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

6 months to
15 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 221 358 289
Rank change year-on-year +137 -69 -5
Permanent jobs citing Security Operations 959 357 729
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.84% 0.73% 0.94%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.16% 0.82% 1.16%
Number of salaries quoted 672 264 428
10th Percentile £41,300 £37,500 £39,664
25th Percentile £53,750 £47,750 £49,688
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 £97,500 £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 82,954 43,576 62,762
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 72.83% 88.69% 80.93%
Number of salaries quoted 57,665 24,452 36,140
10th Percentile £31,250 £28,500 £32,000
25th Percentile £42,000 £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 £76,500
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 15 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 15 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 +114 860 £70,000 +7.69% 1,083
UK excluding London +116 580 £65,000 +16.07% 602
London +91 327 £75,000 -3.23% 578
Work from Home +74 266 £70,000 +3.70% 457
South East +74 209 £59,000 -7.45% 192
North of England +18 120 £70,000 +16.67% 137
Midlands -8 89 £65,000 +26.21% 63
North West +37 80 £75,000 +36.36% 89
East Midlands +28 60 £65,000 +6.34% 31
South West -48 49 £65,000 +27.31% 70
East of England -9 48 £61,250 -10.58% 48
Yorkshire -21 37 £62,500 -3.85% 43
Wales -38 36 £45,000 -35.71% 23
West Midlands -54 29 £67,500 +31.07% 32
Scotland +25 28 £75,000 +25.00% 50
North East -62 3 £75,000 +30.43% 8
Northern Ireland - 3 £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 16 (1.67%) SharePoint
2 5 (0.52%) Confluence
2 5 (0.52%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (0.31%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.10%) IIS
4 1 (0.10%) SharePoint Server
4 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
1 199 (20.75%) Azure
2 126 (13.14%) AWS
3 102 (10.64%) Microsoft 365
4 85 (8.86%) Entra ID
5 81 (8.45%) Azure Sentinel
6 51 (5.32%) GCP
7 31 (3.23%) Microsoft Purview
8 24 (2.50%) Azure Logic Apps
9 19 (1.98%) Mimecast
9 19 (1.98%) SaaS
10 14 (1.46%) Anthropic Claude
11 12 (1.25%) Zapier
12 9 (0.94%) Amazon GuardDuty
13 8 (0.83%) AWS CloudFormation
13 8 (0.83%) Cloudflare
13 8 (0.83%) IaaS
14 7 (0.73%) Microsoft Copilot
14 7 (0.73%) PaaS
15 6 (0.63%) Google Workspace
15 6 (0.63%) Sumo Logic
Communications & Networking
1 152 (15.85%) Firewall
2 102 (10.64%) Network Security
3 55 (5.74%) WAN
4 53 (5.53%) LAN
5 49 (5.11%) VPN
6 46 (4.80%) TCP/IP
7 36 (3.75%) DNS
8 31 (3.23%) Wi-Fi
9 28 (2.92%) Internet
10 26 (2.71%) Cisco Nexus
11 24 (2.50%) Intrusion Detection
12 20 (2.09%) HTTP
13 14 (1.46%) SMTP
13 14 (1.46%) SSL
14 13 (1.36%) Cisco ISE
14 13 (1.36%) FTP
15 6 (0.63%) IPsec
15 6 (0.63%) NGFW
15 6 (0.63%) SD-WAN
16 5 (0.52%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (0.63%) 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
Development Applications
1 10 (1.04%) JIRA
2 5 (0.52%) Jenkins
3 2 (0.21%) Maven
3 2 (0.21%) Team Foundation Server
3 2 (0.21%) Yeoman
General
1 200 (20.86%) Social Skills
2 111 (11.57%) Analytical Skills
3 104 (10.84%) Finance
4 48 (5.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 44 (4.59%) Law
6 43 (4.48%) Legal
7 41 (4.28%) Public Sector
8 37 (3.86%) Aerospace
9 36 (3.75%) Retail
10 20 (2.09%) Banking
11 18 (1.88%) Influencing Skills
11 18 (1.88%) Military
12 9 (0.94%) Documentation Skills
12 9 (0.94%) Financial Institution
13 6 (0.63%) Police
14 5 (0.52%) Advertising
14 5 (0.52%) Manufacturing
15 4 (0.42%) Local Government
15 4 (0.42%) Organisational Skills
15 4 (0.42%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 236 (24.61%) Analyst
2 176 (18.35%) Senior
3 160 (16.68%) Security Analyst
4 138 (14.39%) Security Engineer
5 123 (12.83%) Lead
6 119 (12.41%) Security Manager
7 100 (10.43%) Senior Analyst
8 79 (8.24%) Cybersecurity Analyst
9 74 (7.72%) SOC Analyst
10 67 (6.99%) Cybersecurity Manager
11 66 (6.88%) Senior Security Analyst
12 64 (6.67%) Cybersecurity Engineer
13 62 (6.47%) Architect
14 54 (5.63%) Operational Security Manager
14 54 (5.63%) Security Operations Manager
15 52 (5.42%) Operations Manager
16 47 (4.90%) SOC Engineer
17 43 (4.48%) Security Specialist
18 40 (4.17%) Senior Security Engineer
19 39 (4.07%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (3.02%) Terraform
2 17 (1.77%) LDAP
3 16 (1.67%) ModSecurity
4 9 (0.94%) REST
5 6 (0.63%) ARM Templates
5 6 (0.63%) Regular Expression
6 5 (0.52%) SOAP
7 4 (0.42%) JSON
7 4 (0.42%) OpenID
7 4 (0.42%) SAML
