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

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 215 335 262
Rank change year-on-year +120 -73 +14
Permanent jobs citing Security Operations 1,043 379 734
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.88% 0.77% 1.03%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.20% 0.87% 1.26%
Number of salaries quoted 683 275 429
10th Percentile £41,250 £39,850 £40,001
25th Percentile £53,750 £48,688 £48,750
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 £99,000 £100,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £65,000 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year +13.04% +4.55% -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 87,229 43,738 58,305
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.43% 88.90% 82.16%
Number of salaries quoted 59,718 24,553 31,325
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,250 £32,925
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,250 £44,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -8.33% -
75th Percentile £78,243 £75,000 £78,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £97,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £52,600
% change year-on-year +15.79% -9.70% -2.59%

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 15 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 15 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 +122 944 £70,000 +7.69% 768
UK excluding London +76 614 £65,000 +13.04% 415
London +91 386 £77,000 +0.98% 394
Work from Home +55 265 £70,000 +3.70% 357
South East +63 227 £60,000 -7.69% 125
North of England +18 124 £72,500 +31.82% 118
North West +38 86 £75,000 +66.67% 69
Midlands -3 85 £65,000 +23.22% 37
South West -30 59 £62,500 +22.41% 36
East Midlands +23 54 £65,000 +6.34% 17
East of England -20 52 £58,000 -22.67% 25
Yorkshire -8 38 £62,500 -3.85% 37
Wales -35 34 £46,250 -15.91% 9
Scotland +36 31 £75,000 +7.14% 44
West Midlands -54 31 £67,500 +27.96% 20
Northern Ireland -74 4 £42,500 - 25

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 17 (1.63%) SharePoint
2 12 (1.15%) Microsoft Exchange
3 4 (0.38%) Confluence
3 4 (0.38%) IIS
4 3 (0.29%) Apache Spark
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
1 238 (22.82%) Azure
2 144 (13.81%) AWS
3 115 (11.03%) Microsoft 365
4 110 (10.55%) Entra ID
5 89 (8.53%) Azure Sentinel
6 69 (6.62%) GCP
7 38 (3.64%) Microsoft Purview
8 28 (2.68%) SaaS
9 27 (2.59%) Azure Logic Apps
10 22 (2.11%) Mimecast
11 14 (1.34%) Anthropic Claude
12 12 (1.15%) Zapier
13 11 (1.05%) AWS CloudFormation
13 11 (1.05%) IaaS
14 10 (0.96%) Microsoft Copilot
15 9 (0.86%) Amazon GuardDuty
16 8 (0.77%) Cloudflare
16 8 (0.77%) PaaS
17 6 (0.58%) Google Workspace
18 5 (0.48%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 164 (15.72%) Firewall
2 107 (10.26%) Network Security
3 60 (5.75%) WAN
4 58 (5.56%) LAN
5 56 (5.37%) VPN
6 48 (4.60%) TCP/IP
7 36 (3.45%) DNS
8 31 (2.97%) Wi-Fi
9 27 (2.59%) Internet
10 25 (2.40%) Cisco Nexus
11 24 (2.30%) HTTP
12 19 (1.82%) Intrusion Detection
13 16 (1.53%) Cisco ISE
13 16 (1.53%) FTP
