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

6 months to
26 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 226 362 314
Rank change year-on-year +136 -48 -27
Permanent jobs citing Security Operations 923 340 709
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.85% 0.68% 0.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.16% 0.77% 1.05%
Number of salaries quoted 665 259 448
10th Percentile £42,200 £37,500 £38,466
25th Percentile £52,500 £47,375 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £62,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +12.00% +4.17% -4.00%
75th Percentile £85,000 £78,750 £77,813
90th Percentile £97,500 £96,500 £100,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £65,000 £55,000 £52,750
% change year-on-year +18.18% +4.27% -14.23%

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 79,759 44,399 67,357
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.20% 88.84% 80.67%
Number of salaries quoted 55,200 25,247 42,330
10th Percentile £31,000 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £36,250 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £96,250 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +15.79% -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 26 August 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 26 August 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 +135 828 £70,000 +12.00% 242
UK excluding London +106 571 £65,000 +18.18% 149
London +100 307 £75,000 -4.76% 111
Work from Home +96 253 £70,000 +7.69% 120
South East +86 199 £59,000 -5.60% 43
North of England +31 124 £70,000 +19.15% 33
Midlands 0 87 £65,000 +26.21% 21
North West +49 81 £75,000 +36.36% 23
East Midlands +34 58 £65,000 +6.34% 11
East of England -8 50 £61,250 -1.21% 4
South West -46 45 £65,000 +27.31% 35
Yorkshire -13 39 £55,000 -15.38% 10
Wales -26 36 £45,000 -18.18% 5
Scotland +28 29 £75,000 +30.43% 6
West Midlands -48 29 £67,500 +31.07% 10
North East -62 4 £75,000 +30.43%
Northern Ireland - 3 £42,500 - 2

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 (1.19%) SharePoint
2 5 (0.54%) Confluence
3 3 (0.33%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 3 (0.33%) Distributed Ledger
Cloud Services
1 188 (20.37%) Azure
2 116 (12.57%) AWS
3 92 (9.97%) Microsoft 365
4 79 (8.56%) Azure Sentinel
5 64 (6.93%) Entra ID
6 42 (4.55%) GCP
7 25 (2.71%) Microsoft Purview
8 22 (2.38%) Azure Logic Apps
9 19 (2.06%) SaaS
10 17 (1.84%) Mimecast
11 14 (1.52%) Anthropic Claude
12 12 (1.30%) Zapier
13 9 (0.98%) Amazon GuardDuty
14 8 (0.87%) AWS CloudFormation
15 7 (0.76%) Cloudflare
15 7 (0.76%) IaaS
15 7 (0.76%) PaaS
16 6 (0.65%) GitHub
16 6 (0.65%) Google Workspace
16 6 (0.65%) Sumo Logic
Communications & Networking
1 148 (16.03%) Firewall
2 105 (11.38%) Network Security
3 53 (5.74%) WAN
4 51 (5.53%) LAN
5 47 (5.09%) TCP/IP
6 45 (4.88%) VPN
7 37 (4.01%) DNS
8 29 (3.14%) Wi-Fi
9 26 (2.82%) Internet
10 25 (2.71%) Cisco Nexus
10 25 (2.71%) Intrusion Detection
11 19 (2.06%) HTTP
12 14 (1.52%) SSL
13 13 (1.41%) FTP
13 13 (1.41%) SMTP
14 10 (1.08%) Cisco ISE
15 6 (0.65%) IPsec
15 6 (0.65%) NGFW
15 6 (0.65%) SD-WAN
16 5 (0.54%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (0.65%) SQL Server
2 5 (0.54%) MongoDB
