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

6 months to
1 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 169 174 191
Rank change year-on-year +5 +17 +51
Contract jobs citing NIST 265 190 215
As % of all contract jobs in London 1.49% 1.51% 1.21%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 8.22% 9.53% 8.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 184 123 167
10th Percentile £430 £489 £375
25th Percentile £512 £531 £509
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £650 £650
Median % change year-on-year -7.69% - -3.70%
75th Percentile £741 £728 £778
90th Percentile £896 £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 3,223 1,994 2,496
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 18.18% 15.89% 14.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,168 1,318 1,770
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% -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £688
90th Percentile £750 £775 £800
England median daily rate £500 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 28 63
10th Percentile £19.76 £19.44 £12.90
25th Percentile £25.38 £22.27 £17.94
Median hourly rate £27.75 £34.75 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.14% +39.00% -18.70%
75th Percentile £50.25 £57.50 £43.75
90th Percentile £70.30 £86.37 £53.70
England median hourly rate £30.58 £34.75 £22.50
% change year-on-year -12.00% +54.44% -47.06%

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 1 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 1 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 +3 43 £625 -3.85% 19
South London -16 4 £631 +40.22%
East London -5 3 £450 -26.83% 3
West London -20 1 - - 2
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 4 (1.51%) SharePoint
2 3 (1.13%) Confluence
3 2 (0.75%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.38%) nginx
Applications
1 3 (1.13%) 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 (37.36%) Azure
2 82 (30.94%) AWS
3 38 (14.34%) GCP
4 24 (9.06%) Entra ID
5 18 (6.79%) AWS CloudFormation
6 13 (4.91%) OpenShift
7 12 (4.53%) Amazon ECS
7 12 (4.53%) GitHub
7 12 (4.53%) SaaS
8 10 (3.77%) Azure Sentinel
8 10 (3.77%) Serverless
9 9 (3.40%) Amazon EKS
9 9 (3.40%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 8 (3.02%) AWS Lambda
11 7 (2.64%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 7 (2.64%) Amazon MSK
11 7 (2.64%) Azure DevOps
11 7 (2.64%) Datadog
12 6 (2.26%) Amazon S3
12 6 (2.26%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 18 (6.79%) Network Security
2 15 (5.66%) Firewall
3 14 (5.28%) DNS
4 6 (2.26%) Kerberos
5 3 (1.13%) Cisco IPT
5 3 (1.13%) DHCP
5 3 (1.13%) HTTP
5 3 (1.13%) SD-WAN
5 3 (1.13%) SSL
5 3 (1.13%) TCP/IP
5 3 (1.13%) VPN
5 3 (1.13%) WAN
5 3 (1.13%) Wi-Fi
5 3 (1.13%) X.509
6 2 (0.75%) Intrusion Detection
6 2 (0.75%) IPv4
6 2 (0.75%) IPv6
6 2 (0.75%) LAN
6 2 (0.75%) NGFW
6 2 (0.75%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (3.02%) Amazon RDS
2 4 (1.51%) Amazon Aurora
2 4 (1.51%) Big Data
2 4 (1.51%) Data Lake
2 4 (1.51%) DocumentDB
2 4 (1.51%) DynamoDB
2 4 (1.51%) MySQL
2 4 (1.51%) NoSQL
2 4 (1.51%) PostgreSQL
2 4 (1.51%) Redis
3 3 (1.13%) Amazon Athena
3 3 (1.13%) Amazon Redshift
3 3 (1.13%) Star Schema
4 2 (0.75%) 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 (6.42%) Jenkins
2 13 (4.91%) JIRA
3 5 (1.89%) Git
3 5 (1.89%) GitLab
4 4 (1.51%) Snyk
5 3 (1.13%) JMeter
6 2 (0.75%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.38%) MLflow
7 1 (0.38%) Postman
General
1 100 (37.74%) Social Skills
2 84 (31.70%) Finance
3 46 (17.36%) Analytical Skills
4 25 (9.43%) Documentation Skills
5 24 (9.06%) Banking
6 21 (7.92%) Influencing Skills
7 17 (6.42%) Legal
8 16 (6.04%) Financial Institution
9 15 (5.66%) Public Sector
10 9 (3.40%) Presentation Skills
11 8 (3.02%) Law
12 4 (1.51%) Organisational Skills
12 4 (1.51%) Retail
12 4 (1.51%) Telecoms
13 2 (0.75%) Investment Banking
14 1 (0.38%) Back Office
14 1 (0.38%) Military
14 1 (0.38%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 57 (21.51%) Architect
2 30 (11.32%) Analyst
3 26 (9.81%) Security Engineer
4 24 (9.06%) Consultant
5 22 (8.30%) Security Architect
6 20 (7.55%) CyberArk Architect
7 19 (7.17%) Project Manager
7 19 (7.17%) Security Consultant
8 17 (6.42%) Senior
9 16 (6.04%) Security Manager
9 16 (6.04%) Security Specialist
10 14 (5.28%) Lead
11 11 (4.15%) Migration Manager
