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 19 August 2026.

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

6 months to
19 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 252 232 207
Rank change year-on-year -20 -25 +14
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 542 379 466
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.01% 1.15% 1.20%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.09% 1.27% 1.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 355 228 356
10th Percentile £413 £359 £413
25th Percentile £463 £413 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £507 £550
Median % change year-on-year +6.12% -7.91% -2.65%
75th Percentile £614 £638 £638
90th Percentile £688 £729 £744
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +10.00% -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 13 2
10th Percentile £70.38 £68.50 £64.25
25th Percentile £73.75 £83.25 £66.88
Median hourly rate £77.50 £90.00 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year -13.89% +24.14% -13.07%
75th Percentile £85.05 £91.50 £76.88
90th Percentile £86.03 - £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £84.00 £90.00 £72.50
% change year-on-year -6.67% +24.14% -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 49,538 29,942 36,126
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.48% 91.24% 92.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,723 18,896 23,187
10th Percentile £325 £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 £620 £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 3,497 1,549 1,984
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.59 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.60 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £41.71 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.84% -41.51% +2.87%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.99 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.30 £25.15 £43.95
% change year-on-year +68.19% -42.78% +17.20%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 -24 500 £538 +4.88% 570
UK excluding London +3 268 £550 +10.00% 365
London -39 230 £525 - 255
Work from Home -3 202 £539 +10.51% 165
North of England +16 153 £583 +18.39% 84
North West +25 131 £575 +18.31% 56
Midlands -4 52 £500 +25.00% 42
West Midlands -19 51 £500 +28.21% 27
South East -43 51 £500 - 98
Yorkshire -29 20 £600 +14.29% 22
East of England -43 20 £510 +2.00% 46
South West -44 13 £488 -2.50% 76
Scotland -16 10 £600 +14.29% 19
Wales -15 2 £733 +46.50% 2
East Midlands -15 1 £338 -18.67% 15
North East -40 1 - - 6

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

For the 6 months to 19 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.

1 197 (36.35%) Azure
2 180 (33.21%) Cloud Security
3 157 (28.97%) Cybersecurity
4 156 (28.78%) AWS
5 134 (24.72%) SIEM
6 131 (24.17%) Microsoft
7 120 (22.14%) Python
8 114 (21.03%) Firewall
9 105 (19.37%) Network Security
10 100 (18.45%) CI/CD
11 89 (16.42%) Incident Response
11 89 (16.42%) PowerShell
12 86 (15.87%) Cisco
13 85 (15.68%) Terraform
14 81 (14.94%) GCP
15 76 (14.02%) Security Cleared
16 72 (13.28%) CISSP
16 72 (13.28%) VPN
17 71 (13.10%) Kubernetes
18 70 (12.92%) DevSecOps
18 70 (12.92%) Security Operations
19 65 (11.99%) Security Architecture
19 65 (11.99%) Vulnerability Management
20 64 (11.81%) Infrastructure as Code
21 63 (11.62%) SC Cleared
22 61 (11.25%) Bash
22 61 (11.25%) DevOps
22 61 (11.25%) F5
23 60 (11.07%) Windows
24 58 (10.70%) Threat Modelling

