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 19 August 2026.

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

6 months to
19 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 611 631 655
Rank change year-on-year +20 +24 +15
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Security Engineer 164 46 162
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.15% 0.092% 0.19%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.16% 0.10% 0.20%
Number of salaries quoted 72 33 140
10th Percentile £50,000 £42,024 £40,000
25th Percentile £62,500 £61,250 £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 £90,000 £91,375
90th Percentile £92,375 £97,500 £100,125
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year +16.67% - -

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 100,959 44,891 79,128
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 93.99% 89.94% 95.07%
Number of salaries quoted 69,008 26,549 52,423
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 £75,000 £75,000 £72,000
90th Percentile £96,250 £95,000 £91,250
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,679 £47,863 £50,000
% change year-on-year +10.06% -4.27% -6.54%

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 19 August 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 19 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
UK excluding London +14 121 £70,000 +16.67% 52
England -22 110 £72,500 -12.12% 98
Work from Home +29 59 £77,500 +3.33% 45
Scotland - 53 £57,500 - 6
London -23 40 £85,000 - 55
South East -17 27 £65,000 +8.33% 4
South West - 20 £65,000 - 26
North of England -30 12 £87,500 +16.67% 9
Yorkshire - 10 £72,500 - 4
East of England -27 5 £80,000 +90.09% 4
Midlands - 4 £66,250 - 2
North West -14 2 £87,500 +16.67% 5
East Midlands - 2 - - 1
West Midlands - 2 £66,250 - 1

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

For the 6 months to 19 August 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 92 (56.10%) Cybersecurity
2 86 (52.44%) Firewall
3 64 (39.02%) Network Security
4 59 (35.98%) Business Continuity
5 56 (34.15%) Decision-Making
6 55 (33.54%) Vulnerability Remediation
7 54 (32.93%) BCP
7 54 (32.93%) Business Continuity Planning
8 49 (29.88%) Network Architecture
8 49 (29.88%) VLAN
9 48 (29.27%) Project Delivery
10 46 (28.05%) Capacity Planning
10 46 (28.05%) Economics
11 41 (25.00%) Cloud Security
12 30 (18.29%) Azure
13 28 (17.07%) AWS
13 28 (17.07%) Security Operations
14 27 (16.46%) SIEM
15 26 (15.85%) Terraform
16 25 (15.24%) Cisco
17 24 (14.63%) CI/CD
18 23 (14.02%) Vulnerability Management
19 22 (13.41%) Penetration Testing
20 21 (12.80%) Infrastructure as Code
21 20 (12.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
22 18 (10.98%) Microsoft
22 18 (10.98%) Palo Alto
22 18 (10.98%) Python
23 17 (10.37%) Incident Response
23 17 (10.37%) Software Engineering

