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

6 months to
24 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 161 194 203
Rank change year-on-year +33 +9 +77
Contract jobs citing NIST 273 158 200
As % of all contract jobs in London 1.64% 1.25% 1.10%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 8.76% 8.21% 8.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 188 101 146
10th Percentile £425 £456 £400
25th Percentile £506 £519 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £620 £641 £650
Median % change year-on-year -3.28% -1.38% -
75th Percentile £713 £688 £780
90th Percentile £888 £838 £843
England median daily rate £575 £625 £625
% change year-on-year -8.00% - -3.85%
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 £66.25
% change year-on-year -2.04% +25.58% +1.15%

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 3,118 1,924 2,430
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 18.77% 15.18% 13.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,070 1,275 1,728
10th Percentile £350 £313 £363
25th Percentile £425 £405 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £638 £663 £688
90th Percentile £750 £775 £788
England median daily rate £510 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 40 27 57
10th Percentile £18.07 £19.25 £12.50
25th Percentile £19.11 £23.23 £17.50
Median hourly rate £26.11 £39.04 £26.24
Median % change year-on-year -33.12% +48.78% -40.17%
75th Percentile £57.13 £78.40 £43.75
90th Percentile £76.68 £93.75 £59.20
England median hourly rate £27.25 £32.25 £23.50
% change year-on-year -15.50% +37.23% -44.71%

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 24 March 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 24 March 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 37 £650 +2.36% 24
South London -12 7 £525 +16.67%
East London -4 4 £450 -26.83% 6
West London -16 3 £423 - 7
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 (1.83%) SharePoint
2 3 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.73%) Confluence
4 1 (0.37%) nginx
Applications
1 3 (1.10%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (0.37%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 84 (30.77%) Azure
2 73 (26.74%) AWS
3 31 (11.36%) GCP
4 17 (6.23%) AWS CloudFormation
4 17 (6.23%) Entra ID
5 14 (5.13%) OpenShift
6 12 (4.40%) Amazon ECS
6 12 (4.40%) Azure Sentinel
7 10 (3.66%) GitHub
8 9 (3.30%) Amazon EKS
8 9 (3.30%) Serverless
8 9 (3.30%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 8 (2.93%) AWS Lambda
9 8 (2.93%) Microsoft Purview
9 8 (2.93%) SaaS
10 7 (2.56%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 7 (2.56%) Amazon MSK
11 6 (2.20%) Amazon S3
11 6 (2.20%) IaaS
11 6 (2.20%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 22 (8.06%) Network Security
2 19 (6.96%) Firewall
3 11 (4.03%) DNS
4 4 (1.47%) VPN
5 3 (1.10%) Cisco IPT
5 3 (1.10%) Intrusion Detection
5 3 (1.10%) LAN
5 3 (1.10%) NGFW
5 3 (1.10%) TCP/IP
5 3 (1.10%) WAN
6 2 (0.73%) BGP
6 2 (0.73%) DMZ
6 2 (0.73%) Ethernet VPN
6 2 (0.73%) HTTP
6 2 (0.73%) IPv4
6 2 (0.73%) IPv6
6 2 (0.73%) Kerberos
6 2 (0.73%) SD-WAN
6 2 (0.73%) SSL
