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 10 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 260 204 135
Rank change year-on-year -56 -69 +114
Contract jobs citing PKI 173 143 377
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.81% 1.12% 1.78%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.64% 3.36% 5.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 113 87 241
10th Percentile £357 £413 £363
25th Percentile £487 £513 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £565 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.65% +2.73% -3.08%
75th Percentile £675 £634 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £675
UK median daily rate £560 £558 £568
% change year-on-year +0.45% -1.76% -5.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 0 2
10th Percentile £61.41 - £56.61
25th Percentile £70.50 - £56.93
Median hourly rate £79.50 - £59.70
75th Percentile £96.25 - £64.73
90th Percentile £101.65 - £66.39
UK median hourly rate £79.50 - £59.70
% change year-on-year - - +8.55%

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 6,549 4,256 6,366
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 30.85% 33.24% 30.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,070 2,583 3,792
10th Percentile £205 £200 £206
25th Percentile £360 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £575 £600 £594
90th Percentile £675 £675 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 514 260 680
10th Percentile £14.25 £16.95 £12.25
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £15.00
Median hourly rate £34.50 £31.76 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.63% +15.49% +25.00%
75th Percentile £67.25 £66.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £83.93 £83.47 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £32.50 £30.00
% change year-on-year +7.69% +8.33% +33.42%

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 10 March 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 10 March 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 10 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
South East +24 96 £600 -0.83% 24
South West -44 28 £556 +1.14% 4
West Midlands -49 24 £400 -5.88% 5
Midlands -55 24 £400 -5.88% 9
North of England -60 18 £482 -32.35% 2
Yorkshire -52 10 £482 -33.52% 1
North West -30 8 £444 -11.25% 1
Scotland -24 6 £625 +16.93%
East of England - 3 £550 - 3
Wales -2 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 19 (10.98%) Microsoft Exchange
2 7 (4.05%) SharePoint
3 3 (1.73%) Confluence
3 3 (1.73%) Exchange Server 2010
3 3 (1.73%) SharePoint Server
4 2 (1.16%) IIS
4 2 (1.16%) Skype for Business
5 1 (0.58%) Apache
5 1 (0.58%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.58%) Tomcat
5 1 (0.58%) WebSphere
Applications
1 7 (4.05%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (1.73%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.58%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 28 (16.18%) Azure
2 25 (14.45%) AWS
3 14 (8.09%) Entra ID
4 9 (5.20%) OpenShift
5 8 (4.62%) Microsoft 365
6 7 (4.05%) Power Platform
7 5 (2.89%) AWS CloudFormation
8 4 (2.31%) GCP
8 4 (2.31%) SaaS
9 3 (1.73%) Azure DevOps
9 3 (1.73%) Azure Key Vault