3 3 (0.33%) Hadoop
3 3 (0.33%) NoSQL
4 2 (0.22%) Relational Database
5 1 (0.11%) Azure SQL Database
5 1 (0.11%) Big Data
5 1 (0.11%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 8 (0.87%) JIRA
2 5 (0.54%) Jenkins
3 2 (0.22%) Bitbucket
3 2 (0.22%) Maven
3 2 (0.22%) Metasploit
3 2 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
3 2 (0.22%) Yeoman
General
1 196 (21.24%) Social Skills
2 107 (11.59%) Analytical Skills
3 99 (10.73%) Finance
4 43 (4.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 43 (4.66%) Legal
5 38 (4.12%) Law
6 36 (3.90%) Public Sector
7 33 (3.58%) Aerospace
8 27 (2.93%) Retail
9 17 (1.84%) Influencing Skills
10 15 (1.63%) Military
11 13 (1.41%) Banking
12 8 (0.87%) Documentation Skills
12 8 (0.87%) Financial Institution
13 6 (0.65%) Organisational Skills
13 6 (0.65%) Police
14 5 (0.54%) Advertising
14 5 (0.54%) Manufacturing
15 4 (0.43%) Digital Health
15 4 (0.43%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 229 (24.81%) Analyst
2 157 (17.01%) Senior
3 156 (16.90%) Security Analyst
4 127 (13.76%) Security Manager
5 119 (12.89%) Security Engineer
6 112 (12.13%) Lead
7 94 (10.18%) Senior Analyst
8 80 (8.67%) Cybersecurity Analyst
9 71 (7.69%) SOC Analyst
10 68 (7.37%) Cybersecurity Manager
11 63 (6.83%) Senior Security Analyst
12 62 (6.72%) Operational Security Manager
12 62 (6.72%) Security Operations Manager
13 58 (6.28%) Operations Manager
14 54 (5.85%) Cybersecurity Engineer
15 53 (5.74%) SOC Engineer
16 52 (5.63%) Architect
17 44 (4.77%) Security Specialist
18 36 (3.90%) Security Architect
19 35 (3.79%) Operations Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (3.36%) Terraform
2 17 (1.84%) LDAP
3 13 (1.41%) ModSecurity
4 6 (0.65%) ARM Templates
4 6 (0.65%) Regular Expression
4 6 (0.65%) REST
5 4 (0.43%) OpenID
5 4 (0.43%) SAML
6 3 (0.33%) JSON
6 3 (0.33%) Kafka
6 3 (0.33%) Smart Contracts
7 2 (0.22%) HTML
7 2 (0.22%) RESTful
7 2 (0.22%) SOAP
8 1 (0.11%) CSS
8 1 (0.11%) FFmpeg
8 1 (0.11%) GStreamer
8 1 (0.11%) TAPI
8 1 (0.11%) WPF
8 1 (0.11%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 214 (23.19%) Security Operations Centre
2 166 (17.98%) Security Posture
3 90 (9.75%) Cyber Defence
4 75 (8.13%) Cyber Threat
5 62 (6.72%) Management Information System
6 40 (4.33%) CSOC
7 34 (3.68%) Cloud Native
7 34 (3.68%) Onboarding
8 28 (3.03%) Data Centre
9 17 (1.84%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 17 (1.84%) Self-Motivation
10 14 (1.52%) Cloud Security Posture
11 13 (1.41%) Cyberattack
12 12 (1.30%) Hybrid Cloud
12 12 (1.30%) Social Media
13 11 (1.19%) AI Agents
14 10 (1.08%) Cyber Security Posture
15 9 (0.98%) Client/Server
16 8 (0.87%) Insider Threat
16 8 (0.87%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 93 (10.08%) Windows
2 65 (7.04%) Linux
3 10 (1.08%) Windows 10
4 9 (0.98%) Unix
5 8 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 8 (0.87%) Windows Server
6 5 (0.54%) Mac OS
7 4 (0.43%) Ubuntu
8 2 (0.22%) Kali Linux
9 1 (0.11%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 531 (57.53%) Cybersecurity
2 343 (37.16%) SIEM
3 338 (36.62%) Incident Response
4 228 (24.70%) Vulnerability Management
5 212 (22.97%) Continuous Improvement
6 201 (21.78%) Information Security
7 174 (18.85%) Cloud Security
