Senior Security Engineer Job Trends

Senior Security Engineer
UK

The median Senior Security Engineer salary in the UK is £71,250 per year, according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months leading to 5 August 2026.

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

6 months to
5 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 640 637 654
Rank change year-on-year -3 +17 +60
Permanent jobs requiring a Senior Security Engineer 151 46 163
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 0.14% 0.093% 0.19%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.15% 0.10% 0.20%
Number of salaries quoted 68 33 141
10th Percentile £50,000 £42,024 £50,000
25th Percentile £61,250 £57,500 £60,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £71,250 £82,500 £85,000
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% -2.94% +21.43%
75th Percentile £80,313 £90,000 £90,000
90th Percentile £87,500 £97,500 £100,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £70,000 £57,500 £60,000
% change year-on-year +21.74% -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 98,241 44,677 79,563
% of permanent jobs with a recognized job title 94.17% 90.06% 94.91%
Number of salaries quoted 67,184 26,547 53,755
10th Percentile £30,000 £28,500 £30,000
25th Percentile £40,000 £37,000 £40,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £55,000 £55,000
Median % change year-on-year - - -8.33%
75th Percentile £75,000 £75,000 £71,991
90th Percentile £96,250 £95,000 £90,793
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,500 £50,000 £50,000
% change year-on-year +5.00% - -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 5 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 5 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 +4 114 £70,000 +21.74% 66
England -23 105 £72,500 -12.12% 160
Work from Home +21 51 £80,000 -3.03% 70
Scotland - 46 £57,500 - 7
London -40 35 £85,000 -5.56% 101
South East -16 27 £70,000 +14.29% 9
South West - 20 £50,000 - 22
North of England -29 12 £87,500 +34.62% 22
Yorkshire - 10 £72,500 - 8
East of England -25 5 £80,000 +90.09% 4
Midlands - 4 £66,250 -
North West -2 2 £87,500 +34.62% 12
West Midlands - 2 £66,250 -
East Midlands - 2 - -

