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 13 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 169 161 217
Rank change year-on-year -8 +56 +2
Contract jobs citing NIST 322 240 196
As % of all contract jobs in London 1.63% 1.76% 1.13%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 8.89% 10.56% 8.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 219 168 153
10th Percentile £430 £425 £410
25th Percentile £500 £509 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £588 £650
Median % change year-on-year +2.13% -9.62% -3.70%
75th Percentile £738 £700 £775
90th Percentile £888 £816 £825
England median daily rate £592 £585 £625
% change year-on-year +1.20% -6.40% -3.85%

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 3,622 2,272 2,402
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 18.31% 16.69% 13.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,438 1,511 1,667
10th Percentile £350 £325 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £426
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £638 £673 £675
90th Percentile £738 £756 £790
England median daily rate £507 £500 £523
% change year-on-year +1.40% -4.31% -2.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 33 58
10th Percentile £20.04 £22.75 £12.50
25th Percentile £25.25 £25.15 £17.56
Median hourly rate £28.28 £34.50 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -18.04% +44.96% -27.79%
75th Percentile £41.80 £48.00 £38.06
90th Percentile £62.00 £63.35 £52.73
England median hourly rate £36.07 £31.76 £25.00
% change year-on-year +13.57% +27.04% -41.18%

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 13 July 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 13 July 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 +5 49 £625 +7.76% 36
East London -4 2 £750 +28.21% 4
South London -16 2 £744 +35.18%
West London -18 2 £431 +11.29% 28
North London -3 1 £650 +48.57%
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 (1.86%) SharePoint
2 5 (1.55%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (0.93%) Confluence
4 1 (0.31%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.31%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 5 (1.55%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.62%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 124 (38.51%) Azure
2 96 (29.81%) AWS
3 48 (14.91%) Entra ID
4 46 (14.29%) GCP
5 20 (6.21%) SaaS
6 18 (5.59%) Azure Sentinel
7 14 (4.35%) Azure DevOps
7 14 (4.35%) GitHub
8 13 (4.04%) Microsoft 365
9 12 (3.73%) OpenShift
10 11 (3.42%) AWS CloudFormation
11 10 (3.11%) Microsoft Purview
11 10 (3.11%) OCI
12 8 (2.48%) Datadog
12 8 (2.48%) Serverless
13 6 (1.86%) Amazon ECS
13 6 (1.86%) Azure Monitor
14 5 (1.55%) Amazon Bedrock
14 5 (1.55%) Azure Key Vault
14 5 (1.55%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 25 (7.76%) Network Security
2 16 (4.97%) Firewall
3 11 (3.42%) DNS
4 9 (2.80%) VPN
5 7 (2.17%) NGFW
6 6 (1.86%) Kerberos
6 6 (1.86%) TCP/IP
7 5 (1.55%) HTTP
7 5 (1.55%) SSL
7 5 (1.55%) X.509
8 4 (1.24%) Cisco IPT
8 4 (1.24%) IPsec
9 3 (0.93%) DHCP
9 3 (0.93%) Internet
9 3 (0.93%) SSH
10 2 (0.62%) BGP
10 2 (0.62%) IPv4
10 2 (0.62%) IPv6
10 2 (0.62%) S/MIME
10 2 (0.62%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (1.24%) Big Data
