Senior Security Engineer Job Trends

Senior Security Engineer
UK

The median Senior Security Engineer salary in the UK is £72,500 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 2 September 2026.

The table below compares current salary benchmarking and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 616 626 647
Rank change year-on-year +10 +21 +18
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Security Engineer 177 45 158
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.16% 0.090% 0.19%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.17% 0.10% 0.20%
Number of salaries quoted 83 36 136
10th Percentile £50,000 £43,140 £40,000
25th Percentile £62,500 £62,188 £60,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £72,500 £82,500 £85,000
Median % change year-on-year -12.12% -2.94% +21.43%
75th Percentile £87,500 £91,250 £92,500
90th Percentile £92,250 £97,500 £100,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £65,000 £62,500 £60,000
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -

All Permanent IT Job Roles
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of permanent jobs in our overall sample.

Permanent vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 103,220 44,750 77,447
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.83% 89.79% 95.18%
Number of salaries quoted 70,976 26,578 49,466
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £36,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,750 £73,750 £72,500
90th Percentile £97,500 £95,000 £91,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +15.79% -5.00% -4.76%

Senior Security Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings featuring 'Senior Security Engineer' in the job title relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Senior Security Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Senior Security Engineer
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for Senior Security Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Salary distribution trend for Senior Security Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Senior Security Engineer
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Senior Security Engineer over the 6 months to 2 September 2026.

Salary histogram for Senior Security Engineer in the UK

Senior Security Engineer
Top 14 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Senior Security Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 2 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
UK excluding London +8 130 £65,000 +4.00% 94
England -26 122 £72,500 -12.12% 222
Work from Home +20 63 £75,000 +7.14% 87
Scotland - 53 £57,500 - 12
London -34 43 £85,000 - 145
South East -20 30 £65,000 +4.00% 15
South West - 26 £65,000 - 25
North of England -42 12 £87,500 +16.67% 22
Yorkshire - 10 £72,500 - 3
East of England -22 5 £80,000 +90.09% 11
Midlands - 4 £66,250 - 7
North West -15 2 £87,500 +16.67% 18
East Midlands - 2 - - 3
West Midlands - 2 £66,250 - 4

Senior Security Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 2 September 2026, Senior Security Engineer job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all permanent job ads featuring Senior Security Engineer in the job title.

1 100 (56.50%) Cybersecurity
2 89 (50.28%) Firewall
3 65 (36.72%) Network Security
4 61 (34.46%) Business Continuity
5 58 (32.77%) Decision-Making
6 56 (31.64%) BCP
6 56 (31.64%) Business Continuity Planning
7 55 (31.07%) Vulnerability Remediation
8 49 (27.68%) Network Architecture
8 49 (27.68%) Project Delivery
8 49 (27.68%) VLAN
9 48 (27.12%) Cloud Security
10 46 (25.99%) Capacity Planning
10 46 (25.99%) Economics
11 33 (18.64%) Security Operations
12 30 (16.95%) Azure
12 30 (16.95%) SIEM
13 28 (15.82%) AWS
14 27 (15.25%) Cisco
14 27 (15.25%) Vulnerability Management
15 26 (14.69%) Penetration Testing
15 26 (14.69%) Terraform
16 24 (13.56%) CI/CD
17 22 (12.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
18 21 (11.86%) Incident Response
18 21 (11.86%) Infrastructure as Code
19 20 (11.30%) Microsoft
19 20 (11.30%) Palo Alto
20 19 (10.73%) Software Engineering
21 18 (10.17%) Python

Senior Security Engineer Skill Set
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:

Cloud Services
1 30 (16.95%) Azure
2 28 (15.82%) AWS
3 13 (7.34%) GCP
4 11 (6.21%) Entra ID
5 10 (5.65%) Microsoft 365
6 9 (5.08%) Amazon S3
6 9 (5.08%) AWS Lambda
6 9 (5.08%) Serverless
7 8 (4.52%) Azure Sentinel
8 7 (3.95%) GitHub
8 7 (3.95%) Microsoft Purview
9 6 (3.39%) GitHub Actions
10 5 (2.82%) Azure Logic Apps
10 5 (2.82%) Mimecast
10 5 (2.82%) SaaS
11 2 (1.13%) Anthropic Claude
11 2 (1.13%) IaaS
11 2 (1.13%) PaaS
12 1 (0.56%) AWS CloudFormation
12 1 (0.56%) Slack
Communications & Networking
1 89 (50.28%) Firewall
2 65 (36.72%) Network Security
3 49 (27.68%) VLAN
4 16 (9.04%) Wi-Fi
5 15 (8.47%) VPN
6 14 (7.91%) Internet
7 13 (7.34%) LAN
7 13 (7.34%) WAN
8 11 (6.21%) Cisco Nexus
9 10 (5.65%) Intrusion Detection
10 6 (3.39%) DNS
11 4 (2.26%) BGP
12 3 (1.69%) Cisco ASA
12 3 (1.69%) Cisco Firepower
12 3 (1.69%) OSPF
12 3 (1.69%) Remote Desktop
12 3 (1.69%) TCP/IP
13 2 (1.13%) Wireless
13 2 (1.13%) Wireless Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (0.56%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 5 (2.82%) TeamCity
2 3 (1.69%) Burp Suite
2 3 (1.69%) Jenkins
2 3 (1.69%) Metasploit
3 2 (1.13%) GitLab
3 2 (1.13%) Maven
3 2 (1.13%) Team Foundation Server
4 1 (0.56%) Git
4 1 (0.56%) JIRA
General
1 64 (36.16%) Social Skills
2 13 (7.34%) Finance
3 11 (6.21%) Public Sector
4 10 (5.65%) Documentation Skills
5 9 (5.08%) Retail
6 7 (3.95%) Banking
7 3 (1.69%) Digital Health
7 3 (1.69%) Digital Healthcare
7 3 (1.69%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (1.13%) Automotive
8 2 (1.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (1.13%) Marketing
9 1 (0.56%) Advertising
9 1 (0.56%) Analytical Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (14.69%) Terraform
2 9 (5.08%) Node.js
3 5 (2.82%) eBPF
3 5 (2.82%) JSON
4 3 (1.69%) JSON Schema
4 3 (1.69%) LDAP
4 3 (1.69%) Regular Expression
4 3 (1.69%) RESTful
4 3 (1.69%) XML
4 3 (1.69%) XMPP
5 2 (1.13%) JWT
5 2 (1.13%) OAuth
5 2 (1.13%) OAuth2
5 2 (1.13%) OpenID
5 2 (1.13%) Pulumi
5 2 (1.13%) SAML
6 1 (0.56%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 26 (14.69%) Cloud Native
2 21 (11.86%) CCTV
3 18 (10.17%) Driving Licence
4 12 (6.78%) Security Posture
5 11 (6.21%) PKI
6 8 (4.52%) Cyber Threat
7 5 (2.82%) Management Information System
8 4 (2.26%) Data Centre
8 4 (2.26%) Security Operations Centre
9 3 (1.69%) Cloud Security Posture
9 3 (1.69%) Hybrid Cloud
9 3 (1.69%) NHS
10 2 (1.13%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 2 (1.13%) PMI
10 2 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
11 1 (0.56%) Distributed Systems
11 1 (0.56%) Fibre Optics
11 1 (0.56%) Onboarding
11 1 (0.56%) Product Ownership
11 1 (0.56%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 8 (4.52%) Linux
2 3 (1.69%) Kali Linux
2 3 (1.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 3 (1.69%) Windows
2 3 (1.69%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 100 (56.50%) Cybersecurity
2 61 (34.46%) Business Continuity
3 58 (32.77%) Decision-Making
4 56 (31.64%) BCP
4 56 (31.64%) Business Continuity Planning
5 55 (31.07%) Vulnerability Remediation
6 49 (27.68%) Network Architecture
6 49 (27.68%) Project Delivery
7 48 (27.12%) Cloud Security
8 46 (25.99%) Capacity Planning
8 46 (25.99%) Economics
9 33 (18.64%) Security Operations
10 30 (16.95%) SIEM
11 27 (15.25%) Vulnerability Management
12 26 (14.69%) Penetration Testing
13 24 (13.56%) CI/CD
14 21 (11.86%) Incident Response
14 21 (11.86%) Infrastructure as Code
15 19 (10.73%) Software Engineering
16 17 (9.60%) AI
Programming Languages
1 18 (10.17%) Python
2 13 (7.34%) Bash
3 12 (6.78%) PowerShell
4 5 (2.82%) C++
4 5 (2.82%) Go
5 3 (1.69%) Kusto Query Language
5 3 (1.69%) Shell Script
6 2 (1.13%) JavaScript
6 2 (1.13%) Rust
6 2 (1.13%) Search Processing Language
7 1 (0.56%) Java
7 1 (0.56%) Objective-C
7 1 (0.56%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 14 (7.91%) Cisco Certification
1 14 (7.91%) CISSP
2 13 (7.34%) Security Cleared
3 12 (6.78%) DV Cleared
4 10 (5.65%) CCNA
5 9 (5.08%) CompTIA Security+
6 7 (3.95%) Degree
7 6 (3.39%) CCNP
7 6 (3.39%) CISM
8 5 (2.82%) AWS Certification
8 5 (2.82%) Computer Science Degree
8 5 (2.82%) Microsoft Certification
9 4 (2.26%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 4 (2.26%) Azure Certification
10 3 (1.69%) CASP
10 3 (1.69%) CCIE
10 3 (1.69%) CCSP
10 3 (1.69%) GCIA
10 3 (1.69%) SANS
11 2 (1.13%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (12.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 10 (5.65%) GDPR
2 10 (5.65%) NIST
3 8 (4.52%) SOC 2
4 5 (2.82%) GRC
5 3 (1.69%) Cyber Essentials
5 3 (1.69%) QA
6 2 (1.13%) NCSC
7 1 (0.56%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 10 (5.65%) Active Directory
2 3 (1.69%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 11 (6.21%) Ansible
2 9 (5.08%) Grafana
2 9 (5.08%) Prometheus
3 8 (4.52%) Kubernetes
4 7 (3.95%) Microsoft Intune
5 5 (2.82%) Cilium
6 3 (1.69%) Nessus
6 3 (1.69%) Nmap
6 3 (1.69%) SCCM
6 3 (1.69%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (1.13%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.56%) CASB
Vendors
1 27 (15.25%) Cisco
2 20 (11.30%) Microsoft
2 20 (11.30%) Palo Alto
3 14 (7.91%) Qualys
4 10 (5.65%) Aruba
5 6 (3.39%) Splunk
5 6 (3.39%) Tenable
6 4 (2.26%) Arista
6 4 (2.26%) Red Hat
7 3 (1.69%) CrowdStrike
7 3 (1.69%) McAfee
7 3 (1.69%) Okta
7 3 (1.69%) Rapid7
7 3 (1.69%) VMware
8 2 (1.13%) Fortinet
8 2 (1.13%) OpenAI
8 2 (1.13%) Sophos
9 1 (0.56%) Google
9 1 (0.56%) Juniper
9 1 (0.56%) Pega