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 6 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 211 339 272
Rank change year-on-year +128 -67 -2
Permanent jobs citing Security Operations 1,042 372 731
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.88% 0.75% 1.00%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.20% 0.84% 1.22%
Number of salaries quoted 696 270 422
10th Percentile £41,250 £37,500 £40,000
25th Percentile £53,750 £48,249 £47,813
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £65,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.69% +8.33% -4.00%
75th Percentile £86,250 £80,000 £78,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £100,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £65,000 £57,250 £55,000
% change year-on-year +13.54% +4.09% -12.00%

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 86,526 44,119 60,045
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.14% 89.04% 81.91%
Number of salaries quoted 59,327 24,381 32,429
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,250 £32,500
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £96,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £52,500
% change year-on-year +15.79% -9.52% -2.78%

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 6 October 2026.

Salary histogram for Security Operations in the UK

Security Operations
Top 16 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 6 October 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 +121 939 £70,000 +7.69% 938
UK excluding London +95 623 £65,000 +13.54% 536
London +93 372 £77,000 -0.65% 472
Work from Home +71 277 £70,000 +3.70% 401
South East +79 229 £61,250 -3.92% 181
North of England +25 128 £70,000 +24.44% 140
Midlands -7 93 £65,000 +23.22% 51
North West +39 89 £75,000 +66.67% 74
East Midlands +27 62 £65,000 +6.34% 27
South West -35 55 £60,000 +17.51% 51
East of England -8 50 £61,250 -14.63% 38
Yorkshire -6 39 £62,500 -3.85% 50
Wales -34 35 £45,000 -18.18% 10
Scotland +21 31 £75,000 +7.14% 43
West Midlands -44 31 £67,500 +27.96% 24
Northern Ireland -85 4 £42,500 - 28

