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

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 224 358 289
Rank change year-on-year +134 -69 +3
Permanent jobs citing Security Operations 975 361 738
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.85% 0.73% 0.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.16% 0.82% 1.16%
Number of salaries quoted 680 264 425
10th Percentile £41,250 £37,500 £39,328
25th Percentile £53,750 £48,061 £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 £85,000 £80,000 £78,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £100,000 £100,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £65,000 £55,000 £54,000
% change year-on-year +18.18% +1.85% -13.60%

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 84,196 43,853 63,499
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.06% 88.72% 81.26%
Number of salaries quoted 58,302 24,746 35,929
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 £96,750 £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 18 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 18 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 +123 874 £70,000 +7.69% 867
UK excluding London +99 582 £65,000 +18.18% 483
London +90 343 £76,000 -1.94% 453
Work from Home +87 269 £70,000 +3.70% 359
South East +75 210 £60,000 -7.69% 171
North of England +12 118 £70,000 +21.74% 102
Midlands -3 89 £65,000 +26.21% 54
North West +43 80 £75,000 +50.00% 67
East Midlands +14 60 £65,000 +6.34% 24
South West -51 50 £65,000 +27.31% 54
East of England -9 49 £61,250 -14.63% 41
Yorkshire -22 37 £62,500 -3.85% 29
Wales -35 36 £45,000 -35.71% 9
Scotland +26 29 £75,000 +19.81% 38
West Midlands -58 29 £67,500 +31.07% 30
Northern Ireland - 3 £42,500 - 20
North East -72 1 £75,000 +3.45% 6

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 (1.74%) SharePoint
2 6 (0.62%) Microsoft Exchange
3 5 (0.51%) 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
2 1 (0.10%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 208 (21.33%) Azure
2 130 (13.33%) AWS
3 106 (10.87%) Microsoft 365
4 94 (9.64%) Entra ID
5 82 (8.41%) Azure Sentinel
6 56 (5.74%) GCP
7 33 (3.38%) Microsoft Purview
8 25 (2.56%) Azure Logic Apps
9 21 (2.15%) SaaS
10 18 (1.85%) Mimecast
11 14 (1.44%) Anthropic Claude
12 12 (1.23%) Zapier
13 10 (1.03%) AWS CloudFormation
14 9 (0.92%) IaaS
15 8 (0.82%) Amazon GuardDuty
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
1 151 (15.49%) Firewall
2 102 (10.46%) Network Security
3 55 (5.64%) WAN
4 53 (5.44%) LAN
5 47 (4.82%) VPN
6 46 (4.72%) TCP/IP
7 38 (3.90%) DNS
8 31 (3.18%) Wi-Fi
9 27 (2.77%) Internet
10 25 (2.56%) Cisco Nexus
11 23 (2.36%) Intrusion Detection
12 20 (2.05%) HTTP
13 14 (1.44%) SMTP
13 14 (1.44%) SSL
14 13 (1.33%) FTP
15 12 (1.23%) Cisco ISE
16 6 (0.62%) IPsec
16 6 (0.62%) NGFW
16 6 (0.62%) SD-WAN
17 5 (0.51%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (0.62%) SQL Server
2 5 (0.51%) MongoDB
3 3 (0.31%) Hadoop
3 3 (0.31%) NoSQL
4 2 (0.21%) Azure SQL Database
4 2 (0.21%) Relational Database
5 1 (0.10%) Big Data
5 1 (0.10%) Data Mining
