PKI Contract Job Trends

Public-Key Infrastructure (PKI)
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term PKI in contract job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited PKI over the 6 months leading up to 11 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 330 307 224
Rank change year-on-year -23 -83 +128
Contract jobs citing PKI 282 224 466
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.77% 0.70% 1.08%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.26% 2.19% 3.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 211 127 284
10th Percentile £400 £413 £394
25th Percentile £482 £475 £465
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £573
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +0.44% -4.58%
75th Percentile £688 £649 £675
90th Percentile £838 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £551 £563
% change year-on-year -0.18% -2.04% -2.17%
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 excluding London median hourly rate £90.00 - £55.00

All Generic Skills
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for generic IT skills 12,492 10,232 13,323
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.33% 32.19% 31.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,849 6,089 8,809
10th Percentile £281 £263 £263
25th Percentile £406 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £535 £545
Median % change year-on-year -6.45% -1.83% -0.91%
75th Percentile £628 £663 £660
90th Percentile £738 £775 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 614 316 551
10th Percentile £14.25 £18.14 £15.43
25th Percentile £18.25 £23.30 £18.94
Median hourly rate £27.50 £34.25 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -19.71% -8.67% +50.00%
75th Percentile £61.07 £64.81 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.21 £32.50 £41.23
% change year-on-year -16.28% -21.17% +96.99%

PKI
Job Vacancy Trend

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

PKI job vacancy trend in the UK

PKI
Daily Rate Trend

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing PKI

PKI
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing PKI over the 6 months to 11 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for PKI in the UK

PKI
Hourly Rate Trend

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing PKI

PKI
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing PKI over the 6 months to 11 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for PKI in the UK

PKI
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 PKI within the UK over the 6 months to 11 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 +25 261 £550 -3.51% 69
UK excluding London -52 161 £550 -0.18% 57
London +50 96 £605 +2.48% 14
Work from Home 0 79 £700 +20.17% 35
South East +25 65 £600 -1.64% 19
South West -44 36 £563 +2.27% 17
West Midlands -4 35 £400 -17.95% 3
Midlands -14 35 £400 -17.95% 3
North of England -38 17 £489 -32.62% 14
North West -20 9 £500 +2.56% 7
Yorkshire -44 8 £487 -32.83% 5
Scotland -25 6 £650 +48.57% 1
East of England - 3 £550 - 6
Wales -1 1 £550 +20.22% 1

