Security Engineer Contract Job Trends

Security Engineer
UK

The median Security Engineer daily rate in the UK is £538, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 18 August 2026.

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

6 months to
18 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 262 228 205
Rank change year-on-year -34 -23 +22
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 537 384 462
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.00% 1.17% 1.19%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.08% 1.28% 1.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 352 229 355
10th Percentile £413 £360 £413
25th Percentile £463 £413 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £515 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.37% -6.36% -3.51%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £638
90th Percentile £688 £728 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £540 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +8.00% -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 13 2
10th Percentile £70.38 £68.50 £64.25
25th Percentile £73.75 £83.25 £66.88
Median hourly rate £77.50 £90.00 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year -13.89% +24.14% -13.07%
75th Percentile £85.05 £91.50 £76.88
90th Percentile £86.03 - £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £84.00 £90.00 £72.50
% change year-on-year -6.67% +24.14% -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 49,538 30,006 36,016
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.49% 91.28% 92.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,704 18,935 23,189
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% -1.87%
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 3,506 1,542 1,988
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.56 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.69 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -41.51% +3.61%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.83 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £44.02
% change year-on-year +68.99% -42.87% +22.28%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 -30 495 £536 +4.09% 546
UK excluding London -12 264 £540 +8.00% 350
London -42 229 £525 - 237
Work from Home +11 203 £539 +8.62% 161
North of England +14 150 £583 +18.39% 83
North West +27 128 £575 +18.31% 57
Midlands -17 53 £500 +25.00% 44
West Midlands -11 52 £500 +28.21% 28
South East -50 50 £500 -2.44% 94
Yorkshire -30 20 £600 +14.29% 19
East of England -39 20 £510 +2.00% 43
South West -41 13 £488 -1.27% 72
Scotland -14 10 £600 +14.29% 15
Wales -18 2 £733 +46.50% 2
East Midlands -18 1 £338 -18.67% 16
North East -41 1 - - 7

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

For the 6 months to 18 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.

1 196 (36.50%) Azure
2 179 (33.33%) Cloud Security
3 156 (29.05%) Cybersecurity
4 155 (28.86%) AWS
5 133 (24.77%) SIEM
6 129 (24.02%) Microsoft
7 118 (21.97%) Python
8 111 (20.67%) Firewall
9 101 (18.81%) Network Security
10 99 (18.44%) CI/CD
11 87 (16.20%) Incident Response
11 87 (16.20%) PowerShell
12 86 (16.01%) Cisco
13 84 (15.64%) Terraform
14 80 (14.90%) GCP
15 76 (14.15%) Security Cleared
16 72 (13.41%) VPN
17 70 (13.04%) Kubernetes
18 69 (12.85%) CISSP
18 69 (12.85%) DevSecOps
19 67 (12.48%) Security Operations
20 65 (12.10%) Security Architecture
21 64 (11.92%) Vulnerability Management
22 63 (11.73%) SC Cleared
23 62 (11.55%) F5
23 62 (11.55%) Infrastructure as Code
24 60 (11.17%) DevOps
25 59 (10.99%) Bash
25 59 (10.99%) Windows
26 58 (10.80%) Load Balancing

