Security Engineer Contract Job Trends

Security Engineer
UK

The median Security Engineer daily rate in the UK is £539, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 16 April 2026.

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

6 months to
16 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 242 293 292
Rank change year-on-year +51 -1 -57
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 492 265 339
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.07% 0.90% 0.77%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.16% 0.98% 0.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 296 164 226
10th Percentile £406 £387 £413
25th Percentile £475 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £539 £529 £560
Median % change year-on-year +1.89% -5.58% -6.67%
75th Percentile £600 £643 £675
90th Percentile £669 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +10.00% -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 3 6
10th Percentile £84.00 £65.65 £30.70
25th Percentile - £66.63 £43.57
Median hourly rate £85.40 £73.31 £82.79
Median % change year-on-year +16.49% -11.45% -0.63%
75th Percentile - £80.89 £83.40
90th Percentile £88.24 £82.40 £83.41
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.40 £73.31 £82.79
% change year-on-year +16.49% -11.45% -0.63%

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 42,358 27,131 40,661
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.24% 92.61% 92.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,304 17,800 26,582
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £517 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.29% -1.52% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £626 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +2.63% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,673 984 2,591
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.55 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.27 £19.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £41.94 £30.79 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.20% -12.02% -22.22%
75th Percentile £65.25 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.90 £75.43 £72.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.69 £30.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +42.28% -14.29% -17.38%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 +36 436 £538 +2.38% 293
UK excluding London +15 235 £550 +10.00% 237
London +17 197 £525 -4.55% 88
Work from Home +7 154 £538 -2.01% 78
North of England -12 98 £575 +9.52% 44
North West +19 79 £575 +6.98% 28
Midlands -33 50 £500 -2.44% 30
South East -34 49 £500 +11.11% 83
West Midlands -28 46 £539 +5.12% 14
South West -14 27 £525 +2.44% 40
Scotland +21 22 £675 +22.73% 9
East of England -24 18 £525 +59.09% 32
Yorkshire -46 16 £600 +45.45% 11
East Midlands - 4 £450 - 16
North East -22 3 £400 -23.81% 5

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

For the 6 months to 16 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.

1 175 (35.57%) Azure
2 155 (31.50%) Cybersecurity
3 147 (29.88%) AWS
4 129 (26.22%) Cloud Security
5 113 (22.97%) SIEM
6 112 (22.76%) Firewall
6 112 (22.76%) Microsoft
6 112 (22.76%) Python
7 102 (20.73%) CI/CD
8 99 (20.12%) Security Cleared
9 92 (18.70%) Network Security
10 80 (16.26%) Incident Response
11 79 (16.06%) PowerShell
12 76 (15.45%) SC Cleared
13 75 (15.24%) Cisco
14 69 (14.02%) Vulnerability Management
15 68 (13.82%) Threat Modelling
16 65 (13.21%) DevOps
16 65 (13.21%) NIST
17 63 (12.80%) CISSP
17 63 (12.80%) VPN
18 62 (12.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
19 61 (12.40%) GCP
19 61 (12.40%) Security Operations
20 57 (11.59%) Infrastructure as Code
21 56 (11.38%) DevSecOps
21 56 (11.38%) DNS
22 54 (10.98%) Data Loss Prevention
23 53 (10.77%) Kubernetes
24 52 (10.57%) Degree

