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 4 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 172 178 192
Rank change year-on-year +6 +14 +39
Contract jobs citing NIST 264 190 216
As % of all contract jobs in London 1.49% 1.51% 1.22%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 8.25% 9.50% 8.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 183 123 169
10th Percentile £430 £489 £375
25th Percentile £511 £531 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £650 £650
Median % change year-on-year -7.69% - -3.70%
75th Percentile £744 £728 £775
90th Percentile £898 £838 £825
England median daily rate £600 £625 £625
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 3 0
Median hourly rate - £83.20 -
England median hourly rate £73.60 £78.40 £67.50
% change year-on-year -6.13% +16.15% +5.23%

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 3,200 2,001 2,487
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 18.11% 15.92% 14.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,143 1,318 1,765
10th Percentile £350 £313 £350
25th Percentile £415 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.89% -3.64% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £688
90th Percentile £743 £775 £799
England median daily rate £500 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 28 65
10th Percentile £19.76 £19.44 £13.29
25th Percentile £25.38 £22.27 £18.13
Median hourly rate £27.75 £34.75 £24.50
Median % change year-on-year -20.14% +41.84% -20.33%
75th Percentile £50.25 £57.50 £43.75
90th Percentile £70.30 £86.37 £56.00
England median hourly rate £30.58 £35.00 £22.42
% change year-on-year -12.63% +56.11% -41.84%

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 4 May 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 4 May 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 44 £625 -3.85% 19
East London -5 3 £450 -26.83% 4
South London -14 3 £637 +41.56%
West London -24 1 - - 4
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 3 (1.14%) Confluence
1 3 (1.14%) SharePoint
2 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
2 1 (0.38%) nginx
Applications
1 3 (1.14%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.38%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 99 (37.50%) Azure
2 83 (31.44%) AWS
3 38 (14.39%) GCP
4 24 (9.09%) Entra ID
5 18 (6.82%) AWS CloudFormation
6 13 (4.92%) OpenShift
6 13 (4.92%) SaaS
7 12 (4.55%) Amazon ECS
7 12 (4.55%) GitHub
8 10 (3.79%) Serverless
9 9 (3.41%) Amazon EKS
9 9 (3.41%) Azure Sentinel
9 9 (3.41%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 8 (3.03%) AWS Lambda
11 7 (2.65%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 7 (2.65%) Amazon MSK
11 7 (2.65%) Azure DevOps
11 7 (2.65%) Datadog
12 6 (2.27%) Amazon S3
12 6 (2.27%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 18 (6.82%) Network Security
2 15 (5.68%) Firewall
3 14 (5.30%) DNS
4 6 (2.27%) Kerberos
5 3 (1.14%) Cisco IPT
5 3 (1.14%) DHCP
5 3 (1.14%) HTTP
5 3 (1.14%) SD-WAN
5 3 (1.14%) SSL
5 3 (1.14%) TCP/IP
5 3 (1.14%) VPN
5 3 (1.14%) WAN
5 3 (1.14%) Wi-Fi
5 3 (1.14%) X.509
6 2 (0.76%) Intrusion Detection