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 15 (2.79%) Confluence
2 3 (0.56%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.37%) 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 (1.12%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.37%) Maximo
3 1 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 196 (36.50%) Azure
2 155 (28.86%) AWS
3 80 (14.90%) GCP
4 48 (8.94%) Microsoft Purview
5 46 (8.57%) Microsoft 365
6 41 (7.64%) Entra ID
7 27 (5.03%) AWS CloudFormation
8 26 (4.84%) Azure Sentinel
9 20 (3.72%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 20 (3.72%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 19 (3.54%) SaaS
11 15 (2.79%) GitHub
12 14 (2.61%) Akamai
12 14 (2.61%) Serverless
13 12 (2.23%) AWS CloudTrail
13 12 (2.23%) Azure DevOps
14 11 (2.05%) Amazon GuardDuty
14 11 (2.05%) Mimecast
15 9 (1.68%) Amazon ECS
15 9 (1.68%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 111 (20.67%) Firewall
2 101 (18.81%) Network Security
3 72 (13.41%) VPN
4 57 (10.61%) DNS
5 42 (7.82%) BGP
6 34 (6.33%) DMZ
7 32 (5.96%) Multicast
8 29 (5.40%) SSL
9 28 (5.21%) WAN
10 24 (4.47%) TCP/IP
11 19 (3.54%) SD-WAN
12 17 (3.17%) HTTP
13 15 (2.79%) Cisco ISE
13 15 (2.79%) Internet
14 13 (2.42%) Wireless
15 12 (2.23%) Intrusion Detection
16 10 (1.86%) IPsec
17 9 (1.68%) OSPF
17 9 (1.68%) VLAN
18 7 (1.30%) DMVPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (1.49%) Power BI
2 7 (1.30%) SQL Server
3 6 (1.12%) PostgreSQL
4 4 (0.74%) Data Lake
4 4 (0.74%) MongoDB
5 3 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
5 3 (0.56%) 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 (0.19%) Db2
7 1 (0.19%) DynamoDB
7 1 (0.19%) Elasticsearch
7 1 (0.19%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 18 (3.35%) JIRA
2 9 (1.68%) GitLab
3 7 (1.30%) Jenkins
4 4 (0.74%) Burp Suite
5 3 (0.56%) Claude Code
5 3 (0.56%) Git
6 2 (0.37%) Browser DevTools
6 2 (0.37%) Snyk
6 2 (0.37%) 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 94 (17.50%) Finance
2 93 (17.32%) Social Skills
3 48 (8.94%) Analytical Skills
4 42 (7.82%) Banking
5 21 (3.91%) Documentation Skills
5 21 (3.91%) Investment Banking
6 16 (2.98%) Public Sector
7 7 (1.30%) Legal
7 7 (1.30%) Marketing
8 6 (1.12%) Manufacturing
8 6 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
8 6 (1.12%) Telecoms
9 5 (0.93%) Retail
10 4 (0.74%) Health Technology
10 4 (0.74%) Military
11 3 (0.56%) Aerospace
11 3 (0.56%) Digital Health
11 3 (0.56%) Digital Healthcare
11 3 (0.56%) Financial Institution
11 3 (0.56%) Italian Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (1.68%) 802.1X
1 9 (1.68%) SAML
2 7 (1.30%) LangChain
3 6 (1.12%) PyTorch
3 6 (1.12%) scikit-learn
4 4 (0.74%) ARM Templates
4 4 (0.74%) Elastic Stack
4 4 (0.74%) Microsoft Graph
4 4 (0.74%) SLSA
5 3 (0.56%) Azure Blueprints
5 3 (0.56%) JWT
5 3 (0.56%) OAuth
5 3 (0.56%) OpenID
5 3 (0.56%) REST
5 3 (0.56%) SailPoint
6 2 (0.37%) Model Context Protocol
7 1 (0.19%) AWS CDK
7 1 (0.19%) JSON Web Signature
7 1 (0.19%) RESTful
7 1 (0.19%) Semantic Kernel
Miscellaneous
1 105 (19.55%) Security Posture
2 69 (12.85%) Cloud Native
3 42 (7.82%) Cloud Security Posture
4 41 (7.64%) Management Information System
5 22 (4.10%) Enterprise Cloud
6 18 (3.35%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 17 (3.17%) AI Agents
8 15 (2.79%) Onboarding
9 14 (2.61%) Cyber Threat
10 13 (2.42%) Operational Technology
11 12 (2.23%) Data Centre
11 12 (2.23%) Hybrid Cloud
12 10 (1.86%) Data Protection Act
13 8 (1.49%) Cyber Defence
14 7 (1.30%) Security Operations Centre
15 6 (1.12%) Linux Command Line
15 6 (1.12%) PKI
15 6 (1.12%) SCADA
16 5 (0.93%) NHS
16 5 (0.93%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 59 (10.99%) Windows
2 51 (9.50%) Linux
