Security Engineer Contract Job Trends

Security Engineer
UK

The median Security Engineer daily rate in the UK is £525, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 24 September 2026.

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

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 244 231 201
Rank change year-on-year -13 -30 +45
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 567 392 466
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.03% 1.19% 1.22%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.12% 1.31% 1.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 355 228 343
10th Percentile £413 £379 £405
25th Percentile £458 £424 £439
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £690 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -1.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 12 2
10th Percentile £72.63 £66.75 £64.25
25th Percentile £73.75 £83.06 £66.88
Median hourly rate £79.70 £90.50 £72.50
Median % change year-on-year -11.93% +24.83% -13.07%
75th Percentile £90.53 £91.50 £76.88
90th Percentile £92.11 - £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £90.00 £90.50 £72.50
% change year-on-year -0.55% +24.83% -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 50,643 30,010 35,418
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.25% 91.03% 92.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,934 18,949 21,605
10th Percentile £325 £277 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £731 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,909 1,607 1,616
10th Percentile £14.50 £13.75 £14.84
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.30 £20.75
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.70 £51.57 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £69.65 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.08 £43.90
% change year-on-year +69.49% -42.88% +0.83%

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 24 September 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 24 September 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 24 September 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 -10 527 £525 - 1,221
UK excluding London -15 272 £525 +5.00% 685
London -42 251 £525 -4.55% 576
Work from Home -8 187 £525 +5.85% 415
North of England +20 143 £550 +10.00% 185
North West +20 119 £545 +9.00% 124
Midlands -12 54 £475 +18.01% 84
South East -31 54 £500 - 161
West Midlands -11 50 £500 +28.21% 55
East of England -36 31 £518 +3.50% 83
Yorkshire -22 21 £613 +13.43% 37
South West -43 12 £475 -7.32% 94
Scotland -32 8 £618 +6.47% 54
East Midlands -17 4 £338 -18.67% 29
Wales -13 2 £733 +22.08% 9
North East -43 2 - - 24

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

For the 6 months to 24 September 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 (34.74%) Azure
2 177 (31.22%) Cloud Security
3 172 (30.34%) Cybersecurity
4 150 (26.46%) AWS
5 137 (24.16%) Microsoft
6 127 (22.40%) SIEM
7 119 (20.99%) Python
8 116 (20.46%) Network Security
9 112 (19.75%) Firewall
10 100 (17.64%) Terraform
11 96 (16.93%) PowerShell
11 96 (16.93%) Security Cleared
12 93 (16.40%) Incident Response
13 90 (15.87%) Security Operations
14 87 (15.34%) Cisco
14 87 (15.34%) GCP
15 86 (15.17%) CI/CD
16 83 (14.64%) SC Cleared
17 79 (13.93%) Kubernetes
18 77 (13.58%) CISSP
19 72 (12.70%) VPN
20 71 (12.52%) Palo Alto
21 70 (12.35%) Infrastructure as Code
22 69 (12.17%) Threat Detection
23 67 (11.82%) Windows
24 64 (11.29%) DevOps
24 64 (11.29%) DevSecOps
25 63 (11.11%) Vulnerability Management
26 62 (10.93%) Security Architecture
27 59 (10.41%) Bash

