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 18 September 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 237 155 180
Rank change year-on-year -82 +25 +89
Contract jobs citing PKI 140 247 273
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 0.91% 1.38% 1.28%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.62% 4.77% 4.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 118 168 158
10th Percentile £325 £411 £452
25th Percentile £425 £450 £510
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £546 £575
Median % change year-on-year +0.69% -5.00% +2.04%
75th Percentile £600 £608 £650
90th Percentile £649 £656 £700
UK median daily rate £550 £548 £575
% change year-on-year +0.46% -4.78% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 3
10th Percentile - - £43.50
25th Percentile - £36.75 £47.81
Median hourly rate - £38.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year - -30.00% -27.87%
75th Percentile - £40.25 -
90th Percentile - - -
UK median hourly rate - £23.80 £55.00
% change year-on-year - -56.73% -14.73%

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 5,345 5,176 6,646
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 34.55% 28.89% 31.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,192 2,941 4,349
10th Percentile £222 £213 £220
25th Percentile £363 £373 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £575 £601 £600
90th Percentile £663 £700 £700
UK median daily rate £515 £540 £550
% change year-on-year -4.63% -1.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 427 385 343
10th Percentile £14.78 £13.76 £16.25
25th Percentile £18.51 £20.50 £20.94
Median hourly rate £30.11 £57.35 £49.00
Median % change year-on-year -47.51% +17.04% +124.98%
75th Percentile £58.75 £70.00 £67.63
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.09 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £50.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year -40.00% +11.11% +69.81%

PKI
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings citing PKI as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for PKI 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 18 September 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
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 18 September 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 West -15 49 £550 - 9
South East -42 35 £575 +12.48% 19
Midlands -12 33 £400 +18.52% 1
West Midlands -7 32 £400 +18.52% 1
North of England -4 14 £492 -18.00% 10
North West -6 13 £492 -18.00% 4
Scotland -5 6 £550 -4.35% 5
East of England +7 3 £525 - 5
Yorkshire - 1 £600 - 3
East Midlands - 1 - -
PKI
UK

PKI
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 27 (19.29%) Microsoft Exchange
2 13 (9.29%) Confluence
3 12 (8.57%) Apache
4 8 (5.71%) SharePoint
5 7 (5.00%) Skype for Business
6 4 (2.86%) IIS
6 4 (2.86%) JBoss
7 2 (1.43%) Alfresco
7 2 (1.43%) Camunda
7 2 (1.43%) SharePoint Server
8 1 (0.71%) CMS
8 1 (0.71%) Tomcat
Applications
1 12 (8.57%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (1.43%) Dynamics GP
Cloud Services
1 26 (18.57%) AWS
2 25 (17.86%) Azure
3 10 (7.14%) GCP
4 9 (6.43%) Microsoft 365
4 9 (6.43%) OpenShift
5 8 (5.71%) IaaS
5 8 (5.71%) PaaS
6 6 (4.29%) AWS KMS
6 6 (4.29%) Azure DevOps
7 4 (2.86%) Azure Sentinel
7 4 (2.86%) Entra ID
8 3 (2.14%) Amazon EC2
8 3 (2.14%) AWS CloudTrail
