Security Operations Job Trends

Security Operations (SecOps)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring Security Operations skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 233 374 326
Rank change year-on-year +141 -48 -8
Permanent jobs citing Security Operations 844 332 812
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.85% 0.67% 0.83%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.15% 0.75% 1.02%
Number of salaries quoted 622 244 580
10th Percentile £42,000 £41,250 £37,500
25th Percentile £52,500 £48,416 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £62,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +12.00% +4.17% -4.00%
75th Percentile £82,500 £77,500 £82,500
90th Percentile £95,000 £95,000 £101,470
UK excluding London median annual salary £65,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +18.18% - -7.08%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Security Operations 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 73,444 44,348 79,843
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.65% 90.06% 82.03%
Number of salaries quoted 50,849 24,963 55,346
10th Percentile £30,250 £28,750 £30,000
25th Percentile £41,250 £38,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £56,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +6.19% +2.73% -8.72%
75th Percentile £78,750 £76,840 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £98,474 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +10.00% - -9.09%

Security Operations
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Security Operations job vacancy trend in the UK

Security Operations
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Security Operations.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Security Operations

Security Operations
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Security Operations over the 6 months to 19 July 2026.

Salary histogram for Security Operations in the UK

Security Operations
Top 17 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Security Operations within the UK over the 6 months to 19 July 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 +143 754 £70,000 +12.00% 207
UK excluding London +105 499 £65,000 +18.18% 138
London +100 287 £75,000 -3.23% 93
Work from Home +98 248 £70,000 +12.00% 83
South East +73 161 £62,500 -3.85% 50
North of England +44 120 £70,000 +16.67% 27
Midlands 0 80 £65,000 +18.18% 18
North West +41 73 £75,000 +36.36% 18
East Midlands +29 48 £55,000 -10.02% 12
East of England -3 43 £62,500 +0.81% 17
Yorkshire -6 41 £50,000 -20.00% 7
South West -45 40 £65,000 +27.31% 19
Wales -24 33 £39,500 -28.18% 2
West Midlands -32 32 £67,500 +22.73% 6
Scotland +33 21 £75,000 +30.43% 9
North East -46 6 £75,000 +17.65% 2
Northern Ireland - 3 £42,500 - 3

