About Security jobs
UK cyber security hiring has been one of the strongest segments of UK tech for the last five years, and the 54 roles currently listed on Geekery.io span the full specialism map. The largest cluster is security operations (SOC) and incident response — analysts and engineers working in 24/7 SOCs, monitoring for threats, triaging alerts, and responding to incidents. The second is security engineering — engineers building and operating the security tooling (SIEM, EDR, IAM, network segmentation, vulnerability management). The third is penetration testing and red teaming — offensive security specialists doing authorised attacks to find weaknesses. The fourth is GRC — governance, risk, and compliance roles covering ISO 27001, SOC 2, Cyber Essentials, and the EU AI Act.
UK cyber security salaries: junior SOC analyst £25,000–£50,000, mid-level security engineer £25,000–£100,000, senior security engineer £55,000–£75,000, expert security architect £43,500–£135,000. Penetration testers at senior level regularly command £55,000–£75,000. The UK median for cyber security sits around £42,500, but the experienced median is much higher because of the demand for senior practitioners.
UK cyber hiring is concentrated in London, Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh, Belfast, and Cheltenham — the last because of GCHQ and the cluster of defence and intelligence agencies nearby. Roughly 40% of cyber roles offer full remote working within the UK, with the rest being hybrid. Senior and architect roles skew more remote than SOC shift-work roles.
The most common certifications in UK cyber ads: CompTIA Security+ (entry), ISC² CISSP (senior and management), Offensive Security OSCP (pen testing), SANS GIAC (multiple specialisms), AWS / Azure security certifications (cloud security), and CREST (UK-specific, for pen testing).
If you’re considering a move into cyber security from another engineering discipline, the easiest paths are security engineering (especially cloud security, where your existing cloud knowledge transfers directly) and SOC analysis (where you can start as a junior analyst and build up). Pen testing typically requires demonstrable CTF or bug-bounty work to get hired.
