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

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 167 159 212
Rank change year-on-year -8 +53 +15
Contract jobs citing NIST 307 211 200
As % of all contract jobs in London 1.59% 1.64% 1.14%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 8.71% 9.95% 8.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 209 147 157
10th Percentile £429 £440 £435
25th Percentile £500 £513 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £630 £650
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -3.08% -3.70%
75th Percentile £738 £710 £775
90th Percentile £890 £825 £825
England median daily rate £597 £600 £625
% change year-on-year -0.50% -4.00% -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 3,523 2,121 2,405
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 18.28% 16.45% 13.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,366 1,404 1,679
10th Percentile £350 £325 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £638 £675 £688
90th Percentile £738 £761 £800
England median daily rate £505 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +1.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 30 61
10th Percentile £19.09 £22.68 £12.50
25th Percentile £23.94 £25.15 £18.00
Median hourly rate £28.00 £34.50 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -18.84% +44.96% -8.46%
75th Percentile £41.80 £50.31 £43.75
90th Percentile £62.00 £65.50 £57.50
England median hourly rate £35.50 £32.25 £24.18
% change year-on-year +10.08% +33.37% -43.11%

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 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 1 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 +9 48 £625 -2.42% 16
East London -5 3 £750 +28.21% 4
South London -5 2 £744 +35.18%
West London -19 2 £431 +1.47% 7
North London 0 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 (1.95%) SharePoint
2 5 (1.63%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (0.98%) Confluence
4 1 (0.33%) OpenStack
Applications
1 5 (1.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.65%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 118 (38.44%) Azure
2 93 (30.29%) AWS
3 44 (14.33%) GCP
4 37 (12.05%) Entra ID
5 18 (5.86%) Azure Sentinel
5 18 (5.86%) SaaS
6 15 (4.89%) GitHub
7 14 (4.56%) Azure DevOps
8 12 (3.91%) AWS CloudFormation
8 12 (3.91%) OpenShift
9 11 (3.58%) Microsoft 365
10 9 (2.93%) Microsoft Purview
10 9 (2.93%) Serverless
11 8 (2.61%) Datadog
11 8 (2.61%) OCI
12 7 (2.28%) Amazon ECS
13 6 (1.95%) Azure Monitor
13 6 (1.95%) GitHub Actions
14 5 (1.63%) Amazon Bedrock
14 5 (1.63%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 25 (8.14%) Network Security
2 16 (5.21%) Firewall
3 10 (3.26%) DNS
4 7 (2.28%) NGFW
4 7 (2.28%) VPN
5 6 (1.95%) Kerberos
6 5 (1.63%) X.509
7 4 (1.30%) IPsec
7 4 (1.30%) TCP/IP
8 3 (0.98%) Cisco IPT
8 3 (0.98%) DHCP
8 3 (0.98%) HTTP
8 3 (0.98%) Internet
8 3 (0.98%) SSH
8 3 (0.98%) SSL
9 2 (0.65%) BGP
9 2 (0.65%) Intrusion Detection
9 2 (0.65%) IPv4
9 2 (0.65%) IPv6
9 2 (0.65%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (1.30%) Big Data
2 3 (0.98%) Amazon RDS
2 3 (0.98%) Azure SQL Database
3 2 (0.65%) Amazon Athena
3 2 (0.65%) Amazon Redshift
3 2 (0.65%) Data Hub
3 2 (0.65%) Data Lake