6 2 (0.73%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (4.40%) Data Lake
2 8 (2.93%) Amazon RDS
3 5 (1.83%) Redis
4 4 (1.47%) Amazon Aurora
4 4 (1.47%) DocumentDB
4 4 (1.47%) DynamoDB
4 4 (1.47%) MySQL
4 4 (1.47%) NoSQL
4 4 (1.47%) PostgreSQL
5 3 (1.10%) Amazon Athena
5 3 (1.10%) Amazon Redshift
5 3 (1.10%) Big Data
5 3 (1.10%) Star Schema
6 2 (0.73%) Oracle Database
6 2 (0.73%) Power BI
7 1 (0.37%) Data Hub
7 1 (0.37%) EDRMS
7 1 (0.37%) Metadata
7 1 (0.37%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 17 (6.23%) Jenkins
2 13 (4.76%) JIRA
3 6 (2.20%) GitLab
4 5 (1.83%) Git
5 4 (1.47%) Snyk
6 3 (1.10%) JMeter
7 2 (0.73%) Metasploit
8 1 (0.37%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.37%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.37%) MLflow
General
1 110 (40.29%) Social Skills
2 82 (30.04%) Finance
3 43 (15.75%) Analytical Skills
4 27 (9.89%) Documentation Skills
5 26 (9.52%) Public Sector
6 21 (7.69%) Influencing Skills
7 19 (6.96%) Banking
8 17 (6.23%) Legal
9 15 (5.49%) Financial Institution
10 14 (5.13%) Presentation Skills
11 8 (2.93%) Law
12 6 (2.20%) Organisational Skills
12 6 (2.20%) Telecoms
13 2 (0.73%) Investment Banking
13 2 (0.73%) Military
13 2 (0.73%) Retail
14 1 (0.37%) Electronics
14 1 (0.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 1 (0.37%) Manufacturing
14 1 (0.37%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 48 (17.58%) Architect
2 35 (12.82%) Security Engineer
3 34 (12.45%) Analyst
4 32 (11.72%) Consultant
5 23 (8.42%) Senior
6 21 (7.69%) Security Architect
7 19 (6.96%) Security Consultant
8 17 (6.23%) Project Manager
9 16 (5.86%) Security Manager
9 16 (5.86%) Security Specialist
10 14 (5.13%) CyberArk Architect
11 13 (4.76%) Lead
12 12 (4.40%) Security Analyst
13 10 (3.66%) Migration Manager
13 10 (3.66%) Migration Project Manager
14 9 (3.30%) Cybersecurity Consultant
15 8 (2.93%) Business Analyst
15 8 (2.93%) Cloud Architect
15 8 (2.93%) Cybersecurity Manager
16 7 (2.56%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (6.59%) OpenID
2 16 (5.86%) SAML
3 13 (4.76%) LDAP
4 9 (3.30%) REST
5 8 (2.93%) Kafka
6 5 (1.83%) .NET
6 5 (1.83%) OAuth
6 5 (1.83%) OpenTelemetry
6 5 (1.83%) RESTful
6 5 (1.83%) SailPoint
6 5 (1.83%) Spring
7 4 (1.47%) gRPC
7 4 (1.47%) Hibernate
7 4 (1.47%) JPA
7 4 (1.47%) OAuth2
7 4 (1.47%) Spring Boot
7 4 (1.47%) Spring Cloud
8 3 (1.10%) Elastic Stack
9 2 (0.73%) SOAP
9 2 (0.73%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 31 (11.36%) Onboarding
2 26 (9.52%) Security Posture
3 25 (9.16%) Cloud Native
4 18 (6.59%) Management Information System
5 14 (5.13%) Hybrid Cloud
6 13 (4.76%) Operational Technology
7 9 (3.30%) CMDB
8 7 (2.56%) Cyber Kill Chain
8 7 (2.56%) Data Centre
8 7 (2.56%) Security Operations Centre
9 6 (2.20%) Distributed Systems
10 5 (1.83%) BYOD
10 5 (1.83%) Cyber Threat
11 4 (1.47%) Legacy Applications
11 4 (1.47%) Product Ownership
11 4 (1.47%) Self-Motivation
12 3 (1.10%) AI Agents
12 3 (1.10%) Analytical Mindset
12 3 (1.10%) Cyber Defence
12 3 (1.10%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 14 (5.13%) Linux
1 14 (5.13%) Windows
2 7 (2.56%) Windows Server
3 4 (1.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (1.10%) Unix
