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 15 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 165 162 220
Rank change year-on-year -3 +58 -5
Contract jobs citing NIST 336 226 172
As % of all contract jobs in London 1.66% 1.67% 1.06%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 8.83% 9.78% 7.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 234 158 135
10th Percentile £430 £425 £475
25th Percentile £500 £508 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £588 £660
Median % change year-on-year +2.13% -10.98% -2.22%
75th Percentile £711 £700 £775
90th Percentile £800 £816 £780
England median daily rate £585 £590 £650
% change year-on-year -0.85% -9.23% -

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 3,806 2,312 2,215
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 18.85% 17.10% 13.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,574 1,555 1,511
10th Percentile £350 £317 £350
25th Percentile £430 £413 £426
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -1.79%
75th Percentile £638 £652 £684
90th Percentile £738 £750 £800
England median daily rate £510 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 44 44 43
10th Percentile £18.35 - £16.99
25th Percentile £24.81 £25.15 £21.13
Median hourly rate £34.06 £34.48 £26.68
Median % change year-on-year -1.22% +29.24% -2.98%
75th Percentile £44.75 £44.75 £46.25
90th Percentile £66.71 £54.63 £59.00
England median hourly rate £38.72 £31.64 £27.84
% change year-on-year +22.38% +13.65% -24.24%

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 15 August 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 15 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Central London +1 50 £610 +5.17% 28
West London -18 4 £431 +11.29% 11
East London -3 3 £750 +33.33% 1
South London -6 3 £744 +35.18% 1
North London - 1 £650 - 1
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 (1.79%) SharePoint
2 5 (1.49%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (0.89%) Confluence
4 1 (0.30%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.30%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 8 (2.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.60%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 142 (42.26%) Azure
2 102 (30.36%) AWS
3 60 (17.86%) Entra ID
4 49 (14.58%) GCP
5 22 (6.55%) Azure Sentinel
6 19 (5.65%) SaaS
7 17 (5.06%) Azure DevOps
8 16 (4.76%) Microsoft 365
9 12 (3.57%) OCI
10 11 (3.27%) Microsoft Purview
11 10 (2.98%) GitHub
12 8 (2.38%) Azure Key Vault
12 8 (2.38%) Datadog
13 6 (1.79%) AWS Control Tower
13 6 (1.79%) Azure Monitor
13 6 (1.79%) GitHub Actions
13 6 (1.79%) Serverless
14 5 (1.49%) Amazon Bedrock
14 5 (1.49%) Anthropic Claude
14 5 (1.49%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 27 (8.04%) Network Security
2 18 (5.36%) Firewall
3 12 (3.57%) DNS
4 10 (2.98%) VPN
5 7 (2.08%) TCP/IP
6 6 (1.79%) Kerberos
6 6 (1.79%) NGFW
6 6 (1.79%) X.509
7 5 (1.49%) HTTP
7 5 (1.49%) IPsec
7 5 (1.49%) SSL
8 4 (1.19%) Cisco IPT
8 4 (1.19%) SSH
9 3 (0.89%) DHCP
9 3 (0.89%) Internet
10 2 (0.60%) BGP
10 2 (0.60%) IPv4
10 2 (0.60%) IPv6
10 2 (0.60%) S/MIME
10 2 (0.60%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (1.19%) Amazon RDS
1 4 (1.19%) Big Data
