Security Engineer Contracts

Security Engineer
UK

The median Security Engineer daily rate in the UK is £550 according to job vacancies posted during the 6 months to 20 May 2024.

The first table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics including a comparison to same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
20 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 265 220 326
Rank change year-on-year -45 +106 -27
Contract jobs requiring a Security Engineer 370 684 739
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.87% 1.19% 0.84%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.94% 1.26% 0.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 254 465 495
10th Percentile £413 £415 £363
25th Percentile £425 £500 £466
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +4.55% +10.00%
75th Percentile £650 £684 £675
90th Percentile £750 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £525 £519
% change year-on-year +4.76% +1.20% +5.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 17 15
10th Percentile - £66.00 £27.75
25th Percentile £30.70 £83.31 £37.50
Median hourly rate £55.90 £83.40 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.97% +66.80% -13.04%
75th Percentile £80.85 - £61.57
90th Percentile £82.39 £90.04 £80.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.90 £83.36 £68.63
% change year-on-year -32.94% +21.46% +22.07%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

The following table is for comparison with the above and includes summary statistics for all contract 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 contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 39,468 54,175 84,246
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.79% 94.61% 95.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,716 37,826 59,224
10th Percentile £280 £313 £313
25th Percentile £410 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £543 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.23% +3.33% +8.47%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £638
90th Percentile £750 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £489 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -2.20% +5.26% +11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,674 1,504 2,051
10th Percentile £12.83 £14.25 £12.50
25th Percentile £16.30 £19.06 £15.82
Median hourly rate £36.50 £45.00 £23.91
Median % change year-on-year -18.89% +88.21% +6.27%
75th Percentile £61.30 £65.75 £49.25
90th Percentile £72.90 £76.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £42.50 £20.00
% change year-on-year -5.88% +112.50% +4.19%

Security Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Security Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Security Engineer in the UK

Security Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Security Engineer.

Daily rate trend for Security Engineer in the UK

Security Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Security Engineer over the 6 months to 20 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Security Engineer in the UK

Security Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Security Engineer.

Hourly rate trend for Security Engineer in the UK

Security Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Security Engineer over the 6 months to 20 May 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for Security Engineer in the UK

Security Engineer
Top 17 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Security Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 20 May 2024. 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England -32 321 £550 -8.33% 347
London -8 182 £594 -4.62% 153
Work from Home -24 134 £600 - 130
UK excluding London -48 132 £550 +4.76% 239
South East +17 57 £450 -14.29% 87
South West +5 28 £600 +14.29% 29
Midlands -11 16 £650 +18.18% 36
North of England -35 16 £550 +5.87% 39
West Midlands -3 14 £650 +18.18% 24
Scotland +38 11 £575 +6.98% 9
North West -41 10 £538 +10.60% 23
Yorkshire +11 5 £622 +8.17% 11
East of England +9 5 £600 +26.32% 37
East Midlands +13 2 £550 +6.08% 12
Wales +10 2 £531 -1.16% 10
North East +11 1 £475 -43.89% 5
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 3

Security Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 20 May 2024, Security Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Security Engineer in the job title.

1 118 (31.89%) Cybersecurity
2 107 (28.92%) Azure
3 95 (25.68%) Security Cleared
4 82 (22.16%) Python
5 80 (21.62%) Microsoft
6 78 (21.08%) Firewall
6 78 (21.08%) SIEM
7 77 (20.81%) Network Security
8 74 (20.00%) AWS
9 66 (17.84%) Finance
10 62 (16.76%) PowerShell
11 58 (15.68%) Windows
11 58 (15.68%) Terraform
11 58 (15.68%) Cloud Security
12 54 (14.59%) Social Skills
13 52 (14.05%) Problem-Solving
14 50 (13.51%) DV Cleared
15 47 (12.70%) CISSP
16 45 (12.16%) SC Cleared
17 44 (11.89%) Analytical Skills
18 43 (11.62%) Vulnerability Management
19 41 (11.08%) CI/CD
20 40 (10.81%) Information Security
21 39 (10.54%) Splunk
22 38 (10.27%) DevOps
23 37 (10.00%) Palo Alto
24 36 (9.73%) Incident Response
24 36 (9.73%) Active Directory
25 34 (9.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
25 34 (9.19%) Degree

