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 15 October 2026.

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

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 255 220 207
Rank change year-on-year -35 -13 +44
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 585 422 459
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.06% 1.27% 1.22%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.15% 1.40% 1.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 358 248 332
10th Percentile £413 £380 £400
25th Percentile £461 £421 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £621 £638 £635
90th Percentile £700 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -1.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 11 4
10th Percentile - £82.50 £42.38
25th Percentile £73.75 £84.75 £44.06
Median hourly rate £85.20 £91.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.37% +65.45% -34.05%
75th Percentile £89.68 £91.50 £70.63
90th Percentile £92.11 - £76.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.40 £91.00 £72.50
% change year-on-year -6.15% +25.52% -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 50,841 30,184 35,017
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.94% 90.90% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,834 19,073 21,148
10th Percentile £325 £275 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4,158 1,652 1,437
10th Percentile £14.31 £13.80 £15.09
25th Percentile £19.33 £17.30 £20.50
Median hourly rate £41.56 £25.15 £41.27
Median % change year-on-year +65.23% -39.05% -8.30%
75th Percentile £67.50 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.30 £68.52 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.06 £25.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +64.24% -41.18% -4.49%

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 15 October 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 15 October 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 15 October 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 -24 547 £525 - 182
UK excluding London -14 284 £525 +5.00% 151
London -36 260 £543 -1.36% 55
Work from Home -28 185 £540 +8.00% 67
North of England +18 148 £540 +8.00% 35
North West +23 121 £533 +11.04% 24
South East -31 59 £500 -2.44% 42
Midlands -16 52 £500 +28.21% 22
West Midlands -11 49 £500 +28.21% 14
East of England -33 30 £525 +5.00% 10
Yorkshire -25 24 £600 +11.11% 7
South West -45 14 £525 -2.23% 27
Scotland -34 7 £618 +17.62% 11
East Midlands -12 3 - - 8
Wales -14 2 £733 +22.08% 6
North East -35 2 - - 4

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

For the 6 months to 15 October 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 (33.85%) Azure
2 185 (31.62%) Cloud Security
3 179 (30.60%) Cybersecurity
4 155 (26.50%) AWS
5 149 (25.47%) Microsoft
6 132 (22.56%) SIEM
7 125 (21.37%) Python
8 117 (20.00%) Network Security
9 111 (18.97%) Firewall
10 108 (18.46%) Terraform
11 103 (17.61%) Incident Response
12 102 (17.44%) Security Cleared
13 100 (17.09%) PowerShell
14 99 (16.92%) Security Operations
15 93 (15.90%) CI/CD
15 93 (15.90%) GCP
16 90 (15.38%) SC Cleared
17 83 (14.19%) Kubernetes
18 82 (14.02%) Cisco
19 77 (13.16%) CISSP
19 77 (13.16%) Infrastructure as Code
20 72 (12.31%) DevOps
21 71 (12.14%) Windows
22 70 (11.97%) Palo Alto
22 70 (11.97%) Vulnerability Management
23 69 (11.79%) Threat Detection
24 67 (11.45%) DevSecOps
25 65 (11.11%) VPN
26 63 (10.77%) NIST
27 62 (10.60%) AI