5 1 (0.10%) Elasticsearch
5 1 (0.10%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 10 (1.03%) JIRA
2 5 (0.51%) 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
1 200 (20.51%) Social Skills
2 114 (11.69%) Analytical Skills
3 108 (11.08%) Finance
4 49 (5.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 46 (4.72%) Law
6 45 (4.62%) Legal
7 44 (4.51%) Public Sector
8 38 (3.90%) Aerospace
9 37 (3.79%) Retail
10 23 (2.36%) Banking
11 21 (2.15%) Military
12 18 (1.85%) Influencing Skills
13 10 (1.03%) Documentation Skills
14 9 (0.92%) Financial Institution
15 6 (0.62%) Police
16 5 (0.51%) Advertising
16 5 (0.51%) Investment Banking
16 5 (0.51%) Manufacturing
17 4 (0.41%) Back Office
17 4 (0.41%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 242 (24.82%) Analyst
2 182 (18.67%) Senior
3 165 (16.92%) Security Analyst
4 140 (14.36%) Security Engineer
5 124 (12.72%) Lead
6 120 (12.31%) Security Manager
7 102 (10.46%) Senior Analyst
8 80 (8.21%) Cybersecurity Analyst
9 75 (7.69%) SOC Analyst
10 68 (6.97%) Cybersecurity Manager
10 68 (6.97%) Senior Security Analyst
11 64 (6.56%) Cybersecurity Engineer
12 60 (6.15%) Architect
13 54 (5.54%) Operational Security Manager
13 54 (5.54%) Security Operations Manager
14 53 (5.44%) Operations Manager
15 46 (4.72%) SOC Engineer
16 42 (4.31%) Security Specialist
17 41 (4.21%) Senior Security Engineer
18 37 (3.79%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (3.49%) Terraform
2 18 (1.85%) LDAP
3 16 (1.64%) ModSecurity
4 13 (1.33%) REST
5 6 (0.62%) ARM Templates
5 6 (0.62%) Regular Expression
5 6 (0.62%) SOAP
6 5 (0.51%) JSON
7 4 (0.41%) OpenID
7 4 (0.41%) SAML
8 3 (0.31%) HTML
8 3 (0.31%) Kafka
8 3 (0.31%) Smart Contracts
9 2 (0.21%) CSS
9 2 (0.21%) Elastic Stack
9 2 (0.21%) RESTful
9 2 (0.21%) SailPoint
9 2 (0.21%) XML
10 1 (0.10%) Unreal Engine
10 1 (0.10%) WebRTC
Miscellaneous
1 218 (22.36%) Security Operations Centre
2 180 (18.46%) Security Posture
3 86 (8.82%) Cyber Threat
4 84 (8.62%) Cyber Defence
5 69 (7.08%) Management Information System
6 39 (4.00%) Data Centre
7 38 (3.90%) CSOC
8 37 (3.79%) Cloud Native
9 35 (3.59%) Onboarding
10 22 (2.26%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 18 (1.85%) Self-Motivation
12 15 (1.54%) Cloud Security Posture
13 14 (1.44%) Hybrid Cloud
14 13 (1.33%) AI Agents
15 12 (1.23%) Social Media
16 11 (1.13%) Cyberattack
17 10 (1.03%) Cyber Security Posture
17 10 (1.03%) Virtual Team
18 9 (0.92%) Client/Server
18 9 (0.92%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 95 (9.74%) Windows
2 70 (7.18%) Linux
3 12 (1.23%) Windows Server
4 9 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 8 (0.82%) Mac OS
5 8 (0.82%) Unix
5 8 (0.82%) Windows 10
6 5 (0.51%) Ubuntu
7 3 (0.31%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.10%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 567 (58.15%) Cybersecurity
2 350 (35.90%) SIEM
3 348 (35.69%) Incident Response
4 251 (25.74%) Vulnerability Management
5 230 (23.59%) Continuous Improvement
6 218 (22.36%) Information Security
7 182 (18.67%) Cloud Security
8 166 (17.03%) Threat Detection
