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 24 February 2026.

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

6 months to
24 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 229 282 293
Rank change year-on-year +53 +11 -70
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 479 263 314
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.17% 0.87% 0.71%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.27% 0.94% 0.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 281 155 195
10th Percentile £400 £382 £413
25th Percentile £463 £425 £474
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.27% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £617 £638 £654
90th Percentile £686 £700 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £540 £525 £550
% change year-on-year +2.86% -4.55% +2.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 4 19
10th Percentile - £42.38 £48.14
25th Percentile - £44.06 £75.22
Median hourly rate £85.40 £59.16 £83.40
Median % change year-on-year +44.37% -29.07% +0.11%
75th Percentile - £79.62 -
90th Percentile £92.50 £81.90 £83.41
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.40 £78.36 £83.40
% change year-on-year +8.98% -6.04% +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 37,601 28,063 41,310
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.77% 92.89% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,630 17,563 27,190
10th Percentile £306 £293 £275
25th Percentile £408 £406 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +1.32% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,287 822 2,342
10th Percentile £14.61 £16.25 £13.15
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £16.30
Median hourly rate £32.00 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -8.57% - -10.88%
75th Percentile £63.75 £64.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £71.99
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -7.69% -7.14% -5.74%

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 24 February 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 24 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Security Engineer in the UK

Security Engineer
Top 17 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 24 February 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 +48 420 £538 -2.27% 299
UK excluding London +34 217 £540 +2.86% 262
London +27 208 £525 -8.70% 88
Work from Home +35 149 £538 -2.27% 69
North of England -30 74 £575 +6.98% 73
North West +5 57 £575 +4.55% 49
South East -13 45 £475 +5.56% 81
Midlands -32 42 £488 -7.14% 39
West Midlands -36 36 £510 -2.86% 29
South West +2 31 £537 -2.36% 19
Scotland +27 25 £632 +14.91% 19
Yorkshire -51 14 £540 +60.00% 16
East of England -15 13 £550 +100.00% 28
East Midlands - 6 £450 - 10
Northern Ireland - 5 - - 2
North East -17 3 £400 -23.81% 8
Wales -3 1 £600 - 6

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

For the 6 months to 24 February 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.

1 186 (38.83%) Azure
2 164 (34.24%) Cybersecurity
3 149 (31.11%) AWS
4 133 (27.77%) Cloud Security
5 123 (25.68%) Firewall
6 118 (24.63%) SIEM
7 114 (23.80%) Microsoft
8 110 (22.96%) Security Cleared
9 101 (21.09%) Python
10 95 (19.83%) Network Security
11 92 (19.21%) CI/CD
12 87 (18.16%) SC Cleared
13 84 (17.54%) NIST
14 82 (17.12%) PowerShell
15 79 (16.49%) Security Operations
16 78 (16.28%) Incident Response
17 77 (16.08%) CISSP
18 74 (15.45%) Infrastructure as Code
19 70 (14.61%) DevOps
20 66 (13.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
21 62 (12.94%) Cisco
22 60 (12.53%) Vulnerability Management
23 58 (12.11%) GCP
23 58 (12.11%) Threat Modelling
24 57 (11.90%) Degree
25 55 (11.48%) Windows
26 54 (11.27%) Entra ID
26 54 (11.27%) Kubernetes
26 54 (11.27%) VPN
27 53 (11.06%) Linux