8 3 (2.14%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 2 (1.43%) Datadog
9 2 (1.43%) GitHub
9 2 (1.43%) GitHub Actions
9 2 (1.43%) Power Platform
10 1 (0.71%) Azure Monitor
10 1 (0.71%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 37 (26.43%) DNS
1 37 (26.43%) VPN
2 34 (24.29%) Firewall
3 28 (20.00%) BGP
4 27 (19.29%) IPsec
5 26 (18.57%) MPLS
6 21 (15.00%) DHCP
7 20 (14.29%) WAN
8 15 (10.71%) Network Security
9 13 (9.29%) SSL
9 13 (9.29%) Unified Communications
10 12 (8.57%) Skype
10 12 (8.57%) SMTP
11 6 (4.29%) Junos
11 6 (4.29%) VSAN
12 4 (2.86%) X.509
13 3 (2.14%) 4G
13 3 (2.14%) 5G
13 3 (2.14%) HTTPS
14 2 (1.43%) Cisco Firepower
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (7.14%) SQL Server
2 9 (6.43%) Amazon RDS
3 8 (5.71%) Big Data
3 8 (5.71%) Elasticsearch
4 5 (3.57%) PostgreSQL
4 5 (3.57%) Relational Database
5 2 (1.43%) MongoDB
5 2 (1.43%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 13 (9.29%) JIRA
2 8 (5.71%) GitLab
3 4 (2.86%) MSI
3 4 (2.86%) Robot Framework
3 4 (2.86%) Sonatype Nexus
4 2 (1.43%) Artifactory
4 2 (1.43%) JUnit
4 2 (1.43%) SpecFlow
5 1 (0.71%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.71%) CircleCI
5 1 (0.71%) Jenkins
General
1 39 (27.86%) Social Skills
2 30 (21.43%) Public Sector
3 21 (15.00%) Analytical Skills
4 8 (5.71%) Military
5 3 (2.14%) Finance
6 1 (0.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (0.71%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 30 (21.43%) Support Engineer
2 25 (17.86%) 3rd Line Engineer
3 20 (14.29%) 3rd Line Support
3 20 (14.29%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
4 18 (12.86%) Network Engineer
5 14 (10.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 13 (9.29%) Administrator
6 13 (9.29%) Architect
6 13 (9.29%) Platform Manager
6 13 (9.29%) Systems Administrator
6 13 (9.29%) Systems Manager
6 13 (9.29%) Wintel Administrator
6 13 (9.29%) Wintel Systems Administrator
7 9 (6.43%) 2nd Line Engineer
7 9 (6.43%) Network Support
7 9 (6.43%) Network Support Engineer
8 8 (5.71%) 2nd Line Support
8 8 (5.71%) 2nd Line Support Engineer
8 8 (5.71%) Security Architect
9 7 (5.00%) 2nd Line Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (5.00%) NETCONF
1 7 (5.00%) RESTCONF
2 6 (4.29%) Kafka
3 4 (2.86%) AngularJS
3 4 (2.86%) OpenID
3 4 (2.86%) YAML
4 3 (2.14%) .NET
4 3 (2.14%) JDBC
4 3 (2.14%) ModSecurity
4 3 (2.14%) OAuth
4 3 (2.14%) OAuth2
4 3 (2.14%) REST
4 3 (2.14%) SOAP
5 2 (1.43%) 802.1X
5 2 (1.43%) Gherkin
5 2 (1.43%) HTML
5 2 (1.43%) Keycloak
5 2 (1.43%) Playwright
5 2 (1.43%) Spring Boot
5 2 (1.43%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 11 (7.86%) Data Centre
2 8 (5.71%) Clustering
3 5 (3.57%) Algorithms
3 5 (3.57%) Self-Motivation
4 4 (2.86%) Cyber Defence
4 4 (2.86%) Cyber Threat
4 4 (2.86%) Private Cloud
5 3 (2.14%) Cloud Native
5 3 (2.14%) Replication
5 3 (2.14%) Taxonomies
6 2 (1.43%) Fat Client
6 2 (1.43%) Management Information System
6 2 (1.43%) Thin Client
7 1 (0.71%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (0.71%) Cyber Security Posture
7 1 (0.71%) Data Protection Act
7 1 (0.71%) Enterprise Software
7 1 (0.71%) Legacy Systems
7 1 (0.71%) Linux Command Line
7 1 (0.71%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 63 (45.00%) Windows
2 35 (25.00%) Linux
2 35 (25.00%) Windows Server
3 13 (9.29%) Windows 10
4 9 (6.43%) Windows Server 2019
5 8 (5.71%) Windows Server 2016
