NIST Contract Job Trends in London

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
England > London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in London requiring NIST skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 31 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 161 208 210
Rank change year-on-year +47 +2 +107
Contract jobs citing NIST 239 148 201
As % of all contract jobs in London 1.61% 1.07% 1.08%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 8.78% 7.60% 7.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 161 84 141
10th Percentile £416 £468 £413
25th Percentile £500 £513 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £643 £625
Median % change year-on-year -6.61% +2.80% -3.85%
75th Percentile £700 £688 £750
90th Percentile £900 £775 £825
England median daily rate £561 £625 £625
% change year-on-year -10.20% - -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 5 0
10th Percentile £81.63 - -
25th Percentile £82.19 £68.80 -
Median hourly rate £88.75 £83.20 -
Median % change year-on-year +6.67% - -
75th Percentile £94.69 - -
90th Percentile £94.88 £90.28 -
England median hourly rate £87.50 £83.20 £44.50
% change year-on-year +5.17% +86.97% -35.73%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
London

NIST falls under the Quality Assurance and Compliance category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring quality assurance or compliance skills in London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 2,723 1,947 2,550
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 18.38% 14.07% 13.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,805 1,178 1,855
10th Percentile £350 £300 £363
25th Percentile £415 £400 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -2.22%
75th Percentile £638 £675 £688
90th Percentile £750 £800 £788
England median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 40 30 60
10th Percentile £18.25 £20.00 £12.50
25th Percentile £19.80 £24.57 £19.00
Median hourly rate £26.34 £37.90 £30.13
Median % change year-on-year -30.50% +25.81% -5.12%
75th Percentile £38.93 £82.00 £49.50
90th Percentile £78.38 £95.25 £62.03
England median hourly rate £25.15 £30.92 £28.44
% change year-on-year -18.65% +8.70% -0.56%

NIST
Job Vacancy Trend in London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing NIST relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in London.

NIST job vacancy trend in London

NIST
Daily Rate Trend in London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing NIST.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing NIST

NIST
Daily Rate Histogram in London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing NIST in London over the 6 months to 31 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for NIST in London

NIST
Hourly Rate Trend in London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing NIST.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing NIST

NIST
Contract Job Locations in London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing NIST within the London region over the 6 months to 31 January 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Central London 0 29 £594 +7.95% 27
South London -2 5 £525 - 11
West London - 4 £423 - 12
East London - 4 £450 - 15
NIST
England

NIST
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in London 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:

Application Platforms
1 6 (2.51%) SharePoint
2 3 (1.26%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.84%) Confluence
4 1 (0.42%) nginx
Applications
1 2 (0.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.42%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.42%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.42%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 79 (33.05%) Azure
2 59 (24.69%) AWS
3 23 (9.62%) Entra ID
4 22 (9.21%) GCP
5 16 (6.69%) Azure Sentinel
6 15 (6.28%) GitHub
7 14 (5.86%) AWS CloudFormation
7 14 (5.86%) OpenShift
8 11 (4.60%) Amazon ECS
9 9 (3.77%) Amazon EKS
9 9 (3.77%) Microsoft 365
9 9 (3.77%) Microsoft Purview
9 9 (3.77%) SaaS
9 9 (3.77%) Serverless
10 8 (3.35%) PaaS
10 8 (3.35%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 7 (2.93%) AWS Lambda
11 7 (2.93%) GitHub Actions
12 6 (2.51%) Amazon MSK
12 6 (2.51%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 32 (13.39%) Firewall
2 22 (9.21%) Network Security
3 9 (3.77%) DNS
4 6 (2.51%) NGFW
4 6 (2.51%) VPN
5 3 (1.26%) Intrusion Detection
5 3 (1.26%) LAN
5 3 (1.26%) WAN
6 2 (0.84%) BGP
6 2 (0.84%) Modbus
6 2 (0.84%) SD-WAN
6 2 (0.84%) TCP/IP
6 2 (0.84%) Wi-Fi
6 2 (0.84%) Wireshark
7 1 (0.42%) Cisco ASA
7 1 (0.42%) Ethernet VPN
7 1 (0.42%) OSPF
7 1 (0.42%) Software-Defined Networking
7 1 (0.42%) VSAN
7 1 (0.42%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (5.02%) Data Lake
2 7 (2.93%) Amazon RDS
3 5 (2.09%) Redis
4 4 (1.67%) Amazon Aurora
4 4 (1.67%) DocumentDB
4 4 (1.67%) DynamoDB
4 4 (1.67%) MySQL
4 4 (1.67%) NoSQL
4 4 (1.67%) PostgreSQL
5 3 (1.26%) Star Schema
6 2 (0.84%) Amazon Athena
6 2 (0.84%) Amazon Redshift
6 2 (0.84%) Oracle Database
6 2 (0.84%) Power BI
7 1 (0.42%) EDRMS
7 1 (0.42%) Pinecone
7 1 (0.42%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 18 (7.53%) Jenkins
2 12 (5.02%) JIRA
3 6 (2.51%) GitLab
4 5 (2.09%) Git
5 4 (1.67%) JMeter
6 3 (1.26%) Snyk
7 2 (0.84%) Metasploit
8 1 (0.42%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.42%) MLflow
8 1 (0.42%) Postman
8 1 (0.42%) Selenium
8 1 (0.42%) SonarQube
General
1 92 (38.49%) Social Skills
2 60 (25.10%) Finance
3 28 (11.72%) Public Sector
4 24 (10.04%) Analytical Skills
5 21 (8.79%) Documentation Skills
6 18 (7.53%) Influencing Skills
6 18 (7.53%) Presentation Skills
7 16 (6.69%) Banking
8 14 (5.86%) Legal
9 7 (2.93%) Financial Institution
10 6 (2.51%) Organisational Skills
11 4 (1.67%) Law
11 4 (1.67%) Telecoms
12 3 (1.26%) Manufacturing
13 2 (0.84%) Investment Banking
13 2 (0.84%) Local Government
13 2 (0.84%) Military
14 1 (0.42%) Aerospace
14 1 (0.42%) Marketing
14 1 (0.42%) Retail
Job Titles
1 46 (19.25%) Architect
2 39 (16.32%) Security Engineer
3 31 (12.97%) Analyst
4 24 (10.04%) Security Architect
5 22 (9.21%) Consultant
6 16 (6.69%) Lead
7 15 (6.28%) Senior
8 14 (5.86%) Security Analyst
8 14 (5.86%) Security Specialist
9 13 (5.44%) CyberArk Architect
10 10 (4.18%) Project Manager
10 10 (4.18%) Security Manager
11 9 (3.77%) Security Consultant
12 8 (3.35%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 8 (3.35%) Risk Consultant
13 7 (2.93%) Cloud Architect
13 7 (2.93%) Cybersecurity Engineer
13 7 (2.93%) Senior Security Engineer
14 6 (2.51%) Migration Project Manager
14 6 (2.51%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (8.37%) OpenID
2 17 (7.11%) SAML
3 13 (5.44%) LDAP
4 8 (3.35%) .NET
4 8 (3.35%) REST
5 7 (2.93%) OAuth
6 6 (2.51%) Kafka
6 6 (2.51%) RESTful
7 5 (2.09%) Model Context Protocol
7 5 (2.09%) Spring
8 4 (1.67%) gRPC
8 4 (1.67%) Hibernate
8 4 (1.67%) JPA
8 4 (1.67%) OAuth2
8 4 (1.67%) OpenTelemetry
8 4 (1.67%) Spring Boot
8 4 (1.67%) Spring Cloud
9 3 (1.26%) Semantic Kernel
10 2 (0.84%) Microsoft Graph
10 2 (0.84%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 32 (13.39%) Onboarding
2 26 (10.88%) Cloud Native
3 23 (9.62%) Security Posture
4 19 (7.95%) Management Information System
