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

6 months to
6 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 231 388 317
Rank change year-on-year +157 -71 -19
Permanent jobs citing Security Operations 885 339 713
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.85% 0.68% 0.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 1.15% 0.76% 1.05%
Number of salaries quoted 652 249 481
10th Percentile £42,050 £40,846 £37,500
25th Percentile £52,500 £48,165 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £70,000 £62,500 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year +12.00% +4.17% -3.61%
75th Percentile £85,000 £80,000 £80,000
90th Percentile £95,000 £98,000 £100,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £65,000 £55,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year +18.18% +4.76% -12.50%

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 76,965 44,351 67,835
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 73.55% 89.45% 81.04%
Number of salaries quoted 53,101 25,205 44,372
10th Percentile £30,750 £28,500 £31,250
25th Percentile £41,250 £37,500 £41,250
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -8.71%
75th Percentile £78,750 £75,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £97,500 £95,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £48,750 £50,000
% change year-on-year +12.82% -2.50% -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 6 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 6 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 +135 795 £70,000 +12.00% 423
UK excluding London +116 545 £65,000 +18.18% 253
London +84 289 £75,000 -6.25% 216
Work from Home +76 244 £70,000 +12.00% 182
South East +88 184 £60,000 -4.00% 85
North of England +44 125 £70,000 +16.67% 71
Midlands -5 86 £65,000 +20.16% 31
North West +53 79 £75,000 +36.36% 42
East Midlands +36 56 £58,500 -4.29% 14
East of England -10 46 £61,250 -1.21% 12
South West -37 45 £65,000 +27.31% 31
Yorkshire +3 41 £55,000 -12.00% 23
Wales -22 34 £42,250 -23.18% 5
West Midlands -48 30 £67,500 +24.78% 17
Scotland +41 24 £75,000 +30.43% 15
North East -52 5 £75,000 +17.65% 6
Northern Ireland - 3 £42,500 - 7

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 10 (1.13%) SharePoint
2 5 (0.56%) Confluence
3 3 (0.34%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 3 (0.34%) Distributed Ledger
Cloud Services
1 177 (20.00%) Azure
2 105 (11.86%) AWS
3 83 (9.38%) Microsoft 365
4 72 (8.14%) Azure Sentinel
5 55 (6.21%) Entra ID
6 41 (4.63%) GCP
7 21 (2.37%) SaaS
8 20 (2.26%) Microsoft Purview
9 17 (1.92%) Azure Logic Apps
9 17 (1.92%) Mimecast
10 14 (1.58%) Anthropic Claude
11 12 (1.36%) Zapier
12 9 (1.02%) Amazon GuardDuty
13 8 (0.90%) AWS CloudFormation
13 8 (0.90%) IaaS
13 8 (0.90%) PaaS
14 7 (0.79%) GitHub
14 7 (0.79%) GitHub Actions
15 6 (0.68%) Cloudflare
15 6 (0.68%) Sumo Logic
Communications & Networking
1 134 (15.14%) Firewall
2 96 (10.85%) Network Security
3 46 (5.20%) WAN
4 45 (5.08%) TCP/IP
5 44 (4.97%) LAN
6 37 (4.18%) VPN
7 35 (3.95%) DNS
8 26 (2.94%) Wi-Fi
9 23 (2.60%) Cisco Nexus
9 23 (2.60%) Internet
10 22 (2.49%) Intrusion Detection
11 18 (2.03%) HTTP
12 12 (1.36%) FTP
12 12 (1.36%) SMTP
13 10 (1.13%) SSL
14 9 (1.02%) Cisco ISE
15 6 (0.68%) NGFW
15 6 (0.68%) SD-WAN