8 3 (0.31%) Kafka
8 3 (0.31%) Smart Contracts
9 2 (0.21%) HTML
9 2 (0.21%) RESTful
10 1 (0.10%) CSS
10 1 (0.10%) GStreamer
10 1 (0.10%) SailPoint
10 1 (0.10%) TAPI
10 1 (0.10%) WPF
10 1 (0.10%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 218 (22.73%) Security Operations Centre
2 181 (18.87%) Security Posture
3 86 (8.97%) Cyber Defence
4 85 (8.86%) Cyber Threat
5 67 (6.99%) Management Information System
6 38 (3.96%) CSOC
7 37 (3.86%) Cloud Native
8 36 (3.75%) Data Centre
9 34 (3.55%) Onboarding
10 22 (2.29%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 17 (1.77%) Self-Motivation
12 15 (1.56%) Cloud Security Posture
13 13 (1.36%) Hybrid Cloud
14 12 (1.25%) AI Agents
14 12 (1.25%) Social Media
15 11 (1.15%) Cyberattack
16 10 (1.04%) Cyber Security Posture
17 9 (0.94%) Client/Server
17 9 (0.94%) Virtual Team
18 8 (0.83%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 91 (9.49%) Windows
2 65 (6.78%) Linux
3 9 (0.94%) Windows Server
4 8 (0.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 8 (0.83%) Windows 10
5 7 (0.73%) Mac OS
5 7 (0.73%) Unix
6 4 (0.42%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.21%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.10%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 566 (59.02%) Cybersecurity
2 350 (36.50%) SIEM
3 344 (35.87%) Incident Response
4 247 (25.76%) Vulnerability Management
5 224 (23.36%) Continuous Improvement
6 217 (22.63%) Information Security
7 183 (19.08%) Cloud Security
8 164 (17.10%) Threat Detection
9 147 (15.33%) Risk Management
10 130 (13.56%) Problem-Solving
11 124 (12.93%) Threat Intelligence
12 112 (11.68%) AI
13 110 (11.47%) Security Monitoring
14 100 (10.43%) Cyber Threat Intelligence
15 97 (10.11%) Stakeholder Management
16 92 (9.59%) SOAR
17 91 (9.49%) Mentoring
18 88 (9.18%) Disaster Recovery
19 85 (8.86%) Incident Management
20 83 (8.65%) Penetration Testing
Programming Languages
1 101 (10.53%) PowerShell
2 93 (9.70%) Python
3 47 (4.90%) Kusto Query Language
4 24 (2.50%) Bash
5 12 (1.25%) SQL
6 11 (1.15%) C++
7 10 (1.04%) Perl
7 10 (1.04%) Search Processing Language
8 8 (0.83%) JavaScript
9 6 (0.63%) Bicep
9 6 (0.63%) C
9 6 (0.63%) Go
9 6 (0.63%) Java
10 3 (0.31%) C#
10 3 (0.31%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.10%) MATLAB
11 1 (0.10%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 198 (20.65%) Security Cleared
2 151 (15.75%) CISSP
3 133 (13.87%) SC Cleared
4 80 (8.34%) CISM
4 80 (8.34%) CompTIA Security+
5 79 (8.24%) Degree
6 56 (5.84%) DV Cleared
7 53 (5.53%) Cisco Certification
8 45 (4.69%) GIAC
9 40 (4.17%) CEH
10 30 (3.13%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 30 (3.13%) CompTIA CySA+
11 24 (2.50%) Computer Science Degree
11 24 (2.50%) GCIH
12 23 (2.40%) AWS Certification
12 23 (2.40%) GCIA
12 23 (2.40%) SANS
13 21 (2.19%) CCSP
14 19 (1.98%) CCNP
14 19 (1.98%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 206 (21.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 164 (17.10%) NIST
3 72 (7.51%) GDPR
4 65 (6.78%) GRC
5 56 (5.84%) Cyber Essentials
6 41 (4.28%) PCI DSS
7 24 (2.50%) SOC 2
8 21 (2.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 17 (1.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 15 (1.56%) NCSC
10 15 (1.56%) SLA
11 11 (1.15%) Data Quality
12 6 (0.63%) 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)
14 3 (0.31%) PMO
15 2 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 34 (3.55%) Active Directory
2 9 (0.94%) Docker
3 7 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (0.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.21%) Firmware
5 1 (0.10%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 37 (3.86%) Microsoft Intune
2 33 (3.44%) Single Sign-On
3 29 (3.02%) Kubernetes
4 28 (2.92%) QRadar
5 16 (1.67%) SCCM
6 8 (0.83%) Ansible
7 7 (0.73%) FortiGate
7 7 (0.73%) Graylog
7 7 (0.73%) Nessus
8 5 (0.52%) McAfee ePO
8 5 (0.52%) Nagios
8 5 (0.52%) Red Hat Satellite
9 4 (0.42%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
10 3 (0.31%) CASB
10 3 (0.31%) Computer Incident Response Team
10 3 (0.31%) Kibana
10 3 (0.31%) Progress Chef
10 3 (0.31%) Symantec Endpoint Protection
11 2 (0.21%) Grafana
11 2 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 257 (26.80%) Microsoft
2 81 (8.45%) Splunk
3 67 (6.99%) Palo Alto
4 62 (6.47%) Cisco
5 57 (5.94%) Qualys
6 51 (5.32%) CrowdStrike
7 46 (4.80%) ServiceNow
8 26 (2.71%) Aruba
9 25 (2.61%) Fortinet
10 24 (2.50%) Google
11 22 (2.29%) Tenable
12 16 (1.67%) OpenAI
12 16 (1.67%) Rapid7
13 12 (1.25%) Meraki
13 12 (1.25%) Zscaler
14 9 (0.94%) CyberArk
14 9 (0.94%) Red Hat
14 9 (0.94%) SolarWinds
15 8 (0.83%) iManage
15 8 (0.83%) Sophos