9 147 (15.08%) Risk Management
10 134 (13.74%) Problem-Solving
11 124 (12.72%) Threat Intelligence
12 115 (11.79%) AI
13 114 (11.69%) Security Monitoring
14 102 (10.46%) Stakeholder Management
15 99 (10.15%) Cyber Threat Intelligence
16 94 (9.64%) Mentoring
17 92 (9.44%) SOAR
18 91 (9.33%) Disaster Recovery
19 87 (8.92%) Incident Management
20 82 (8.41%) Penetration Testing
Programming Languages
1 106 (10.87%) PowerShell
2 96 (9.85%) Python
3 50 (5.13%) Kusto Query Language
4 25 (2.56%) Bash
5 14 (1.44%) SQL
6 11 (1.13%) C++
7 10 (1.03%) Perl
7 10 (1.03%) Search Processing Language
8 9 (0.92%) JavaScript
9 7 (0.72%) Bicep
9 7 (0.72%) Go
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
1 201 (20.62%) Security Cleared
2 153 (15.69%) CISSP
3 135 (13.85%) SC Cleared
4 82 (8.41%) CISM
5 78 (8.00%) Degree
6 77 (7.90%) CompTIA Security+
7 58 (5.95%) DV Cleared
8 49 (5.03%) Cisco Certification
9 45 (4.62%) GIAC
10 38 (3.90%) CEH
11 31 (3.18%) CompTIA CySA+
12 27 (2.77%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 24 (2.46%) Computer Science Degree
13 24 (2.46%) SANS
14 23 (2.36%) AWS Certification
14 23 (2.36%) GCIA
14 23 (2.36%) GCIH
15 18 (1.85%) CCNP
15 18 (1.85%) CCSP
15 18 (1.85%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 208 (21.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 162 (16.62%) NIST
3 73 (7.49%) GDPR
4 63 (6.46%) GRC
5 62 (6.36%) Cyber Essentials
6 42 (4.31%) PCI DSS
7 24 (2.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 23 (2.36%) SOC 2
9 19 (1.95%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 16 (1.64%) NCSC
11 15 (1.54%) SLA
12 12 (1.23%) Data Quality
13 6 (0.62%) NIST 800
14 5 (0.51%) Accessibility
15 3 (0.31%) COBIT
15 3 (0.31%) ISO 22301
15 3 (0.31%) ISO 9001
15 3 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
16 2 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
16 2 (0.21%) QA
System Software
1 39 (4.00%) Active Directory
2 11 (1.13%) Docker
3 9 (0.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.10%) Firmware
5 1 (0.10%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 38 (3.90%) Microsoft Intune
2 34 (3.49%) Single Sign-On
3 31 (3.18%) Kubernetes
4 28 (2.87%) QRadar
5 16 (1.64%) SCCM
6 9 (0.92%) Ansible
7 7 (0.72%) FortiGate
7 7 (0.72%) Graylog
7 7 (0.72%) Nessus
8 5 (0.51%) McAfee ePO
8 5 (0.51%) Nagios
8 5 (0.51%) Red Hat Satellite
9 4 (0.41%) Kibana
9 4 (0.41%) Progress Chef
10 3 (0.31%) CASB
10 3 (0.31%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
10 3 (0.31%) Computer Incident Response Team
10 3 (0.31%) Symantec Endpoint Protection
11 2 (0.21%) Grafana
11 2 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 266 (27.28%) Microsoft
2 81 (8.31%) Splunk
3 67 (6.87%) Palo Alto
4 61 (6.26%) Cisco
5 57 (5.85%) Qualys
6 52 (5.33%) CrowdStrike
7 49 (5.03%) ServiceNow
8 26 (2.67%) Aruba
8 26 (2.67%) Google
9 24 (2.46%) Fortinet
10 22 (2.26%) Tenable
11 16 (1.64%) OpenAI
11 16 (1.64%) Rapid7
12 12 (1.23%) Meraki
12 12 (1.23%) Zscaler
13 9 (0.92%) CyberArk
13 9 (0.92%) Red Hat
13 9 (0.92%) SolarWinds
13 9 (0.92%) VMware
14 8 (0.82%) iManage