Security Operations
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 10 (1.18%) SharePoint
2 4 (0.47%) Confluence
3 3 (0.36%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.24%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 3 (0.36%) Distributed Ledger
2 1 (0.12%) Exchequer
Cloud Services
1 180 (21.33%) Azure
2 98 (11.61%) AWS
3 81 (9.60%) Microsoft 365
4 72 (8.53%) Azure Sentinel
5 57 (6.75%) Entra ID
6 41 (4.86%) GCP
7 24 (2.84%) SaaS
8 17 (2.01%) Microsoft Purview
9 15 (1.78%) Azure Logic Apps
9 15 (1.78%) Mimecast
10 14 (1.66%) Anthropic Claude
11 12 (1.42%) Zapier
12 10 (1.18%) IaaS
12 10 (1.18%) PaaS
13 8 (0.95%) Amazon GuardDuty
13 8 (0.95%) AWS CloudFormation
13 8 (0.95%) GitHub
13 8 (0.95%) GitHub Actions
14 6 (0.71%) Cloudflare
14 6 (0.71%) Sumo Logic
Communications & Networking
1 126 (14.93%) Firewall
2 82 (9.72%) Network Security
3 43 (5.09%) WAN
4 41 (4.86%) TCP/IP
5 40 (4.74%) LAN
6 35 (4.15%) VPN
7 33 (3.91%) DNS
8 24 (2.84%) Wi-Fi
9 22 (2.61%) Cisco Nexus
10 21 (2.49%) Internet
11 18 (2.13%) Intrusion Detection
12 17 (2.01%) HTTP
13 11 (1.30%) FTP
13 11 (1.30%) SMTP
14 10 (1.18%) Cisco ISE
15 8 (0.95%) SSL
16 7 (0.83%) SD-WAN
17 5 (0.59%) NGFW
18 4 (0.47%) HTTPS
18 4 (0.47%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (0.59%) SQL Server
2 4 (0.47%) MongoDB
3 3 (0.36%) Hadoop
3 3 (0.36%) NoSQL
4 2 (0.24%) Relational Database
5 1 (0.12%) Azure SQL Database
5 1 (0.12%) Big Data
5 1 (0.12%) Elasticsearch
5 1 (0.12%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 6 (0.71%) Jenkins
2 5 (0.59%) JIRA
3 4 (0.47%) Bitbucket
3 4 (0.47%) Metasploit
4 3 (0.36%) CircleCI
5 1 (0.12%) Yeoman
General
1 167 (19.79%) Social Skills
2 105 (12.44%) Finance
3 104 (12.32%) Analytical Skills
4 50 (5.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 43 (5.09%) Law
6 37 (4.38%) Public Sector
7 34 (4.03%) Legal
8 28 (3.32%) Retail
9 19 (2.25%) Influencing Skills
10 16 (1.90%) Banking
11 15 (1.78%) Aerospace
12 11 (1.30%) Financial Institution
13 6 (0.71%) Advertising
13 6 (0.71%) Back Office
13 6 (0.71%) Organisational Skills
13 6 (0.71%) Police
14 5 (0.59%) Presentation Skills
15 4 (0.47%) Games
15 4 (0.47%) Manufacturing
15 4 (0.47%) Military
Job Titles
1 202 (23.93%) Analyst
2 144 (17.06%) Security Analyst
3 134 (15.88%) Senior
4 113 (13.39%) Security Manager
5 103 (12.20%) Security Engineer
6 93 (11.02%) Lead
7 80 (9.48%) Cybersecurity Analyst
8 75 (8.89%) Senior Analyst
9 59 (6.99%) Cybersecurity Manager
9 59 (6.99%) SOC Engineer
10 57 (6.75%) Operational Security Manager
10 57 (6.75%) Security Operations Manager
11 54 (6.40%) Senior Security Analyst
12 53 (6.28%) SOC Analyst
13 52 (6.16%) Operations Manager
14 51 (6.04%) Architect
15 45 (5.33%) Cybersecurity Engineer
16 37 (4.38%) Security Specialist
17 35 (4.15%) Operations Analyst
17 35 (4.15%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (1.66%) LDAP
2 7 (0.83%) ARM Templates
3 6 (0.71%) Regular Expression
4 4 (0.47%) OpenID
4 4 (0.47%) REST
4 4 (0.47%) SAML
5 3 (0.36%) JSON
5 3 (0.36%) Kafka
5 3 (0.36%) Smart Contracts
6 2 (0.24%) RESTful
7 1 (0.12%) Elastic Stack
7 1 (0.12%) FFmpeg
7 1 (0.12%) GStreamer
7 1 (0.12%) HTML
7 1 (0.12%) SailPoint
7 1 (0.12%) TAPI
7 1 (0.12%) Unreal Engine
7 1 (0.12%) WebRTC
7 1 (0.12%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 209 (24.76%) Security Operations Centre
2 143 (16.94%) Security Posture
3 79 (9.36%) Cyber Defence
4 58 (6.87%) Cyber Threat
5 53 (6.28%) Management Information System
6 41 (4.86%) CSOC
7 32 (3.79%) Cloud Native
8 30 (3.55%) Onboarding
9 22 (2.61%) Data Centre
10 14 (1.66%) Cloud Security Posture
11 13 (1.54%) Cyberattack
11 13 (1.54%) Hybrid Cloud
11 13 (1.54%) Self-Motivation
12 9 (1.07%) AI Agents
12 9 (1.07%) Client/Server
13 7 (0.83%) Virtual Team
14 6 (0.71%) Analytical Mindset
14 6 (0.71%) Insider Threat
14 6 (0.71%) Linux Command Line