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 13 (2.22%) IIS
2 7 (1.20%) Confluence
3 2 (0.34%) Apache
3 2 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.34%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.34%) nginx
4 1 (0.17%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 2 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.17%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.17%) Microsoft Project
2 1 (0.17%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (0.68%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.34%) Maximo
3 1 (0.17%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 198 (33.85%) Azure
2 155 (26.50%) AWS
3 93 (15.90%) GCP
4 58 (9.91%) Entra ID
5 43 (7.35%) Microsoft 365
6 41 (7.01%) Azure Sentinel
7 35 (5.98%) Microsoft Purview
8 27 (4.62%) AWS CloudFormation
9 21 (3.59%) GitHub
10 16 (2.74%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 14 (2.39%) Azure DevOps
11 14 (2.39%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 12 (2.05%) Power Platform
13 11 (1.88%) Akamai
13 11 (1.88%) Azure Monitor
13 11 (1.88%) SaaS
13 11 (1.88%) Serverless
14 10 (1.71%) AWS CloudTrail
14 10 (1.71%) Azure AKS
14 10 (1.71%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 117 (20.00%) Network Security
2 111 (18.97%) Firewall
3 65 (11.11%) VPN
4 43 (7.35%) DNS
5 31 (5.30%) BGP
6 26 (4.44%) SSL
7 25 (4.27%) WAN
8 23 (3.93%) DMZ
9 20 (3.42%) HTTP
9 20 (3.42%) Multicast
10 18 (3.08%) TCP/IP
11 16 (2.74%) Internet
11 16 (2.74%) Intrusion Detection
12 15 (2.56%) Wireless
13 14 (2.39%) Cisco ISE
14 13 (2.22%) SD-WAN
15 12 (2.05%) IPsec
16 10 (1.71%) OSPF
17 9 (1.54%) Cisco ASA
17 9 (1.54%) Cisco IPT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (1.20%) Power BI
2 4 (0.68%) SQL Server
3 3 (0.51%) MongoDB
3 3 (0.51%) PostgreSQL
4 2 (0.34%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (0.34%) Big Data
4 2 (0.34%) DynamoDB
4 2 (0.34%) SAP HANA
5 1 (0.17%) Apache Cassandra
5 1 (0.17%) BigQuery
5 1 (0.17%) Data Lake
5 1 (0.17%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (0.17%) Delta Lake
5 1 (0.17%) Elasticsearch
5 1 (0.17%) Metadata
5 1 (0.17%) NoSQL
5 1 (0.17%) RDBMS
5 1 (0.17%) Redis
5 1 (0.17%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 10 (1.71%) Git
2 7 (1.20%) JIRA
3 6 (1.03%) GitLab
3 6 (1.03%) Jenkins
4 3 (0.51%) Burp Suite
5 2 (0.34%) Claude Code
5 2 (0.34%) JUnit
5 2 (0.34%) Snyk
6 1 (0.17%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 1 (0.17%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.17%) Maven
6 1 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 104 (17.78%) Social Skills
2 101 (17.26%) Finance
3 47 (8.03%) Analytical Skills
4 43 (7.35%) Banking
5 21 (3.59%) Public Sector
6 16 (2.74%) Investment Banking
7 15 (2.56%) Documentation Skills
8 10 (1.71%) Military
8 10 (1.71%) Presentation Skills
9 8 (1.37%) Manufacturing
10 7 (1.20%) Back Office
10 7 (1.20%) Marketing
10 7 (1.20%) Retail
11 6 (1.03%) Influencing Skills
12 5 (0.85%) Legal
13 4 (0.68%) Aerospace
13 4 (0.68%) Financial Institution
13 4 (0.68%) Health Technology
13 4 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 4 (0.68%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 108 (18.46%) Terraform
2 18 (3.08%) JSON
3 15 (2.56%) REST
4 10 (1.71%) OAuth
5 9 (1.54%) 802.1X
5 9 (1.54%) OpenID
5 9 (1.54%) Regular Expression
6 8 (1.37%) JWT
6 8 (1.37%) SAML
7 7 (1.20%) LDAP
8 6 (1.03%) OAuth2
9 5 (0.85%) ARM Templates
10 4 (0.68%) Azure Blueprints
10 4 (0.68%) Microsoft Graph
10 4 (0.68%) Model Context Protocol
11 3 (0.51%) AWS CDK
11 3 (0.51%) pytest
11 3 (0.51%) SLSA
11 3 (0.51%) SOAP
11 3 (0.51%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 97 (16.58%) Security Posture
2 63 (10.77%) Cloud Native
3 40 (6.84%) Management Information System
4 32 (5.47%) Cloud Security Posture
4 32 (5.47%) Onboarding
5 29 (4.96%) Cyber Threat
6 24 (4.10%) Enterprise Cloud
7 18 (3.08%) AI Agents
8 17 (2.91%) Cyber Defence
8 17 (2.91%) Data Centre
9 14 (2.39%) PKI
9 14 (2.39%) Security Operations Centre
10 13 (2.22%) Operational Technology
11 11 (1.88%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 10 (1.71%) Hybrid Cloud
