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

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 238 386 331
Rank change year-on-year +148 -55 0
Permanent jobs citing Security Operations 796 330 860
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.83% 0.71% 0.81%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.12% 0.77% 0.99%
Number of salaries quoted 596 238 624
10th Percentile £41,875 £41,425 £37,500
25th Percentile £53,438 £48,165 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £62,250 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +12.45% +3.75% -4.00%
75th Percentile £82,500 £77,500 £78,750
90th Percentile £95,000 £97,375 £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 70,838 42,616 86,708
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.43% 91.47% 82.17%
Number of salaries quoted 48,971 23,341 61,278
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,822 £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% -9.09%
75th Percentile £78,750 £77,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £53,171 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +6.34% - -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 1 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 1 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 +134 714 £70,000 +12.00% 254
UK excluding London +101 463 £65,000 +18.18% 184
London +90 277 £75,000 -3.23% 101
Work from Home +103 240 £68,750 +24.33% 122
South East +63 142 £60,000 -7.69% 69
North of England +42 122 £70,000 +16.67% 32
Midlands -6 79 £60,000 +9.09% 20
North West +47 73 £75,000 +36.36% 18
East Midlands +17 46 £55,000 -10.02% 7
Yorkshire -5 43 £62,500 - 12
South West -47 37 £65,000 +27.31% 19
East of England -7 33 £62,500 +0.81% 28
West Midlands -39 33 £67,500 +22.73% 13
Wales -20 31 £25,000 -54.55% 13
Scotland +30 19 £75,000 +30.43% 9
North East -49 6 £75,000 +22.45% 2
Northern Ireland - 2 £40,750 - 3

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 11 (1.38%) SharePoint
2 3 (0.38%) Apache Spark
2 3 (0.38%) Confluence
2 3 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.25%) Distributed Ledger
2 1 (0.13%) Exchequer
Cloud Services
1 172 (21.61%) Azure
2 95 (11.93%) AWS
3 80 (10.05%) Microsoft 365
4 64 (8.04%) Azure Sentinel
5 54 (6.78%) Entra ID
6 43 (5.40%) GCP
7 24 (3.02%) SaaS
8 16 (2.01%) Mimecast
9 14 (1.76%) Anthropic Claude
9 14 (1.76%) Microsoft Purview
10 13 (1.63%) Azure Logic Apps
11 12 (1.51%) Zapier
12 9 (1.13%) AWS CloudFormation
12 9 (1.13%) GitHub
12 9 (1.13%) GitHub Actions
12 9 (1.13%) IaaS
12 9 (1.13%) PaaS
13 8 (1.01%) Amazon GuardDuty
14 6 (0.75%) Cloudflare
14 6 (0.75%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 119 (14.95%) Firewall
2 84 (10.55%) Network Security
3 39 (4.90%) WAN
4 36 (4.52%) LAN
5 35 (4.40%) TCP/IP
5 35 (4.40%) VPN
6 33 (4.15%) DNS
7 20 (2.51%) Wi-Fi
8 18 (2.26%) Cisco Nexus
8 18 (2.26%) Intrusion Detection
9 17 (2.14%) HTTP
9 17 (2.14%) Internet
10 11 (1.38%) FTP
10 11 (1.38%) SMTP
11 10 (1.26%) Cisco ISE
12 8 (1.01%) SSL
13 7 (0.88%) SD-WAN
14 5 (0.63%) NGFW
15 4 (0.50%) HTTPS
16 3 (0.38%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (0.50%) SQL Server
2 3 (0.38%) Hadoop
2 3 (0.38%) MongoDB
2 3 (0.38%) NoSQL
3 2 (0.25%) Elasticsearch
