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 31 July 2026.

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

6 months to
31 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 256 248 219
Rank change year-on-year -8 -29 -1
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 542 357 445
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.02% 1.09% 1.12%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.10% 1.19% 1.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 354 225 347
10th Percentile £413 £377 £410
25th Percentile £469 £413 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £539 £515 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.61% -6.36% -2.22%
75th Percentile £612 £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 49,168 30,000 36,945
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.60% 91.47% 92.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,645 19,092 23,906
10th Percentile £331 £284 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.02%
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 3,387 1,467 2,179
10th Percentile £15.37 £13.72 £14.05
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £19.05
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -40.82% -1.16%
75th Percentile £67.86 £55.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -41.51% +8.72%

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 31 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 31 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 31 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 -14 500 £538 +4.37% 498
UK excluding London +9 258 £550 +10.00% 320
London -13 242 £525 -4.11% 204
Work from Home +8 202 £540 +8.00% 145
North of England +17 142 £583 +17.44% 95
North West +15 119 £575 +16.87% 63
Midlands -12 56 £500 +22.70% 35
West Midlands -21 55 £500 +25.00% 21
South East -39 51 £500 - 93
Yorkshire -37 21 £600 +14.29% 25
East of England -33 17 £510 +2.00% 33
South West -43 13 £488 - 56
Scotland -3 11 £600 +3.45% 8
Wales -15 2 £733 +46.50% 4
East Midlands -12 1 £338 -18.67% 14
North East -45 1 - - 7

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

For the 6 months to 31 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 (34.50%) Azure
2 172 (31.73%) Cloud Security
3 161 (29.70%) Cybersecurity
4 148 (27.31%) AWS
5 128 (23.62%) SIEM
6 124 (22.88%) Microsoft
7 120 (22.14%) Firewall
8 117 (21.59%) Python
9 107 (19.74%) Network Security
10 97 (17.90%) CI/CD
11 87 (16.05%) Cisco
11 87 (16.05%) PowerShell
12 86 (15.87%) Incident Response
13 79 (14.58%) Security Cleared
14 77 (14.21%) Terraform
15 72 (13.28%) GCP
15 72 (13.28%) VPN
16 71 (13.10%) Security Operations
17 69 (12.73%) SC Cleared
18 68 (12.55%) Security Architecture
19 67 (12.36%) CISSP
20 64 (11.81%) Threat Modelling
20 64 (11.81%) Vulnerability Management
21 62 (11.44%) DevSecOps
21 62 (11.44%) DNS
22 61 (11.25%) Windows
23 60 (11.07%) F5
24 57 (10.52%) Bash
24 57 (10.52%) Data Loss Prevention
25 56 (10.33%) DevOps

