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 12 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 273 237 114
Rank change year-on-year -36 -123 +118
Contract jobs citing PKI 200 130 388
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.74% 0.88% 1.87%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.43% 2.61% 6.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 137 108 267
10th Percentile £412 £350 £363
25th Percentile £463 £463 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year - - -1.35%
75th Percentile £610 £600 £608
90th Percentile £650 £638 £673
UK median daily rate £550 £550 £550
% change year-on-year - - -5.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 0 1
10th Percentile £53.08 - -
25th Percentile £70.67 - £36.75
Median hourly rate £72.54 - £38.50
75th Percentile £100.00 - £40.25
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate £72.54 - £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 8,233 4,983 6,047
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 30.39% 33.56% 29.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,031 2,993 3,544
10th Percentile £281 £220 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £592 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.37% -2.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 683 391 719
10th Percentile £15.35 £15.13 £12.15
25th Percentile £19.34 £18.51 £14.54
Median hourly rate £43.96 £31.76 £36.05
Median % change year-on-year +38.41% -11.89% +2.99%
75th Percentile £70.00 £62.25 £63.75
90th Percentile £85.90 £80.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £43.96 £31.00 £36.50
% change year-on-year +41.81% -15.07% +32.25%

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 12 July 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 12 July 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 12 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
South East -7 103 £575 - 20
North of England -54 35 £446 -9.30% 10
North West -33 23 £418 -15.14% 7
Scotland +1 22 £490 -8.41% 11
South West -64 20 £539 -6.30% 15
Midlands -54 12 £450 +12.50% 5
Yorkshire - 12 £500 - 3
West Midlands -69 11 £450 +12.50% 3
Wales - 6 £463 - 2
East of England -23 4 £400 -23.81% 2
East Midlands -15 1 £475 - 2
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 10 (5.00%) SharePoint
2 7 (3.50%) Confluence
2 7 (3.50%) Microsoft Exchange
3 5 (2.50%) IIS
4 3 (1.50%) Apache
4 3 (1.50%) Exchange Server 2010
4 3 (1.50%) Tomcat
4 3 (1.50%) WebSphere
5 1 (0.50%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 5 (2.50%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 11 (5.50%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.50%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.50%) Dynamics GP
Cloud Services
1 52 (26.00%) Azure
2 35 (17.50%) Entra ID
3 27 (13.50%) AWS
4 16 (8.00%) Power Platform
5 12 (6.00%) Microsoft 365
6 11 (5.50%) GCP
7 5 (2.50%) Azure Key Vault
8 4 (2.00%) Azure DevOps
9 3 (1.50%) AWS KMS
9 3 (1.50%) GitHub
9 3 (1.50%) OpenShift
10 2 (1.00%) Azure Monitor
10 2 (1.00%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 2 (1.00%) OneDrive
11 1 (0.50%) Anthos
11 1 (0.50%) Apigee
11 1 (0.50%) Azure Sentinel
11 1 (0.50%) GitHub Actions
11 1 (0.50%) Google Workspace
11 1 (0.50%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 63 (31.50%) DNS
2 49 (24.50%) Firewall
3 44 (22.00%) DHCP
