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 23 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 283 236 116
Rank change year-on-year -47 -120 +125
Contract jobs citing PKI 176 117 382
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.68% 0.87% 1.79%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.27% 2.57% 6.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 119 97 263
10th Percentile £408 £350 £363
25th Percentile £463 £490 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year - - -2.65%
75th Percentile £625 £603 £608
90th Percentile £675 £638 £674
UK median daily rate £550 £550 £550
% change year-on-year - - -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 1
10th Percentile £47.22 - -
25th Percentile £56.01 - £36.75
Median hourly rate £71.33 - £38.50
75th Percentile £72.27 - £40.25
90th Percentile £72.43 - -
UK median hourly rate £71.33 - £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 7,760 4,558 6,077
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 29.90% 33.83% 28.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,723 2,749 3,561
10th Percentile £280 £220 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £591 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.42% -2.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 671 348 768
10th Percentile £15.72 £15.27 £12.15
25th Percentile £19.82 £18.87 £14.21
Median hourly rate £43.96 £31.63 £35.25
Median % change year-on-year +39.00% -10.28% +60.23%
75th Percentile £70.00 £62.24 £63.75
90th Percentile £85.00 £81.35 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £32.05 £35.65
% change year-on-year +32.61% -10.10% +58.55%

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 23 June 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 23 June 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 23 June 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 99 £590 +2.61% 18
North of England -55 30 £425 -13.62% 11
Scotland -1 21 £509 -4.95% 7
North West -30 21 £422 -14.33% 6
South West -62 13 £538 -6.52% 10
Midlands -58 11 £450 - 2
West Midlands -64 10 £400 -11.11% 1
Yorkshire - 9 £565 - 4
East of England -27 4 £400 -23.81% 2
East Midlands -17 1 £475 - 1
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 9 (5.11%) SharePoint
2 6 (3.41%) Confluence
3 5 (2.84%) IIS
4 3 (1.70%) Apache
4 3 (1.70%) Tomcat
4 3 (1.70%) WebSphere
5 2 (1.14%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.57%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 4 (2.27%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 10 (5.68%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.57%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.57%) Dynamics GP
Cloud Services
1 46 (26.14%) Azure
2 31 (17.61%) Entra ID
3 24 (13.64%) AWS
4 15 (8.52%) Power Platform
5 13 (7.39%) GCP
6 9 (5.11%) Microsoft 365
7 6 (3.41%) Azure Key Vault
8 4 (2.27%) AWS KMS
8 4 (2.27%) Azure DevOps
9 3 (1.70%) GitHub
9 3 (1.70%) OpenShift
10 2 (1.14%) Azure Monitor
10 2 (1.14%) Google Kubernetes Engine
10 2 (1.14%) OneDrive
11 1 (0.57%) Anthos
11 1 (0.57%) Apigee
11 1 (0.57%) Azure Logic Apps
11 1 (0.57%) GitHub Actions
11 1 (0.57%) OCI
11 1 (0.57%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 49 (27.84%) DNS
2 41 (23.30%) Firewall
3 34 (19.32%) BGP
3 34 (19.32%) DHCP
