Security Engineer Contract Job Trends

Security Engineer
UK

The median Security Engineer daily rate in the UK is £535, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 13 August 2026.

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

6 months to
13 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 254 232 213
Rank change year-on-year -22 -19 +9
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 537 378 458
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.01% 1.15% 1.18%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.09% 1.26% 1.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 353 230 349
10th Percentile £413 £361 £411
25th Percentile £469 £413 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £514 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.06% -6.59% -2.65%
75th Percentile £610 £647 £638
90th Percentile £688 £738 £740
UK excluding London median daily rate £540 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +8.00% -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 11 2
10th Percentile £70.38 £65.00 £64.25
25th Percentile £73.75 £82.88 £66.88
Median hourly rate £77.50 £87.50 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year -11.43% +20.69% -13.07%
75th Percentile £85.05 £91.50 £76.88
90th Percentile £86.03 - £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £84.00 £87.50 £72.50
% change year-on-year -4.00% +20.69% -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 49,387 30,089 36,178
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.56% 91.36% 92.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,655 19,063 23,293
10th Percentile £328 £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 £623 £638
90th Percentile £727 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,474 1,522 2,032
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.60 £14.18
25th Percentile £20.75 £17.26 £20.50
Median hourly rate £42.31 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.21% -41.51% +2.38%
75th Percentile £67.96 £53.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.61 £25.11 £45.00
% change year-on-year +73.66% -44.20% +25.00%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 -16 494 £533 +3.50% 897
UK excluding London -21 261 £540 +8.00% 470
London -45 233 £525 -3.67% 484
Work from Home +6 202 £540 +8.00% 296
North of England +25 145 £583 +18.39% 129
North West +28 123 £575 +18.31% 93
Midlands -16 55 £500 +22.70% 47
West Midlands -5 54 £500 +25.00% 28
South East -37 50 £500 -2.44% 124
Yorkshire -26 20 £600 +14.29% 27
East of England -33 20 £510 +2.00% 54
South West -40 12 £481 -1.28% 80
Scotland -10 11 £600 +14.29% 30
Wales -12 2 £733 +46.50% 7
East Midlands -16 1 £338 -18.67% 19
North East -44 1 - - 9

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

For the 6 months to 13 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.