9 3 (1.73%) GitHub
9 3 (1.73%) Power Automate
10 2 (1.16%) AWS KMS
10 2 (1.16%) Google Workspace
10 2 (1.16%) OneDrive
11 1 (0.58%) Anthos
11 1 (0.58%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 47 (27.17%) DNS
2 45 (26.01%) Firewall
3 37 (21.39%) BGP
4 32 (18.50%) DHCP
5 31 (17.92%) WAN
6 22 (12.72%) Junos
7 21 (12.14%) VPN
8 20 (11.56%) OSPF
9 19 (10.98%) LAN
10 18 (10.40%) BIG-IP
10 18 (10.40%) Ethernet VPN
10 18 (10.40%) VXLAN
11 17 (9.83%) Cisco ISE
11 17 (9.83%) MPLS
12 11 (6.36%) IPsec
12 11 (6.36%) SSL
13 10 (5.78%) Cisco IOS
14 9 (5.20%) TCP/IP
15 8 (4.62%) Skype
16 7 (4.05%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (4.62%) SQL Server
2 3 (1.73%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 8 (4.62%) JIRA
2 6 (3.47%) Robot Framework
3 4 (2.31%) Sonatype Nexus
4 2 (1.16%) GitLab
5 1 (0.58%) Git
5 1 (0.58%) Jenkins
General
1 28 (16.18%) Social Skills
2 22 (12.72%) Public Sector
3 13 (7.51%) Analytical Skills
4 7 (4.05%) Military
5 6 (3.47%) Finance
6 3 (1.73%) Banking
6 3 (1.73%) Presentation Skills
7 2 (1.16%) Financial Institution
7 2 (1.16%) Legal
8 1 (0.58%) Aerospace
8 1 (0.58%) Back Office
8 1 (0.58%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (0.58%) Influencing Skills
8 1 (0.58%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 47 (27.17%) Architect
2 31 (17.92%) Senior
3 26 (15.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 14 (8.09%) Network Engineer
5 13 (7.51%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
5 13 (7.51%) Support Engineer
6 12 (6.94%) 3rd Line Engineer
7 10 (5.78%) Firewall Specialist
7 10 (5.78%) Network Specialist
7 10 (5.78%) Security Engineer
8 9 (5.20%) 3rd Line Support
9 8 (4.62%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
9 8 (4.62%) Cloud Engineer
9 8 (4.62%) Senior Network Engineer
9 8 (4.62%) Wintel Engineer
10 7 (4.05%) 2nd Line Engineer
10 7 (4.05%) Senior Architect
11 6 (3.47%) Platform Engineer
11 6 (3.47%) WAN Engineer
12 5 (2.89%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (10.40%) 802.1X
2 7 (4.05%) LDAP
3 5 (2.89%) OpenID
3 5 (2.89%) REST
4 4 (2.31%) OAuth
4 4 (2.31%) SAML
5 3 (1.73%) OAuth2
5 3 (1.73%) SailPoint
6 2 (1.16%) JSON
7 1 (0.58%) OpenTelemetry
7 1 (0.58%) Web Services
7 1 (0.58%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 19 (10.98%) Clustering
1 19 (10.98%) Data Centre
2 9 (5.20%) Fat Client
2 9 (5.20%) Thin Client
3 6 (3.47%) Algorithms
3 6 (3.47%) Public Cloud
4 5 (2.89%) Smartcard
5 4 (2.31%) Hybrid Cloud
5 4 (2.31%) Security Operations Centre
6 3 (1.73%) Onboarding
6 3 (1.73%) Operational Technology
6 3 (1.73%) Security Posture
7 2 (1.16%) Cloud Native
7 2 (1.16%) Data Protection Act
7 2 (1.16%) Management Information System
7 2 (1.16%) SWIFT Messaging Network
8 1 (0.58%) CMDB
8 1 (0.58%) Replication
8 1 (0.58%) Tandem
8 1 (0.58%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 70 (40.46%) Windows
2 33 (19.08%) Linux
3 31 (17.92%) Windows Server
4 9 (5.20%) Windows 7
5 8 (4.62%) Windows Server 2012
6 6 (3.47%) Ubuntu
6 6 (3.47%) Windows 10
7 5 (2.89%) CentOS
8 4 (2.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 4 (2.31%) Windows Server 2016
9 2 (1.16%) VMS
9 2 (1.16%) Windows Server 2019
