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 23 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 234 386 330
Rank change year-on-year +152 -56 +6
Permanent jobs citing Security Operations 775 323 884
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.82% 0.72% 0.81%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.12% 0.77% 0.99%
Number of salaries quoted 580 233 646
10th Percentile £41,700 £41,750 £37,500
25th Percentile £51,250 £48,875 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £62,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +12.90% +3.33% -4.00%
75th Percentile £82,500 £77,500 £77,063
90th Percentile £95,000 £100,000 £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 69,314 41,679 88,914
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.17% 92.27% 81.73%
Number of salaries quoted 47,751 22,444 62,987
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,750 £29,750
25th Percentile £41,250 £38,750 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -9.41%
75th Percentile £78,750 £77,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £92,159
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -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 23 June 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 23 June 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 +138 698 £70,000 +12.90% 183
UK excluding London +108 453 £65,000 +18.18% 148
London +85 267 £74,250 -2.62% 75
Work from Home +114 244 £65,000 +18.18% 90
South East +62 137 £60,000 -11.11% 51
North of England +55 122 £70,000 +16.67% 35
Midlands -2 82 £60,000 +9.09% 18
North West +61 73 £75,000 +36.36% 18
East Midlands +19 47 £55,000 -10.02% 7
Yorkshire -1 43 £62,500 - 14
South West -46 36 £65,000 +27.31% 18
West Midlands -30 35 £67,500 +22.73% 11
East of England -9 31 £56,250 +2.74% 13
Wales -16 29 £25,000 -52.56% 8
Scotland +22 16 £75,000 +36.36% 10
North East -48 6 £75,000 +22.45% 3
Northern Ireland - 2 £40,750 - 4

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 12 (1.55%) SharePoint
2 4 (0.52%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.26%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.26%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 1 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
1 1 (0.13%) Exchequer
Cloud Services
1 166 (21.42%) Azure
2 90 (11.61%) AWS
3 78 (10.06%) Microsoft 365
4 63 (8.13%) Azure Sentinel
5 50 (6.45%) Entra ID
6 41 (5.29%) GCP
7 24 (3.10%) SaaS
8 15 (1.94%) Mimecast
9 14 (1.81%) Anthropic Claude
10 13 (1.68%) Microsoft Purview
11 12 (1.55%) Zapier
12 11 (1.42%) Azure Logic Apps
13 9 (1.16%) GitHub
13 9 (1.16%) GitHub Actions
14 8 (1.03%) AWS CloudFormation
15 7 (0.90%) IaaS
15 7 (0.90%) PaaS
16 6 (0.77%) Amazon GuardDuty
16 6 (0.77%) Google Workspace
16 6 (0.77%) Sumo Logic
Communications & Networking
1 116 (14.97%) Firewall
2 81 (10.45%) Network Security
3 37 (4.77%) WAN
4 35 (4.52%) TCP/IP
5 34 (4.39%) DNS
5 34 (4.39%) LAN
6 32 (4.13%) VPN
7 18 (2.32%) Wi-Fi
8 17 (2.19%) HTTP
8 17 (2.19%) Intrusion Detection
9 16 (2.06%) Cisco Nexus
10 15 (1.94%) Internet
11 11 (1.42%) FTP
11 11 (1.42%) SMTP
12 10 (1.29%) Cisco ISE
13 8 (1.03%) SSL
14 7 (0.90%) SD-WAN
15 5 (0.65%) NGFW
16 4 (0.52%) HTTPS
17 3 (0.39%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (0.39%) Power BI
