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 27 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 246 184 147
Rank change year-on-year -62 -37 +95
Contract jobs citing PKI 165 183 325
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.90% 1.24% 1.65%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.74% 3.96% 5.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 123 107 178
10th Percentile £303 £413 £400
25th Percentile £425 £475 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £551 £561
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% -1.83% -2.39%
75th Percentile £638 £634 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £700
UK median daily rate £550 £560 £575
% change year-on-year -1.79% -2.61% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 0 5
10th Percentile £74.80 - £46.38
25th Percentile £82.00 - -
Median hourly rate £90.00 - £55.00
75th Percentile £100.00 - £56.40
90th Percentile £103.30 - £63.06
UK median hourly rate £90.00 - £55.00

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 6,028 4,622 6,096
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 32.74% 31.37% 30.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,727 2,607 3,864
10th Percentile £204 £200 £210
25th Percentile £358 £356 £368
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £575 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £688 £697
UK median daily rate £502 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -5.31% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 469 245 389
10th Percentile £13.06 £18.01 £15.86
25th Percentile £17.05 £22.50 £19.44
Median hourly rate £27.21 £32.50 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -16.28% -26.97% +67.92%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £76.25 £79.39 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £27.21 £33.54 £41.50
% change year-on-year -18.87% -19.18% +25.76%

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 27 December 2025.

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 27 December 2025.

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 27 December 2025. 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 +1 62 £600 +3.67% 33
South West -33 41 £550 - 18
West Midlands +3 38 £400 -27.27% 5
Midlands -11 38 £400 -27.27% 6
North of England -46 17 £489 -32.62% 15
North West -13 9 £500 +2.56% 8
Yorkshire -39 8 £487 -32.83% 7
Scotland -22 5 £625 +42.86% 1
East of England -19 3 £550 - 10
Wales -3 1 £550 +20.22% 3
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 26 (15.76%) Microsoft Exchange
2 11 (6.67%) SharePoint
3 6 (3.64%) Skype for Business
4 4 (2.42%) Confluence
4 4 (2.42%) SharePoint Server
5 3 (1.82%) Exchange Server 2010
6 1 (0.61%) Apache
6 1 (0.61%) IIS
6 1 (0.61%) JBoss
Applications
1 9 (5.45%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 26 (15.76%) AWS
1 26 (15.76%) Azure
2 9 (5.45%) OpenShift
3 8 (4.85%) Entra ID
4 7 (4.24%) Microsoft 365
5 5 (3.03%) AWS CloudFormation
6 4 (2.42%) Azure DevOps
6 4 (2.42%) GitHub
6 4 (2.42%) Power Platform
7 3 (1.82%) AWS KMS
7 3 (1.82%) GCP
7 3 (1.82%) Power Automate
7 3 (1.82%) SaaS
8 2 (1.21%) Azure Key Vault
8 2 (1.21%) Google Workspace
9 1 (0.61%) Amazon EventBridge
9 1 (0.61%) AWS Lambda
9 1 (0.61%) Azure Sentinel
