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 18 June 2026.

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

6 months to
18 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 227 270 253
Rank change year-on-year +43 -17 -37
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 549 289 405
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.09% 0.97% 0.92%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.18% 1.05% 0.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 345 170 299
10th Percentile £413 £398 £413
25th Percentile £475 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.38% -4.55% -2.65%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £686 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £545 £500 £538
% change year-on-year +9.00% -7.06% +1.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 8 4
10th Percentile - £62.75 -
25th Percentile £73.75 £78.13 £30.70
Median hourly rate £84.00 £84.75 £48.40
Median % change year-on-year -0.88% +75.10% -41.97%
75th Percentile £85.40 £91.50 £70.63
90th Percentile £86.11 - £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.40 £84.75 £48.40
% change year-on-year +0.77% +75.10% -41.97%

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 46,545 27,461 40,758
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.35% 92.26% 92.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,281 17,668 26,127
10th Percentile £325 £289 £280
25th Percentile £413 £402 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,104 1,179 2,967
10th Percentile £15.24 £13.97 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.79 £17.79 £16.37
Median hourly rate £43.61 £27.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +58.56% -26.67% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £62.01
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -1.45%

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 18 June 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 18 June 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 18 June 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 +24 493 £525 - 362
UK excluding London +4 257 £545 +9.00% 304
London +42 243 £525 -4.55% 129
Work from Home +22 204 £550 +4.76% 116
North of England +4 120 £569 +13.64% 84
North West +29 99 £558 +8.73% 51
Midlands -13 55 £500 -8.05% 37
West Midlands -13 52 £538 -1.15% 24
South East -35 50 £500 +11.11% 83
Scotland +7 24 £650 +18.18% 34
South West -18 22 £525 +7.69% 28
Yorkshire -48 20 £600 +14.29% 22
East of England -28 19 £525 -2.33% 24
East Midlands - 3 £406 - 13
Wales -13 2 £733 +46.50% 7
North East -43 1 - - 11

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

For the 6 months to 18 June 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.

1 198 (36.07%) Azure
2 168 (30.60%) Cybersecurity
3 151 (27.50%) AWS
4 150 (27.32%) Cloud Security
5 128 (23.32%) Python
6 125 (22.77%) Microsoft
7 123 (22.40%) SIEM
8 115 (20.95%) Firewall
9 114 (20.77%) Network Security
10 102 (18.58%) CI/CD
11 93 (16.94%) Security Cleared
12 89 (16.21%) PowerShell
13 86 (15.66%) Cisco
14 84 (15.30%) Incident Response
15 72 (13.11%) SC Cleared
15 72 (13.11%) VPN
16 67 (12.20%) Data Loss Prevention
17 65 (11.84%) DevOps
17 65 (11.84%) Terraform
17 65 (11.84%) Vulnerability Management
18 64 (11.66%) Security Architecture
19 63 (11.48%) CISSP
19 63 (11.48%) GCP
19 63 (11.48%) Windows
20 62 (11.29%) NIST
21 61 (11.11%) DNS
22 60 (10.93%) Security Operations
23 58 (10.56%) Threat Modelling
24 57 (10.38%) Microsoft Purview
25 55 (10.02%) F5