10 1 (0.58%) Solaris
10 1 (0.58%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 48 (27.75%) Agile
2 37 (21.39%) Identity Access Management
3 30 (17.34%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 29 (16.76%) Problem-Solving
5 24 (13.87%) Load Balancing
6 23 (13.29%) CI/CD
6 23 (13.29%) ITIL
6 23 (13.29%) Key Management
7 21 (12.14%) High Availability
8 20 (11.56%) Observability
8 20 (11.56%) Service Management
9 19 (10.98%) DevOps
9 19 (10.98%) Platform Engineering
10 17 (9.83%) Change Management
10 17 (9.83%) Cybersecurity
11 16 (9.25%) Infrastructure as Code
11 16 (9.25%) ITSM
12 15 (8.67%) Continuous Improvement
12 15 (8.67%) Prototyping
13 13 (7.51%) Knowledge Transfer
Programming Languages
1 35 (20.23%) PowerShell
1 35 (20.23%) Python
2 13 (7.51%) SQL
3 11 (6.36%) Bash
4 4 (2.31%) PHP
5 3 (1.73%) C#
5 3 (1.73%) JavaScript
6 1 (0.58%) Bicep
6 1 (0.58%) Go
6 1 (0.58%) Java
6 1 (0.58%) Perl
6 1 (0.58%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 126 (72.83%) Security Cleared
2 80 (46.24%) DV Cleared
3 45 (26.01%) SC Cleared
4 18 (10.40%) Cisco Certification
5 15 (8.67%) Degree
6 14 (8.09%) CISM
6 14 (8.09%) CISSP
7 10 (5.78%) Microsoft Certification
8 8 (4.62%) GIAC
8 8 (4.62%) MCSE
9 6 (3.47%) JNCIA
9 6 (3.47%) JNCIP
9 6 (3.47%) JNCIS
10 5 (2.89%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 4 (2.31%) APMG
11 4 (2.31%) AWS Certification
11 4 (2.31%) CompTIA Security+
11 4 (2.31%) Master's Degree
11 4 (2.31%) SSCP
12 3 (1.73%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (8.67%) NIST
2 13 (7.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 7 (4.05%) Cyber Essentials
4 6 (3.47%) NCSC
4 6 (3.47%) PCI DSS
5 5 (2.89%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 4 (2.31%) GDPR
6 4 (2.31%) SLA
7 1 (0.58%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 1 (0.58%) NIST 800
7 1 (0.58%) SOC 2
System Software
1 55 (31.79%) Active Directory
2 32 (18.50%) VMware Infrastructure
3 10 (5.78%) VMware NSX
4 7 (4.05%) Docker
4 7 (4.05%) Firmware
4 7 (4.05%) VMware ESXi
5 6 (3.47%) Hyper-V
6 5 (2.89%) Virtual Machines
7 3 (1.73%) Sendmail
8 2 (1.16%) KVM
8 2 (1.16%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 2 (1.16%) Virtual Servers
8 2 (1.16%) vSphere
9 1 (0.58%) NFS
Systems Management
1 26 (15.03%) Terraform
2 25 (14.45%) Ansible
3 18 (10.40%) FortiGate
4 16 (9.25%) Kubernetes
4 16 (9.25%) vCenter Server
5 12 (6.94%) Single Sign-On
6 9 (5.20%) WMI
7 8 (4.62%) WSUS
8 7 (4.05%) Microsoft Intune
9 6 (3.47%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 6 (3.47%) SCCM
10 5 (2.89%) SCOM
11 4 (2.31%) Prometheus
11 4 (2.31%) QRadar
12 3 (1.73%) Grafana
12 3 (1.73%) Podman
12 3 (1.73%) Proxmox
13 1 (0.58%) Argo
13 1 (0.58%) Istio
13 1 (0.58%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 58 (33.53%) Microsoft
2 53 (30.64%) VMware
3 42 (24.28%) Cisco
4 34 (19.65%) Juniper
5 28 (16.18%) SolarWinds
6 24 (13.87%) Splunk
7 20 (11.56%) F5
8 17 (9.83%) Extreme Networks
9 10 (5.78%) Thales
10 7 (4.05%) Google
10 7 (4.05%) ServiceNow
10 7 (4.05%) Veeam
11 5 (2.89%) Broadcom
12 4 (2.31%) Palo Alto
12 4 (2.31%) Red Hat
13 3 (1.73%) BMC
13 3 (1.73%) Citrix
13 3 (1.73%) IBM
13 3 (1.73%) Remedy
13 3 (1.73%) Zscaler