8 156 (16.90%) Threat Detection
9 133 (14.41%) Risk Management
10 122 (13.22%) Threat Intelligence
11 116 (12.57%) Problem-Solving
12 101 (10.94%) AI
13 99 (10.73%) Cyber Threat Intelligence
14 97 (10.51%) Security Monitoring
15 94 (10.18%) SOAR
16 86 (9.32%) Disaster Recovery
17 85 (9.21%) Stakeholder Management
18 82 (8.88%) Penetration Testing
19 81 (8.78%) Mentoring
20 79 (8.56%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 104 (11.27%) PowerShell
2 94 (10.18%) Python
3 41 (4.44%) Kusto Query Language
4 24 (2.60%) Bash
5 12 (1.30%) SQL
6 11 (1.19%) C++
7 10 (1.08%) Perl
8 9 (0.98%) Search Processing Language
9 8 (0.87%) Bicep
10 6 (0.65%) C
10 6 (0.65%) JavaScript
11 5 (0.54%) Java
12 4 (0.43%) Go
13 3 (0.33%) C#
13 3 (0.33%) Shell Script
14 1 (0.11%) MATLAB
14 1 (0.11%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 189 (20.48%) Security Cleared
2 138 (14.95%) CISSP
3 129 (13.98%) SC Cleared
4 81 (8.78%) CompTIA Security+
5 77 (8.34%) Degree
6 69 (7.48%) CISM
7 53 (5.74%) Cisco Certification
8 50 (5.42%) DV Cleared
9 46 (4.98%) GIAC
10 43 (4.66%) CEH
11 30 (3.25%) CompTIA CySA+
12 29 (3.14%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 24 (2.60%) Computer Science Degree
13 24 (2.60%) SANS
14 23 (2.49%) GCIH
15 22 (2.38%) GCIA
16 20 (2.17%) CCNP
16 20 (2.17%) CCSP
17 18 (1.95%) Azure Certification
17 18 (1.95%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 193 (20.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 156 (16.90%) NIST
3 71 (7.69%) GDPR
4 63 (6.83%) GRC
5 54 (5.85%) Cyber Essentials
6 30 (3.25%) PCI DSS
7 24 (2.60%) SOC 2
8 21 (2.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 17 (1.84%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 15 (1.63%) SLA
11 13 (1.41%) NCSC
12 11 (1.19%) Data Quality
13 5 (0.54%) Accessibility
13 5 (0.54%) NIST 800
14 4 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
15 2 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
15 2 (0.22%) COBIT
15 2 (0.22%) ISO 22301
15 2 (0.22%) ISO 9001
15 2 (0.22%) PMO
System Software
1 28 (3.03%) Active Directory
2 8 (0.87%) Docker
2 8 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (0.65%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.22%) Firmware
5 1 (0.11%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 34 (3.68%) Microsoft Intune
2 28 (3.03%) QRadar
3 27 (2.93%) Kubernetes
3 27 (2.93%) Single Sign-On
4 18 (1.95%) SCCM
5 9 (0.98%) Ansible
6 7 (0.76%) FortiGate
6 7 (0.76%) Graylog
6 7 (0.76%) Nessus
7 6 (0.65%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
8 5 (0.54%) McAfee ePO
8 5 (0.54%) Nagios
8 5 (0.54%) Red Hat Satellite
9 3 (0.33%) Computer Incident Response Team
9 3 (0.33%) Kibana
9 3 (0.33%) Symantec Endpoint Protection
10 2 (0.22%) Argo
10 2 (0.22%) CASB
10 2 (0.22%) Grafana
10 2 (0.22%) Istio
Vendors
1 247 (26.76%) Microsoft
2 82 (8.88%) Splunk
3 62 (6.72%) Palo Alto
4 58 (6.28%) Cisco
5 55 (5.96%) Qualys
6 48 (5.20%) CrowdStrike
7 44 (4.77%) ServiceNow
8 26 (2.82%) Fortinet
9 24 (2.60%) Aruba
10 23 (2.49%) Tenable
11 18 (1.95%) Google
12 16 (1.73%) OpenAI
12 16 (1.73%) Rapid7
13 12 (1.30%) Zscaler
14 11 (1.19%) SolarWinds
15 10 (1.08%) CyberArk
16 9 (0.98%) iManage
16 9 (0.98%) Meraki
16 9 (0.98%) Red Hat
16 9 (0.98%) Sophos