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 21 (3.83%) Confluence
2 3 (0.55%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.18%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (0.55%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 6 (1.09%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.36%) Maximo
2 2 (0.36%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.18%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 198 (36.07%) Azure
2 151 (27.50%) AWS
3 63 (11.48%) GCP
4 57 (10.38%) Microsoft Purview
5 51 (9.29%) Microsoft 365
6 39 (7.10%) Entra ID
7 21 (3.83%) Azure Sentinel
7 21 (3.83%) SaaS
8 20 (3.64%) GitHub
8 20 (3.64%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 18 (3.28%) AWS CloudFormation
10 17 (3.10%) Amazon GuardDuty
10 17 (3.10%) Mimecast
11 14 (2.55%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 11 (2.00%) Akamai
12 11 (2.00%) AWS CloudTrail
12 11 (2.00%) AWS KMS
12 11 (2.00%) OpenShift
13 9 (1.64%) Azure Key Vault
13 9 (1.64%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 115 (20.95%) Firewall
2 114 (20.77%) Network Security
3 72 (13.11%) VPN
4 61 (11.11%) DNS
5 48 (8.74%) BGP
6 35 (6.38%) DMZ
7 33 (6.01%) Multicast
8 24 (4.37%) SSL
8 24 (4.37%) TCP/IP
9 23 (4.19%) WAN
10 19 (3.46%) SD-WAN
11 18 (3.28%) HTTP
12 12 (2.19%) Internet
12 12 (2.19%) TACACS
13 11 (2.00%) VLAN
14 10 (1.82%) Cisco ISE
14 10 (1.82%) MPLS
14 10 (1.82%) Wireless
15 9 (1.64%) NGFW
16 8 (1.46%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (1.28%) Power BI
2 5 (0.91%) Data Lake
2 5 (0.91%) SQL Server
3 4 (0.73%) MongoDB
3 4 (0.73%) PostgreSQL
4 3 (0.55%) Big Data
5 2 (0.36%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (0.36%) Apache Cassandra
5 2 (0.36%) Elasticsearch
5 2 (0.36%) NoSQL
5 2 (0.36%) RDBMS
5 2 (0.36%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.18%) Amazon Athena
6 1 (0.18%) Amazon Redshift
6 1 (0.18%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.18%) Db2
6 1 (0.18%) Metadata
6 1 (0.18%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 24 (4.37%) JIRA
2 11 (2.00%) GitLab
3 8 (1.46%) Git
3 8 (1.46%) Jenkins
4 6 (1.09%) Snyk
5 3 (0.55%) Burp Suite
6 2 (0.36%) Browser DevTools
6 2 (0.36%) Claude Code
6 2 (0.36%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.18%) Artifactory
7 1 (0.18%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 1 (0.18%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.18%) Metasploit
7 1 (0.18%) sqlmap
7 1 (0.18%) TruffleHog
General
1 110 (20.04%) Social Skills
2 88 (16.03%) Finance
3 47 (8.56%) Analytical Skills
4 41 (7.47%) Banking
5 32 (5.83%) Public Sector
6 23 (4.19%) Investment Banking
7 16 (2.91%) Documentation Skills
8 7 (1.28%) Legal
8 7 (1.28%) Marketing
8 7 (1.28%) Presentation Skills
9 6 (1.09%) Telecoms
10 5 (0.91%) Cyber-Physical System
11 4 (0.73%) Health Technology
11 4 (0.73%) Manufacturing
12 3 (0.55%) Aerospace
12 3 (0.55%) Financial Institution
12 3 (0.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 3 (0.55%) Local Government
12 3 (0.55%) Military
13 2 (0.36%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (1.82%) LDAP
2 8 (1.46%) SAML
3 7 (1.28%) Elastic Stack
4 6 (1.09%) LangChain
4 6 (1.09%) PyTorch
4 6 (1.09%) REST
4 6 (1.09%) scikit-learn
5 5 (0.91%) 802.1X
5 5 (0.91%) Microsoft Graph
5 5 (0.91%) SLSA
6 4 (0.73%) .NET
6 4 (0.73%) OAuth
7 3 (0.55%) AWS CDK
8 2 (0.36%) GraphQL
8 2 (0.36%) JSON
8 2 (0.36%) NestJS
8 2 (0.36%) SailPoint
8 2 (0.36%) Web Services
9 1 (0.18%) Kafka
9 1 (0.18%) Regular Expression
Miscellaneous
1 80 (14.57%) Security Posture
2 57 (10.38%) Cloud Native
3 34 (6.19%) Management Information System
4 27 (4.92%) Cloud Security Posture
5 20 (3.64%) Data Centre
6 17 (3.10%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 17 (3.10%) Operational Technology
7 12 (2.19%) Cyber Threat
7 12 (2.19%) Data Protection Act
7 12 (2.19%) Hybrid Cloud
7 12 (2.19%) Onboarding
8 11 (2.00%) AI Agents
8 11 (2.00%) PKI
9 10 (1.82%) Public Cloud
10 8 (1.46%) Security Operations Centre
11 6 (1.09%) Cyber Defence
