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

6 months to
22 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 167 168 193
Rank change year-on-year +1 +25 +39
Contract jobs citing NIST 280 196 213
As % of all contract jobs in London 1.55% 1.60% 1.22%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 8.52% 9.98% 8.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 192 132 166
10th Percentile £430 £465 £375
25th Percentile £506 £525 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £608 £646 £650
Median % change year-on-year -5.89% -0.69% -3.70%
75th Percentile £750 £725 £775
90th Percentile £900 £836 £825
England median daily rate £600 £602 £625
% change year-on-year -0.25% -3.76% -3.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 0
Median hourly rate - £78.40 -
England median hourly rate £81.50 £52.50 £67.50
% change year-on-year +55.24% -22.22% +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 3,286 1,963 2,471
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 18.16% 16.04% 14.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,219 1,299 1,745
10th Percentile £350 £319 £350
25th Percentile £421 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.80% -2.73% -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 38 29 62
10th Percentile £19.76 £21.00 £12.70
25th Percentile £25.38 £22.75 £17.85
Median hourly rate £28.00 £34.50 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year -18.84% +42.68% -30.91%
75th Percentile £40.46 £55.00 £47.50
90th Percentile £66.38 £79.36 £57.13
England median hourly rate £33.55 £35.00 £23.00
% change year-on-year -4.14% +52.17% -38.67%

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 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 22 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 +11 49 £625 -3.85% 24
East London -9 4 £450 -23.08% 3
South London -21 2 £744 +35.18% 3
West London -28 1 - - 3
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 (1.07%) Confluence
1 3 (1.07%) SharePoint
2 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
2 1 (0.36%) nginx
Applications
1 4 (1.43%) 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 (38.21%) Azure
2 88 (31.43%) AWS
3 42 (15.00%) GCP
4 28 (10.00%) Entra ID
5 17 (6.07%) AWS CloudFormation
6 16 (5.71%) SaaS
7 13 (4.64%) OpenShift
8 12 (4.29%) Azure Sentinel
9 11 (3.93%) Amazon ECS
9 11 (3.93%) GitHub
10 10 (3.57%) Serverless
11 9 (3.21%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 8 (2.86%) Amazon EKS
12 8 (2.86%) AWS Lambda
12 8 (2.86%) Datadog
13 7 (2.50%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 7 (2.50%) Amazon MSK
13 7 (2.50%) Azure DevOps
13 7 (2.50%) Microsoft 365
14 6 (2.14%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 19 (6.79%) Network Security
2 16 (5.71%) Firewall
3 14 (5.00%) DNS
4 6 (2.14%) Kerberos
5 4 (1.43%) NGFW
6 3 (1.07%) Cisco IPT
6 3 (1.07%) DHCP
6 3 (1.07%) HTTP
6 3 (1.07%) Intrusion Detection
6 3 (1.07%) SD-WAN
6 3 (1.07%) SSL
6 3 (1.07%) TCP/IP
6 3 (1.07%) VPN
6 3 (1.07%) WAN
6 3 (1.07%) Wi-Fi
6 3 (1.07%) X.509
7 2 (0.71%) IPv4
