Security Engineer Contract Job Trends

Security Engineer
UK

The median Security Engineer daily rate in the UK is £540, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 23 April 2026.

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

6 months to
23 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 239 284 287
Rank change year-on-year +45 +3 -62
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 502 262 349
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.08% 0.89% 0.80%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.17% 0.96% 0.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 307 162 238
10th Percentile £406 £384 £413
25th Percentile £475 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £529 £573
Median % change year-on-year +2.13% -7.64% -3.78%
75th Percentile £603 £638 £675
90th Percentile £675 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +9.95% -9.05% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 3 4
10th Percentile £79.43 £65.65 -
25th Percentile £84.35 £66.63 £30.70
Median hourly rate £85.40 £73.31 £57.60
Median % change year-on-year +16.49% +27.27% -30.86%
75th Percentile - £80.89 £83.40
90th Percentile £87.53 £82.40 £83.41
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.40 £73.31 £57.60
% change year-on-year +16.49% +27.27% -30.86%

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 42,836 27,359 40,556
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.28% 92.64% 92.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,486 17,911 26,489
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +2.63% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,746 1,013 2,627
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.44 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.51 £16.25
Median hourly rate £42.50 £30.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +41.67% -14.29% -22.22%
75th Percentile £65.60 £63.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.00 £28.88 £37.18
% change year-on-year +52.38% -22.34% -12.52%

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 23 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 23 April 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 23 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 +29 443 £538 +2.38% 327
UK excluding London +9 239 £550 +9.95% 250
London +22 203 £525 -4.55% 115
Work from Home +20 163 £540 +1.41% 95
North of England -1 103 £575 +9.52% 55
North West +23 83 £575 +9.52% 35
Midlands -26 51 £500 -4.76% 31
South East -34 49 £500 +11.11% 90
West Midlands -29 47 £539 +2.62% 20
South West -22 24 £525 - 30
Scotland +21 23 £675 +22.73% 11
East of England -15 18 £518 +56.82% 30
Yorkshire -42 17 £600 +45.45% 15
East Midlands - 4 £450 - 11
North East -24 3 £400 -23.81% 5
Wales - 2 £733 - 2

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

For the 6 months to 23 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.

