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 5 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 234 382 318
Rank change year-on-year +148 -64 -21
Permanent jobs citing Security Operations 883 336 711
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.85% 0.68% 0.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.15% 0.76% 1.05%
Number of salaries quoted 652 248 479
10th Percentile £42,050 £40,834 £37,500
25th Percentile £52,500 £48,165 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £62,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +12.00% +4.17% -3.61%
75th Percentile £85,000 £79,063 £80,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £98,250 £100,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £65,000 £55,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +18.18% +4.76% -12.50%

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 76,763 44,374 67,952
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.58% 89.45% 81.06%
Number of salaries quoted 52,880 25,244 44,456
10th Percentile £30,750 £28,500 £31,246
25th Percentile £41,250 £37,500 £41,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.71%
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,246 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £49,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +12.24% -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 5 August 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 5 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 +138 793 £70,000 +12.00% 418
UK excluding London +115 543 £65,000 +18.18% 252
London +87 289 £75,000 -6.25% 207
Work from Home +84 244 £70,000 +16.67% 190
South East +97 183 £60,000 -4.00% 90
North of England +42 125 £70,000 +16.67% 71
Midlands -1 86 £65,000 +19.27% 30
North West +57 79 £75,000 +36.36% 46
East Midlands +29 56 £58,500 -4.29% 14
East of England -10 46 £61,250 -1.21% 12
South West -37 44 £65,000 +27.31% 28
Yorkshire -6 40 £55,000 -12.00% 21
Wales -20 34 £42,250 -23.18% 5
West Midlands -51 30 £67,500 +23.85% 16
Scotland +28 24 £75,000 +30.43% 13
North East -52 6 £75,000 +17.65% 4
Northern Ireland - 3 £42,500 - 7

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 (1.13%) SharePoint
2 5 (0.57%) Confluence
3 3 (0.34%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 3 (0.34%) Distributed Ledger
Cloud Services
1 176 (19.93%) Azure
2 104 (11.78%) AWS
3 82 (9.29%) Microsoft 365
4 71 (8.04%) Azure Sentinel
5 55 (6.23%) Entra ID
6 40 (4.53%) GCP
7 21 (2.38%) SaaS
8 19 (2.15%) Microsoft Purview
9 18 (2.04%) Mimecast
10 16 (1.81%) Azure Logic Apps
11 14 (1.59%) Anthropic Claude
12 12 (1.36%) Zapier
13 9 (1.02%) Amazon GuardDuty
14 8 (0.91%) AWS CloudFormation
14 8 (0.91%) IaaS
14 8 (0.91%) PaaS
15 7 (0.79%) GitHub
15 7 (0.79%) GitHub Actions
16 6 (0.68%) Cloudflare
16 6 (0.68%) Sumo Logic
Communications & Networking
1 135 (15.29%) Firewall
2 97 (10.99%) Network Security
3 46 (5.21%) WAN
4 45 (5.10%) TCP/IP
5 44 (4.98%) LAN
6 38 (4.30%) VPN
7 35 (3.96%) DNS
8 26 (2.94%) Wi-Fi
9 24 (2.72%) Cisco Nexus
10 23 (2.60%) Internet
10 23 (2.60%) Intrusion Detection
11 18 (2.04%) HTTP
12 12 (1.36%) FTP
12 12 (1.36%) SMTP
13 10 (1.13%) Cisco ISE
13 10 (1.13%) SSL
14 6 (0.68%) NGFW
14 6 (0.68%) SD-WAN
15 5 (0.57%) Kerberos
