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 22 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 160 212 206
Rank change year-on-year +52 -6 +102
Contract jobs citing NIST 257 152 200
As % of all contract jobs in London 1.65% 1.13% 1.08%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 8.80% 7.74% 7.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 173 83 144
10th Percentile £417 £451 £400
25th Percentile £500 £513 £511
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £615 £635 £625
Median % change year-on-year -3.15% +1.60% -3.85%
75th Percentile £700 £688 £750
90th Percentile £888 £773 £825
England median daily rate £560 £625 £600
% change year-on-year -10.40% +4.17% -7.69%
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 £81.50 £83.20 £44.50
% change year-on-year -2.04% +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 2,920 1,964 2,502
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 18.76% 14.55% 13.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,939 1,221 1,814
10th Percentile £350 £308 £363
25th Percentile £419 £400 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £638 £668 £688
90th Percentile £750 £788 £788
England median daily rate £501 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +0.10% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 27 60
10th Percentile £18.07 £19.25 £12.50
25th Percentile £18.56 £23.23 £18.69
Median hourly rate £26.11 £39.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -33.05% +41.84% -21.44%
75th Percentile £35.00 £80.80 £41.50
90th Percentile £80.09 £94.25 £61.75
England median hourly rate £25.64 £31.76 £26.66
% change year-on-year -19.29% +19.13% -23.83%

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 22 February 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 22 February 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 34 £625 -0.79% 14
South London -12 5 £525 -
East London +7 4 £450 -28.57% 4
West London -20 4 £423 - 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 5 (1.95%) SharePoint
2 3 (1.17%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.78%) Confluence
4 1 (0.39%) nginx
Applications
1 2 (0.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.39%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.39%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 78 (30.35%) Azure
2 62 (24.12%) AWS
3 23 (8.95%) GCP
4 21 (8.17%) Entra ID
5 16 (6.23%) AWS CloudFormation
6 14 (5.45%) OpenShift
7 13 (5.06%) Azure Sentinel
8 12 (4.67%) Amazon ECS
8 12 (4.67%) GitHub
9 11 (4.28%) Serverless
10 9 (3.50%) Amazon EKS
10 9 (3.50%) SaaS
10 9 (3.50%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 8 (3.11%) AWS Lambda
11 8 (3.11%) Microsoft 365
11 8 (3.11%) Microsoft Purview
11 8 (3.11%) PaaS
12 7 (2.72%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 7 (2.72%) Amazon MSK
13 6 (2.33%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 28 (10.89%) Firewall
2 23 (8.95%) Network Security
3 10 (3.89%) DNS
4 6 (2.33%) VPN
5 5 (1.95%) NGFW
6 3 (1.17%) Intrusion Detection
6 3 (1.17%) LAN
6 3 (1.17%) WAN
7 2 (0.78%) BGP
7 2 (0.78%) Modbus
7 2 (0.78%) SD-WAN
7 2 (0.78%) TCP/IP
7 2 (0.78%) Wi-Fi
7 2 (0.78%) Wireshark
8 1 (0.39%) Cisco ASA