3 2 (0.25%) Power BI
3 2 (0.25%) Relational Database
4 1 (0.13%) Azure SQL Database
4 1 (0.13%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 7 (0.88%) Jenkins
2 4 (0.50%) Bitbucket
2 4 (0.50%) CircleCI
2 4 (0.50%) JIRA
2 4 (0.50%) Metasploit
3 1 (0.13%) Yeoman
General
1 169 (21.23%) Social Skills
2 103 (12.94%) Analytical Skills
3 94 (11.81%) Finance
4 51 (6.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 40 (5.03%) Law
6 34 (4.27%) Public Sector
7 32 (4.02%) Legal
8 26 (3.27%) Retail
9 16 (2.01%) Influencing Skills
10 15 (1.88%) Banking
11 11 (1.38%) Aerospace
12 10 (1.26%) Financial Institution
13 6 (0.75%) Advertising
13 6 (0.75%) Back Office
13 6 (0.75%) Organisational Skills
13 6 (0.75%) Police
14 5 (0.63%) Aviation
14 5 (0.63%) Presentation Skills
15 4 (0.50%) Digital Health
15 4 (0.50%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 196 (24.62%) Analyst
2 147 (18.47%) Security Analyst
3 127 (15.95%) Senior
4 99 (12.44%) Security Engineer
5 98 (12.31%) Security Manager
6 88 (11.06%) Lead
7 85 (10.68%) Cybersecurity Analyst
8 68 (8.54%) Senior Analyst
9 53 (6.66%) Cybersecurity Manager
9 53 (6.66%) Senior Security Analyst
9 53 (6.66%) SOC Engineer
10 51 (6.41%) Operational Security Manager
10 51 (6.41%) Security Operations Manager
11 48 (6.03%) Operations Manager
11 48 (6.03%) SOC Analyst
12 46 (5.78%) Architect
13 39 (4.90%) Cybersecurity Engineer
14 35 (4.40%) Operations Analyst
14 35 (4.40%) Security Specialist
15 33 (4.15%) Senior Cybersecurity Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (1.63%) LDAP
2 6 (0.75%) ARM Templates
2 6 (0.75%) Regular Expression
3 5 (0.63%) REST
4 3 (0.38%) JSON
4 3 (0.38%) Kafka
4 3 (0.38%) OpenID
4 3 (0.38%) SAML
5 2 (0.25%) RESTful
5 2 (0.25%) Smart Contracts
6 1 (0.13%) EDI
6 1 (0.13%) Elastic Stack
6 1 (0.13%) FFmpeg
6 1 (0.13%) GStreamer
6 1 (0.13%) HTML
6 1 (0.13%) SailPoint
6 1 (0.13%) TAPI
6 1 (0.13%) Unreal Engine
6 1 (0.13%) WebRTC
6 1 (0.13%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 197 (24.75%) Security Operations Centre
2 133 (16.71%) Security Posture
3 73 (9.17%) Cyber Defence
4 52 (6.53%) Management Information System
5 50 (6.28%) Cyber Threat
6 37 (4.65%) CSOC
7 33 (4.15%) Cloud Native
8 26 (3.27%) Onboarding
9 14 (1.76%) Cloud Security Posture
9 14 (1.76%) Data Centre
10 13 (1.63%) Cyberattack
10 13 (1.63%) Hybrid Cloud
10 13 (1.63%) Self-Motivation
11 9 (1.13%) AI Agents
11 9 (1.13%) Client/Server
12 7 (0.88%) Virtual Team
13 6 (0.75%) Analytical Mindset
13 6 (0.75%) Cyber Kill Chain
13 6 (0.75%) Insider Threat
13 6 (0.75%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 92 (11.56%) Windows
2 61 (7.66%) Linux
3 15 (1.88%) Windows 10
4 12 (1.51%) Unix
5 6 (0.75%) Windows Server
6 4 (0.50%) Kali Linux
7 3 (0.38%) Mac OS
7 3 (0.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 2 (0.25%) Windows Server 2012
8 2 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
9 1 (0.13%) CentOS
9 1 (0.13%) Data ONTAP
9 1 (0.13%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 445 (55.90%) Cybersecurity
2 297 (37.31%) SIEM
3 277 (34.80%) Incident Response
4 175 (21.98%) Continuous Improvement
5 167 (20.98%) Vulnerability Management
6 162 (20.35%) Cloud Security
7 146 (18.34%) Information Security
