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 12 August 2026.

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

6 months to
12 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 250 227 208
Rank change year-on-year -23 -19 +19
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 543 380 456
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.02% 1.15% 1.17%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.10% 1.26% 1.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 359 231 348
10th Percentile £413 £363 £411
25th Percentile £466 £413 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -6.82% -2.65%
75th Percentile £610 £644 £638
90th Percentile £688 £738 £741
UK excluding London median daily rate £540 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +8.00% -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 11 2
10th Percentile £70.38 £65.00 £64.25
25th Percentile £73.75 £82.88 £66.88
Median hourly rate £77.50 £87.50 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year -11.43% +20.69% -13.07%
75th Percentile £85.05 £91.50 £76.88
90th Percentile £86.03 - £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £84.00 £87.50 £72.50
% change year-on-year -4.00% +20.69% -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 49,398 30,125 36,175
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.56% 91.38% 92.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,694 19,103 23,309
10th Percentile £328 £282 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £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 3,473 1,514 2,025
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.60 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.75 £17.12 £20.50
Median hourly rate £42.25 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.99% -41.51% +2.87%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.68 £25.08 £45.00
% change year-on-year +70.20% -44.28% +27.66%

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 12 August 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 12 August 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 12 August 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 -16 500 £525 +2.19% 910
UK excluding London -11 261 £540 +8.00% 480
London -36 239 £525 -2.60% 482
Work from Home 0 203 £539 +7.75% 304
North of England +19 144 £591 +20.17% 136
North West +25 122 £575 +18.31% 101
Midlands -14 54 £500 +22.70% 46
West Midlands -9 53 £500 +25.00% 26
South East -41 51 £500 -2.44% 123
Yorkshire -29 20 £600 +14.29% 26
East of England -31 20 £510 +2.00% 55
South West -43 12 £481 -1.28% 82
Scotland -8 11 £600 +14.29% 31
Wales -11 2 £733 +46.50% 8
East Midlands -7 1 £338 -18.67% 20
North East -44 1 - - 9

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

For the 6 months to 12 August 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.

