Security Engineer Contract Job Trends

Security Engineer
UK

The median Security Engineer daily rate in the UK is £529, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 24 August 2026.

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

6 months to
24 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 263 236 211
Rank change year-on-year -27 -25 +21
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 530 382 471
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.99% 1.16% 1.21%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.07% 1.27% 1.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 340 229 357
10th Percentile £413 £373 £410
25th Percentile £463 £413 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £529 £515 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.72% -6.36% -4.35%
75th Percentile £608 £638 £638
90th Percentile £688 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £535 £500 £546
% change year-on-year +7.05% -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 49,592 30,105 36,124
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.46% 91.25% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,685 19,016 22,990
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 3,534 1,573 1,935
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.69 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.67 £17.30 £19.59
Median hourly rate £42.13 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.50% -41.51% -1.71%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.99 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £71.49 £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 24 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 24 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 24 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 -28 487 £525 +1.94% 310
UK excluding London -27 259 £535 +7.05% 253
London -36 226 £525 - 88
Work from Home -2 195 £533 +8.73% 76
North of England +20 147 £555 +11.90% 53
North West +27 125 £550 +13.17% 32
Midlands -13 51 £500 +20.48% 36
South East -39 51 £500 - 79
West Midlands -13 50 £500 +11.11% 27
Yorkshire -25 20 £600 +11.11% 17
East of England -40 19 £510 +2.00% 35
South West -45 13 £488 -3.70% 49
Scotland -21 10 £600 +14.29% 5
Wales -17 2 £733 +33.18% 1
East Midlands -12 1 £338 -18.67% 9
North East -41 1 - - 4

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

For the 6 months to 24 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.

1 185 (34.91%) Azure
2 175 (33.02%) Cloud Security
3 151 (28.49%) Cybersecurity
4 142 (26.79%) AWS
5 130 (24.53%) Microsoft
6 123 (23.21%) SIEM
7 106 (20.00%) Python
8 102 (19.25%) Firewall
8 102 (19.25%) Network Security
9 89 (16.79%) CI/CD
10 88 (16.60%) Incident Response
11 84 (15.85%) Cisco
12 83 (15.66%) PowerShell
13 82 (15.47%) Terraform
14 79 (14.91%) GCP
15 74 (13.96%) Security Cleared
16 71 (13.40%) VPN
17 69 (13.02%) Security Operations
18 65 (12.26%) CISSP
18 65 (12.26%) Kubernetes
19 63 (11.89%) DevSecOps
19 63 (11.89%) Infrastructure as Code
20 61 (11.51%) SC Cleared
21 60 (11.32%) F5
22 57 (10.75%) Vulnerability Management
22 57 (10.75%) Windows
23 55 (10.38%) Bash
23 55 (10.38%) DNS
23 55 (10.38%) Load Balancing
23 55 (10.38%) Security Architecture