8 1 (0.39%) Ethernet VPN
8 1 (0.39%) OSPF
8 1 (0.39%) Software-Defined Networking
8 1 (0.39%) VSAN
8 1 (0.39%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (5.06%) Data Lake
2 8 (3.11%) Amazon RDS
3 5 (1.95%) Redis
4 4 (1.56%) Amazon Aurora
4 4 (1.56%) DocumentDB
4 4 (1.56%) DynamoDB
4 4 (1.56%) MySQL
4 4 (1.56%) NoSQL
4 4 (1.56%) PostgreSQL
5 3 (1.17%) Amazon Athena
5 3 (1.17%) Amazon Redshift
5 3 (1.17%) Star Schema
6 2 (0.78%) Oracle Database
6 2 (0.78%) Power BI
7 1 (0.39%) Data Hub
7 1 (0.39%) EDRMS
7 1 (0.39%) Metadata
7 1 (0.39%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 18 (7.00%) Jenkins
2 12 (4.67%) JIRA
3 6 (2.33%) GitLab
4 5 (1.95%) Git
5 4 (1.56%) JMeter
5 4 (1.56%) Snyk
6 2 (0.78%) Metasploit
6 2 (0.78%) MLflow
7 1 (0.39%) Burp Suite
7 1 (0.39%) Postman
7 1 (0.39%) Selenium
General
1 98 (38.13%) Social Skills
2 66 (25.68%) Finance
3 30 (11.67%) Analytical Skills
4 27 (10.51%) Public Sector
5 20 (7.78%) Documentation Skills
6 19 (7.39%) Influencing Skills
7 18 (7.00%) Presentation Skills
8 17 (6.61%) Banking
9 12 (4.67%) Legal
10 11 (4.28%) Financial Institution
11 5 (1.95%) Law
11 5 (1.95%) Organisational Skills
12 4 (1.56%) Telecoms
13 3 (1.17%) Manufacturing
14 2 (0.78%) Military
14 2 (0.78%) Retail
15 1 (0.39%) Aerospace
15 1 (0.39%) Electronics
15 1 (0.39%) Investment Banking
15 1 (0.39%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 43 (16.73%) Architect
2 37 (14.40%) Security Engineer
3 33 (12.84%) Analyst
4 27 (10.51%) Consultant
5 22 (8.56%) Security Architect
6 19 (7.39%) Security Specialist
7 18 (7.00%) Senior
8 15 (5.84%) Security Analyst
9 14 (5.45%) Lead
9 14 (5.45%) Project Manager
10 13 (5.06%) CyberArk Architect
10 13 (5.06%) Security Consultant
11 12 (4.67%) Security Manager
12 8 (3.11%) Risk Consultant
13 7 (2.72%) Cloud Architect
13 7 (2.72%) Cybersecurity Engineer
13 7 (2.72%) Migration Manager
13 7 (2.72%) Migration Project Manager
13 7 (2.72%) Senior Security Engineer
14 6 (2.33%) Security Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (7.78%) OpenID
2 17 (6.61%) SAML
3 13 (5.06%) LDAP
4 8 (3.11%) .NET
4 8 (3.11%) Kafka
4 8 (3.11%) REST
5 7 (2.72%) OAuth
6 6 (2.33%) RESTful
7 5 (1.95%) OpenTelemetry
7 5 (1.95%) Spring
8 4 (1.56%) gRPC
8 4 (1.56%) Hibernate
8 4 (1.56%) JPA
8 4 (1.56%) OAuth2
8 4 (1.56%) Spring Boot
8 4 (1.56%) Spring Cloud
9 3 (1.17%) Model Context Protocol
9 3 (1.17%) PyTorch
9 3 (1.17%) TensorFlow
10 2 (0.78%) A2A Protocol
Miscellaneous
1 31 (12.06%) Onboarding
2 27 (10.51%) Cloud Native
3 26 (10.12%) Security Posture
4 22 (8.56%) Management Information System
5 14 (5.45%) Operational Technology
6 11 (4.28%) Cyber Threat
7 8 (3.11%) Security Operations Centre
8 6 (2.33%) Cyber Kill Chain
8 6 (2.33%) Distributed Systems
8 6 (2.33%) Hybrid Cloud
9 5 (1.95%) Data Centre
10 4 (1.56%) Analytical Mindset
10 4 (1.56%) NHS
11 3 (1.17%) BYOD
11 3 (1.17%) Cloud Security Posture
11 3 (1.17%) CMDB
11 3 (1.17%) Data Protection Act
11 3 (1.17%) Product Ownership
11 3 (1.17%) SCADA
11 3 (1.17%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 13 (5.06%) Linux
1 13 (5.06%) Windows
2 8 (3.11%) Windows Server
3 4 (1.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (1.17%) Unix