2 3 (0.89%) Azure SQL Database
2 3 (0.89%) DynamoDB
3 2 (0.60%) Power BI
4 1 (0.30%) Amazon Athena
4 1 (0.30%) Amazon Redshift
4 1 (0.30%) Data Hub
4 1 (0.30%) Data Lake
4 1 (0.30%) Metadata
4 1 (0.30%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 9 (2.68%) JIRA
2 7 (2.08%) Snyk
3 6 (1.79%) GitLab
4 5 (1.49%) Jenkins
5 4 (1.19%) Burp Suite
5 4 (1.19%) SonarQube
6 3 (0.89%) Git
7 2 (0.60%) Claude Code
7 2 (0.60%) MSI
8 1 (0.30%) Postman
8 1 (0.30%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.30%) Selenium
8 1 (0.30%) TestRail
General
1 110 (32.74%) Social Skills
2 101 (30.06%) Finance
3 47 (13.99%) Analytical Skills
4 27 (8.04%) Banking
5 25 (7.44%) Public Sector
6 24 (7.14%) Legal
7 16 (4.76%) Documentation Skills
8 10 (2.98%) Financial Institution
9 8 (2.38%) Influencing Skills
10 6 (1.79%) Law
11 5 (1.49%) Manufacturing
12 4 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
12 4 (1.19%) Retail
13 3 (0.89%) Investment Banking
13 3 (0.89%) Local Government
13 3 (0.89%) Presentation Skills
13 3 (0.89%) Telecoms
14 2 (0.60%) German Language
14 2 (0.60%) Pharmaceutical
15 1 (0.30%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 79 (23.51%) Architect
2 57 (16.96%) Analyst
3 44 (13.10%) Security Architect
4 37 (11.01%) Consultant
5 30 (8.93%) Senior
6 28 (8.33%) Lead
7 25 (7.44%) Security Analyst
8 23 (6.85%) Business Analyst
8 23 (6.85%) Security Consultant
9 20 (5.95%) Security Engineer
10 17 (5.06%) Security Manager
11 15 (4.46%) Cybersecurity Analyst
11 15 (4.46%) Project Manager
12 14 (4.17%) Cybersecurity Consultant
13 13 (3.87%) Solutions Architect
14 10 (2.98%) Security Specialist
14 10 (2.98%) Senior Architect
15 9 (2.68%) CyberArk Architect
15 9 (2.68%) Cybersecurity Architect
15 9 (2.68%) Head of Security
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (4.76%) SailPoint
2 10 (2.98%) OAuth
3 9 (2.68%) SAML
4 7 (2.08%) JSON
4 7 (2.08%) REST
5 5 (1.49%) LDAP
6 4 (1.19%) YAML
7 3 (0.89%) Kafka
7 3 (0.89%) OpenID
7 3 (0.89%) SLSA
7 3 (0.89%) SOAP
7 3 (0.89%) SPIFFE
8 2 (0.60%) Azure Blueprints
8 2 (0.60%) Elastic Stack
8 2 (0.60%) Middleware
8 2 (0.60%) OAuth2
8 2 (0.60%) Playwright
8 2 (0.60%) RESTful
9 1 (0.30%) Flask
9 1 (0.30%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 30 (8.93%) Cloud Native
2 29 (8.63%) Security Posture
3 28 (8.33%) Onboarding
4 22 (6.55%) Operational Technology
5 18 (5.36%) Hybrid Cloud
6 13 (3.87%) CMDB
7 12 (3.57%) Management Information System
8 11 (3.27%) AI Agents
8 11 (3.27%) SCADA
9 10 (2.98%) PKI
10 8 (2.38%) Cyber Threat
11 7 (2.08%) Self-Motivation
12 5 (1.49%) Cloud Security Posture
12 5 (1.49%) Data Centre
12 5 (1.49%) Data Protection Act
13 4 (1.19%) BYOD
14 3 (0.89%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
14 3 (0.89%) Enterprise Software
14 3 (0.89%) Mainframe
14 3 (0.89%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 21 (6.25%) Windows
2 18 (5.36%) Linux
3 8 (2.38%) Windows Server
4 6 (1.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (1.19%) Unix
6 3 (0.89%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.60%) Alpine Linux
8 1 (0.30%) Android
8 1 (0.30%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.30%) CentOS
8 1 (0.30%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 189 (56.25%) Cybersecurity
