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 19 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 232 384 323
Rank change year-on-year +152 -61 +14
Permanent jobs citing Security Operations 763 319 889
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.81% 0.71% 0.82%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.11% 0.77% 1.00%
Number of salaries quoted 574 229 649
10th Percentile £41,400 £42,350 £37,500
25th Percentile £51,250 £49,000 £50,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £62,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +12.90% +3.33% -4.00%
75th Percentile £82,500 £77,500 £77,500
90th Percentile £94,933 £110,000 £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 68,493 41,477 89,117
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 72.95% 92.48% 81.80%
Number of salaries quoted 47,109 22,216 63,180
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,822 £29,750
25th Percentile £41,250 £39,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £57,500 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% +4.55% -9.54%
75th Percentile £78,750 £77,500 £72,500
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £92,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -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 19 June 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 19 June 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 +125 688 £70,000 +12.00% 186
UK excluding London +116 444 £65,000 +18.18% 162
London +82 265 £75,000 -3.23% 70
Work from Home +112 243 £65,000 +18.18% 92
South East +66 133 £60,000 -5.88% 63
North of England +56 121 £70,000 +16.67% 36
Midlands +15 80 £60,000 +9.09% 19
North West +56 72 £75,000 +30.43% 19
East Midlands +20 47 £55,000 -3.51% 8
Yorkshire -8 43 £62,500 -3.85% 14
South West -43 36 £65,000 +27.31% 17
West Midlands -24 33 £67,500 +22.73% 11
East of England -11 30 £57,500 +5.02% 11
Wales -19 29 £25,000 -52.56% 9
Scotland +18 15 £75,000 +36.36% 10
North East -39 6 £75,000 +22.45% 3
Northern Ireland - 2 £40,750 - 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 12 (1.57%) SharePoint
2 4 (0.52%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.26%) Confluence
4 1 (0.13%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 1 (0.13%) Distributed Ledger
1 1 (0.13%) Exchequer
Cloud Services
1 164 (21.49%) Azure
2 89 (11.66%) AWS
3 76 (9.96%) Microsoft 365
4 62 (8.13%) Azure Sentinel
5 49 (6.42%) Entra ID
6 41 (5.37%) GCP
7 23 (3.01%) SaaS
8 15 (1.97%) Mimecast
9 14 (1.83%) Anthropic Claude
10 13 (1.70%) Microsoft Purview
11 12 (1.57%) Zapier
12 10 (1.31%) Azure Logic Apps
13 9 (1.18%) GitHub
13 9 (1.18%) GitHub Actions
14 8 (1.05%) AWS CloudFormation
15 7 (0.92%) IaaS
15 7 (0.92%) PaaS
16 6 (0.79%) Cloudflare
16 6 (0.79%) Google Workspace
17 5 (0.66%) Sumo Logic
Communications & Networking
1 113 (14.81%) Firewall
2 79 (10.35%) Network Security
3 35 (4.59%) DNS
3 35 (4.59%) TCP/IP
4 34 (4.46%) WAN
5 31 (4.06%) LAN
5 31 (4.06%) VPN
6 17 (2.23%) HTTP
6 17 (2.23%) Intrusion Detection
7 15 (1.97%) Wi-Fi
8 14 (1.83%) Cisco Nexus
9 13 (1.70%) Internet
10 11 (1.44%) FTP
10 11 (1.44%) SMTP
11 10 (1.31%) Cisco ISE
12 8 (1.05%) SSL
13 7 (0.92%) SD-WAN
14 5 (0.66%) NGFW
15 4 (0.52%) HTTPS
15 4 (0.52%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (0.39%) Power BI