7 2 (0.71%) IPv6
7 2 (0.71%) LAN
7 2 (0.71%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (2.86%) Amazon RDS
2 4 (1.43%) Amazon Aurora
2 4 (1.43%) Big Data
2 4 (1.43%) Data Lake
2 4 (1.43%) DocumentDB
2 4 (1.43%) DynamoDB
2 4 (1.43%) MySQL
2 4 (1.43%) NoSQL
2 4 (1.43%) PostgreSQL
2 4 (1.43%) Redis
3 3 (1.07%) Amazon Athena
3 3 (1.07%) Amazon Redshift
3 3 (1.07%) Star Schema
4 1 (0.36%) Data Hub
4 1 (0.36%) EDRMS
4 1 (0.36%) Metadata
4 1 (0.36%) Oracle Database
4 1 (0.36%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 17 (6.07%) Jenkins
2 11 (3.93%) JIRA
3 5 (1.79%) GitLab
4 4 (1.43%) Git
4 4 (1.43%) Snyk
5 3 (1.07%) JMeter
6 2 (0.71%) Claude Code
7 1 (0.36%) MLflow
7 1 (0.36%) Postman
General
1 96 (34.29%) Social Skills
2 91 (32.50%) Finance
3 50 (17.86%) Analytical Skills
4 25 (8.93%) Documentation Skills
5 23 (8.21%) Banking
6 21 (7.50%) Influencing Skills
7 17 (6.07%) Legal
8 15 (5.36%) Financial Institution
9 11 (3.93%) Public Sector
10 8 (2.86%) Presentation Skills
11 6 (2.14%) Law
12 4 (1.43%) Retail
12 4 (1.43%) Telecoms
13 3 (1.07%) Organisational Skills
14 2 (0.71%) Investment Banking
14 2 (0.71%) Pharmaceutical
15 1 (0.36%) Back Office
15 1 (0.36%) Military
Job Titles
1 66 (23.57%) Architect
2 34 (12.14%) Analyst
3 28 (10.00%) Security Architect
4 26 (9.29%) Consultant
5 24 (8.57%) Security Engineer
6 22 (7.86%) CyberArk Architect
7 20 (7.14%) Project Manager
8 19 (6.79%) Security Consultant
8 19 (6.79%) Senior
9 17 (6.07%) Lead
9 17 (6.07%) Security Manager
10 15 (5.36%) Security Specialist
11 12 (4.29%) Business Analyst
11 12 (4.29%) Cloud Architect
11 12 (4.29%) Security Analyst
12 10 (3.57%) Cybersecurity Consultant
12 10 (3.57%) Migration Manager
12 10 (3.57%) Migration Project Manager
13 8 (2.86%) Cybersecurity Architect
13 8 (2.86%) Security Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (7.14%) SAML
2 19 (6.79%) OpenID
3 16 (5.71%) LDAP
4 11 (3.93%) SailPoint
5 9 (3.21%) Kafka
5 9 (3.21%) OAuth
6 6 (2.14%) REST
6 6 (2.14%) RESTful
7 5 (1.79%) OAuth2
7 5 (1.79%) OpenTelemetry
8 4 (1.43%) .NET
8 4 (1.43%) gRPC
8 4 (1.43%) Hibernate
8 4 (1.43%) JPA
8 4 (1.43%) JSON
8 4 (1.43%) Spring
8 4 (1.43%) Spring Boot
8 4 (1.43%) Spring Cloud
9 3 (1.07%) SPIFFE
10 2 (0.71%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 38 (13.57%) Onboarding
2 32 (11.43%) Cloud Native
3 23 (8.21%) Security Posture
4 17 (6.07%) Management Information System
5 15 (5.36%) Hybrid Cloud
6 12 (4.29%) Operational Technology
7 9 (3.21%) CMDB
8 6 (2.14%) Distributed Systems
9 5 (1.79%) AI Agents
9 5 (1.79%) Data Centre
10 4 (1.43%) BYOD
10 4 (1.43%) Data Protection Act
10 4 (1.43%) Legacy Applications
10 4 (1.43%) PKI
10 4 (1.43%) SCADA
10 4 (1.43%) Self-Motivation
11 3 (1.07%) Cloud Security Posture
11 3 (1.07%) Cyber Defence
11 3 (1.07%) Legacy Systems
11 3 (1.07%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 15 (5.36%) Windows
2 12 (4.29%) Linux
3 4 (1.43%) Windows Server
4 3 (1.07%) Unix
5 2 (0.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.36%) Android
