Security Operations Contracts

Security Operations (SecOps)
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Security Operations skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited Security Operations over the 6 months to 11 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
11 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 231 302 386
Rank change year-on-year +71 +84 +48
Contract jobs citing Security Operations 437 497 583
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 1.02% 0.86% 0.67%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.18% 0.96% 0.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 310 347 407
10th Percentile £425 £413 £425
25th Percentile £500 £513 £489
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £606 £600
Median % change year-on-year -0.99% +1.00% +14.34%
75th Percentile £688 £718 £725
90th Percentile £753 £818 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £570 £610 £575
% change year-on-year -6.56% +6.09% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 4 5
10th Percentile - £44.86 £27.26
25th Percentile - £63.11 £36.25
Median hourly rate £11.25 £84.50 £41.95
Median % change year-on-year -86.69% +101.43% +16.53%
75th Percentile - £95.31 £66.00
90th Percentile - £98.13 £76.05
UK excluding London median hourly rate £11.25 £92.50 £61.23
% change year-on-year -87.84% +51.08% +410.21%

All Process and Methodology Skills
UK

Security Operations is in the Processes and Methodologies category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 37,094 51,920 79,222
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.26% 89.82% 90.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,889 35,981 55,625
10th Percentile £300 £325 £343
25th Percentile £413 £438 £426
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +3.77% +8.72%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% +8.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,438 1,716 1,886
10th Percentile £12.75 £11.00 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.00 £16.24 £15.50
Median hourly rate £36.50 £36.40 £25.68
Median % change year-on-year +0.29% +41.73% +4.82%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £49.50
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.06 £35.00 £20.00
% change year-on-year +8.74% +75.00% -6.98%

Security Operations
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Security Operations as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Security Operations in the UK

Security Operations
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Security Operations.

Daily rate trend for Security Operations in the UK

Security Operations
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Security Operations over the 6 months to 11 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Security Operations in the UK

Security Operations
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Security Operations.

Hourly rate trend for Security Operations in the UK

Security Operations
Top 14 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Security Operations within the UK over the 6 months to 11 May 2024. 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 +61 392 £600 -2.04% 179
UK excluding London +81 271 £570 -6.56% 127
London +4 130 £650 +4.00% 73
South West +90 126 £570 -8.80% 14
Work from Home +37 109 £525 -19.23% 89
South East +37 50 £533 -14.72% 35
Midlands +27 41 £625 -2.95% 24
West Midlands +20 38 £634 -2.40% 15
Scotland +48 23 £500 +9.89% 16
East of England +6 17 £650 +8.33% 12
North of England -23 15 £625 +3.14% 23
North West -36 9 £625 +3.14% 9
Yorkshire +11 6 £784 +43.15% 12
East Midlands +15 3 £567 -7.65% 8