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 17 (3.55%) Confluence
2 10 (2.09%) Microsoft Exchange
3 4 (0.84%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.42%) Apache
4 2 (0.42%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 3 (0.63%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.21%) SAP ERP
1 1 (0.21%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 186 (38.83%) Azure
2 149 (31.11%) AWS
3 58 (12.11%) GCP
4 54 (11.27%) Entra ID
5 50 (10.44%) Microsoft 365
6 43 (8.98%) Azure Sentinel
7 42 (8.77%) Microsoft Purview
8 27 (5.64%) GitHub
9 25 (5.22%) OpenShift
10 23 (4.80%) AWS CloudFormation
11 16 (3.34%) SaaS
12 14 (2.92%) Mimecast
13 13 (2.71%) Amazon GuardDuty
14 12 (2.51%) Amazon ECS
14 12 (2.51%) Azure Key Vault
14 12 (2.51%) GitHub Actions
15 11 (2.30%) Azure Monitor
16 10 (2.09%) AWS KMS
16 10 (2.09%) Azure DevOps
16 10 (2.09%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 123 (25.68%) Firewall
2 95 (19.83%) Network Security
3 54 (11.27%) VPN
4 46 (9.60%) DNS
5 28 (5.85%) BGP
6 18 (3.76%) TCP/IP
6 18 (3.76%) WAN
7 15 (3.13%) Wireless
8 14 (2.92%) DMZ
8 14 (2.92%) Multicast
8 14 (2.92%) SSL
9 11 (2.30%) Cisco ASA
10 9 (1.88%) IPsec
11 8 (1.67%) DHCP
11 8 (1.67%) OSPF
12 7 (1.46%) Cisco IOS
12 7 (1.46%) Cisco IPT
12 7 (1.46%) DMVPN
12 7 (1.46%) Intrusion Detection
12 7 (1.46%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (2.71%) Data Lake
2 5 (1.04%) BigQuery
2 5 (1.04%) Elasticsearch
3 4 (0.84%) Amazon Athena
3 4 (0.84%) Power BI
4 3 (0.63%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (0.63%) SQL Server
5 2 (0.42%) Amazon Redshift
5 2 (0.42%) Mixpanel
5 2 (0.42%) OLAP
5 2 (0.42%) OLTP
5 2 (0.42%) PostgreSQL
6 1 (0.21%) Apache Cassandra
6 1 (0.21%) DynamoDB
6 1 (0.21%) MongoDB
6 1 (0.21%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.21%) RDBMS
6 1 (0.21%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 23 (4.80%) JIRA
2 20 (4.18%) GitLab
3 11 (2.30%) Jenkins
4 10 (2.09%) Snyk
5 7 (1.46%) Git
6 6 (1.25%) SonarQube
7 4 (0.84%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.42%) Artifactory
9 1 (0.21%) Travis CI
General
1 119 (24.84%) Social Skills
2 66 (13.78%) Finance
3 56 (11.69%) Public Sector
4 44 (9.19%) Analytical Skills
5 20 (4.18%) Banking
6 13 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
7 10 (2.09%) Investment Banking
8 9 (1.88%) Telecoms
9 8 (1.67%) Legal
10 6 (1.25%) Financial Institution
10 6 (1.25%) Spanish Language
11 5 (1.04%) Cyber-Physical System
11 5 (1.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 5 (1.04%) Military
11 5 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
12 4 (0.84%) Organisational Skills
12 4 (0.84%) Pharmaceutical
13 3 (0.63%) Local Government
14 2 (0.42%) Retail
15 1 (0.21%) Manufacturing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (4.38%) REST
2 13 (2.71%) Elastic Stack
2 13 (2.71%) SAML
3 10 (2.09%) LDAP
3 10 (2.09%) OAuth
4 7 (1.46%) 802.1X
4 7 (1.46%) NestJS
4 7 (1.46%) Node.js
4 7 (1.46%) OpenID
5 6 (1.25%) JSON
5 6 (1.25%) Kafka
5 6 (1.25%) LangChain
5 6 (1.25%) Microsoft Graph
5 6 (1.25%) PyTorch
5 6 (1.25%) scikit-learn
6 5 (1.04%) .NET
6 5 (1.04%) SailPoint
7 4 (0.84%) SLSA
7 4 (0.84%) SOAP
8 3 (0.63%) AWS CDK
Miscellaneous
1 60 (12.53%) Security Posture
2 37 (7.72%) Cloud Native
3 26 (5.43%) Data Centre
4 23 (4.80%) Management Information System
5 18 (3.76%) Onboarding
6 16 (3.34%) Data Protection Act
7 12 (2.51%) Cloud Security Posture
8 10 (2.09%) PKI
8 10 (2.09%) Security Operations Centre
9 9 (1.88%) Cyber Defence
9 9 (1.88%) Hybrid Cloud
9 9 (1.88%) Operational Technology
10 8 (1.67%) BYOD
11 7 (1.46%) Public Cloud
12 6 (1.25%) Cyber Security Posture
12 6 (1.25%) Cyber Threat
13 5 (1.04%) Enterprise Software
13 5 (1.04%) Greenfield Project
13 5 (1.04%) Linux Command Line
13 5 (1.04%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 55 (11.48%) Windows
2 53 (11.06%) Linux
3 15 (3.13%) Windows Server
