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 27 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 162 182 201
Rank change year-on-year +20 +19 +74
Contract jobs citing NIST 276 163 201
As % of all contract jobs in London 1.65% 1.29% 1.11%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 8.82% 8.38% 8.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 190 105 146
10th Percentile £425 £459 £400
25th Percentile £506 £519 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £641 £650
Median % change year-on-year -6.40% -1.38% -
75th Percentile £705 £688 £780
90th Percentile £888 £828 £825
England median daily rate £575 £625 £625
% change year-on-year -8.00% - -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 £82.25 £83.20 £66.25
% change year-on-year -1.14% +25.58% +1.15%

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 3,131 1,945 2,436
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 18.72% 15.39% 13.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,073 1,302 1,732
10th Percentile £350 £313 £363
25th Percentile £424 £406 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £638 £663 £688
90th Percentile £750 £774 £788
England median daily rate £510 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +0.99% -3.81% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 40 25 54
10th Percentile £18.07 £18.88 £12.50
25th Percentile £19.11 £22.27 £17.02
Median hourly rate £26.11 £39.04 £25.81
Median % change year-on-year -33.12% +51.26% -41.15%
75th Percentile £57.13 £78.40 £47.75
90th Percentile £76.68 £89.53 £60.48
England median hourly rate £28.28 £32.25 £22.34
% change year-on-year -12.33% +44.36% -47.44%

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 27 March 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 27 March 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 -3 36 £663 +3.52% 24
South London -12 7 £525 +16.67%
East London -3 4 £450 -26.83% 6
West London -15 3 £423 - 6
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 5 (1.81%) SharePoint
2 3 (1.09%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.72%) Confluence
4 1 (0.36%) nginx
Applications
1 2 (0.72%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (0.36%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 88 (31.88%) Azure
2 77 (27.90%) AWS
3 32 (11.59%) GCP
4 22 (7.97%) Entra ID
5 17 (6.16%) AWS CloudFormation
6 14 (5.07%) OpenShift
7 12 (4.35%) Amazon ECS
8 10 (3.62%) Azure Sentinel
8 10 (3.62%) GitHub
8 10 (3.62%) Serverless
9 9 (3.26%) Amazon EKS
9 9 (3.26%) SaaS
9 9 (3.26%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 8 (2.90%) AWS Lambda
11 7 (2.54%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 7 (2.54%) Amazon MSK
11 7 (2.54%) Microsoft Purview
12 6 (2.17%) Amazon S3
12 6 (2.17%) IaaS
12 6 (2.17%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 21 (7.61%) Network Security
2 19 (6.88%) Firewall
3 14 (5.07%) DNS
4 5 (1.81%) VPN
5 4 (1.45%) Kerberos
5 4 (1.45%) TCP/IP
5 4 (1.45%) WAN
6 3 (1.09%) Cisco IPT
6 3 (1.09%) HTTP
6 3 (1.09%) LAN
6 3 (1.09%) NGFW
6 3 (1.09%) SD-WAN
6 3 (1.09%) SSL
7 2 (0.72%) BGP
7 2 (0.72%) Ethernet VPN
7 2 (0.72%) Intrusion Detection
7 2 (0.72%) IPv4
7 2 (0.72%) IPv6
7 2 (0.72%) VSAN