PKI
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 37 (13.12%) Microsoft Exchange
2 14 (4.96%) SharePoint
3 9 (3.19%) Confluence
4 7 (2.48%) IIS
5 6 (2.13%) Skype for Business
6 4 (1.42%) SharePoint Server
7 3 (1.06%) Exchange Server 2010
7 3 (1.06%) nginx
8 1 (0.35%) Apache
8 1 (0.35%) JBoss
Applications
1 17 (6.03%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.71%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 49 (17.38%) Azure
2 48 (17.02%) AWS
3 29 (10.28%) IaaS
4 22 (7.80%) Microsoft 365
5 21 (7.45%) Entra ID
6 13 (4.61%) GitHub
7 10 (3.55%) AWS CloudFormation
8 9 (3.19%) OpenShift
8 9 (3.19%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 7 (2.48%) SaaS
10 6 (2.13%) GCP
10 6 (2.13%) PaaS
11 5 (1.77%) Amazon ECS
11 5 (1.77%) AWS Fargate
11 5 (1.77%) AWS KMS
12 4 (1.42%) Amazon EKS
12 4 (1.42%) Power Platform
13 3 (1.06%) Azure DevOps
13 3 (1.06%) Power Automate
13 3 (1.06%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 57 (20.21%) DNS
2 55 (19.50%) Firewall
3 36 (12.77%) VPN
4 34 (12.06%) BGP
5 30 (10.64%) IPsec
6 26 (9.22%) WAN
7 25 (8.87%) DHCP
8 24 (8.51%) SSL
9 23 (8.16%) Network Security
10 22 (7.80%) MPLS
11 16 (5.67%) Skype
12 10 (3.55%) OSPF
12 10 (3.55%) TCP/IP
13 9 (3.19%) S/MIME
14 8 (2.84%) HTTPS
14 8 (2.84%) Junos
15 6 (2.13%) Cisco ISE
15 6 (2.13%) Kerberos
16 5 (1.77%) EIGRP
16 5 (1.77%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (3.90%) SQL Server
2 6 (2.13%) Elasticsearch
3 5 (1.77%) MongoDB
4 4 (1.42%) Amazon RDS
5 1 (0.35%) Amazon QuickSight
5 1 (0.35%) Redis
Development Applications
1 14 (4.96%) JIRA
2 13 (4.61%) GitLab
3 7 (2.48%) Jenkins
4 4 (1.42%) Robot Framework
4 4 (1.42%) Sonatype Nexus
4 4 (1.42%) Terragrunt
5 2 (0.71%) Git
6 1 (0.35%) Artifactory
6 1 (0.35%) CircleCI
6 1 (0.35%) JUnit
6 1 (0.35%) MSI
6 1 (0.35%) SpecFlow
General
1 51 (18.09%) Analytical Skills
1 51 (18.09%) Social Skills
2 32 (11.35%) Public Sector
3 22 (7.80%) Finance
4 13 (4.61%) Military
5 6 (2.13%) Banking
6 4 (1.42%) Documentation Skills
6 4 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
7 2 (0.71%) Financial Institution
7 2 (0.71%) Legal
7 2 (0.71%) Local Government
8 1 (0.35%) Aerospace
8 1 (0.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.35%) Influencing Skills
8 1 (0.35%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.35%) Pharmaceutical
8 1 (0.35%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 87 (30.85%) Architect
2 31 (10.99%) Senior
3 26 (9.22%) 3rd Line Engineer
3 26 (9.22%) Support Engineer
4 23 (8.16%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 20 (7.09%) 3rd Line Support
6 19 (6.74%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
7 17 (6.03%) Wintel Engineer
8 16 (5.67%) Network Engineer
9 15 (5.32%) Administrator
9 15 (5.32%) Platform Manager
9 15 (5.32%) Security Architect
9 15 (5.32%) Systems Administrator
9 15 (5.32%) Systems Manager
9 15 (5.32%) Wintel Administrator
9 15 (5.32%) Wintel Systems Administrator
10 12 (4.26%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 11 (3.90%) Lead
12 10 (3.55%) 2nd Line Engineer
12 10 (3.55%) WAN Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (10.99%) REST
2 28 (9.93%) JSON
3 16 (5.67%) OpenID
4 11 (3.90%) OAuth
4 11 (3.90%) SAML
5 10 (3.55%) OAuth2
6 6 (2.13%) Elastic Stack
6 6 (2.13%) Kafka
6 6 (2.13%) LDAP
7 5 (1.77%) cloud-init
7 5 (1.77%) Keycloak
8 4 (1.42%) AWS CDK
9 3 (1.06%) .NET
9 3 (1.06%) JDBC
9 3 (1.06%) SOAP
10 2 (0.71%) 802.1X
10 2 (0.71%) CSS
10 2 (0.71%) HTML
10 2 (0.71%) Microsoft Graph
10 2 (0.71%) ModSecurity
Miscellaneous
1 30 (10.64%) Self-Motivation
2 14 (4.96%) Algorithms
3 13 (4.61%) Fat Client
3 13 (4.61%) Thin Client
4 10 (3.55%) Data Centre
5 8 (2.84%) Private Cloud
6 7 (2.48%) Management Information System
7 5 (1.77%) Legacy Applications
7 5 (1.77%) Public Cloud
7 5 (1.77%) Replication
7 5 (1.77%) Smartcard
8 4 (1.42%) Clustering
8 4 (1.42%) Enterprise Storage
8 4 (1.42%) Onboarding
8 4 (1.42%) Security Operations Centre
8 4 (1.42%) Security Posture
9 3 (1.06%) Analytical Mindset
9 3 (1.06%) Cloud Native