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 11 (1.94%) IIS
2 8 (1.41%) Confluence
3 3 (0.53%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.35%) nginx
5 1 (0.18%) Apache
5 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 2 (0.35%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (0.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.18%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
2 1 (0.18%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (1.06%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.35%) Maximo
3 1 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 197 (34.74%) Azure
2 150 (26.46%) AWS
3 87 (15.34%) GCP
4 52 (9.17%) Entra ID
5 45 (7.94%) Microsoft 365
6 35 (6.17%) Microsoft Purview
7 34 (6.00%) Azure Sentinel
8 29 (5.11%) AWS CloudFormation
9 22 (3.88%) GitHub
10 16 (2.82%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 14 (2.47%) Azure DevOps
12 13 (2.29%) Power Platform
12 13 (2.29%) SaaS
12 13 (2.29%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 12 (2.12%) Serverless
14 11 (1.94%) Akamai
15 10 (1.76%) Amazon ECS
15 10 (1.76%) AWS CloudTrail
15 10 (1.76%) Azure AKS
16 9 (1.59%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 116 (20.46%) Network Security
2 112 (19.75%) Firewall
3 72 (12.70%) VPN
4 48 (8.47%) DNS
5 37 (6.53%) BGP
6 30 (5.29%) SSL
7 29 (5.11%) WAN
8 26 (4.59%) DMZ
9 24 (4.23%) Multicast
10 22 (3.88%) TCP/IP
11 21 (3.70%) HTTP
12 17 (3.00%) Internet
13 16 (2.82%) Cisco ISE
13 16 (2.82%) Wireless
14 15 (2.65%) Intrusion Detection
14 15 (2.65%) SD-WAN
15 13 (2.29%) IPsec
16 12 (2.12%) OSPF
17 10 (1.76%) DMVPN
18 9 (1.59%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (1.59%) Power BI
2 5 (0.88%) SQL Server
3 4 (0.71%) MongoDB
3 4 (0.71%) PostgreSQL
4 3 (0.53%) Big Data
4 3 (0.53%) Data Lake
5 2 (0.35%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (0.35%) DynamoDB
5 2 (0.35%) SAP HANA
6 1 (0.18%) Apache Cassandra
6 1 (0.18%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (0.18%) Db2
6 1 (0.18%) Delta Lake
6 1 (0.18%) Elasticsearch
6 1 (0.18%) Metadata
6 1 (0.18%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.18%) RDBMS
6 1 (0.18%) Redis
6 1 (0.18%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 9 (1.59%) JIRA
2 8 (1.41%) Git
3 6 (1.06%) GitLab
3 6 (1.06%) Jenkins
4 3 (0.53%) Burp Suite
5 2 (0.35%) JUnit
5 2 (0.35%) Snyk
5 2 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
6 1 (0.18%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 1 (0.18%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.18%) Browser DevTools
6 1 (0.18%) Claude Code
6 1 (0.18%) Maven
General
1 104 (18.34%) Social Skills
2 96 (16.93%) Finance
3 48 (8.47%) Analytical Skills
4 39 (6.88%) Banking
5 19 (3.35%) Public Sector
6 17 (3.00%) Investment Banking
7 16 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
8 9 (1.59%) Military
8 9 (1.59%) Presentation Skills
9 7 (1.23%) Back Office
9 7 (1.23%) Manufacturing
9 7 (1.23%) Marketing
10 6 (1.06%) Legal
10 6 (1.06%) Telecoms
11 5 (0.88%) Influencing Skills
11 5 (0.88%) Retail
12 4 (0.71%) Financial Institution
12 4 (0.71%) Health Technology
13 3 (0.53%) Digital Health
13 3 (0.53%) Digital Healthcare
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 100 (17.64%) Terraform
2 17 (3.00%) JSON
3 12 (2.12%) REST
4 11 (1.94%) 802.1X
5 9 (1.59%) SAML
6 8 (1.41%) JWT
6 8 (1.41%) OpenID
6 8 (1.41%) Regular Expression
7 7 (1.23%) LDAP
7 7 (1.23%) OAuth
8 6 (1.06%) OAuth2
9 5 (0.88%) ARM Templates
10 4 (0.71%) Azure Blueprints
10 4 (0.71%) Elastic Stack
10 4 (0.71%) Microsoft Graph
11 3 (0.53%) Model Context Protocol
11 3 (0.53%) pytest
11 3 (0.53%) SailPoint
11 3 (0.53%) SLSA
11 3 (0.53%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 98 (17.28%) Security Posture
2 65 (11.46%) Cloud Native
3 40 (7.05%) Management Information System
4 33 (5.82%) Cloud Security Posture
5 31 (5.47%) Onboarding
6 26 (4.59%) Cyber Threat
7 23 (4.06%) Enterprise Cloud
8 19 (3.35%) Data Centre
9 17 (3.00%) AI Agents
10 15 (2.65%) Cyber Defence
11 13 (2.29%) Operational Technology
12 11 (1.94%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