3 19 (3.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 12 (2.23%) Windows Server
5 8 (1.49%) Mac OS
6 7 (1.30%) Apple iOS
7 5 (0.93%) Windows 10
8 2 (0.37%) Android
8 2 (0.37%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.19%) Unix
9 1 (0.19%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 179 (33.33%) Cloud Security
2 156 (29.05%) Cybersecurity
3 133 (24.77%) SIEM
4 99 (18.44%) CI/CD
5 87 (16.20%) Incident Response
6 69 (12.85%) DevSecOps
7 67 (12.48%) Security Operations
8 65 (12.10%) Security Architecture
9 64 (11.92%) Vulnerability Management
10 62 (11.55%) Infrastructure as Code
11 60 (11.17%) DevOps
12 58 (10.80%) Load Balancing
13 57 (10.61%) Threat Modelling
14 56 (10.43%) Data Loss Prevention
15 54 (10.06%) Zero Trust
16 52 (9.68%) Threat Detection
17 46 (8.57%) Agile
18 45 (8.38%) Stakeholder Management
19 44 (8.19%) AI
20 43 (8.01%) Data Protection
Programming Languages
1 118 (21.97%) Python
2 87 (16.20%) PowerShell
3 59 (10.99%) Bash
4 20 (3.72%) Bicep
5 19 (3.54%) Java
6 10 (1.86%) SQL
7 9 (1.68%) Kusto Query Language
8 4 (0.74%) Go
8 4 (0.74%) Search Processing Language
9 3 (0.56%) Perl
9 3 (0.56%) Shell Script
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
Qualifications
1 76 (14.15%) Security Cleared
2 69 (12.85%) CISSP
3 63 (11.73%) SC Cleared
4 43 (8.01%) Degree
5 33 (6.15%) AWS Certification
6 31 (5.77%) Cisco Certification
7 28 (5.21%) CISM
8 23 (4.28%) Azure Certification
9 18 (3.35%) CCNP
10 17 (3.17%) CEH
11 16 (2.98%) DV Cleared
12 14 (2.61%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 13 (2.42%) Microsoft Certification
14 12 (2.23%) OSCP
15 10 (1.86%) CCIE
15 10 (1.86%) GIAC
16 9 (1.68%) Computer Science Degree
17 8 (1.49%) CCSP
18 7 (1.30%) CompTIA Security+
19 6 (1.12%) GCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 49 (9.12%) NIST
2 46 (8.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 28 (5.21%) GDPR
4 18 (3.35%) PCI DSS
5 15 (2.79%) NCSC
6 14 (2.61%) Cyber Essentials
7 11 (2.05%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 11 (2.05%) HIPAA
8 6 (1.12%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 6 (1.12%) NIST 800
8 6 (1.12%) SLA
9 5 (0.93%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 5 (0.93%) SOC 2
10 3 (0.56%) ISA99
11 2 (0.37%) COBIT
11 2 (0.37%) GRC
11 2 (0.37%) JSP 440
12 1 (0.19%) PMO
12 1 (0.19%) QA
12 1 (0.19%) RMADS
System Software
1 32 (5.96%) Active Directory
2 27 (5.03%) Docker
3 6 (1.12%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (1.12%) VMware NSX
3 6 (1.12%) vSphere
4 4 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (0.56%) Virtual Servers
6 2 (0.37%) Squid
6 2 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.19%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.19%) RACF
Systems Management
1 84 (15.64%) Terraform
2 70 (13.04%) Kubernetes
3 16 (2.98%) Ansible
3 16 (2.98%) Progress Chef
4 12 (2.23%) FortiGate
5 10 (1.86%) Microsoft Intune
5 10 (1.86%) Single Sign-On
6 7 (1.30%) Grafana
7 5 (0.93%) CASB
7 5 (0.93%) Istio
8 4 (0.74%) linkerd
8 4 (0.74%) QRadar
9 2 (0.37%) Prometheus
10 1 (0.19%) Argo
10 1 (0.19%) CSIRT
10 1 (0.19%) Host Intrusion Detection System
10 1 (0.19%) HP Fortify
10 1 (0.19%) Network Intrusion Detection System
10 1 (0.19%) SCCM
10 1 (0.19%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 129 (24.02%) Microsoft
2 86 (16.01%) Cisco
3 62 (11.55%) F5
4 47 (8.75%) Palo Alto
5 38 (7.08%) CrowdStrike
6 32 (5.96%) Zscaler
7 29 (5.40%) Fortinet
8 28 (5.21%) CyberArk
9 26 (4.84%) CheckPoint
9 26 (4.84%) Google
10 24 (4.47%) ServiceNow
11 21 (3.91%) Splunk
12 20 (3.72%) Red Hat
13 14 (2.61%) VMware
14 13 (2.42%) BeyondTrust
14 13 (2.42%) Blue Coat
14 13 (2.42%) Netskope
15 12 (2.23%) Tenable
16 10 (1.86%) Juniper
16 10 (1.86%) Oracle