9 1 (0.61%) GitHub Actions
9 1 (0.61%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 37 (22.42%) Firewall
2 30 (18.18%) DNS
3 28 (16.97%) VPN
4 25 (15.15%) BGP
4 25 (15.15%) WAN
5 24 (14.55%) IPsec
6 23 (13.94%) MPLS
7 17 (10.30%) DHCP
8 16 (9.70%) Skype
9 13 (7.88%) SSL
10 10 (6.06%) Junos
11 9 (5.45%) Network Security
11 9 (5.45%) TCP/IP
12 5 (3.03%) Unified Communications
12 5 (3.03%) VSAN
13 4 (2.42%) Cisco Firepower
13 4 (2.42%) Cisco IOS
13 4 (2.42%) Cisco ISE
13 4 (2.42%) Internet
13 4 (2.42%) NX-OS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (6.67%) SQL Server
2 1 (0.61%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 8 (4.85%) JIRA
2 3 (1.82%) GitLab
2 3 (1.82%) Robot Framework
2 3 (1.82%) Sonatype Nexus
3 1 (0.61%) Artifactory
3 1 (0.61%) CircleCI
3 1 (0.61%) Jenkins
3 1 (0.61%) SpecFlow
General
1 42 (25.45%) Social Skills
2 24 (14.55%) Public Sector
3 19 (11.52%) Analytical Skills
4 5 (3.03%) Military
5 4 (2.42%) Finance
6 3 (1.82%) Presentation Skills
7 2 (1.21%) Banking
7 2 (1.21%) Legal
8 1 (0.61%) Aerospace
8 1 (0.61%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.61%) Financial Institution
8 1 (0.61%) Influencing Skills
8 1 (0.61%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.61%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 42 (25.45%) Architect
2 25 (15.15%) Support Engineer
3 24 (14.55%) 3rd Line Engineer
4 20 (12.12%) 3rd Line Support
5 19 (11.52%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
6 16 (9.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 16 (9.70%) Senior
7 11 (6.67%) Network Engineer
7 11 (6.67%) WAN Engineer
8 10 (6.06%) 2nd Line Engineer
8 10 (6.06%) Wintel Engineer
9 9 (5.45%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
10 8 (4.85%) Administrator
10 8 (4.85%) Cloud Engineer
10 8 (4.85%) Platform Manager
10 8 (4.85%) Systems Administrator
10 8 (4.85%) Systems Manager
10 8 (4.85%) Wintel Administrator
10 8 (4.85%) Wintel Systems Administrator
11 7 (4.24%) Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (1.82%) REST
2 2 (1.21%) ModSecurity
2 2 (1.21%) OpenID
3 1 (0.61%) .NET
3 1 (0.61%) AngularJS
3 1 (0.61%) Elastic Stack
3 1 (0.61%) Gherkin
3 1 (0.61%) Kafka
3 1 (0.61%) Middleware
3 1 (0.61%) OAuth
3 1 (0.61%) OAuth2
3 1 (0.61%) Playwright
3 1 (0.61%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 10 (6.06%) Fat Client
1 10 (6.06%) Thin Client
2 7 (4.24%) Algorithms
3 5 (3.03%) Public Cloud
4 4 (2.42%) Data Centre
4 4 (2.42%) Security Operations Centre
4 4 (2.42%) Self-Motivation
4 4 (2.42%) Smartcard
5 3 (1.82%) Cloud Native
5 3 (1.82%) Cyber Defence
5 3 (1.82%) Onboarding
5 3 (1.82%) Private Cloud
5 3 (1.82%) Security Posture
6 2 (1.21%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (1.21%) Replication
7 1 (0.61%) CMDB
7 1 (0.61%) Management Information System
7 1 (0.61%) Product Ownership
7 1 (0.61%) SWIFT Messaging Network
7 1 (0.61%) Tandem
Operating Systems
1 65 (39.39%) Windows
2 35 (21.21%) Linux
3 32 (19.39%) Windows Server
4 13 (7.88%) Windows 10
5 10 (6.06%) Windows 7
6 8 (4.85%) Windows Server 2012
7 5 (3.03%) Windows Server 2016
8 4 (2.42%) Windows Server 2008
8 4 (2.42%) Windows Server 2019
9 3 (1.82%) CentOS
9 3 (1.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 2 (1.21%) VMS
11 1 (0.61%) Solaris
11 1 (0.61%) SUSE