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 (3.86%) Confluence
2 7 (1.42%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (0.61%) Apache Spark
3 3 (0.61%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.41%) Apache
Applications
1 3 (0.61%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (0.41%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.20%) SAP ERP
2 1 (0.20%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 175 (35.57%) Azure
2 147 (29.88%) AWS
3 61 (12.40%) GCP
4 51 (10.37%) Microsoft 365
5 48 (9.76%) Microsoft Purview
6 47 (9.55%) Entra ID
7 30 (6.10%) Azure Sentinel
8 24 (4.88%) GitHub
9 21 (4.27%) SaaS
10 20 (4.07%) AWS CloudFormation
11 19 (3.86%) OpenShift
12 15 (3.05%) Amazon GuardDuty
13 13 (2.64%) Serverless
13 13 (2.64%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 12 (2.44%) Amazon ECS
14 12 (2.44%) Mimecast
15 11 (2.24%) Azure Key Vault
16 10 (2.03%) AWS KMS
16 10 (2.03%) Azure DevOps
16 10 (2.03%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 112 (22.76%) Firewall
2 92 (18.70%) Network Security
3 63 (12.80%) VPN
4 56 (11.38%) DNS
5 41 (8.33%) BGP
6 27 (5.49%) Multicast
7 26 (5.28%) DMZ
8 18 (3.66%) TCP/IP
9 17 (3.46%) WAN
10 16 (3.25%) SSL
11 10 (2.03%) HTTP
11 10 (2.03%) SD-WAN
11 10 (2.03%) Wireless
12 9 (1.83%) Cisco ASA
12 9 (1.83%) DHCP
12 9 (1.83%) Internet
13 8 (1.63%) Cisco IOS
13 8 (1.63%) IPsec
13 8 (1.63%) OSPF
13 8 (1.63%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (1.42%) Data Lake
2 4 (0.81%) Amazon Athena
2 4 (0.81%) Amazon RDS
2 4 (0.81%) Elasticsearch
2 4 (0.81%) Power BI
2 4 (0.81%) SQL Server
3 3 (0.61%) PostgreSQL
4 2 (0.41%) Amazon Redshift
4 2 (0.41%) BigQuery
4 2 (0.41%) Mixpanel
4 2 (0.41%) MongoDB
4 2 (0.41%) OLAP
4 2 (0.41%) OLTP
5 1 (0.20%) Apache Cassandra
5 1 (0.20%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (0.20%) DB2
5 1 (0.20%) Metadata
5 1 (0.20%) NoSQL
5 1 (0.20%) RDBMS
5 1 (0.20%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 24 (4.88%) JIRA
2 18 (3.66%) GitLab
3 9 (1.83%) Jenkins
4 7 (1.42%) Snyk
5 6 (1.22%) Git
6 4 (0.81%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.41%) Artifactory
7 2 (0.41%) Browser DevTools
7 2 (0.41%) Burp Suite
7 2 (0.41%) Claude Code
7 2 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.20%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.20%) Metasploit
8 1 (0.20%) sqlmap
8 1 (0.20%) Travis CI
8 1 (0.20%) TruffleHog
General
1 107 (21.75%) Social Skills
2 64 (13.01%) Finance
3 50 (10.16%) Analytical Skills
4 38 (7.72%) Public Sector
5 32 (6.50%) Banking
6 16 (3.25%) Investment Banking
7 14 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
8 10 (2.03%) Legal
9 8 (1.63%) Telecoms
10 6 (1.22%) Financial Institution
11 5 (1.02%) Cyber-Physical System
11 5 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
12 4 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 3 (0.61%) Aerospace
13 3 (0.61%) Local Government
13 3 (0.61%) Manufacturing
14 2 (0.41%) Military
14 2 (0.41%) Pharmaceutical
14 2 (0.41%) Spanish Language
15 1 (0.20%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (3.25%) REST
2 14 (2.85%) Elastic Stack
3 10 (2.03%) LDAP
4 7 (1.42%) Node.js
4 7 (1.42%) SAML
5 6 (1.22%) 802.1X
5 6 (1.22%) JSON
5 6 (1.22%) Kafka
5 6 (1.22%) LangChain
5 6 (1.22%) OAuth
5 6 (1.22%) PyTorch
5 6 (1.22%) SailPoint
5 6 (1.22%) scikit-learn
6 5 (1.02%) .NET
6 5 (1.02%) Microsoft Graph
6 5 (1.02%) NestJS
6 5 (1.02%) SLSA
7 4 (0.81%) SOAP
8 3 (0.61%) ADO
8 3 (0.61%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 70 (14.23%) Security Posture
2 42 (8.54%) Cloud Native
3 21 (4.27%) Management Information System
4 20 (4.07%) Cloud Security Posture
5 19 (3.86%) Data Centre
6 11 (2.24%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 11 (2.24%) Onboarding
6 11 (2.24%) Operational Technology
6 11 (2.24%) PKI
7 10 (2.03%) Data Protection Act
7 10 (2.03%) Hybrid Cloud
8 8 (1.63%) Public Cloud
9 6 (1.22%) BYOD
9 6 (1.22%) Cyber Threat
10 5 (1.02%) AI Agents
10 5 (1.02%) Cyber Defence
10 5 (1.02%) Greenfield Project
10 5 (1.02%) Linux Command Line
10 5 (1.02%) Mobile App
11 4 (0.81%) YARA
Operating Systems