2 3 (0.93%) Azure SQL Database
3 2 (0.62%) Amazon Athena
3 2 (0.62%) Amazon RDS
3 2 (0.62%) Amazon Redshift
3 2 (0.62%) Data Hub
3 2 (0.62%) Power BI
4 1 (0.31%) Data Lake
4 1 (0.31%) Metadata
4 1 (0.31%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 14 (4.35%) Jenkins
2 9 (2.80%) JIRA
3 8 (2.48%) Snyk
4 6 (1.86%) Git
5 4 (1.24%) Burp Suite
5 4 (1.24%) GitLab
6 3 (0.93%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.62%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.31%) MLflow
8 1 (0.31%) Postman
General
1 105 (32.61%) Finance
2 104 (32.30%) Social Skills
3 47 (14.60%) Analytical Skills
4 25 (7.76%) Banking
4 25 (7.76%) Documentation Skills
5 22 (6.83%) Public Sector
6 19 (5.90%) Influencing Skills
7 18 (5.59%) Legal
8 12 (3.73%) Financial Institution
9 6 (1.86%) Law
9 6 (1.86%) Presentation Skills
10 5 (1.55%) Organisational Skills
10 5 (1.55%) Retail
11 4 (1.24%) Telecoms
12 3 (0.93%) Local Government
13 2 (0.62%) Manufacturing
13 2 (0.62%) Pharmaceutical
14 1 (0.31%) Aerospace
14 1 (0.31%) Back Office
14 1 (0.31%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 75 (23.29%) Architect
2 51 (15.84%) Analyst
3 36 (11.18%) Security Architect
4 31 (9.63%) Consultant
4 31 (9.63%) Senior
5 28 (8.70%) Security Engineer
6 22 (6.83%) Security Analyst
7 20 (6.21%) CyberArk Architect
7 20 (6.21%) Lead
7 20 (6.21%) Security Consultant
8 18 (5.59%) Security Manager
9 16 (4.97%) Business Analyst
9 16 (4.97%) Project Manager
10 14 (4.35%) Cybersecurity Analyst
10 14 (4.35%) Security Specialist
11 11 (3.42%) Cybersecurity Consultant
11 11 (3.42%) Solutions Architect
12 10 (3.11%) Cloud Engineer
13 9 (2.80%) Cloud Security Engineer
13 9 (2.80%) Senior Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (5.90%) SAML
2 15 (4.66%) LDAP
3 14 (4.35%) OpenID
3 14 (4.35%) SailPoint
4 7 (2.17%) OAuth
5 5 (1.55%) JSON
5 5 (1.55%) Kafka
6 4 (1.24%) .NET
7 3 (0.93%) REST
7 3 (0.93%) SLSA
7 3 (0.93%) SPIFFE
7 3 (0.93%) YAML
8 2 (0.62%) Azure Blueprints
8 2 (0.62%) Elastic Stack
8 2 (0.62%) Middleware
8 2 (0.62%) OAuth2
8 2 (0.62%) OpenTelemetry
8 2 (0.62%) RESTful
8 2 (0.62%) SOAP
8 2 (0.62%) Vert.x
Miscellaneous
1 38 (11.80%) Cloud Native
2 31 (9.63%) Onboarding
2 31 (9.63%) Security Posture
3 21 (6.52%) Operational Technology
4 18 (5.59%) Hybrid Cloud
5 14 (4.35%) Management Information System
6 10 (3.11%) CMDB
6 10 (3.11%) SCADA
7 9 (2.80%) AI Agents
7 9 (2.80%) PKI
8 6 (1.86%) Cyber Threat
9 5 (1.55%) Cloud Security Posture
9 5 (1.55%) Data Centre
9 5 (1.55%) Self-Motivation
10 4 (1.24%) BYOD
10 4 (1.24%) Data Protection Act
10 4 (1.24%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 4 (1.24%) Legacy Applications
10 4 (1.24%) Legacy Systems
11 3 (0.93%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 18 (5.59%) Windows
2 15 (4.66%) Linux
3 8 (2.48%) Windows Server
4 6 (1.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (1.24%) Unix
6 3 (0.93%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.62%) Alpine Linux
8 1 (0.31%) Android
8 1 (0.31%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.31%) CentOS
8 1 (0.31%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 178 (55.28%) Cybersecurity
2 71 (22.05%) Stakeholder Management
3 69 (21.43%) Security Architecture
4 68 (21.12%) Risk Management
