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 9 April 2026.

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

6 months to
9 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 237 279 292
Rank change year-on-year +42 +13 -67
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 504 264 329
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.10% 0.90% 0.75%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.19% 0.97% 0.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 306 164 218
10th Percentile £400 £400 £413
25th Percentile £475 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £529 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.13% -3.86% -8.33%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £672 £731 £729
UK excluding London median daily rate £545 £500 £543
% change year-on-year +8.95% -7.79% -1.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 3 7
10th Percentile £84.00 £65.65 £30.70
25th Percentile - £66.63 £56.44
Median hourly rate £85.40 £73.31 £83.40
Median % change year-on-year +16.49% -12.10% +0.11%
75th Percentile - £80.89 -
90th Percentile £88.24 £82.40 £83.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.40 £73.31 £83.40
% change year-on-year +16.49% -12.10% +0.11%

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 42,236 27,096 40,842
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.26% 92.72% 92.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,288 17,831 26,727
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £407 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £744
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +2.63% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,660 965 2,571
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.99 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.00 £20.26 £16.25
Median hourly rate £40.54 £31.76 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.64% -9.26% -21.40%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.25 £71.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £30.45 £35.00
% change year-on-year +37.73% -13.00% -16.97%

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 9 April 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 9 April 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Security Engineer in the UK

Security Engineer
Top 15 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 9 April 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 +19 448 £538 +2.38% 341
UK excluding London +17 242 £545 +8.95% 288
London +12 202 £525 -4.55% 99
Work from Home +16 162 £538 -0.56% 80
North of England -5 101 £575 +6.98% 65
North West +30 82 £575 +4.55% 43
Midlands -29 51 £500 - 38
South East -34 47 £500 +11.11% 97
West Midlands -30 46 £539 +7.75% 19
South West -4 34 £525 - 35
Scotland +25 22 £675 +22.73% 13
East of England -27 16 £525 +59.09% 36
Yorkshire -46 16 £600 +45.45% 17
East Midlands - 5 £413 - 19
North East -21 3 £400 -23.81% 5

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

For the 6 months to 9 April 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.

1 178 (35.32%) Azure
2 163 (32.34%) Cybersecurity
3 157 (31.15%) AWS
4 132 (26.19%) Cloud Security
5 120 (23.81%) SIEM
6 114 (22.62%) Microsoft
7 113 (22.42%) Firewall
8 109 (21.63%) Python
9 106 (21.03%) Security Cleared
10 103 (20.44%) CI/CD
11 90 (17.86%) Network Security
12 86 (17.06%) Incident Response
13 81 (16.07%) SC Cleared
14 79 (15.67%) PowerShell
15 72 (14.29%) Cisco
15 72 (14.29%) Vulnerability Management
16 71 (14.09%) CISSP
17 70 (13.89%) Security Operations
18 69 (13.69%) NIST
18 69 (13.69%) Threat Modelling
19 66 (13.10%) DevOps
20 65 (12.90%) GCP
20 65 (12.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
21 61 (12.10%) VPN
22 58 (11.51%) DNS
23 57 (11.31%) Degree
23 57 (11.31%) DevSecOps
23 57 (11.31%) Infrastructure as Code
24 53 (10.52%) Data Loss Prevention
24 53 (10.52%) Kubernetes

