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

6 months to
27 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 396 343 228
Rank change year-on-year -53 -115 +89
Contract jobs citing PKI 278 201 467
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.55% 0.66% 1.08%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.66% 1.92% 3.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 186 158 327
10th Percentile £417 £358 £363
25th Percentile £463 £490 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.35%
75th Percentile £638 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £686 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £550 £550
% change year-on-year - - -1.92%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 4
10th Percentile £47.22 - -
25th Percentile £56.01 - -
Median hourly rate £71.33 - £23.80
75th Percentile £72.27 - £27.91
90th Percentile £72.43 - £35.32
UK excluding London median hourly rate £71.33 - £38.50
% change year-on-year - - +156.67%

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 16,745 10,494 13,082
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.85% 34.61% 30.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,252 6,549 8,293
10th Percentile £313 £300 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £630 £650 £663
90th Percentile £750 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 858 478 929
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.84 £12.25
25th Percentile £21.00 £19.00 £15.39
Median hourly rate £43.10 £31.04 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +38.86% -14.96% +62.22%
75th Percentile £70.00 £58.46 £62.50
90th Percentile £86.52 £80.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £30.25 £36.05
% change year-on-year +45.32% -16.08% +60.20%

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 27 June 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 27 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for PKI in the UK

PKI
Top 15 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 27 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
England -82 235 £560 -1.97% 53
UK excluding London -53 182 £550 - 53
South East +2 101 £590 +2.61% 19
London -62 70 £550 -4.35% 13
Work from Home -57 65 £550 - 25
North of England -50 30 £425 -13.62% 11
Scotland +8 21 £491 -8.22% 8
North West -38 21 £422 -14.33% 6
South West -65 15 £538 -6.52% 8
Midlands -68 11 £450 +12.50% 2
West Midlands -69 10 £400 - 1
Yorkshire - 9 £565 - 4
East of England -27 4 £400 -23.81% 1
Wales - 2 £538 - 4
East Midlands -13 1 £475 - 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 11 (3.96%) Microsoft Exchange
1 11 (3.96%) SharePoint
2 9 (3.24%) Confluence
3 7 (2.52%) IIS
4 3 (1.08%) Apache
4 3 (1.08%) Tomcat
4 3 (1.08%) WebSphere
5 2 (0.72%) Exchange Server 2010
6 1 (0.36%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 4 (1.44%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 10 (3.60%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.36%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.36%) Dynamics GP
Cloud Services
1 87 (31.29%) Azure
2 63 (22.66%) AWS
3 51 (18.35%) Entra ID
4 21 (7.55%) Microsoft 365
5 20 (7.19%) GCP
6 17 (6.12%) Power Platform
7 10 (3.60%) Azure Key Vault
7 10 (3.60%) IaaS
7 10 (3.60%) OpenShift
8 9 (3.24%) PaaS
9 7 (2.52%) Azure DevOps
10 5 (1.80%) AWS KMS
10 5 (1.80%) GitHub
11 4 (1.44%) SaaS
12 3 (1.08%) Amazon EKS
13 2 (0.72%) Azure Monitor
13 2 (0.72%) Azure Sentinel
13 2 (0.72%) GitHub Actions
13 2 (0.72%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 2 (0.72%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 77 (27.70%) DNS
2 59 (21.22%) Firewall
3 53 (19.06%) DHCP
4 37 (13.31%) BGP
5 36 (12.95%) WAN
6 31 (11.15%) LAN
7 30 (10.79%) VPN
8 28 (10.07%) OSPF
