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 31 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 234 379 318
Rank change year-on-year +145 -61 -15
Permanent jobs citing Security Operations 880 332 739
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.86% 0.67% 0.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.16% 0.75% 1.04%
Number of salaries quoted 652 245 511
10th Percentile £42,000 £41,022 £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% -3.23%
75th Percentile £85,000 £78,750 £80,000
90th Percentile £96,000 £99,000 £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 75,768 44,292 70,756
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.64% 89.63% 81.31%
Number of salaries quoted 52,326 25,118 47,262
10th Percentile £30,500 £28,750 £30,000
25th Percentile £41,250 £37,500 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £78,750 £76,250 £73,886
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £95,000
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 31 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 31 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 +142 789 £70,000 +12.00% 281
UK excluding London +116 538 £65,000 +18.18% 167
London +105 290 £75,000 -6.25% 155
Work from Home +86 246 £70,000 +16.67% 122
South East +84 180 £65,000 +4.00% 63
North of England +51 124 £70,000 +16.67% 43
Midlands -6 86 £65,000 +18.18% 20
North West +57 78 £75,000 +36.36% 26
East Midlands +26 54 £58,500 -4.29% 10
East of England -3 46 £56,250 -9.27% 6
South West -42 43 £65,000 +27.31% 21
Yorkshire -7 40 £55,000 -12.00% 14
Wales -27 34 £42,250 -23.18% 4
West Midlands -36 32 £67,500 +22.73% 10
Scotland +26 24 £75,000 +30.43% 10
North East -48 6 £75,000 +17.65% 3
Northern Ireland - 3 £42,500 - 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 10 (1.14%) 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
1 179 (20.34%) Azure
2 102 (11.59%) AWS
3 80 (9.09%) Microsoft 365
4 72 (8.18%) Azure Sentinel
5 54 (6.14%) Entra ID
6 40 (4.55%) GCP
7 21 (2.39%) SaaS
8 19 (2.16%) Microsoft Purview
9 17 (1.93%) Mimecast
10 15 (1.70%) Azure Logic Apps
11 14 (1.59%) Anthropic Claude
12 12 (1.36%) Zapier
13 9 (1.02%) Amazon GuardDuty
13 9 (1.02%) AWS CloudFormation
13 9 (1.02%) IaaS
13 9 (1.02%) PaaS
14 7 (0.80%) GitHub
14 7 (0.80%) GitHub Actions
15 6 (0.68%) Cloudflare
15 6 (0.68%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 133 (15.11%) Firewall
2 97 (11.02%) Network Security
3 45 (5.11%) WAN
4 43 (4.89%) LAN
4 43 (4.89%) TCP/IP
5 38 (4.32%) VPN
6 35 (3.98%) DNS
7 26 (2.95%) Wi-Fi
8 24 (2.73%) Cisco Nexus
9 23 (2.61%) Internet
10 22 (2.50%) Intrusion Detection
11 17 (1.93%) HTTP
12 11 (1.25%) FTP
12 11 (1.25%) SMTP
13 10 (1.14%) Cisco ISE
13 10 (1.14%) 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
1 168 (19.09%) Social Skills
2 104 (11.82%) Analytical Skills
3 99 (11.25%) Finance
4 48 (5.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 39 (4.43%) Law
6 37 (4.20%) Public Sector
7 35 (3.98%) Legal
8 27 (3.07%) Retail
9 21 (2.39%) Aerospace
10 20 (2.27%) Influencing Skills
11 15 (1.70%) Banking
12 9 (1.02%) Financial Institution
13 8 (0.91%) Military
14 7 (0.80%) Organisational Skills
15 6 (0.68%) Advertising
15 6 (0.68%) Police
16 5 (0.57%) Documentation Skills
17 4 (0.45%) Digital Health
17 4 (0.45%) Games
17 4 (0.45%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 215 (24.43%) Analyst
2 152 (17.27%) Security Analyst
3 143 (16.25%) Senior
4 125 (14.20%) Security Manager
5 106 (12.05%) Security Engineer
6 100 (11.36%) Lead
7 86 (9.77%) Cybersecurity Analyst
8 82 (9.32%) Senior Analyst
9 65 (7.39%) Cybersecurity Manager
10 60 (6.82%) Operational Security Manager
10 60 (6.82%) Security Operations Manager
10 60 (6.82%) SOC Engineer
11 57 (6.48%) Senior Security Analyst
11 57 (6.48%) SOC Analyst
12 56 (6.36%) Operations Manager
13 49 (5.57%) Architect
13 49 (5.57%) Cybersecurity Engineer
14 37 (4.20%) Security Specialist
15 33 (3.75%) Operations Analyst
15 33 (3.75%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (1.70%) LDAP
2 7 (0.80%) ARM Templates
3 6 (0.68%) Regular Expression
4 5 (0.57%) ModSecurity
5 4 (0.45%) OpenID
5 4 (0.45%) REST
5 4 (0.45%) SAML
6 3 (0.34%) JSON
6 3 (0.34%) Kafka
6 3 (0.34%) Smart Contracts
7 2 (0.23%) RESTful
8 1 (0.11%) Elastic Stack
8 1 (0.11%) FFmpeg
8 1 (0.11%) GStreamer
8 1 (0.11%) HTML
8 1 (0.11%) SailPoint