9 3 (1.06%) Cyber Defence
9 3 (1.06%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 93 (32.98%) Windows
2 49 (17.38%) Linux
3 44 (15.60%) Windows Server
4 13 (4.61%) Windows 10
5 11 (3.90%) Windows 7
6 9 (3.19%) Windows Server 2012
7 8 (2.84%) CentOS
8 7 (2.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 7 (2.48%) Unix
9 5 (1.77%) Windows Server 2008
9 5 (1.77%) Windows Server 2016
9 5 (1.77%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (1.06%) VMS
10 3 (1.06%) Windows Server 2003
11 1 (0.35%) Android
11 1 (0.35%) Solaris
11 1 (0.35%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 85 (30.14%) Agile
2 68 (24.11%) Key Management
3 37 (13.12%) ITIL
4 36 (12.77%) Change Management
5 35 (12.41%) CI/CD
6 32 (11.35%) Problem-Solving
7 30 (10.64%) Configuration Management
7 30 (10.64%) DevOps
7 30 (10.64%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 25 (8.87%) Cryptography
8 25 (8.87%) Cybersecurity
9 24 (8.51%) Containerisation
9 24 (8.51%) Platform Engineering
9 24 (8.51%) Service Management
10 23 (8.16%) Identity Access Management
10 23 (8.16%) Incident Response
10 23 (8.16%) Information Security
10 23 (8.16%) Infrastructure as Code
10 23 (8.16%) SIEM
11 21 (7.45%) Security Architecture
Programming Languages
1 73 (25.89%) PowerShell
2 45 (15.96%) Python
3 21 (7.45%) Bash
4 20 (7.09%) SQL
5 6 (2.13%) JavaScript
5 6 (2.13%) Perl
5 6 (2.13%) Shell Script
6 5 (1.77%) C++
6 5 (1.77%) Go
6 5 (1.77%) Java
7 1 (0.35%) Bicep
7 1 (0.35%) C
7 1 (0.35%) C#
7 1 (0.35%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 195 (69.15%) Security Cleared
2 100 (35.46%) SC Cleared
3 89 (31.56%) DV Cleared
4 35 (12.41%) Degree
5 25 (8.87%) Microsoft Certification
6 22 (7.80%) CISSP
7 19 (6.74%) Cisco Certification
8 16 (5.67%) CISM
9 14 (4.96%) CCNP
10 12 (4.26%) MCSE
11 10 (3.55%) Computer Science Degree
12 8 (2.84%) Master's Degree
13 7 (2.48%) ITIL Certification
14 6 (2.13%) AWS Certification
14 6 (2.13%) CCNA
14 6 (2.13%) IISP
14 6 (2.13%) ISACA
14 6 (2.13%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 5 (1.77%) GIAC
15 5 (1.77%) JNCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (5.32%) PCI DSS
2 14 (4.96%) NCSC
3 13 (4.61%) NIST
4 10 (3.55%) GDPR
4 10 (3.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (1.77%) FIPS 140-2
6 4 (1.42%) SLA
7 2 (0.71%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.71%) HIPAA
7 2 (0.71%) JSP 440
7 2 (0.71%) NIST 800
7 2 (0.71%) RMADS
7 2 (0.71%) SOC 1
8 1 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 1 (0.35%) GxP
8 1 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 1 (0.35%) PMO
8 1 (0.35%) PSD2
System Software
1 86 (30.50%) Active Directory
2 43 (15.25%) VMware Infrastructure
3 20 (7.09%) Docker
4 13 (4.61%) Firmware
5 11 (3.90%) Hyper-V
5 11 (3.90%) VMware NSX
6 9 (3.19%) VMware ESXi
6 9 (3.19%) vSphere
7 5 (1.77%) Microsoft Virtual Server
7 5 (1.77%) Virtual Servers
8 4 (1.42%) BitLocker
8 4 (1.42%) Virtual Machines
9 3 (1.06%) Microsoft App-V
9 3 (1.06%) Sendmail
10 2 (0.71%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 1 (0.35%) NFS
11 1 (0.35%) Squid
11 1 (0.35%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 30 (10.64%) Ansible
1 30 (10.64%) Kubernetes
1 30 (10.64%) Terraform
2 20 (7.09%) Single Sign-On
3 19 (6.74%) vCenter Server
4 14 (4.96%) WSUS
5 13 (4.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 13 (4.61%) Microsoft Intune
6 12 (4.26%) SCCM
6 12 (4.26%) WMI
7 9 (3.19%) SCOM
8 6 (2.13%) Grafana
8 6 (2.13%) Prometheus
9 5 (1.77%) Jamf Pro
9 5 (1.77%) Packer
10 4 (1.42%) Podman
10 4 (1.42%) QRadar
11 3 (1.06%) OPNET
11 3 (1.06%) Proxmox
11 3 (1.06%) vMotion
Vendors
1 95 (33.69%) Microsoft
2 66 (23.40%) VMware
3 36 (12.77%) Cisco
4 33 (11.70%) Juniper
5 23 (8.16%) Splunk
6 15 (5.32%) SolarWinds
7 14 (4.96%) Veeam
8 13 (4.61%) Thales
9 8 (2.84%) Palo Alto
10 7 (2.48%) Citrix
10 7 (2.48%) Dell
11 6 (2.13%) Broadcom
11 6 (2.13%) Google
11 6 (2.13%) ServiceNow
12 5 (1.77%) Aruba
12 5 (1.77%) CyberArk
12 5 (1.77%) Fortinet
12 5 (1.77%) Okta
12 5 (1.77%) Red Hat
13 4 (1.42%) Zscaler