1 3 (0.39%) SQL Server
2 2 (0.26%) Elasticsearch
2 2 (0.26%) Hadoop
2 2 (0.26%) MongoDB
2 2 (0.26%) NoSQL
2 2 (0.26%) Relational Database
3 1 (0.13%) Azure SQL Database
3 1 (0.13%) Big Data
3 1 (0.13%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 7 (0.90%) Jenkins
2 4 (0.52%) Bitbucket
2 4 (0.52%) CircleCI
2 4 (0.52%) Metasploit
3 3 (0.39%) JIRA
4 1 (0.13%) Yeoman
General
1 166 (21.42%) Social Skills
2 101 (13.03%) Analytical Skills
3 89 (11.48%) Finance
4 51 (6.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 40 (5.16%) Law
6 34 (4.39%) Public Sector
7 33 (4.26%) Legal
8 27 (3.48%) Retail
9 17 (2.19%) Influencing Skills
10 15 (1.94%) Banking
11 10 (1.29%) Aerospace
12 9 (1.16%) Financial Institution
13 6 (0.77%) Advertising
13 6 (0.77%) Aviation
13 6 (0.77%) Back Office
13 6 (0.77%) Organisational Skills
13 6 (0.77%) Police
13 6 (0.77%) Presentation Skills
14 4 (0.52%) Manufacturing
14 4 (0.52%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 192 (24.77%) Analyst
2 142 (18.32%) Security Analyst
3 122 (15.74%) Senior
4 98 (12.65%) Security Engineer
5 95 (12.26%) Security Manager
6 84 (10.84%) Lead
7 83 (10.71%) Cybersecurity Analyst
8 62 (8.00%) Senior Analyst
9 53 (6.84%) Cybersecurity Manager
10 52 (6.71%) SOC Engineer
11 49 (6.32%) Operational Security Manager
11 49 (6.32%) Security Operations Manager
12 48 (6.19%) Senior Security Analyst
13 46 (5.94%) Operations Manager
13 46 (5.94%) SOC Analyst
14 45 (5.81%) Architect
15 38 (4.90%) Cybersecurity Engineer
16 34 (4.39%) Operations Analyst
17 33 (4.26%) Security Specialist
18 30 (3.87%) Senior Cybersecurity Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (1.68%) LDAP
2 6 (0.77%) Regular Expression
3 5 (0.65%) REST
4 4 (0.52%) ARM Templates
5 3 (0.39%) JSON
6 2 (0.26%) Kafka
6 2 (0.26%) OpenID
6 2 (0.26%) RESTful
6 2 (0.26%) SAML
7 1 (0.13%) EDI
7 1 (0.13%) FFmpeg
7 1 (0.13%) GStreamer
7 1 (0.13%) HTML
7 1 (0.13%) SailPoint
7 1 (0.13%) Smart Contracts
7 1 (0.13%) SOAP
7 1 (0.13%) TAPI
7 1 (0.13%) Unreal Engine
7 1 (0.13%) WebRTC
7 1 (0.13%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 192 (24.77%) Security Operations Centre
2 123 (15.87%) Security Posture
3 70 (9.03%) Cyber Defence
4 51 (6.58%) Cyber Threat
4 51 (6.58%) Management Information System
5 37 (4.77%) CSOC
6 30 (3.87%) Cloud Native
7 24 (3.10%) Onboarding
8 14 (1.81%) Data Centre
9 13 (1.68%) Cyberattack
9 13 (1.68%) Self-Motivation
10 12 (1.55%) Cloud Security Posture
11 10 (1.29%) Hybrid Cloud
12 9 (1.16%) AI Agents
12 9 (1.16%) Client/Server
13 7 (0.90%) Analytical Mindset
13 7 (0.90%) Virtual Team
14 6 (0.77%) Cyber Kill Chain
14 6 (0.77%) Insider Threat
14 6 (0.77%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 93 (12.00%) Windows
2 60 (7.74%) Linux
3 16 (2.06%) Windows 10
4 13 (1.68%) Unix
5 7 (0.90%) Windows Server
6 4 (0.52%) Kali Linux
7 3 (0.39%) Mac OS
7 3 (0.39%) Windows Server 2012
7 3 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
8 2 (0.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.13%) CentOS
9 1 (0.13%) Data ONTAP
9 1 (0.13%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 433 (55.87%) Cybersecurity
2 291 (37.55%) SIEM
3 267 (34.45%) Incident Response
4 172 (22.19%) Continuous Improvement
5 154 (19.87%) Vulnerability Management
6 151 (19.48%) Cloud Security