1 193 (35.94%) Azure
2 179 (33.33%) Cloud Security
3 153 (28.49%) Cybersecurity
4 152 (28.31%) AWS
5 132 (24.58%) SIEM
6 128 (23.84%) Microsoft
7 115 (21.42%) Python
8 111 (20.67%) Firewall
9 101 (18.81%) Network Security
10 98 (18.25%) CI/CD
11 87 (16.20%) PowerShell
12 86 (16.01%) Cisco
13 85 (15.83%) Incident Response
14 81 (15.08%) Terraform
15 77 (14.34%) GCP
16 75 (13.97%) Security Cleared
17 70 (13.04%) VPN
18 67 (12.48%) DevSecOps
19 66 (12.29%) CISSP
19 66 (12.29%) Security Architecture
19 66 (12.29%) Security Operations
20 64 (11.92%) Kubernetes
21 63 (11.73%) SC Cleared
22 62 (11.55%) Vulnerability Management
23 61 (11.36%) DevOps
23 61 (11.36%) F5
23 61 (11.36%) Windows
24 59 (10.99%) Infrastructure as Code
25 58 (10.80%) DNS
26 57 (10.61%) 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 17 (3.17%) 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
2 2 (0.37%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.19%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 193 (35.94%) Azure
2 152 (28.31%) AWS
3 77 (14.34%) GCP
4 48 (8.94%) Microsoft Purview
5 46 (8.57%) Microsoft 365
6 40 (7.45%) Entra ID
7 26 (4.84%) AWS CloudFormation
8 25 (4.66%) Azure Sentinel
9 22 (4.10%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 21 (3.91%) SaaS
11 18 (3.35%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 15 (2.79%) GitHub
13 14 (2.61%) Akamai
14 13 (2.42%) Serverless
15 12 (2.23%) Amazon GuardDuty
16 11 (2.05%) AWS CloudTrail
16 11 (2.05%) Azure DevOps
16 11 (2.05%) Mimecast
17 8 (1.49%) Amazon ECS
17 8 (1.49%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 111 (20.67%) Firewall
2 101 (18.81%) Network Security
3 70 (13.04%) VPN
4 58 (10.80%) DNS
5 42 (7.82%) BGP
6 34 (6.33%) DMZ
7 32 (5.96%) Multicast
8 28 (5.21%) SSL
9 27 (5.03%) WAN
10 24 (4.47%) TCP/IP
11 19 (3.54%) SD-WAN
12 17 (3.17%) HTTP
13 16 (2.98%) Internet
14 15 (2.79%) Cisco ISE
15 13 (2.42%) Wireless
16 11 (2.05%) Intrusion Detection
17 9 (1.68%) IPsec
17 9 (1.68%) OSPF
17 9 (1.68%) VLAN
18 7 (1.30%) LAN
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 20 (3.72%) 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 93 (17.32%) Social Skills
2 90 (16.76%) Finance
3 46 (8.57%) Analytical Skills
4 39 (7.26%) Banking
5 21 (3.91%) Documentation Skills
5 21 (3.91%) Investment Banking
6 18 (3.35%) 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%) Financial Institution
11 3 (0.56%) Italian Language
12 2 (0.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 2 (0.37%) Law
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (1.68%) SAML
2 8 (1.49%) 802.1X
3 7 (1.30%) LangChain
4 6 (1.12%) PyTorch
4 6 (1.12%) scikit-learn
5 4 (0.74%) Elastic Stack
5 4 (0.74%) Microsoft Graph
5 4 (0.74%) SLSA
6 3 (0.56%) ARM Templates
6 3 (0.56%) JWT
6 3 (0.56%) OAuth
6 3 (0.56%) OpenID
6 3 (0.56%) REST
6 3 (0.56%) SailPoint
7 2 (0.37%) Azure Blueprints
8 1 (0.19%) AWS CDK
8 1 (0.19%) JSON Web Signature
8 1 (0.19%) Model Context Protocol
8 1 (0.19%) RESTful
8 1 (0.19%) Semantic Kernel
Miscellaneous
1 101 (18.81%) Security Posture
2 64 (11.92%) Cloud Native
3 40 (7.45%) Cloud Security Posture
4 38 (7.08%) Management Information System
5 22 (4.10%) Enterprise Cloud
6 17 (3.17%) AI Agents
6 17 (3.17%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 15 (2.79%) Onboarding
8 14 (2.61%) Cyber Threat
8 14 (2.61%) Hybrid Cloud
8 14 (2.61%) Operational Technology
9 13 (2.42%) Data Centre
10 10 (1.86%) Data Protection Act
11 8 (1.49%) Cyber Defence
12 7 (1.30%) Public Cloud