Security Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 9 (2.43%) Microsoft Exchange
2 7 (1.89%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.08%) Confluence
4 1 (0.27%) IIS
Business Applications
1 1 (0.27%) Distributed Ledger
Cloud Services
1 107 (28.92%) Azure
2 74 (20.00%) AWS
3 29 (7.84%) GCP
4 27 (7.30%) Microsoft 365
5 25 (6.76%) Entra ID
6 21 (5.68%) Azure Sentinel
7 10 (2.70%) AWS CloudFormation
7 10 (2.70%) GitHub
8 8 (2.16%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 8 (2.16%) Serverless
9 7 (1.89%) AWS CloudTrail
9 7 (1.89%) CloudFront
9 7 (1.89%) Microsoft Purview
10 6 (1.62%) AWS Lambda
10 6 (1.62%) Azure DevOps
11 5 (1.35%) Akamai
11 5 (1.35%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 5 (1.35%) Mimecast
11 5 (1.35%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 4 (1.08%) Slack
Communications & Networking
1 78 (21.08%) Firewall
2 77 (20.81%) Network Security
3 28 (7.57%) DNS
4 23 (6.22%) VPN
5 9 (2.43%) TCP/IP
6 8 (2.16%) BGP
7 7 (1.89%) Intrusion Detection
7 7 (1.89%) WAN
8 6 (1.62%) DHCP
8 6 (1.62%) HTTP
8 6 (1.62%) LAN
8 6 (1.62%) OSPF
9 5 (1.35%) DMZ
9 5 (1.35%) NGFW
9 5 (1.35%) Wi-Fi
10 4 (1.08%) Cisco Firepower
10 4 (1.08%) DKIM
10 4 (1.08%) HTTPS
10 4 (1.08%) Internet
10 4 (1.08%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (2.97%) SQL Server
2 8 (2.16%) Big Data
2 8 (2.16%) BigQuery
3 4 (1.08%) Metadata
3 4 (1.08%) Power BI
4 3 (0.81%) Elasticsearch
5 2 (0.54%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (0.54%) DynamoDB
6 1 (0.27%) MySQL
6 1 (0.27%) RDBMS
6 1 (0.27%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 10 (2.70%) JIRA
2 9 (2.43%) Jenkins
3 8 (2.16%) Burp Suite
4 6 (1.62%) GitLab
5 4 (1.08%) Browser DevTools
5 4 (1.08%) CircleCI
5 4 (1.08%) Git
6 3 (0.81%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 3 (0.81%) Travis CI
7 2 (0.54%) Robot Framework
7 2 (0.54%) Snyk
7 2 (0.54%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.27%) Artifactory
8 1 (0.27%) Maven
8 1 (0.27%) MSI
General
1 66 (17.84%) Finance
2 54 (14.59%) Social Skills
3 44 (11.89%) Analytical Skills
4 30 (8.11%) Banking
5 24 (6.49%) Public Sector
6 14 (3.78%) Manufacturing
7 10 (2.70%) Automotive
8 8 (2.16%) Retail
9 7 (1.89%) Electronics
10 6 (1.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 4 (1.08%) Documentation Skills
11 4 (1.08%) Investment Banking
11 4 (1.08%) Marketing
11 4 (1.08%) Organisational Skills
11 4 (1.08%) Telecoms
12 3 (0.81%) Law
13 2 (0.54%) Advertising
13 2 (0.54%) Military
13 2 (0.54%) Multimedia
13 2 (0.54%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (2.16%) OAuth
1 8 (2.16%) SAML
2 7 (1.89%) YAML
3 6 (1.62%) OAuth2
4 5 (1.35%) JSON
4 5 (1.35%) SailPoint
4 5 (1.35%) Web Services
5 4 (1.08%) Kafka
5 4 (1.08%) React
5 4 (1.08%) Regular Expression
5 4 (1.08%) Vue
5 4 (1.08%) XML
6 3 (0.81%) .NET
6 3 (0.81%) Apache NiFi
6 3 (0.81%) Elastic Stack
6 3 (0.81%) RESTful
7 2 (0.54%) AWS CDK
7 2 (0.54%) REST
7 2 (0.54%) SOAP
8 1 (0.27%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 34 (9.19%) Security Posture
2 31 (8.38%) PKI
3 20 (5.41%) Data Centre
4 19 (5.14%) Management Information System
5 18 (4.86%) Cloud Native
5 18 (4.86%) Cyber Threat
6 12 (3.24%) Security Operations Centre
7 9 (2.43%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 8 (2.16%) Onboarding
9 7 (1.89%) Cyberattack
9 7 (1.89%) Public Cloud
10 6 (1.62%) Cyber Defence
10 6 (1.62%) Cyber Kill Chain
10 6 (1.62%) Operational Technology
11 5 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
11 5 (1.35%) Distributed Applications
11 5 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
12 3 (0.81%) Data Structures
12 3 (0.81%) Hybrid Cloud
12 3 (0.81%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 58 (15.68%) Windows
