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 29 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 257 361 340
Rank change year-on-year +104 -21 +3
Permanent jobs citing Security Operations 695 323 830
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.75% 0.75% 0.83%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.01% 0.81% 0.99%
Number of salaries quoted 522 227 612
10th Percentile £41,250 £42,500 £37,500
25th Percentile £51,250 £50,197 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £62,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +12.00% +4.17% -4.00%
75th Percentile £80,000 £77,500 £80,000
90th Percentile £94,978 £111,250 £100,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £65,000 £55,000 £54,000
% change year-on-year +18.18% +1.85% -6.09%

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 68,838 39,983 83,789
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.88% 93.25% 83.85%
Number of salaries quoted 44,890 21,039 60,407
10th Percentile £30,000 £29,750 £29,250
25th Percentile £41,000 £40,903 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £58,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% +5.45% -9.84%
75th Percentile £78,750 £78,750 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £101,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £51,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +2.94% +2.00% -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 29 May 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 29 May 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 +93 632 £70,000 +12.00% 165
UK excluding London +93 404 £65,000 +18.18% 145
London +76 240 £72,500 -6.45% 69
Work from Home +120 230 £60,000 +8.50% 70
North of England +38 118 £70,000 +16.67% 25
South East +39 114 £52,500 -16.00% 60
Midlands +3 73 £55,000 - 20
North West +46 67 £75,000 +25.00% 12
Yorkshire -25 43 £62,500 +4.17% 13
South West -38 41 £65,000 +25.65% 25
East Midlands +3 39 £53,750 -5.70% 8
West Midlands -38 34 £65,000 +18.18% 12
Wales -10 27 £25,000 -52.56% 6
East of England -23 20 £50,000 -8.68% 6
Scotland -6 10 £63,419 +5.70% 10
North East -30 8 £75,000 +7.14%
Northern Ireland - 1 £39,000 - 1

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 8 (1.15%) SharePoint
2 5 (0.72%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.14%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 1 (0.14%) Exchequer
Cloud Services
1 151 (21.73%) Azure
2 80 (11.51%) AWS
3 71 (10.22%) Microsoft 365
4 60 (8.63%) Azure Sentinel
5 44 (6.33%) GCP
6 40 (5.76%) Entra ID
7 23 (3.31%) SaaS
8 16 (2.30%) Mimecast
9 10 (1.44%) Microsoft Purview
10 9 (1.29%) Anthropic Claude
10 9 (1.29%) GitHub
10 9 (1.29%) GitHub Actions
11 8 (1.15%) AWS CloudFormation
11 8 (1.15%) Zapier
12 7 (1.01%) IaaS
12 7 (1.01%) PaaS
13 6 (0.86%) Datadog
14 5 (0.72%) Azure Logic Apps
14 5 (0.72%) Sumo Logic
15 4 (0.58%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 100 (14.39%) Firewall
2 75 (10.79%) Network Security
3 33 (4.75%) TCP/IP
4 31 (4.46%) DNS
5 30 (4.32%) VPN
6 21 (3.02%) WAN
7 18 (2.59%) Intrusion Detection
7 18 (2.59%) LAN
8 15 (2.16%) HTTP
9 10 (1.44%) FTP
9 10 (1.44%) SMTP
10 9 (1.29%) Cisco ISE
10 9 (1.29%) Internet
10 9 (1.29%) SSL
11 8 (1.15%) Cisco Nexus
12 5 (0.72%) SD-WAN