5 1 (0.37%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 131 (47.99%) Cybersecurity
2 69 (25.27%) Information Security
3 64 (23.44%) Cloud Security
4 61 (22.34%) Risk Management
4 61 (22.34%) Stakeholder Management
5 58 (21.25%) SIEM
6 55 (20.15%) CI/CD
7 45 (16.48%) Infrastructure as Code
8 44 (16.12%) Continuous Improvement
8 44 (16.12%) Incident Response
8 44 (16.12%) Security Architecture
9 43 (15.75%) Data Protection
10 42 (15.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 42 (15.38%) Threat Modelling
11 39 (14.29%) Agile
12 38 (13.92%) DevOps
12 38 (13.92%) Vulnerability Management
13 36 (13.19%) AI
14 29 (10.62%) Identity Access Management
14 29 (10.62%) Risk Assessment
Programming Languages
1 27 (9.89%) Python
2 18 (6.59%) PowerShell
3 16 (5.86%) Java
4 12 (4.40%) SQL
5 7 (2.56%) Kusto Query Language
6 6 (2.20%) Bash
7 2 (0.73%) C++
8 1 (0.37%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 73 (26.74%) Security Cleared
2 69 (25.27%) CISSP
3 62 (22.71%) SC Cleared
4 46 (16.85%) CISM
5 37 (13.55%) Degree
6 20 (7.33%) CEH
7 19 (6.96%) Cisco Certification
8 18 (6.59%) CompTIA Security+
9 17 (6.23%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 17 (6.23%) CRISC
10 16 (5.86%) PMI Certification
10 16 (5.86%) PMP
11 14 (5.13%) CISA
12 12 (4.40%) GIAC
13 11 (4.03%) Computer Science Degree
13 11 (4.03%) Master's Degree
14 10 (3.66%) AWS Certification
14 10 (3.66%) CCSP
14 10 (3.66%) DV Cleared
14 10 (3.66%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 176 (64.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 73 (26.74%) GDPR
3 38 (13.92%) GRC
4 35 (12.82%) NCSC
4 35 (12.82%) PCI DSS
5 30 (10.99%) COBIT
6 20 (7.33%) NIST 800
7 17 (6.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 16 (5.86%) ITGC
9 14 (5.13%) Cyber Essentials
10 11 (4.03%) SOC 2
11 9 (3.30%) HIPAA
12 8 (2.93%) QA
13 7 (2.56%) SOX 404
14 6 (2.20%) ISO/IEC 27005
15 5 (1.83%) ISO 22301
15 5 (1.83%) SLA
16 4 (1.47%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 4 (1.47%) HMG Security Policy Framework
17 3 (1.10%) PMO
System Software
1 16 (5.86%) Active Directory
2 13 (4.76%) Docker
3 4 (1.47%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.73%) VMware NSX
5 1 (0.37%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.37%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 30 (10.99%) Kubernetes
2 21 (7.69%) Terraform
3 6 (2.20%) Ansible
3 6 (2.20%) Nessus
4 5 (1.83%) CASB
5 3 (1.10%) Grafana
5 3 (1.10%) Microsoft Intune
5 3 (1.10%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (0.73%) VxRail
7 1 (0.37%) Fluentd
7 1 (0.37%) FortiGate
7 1 (0.37%) Jamf Pro
7 1 (0.37%) Network Intrusion Detection System
7 1 (0.37%) Nmap
7 1 (0.37%) RSA Archer
7 1 (0.37%) SCCM
7 1 (0.37%) SELinux
7 1 (0.37%) WSUS
Vendors
1 36 (13.19%) CyberArk
2 35 (12.82%) Microsoft
3 30 (10.99%) Splunk
4 16 (5.86%) ServiceNow
5 14 (5.13%) Tenable
6 11 (4.03%) Google
7 9 (3.30%) Cisco
7 9 (3.30%) Oracle
8 8 (2.93%) Palo Alto
8 8 (2.93%) Qualys
8 8 (2.93%) SAP
9 7 (2.56%) Rapid7
9 7 (2.56%) VMware
10 6 (2.20%) Fortinet
11 5 (1.83%) CrowdStrike
12 4 (1.47%) Trend Micro
12 4 (1.47%) Zscaler
13 3 (1.10%) CheckPoint
13 3 (1.10%) Commvault
13 3 (1.10%) Red Hat