16 5 (0.56%) Kerberos
17 4 (0.45%) HTTPS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (0.68%) SQL Server
2 5 (0.56%) MongoDB
3 3 (0.34%) Hadoop
3 3 (0.34%) NoSQL
4 2 (0.23%) Relational Database
5 1 (0.11%) Azure SQL Database
5 1 (0.11%) Big Data
5 1 (0.11%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 5 (0.56%) JIRA
2 4 (0.45%) Bitbucket
2 4 (0.45%) Jenkins
2 4 (0.45%) Metasploit
3 1 (0.11%) CircleCI
3 1 (0.11%) Yeoman
General
1 171 (19.32%) Social Skills
2 105 (11.86%) Analytical Skills
3 98 (11.07%) Finance
4 49 (5.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 39 (4.41%) Law
6 37 (4.18%) Legal
6 37 (4.18%) Public Sector
7 27 (3.05%) Retail
8 24 (2.71%) Aerospace
9 18 (2.03%) Influencing Skills
10 14 (1.58%) Banking
11 9 (1.02%) Financial Institution
11 9 (1.02%) Military
12 6 (0.68%) Advertising
12 6 (0.68%) Documentation Skills
12 6 (0.68%) Organisational Skills
12 6 (0.68%) Police
13 4 (0.45%) Digital Health
13 4 (0.45%) Games
13 4 (0.45%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 220 (24.86%) Analyst
2 154 (17.40%) Security Analyst
3 146 (16.50%) Senior
4 124 (14.01%) Security Manager
5 108 (12.20%) Security Engineer
6 102 (11.53%) Lead
7 86 (9.72%) Cybersecurity Analyst
7 86 (9.72%) Senior Analyst
8 64 (7.23%) Cybersecurity Manager
9 60 (6.78%) Operational Security Manager
9 60 (6.78%) Security Operations Manager
9 60 (6.78%) SOC Analyst
9 60 (6.78%) SOC Engineer
10 58 (6.55%) Senior Security Analyst
11 56 (6.33%) Operations Manager
12 51 (5.76%) Cybersecurity Engineer
13 49 (5.54%) Architect
14 39 (4.41%) Security Specialist
15 34 (3.84%) IT Analyst
16 33 (3.73%) Senior Cybersecurity Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (1.81%) LDAP
2 6 (0.68%) ARM Templates
2 6 (0.68%) ModSecurity
2 6 (0.68%) Regular Expression
3 4 (0.45%) OpenID
3 4 (0.45%) REST
3 4 (0.45%) SAML
4 3 (0.34%) JSON
4 3 (0.34%) Kafka
4 3 (0.34%) Smart Contracts
5 2 (0.23%) RESTful
6 1 (0.11%) Elastic Stack
6 1 (0.11%) FFmpeg
6 1 (0.11%) GStreamer
6 1 (0.11%) HTML
6 1 (0.11%) SailPoint
6 1 (0.11%) TAPI
6 1 (0.11%) Unreal Engine
6 1 (0.11%) WebRTC
6 1 (0.11%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 215 (24.29%) Security Operations Centre
2 154 (17.40%) Security Posture
3 88 (9.94%) Cyber Defence
4 69 (7.80%) Cyber Threat
5 59 (6.67%) Management Information System
6 45 (5.08%) CSOC
7 32 (3.62%) Onboarding
8 30 (3.39%) Cloud Native
9 23 (2.60%) Data Centre
10 17 (1.92%) Self-Motivation
11 16 (1.81%) Cyberattack
12 14 (1.58%) Cloud Security Posture
13 12 (1.36%) Hybrid Cloud
14 10 (1.13%) AI Agents
14 10 (1.13%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
15 9 (1.02%) Client/Server
16 8 (0.90%) Cyber Security Posture
17 7 (0.79%) Insider Threat
17 7 (0.79%) Social Media
17 7 (0.79%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 95 (10.73%) Windows
2 68 (7.68%) Linux
3 12 (1.36%) Unix
3 12 (1.36%) Windows 10
4 7 (0.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 6 (0.68%) Windows Server
6 5 (0.56%) Mac OS
7 4 (0.45%) Kali Linux
8 3 (0.34%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.11%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 502 (56.72%) Cybersecurity
2 328 (37.06%) SIEM
3 316 (35.71%) Incident Response
4 204 (23.05%) Vulnerability Management
5 203 (22.94%) Continuous Improvement