16 4 (0.45%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (0.68%) SQL Server
2 5 (0.57%) MongoDB
3 3 (0.34%) Hadoop
3 3 (0.34%) NoSQL
4 2 (0.23%) Relational Database
5 1 (0.11%) Azure SQL Database
5 1 (0.11%) Big Data
5 1 (0.11%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 5 (0.57%) JIRA
2 4 (0.45%) Bitbucket
2 4 (0.45%) Jenkins
2 4 (0.45%) Metasploit
3 1 (0.11%) CircleCI
3 1 (0.11%) Yeoman
General
1 170 (19.25%) Social Skills
2 105 (11.89%) Analytical Skills
3 98 (11.10%) Finance
4 48 (5.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 40 (4.53%) Law
6 37 (4.19%) Public Sector
7 36 (4.08%) Legal
8 27 (3.06%) Retail
9 24 (2.72%) Aerospace
10 18 (2.04%) Influencing Skills
11 14 (1.59%) Banking
12 9 (1.02%) Financial Institution
12 9 (1.02%) Military
13 6 (0.68%) Advertising
13 6 (0.68%) Documentation Skills
13 6 (0.68%) Organisational Skills
13 6 (0.68%) Police
14 4 (0.45%) Digital Health
14 4 (0.45%) Games
14 4 (0.45%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 219 (24.80%) Analyst
2 154 (17.44%) Security Analyst
3 145 (16.42%) Senior
4 124 (14.04%) Security Manager
5 107 (12.12%) Security Engineer
6 102 (11.55%) Lead
7 86 (9.74%) Cybersecurity Analyst
8 85 (9.63%) Senior Analyst
9 64 (7.25%) Cybersecurity Manager
10 60 (6.80%) Operational Security Manager
10 60 (6.80%) Security Operations Manager
10 60 (6.80%) SOC Engineer
11 59 (6.68%) SOC Analyst
12 58 (6.57%) Senior Security Analyst
13 56 (6.34%) Operations Manager
14 50 (5.66%) Cybersecurity Engineer
15 49 (5.55%) Architect
16 39 (4.42%) Security Specialist
17 34 (3.85%) IT Analyst
18 33 (3.74%) Senior Cybersecurity Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (1.81%) LDAP
2 6 (0.68%) ARM Templates
2 6 (0.68%) ModSecurity
2 6 (0.68%) Regular Expression
3 4 (0.45%) OpenID
3 4 (0.45%) REST
3 4 (0.45%) SAML
4 3 (0.34%) JSON
4 3 (0.34%) Kafka
4 3 (0.34%) Smart Contracts
5 2 (0.23%) RESTful
6 1 (0.11%) Elastic Stack
6 1 (0.11%) FFmpeg
6 1 (0.11%) GStreamer
6 1 (0.11%) HTML
6 1 (0.11%) SailPoint
6 1 (0.11%) TAPI
6 1 (0.11%) Unreal Engine
6 1 (0.11%) WebRTC
6 1 (0.11%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 213 (24.12%) Security Operations Centre
2 155 (17.55%) Security Posture
3 88 (9.97%) Cyber Defence
4 69 (7.81%) Cyber Threat
5 59 (6.68%) Management Information System
6 45 (5.10%) CSOC
7 32 (3.62%) Onboarding
8 30 (3.40%) Cloud Native
9 23 (2.60%) Data Centre
10 17 (1.93%) Self-Motivation
11 16 (1.81%) Cyberattack
12 14 (1.59%) Cloud Security Posture
13 12 (1.36%) Hybrid Cloud
14 10 (1.13%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
15 9 (1.02%) AI Agents
15 9 (1.02%) Client/Server
16 8 (0.91%) Cyber Security Posture
17 7 (0.79%) Social Media
17 7 (0.79%) Virtual Team
18 6 (0.68%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 95 (10.76%) Windows
2 68 (7.70%) Linux
3 12 (1.36%) Unix
3 12 (1.36%) Windows 10
4 7 (0.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 6 (0.68%) Windows Server
6 5 (0.57%) Mac OS
7 4 (0.45%) Kali Linux
8 3 (0.34%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.11%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 502 (56.85%) Cybersecurity
2 330 (37.37%) SIEM
3 317 (35.90%) Incident Response
4 204 (23.10%) Vulnerability Management
5 202 (22.88%) Continuous Improvement
6 183 (20.72%) Information Security