9 26 (9.35%) Network Security
10 25 (8.99%) Ethernet VPN
10 25 (8.99%) VXLAN
11 24 (8.63%) BIG-IP
11 24 (8.63%) Cisco ISE
12 23 (8.27%) Junos
13 19 (6.83%) SSL
14 11 (3.96%) MPLS
15 10 (3.60%) Cisco ASA
15 10 (3.60%) SSH
16 9 (3.24%) IPsec
16 9 (3.24%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (6.12%) SQL Server
2 12 (4.32%) Power BI
3 9 (3.24%) Elasticsearch
4 5 (1.80%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (1.44%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (1.44%) MongoDB
5 4 (1.44%) MySQL
6 3 (1.08%) Big Data
7 2 (0.72%) Metadata
7 2 (0.72%) NoSQL
8 1 (0.36%) Db2
8 1 (0.36%) RDBMS
8 1 (0.36%) Relational Database
8 1 (0.36%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 12 (4.32%) JIRA
2 8 (2.88%) GitLab
3 6 (2.16%) Git
3 6 (2.16%) Jenkins
4 4 (1.44%) Robot Framework
4 4 (1.44%) Sonatype Nexus
5 3 (1.08%) Terragrunt
6 2 (0.72%) Burp Suite
6 2 (0.72%) Cucumber
6 2 (0.72%) Gatling
6 2 (0.72%) Gradle
6 2 (0.72%) LoadRunner
6 2 (0.72%) MSI
6 2 (0.72%) REST Assured
6 2 (0.72%) SonarQube
General
1 39 (14.03%) Social Skills
2 32 (11.51%) Finance
3 27 (9.71%) Public Sector
4 11 (3.96%) Analytical Skills
4 11 (3.96%) Documentation Skills
5 8 (2.88%) Banking
6 5 (1.80%) Legal
6 5 (1.80%) Military
6 5 (1.80%) Retail
7 2 (0.72%) Corporate Banking
7 2 (0.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 2 (0.72%) Influencing Skills
7 2 (0.72%) Investment Banking
7 2 (0.72%) Local Government
7 2 (0.72%) Retail Banking
8 1 (0.36%) Back Office
8 1 (0.36%) Financial Institution
8 1 (0.36%) Law
8 1 (0.36%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.36%) Wearables
Job Titles
1 51 (18.35%) Senior
2 45 (16.19%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 31 (11.15%) Architect
4 23 (8.27%) Network Engineer
5 18 (6.47%) 3rd Line Engineer
6 16 (5.76%) Lead
6 16 (5.76%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
7 14 (5.04%) Firewall Specialist
7 14 (5.04%) Network Specialist
7 14 (5.04%) Support Engineer
8 13 (4.68%) Storage Engineer
9 12 (4.32%) Senior Network Engineer
10 11 (3.96%) DevOps Engineer
11 10 (3.60%) Analyst
11 10 (3.60%) Security Engineer
11 10 (3.60%) Senior Architect
12 9 (3.24%) 3rd Line Infrastructure Engineer
12 9 (3.24%) Linux Engineer
13 6 (2.16%) ITSM Architect
13 6 (2.16%) VMware Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (12.23%) 802.1X
2 23 (8.27%) OpenID
3 20 (7.19%) SAML
4 19 (6.83%) LDAP
5 16 (5.76%) OAuth
6 14 (5.04%) REST
7 7 (2.52%) JSON
7 7 (2.52%) OAuth2
7 7 (2.52%) RabbitMQ
8 5 (1.80%) Kafka
9 4 (1.44%) Keycloak
9 4 (1.44%) SailPoint
10 3 (1.08%) FIDO
10 3 (1.08%) Microsoft Graph
10 3 (1.08%) SPIFFE
11 2 (0.72%) Blazor
11 2 (0.72%) eBPF
11 2 (0.72%) Playwright
11 2 (0.72%) Quarkus
11 2 (0.72%) WebAuthn
Miscellaneous
1 47 (16.91%) Clustering
2 30 (10.79%) Data Centre
3 12 (4.32%) Onboarding
4 10 (3.60%) Cloud Native
4 10 (3.60%) Hybrid Cloud
5 9 (3.24%) Enterprise Storage
5 9 (3.24%) Linux Command Line
6 8 (2.88%) Public Cloud
7 7 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
7 7 (2.52%) Management Information System
8 6 (2.16%) Distributed Systems
8 6 (2.16%) Operational Technology
8 6 (2.16%) Security Posture
9 5 (1.80%) Algorithms
9 5 (1.80%) Enterprise Software
9 5 (1.80%) Fat Client
9 5 (1.80%) Private Cloud
9 5 (1.80%) Thin Client
10 4 (1.44%) Data Protection Act
10 4 (1.44%) Smartcard
Operating Systems
1 132 (47.48%) Windows
2 74 (26.62%) Linux
3 68 (24.46%) Windows Server
4 11 (3.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 9 (3.24%) Ubuntu
6 6 (2.16%) Debian
6 6 (2.16%) Unix
6 6 (2.16%) Windows Server 2003
6 6 (2.16%) Windows Server 2019
7 5 (1.80%) Windows Server 2012
8 4 (1.44%) Android
8 4 (1.44%) Windows Server 2016
9 3 (1.08%) Apple iOS
9 3 (1.08%) Mac OS
10 2 (0.72%) CentOS
