Incident Response Job Trends

Incident Response
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring Incident Response skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 17 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 170 241 286
Rank change year-on-year +71 +45 +52
Permanent jobs citing Incident Response 1,283 656 794
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 1.20% 1.31% 0.96%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.63% 1.47% 1.19%
Number of salaries quoted 881 505 575
10th Percentile £37,500 £42,000 £45,000
25th Percentile £50,468 £51,250 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £71,991 £65,000 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year +10.76% - +4.00%
75th Percentile £88,750 £80,000 £82,500
90th Percentile £102,500 £95,000 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £57,500 £55,000 £56,000
% change year-on-year +4.55% -1.79% +1.82%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Incident Response falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 78,635 44,750 66,977
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.41% 89.19% 80.88%
Number of salaries quoted 54,192 25,377 43,044
10th Percentile £30,780 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,750 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.71%
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,750 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +15.79% -5.00% -9.09%

Incident Response
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Incident Response relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Incident Response job vacancy trend in the UK

Incident Response
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Incident Response.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Incident Response

Incident Response
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Incident Response over the 6 months to 17 August 2026.

Salary histogram for Incident Response in the UK

Incident Response
Top 17 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Incident Response within the UK over the 6 months to 17 August 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England +68 1,147 £72,500 +11.54% 417
UK excluding London +58 670 £57,500 +4.55% 315
London +44 548 £85,000 +21.43% 190
Work from Home +68 428 £72,500 +7.41% 200
South East +36 204 £57,750 +2.21% 103
North of England +19 156 £52,500 -12.50% 81
Midlands +15 108 £65,000 +23.81% 37
North West +34 82 £50,000 -13.04% 50
West Midlands -4 65 £67,500 +28.57% 23
East of England +20 64 £60,100 +26.53% 18
Yorkshire -10 60 £53,000 -11.67% 18
South West -30 59 £65,000 +1.96% 40
Wales -27 44 £53,171 -3.33% 14
East Midlands +10 43 £60,000 +14.29% 14
Scotland +7 30 £71,991 +59.98% 16
North East -54 14 £64,746 -5.82% 14
Northern Ireland -70 7 £42,500 -11.74% 10