11 1 (0.61%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.61%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 44 (26.67%) Agile
2 27 (16.36%) Change Management
3 21 (12.73%) ITIL
3 21 (12.73%) Key Management
4 20 (12.12%) CI/CD
4 20 (12.12%) Cryptography
4 20 (12.12%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 20 (12.12%) Service Management
5 19 (11.52%) Platform Engineering
5 19 (11.52%) Problem-Solving
6 18 (10.91%) DevOps
7 17 (10.30%) Load Balancing
7 17 (10.30%) Migration
8 14 (8.48%) Identity Access Management
8 14 (8.48%) SIEM
9 13 (7.88%) Incident Response
9 13 (7.88%) Knowledge Transfer
9 13 (7.88%) Prototyping
10 12 (7.27%) Cybersecurity
10 12 (7.27%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 35 (21.21%) PowerShell
2 26 (15.76%) Python
3 16 (9.70%) SQL
4 9 (5.45%) Bash
5 1 (0.61%) Bicep
5 1 (0.61%) C
5 1 (0.61%) C#
5 1 (0.61%) JavaScript
5 1 (0.61%) Perl
5 1 (0.61%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 123 (74.55%) Security Cleared
2 71 (43.03%) DV Cleared
3 52 (31.52%) SC Cleared
4 16 (9.70%) CISSP
5 15 (9.09%) CISM
5 15 (9.09%) Degree
6 14 (8.48%) Microsoft Certification
7 12 (7.27%) MCSE
8 8 (4.85%) Cisco Certification
9 7 (4.24%) CCNP
10 6 (3.64%) CCNA
10 6 (3.64%) ITIL Certification
10 6 (3.64%) Master's Degree
10 6 (3.64%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 5 (3.03%) AWS Certification
12 4 (2.42%) GIAC
13 3 (1.82%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 3 (1.82%) Computer Science Degree
14 2 (1.21%) MCSA
15 1 (0.61%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (7.27%) NIST
2 9 (5.45%) PCI DSS
3 8 (4.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 8 (4.85%) NCSC
4 7 (4.24%) GDPR
5 3 (1.82%) FIPS 140-2
5 3 (1.82%) SLA
6 2 (1.21%) SOC 1
7 1 (0.61%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.61%) Cyber Essentials
7 1 (0.61%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 1 (0.61%) JSP 440
7 1 (0.61%) NIST 800
7 1 (0.61%) PMO
7 1 (0.61%) RMADS
System Software
1 54 (32.73%) Active Directory
2 32 (19.39%) VMware Infrastructure
3 10 (6.06%) VMware NSX
4 9 (5.45%) Docker
5 7 (4.24%) Hyper-V
6 5 (3.03%) Firmware
6 5 (3.03%) Microsoft Virtual Server
6 5 (3.03%) Virtual Machines
6 5 (3.03%) Virtual Servers
7 4 (2.42%) VMware ESXi
8 3 (1.82%) Sendmail
8 3 (1.82%) vSphere
9 1 (0.61%) NFS
Systems Management
1 19 (11.52%) Ansible
2 17 (10.30%) Terraform
3 16 (9.70%) vCenter Server
4 15 (9.09%) Kubernetes
5 11 (6.67%) WSUS
6 10 (6.06%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 10 (6.06%) SCCM
6 10 (6.06%) Single Sign-On
6 10 (6.06%) WMI
7 8 (4.85%) Microsoft Intune
8 4 (2.42%) Podman
8 4 (2.42%) QRadar
9 3 (1.82%) Grafana
9 3 (1.82%) OPNET
9 3 (1.82%) Prometheus
9 3 (1.82%) Proxmox
9 3 (1.82%) SCOM
10 2 (1.21%) Check_MK
11 1 (0.61%) Progress Chef
11 1 (0.61%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 66 (40.00%) Microsoft
2 49 (29.70%) VMware
3 29 (17.58%) Juniper
4 26 (15.76%) Cisco
5 15 (9.09%) SolarWinds
6 13 (7.88%) Veeam
7 12 (7.27%) Splunk
8 7 (4.24%) Thales
9 6 (3.64%) Google
10 5 (3.03%) Broadcom
10 5 (3.03%) Red Hat
11 3 (1.82%) CheckPoint
11 3 (1.82%) Citrix
11 3 (1.82%) Fortinet
11 3 (1.82%) ServiceNow
11 3 (1.82%) Zscaler
12 2 (1.21%) CyberArk
12 2 (1.21%) IBM
12 2 (1.21%) Palo Alto
12 2 (1.21%) Wyse