7 2 (0.72%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (4.35%) Data Lake
2 8 (2.90%) Amazon RDS
3 5 (1.81%) Redis
4 4 (1.45%) Amazon Aurora
4 4 (1.45%) Big Data
4 4 (1.45%) DocumentDB
4 4 (1.45%) DynamoDB
4 4 (1.45%) MySQL
4 4 (1.45%) NoSQL
4 4 (1.45%) PostgreSQL
5 3 (1.09%) Amazon Athena
5 3 (1.09%) Amazon Redshift
5 3 (1.09%) Star Schema
6 2 (0.72%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.36%) Data Hub
7 1 (0.36%) EDRMS
7 1 (0.36%) Metadata
7 1 (0.36%) Power BI
7 1 (0.36%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 17 (6.16%) Jenkins
2 12 (4.35%) JIRA
3 6 (2.17%) GitLab
4 5 (1.81%) Git
5 4 (1.45%) Snyk
6 3 (1.09%) JMeter
7 1 (0.36%) Burp Suite
7 1 (0.36%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.36%) Metasploit
7 1 (0.36%) MLflow
General
1 109 (39.49%) Social Skills
2 83 (30.07%) Finance
3 43 (15.58%) Analytical Skills
4 27 (9.78%) Documentation Skills
5 26 (9.42%) Public Sector
6 23 (8.33%) Banking
7 22 (7.97%) Influencing Skills
8 17 (6.16%) Legal
9 15 (5.43%) Financial Institution
10 14 (5.07%) Presentation Skills
11 8 (2.90%) Law
12 6 (2.17%) Telecoms
13 5 (1.81%) Organisational Skills
14 2 (0.72%) Investment Banking
14 2 (0.72%) Military
14 2 (0.72%) Retail
15 1 (0.36%) Electronics
15 1 (0.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 1 (0.36%) Manufacturing
15 1 (0.36%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 53 (19.20%) Architect
2 35 (12.68%) Security Engineer
3 34 (12.32%) Analyst
4 32 (11.59%) Consultant
5 23 (8.33%) Senior
6 21 (7.61%) Security Architect
7 19 (6.88%) Security Consultant
8 18 (6.52%) CyberArk Architect
9 17 (6.16%) Project Manager
10 16 (5.80%) Security Specialist
11 14 (5.07%) Security Manager
12 11 (3.99%) Lead
12 11 (3.99%) Security Analyst
13 10 (3.62%) Migration Manager
13 10 (3.62%) Migration Project Manager
14 9 (3.26%) Cybersecurity Consultant
15 8 (2.90%) Business Analyst
15 8 (2.90%) Cloud Architect
15 8 (2.90%) Cybersecurity Architect
15 8 (2.90%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (6.52%) OpenID
2 17 (6.16%) SAML
3 14 (5.07%) LDAP
4 9 (3.26%) REST
5 8 (2.90%) Kafka
6 6 (2.17%) SailPoint
7 5 (1.81%) .NET
7 5 (1.81%) OAuth
7 5 (1.81%) OpenTelemetry
7 5 (1.81%) RESTful
7 5 (1.81%) Spring
8 4 (1.45%) gRPC
8 4 (1.45%) Hibernate
8 4 (1.45%) JPA
8 4 (1.45%) OAuth2
8 4 (1.45%) Spring Boot
8 4 (1.45%) Spring Cloud
9 3 (1.09%) Elastic Stack
10 2 (0.72%) SOAP
10 2 (0.72%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 35 (12.68%) Onboarding
2 25 (9.06%) Cloud Native
2 25 (9.06%) Security Posture
3 17 (6.16%) Management Information System
4 14 (5.07%) Hybrid Cloud
5 13 (4.71%) Operational Technology
6 9 (3.26%) CMDB
7 7 (2.54%) Cyber Kill Chain
7 7 (2.54%) Data Centre
7 7 (2.54%) Security Operations Centre
8 6 (2.17%) Distributed Systems
9 5 (1.81%) BYOD
9 5 (1.81%) Cyber Threat
10 4 (1.45%) Cyber Defence
10 4 (1.45%) Legacy Applications
10 4 (1.45%) Product Ownership
10 4 (1.45%) Self-Motivation
11 3 (1.09%) AI Agents
11 3 (1.09%) Analytical Mindset
11 3 (1.09%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 17 (6.16%) Linux
1 17 (6.16%) Windows
2 7 (2.54%) Windows Server
3 6 (2.17%) Unix
