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

6 months to
19 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 176 167 196
Rank change year-on-year -9 +29 +43
Contract jobs citing NIST 275 199 215
As % of all contract jobs in London 1.53% 1.60% 1.23%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 8.47% 10.00% 8.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 189 132 168
10th Percentile £430 £465 £375
25th Percentile £510 £525 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £615 £646 £650
Median % change year-on-year -4.73% -0.69% -3.70%
75th Percentile £750 £725 £775
90th Percentile £900 £836 £825
England median daily rate £600 £618 £625
% change year-on-year -2.83% -1.20% -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 3,248 1,990 2,474
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 18.06% 16.02% 14.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,184 1,323 1,745
10th Percentile £350 £325 £350
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £533 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.35% -3.18% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £688
90th Percentile £738 £775 £800
England median daily rate £500 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 29 62
10th Percentile £19.68 £19.63 £12.70
25th Percentile £25.25 £22.27 £17.85
Median hourly rate £28.00 £34.50 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year -18.84% +42.68% -30.91%
75th Percentile £37.50 £65.00 £47.50
90th Percentile £67.25 £85.31 £57.13
England median hourly rate £33.12 £35.00 £22.50
% change year-on-year -5.37% +55.56% -40.00%

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 19 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 19 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 +10 49 £625 -3.85% 24
East London -10 4 £450 -23.08% 2
South London -12 2 £744 +35.18% 3
West London -26 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 (1.09%) Confluence
1 3 (1.09%) SharePoint
2 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
2 1 (0.36%) nginx
Applications
1 3 (1.09%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.36%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 107 (38.91%) Azure
2 87 (31.64%) AWS
3 42 (15.27%) GCP
4 28 (10.18%) Entra ID
5 17 (6.18%) AWS CloudFormation
6 16 (5.82%) SaaS
7 13 (4.73%) OpenShift
8 11 (4.00%) Amazon ECS
8 11 (4.00%) Azure Sentinel
8 11 (4.00%) GitHub
9 10 (3.64%) Serverless
10 9 (3.27%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 8 (2.91%) Amazon EKS
11 8 (2.91%) AWS Lambda
11 8 (2.91%) Datadog
12 7 (2.55%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 7 (2.55%) Amazon MSK
12 7 (2.55%) Azure DevOps
12 7 (2.55%) Microsoft 365
13 6 (2.18%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 19 (6.91%) Network Security
2 16 (5.82%) Firewall
3 14 (5.09%) DNS
4 6 (2.18%) Kerberos
5 4 (1.45%) NGFW
6 3 (1.09%) Cisco IPT
6 3 (1.09%) DHCP
6 3 (1.09%) HTTP
6 3 (1.09%) Intrusion Detection
6 3 (1.09%) SD-WAN
6 3 (1.09%) SSL
6 3 (1.09%) TCP/IP
6 3 (1.09%) VPN
6 3 (1.09%) WAN
6 3 (1.09%) Wi-Fi
6 3 (1.09%) X.509
7 2 (0.73%) IPv4
7 2 (0.73%) IPv6
7 2 (0.73%) LAN