5 64 (19.88%) Information Security
6 62 (19.25%) CI/CD
7 59 (18.32%) Cloud Security
8 54 (16.77%) Threat Modelling
9 53 (16.46%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 50 (15.53%) AI
11 48 (14.91%) DevOps
11 48 (14.91%) SIEM
12 45 (13.98%) Vulnerability Management
13 44 (13.66%) Incident Response
13 44 (13.66%) Roadmaps
14 43 (13.35%) Identity Access Management
14 43 (13.35%) Infrastructure as Code
15 40 (12.42%) Data Protection
16 39 (12.11%) Continuous Improvement
17 35 (10.87%) Regulatory Compliance
Programming Languages
1 40 (12.42%) Python
2 25 (7.76%) PowerShell
3 12 (3.73%) SQL
4 9 (2.80%) Bash
4 9 (2.80%) Java
5 5 (1.55%) Kusto Query Language
6 3 (0.93%) Bicep
7 2 (0.62%) Go
7 2 (0.62%) Objective-C
8 1 (0.31%) C
8 1 (0.31%) JavaScript
8 1 (0.31%) Korn
8 1 (0.31%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 91 (28.26%) CISSP
2 68 (21.12%) Security Cleared
3 53 (16.46%) SC Cleared
4 47 (14.60%) CISM
5 37 (11.49%) Degree
6 26 (8.07%) Cisco Certification
7 25 (7.76%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 23 (7.14%) CRISC
9 21 (6.52%) CISA
10 20 (6.21%) CEH
10 20 (6.21%) GIAC
11 17 (5.28%) CompTIA Security+
12 15 (4.66%) Azure Certification
13 13 (4.04%) AWS Certification
13 13 (4.04%) CCSP
14 12 (3.73%) Computer Science Degree
14 12 (3.73%) PMI Certification
14 12 (3.73%) PMP
15 11 (3.42%) DV Cleared
16 9 (2.80%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 199 (61.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 59 (18.32%) GDPR
3 51 (15.84%) GRC
4 46 (14.29%) NCSC
5 39 (12.11%) COBIT
6 33 (10.25%) NIST 800
7 31 (9.63%) PCI DSS
8 23 (7.14%) SOC 2
9 16 (4.97%) Cyber Essentials
10 15 (4.66%) ITGC
11 12 (3.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 9 (2.80%) EU AI Act
12 9 (2.80%) QA
13 6 (1.86%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 6 (1.86%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 6 (1.86%) ISO/IEC 27005
13 6 (1.86%) PMO
13 6 (1.86%) SLA
14 5 (1.55%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 5 (1.55%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 34 (10.56%) Active Directory
2 16 (4.97%) Docker
3 3 (0.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.62%) Hyper-V
4 2 (0.62%) OpenSSH
4 2 (0.62%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.31%) Varnish
5 1 (0.31%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 35 (10.87%) Kubernetes
2 23 (7.14%) Terraform
3 12 (3.73%) Single Sign-On
4 9 (2.80%) Ansible
5 7 (2.17%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (0.62%) Grafana
6 2 (0.62%) HP Fortify
6 2 (0.62%) Nessus
6 2 (0.62%) Nexpose
6 2 (0.62%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.62%) Puppet
7 1 (0.31%) CASB
7 1 (0.31%) Docker Swarm
7 1 (0.31%) Network Intrusion Detection System
7 1 (0.31%) SELinux
7 1 (0.31%) VxRail
Vendors
1 58 (18.01%) Microsoft
2 38 (11.80%) CyberArk
3 33 (10.25%) Splunk
4 22 (6.83%) ServiceNow
5 17 (5.28%) Google
6 14 (4.35%) Tenable
7 13 (4.04%) CrowdStrike
8 12 (3.73%) Qualys
9 10 (3.11%) Palo Alto
9 10 (3.11%) Rapid7
10 6 (1.86%) Okta
11 5 (1.55%) Cisco
11 5 (1.55%) Zscaler
12 4 (1.24%) Veracode
12 4 (1.24%) VMware
13 3 (0.93%) BeyondTrust
13 3 (0.93%) Forcepoint
13 3 (0.93%) ForgeRock
13 3 (0.93%) Fortinet
13 3 (0.93%) Workday