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 16 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 224 355 293
Rank change year-on-year +131 -62 -10
Permanent jobs citing Security Operations 970 361 731
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.85% 0.73% 0.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.17% 0.82% 1.16%
Number of salaries quoted 680 265 422
10th Percentile £41,250 £37,500 £38,992
25th Percentile £53,750 £47,750 £49,063
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £65,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.69% +8.33% -4.00%
75th Percentile £85,000 £80,000 £78,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £100,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £65,000 £56,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +16.07% +1.82% -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 83,236 43,812 63,193
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 72.95% 88.75% 81.16%
Number of salaries quoted 57,755 24,707 35,897
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,000
25th Percentile £41,750 £36,250 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £80,000 £75,000 £77,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,250 £95,000
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 16 September 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 16 September 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 +128 870 £70,000 +7.69% 1,134
UK excluding London +105 583 £65,000 +16.07% 637
London +97 335 £75,000 -3.23% 596
Work from Home +85 271 £70,000 +3.70% 490
South East +67 209 £60,000 -5.88% 207
North of England +10 119 £70,000 +16.67% 150
Midlands +10 89 £65,000 +26.21% 61
North West +39 80 £75,000 +36.36% 97
East Midlands +25 60 £65,000 +6.34% 28
East of England -11 50 £61,250 -14.63% 49
South West -38 50 £65,000 +27.31% 77
Yorkshire -10 37 £62,500 -3.85% 47
Wales -41 37 £45,000 -35.71% 17
West Midlands -55 29 £67,500 +31.07% 33
Scotland +28 28 £75,000 +25.00% 57
Northern Ireland - 3 £42,500 - 26
North East -66 2 £60,750 -16.21% 9

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 16 (1.65%) SharePoint
2 6 (0.62%) Microsoft Exchange
3 5 (0.52%) Confluence
4 3 (0.31%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.10%) IIS
5 1 (0.10%) SharePoint Server
5 1 (0.10%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 1 (0.10%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 3 (0.31%) Distributed Ledger
Cloud Services
1 206 (21.24%) Azure
2 129 (13.30%) AWS
3 105 (10.82%) Microsoft 365
4 91 (9.38%) Entra ID
5 82 (8.45%) Azure Sentinel
6 55 (5.67%) GCP
7 32 (3.30%) Microsoft Purview
8 24 (2.47%) Azure Logic Apps
9 20 (2.06%) SaaS
10 19 (1.96%) Mimecast
11 14 (1.44%) Anthropic Claude
12 12 (1.24%) Zapier
13 10 (1.03%) AWS CloudFormation
14 9 (0.93%) Amazon GuardDuty
14 9 (0.93%) IaaS
15 8 (0.82%) Cloudflare
15 8 (0.82%) Microsoft Copilot
16 7 (0.72%) PaaS
17 6 (0.62%) Google Workspace
17 6 (0.62%) Sumo Logic
Communications & Networking
1 153 (15.77%) Firewall
2 103 (10.62%) Network Security
3 55 (5.67%) WAN
4 53 (5.46%) LAN
5 49 (5.05%) VPN
6 46 (4.74%) TCP/IP
7 37 (3.81%) DNS
8 31 (3.20%) Wi-Fi
9 28 (2.89%) Internet
10 26 (2.68%) Cisco Nexus
11 24 (2.47%) Intrusion Detection
12 20 (2.06%) HTTP
13 14 (1.44%) SMTP
13 14 (1.44%) SSL
14 13 (1.34%) Cisco ISE