6 184 (20.79%) Information Security
7 171 (19.32%) Cloud Security
8 137 (15.48%) Threat Detection
9 125 (14.12%) Threat Intelligence
10 122 (13.79%) Risk Management
11 109 (12.32%) Problem-Solving
12 102 (11.53%) Cyber Threat Intelligence
13 90 (10.17%) AI
14 89 (10.06%) SOAR
15 80 (9.04%) Stakeholder Management
16 79 (8.93%) Security Monitoring
17 76 (8.59%) Penetration Testing
18 75 (8.47%) Mentoring
19 73 (8.25%) Incident Management
19 73 (8.25%) MITRE ATT&CK
Programming Languages
1 103 (11.64%) PowerShell
2 92 (10.40%) Python
3 38 (4.29%) Kusto Query Language
4 24 (2.71%) Bash
5 11 (1.24%) SQL
6 10 (1.13%) C++
7 9 (1.02%) Perl
8 8 (0.90%) Bicep
8 8 (0.90%) Search Processing Language
9 6 (0.68%) C
10 5 (0.56%) Java
11 4 (0.45%) JavaScript
12 3 (0.34%) C#
12 3 (0.34%) Shell Script
13 2 (0.23%) Go
14 1 (0.11%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 178 (20.11%) Security Cleared
2 130 (14.69%) CISSP
3 129 (14.58%) SC Cleared
4 82 (9.27%) CompTIA Security+
5 71 (8.02%) Degree
6 64 (7.23%) CISM
7 48 (5.42%) GIAC
8 45 (5.08%) Cisco Certification
9 41 (4.63%) CEH
10 38 (4.29%) DV Cleared
11 28 (3.16%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 28 (3.16%) CompTIA CySA+
11 28 (3.16%) SANS
12 24 (2.71%) GCIH
13 22 (2.49%) CISA
13 22 (2.49%) Computer Science Degree
13 22 (2.49%) GCIA
14 19 (2.15%) CCSP
15 18 (2.03%) CREST Certified
16 15 (1.69%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 184 (20.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 155 (17.51%) NIST
3 77 (8.70%) GDPR
4 53 (5.99%) GRC
5 51 (5.76%) Cyber Essentials
6 31 (3.50%) PCI DSS
7 25 (2.82%) SOC 2
8 21 (2.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 18 (2.03%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 13 (1.47%) NCSC
10 13 (1.47%) SLA
11 7 (0.79%) Data Quality
11 7 (0.79%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 5 (0.56%) Accessibility
13 3 (0.34%) NIST 800
14 2 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
14 2 (0.23%) COBIT
14 2 (0.23%) ISO 22301
14 2 (0.23%) ISO 9001
14 2 (0.23%) PMO
System Software
1 22 (2.49%) Active Directory
2 9 (1.02%) Docker
3 8 (0.90%) Virtual Machines
4 6 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.23%) Firmware
6 1 (0.11%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 33 (3.73%) Microsoft Intune
2 29 (3.28%) Terraform
3 27 (3.05%) QRadar
4 23 (2.60%) Kubernetes
5 20 (2.26%) SCCM
6 19 (2.15%) Single Sign-On
7 11 (1.24%) Ansible
8 7 (0.79%) FortiGate
8 7 (0.79%) Nessus
9 6 (0.68%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
9 6 (0.68%) Graylog
10 5 (0.56%) Red Hat Satellite
11 3 (0.34%) Computer Incident Response Team
11 3 (0.34%) Kibana
12 2 (0.23%) Jamf Pro
12 2 (0.23%) McAfee ePO
12 2 (0.23%) Nagios
13 1 (0.11%) Grafana
13 1 (0.11%) Host Intrusion Detection System
13 1 (0.11%) Symantec Endpoint Protection
Vendors
1 239 (27.01%) Microsoft
2 76 (8.59%) Splunk
3 52 (5.88%) Qualys
4 50 (5.65%) Palo Alto
5 49 (5.54%) Cisco
6 45 (5.08%) CrowdStrike
6 45 (5.08%) ServiceNow
7 23 (2.60%) Tenable
8 21 (2.37%) Aruba
8 21 (2.37%) Fortinet
9 16 (1.81%) OpenAI
10 15 (1.69%) Google
11 14 (1.58%) Rapid7
12 12 (1.36%) SolarWinds
13 10 (1.13%) Sophos
14 9 (1.02%) iManage
15 8 (0.90%) CyberArk
15 8 (0.90%) Red Hat
15 8 (0.90%) Zscaler
16 7 (0.79%) Carbon Black