1 194 (35.73%) Azure
2 181 (33.33%) Cloud Security
3 155 (28.55%) Cybersecurity
4 152 (27.99%) AWS
5 133 (24.49%) SIEM
6 130 (23.94%) Microsoft
7 116 (21.36%) Python
8 113 (20.81%) Firewall
9 103 (18.97%) Network Security
10 99 (18.23%) CI/CD
11 88 (16.21%) PowerShell
12 85 (15.65%) Cisco
12 85 (15.65%) Incident Response
13 81 (14.92%) Terraform
14 79 (14.55%) Security Cleared
15 76 (14.00%) GCP
16 71 (13.08%) Security Operations
17 70 (12.89%) VPN
18 69 (12.71%) CISSP
19 68 (12.52%) SC Cleared
20 65 (11.97%) DevSecOps
20 65 (11.97%) Security Architecture
21 63 (11.60%) Kubernetes
21 63 (11.60%) Vulnerability Management
22 62 (11.42%) DevOps
22 62 (11.42%) Windows
23 61 (11.23%) Threat Modelling
24 60 (11.05%) F5
25 59 (10.87%) DNS
26 58 (10.68%) 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 19 (3.50%) Confluence
2 3 (0.55%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.37%) nginx
4 1 (0.18%) Apache
4 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 1 (0.18%) Chatbot
1 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 6 (1.10%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.37%) Maximo
2 2 (0.37%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.18%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 194 (35.73%) Azure
2 152 (27.99%) AWS
3 76 (14.00%) GCP
4 49 (9.02%) Microsoft Purview
5 47 (8.66%) Microsoft 365
6 41 (7.55%) Entra ID
7 26 (4.79%) AWS CloudFormation
8 25 (4.60%) Azure Sentinel
9 22 (4.05%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 21 (3.87%) SaaS
11 18 (3.31%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 15 (2.76%) GitHub
13 14 (2.58%) Akamai
14 13 (2.39%) Serverless
15 12 (2.21%) Amazon GuardDuty
16 11 (2.03%) AWS CloudTrail
16 11 (2.03%) Azure DevOps
16 11 (2.03%) Mimecast
17 8 (1.47%) Amazon EC2
17 8 (1.47%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 113 (20.81%) Firewall
2 103 (18.97%) Network Security
3 70 (12.89%) VPN
4 59 (10.87%) DNS
5 41 (7.55%) BGP
6 33 (6.08%) DMZ
7 31 (5.71%) Multicast
8 29 (5.34%) SSL
9 27 (4.97%) WAN
10 26 (4.79%) TCP/IP
11 19 (3.50%) SD-WAN
12 17 (3.13%) HTTP
13 16 (2.95%) Internet
14 15 (2.76%) Cisco ISE
15 13 (2.39%) Wireless
16 11 (2.03%) Intrusion Detection
17 10 (1.84%) VLAN
18 9 (1.66%) IPsec
18 9 (1.66%) OSPF
19 7 (1.29%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (1.47%) Power BI
2 7 (1.29%) SQL Server
3 6 (1.10%) PostgreSQL
4 4 (0.74%) Data Lake
4 4 (0.74%) MongoDB
5 3 (0.55%) Amazon RDS
5 3 (0.55%) Big Data
6 2 (0.37%) Apache Cassandra
6 2 (0.37%) Data Warehouse
6 2 (0.37%) Metadata
6 2 (0.37%) NoSQL
6 2 (0.37%) RDBMS
6 2 (0.37%) Relational Database
7 1 (0.18%) Db2
7 1 (0.18%) DynamoDB
7 1 (0.18%) Elasticsearch
7 1 (0.18%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 22 (4.05%) JIRA
2 9 (1.66%) GitLab
3 7 (1.29%) Jenkins
4 4 (0.74%) Burp Suite
5 3 (0.55%) Claude Code
5 3 (0.55%) Git
6 2 (0.37%) Browser DevTools
6 2 (0.37%) Snyk
6 2 (0.37%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.18%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 1 (0.18%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.18%) Metasploit
7 1 (0.18%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.18%) sqlmap
7 1 (0.18%) TruffleHog
General
1 97 (17.86%) Social Skills
2 93 (17.13%) Finance
3 46 (8.47%) Analytical Skills
4 39 (7.18%) Banking
5 21 (3.87%) Documentation Skills
6 20 (3.68%) Investment Banking
6 20 (3.68%) Public Sector
7 7 (1.29%) Legal
7 7 (1.29%) Marketing
8 6 (1.10%) Manufacturing
8 6 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
8 6 (1.10%) Telecoms
9 5 (0.92%) Retail
10 4 (0.74%) Health Technology
10 4 (0.74%) Military
11 3 (0.55%) Aerospace
11 3 (0.55%) Financial Institution
11 3 (0.55%) Italian Language
12 2 (0.37%) Digital Health
12 2 (0.37%) Law
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (1.66%) SAML
2 8 (1.47%) 802.1X
3 7 (1.29%) LangChain
4 6 (1.10%) PyTorch
4 6 (1.10%) scikit-learn
5 4 (0.74%) Elastic Stack
5 4 (0.74%) Microsoft Graph
5 4 (0.74%) SLSA
6 3 (0.55%) ARM Templates
6 3 (0.55%) JWT
6 3 (0.55%) OAuth
6 3 (0.55%) OpenID
6 3 (0.55%) REST
6 3 (0.55%) SailPoint
7 2 (0.37%) Azure Blueprints
7 2 (0.37%) LDAP
8 1 (0.18%) Java SE
8 1 (0.18%) JCE
8 1 (0.18%) JSON
8 1 (0.18%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 102 (18.78%) Security Posture
2 64 (11.79%) Cloud Native
3 41 (7.55%) Cloud Security Posture