4 37 (18.50%) BGP
5 35 (17.50%) WAN
6 32 (16.00%) LAN
7 29 (14.50%) OSPF
8 23 (11.50%) BIG-IP
8 23 (11.50%) Ethernet VPN
8 23 (11.50%) Junos
8 23 (11.50%) VPN
8 23 (11.50%) VXLAN
9 22 (11.00%) Cisco ISE
10 15 (7.50%) Network Security
11 14 (7.00%) SSL
12 13 (6.50%) Cisco ASA
13 12 (6.00%) IPsec
14 10 (5.00%) MPLS
14 10 (5.00%) TCP/IP
15 9 (4.50%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (7.50%) SQL Server
2 11 (5.50%) Power BI
3 1 (0.50%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 10 (5.00%) JIRA
2 4 (2.00%) Jenkins
3 3 (1.50%) Git
3 3 (1.50%) Robot Framework
3 3 (1.50%) Sonatype Nexus
4 2 (1.00%) Burp Suite
4 2 (1.00%) Cucumber
4 2 (1.00%) Gatling
4 2 (1.00%) GitLab
4 2 (1.00%) Gradle
4 2 (1.00%) LoadRunner
4 2 (1.00%) MSI
4 2 (1.00%) REST Assured
4 2 (1.00%) SonarQube
General
1 30 (15.00%) Social Skills
2 22 (11.00%) Public Sector
3 16 (8.00%) Finance
4 12 (6.00%) Analytical Skills
5 6 (3.00%) Documentation Skills
6 5 (2.50%) Banking
6 5 (2.50%) Military
7 3 (1.50%) Police
7 3 (1.50%) Retail
8 2 (1.00%) Corporate Banking
8 2 (1.00%) Investment Banking
8 2 (1.00%) Legal
8 2 (1.00%) Retail Banking
9 1 (0.50%) Back Office
9 1 (0.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.50%) Law
Job Titles
1 52 (26.00%) Senior
2 40 (20.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 23 (11.50%) Architect
3 23 (11.50%) Network Engineer
4 17 (8.50%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
5 15 (7.50%) Senior Network Engineer
6 14 (7.00%) Firewall Specialist
6 14 (7.00%) Network Specialist
7 11 (5.50%) 3rd Line Engineer
7 11 (5.50%) Storage Engineer
7 11 (5.50%) Support Engineer
8 9 (4.50%) Senior Architect
9 8 (4.00%) Security Engineer
10 7 (3.50%) Lead
11 6 (3.00%) ITSM Architect
11 6 (3.00%) VMware Engineer
12 5 (2.50%) Citrix Infrastructure Engineer
12 5 (2.50%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
12 5 (2.50%) Linux Infrastructure Engineer
12 5 (2.50%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (15.50%) 802.1X
2 14 (7.00%) OpenID
3 13 (6.50%) LDAP
4 12 (6.00%) OAuth
4 12 (6.00%) REST
4 12 (6.00%) SAML
5 5 (2.50%) RabbitMQ
6 4 (2.00%) JSON
6 4 (2.00%) OAuth2
7 3 (1.50%) SailPoint
8 2 (1.00%) FIDO
8 2 (1.00%) Microsoft Graph
8 2 (1.00%) Node.js
8 2 (1.00%) Playwright
8 2 (1.00%) Quarkus
8 2 (1.00%) React
8 2 (1.00%) Spring
8 2 (1.00%) Spring Boot
9 1 (0.50%) OpenTelemetry
9 1 (0.50%) WebAuthn
Miscellaneous
1 37 (18.50%) Clustering
2 29 (14.50%) Data Centre
3 8 (4.00%) Hybrid Cloud
4 7 (3.50%) Linux Command Line
4 7 (3.50%) Public Cloud
5 6 (3.00%) Legacy Systems
6 5 (2.50%) Management Information System
6 5 (2.50%) Onboarding
6 5 (2.50%) Operational Technology
7 4 (2.00%) Distributed Systems
7 4 (2.00%) Enterprise Software
7 4 (2.00%) Fat Client
7 4 (2.00%) Security Posture
7 4 (2.00%) Self-Motivation
7 4 (2.00%) Thin Client
8 3 (1.50%) Data Protection Act
8 3 (1.50%) Enterprise Cloud
8 3 (1.50%) Private Cloud
8 3 (1.50%) Smartcard
8 3 (1.50%) Tandem
Operating Systems
1 108 (54.00%) Windows
2 57 (28.50%) Windows Server
3 49 (24.50%) Linux
4 6 (3.00%) Debian
4 6 (3.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 6 (3.00%) Ubuntu
4 6 (3.00%) Windows Server 2016
5 5 (2.50%) Unix
5 5 (2.50%) Windows Server 2019
6 4 (2.00%) Windows Server 2012
7 2 (1.00%) Android
7 2 (1.00%) Apple iOS
7 2 (1.00%) CentOS
7 2 (1.00%) Mac OS
7 2 (1.00%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.50%) Data ONTAP