7 2 (0.73%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (2.91%) Amazon RDS
2 4 (1.45%) Amazon Aurora
2 4 (1.45%) Big Data
2 4 (1.45%) Data Lake
2 4 (1.45%) DocumentDB
2 4 (1.45%) DynamoDB
2 4 (1.45%) MySQL
2 4 (1.45%) NoSQL
2 4 (1.45%) PostgreSQL
2 4 (1.45%) Redis
3 3 (1.09%) Amazon Athena
3 3 (1.09%) Amazon Redshift
3 3 (1.09%) Star Schema
4 1 (0.36%) Data Hub
4 1 (0.36%) EDRMS
4 1 (0.36%) Metadata
4 1 (0.36%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 17 (6.18%) Jenkins
2 11 (4.00%) JIRA
3 5 (1.82%) GitLab
4 4 (1.45%) Git
4 4 (1.45%) Snyk
5 3 (1.09%) JMeter
6 2 (0.73%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.36%) MLflow
7 1 (0.36%) Postman
General
1 97 (35.27%) Social Skills
2 89 (32.36%) Finance
3 49 (17.82%) Analytical Skills
4 25 (9.09%) Documentation Skills
5 23 (8.36%) Banking
6 21 (7.64%) Influencing Skills
7 17 (6.18%) Legal
8 15 (5.45%) Financial Institution
9 11 (4.00%) Public Sector
10 8 (2.91%) Presentation Skills
11 6 (2.18%) Law
12 4 (1.45%) Retail
12 4 (1.45%) Telecoms
13 3 (1.09%) Organisational Skills
14 2 (0.73%) Investment Banking
14 2 (0.73%) Pharmaceutical
15 1 (0.36%) Back Office
15 1 (0.36%) Military
Job Titles
1 67 (24.36%) Architect
2 32 (11.64%) Analyst
3 29 (10.55%) Security Architect
4 25 (9.09%) Consultant
5 23 (8.36%) Security Engineer
6 22 (8.00%) CyberArk Architect
7 21 (7.64%) Project Manager
8 19 (6.91%) Security Consultant
9 18 (6.55%) Senior
10 17 (6.18%) Security Manager
11 16 (5.82%) Lead
12 14 (5.09%) Security Specialist
13 12 (4.36%) Cloud Architect
14 11 (4.00%) Business Analyst
14 11 (4.00%) Migration Manager
14 11 (4.00%) Migration Project Manager
14 11 (4.00%) Security Analyst
15 10 (3.64%) Cybersecurity Consultant
16 8 (2.91%) Cloud Engineer
16 8 (2.91%) Cybersecurity Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (7.27%) SAML
2 19 (6.91%) OpenID
3 16 (5.82%) LDAP
4 11 (4.00%) SailPoint
5 9 (3.27%) Kafka
5 9 (3.27%) OAuth
6 6 (2.18%) REST
6 6 (2.18%) RESTful
7 5 (1.82%) OAuth2
7 5 (1.82%) OpenTelemetry
8 4 (1.45%) .NET
8 4 (1.45%) gRPC
8 4 (1.45%) Hibernate
8 4 (1.45%) JPA
8 4 (1.45%) JSON
8 4 (1.45%) Spring
8 4 (1.45%) Spring Boot
8 4 (1.45%) Spring Cloud
9 2 (0.73%) Middleware
9 2 (0.73%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 37 (13.45%) Onboarding
2 32 (11.64%) Cloud Native
3 23 (8.36%) Security Posture
4 17 (6.18%) Management Information System
5 15 (5.45%) Hybrid Cloud
6 13 (4.73%) Operational Technology
7 9 (3.27%) CMDB
8 6 (2.18%) Distributed Systems
9 5 (1.82%) Data Centre
10 4 (1.45%) AI Agents
10 4 (1.45%) BYOD
10 4 (1.45%) Data Protection Act
10 4 (1.45%) Legacy Applications
10 4 (1.45%) PKI
10 4 (1.45%) SCADA
10 4 (1.45%) Self-Motivation
11 3 (1.09%) Cloud Security Posture
11 3 (1.09%) Cyber Defence
11 3 (1.09%) Legacy Systems
11 3 (1.09%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 15 (5.45%) Windows
2 12 (4.36%) Linux
3 4 (1.45%) Windows Server
4 3 (1.09%) Unix
5 2 (0.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.36%) Android
6 1 (0.36%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.36%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 138 (50.18%) Cybersecurity
