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

6 months to
3 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 230 394 320
Rank change year-on-year +164 -74 -25
Permanent jobs citing Security Operations 890 338 707
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.86% 0.68% 0.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.17% 0.76% 1.05%
Number of salaries quoted 660 248 480
10th Percentile £41,975 £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% -3.23%
75th Percentile £85,000 £79,063 £80,000
90th Percentile £96,000 £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 76,352 44,509 67,465
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.64% 89.49% 81.05%
Number of salaries quoted 52,648 25,381 44,449
10th Percentile £30,580 £28,500 £31,210
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% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £78,750 £76,250 £75,000
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 3 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 3 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 +152 798 £70,000 +12.00% 334
UK excluding London +109 547 £65,000 +18.18% 211
London +95 291 £75,000 -6.25% 169
Work from Home +94 246 £70,000 +16.67% 144
South East +104 183 £62,500 - 84
North of England +43 125 £70,000 +16.67% 44
Midlands +4 88 £65,000 +19.27% 27
North West +55 78 £75,000 +36.36% 28
East Midlands +31 56 £58,500 -4.29% 13
East of England -8 47 £57,500 -7.26% 9
South West -47 44 £65,000 +27.31% 27
Yorkshire -9 41 £55,000 -12.00% 13
Wales -27 34 £42,250 -23.18% 4
West Midlands -48 32 £67,500 +23.85% 14
Scotland +27 25 £75,000 +30.43% 15
North East -53 6 £75,000 +17.65% 3
Northern Ireland - 3 £42,500 - 5

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 (1.12%) SharePoint
2 5 (0.56%) Confluence
3 3 (0.34%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.22%) 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
1 180 (20.22%) Azure
2 103 (11.57%) AWS
3 81 (9.10%) Microsoft 365
4 73 (8.20%) Azure Sentinel
5 54 (6.07%) Entra ID
6 40 (4.49%) GCP
7 21 (2.36%) SaaS
8 20 (2.25%) Microsoft Purview
9 18 (2.02%) Mimecast
10 15 (1.69%) Azure Logic Apps
11 14 (1.57%) Anthropic Claude
12 12 (1.35%) Zapier
13 9 (1.01%) Amazon GuardDuty
13 9 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
13 9 (1.01%) IaaS
13 9 (1.01%) PaaS
14 7 (0.79%) GitHub
14 7 (0.79%) GitHub Actions
15 6 (0.67%) Cloudflare
15 6 (0.67%) Sumo Logic
Communications & Networking
1 136 (15.28%) Firewall
2 99 (11.12%) Network Security
3 46 (5.17%) WAN
4 45 (5.06%) TCP/IP
5 44 (4.94%) LAN
6 39 (4.38%) VPN
7 36 (4.04%) DNS
8 26 (2.92%) Wi-Fi
9 24 (2.70%) Cisco Nexus
10 23 (2.58%) Internet
10 23 (2.58%) Intrusion Detection
11 18 (2.02%) HTTP
12 12 (1.35%) FTP
12 12 (1.35%) SMTP
13 10 (1.12%) Cisco ISE
13 10 (1.12%) SSL
14 6 (0.67%) NGFW
14 6 (0.67%) SD-WAN
15 5 (0.56%) Kerberos
16 4 (0.45%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (0.67%) SQL Server
2 5 (0.56%) MongoDB
3 3 (0.34%) Hadoop
3 3 (0.34%) NoSQL
4 2 (0.22%) Relational Database
5 1 (0.11%) Azure SQL Database
5 1 (0.11%) Big Data