4 4 (1.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.36%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 128 (46.38%) Cybersecurity
2 66 (23.91%) Information Security
3 63 (22.83%) Cloud Security
4 62 (22.46%) Stakeholder Management
5 59 (21.38%) Risk Management
5 59 (21.38%) SIEM
6 57 (20.65%) CI/CD
7 46 (16.67%) Infrastructure as Code
8 44 (15.94%) Continuous Improvement
8 44 (15.94%) Incident Response
9 43 (15.58%) Data Protection
9 43 (15.58%) Security Architecture
10 42 (15.22%) DevOps
10 42 (15.22%) Threat Modelling
11 41 (14.86%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 38 (13.77%) Agile
12 38 (13.77%) Vulnerability Management
13 37 (13.41%) AI
14 31 (11.23%) Identity Access Management
15 29 (10.51%) Risk Assessment
Programming Languages
1 27 (9.78%) Python
2 19 (6.88%) PowerShell
3 16 (5.80%) Java
4 12 (4.35%) SQL
5 7 (2.54%) Kusto Query Language
6 5 (1.81%) Bash
7 2 (0.72%) C++
8 1 (0.36%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 72 (26.09%) Security Cleared
2 68 (24.64%) CISSP
3 61 (22.10%) SC Cleared
4 44 (15.94%) CISM
5 37 (13.41%) Degree
6 20 (7.25%) CEH
6 20 (7.25%) Cisco Certification
7 19 (6.88%) CompTIA Security+
8 18 (6.52%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 18 (6.52%) CRISC
9 16 (5.80%) PMI Certification
9 16 (5.80%) PMP
10 13 (4.71%) CISA
11 12 (4.35%) Computer Science Degree
11 12 (4.35%) GIAC
12 11 (3.99%) Master's Degree
13 10 (3.62%) AWS Certification
13 10 (3.62%) CCSP
13 10 (3.62%) DV Cleared
13 10 (3.62%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 177 (64.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 72 (26.09%) GDPR
3 38 (13.77%) GRC
4 36 (13.04%) PCI DSS
5 35 (12.68%) NCSC
6 30 (10.87%) COBIT
7 22 (7.97%) NIST 800
8 20 (7.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 16 (5.80%) ITGC
10 13 (4.71%) Cyber Essentials
11 11 (3.99%) SOC 2
12 9 (3.26%) HIPAA
13 8 (2.90%) QA
14 7 (2.54%) SOX 404
15 6 (2.17%) ISO/IEC 27005
16 5 (1.81%) ISO 22301
16 5 (1.81%) SLA
17 4 (1.45%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 4 (1.45%) HMG Security Policy Framework
18 3 (1.09%) PMO
System Software
1 20 (7.25%) Active Directory
2 13 (4.71%) Docker
3 4 (1.45%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.72%) VMware NSX
5 1 (0.36%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.36%) Varnish
5 1 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 31 (11.23%) Kubernetes
2 22 (7.97%) Terraform
3 6 (2.17%) Nessus
3 6 (2.17%) Single Sign-On
4 5 (1.81%) Ansible
4 5 (1.81%) CASB
5 3 (1.09%) Grafana
5 3 (1.09%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.72%) VxRail
7 1 (0.36%) Fluentd
7 1 (0.36%) FortiGate
7 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.36%) Network Intrusion Detection System
7 1 (0.36%) Nmap
7 1 (0.36%) RSA Archer
7 1 (0.36%) SELinux
Vendors
1 40 (14.49%) CyberArk
2 36 (13.04%) Microsoft
3 31 (11.23%) Splunk
4 19 (6.88%) ServiceNow
5 13 (4.71%) Tenable
6 11 (3.99%) Google
7 9 (3.26%) Cisco
7 9 (3.26%) Oracle
8 8 (2.90%) Qualys
8 8 (2.90%) SAP
9 7 (2.54%) Palo Alto
9 7 (2.54%) Rapid7
9 7 (2.54%) VMware
10 5 (1.81%) CrowdStrike
10 5 (1.81%) Fortinet
11 4 (1.45%) Trend Micro
11 4 (1.45%) Zscaler
12 3 (1.09%) CheckPoint
12 3 (1.09%) Commvault
12 3 (1.09%) Red Hat