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 (18.29%) Azure
2 28 (17.07%) AWS
3 13 (7.93%) GCP
4 10 (6.10%) Entra ID
4 10 (6.10%) Microsoft 365
5 9 (5.49%) Amazon S3
5 9 (5.49%) AWS Lambda
5 9 (5.49%) Serverless
6 8 (4.88%) Azure Sentinel
7 7 (4.27%) GitHub
7 7 (4.27%) Microsoft Purview
8 6 (3.66%) GitHub Actions
9 5 (3.05%) Azure Logic Apps
9 5 (3.05%) Mimecast
9 5 (3.05%) SaaS
10 2 (1.22%) Anthropic Claude
10 2 (1.22%) IaaS
10 2 (1.22%) PaaS
10 2 (1.22%) Pulumi
11 1 (0.61%) AWS Control Tower
Communications & Networking
1 86 (52.44%) Firewall
2 64 (39.02%) Network Security
3 49 (29.88%) VLAN
4 14 (8.54%) VPN
4 14 (8.54%) Wi-Fi
5 12 (7.32%) Internet
6 11 (6.71%) LAN
6 11 (6.71%) WAN
7 10 (6.10%) Intrusion Detection
8 9 (5.49%) Cisco Nexus
9 6 (3.66%) DNS
10 4 (2.44%) BGP
11 3 (1.83%) Cisco ASA
11 3 (1.83%) Cisco Firepower
11 3 (1.83%) OSPF
11 3 (1.83%) Remote Desktop
11 3 (1.83%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (0.61%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 5 (3.05%) TeamCity
2 3 (1.83%) Burp Suite
2 3 (1.83%) Metasploit
3 2 (1.22%) GitLab
4 1 (0.61%) Git
4 1 (0.61%) Jenkins
4 1 (0.61%) JIRA
General
1 62 (37.80%) Social Skills
2 11 (6.71%) Public Sector
3 10 (6.10%) Documentation Skills
4 9 (5.49%) Retail
5 7 (4.27%) Banking
6 6 (3.66%) Finance
7 3 (1.83%) Digital Health
7 3 (1.83%) Digital Healthcare
8 2 (1.22%) Automotive
8 2 (1.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (1.22%) Marketing
9 1 (0.61%) Advertising
9 1 (0.61%) Analytical Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (5.49%) Node.js
2 5 (3.05%) eBPF
2 5 (3.05%) JSON
3 3 (1.83%) JSON Schema
3 3 (1.83%) LDAP
3 3 (1.83%) Regular Expression
3 3 (1.83%) RESTful
3 3 (1.83%) XML
3 3 (1.83%) XMPP
4 2 (1.22%) JWT
4 2 (1.22%) OAuth
4 2 (1.22%) OAuth2
4 2 (1.22%) OpenID
4 2 (1.22%) SAML
5 1 (0.61%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 26 (15.85%) Cloud Native
2 20 (12.20%) CCTV
3 18 (10.98%) Driving Licence
4 11 (6.71%) PKI
5 9 (5.49%) Security Posture
6 7 (4.27%) Cyber Threat
7 5 (3.05%) Management Information System
8 4 (2.44%) Data Centre
9 3 (1.83%) Cloud Security Posture
9 3 (1.83%) Hybrid Cloud
9 3 (1.83%) NHS
10 2 (1.22%) Self-Motivation
11 1 (0.61%) Blog
11 1 (0.61%) Distributed Systems
11 1 (0.61%) Fibre Optics
11 1 (0.61%) Linux Command Line
11 1 (0.61%) Onboarding
11 1 (0.61%) Product Ownership
11 1 (0.61%) Security Operations Centre
11 1 (0.61%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 7 (4.27%) Linux
2 3 (1.83%) Kali Linux
2 3 (1.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 3 (1.83%) Windows
2 3 (1.83%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 92 (56.10%) Cybersecurity
2 59 (35.98%) Business Continuity
3 56 (34.15%) Decision-Making
4 55 (33.54%) Vulnerability Remediation
5 54 (32.93%) BCP
5 54 (32.93%) Business Continuity Planning
6 49 (29.88%) Network Architecture
7 48 (29.27%) Project Delivery
8 46 (28.05%) Capacity Planning
8 46 (28.05%) Economics
9 41 (25.00%) Cloud Security
10 28 (17.07%) Security Operations
11 27 (16.46%) SIEM
12 24 (14.63%) CI/CD
13 23 (14.02%) Vulnerability Management
14 22 (13.41%) Penetration Testing
15 21 (12.80%) Infrastructure as Code
16 17 (10.37%) Incident Response
16 17 (10.37%) Software Engineering
17 16 (9.76%) AI
Programming Languages
1 18 (10.98%) Python
2 13 (7.93%) Bash
3 12 (7.32%) PowerShell
4 5 (3.05%) Go
5 4 (2.44%) C++
6 3 (1.83%) Shell Script
7 2 (1.22%) JavaScript
7 2 (1.22%) Kusto Query Language
7 2 (1.22%) Search Processing Language
8 1 (0.61%) Java
8 1 (0.61%) Objective-C
8 1 (0.61%) Rust
8 1 (0.61%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 13 (7.93%) Cisco Certification
1 13 (7.93%) CISSP
1 13 (7.93%) Security Cleared
2 12 (7.32%) DV Cleared
3 9 (5.49%) CCNA
3 9 (5.49%) CompTIA Security+
4 7 (4.27%) Degree
5 6 (3.66%) CCNP
5 6 (3.66%) CISM
6 5 (3.05%) AWS Certification
6 5 (3.05%) Computer Science Degree
6 5 (3.05%) Microsoft Certification
7 4 (2.44%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 4 (2.44%) Azure Certification
8 3 (1.83%) CASP
8 3 (1.83%) CCIE
8 3 (1.83%) CCSP
8 3 (1.83%) GCIA
8 3 (1.83%) SANS
9 2 (1.22%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (12.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 10 (6.10%) GDPR
2 10 (6.10%) NIST
3 8 (4.88%) SOC 2
4 5 (3.05%) GRC
5 3 (1.83%) Cyber Essentials
5 3 (1.83%) QA
6 2 (1.22%) NCSC
7 1 (0.61%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 9 (5.49%) Active Directory
2 3 (1.83%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 26 (15.85%) Terraform
2 11 (6.71%) Ansible
3 9 (5.49%) Grafana
3 9 (5.49%) Prometheus
4 8 (4.88%) Kubernetes
5 7 (4.27%) Microsoft Intune
6 5 (3.05%) Cilium
7 3 (1.83%) Nessus
7 3 (1.83%) Nmap
7 3 (1.83%) SCCM
7 3 (1.83%) Single Sign-On
8 1 (0.61%) CASB
Vendors
1 25 (15.24%) Cisco
2 18 (10.98%) Microsoft
2 18 (10.98%) Palo Alto
3 12 (7.32%) Qualys
4 8 (4.88%) Aruba
5 6 (3.66%) Splunk
5 6 (3.66%) Tenable
6 4 (2.44%) Arista
6 4 (2.44%) Red Hat
7 3 (1.83%) CrowdStrike
7 3 (1.83%) McAfee
7 3 (1.83%) Okta
7 3 (1.83%) Rapid7
7 3 (1.83%) VMware
8 2 (1.22%) Fortinet
8 2 (1.22%) OpenAI
8 2 (1.22%) Sophos
9 1 (0.61%) Google
9 1 (0.61%) Juniper
9 1 (0.61%) Pega