Incident Response
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 36 (2.81%) Microsoft Exchange
2 34 (2.65%) SharePoint
3 11 (0.86%) Confluence
4 7 (0.55%) Apache Spark
5 4 (0.31%) WordPress
6 3 (0.23%) IIS
7 2 (0.16%) Apache Airflow
7 2 (0.16%) Apache Pulsar
7 2 (0.16%) CMS
7 2 (0.16%) Headless CMS
7 2 (0.16%) nginx
8 1 (0.078%) Apache
8 1 (0.078%) WebLogic
8 1 (0.078%) WebSphere
Applications
1 7 (0.55%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.23%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (0.16%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.16%) Trello
4 1 (0.078%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 12 (0.94%) FLEXCUBE
2 4 (0.31%) Dynamics NAV
3 3 (0.23%) Dynamics AX
4 2 (0.16%) Distributed Ledger
5 1 (0.078%) SAP EHS
5 1 (0.078%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.078%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 435 (33.90%) Azure
2 320 (24.94%) AWS
3 180 (14.03%) Microsoft 365
4 114 (8.89%) Entra ID
5 111 (8.65%) GCP
6 88 (6.86%) SaaS
7 68 (5.30%) GitHub
8 57 (4.44%) Azure Sentinel
9 48 (3.74%) GitHub Actions
10 46 (3.59%) Power Platform
11 45 (3.51%) AWS CloudFormation
12 32 (2.49%) Azure DevOps
13 31 (2.42%) Serverless
14 29 (2.26%) Mimecast
15 26 (2.03%) Cloud Computing
15 26 (2.03%) Microsoft Purview
16 25 (1.95%) Amazon S3
16 25 (1.95%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 22 (1.71%) AWS Lambda
18 21 (1.64%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 226 (17.61%) Firewall
2 177 (13.80%) Network Security
3 91 (7.09%) VPN
4 85 (6.63%) DNS
4 85 (6.63%) TCP/IP
5 67 (5.22%) WAN
6 49 (3.82%) LAN
7 46 (3.59%) DHCP
8 30 (2.34%) Wi-Fi
9 29 (2.26%) Intrusion Detection
10 23 (1.79%) VLAN
11 19 (1.48%) HTTP
12 17 (1.33%) SSL
13 15 (1.17%) Broadband
13 15 (1.17%) Internet
13 15 (1.17%) SD-WAN
14 13 (1.01%) Cisco ISE
14 13 (1.01%) IPsec
15 11 (0.86%) VoIP
16 10 (0.78%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 39 (3.04%) Power BI
2 26 (2.03%) SQL Server
3 22 (1.71%) Amazon RDS
4 21 (1.64%) Big Data
5 13 (1.01%) MongoDB
5 13 (1.01%) PostgreSQL
6 11 (0.86%) Oracle Database
7 10 (0.78%) MySQL
8 9 (0.70%) Redis
9 8 (0.62%) Azure SQL Database
9 8 (0.62%) NoSQL
10 6 (0.47%) Data Lake
11 4 (0.31%) Amazon Aurora
11 4 (0.31%) DynamoDB
12 3 (0.23%) Apache Iceberg
12 3 (0.23%) Flink
12 3 (0.23%) Hadoop
13 2 (0.16%) Apache Cassandra
13 2 (0.16%) Metadata
14 1 (0.078%) Neo4j
Development Applications
1 26 (2.03%) Git
2 23 (1.79%) JIRA
3 18 (1.40%) Jenkins
4 15 (1.17%) GitLab
5 11 (0.86%) Bitbucket
6 9 (0.70%) TeamCity
7 8 (0.62%) Burp Suite
8 7 (0.55%) Metasploit
9 4 (0.31%) Claude Code
10 3 (0.23%) GCC
11 2 (0.16%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 2 (0.16%) git-flow
11 2 (0.16%) Gradle
11 2 (0.16%) NUnit
11 2 (0.16%) rollup.js
11 2 (0.16%) Snyk
11 2 (0.16%) Terragrunt
11 2 (0.16%) Xcode
11 2 (0.16%) Yeoman
12 1 (0.078%) Vite
General
1 406 (31.64%) Social Skills
2 238 (18.55%) Finance
3 210 (16.37%) Analytical Skills
4 95 (7.40%) Legal
5 75 (5.85%) Banking
6 71 (5.53%) Law
7 67 (5.22%) Public Sector
8 59 (4.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 56 (4.36%) Retail
10 47 (3.66%) Influencing Skills
11 42 (3.27%) Aerospace
12 39 (3.04%) Manufacturing
13 25 (1.95%) Military
14 21 (1.64%) Telecoms
15 20 (1.56%) Financial Institution
16 17 (1.33%) Documentation Skills
17 14 (1.09%) Advertising
17 14 (1.09%) Back Office
18 12 (0.94%) Organisational Skills
19 11 (0.86%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 208 (16.21%) Senior
2 207 (16.13%) Analyst
3 176 (13.72%) Lead
4 148 (11.54%) Security Analyst
5 118 (9.20%) Security Manager
6 94 (7.33%) Security Engineer
7 86 (6.70%) Cybersecurity Analyst
8 69 (5.38%) Architect
9 62 (4.83%) Cybersecurity Manager
10 54 (4.21%) Consultant
11 52 (4.05%) Senior Analyst
12 47 (3.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 42 (3.27%) Senior Security Analyst
14 38 (2.96%) Information Manager
14 38 (2.96%) Information Security Manager
15 37 (2.88%) Cloud Engineer
16 35 (2.73%) SOC Analyst
17 34 (2.65%) Operations Manager
18 33 (2.57%) IT Analyst
19 32 (2.49%) Site Reliability Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (2.03%) ModSecurity
2 24 (1.87%) OpenID
2 24 (1.87%) SAML
3 21 (1.64%) OAuth
4 20 (1.56%) LDAP
5 18 (1.40%) React
6 16 (1.25%) .NET
6 16 (1.25%) Node.js
7 13 (1.01%) REST
8 12 (0.94%) AWS CDK
9 11 (0.86%) Kafka
9 11 (0.86%) Ruby on Rails
10 10 (0.78%) Elastic Stack
11 9 (0.70%) eBPF
11 9 (0.70%) RESTful
12 8 (0.62%) OpenTelemetry
12 8 (0.62%) XML
13 7 (0.55%) .NET Core
13 7 (0.55%) FIX Protocol
13 7 (0.55%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 225 (17.54%) Security Posture
2 124 (9.66%) Cyber Threat
3 118 (9.20%) Cloud Native
4 109 (8.50%) Management Information System
5 75 (5.85%) Security Operations Centre