8 123 (15.45%) Threat Intelligence
9 106 (13.32%) Problem-Solving
10 104 (13.07%) Threat Detection
11 103 (12.94%) Cyber Threat Intelligence
12 101 (12.69%) Risk Management
13 86 (10.80%) SOAR
14 75 (9.42%) AI
15 73 (9.17%) Security Monitoring
16 72 (9.05%) MITRE ATT&CK
17 68 (8.54%) Penetration Testing
18 67 (8.42%) Mentoring
19 66 (8.29%) Roadmaps
20 62 (7.79%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 107 (13.44%) PowerShell
2 90 (11.31%) Python
3 30 (3.77%) Kusto Query Language
4 23 (2.89%) Bash
5 12 (1.51%) SQL
6 9 (1.13%) C++
7 8 (1.01%) Bicep
7 8 (1.01%) Perl
8 6 (0.75%) JavaScript
8 6 (0.75%) Search Processing Language
9 5 (0.63%) C
10 3 (0.38%) C#
10 3 (0.38%) Java
11 2 (0.25%) Go
11 2 (0.25%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.13%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 158 (19.85%) Security Cleared
2 119 (14.95%) SC Cleared
3 104 (13.07%) CISSP
4 68 (8.54%) CompTIA Security+
5 61 (7.66%) Degree
6 51 (6.41%) CISM
6 51 (6.41%) GIAC
7 33 (4.15%) Cisco Certification
8 32 (4.02%) CEH
8 32 (4.02%) DV Cleared
9 26 (3.27%) SANS
10 23 (2.89%) Computer Science Degree
11 21 (2.64%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 21 (2.64%) CompTIA CySA+
11 21 (2.64%) CREST Certified
12 20 (2.51%) GCIH
13 18 (2.26%) CCSP
13 18 (2.26%) CISA
14 17 (2.14%) GCIA
15 14 (1.76%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 158 (19.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 148 (18.59%) NIST
3 68 (8.54%) GDPR
4 49 (6.16%) GRC
5 48 (6.03%) Cyber Essentials
6 35 (4.40%) PCI DSS
7 22 (2.76%) SOC 2
8 21 (2.64%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 17 (2.14%) NCSC
10 16 (2.01%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 10 (1.26%) SLA
12 5 (0.63%) Accessibility
12 5 (0.63%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 3 (0.38%) COBIT
13 3 (0.38%) Data Quality
13 3 (0.38%) NIST 800
13 3 (0.38%) SOC 3
14 2 (0.25%) ISO 22301
14 2 (0.25%) ISO 9001
14 2 (0.25%) PMO
System Software
1 25 (3.14%) Active Directory
2 12 (1.51%) Docker
3 6 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (0.50%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.25%) Firmware
5 2 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
6 1 (0.13%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 35 (4.40%) Microsoft Intune
2 30 (3.77%) Terraform
3 26 (3.27%) QRadar
4 25 (3.14%) Kubernetes
4 25 (3.14%) SCCM
5 14 (1.76%) Ansible
6 13 (1.63%) Single Sign-On
7 7 (0.88%) FortiGate
8 6 (0.75%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
8 6 (0.75%) Graylog
9 4 (0.50%) Computer Incident Response Team
9 4 (0.50%) Grafana
10 3 (0.38%) CASB
10 3 (0.38%) Kibana
10 3 (0.38%) Nessus
10 3 (0.38%) Red Hat Satellite
10 3 (0.38%) vCenter Server
11 1 (0.13%) CSIRT
11 1 (0.13%) Host Intrusion Detection System
Vendors
1 231 (29.02%) Microsoft
2 66 (8.29%) Splunk
3 50 (6.28%) ServiceNow
4 46 (5.78%) Qualys
5 41 (5.15%) CrowdStrike
6 36 (4.52%) Cisco
7 29 (3.64%) Palo Alto
8 24 (3.02%) Tenable
9 17 (2.14%) Google
9 17 (2.14%) SolarWinds
10 16 (2.01%) OpenAI
11 15 (1.88%) Aruba
12 14 (1.76%) Fortinet
13 12 (1.51%) Rapid7
14 10 (1.26%) Sophos
15 8 (1.01%) iManage
15 8 (1.01%) Zscaler
16 7 (0.88%) Meraki
16 7 (0.88%) Okta
16 7 (0.88%) VMware