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 18 (1.73%) SharePoint
2 10 (0.96%) Microsoft Exchange
3 4 (0.38%) Confluence
4 3 (0.29%) Apache Spark
4 3 (0.29%) IIS
5 1 (0.096%) SharePoint Server
5 1 (0.096%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (0.19%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (0.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 3 (0.29%) Distributed Ledger
2 1 (0.096%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 225 (21.59%) Azure
2 136 (13.05%) AWS
3 109 (10.46%) Microsoft 365
4 103 (9.88%) Entra ID
5 84 (8.06%) Azure Sentinel
6 66 (6.33%) GCP
7 36 (3.45%) Microsoft Purview
8 27 (2.59%) SaaS
9 25 (2.40%) Azure Logic Apps
10 20 (1.92%) Mimecast
11 14 (1.34%) Anthropic Claude
12 12 (1.15%) AWS CloudFormation
12 12 (1.15%) IaaS
12 12 (1.15%) Zapier
13 9 (0.86%) Microsoft Copilot
13 9 (0.86%) PaaS
14 8 (0.77%) Amazon GuardDuty
14 8 (0.77%) Cloudflare
15 6 (0.58%) Google Workspace
15 6 (0.58%) Sumo Logic
Communications & Networking
1 165 (15.83%) Firewall
2 110 (10.56%) Network Security
3 61 (5.85%) WAN
4 58 (5.57%) LAN
5 54 (5.18%) VPN
6 51 (4.89%) TCP/IP
7 39 (3.74%) DNS
8 31 (2.98%) Wi-Fi
9 27 (2.59%) Internet
10 25 (2.40%) Cisco Nexus
10 25 (2.40%) HTTP
11 21 (2.02%) Intrusion Detection
12 17 (1.63%) SMTP
13 16 (1.54%) FTP
14 14 (1.34%) Cisco ISE
14 14 (1.34%) SSL
15 8 (0.77%) Wireless
16 7 (0.67%) SD-WAN
17 6 (0.58%) IPsec
17 6 (0.58%) NGFW
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (0.48%) SQL Server
2 4 (0.38%) MongoDB
3 3 (0.29%) Azure SQL Database
3 3 (0.29%) Hadoop
3 3 (0.29%) NoSQL
4 2 (0.19%) Power BI
4 2 (0.19%) Power Query
4 2 (0.19%) Relational Database
5 1 (0.096%) Big Data
5 1 (0.096%) Data Mining
5 1 (0.096%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 9 (0.86%) JIRA
2 6 (0.58%) Jenkins
3 3 (0.29%) Maven
3 3 (0.29%) Team Foundation Server
4 2 (0.19%) Yeoman
5 1 (0.096%) Git
5 1 (0.096%) GitLab
General
1 210 (20.15%) Social Skills
2 132 (12.67%) Finance
3 115 (11.04%) Analytical Skills
4 55 (5.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 48 (4.61%) Law
5 48 (4.61%) Legal
5 48 (4.61%) Public Sector
6 43 (4.13%) Aerospace
7 37 (3.55%) Retail
8 28 (2.69%) Banking
9 24 (2.30%) Influencing Skills
10 21 (2.02%) Military
11 11 (1.06%) Documentation Skills
12 9 (0.86%) Financial Institution
13 6 (0.58%) Advertising
13 6 (0.58%) Back Office
13 6 (0.58%) Investment Banking
14 5 (0.48%) Aviation
14 5 (0.48%) Manufacturing
15 4 (0.38%) Digital Health
Job Titles
1 267 (25.62%) Analyst
2 206 (19.77%) Senior
3 183 (17.56%) Security Analyst
4 149 (14.30%) Lead
5 145 (13.92%) Security Engineer
6 129 (12.38%) Security Manager
7 111 (10.65%) Senior Analyst
8 89 (8.54%) SOC Analyst
9 87 (8.35%) Cybersecurity Analyst
10 74 (7.10%) Cybersecurity Manager
11 73 (7.01%) Senior Security Analyst
12 67 (6.43%) Architect
13 64 (6.14%) Cybersecurity Engineer
14 61 (5.85%) Operational Security Manager
14 61 (5.85%) Security Operations Manager
15 53 (5.09%) Operations Manager
16 46 (4.41%) Senior Security Engineer
16 46 (4.41%) SOC Engineer
17 45 (4.32%) Cloud Engineer
18 44 (4.22%) Operations Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (3.74%) Terraform
2 22 (2.11%) LDAP
3 16 (1.54%) ModSecurity
4 14 (1.34%) REST
5 8 (0.77%) ARM Templates
6 7 (0.67%) JSON
6 7 (0.67%) SOAP
7 4 (0.38%) OpenID
7 4 (0.38%) Regular Expression
7 4 (0.38%) SAML
8 3 (0.29%) HTML
8 3 (0.29%) Kafka
8 3 (0.29%) SailPoint
8 3 (0.29%) Smart Contracts
9 2 (0.19%) CSS
9 2 (0.19%) Elastic Stack
9 2 (0.19%) RESTful
9 2 (0.19%) XML
10 1 (0.096%) GStreamer
10 1 (0.096%) WebRTC
Miscellaneous
1 236 (22.65%) Security Operations Centre
2 188 (18.04%) Security Posture
3 105 (10.08%) Cyber Threat
4 93 (8.93%) Cyber Defence
5 71 (6.81%) Management Information System
6 46 (4.41%) Data Centre
7 42 (4.03%) CSOC
8 41 (3.93%) Cloud Native
9 32 (3.07%) Onboarding
10 25 (2.40%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 18 (1.73%) Self-Motivation
12 15 (1.44%) Cloud Security Posture
12 15 (1.44%) Hybrid Cloud
13 13 (1.25%) AI Agents
14 12 (1.15%) Social Media
