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 16 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 322 322 225
Rank change year-on-year 0 -97 +120
Contract jobs citing PKI 287 221 458
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.77% 0.69% 1.08%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.25% 2.15% 3.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 213 125 277
10th Percentile £400 £413 £400
25th Percentile £482 £475 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £585
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% -1.71% -6.40%
75th Percentile £688 £649 £675
90th Percentile £838 £733 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £551 £573
% change year-on-year -0.18% -3.76% -0.43%
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 12,745 10,268 13,171
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.27% 32.23% 30.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,049 6,101 8,667
10th Percentile £278 £263 £263
25th Percentile £406 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £531 £549
Median % change year-on-year -5.75% -3.37% -1.79%
75th Percentile £625 £656 £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 610 321 569
10th Percentile £14.25 £18.50 £15.31
25th Percentile £18.23 £23.59 £18.93
Median hourly rate £27.50 £34.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -20.29% -8.00% +57.63%
75th Percentile £61.07 £64.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.30 £80.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.36 £32.50 £41.23
% change year-on-year -15.83% -21.17% +99.18%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 +31 267 £550 -3.51% 93
UK excluding London -43 163 £550 -0.18% 85
London +48 97 £600 +1.64% 17
Work from Home -4 78 £700 +19.66% 29
South East +16 66 £600 -1.64% 29
South West -45 36 £550 - 17
West Midlands -13 35 £400 -5.88% 4
Midlands -20 35 £400 -5.88% 9
North of England -45 18 £489 -32.62% 17
North West -11 10 £500 +2.56% 8
Yorkshire -49 8 £487 -32.83% 7
Scotland -23 6 £650 +48.57% 2
East of England - 3 £550 - 11
Wales -1 1 £550 +20.22% 3

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 38 (13.24%) Microsoft Exchange
2 14 (4.88%) SharePoint
3 8 (2.79%) Confluence
4 7 (2.44%) IIS
5 6 (2.09%) Skype for Business
6 4 (1.39%) SharePoint Server
7 3 (1.05%) Exchange Server 2010
7 3 (1.05%) nginx
8 1 (0.35%) Apache
8 1 (0.35%) JBoss
Applications
1 16 (5.57%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.70%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 52 (18.12%) Azure
2 51 (17.77%) AWS
3 29 (10.10%) IaaS
4 22 (7.67%) Microsoft 365
5 21 (7.32%) Entra ID
6 13 (4.53%) GitHub
7 10 (3.48%) AWS CloudFormation
8 9 (3.14%) OpenShift
8 9 (3.14%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 8 (2.79%) GCP
10 7 (2.44%) SaaS
11 6 (2.09%) PaaS
12 5 (1.74%) Amazon ECS
12 5 (1.74%) AWS Fargate
12 5 (1.74%) AWS KMS
13 4 (1.39%) Amazon EKS
13 4 (1.39%) Power Platform
14 3 (1.05%) Azure DevOps
14 3 (1.05%) Azure Key Vault
14 3 (1.05%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 58 (20.21%) Firewall
2 57 (19.86%) DNS
3 37 (12.89%) BGP
3 37 (12.89%) VPN
4 31 (10.80%) IPsec
5 29 (10.10%) WAN
6 28 (9.76%) Network Security
7 25 (8.71%) DHCP
7 25 (8.71%) SSL
8 24 (8.36%) MPLS
9 16 (5.57%) Skype
10 12 (4.18%) OSPF
11 10 (3.48%) TCP/IP
12 9 (3.14%) S/MIME
13 8 (2.79%) HTTPS
13 8 (2.79%) Junos
14 7 (2.44%) LAN
15 6 (2.09%) Cisco IOS
15 6 (2.09%) Cisco ISE
15 6 (2.09%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (3.83%) SQL Server
2 6 (2.09%) Elasticsearch
3 5 (1.74%) MongoDB
4 4 (1.39%) Amazon RDS
5 1 (0.35%) Amazon QuickSight
5 1 (0.35%) Redis
Development Applications
1 13 (4.53%) GitLab
1 13 (4.53%) JIRA
2 7 (2.44%) Jenkins
3 4 (1.39%) Robot Framework
3 4 (1.39%) Sonatype Nexus
3 4 (1.39%) Terragrunt
4 2 (0.70%) Git
5 1 (0.35%) Artifactory
5 1 (0.35%) CircleCI
5 1 (0.35%) JUnit
5 1 (0.35%) MSI
5 1 (0.35%) SpecFlow
General
1 51 (17.77%) Analytical Skills
2 48 (16.72%) Social Skills
3 34 (11.85%) Public Sector
4 22 (7.67%) Finance
5 13 (4.53%) Military
6 6 (2.09%) Banking
7 4 (1.39%) Documentation Skills
7 4 (1.39%) Presentation Skills
8 2 (0.70%) Financial Institution
8 2 (0.70%) Legal
8 2 (0.70%) Local Government