13 16 (1.53%) SMTP
14 14 (1.34%) SSL
15 10 (0.96%) Wireless
16 6 (0.58%) IPsec
16 6 (0.58%) NGFW
17 5 (0.48%) SD-WAN
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%) GitLab
4 2 (0.19%) Yeoman
5 1 (0.096%) Git
5 1 (0.096%) Snyk
5 1 (0.096%) SonarQube
General
1 206 (19.75%) Social Skills
2 137 (13.14%) Finance
3 108 (10.35%) Analytical Skills
4 52 (4.99%) Law
5 49 (4.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 47 (4.51%) Legal
7 44 (4.22%) Public Sector
8 43 (4.12%) Aerospace
9 38 (3.64%) Retail
10 32 (3.07%) Banking
11 24 (2.30%) Influencing Skills
12 22 (2.11%) Military
13 12 (1.15%) Documentation Skills
14 9 (0.86%) Financial Institution
15 6 (0.58%) Advertising
15 6 (0.58%) Back Office
15 6 (0.58%) Investment Banking
16 5 (0.48%) Manufacturing
17 4 (0.38%) Local Government
17 4 (0.38%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 269 (25.79%) Analyst
2 213 (20.42%) Senior
3 182 (17.45%) Security Analyst
4 156 (14.96%) Lead
5 138 (13.23%) Security Engineer
6 134 (12.85%) Security Manager
7 114 (10.93%) Senior Analyst
8 92 (8.82%) SOC Analyst
9 79 (7.57%) Cybersecurity Analyst
10 77 (7.38%) Cybersecurity Manager
11 75 (7.19%) Senior Security Analyst
12 69 (6.62%) Architect
13 60 (5.75%) Cybersecurity Engineer
13 60 (5.75%) Operational Security Manager
13 60 (5.75%) Security Operations Manager
14 51 (4.89%) Operations Manager
15 47 (4.51%) Senior Security Engineer
16 46 (4.41%) Operations Analyst
17 43 (4.12%) Cloud Engineer
18 42 (4.03%) Security Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 41 (3.93%) Terraform
2 22 (2.11%) LDAP
3 16 (1.53%) ModSecurity
4 15 (1.44%) REST
5 8 (0.77%) ARM Templates
5 8 (0.77%) SOAP
6 7 (0.67%) JSON
7 4 (0.38%) OpenID
7 4 (0.38%) SAML
8 3 (0.29%) HTML
8 3 (0.29%) Kafka
8 3 (0.29%) Regular Expression
8 3 (0.29%) RESTful
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%) XML
10 1 (0.096%) FFmpeg
10 1 (0.096%) WebRTC
Miscellaneous
1 244 (23.39%) Security Operations Centre
2 179 (17.16%) Security Posture
3 110 (10.55%) Cyber Threat
4 96 (9.20%) Cyber Defence
5 73 (7.00%) Management Information System
6 44 (4.22%) Data Centre
7 42 (4.03%) Cloud Native
8 34 (3.26%) CSOC
9 33 (3.16%) Onboarding
10 27 (2.59%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 16 (1.53%) AI Agents
12 15 (1.44%) Hybrid Cloud
13 13 (1.25%) Cloud Security Posture
14 12 (1.15%) Social Media
15 11 (1.05%) PKI
16 10 (0.96%) Cyber Security Posture
16 10 (0.96%) Public Cloud
16 10 (0.96%) Self-Motivation
16 10 (0.96%) Virtual Team
17 9 (0.86%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 97 (9.30%) Windows
2 74 (7.09%) Linux
3 15 (1.44%) macOS
4 14 (1.34%) Windows Server
5 9 (0.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (0.77%) Unix
7 6 (0.58%) Apple iOS
8 5 (0.48%) Ubuntu
9 4 (0.38%) Windows 10
10 2 (0.19%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 623 (59.73%) Cybersecurity
2 389 (37.30%) Incident Response
3 349 (33.46%) SIEM
4 284 (27.23%) Vulnerability Management
5 253 (24.26%) Information Security
6 242 (23.20%) Continuous Improvement
7 200 (19.18%) Cloud Security
8 174 (16.68%) Risk Management
