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

6 months to
27 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 226 380 324
Rank change year-on-year +154 -56 +9
Permanent jobs citing Security Operations 788 323 862
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.83% 0.71% 0.82%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.13% 0.77% 0.99%
Number of salaries quoted 591 234 631
10th Percentile £41,750 £41,750 £37,500
25th Percentile £52,500 £48,343 £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 £95,000 £98,875 £100,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £65,000 £55,000 £54,000
% change year-on-year +18.18% +1.85% -5.41%

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 69,907 41,954 86,795
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.40% 92.11% 82.23%
Number of salaries quoted 48,219 22,640 61,471
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,750 £29,750
25th Percentile £41,250 £38,750 £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 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £53,000 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +6.00% - -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 27 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 27 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 +123 709 £70,000 +12.90% 209
UK excluding London +122 459 £65,000 +18.18% 164
London +91 274 £75,000 -3.23% 84
Work from Home +110 241 £67,500 +22.73% 97
South East +59 139 £60,000 -11.11% 60
North of England +55 122 £70,000 +16.67% 34
Midlands +5 82 £57,500 +4.55% 18
North West +56 73 £75,000 +36.36% 17
East Midlands +18 46 £55,000 -10.02% 7
Yorkshire -4 43 £62,500 - 14
South West -43 37 £65,000 +27.31% 17
West Midlands -22 36 £67,500 +22.73% 11
East of England -8 32 £57,500 -7.26% 23
Wales -21 30 £25,000 -52.56% 9
Scotland +23 17 £75,000 +30.43% 9
North East -38 6 £75,000 +22.45% 3
Northern Ireland - 2 £40,750 - 4

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 11 (1.40%) SharePoint
2 3 (0.38%) Confluence
2 3 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.25%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.25%) Distributed Ledger
2 1 (0.13%) Exchequer
Cloud Services
1 171 (21.70%) Azure
2 95 (12.06%) AWS
3 79 (10.03%) Microsoft 365
4 63 (7.99%) Azure Sentinel
5 52 (6.60%) Entra ID
6 43 (5.46%) GCP
7 24 (3.05%) SaaS
8 16 (2.03%) Mimecast
9 14 (1.78%) Anthropic Claude
10 13 (1.65%) Microsoft Purview
11 12 (1.52%) Zapier
12 11 (1.40%) Azure Logic Apps
13 9 (1.14%) GitHub
13 9 (1.14%) GitHub Actions
14 8 (1.02%) AWS CloudFormation
14 8 (1.02%) IaaS
14 8 (1.02%) PaaS
15 7 (0.89%) Amazon GuardDuty
16 6 (0.76%) Cloudflare
16 6 (0.76%) Sumo Logic
Communications & Networking
1 116 (14.72%) Firewall
2 82 (10.41%) Network Security
3 37 (4.70%) WAN
4 35 (4.44%) TCP/IP
5 34 (4.31%) LAN
6 33 (4.19%) DNS
6 33 (4.19%) VPN
7 18 (2.28%) Intrusion Detection
7 18 (2.28%) Wi-Fi
8 17 (2.16%) HTTP
9 16 (2.03%) Cisco Nexus
10 15 (1.90%) Internet
11 11 (1.40%) FTP
11 11 (1.40%) SMTP
12 10 (1.27%) Cisco ISE
13 8 (1.02%) SSL
14 7 (0.89%) SD-WAN
15 5 (0.63%) NGFW
16 4 (0.51%) HTTPS
17 3 (0.38%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (0.51%) SQL Server
2 3 (0.38%) MongoDB
2 3 (0.38%) Power BI
3 2 (0.25%) Elasticsearch