4 9 (1.88%) Unix
5 8 (1.67%) Mac OS
6 7 (1.46%) Ubuntu
7 6 (1.25%) Android
7 6 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 5 (1.04%) Apple iOS
8 5 (1.04%) Windows 10
9 4 (0.84%) VMS
10 1 (0.21%) Rocky
10 1 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 164 (34.24%) Cybersecurity
2 133 (27.77%) Cloud Security
3 118 (24.63%) SIEM
4 92 (19.21%) CI/CD
5 79 (16.49%) Security Operations
6 78 (16.28%) Incident Response
7 74 (15.45%) Infrastructure as Code
8 70 (14.61%) DevOps
9 60 (12.53%) Vulnerability Management
10 58 (12.11%) Threat Modelling
11 50 (10.44%) DevSecOps
12 49 (10.23%) Agile
13 46 (9.60%) Information Security
14 43 (8.98%) Data Loss Prevention
15 42 (8.77%) Problem-Solving
16 39 (8.14%) Continuous Improvement
16 39 (8.14%) Security Architecture
17 38 (7.93%) Threat Detection
18 36 (7.52%) SOAR
18 36 (7.52%) Zero Trust
Programming Languages
1 101 (21.09%) Python
2 82 (17.12%) PowerShell
3 32 (6.68%) Bash
4 20 (4.18%) Kusto Query Language
5 17 (3.55%) Java
6 7 (1.46%) Bicep
6 7 (1.46%) SQL
7 6 (1.25%) JavaScript
8 4 (0.84%) BeanShell
8 4 (0.84%) PHP
8 4 (0.84%) TypeScript
9 3 (0.63%) C#
10 2 (0.42%) Go
10 2 (0.42%) Kotlin
10 2 (0.42%) Ruby
10 2 (0.42%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.21%) Rust
11 1 (0.21%) Scala
11 1 (0.21%) Search Processing Language
11 1 (0.21%) Swift
Qualifications
1 110 (22.96%) Security Cleared
2 87 (18.16%) SC Cleared
3 77 (16.08%) CISSP
4 57 (11.90%) Degree
5 46 (9.60%) CISM
6 26 (5.43%) DV Cleared
7 25 (5.22%) Cisco Certification
8 20 (4.18%) Azure Certification
9 16 (3.34%) CompTIA Security+
10 14 (2.92%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 14 (2.92%) AWS Certification
10 14 (2.92%) CEH
11 12 (2.51%) GIAC
12 11 (2.30%) SANS
13 10 (2.09%) Microsoft Certification
14 9 (1.88%) CCNP
15 8 (1.67%) CCSP
16 7 (1.46%) Computer Science Degree
17 6 (1.25%) CompTIA CySA+
17 6 (1.25%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 84 (17.54%) NIST
2 66 (13.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 43 (8.98%) GDPR
4 23 (4.80%) Cyber Essentials
5 15 (3.13%) HIPAA
6 12 (2.51%) NCSC
6 12 (2.51%) PCI DSS
7 11 (2.30%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 10 (2.09%) GRC
9 7 (1.46%) NIST 800
9 7 (1.46%) RMADS
10 6 (1.25%) SOC 2
11 5 (1.04%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 5 (1.04%) JSP 440
12 4 (0.84%) Government Security Classifications
12 4 (0.84%) SLA
13 3 (0.63%) Actionable Recommendations
14 2 (0.42%) Data Quality
14 2 (0.42%) GxP
15 1 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 41 (8.56%) Active Directory
2 26 (5.43%) Docker
3 16 (3.34%) Virtual Machines
4 8 (1.67%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (1.25%) Hyper-V
5 6 (1.25%) VMware ESXi
6 5 (1.04%) Firmware
7 2 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
8 1 (0.21%) GPFS
8 1 (0.21%) Lustre
8 1 (0.21%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 1 (0.21%) Snort
8 1 (0.21%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 54 (11.27%) Kubernetes
2 52 (10.86%) Terraform
3 22 (4.59%) Microsoft Intune
4 18 (3.76%) SCCM
5 13 (2.71%) Single Sign-On
6 12 (2.51%) Fluentd
7 10 (2.09%) Ansible
8 9 (1.88%) CASB
9 8 (1.67%) Nessus
10 7 (1.46%) Kibana
10 7 (1.46%) logstash
10 7 (1.46%) WSUS
11 6 (1.25%) SCOrch
11 6 (1.25%) vCenter Server
12 5 (1.04%) Functional Safety
13 4 (0.84%) AirWatch
13 4 (0.84%) CSIRT
14 3 (0.63%) Argo
14 3 (0.63%) Icinga
14 3 (0.63%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 114 (23.80%) Microsoft
2 62 (12.94%) Cisco
3 42 (8.77%) Splunk
4 35 (7.31%) F5
5 33 (6.89%) Palo Alto
6 27 (5.64%) Tenable
7 22 (4.59%) CheckPoint
7 22 (4.59%) Fortinet
7 22 (4.59%) Google
8 18 (3.76%) CrowdStrike
9 16 (3.34%) ServiceNow
10 14 (2.92%) Juniper
10 14 (2.92%) Zscaler
11 13 (2.71%) Qualys
12 12 (2.51%) Cribl.io
13 11 (2.30%) CyberArk
14 9 (1.88%) Blue Coat
14 9 (1.88%) VMware
15 8 (1.67%) Ping Identity
16 7 (1.46%) Rapid7