3 2 (0.65%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (0.65%) Power BI
4 1 (0.33%) Amazon Aurora
4 1 (0.33%) DocumentDB
4 1 (0.33%) DynamoDB
4 1 (0.33%) Metadata
4 1 (0.33%) MySQL
4 1 (0.33%) NoSQL
4 1 (0.33%) Redis
4 1 (0.33%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 16 (5.21%) Jenkins
2 10 (3.26%) JIRA
3 8 (2.61%) Snyk
4 5 (1.63%) Git
4 5 (1.63%) GitLab
5 4 (1.30%) Burp Suite
6 3 (0.98%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.65%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.33%) JMeter
8 1 (0.33%) MLflow
8 1 (0.33%) Postman
General
1 103 (33.55%) Social Skills
2 101 (32.90%) Finance
3 47 (15.31%) Analytical Skills
4 26 (8.47%) Documentation Skills
5 23 (7.49%) Banking
6 20 (6.51%) Influencing Skills
7 16 (5.21%) Public Sector
8 15 (4.89%) Legal
9 13 (4.23%) Financial Institution
10 6 (1.95%) Presentation Skills
11 5 (1.63%) Law
11 5 (1.63%) Organisational Skills
11 5 (1.63%) Retail
12 4 (1.30%) Telecoms
13 2 (0.65%) Local Government
13 2 (0.65%) Manufacturing
13 2 (0.65%) Pharmaceutical
14 1 (0.33%) Back Office
14 1 (0.33%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 74 (24.10%) Architect
2 42 (13.68%) Analyst
3 34 (11.07%) Security Architect
4 30 (9.77%) Consultant
5 28 (9.12%) Security Engineer
6 25 (8.14%) Senior
7 21 (6.84%) CyberArk Architect
7 21 (6.84%) Security Consultant
8 19 (6.19%) Lead
9 18 (5.86%) Project Manager
9 18 (5.86%) Security Manager
10 16 (5.21%) Business Analyst
10 16 (5.21%) Security Analyst
11 13 (4.23%) Security Specialist
12 11 (3.58%) Cybersecurity Consultant
12 11 (3.58%) Solutions Architect
13 10 (3.26%) Cloud Engineer
14 9 (2.93%) Cloud Security Engineer
14 9 (2.93%) Cybersecurity Analyst
14 9 (2.93%) Senior Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (6.19%) SAML
2 16 (5.21%) LDAP
3 15 (4.89%) OpenID
4 12 (3.91%) SailPoint
5 6 (1.95%) Kafka
5 6 (1.95%) OAuth
6 5 (1.63%) JSON
7 4 (1.30%) .NET
7 4 (1.30%) REST
8 3 (0.98%) OAuth2
8 3 (0.98%) OpenTelemetry
8 3 (0.98%) RESTful
8 3 (0.98%) SLSA
8 3 (0.98%) SPIFFE
8 3 (0.98%) YAML
9 2 (0.65%) Azure Blueprints
9 2 (0.65%) Elastic Stack
9 2 (0.65%) Middleware
9 2 (0.65%) SOAP
9 2 (0.65%) Vert.x
Miscellaneous
1 38 (12.38%) Cloud Native
2 34 (11.07%) Onboarding
3 30 (9.77%) Security Posture
4 18 (5.86%) Hybrid Cloud
4 18 (5.86%) Operational Technology
5 16 (5.21%) Management Information System
6 10 (3.26%) CMDB
7 9 (2.93%) SCADA
8 8 (2.61%) AI Agents
9 5 (1.63%) Cloud Security Posture
9 5 (1.63%) Data Centre
9 5 (1.63%) Self-Motivation
10 4 (1.30%) BYOD
10 4 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
10 4 (1.30%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 4 (1.30%) Distributed Systems
10 4 (1.30%) Legacy Applications
10 4 (1.30%) PKI
10 4 (1.30%) Taxonomies
11 3 (0.98%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 18 (5.86%) Windows
2 15 (4.89%) Linux
3 8 (2.61%) Windows Server
4 6 (1.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (1.30%) Unix
6 3 (0.98%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.65%) Alpine Linux
8 1 (0.33%) Android
8 1 (0.33%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.33%) CentOS
8 1 (0.33%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 169 (55.05%) Cybersecurity
2 75 (24.43%) Stakeholder Management