13 9 (1.59%) Hybrid Cloud
13 9 (1.59%) PKI
13 9 (1.59%) Public Cloud
13 9 (1.59%) Security Operations Centre
14 8 (1.41%) CCTV
14 8 (1.41%) Data Protection Act
15 5 (0.88%) Mobile App
15 5 (0.88%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 67 (11.82%) Windows
2 46 (8.11%) Linux
3 19 (3.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 17 (3.00%) Windows Server
5 10 (1.76%) Apple iOS
6 7 (1.23%) Mac OS
7 5 (0.88%) Android
7 5 (0.88%) Windows 10
8 3 (0.53%) Ubuntu
9 2 (0.35%) Unix
10 1 (0.18%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 177 (31.22%) Cloud Security
2 172 (30.34%) Cybersecurity
3 127 (22.40%) SIEM
4 93 (16.40%) Incident Response
5 90 (15.87%) Security Operations
6 86 (15.17%) CI/CD
7 70 (12.35%) Infrastructure as Code
8 69 (12.17%) Threat Detection
9 64 (11.29%) DevOps
9 64 (11.29%) DevSecOps
10 63 (11.11%) Vulnerability Management
11 62 (10.93%) Security Architecture
12 58 (10.23%) Zero Trust
13 57 (10.05%) Security Monitoring
14 53 (9.35%) AI
15 52 (9.17%) Identity Access Management
15 52 (9.17%) Threat Modelling
16 50 (8.82%) Continuous Improvement
16 50 (8.82%) Stakeholder Management
17 49 (8.64%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 119 (20.99%) Python
2 96 (16.93%) PowerShell
3 59 (10.41%) Bash
4 26 (4.59%) Java
5 20 (3.53%) Bicep
6 9 (1.59%) SQL
7 8 (1.41%) Go
7 8 (1.41%) Kusto Query Language
8 4 (0.71%) Search Processing Language
9 3 (0.53%) Perl
10 2 (0.35%) C#
11 1 (0.18%) JavaScript
11 1 (0.18%) Korn
11 1 (0.18%) PHP
11 1 (0.18%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.18%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 96 (16.93%) Security Cleared
2 83 (14.64%) SC Cleared
3 77 (13.58%) CISSP
4 48 (8.47%) Degree
5 42 (7.41%) Cisco Certification
6 32 (5.64%) AWS Certification
7 29 (5.11%) CISM
8 23 (4.06%) Azure Certification
8 23 (4.06%) DV Cleared
9 22 (3.88%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 20 (3.53%) CCNP
11 17 (3.00%) CEH
12 16 (2.82%) CCSP
13 14 (2.47%) OSCP
14 12 (2.12%) GIAC
14 12 (2.12%) Microsoft Certification
15 11 (1.94%) CISA
16 9 (1.59%) Computer Science Degree
17 8 (1.41%) CCIE
17 8 (1.41%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 56 (9.88%) NIST
2 52 (9.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 23 (4.06%) PCI DSS
4 20 (3.53%) GDPR
5 14 (2.47%) Cyber Essentials
6 13 (2.29%) NCSC
7 11 (1.94%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 8 (1.41%) GRC
9 6 (1.06%) HIPAA
9 6 (1.06%) NIST 800
10 4 (0.71%) ISO 31000
10 4 (0.71%) ISO 9001
10 4 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 27005
11 3 (0.53%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 3 (0.53%) SOC 2
12 2 (0.35%) COBIT
12 2 (0.35%) JSP 440
12 2 (0.35%) QA
12 2 (0.35%) SLA
13 1 (0.18%) RMADS
System Software
1 45 (7.94%) Active Directory
2 23 (4.06%) Docker
3 11 (1.94%) Virtual Machines
4 10 (1.76%) VMware Infrastructure
5 7 (1.23%) Hyper-V
5 7 (1.23%) NFS
6 5 (0.88%) vSphere
7 4 (0.71%) ISA Server
7 4 (0.71%) Virtual Servers
7 4 (0.71%) VMware NSX
8 3 (0.53%) Firmware
9 2 (0.35%) Squid
9 2 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.18%) RACF
Systems Management
1 79 (13.93%) Kubernetes
2 26 (4.59%) Ansible
3 18 (3.17%) Progress Chef
4 13 (2.29%) Microsoft Intune
5 12 (2.12%) FortiGate
6 10 (1.76%) Single Sign-On
7 8 (1.41%) Grafana
8 6 (1.06%) Istio
9 5 (0.88%) CASB
9 5 (0.88%) linkerd
10 3 (0.53%) QRadar
11 2 (0.35%) Prometheus
11 2 (0.35%) SCCM
12 1 (0.18%) Argo
12 1 (0.18%) CSIRT
12 1 (0.18%) Host Intrusion Detection System
12 1 (0.18%) McAfee ePO
12 1 (0.18%) Nessus
12 1 (0.18%) Network Intrusion Detection System
12 1 (0.18%) VxRail
Vendors
1 137 (24.16%) Microsoft
2 87 (15.34%) Cisco
3 71 (12.52%) Palo Alto
4 55 (9.70%) F5
5 48 (8.47%) Zscaler
6 40 (7.05%) CrowdStrike
7 36 (6.35%) CheckPoint
7 36 (6.35%) Splunk
8 30 (5.29%) Fortinet
9 24 (4.23%) CyberArk
10 23 (4.06%) Google
11 20 (3.53%) Red Hat
12 18 (3.17%) ServiceNow
13 17 (3.00%) VMware
14 16 (2.82%) Blue Coat
15 14 (2.47%) Juniper
16 13 (2.29%) Qualys
17 12 (2.12%) BeyondTrust
18 11 (1.94%) Netskope
19 10 (1.76%) AlgoSec