Security Operations
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 14 (3.20%) CMS
2 5 (1.14%) Confluence
3 1 (0.23%) SharePoint
Applications
1 5 (1.14%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.23%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 3 (0.69%) Dynamics GP
1 3 (0.69%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.23%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 74 (16.93%) Azure
2 29 (6.64%) Azure Sentinel
3 27 (6.18%) AWS
4 22 (5.03%) Microsoft 365
5 16 (3.66%) Power Platform
6 6 (1.37%) IaaS
7 5 (1.14%) Entra ID
7 5 (1.14%) GCP
7 5 (1.14%) SaaS
8 4 (0.92%) Amazon GuardDuty
8 4 (0.92%) PaaS
9 3 (0.69%) Mimecast
10 2 (0.46%) AWS CloudTrail
10 2 (0.46%) Azure DevOps
10 2 (0.46%) Azure Stack
10 2 (0.46%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 2 (0.46%) GitHub
10 2 (0.46%) Microsoft Purview
11 1 (0.23%) Akamai
11 1 (0.23%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 51 (11.67%) Firewall
1 51 (11.67%) Network Security
2 24 (5.49%) Intrusion Detection
3 14 (3.20%) TCP/IP
4 7 (1.60%) DNS
5 4 (0.92%) LAN
5 4 (0.92%) tcpdump
5 4 (0.92%) Wireshark
6 3 (0.69%) Cisco ISE
6 3 (0.69%) DHCP
6 3 (0.69%) Internet
6 3 (0.69%) SSL
6 3 (0.69%) VPN
6 3 (0.69%) WAN
7 2 (0.46%) Broadband
7 2 (0.46%) HTTP
7 2 (0.46%) SD-WAN
7 2 (0.46%) VoIP
7 2 (0.46%) Wireless
8 1 (0.23%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (2.97%) Big Data
2 11 (2.52%) Power BI
3 9 (2.06%) Elasticsearch
4 3 (0.69%) Apache Hive
4 3 (0.69%) Hadoop
4 3 (0.69%) Tableau
5 2 (0.46%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
5 2 (0.46%) Azure SQL Database
5 2 (0.46%) Data Warehouse
5 2 (0.46%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.23%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 5 (1.14%) JIRA
2 4 (0.92%) Git
2 4 (0.92%) Jenkins
3 3 (0.69%) Burp Suite
3 3 (0.69%) IDA Disassembler
3 3 (0.69%) Metasploit
3 3 (0.69%) Rational DOORS
4 2 (0.46%) Bitbucket
4 2 (0.46%) GitLab
General
1 78 (17.85%) Analytical Skills
2 72 (16.48%) Social Skills
3 55 (12.59%) Finance
4 38 (8.70%) Public Sector
5 28 (6.41%) Banking
6 16 (3.66%) Manufacturing
7 12 (2.75%) Telecoms
8 11 (2.52%) Military
9 7 (1.60%) Financial Institution
9 7 (1.60%) Influencing Skills
10 6 (1.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 5 (1.14%) Law
11 5 (1.14%) Legal
12 3 (0.69%) Games
12 3 (0.69%) Marketing
13 2 (0.46%) Electronics
13 2 (0.46%) Retail Banking
14 1 (0.23%) Back Office
14 1 (0.23%) Health Technology
14 1 (0.23%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 167 (38.22%) Analyst
2 97 (22.20%) SOC Analyst
3 39 (8.92%) Security Analyst
3 39 (8.92%) Senior
4 37 (8.47%) Architect
5 36 (8.24%) SOC Engineer
6 33 (7.55%) Threat Intelligence Analyst
7 30 (6.86%) Lead
8 29 (6.64%) Security Engineer
9 23 (5.26%) Security Specialist
10 21 (4.81%) Security Manager
11 20 (4.58%) Cyber Threat Analyst
11 20 (4.58%) Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst
12 18 (4.12%) Security Architect
13 16 (3.66%) Senior Analyst
14 15 (3.43%) Consultant
14 15 (3.43%) Operations Analyst
14 15 (3.43%) Security Operations Analyst
15 14 (3.20%) SOC Manager
16 13 (2.97%) Cybersecurity Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (2.97%) Apache NiFi
2 9 (2.06%) Elastic Stack
3 8 (1.83%) AngularJS
3 8 (1.83%) CSS
3 8 (1.83%) XML
4 7 (1.60%) HTML
5 6 (1.37%) SOAP
6 5 (1.14%) JSON
7 4 (0.92%) Ajax
7 4 (0.92%) LDAP
7 4 (0.92%) Web Services
8 3 (0.69%) OLE
8 3 (0.69%) SAML
8 3 (0.69%) YAML
9 2 (0.46%) PySpark
10 1 (0.23%) .NET
10 1 (0.23%) JDBC
10 1 (0.23%) OAuth
10 1 (0.23%) OAuth2
10 1 (0.23%) Regular Expression
Miscellaneous
1 157 (35.93%) Security Operations Centre
2 81 (18.54%) Cyber Threat
3 77 (17.62%) Management Information System
4 49 (11.21%) CSOC
5 45 (10.30%) Security Posture
6 43 (9.84%) Cyber Defence
7 23 (5.26%) Cyberattack
8 22 (5.03%) Cyber Kill Chain
9 15 (3.43%) Distributed Applications
