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 25 August 2026.

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

6 months to
25 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 260 233 204
Rank change year-on-year -27 -29 +18
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 528 379 471
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.98% 1.16% 1.21%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.06% 1.27% 1.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 338 227 357
10th Percentile £413 £370 £410
25th Percentile £461 £413 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -6.36% -4.35%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £638
90th Percentile £688 £730 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £533 £500 £546
% change year-on-year +6.60% -8.47% -0.68%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 12 2
10th Percentile £70.38 £66.75 £64.25
25th Percentile £73.75 £83.06 £66.88
Median hourly rate £77.50 £90.50 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year -14.36% +24.83% -13.07%
75th Percentile £85.05 £91.50 £76.88
90th Percentile £86.03 - £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £84.00 £90.50 £72.50
% change year-on-year -7.18% +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 49,605 29,863 36,126
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.47% 91.22% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,683 18,859 22,977
10th Percentile £325 £280 £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 £623 £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 3,539 1,568 1,933
10th Percentile £14.99 £13.64 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.53 £17.21 £19.50
Median hourly rate £41.92 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +66.68% -41.51% -1.58%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.99 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £71.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +7.50%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 -25 485 £525 +1.94% 518
UK excluding London -16 257 £533 +6.60% 322
London -37 226 £525 - 237
Work from Home -2 196 £525 +7.20% 160
North of England +19 144 £550 +10.89% 76
North West +26 122 £550 +13.17% 48
South East -37 52 £500 - 66
Midlands -29 51 £500 +20.48% 41
West Midlands -12 50 £500 +11.11% 28
Yorkshire -26 20 £600 +11.11% 21
East of England -37 19 £510 +2.00% 50
South West -45 13 £488 -3.70% 70
Scotland -15 10 £600 +14.29% 16
Wales -15 2 £733 +33.18% 3
East Midlands -18 1 £338 -18.67% 13
North East -41 1 - - 7

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

For the 6 months to 25 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.