3 69 (22.48%) Security Architecture
4 67 (21.82%) Risk Management
5 65 (21.17%) CI/CD
5 65 (21.17%) Information Security
6 57 (18.57%) Cloud Security
7 54 (17.59%) Threat Modelling
8 51 (16.61%) DevOps
9 50 (16.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 48 (15.64%) AI
11 47 (15.31%) SIEM
12 45 (14.66%) Incident Response
12 45 (14.66%) Infrastructure as Code
13 44 (14.33%) Roadmaps
14 42 (13.68%) Continuous Improvement
14 42 (13.68%) Vulnerability Management
15 40 (13.03%) Data Protection
15 40 (13.03%) Identity Access Management
16 36 (11.73%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 36 (11.73%) Python
2 24 (7.82%) PowerShell
3 14 (4.56%) SQL
4 10 (3.26%) Java
5 9 (2.93%) Bash
6 3 (0.98%) Bicep
6 3 (0.98%) Kusto Query Language
7 2 (0.65%) Go
8 1 (0.33%) JavaScript
8 1 (0.33%) Korn
8 1 (0.33%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 86 (28.01%) CISSP
2 65 (21.17%) Security Cleared
3 52 (16.94%) SC Cleared
4 46 (14.98%) CISM
5 39 (12.70%) Degree
6 26 (8.47%) Cisco Certification
7 25 (8.14%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 24 (7.82%) CRISC
9 20 (6.51%) CISA
9 20 (6.51%) GIAC
10 19 (6.19%) CEH
11 18 (5.86%) CompTIA Security+
12 14 (4.56%) Azure Certification
13 13 (4.23%) AWS Certification
13 13 (4.23%) CCSP
13 13 (4.23%) PMI Certification
13 13 (4.23%) PMP
14 12 (3.91%) Computer Science Degree
15 9 (2.93%) OSCP
16 8 (2.61%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 191 (62.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 60 (19.54%) GDPR
3 51 (16.61%) GRC
4 43 (14.01%) NCSC
5 39 (12.70%) COBIT
6 32 (10.42%) PCI DSS
7 30 (9.77%) NIST 800
8 22 (7.17%) SOC 2
9 14 (4.56%) Cyber Essentials
10 13 (4.23%) ITGC
11 10 (3.26%) QA
11 10 (3.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 8 (2.61%) EU AI Act
12 8 (2.61%) HMG Security Policy Framework
13 6 (1.95%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
13 6 (1.95%) ISO/IEC 27005
13 6 (1.95%) SLA
14 5 (1.63%) PMO
15 4 (1.30%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 4 (1.30%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 27 (8.79%) Active Directory
2 16 (5.21%) Docker
3 3 (0.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.65%) Hyper-V
4 2 (0.65%) OpenSSH
4 2 (0.65%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.33%) Varnish
5 1 (0.33%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 36 (11.73%) Kubernetes
2 24 (7.82%) Terraform
3 10 (3.26%) Single Sign-On
4 9 (2.93%) Ansible
5 6 (1.95%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (0.65%) Grafana
6 2 (0.65%) HP Fortify
6 2 (0.65%) Nessus
6 2 (0.65%) Nexpose
6 2 (0.65%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.65%) Puppet
7 1 (0.33%) CASB
7 1 (0.33%) Docker Swarm
7 1 (0.33%) Network Intrusion Detection System
7 1 (0.33%) SELinux
7 1 (0.33%) VxRail
Vendors
1 51 (16.61%) Microsoft
2 37 (12.05%) CyberArk
3 34 (11.07%) Splunk
4 22 (7.17%) ServiceNow
5 14 (4.56%) Google
6 13 (4.23%) Tenable
7 11 (3.58%) Qualys
8 10 (3.26%) CrowdStrike
8 10 (3.26%) Palo Alto
9 9 (2.93%) Rapid7
10 5 (1.63%) Cisco
10 5 (1.63%) Zscaler
11 4 (1.30%) Okta
11 4 (1.30%) Veracode
11 4 (1.30%) VMware
12 3 (0.98%) Commvault
12 3 (0.98%) Forcepoint
12 3 (0.98%) ForgeRock
12 3 (0.98%) Fortinet
12 3 (0.98%) Workday