8 1 (0.50%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 73 (36.50%) Identity Access Management
2 45 (22.50%) ITIL
3 43 (21.50%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 37 (18.50%) Problem-Solving
5 35 (17.50%) Agile
6 34 (17.00%) High Availability
7 30 (15.00%) ITSM
8 29 (14.50%) Cybersecurity
9 27 (13.50%) Service Management
9 27 (13.50%) Zero Trust
10 26 (13.00%) Observability
11 25 (12.50%) Load Balancing
12 20 (10.00%) RBAC
13 19 (9.50%) Project Delivery
14 18 (9.00%) Key Management
15 17 (8.50%) Change Management
15 17 (8.50%) CI/CD
15 17 (8.50%) Continuous Improvement
15 17 (8.50%) Identity Management
16 16 (8.00%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 49 (24.50%) PowerShell
2 36 (18.00%) Python
3 12 (6.00%) SQL
4 11 (5.50%) JavaScript
5 9 (4.50%) Bash
6 6 (3.00%) Java
7 4 (2.00%) C#
7 4 (2.00%) PHP
8 1 (0.50%) Go
8 1 (0.50%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 120 (60.00%) Security Cleared
2 76 (38.00%) DV Cleared
3 49 (24.50%) SC Cleared
4 30 (15.00%) Cisco Certification
5 15 (7.50%) Degree
6 14 (7.00%) Microsoft Certification
7 11 (5.50%) MCSE
8 9 (4.50%) CCNP
9 8 (4.00%) CISSP
9 8 (4.00%) GIAC
10 7 (3.50%) CompTIA Security+
10 7 (3.50%) JNCIA
10 7 (3.50%) JNCIP
10 7 (3.50%) JNCIS
11 6 (3.00%) Azure Certification
12 5 (2.50%) SSCP
13 4 (2.00%) CISM
13 4 (2.00%) Computer Science Degree
13 4 (2.00%) Master's Degree
13 4 (2.00%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (12.50%) NIST
2 16 (8.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 11 (5.50%) NCSC
4 10 (5.00%) Cyber Essentials
5 7 (3.50%) SLA
6 4 (2.00%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 2 (1.00%) GDPR
7 2 (1.00%) ISA99
7 2 (1.00%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
7 2 (1.00%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.50%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 1 (0.50%) JSP 440
8 1 (0.50%) SOC 2
System Software
1 75 (37.50%) Active Directory
2 46 (23.00%) VMware Infrastructure
3 20 (10.00%) VMware NSX
4 18 (9.00%) Hyper-V
5 13 (6.50%) Docker
6 8 (4.00%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (2.00%) vSphere
8 3 (1.50%) Firmware
8 3 (1.50%) OpenAM
9 2 (1.00%) KVM
9 2 (1.00%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (1.00%) Virtual Machines
9 2 (1.00%) XenApp
9 2 (1.00%) XenDesktop
10 1 (0.50%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
Systems Management
1 27 (13.50%) Ansible
2 26 (13.00%) Terraform
3 23 (11.50%) FortiGate
4 20 (10.00%) vCenter Server
5 17 (8.50%) Kubernetes
6 15 (7.50%) SCOM
7 14 (7.00%) Single Sign-On
8 11 (5.50%) Avamar
9 9 (4.50%) Microsoft Intune
10 8 (4.00%) SCCM
11 5 (2.50%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 5 (2.50%) Failover Clustering
11 5 (2.50%) WSUS
12 4 (2.00%) WMI
13 3 (1.50%) Istio
13 3 (1.50%) VxRail
14 2 (1.00%) Kibana
14 2 (1.00%) Prometheus
15 1 (0.50%) Cisco CUCM
15 1 (0.50%) Forefront Identity Manager
Vendors
1 69 (34.50%) Microsoft
2 61 (30.50%) VMware
3 52 (26.00%) Cisco
4 29 (14.50%) Juniper
5 27 (13.50%) F5
5 27 (13.50%) SolarWinds
6 23 (11.50%) Splunk
7 22 (11.00%) Extreme Networks
8 20 (10.00%) ServiceNow
9 19 (9.50%) Thales
10 15 (7.50%) Okta
11 11 (5.50%) BMC
11 11 (5.50%) Dell
11 11 (5.50%) Remedy
12 9 (4.50%) BeyondTrust
12 9 (4.50%) Citrix
13 8 (4.00%) Palo Alto
14 7 (3.50%) IBM
15 5 (2.50%) Fortinet
15 5 (2.50%) NetApp