Key Management Contract Job Trends

Key Management
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Key Management skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 7 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 450 474 529
Rank change year-on-year +24 +55 +155
Contract jobs citing Key Management 132 55 59
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.36% 0.17% 0.14%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.41% 0.19% 0.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 96 23 35
10th Percentile £388 £450 £418
25th Percentile £466 £455 £480
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £575 £650
Median % change year-on-year +4.35% -11.54% +18.18%
75th Percentile £838 £653 £688
90th Percentile - £725 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £491 £627 £650
% change year-on-year -21.69% -3.54% +16.07%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 1 3
10th Percentile £87.75 - £57.60
25th Percentile £90.00 £77.50 £65.25
Median hourly rate £91.00 £85.00 £78.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.06% +8.97% +48.57%
75th Percentile £91.50 £92.50 -
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £91.00 £85.00 £78.00
% change year-on-year +7.06% +8.97% +48.57%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Key Management falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 32,541 28,533 37,398
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.91% 88.47% 87.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,569 17,345 24,861
10th Percentile £304 £308 £305
25th Percentile £406 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £720 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,000 921 1,535
10th Percentile £14.74 £15.62 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.30 £18.93
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -23.53% +21.43%
75th Percentile £55.00 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.65 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.83 £30.45 £45.00
% change year-on-year -21.76% -32.33% +55.17%

Key Management
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Key Management relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Key Management job vacancy trend in the UK

Key Management
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Key Management.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Key Management

Key Management
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Key Management over the 6 months to 7 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Key Management in the UK

Key Management
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Key Management.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Key Management

Key Management
Top 14 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Key Management within the UK over the 6 months to 7 January 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
England +19 116 £600 +4.35% 15
UK excluding London -27 64 £491 -21.69% 14
Work from Home +31 56 £825 +75.53% 8
London +17 54 £825 +83.33% 2
North of England -22 31 £482 -29.65% 5
Yorkshire -33 17 £487 -
West Midlands -25 14 £486 -
Midlands -29 14 £486 -
North West -16 12 £466 -32.06% 5
South East -22 8 £700 +7.69% 4
East of England -16 6 - - 1
South West -12 4 £613 +17.22% 3
Scotland - 3 £675 - 1
North East - 2 £466 -

