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 16 September 2026.

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

6 months to
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 617 635 644
Rank change year-on-year +18 +9 -6
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Security Engineer 189 45 158
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.17% 0.091% 0.20%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.18% 0.10% 0.21%
Number of salaries quoted 94 35 133
10th Percentile £48,250 £42,768 £40,000
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% +21.43%
75th Percentile £87,500 £92,500 £92,500
90th Percentile £91,250 £97,500 £100,000
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 106,506 44,266 74,164
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.35% 89.67% 95.25%
Number of salaries quoted 73,200 26,014 44,625
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,250 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £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 £75,000 £73,750
90th Percentile £100,000 £95,000 £92,500
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 16 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 16 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 -4 140 £70,000 +7.69% 164
England -23 133 £72,500 -3.33% 345
Work from Home +24 66 £74,000 +13.85% 138
Scotland - 52 - - 20
London -29 43 £85,000 -5.56% 200
South East -34 33 £65,000 - 39
South West - 29 £65,000 - 17
North of England -55 14 £72,500 -3.33% 36
Yorkshire - 10 £72,500 - 3
East of England -30 8 £75,000 +78.21% 25
North West -17 4 £78,750 +5.00% 29
Midlands - 4 £66,250 - 17
East Midlands - 2 - - 6
West Midlands - 2 £66,250 - 11

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

For the 6 months to 16 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.

1 105 (55.56%) Cybersecurity
2 90 (47.62%) Firewall
3 64 (33.86%) Network Security
4 62 (32.80%) Business Continuity
5 59 (31.22%) Decision-Making
6 57 (30.16%) BCP
6 57 (30.16%) Business Continuity Planning
7 53 (28.04%) Vulnerability Remediation
8 51 (26.98%) Cloud Security
9 49 (25.93%) Network Architecture
9 49 (25.93%) Project Delivery
9 49 (25.93%) VLAN
10 46 (24.34%) Capacity Planning
10 46 (24.34%) Economics
11 40 (21.16%) Security Operations
12 33 (17.46%) SIEM
13 31 (16.40%) Azure
14 29 (15.34%) Vulnerability Management
15 28 (14.81%) Cisco
16 27 (14.29%) AWS
16 27 (14.29%) Penetration Testing
17 24 (12.70%) CI/CD
17 24 (12.70%) Microsoft
17 24 (12.70%) Terraform
18 22 (11.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
18 22 (11.64%) Software Engineering
19 21 (11.11%) Infrastructure as Code
19 21 (11.11%) Palo Alto
20 20 (10.58%) Incident Response
21 18 (9.52%) AI

