Network Security Engineer Job Trends

Network Security Engineer
UK

The median Network Security Engineer salary in the UK is £52,500 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 12 November 2025.

The table below compares current salary benchmarking and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 632 673 649
Rank change year-on-year +41 -24 +335
Permanent jobs requiring a Network Security Engineer 20 78 83
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.038% 0.12% 0.16%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.043% 0.12% 0.16%
Number of salaries quoted 17 63 72
10th Percentile £46,250 £51,250 £38,294
25th Percentile £46,875 £56,250 £42,313
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £60,000 £56,000
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% +7.14% -13.85%
75th Percentile £62,500 £70,963 £69,563
90th Percentile £74,500 £80,000 £73,850
UK excluding London median annual salary £48,750 £60,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year -18.75% +14.29% -4.55%

All Permanent IT Job Vacancies
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent 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 permanent jobs in our overall sample.

Permanent vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 47,047 63,901 50,390
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 89.87% 94.87% 95.50%
Number of salaries quoted 28,947 35,849 38,981
10th Percentile £28,250 £31,250 £31,500
25th Percentile £35,000 £42,500 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £52,500 £57,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% -4.17% -
75th Percentile £73,750 £75,000 £80,000
90th Percentile £92,500 £95,000 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £46,350 £50,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year -7.30% -4.76% -

Network Security Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'Network Security Engineer' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Network Security Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Network Security Engineer
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for Network Security Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Salary distribution trend for Network Security Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Network Security Engineer
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Network Security Engineer over the 6 months to 12 November 2025.

Salary histogram for Network Security Engineer in the UK

Network Security Engineer
Top 12 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Network Security Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 12 November 2025. 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 +45 19 £53,750 -10.42% 24
UK excluding London +48 12 £48,750 -18.75% 18
London +39 8 £70,000 -3.93% 8
North of England +7 5 £48,750 -18.75%
North East - 4 £48,750 -
South East +5 3 £55,000 -4.35% 12
East of England +13 2 £52,500 -19.23% 3
Midlands +54 1 £47,500 -5.00% 2
West Midlands +44 1 £47,500 -5.00% 2
Work from Home +19 1 £55,000 -8.33% 4
Wales +9 1 £52,500 -12.50%
Yorkshire +3 1 £47,500 -20.83%

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

For the 6 months to 12 November 2025, Network Security Engineer 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 permanent job ads featuring Network Security Engineer in the job title.

1 19 (95.00%) Network Security
2 18 (90.00%) Firewall
3 11 (55.00%) VPN
4 10 (50.00%) CheckPoint
5 9 (45.00%) Cisco
6 8 (40.00%) Fortinet
6 8 (40.00%) Intrusion Detection
6 8 (40.00%) SIEM
7 7 (35.00%) Cybersecurity
7 7 (35.00%) Disaster Recovery
8 6 (30.00%) CCNP
8 6 (30.00%) Cisco Certification
8 6 (30.00%) Palo Alto
9 5 (25.00%) GDPR
9 5 (25.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 5 (25.00%) Penetration Testing
9 5 (25.00%) Root Cause Analysis
9 5 (25.00%) Vulnerability Assessment
9 5 (25.00%) Windows
10 4 (20.00%) BCP
10 4 (20.00%) Business Continuity
10 4 (20.00%) Business Continuity Planning
10 4 (20.00%) CCNA
10 4 (20.00%) Cisco ISE
10 4 (20.00%) F5
10 4 (20.00%) Identity Access Management
10 4 (20.00%) Incident Response
10 4 (20.00%) LAN
10 4 (20.00%) Linux
10 4 (20.00%) NIST

