3.59%) GitHub
10 18 (3.23%) SaaS
11 16 (2.87%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 14 (2.51%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 13 (2.33%) Azure DevOps
13 13 (2.33%) Serverless
14 12 (2.15%) AWS CloudTrail
15 10 (1.80%) Akamai
15 10 (1.80%) Amazon ECS
15 10 (1.80%) Azure AKS
15 10 (1.80%) Mimecast
15 10 (1.80%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 113 (20.29%) Network Security
2 108 (19.39%) Firewall
3 74 (13.29%) VPN
4 51 (9.16%) DNS
5 40 (7.18%) BGP
6 33 (5.92%) SSL
7 30 (5.39%) DMZ
7 30 (5.39%) WAN
8 28 (5.03%) Multicast
9 21 (3.77%) TCP/IP
10 20 (3.59%) HTTP
10 20 (3.59%) Internet
11 18 (3.23%) SD-WAN
12 16 (2.87%) Cisco ISE
12 16 (2.87%) Wireless
13 14 (2.51%) IPsec
14 13 (2.33%) Intrusion Detection
15 11 (1.97%) OSPF
16 10 (1.80%) DMVPN
16 10 (1.80%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (1.44%) Power BI
2 5 (0.90%) SQL Server
3 4 (0.72%) PostgreSQL
4 3 (0.54%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (0.54%) Big Data
4 3 (0.54%) Data Lake
4 3 (0.54%) MongoDB
5 2 (0.36%) DynamoDB
5 2 (0.36%) SAP HANA
6 1 (0.18%) Apache Cassandra
6 1 (0.18%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.18%) Db2
6 1 (0.18%) Delta Lake
6 1 (0.18%) Elasticsearch
6 1 (0.18%) Metadata
6 1 (0.18%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.18%) RDBMS
6 1 (0.18%) Redis
6 1 (0.18%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 10 (1.80%) JIRA
2 8 (1.44%) GitLab
3 7 (1.26%) Jenkins
4 5 (0.90%) Git
5 4 (0.72%) Burp Suite
6 3 (0.54%) Claude Code
6 3 (0.54%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.36%) Snyk
8 1 (0.18%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 1 (0.18%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.18%) Browser DevTools
8 1 (0.18%) Maven
8 1 (0.18%) Metasploit
8 1 (0.18%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.18%) sqlmap
8 1 (0.18%) TruffleHog
General
1 97 (17.41%) Social Skills
2 89 (15.98%) Finance
3 44 (7.90%) Analytical Skills
4 38 (6.82%) Banking
5 19 (3.41%) Documentation Skills
5 19 (3.41%) Investment Banking
5 19 (3.41%) Public Sector
6 9 (1.62%) Military
7 8 (1.44%) Presentation Skills
8 7 (1.26%) Back Office
8 7 (1.26%) Manufacturing
8 7 (1.26%) Marketing
9 6 (1.08%) Legal
9 6 (1.08%) Telecoms
10 5 (0.90%) Retail
11 4 (0.72%) Health Technology
11 4 (0.72%) Influencing Skills
12 3 (0.54%) Aerospace
12 3 (0.54%) Digital Health
12 3 (0.54%) Digital Healthcare
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 92 (16.52%) Terraform
2 13 (2.33%) JSON
3 12 (2.15%) 802.1X
4 9 (1.62%) SAML
5 8 (1.44%) LDAP
5 8 (1.44%) Regular Expression
6 7 (1.26%) REST
7 6 (1.08%) JWT
7 6 (1.08%) OpenID
8 5 (0.90%) ARM Templates
8 5 (0.90%) OAuth
9 4 (0.72%) Azure Blueprints
9 4 (0.72%) Elastic Stack
9 4 (0.72%) OAuth2
9 4 (0.72%) SLSA
10 3 (0.54%) Microsoft Graph
10 3 (0.54%) SailPoint
11 2 (0.36%) Model Context Protocol
12 1 (0.18%) Plotly
12 1 (0.18%) Semantic Kernel
Miscellaneous
1 99 (17.77%) Security Posture
2 58 (10.41%) Cloud Native
3 39 (7.00%) Management Information System
4 38 (6.82%) Cloud Security Posture
5 23 (4.13%) Cyber Threat
6 22 (3.95%) Enterprise Cloud
7 21 (3.77%) Onboarding
8 18 (3.23%) AI Agents
9 16 (2.87%) Data Centre
10 15 (2.69%) Operational Technology
11 12 (2.15%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 11 (1.97%) Cyber Defence
13 9 (1.62%) Hybrid Cloud
13 9 (1.62%) Security Operations Centre
14 8 (1.44%) CCTV
14 8 (1.44%) Data Protection Act
15 6 (1.08%) PKI
15 6 (1.08%) Public Cloud
15 6 (1.08%) SCADA
16 5 (0.90%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 66 (11.85%) Windows
2 43 (7.72%) Linux
3 18 (3.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 15 (2.69%) Windows Server