1 184 (36.65%) Azure
2 154 (30.68%) Cybersecurity
3 150 (29.88%) AWS
4 128 (25.50%) Cloud Security
5 117 (23.31%) Python
6 116 (23.11%) SIEM
7 112 (22.31%) Microsoft
8 111 (22.11%) Firewall
9 104 (20.72%) CI/CD
10 95 (18.92%) Network Security
11 94 (18.73%) Security Cleared
12 83 (16.53%) Incident Response
12 83 (16.53%) PowerShell
13 79 (15.74%) Cisco
14 71 (14.14%) SC Cleared
15 68 (13.55%) DevOps
15 68 (13.55%) Threat Modelling
15 68 (13.55%) VPN
16 67 (13.35%) Vulnerability Management
17 66 (13.15%) CISSP
18 65 (12.95%) NIST
19 63 (12.55%) GCP
20 62 (12.35%) Security Operations
21 60 (11.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
22 58 (11.55%) DNS
23 57 (11.35%) Data Loss Prevention
23 57 (11.35%) Kubernetes
24 55 (10.96%) DevSecOps
24 55 (10.96%) Infrastructure as Code
25 53 (10.56%) 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 (3.78%) Confluence
2 7 (1.39%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (0.60%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.40%) Apache
4 2 (0.40%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (0.60%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (0.40%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.20%) SAP ERP
2 1 (0.20%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 184 (36.65%) Azure
2 150 (29.88%) AWS
3 63 (12.55%) GCP
4 53 (10.56%) Microsoft 365
5 48 (9.56%) Microsoft Purview
6 44 (8.76%) Entra ID
7 31 (6.18%) Azure Sentinel
8 24 (4.78%) GitHub
9 21 (4.18%) AWS CloudFormation
9 21 (4.18%) SaaS
10 19 (3.78%) OpenShift
11 15 (2.99%) Amazon GuardDuty
12 13 (2.59%) Serverless
12 13 (2.59%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 12 (2.39%) Amazon ECS
14 11 (2.19%) Mimecast
15 10 (1.99%) AWS CloudTrail
15 10 (1.99%) AWS KMS
15 10 (1.99%) Azure DevOps
15 10 (1.99%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 111 (22.11%) Firewall
2 95 (18.92%) Network Security
3 68 (13.55%) VPN
4 58 (11.55%) DNS
5 43 (8.57%) BGP
6 29 (5.78%) Multicast
7 28 (5.58%) DMZ
8 19 (3.78%) WAN
9 18 (3.59%) TCP/IP
10 17 (3.39%) SSL
11 12 (2.39%) SD-WAN
12 10 (1.99%) HTTP
12 10 (1.99%) Wireless
13 9 (1.79%) Cisco ASA
13 9 (1.79%) DHCP
13 9 (1.79%) Internet
13 9 (1.79%) IPsec
13 9 (1.79%) TACACS
14 8 (1.59%) Cisco IOS
14 8 (1.59%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (1.39%) Data Lake
2 5 (1.00%) SQL Server
3 4 (0.80%) Amazon Athena
3 4 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
3 4 (0.80%) Elasticsearch
3 4 (0.80%) PostgreSQL
3 4 (0.80%) Power BI
4 3 (0.60%) MongoDB
5 2 (0.40%) Amazon Redshift
5 2 (0.40%) Apache Cassandra
5 2 (0.40%) BigQuery
5 2 (0.40%) Mixpanel
5 2 (0.40%) NoSQL
5 2 (0.40%) OLAP
5 2 (0.40%) OLTP
5 2 (0.40%) RDBMS
5 2 (0.40%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.20%) Big Data
6 1 (0.20%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.20%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 23 (4.58%) JIRA
2 17 (3.39%) GitLab
3 8 (1.59%) Jenkins
4 7 (1.39%) Snyk
5 6 (1.20%) Git
6 4 (0.80%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.40%) Artifactory
7 2 (0.40%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.40%) Browser DevTools
7 2 (0.40%) Burp Suite
7 2 (0.40%) Claude Code
7 2 (0.40%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.20%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 1 (0.20%) Metasploit
8 1 (0.20%) sqlmap
8 1 (0.20%) Travis CI
8 1 (0.20%) TruffleHog
General
1 108 (21.51%) Social Skills
2 69 (13.75%) Finance
3 53 (10.56%) Analytical Skills
4 35 (6.97%) Public Sector
5 34 (6.77%) Banking
6 17 (3.39%) Investment Banking
7 15 (2.99%) Documentation Skills
8 11 (2.19%) Legal
9 8 (1.59%) Telecoms
10 6 (1.20%) Financial Institution
11 5 (1.00%) Cyber-Physical System
11 5 (1.00%) Presentation Skills
12 4 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 3 (0.60%) Aerospace
13 3 (0.60%) Local Government
13 3 (0.60%) Manufacturing
14 2 (0.40%) Health Technology
14 2 (0.40%) Military
14 2 (0.40%) Pharmaceutical
14 2 (0.40%) Spanish Language
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (3.19%) REST
2 14 (2.79%) Elastic Stack
3 10 (1.99%) LDAP
4 7 (1.39%) Node.js
4 7 (1.39%) SAML
5 6 (1.20%) 802.1X
5 6 (1.20%) JSON
5 6 (1.20%) Kafka
5 6 (1.20%) LangChain
5 6 (1.20%) OAuth
5 6 (1.20%) PyTorch
5 6 (1.20%) SailPoint
5 6 (1.20%) scikit-learn
6 5 (1.00%) .NET
6 5 (1.00%) Microsoft Graph
6 5 (1.00%) NestJS
6 5 (1.00%) SLSA
7 4 (0.80%) SOAP
8 3 (0.60%) OpenID
8 3 (0.60%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 69 (13.75%) Security Posture
2 44 (8.76%) Cloud Native