2 69 (25.09%) Stakeholder Management
3 59 (21.45%) CI/CD
3 59 (21.45%) Information Security
3 59 (21.45%) Security Architecture
4 58 (21.09%) Risk Management
5 52 (18.91%) Cloud Security
6 50 (18.18%) DevOps
7 49 (17.82%) SIEM
8 48 (17.45%) Incident Response
9 46 (16.73%) Continuous Improvement
10 44 (16.00%) AI
10 44 (16.00%) Threat Modelling
11 43 (15.64%) Data Protection
11 43 (15.64%) Infrastructure as Code
12 41 (14.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 38 (13.82%) Agile
13 38 (13.82%) Vulnerability Management
14 37 (13.45%) Roadmaps
15 33 (12.00%) Identity Access Management
Programming Languages
1 28 (10.18%) Python
2 22 (8.00%) PowerShell
3 14 (5.09%) Java
4 13 (4.73%) SQL
5 10 (3.64%) Bash
6 4 (1.45%) Kusto Query Language
7 2 (0.73%) Go
8 1 (0.36%) Bicep
8 1 (0.36%) JavaScript
8 1 (0.36%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 78 (28.36%) CISSP
2 62 (22.55%) Security Cleared
3 51 (18.55%) SC Cleared
4 42 (15.27%) CISM
5 38 (13.82%) Degree
6 22 (8.00%) (ISC)2 CCSP
6 22 (8.00%) Cisco Certification
6 22 (8.00%) CompTIA Security+
7 21 (7.64%) CRISC
8 19 (6.91%) CEH
9 17 (6.18%) PMI Certification
9 17 (6.18%) PMP
10 16 (5.82%) CISA
10 16 (5.82%) GIAC
11 12 (4.36%) AWS Certification
11 12 (4.36%) CCSP
12 11 (4.00%) Computer Science Degree
13 10 (3.64%) Azure Certification
14 9 (3.27%) Master's Degree
15 7 (2.55%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 174 (63.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 61 (22.18%) GDPR
3 39 (14.18%) COBIT
3 39 (14.18%) NCSC
4 38 (13.82%) GRC
5 34 (12.36%) PCI DSS
6 25 (9.09%) NIST 800
7 14 (5.09%) ITGC
8 12 (4.36%) Cyber Essentials
8 12 (4.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 12 (4.36%) SOC 2
9 9 (3.27%) QA
10 6 (2.18%) ISO/IEC 27005
10 6 (2.18%) SLA
11 5 (1.82%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 4 (1.45%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 4 (1.45%) ISO 22301
12 4 (1.45%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 3 (1.09%) Data Quality
13 3 (1.09%) RMADS
System Software
1 24 (8.73%) Active Directory
2 13 (4.73%) Docker
3 2 (0.73%) OpenSSH
4 1 (0.36%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.36%) Varnish
4 1 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.36%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.36%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 33 (12.00%) Kubernetes
2 24 (8.73%) Terraform
3 9 (3.27%) Single Sign-On
4 6 (2.18%) Ansible
5 5 (1.82%) Microsoft Intune
6 3 (1.09%) CASB
6 3 (1.09%) Nessus
7 2 (0.73%) Grafana
7 2 (0.73%) Prometheus
8 1 (0.36%) Network Intrusion Detection System
8 1 (0.36%) Nexpose
8 1 (0.36%) Puppet
8 1 (0.36%) SELinux
8 1 (0.36%) VxRail
Vendors
1 42 (15.27%) CyberArk
1 42 (15.27%) Microsoft
2 33 (12.00%) Splunk
3 17 (6.18%) ServiceNow
4 11 (4.00%) Google
4 11 (4.00%) Tenable
5 8 (2.91%) Qualys
6 6 (2.18%) CrowdStrike
6 6 (2.18%) Palo Alto
6 6 (2.18%) Rapid7
6 6 (2.18%) Zscaler
7 5 (1.82%) Cisco
8 4 (1.45%) Fortinet
8 4 (1.45%) VMware
9 3 (1.09%) Commvault
9 3 (1.09%) Forcepoint
9 3 (1.09%) ForgeRock
9 3 (1.09%) Workday
10 2 (0.73%) Okta
10 2 (0.73%) Red Hat