2 25 (6.76%) Linux
3 17 (4.59%) Windows Server
4 14 (3.78%) Unix
5 7 (1.89%) Mac OS
5 7 (1.89%) Windows 10
6 5 (1.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.81%) Android
7 3 (0.81%) Apple iOS
7 3 (0.81%) zOS
8 2 (0.54%) Windows Server 2019
9 1 (0.27%) AIX
9 1 (0.27%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 118 (31.89%) Cybersecurity
2 78 (21.08%) SIEM
3 58 (15.68%) Cloud Security
4 52 (14.05%) Problem-Solving
5 43 (11.62%) Vulnerability Management
6 41 (11.08%) CI/CD
7 40 (10.81%) Information Security
8 38 (10.27%) DevOps
9 36 (9.73%) Incident Response
10 33 (8.92%) Agile
11 32 (8.65%) Application Security
11 32 (8.65%) Security Operations
12 27 (7.30%) DevSecOps
12 27 (7.30%) Penetration Testing
13 26 (7.03%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 24 (6.49%) Computer Science
14 24 (6.49%) Identity Access Management
15 23 (6.22%) Security Architecture
16 22 (5.95%) Analytics
17 20 (5.41%) Threat Detection
Programming Languages
1 82 (22.16%) Python
2 62 (16.76%) PowerShell
3 12 (3.24%) Bash
4 10 (2.70%) Go
4 10 (2.70%) JavaScript
5 9 (2.43%) SQL
6 5 (1.35%) Kusto Query Language
7 4 (1.08%) Perl
8 3 (0.81%) C#
8 3 (0.81%) Java
9 2 (0.54%) C++
10 1 (0.27%) C
10 1 (0.27%) Groovy
10 1 (0.27%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 95 (25.68%) Security Cleared
2 50 (13.51%) DV Cleared
3 47 (12.70%) CISSP
4 45 (12.16%) SC Cleared
5 34 (9.19%) Degree
6 20 (5.41%) CISM
7 17 (4.59%) Computer Science Degree
8 16 (4.32%) Cisco Certification
9 12 (3.24%) CCNP
10 10 (2.70%) AWS Certification
10 10 (2.70%) CompTIA Security+
11 8 (2.16%) CEH
12 6 (1.62%) Azure Certification
13 5 (1.35%) CISA
13 5 (1.35%) GIAC
13 5 (1.35%) Microsoft Certification
14 4 (1.08%) CCIE
14 4 (1.08%) CCSP
15 3 (0.81%) CCNA
15 3 (0.81%) GSEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (9.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 29 (7.84%) NIST
3 11 (2.97%) PCI DSS
4 10 (2.70%) NCSC
5 9 (2.43%) GDPR
6 7 (1.89%) Cyber Essentials
7 6 (1.62%) COBIT
8 5 (1.35%) QA
9 4 (1.08%) Actionable Recommendations
9 4 (1.08%) Automotive SPICE
9 4 (1.08%) AUTOSAR
9 4 (1.08%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 4 (1.08%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 3 (0.81%) HIPAA
10 3 (0.81%) JSP 440
10 3 (0.81%) NIST 800
11 2 (0.54%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 2 (0.54%) ISA99
11 2 (0.54%) ISO 22301
11 2 (0.54%) RMADS
System Software
1 36 (9.73%) Active Directory
2 13 (3.51%) VMware Infrastructure
3 12 (3.24%) Docker
3 12 (3.24%) VMware NSX
4 5 (1.35%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (1.08%) vSphere
6 2 (0.54%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.54%) XenApp
7 1 (0.27%) Firmware
7 1 (0.27%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 58 (15.68%) Terraform
2 30 (8.11%) Ansible
3 21 (5.68%) SCCM
4 14 (3.78%) Kubernetes
5 9 (2.43%) Microsoft Intune
6 8 (2.16%) CASB
7 7 (1.89%) ArcSight ESM
7 7 (1.89%) FortiGate
8 5 (1.35%) Nessus
8 5 (1.35%) QRadar
8 5 (1.35%) Single Sign-On
9 4 (1.08%) Functional Safety
9 4 (1.08%) Puppet
9 4 (1.08%) Trend Micro Deep Security
10 3 (0.81%) Docker Swarm
10 3 (0.81%) Grafana
10 3 (0.81%) Kibana
10 3 (0.81%) logstash
10 3 (0.81%) Progress Chef
10 3 (0.81%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 80 (21.62%) Microsoft
2 39 (10.54%) Splunk
3 37 (10.00%) Palo Alto
4 26 (7.03%) VMware
5 23 (6.22%) Cisco
6 20 (5.41%) ArcSight
6 20 (5.41%) Qualys
7 16 (4.32%) F5
8 15 (4.05%) CrowdStrike
9 13 (3.51%) Fortinet
10 12 (3.24%) Google
11 9 (2.43%) CheckPoint
11 9 (2.43%) Rapid7
11 9 (2.43%) Zscaler
12 7 (1.89%) CA
12 7 (1.89%) Dell
13 6 (1.62%) LogRhythm
14 5 (1.35%) Citrix
14 5 (1.35%) ServiceNow
15 4 (1.08%) Juniper