Key Management
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 22 (16.67%) Confluence
2 9 (6.82%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.76%) nginx
Applications
1 9 (6.82%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (1.52%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 3 (2.27%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (0.76%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.76%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 35 (26.52%) AWS
2 26 (19.70%) IaaS
3 22 (16.67%) Azure
4 13 (9.85%) GitHub
5 12 (9.09%) Amazon EKS
6 9 (6.82%) GCP
7 8 (6.06%) AWS KMS
7 8 (6.06%) OpenShift
8 7 (5.30%) AWS CloudFormation
9 6 (4.55%) Azure Key Vault
10 4 (3.03%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 4 (3.03%) AWS CloudTrail
10 4 (3.03%) AWS Lambda
10 4 (3.03%) Entra ID
10 4 (3.03%) GitHub Actions
10 4 (3.03%) Serverless
10 4 (3.03%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 2 (1.52%) Amazon EC2
11 2 (1.52%) Amazon S3
11 2 (1.52%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 31 (23.48%) SSH
2 22 (16.67%) SSL
3 10 (7.58%) Firewall
4 8 (6.06%) Network Security
4 8 (6.06%) S/MIME
5 6 (4.55%) VPN
6 5 (3.79%) Kerberos
7 4 (3.03%) DNS
8 3 (2.27%) TCP/IP
9 2 (1.52%) 3GPP
9 2 (1.52%) MVNO
9 2 (1.52%) SMPP
9 2 (1.52%) SMS
9 2 (1.52%) SNMP
10 1 (0.76%) DMZ
10 1 (0.76%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (7.58%) MongoDB
2 7 (5.30%) DocumentDB
2 7 (5.30%) NoSQL
3 4 (3.03%) OLTP
4 3 (2.27%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (1.52%) Amazon RDS
6 1 (0.76%) Apache Hive
6 1 (0.76%) Elasticsearch
6 1 (0.76%) Hadoop
6 1 (0.76%) Impala
6 1 (0.76%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (0.76%) Redis
6 1 (0.76%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 25 (18.94%) JIRA
2 10 (7.58%) Git
3 7 (5.30%) GitLab
3 7 (5.30%) Jenkins
4 3 (2.27%) CircleCI
5 2 (1.52%) git-flow
6 1 (0.76%) Browser DevTools
6 1 (0.76%) Fiddler
6 1 (0.76%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.76%) TeamCity
General
1 42 (31.82%) Analytical Skills
2 33 (25.00%) Social Skills
3 20 (15.15%) Finance
4 10 (7.58%) Public Sector
5 9 (6.82%) Banking
6 7 (5.30%) Military
7 5 (3.79%) Presentation Skills
8 4 (3.03%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (3.03%) Law
9 3 (2.27%) Local Government
10 2 (1.52%) Aerospace
10 2 (1.52%) Financial Institution
10 2 (1.52%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.76%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.76%) Manufacturing
11 1 (0.76%) Private Banking
11 1 (0.76%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 40 (30.30%) Architect
2 15 (11.36%) Consultant
3 14 (10.61%) Developer
4 13 (9.85%) Lead
5 11 (8.33%) Analyst
5 11 (8.33%) Security Engineer
6 6 (4.55%) Management Consultant
6 6 (4.55%) Security Consultant
7 5 (3.79%) Full-Stack Developer
7 5 (3.79%) Security Architect
8 4 (3.03%) Oracle Developer
9 3 (2.27%) Build Engineer
9 3 (2.27%) Full-Stack Engineer
9 3 (2.27%) Technical Engineer
10 2 (1.52%) Automation Specialist
10 2 (1.52%) AWS Architect
10 2 (1.52%) Cloud Architect
10 2 (1.52%) Cryptography Engineer
10 2 (1.52%) Enterprise Security Architect
10 2 (1.52%) Senior
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (25.00%) REST
2 28 (21.21%) JSON
3 10 (7.58%) Kafka
4 9 (6.82%) SAML
5 8 (6.06%) OAuth
6 7 (5.30%) HTML
6 7 (5.30%) LDAP
6 7 (5.30%) Node.js
6 7 (5.30%) RESTful
6 7 (5.30%) Spring
6 7 (5.30%) Spring Boot
7 4 (3.03%) OpenID
8 3 (2.27%) OAuth2
9 2 (1.52%) .NET
10 1 (0.76%) ADO
10 1 (0.76%) Elastic Stack
10 1 (0.76%) JAAS
10 1 (0.76%) JSSE
10 1 (0.76%) SignalR