5 1 (0.11%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 5 (0.56%) 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
1 172 (19.33%) Social Skills
2 106 (11.91%) Analytical Skills
3 99 (11.12%) Finance
4 48 (5.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 39 (4.38%) Law
6 37 (4.16%) Public Sector
7 36 (4.04%) Legal
8 27 (3.03%) Retail
9 24 (2.70%) Aerospace
10 20 (2.25%) Influencing Skills
11 15 (1.69%) Banking
12 9 (1.01%) Financial Institution
12 9 (1.01%) Military
13 7 (0.79%) Organisational Skills
14 6 (0.67%) Advertising
14 6 (0.67%) Documentation Skills
14 6 (0.67%) Police
15 4 (0.45%) Back Office
15 4 (0.45%) Games
15 4 (0.45%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 222 (24.94%) Analyst
2 156 (17.53%) Security Analyst
3 146 (16.40%) Senior
4 125 (14.04%) Security Manager
5 105 (11.80%) Security Engineer
6 103 (11.57%) Lead
7 87 (9.78%) Cybersecurity Analyst
8 85 (9.55%) Senior Analyst
9 65 (7.30%) Cybersecurity Manager
10 60 (6.74%) Operational Security Manager
10 60 (6.74%) Security Operations Manager
10 60 (6.74%) SOC Analyst
10 60 (6.74%) SOC Engineer
11 58 (6.52%) Senior Security Analyst
12 56 (6.29%) Operations Manager
13 49 (5.51%) Architect
13 49 (5.51%) Cybersecurity Engineer
14 37 (4.16%) Security Specialist
15 34 (3.82%) IT Analyst
15 34 (3.82%) Operations Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (1.80%) LDAP
2 7 (0.79%) ARM Templates
3 6 (0.67%) ModSecurity
3 6 (0.67%) Regular Expression
4 4 (0.45%) OpenID
4 4 (0.45%) REST
4 4 (0.45%) SAML
5 3 (0.34%) JSON
5 3 (0.34%) Kafka
5 3 (0.34%) Smart Contracts
6 2 (0.22%) RESTful
7 1 (0.11%) Elastic Stack
7 1 (0.11%) FFmpeg
7 1 (0.11%) GStreamer
7 1 (0.11%) HTML
7 1 (0.11%) SailPoint
7 1 (0.11%) TAPI
7 1 (0.11%) Unreal Engine
7 1 (0.11%) WebRTC
7 1 (0.11%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 218 (24.49%) Security Operations Centre
2 155 (17.42%) Security Posture
3 88 (9.89%) Cyber Defence
4 67 (7.53%) Cyber Threat
5 59 (6.63%) Management Information System
6 45 (5.06%) CSOC
7 32 (3.60%) Cloud Native
7 32 (3.60%) Onboarding
8 23 (2.58%) Data Centre
9 17 (1.91%) Self-Motivation
10 15 (1.69%) Cyberattack
11 14 (1.57%) Cloud Security Posture
12 13 (1.46%) Hybrid Cloud
13 10 (1.12%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
14 9 (1.01%) AI Agents
14 9 (1.01%) Client/Server
15 8 (0.90%) Cyber Security Posture
16 7 (0.79%) Social Media
16 7 (0.79%) Virtual Team
17 6 (0.67%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 94 (10.56%) Windows
2 67 (7.53%) Linux
3 12 (1.35%) Unix
3 12 (1.35%) Windows 10
4 7 (0.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (0.56%) Mac OS
5 5 (0.56%) Windows Server
6 4 (0.45%) Kali Linux
7 3 (0.34%) Ubuntu
8 1 (0.11%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 509 (57.19%) Cybersecurity
2 332 (37.30%) SIEM
3 316 (35.51%) Incident Response
4 204 (22.92%) Continuous Improvement
5 202 (22.70%) Vulnerability Management
6 183 (20.56%) Information Security
7 173 (19.44%) Cloud Security
8 134 (15.06%) Threat Detection
9 124 (13.93%) Threat Intelligence
10 120 (13.48%) Risk Management
11 111 (12.47%) Problem-Solving