10 13 (2.97%) Onboarding
10 13 (2.97%) Operational Technology
11 11 (2.52%) CMDB
11 11 (2.52%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 8 (1.83%) CESG
13 6 (1.37%) Cloud Security Posture
14 4 (0.92%) Cloud Native
14 4 (0.92%) Data Protection Act
14 4 (0.92%) PKI
15 3 (0.69%) Enterprise Software
15 3 (0.69%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 77 (17.62%) Windows
2 58 (13.27%) Linux
3 15 (3.43%) Unix
4 11 (2.52%) Android
4 11 (2.52%) Apple iOS
5 10 (2.29%) Windows Server
6 3 (0.69%) Kali Linux
7 2 (0.46%) Mac OS
8 1 (0.23%) Mac OS X
8 1 (0.23%) Oracle Linux
8 1 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.23%) Ubuntu
8 1 (0.23%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 272 (62.24%) Cybersecurity
2 200 (45.77%) SIEM
3 194 (44.39%) Incident Response
4 128 (29.29%) Information Security
5 109 (24.94%) Threat Intelligence
6 89 (20.37%) Vulnerability Management
7 83 (18.99%) Cyber Threat Intelligence
8 68 (15.56%) MITRE ATT&CK
9 63 (14.42%) Use Case
10 57 (13.04%) Analytics
11 56 (12.81%) Problem-Solving
12 48 (10.98%) SOAR
13 47 (10.76%) Threat Detection
14 42 (9.61%) Agile
15 41 (9.38%) Incident Management
16 40 (9.15%) Continuous Improvement
16 40 (9.15%) Security Architecture
17 38 (8.70%) Penetration Testing
18 34 (7.78%) Data Security
18 34 (7.78%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 31 (7.09%) PowerShell
2 21 (4.81%) Python
3 17 (3.89%) Kusto Query Language
4 13 (2.97%) JavaScript
5 6 (1.37%) Bash
6 4 (0.92%) Search Processing Language
7 3 (0.69%) Java
7 3 (0.69%) Perl
7 3 (0.69%) SQL
8 2 (0.46%) C
8 2 (0.46%) C++
8 2 (0.46%) Go
8 2 (0.46%) Ruby
8 2 (0.46%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 192 (43.94%) Security Cleared
2 122 (27.92%) DV Cleared
3 71 (16.25%) CISSP
4 67 (15.33%) Degree
4 67 (15.33%) SC Cleared
5 34 (7.78%) CISM
6 25 (5.72%) SANS
7 23 (5.26%) CEH
7 23 (5.26%) Computer Science Degree
8 21 (4.81%) CompTIA Security+
9 19 (4.35%) Microsoft Certification
10 13 (2.97%) Azure Certification
11 11 (2.52%) GIAC
12 10 (2.29%) ITIL Certification
13 9 (2.06%) CISA
14 8 (1.83%) CISMP
14 8 (1.83%) ISACA
14 8 (1.83%) SSCP
15 6 (1.37%) BPSS Clearance
15 6 (1.37%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 51 (11.67%) NIST
2 41 (9.38%) GDPR
3 30 (6.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 18 (4.12%) NCSC
4 18 (4.12%) PCI DSS
5 17 (3.89%) NIST 800
6 13 (2.97%) Actionable Recommendations
7 11 (2.52%) HIPAA
8 6 (1.37%) Cyber Essentials
8 6 (1.37%) GRC
9 5 (1.14%) Data Quality
10 4 (0.92%) Disclosure Scotland
10 4 (0.92%) QA
10 4 (0.92%) SLA
11 2 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 2 (0.46%) RMADS
System Software
1 21 (4.81%) Active Directory
2 7 (1.60%) Virtual Machines
3 4 (0.92%) Hyper-V
4 3 (0.69%) Docker
4 3 (0.69%) Snort
4 3 (0.69%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.46%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 12 (2.75%) Kibana
2 11 (2.52%) Terraform
3 10 (2.29%) Nessus
4 9 (2.06%) logstash
5 8 (1.83%) Kubernetes
6 7 (1.60%) CSIRT
7 6 (1.37%) SCCM
8 5 (1.14%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
9 4 (0.92%) Microsoft Intune
9 4 (0.92%) QRadar
9 4 (0.92%) Single Sign-On
10 3 (0.69%) Ansible
11 2 (0.46%) CASB
11 2 (0.46%) Network Intrusion Detection System
11 2 (0.46%) WSUS
12 1 (0.23%) FortiGate
12 1 (0.23%) Grafana
12 1 (0.23%) Prometheus
12 1 (0.23%) Puppet
12 1 (0.23%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 111 (25.40%) Microsoft
2 44 (10.07%) Splunk
3 31 (7.09%) LogRhythm
4 29 (6.64%) Qualys
5 19 (4.35%) Varonis
6 16 (3.66%) Darktrace
6 16 (3.66%) Forcepoint
6 16 (3.66%) ServiceNow
7 15 (3.43%) FireEye
8 13 (2.97%) Red Hat
9 10 (2.29%) Cisco
9 10 (2.29%) CrowdStrike
10 7 (1.60%) Palo Alto
10 7 (1.60%) Virgin Media
11 4 (0.92%) ArcSight
11 4 (0.92%) ForeScout
11 4 (0.92%) Oracle
11 4 (0.92%) Rapid7
11 4 (0.92%) SAP
11 4 (0.92%) VMware