14 6 (0.71%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 96 (11.37%) Windows
2 67 (7.94%) Linux
3 14 (1.66%) Windows 10
4 11 (1.30%) Unix
5 4 (0.47%) Kali Linux
5 4 (0.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (0.47%) Windows Server
6 3 (0.36%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.12%) CentOS
7 1 (0.12%) Data ONTAP
7 1 (0.12%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 476 (56.40%) Cybersecurity
2 318 (37.68%) SIEM
3 294 (34.83%) Incident Response
4 186 (22.04%) Continuous Improvement
4 186 (22.04%) Vulnerability Management
5 170 (20.14%) Cloud Security
6 161 (19.08%) Information Security
7 124 (14.69%) Threat Intelligence
8 118 (13.98%) Threat Detection
9 116 (13.74%) Risk Management
10 106 (12.56%) Problem-Solving
11 102 (12.09%) Cyber Threat Intelligence
12 90 (10.66%) SOAR
13 83 (9.83%) AI
14 75 (8.89%) Penetration Testing
14 75 (8.89%) Security Monitoring
15 74 (8.77%) MITRE ATT&CK
16 71 (8.41%) Mentoring
16 71 (8.41%) Roadmaps
17 70 (8.29%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 110 (13.03%) PowerShell
2 91 (10.78%) Python
3 36 (4.27%) Kusto Query Language
4 24 (2.84%) Bash
5 11 (1.30%) SQL
6 9 (1.07%) Bicep
6 9 (1.07%) C++
7 8 (0.95%) Perl
8 7 (0.83%) Search Processing Language
9 5 (0.59%) C
9 5 (0.59%) JavaScript
10 4 (0.47%) Java
11 3 (0.36%) C#
12 2 (0.24%) Go
13 1 (0.12%) MATLAB
13 1 (0.12%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 164 (19.43%) Security Cleared
2 123 (14.57%) SC Cleared
3 114 (13.51%) CISSP
4 74 (8.77%) CompTIA Security+
5 63 (7.46%) Degree
6 58 (6.87%) CISM
7 51 (6.04%) GIAC
8 36 (4.27%) CEH
9 34 (4.03%) Cisco Certification
9 34 (4.03%) DV Cleared
10 26 (3.08%) SANS
11 25 (2.96%) CompTIA CySA+
12 24 (2.84%) Computer Science Degree
13 23 (2.73%) CISA
14 22 (2.61%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 22 (2.61%) GCIH
15 21 (2.49%) CREST Certified
15 21 (2.49%) GCIA
16 18 (2.13%) CCSP
17 17 (2.01%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 175 (20.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 155 (18.36%) NIST
3 76 (9.00%) GDPR
4 54 (6.40%) GRC
5 48 (5.69%) Cyber Essentials
6 36 (4.27%) PCI DSS
7 27 (3.20%) SOC 2
8 20 (2.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 17 (2.01%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 16 (1.90%) NCSC
11 9 (1.07%) SLA
12 5 (0.59%) Accessibility
12 5 (0.59%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 4 (0.47%) COBIT
13 4 (0.47%) Data Quality
14 3 (0.36%) NIST 800
14 3 (0.36%) SOC 3
15 2 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
15 2 (0.24%) ISO 22301
15 2 (0.24%) PMO
System Software
1 23 (2.73%) Active Directory
2 10 (1.18%) Docker
3 7 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (0.59%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.24%) Firmware
6 1 (0.12%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 33 (3.91%) Microsoft Intune
2 29 (3.44%) Terraform
3 27 (3.20%) QRadar
4 23 (2.73%) Kubernetes
5 22 (2.61%) SCCM
6 20 (2.37%) Single Sign-On
7 11 (1.30%) Ansible
8 7 (0.83%) FortiGate
9 6 (0.71%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
9 6 (0.71%) Graylog
10 4 (0.47%) Computer Incident Response Team
10 4 (0.47%) Red Hat Satellite
11 3 (0.36%) CASB
11 3 (0.36%) Grafana
11 3 (0.36%) Kibana
11 3 (0.36%) Nessus
12 1 (0.12%) Host Intrusion Detection System
12 1 (0.12%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 239 (28.32%) Microsoft
2 71 (8.41%) Splunk
3 49 (5.81%) Qualys
3 49 (5.81%) ServiceNow
4 46 (5.45%) CrowdStrike
5 42 (4.98%) Cisco
6 35 (4.15%) Palo Alto
7 24 (2.84%) Tenable
8 19 (2.25%) Aruba
9 16 (1.90%) Fortinet
9 16 (1.90%) OpenAI
10 15 (1.78%) Google
11 14 (1.66%) Rapid7
11 14 (1.66%) SolarWinds
12 11 (1.30%) Sophos
13 9 (1.07%) iManage
14 8 (0.95%) Meraki
14 8 (0.95%) Zscaler
15 7 (0.83%) Carbon Black
15 7 (0.83%) Okta