5 11 (1.97%) Apple iOS
6 7 (1.26%) Mac OS
7 6 (1.08%) Android
8 5 (0.90%) Windows 10
9 2 (0.36%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.18%) Unix
10 1 (0.18%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 173 (31.06%) Cloud Security
2 172 (30.88%) Cybersecurity
3 127 (22.80%) SIEM
4 89 (15.98%) Incident Response
5 83 (14.90%) CI/CD
6 82 (14.72%) Security Operations
7 68 (12.21%) Infrastructure as Code
7 68 (12.21%) Threat Detection
8 66 (11.85%) DevSecOps
9 61 (10.95%) DevOps
10 59 (10.59%) Vulnerability Management
11 53 (9.52%) Security Architecture
11 53 (9.52%) Zero Trust
12 52 (9.34%) Threat Modelling
13 50 (8.98%) AI
13 50 (8.98%) Security Monitoring
14 48 (8.62%) Continuous Improvement
15 47 (8.44%) Load Balancing
16 45 (8.08%) Application Security
16 45 (8.08%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 114 (20.47%) Python
2 94 (16.88%) PowerShell
3 58 (10.41%) Bash
4 23 (4.13%) Java
5 21 (3.77%) Bicep
6 7 (1.26%) Kusto Query Language
6 7 (1.26%) SQL
7 5 (0.90%) Go
8 4 (0.72%) Search Processing Language
9 3 (0.54%) Perl
10 1 (0.18%) C
10 1 (0.18%) C#
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 98 (17.59%) Security Cleared
2 85 (15.26%) SC Cleared
3 71 (12.75%) CISSP
4 44 (7.90%) Degree
5 38 (6.82%) Cisco Certification
6 32 (5.75%) AWS Certification
7 28 (5.03%) CISM
8 25 (4.49%) DV Cleared
9 23 (4.13%) Azure Certification
10 22 (3.95%) CCNP
11 18 (3.23%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 17 (3.05%) CEH
13 13 (2.33%) CCSP
13 13 (2.33%) OSCP
14 12 (2.15%) GIAC
15 11 (1.97%) Microsoft Certification
16 10 (1.80%) CCIE
17 9 (1.62%) Computer Science Degree
18 8 (1.44%) CISA
18 8 (1.44%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 54 (9.69%) NIST
2 52 (9.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 20 (3.59%) GDPR
4 19 (3.41%) PCI DSS
5 17 (3.05%) NCSC
6 15 (2.69%) Cyber Essentials
7 11 (1.97%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 7 (1.26%) NIST 800
9 6 (1.08%) HIPAA
10 5 (0.90%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 4 (0.72%) GRC
12 3 (0.54%) ISA99
12 3 (0.54%) SOC 2
13 2 (0.36%) COBIT
13 2 (0.36%) ISO 31000
13 2 (0.36%) ISO 9001
13 2 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27005
13 2 (0.36%) JSP 440
13 2 (0.36%) SLA
14 1 (0.18%) QA
System Software
1 42 (7.54%) Active Directory
2 21 (3.77%) Docker
3 12 (2.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 11 (1.97%) Virtual Machines
5 7 (1.26%) Hyper-V
5 7 (1.26%) NFS
6 6 (1.08%) VMware NSX
6 6 (1.08%) vSphere
7 3 (0.54%) Firmware
7 3 (0.54%) Virtual Servers
8 2 (0.36%) ISA Server
8 2 (0.36%) Squid
8 2 (0.36%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.18%) RACF
Systems Management
1 73 (13.11%) Kubernetes
2 24 (4.31%) Ansible
3 16 (2.87%) Progress Chef
4 12 (2.15%) FortiGate
4 12 (2.15%) Microsoft Intune
5 10 (1.80%) Single Sign-On
6 8 (1.44%) Grafana
7 7 (1.26%) CASB
8 6 (1.08%) Istio
9 5 (0.90%) linkerd
9 5 (0.90%) QRadar
10 2 (0.36%) Prometheus
10 2 (0.36%) SCCM
11 1 (0.18%) Argo
11 1 (0.18%) CSIRT
11 1 (0.18%) Host Intrusion Detection System
11 1 (0.18%) Network Intrusion Detection System
11 1 (0.18%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 130 (23.34%) Microsoft
2 89 (15.98%) Cisco
3 65 (11.67%) Palo Alto
4 61 (10.95%) F5
5 47 (8.44%) Zscaler
6 41 (7.36%) CrowdStrike
7 32 (5.75%) CheckPoint
7 32 (5.75%) Fortinet
7 32 (5.75%) Splunk
8 25 (4.49%) CyberArk
9 23 (4.13%) ServiceNow
10 20 (3.59%) Google
10 20 (3.59%) VMware
11 19 (3.41%) Red Hat
12 16 (2.87%) Blue Coat
13 14 (2.51%) Juniper
14 13 (2.33%) BeyondTrust
15 12 (2.15%) Netskope
15 12 (2.15%) Qualys
16 11 (1.97%) Tenable