PKI Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Public-Key Infrastructure (PKI)
UK > UK excluding London

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term PKI in contract job vacancies in the UK excluding London. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited PKI over the 6 months leading up to 16 May 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 274 233 112
Rank change year-on-year -41 -121 +116
Contract jobs citing PKI 175 110 391
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.72% 0.86% 1.93%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.43% 2.59% 6.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 112 92 271
10th Percentile £410 £413 £363
25th Percentile £463 £498 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year - - -2.65%
75th Percentile £643 £606 £608
90th Percentile £725 £638 £675
UK median daily rate £550 £565 £550
% change year-on-year -2.65% +2.73% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 0 1
10th Percentile £61.41 - -
25th Percentile £70.50 - £36.75
Median hourly rate £79.50 - £38.50
75th Percentile £96.25 - £40.25
90th Percentile £101.65 - -
UK median hourly rate £79.50 - £23.80
% change year-on-year - - -63.38%

All Generic Skills
UK excluding London

PKI falls under the General and Transferable Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring generic IT skills in the UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 7,189 4,248 5,900
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 29.41% 33.14% 29.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,440 2,609 3,542
10th Percentile £263 £205 £210
25th Percentile £393 £363 £378
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.26% -4.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £656 £688
UK median daily rate £509 £525 £543
% change year-on-year -3.05% -3.23% -1.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 572 300 717
10th Percentile £15.79 £16.95 £12.15
25th Percentile £19.34 £19.25 £14.06
Median hourly rate £47.54 £30.39 £28.50
Median % change year-on-year +56.43% +6.63% +29.55%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.40 £83.47 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £31.76 £31.25
% change year-on-year +33.82% +1.63% +38.98%

PKI
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing PKI relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

PKI job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

PKI
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing PKI.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing PKI

PKI
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing PKI in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 16 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for PKI in the UK excluding London

PKI
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing PKI.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing PKI

PKI
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing PKI in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 16 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for PKI in the UK excluding London

PKI
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing PKI within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 16 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
South East -4 102 £600 +4.35% 25
North of England -44 30 £475 -3.51% 3
North West -23 18 £418 -15.04% 2
South West -61 16 £545 -5.22% 3
West Midlands -67 14 £450 +5.88% 3
Midlands -72 14 £450 +5.88% 6
Scotland +6 13 £451 -15.79% 4
Yorkshire -45 12 £482 -33.52%
East of England -31 4 £400 -23.81% 5
PKI
UK