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 31 (16.40%) Azure
2 27 (14.29%) AWS
3 13 (6.88%) GCP
4 12 (6.35%) Entra ID
5 10 (5.29%) Amazon S3
5 10 (5.29%) Microsoft 365
6 9 (4.76%) AWS Lambda
6 9 (4.76%) Serverless
7 8 (4.23%) Azure Sentinel
8 7 (3.70%) GitHub
8 7 (3.70%) GitHub Actions
8 7 (3.70%) Microsoft Purview
9 5 (2.65%) Azure Logic Apps
9 5 (2.65%) SaaS
10 4 (2.12%) Mimecast
11 2 (1.06%) Anthropic Claude
11 2 (1.06%) IaaS
11 2 (1.06%) PaaS
12 1 (0.53%) Amazon Kinesis
12 1 (0.53%) Slack
Communications & Networking
1 90 (47.62%) Firewall
2 64 (33.86%) Network Security
3 49 (25.93%) VLAN
4 17 (8.99%) Wi-Fi
5 16 (8.47%) Internet
6 14 (7.41%) LAN
6 14 (7.41%) VPN
6 14 (7.41%) WAN
7 12 (6.35%) Cisco Nexus
8 10 (5.29%) Intrusion Detection
9 6 (3.17%) DNS
10 4 (2.12%) BGP
11 3 (1.59%) Cisco ASA
11 3 (1.59%) Cisco Firepower
11 3 (1.59%) OSPF
11 3 (1.59%) Remote Desktop
11 3 (1.59%) TCP/IP
12 2 (1.06%) Wireless
12 2 (1.06%) Wireless Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (0.53%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 5 (2.65%) TeamCity
2 3 (1.59%) Burp Suite
2 3 (1.59%) Jenkins
2 3 (1.59%) Metasploit
3 2 (1.06%) Maven
3 2 (1.06%) Team Foundation Server
4 1 (0.53%) Git
4 1 (0.53%) GitLab
4 1 (0.53%) JIRA
General
1 65 (34.39%) Social Skills
2 14 (7.41%) Finance
3 11 (5.82%) Public Sector
4 10 (5.29%) Documentation Skills
5 9 (4.76%) Retail
6 7 (3.70%) Banking
7 3 (1.59%) Digital Health
7 3 (1.59%) Digital Healthcare
7 3 (1.59%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (1.06%) Automotive
8 2 (1.06%) Marketing
9 1 (0.53%) Analytical Skills
9 1 (0.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (12.70%) Terraform
2 9 (4.76%) Node.js
3 5 (2.65%) eBPF
3 5 (2.65%) JSON
4 3 (1.59%) JSON Schema
4 3 (1.59%) LDAP
4 3 (1.59%) Regular Expression
4 3 (1.59%) RESTful
4 3 (1.59%) XML
4 3 (1.59%) XMPP
5 2 (1.06%) JWT
5 2 (1.06%) OAuth
5 2 (1.06%) OAuth2
5 2 (1.06%) OpenID
5 2 (1.06%) Pulumi
5 2 (1.06%) SAML
6 1 (0.53%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 29 (15.34%) Cloud Native
2 20 (10.58%) CCTV
3 17 (8.99%) Driving Licence
4 15 (7.94%) Security Posture
5 11 (5.82%) PKI
6 9 (4.76%) Cyber Threat
7 6 (3.17%) Security Operations Centre
8 5 (2.65%) Management Information System
9 4 (2.12%) Data Centre
10 3 (1.59%) Cloud Security Posture
10 3 (1.59%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 3 (1.59%) Hybrid Cloud
10 3 (1.59%) NHS
10 3 (1.59%) Virtual Team
11 2 (1.06%) PMI
11 2 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
12 1 (0.53%) Distributed Systems
12 1 (0.53%) Fibre Optics
12 1 (0.53%) Product Ownership
12 1 (0.53%) YARA
Operating Systems
1 8 (4.23%) Linux
2 3 (1.59%) Kali Linux
2 3 (1.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 3 (1.59%) Windows
2 3 (1.59%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 105 (55.56%) Cybersecurity
2 62 (32.80%) Business Continuity
3 59 (31.22%) Decision-Making
4 57 (30.16%) BCP
4 57 (30.16%) Business Continuity Planning
5 53 (28.04%) Vulnerability Remediation
6 51 (26.98%) Cloud Security
7 49 (25.93%) Network Architecture
7 49 (25.93%) Project Delivery
8 46 (24.34%) Capacity Planning
8 46 (24.34%) Economics
9 40 (21.16%) Security Operations
10 33 (17.46%) SIEM
11 29 (15.34%) Vulnerability Management
12 27 (14.29%) Penetration Testing
13 24 (12.70%) CI/CD
14 22 (11.64%) Software Engineering
15 21 (11.11%) Infrastructure as Code
16 20 (10.58%) Incident Response
17 18 (9.52%) Application Security
Programming Languages
1 18 (9.52%) Python
2 12 (6.35%) Bash
3 10 (5.29%) PowerShell
4 6 (3.17%) Kusto Query Language
5 5 (2.65%) C++
5 5 (2.65%) Go
6 3 (1.59%) Search Processing Language
6 3 (1.59%) Shell Script
7 2 (1.06%) JavaScript
7 2 (1.06%) Rust
8 1 (0.53%) Java
8 1 (0.53%) Objective-C
8 1 (0.53%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 14 (7.41%) Cisco Certification
1 14 (7.41%) CISSP
1 14 (7.41%) Security Cleared
2 12 (6.35%) DV Cleared
3 10 (5.29%) CCNA
4 9 (4.76%) CompTIA Security+
5 7 (3.70%) Degree
6 6 (3.17%) CCNP
6 6 (3.17%) CISM
7 5 (2.65%) AWS Certification
7 5 (2.65%) Computer Science Degree
7 5 (2.65%) Microsoft Certification
8 4 (2.12%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 4 (2.12%) Azure Certification
9 3 (1.59%) CASP
9 3 (1.59%) CCIE
9 3 (1.59%) CCSP
9 3 (1.59%) GCIA
9 3 (1.59%) SANS
10 2 (1.06%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (11.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 9 (4.76%) GDPR
2 9 (4.76%) NIST
3 8 (4.23%) SOC 2
4 5 (2.65%) GRC
5 3 (1.59%) Cyber Essentials
5 3 (1.59%) QA
6 1 (0.53%) HMG Security Policy Framework
6 1 (0.53%) NCSC
System Software
1 10 (5.29%) Active Directory
2 3 (1.59%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 11 (5.82%) Ansible
2 9 (4.76%) Grafana
2 9 (4.76%) Kubernetes
2 9 (4.76%) Prometheus
3 7 (3.70%) Microsoft Intune
4 5 (2.65%) Cilium
5 3 (1.59%) Nessus
5 3 (1.59%) Nmap
5 3 (1.59%) SCCM
5 3 (1.59%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (1.06%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.53%) CASB
Vendors
1 28 (14.81%) Cisco
2 24 (12.70%) Microsoft
3 21 (11.11%) Palo Alto
4 15 (7.94%) Qualys
5 11 (5.82%) Aruba
6 7 (3.70%) Splunk
7 6 (3.17%) Tenable
8 4 (2.12%) Arista
8 4 (2.12%) Red Hat
9 3 (1.59%) CrowdStrike
9 3 (1.59%) McAfee
9 3 (1.59%) Okta
9 3 (1.59%) Rapid7
9 3 (1.59%) RedGate
9 3 (1.59%) VMware
10 2 (1.06%) Fortinet
10 2 (1.06%) OpenAI
11 1 (0.53%) Cribl.io
11 1 (0.53%) Juniper
11 1 (0.53%) Sophos