6 1 (0.36%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.36%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 142 (50.71%) Cybersecurity
2 70 (25.00%) Stakeholder Management
3 59 (21.07%) CI/CD
3 59 (21.07%) Information Security
3 59 (21.07%) Risk Management
4 58 (20.71%) Security Architecture
5 54 (19.29%) Cloud Security
6 50 (17.86%) DevOps
6 50 (17.86%) SIEM
7 48 (17.14%) Incident Response
8 46 (16.43%) AI
8 46 (16.43%) Continuous Improvement
9 45 (16.07%) Threat Modelling
10 43 (15.36%) Data Protection
10 43 (15.36%) Infrastructure as Code
11 41 (14.64%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 39 (13.93%) Vulnerability Management
13 37 (13.21%) Agile
13 37 (13.21%) Roadmaps
14 33 (11.79%) Risk Assessment
Programming Languages
1 29 (10.36%) Python
2 23 (8.21%) PowerShell
3 14 (5.00%) Java
4 13 (4.64%) SQL
5 10 (3.57%) Bash
6 4 (1.43%) Kusto Query Language
7 2 (0.71%) Go
8 1 (0.36%) Bicep
8 1 (0.36%) JavaScript
8 1 (0.36%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 80 (28.57%) CISSP
2 64 (22.86%) Security Cleared
3 52 (18.57%) SC Cleared
4 43 (15.36%) CISM
5 38 (13.57%) Degree
6 23 (8.21%) CompTIA Security+
7 22 (7.86%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 22 (7.86%) Cisco Certification
8 21 (7.50%) CRISC
9 19 (6.79%) CEH
10 17 (6.07%) CISA
11 16 (5.71%) GIAC
11 16 (5.71%) PMI Certification
11 16 (5.71%) PMP
12 12 (4.29%) AWS Certification
12 12 (4.29%) CCSP
13 11 (3.93%) Computer Science Degree
14 10 (3.57%) Azure Certification
15 9 (3.21%) Master's Degree
16 7 (2.50%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 175 (62.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 60 (21.43%) GDPR
3 39 (13.93%) COBIT
3 39 (13.93%) GRC
3 39 (13.93%) NCSC
4 34 (12.14%) PCI DSS
5 27 (9.64%) NIST 800
6 14 (5.00%) ITGC
7 13 (4.64%) SOC 2
8 12 (4.29%) Cyber Essentials
8 12 (4.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 9 (3.21%) QA
10 6 (2.14%) ISO/IEC 27005
10 6 (2.14%) SLA
11 5 (1.79%) EU AI Act
11 5 (1.79%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 4 (1.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 4 (1.43%) ISO 22301
12 4 (1.43%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 3 (1.07%) PMO
System Software
1 24 (8.57%) Active Directory
2 13 (4.64%) Docker
3 2 (0.71%) 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 (11.79%) Kubernetes
2 24 (8.57%) Terraform
3 9 (3.21%) Single Sign-On
4 6 (2.14%) Ansible
5 5 (1.79%) Microsoft Intune
6 3 (1.07%) CASB
6 3 (1.07%) Nessus
7 2 (0.71%) Grafana
7 2 (0.71%) Nexpose
7 2 (0.71%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.71%) Puppet
8 1 (0.36%) Network Intrusion Detection System
8 1 (0.36%) SELinux
8 1 (0.36%) VxRail
Vendors
1 44 (15.71%) Microsoft
2 41 (14.64%) CyberArk
3 33 (11.79%) Splunk
4 18 (6.43%) ServiceNow
5 11 (3.93%) Google
5 11 (3.93%) Tenable
6 8 (2.86%) Qualys
7 6 (2.14%) CrowdStrike
7 6 (2.14%) Palo Alto
7 6 (2.14%) Rapid7
7 6 (2.14%) Zscaler
8 5 (1.79%) Cisco
9 4 (1.43%) Fortinet
9 4 (1.43%) VMware
10 3 (1.07%) Commvault
10 3 (1.07%) Forcepoint
10 3 (1.07%) ForgeRock
10 3 (1.07%) Workday
11 2 (0.71%) IBM
11 2 (0.71%) Red Hat