3 34 (19.32%) WAN
4 29 (16.48%) LAN
5 26 (14.77%) OSPF
6 23 (13.07%) BIG-IP
6 23 (13.07%) Ethernet VPN
6 23 (13.07%) Junos
6 23 (13.07%) VXLAN
7 22 (12.50%) Cisco ISE
8 21 (11.93%) VPN
9 15 (8.52%) Network Security
10 12 (6.82%) SSL
11 10 (5.68%) Cisco ASA
11 10 (5.68%) MPLS
12 8 (4.55%) IPsec
13 6 (3.41%) SSH
13 6 (3.41%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (6.82%) SQL Server
2 10 (5.68%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 8 (4.55%) JIRA
2 4 (2.27%) Jenkins
2 4 (2.27%) Robot Framework
2 4 (2.27%) Sonatype Nexus
3 3 (1.70%) Git
4 2 (1.14%) Burp Suite
4 2 (1.14%) Cucumber
4 2 (1.14%) Gatling
4 2 (1.14%) GitLab
4 2 (1.14%) Gradle
4 2 (1.14%) LoadRunner
4 2 (1.14%) MSI
4 2 (1.14%) REST Assured
4 2 (1.14%) SonarQube
General
1 26 (14.77%) Social Skills
2 18 (10.23%) Finance
3 17 (9.66%) Public Sector
4 10 (5.68%) Analytical Skills
5 7 (3.98%) Banking
6 5 (2.84%) Military
7 4 (2.27%) Documentation Skills
8 3 (1.70%) Retail
9 2 (1.14%) Corporate Banking
9 2 (1.14%) Financial Institution
9 2 (1.14%) Investment Banking
9 2 (1.14%) Legal
9 2 (1.14%) Retail Banking
10 1 (0.57%) Back Office
10 1 (0.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (0.57%) Law
Job Titles
1 41 (23.30%) Senior
2 30 (17.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 24 (13.64%) Architect
4 20 (11.36%) Network Engineer
5 14 (7.95%) Firewall Specialist
5 14 (7.95%) Network Specialist
6 12 (6.82%) Senior Network Engineer
7 11 (6.25%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
8 10 (5.68%) Security Engineer
8 10 (5.68%) Support Engineer
9 9 (5.11%) Senior Architect
10 8 (4.55%) 3rd Line Engineer
10 8 (4.55%) Storage Engineer
11 7 (3.98%) Lead
12 6 (3.41%) ITSM Architect
13 5 (2.84%) Citrix Engineer
13 5 (2.84%) Citrix Infrastructure Engineer
13 5 (2.84%) Integration Engineer
13 5 (2.84%) Linux Infrastructure Engineer
13 5 (2.84%) VMware Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (17.61%) 802.1X
2 12 (6.82%) OpenID
3 11 (6.25%) LDAP
3 11 (6.25%) REST
4 10 (5.68%) OAuth
4 10 (5.68%) SAML
5 5 (2.84%) RabbitMQ
6 4 (2.27%) JSON
6 4 (2.27%) OAuth2
7 3 (1.70%) SailPoint
8 2 (1.14%) FIDO
8 2 (1.14%) Microsoft Graph
8 2 (1.14%) Node.js
8 2 (1.14%) Playwright
8 2 (1.14%) Quarkus
8 2 (1.14%) React
8 2 (1.14%) Spring
8 2 (1.14%) Spring Boot
9 1 (0.57%) OpenTelemetry
9 1 (0.57%) WebAuthn
Miscellaneous
1 34 (19.32%) Clustering
2 23 (13.07%) Data Centre
3 8 (4.55%) Hybrid Cloud
4 7 (3.98%) Linux Command Line
4 7 (3.98%) Public Cloud
5 5 (2.84%) Operational Technology
6 4 (2.27%) Algorithms
6 4 (2.27%) Legacy Systems
6 4 (2.27%) Management Information System
6 4 (2.27%) Onboarding
7 3 (1.70%) Data Protection Act
7 3 (1.70%) Distributed Systems
7 3 (1.70%) Enterprise Cloud
7 3 (1.70%) Enterprise Software
7 3 (1.70%) Private Cloud
7 3 (1.70%) Tandem
8 2 (1.14%) Cyber Threat
8 2 (1.14%) Enterprise Storage
8 2 (1.14%) SCADA
8 2 (1.14%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 88 (50.00%) Windows
2 43 (24.43%) Windows Server
3 39 (22.16%) Linux
4 6 (3.41%) Debian
4 6 (3.41%) Ubuntu
5 4 (2.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (2.27%) Windows Server 2019
6 3 (1.70%) Unix
7 2 (1.14%) Android
7 2 (1.14%) Apple iOS
7 2 (1.14%) CentOS
7 2 (1.14%) Mac OS
7 2 (1.14%) Windows 10
7 2 (1.14%) Windows Server 2012