Network 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 2 (10.00%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 1 (5.00%) Microsoft Office
1 1 (5.00%) MS Visio
Cloud Services
1 2 (10.00%) Azure
1 2 (10.00%) Mimecast
1 2 (10.00%) Rubrik
1 2 (10.00%) SecurityScorecard
2 1 (5.00%) AWS
2 1 (5.00%) Azure Sentinel
2 1 (5.00%) Entra ID
2 1 (5.00%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 19 (95.00%) Network Security
2 18 (90.00%) Firewall
3 11 (55.00%) VPN
4 8 (40.00%) Intrusion Detection
5 4 (20.00%) Cisco ISE
5 4 (20.00%) LAN
6 3 (15.00%) DNS
6 3 (15.00%) IPsec
6 3 (15.00%) SSL
6 3 (15.00%) TCP/IP
6 3 (15.00%) VLAN
6 3 (15.00%) WAN
7 2 (10.00%) BGP
7 2 (10.00%) Cisco Nexus
7 2 (10.00%) OSPF
7 2 (10.00%) WLAN
8 1 (5.00%) EIGRP
8 1 (5.00%) Ethernet VPN
8 1 (5.00%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
8 1 (5.00%) Intelligent Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (10.00%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 3 (15.00%) JIRA
General
1 4 (20.00%) Manufacturing
1 4 (20.00%) Pharmaceutical
2 2 (10.00%) Law
2 2 (10.00%) Public Sector
2 2 (10.00%) Social Skills
3 1 (5.00%) Documentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (5.00%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 1 (5.00%) Cyber Threat
1 1 (5.00%) Security Posture
1 1 (5.00%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 5 (25.00%) Windows
2 4 (20.00%) Linux
3 2 (10.00%) Windows Server
4 1 (5.00%) Check Point GAiA
Processes & Methodologies
1 8 (40.00%) SIEM
2 7 (35.00%) Cybersecurity
2 7 (35.00%) Disaster Recovery
3 5 (25.00%) Penetration Testing
3 5 (25.00%) Root Cause Analysis
3 5 (25.00%) Vulnerability Assessment
4 4 (20.00%) BCP
4 4 (20.00%) Business Continuity
4 4 (20.00%) Business Continuity Planning
4 4 (20.00%) Identity Access Management
4 4 (20.00%) Incident Response
5 3 (15.00%) High Availability
5 3 (15.00%) ITIL
5 3 (15.00%) Load Balancing
6 2 (10.00%) Collaborative Working
6 2 (10.00%) Network Segmentation
6 2 (10.00%) Problem-Solving
6 2 (10.00%) Scorecard
6 2 (10.00%) Threat Detection
6 2 (10.00%) Vulnerability Management
Programming Languages
1 1 (5.00%) Bash
1 1 (5.00%) Python
Qualifications
1 6 (30.00%) CCNP
1 6 (30.00%) Cisco Certification
2 4 (20.00%) CCNA
3 3 (15.00%) CCSE
3 3 (15.00%) CISSP
4 2 (10.00%) CCSA
4 2 (10.00%) Security Cleared
5 1 (5.00%) Check Point Certification
5 1 (5.00%) Degree
5 1 (5.00%) DV Cleared
5 1 (5.00%) GCIH
5 1 (5.00%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
5 1 (5.00%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (25.00%) GDPR
1 5 (25.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 4 (20.00%) NIST
3 1 (5.00%) SLA
System Software
1 2 (10.00%) EMC RecoverPoint
1 2 (10.00%) pfSense
1 2 (10.00%) Squid
2 1 (5.00%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 2 (10.00%) Cisco CUCM
1 2 (10.00%) Nagios
1 2 (10.00%) VxRail
2 1 (5.00%) Ansible
2 1 (5.00%) FortiGate
2 1 (5.00%) Terraform
Vendors
1 10 (50.00%) CheckPoint
2 9 (45.00%) Cisco
3 8 (40.00%) Fortinet
4 6 (30.00%) Palo Alto
5 4 (20.00%) F5
5 4 (20.00%) Sophos
6 3 (15.00%) Microsoft
6 3 (15.00%) Splunk
6 3 (15.00%) Zscaler
7 2 (10.00%) Blue Coat
7 2 (10.00%) Dell
7 2 (10.00%) HP
7 2 (10.00%) LogicMonitor
7 2 (10.00%) Okta
7 2 (10.00%) VMware
8 1 (5.00%) Citrix
8 1 (5.00%) Darktrace
8 1 (5.00%) LogRhythm
8 1 (5.00%) ServiceNow