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 29 July 2026.

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

6 months to
29 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 250 242 223
Rank change year-on-year -8 -19 -11
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 541 359 442
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.03% 1.09% 1.11%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.11% 1.20% 1.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 353 228 346
10th Percentile £413 £380 £409
25th Percentile £475 £413 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year +3.37% -5.45% -2.22%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £638
90th Percentile £688 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +10.00% -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 10 2
10th Percentile £70.38 £64.25 £64.25
25th Percentile £73.75 £82.69 £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 48,690 30,025 37,043
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.66% 91.50% 92.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,369 19,114 23,981
10th Percentile £331 £282 £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 3,338 1,460 2,193
10th Percentile £15.50 £13.69 £14.05
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £19.09
Median hourly rate £43.61 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +73.38% -40.82% -1.88%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.10 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -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 29 July 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 29 July 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 29 July 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 -2 499 £538 +4.37% 449
UK excluding London -1 259 £550 +10.00% 293
London -10 239 £525 -4.11% 183
Work from Home -10 201 £540 +8.00% 130
North of England +13 141 £591 +20.17% 100
North West +18 119 £575 +16.87% 65
Midlands -17 56 £500 +9.29% 38
West Midlands -17 55 £500 - 21
South East -44 51 £500 -2.44% 84
Yorkshire -30 21 £600 +20.00% 26
East of England -31 17 £510 +2.00% 28
South West -38 15 £488 - 36
Scotland -11 11 £600 +3.45% 9
Wales -14 2 £733 +46.50% 4
East Midlands -12 1 £338 -18.67% 17
North East -48 1 - - 9

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

For the 6 months to 29 July 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.