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

For the 6 months to 5 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 81 (53.64%) Cybersecurity
2 73 (48.34%) Firewall
3 58 (38.41%) Network Security
4 50 (33.11%) Business Continuity
5 49 (32.45%) Decision-Making
6 45 (29.80%) BCP
6 45 (29.80%) Business Continuity Planning
6 45 (29.80%) Vulnerability Remediation
7 44 (29.14%) Cloud Security
8 42 (27.81%) Network Architecture
8 42 (27.81%) VLAN
9 40 (26.49%) Project Delivery
10 39 (25.83%) Capacity Planning
10 39 (25.83%) Economics
11 28 (18.54%) AWS
12 27 (17.88%) Azure
12 27 (17.88%) Security Operations
12 27 (17.88%) Terraform
13 26 (17.22%) CI/CD
14 25 (16.56%) SIEM
15 23 (15.23%) Vulnerability Management
16 21 (13.91%) Cisco
16 21 (13.91%) Infrastructure as Code
16 21 (13.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
16 21 (13.91%) Python
17 19 (12.58%) Incident Response
18 18 (11.92%) Software Engineering
19 16 (10.60%) DevOps
19 16 (10.60%) Penetration Testing
20 15 (9.93%) 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 28 (18.54%) AWS
2 27 (17.88%) Azure
3 14 (9.27%) GCP
4 9 (5.96%) Amazon S3
4 9 (5.96%) AWS Lambda
4 9 (5.96%) GitHub
4 9 (5.96%) Microsoft 365
4 9 (5.96%) Serverless
5 8 (5.30%) Entra ID
5 8 (5.30%) GitHub Actions
6 7 (4.64%) Azure Sentinel
7 5 (3.31%) Azure Logic Apps
7 5 (3.31%) Microsoft Purview
7 5 (3.31%) SaaS
8 2 (1.32%) Anthropic Claude
8 2 (1.32%) IaaS
8 2 (1.32%) Mimecast
8 2 (1.32%) PaaS
8 2 (1.32%) Pulumi
9 1 (0.66%) Amazon GuardDuty
Communications & Networking
1 73 (48.34%) Firewall
2 58 (38.41%) Network Security
3 42 (27.81%) VLAN
4 12 (7.95%) Wi-Fi
5 10 (6.62%) Internet
5 10 (6.62%) Intrusion Detection
5 10 (6.62%) VPN
6 9 (5.96%) LAN
6 9 (5.96%) WAN
7 7 (4.64%) Cisco Nexus
8 4 (2.65%) BGP
8 4 (2.65%) DNS
9 3 (1.99%) Cisco Firepower
9 3 (1.99%) OSPF
9 3 (1.99%) Remote Desktop
9 3 (1.99%) TCP/IP
10 1 (0.66%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (0.66%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 7 (4.64%) TeamCity
2 2 (1.32%) GitLab
3 1 (0.66%) Burp Suite
3 1 (0.66%) Git
3 1 (0.66%) Jenkins
3 1 (0.66%) JIRA
3 1 (0.66%) Metasploit
General
1 54 (35.76%) Social Skills
2 11 (7.28%) Retail
3 10 (6.62%) Documentation Skills
3 10 (6.62%) Public Sector
4 9 (5.96%) Banking
5 6 (3.97%) Finance
6 3 (1.99%) Digital Health
6 3 (1.99%) Digital Healthcare
7 2 (1.32%) Analytical Skills
7 2 (1.32%) Automotive
7 2 (1.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 2 (1.32%) Marketing
8 1 (0.66%) Advertising
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (5.96%) Node.js
2 5 (3.31%) eBPF
2 5 (3.31%) JSON
3 3 (1.99%) JSON Schema
3 3 (1.99%) LDAP
3 3 (1.99%) Regular Expression
3 3 (1.99%) RESTful
3 3 (1.99%) XML
3 3 (1.99%) XMPP
4 2 (1.32%) JWT
4 2 (1.32%) OAuth
4 2 (1.32%) OAuth2
4 2 (1.32%) OpenID
4 2 (1.32%) SAML
5 1 (0.66%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 27 (17.88%) Cloud Native
2 19 (12.58%) CCTV
3 17 (11.26%) Driving Licence
4 13 (8.61%) PKI
5 9 (5.96%) Security Posture
6 5 (3.31%) Cyber Threat
6 5 (3.31%) Management Information System
7 4 (2.65%) Data Centre
8 3 (1.99%) Cloud Security Posture
8 3 (1.99%) Hybrid Cloud
8 3 (1.99%) NHS
8 3 (1.99%) Security Operations Centre
9 1 (0.66%) Client/Server
9 1 (0.66%) Distributed Systems
9 1 (0.66%) Embedded Systems
9 1 (0.66%) Fibre Optics
9 1 (0.66%) Linux Command Line
9 1 (0.66%) Product Ownership
9 1 (0.66%) Self-Motivation
9 1 (0.66%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 5 (3.31%) Linux
2 3 (1.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 3 (1.99%) Windows
2 3 (1.99%) Windows Server
3 1 (0.66%) Kali Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 81 (53.64%) Cybersecurity
2 50 (33.11%) Business Continuity
3 49 (32.45%) Decision-Making
4 45 (29.80%) BCP
4 45 (29.80%) Business Continuity Planning
4 45 (29.80%) Vulnerability Remediation
5 44 (29.14%) Cloud Security
6 42 (27.81%) Network Architecture
7 40 (26.49%) Project Delivery
8 39 (25.83%) Capacity Planning
8 39 (25.83%) Economics
9 27 (17.88%) Security Operations
10 26 (17.22%) CI/CD
11 25 (16.56%) SIEM
12 23 (15.23%) Vulnerability Management
13 21 (13.91%) Infrastructure as Code
14 19 (12.58%) Incident Response
15 18 (11.92%) Software Engineering
16 16 (10.60%) DevOps
16 16 (10.60%) Penetration Testing
Programming Languages
1 21 (13.91%) Python
2 13 (8.61%) Bash
3 11 (7.28%) PowerShell
4 5 (3.31%) Go
5 4 (2.65%) C++
6 3 (1.99%) Shell Script
7 2 (1.32%) JavaScript
7 2 (1.32%) Kusto Query Language
7 2 (1.32%) Search Processing Language
8 1 (0.66%) Java
8 1 (0.66%) Rust
8 1 (0.66%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 13 (8.61%) CISSP
2 12 (7.95%) Cisco Certification
2 12 (7.95%) DV Cleared
2 12 (7.95%) Security Cleared
3 9 (5.96%) CCNA
4 8 (5.30%) CompTIA Security+
5 7 (4.64%) AWS Certification
5 7 (4.64%) Degree
6 6 (3.97%) CCNP
6 6 (3.97%) CISM
7 5 (3.31%) Computer Science Degree
8 4 (2.65%) Azure Certification
9 3 (1.99%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 3 (1.99%) CCIE
9 3 (1.99%) CCSP
9 3 (1.99%) GCIA
9 3 (1.99%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (1.99%) SANS
10 2 (1.32%) CASP
10 2 (1.32%) CompTIA CySA+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (13.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 10 (6.62%) SOC 2
3 9 (5.96%) GDPR
3 9 (5.96%) NIST
4 7 (4.64%) GRC
5 3 (1.99%) Cyber Essentials
5 3 (1.99%) QA
6 2 (1.32%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.66%) NCSC
System Software
1 7 (4.64%) Active Directory
2 3 (1.99%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 27 (17.88%) Terraform
2 11 (7.28%) Ansible
3 10 (6.62%) Kubernetes
4 9 (5.96%) Grafana
4 9 (5.96%) Prometheus
5 7 (4.64%) Cilium
6 6 (3.97%) Microsoft Intune
7 3 (1.99%) SCCM
8 2 (1.32%) HP Fortify
9 1 (0.66%) CASB
9 1 (0.66%) Nessus
9 1 (0.66%) Nmap
9 1 (0.66%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 21 (13.91%) Cisco
2 14 (9.27%) Microsoft
2 14 (9.27%) Palo Alto
3 10 (6.62%) Qualys
4 6 (3.97%) Aruba
5 5 (3.31%) Splunk
6 4 (2.65%) Arista
6 4 (2.65%) Red Hat
6 4 (2.65%) Tenable
7 3 (1.99%) McAfee
7 3 (1.99%) VMware
8 2 (1.32%) OpenAI
9 1 (0.66%) CrowdStrike
9 1 (0.66%) Fortinet
9 1 (0.66%) Google
9 1 (0.66%) Juniper
9 1 (0.66%) Okta
9 1 (0.66%) Pega
9 1 (0.66%) Rapid7
9 1 (0.66%) Sophos