5 1 (0.39%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 118 (45.91%) Cybersecurity
2 76 (29.57%) Risk Management
3 68 (26.46%) Cloud Security
4 65 (25.29%) Information Security
5 63 (24.51%) SIEM
6 61 (23.74%) Stakeholder Management
7 48 (18.68%) CI/CD
7 48 (18.68%) Infrastructure as Code
8 47 (18.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 41 (15.95%) Incident Response
10 38 (14.79%) Security Architecture
11 37 (14.40%) Threat Modelling
12 36 (14.01%) DevOps
13 35 (13.62%) Vulnerability Management
14 34 (13.23%) AI
14 34 (13.23%) Data Protection
15 33 (12.84%) Agile
16 31 (12.06%) Continuous Improvement
17 29 (11.28%) Identity Access Management
18 25 (9.73%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 26 (10.12%) Python
2 16 (6.23%) Java
3 15 (5.84%) PowerShell
4 10 (3.89%) SQL
5 7 (2.72%) Bash
6 6 (2.33%) Kusto Query Language
7 2 (0.78%) C++
8 1 (0.39%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 70 (27.24%) Security Cleared
2 63 (24.51%) SC Cleared
3 60 (23.35%) CISSP
4 43 (16.73%) CISM
5 28 (10.89%) Degree
6 19 (7.39%) CRISC
7 15 (5.84%) CISA
7 15 (5.84%) CompTIA Security+
8 13 (5.06%) DV Cleared
8 13 (5.06%) PMI Certification
8 13 (5.06%) PMP
9 12 (4.67%) CEH
9 12 (4.67%) Cisco Certification
10 11 (4.28%) Master's Degree
11 10 (3.89%) AWS Certification
12 9 (3.50%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 9 (3.50%) OSCP
12 9 (3.50%) SANS
13 8 (3.11%) Computer Science Degree
13 8 (3.11%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 170 (66.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 65 (25.29%) GDPR
3 40 (15.56%) GRC
3 40 (15.56%) PCI DSS
4 32 (12.45%) NCSC
5 22 (8.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 21 (8.17%) COBIT
7 17 (6.61%) NIST 800
8 14 (5.45%) Cyber Essentials
9 13 (5.06%) SOC 2
10 10 (3.89%) HIPAA
11 9 (3.50%) ITGC
12 8 (3.11%) QA
13 7 (2.72%) SOX 404
14 6 (2.33%) EU AI Act
14 6 (2.33%) ISO/IEC 27005
15 5 (1.95%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 4 (1.56%) HMG Security Policy Framework
16 4 (1.56%) SLA
17 3 (1.17%) RMADS
System Software
1 20 (7.78%) Active Directory
2 11 (4.28%) Docker
3 4 (1.56%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (1.17%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.39%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 29 (11.28%) Kubernetes
2 22 (8.56%) Terraform
3 6 (2.33%) Ansible
4 5 (1.95%) Nessus
4 5 (1.95%) Single Sign-On
5 4 (1.56%) CASB
5 4 (1.56%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (0.78%) RSA Archer
6 2 (0.78%) SCCM
7 1 (0.39%) Fluentd
7 1 (0.39%) FortiGate
7 1 (0.39%) Grafana
7 1 (0.39%) Jamf Pro
7 1 (0.39%) Kubeflow
7 1 (0.39%) Network Intrusion Detection System
7 1 (0.39%) Nmap
7 1 (0.39%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.39%) SELinux
7 1 (0.39%) VxRail
7 1 (0.39%) WSUS
Vendors
1 41 (15.95%) Microsoft
2 29 (11.28%) CyberArk
3 24 (9.34%) Splunk
4 11 (4.28%) ServiceNow
5 10 (3.89%) Tenable
6 9 (3.50%) Oracle
7 8 (3.11%) Palo Alto
7 8 (3.11%) Qualys
7 8 (3.11%) SAP
8 7 (2.72%) Cisco
8 7 (2.72%) Google
8 7 (2.72%) Rapid7
9 6 (2.33%) CrowdStrike
9 6 (2.33%) VMware
10 4 (1.56%) Dell
10 4 (1.56%) Fortinet
10 4 (1.56%) Trend Micro
11 3 (1.17%) CheckPoint
12 2 (0.78%) Foundry
12 2 (0.78%) Red Hat