2 75 (22.32%) Security Architecture
3 72 (21.43%) Stakeholder Management
4 69 (20.54%) Risk Management
5 63 (18.75%) Cloud Security
6 60 (17.86%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 57 (16.96%) Information Security
8 55 (16.37%) Roadmaps
9 54 (16.07%) Identity Access Management
10 52 (15.48%) Incident Response
11 50 (14.88%) AI
12 49 (14.58%) CI/CD
13 47 (13.99%) Vulnerability Management
14 45 (13.39%) Threat Modelling
15 44 (13.10%) SIEM
16 42 (12.50%) Zero Trust
17 41 (12.20%) Continuous Improvement
18 39 (11.61%) DevOps
19 38 (11.31%) Data Protection
19 38 (11.31%) Risk Assessment
Programming Languages
1 37 (11.01%) Python
2 33 (9.82%) PowerShell
3 18 (5.36%) SQL
4 11 (3.27%) Bash
5 6 (1.79%) Bicep
5 6 (1.79%) Kusto Query Language
6 4 (1.19%) Java
7 2 (0.60%) Go
7 2 (0.60%) Objective-C
8 1 (0.30%) BeanShell
8 1 (0.30%) C
8 1 (0.30%) JavaScript
8 1 (0.30%) Korn
Qualifications
1 98 (29.17%) CISSP
2 66 (19.64%) Security Cleared
3 54 (16.07%) CISM
4 50 (14.88%) SC Cleared
5 37 (11.01%) Degree
6 24 (7.14%) Cisco Certification
7 22 (6.55%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 22 (6.55%) CRISC
7 22 (6.55%) GIAC
8 21 (6.25%) CEH
9 20 (5.95%) CompTIA Security+
10 18 (5.36%) Azure Certification
11 17 (5.06%) CISA
12 15 (4.46%) AWS Certification
13 14 (4.17%) DV Cleared
14 13 (3.87%) PMI Certification
14 13 (3.87%) PMP
15 12 (3.57%) FFIEC
16 10 (2.98%) CCSP
16 10 (2.98%) GCIH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 201 (59.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 58 (17.26%) GDPR
3 45 (13.39%) GRC
4 42 (12.50%) COBIT
5 33 (9.82%) NCSC
6 29 (8.63%) NIST 800
7 22 (6.55%) PCI DSS
8 21 (6.25%) SOC 2
9 20 (5.95%) Cyber Essentials
10 15 (4.46%) ITGC
11 13 (3.87%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 12 (3.57%) EU AI Act
13 11 (3.27%) ISO/IEC 42001
14 10 (2.98%) QA
15 8 (2.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 7 (2.08%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
17 5 (1.49%) PMO
17 5 (1.49%) SLA
18 4 (1.19%) HIPAA
18 4 (1.19%) HMG Security Policy Framework
System Software
1 41 (12.20%) Active Directory
2 15 (4.46%) Docker
3 3 (0.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.60%) Hyper-V
4 2 (0.60%) OpenSSH
4 2 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.30%) Firmware
5 1 (0.30%) Varnish
5 1 (0.30%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 25 (7.44%) Terraform
2 21 (6.25%) Kubernetes
3 12 (3.57%) Single Sign-On
4 10 (2.98%) Ansible
5 8 (2.38%) Microsoft Intune
6 3 (0.89%) Nessus
7 2 (0.60%) Docker Swarm
7 2 (0.60%) Grafana
7 2 (0.60%) HP Fortify
7 2 (0.60%) Nexpose
7 2 (0.60%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.60%) Puppet
7 2 (0.60%) SCCM
8 1 (0.30%) Argo
8 1 (0.30%) CASB
8 1 (0.30%) QRadar
8 1 (0.30%) VxRail
Vendors
1 72 (21.43%) Microsoft
2 29 (8.63%) CyberArk
3 25 (7.44%) Splunk
4 23 (6.85%) ServiceNow
5 16 (4.76%) CrowdStrike
5 16 (4.76%) Tenable
6 15 (4.46%) Google
7 14 (4.17%) Qualys
8 10 (2.98%) Palo Alto
9 7 (2.08%) Okta
9 7 (2.08%) Rapid7
9 7 (2.08%) Zscaler
10 6 (1.79%) Cisco
11 4 (1.19%) ForgeRock
11 4 (1.19%) Veracode
11 4 (1.19%) VMware
12 3 (0.89%) BeyondTrust
12 3 (0.89%) Commvault
12 3 (0.89%) OpenAI
12 3 (0.89%) Workday