1 182 (34.47%) Azure
2 173 (32.77%) Cloud Security
3 151 (28.60%) Cybersecurity
4 139 (26.33%) AWS
5 129 (24.43%) Microsoft
6 121 (22.92%) SIEM
7 104 (19.70%) Python
8 103 (19.51%) Network Security
9 101 (19.13%) Firewall
10 88 (16.67%) Incident Response
11 87 (16.48%) CI/CD
12 85 (16.10%) Cisco
13 82 (15.53%) PowerShell
14 80 (15.15%) Terraform
15 77 (14.58%) GCP
16 75 (14.20%) Security Cleared
17 72 (13.64%) VPN
18 69 (13.07%) Security Operations
19 65 (12.31%) CISSP
20 63 (11.93%) DevSecOps
20 63 (11.93%) Infrastructure as Code
21 62 (11.74%) Kubernetes
21 62 (11.74%) SC Cleared
22 61 (11.55%) F5
23 56 (10.61%) DNS
23 56 (10.61%) Vulnerability Management
23 56 (10.61%) Windows
24 55 (10.42%) Security Architecture
24 55 (10.42%) Zero Trust
25 54 (10.23%) 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 (1.70%) Confluence
2 3 (0.57%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.38%) nginx
4 1 (0.19%) Apache
4 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 1 (0.19%) Chatbot
1 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 6 (1.14%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.38%) Maximo
3 1 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 182 (34.47%) Azure
2 139 (26.33%) AWS
3 77 (14.58%) GCP
4 46 (8.71%) Microsoft 365
4 46 (8.71%) Microsoft Purview
5 41 (7.77%) Entra ID
6 27 (5.11%) AWS CloudFormation
6 27 (5.11%) Azure Sentinel
7 19 (3.60%) SaaS
8 15 (2.84%) Akamai
8 15 (2.84%) GitHub
8 15 (2.84%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 15 (2.84%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 14 (2.65%) Serverless
10 12 (2.27%) AWS CloudTrail
10 12 (2.27%) Azure DevOps
11 11 (2.08%) Amazon GuardDuty
11 11 (2.08%) Mimecast
12 10 (1.89%) Power Platform
13 9 (1.70%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 103 (19.51%) Network Security
2 101 (19.13%) Firewall
3 72 (13.64%) VPN
4 56 (10.61%) DNS
5 42 (7.95%) BGP
6 34 (6.44%) DMZ
7 32 (6.06%) Multicast
8 28 (5.30%) SSL
9 27 (5.11%) WAN
10 24 (4.55%) TCP/IP
11 19 (3.60%) SD-WAN
12 18 (3.41%) HTTP
13 16 (3.03%) Internet
14 15 (2.84%) Cisco ISE
15 13 (2.46%) Intrusion Detection
16 12 (2.27%) Wireless
17 9 (1.70%) IPsec
17 9 (1.70%) OSPF
17 9 (1.70%) VLAN
18 6 (1.14%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (1.52%) Power BI
2 5 (0.95%) SQL Server
3 4 (0.76%) Data Lake
3 4 (0.76%) PostgreSQL
4 3 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (0.57%) Big Data
4 3 (0.57%) MongoDB
5 2 (0.38%) Data Warehouse
5 2 (0.38%) DynamoDB
5 2 (0.38%) Metadata
5 2 (0.38%) SAP HANA
6 1 (0.19%) Apache Cassandra
6 1 (0.19%) Db2
6 1 (0.19%) Delta Lake
6 1 (0.19%) Elasticsearch
6 1 (0.19%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.19%) RDBMS
6 1 (0.19%) Redis
6 1 (0.19%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 11 (2.08%) JIRA
2 9 (1.70%) GitLab
3 7 (1.33%) Jenkins
4 4 (0.76%) Burp Suite
5 3 (0.57%) Claude Code
5 3 (0.57%) Git
6 2 (0.38%) Browser DevTools
6 2 (0.38%) Snyk
6 2 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.19%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 1 (0.19%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.19%) Metasploit
7 1 (0.19%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.19%) sqlmap
7 1 (0.19%) TruffleHog
General
1 93 (17.61%) Social Skills
2 86 (16.29%) Finance
3 47 (8.90%) Analytical Skills
4 40 (7.58%) Banking
5 21 (3.98%) Investment Banking
6 20 (3.79%) Documentation Skills
7 15 (2.84%) Public Sector
8 7 (1.33%) Marketing
9 6 (1.14%) Legal
9 6 (1.14%) Manufacturing
9 6 (1.14%) Presentation Skills
9 6 (1.14%) Telecoms
10 5 (0.95%) Retail
11 4 (0.76%) Health Technology
11 4 (0.76%) Military
12 3 (0.57%) Aerospace
12 3 (0.57%) Digital Health
12 3 (0.57%) Digital Healthcare
12 3 (0.57%) Italian Language
13 2 (0.38%) Law
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 80 (15.15%) Terraform
2 8 (1.52%) 802.1X
2 8 (1.52%) SAML
3 5 (0.95%) REST
4 4 (0.76%) ARM Templates
4 4 (0.76%) Elastic Stack
4 4 (0.76%) Microsoft Graph
4 4 (0.76%) SLSA
5 3 (0.57%) Azure Blueprints
5 3 (0.57%) JWT
5 3 (0.57%) SailPoint
6 2 (0.38%) JSON
6 2 (0.38%) Model Context Protocol
6 2 (0.38%) OAuth
6 2 (0.38%) OpenID
7 1 (0.19%) Java SE
7 1 (0.19%) JCE
7 1 (0.19%) Regular Expression
7 1 (0.19%) RESTful
7 1 (0.19%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 95 (17.99%) Security Posture
2 56 (10.61%) Cloud Native
3 38 (7.20%) Cloud Security Posture
4 35 (6.63%) Management Information System