12 101 (11.35%) Cyber Threat Intelligence
13 89 (10.00%) SOAR
14 88 (9.89%) AI
15 82 (9.21%) Security Monitoring
16 80 (8.99%) Stakeholder Management
17 77 (8.65%) Penetration Testing
18 75 (8.43%) Mentoring
19 73 (8.20%) Incident Management
20 72 (8.09%) MITRE ATT&CK
Programming Languages
1 104 (11.69%) PowerShell
2 91 (10.22%) Python
3 37 (4.16%) Kusto Query Language
4 24 (2.70%) Bash
5 10 (1.12%) C++
5 10 (1.12%) SQL
6 9 (1.01%) Bicep
6 9 (1.01%) Perl
7 8 (0.90%) Search Processing Language
8 6 (0.67%) C
9 5 (0.56%) Java
9 5 (0.56%) JavaScript
10 3 (0.34%) C#
10 3 (0.34%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.22%) Go
12 1 (0.11%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 178 (20.00%) Security Cleared
2 129 (14.49%) SC Cleared
3 128 (14.38%) CISSP
4 79 (8.88%) CompTIA Security+
5 72 (8.09%) Degree
6 65 (7.30%) CISM
7 47 (5.28%) Cisco Certification
7 47 (5.28%) GIAC
8 39 (4.38%) DV Cleared
9 38 (4.27%) CEH
10 29 (3.26%) CompTIA CySA+
11 28 (3.15%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 28 (3.15%) SANS
12 24 (2.70%) Computer Science Degree
13 23 (2.58%) GCIH
14 22 (2.47%) CISA
15 21 (2.36%) GCIA
16 19 (2.13%) CCSP
16 19 (2.13%) CREST Certified
17 16 (1.80%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 183 (20.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 157 (17.64%) NIST
3 78 (8.76%) GDPR
4 54 (6.07%) GRC
5 50 (5.62%) Cyber Essentials
6 33 (3.71%) PCI DSS
7 26 (2.92%) SOC 2
8 22 (2.47%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 18 (2.02%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 14 (1.57%) NCSC
11 13 (1.46%) SLA
12 7 (0.79%) Data Quality
12 7 (0.79%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 5 (0.56%) Accessibility
14 3 (0.34%) NIST 800
15 2 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
15 2 (0.22%) COBIT
15 2 (0.22%) ISO 22301
15 2 (0.22%) PMO
15 2 (0.22%) SOC 3
System Software
1 21 (2.36%) Active Directory
2 10 (1.12%) Docker
3 8 (0.90%) Virtual Machines
4 6 (0.67%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.22%) Firmware
6 1 (0.11%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 34 (3.82%) Microsoft Intune
2 30 (3.37%) Terraform
3 27 (3.03%) QRadar
4 23 (2.58%) Kubernetes
5 20 (2.25%) SCCM
6 19 (2.13%) Single Sign-On
7 11 (1.24%) Ansible
8 7 (0.79%) FortiGate
8 7 (0.79%) Nessus
9 6 (0.67%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
9 6 (0.67%) Graylog
10 5 (0.56%) Red Hat Satellite
11 3 (0.34%) Computer Incident Response Team
11 3 (0.34%) Kibana
12 2 (0.22%) Jamf Pro
12 2 (0.22%) McAfee ePO
12 2 (0.22%) Nagios
13 1 (0.11%) CASB
13 1 (0.11%) Symantec Endpoint Protection
13 1 (0.11%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 240 (26.97%) Microsoft
2 76 (8.54%) Splunk
3 51 (5.73%) Cisco
3 51 (5.73%) Qualys
4 50 (5.62%) Palo Alto
5 45 (5.06%) ServiceNow
6 44 (4.94%) CrowdStrike
7 23 (2.58%) Tenable
8 22 (2.47%) Fortinet
9 21 (2.36%) Aruba
10 16 (1.80%) OpenAI
10 16 (1.80%) Rapid7
11 15 (1.69%) Google
12 12 (1.35%) SolarWinds
13 11 (1.24%) Sophos
14 9 (1.01%) iManage
14 9 (1.01%) Zscaler
15 8 (0.90%) CyberArk
15 8 (0.90%) Meraki
15 8 (0.90%) Red Hat