1 3 (0.39%) SQL Server
2 2 (0.26%) Elasticsearch
2 2 (0.26%) MongoDB
2 2 (0.26%) Relational Database
3 1 (0.13%) Azure SQL Database
3 1 (0.13%) Big Data
3 1 (0.13%) Hadoop
3 1 (0.13%) NoSQL
3 1 (0.13%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 7 (0.92%) Jenkins
2 4 (0.52%) Bitbucket
2 4 (0.52%) CircleCI
2 4 (0.52%) Metasploit
3 3 (0.39%) JIRA
General
1 166 (21.76%) Social Skills
2 101 (13.24%) Analytical Skills
3 88 (11.53%) Finance
4 50 (6.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 39 (5.11%) Law
6 34 (4.46%) Legal
6 34 (4.46%) Public Sector
7 26 (3.41%) Retail
8 17 (2.23%) Influencing Skills
9 14 (1.83%) Banking
10 10 (1.31%) Aerospace
11 8 (1.05%) Financial Institution
12 6 (0.79%) Advertising
12 6 (0.79%) Aviation
12 6 (0.79%) Organisational Skills
12 6 (0.79%) Police
12 6 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
13 5 (0.66%) Back Office
14 4 (0.52%) Games
14 4 (0.52%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 186 (24.38%) Analyst
2 137 (17.96%) Security Analyst
3 115 (15.07%) Senior
4 96 (12.58%) Security Engineer
5 93 (12.19%) Security Manager
6 83 (10.88%) Lead
7 80 (10.48%) Cybersecurity Analyst
8 57 (7.47%) Senior Analyst
9 52 (6.82%) Cybersecurity Manager
9 52 (6.82%) SOC Engineer
10 49 (6.42%) Operational Security Manager
10 49 (6.42%) Security Operations Manager
11 46 (6.03%) Operations Manager
12 45 (5.90%) Architect
12 45 (5.90%) SOC Analyst
13 44 (5.77%) Senior Security Analyst
14 37 (4.85%) Cybersecurity Engineer
15 34 (4.46%) Operations Analyst
16 32 (4.19%) Security Specialist
17 29 (3.80%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (1.70%) LDAP
2 6 (0.79%) Regular Expression
3 5 (0.66%) REST
4 4 (0.52%) ARM Templates
5 3 (0.39%) JSON
6 2 (0.26%) OpenID
6 2 (0.26%) RESTful
6 2 (0.26%) SAML
7 1 (0.13%) EDI
7 1 (0.13%) Elastic Stack
7 1 (0.13%) GStreamer
7 1 (0.13%) HTML
7 1 (0.13%) Kafka
7 1 (0.13%) SailPoint
7 1 (0.13%) Smart Contracts
7 1 (0.13%) SOAP
7 1 (0.13%) TAPI
7 1 (0.13%) Unreal Engine
7 1 (0.13%) WebRTC
7 1 (0.13%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 187 (24.51%) Security Operations Centre
2 122 (15.99%) Security Posture
3 69 (9.04%) Cyber Defence
4 51 (6.68%) Cyber Threat
5 50 (6.55%) Management Information System
6 37 (4.85%) CSOC
7 30 (3.93%) Cloud Native
8 23 (3.01%) Onboarding
9 14 (1.83%) Data Centre
10 13 (1.70%) Cyberattack
10 13 (1.70%) Self-Motivation
11 12 (1.57%) Cloud Security Posture
12 9 (1.18%) AI Agents
12 9 (1.18%) Client/Server
12 9 (1.18%) Hybrid Cloud
13 8 (1.05%) Analytical Mindset
14 7 (0.92%) Virtual Team
15 6 (0.79%) Cyber Kill Chain
15 6 (0.79%) Insider Threat
15 6 (0.79%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 94 (12.32%) Windows
2 60 (7.86%) Linux
3 16 (2.10%) Windows 10
4 13 (1.70%) Unix
5 8 (1.05%) Windows Server
6 4 (0.52%) Kali Linux
6 4 (0.52%) Windows Server 2012
6 4 (0.52%) Windows Server 2019
7 3 (0.39%) Mac OS
8 2 (0.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.13%) CentOS
9 1 (0.13%) Data ONTAP
9 1 (0.13%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 425 (55.70%) Cybersecurity
2 286 (37.48%) SIEM
3 263 (34.47%) Incident Response
4 169 (22.15%) Continuous Improvement
5 149 (19.53%) Vulnerability Management
6 148 (19.40%) Cloud Security