5 22 (4.17%) Enterprise Cloud
6 19 (3.60%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 17 (3.22%) AI Agents
7 17 (3.22%) Onboarding
8 14 (2.65%) Cyber Threat
9 13 (2.46%) Operational Technology
10 12 (2.27%) Hybrid Cloud
11 11 (2.08%) Data Centre
12 9 (1.70%) Data Protection Act
13 8 (1.52%) Cyber Defence
14 7 (1.33%) Security Operations Centre
15 6 (1.14%) PKI
15 6 (1.14%) SCADA
16 5 (0.95%) NHS
16 5 (0.95%) Public Cloud
17 4 (0.76%) Cyber Kill Chain
Operating Systems
1 56 (10.61%) Windows
2 43 (8.14%) Linux
3 16 (3.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 12 (2.27%) Windows Server
5 8 (1.52%) Mac OS
6 7 (1.33%) Apple iOS
7 5 (0.95%) Windows 10
8 2 (0.38%) Android
8 2 (0.38%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.19%) Unix
9 1 (0.19%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 173 (32.77%) Cloud Security
2 151 (28.60%) Cybersecurity
3 121 (22.92%) SIEM
4 88 (16.67%) Incident Response
5 87 (16.48%) CI/CD
6 69 (13.07%) Security Operations
7 63 (11.93%) DevSecOps
7 63 (11.93%) Infrastructure as Code
8 56 (10.61%) Vulnerability Management
9 55 (10.42%) Security Architecture
9 55 (10.42%) Zero Trust
10 54 (10.23%) Threat Detection
11 53 (10.04%) Load Balancing
12 51 (9.66%) DevOps
12 51 (9.66%) Threat Modelling
13 46 (8.71%) Data Loss Prevention
14 43 (8.14%) Stakeholder Management
15 42 (7.95%) Information Security
16 41 (7.77%) Application Security
17 40 (7.58%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 104 (19.70%) Python
2 82 (15.53%) PowerShell
3 54 (10.23%) Bash
4 20 (3.79%) Bicep
5 17 (3.22%) Java
6 9 (1.70%) Kusto Query Language
7 5 (0.95%) Go
7 5 (0.95%) SQL
8 4 (0.76%) Search Processing Language
9 3 (0.57%) Perl
10 1 (0.19%) C
10 1 (0.19%) C#
10 1 (0.19%) JavaScript
10 1 (0.19%) Korn
10 1 (0.19%) PHP
10 1 (0.19%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.19%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 75 (14.20%) Security Cleared
2 65 (12.31%) CISSP
3 62 (11.74%) SC Cleared
4 40 (7.58%) Degree
5 33 (6.25%) Cisco Certification
6 29 (5.49%) AWS Certification
7 27 (5.11%) CISM
8 21 (3.98%) CCNP
9 19 (3.60%) Azure Certification
10 17 (3.22%) CEH
10 17 (3.22%) DV Cleared
11 14 (2.65%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 13 (2.46%) Microsoft Certification
12 13 (2.46%) OSCP
13 10 (1.89%) CCIE
13 10 (1.89%) GIAC
14 9 (1.70%) Computer Science Degree
15 7 (1.33%) CCSP
15 7 (1.33%) CompTIA Security+
16 6 (1.14%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 48 (9.09%) NIST
2 47 (8.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 22 (4.17%) GDPR
4 18 (3.41%) PCI DSS
5 15 (2.84%) Cyber Essentials
5 15 (2.84%) NCSC
6 12 (2.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 6 (1.14%) HIPAA
7 6 (1.14%) NIST 800
8 5 (0.95%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 5 (0.95%) SLA
9 4 (0.76%) SOC 2
10 3 (0.57%) ISA99
11 2 (0.38%) COBIT
11 2 (0.38%) GRC
11 2 (0.38%) JSP 440
12 1 (0.19%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 1 (0.19%) Government Security Classifications
12 1 (0.19%) QA
12 1 (0.19%) RMADS
System Software
1 33 (6.25%) Active Directory
2 18 (3.41%) Docker
3 6 (1.14%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (1.14%) VMware NSX
3 6 (1.14%) vSphere
4 4 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (0.57%) Virtual Servers
6 2 (0.38%) Squid
6 2 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.19%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.19%) RACF
Systems Management
1 62 (11.74%) Kubernetes
2 17 (3.22%) Ansible
3 14 (2.65%) Progress Chef
4 12 (2.27%) FortiGate
5 11 (2.08%) Microsoft Intune
6 10 (1.89%) Single Sign-On
7 8 (1.52%) Grafana
8 6 (1.14%) Istio
9 5 (0.95%) CASB
9 5 (0.95%) linkerd
9 5 (0.95%) QRadar
10 2 (0.38%) Prometheus
11 1 (0.19%) Argo
11 1 (0.19%) CSIRT
11 1 (0.19%) Host Intrusion Detection System
11 1 (0.19%) HP Fortify
11 1 (0.19%) Network Intrusion Detection System
11 1 (0.19%) SCCM
11 1 (0.19%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 129 (24.43%) Microsoft
2 85 (16.10%) Cisco
3 61 (11.55%) F5
4 49 (9.28%) Palo Alto
5 38 (7.20%) CrowdStrike
6 34 (6.44%) Zscaler
7 30 (5.68%) Fortinet
8 26 (4.92%) CheckPoint
8 26 (4.92%) CyberArk
9 24 (4.55%) ServiceNow
10 22 (4.17%) Splunk
11 18 (3.41%) Google
12 17 (3.22%) Red Hat
13 14 (2.65%) VMware
14 13 (2.46%) BeyondTrust
14 13 (2.46%) Netskope
15 12 (2.27%) Blue Coat
15 12 (2.27%) Tenable
16 10 (1.89%) Qualys
17 9 (1.70%) Juniper