14 13 (1.34%) FTP
15 6 (0.62%) IPsec
15 6 (0.62%) NGFW
15 6 (0.62%) SD-WAN
16 5 (0.52%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (0.62%) SQL Server
2 5 (0.52%) MongoDB
3 3 (0.31%) Hadoop
3 3 (0.31%) NoSQL
4 2 (0.21%) Relational Database
5 1 (0.10%) Azure SQL Database
5 1 (0.10%) Big Data
5 1 (0.10%) Data Mining
5 1 (0.10%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 10 (1.03%) JIRA
2 5 (0.52%) Jenkins
3 2 (0.21%) Maven
3 2 (0.21%) Team Foundation Server
3 2 (0.21%) Yeoman
4 1 (0.10%) Git
4 1 (0.10%) GitLab
General
1 202 (20.82%) Social Skills
2 114 (11.75%) Analytical Skills
3 105 (10.82%) Finance
4 49 (5.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 44 (4.54%) Law
5 44 (4.54%) Legal
5 44 (4.54%) Public Sector
6 38 (3.92%) Aerospace
7 37 (3.81%) Retail
8 22 (2.27%) Banking
9 21 (2.16%) Military
10 18 (1.86%) Influencing Skills
11 9 (0.93%) Documentation Skills
11 9 (0.93%) Financial Institution
12 6 (0.62%) Police
13 5 (0.52%) Advertising
13 5 (0.52%) Manufacturing
14 4 (0.41%) Investment Banking
14 4 (0.41%) Local Government
14 4 (0.41%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 240 (24.74%) Analyst
2 177 (18.25%) Senior
3 163 (16.80%) Security Analyst
4 138 (14.23%) Security Engineer
5 124 (12.78%) Lead
6 119 (12.27%) Security Manager
7 101 (10.41%) Senior Analyst
8 80 (8.25%) Cybersecurity Analyst
9 75 (7.73%) SOC Analyst
10 67 (6.91%) Cybersecurity Manager
10 67 (6.91%) Senior Security Analyst
11 64 (6.60%) Cybersecurity Engineer
12 61 (6.29%) Architect
13 54 (5.57%) Operational Security Manager
13 54 (5.57%) Security Operations Manager
14 53 (5.46%) Operations Manager
15 46 (4.74%) SOC Engineer
16 43 (4.43%) Security Specialist
17 40 (4.12%) Senior Security Engineer
18 38 (3.92%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (3.30%) Terraform
2 18 (1.86%) LDAP
3 16 (1.65%) ModSecurity
4 11 (1.13%) REST
5 6 (0.62%) ARM Templates
5 6 (0.62%) Regular Expression
6 5 (0.52%) JSON
6 5 (0.52%) SOAP
7 4 (0.41%) OpenID
7 4 (0.41%) SAML
8 3 (0.31%) Kafka
8 3 (0.31%) Smart Contracts
9 2 (0.21%) Elastic Stack
9 2 (0.21%) HTML
9 2 (0.21%) RESTful
9 2 (0.21%) SailPoint
10 1 (0.10%) CSS
10 1 (0.10%) WPF
10 1 (0.10%) XML
10 1 (0.10%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 218 (22.47%) Security Operations Centre
2 180 (18.56%) Security Posture
3 86 (8.87%) Cyber Defence
3 86 (8.87%) Cyber Threat
4 68 (7.01%) Management Information System
5 38 (3.92%) CSOC
6 37 (3.81%) Cloud Native
6 37 (3.81%) Data Centre
7 34 (3.51%) Onboarding
8 22 (2.27%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 17 (1.75%) Self-Motivation
10 15 (1.55%) Cloud Security Posture
11 14 (1.44%) Hybrid Cloud
12 12 (1.24%) AI Agents
12 12 (1.24%) Social Media
13 11 (1.13%) Cyberattack
14 10 (1.03%) Cyber Security Posture
15 9 (0.93%) Client/Server
15 9 (0.93%) Virtual Team
16 8 (0.82%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 94 (9.69%) Windows
2 69 (7.11%) Linux
3 11 (1.13%) Windows Server
4 8 (0.82%) Mac OS
4 8 (0.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 8 (0.82%) Unix
4 8 (0.82%) Windows 10
5 4 (0.41%) Ubuntu
6 3 (0.31%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.10%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 568 (58.56%) Cybersecurity
2 354 (36.49%) SIEM
3 347 (35.77%) Incident Response
4 251 (25.88%) Vulnerability Management