3 2 (0.25%) Hadoop
3 2 (0.25%) NoSQL
3 2 (0.25%) Relational Database
4 1 (0.13%) Azure SQL Database
4 1 (0.13%) Big Data
4 1 (0.13%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 7 (0.89%) Jenkins
2 4 (0.51%) Bitbucket
2 4 (0.51%) CircleCI
2 4 (0.51%) JIRA
2 4 (0.51%) Metasploit
3 1 (0.13%) Yeoman
General
1 167 (21.19%) Social Skills
2 105 (13.32%) Analytical Skills
3 94 (11.93%) Finance
4 51 (6.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 40 (5.08%) Law
6 34 (4.31%) Public Sector
7 33 (4.19%) Legal
8 26 (3.30%) Retail
9 17 (2.16%) Influencing Skills
10 16 (2.03%) Banking
11 11 (1.40%) Aerospace
12 10 (1.27%) Financial Institution
13 6 (0.76%) Advertising
13 6 (0.76%) Back Office
13 6 (0.76%) Organisational Skills
13 6 (0.76%) Police
13 6 (0.76%) Presentation Skills
14 5 (0.63%) Aviation
15 4 (0.51%) Digital Health
15 4 (0.51%) Games
Job Titles
1 195 (24.75%) Analyst
2 145 (18.40%) Security Analyst
3 121 (15.36%) Senior
4 98 (12.44%) Security Engineer
5 97 (12.31%) Security Manager
6 87 (11.04%) Lead
7 83 (10.53%) Cybersecurity Analyst
8 64 (8.12%) Senior Analyst
9 54 (6.85%) Cybersecurity Manager
10 53 (6.73%) SOC Engineer
11 50 (6.35%) Operational Security Manager
11 50 (6.35%) Security Operations Manager
11 50 (6.35%) Senior Security Analyst
12 47 (5.96%) Operations Manager
12 47 (5.96%) SOC Analyst
13 46 (5.84%) Architect
14 38 (4.82%) Cybersecurity Engineer
15 35 (4.44%) Operations Analyst
16 33 (4.19%) Security Specialist
17 30 (3.81%) Security Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (1.78%) LDAP
2 6 (0.76%) Regular Expression
3 5 (0.63%) ARM Templates
3 5 (0.63%) REST
4 3 (0.38%) JSON
4 3 (0.38%) OpenID
4 3 (0.38%) SAML
5 2 (0.25%) Kafka
5 2 (0.25%) RESTful
5 2 (0.25%) Smart Contracts
6 1 (0.13%) EDI
6 1 (0.13%) Elastic Stack
6 1 (0.13%) FFmpeg
6 1 (0.13%) GStreamer
6 1 (0.13%) HTML
6 1 (0.13%) SailPoint
6 1 (0.13%) TAPI
6 1 (0.13%) Unreal Engine
6 1 (0.13%) WebRTC
6 1 (0.13%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 195 (24.75%) Security Operations Centre
2 132 (16.75%) Security Posture
3 71 (9.01%) Cyber Defence
4 52 (6.60%) Management Information System
5 51 (6.47%) Cyber Threat
6 37 (4.70%) CSOC
7 32 (4.06%) Cloud Native
8 25 (3.17%) Onboarding
9 14 (1.78%) Data Centre
10 13 (1.65%) Cloud Security Posture
10 13 (1.65%) Cyberattack
10 13 (1.65%) Self-Motivation
11 10 (1.27%) Hybrid Cloud
12 9 (1.14%) AI Agents
12 9 (1.14%) Client/Server
13 7 (0.89%) Analytical Mindset
13 7 (0.89%) Virtual Team
14 6 (0.76%) Cyber Kill Chain
14 6 (0.76%) Driving Licence
14 6 (0.76%) Insider Threat
Operating Systems
1 94 (11.93%) Windows
2 61 (7.74%) Linux
3 16 (2.03%) Windows 10
4 13 (1.65%) Unix
5 7 (0.89%) Windows Server
6 4 (0.51%) Kali Linux
7 3 (0.38%) Mac OS
7 3 (0.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 2 (0.25%) Windows Server 2012
8 2 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
9 1 (0.13%) CentOS
9 1 (0.13%) Data ONTAP
9 1 (0.13%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 441 (55.96%) Cybersecurity
2 299 (37.94%) SIEM
3 276 (35.03%) Incident Response
4 175 (22.21%) Continuous Improvement
5 161 (20.43%) Vulnerability Management
6 157 (19.92%) Cloud Security
7 147 (18.65%) Information Security
8 120 (15.23%) Threat Intelligence
9 106 (13.45%) Problem-Solving