7 170 (19.25%) Cloud Security
8 136 (15.40%) Threat Detection
9 125 (14.16%) Threat Intelligence
10 121 (13.70%) Risk Management
11 108 (12.23%) Problem-Solving
12 102 (11.55%) Cyber Threat Intelligence
13 88 (9.97%) AI
13 88 (9.97%) SOAR
14 80 (9.06%) Stakeholder Management
15 79 (8.95%) Security Monitoring
16 78 (8.83%) Penetration Testing
17 74 (8.38%) Mentoring
18 73 (8.27%) Incident Management
18 73 (8.27%) MITRE ATT&CK
Programming Languages
1 104 (11.78%) PowerShell
2 92 (10.42%) Python
3 38 (4.30%) Kusto Query Language
4 24 (2.72%) Bash
5 11 (1.25%) SQL
6 10 (1.13%) C++
7 9 (1.02%) Perl
8 8 (0.91%) Bicep
8 8 (0.91%) Search Processing Language
9 6 (0.68%) C
10 5 (0.57%) Java
11 4 (0.45%) JavaScript
12 3 (0.34%) C#
12 3 (0.34%) Shell Script
13 2 (0.23%) Go
14 1 (0.11%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 178 (20.16%) Security Cleared
2 130 (14.72%) CISSP
3 129 (14.61%) SC Cleared
4 82 (9.29%) CompTIA Security+
5 70 (7.93%) Degree
6 65 (7.36%) CISM
7 48 (5.44%) GIAC
8 46 (5.21%) Cisco Certification
9 40 (4.53%) CEH
10 38 (4.30%) DV Cleared
11 28 (3.17%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 28 (3.17%) CompTIA CySA+
11 28 (3.17%) SANS
12 24 (2.72%) GCIH
13 22 (2.49%) CISA
13 22 (2.49%) GCIA
14 21 (2.38%) Computer Science Degree
15 19 (2.15%) CCSP
16 18 (2.04%) CREST Certified
17 15 (1.70%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 184 (20.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 155 (17.55%) NIST
3 77 (8.72%) GDPR
4 53 (6.00%) GRC
5 51 (5.78%) Cyber Essentials
6 31 (3.51%) PCI DSS
7 25 (2.83%) SOC 2
8 21 (2.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 18 (2.04%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 13 (1.47%) NCSC
10 13 (1.47%) SLA
11 7 (0.79%) Data Quality
11 7 (0.79%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 5 (0.57%) Accessibility
13 3 (0.34%) NIST 800
14 2 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
14 2 (0.23%) COBIT
14 2 (0.23%) ISO 22301
14 2 (0.23%) ISO 9001
14 2 (0.23%) PMO
System Software
1 22 (2.49%) Active Directory
2 9 (1.02%) Docker
3 8 (0.91%) Virtual Machines
4 6 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.23%) Firmware
6 1 (0.11%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 33 (3.74%) Microsoft Intune
2 29 (3.28%) Terraform
3 27 (3.06%) QRadar
4 22 (2.49%) Kubernetes
5 20 (2.27%) SCCM
6 19 (2.15%) Single Sign-On
7 11 (1.25%) Ansible
8 7 (0.79%) FortiGate
8 7 (0.79%) Nessus
9 6 (0.68%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
9 6 (0.68%) Graylog
10 5 (0.57%) Red Hat Satellite
11 3 (0.34%) Computer Incident Response Team
11 3 (0.34%) Kibana
12 2 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
12 2 (0.23%) McAfee ePO
12 2 (0.23%) Nagios
13 1 (0.11%) Grafana
13 1 (0.11%) Symantec Endpoint Protection
13 1 (0.11%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 237 (26.84%) Microsoft
2 77 (8.72%) Splunk
3 52 (5.89%) Qualys
4 50 (5.66%) Cisco
4 50 (5.66%) Palo Alto
5 45 (5.10%) CrowdStrike
5 45 (5.10%) ServiceNow
6 23 (2.60%) Tenable
7 22 (2.49%) Fortinet
8 21 (2.38%) Aruba
9 16 (1.81%) OpenAI
10 15 (1.70%) Google
11 14 (1.59%) Rapid7
12 12 (1.36%) SolarWinds
13 11 (1.25%) Sophos
14 9 (1.02%) iManage
14 9 (1.02%) Zscaler
15 8 (0.91%) CyberArk
15 8 (0.91%) Red Hat
16 7 (0.79%) LogRhythm