7 2 (1.14%) Windows Server 2016
8 1 (0.57%) Data ONTAP
8 1 (0.57%) VMS
8 1 (0.57%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 63 (35.80%) Identity Access Management
2 41 (23.30%) ITIL
3 36 (20.45%) Agile
4 34 (19.32%) High Availability
5 32 (18.18%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 31 (17.61%) Problem-Solving
7 26 (14.77%) ITSM
7 26 (14.77%) Observability
8 25 (14.20%) Load Balancing
8 25 (14.20%) Service Management
8 25 (14.20%) Zero Trust
9 24 (13.64%) Cybersecurity
10 21 (11.93%) RBAC
11 17 (9.66%) Key Management
12 16 (9.09%) Identity Management
12 16 (9.09%) Project Delivery
13 14 (7.95%) Continuous Improvement
13 14 (7.95%) DevOps
14 13 (7.39%) Change Management
15 12 (6.82%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 43 (24.43%) PowerShell
2 33 (18.75%) Python
3 11 (6.25%) SQL
4 10 (5.68%) JavaScript
5 6 (3.41%) Bash
6 5 (2.84%) Java
7 4 (2.27%) C#
7 4 (2.27%) PHP
8 1 (0.57%) Go
8 1 (0.57%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 105 (59.66%) Security Cleared
2 72 (40.91%) DV Cleared
3 37 (21.02%) SC Cleared
4 27 (15.34%) Cisco Certification
5 13 (7.39%) Degree
6 9 (5.11%) GIAC
7 8 (4.55%) CISSP
7 8 (4.55%) MCSE
7 8 (4.55%) Microsoft Certification
8 7 (3.98%) CompTIA Security+
8 7 (3.98%) JNCIA
8 7 (3.98%) JNCIP
8 7 (3.98%) JNCIS
9 6 (3.41%) CCNP
10 5 (2.84%) Azure Certification
10 5 (2.84%) CISM
10 5 (2.84%) SSCP
11 4 (2.27%) APMG
11 4 (2.27%) Computer Science Degree
11 4 (2.27%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (14.20%) NIST
2 17 (9.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 10 (5.68%) Cyber Essentials
4 8 (4.55%) NCSC
5 7 (3.98%) SLA
6 4 (2.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 4 (2.27%) PCI DSS
7 2 (1.14%) GDPR
7 2 (1.14%) ISA99
7 2 (1.14%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 1 (0.57%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 1 (0.57%) SOC 2
System Software
1 56 (31.82%) Active Directory
2 34 (19.32%) VMware Infrastructure
3 16 (9.09%) VMware NSX
4 9 (5.11%) Hyper-V
5 8 (4.55%) Docker
6 7 (3.98%) VMware ESXi
7 5 (2.84%) Firmware
8 2 (1.14%) KVM
8 2 (1.14%) Virtual Desktop
8 2 (1.14%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (1.14%) XenApp
8 2 (1.14%) XenDesktop
9 1 (0.57%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
9 1 (0.57%) OpenAM
9 1 (0.57%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 23 (13.07%) Ansible
1 23 (13.07%) FortiGate
2 22 (12.50%) Terraform
3 16 (9.09%) vCenter Server
4 15 (8.52%) Single Sign-On
5 14 (7.95%) Kubernetes
6 12 (6.82%) SCOM
7 11 (6.25%) Microsoft Intune
8 8 (4.55%) Avamar
8 8 (4.55%) SCCM
9 5 (2.84%) WMI
10 3 (1.70%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 3 (1.70%) Failover Clustering
10 3 (1.70%) Istio
10 3 (1.70%) WSUS
11 2 (1.14%) Kibana
11 2 (1.14%) Prometheus
12 1 (0.57%) Cisco CUCM
12 1 (0.57%) Grafana
12 1 (0.57%) Puppet
Vendors
1 55 (31.25%) Microsoft
2 50 (28.41%) VMware
3 47 (26.70%) Cisco
4 29 (16.48%) Juniper
5 27 (15.34%) F5
5 27 (15.34%) SolarWinds
6 23 (13.07%) Splunk
7 22 (12.50%) Extreme Networks
8 19 (10.80%) ServiceNow
9 17 (9.66%) Thales
10 12 (6.82%) Okta
11 10 (5.68%) BMC
11 10 (5.68%) Remedy
12 9 (5.11%) Citrix
13 8 (4.55%) Dell
13 8 (4.55%) Palo Alto
14 7 (3.98%) IBM
15 6 (3.41%) BeyondTrust
16 5 (2.84%) ForeScout
16 5 (2.84%) Fortinet