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 15 (2.77%) Confluence
2 3 (0.55%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.37%) nginx
4 1 (0.18%) Apache
4 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 1 (0.18%) Chatbot
1 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 6 (1.11%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.37%) Maximo
3 1 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 197 (36.35%) Azure
2 156 (28.78%) AWS
3 81 (14.94%) GCP
4 48 (8.86%) Microsoft Purview
5 46 (8.49%) Microsoft 365
6 41 (7.56%) Entra ID
7 27 (4.98%) AWS CloudFormation
8 26 (4.80%) Azure Sentinel
9 20 (3.69%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 20 (3.69%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 19 (3.51%) SaaS
11 15 (2.77%) Akamai
11 15 (2.77%) GitHub
12 14 (2.58%) Serverless
13 12 (2.21%) AWS CloudTrail
13 12 (2.21%) Azure DevOps
14 11 (2.03%) Amazon GuardDuty
14 11 (2.03%) Mimecast
15 9 (1.66%) Amazon ECS
15 9 (1.66%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 114 (21.03%) Firewall
2 105 (19.37%) Network Security
3 72 (13.28%) VPN
4 56 (10.33%) DNS
5 41 (7.56%) BGP
6 33 (6.09%) DMZ
7 31 (5.72%) Multicast
8 29 (5.35%) SSL
9 28 (5.17%) WAN
10 24 (4.43%) TCP/IP
11 19 (3.51%) SD-WAN
12 18 (3.32%) HTTP
13 16 (2.95%) Internet
14 15 (2.77%) Cisco ISE
15 13 (2.40%) Wireless
16 12 (2.21%) Intrusion Detection
17 10 (1.85%) IPsec
18 9 (1.66%) OSPF
18 9 (1.66%) VLAN
19 7 (1.29%) DMVPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (1.48%) Power BI
2 7 (1.29%) SQL Server
3 6 (1.11%) PostgreSQL
4 4 (0.74%) Data Lake
4 4 (0.74%) MongoDB
5 3 (0.55%) Amazon RDS
5 3 (0.55%) 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 (0.18%) Db2
7 1 (0.18%) DynamoDB
7 1 (0.18%) Elasticsearch
7 1 (0.18%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 18 (3.32%) JIRA
2 9 (1.66%) GitLab
3 7 (1.29%) Jenkins
4 4 (0.74%) Burp Suite
5 3 (0.55%) Claude Code
5 3 (0.55%) Git
6 2 (0.37%) Browser DevTools
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 94 (17.34%) Finance
1 94 (17.34%) Social Skills
2 48 (8.86%) Analytical Skills
3 41 (7.56%) Banking
4 21 (3.87%) Documentation Skills
5 20 (3.69%) Investment Banking
6 16 (2.95%) Public Sector
7 7 (1.29%) Legal
7 7 (1.29%) Marketing
8 6 (1.11%) Manufacturing
8 6 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
8 6 (1.11%) Telecoms
9 5 (0.92%) Retail
10 4 (0.74%) Health Technology
10 4 (0.74%) Military
11 3 (0.55%) Aerospace
11 3 (0.55%) Digital Health
11 3 (0.55%) Digital Healthcare
11 3 (0.55%) Financial Institution
11 3 (0.55%) Italian Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (1.66%) 802.1X
1 9 (1.66%) SAML
2 7 (1.29%) LangChain
3 6 (1.11%) PyTorch
3 6 (1.11%) scikit-learn
4 5 (0.92%) REST
5 4 (0.74%) ARM Templates
5 4 (0.74%) Elastic Stack
5 4 (0.74%) Microsoft Graph
5 4 (0.74%) SLSA
6 3 (0.55%) Azure Blueprints
6 3 (0.55%) JWT
6 3 (0.55%) OAuth
6 3 (0.55%) OpenID
6 3 (0.55%) SailPoint
7 2 (0.37%) Model Context Protocol
8 1 (0.18%) AWS CDK
8 1 (0.18%) JSON Web Signature
8 1 (0.18%) SAP Fiori
8 1 (0.18%) Semantic Kernel
Miscellaneous
1 108 (19.93%) Security Posture
2 70 (12.92%) Cloud Native
3 42 (7.75%) Cloud Security Posture
4 41 (7.56%) Management Information System
5 22 (4.06%) Enterprise Cloud
6 19 (3.51%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 17 (3.14%) AI Agents
8 16 (2.95%) Onboarding
9 14 (2.58%) Cyber Threat
10 13 (2.40%) Operational Technology
11 12 (2.21%) Data Centre
11 12 (2.21%) Hybrid Cloud
12 10 (1.85%) Data Protection Act
13 8 (1.48%) Cyber Defence
14 7 (1.29%) Security Operations Centre
15 6 (1.11%) Linux Command Line
15 6 (1.11%) PKI
15 6 (1.11%) SCADA
16 5 (0.92%) NHS
16 5 (0.92%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 60 (11.07%) Windows
2 52 (9.59%) Linux
