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 30 September 2026.

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

6 months to
30 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 615 634 624
Rank change year-on-year +19 -10 +3
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Security Engineer 201 40 159
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.17% 0.081% 0.21%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.18% 0.090% 0.22%
Number of salaries quoted 103 32 129
10th Percentile £48,000 £41,652 £45,162
25th Percentile £62,500 £62,500 £60,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £72,500 £75,000 £85,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% -11.76% +36.00%
75th Percentile £87,000 £90,000 £95,000
90th Percentile £91,000 £97,500 £101,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £65,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +7.69% +8.33% -

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 109,655 44,258 71,074
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 92.93% 89.76% 95.29%
Number of salaries quoted 74,828 25,506 41,262
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £30,500
25th Percentile £41,000 £36,250 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £59,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year +7.27% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £77,500 £74,000 £75,000
90th Percentile £98,750 £95,000 £93,750
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 30 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 30 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 -3 149 £70,000 +7.69% 133
England -17 144 £72,500 -3.33% 268
Work from Home +7 68 £71,250 +9.62% 102
Scotland - 52 - - 13
London -42 45 £85,000 -5.56% 144
South East -31 34 £65,000 - 34
South West - 29 £65,000 - 19
North of England -48 20 £70,000 +7.69% 33
Yorkshire - 11 £66,250 - 5
East of England -30 10 £75,000 +78.21% 17
North West -23 9 £70,000 +7.69% 21
Midlands - 4 £66,250 - 14
East Midlands - 2 - - 4
West Midlands - 2 £66,250 - 10

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

For the 6 months to 30 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.

1 107 (53.23%) Cybersecurity
2 92 (45.77%) Firewall
3 66 (32.84%) Network Security
4 62 (30.85%) Business Continuity
5 60 (29.85%) Decision-Making
6 57 (28.36%) BCP
6 57 (28.36%) Business Continuity Planning
7 56 (27.86%) Cloud Security
8 54 (26.87%) Vulnerability Remediation
9 50 (24.88%) Project Delivery
10 49 (24.38%) Network Architecture
10 49 (24.38%) VLAN
11 46 (22.89%) Capacity Planning
11 46 (22.89%) Economics
12 44 (21.89%) Security Operations
13 34 (16.92%) SIEM
14 33 (16.42%) Vulnerability Management
15 30 (14.93%) Azure
16 29 (14.43%) Cisco
17 28 (13.93%) AWS
17 28 (13.93%) Penetration Testing
18 25 (12.44%) CI/CD
18 25 (12.44%) Incident Response
18 25 (12.44%) Microsoft
18 25 (12.44%) Terraform
19 24 (11.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
20 23 (11.44%) Software Engineering
21 22 (10.95%) Application Security
21 22 (10.95%) Infrastructure as Code
21 22 (10.95%) Palo Alto

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:

Business Applications
1 1 (0.50%) C-CURE
Cloud Services
1 30 (14.93%) Azure
2 28 (13.93%) AWS
3 14 (6.97%) GCP
4 11 (5.47%) Entra ID
5 10 (4.98%) Amazon S3
5 10 (4.98%) Microsoft 365
6 9 (4.48%) AWS Lambda
6 9 (4.48%) Serverless
7 7 (3.48%) Azure Sentinel
7 7 (3.48%) GitHub
7 7 (3.48%) GitHub Actions
7 7 (3.48%) Microsoft Purview
8 6 (2.99%) SaaS
9 5 (2.49%) Azure Logic Apps
10 4 (1.99%) Mimecast
11 2 (1.00%) Anthropic Claude
11 2 (1.00%) IaaS
11 2 (1.00%) PaaS
12 1 (0.50%) Akamai
12 1 (0.50%) Google Compute Engine
Communications & Networking
1 92 (45.77%) Firewall
2 66 (32.84%) Network Security
3 49 (24.38%) VLAN
4 17 (8.46%) Wi-Fi
5 16 (7.96%) Internet
5 16 (7.96%) VPN
6 14 (6.97%) LAN
6 14 (6.97%) WAN
7 12 (5.97%) Cisco Nexus
8 10 (4.98%) Intrusion Detection
9 6 (2.99%) DNS
10 5 (2.49%) BGP
11 4 (1.99%) Cisco ASA
11 4 (1.99%) Cisco Firepower
11 4 (1.99%) TCP/IP
12 3 (1.49%) OSPF
12 3 (1.49%) Remote Desktop
12 3 (1.49%) Wireless
12 3 (1.49%) Wireless Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (0.50%) Amazon RDS
1 1 (0.50%) Hadoop
1 1 (0.50%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 6 (2.99%) TeamCity
2 4 (1.99%) Jenkins
3 3 (1.49%) Burp Suite
3 3 (1.49%) Maven
3 3 (1.49%) Metasploit
3 3 (1.49%) Team Foundation Server
4 1 (0.50%) Git
4 1 (0.50%) GitLab
4 1 (0.50%) JIRA
General
1 69 (34.33%) Social Skills
2 18 (8.96%) Finance
3 11 (5.47%) Public Sector
4 10 (4.98%) Documentation Skills
5 8 (3.98%) Retail
6 7 (3.48%) Banking
7 4 (1.99%) Influencing Skills
8 3 (1.49%) Digital Health
8 3 (1.49%) Digital Healthcare
9 2 (1.00%) Automotive
9 2 (1.00%) Marketing
10 1 (0.50%) Analytical Skills
10 1 (0.50%) Back Office
10 1 (0.50%) Financial Institution
10 1 (0.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (12.44%) Terraform
2 9 (4.48%) Node.js
3 5 (2.49%) eBPF
3 5 (2.49%) JSON
4 3 (1.49%) JSON Schema
4 3 (1.49%) LDAP
4 3 (1.49%) Regular Expression
4 3 (1.49%) RESTful
4 3 (1.49%) XML
4 3 (1.49%) XMPP
5 2 (1.00%) JWT
5 2 (1.00%) OAuth
5 2 (1.00%) OAuth2
5 2 (1.00%) OpenID
5 2 (1.00%) Pulumi
5 2 (1.00%) SAML
6 1 (0.50%) Ajax
6 1 (0.50%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 32 (15.92%) Cloud Native
2 19 (9.45%) CCTV
3 17 (8.46%) Security Posture
4 14 (6.97%) Driving Licence
5 11 (5.47%) PKI
6 9 (4.48%) Cyber Threat
7 8 (3.98%) Security Operations Centre
8 6 (2.99%) Management Information System
9 4 (1.99%) Data Centre
9 4 (1.99%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 4 (1.99%) Virtual Team
10 3 (1.49%) Cloud Security Posture
10 3 (1.49%) Hybrid Cloud
10 3 (1.49%) NHS
10 3 (1.49%) PMI
10 3 (1.49%) Self-Motivation
11 2 (1.00%) Blog
11 2 (1.00%) Distributed Systems
12 1 (0.50%) Onboarding
12 1 (0.50%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 8 (3.98%) Linux
2 3 (1.49%) Kali Linux
2 3 (1.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 3 (1.49%) Windows
2 3 (1.49%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 107 (53.23%) Cybersecurity
2 62 (30.85%) Business Continuity
3 60 (29.85%) Decision-Making
4 57 (28.36%) BCP
4 57 (28.36%) Business Continuity Planning
5 56 (27.86%) Cloud Security
6 54 (26.87%) Vulnerability Remediation
7 50 (24.88%) Project Delivery
8 49 (24.38%) Network Architecture
9 46 (22.89%) Capacity Planning
9 46 (22.89%) Economics
10 44 (21.89%) Security Operations
11 34 (16.92%) SIEM
12 33 (16.42%) Vulnerability Management
13 28 (13.93%) Penetration Testing
14 25 (12.44%) CI/CD
14 25 (12.44%) Incident Response
15 23 (11.44%) Software Engineering
16 22 (10.95%) Application Security
16 22 (10.95%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 19 (9.45%) Python
2 12 (5.97%) Bash
3 10 (4.98%) PowerShell
4 7 (3.48%) Kusto Query Language
5 6 (2.99%) Go
6 5 (2.49%) C++
7 3 (1.49%) Search Processing Language
7 3 (1.49%) Shell Script
8 2 (1.00%) Java
8 2 (1.00%) JavaScript
8 2 (1.00%) Rust
9 1 (0.50%) Objective-C
9 1 (0.50%) SQL
9 1 (0.50%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 17 (8.46%) Cisco Certification
2 16 (7.96%) CISSP
3 15 (7.46%) Security Cleared
4 12 (5.97%) CCNA
4 12 (5.97%) DV Cleared
5 9 (4.48%) CompTIA Security+
6 7 (3.48%) CCNP
6 7 (3.48%) CISM
6 7 (3.48%) Degree
7 5 (2.49%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 5 (2.49%) AWS Certification
7 5 (2.49%) Computer Science Degree
7 5 (2.49%) Microsoft Certification
8 4 (1.99%) Azure Certification
8 4 (1.99%) CCSP
9 3 (1.49%) CASP
9 3 (1.49%) CCIE
9 3 (1.49%) PMI Certification
9 3 (1.49%) SANS
9 3 (1.49%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (11.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 10 (4.98%) NIST
3 9 (4.48%) GDPR
3 9 (4.48%) SOC 2
4 5 (2.49%) GRC
5 3 (1.49%) Cyber Essentials
5 3 (1.49%) QA
6 1 (0.50%) HMG Security Policy Framework
6 1 (0.50%) NCSC
6 1 (0.50%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 10 (4.98%) Active Directory
2 3 (1.49%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 11 (5.47%) Ansible
2 10 (4.98%) Grafana
2 10 (4.98%) Kubernetes
3 9 (4.48%) Prometheus
4 7 (3.48%) Microsoft Intune
5 6 (2.99%) Cilium
6 3 (1.49%) Nessus
6 3 (1.49%) Nmap
6 3 (1.49%) Progress Chef
6 3 (1.49%) SCCM
6 3 (1.49%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.50%) CASB
Vendors
1 29 (14.43%) Cisco
2 25 (12.44%) Microsoft
3 22 (10.95%) Palo Alto
4 15 (7.46%) Qualys
5 11 (5.47%) Aruba
6 7 (3.48%) Splunk
7 6 (2.99%) Tenable
8 5 (2.49%) RedGate
9 4 (1.99%) Arista
9 4 (1.99%) Red Hat
10 3 (1.49%) CrowdStrike
10 3 (1.49%) Fortinet
10 3 (1.49%) McAfee
10 3 (1.49%) Okta
10 3 (1.49%) Rapid7
10 3 (1.49%) VMware
11 2 (1.00%) OpenAI
12 1 (0.50%) Cribl.io
12 1 (0.50%) Google
12 1 (0.50%) LexisNexis