4 38 (7.00%) Management Information System
5 22 (4.05%) Enterprise Cloud
6 17 (3.13%) AI Agents
6 17 (3.13%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 15 (2.76%) Onboarding
8 14 (2.58%) Hybrid Cloud
8 14 (2.58%) Operational Technology
9 13 (2.39%) Cyber Threat
9 13 (2.39%) Data Centre
10 10 (1.84%) Data Protection Act
11 9 (1.66%) Public Cloud
12 8 (1.47%) Cyber Defence
13 6 (1.10%) Linux Command Line
13 6 (1.10%) PKI
13 6 (1.10%) SCADA
13 6 (1.10%) Security Operations Centre
14 4 (0.74%) BYOD
Operating Systems
1 62 (11.42%) Windows
2 50 (9.21%) Linux
3 17 (3.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 14 (2.58%) Windows Server
5 9 (1.66%) Mac OS
6 7 (1.29%) Apple iOS
7 6 (1.10%) Windows 10
8 2 (0.37%) Android
8 2 (0.37%) Ubuntu
8 2 (0.37%) Unix
8 2 (0.37%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 181 (33.33%) Cloud Security
2 155 (28.55%) Cybersecurity
3 133 (24.49%) SIEM
4 99 (18.23%) CI/CD
5 85 (15.65%) Incident Response
6 71 (13.08%) Security Operations
7 65 (11.97%) DevSecOps
7 65 (11.97%) Security Architecture
8 63 (11.60%) Vulnerability Management
9 62 (11.42%) DevOps
10 61 (11.23%) Threat Modelling
11 58 (10.68%) Infrastructure as Code
12 56 (10.31%) Data Loss Prevention
12 56 (10.31%) Load Balancing
13 54 (9.94%) Zero Trust
14 50 (9.21%) Agile
15 49 (9.02%) Information Security
15 49 (9.02%) Threat Detection
16 44 (8.10%) Continuous Improvement
17 43 (7.92%) Data Protection
Programming Languages
1 116 (21.36%) Python
2 88 (16.21%) PowerShell
3 58 (10.68%) Bash
4 19 (3.50%) Bicep
5 18 (3.31%) Java
6 10 (1.84%) Kusto Query Language
6 10 (1.84%) SQL
7 4 (0.74%) Search Processing Language
8 3 (0.55%) Go
8 3 (0.55%) Perl
8 3 (0.55%) Shell Script
9 2 (0.37%) JavaScript
10 1 (0.18%) C
10 1 (0.18%) C#
10 1 (0.18%) Korn
10 1 (0.18%) PHP
Qualifications
1 79 (14.55%) Security Cleared
2 69 (12.71%) CISSP
3 68 (12.52%) SC Cleared
4 42 (7.73%) Degree
5 34 (6.26%) Cisco Certification
6 31 (5.71%) CISM
7 30 (5.52%) AWS Certification
8 23 (4.24%) Azure Certification
9 18 (3.31%) CEH
10 17 (3.13%) CCNP
11 16 (2.95%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 14 (2.58%) DV Cleared
13 12 (2.21%) Microsoft Certification
14 10 (1.84%) Computer Science Degree
14 10 (1.84%) OSCP
15 8 (1.47%) CCIE
15 8 (1.47%) CompTIA Security+
15 8 (1.47%) GIAC
16 6 (1.10%) CISA
16 6 (1.10%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 46 (8.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 46 (8.47%) NIST
2 31 (5.71%) GDPR
3 16 (2.95%) PCI DSS
4 15 (2.76%) NCSC
5 14 (2.58%) Cyber Essentials
6 11 (2.03%) HIPAA
7 10 (1.84%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 6 (1.10%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 6 (1.10%) NIST 800
8 6 (1.10%) SLA
9 5 (0.92%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 5 (0.92%) SOC 2
10 4 (0.74%) Government Security Classifications
11 3 (0.55%) ISA99
12 2 (0.37%) COBIT
12 2 (0.37%) GRC
12 2 (0.37%) JSP 440
13 1 (0.18%) Data Quality
13 1 (0.18%) QA
System Software
1 32 (5.89%) Active Directory
2 26 (4.79%) Docker
3 6 (1.10%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (1.10%) VMware NSX
3 6 (1.10%) vSphere
4 5 (0.92%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (0.55%) Virtual Servers
6 2 (0.37%) Squid
6 2 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.18%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.18%) RACF
Systems Management
1 81 (14.92%) Terraform
2 63 (11.60%) Kubernetes
3 16 (2.95%) Ansible
4 14 (2.58%) Progress Chef
5 13 (2.39%) Microsoft Intune
6 12 (2.21%) FortiGate
7 11 (2.03%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (1.29%) Grafana
9 6 (1.10%) CASB
10 4 (0.74%) QRadar
11 3 (0.55%) Istio
12 2 (0.37%) linkerd
12 2 (0.37%) Nessus
12 2 (0.37%) Prometheus
13 1 (0.18%) Argo
13 1 (0.18%) CSIRT
13 1 (0.18%) Host Intrusion Detection System
13 1 (0.18%) HP Fortify
13 1 (0.18%) Network Intrusion Detection System
13 1 (0.18%) SCCM
Vendors
1 130 (23.94%) Microsoft
2 85 (15.65%) Cisco
3 60 (11.05%) F5
4 45 (8.29%) Palo Alto
5 39 (7.18%) CrowdStrike
6 35 (6.45%) Zscaler
7 29 (5.34%) CyberArk
7 29 (5.34%) Fortinet
8 28 (5.16%) ServiceNow
9 25 (4.60%) Google
10 24 (4.42%) CheckPoint
11 21 (3.87%) Splunk
12 18 (3.31%) Red Hat
13 14 (2.58%) Blue Coat
13 14 (2.58%) VMware
14 13 (2.39%) BeyondTrust
14 13 (2.39%) Netskope
14 13 (2.39%) Tenable
15 12 (2.21%) Qualys
16 10 (1.84%) Oracle