11 11 (4.15%) Migration Project Manager
12 9 (3.40%) Business Analyst
12 9 (3.40%) Cloud Architect
12 9 (3.40%) Cybersecurity Consultant
12 9 (3.40%) Security Analyst
13 8 (3.02%) Cloud Engineer
14 7 (2.64%) Cybersecurity Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (7.17%) OpenID
1 19 (7.17%) SAML
2 16 (6.04%) LDAP
3 9 (3.40%) Kafka
3 9 (3.40%) REST
3 9 (3.40%) SailPoint
4 8 (3.02%) OAuth
5 6 (2.26%) RESTful
6 5 (1.89%) .NET
6 5 (1.89%) OAuth2
6 5 (1.89%) OpenTelemetry
6 5 (1.89%) Spring
7 4 (1.51%) gRPC
7 4 (1.51%) Hibernate
7 4 (1.51%) JPA
7 4 (1.51%) JSON
7 4 (1.51%) Spring Boot
7 4 (1.51%) Spring Cloud
8 3 (1.13%) SOAP
9 2 (0.75%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 36 (13.58%) Onboarding
2 27 (10.19%) Cloud Native
3 22 (8.30%) Security Posture
4 17 (6.42%) Management Information System
5 15 (5.66%) Hybrid Cloud
6 14 (5.28%) Operational Technology
7 10 (3.77%) CMDB
8 6 (2.26%) Distributed Systems
9 5 (1.89%) BYOD
9 5 (1.89%) Data Centre
10 4 (1.51%) AI Agents
10 4 (1.51%) Data Protection Act
10 4 (1.51%) Legacy Applications
10 4 (1.51%) Self-Motivation
11 3 (1.13%) Cyber Defence
11 3 (1.13%) Mainframe
11 3 (1.13%) PKI
11 3 (1.13%) Product Ownership
11 3 (1.13%) Replication
11 3 (1.13%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 13 (4.91%) Linux
1 13 (4.91%) Windows
2 5 (1.89%) Windows Server
3 3 (1.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 3 (1.13%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 127 (47.92%) Cybersecurity
2 64 (24.15%) Stakeholder Management
3 61 (23.02%) CI/CD
4 60 (22.64%) Information Security
5 59 (22.26%) Risk Management
6 51 (19.25%) Cloud Security
7 50 (18.87%) Security Architecture
8 49 (18.49%) SIEM
9 48 (18.11%) Incident Response
10 47 (17.74%) DevOps
11 43 (16.23%) AI
11 43 (16.23%) Data Protection
11 43 (16.23%) Threat Modelling
12 42 (15.85%) Infrastructure as Code
13 41 (15.47%) Continuous Improvement
14 38 (14.34%) Agile
14 38 (14.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 37 (13.96%) Vulnerability Management
16 32 (12.08%) Roadmaps
17 31 (11.70%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 30 (11.32%) Python
2 24 (9.06%) PowerShell
3 15 (5.66%) Java
4 13 (4.91%) SQL
5 9 (3.40%) Bash
6 4 (1.51%) Kusto Query Language
7 2 (0.75%) Go
8 1 (0.38%) Bicep
8 1 (0.38%) JavaScript
8 1 (0.38%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 74 (27.92%) CISSP
2 57 (21.51%) Security Cleared
3 46 (17.36%) SC Cleared
4 42 (15.85%) CISM
5 38 (14.34%) Degree
6 20 (7.55%) (ISC)2 CCSP
6 20 (7.55%) Cisco Certification
6 20 (7.55%) CompTIA Security+
6 20 (7.55%) CRISC
7 18 (6.79%) PMI Certification
7 18 (6.79%) PMP
8 17 (6.42%) CEH
9 16 (6.04%) CISA
10 13 (4.91%) GIAC
11 12 (4.53%) AWS Certification
11 12 (4.53%) Computer Science Degree
12 11 (4.15%) CCSP
13 10 (3.77%) Master's Degree
14 9 (3.40%) Azure Certification
15 8 (3.02%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 169 (63.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 62 (23.40%) GDPR
3 37 (13.96%) NCSC
4 36 (13.58%) GRC
4 36 (13.58%) PCI DSS
5 33 (12.45%) COBIT
6 26 (9.81%) NIST 800
7 15 (5.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 13 (4.91%) ITGC
9 11 (4.15%) SOC 2
10 10 (3.77%) Cyber Essentials
11 9 (3.40%) QA
12 6 (2.26%) SLA
13 5 (1.89%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 5 (1.89%) ISO/IEC 27005
14 4 (1.51%) ISO 22301
14 4 (1.51%) ISO/IEC 42001
15 3 (1.13%) EU AI Act
15 3 (1.13%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
15 3 (1.13%) PMO
System Software
1 22 (8.30%) Active Directory
2 14 (5.28%) Docker
3 2 (0.75%) 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 (12.83%) Kubernetes
2 25 (9.43%) Terraform
3 8 (3.02%) Single Sign-On
4 6 (2.26%) Ansible
5 3 (1.13%) CASB
5 3 (1.13%) Nessus
6 2 (0.75%) Grafana
6 2 (0.75%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (0.75%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.38%) Network Intrusion Detection System
7 1 (0.38%) SELinux
7 1 (0.38%) VxRail
Vendors
1 43 (16.23%) CyberArk
2 35 (13.21%) Microsoft
3 33 (12.45%) Splunk
4 19 (7.17%) ServiceNow
5 11 (4.15%) Tenable
6 10 (3.77%) Google
7 8 (3.02%) Qualys
8 7 (2.64%) Rapid7
9 4 (1.51%) Cisco
9 4 (1.51%) CrowdStrike
9 4 (1.51%) Fortinet
9 4 (1.51%) Palo Alto
9 4 (1.51%) VMware
9 4 (1.51%) Zscaler
10 3 (1.13%) Commvault
10 3 (1.13%) Forcepoint
10 3 (1.13%) ForgeRock
10 3 (1.13%) Oracle
10 3 (1.13%) Workday
11 2 (0.75%) Red Hat