7 137 (17.96%) Information Security
8 115 (15.07%) Threat Intelligence
9 101 (13.24%) Problem-Solving
10 98 (12.84%) Cyber Threat Intelligence
11 94 (12.32%) Threat Detection
12 91 (11.93%) Risk Management
13 85 (11.14%) SOAR
14 72 (9.44%) MITRE ATT&CK
15 70 (9.17%) AI
16 68 (8.91%) Security Monitoring
17 66 (8.65%) Roadmaps
18 65 (8.52%) Mentoring
19 58 (7.60%) Penetration Testing
20 57 (7.47%) Use Case
Programming Languages
1 105 (13.76%) PowerShell
2 92 (12.06%) Python
3 31 (4.06%) Kusto Query Language
4 24 (3.15%) Bash
5 13 (1.70%) SQL
6 9 (1.18%) C++
6 9 (1.18%) Perl
7 6 (0.79%) Bicep
7 6 (0.79%) JavaScript
8 5 (0.66%) C
8 5 (0.66%) Search Processing Language
9 3 (0.39%) C#
10 2 (0.26%) Go
10 2 (0.26%) Java
10 2 (0.26%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.13%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 151 (19.79%) Security Cleared
2 115 (15.07%) SC Cleared
3 98 (12.84%) CISSP
4 68 (8.91%) CompTIA Security+
5 58 (7.60%) Degree
6 50 (6.55%) GIAC
7 47 (6.16%) CISM
8 33 (4.33%) CEH
9 32 (4.19%) Cisco Certification
10 29 (3.80%) DV Cleared
11 26 (3.41%) SANS
12 21 (2.75%) Computer Science Degree
12 21 (2.75%) CREST Certified
13 20 (2.62%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 20 (2.62%) CompTIA CySA+
14 19 (2.49%) GCIH
15 16 (2.10%) CISA
15 16 (2.10%) GCIA
16 15 (1.97%) CCSP
17 14 (1.83%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 150 (19.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 140 (18.35%) NIST
3 64 (8.39%) GDPR
4 47 (6.16%) GRC
5 46 (6.03%) Cyber Essentials
6 34 (4.46%) PCI DSS
7 21 (2.75%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 17 (2.23%) NCSC
8 17 (2.23%) SOC 2
9 16 (2.10%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 10 (1.31%) SLA
11 5 (0.66%) Accessibility
11 5 (0.66%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 3 (0.39%) COBIT
12 3 (0.39%) NIST 800
12 3 (0.39%) SOC 3
13 2 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
13 2 (0.26%) Data Quality
13 2 (0.26%) ISO 22301
13 2 (0.26%) PMO
System Software
1 28 (3.67%) Active Directory
2 11 (1.44%) Docker
3 5 (0.66%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (0.52%) VMware ESXi
5 3 (0.39%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.26%) Firmware
7 1 (0.13%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 34 (4.46%) Microsoft Intune
2 27 (3.54%) Terraform
3 26 (3.41%) SCCM
4 24 (3.15%) QRadar
5 23 (3.01%) Kubernetes
6 14 (1.83%) Ansible
7 11 (1.44%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (0.92%) FortiGate
9 6 (0.79%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
9 6 (0.79%) Graylog
10 5 (0.66%) vCenter Server
11 4 (0.52%) Computer Incident Response Team
11 4 (0.52%) Grafana
12 3 (0.39%) CASB
12 3 (0.39%) Kibana
12 3 (0.39%) Nessus
13 2 (0.26%) CSIRT
13 2 (0.26%) Red Hat Satellite
14 1 (0.13%) Host Intrusion Detection System
Vendors
1 225 (29.49%) Microsoft
2 62 (8.13%) Splunk
3 48 (6.29%) ServiceNow
4 38 (4.98%) CrowdStrike
5 36 (4.72%) Qualys
6 32 (4.19%) Cisco
7 21 (2.75%) Palo Alto
8 20 (2.62%) SolarWinds
9 19 (2.49%) Tenable
10 16 (2.10%) OpenAI
11 14 (1.83%) Fortinet
11 14 (1.83%) Google
12 11 (1.44%) Aruba
13 10 (1.31%) Rapid7
14 9 (1.18%) Sophos
14 9 (1.18%) VMware
15 8 (1.05%) iManage
16 7 (0.92%) Okta
16 7 (0.92%) Zscaler
17 6 (0.79%) Carbon Black