12 5 (0.72%) Wi-Fi
13 4 (0.58%) DHCP
13 4 (0.58%) HTTPS
13 4 (0.58%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (0.43%) Power BI
2 2 (0.29%) Elasticsearch
2 2 (0.29%) Relational Database
2 2 (0.29%) SQL Server
3 1 (0.14%) Big Data
3 1 (0.14%) MongoDB
3 1 (0.14%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 7 (1.01%) Jenkins
2 6 (0.86%) CircleCI
3 4 (0.58%) Bitbucket
3 4 (0.58%) Metasploit
4 2 (0.29%) JIRA
General
1 162 (23.31%) Social Skills
2 99 (14.24%) Analytical Skills
3 85 (12.23%) Finance
4 47 (6.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 34 (4.89%) Law
6 31 (4.46%) Public Sector
7 30 (4.32%) Legal
8 28 (4.03%) Retail
9 17 (2.45%) Influencing Skills
10 16 (2.30%) Banking
11 8 (1.15%) Aerospace
11 8 (1.15%) Financial Institution
11 8 (1.15%) Organisational Skills
12 7 (1.01%) Police
13 6 (0.86%) Advertising
13 6 (0.86%) Aviation
13 6 (0.86%) Back Office
13 6 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
14 4 (0.58%) Documentation Skills
15 3 (0.43%) Social Housing
Job Titles
1 164 (23.60%) Analyst
2 114 (16.40%) Security Analyst
3 90 (12.95%) Security Manager
4 89 (12.81%) Senior
5 81 (11.65%) Security Engineer
6 68 (9.78%) Lead
7 62 (8.92%) Cybersecurity Analyst
8 53 (7.63%) Operational Security Manager
8 53 (7.63%) Security Operations Manager
9 50 (7.19%) Cybersecurity Manager
9 50 (7.19%) Operations Manager
10 45 (6.47%) SOC Engineer
11 43 (6.19%) SOC Analyst
12 41 (5.90%) Architect
13 37 (5.32%) Senior Analyst
14 32 (4.60%) Operations Analyst
15 30 (4.32%) Cybersecurity Engineer
16 28 (4.03%) Security Architect
16 28 (4.03%) Security Specialist
17 25 (3.60%) Senior Security Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (1.58%) LDAP
2 6 (0.86%) Regular Expression
3 5 (0.72%) REST
4 4 (0.58%) ARM Templates
5 2 (0.29%) JSON
6 1 (0.14%) EDI
6 1 (0.14%) FFmpeg
6 1 (0.14%) GStreamer
6 1 (0.14%) HTML
6 1 (0.14%) RESTful
6 1 (0.14%) SailPoint
6 1 (0.14%) SOAP
6 1 (0.14%) TAPI
6 1 (0.14%) Unreal Engine
6 1 (0.14%) WebRTC
6 1 (0.14%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 165 (23.74%) Security Operations Centre
2 96 (13.81%) Security Posture
3 68 (9.78%) Cyber Defence
4 46 (6.62%) Cyber Threat
4 46 (6.62%) Management Information System
5 33 (4.75%) CSOC
6 26 (3.74%) Cloud Native
7 22 (3.17%) Onboarding
8 13 (1.87%) Data Centre
9 12 (1.73%) Analytical Mindset
9 12 (1.73%) Cyberattack
10 10 (1.44%) Cloud Security Posture
10 10 (1.44%) Self-Motivation
11 8 (1.15%) AI Agents
11 8 (1.15%) Client/Server
12 7 (1.01%) Driving Licence
13 6 (0.86%) Cyber Kill Chain
13 6 (0.86%) Life Science
13 6 (0.86%) Low-Code
13 6 (0.86%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 94 (13.53%) Windows
2 56 (8.06%) Linux
3 21 (3.02%) Windows 10
4 12 (1.73%) Unix
5 8 (1.15%) Windows Server
6 4 (0.58%) Kali Linux
6 4 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
6 4 (0.58%) Windows Server 2019
7 3 (0.43%) Mac OS
8 1 (0.14%) CentOS
8 1 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
8 1 (0.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.14%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 363 (52.23%) Cybersecurity
2 252 (36.26%) SIEM
3 248 (35.68%) Incident Response
4 152 (21.87%) Continuous Improvement
5 128 (18.42%) Cloud Security
6 117 (16.83%) Information Security