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 (3.77%) Confluence
2 8 (1.59%) Microsoft Exchange
3 4 (0.79%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.60%) Apache Spark
5 2 (0.40%) Apache
Applications
1 3 (0.60%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (0.40%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.20%) SAP ERP
2 1 (0.20%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 178 (35.32%) Azure
2 157 (31.15%) AWS
3 65 (12.90%) GCP
4 48 (9.52%) Microsoft 365
4 48 (9.52%) Microsoft Purview
5 45 (8.93%) Entra ID
6 31 (6.15%) Azure Sentinel
7 24 (4.76%) GitHub
8 20 (3.97%) AWS CloudFormation
8 20 (3.97%) OpenShift
8 20 (3.97%) SaaS
9 16 (3.17%) Mimecast
10 15 (2.98%) Amazon GuardDuty
11 14 (2.78%) Serverless
12 13 (2.58%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 12 (2.38%) Amazon ECS
14 11 (2.18%) Azure DevOps
14 11 (2.18%) Azure Key Vault
15 10 (1.98%) AWS KMS
15 10 (1.98%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 113 (22.42%) Firewall
2 90 (17.86%) Network Security
3 61 (12.10%) VPN
4 58 (11.51%) DNS
5 39 (7.74%) BGP
6 26 (5.16%) DMZ
6 26 (5.16%) Multicast
7 18 (3.57%) TCP/IP
8 17 (3.37%) WAN
9 14 (2.78%) SSL
10 10 (1.98%) Cisco ASA
10 10 (1.98%) HTTP
10 10 (1.98%) Internet
11 9 (1.79%) SD-WAN
12 8 (1.59%) Cisco IOS
12 8 (1.59%) DHCP
12 8 (1.59%) IPsec
12 8 (1.59%) NGFW
12 8 (1.59%) Wireless
13 7 (1.39%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (1.39%) Data Lake
2 5 (0.99%) BigQuery
3 4 (0.79%) Amazon Athena
3 4 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
3 4 (0.79%) Elasticsearch
3 4 (0.79%) Power BI
3 4 (0.79%) SQL Server
4 3 (0.60%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.40%) Amazon Redshift
5 2 (0.40%) Mixpanel
5 2 (0.40%) MongoDB
5 2 (0.40%) OLAP
5 2 (0.40%) OLTP
6 1 (0.20%) Apache Cassandra
6 1 (0.20%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.20%) DB2
6 1 (0.20%) Metadata
6 1 (0.20%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.20%) RDBMS
6 1 (0.20%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 27 (5.36%) JIRA
2 18 (3.57%) GitLab
3 8 (1.59%) Jenkins
4 7 (1.39%) Git
4 7 (1.39%) Snyk
5 4 (0.79%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.40%) Artifactory
6 2 (0.40%) Browser DevTools
6 2 (0.40%) Burp Suite
6 2 (0.40%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.20%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.20%) Metasploit
7 1 (0.20%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.20%) sqlmap
7 1 (0.20%) Travis CI
7 1 (0.20%) TruffleHog
General
1 105 (20.83%) Social Skills
2 70 (13.89%) Finance
3 48 (9.52%) Analytical Skills
4 40 (7.94%) Public Sector
5 32 (6.35%) Banking
6 16 (3.17%) Investment Banking
7 11 (2.18%) Documentation Skills
8 10 (1.98%) Legal
9 7 (1.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 7 (1.39%) Telecoms
10 6 (1.19%) Financial Institution
11 5 (0.99%) Cyber-Physical System
11 5 (0.99%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (0.60%) Aerospace
12 3 (0.60%) Local Government
12 3 (0.60%) Manufacturing
12 3 (0.60%) Military
12 3 (0.60%) Spanish Language
13 2 (0.40%) Pharmaceutical
14 1 (0.20%) Italian Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (3.57%) REST
2 14 (2.78%) Elastic Stack
3 10 (1.98%) LDAP
4 7 (1.39%) NestJS
4 7 (1.39%) Node.js
5 6 (1.19%) JSON
5 6 (1.19%) Kafka
5 6 (1.19%) LangChain
5 6 (1.19%) PyTorch
5 6 (1.19%) SAML
5 6 (1.19%) scikit-learn
6 5 (0.99%) .NET
6 5 (0.99%) Microsoft Graph
6 5 (0.99%) OAuth
6 5 (0.99%) SailPoint
6 5 (0.99%) SLSA
7 4 (0.79%) 802.1X
7 4 (0.79%) AWS CDK
7 4 (0.79%) SOAP
8 3 (0.60%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 67 (13.29%) Security Posture
2 42 (8.33%) Cloud Native
3 22 (4.37%) Management Information System
4 18 (3.57%) Cloud Security Posture
4 18 (3.57%) Data Centre
5 14 (2.78%) Onboarding
6 12 (2.38%) Operational Technology
7 11 (2.18%) Cyber Defence
7 11 (2.18%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 11 (2.18%) Hybrid Cloud
7 11 (2.18%) PKI
8 10 (1.98%) Data Protection Act
9 8 (1.59%) Public Cloud
10 6 (1.19%) BYOD
10 6 (1.19%) Cyber Threat
11 5 (0.99%) AI Agents
11 5 (0.99%) Greenfield Project
11 5 (0.99%) Linux Command Line