6 6 (4.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 6 (4.29%) Windows Server 2012
7 4 (2.86%) CentOS
7 4 (2.86%) Windows Server 2008
8 3 (2.14%) Solaris
8 3 (2.14%) Windows Server 2003
9 2 (1.43%) Oracle Linux
9 2 (1.43%) Windows 7
10 1 (0.71%) SUSE
10 1 (0.71%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 30 (21.43%) Agile
2 27 (19.29%) DevOps
3 21 (15.00%) Service Management
4 19 (13.57%) Problem-Solving
5 17 (12.14%) Change Management
5 17 (12.14%) Cryptography
6 16 (11.43%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 15 (10.71%) Load Balancing
8 14 (10.00%) Critical Thinking
8 14 (10.00%) Network Management
9 13 (9.29%) Security Patching
10 12 (8.57%) CI/CD
10 12 (8.57%) ITIL
10 12 (8.57%) System Testing
10 12 (8.57%) Test Automation
11 11 (7.86%) Cybersecurity
11 11 (7.86%) Mentoring
11 11 (7.86%) Roadmaps
12 10 (7.14%) Migration
12 10 (7.14%) Prototyping
Programming Languages
1 34 (24.29%) PowerShell
2 16 (11.43%) Python
3 15 (10.71%) SQL
4 8 (5.71%) Java
5 7 (5.00%) JavaScript
6 4 (2.86%) PHP
7 3 (2.14%) C#
8 2 (1.43%) Bicep
9 1 (0.71%) Bash
9 1 (0.71%) C
9 1 (0.71%) Shell Script
9 1 (0.71%) VB
9 1 (0.71%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 105 (75.00%) Security Cleared
2 57 (40.71%) DV Cleared
3 51 (36.43%) SC Cleared
4 25 (17.86%) Degree
5 14 (10.00%) Cisco Certification
6 13 (9.29%) CCNP
7 7 (5.00%) MCSE
7 7 (5.00%) Microsoft Certification
8 5 (3.57%) CCNA
8 5 (3.57%) ITIL Certification
9 4 (2.86%) Master's Degree
10 3 (2.14%) AWS Certification
10 3 (2.14%) CISSP
10 3 (2.14%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 2 (1.43%) CISM
11 2 (1.43%) ISTQB
11 2 (1.43%) MCSA
12 1 (0.71%) CEH
12 1 (0.71%) GIAC
12 1 (0.71%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (7.86%) NIST
2 8 (5.71%) NCSC
3 6 (4.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 5 (3.57%) FIPS 140-2
4 5 (3.57%) GDPR
4 5 (3.57%) PCI DSS
5 2 (1.43%) Disclosure Scotland
5 2 (1.43%) NIST 800
5 2 (1.43%) SOC 1
5 2 (1.43%) SOC 2
6 1 (0.71%) Accessibility
6 1 (0.71%) JSP 440
6 1 (0.71%) PMO
6 1 (0.71%) RMADS
System Software
1 47 (33.57%) Active Directory
2 41 (29.29%) VMware Infrastructure
3 22 (15.71%) VMware ESXi
4 18 (12.86%) Hyper-V
5 13 (9.29%) Docker
6 8 (5.71%) BitLocker
6 8 (5.71%) Microsoft App-V
6 8 (5.71%) Terminal Services
7 6 (4.29%) Virtual Servers
8 5 (3.57%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 5 (3.57%) Virtual Machines
9 4 (2.86%) VMware NSX
10 2 (1.43%) vSphere
11 1 (0.71%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 34 (24.29%) Ansible
2 15 (10.71%) vCenter Server
3 14 (10.00%) Kubernetes
4 11 (7.86%) Terraform
5 9 (6.43%) Nagios
5 9 (6.43%) Puppet
5 9 (6.43%) SCCM
6 8 (5.71%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 8 (5.71%) vMotion
7 7 (5.00%) Microsoft Intune
7 7 (5.00%) Single Sign-On
7 7 (5.00%) WSUS
8 6 (4.29%) OPNET
8 6 (4.29%) WMI
9 4 (2.86%) Progress Chef
10 3 (2.14%) Check_MK
10 3 (2.14%) SCOM
11 1 (0.71%) Cisco CUCM
11 1 (0.71%) Cisco UCCX
11 1 (0.71%) Grafana
Vendors
1 53 (37.86%) Microsoft
2 48 (34.29%) VMware
3 24 (17.14%) Cisco
4 22 (15.71%) Juniper
5 11 (7.86%) Atlassian
5 11 (7.86%) Veeam
6 8 (5.71%) Citrix
6 8 (5.71%) Google
6 8 (5.71%) HP
6 8 (5.71%) Splunk
6 8 (5.71%) Symantec
7 7 (5.00%) Oracle
7 7 (5.00%) SolarWinds
8 5 (3.57%) ForgeRock
8 5 (3.57%) Fortinet
9 4 (2.86%) IBM
9 4 (2.86%) Red Hat
10 3 (2.14%) Ping Identity
11 2 (1.43%) Intel
11 2 (1.43%) Thales