1 187 (34.57%) Azure
2 169 (31.24%) Cloud Security
3 163 (30.13%) Cybersecurity
4 147 (27.17%) AWS
5 128 (23.66%) SIEM
6 124 (22.92%) Firewall
6 124 (22.92%) Microsoft
7 115 (21.26%) Python
8 109 (20.15%) Network Security
9 96 (17.74%) CI/CD
10 88 (16.27%) Cisco
11 87 (16.08%) PowerShell
12 84 (15.53%) Incident Response
13 81 (14.97%) Security Cleared
14 75 (13.86%) Terraform
15 72 (13.31%) Security Operations
15 72 (13.31%) VPN
16 71 (13.12%) SC Cleared
17 69 (12.75%) GCP
18 67 (12.38%) Security Architecture
19 66 (12.20%) CISSP
20 64 (11.83%) DNS
21 63 (11.65%) Threat Modelling
22 62 (11.46%) Vulnerability Management
22 62 (11.46%) Windows
23 60 (11.09%) F5
24 59 (10.91%) DevSecOps
25 56 (10.35%) Data Loss Prevention
25 56 (10.35%) DevOps
25 56 (10.35%) 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 18 (3.33%) Confluence
2 3 (0.55%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 3 (0.55%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.18%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 6 (1.11%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.37%) Maximo
2 2 (0.37%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.18%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 187 (34.57%) Azure
2 147 (27.17%) AWS
3 69 (12.75%) GCP
4 47 (8.69%) Microsoft 365
4 47 (8.69%) Microsoft Purview
5 37 (6.84%) Entra ID
6 24 (4.44%) Azure Sentinel
7 23 (4.25%) AWS CloudFormation
8 21 (3.88%) SaaS
8 21 (3.88%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 17 (3.14%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 14 (2.59%) Akamai
11 12 (2.22%) Amazon GuardDuty
12 11 (2.03%) AWS CloudTrail
12 11 (2.03%) GitHub
12 11 (2.03%) Mimecast
12 11 (2.03%) Serverless
13 9 (1.66%) Azure DevOps
14 8 (1.48%) Amazon EC2
14 8 (1.48%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 124 (22.92%) Firewall
2 109 (20.15%) Network Security
3 72 (13.31%) VPN
4 64 (11.83%) DNS
5 43 (7.95%) BGP
6 34 (6.28%) DMZ
7 32 (5.91%) Multicast
8 29 (5.36%) SSL
9 27 (4.99%) TCP/IP
10 26 (4.81%) WAN
11 19 (3.51%) SD-WAN
12 17 (3.14%) HTTP
13 15 (2.77%) Internet
14 14 (2.59%) Cisco ISE
15 13 (2.40%) Wireless
16 11 (2.03%) VLAN
17 10 (1.85%) Intrusion Detection
18 9 (1.66%) IPsec
18 9 (1.66%) OSPF
19 7 (1.29%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (1.48%) Power BI
1 8 (1.48%) SQL Server
2 6 (1.11%) PostgreSQL
3 4 (0.74%) MongoDB
4 3 (0.55%) Big Data
4 3 (0.55%) Data Lake
5 2 (0.37%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (0.37%) Apache Cassandra
5 2 (0.37%) Metadata
5 2 (0.37%) NoSQL
5 2 (0.37%) RDBMS
5 2 (0.37%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.18%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.18%) Db2
6 1 (0.18%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 21 (3.88%) JIRA
2 7 (1.29%) GitLab
3 6 (1.11%) Jenkins
4 4 (0.74%) Burp Suite
5 3 (0.55%) Git
6 2 (0.37%) Browser DevTools
6 2 (0.37%) Claude Code
6 2 (0.37%) Snyk
6 2 (0.37%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.18%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 1 (0.18%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.18%) Metasploit
7 1 (0.18%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.18%) sqlmap
7 1 (0.18%) TruffleHog
General
1 106 (19.59%) Social Skills
2 91 (16.82%) Finance
3 45 (8.32%) Analytical Skills
4 41 (7.58%) Banking
5 22 (4.07%) Investment Banking
6 21 (3.88%) Documentation Skills
6 21 (3.88%) Public Sector
7 8 (1.48%) Telecoms
8 7 (1.29%) Legal
8 7 (1.29%) Marketing
9 6 (1.11%) Manufacturing
10 5 (0.92%) Retail
11 4 (0.74%) Health Technology
11 4 (0.74%) Military
11 4 (0.74%) Presentation Skills
12 3 (0.55%) Aerospace
12 3 (0.55%) Financial Institution
13 2 (0.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 2 (0.37%) Law
14 1 (0.18%) Digital Health
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (1.66%) SAML
2 8 (1.48%) 802.1X
3 7 (1.29%) LangChain
4 6 (1.11%) PyTorch
4 6 (1.11%) scikit-learn
5 4 (0.74%) Elastic Stack
5 4 (0.74%) Microsoft Graph
5 4 (0.74%) REST
5 4 (0.74%) SLSA
6 3 (0.55%) ARM Templates
6 3 (0.55%) LDAP
7 2 (0.37%) AWS CDK
7 2 (0.37%) Azure Blueprints
7 2 (0.37%) JSON
7 2 (0.37%) OAuth
7 2 (0.37%) SailPoint
8 1 (0.18%) JWT
8 1 (0.18%) Model Context Protocol
8 1 (0.18%) NestJS
8 1 (0.18%) Semantic Kernel
Miscellaneous
1 95 (17.56%) Security Posture
2 56 (10.35%) Cloud Native
3 40 (7.39%) Management Information System