5 11 (4.60%) Cyber Threat
6 9 (3.77%) Operational Technology
7 8 (3.35%) Security Operations Centre
8 7 (2.93%) Cyber Kill Chain
9 5 (2.09%) Data Centre
10 4 (1.67%) AI Agents
10 4 (1.67%) Distributed Systems
10 4 (1.67%) NHS
11 3 (1.26%) Analytical Mindset
11 3 (1.26%) Cloud Security Posture
11 3 (1.26%) Greenfield Project
11 3 (1.26%) IoT
11 3 (1.26%) Product Ownership
11 3 (1.26%) Taxonomies
12 2 (0.84%) Algorithms
12 2 (0.84%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 13 (5.44%) Linux
1 13 (5.44%) Windows
2 7 (2.93%) Windows Server
3 3 (1.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 3 (1.26%) Unix
4 1 (0.42%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 109 (45.61%) Cybersecurity
2 69 (28.87%) Cloud Security
3 68 (28.45%) Risk Management
4 65 (27.20%) SIEM
5 54 (22.59%) Information Security
5 54 (22.59%) Stakeholder Management
6 50 (20.92%) CI/CD
7 47 (19.67%) Infrastructure as Code
7 47 (19.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 43 (17.99%) Incident Response
9 39 (16.32%) Threat Modelling
10 38 (15.90%) DevOps
11 37 (15.48%) Security Architecture
12 31 (12.97%) Data Protection
13 30 (12.55%) Identity Access Management
14 29 (12.13%) AI
15 28 (11.72%) Vulnerability Management
16 27 (11.30%) Data Loss Prevention
17 26 (10.88%) Agile
17 26 (10.88%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 26 (10.88%) Python
2 17 (7.11%) PowerShell
3 14 (5.86%) Java
4 9 (3.77%) SQL
5 7 (2.93%) Bash
5 7 (2.93%) Kusto Query Language
6 2 (0.84%) Bicep
6 2 (0.84%) C++
7 1 (0.42%) C#
7 1 (0.42%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 69 (28.87%) Security Cleared
2 62 (25.94%) SC Cleared
3 52 (21.76%) CISSP
4 36 (15.06%) CISM
5 22 (9.21%) Degree
6 14 (5.86%) CompTIA Security+
7 13 (5.44%) DV Cleared
8 12 (5.02%) CISA
8 12 (5.02%) CRISC
9 11 (4.60%) Cisco Certification
9 11 (4.60%) PMI Certification
9 11 (4.60%) PMP
10 10 (4.18%) CEH
11 9 (3.77%) AWS Certification
11 9 (3.77%) OSCP
11 9 (3.77%) SANS
12 8 (3.35%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 7 (2.93%) CREST Certified
13 7 (2.93%) FFIEC
13 7 (2.93%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 160 (66.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 63 (26.36%) GDPR
3 32 (13.39%) NCSC
4 31 (12.97%) PCI DSS
5 30 (12.55%) GRC
6 22 (9.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 19 (7.95%) COBIT
8 14 (5.86%) Cyber Essentials
9 11 (4.60%) EU AI Act
10 10 (4.18%) HIPAA
10 10 (4.18%) ITGC
10 10 (4.18%) NIST 800
11 9 (3.77%) QA
12 7 (2.93%) SOC 2
12 7 (2.93%) SOX 404
13 5 (2.09%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 4 (1.67%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 4 (1.67%) ISO/IEC 27005
14 4 (1.67%) ISO/IEC 42001
15 3 (1.26%) RMADS
System Software
1 22 (9.21%) Active Directory
2 13 (5.44%) Docker
3 3 (1.26%) Hyper-V
3 3 (1.26%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.42%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 30 (12.55%) Kubernetes
2 23 (9.62%) Terraform
3 6 (2.51%) Ansible
4 5 (2.09%) Nessus
4 5 (2.09%) Single Sign-On
5 4 (1.67%) CASB
6 3 (1.26%) Microsoft Intune
7 2 (0.84%) CSIRT
7 2 (0.84%) Grafana
7 2 (0.84%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.84%) QRadar
7 2 (0.84%) RSA Archer
7 2 (0.84%) SCCM
8 1 (0.42%) Fluentd
8 1 (0.42%) Jamf Pro
8 1 (0.42%) Kubeflow
8 1 (0.42%) Network Intrusion Detection System
8 1 (0.42%) Nmap
8 1 (0.42%) VxRail
8 1 (0.42%) WSUS
Vendors
1 45 (18.83%) Microsoft
2 27 (11.30%) CyberArk
3 25 (10.46%) Splunk
4 11 (4.60%) ServiceNow
5 9 (3.77%) Oracle
6 8 (3.35%) Google
6 8 (3.35%) Palo Alto
6 8 (3.35%) SAP
7 7 (2.93%) Cisco
7 7 (2.93%) Tenable
8 6 (2.51%) Fortinet
8 6 (2.51%) Rapid7
9 5 (2.09%) CrowdStrike
9 5 (2.09%) Qualys
9 5 (2.09%) VMware
10 4 (1.67%) Dell
11 3 (1.26%) CheckPoint
11 3 (1.26%) Trend Micro
12 2 (0.84%) Foundry
12 2 (0.84%) LogRhythm