11 5 (0.99%) Mobile App
11 5 (0.99%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 51 (10.12%) Linux
2 48 (9.52%) Windows
3 12 (2.38%) Windows Server
4 9 (1.79%) Apple iOS
4 9 (1.79%) Mac OS
5 7 (1.39%) Android
5 7 (1.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 7 (1.39%) Ubuntu
6 5 (0.99%) Windows 10
7 4 (0.79%) Unix
8 2 (0.40%) VMS
9 1 (0.20%) Rocky
9 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 163 (32.34%) Cybersecurity
2 132 (26.19%) Cloud Security
3 120 (23.81%) SIEM
4 103 (20.44%) CI/CD
5 86 (17.06%) Incident Response
6 72 (14.29%) Vulnerability Management
7 70 (13.89%) Security Operations
8 69 (13.69%) Threat Modelling
9 66 (13.10%) DevOps
10 57 (11.31%) DevSecOps
10 57 (11.31%) Infrastructure as Code
11 53 (10.52%) Data Loss Prevention
12 50 (9.92%) Information Security
13 49 (9.72%) Security Architecture
14 47 (9.33%) Agile
15 42 (8.33%) AI
15 42 (8.33%) Continuous Improvement
15 42 (8.33%) Threat Detection
16 39 (7.74%) SDLC
17 38 (7.54%) Load Balancing
Programming Languages
1 109 (21.63%) Python
2 79 (15.67%) PowerShell
3 36 (7.14%) Bash
4 21 (4.17%) Kusto Query Language
5 19 (3.77%) Java
6 10 (1.98%) SQL
7 6 (1.19%) Bicep
8 5 (0.99%) JavaScript
9 4 (0.79%) BeanShell
9 4 (0.79%) PHP
9 4 (0.79%) TypeScript
10 2 (0.40%) C#
10 2 (0.40%) Go
10 2 (0.40%) Ruby
10 2 (0.40%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.20%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.20%) Objective-C
11 1 (0.20%) Scala
11 1 (0.20%) Search Processing Language
11 1 (0.20%) Swift
Qualifications
1 106 (21.03%) Security Cleared
2 81 (16.07%) SC Cleared
3 71 (14.09%) CISSP
4 57 (11.31%) Degree
5 41 (8.13%) CISM
6 26 (5.16%) DV Cleared
7 25 (4.96%) Cisco Certification
8 19 (3.77%) AWS Certification
9 17 (3.37%) Azure Certification
10 15 (2.98%) CEH
11 14 (2.78%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 14 (2.78%) CompTIA Security+
12 12 (2.38%) GIAC
12 12 (2.38%) Microsoft Certification
13 11 (2.18%) SANS
14 10 (1.98%) CCNP
15 8 (1.59%) Computer Science Degree
16 7 (1.39%) CCSP
17 6 (1.19%) CompTIA CySA+
17 6 (1.19%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (13.69%) NIST
2 65 (12.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 38 (7.54%) GDPR
4 25 (4.96%) Cyber Essentials
5 15 (2.98%) PCI DSS
6 14 (2.78%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 14 (2.78%) NCSC
7 10 (1.98%) GRC
8 8 (1.59%) SLA
9 7 (1.39%) RMADS
10 6 (1.19%) HIPAA
10 6 (1.19%) NIST 800
11 5 (0.99%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 4 (0.79%) Government Security Classifications
12 4 (0.79%) SOC 2
13 3 (0.60%) Actionable Recommendations
13 3 (0.60%) ISA99
13 3 (0.60%) JSP 440
14 2 (0.40%) Data Quality
14 2 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 29 (5.75%) Active Directory
2 22 (4.37%) Docker
3 10 (1.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (1.79%) Virtual Machines
5 7 (1.39%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (0.79%) Firmware
6 4 (0.79%) VMware NSX
7 3 (0.60%) vSphere
8 2 (0.40%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.20%) GPFS
9 1 (0.20%) Lustre
9 1 (0.20%) RACF
9 1 (0.20%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 1 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 53 (10.52%) Kubernetes
2 47 (9.33%) Terraform
3 19 (3.77%) Microsoft Intune
4 12 (2.38%) Ansible
5 10 (1.98%) CASB
5 10 (1.98%) SCCM
6 9 (1.79%) Fluentd
7 8 (1.59%) Nessus
7 8 (1.59%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (1.39%) vCenter Server
9 6 (1.19%) Kibana
9 6 (1.19%) logstash
10 5 (0.99%) Functional Safety
10 5 (0.99%) Progress Chef
10 5 (0.99%) WSUS
11 4 (0.79%) AirWatch
11 4 (0.79%) QRadar
12 3 (0.60%) Icinga
12 3 (0.60%) SCOM
12 3 (0.60%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 114 (22.62%) Microsoft
2 72 (14.29%) Cisco
3 46 (9.13%) F5
4 32 (6.35%) Splunk
5 30 (5.95%) Palo Alto
6 27 (5.36%) Tenable
7 26 (5.16%) CrowdStrike
7 26 (5.16%) Google
8 25 (4.96%) Fortinet
9 21 (4.17%) ServiceNow
10 15 (2.98%) Qualys
11 14 (2.78%) CheckPoint
11 14 (2.78%) CyberArk
11 14 (2.78%) VMware
12 11 (2.18%) Juniper
12 11 (2.18%) Zscaler
13 9 (1.79%) Netskope
14 8 (1.59%) Cribl.io
14 8 (1.59%) Ping Identity
14 8 (1.59%) Rapid7