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 (3.32%) 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 (34.50%) Azure
2 148 (27.31%) AWS
3 72 (13.28%) GCP
4 47 (8.67%) Microsoft Purview
5 46 (8.49%) Microsoft 365
6 36 (6.64%) Entra ID
7 24 (4.43%) AWS CloudFormation
8 23 (4.24%) Azure Sentinel
9 22 (4.06%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 21 (3.87%) SaaS
11 17 (3.14%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 14 (2.58%) Akamai
13 13 (2.40%) Amazon GuardDuty
13 13 (2.40%) GitHub
14 12 (2.21%) AWS CloudTrail
15 11 (2.03%) Mimecast
15 11 (2.03%) Serverless
16 9 (1.66%) Azure DevOps
17 8 (1.48%) Amazon EC2
17 8 (1.48%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 120 (22.14%) Firewall
2 107 (19.74%) Network Security
3 72 (13.28%) VPN
4 62 (11.44%) DNS
5 43 (7.93%) BGP
6 34 (6.27%) DMZ
7 32 (5.90%) Multicast
8 29 (5.35%) SSL
9 27 (4.98%) TCP/IP
10 26 (4.80%) WAN
11 19 (3.51%) SD-WAN
12 17 (3.14%) HTTP
13 16 (2.95%) Internet
14 14 (2.58%) 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%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (0.55%) Big Data
4 3 (0.55%) Data Lake
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%) DynamoDB
6 1 (0.18%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 21 (3.87%) JIRA
2 8 (1.48%) 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
1 104 (19.19%) Social Skills
2 93 (17.16%) Finance
3 45 (8.30%) Analytical Skills
4 41 (7.56%) Banking
5 22 (4.06%) Investment Banking
6 20 (3.69%) Documentation Skills
6 20 (3.69%) 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%) Presentation Skills
10 5 (0.92%) Retail
11 4 (0.74%) Health Technology
12 3 (0.55%) Aerospace
12 3 (0.55%) Financial Institution
12 3 (0.55%) Military
13 2 (0.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 2 (0.37%) Italian Language
13 2 (0.37%) Law
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%) 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%) SAP Fiori
8 1 (0.18%) Semantic Kernel
Miscellaneous
1 95 (17.53%) Security Posture
2 56 (10.33%) Cloud Native
3 40 (7.38%) Management Information System
4 37 (6.83%) Cloud Security Posture
5 20 (3.69%) Enterprise Cloud
6 18 (3.32%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 16 (2.95%) AI Agents
7 16 (2.95%) Onboarding
8 15 (2.77%) Operational Technology
9 14 (2.58%) Data Centre
10 12 (2.21%) Cyber Threat
10 12 (2.21%) 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%) PKI
14 6 (1.11%) SCADA
14 6 (1.11%) Security Operations Centre
15 4 (0.74%) BYOD
Operating Systems
1 61 (11.25%) Windows
2 51 (9.41%) Linux
3 15 (2.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 14 (2.58%) 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
1 172 (31.73%) Cloud Security
2 161 (29.70%) Cybersecurity
3 128 (23.62%) SIEM
4 97 (17.90%) CI/CD
5 86 (15.87%) Incident Response
6 71 (13.10%) Security Operations
7 68 (12.55%) Security Architecture
8 64 (11.81%) Threat Modelling
8 64 (11.81%) Vulnerability Management
9 62 (11.44%) DevSecOps
10 57 (10.52%) Data Loss Prevention
11 56 (10.33%) DevOps
11 56 (10.33%) Load Balancing
12 53 (9.78%) Infrastructure as Code
13 52 (9.59%) Information Security
14 49 (9.04%) Agile
15 48 (8.86%) Zero Trust
16 45 (8.30%) Threat Detection
17 44 (8.12%) AI
17 44 (8.12%) Data Protection
Programming Languages
1 117 (21.59%) Python
2 87 (16.05%) PowerShell
3 57 (10.52%) Bash
4 19 (3.51%) Bicep
5 17 (3.14%) Java
6 9 (1.66%) Kusto Query Language
6 9 (1.66%) SQL
7 4 (0.74%) Search Processing Language
8 3 (0.55%) Perl
8 3 (0.55%) Shell Script
9 2 (0.37%) JavaScript
9 2 (0.37%) PHP
10 1 (0.18%) C
10 1 (0.18%) C#
10 1 (0.18%) Go
10 1 (0.18%) Korn
10 1 (0.18%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 79 (14.58%) Security Cleared
2 69 (12.73%) SC Cleared
3 67 (12.36%) CISSP
4 44 (8.12%) Degree
5 35 (6.46%) Cisco Certification
6 30 (5.54%) CISM
7 28 (5.17%) AWS Certification
8 21 (3.87%) Azure Certification
9 17 (3.14%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 17 (3.14%) CCNP
10 16 (2.95%) CEH
11 14 (2.58%) DV Cleared
12 12 (2.21%) 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 48 (8.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 46 (8.49%) NIST
3 29 (5.35%) GDPR
4 17 (3.14%) Cyber Essentials
5 16 (2.95%) PCI DSS
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%) SOC 2
12 3 (0.55%) ISA99
12 3 (0.55%) JSP 440
13 2 (0.37%) COBIT
13 2 (0.37%) GRC
14 1 (0.18%) PMO
14 1 (0.18%) QA
System Software
1 31 (5.72%) Active Directory
2 25 (4.61%) 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 77 (14.21%) Terraform
2 56 (10.33%) Kubernetes
3 16 (2.95%) Ansible
4 13 (2.40%) Progress Chef
5 12 (2.21%) FortiGate
5 12 (2.21%) 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%) CSIRT
11 1 (0.18%) Host Intrusion Detection System
11 1 (0.18%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 124 (22.88%) Microsoft
2 87 (16.05%) Cisco
3 60 (11.07%) F5
4 44 (8.12%) Palo Alto
5 38 (7.01%) CrowdStrike
6 36 (6.64%) Zscaler
7 31 (5.72%) Fortinet
8 29 (5.35%) CyberArk
9 27 (4.98%) ServiceNow
10 25 (4.61%) CheckPoint
11 24 (4.43%) Google
12 18 (3.32%) Splunk
13 16 (2.95%) Red Hat
14 15 (2.77%) VMware
15 14 (2.58%) BeyondTrust
15 14 (2.58%) Blue Coat
15 14 (2.58%) Netskope
15 14 (2.58%) Tenable
16 11 (2.03%) Oracle
16 11 (2.03%) Qualys