9 173 (16.59%) Threat Detection
10 148 (14.19%) Threat Intelligence
11 132 (12.66%) AI
11 132 (12.66%) Stakeholder Management
12 131 (12.56%) Problem-Solving
13 130 (12.46%) Security Monitoring
14 119 (11.41%) Cyber Threat Intelligence
15 96 (9.20%) Disaster Recovery
16 94 (9.01%) Incident Management
17 91 (8.72%) Mentoring
18 88 (8.44%) Penetration Testing
18 88 (8.44%) SOAR
Programming Languages
1 109 (10.45%) PowerShell
2 104 (9.97%) Python
3 53 (5.08%) Kusto Query Language
4 32 (3.07%) 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%) Go
8 10 (0.96%) Search Processing Language
9 9 (0.86%) JavaScript
10 8 (0.77%) Java
11 4 (0.38%) C
11 4 (0.38%) Shell Script
12 3 (0.29%) C#
13 1 (0.096%) MATLAB
13 1 (0.096%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 197 (18.89%) Security Cleared
2 166 (15.92%) CISSP
3 123 (11.79%) SC Cleared
4 89 (8.53%) CISM
5 79 (7.57%) CompTIA Security+
6 77 (7.38%) Degree
7 66 (6.33%) DV Cleared
8 47 (4.51%) Cisco Certification
9 43 (4.12%) GIAC
10 37 (3.55%) CEH
11 35 (3.36%) CompTIA CySA+
12 27 (2.59%) AWS Certification
13 26 (2.49%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 24 (2.30%) GCIA
14 24 (2.30%) GCIH
15 22 (2.11%) Azure Certification
15 22 (2.11%) Computer Science Degree
16 19 (1.82%) CISA
17 18 (1.73%) SANS
18 17 (1.63%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 232 (22.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 178 (17.07%) NIST
3 78 (7.48%) Cyber Essentials
3 78 (7.48%) GRC
4 71 (6.81%) GDPR
5 53 (5.08%) PCI DSS
6 30 (2.88%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 28 (2.68%) NCSC
8 25 (2.40%) SOC 2
9 19 (1.82%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 18 (1.73%) SLA
11 12 (1.15%) Data Quality
12 7 (0.67%) Accessibility
13 6 (0.58%) NIST 800
14 5 (0.48%) HMG Security Policy Framework
15 3 (0.29%) COBIT
15 3 (0.29%) ISO 22301
15 3 (0.29%) ISO 9001
15 3 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
15 3 (0.29%) QA
System Software
1 47 (4.51%) Active Directory
2 16 (1.53%) Docker
3 10 (0.96%) 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
Systems Management
1 46 (4.41%) Microsoft Intune
2 44 (4.22%) Kubernetes
3 42 (4.03%) Single Sign-On
4 29 (2.78%) QRadar
5 13 (1.25%) SCCM
6 11 (1.05%) Ansible
7 7 (0.67%) Graylog
7 7 (0.67%) Nessus
8 6 (0.58%) Progress Chef
9 5 (0.48%) FortiGate
9 5 (0.48%) McAfee ePO
9 5 (0.48%) Nagios
10 4 (0.38%) Kibana
10 4 (0.38%) Red Hat Satellite
11 3 (0.29%) CASB
11 3 (0.29%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
11 3 (0.29%) Computer Incident Response Team
11 3 (0.29%) Puppet
11 3 (0.29%) Symantec Endpoint Protection
12 2 (0.19%) Istio
Vendors
1 294 (28.19%) Microsoft
2 87 (8.34%) Splunk
3 71 (6.81%) Palo Alto
4 67 (6.42%) Cisco
5 65 (6.23%) CrowdStrike
6 54 (5.18%) Qualys
7 38 (3.64%) ServiceNow
8 37 (3.55%) Google
9 26 (2.49%) Aruba
10 22 (2.11%) Fortinet
10 22 (2.11%) Tenable
11 16 (1.53%) Meraki
11 16 (1.53%) OpenAI
12 14 (1.34%) Rapid7
12 14 (1.34%) Zscaler
13 12 (1.15%) VMware
14 10 (0.96%) Darktrace
15 9 (0.86%) Carbon Black
16 8 (0.77%) CyberArk
16 8 (0.77%) iManage