13 9 (1.54%) Public Cloud
14 8 (1.37%) CCTV
14 8 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
14 8 (1.37%) Mobile App
15 6 (1.03%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 71 (12.14%) Windows
2 50 (8.55%) Linux
3 19 (3.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 17 (2.91%) Windows Server
5 11 (1.88%) Apple iOS
6 8 (1.37%) Android
7 5 (0.85%) Windows 10
8 4 (0.68%) macOS
9 3 (0.51%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.17%) Unix
10 1 (0.17%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 185 (31.62%) Cloud Security
2 179 (30.60%) Cybersecurity
3 132 (22.56%) SIEM
4 103 (17.61%) Incident Response
5 99 (16.92%) Security Operations
6 93 (15.90%) CI/CD
7 77 (13.16%) Infrastructure as Code
8 72 (12.31%) DevOps
9 70 (11.97%) Vulnerability Management
10 69 (11.79%) Threat Detection
11 67 (11.45%) DevSecOps
12 62 (10.60%) AI
12 62 (10.60%) Continuous Improvement
13 60 (10.26%) Security Architecture
14 59 (10.09%) Security Monitoring
14 59 (10.09%) Zero Trust
15 57 (9.74%) Problem-Solving
16 56 (9.57%) Identity Access Management
16 56 (9.57%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 56 (9.57%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 125 (21.37%) Python
2 100 (17.09%) PowerShell
3 60 (10.26%) Bash
4 25 (4.27%) Java
5 21 (3.59%) Bicep
6 12 (2.05%) SQL
7 10 (1.71%) Go
8 9 (1.54%) Kusto Query Language
9 4 (0.68%) Search Processing Language
10 3 (0.51%) C#
10 3 (0.51%) Perl
11 1 (0.17%) JavaScript
11 1 (0.17%) Korn
11 1 (0.17%) PHP
11 1 (0.17%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.17%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 102 (17.44%) Security Cleared
2 90 (15.38%) SC Cleared
3 77 (13.16%) CISSP
4 49 (8.38%) Degree
5 41 (7.01%) Cisco Certification
6 29 (4.96%) AWS Certification
7 28 (4.79%) CISM
8 25 (4.27%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 22 (3.76%) DV Cleared
10 21 (3.59%) Azure Certification
11 18 (3.08%) CCSP
12 16 (2.74%) CCNP
12 16 (2.74%) CEH
13 14 (2.39%) OSCP
14 13 (2.22%) GIAC
15 12 (2.05%) Microsoft Certification
16 11 (1.88%) CISA
17 9 (1.54%) CompTIA Security+
18 7 (1.20%) CCIE
18 7 (1.20%) GSEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 63 (10.77%) NIST
2 61 (10.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 30 (5.13%) PCI DSS
4 19 (3.25%) GDPR
5 15 (2.56%) NCSC
6 13 (2.22%) Cyber Essentials
7 10 (1.71%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 9 (1.54%) GRC
9 6 (1.03%) HIPAA
10 5 (0.85%) ISO 31000
10 5 (0.85%) ISO 9001
10 5 (0.85%) ISO/IEC 27005
10 5 (0.85%) NIST 800
10 5 (0.85%) SOC 2
11 3 (0.51%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 3 (0.51%) QA
12 2 (0.34%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 2 (0.34%) COBIT
12 2 (0.34%) Data Quality
12 2 (0.34%) JSP 440
System Software
1 54 (9.23%) Active Directory
2 25 (4.27%) Docker
3 12 (2.05%) Virtual Machines
4 9 (1.54%) VMware Infrastructure
5 7 (1.20%) Hyper-V
5 7 (1.20%) NFS
6 5 (0.85%) ISA Server
7 4 (0.68%) Firmware
8 3 (0.51%) vSphere
9 2 (0.34%) Squid
9 2 (0.34%) Virtual Servers
9 2 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.17%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 83 (14.19%) Kubernetes
2 26 (4.44%) Ansible
3 19 (3.25%) Progress Chef
4 15 (2.56%) Microsoft Intune
5 9 (1.54%) FortiGate
5 9 (1.54%) Single Sign-On
6 8 (1.37%) Grafana
7 7 (1.20%) Istio
8 6 (1.03%) CASB
9 5 (0.85%) linkerd
10 4 (0.68%) QRadar
11 2 (0.34%) Prometheus
11 2 (0.34%) SCCM
12 1 (0.17%) Argo
12 1 (0.17%) CSIRT
12 1 (0.17%) Host Intrusion Detection System
12 1 (0.17%) McAfee ePO
12 1 (0.17%) Nessus
12 1 (0.17%) Network Intrusion Detection System
12 1 (0.17%) VxRail
Vendors
1 149 (25.47%) Microsoft
2 82 (14.02%) Cisco
3 70 (11.97%) Palo Alto
4 48 (8.21%) F5
5 46 (7.86%) Zscaler
6 42 (7.18%) Splunk
7 39 (6.67%) CrowdStrike
8 32 (5.47%) CheckPoint
9 24 (4.10%) Google
9 24 (4.10%) ServiceNow
10 23 (3.93%) CyberArk
10 23 (3.93%) Fortinet
11 20 (3.42%) Red Hat
12 14 (2.39%) Blue Coat
12 14 (2.39%) Qualys
12 14 (2.39%) VMware
13 12 (2.05%) Juniper
14 10 (1.71%) AlgoSec
14 10 (1.71%) Netskope
15 9 (1.54%) Databricks