6 2 (0.76%) IPv4
6 2 (0.76%) IPv6
6 2 (0.76%) LAN
6 2 (0.76%) NGFW
6 2 (0.76%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (3.03%) Amazon RDS
2 4 (1.52%) Amazon Aurora
2 4 (1.52%) Big Data
2 4 (1.52%) Data Lake
2 4 (1.52%) DocumentDB
2 4 (1.52%) DynamoDB
2 4 (1.52%) MySQL
2 4 (1.52%) NoSQL
2 4 (1.52%) PostgreSQL
2 4 (1.52%) Redis
3 3 (1.14%) Amazon Athena
3 3 (1.14%) Amazon Redshift
3 3 (1.14%) Star Schema
4 2 (0.76%) Oracle Database
5 1 (0.38%) Data Hub
5 1 (0.38%) EDRMS
5 1 (0.38%) Metadata
5 1 (0.38%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 17 (6.44%) Jenkins
2 12 (4.55%) JIRA
3 5 (1.89%) Git
3 5 (1.89%) GitLab
4 4 (1.52%) Snyk
5 3 (1.14%) JMeter
6 2 (0.76%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.38%) MLflow
7 1 (0.38%) Postman
General
1 100 (37.88%) Social Skills
2 84 (31.82%) Finance
3 46 (17.42%) Analytical Skills
4 25 (9.47%) Documentation Skills
5 24 (9.09%) Banking
6 21 (7.95%) Influencing Skills
7 16 (6.06%) Financial Institution
7 16 (6.06%) Legal
8 13 (4.92%) Public Sector
9 9 (3.41%) Presentation Skills
10 8 (3.03%) Law
11 4 (1.52%) Organisational Skills
11 4 (1.52%) Retail
11 4 (1.52%) Telecoms
12 2 (0.76%) Investment Banking
13 1 (0.38%) Back Office
13 1 (0.38%) Military
13 1 (0.38%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 57 (21.59%) Architect
2 29 (10.98%) Analyst
3 25 (9.47%) Security Engineer
4 24 (9.09%) Consultant
5 22 (8.33%) Security Architect
6 21 (7.95%) Project Manager
7 20 (7.58%) CyberArk Architect
8 19 (7.20%) Security Consultant
9 18 (6.82%) Security Manager
10 17 (6.44%) Senior
11 16 (6.06%) Security Specialist
12 13 (4.92%) Lead
13 11 (4.17%) Migration Manager
13 11 (4.17%) Migration Project Manager
14 9 (3.41%) Business Analyst
14 9 (3.41%) Cloud Architect
14 9 (3.41%) Cybersecurity Consultant
14 9 (3.41%) Security Project Manager
15 8 (3.03%) Cloud Engineer
15 8 (3.03%) Security Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (7.20%) OpenID
1 19 (7.20%) SAML
2 16 (6.06%) LDAP
3 9 (3.41%) Kafka
3 9 (3.41%) REST
3 9 (3.41%) SailPoint
4 8 (3.03%) OAuth
5 6 (2.27%) RESTful
6 5 (1.89%) .NET
6 5 (1.89%) OAuth2
6 5 (1.89%) OpenTelemetry
6 5 (1.89%) Spring
7 4 (1.52%) gRPC
7 4 (1.52%) Hibernate
7 4 (1.52%) JPA
7 4 (1.52%) JSON
7 4 (1.52%) Spring Boot
7 4 (1.52%) Spring Cloud
8 3 (1.14%) SOAP
9 2 (0.76%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 37 (14.02%) Onboarding
2 27 (10.23%) Cloud Native
3 20 (7.58%) Security Posture
4 17 (6.44%) Management Information System
5 15 (5.68%) Hybrid Cloud
6 14 (5.30%) Operational Technology
7 10 (3.79%) CMDB
8 6 (2.27%) Distributed Systems
9 5 (1.89%) Data Centre
10 4 (1.52%) AI Agents
10 4 (1.52%) BYOD
10 4 (1.52%) Data Protection Act
10 4 (1.52%) Legacy Applications
10 4 (1.52%) Self-Motivation
11 3 (1.14%) Cyber Defence
11 3 (1.14%) Mainframe
11 3 (1.14%) PKI
11 3 (1.14%) Product Ownership
11 3 (1.14%) Replication
11 3 (1.14%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 13 (4.92%) Linux
1 13 (4.92%) Windows
2 5 (1.89%) Windows Server
3 3 (1.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 3 (1.14%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 127 (48.11%) Cybersecurity