10 101 (12.82%) Cyber Threat Intelligence
10 101 (12.82%) Threat Detection
11 99 (12.56%) Risk Management
12 86 (10.91%) SOAR
13 74 (9.39%) AI
14 73 (9.26%) MITRE ATT&CK
14 73 (9.26%) Security Monitoring
15 69 (8.76%) Mentoring
16 68 (8.63%) Roadmaps
17 65 (8.25%) Penetration Testing
18 60 (7.61%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 107 (13.58%) PowerShell
2 93 (11.80%) Python
3 31 (3.93%) Kusto Query Language
4 24 (3.05%) Bash
5 13 (1.65%) SQL
6 9 (1.14%) C++
6 9 (1.14%) Perl
7 7 (0.89%) Bicep
8 6 (0.76%) JavaScript
8 6 (0.76%) Search Processing Language
9 5 (0.63%) C
10 3 (0.38%) C#
10 3 (0.38%) Java
11 2 (0.25%) Go
11 2 (0.25%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.13%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 157 (19.92%) Security Cleared
2 119 (15.10%) SC Cleared
3 105 (13.32%) CISSP
4 70 (8.88%) CompTIA Security+
5 61 (7.74%) Degree
6 52 (6.60%) CISM
7 51 (6.47%) GIAC
8 34 (4.31%) CEH
8 34 (4.31%) Cisco Certification
9 31 (3.93%) DV Cleared
10 26 (3.30%) SANS
11 22 (2.79%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 22 (2.79%) Computer Science Degree
12 21 (2.66%) CompTIA CySA+
12 21 (2.66%) CREST Certified
13 20 (2.54%) GCIH
14 18 (2.28%) CCSP
14 18 (2.28%) CISA
15 17 (2.16%) GCIA
16 14 (1.78%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 157 (19.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 146 (18.53%) NIST
3 67 (8.50%) GDPR
4 49 (6.22%) GRC
5 47 (5.96%) Cyber Essentials
6 35 (4.44%) PCI DSS
7 20 (2.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 20 (2.54%) SOC 2
8 17 (2.16%) NCSC
8 17 (2.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 10 (1.27%) SLA
10 5 (0.63%) Accessibility
10 5 (0.63%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 3 (0.38%) COBIT
11 3 (0.38%) Data Quality
11 3 (0.38%) NIST 800
11 3 (0.38%) SOC 3
12 2 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
12 2 (0.25%) ISO 22301
12 2 (0.25%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 26 (3.30%) Active Directory
2 11 (1.40%) Docker
3 6 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (0.51%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.25%) Firmware
5 2 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
6 1 (0.13%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 34 (4.31%) Microsoft Intune
2 29 (3.68%) Terraform
3 26 (3.30%) QRadar
4 25 (3.17%) SCCM
5 24 (3.05%) Kubernetes
6 14 (1.78%) Ansible
7 12 (1.52%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (0.89%) FortiGate
9 6 (0.76%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
9 6 (0.76%) Graylog
10 4 (0.51%) Computer Incident Response Team
10 4 (0.51%) Grafana
11 3 (0.38%) CASB
11 3 (0.38%) Kibana
11 3 (0.38%) Nessus
11 3 (0.38%) Red Hat Satellite
11 3 (0.38%) vCenter Server
12 2 (0.25%) CSIRT
13 1 (0.13%) Host Intrusion Detection System
Vendors
1 231 (29.31%) Microsoft
2 65 (8.25%) Splunk
3 51 (6.47%) ServiceNow
4 43 (5.46%) Qualys
5 40 (5.08%) CrowdStrike
6 34 (4.31%) Cisco
7 26 (3.30%) Palo Alto
8 22 (2.79%) Tenable
9 18 (2.28%) SolarWinds
10 16 (2.03%) Google
10 16 (2.03%) OpenAI
11 14 (1.78%) Fortinet
12 13 (1.65%) Aruba
13 12 (1.52%) Rapid7
14 10 (1.27%) Sophos
15 8 (1.02%) iManage
15 8 (1.02%) Zscaler
16 7 (0.89%) Okta
16 7 (0.89%) VMware
17 6 (0.76%) Meraki