PKI
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding 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 (3.43%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (2.86%) IIS
2 5 (2.86%) SharePoint
3 3 (1.71%) Confluence
4 2 (1.14%) Apache
4 2 (1.14%) Tomcat
4 2 (1.14%) WebSphere
5 1 (0.57%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.57%) Exchange Server 2010
Applications
1 3 (1.71%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 9 (5.14%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.57%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 39 (22.29%) Azure
2 30 (17.14%) AWS
3 19 (10.86%) Entra ID
4 14 (8.00%) Power Platform
5 10 (5.71%) GCP
6 9 (5.14%) Microsoft 365
6 9 (5.14%) OpenShift
7 6 (3.43%) Azure Key Vault
8 4 (2.29%) AWS CloudFormation
8 4 (2.29%) AWS KMS
8 4 (2.29%) SaaS
9 3 (1.71%) Power Automate
10 2 (1.14%) Azure DevOps
10 2 (1.14%) OneDrive
11 1 (0.57%) Anthos
11 1 (0.57%) GitHub
11 1 (0.57%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 1 (0.57%) Google Workspace
11 1 (0.57%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 48 (27.43%) DNS
2 39 (22.29%) Firewall
3 34 (19.43%) DHCP
4 33 (18.86%) BGP
5 29 (16.57%) WAN
6 25 (14.29%) LAN
6 25 (14.29%) OSPF
7 24 (13.71%) Junos
8 23 (13.14%) BIG-IP
8 23 (13.14%) Cisco ISE
8 23 (13.14%) Ethernet VPN
8 23 (13.14%) VXLAN
9 19 (10.86%) VPN
10 13 (7.43%) SSL
11 12 (6.86%) Network Security
12 8 (4.57%) MPLS
12 8 (4.57%) TCP/IP
13 7 (4.00%) Cisco ASA
13 7 (4.00%) Cisco IOS
14 6 (3.43%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (5.71%) SQL Server
2 9 (5.14%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 8 (4.57%) JIRA
2 7 (4.00%) Robot Framework
3 6 (3.43%) Sonatype Nexus
4 2 (1.14%) Git
4 2 (1.14%) Jenkins
4 2 (1.14%) MSI
5 1 (0.57%) Burp Suite
5 1 (0.57%) Cucumber
5 1 (0.57%) Gatling
5 1 (0.57%) GitLab
5 1 (0.57%) Gradle
5 1 (0.57%) LoadRunner
5 1 (0.57%) REST Assured
5 1 (0.57%) SonarQube
General
1 24 (13.71%) Social Skills
2 19 (10.86%) Public Sector
3 14 (8.00%) Finance
4 8 (4.57%) Analytical Skills
5 4 (2.29%) Banking
5 4 (2.29%) Military
6 3 (1.71%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (1.14%) Financial Institution
7 2 (1.14%) Legal
7 2 (1.14%) Retail
8 1 (0.57%) Aerospace
8 1 (0.57%) Back Office
8 1 (0.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.57%) Law
Job Titles
1 37 (21.14%) Senior
2 36 (20.57%) Architect
3 30 (17.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 16 (9.14%) Network Engineer
5 14 (8.00%) Firewall Specialist
5 14 (8.00%) Network Specialist
6 12 (6.86%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
7 11 (6.29%) Security Engineer
8 10 (5.71%) Senior Network Engineer
8 10 (5.71%) Support Engineer
9 9 (5.14%) Senior Architect
10 8 (4.57%) 3rd Line Engineer
11 6 (3.43%) ITSM Architect
12 5 (2.86%) Identity Management Engineer
13 4 (2.29%) Citrix Infrastructure Engineer
13 4 (2.29%) Infrastructure Support
13 4 (2.29%) Lead
13 4 (2.29%) Linux Infrastructure Engineer
13 4 (2.29%) VMware Engineer
13 4 (2.29%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (16.57%) 802.1X
2 10 (5.71%) REST
3 9 (5.14%) OpenID
4 8 (4.57%) LDAP
4 8 (4.57%) OAuth
4 8 (4.57%) SAML
5 4 (2.29%) OAuth2
6 3 (1.71%) JSON
6 3 (1.71%) RabbitMQ
6 3 (1.71%) SailPoint
7 1 (0.57%) Microsoft Graph
7 1 (0.57%) Node.js
7 1 (0.57%) OpenTelemetry
7 1 (0.57%) Playwright
7 1 (0.57%) Quarkus
7 1 (0.57%) React
7 1 (0.57%) Spring
7 1 (0.57%) Spring Boot
7 1 (0.57%) Web Services
7 1 (0.57%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 31 (17.71%) Clustering
2 23 (13.14%) Data Centre
3 10 (5.71%) Public Cloud
4 7 (4.00%) Algorithms
4 7 (4.00%) Hybrid Cloud
4 7 (4.00%) Onboarding
5 5 (2.86%) Operational Technology
5 5 (2.86%) Smartcard
6 4 (2.29%) Linux Command Line
7 3 (1.71%) Data Protection Act
7 3 (1.71%) Fat Client
7 3 (1.71%) Legacy Systems