1 51 (10.37%) Linux
2 49 (9.96%) Windows
3 12 (2.44%) Windows Server
4 9 (1.83%) Apple iOS
4 9 (1.83%) Mac OS
5 7 (1.42%) Android
5 7 (1.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 7 (1.42%) Ubuntu
6 5 (1.02%) Windows 10
7 4 (0.81%) Unix
8 2 (0.41%) VMS
9 1 (0.20%) Rocky
9 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 155 (31.50%) Cybersecurity
2 129 (26.22%) Cloud Security
3 113 (22.97%) SIEM
4 102 (20.73%) CI/CD
5 80 (16.26%) Incident Response
6 69 (14.02%) Vulnerability Management
7 68 (13.82%) Threat Modelling
8 65 (13.21%) DevOps
9 61 (12.40%) Security Operations
10 57 (11.59%) Infrastructure as Code
11 56 (11.38%) DevSecOps
12 54 (10.98%) Data Loss Prevention
13 50 (10.16%) Information Security
14 49 (9.96%) Security Architecture
15 43 (8.74%) Continuous Improvement
16 42 (8.54%) AI
17 41 (8.33%) Threat Detection
18 39 (7.93%) SDLC
19 38 (7.72%) Load Balancing
20 37 (7.52%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 112 (22.76%) Python
2 79 (16.06%) PowerShell
3 37 (7.52%) Bash
4 20 (4.07%) Kusto Query Language
5 19 (3.86%) Java
6 10 (2.03%) SQL
7 6 (1.22%) Bicep
7 6 (1.22%) JavaScript
8 5 (1.02%) PHP
9 4 (0.81%) BeanShell
10 3 (0.61%) C#
10 3 (0.61%) Go
10 3 (0.61%) TypeScript
11 2 (0.41%) Ruby
11 2 (0.41%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.20%) Kotlin
12 1 (0.20%) Objective-C
12 1 (0.20%) Scala
12 1 (0.20%) Search Processing Language
12 1 (0.20%) Swift
Qualifications
1 99 (20.12%) Security Cleared
2 76 (15.45%) SC Cleared
3 63 (12.80%) CISSP
4 52 (10.57%) Degree
5 40 (8.13%) CISM
6 26 (5.28%) Cisco Certification
7 22 (4.47%) DV Cleared
8 19 (3.86%) AWS Certification
9 17 (3.46%) Azure Certification
10 13 (2.64%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 13 (2.64%) CompTIA Security+
11 12 (2.44%) CCNP
11 12 (2.44%) CEH
11 12 (2.44%) GIAC
11 12 (2.44%) Microsoft Certification
12 9 (1.83%) Computer Science Degree
13 6 (1.22%) CCSP
13 6 (1.22%) CESG Certified Professional
14 5 (1.02%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
14 5 (1.02%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 65 (13.21%) NIST
2 62 (12.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 37 (7.52%) GDPR
4 25 (5.08%) Cyber Essentials
5 15 (3.05%) PCI DSS
6 14 (2.85%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 14 (2.85%) NCSC
7 10 (2.03%) GRC
8 8 (1.63%) SLA
9 7 (1.42%) RMADS
10 6 (1.22%) HIPAA
11 5 (1.02%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 5 (1.02%) NIST 800
12 4 (0.81%) Government Security Classifications
12 4 (0.81%) SOC 2
13 3 (0.61%) Actionable Recommendations
13 3 (0.61%) ISA99
13 3 (0.61%) JSP 440
14 2 (0.41%) Data Quality
14 2 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 29 (5.89%) Active Directory
2 22 (4.47%) Docker
3 11 (2.24%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (1.63%) Virtual Machines
5 7 (1.42%) VMware ESXi
6 5 (1.02%) VMware NSX
7 4 (0.81%) Firmware
7 4 (0.81%) vSphere
8 3 (0.61%) Virtual Servers
9 2 (0.41%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.41%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.20%) GPFS
10 1 (0.20%) Lustre
10 1 (0.20%) RACF
10 1 (0.20%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 1 (0.20%) Squid
Systems Management
1 53 (10.77%) Kubernetes
2 48 (9.76%) Terraform
3 20 (4.07%) Microsoft Intune
4 14 (2.85%) Ansible
5 9 (1.83%) Fluentd
5 9 (1.83%) SCCM
6 8 (1.63%) CASB
6 8 (1.63%) Single Sign-On
7 7 (1.42%) Nessus
7 7 (1.42%) vCenter Server
8 6 (1.22%) Kibana
8 6 (1.22%) logstash
9 5 (1.02%) Functional Safety
9 5 (1.02%) WSUS
10 4 (0.81%) AirWatch
10 4 (0.81%) FortiGate
10 4 (0.81%) Progress Chef
10 4 (0.81%) QRadar
11 3 (0.61%) Icinga
11 3 (0.61%) SCOM
Vendors
1 112 (22.76%) Microsoft
2 75 (15.24%) Cisco
3 46 (9.35%) F5
4 29 (5.89%) Palo Alto
5 26 (5.28%) CrowdStrike
5 26 (5.28%) Fortinet
5 26 (5.28%) Splunk
6 23 (4.67%) Google
7 22 (4.47%) Tenable
8 21 (4.27%) ServiceNow
9 16 (3.25%) VMware
10 15 (3.05%) CheckPoint
10 15 (3.05%) CyberArk
10 15 (3.05%) Qualys
11 13 (2.64%) Zscaler
12 11 (2.24%) Juniper
13 9 (1.83%) Netskope
14 8 (1.63%) Rapid7
15 7 (1.42%) Blue Coat
15 7 (1.42%) Cribl.io