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 10 (1.89%) 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 (1.13%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.38%) Maximo
3 1 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 185 (34.91%) Azure
2 142 (26.79%) AWS
3 79 (14.91%) GCP
4 46 (8.68%) Microsoft 365
4 46 (8.68%) Microsoft Purview
5 41 (7.74%) Entra ID
6 27 (5.09%) AWS CloudFormation
6 27 (5.09%) Azure Sentinel
7 19 (3.58%) SaaS
8 17 (3.21%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 17 (3.21%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 15 (2.83%) Akamai
9 15 (2.83%) GitHub
10 14 (2.64%) Serverless
11 12 (2.26%) AWS CloudTrail
11 12 (2.26%) Azure DevOps
12 11 (2.08%) Amazon GuardDuty
12 11 (2.08%) Mimecast
13 10 (1.89%) Power Platform
14 9 (1.70%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 102 (19.25%) Firewall
1 102 (19.25%) Network Security
2 71 (13.40%) VPN
3 55 (10.38%) DNS
4 42 (7.92%) BGP
5 34 (6.42%) DMZ
6 32 (6.04%) Multicast
7 27 (5.09%) SSL
8 26 (4.91%) WAN
9 24 (4.53%) TCP/IP
10 19 (3.58%) SD-WAN
11 18 (3.40%) HTTP
12 16 (3.02%) Internet
13 15 (2.83%) Cisco ISE
14 13 (2.45%) Intrusion Detection
15 11 (2.08%) Wireless
16 9 (1.70%) OSPF
16 9 (1.70%) VLAN
17 8 (1.51%) IPsec
18 6 (1.13%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (1.51%) Power BI
2 5 (0.94%) SQL Server
3 4 (0.75%) Data Lake
3 4 (0.75%) 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 12 (2.26%) JIRA
2 9 (1.70%) GitLab
3 7 (1.32%) Jenkins
4 4 (0.75%) 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 (17.55%) Social Skills
2 86 (16.23%) Finance
3 47 (8.87%) Analytical Skills
4 40 (7.55%) Banking
5 21 (3.96%) Investment Banking
6 20 (3.77%) Documentation Skills
7 15 (2.83%) Public Sector
8 7 (1.32%) Marketing
9 6 (1.13%) Legal
9 6 (1.13%) Manufacturing
9 6 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
10 5 (0.94%) Retail
10 5 (0.94%) Telecoms
11 4 (0.75%) Health Technology
11 4 (0.75%) 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 82 (15.47%) Terraform
2 8 (1.51%) SAML
3 7 (1.32%) 802.1X
4 5 (0.94%) REST
5 4 (0.75%) ARM Templates
5 4 (0.75%) Elastic Stack
5 4 (0.75%) Microsoft Graph
5 4 (0.75%) SLSA
6 3 (0.57%) Azure Blueprints
6 3 (0.57%) JWT
6 3 (0.57%) SailPoint
7 2 (0.38%) JSON
7 2 (0.38%) Model Context Protocol
7 2 (0.38%) OAuth
7 2 (0.38%) OpenID
8 1 (0.19%) Java SE
8 1 (0.19%) JCE
8 1 (0.19%) Regular Expression
8 1 (0.19%) RESTful
8 1 (0.19%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 97 (18.30%) Security Posture
2 59 (11.13%) Cloud Native
3 38 (7.17%) Cloud Security Posture
4 35 (6.60%) Management Information System
5 22 (4.15%) Enterprise Cloud
6 19 (3.58%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 17 (3.21%) AI Agents
7 17 (3.21%) Onboarding
8 14 (2.64%) Cyber Threat
9 13 (2.45%) Operational Technology
10 12 (2.26%) Hybrid Cloud
11 11 (2.08%) Data Centre
12 9 (1.70%) Data Protection Act
13 8 (1.51%) Cyber Defence
14 7 (1.32%) Security Operations Centre
15 6 (1.13%) PKI
15 6 (1.13%) SCADA
16 5 (0.94%) NHS
16 5 (0.94%) Public Cloud
17 4 (0.75%) Cyber Kill Chain
Operating Systems
1 57 (10.75%) Windows
2 45 (8.49%) Linux
3 17 (3.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 12 (2.26%) Windows Server
5 8 (1.51%) Mac OS
6 7 (1.32%) Apple iOS
7 5 (0.94%) Windows 10
8 2 (0.38%) Android
8 2 (0.38%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.19%) Unix
9 1 (0.19%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 175 (33.02%) Cloud Security
2 151 (28.49%) Cybersecurity
3 123 (23.21%) SIEM
4 89 (16.79%) CI/CD
5 88 (16.60%) Incident Response
6 69 (13.02%) Security Operations
7 63 (11.89%) DevSecOps
7 63 (11.89%) Infrastructure as Code
8 57 (10.75%) Vulnerability Management
9 55 (10.38%) Load Balancing
9 55 (10.38%) Security Architecture
9 55 (10.38%) Threat Detection
9 55 (10.38%) Zero Trust
10 53 (10.00%) DevOps
11 51 (9.62%) Threat Modelling
12 47 (8.87%) Data Loss Prevention
13 43 (8.11%) Stakeholder Management
14 42 (7.92%) Agile
14 42 (7.92%) Information Security
15 41 (7.74%) Application Security
Programming Languages
1 106 (20.00%) Python
2 83 (15.66%) PowerShell
3 55 (10.38%) Bash
4 20 (3.77%) Bicep
5 18 (3.40%) Java
6 9 (1.70%) Kusto Query Language
7 6 (1.13%) SQL
8 5 (0.94%) Go
9 4 (0.75%) Search Processing Language
10 3 (0.57%) Perl
11 1 (0.19%) C
11 1 (0.19%) C#
11 1 (0.19%) JavaScript
11 1 (0.19%) Korn
11 1 (0.19%) PHP
11 1 (0.19%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.19%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 74 (13.96%) Security Cleared
2 65 (12.26%) CISSP
3 61 (11.51%) SC Cleared
4 40 (7.55%) Degree
5 33 (6.23%) Cisco Certification
6 30 (5.66%) AWS Certification
7 27 (5.09%) CISM
8 21 (3.96%) CCNP
9 20 (3.77%) Azure Certification
10 17 (3.21%) CEH
10 17 (3.21%) DV Cleared
11 14 (2.64%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 13 (2.45%) Microsoft Certification
12 13 (2.45%) OSCP
13 10 (1.89%) CCIE
13 10 (1.89%) GIAC
14 9 (1.70%) Computer Science Degree
15 7 (1.32%) CCSP
15 7 (1.32%) CompTIA Security+
16 6 (1.13%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 48 (9.06%) NIST
2 47 (8.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 22 (4.15%) GDPR
4 18 (3.40%) PCI DSS
5 15 (2.83%) Cyber Essentials
5 15 (2.83%) NCSC
6 12 (2.26%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 6 (1.13%) HIPAA
7 6 (1.13%) NIST 800
8 5 (0.94%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 5 (0.94%) SLA
9 4 (0.75%) 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 (6.23%) Active Directory
2 21 (3.96%) Docker
3 6 (1.13%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (1.13%) VMware NSX
3 6 (1.13%) vSphere
4 4 (0.75%) 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 65 (12.26%) Kubernetes
2 17 (3.21%) Ansible
3 16 (3.02%) Progress Chef
4 12 (2.26%) FortiGate
5 11 (2.08%) Microsoft Intune
6 10 (1.89%) Single Sign-On
7 8 (1.51%) Grafana
8 6 (1.13%) Istio
9 5 (0.94%) CASB
9 5 (0.94%) linkerd
9 5 (0.94%) 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
1 130 (24.53%) Microsoft
2 84 (15.85%) Cisco
3 60 (11.32%) F5
4 48 (9.06%) Palo Alto
5 38 (7.17%) CrowdStrike
6 33 (6.23%) Zscaler
7 30 (5.66%) Fortinet
8 26 (4.91%) CyberArk
9 25 (4.72%) CheckPoint
10 24 (4.53%) ServiceNow
11 22 (4.15%) Splunk
12 20 (3.77%) Google
13 18 (3.40%) Red Hat
14 14 (2.64%) VMware
15 13 (2.45%) BeyondTrust
15 13 (2.45%) Netskope
16 12 (2.26%) Tenable
17 11 (2.08%) Blue Coat
18 10 (1.89%) Qualys
19 9 (1.70%) Oracle