15 11 (1.06%) PKI
16 10 (0.96%) Cyber Security Posture
16 10 (0.96%) Public Cloud
16 10 (0.96%) Virtual Team
17 9 (0.86%) Client/Server
Operating Systems
1 97 (9.31%) Windows
2 72 (6.91%) Linux
3 13 (1.25%) Windows Server
4 12 (1.15%) Mac OS
5 9 (0.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (0.77%) Unix
7 6 (0.58%) Ubuntu
7 6 (0.58%) Windows 10
8 5 (0.48%) Apple iOS
9 2 (0.19%) Kali Linux
10 1 (0.096%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 619 (59.40%) Cybersecurity
2 381 (36.56%) Incident Response
3 367 (35.22%) SIEM
4 277 (26.58%) Vulnerability Management
5 255 (24.47%) Continuous Improvement
6 246 (23.61%) Information Security
7 197 (18.91%) Cloud Security
8 178 (17.08%) Threat Detection
9 165 (15.83%) Risk Management
10 141 (13.53%) Threat Intelligence
11 135 (12.96%) AI
11 135 (12.96%) Problem-Solving
12 127 (12.19%) Stakeholder Management
13 126 (12.09%) Security Monitoring
14 114 (10.94%) Cyber Threat Intelligence
15 99 (9.50%) Disaster Recovery
16 97 (9.31%) Mentoring
17 95 (9.12%) Incident Management
18 94 (9.02%) SOAR
19 87 (8.35%) Vulnerability Remediation
Programming Languages
1 107 (10.27%) PowerShell
2 100 (9.60%) Python
3 53 (5.09%) Kusto Query Language
4 30 (2.88%) Bash
5 15 (1.44%) SQL
6 14 (1.34%) C++
7 13 (1.25%) Perl
8 10 (0.96%) Bicep
8 10 (0.96%) Search Processing Language
9 9 (0.86%) Go
9 9 (0.86%) JavaScript
10 6 (0.58%) Java
11 5 (0.48%) C
12 4 (0.38%) Shell Script
13 3 (0.29%) C#
14 1 (0.096%) MATLAB
14 1 (0.096%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 201 (19.29%) Security Cleared
2 163 (15.64%) CISSP
3 133 (12.76%) SC Cleared
4 87 (8.35%) CISM
5 82 (7.87%) Degree
6 79 (7.58%) CompTIA Security+
7 64 (6.14%) DV Cleared
8 48 (4.61%) Cisco Certification
9 44 (4.22%) GIAC
10 37 (3.55%) CEH
11 35 (3.36%) CompTIA CySA+
12 26 (2.50%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 26 (2.50%) AWS Certification
12 26 (2.50%) Computer Science Degree
13 25 (2.40%) GCIA
13 25 (2.40%) SANS
14 24 (2.30%) GCIH
15 21 (2.02%) Azure Certification
16 19 (1.82%) CISA
17 18 (1.73%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 226 (21.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 171 (16.41%) NIST
3 76 (7.29%) Cyber Essentials
4 73 (7.01%) GRC
5 72 (6.91%) GDPR
6 51 (4.89%) PCI DSS
7 29 (2.78%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 24 (2.30%) SOC 2
9 23 (2.21%) NCSC
10 19 (1.82%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 18 (1.73%) SLA
12 12 (1.15%) Data Quality
13 6 (0.58%) Accessibility
13 6 (0.58%) NIST 800
14 3 (0.29%) COBIT
14 3 (0.29%) ISO 22301
14 3 (0.29%) ISO 9001
14 3 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
14 3 (0.29%) QA
15 2 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 43 (4.13%) Active Directory
2 15 (1.44%) Docker
3 11 (1.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (0.86%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.19%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.19%) NFS
5 2 (0.19%) Snort
5 2 (0.19%) VMware Workstation
6 1 (0.096%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 41 (3.93%) Kubernetes
1 41 (3.93%) Microsoft Intune
2 39 (3.74%) Single Sign-On
3 32 (3.07%) QRadar
4 14 (1.34%) SCCM
5 10 (0.96%) Ansible
6 7 (0.67%) FortiGate
6 7 (0.67%) Graylog
6 7 (0.67%) Nessus
7 6 (0.58%) Progress Chef
8 5 (0.48%) McAfee ePO
8 5 (0.48%) Nagios
9 4 (0.38%) Kibana
9 4 (0.38%) Red Hat Satellite
10 3 (0.29%) CASB
10 3 (0.29%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
10 3 (0.29%) Computer Incident Response Team
10 3 (0.29%) Puppet
10 3 (0.29%) Symantec Endpoint Protection
11 2 (0.19%) Istio
Vendors
1 290 (27.83%) Microsoft
2 86 (8.25%) Splunk
3 69 (6.62%) Palo Alto
4 64 (6.14%) Cisco
5 59 (5.66%) CrowdStrike
6 54 (5.18%) Qualys
7 43 (4.13%) ServiceNow
8 33 (3.17%) Google
9 26 (2.50%) Aruba
10 24 (2.30%) Fortinet
11 22 (2.11%) Tenable
12 16 (1.54%) OpenAI
13 14 (1.34%) Meraki
13 14 (1.34%) Rapid7
13 14 (1.34%) Zscaler
14 13 (1.25%) VMware
15 9 (0.86%) Carbon Black
16 8 (0.77%) CyberArk
16 8 (0.77%) iManage
16 8 (0.77%) Red Hat