7 3 (1.71%) Management Information System
7 3 (1.71%) Thin Client
8 2 (1.14%) Enterprise Software
8 2 (1.14%) Enterprise Storage
8 2 (1.14%) Private Cloud
8 2 (1.14%) SCADA
8 2 (1.14%) SWIFT Messaging Network
8 2 (1.14%) Tandem
Operating Systems
1 80 (45.71%) Windows
2 37 (21.14%) Linux
2 37 (21.14%) Windows Server
3 6 (3.43%) Ubuntu
4 5 (2.86%) Debian
4 5 (2.86%) Windows Server 2019
5 4 (2.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (1.71%) Windows 7
6 3 (1.71%) Windows Server 2012
6 3 (1.71%) Windows Server 2016
7 2 (1.14%) CentOS
7 2 (1.14%) Unix
8 1 (0.57%) Data ONTAP
8 1 (0.57%) Solaris
8 1 (0.57%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 57 (32.57%) Identity Access Management
2 43 (24.57%) Agile
3 35 (20.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 34 (19.43%) Problem-Solving
5 33 (18.86%) High Availability
6 32 (18.29%) ITIL
7 26 (14.86%) Observability
8 25 (14.29%) ITSM
8 25 (14.29%) Load Balancing
9 24 (13.71%) Service Management
10 23 (13.14%) Key Management
11 22 (12.57%) Cybersecurity
12 20 (11.43%) CI/CD
13 18 (10.29%) DevOps
14 17 (9.71%) Zero Trust
15 16 (9.14%) Change Management
15 16 (9.14%) Identity Management
16 15 (8.57%) Cloud Security
16 15 (8.57%) Continuous Improvement
16 15 (8.57%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 40 (22.86%) PowerShell
2 35 (20.00%) Python
3 12 (6.86%) Bash
3 12 (6.86%) SQL
4 9 (5.14%) JavaScript
5 4 (2.29%) C#
5 4 (2.29%) PHP
6 3 (1.71%) Java
7 1 (0.57%) Go
7 1 (0.57%) Perl
7 1 (0.57%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 113 (64.57%) Security Cleared
2 75 (42.86%) DV Cleared
3 36 (20.57%) SC Cleared
4 25 (14.29%) Cisco Certification
5 17 (9.71%) CISSP
6 16 (9.14%) CISM
7 11 (6.29%) GIAC
8 10 (5.71%) Degree
9 7 (4.00%) CompTIA Security+
9 7 (4.00%) JNCIA
9 7 (4.00%) JNCIP
9 7 (4.00%) JNCIS
10 4 (2.29%) APMG
10 4 (2.29%) AWS Certification
10 4 (2.29%) Azure Certification
10 4 (2.29%) CCNA
10 4 (2.29%) CCNP
10 4 (2.29%) SSCP
11 3 (1.71%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (1.71%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (13.71%) NIST
2 20 (11.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 10 (5.71%) Cyber Essentials
4 8 (4.57%) NCSC
5 7 (4.00%) PCI DSS
6 6 (3.43%) SLA
7 4 (2.29%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 4 (2.29%) GDPR
8 2 (1.14%) ISA99
8 2 (1.14%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 1 (0.57%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 1 (0.57%) SOC 2
System Software
1 50 (28.57%) Active Directory
2 34 (19.43%) VMware Infrastructure
3 12 (6.86%) VMware NSX
4 8 (4.57%) Hyper-V
5 7 (4.00%) Docker
5 7 (4.00%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (2.29%) Firmware
7 2 (1.14%) KVM
7 2 (1.14%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (1.14%) vSphere
7 2 (1.14%) XenApp
7 2 (1.14%) XenDesktop
8 1 (0.57%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 29 (16.57%) Ansible
2 28 (16.00%) Terraform
3 23 (13.14%) FortiGate
4 20 (11.43%) Kubernetes
5 14 (8.00%) Single Sign-On
6 13 (7.43%) vCenter Server
7 9 (5.14%) SCOM
8 6 (3.43%) Microsoft Intune
9 5 (2.86%) SCCM
9 5 (2.86%) WMI
10 4 (2.29%) Avamar
10 4 (2.29%) Prometheus
11 3 (1.71%) Grafana
12 2 (1.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 2 (1.14%) Failover Clustering
12 2 (1.14%) Istio
12 2 (1.14%) WSUS
13 1 (0.57%) Argo
13 1 (0.57%) Puppet
13 1 (0.57%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 54 (30.86%) VMware
2 49 (28.00%) Microsoft
3 43 (24.57%) Cisco
4 28 (16.00%) Juniper
5 26 (14.86%) SolarWinds
6 25 (14.29%) F5
7 23 (13.14%) Splunk
8 22 (12.57%) Extreme Networks
9 15 (8.57%) ServiceNow
10 13 (7.43%) Thales
11 9 (5.14%) BMC
11 9 (5.14%) Citrix
11 9 (5.14%) Remedy
12 8 (4.57%) Okta
13 6 (3.43%) Palo Alto
14 5 (2.86%) BeyondTrust
14 5 (2.86%) ForeScout
14 5 (2.86%) IBM
15 4 (2.29%) Dell
16 3 (1.71%) Aruba