12 7 (1.30%) Security Operations Centre
13 6 (1.12%) Linux Command Line
13 6 (1.12%) PKI
13 6 (1.12%) SCADA
14 4 (0.74%) Cyber Kill Chain
Operating Systems
1 61 (11.36%) Windows
2 49 (9.12%) Linux
3 17 (3.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 14 (2.61%) Windows Server
5 9 (1.68%) Mac OS
6 7 (1.30%) Apple iOS
7 6 (1.12%) 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
2 153 (28.49%) Cybersecurity
3 132 (24.58%) SIEM
4 98 (18.25%) CI/CD
5 85 (15.83%) Incident Response
6 67 (12.48%) DevSecOps
7 66 (12.29%) Security Architecture
7 66 (12.29%) Security Operations
8 62 (11.55%) Vulnerability Management
9 61 (11.36%) DevOps
10 59 (10.99%) Infrastructure as Code
11 57 (10.61%) Load Balancing
12 55 (10.24%) Data Loss Prevention
12 55 (10.24%) Threat Modelling
13 54 (10.06%) Zero Trust
14 50 (9.31%) Threat Detection
15 48 (8.94%) Agile
16 44 (8.19%) Information Security
17 43 (8.01%) AI
18 42 (7.82%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 115 (21.42%) Python
2 87 (16.20%) PowerShell
3 57 (10.61%) Bash
4 19 (3.54%) Bicep
5 18 (3.35%) Java
6 10 (1.86%) SQL
7 9 (1.68%) Kusto Query Language
8 4 (0.74%) Search Processing Language
9 3 (0.56%) Go
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 75 (13.97%) Security Cleared
2 66 (12.29%) CISSP
3 63 (11.73%) SC Cleared
4 42 (7.82%) Degree
5 31 (5.77%) Cisco Certification
6 30 (5.59%) AWS Certification
7 29 (5.40%) CISM
8 22 (4.10%) Azure Certification
9 18 (3.35%) CEH
10 16 (2.98%) CCNP
11 15 (2.79%) DV Cleared
12 14 (2.61%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 11 (2.05%) Microsoft Certification
14 10 (1.86%) Computer Science Degree
14 10 (1.86%) OSCP
15 8 (1.49%) CCIE
15 8 (1.49%) GIAC
16 7 (1.30%) CompTIA Security+
17 6 (1.12%) CISA
18 5 (0.93%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 46 (8.57%) NIST
2 44 (8.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 29 (5.40%) GDPR
4 16 (2.98%) PCI DSS
5 15 (2.79%) NCSC
6 14 (2.61%) Cyber Essentials
7 11 (2.05%) HIPAA
8 10 (1.86%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 6 (1.12%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 6 (1.12%) NIST 800
9 6 (1.12%) SLA
10 5 (0.93%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 5 (0.93%) SOC 2
11 3 (0.56%) ISA99
12 2 (0.37%) COBIT
12 2 (0.37%) Government Security Classifications
12 2 (0.37%) GRC
12 2 (0.37%) JSP 440
13 1 (0.19%) Data Quality
13 1 (0.19%) QA
System Software
1 30 (5.59%) Active Directory
2 26 (4.84%) 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 81 (15.08%) Terraform
2 64 (11.92%) Kubernetes
3 16 (2.98%) Ansible
4 14 (2.61%) Progress Chef
5 12 (2.23%) FortiGate
5 12 (2.23%) Microsoft Intune
6 11 (2.05%) Single Sign-On
7 7 (1.30%) Grafana
8 5 (0.93%) CASB
9 4 (0.74%) QRadar
10 3 (0.56%) Istio
11 2 (0.37%) linkerd
11 2 (0.37%) Prometheus
12 1 (0.19%) Argo
12 1 (0.19%) CSIRT
12 1 (0.19%) Host Intrusion Detection System
12 1 (0.19%) HP Fortify
12 1 (0.19%) Network Intrusion Detection System
12 1 (0.19%) SCCM
12 1 (0.19%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 128 (23.84%) Microsoft
2 86 (16.01%) Cisco
3 61 (11.36%) F5
4 45 (8.38%) Palo Alto
5 39 (7.26%) CrowdStrike
6 33 (6.15%) Zscaler
7 29 (5.40%) Fortinet
8 28 (5.21%) CyberArk
9 26 (4.84%) ServiceNow
10 25 (4.66%) Google
11 24 (4.47%) CheckPoint
12 21 (3.91%) Splunk
13 18 (3.35%) Red Hat
14 14 (2.61%) VMware
15 13 (2.42%) BeyondTrust
15 13 (2.42%) Blue Coat
15 13 (2.42%) Netskope
16 12 (2.23%) Tenable
17 11 (2.05%) Qualys
18 10 (1.86%) Oracle