3 23 (4.58%) Management Information System
4 21 (4.18%) Cloud Security Posture
5 20 (3.98%) Data Centre
6 13 (2.59%) Operational Technology
7 11 (2.19%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 11 (2.19%) Onboarding
7 11 (2.19%) PKI
8 10 (1.99%) Data Protection Act
8 10 (1.99%) Hybrid Cloud
9 8 (1.59%) Public Cloud
10 6 (1.20%) AI Agents
10 6 (1.20%) BYOD
10 6 (1.20%) Cyber Defence
10 6 (1.20%) Linux Command Line
11 5 (1.00%) Cyber Kill Chain
11 5 (1.00%) Cyber Threat
11 5 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
12 4 (0.80%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 53 (10.56%) Linux
2 51 (10.16%) Windows
3 13 (2.59%) Windows Server
4 9 (1.79%) Mac OS
5 7 (1.39%) Apple iOS
5 7 (1.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 7 (1.39%) Ubuntu
6 5 (1.00%) Android
6 5 (1.00%) Windows 10
7 4 (0.80%) Unix
8 2 (0.40%) VMS
9 1 (0.20%) Rocky
9 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 154 (30.68%) Cybersecurity
2 128 (25.50%) Cloud Security
3 116 (23.11%) SIEM
4 104 (20.72%) CI/CD
5 83 (16.53%) Incident Response
6 68 (13.55%) DevOps
6 68 (13.55%) Threat Modelling
7 67 (13.35%) Vulnerability Management
8 62 (12.35%) Security Operations
9 57 (11.35%) Data Loss Prevention
10 55 (10.96%) DevSecOps
10 55 (10.96%) Infrastructure as Code
11 53 (10.56%) Information Security
12 52 (10.36%) Security Architecture
13 47 (9.36%) Continuous Improvement
14 42 (8.37%) AI
15 41 (8.17%) Threat Detection
16 40 (7.97%) Load Balancing
17 39 (7.77%) Agile
17 39 (7.77%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 117 (23.31%) Python
2 83 (16.53%) PowerShell
3 41 (8.17%) Bash
4 19 (3.78%) Java
4 19 (3.78%) Kusto Query Language
5 11 (2.19%) SQL
6 5 (1.00%) JavaScript
6 5 (1.00%) PHP
7 4 (0.80%) BeanShell
7 4 (0.80%) Bicep
8 3 (0.60%) C#
8 3 (0.60%) Go
8 3 (0.60%) Shell Script
8 3 (0.60%) TypeScript
9 2 (0.40%) Ruby
10 1 (0.20%) C
10 1 (0.20%) Scala
10 1 (0.20%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 94 (18.73%) Security Cleared
2 71 (14.14%) SC Cleared
3 66 (13.15%) CISSP
4 53 (10.56%) Degree
5 42 (8.37%) CISM
6 28 (5.58%) Cisco Certification
7 22 (4.38%) DV Cleared
8 19 (3.78%) AWS Certification
9 18 (3.59%) Azure Certification
10 15 (2.99%) CompTIA Security+
11 14 (2.79%) CCNP
12 13 (2.59%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 12 (2.39%) GIAC
14 11 (2.19%) CEH
14 11 (2.19%) Microsoft Certification
15 9 (1.79%) Computer Science Degree
16 6 (1.20%) CCSP
16 6 (1.20%) CESG Certified Professional
17 5 (1.00%) CCIE
17 5 (1.00%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 65 (12.95%) NIST
2 60 (11.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 38 (7.57%) GDPR
4 25 (4.98%) Cyber Essentials
5 19 (3.78%) PCI DSS
6 14 (2.79%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 11 (2.19%) NCSC
8 10 (1.99%) GRC
9 8 (1.59%) SLA
10 7 (1.39%) HIPAA
10 7 (1.39%) RMADS
11 6 (1.20%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 4 (0.80%) Government Security Classifications
12 4 (0.80%) NIST 800
12 4 (0.80%) SOC 2
13 3 (0.60%) Actionable Recommendations
13 3 (0.60%) ISA99
13 3 (0.60%) JSP 440
14 2 (0.40%) Data Quality
14 2 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 28 (5.58%) Active Directory
2 24 (4.78%) Docker
3 11 (2.19%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (1.79%) Virtual Machines
5 7 (1.39%) VMware ESXi
6 5 (1.00%) VMware NSX
6 5 (1.00%) vSphere
7 4 (0.80%) Firmware
8 3 (0.60%) Virtual Servers
9 2 (0.40%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.40%) Squid
9 2 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.20%) GPFS
10 1 (0.20%) Lustre
10 1 (0.20%) RACF
10 1 (0.20%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 57 (11.35%) Kubernetes
2 50 (9.96%) Terraform
3 20 (3.98%) Microsoft Intune
4 16 (3.19%) Ansible
5 9 (1.79%) Fluentd
5 9 (1.79%) SCCM
6 8 (1.59%) Single Sign-On
7 7 (1.39%) CASB
7 7 (1.39%) vCenter Server
8 6 (1.20%) FortiGate
8 6 (1.20%) Kibana
8 6 (1.20%) logstash
8 6 (1.20%) Nessus
9 5 (1.00%) Functional Safety
9 5 (1.00%) WSUS
10 4 (0.80%) AirWatch
10 4 (0.80%) Progress Chef
10 4 (0.80%) QRadar
11 3 (0.60%) Icinga
11 3 (0.60%) SCOM
Vendors
1 112 (22.31%) Microsoft
2 79 (15.74%) Cisco
3 48 (9.56%) F5
4 30 (5.98%) Palo Alto
5 28 (5.58%) Fortinet
6 26 (5.18%) CrowdStrike
6 26 (5.18%) Splunk
7 22 (4.38%) Google
8 21 (4.18%) ServiceNow
8 21 (4.18%) Tenable
9 18 (3.59%) VMware
10 16 (3.19%) CheckPoint
10 16 (3.19%) CyberArk
11 15 (2.99%) Qualys
11 15 (2.99%) Zscaler
12 11 (2.19%) Juniper
13 9 (1.79%) Netskope
14 8 (1.59%) Rapid7
15 7 (1.39%) Blue Coat
15 7 (1.39%) Cribl.io