11 6 (1.09%) Enterprise Cloud
11 6 (1.09%) Linux Command Line
11 6 (1.09%) SCADA
12 5 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 63 (11.48%) Windows
2 50 (9.11%) Linux
3 12 (2.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 12 (2.19%) Windows Server
4 11 (2.00%) Mac OS
5 8 (1.46%) Windows 10
6 7 (1.28%) Apple iOS
7 6 (1.09%) Ubuntu
8 4 (0.73%) Unix
9 2 (0.36%) Android
10 1 (0.18%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 168 (30.60%) Cybersecurity
2 150 (27.32%) Cloud Security
3 123 (22.40%) SIEM
4 102 (18.58%) CI/CD
5 84 (15.30%) Incident Response
6 67 (12.20%) Data Loss Prevention
7 65 (11.84%) DevOps
7 65 (11.84%) Vulnerability Management
8 64 (11.66%) Security Architecture
9 60 (10.93%) Security Operations
10 58 (10.56%) Threat Modelling
11 53 (9.65%) Information Security
11 53 (9.65%) Load Balancing
12 51 (9.29%) DevSecOps
13 48 (8.74%) Continuous Improvement
14 47 (8.56%) Infrastructure as Code
14 47 (8.56%) Zero Trust
15 46 (8.38%) Agile
16 42 (7.65%) Validation
17 40 (7.29%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 128 (23.32%) Python
2 89 (16.21%) PowerShell
3 47 (8.56%) Bash
4 20 (3.64%) Java
5 16 (2.91%) Kusto Query Language
6 9 (1.64%) SQL
7 5 (0.91%) PHP
7 5 (0.91%) Search Processing Language
8 3 (0.55%) Bicep
8 3 (0.55%) Perl
8 3 (0.55%) Shell Script
9 2 (0.36%) Go
9 2 (0.36%) JavaScript
9 2 (0.36%) Ruby
9 2 (0.36%) TypeScript
10 1 (0.18%) C
10 1 (0.18%) C#
Qualifications
1 93 (16.94%) Security Cleared
2 72 (13.11%) SC Cleared
3 63 (11.48%) CISSP
4 51 (9.29%) Degree
5 33 (6.01%) Cisco Certification
6 28 (5.10%) CISM
7 25 (4.55%) AWS Certification
8 20 (3.64%) Azure Certification
9 19 (3.46%) DV Cleared
10 16 (2.91%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 16 (2.91%) CCNP
11 11 (2.00%) CompTIA Security+
11 11 (2.00%) Computer Science Degree
11 11 (2.00%) Microsoft Certification
12 9 (1.64%) GIAC
13 8 (1.46%) CCSP
13 8 (1.46%) CEH
14 7 (1.28%) CCIE
15 5 (0.91%) OSCP
15 5 (0.91%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 62 (11.29%) NIST
2 53 (9.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 31 (5.65%) GDPR
4 29 (5.28%) Cyber Essentials
5 23 (4.19%) PCI DSS
6 16 (2.91%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 9 (1.64%) NCSC
8 8 (1.46%) SLA
9 6 (1.09%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 6 (1.09%) HIPAA
9 6 (1.09%) NIST 800
9 6 (1.09%) RMADS
10 5 (0.91%) GRC
10 5 (0.91%) JSP 440
11 4 (0.73%) SOC 2
12 3 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
12 3 (0.55%) Government Security Classifications
12 3 (0.55%) ISA99
12 3 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 2 (0.36%) COBIT
System Software
1 30 (5.46%) Active Directory
2 26 (4.74%) Docker
3 12 (2.19%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (1.46%) VMware ESXi
5 6 (1.09%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (1.09%) VMware NSX
5 6 (1.09%) vSphere
6 3 (0.55%) Firmware
7 2 (0.36%) Hyper-V
7 2 (0.36%) Squid
7 2 (0.36%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.36%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.18%) RACF
Systems Management
1 65 (11.84%) Terraform
2 54 (9.84%) Kubernetes
3 19 (3.46%) Ansible
4 17 (3.10%) Microsoft Intune
5 13 (2.37%) Single Sign-On
6 10 (1.82%) FortiGate
6 10 (1.82%) Progress Chef
7 7 (1.28%) vCenter Server
8 6 (1.09%) CASB
8 6 (1.09%) Nessus
9 5 (0.91%) Functional Safety
10 4 (0.73%) AirWatch
11 3 (0.55%) Grafana
11 3 (0.55%) Kibana
11 3 (0.55%) SCOM
12 2 (0.36%) logstash
12 2 (0.36%) QRadar
13 1 (0.18%) CSIRT
13 1 (0.18%) Host Intrusion Detection System
13 1 (0.18%) SCCM
Vendors
1 125 (22.77%) Microsoft
2 86 (15.66%) Cisco
3 55 (10.02%) F5
4 42 (7.65%) Palo Alto
5 41 (7.47%) CrowdStrike
6 35 (6.38%) Fortinet
7 30 (5.46%) Zscaler
8 27 (4.92%) CyberArk
9 25 (4.55%) Google
10 22 (4.01%) Splunk
11 20 (3.64%) CheckPoint
11 20 (3.64%) ServiceNow
12 19 (3.46%) VMware
13 18 (3.28%) Netskope
14 17 (3.10%) Tenable
15 12 (2.19%) BeyondTrust
15 12 (2.19%) Qualys
15 12 (2.19%) Red Hat
16 11 (2.00%) Blue Coat
17 8 (1.46%) Oracle