2 64 (24.24%) Stakeholder Management
3 60 (22.73%) CI/CD
4 59 (22.35%) Information Security
5 58 (21.97%) Risk Management
6 51 (19.32%) Cloud Security
7 50 (18.94%) Security Architecture
8 49 (18.56%) SIEM
9 47 (17.80%) DevOps
9 47 (17.80%) Incident Response
10 43 (16.29%) AI
10 43 (16.29%) Data Protection
11 42 (15.91%) Infrastructure as Code
11 42 (15.91%) Threat Modelling
12 40 (15.15%) Continuous Improvement
13 38 (14.39%) Agile
14 37 (14.02%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 36 (13.64%) Vulnerability Management
16 32 (12.12%) Roadmaps
17 31 (11.74%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 30 (11.36%) Python
2 23 (8.71%) PowerShell
3 15 (5.68%) Java
4 13 (4.92%) SQL
5 9 (3.41%) Bash
6 4 (1.52%) Kusto Query Language
7 2 (0.76%) Go
8 1 (0.38%) Bicep
8 1 (0.38%) JavaScript
8 1 (0.38%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 75 (28.41%) CISSP
2 56 (21.21%) Security Cleared
3 45 (17.05%) SC Cleared
4 43 (16.29%) CISM
5 38 (14.39%) Degree
6 20 (7.58%) (ISC)2 CCSP
6 20 (7.58%) Cisco Certification
6 20 (7.58%) CompTIA Security+
6 20 (7.58%) CRISC
7 18 (6.82%) PMI Certification
7 18 (6.82%) PMP
8 17 (6.44%) CEH
9 16 (6.06%) CISA
10 13 (4.92%) GIAC
11 12 (4.55%) AWS Certification
11 12 (4.55%) Computer Science Degree
12 11 (4.17%) CCSP
13 10 (3.79%) Master's Degree
14 9 (3.41%) Azure Certification
15 8 (3.03%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 166 (62.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 61 (23.11%) GDPR
3 36 (13.64%) NCSC
4 35 (13.26%) GRC
4 35 (13.26%) PCI DSS
5 33 (12.50%) COBIT
6 25 (9.47%) NIST 800
7 15 (5.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 13 (4.92%) ITGC
9 11 (4.17%) SOC 2
10 10 (3.79%) Cyber Essentials
11 9 (3.41%) QA
12 6 (2.27%) SLA
13 5 (1.89%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 5 (1.89%) ISO/IEC 27005
14 4 (1.52%) ISO 22301
14 4 (1.52%) ISO/IEC 42001
15 3 (1.14%) EU AI Act
15 3 (1.14%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
15 3 (1.14%) PMO
System Software
1 21 (7.95%) Active Directory
2 14 (5.30%) Docker
3 2 (0.76%) OpenSSH
4 1 (0.38%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.38%) Varnish
4 1 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.38%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.38%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 34 (12.88%) Kubernetes
2 25 (9.47%) Terraform
3 8 (3.03%) Single Sign-On
4 6 (2.27%) Ansible
5 3 (1.14%) CASB
5 3 (1.14%) Nessus
6 2 (0.76%) Grafana
6 2 (0.76%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (0.76%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.38%) Network Intrusion Detection System
7 1 (0.38%) SELinux
7 1 (0.38%) VxRail
Vendors
1 44 (16.67%) CyberArk
2 34 (12.88%) Microsoft
3 33 (12.50%) Splunk
4 18 (6.82%) ServiceNow
5 11 (4.17%) Tenable
6 10 (3.79%) Google
7 8 (3.03%) Qualys
8 7 (2.65%) Rapid7
9 4 (1.52%) Cisco
9 4 (1.52%) CrowdStrike
9 4 (1.52%) Fortinet
9 4 (1.52%) Palo Alto
9 4 (1.52%) VMware
9 4 (1.52%) Zscaler
10 3 (1.14%) Commvault
10 3 (1.14%) Forcepoint
10 3 (1.14%) ForgeRock
10 3 (1.14%) Oracle
10 3 (1.14%) Workday
11 2 (0.76%) Red Hat