7 114 (16.40%) Vulnerability Management
8 101 (14.53%) Threat Intelligence
9 88 (12.66%) Problem-Solving
10 85 (12.23%) Threat Detection
11 84 (12.09%) Cyber Threat Intelligence
12 79 (11.37%) SOAR
13 72 (10.36%) Risk Management
14 67 (9.64%) MITRE ATT&CK
15 61 (8.78%) Roadmaps
16 58 (8.35%) Security Monitoring
17 57 (8.20%) Mentoring
18 55 (7.91%) Use Case
19 54 (7.77%) AI
20 51 (7.34%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 105 (15.11%) PowerShell
2 92 (13.24%) Python
3 25 (3.60%) Bash
4 24 (3.45%) Kusto Query Language
5 11 (1.58%) SQL
6 10 (1.44%) Perl
7 9 (1.29%) C++
8 6 (0.86%) Bicep
9 5 (0.72%) JavaScript
10 4 (0.58%) C
11 3 (0.43%) C#
12 2 (0.29%) Go
12 2 (0.29%) Shell Script
13 1 (0.14%) Java
13 1 (0.14%) MATLAB
13 1 (0.14%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 131 (18.85%) Security Cleared
2 106 (15.25%) SC Cleared
3 94 (13.53%) CISSP
4 59 (8.49%) CompTIA Security+
5 57 (8.20%) Degree
6 43 (6.19%) GIAC
7 42 (6.04%) CISM
8 34 (4.89%) Cisco Certification
9 32 (4.60%) CEH
10 24 (3.45%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 23 (3.31%) SANS
12 22 (3.17%) Computer Science Degree
12 22 (3.17%) CREST Certified
13 18 (2.59%) GCIH
14 17 (2.45%) DV Cleared
15 16 (2.30%) CCSP
15 16 (2.30%) CompTIA CySA+
16 13 (1.87%) Azure Certification
16 13 (1.87%) Microsoft Certification
17 12 (1.73%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 129 (18.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 128 (18.42%) NIST
3 55 (7.91%) GDPR
4 47 (6.76%) GRC
5 45 (6.47%) Cyber Essentials
6 34 (4.89%) PCI DSS
7 21 (3.02%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 17 (2.45%) NCSC
8 17 (2.45%) SOC 2
9 11 (1.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 10 (1.44%) SLA
11 5 (0.72%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 5 (0.72%) SOC 3
12 4 (0.58%) Accessibility
12 4 (0.58%) COBIT
13 3 (0.43%) Actionable Recommendations
14 2 (0.29%) ISO 22301
14 2 (0.29%) ISO 9001
14 2 (0.29%) NIST 800
14 2 (0.29%) PMO
System Software
1 25 (3.60%) Active Directory
2 13 (1.87%) Docker
3 4 (0.58%) VMware ESXi
4 3 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.29%) Firmware
5 2 (0.29%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.14%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 30 (4.32%) Microsoft Intune
2 29 (4.17%) SCCM
3 23 (3.31%) Kubernetes
3 23 (3.31%) QRadar
4 22 (3.17%) Terraform
5 14 (2.01%) Ansible
6 11 (1.58%) Single Sign-On
7 6 (0.86%) CASB
7 6 (0.86%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
7 6 (0.86%) Grafana
8 5 (0.72%) FortiGate
8 5 (0.72%) Graylog
8 5 (0.72%) vCenter Server
9 4 (0.58%) Computer Incident Response Team
10 3 (0.43%) CSIRT
11 2 (0.29%) Kibana
12 1 (0.14%) Host Intrusion Detection System
12 1 (0.14%) Nessus
12 1 (0.14%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 205 (29.50%) Microsoft
2 54 (7.77%) ServiceNow
3 47 (6.76%) Splunk
4 33 (4.75%) CrowdStrike
5 25 (3.60%) SolarWinds
6 23 (3.31%) Cisco
7 22 (3.17%) Qualys
8 15 (2.16%) Tenable
9 12 (1.73%) Google
10 11 (1.58%) Fortinet
11 10 (1.44%) OpenAI
11 10 (1.44%) Palo Alto
12 9 (1.29%) Rapid7
12 9 (1.29%) Sophos
13 8 (1.15%) VMware
14 7 (1.01%) Okta
14 7 (1.01%) Zscaler
15 6 (0.86%) Carbon Black
16 5 (0.72%) CheckPoint
16 5 (0.72%) Veeam