7 139 (17.94%) Information Security
8 116 (14.97%) Threat Intelligence
9 101 (13.03%) Problem-Solving
10 98 (12.65%) Cyber Threat Intelligence
11 97 (12.52%) Threat Detection
12 94 (12.13%) Risk Management
13 85 (10.97%) SOAR
14 72 (9.29%) MITRE ATT&CK
15 71 (9.16%) AI
16 69 (8.90%) Security Monitoring
17 67 (8.65%) Mentoring
18 66 (8.52%) Roadmaps
19 62 (8.00%) Penetration Testing
20 59 (7.61%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 105 (13.55%) PowerShell
2 91 (11.74%) Python
3 30 (3.87%) Kusto Query Language
4 24 (3.10%) Bash
5 14 (1.81%) SQL
6 9 (1.16%) C++
6 9 (1.16%) Perl
7 6 (0.77%) Bicep
7 6 (0.77%) JavaScript
8 5 (0.65%) C
8 5 (0.65%) Search Processing Language
9 3 (0.39%) C#
10 2 (0.26%) Go
10 2 (0.26%) Java
10 2 (0.26%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.13%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 152 (19.61%) Security Cleared
2 116 (14.97%) SC Cleared
3 100 (12.90%) CISSP
4 69 (8.90%) CompTIA Security+
5 59 (7.61%) Degree
6 50 (6.45%) GIAC
7 48 (6.19%) CISM
8 33 (4.26%) CEH
9 32 (4.13%) Cisco Certification
10 30 (3.87%) DV Cleared
11 26 (3.35%) SANS
12 21 (2.71%) Computer Science Degree
12 21 (2.71%) CREST Certified
13 20 (2.58%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 20 (2.58%) CompTIA CySA+
14 19 (2.45%) GCIH
15 17 (2.19%) CISA
16 16 (2.06%) GCIA
17 15 (1.94%) CCSP
18 14 (1.81%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 154 (19.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 142 (18.32%) NIST
3 65 (8.39%) GDPR
4 48 (6.19%) GRC
5 46 (5.94%) Cyber Essentials
6 35 (4.52%) PCI DSS
7 21 (2.71%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 19 (2.45%) SOC 2
9 17 (2.19%) NCSC
10 16 (2.06%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 10 (1.29%) SLA
12 5 (0.65%) Accessibility
12 5 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 3 (0.39%) COBIT
13 3 (0.39%) NIST 800
13 3 (0.39%) SOC 3
14 2 (0.26%) Data Quality
14 2 (0.26%) ISO 22301
14 2 (0.26%) ISO 9001
14 2 (0.26%) PMO
System Software
1 27 (3.48%) Active Directory
2 11 (1.42%) Docker
3 5 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
4 3 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
4 3 (0.39%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.26%) Firmware
6 1 (0.13%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 34 (4.39%) Microsoft Intune
2 27 (3.48%) Terraform
3 26 (3.35%) SCCM
4 24 (3.10%) QRadar
5 23 (2.97%) Kubernetes
6 14 (1.81%) Ansible
7 11 (1.42%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (0.90%) FortiGate
9 6 (0.77%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
9 6 (0.77%) Graylog
10 4 (0.52%) Computer Incident Response Team
10 4 (0.52%) Grafana
10 4 (0.52%) vCenter Server
11 3 (0.39%) CASB
11 3 (0.39%) Kibana
11 3 (0.39%) Nessus
12 2 (0.26%) CSIRT
12 2 (0.26%) Red Hat Satellite
13 1 (0.13%) Host Intrusion Detection System
Vendors
1 226 (29.16%) Microsoft
2 63 (8.13%) Splunk
3 48 (6.19%) ServiceNow
4 40 (5.16%) CrowdStrike
4 40 (5.16%) Qualys
5 34 (4.39%) Cisco
6 25 (3.23%) Palo Alto
7 20 (2.58%) Tenable
8 19 (2.45%) SolarWinds
9 16 (2.06%) OpenAI
10 14 (1.81%) Fortinet
10 14 (1.81%) Google
11 13 (1.68%) Aruba
12 11 (1.42%) Rapid7
13 9 (1.16%) Sophos
14 8 (1.03%) iManage
14 8 (1.03%) VMware
15 7 (0.90%) Okta
15 7 (0.90%) Zscaler
16 6 (0.77%) Carbon Black