4 35 (6.47%) Cloud Security Posture
5 20 (3.70%) Enterprise Cloud
6 19 (3.51%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 17 (3.14%) Onboarding
8 16 (2.96%) Data Centre
9 15 (2.77%) AI Agents
9 15 (2.77%) Operational Technology
10 12 (2.22%) Cyber Threat
10 12 (2.22%) Hybrid Cloud
11 11 (2.03%) Data Protection Act
12 9 (1.66%) Public Cloud
13 8 (1.48%) Cyber Defence
14 6 (1.11%) Linux Command Line
14 6 (1.11%) SCADA
14 6 (1.11%) Security Operations Centre
15 4 (0.74%) BYOD
15 4 (0.74%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 62 (11.46%) Windows
2 51 (9.43%) Linux
3 15 (2.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 14 (2.59%) Windows Server
5 9 (1.66%) Mac OS
6 7 (1.29%) Apple iOS
7 6 (1.11%) Windows 10
8 3 (0.55%) Ubuntu
8 3 (0.55%) Unix
9 2 (0.37%) Android
9 2 (0.37%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 169 (31.24%) Cloud Security
2 163 (30.13%) Cybersecurity
3 128 (23.66%) SIEM
4 96 (17.74%) CI/CD
5 84 (15.53%) Incident Response
6 72 (13.31%) Security Operations
7 67 (12.38%) Security Architecture
8 63 (11.65%) Threat Modelling
9 62 (11.46%) Vulnerability Management
10 59 (10.91%) DevSecOps
11 56 (10.35%) Data Loss Prevention
11 56 (10.35%) DevOps
11 56 (10.35%) Load Balancing
12 52 (9.61%) Infrastructure as Code
13 51 (9.43%) Information Security
14 49 (9.06%) Agile
15 46 (8.50%) Zero Trust
16 45 (8.32%) Continuous Improvement
17 44 (8.13%) Data Protection
17 44 (8.13%) Threat Detection
Programming Languages
1 115 (21.26%) Python
2 87 (16.08%) PowerShell
3 55 (10.17%) Bash
4 18 (3.33%) Bicep
5 17 (3.14%) Java
6 10 (1.85%) Kusto Query Language
7 9 (1.66%) SQL
8 4 (0.74%) Search Processing Language
9 3 (0.55%) Perl
9 3 (0.55%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.37%) JavaScript
10 2 (0.37%) PHP
11 1 (0.18%) C
11 1 (0.18%) C#
11 1 (0.18%) Go
11 1 (0.18%) Korn
11 1 (0.18%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 81 (14.97%) Security Cleared
2 71 (13.12%) SC Cleared
3 66 (12.20%) CISSP
4 45 (8.32%) Degree
5 35 (6.47%) Cisco Certification
6 29 (5.36%) CISM
7 28 (5.18%) AWS Certification
8 22 (4.07%) Azure Certification
9 17 (3.14%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 17 (3.14%) CCNP
10 15 (2.77%) CEH
11 14 (2.59%) DV Cleared
12 12 (2.22%) Microsoft Certification
13 11 (2.03%) Computer Science Degree
14 9 (1.66%) CompTIA Security+
14 9 (1.66%) GIAC
15 8 (1.48%) CCIE
16 7 (1.29%) OSCP
17 6 (1.11%) CCSP
17 6 (1.11%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 50 (9.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 49 (9.06%) NIST
3 31 (5.73%) GDPR
4 18 (3.33%) PCI DSS
5 17 (3.14%) Cyber Essentials
6 13 (2.40%) NCSC
7 11 (2.03%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 11 (2.03%) HIPAA
8 8 (1.48%) SLA
9 6 (1.11%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 6 (1.11%) NIST 800
10 5 (0.92%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 4 (0.74%) Government Security Classifications
11 4 (0.74%) GRC
11 4 (0.74%) SOC 2
12 3 (0.55%) ISA99
12 3 (0.55%) JSP 440
13 2 (0.37%) Actionable Recommendations
13 2 (0.37%) COBIT
14 1 (0.18%) QA
System Software
1 32 (5.91%) Active Directory
2 24 (4.44%) Docker
3 7 (1.29%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (1.11%) VMware NSX
4 6 (1.11%) vSphere
5 5 (0.92%) Virtual Machines
6 3 (0.55%) Virtual Servers
6 3 (0.55%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.37%) Squid
8 1 (0.18%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.18%) RACF
Systems Management
1 75 (13.86%) Terraform
2 53 (9.80%) Kubernetes
3 16 (2.96%) Ansible
4 13 (2.40%) Progress Chef
5 12 (2.22%) FortiGate
5 12 (2.22%) Microsoft Intune
6 11 (2.03%) Single Sign-On
7 6 (1.11%) CASB
8 5 (0.92%) Grafana
9 3 (0.55%) Nessus
10 2 (0.37%) QRadar
10 2 (0.37%) vCenter Server
11 1 (0.18%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 1 (0.18%) CSIRT
11 1 (0.18%) Host Intrusion Detection System
11 1 (0.18%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 124 (22.92%) Microsoft
2 88 (16.27%) Cisco
3 60 (11.09%) F5
4 46 (8.50%) Palo Alto
5 38 (7.02%) CrowdStrike
6 35 (6.47%) Zscaler
7 33 (6.10%) Fortinet
8 29 (5.36%) CyberArk
9 27 (4.99%) ServiceNow
10 24 (4.44%) CheckPoint
10 24 (4.44%) Google
11 18 (3.33%) Splunk
12 16 (2.96%) Red Hat
13 15 (2.77%) VMware
14 14 (2.59%) BeyondTrust
14 14 (2.59%) Blue Coat
14 14 (2.59%) Netskope
14 14 (2.59%) Tenable
15 11 (2.03%) Oracle
15 11 (2.03%) Qualys