5 225 (23.20%) Continuous Improvement
6 219 (22.58%) Information Security
7 184 (18.97%) Cloud Security
8 166 (17.11%) Threat Detection
9 148 (15.26%) Risk Management
10 132 (13.61%) Problem-Solving
11 125 (12.89%) Threat Intelligence
12 114 (11.75%) AI
12 114 (11.75%) Security Monitoring
13 100 (10.31%) Cyber Threat Intelligence
14 98 (10.10%) Stakeholder Management
15 93 (9.59%) SOAR
16 92 (9.48%) Mentoring
17 91 (9.38%) Disaster Recovery
18 87 (8.97%) Incident Management
19 82 (8.45%) Penetration Testing
Programming Languages
1 105 (10.82%) PowerShell
2 95 (9.79%) Python
3 48 (4.95%) Kusto Query Language
4 25 (2.58%) Bash
5 13 (1.34%) SQL
6 11 (1.13%) C++
7 10 (1.03%) Perl
7 10 (1.03%) Search Processing Language
8 8 (0.82%) JavaScript
9 7 (0.72%) Go
10 6 (0.62%) Bicep
10 6 (0.62%) C
10 6 (0.62%) Java
11 4 (0.41%) Shell Script
12 3 (0.31%) C#
13 1 (0.10%) MATLAB
13 1 (0.10%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 203 (20.93%) Security Cleared
2 151 (15.57%) CISSP
3 136 (14.02%) SC Cleared
4 81 (8.35%) CISM
5 79 (8.14%) CompTIA Security+
5 79 (8.14%) Degree
6 58 (5.98%) DV Cleared
7 52 (5.36%) Cisco Certification
8 46 (4.74%) GIAC
9 39 (4.02%) CEH
10 31 (3.20%) CompTIA CySA+
11 29 (2.99%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 24 (2.47%) Computer Science Degree
13 23 (2.37%) AWS Certification
13 23 (2.37%) GCIA
13 23 (2.37%) GCIH
13 23 (2.37%) SANS
14 20 (2.06%) CCSP
15 19 (1.96%) CCNP
15 19 (1.96%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 208 (21.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 164 (16.91%) NIST
3 72 (7.42%) GDPR
4 65 (6.70%) GRC
5 58 (5.98%) Cyber Essentials
6 41 (4.23%) PCI DSS
7 24 (2.47%) SOC 2
8 22 (2.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 18 (1.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 15 (1.55%) NCSC
10 15 (1.55%) SLA
11 11 (1.13%) Data Quality
12 6 (0.62%) NIST 800
13 5 (0.52%) Accessibility
14 3 (0.31%) COBIT
14 3 (0.31%) ISO 22301
14 3 (0.31%) ISO 9001
14 3 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
15 2 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
15 2 (0.21%) QA
System Software
1 38 (3.92%) Active Directory
2 10 (1.03%) Docker
3 9 (0.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (0.72%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.21%) Firmware
6 1 (0.10%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 37 (3.81%) Microsoft Intune
2 34 (3.51%) Single Sign-On
3 31 (3.20%) Kubernetes
4 28 (2.89%) QRadar
5 16 (1.65%) SCCM
6 9 (0.93%) Ansible
7 7 (0.72%) FortiGate
7 7 (0.72%) Graylog
7 7 (0.72%) Nessus
8 5 (0.52%) McAfee ePO
8 5 (0.52%) Nagios
8 5 (0.52%) Red Hat Satellite
9 4 (0.41%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
9 4 (0.41%) Kibana
9 4 (0.41%) Progress Chef
10 3 (0.31%) CASB
10 3 (0.31%) Computer Incident Response Team
10 3 (0.31%) Symantec Endpoint Protection
11 2 (0.21%) Argo
11 2 (0.21%) Istio
Vendors
1 262 (27.01%) Microsoft
2 84 (8.66%) Splunk
3 67 (6.91%) Palo Alto
4 63 (6.49%) Cisco
5 57 (5.88%) Qualys
6 52 (5.36%) CrowdStrike
7 47 (4.85%) ServiceNow
8 26 (2.68%) Aruba
9 25 (2.58%) Fortinet
9 25 (2.58%) Google
10 22 (2.27%) Tenable
11 16 (1.65%) OpenAI
11 16 (1.65%) Rapid7
12 13 (1.34%) Zscaler
13 12 (1.24%) Meraki
14 9 (0.93%) CyberArk
14 9 (0.93%) Red Hat
14 9 (0.93%) SolarWinds
14 9 (0.93%) VMware
15 8 (0.82%) Sophos