8 1 (0.11%) TAPI
8 1 (0.11%) Unreal Engine
8 1 (0.11%) WebRTC
8 1 (0.11%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 215 (24.43%) Security Operations Centre
2 152 (17.27%) Security Posture
3 86 (9.77%) Cyber Defence
4 65 (7.39%) Cyber Threat
5 58 (6.59%) Management Information System
6 45 (5.11%) CSOC
7 32 (3.64%) Cloud Native
8 31 (3.52%) Onboarding
9 23 (2.61%) Data Centre
10 16 (1.82%) Self-Motivation
11 15 (1.70%) Cyberattack
12 14 (1.59%) Cloud Security Posture
13 13 (1.48%) Hybrid Cloud
14 9 (1.02%) AI Agents
14 9 (1.02%) Client/Server
14 9 (1.02%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
15 7 (0.80%) Cyber Security Posture
15 7 (0.80%) Virtual Team
16 6 (0.68%) Linux Command Line
16 6 (0.68%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 93 (10.57%) Windows
2 66 (7.50%) Linux
3 12 (1.36%) Windows 10
4 11 (1.25%) Unix
5 6 (0.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 5 (0.57%) Windows Server
7 4 (0.45%) Kali Linux
7 4 (0.45%) Mac OS
8 2 (0.23%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.11%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 502 (57.05%) Cybersecurity
2 328 (37.27%) SIEM
3 310 (35.23%) Incident Response
4 199 (22.61%) Continuous Improvement
4 199 (22.61%) Vulnerability Management
5 180 (20.45%) Information Security
6 173 (19.66%) Cloud Security
7 129 (14.66%) Threat Detection
8 121 (13.75%) Threat Intelligence
9 120 (13.64%) Risk Management
10 109 (12.39%) Problem-Solving
11 98 (11.14%) Cyber Threat Intelligence
12 87 (9.89%) AI
12 87 (9.89%) SOAR
13 79 (8.98%) Security Monitoring
13 79 (8.98%) Stakeholder Management
14 77 (8.75%) Penetration Testing
15 74 (8.41%) Mentoring
16 72 (8.18%) Incident Management
17 71 (8.07%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 103 (11.70%) PowerShell
2 89 (10.11%) Python
3 36 (4.09%) Kusto Query Language
4 23 (2.61%) Bash
5 10 (1.14%) SQL
6 9 (1.02%) Bicep
6 9 (1.02%) C++
7 8 (0.91%) Perl
8 7 (0.80%) Search Processing Language
9 6 (0.68%) C
10 5 (0.57%) Java
10 5 (0.57%) JavaScript
11 3 (0.34%) C#
12 2 (0.23%) Go
12 2 (0.23%) Shell Script
13 1 (0.11%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 175 (19.89%) Security Cleared
2 128 (14.55%) SC Cleared
3 126 (14.32%) CISSP
4 78 (8.86%) CompTIA Security+
5 71 (8.07%) Degree
6 65 (7.39%) CISM
7 47 (5.34%) GIAC
8 46 (5.23%) Cisco Certification
9 37 (4.20%) CEH
10 36 (4.09%) DV Cleared
11 28 (3.18%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 27 (3.07%) CompTIA CySA+
12 27 (3.07%) SANS
13 24 (2.73%) Computer Science Degree
14 22 (2.50%) CISA
14 22 (2.50%) GCIH
15 21 (2.39%) GCIA
16 19 (2.16%) CCSP
16 19 (2.16%) CREST Certified
17 16 (1.82%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 181 (20.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 157 (17.84%) NIST
3 77 (8.75%) GDPR
4 54 (6.14%) GRC
5 49 (5.57%) Cyber Essentials
6 33 (3.75%) PCI DSS
7 25 (2.84%) SOC 2
8 21 (2.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 18 (2.05%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 14 (1.59%) NCSC
11 12 (1.36%) SLA
12 7 (0.80%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 6 (0.68%) Data Quality
14 5 (0.57%) Accessibility
15 3 (0.34%) NIST 800
16 2 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
16 2 (0.23%) COBIT
16 2 (0.23%) ISO 22301
16 2 (0.23%) PMO
16 2 (0.23%) SOC 3
System Software
1 21 (2.39%) Active Directory
2 10 (1.14%) 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 (3.75%) Microsoft Intune
2 29 (3.30%) Terraform
3 26 (2.95%) QRadar
4 23 (2.61%) Kubernetes
5 20 (2.27%) SCCM
6 19 (2.16%) Single Sign-On
7 10 (1.14%) Ansible
8 7 (0.80%) FortiGate
9 6 (0.68%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
9 6 (0.68%) Graylog
9 6 (0.68%) Nessus
10 5 (0.57%) Red Hat Satellite
11 3 (0.34%) Computer Incident Response Team
11 3 (0.34%) Kibana
12 2 (0.23%) McAfee ePO
12 2 (0.23%) Nagios
13 1 (0.11%) Grafana
13 1 (0.11%) Jamf Pro
13 1 (0.11%) Symantec Endpoint Protection
13 1 (0.11%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 238 (27.05%) Microsoft
2 73 (8.30%) Splunk
3 51 (5.80%) Qualys
4 50 (5.68%) Cisco
5 48 (5.45%) Palo Alto
6 45 (5.11%) ServiceNow
7 44 (5.00%) CrowdStrike
8 23 (2.61%) Tenable
9 21 (2.39%) Aruba
9 21 (2.39%) Fortinet
10 16 (1.82%) OpenAI
10 16 (1.82%) Rapid7
11 15 (1.70%) Google
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%) Meraki
16 7 (0.80%) LogRhythm