10 1 (0.76%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 67 (50.76%) PKI
2 26 (19.70%) Self-Motivation
3 13 (9.85%) Algorithms
4 9 (6.82%) Tandem
5 8 (6.06%) Management Information System
6 5 (3.79%) Data Protection Act
6 5 (3.79%) Java Card
7 4 (3.03%) Enterprise Software
7 4 (3.03%) Hybrid Cloud
7 4 (3.03%) Legacy Code
8 3 (2.27%) Analytical Mindset
8 3 (2.27%) EMV
8 3 (2.27%) Mobile App
8 3 (2.27%) Onboarding
8 3 (2.27%) Smartcard
9 2 (1.52%) Data Centre
9 2 (1.52%) IoT
9 2 (1.52%) Machine to Machine
9 2 (1.52%) Security Posture
9 2 (1.52%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 20 (15.15%) Windows
2 14 (10.61%) Linux
3 12 (9.09%) Unix
4 7 (5.30%) AIX
4 7 (5.30%) Solaris
5 3 (2.27%) Android
5 3 (2.27%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.76%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 40 (30.30%) Agile
2 38 (28.79%) Cryptography
3 29 (21.97%) Identity Access Management
4 28 (21.21%) CI/CD
4 28 (21.21%) Configuration Management
5 22 (16.67%) Computer Science
6 21 (15.91%) Cloud Security
6 21 (15.91%) Information Security
7 20 (15.15%) Containerisation
8 19 (14.39%) DevOps
8 19 (14.39%) Incident Response
9 18 (13.64%) Incident Management
10 17 (12.88%) Change Management
10 17 (12.88%) RBAC
11 16 (12.12%) Data Protection
11 16 (12.12%) Roadmaps
12 15 (11.36%) Cybersecurity
12 15 (11.36%) Stakeholder Management
13 14 (10.61%) Knowledge Transfer
14 13 (9.85%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 39 (29.55%) PowerShell
2 22 (16.67%) Python
3 13 (9.85%) Bash
4 10 (7.58%) Java
5 8 (6.06%) SQL
6 7 (5.30%) JavaScript
6 7 (5.30%) Shell Script
7 4 (3.03%) PL/SQL
7 4 (3.03%) ProC
8 3 (2.27%) C
8 3 (2.27%) Go
9 2 (1.52%) Bicep
9 2 (1.52%) C++
10 1 (0.76%) Korn
10 1 (0.76%) Rust
Qualifications
1 57 (43.18%) Security Cleared
2 47 (35.61%) SC Cleared
3 26 (19.70%) Degree
4 20 (15.15%) CISSP
5 19 (14.39%) Computer Science Degree
6 15 (11.36%) CISM
7 7 (5.30%) DV Cleared
8 6 (4.55%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (3.79%) AWS Certification
10 4 (3.03%) Master's Degree
11 3 (2.27%) BPSS Clearance
11 3 (2.27%) GIAC
12 2 (1.52%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 2 (1.52%) CCSP
12 2 (1.52%) CEH
12 2 (1.52%) Cisco Certification
12 2 (1.52%) FFIEC
12 2 (1.52%) ITIL Certification
12 2 (1.52%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 2 (1.52%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (15.91%) NIST
2 16 (12.12%) PCI DSS
3 14 (10.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 11 (8.33%) GDPR
4 11 (8.33%) NCSC
5 7 (5.30%) JSP 440
5 7 (5.30%) NIST 800
6 6 (4.55%) FIPS 140-2
7 5 (3.79%) SOC 2
8 4 (3.03%) HIPAA
9 3 (2.27%) Accessibility
9 3 (2.27%) SLA
10 1 (0.76%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.76%) GRC
10 1 (0.76%) ISO/IEC 27005
10 1 (0.76%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 1 (0.76%) QA
System Software
1 18 (13.64%) Active Directory
2 14 (10.61%) Docker
3 8 (6.06%) Firmware
4 1 (0.76%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 24 (18.18%) Kubernetes
2 17 (12.88%) Terraform
3 15 (11.36%) Ansible
4 6 (4.55%) Prometheus
5 5 (3.79%) Grafana
5 5 (3.79%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.76%) Kibana
6 1 (0.76%) Progress Chef
6 1 (0.76%) Suricata
Vendors
1 23 (17.42%) Microsoft
2 18 (13.64%) Thales
3 12 (9.09%) CyberArk
4 9 (6.82%) IBM
5 7 (5.30%) BeyondTrust
5 7 (5.30%) Oracle
5 7 (5.30%) Splunk
6 5 (3.79%) Gemalto
6 5 (3.79%) ServiceNow
7 4 (3.03%) BiZZdesign
7 4 (3.03%) Dynatrace
8 2 (1.52%) CloudEndure
9 1 (0.76%) AppDynamics
9 1 (0.76%) CrowdStrike
9 1 (0.76%) Qualys
9 1 (0.76%) Sparx
9 1 (0.76%) WSO2