3 20 (3.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 12 (2.21%) Windows Server
5 8 (1.48%) Mac OS
6 7 (1.29%) Apple iOS
7 5 (0.92%) Windows 10
8 2 (0.37%) Android
8 2 (0.37%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.18%) Unix
9 1 (0.18%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 180 (33.21%) Cloud Security
2 157 (28.97%) Cybersecurity
3 134 (24.72%) SIEM
4 100 (18.45%) CI/CD
5 89 (16.42%) Incident Response
6 70 (12.92%) DevSecOps
6 70 (12.92%) Security Operations
7 65 (11.99%) Security Architecture
7 65 (11.99%) Vulnerability Management
8 64 (11.81%) Infrastructure as Code
9 61 (11.25%) DevOps
10 58 (10.70%) Threat Modelling
11 57 (10.52%) Data Loss Prevention
11 57 (10.52%) Load Balancing
12 56 (10.33%) Zero Trust
13 53 (9.78%) Threat Detection
14 47 (8.67%) Agile
15 45 (8.30%) Stakeholder Management
16 44 (8.12%) AI
17 43 (7.93%) Data Protection
Programming Languages
1 120 (22.14%) Python
2 89 (16.42%) PowerShell
3 61 (11.25%) Bash
4 20 (3.69%) Bicep
4 20 (3.69%) Java
5 10 (1.85%) SQL
6 9 (1.66%) Kusto Query Language
7 4 (0.74%) Go
7 4 (0.74%) Search Processing Language
8 3 (0.55%) Perl
8 3 (0.55%) Shell Script
9 1 (0.18%) C
9 1 (0.18%) C#
9 1 (0.18%) JavaScript
9 1 (0.18%) Korn
9 1 (0.18%) PHP
Qualifications
1 76 (14.02%) Security Cleared
2 72 (13.28%) CISSP
3 63 (11.62%) SC Cleared
4 43 (7.93%) Degree
5 34 (6.27%) AWS Certification
5 34 (6.27%) Cisco Certification
6 28 (5.17%) CISM
7 24 (4.43%) Azure Certification
8 21 (3.87%) CCNP
9 17 (3.14%) CEH
10 16 (2.95%) DV Cleared
11 14 (2.58%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 13 (2.40%) Microsoft Certification
13 12 (2.21%) OSCP
14 10 (1.85%) CCIE
14 10 (1.85%) GIAC
15 9 (1.66%) Computer Science Degree
16 8 (1.48%) CCSP
17 7 (1.29%) CompTIA Security+
18 6 (1.11%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 49 (9.04%) NIST
2 46 (8.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 28 (5.17%) GDPR
4 18 (3.32%) PCI DSS
5 15 (2.77%) NCSC
6 14 (2.58%) Cyber Essentials
7 11 (2.03%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 11 (2.03%) HIPAA
8 6 (1.11%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 6 (1.11%) NIST 800
8 6 (1.11%) SLA
9 5 (0.92%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 5 (0.92%) SOC 2
10 3 (0.55%) ISA99
11 2 (0.37%) COBIT
11 2 (0.37%) GRC
11 2 (0.37%) JSP 440
12 1 (0.18%) Government Security Classifications
12 1 (0.18%) QA
12 1 (0.18%) RMADS
System Software
1 32 (5.90%) Active Directory
2 28 (5.17%) Docker
3 6 (1.11%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (1.11%) VMware NSX
3 6 (1.11%) vSphere
4 4 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (0.55%) Virtual Servers
6 2 (0.37%) Squid
6 2 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.18%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.18%) RACF
Systems Management
1 85 (15.68%) Terraform
2 71 (13.10%) Kubernetes
3 18 (3.32%) Progress Chef
4 17 (3.14%) Ansible
5 12 (2.21%) FortiGate
6 10 (1.85%) Microsoft Intune
6 10 (1.85%) Single Sign-On
7 7 (1.29%) Grafana
8 5 (0.92%) CASB
8 5 (0.92%) Istio
9 4 (0.74%) linkerd
9 4 (0.74%) QRadar
10 2 (0.37%) Prometheus
11 1 (0.18%) Argo
11 1 (0.18%) CSIRT
11 1 (0.18%) Host Intrusion Detection System
11 1 (0.18%) HP Fortify
11 1 (0.18%) Network Intrusion Detection System
11 1 (0.18%) SCCM
11 1 (0.18%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 131 (24.17%) Microsoft
2 86 (15.87%) Cisco
3 61 (11.25%) F5
4 48 (8.86%) Palo Alto
5 38 (7.01%) CrowdStrike
6 33 (6.09%) Zscaler
7 30 (5.54%) Fortinet
8 28 (5.17%) CyberArk
9 27 (4.98%) CheckPoint
9 27 (4.98%) Google
10 24 (4.43%) ServiceNow
11 21 (3.87%) Red Hat
11 21 (3.87%) Splunk
12 14 (2.58%) VMware
13 13 (2.40%) BeyondTrust
13 13 (2.40%) Blue Coat
13 13 (2.40%) Netskope
14 12 (2.21%) Tenable
15 10 (1.85%) Juniper
15 10 (1.85%) Qualys