6 69 (5.38%) Cyber Defence
7 67 (5.22%) Onboarding
8 54 (4.21%) Distributed Systems
9 49 (3.82%) Data Centre
10 37 (2.88%) Enterprise Software
11 34 (2.65%) Self-Motivation
12 31 (2.42%) Social Media
13 27 (2.10%) Cyberattack
13 27 (2.10%) Product Ownership
14 26 (2.03%) Cyber Security Posture
15 23 (1.79%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
15 23 (1.79%) Operational Technology
16 22 (1.71%) PKI
17 21 (1.64%) CSOC
18 20 (1.56%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 160 (12.47%) Windows
2 149 (11.61%) Linux
3 74 (5.77%) Windows Server
4 46 (3.59%) Unix
5 20 (1.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 17 (1.33%) Mac OS
7 13 (1.01%) Ubuntu
7 13 (1.01%) VMS
8 12 (0.94%) AIX
8 12 (0.94%) Oracle Linux
9 7 (0.55%) CentOS
10 5 (0.39%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.39%) Windows Server 2016
10 5 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.23%) Debian
11 3 (0.23%) Kali Linux
12 2 (0.16%) Amazon Linux
12 2 (0.16%) Android
12 2 (0.16%) Apple iOS
13 1 (0.078%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 564 (43.96%) Cybersecurity
2 393 (30.63%) Continuous Improvement
3 361 (28.14%) SIEM
4 343 (26.73%) Security Operations
5 320 (24.94%) Vulnerability Management
6 295 (22.99%) Information Security
7 244 (19.02%) Problem-Solving
8 231 (18.00%) Cloud Security
9 224 (17.46%) CI/CD
10 222 (17.30%) Risk Management
11 197 (15.35%) Mentoring
12 187 (14.58%) Incident Management
13 184 (14.34%) Infrastructure as Code
14 180 (14.03%) Observability
15 179 (13.95%) Disaster Recovery
16 177 (13.80%) DevOps
17 173 (13.48%) Threat Detection
18 163 (12.70%) Threat Intelligence
19 150 (11.69%) Root Cause Analysis
20 149 (11.61%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 204 (15.90%) Python
2 168 (13.09%) PowerShell
3 76 (5.92%) Bash
4 71 (5.53%) SQL
5 42 (3.27%) Kusto Query Language
6 25 (1.95%) Java
7 24 (1.87%) Go
8 23 (1.79%) C#
9 22 (1.71%) Bicep
10 20 (1.56%) JavaScript
11 17 (1.33%) Shell Script
12 14 (1.09%) Ruby
13 13 (1.01%) TypeScript
14 11 (0.86%) Korn
14 11 (0.86%) PL/SQL
15 9 (0.70%) PHP
15 9 (0.70%) Search Processing Language
16 7 (0.55%) C
17 4 (0.31%) Objective-C
17 4 (0.31%) Rust
Qualifications
1 257 (20.03%) CISSP
2 198 (15.43%) Security Cleared
3 170 (13.25%) Degree
4 159 (12.39%) CISM
5 129 (10.05%) SC Cleared
6 90 (7.01%) Cisco Certification
7 81 (6.31%) CompTIA Security+
8 65 (5.07%) DV Cleared
9 51 (3.98%) GIAC
10 50 (3.90%) CEH
11 48 (3.74%) AWS Certification
12 46 (3.59%) Azure Certification
13 44 (3.43%) CCNP
14 42 (3.27%) GCIH
14 42 (3.27%) SANS
15 41 (3.20%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 37 (2.88%) CCSP
17 36 (2.81%) Computer Science Degree
18 33 (2.57%) CISA
19 32 (2.49%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 343 (26.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 230 (17.93%) NIST
3 164 (12.78%) GDPR
4 143 (11.15%) Cyber Essentials
5 73 (5.69%) GRC
6 66 (5.14%) SLA
7 64 (4.99%) PCI DSS
8 53 (4.13%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 51 (3.98%) SOC 2
10 26 (2.03%) NCSC
11 24 (1.87%) QA
12 19 (1.48%) COBIT
13 14 (1.09%) Accessibility
14 12 (0.94%) Data Quality
14 12 (0.94%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
15 11 (0.86%) HIPAA
15 11 (0.86%) NIST 800
16 10 (0.78%) Actionable Recommendations
17 7 (0.55%) SOC 1
18 6 (0.47%) ISO 22301
System Software
1 105 (8.18%) Active Directory
2 67 (5.22%) Docker
3 50 (3.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 25 (1.95%) Hyper-V
5 17 (1.33%) vSphere
6 14 (1.09%) Virtual Machines
7 12 (0.94%) Oracle RAC
8 6 (0.47%) Firmware
9 4 (0.31%) EMC RecoverPoint
9 4 (0.31%) KVM
10 3 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
11 2 (0.16%) ProxySG
12 1 (0.078%) Ceph
12 1 (0.078%) Embedded Firmware
12 1 (0.078%) IAG
12 1 (0.078%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 160 (12.47%) Terraform
2 116 (9.04%) Kubernetes
3 50 (3.90%) Ansible
3 50 (3.90%) Microsoft Intune
4 33 (2.57%) Single Sign-On
5 31 (2.42%) Grafana
6 22 (1.71%) Prometheus
6 22 (1.71%) QRadar
7 19 (1.48%) Nagios
8 15 (1.17%) Nessus
9 11 (0.86%) Data Guard
9 11 (0.86%) Oracle RMAN
10 10 (0.78%) Cilium
10 10 (0.78%) Kibana
11 9 (0.70%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
12 8 (0.62%) SCCM
13 7 (0.55%) Cisco Prime
14 6 (0.47%) Argo
14 6 (0.47%) Proxmox
14 6 (0.47%) VxRail
Vendors
1 348 (27.12%) Microsoft
2 87 (6.78%) Splunk
3 83 (6.47%) Cisco
4 70 (5.46%) VMware
5 68 (5.30%) CrowdStrike
6 58 (4.52%) Palo Alto
7 35 (2.73%) Google
7 35 (2.73%) Qualys
7 35 (2.73%) ServiceNow
8 32 (2.49%) Databricks
9 31 (2.42%) Oracle
10 30 (2.34%) Fortinet
10 30 (2.34%) Tenable
10 30 (2.34%) Zscaler
11 26 (2.03%) Meraki
12 21 (1.64%) Sophos
13 19 (1.48%) iManage
13 19 (1.48%) Okta
13 19 (1.48%) Rapid7
14 16 (1.25%) ForgeRock