10 2 (0.72%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.36%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.36%) VMS
11 1 (0.36%) Windows 7
11 1 (0.36%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 80 (28.78%) Identity Access Management
2 50 (17.99%) ITIL
3 49 (17.63%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 44 (15.83%) High Availability
5 42 (15.11%) Cybersecurity
6 40 (14.39%) Agile
7 39 (14.03%) Problem-Solving
8 38 (13.67%) Zero Trust
9 37 (13.31%) DevOps
10 36 (12.95%) Observability
11 31 (11.15%) Load Balancing
12 28 (10.07%) ITSM
13 27 (9.71%) Infrastructure as Code
13 27 (9.71%) Key Management
13 27 (9.71%) RBAC
13 27 (9.71%) Service Management
14 26 (9.35%) CI/CD
15 24 (8.63%) Cryptography
15 24 (8.63%) Project Delivery
16 20 (7.19%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 66 (23.74%) PowerShell
2 45 (16.19%) Python
3 13 (4.68%) SQL
4 11 (3.96%) JavaScript
5 9 (3.24%) Bash
6 8 (2.88%) C#
6 8 (2.88%) Java
7 4 (1.44%) PHP
8 3 (1.08%) C++
8 3 (1.08%) Go
9 2 (0.72%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 148 (53.24%) Security Cleared
2 88 (31.65%) DV Cleared
3 61 (21.94%) SC Cleared
4 30 (10.79%) Cisco Certification
5 21 (7.55%) Degree
6 13 (4.68%) Microsoft Certification
7 12 (4.32%) CISSP
8 10 (3.60%) Azure Certification
8 10 (3.60%) MCSE
9 9 (3.24%) GIAC
10 8 (2.88%) CCNP
10 8 (2.88%) CISM
10 8 (2.88%) CompTIA Security+
11 7 (2.52%) JNCIA
11 7 (2.52%) JNCIP
11 7 (2.52%) JNCIS
12 5 (1.80%) Master's Degree
12 5 (1.80%) SSCP
13 4 (1.44%) Computer Science Degree
13 4 (1.44%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (10.43%) NIST
2 20 (7.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 14 (5.04%) NCSC
4 10 (3.60%) Cyber Essentials
5 8 (2.88%) SLA
6 7 (2.52%) QA
7 4 (1.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 4 (1.44%) GDPR
7 4 (1.44%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.72%) Government Security Classifications
8 2 (0.72%) ISA99
8 2 (0.72%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 2 (0.72%) NIST 800
8 2 (0.72%) RMADS
8 2 (0.72%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.36%) GMP
9 1 (0.36%) GRC
9 1 (0.36%) GxP
9 1 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 1 (0.36%) JSP 440
System Software
1 100 (35.97%) Active Directory
2 52 (18.71%) VMware Infrastructure
3 28 (10.07%) Docker
4 22 (7.91%) Hyper-V
5 18 (6.47%) VMware NSX
6 17 (6.12%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (3.60%) BitLocker
8 9 (3.24%) Microsoft App-V
9 8 (2.88%) Virtual Machines
10 5 (1.80%) Firmware
11 4 (1.44%) Terminal Services
11 4 (1.44%) Virtual Desktop
12 3 (1.08%) KVM
12 3 (1.08%) OpenAM
12 3 (1.08%) OpenSSH
13 2 (0.72%) vSphere
13 2 (0.72%) XenApp
13 2 (0.72%) XenDesktop
14 1 (0.36%) iptables
14 1 (0.36%) NFS
Systems Management
1 45 (16.19%) Ansible
2 41 (14.75%) Kubernetes
3 35 (12.59%) Terraform
4 26 (9.35%) vCenter Server
5 25 (8.99%) Single Sign-On
6 23 (8.27%) FortiGate
7 16 (5.76%) Microsoft Intune
8 13 (4.68%) Puppet
9 12 (4.32%) SCOM
10 10 (3.60%) Prometheus
11 9 (3.24%) Grafana
11 9 (3.24%) vMotion
12 8 (2.88%) Avamar
12 8 (2.88%) SCCM
13 7 (2.52%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 5 (1.80%) Failover Clustering
14 5 (1.80%) Kibana
14 5 (1.80%) WMI
14 5 (1.80%) WSUS
15 4 (1.44%) CA Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 98 (35.25%) Microsoft
2 70 (25.18%) VMware
3 57 (20.50%) Cisco
4 36 (12.95%) Splunk
5 30 (10.79%) Juniper
6 28 (10.07%) F5
7 27 (9.71%) SolarWinds
8 23 (8.27%) ServiceNow
9 22 (7.91%) Extreme Networks
10 19 (6.83%) Citrix
11 18 (6.47%) Okta
12 16 (5.76%) Thales
13 12 (4.32%) Palo Alto
14 11 (3.96%) BeyondTrust
15 10 (3.60%) BMC
15 10 (3.60%) Dell
15 10 (3.60%) NetApp
15 10 (3.60%) Remedy
16 8 (2.88%) ForeScout
17 7 (2.52%) IBM