9 1 (0.35%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.35%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.35%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.35%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 89 (31.01%) Architect
2 31 (10.80%) Senior
3 26 (9.06%) 3rd Line Engineer
3 26 (9.06%) Support Engineer
4 24 (8.36%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 20 (6.97%) 3rd Line Support
6 19 (6.62%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
7 17 (5.92%) Network Engineer
7 17 (5.92%) Wintel Engineer
8 16 (5.57%) Security Architect
9 15 (5.23%) Administrator
9 15 (5.23%) Platform Manager
9 15 (5.23%) Systems Administrator
9 15 (5.23%) Systems Manager
9 15 (5.23%) Wintel Administrator
9 15 (5.23%) Wintel Systems Administrator
10 12 (4.18%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 10 (3.48%) 2nd Line Engineer
11 10 (3.48%) Lead
11 10 (3.48%) WAN Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (10.80%) REST
2 28 (9.76%) JSON
3 16 (5.57%) OpenID
4 11 (3.83%) OAuth
4 11 (3.83%) SAML
5 10 (3.48%) OAuth2
6 7 (2.44%) LDAP
7 6 (2.09%) Elastic Stack
7 6 (2.09%) Kafka
8 5 (1.74%) cloud-init
8 5 (1.74%) Keycloak
9 4 (1.39%) AWS CDK
10 3 (1.05%) .NET
10 3 (1.05%) CSS
10 3 (1.05%) HTML
10 3 (1.05%) JDBC
10 3 (1.05%) SOAP
11 2 (0.70%) 802.1X
11 2 (0.70%) Microsoft Graph
11 2 (0.70%) ModSecurity
Miscellaneous
1 30 (10.45%) Self-Motivation
2 15 (5.23%) Algorithms
3 13 (4.53%) Fat Client
3 13 (4.53%) Thin Client
4 11 (3.83%) Data Centre
5 8 (2.79%) Private Cloud
6 7 (2.44%) Management Information System
7 5 (1.74%) Legacy Applications
7 5 (1.74%) Public Cloud
7 5 (1.74%) Replication
7 5 (1.74%) Smartcard
8 4 (1.39%) Clustering
8 4 (1.39%) Enterprise Storage
8 4 (1.39%) Onboarding
8 4 (1.39%) Security Operations Centre
8 4 (1.39%) Security Posture
9 3 (1.05%) Analytical Mindset
9 3 (1.05%) Cloud Native
9 3 (1.05%) Cyber Defence
9 3 (1.05%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 94 (32.75%) Windows
2 49 (17.07%) Linux
3 45 (15.68%) Windows Server
4 13 (4.53%) Windows 10
5 11 (3.83%) Windows 7
6 9 (3.14%) Windows Server 2012
7 8 (2.79%) CentOS
8 7 (2.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 7 (2.44%) Unix
9 5 (1.74%) Windows Server 2008
9 5 (1.74%) Windows Server 2016
9 5 (1.74%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (1.05%) VMS
10 3 (1.05%) Windows Server 2003
11 2 (0.70%) Ubuntu
12 1 (0.35%) Android
12 1 (0.35%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 85 (29.62%) Agile
2 69 (24.04%) Key Management
3 37 (12.89%) ITIL
4 36 (12.54%) Change Management
5 35 (12.20%) CI/CD
6 32 (11.15%) Problem-Solving
7 31 (10.80%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 30 (10.45%) Configuration Management
9 29 (10.10%) DevOps
10 26 (9.06%) Cryptography
11 25 (8.71%) Cybersecurity
11 25 (8.71%) Information Security
11 25 (8.71%) SIEM
12 24 (8.36%) Containerisation
12 24 (8.36%) Identity Access Management
12 24 (8.36%) Incident Response
12 24 (8.36%) Platform Engineering
12 24 (8.36%) Security Architecture
12 24 (8.36%) Service Management
13 23 (8.01%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 72 (25.09%) PowerShell
2 46 (16.03%) Python
3 21 (7.32%) Bash
3 21 (7.32%) SQL
4 7 (2.44%) JavaScript
5 6 (2.09%) Perl
5 6 (2.09%) Shell Script
6 5 (1.74%) C++
6 5 (1.74%) Go
6 5 (1.74%) Java
7 1 (0.35%) Bicep
7 1 (0.35%) C
7 1 (0.35%) C#
7 1 (0.35%) Kusto Query Language
7 1 (0.35%) PHP
Qualifications
1 201 (70.03%) Security Cleared
2 103 (35.89%) SC Cleared
3 93 (32.40%) DV Cleared
4 35 (12.20%) Degree
5 25 (8.71%) Microsoft Certification
6 24 (8.36%) CISSP
7 21 (7.32%) Cisco Certification
8 18 (6.27%) CISM
9 15 (5.23%) CCNP
10 12 (4.18%) MCSE
11 10 (3.48%) Computer Science Degree
12 8 (2.79%) Master's Degree
13 7 (2.44%) ITIL Certification
14 6 (2.09%) AWS Certification
14 6 (2.09%) CCNA
14 6 (2.09%) GIAC
14 6 (2.09%) IISP
14 6 (2.09%) ISACA
14 6 (2.09%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 5 (1.74%) JNCIA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (5.92%) NCSC
2 15 (5.23%) PCI DSS
3 14 (4.88%) NIST
4 12 (4.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 10 (3.48%) GDPR
6 5 (1.74%) FIPS 140-2
7 4 (1.39%) RMADS
7 4 (1.39%) SLA
8 3 (1.05%) JSP 440
9 2 (0.70%) Accessibility
9 2 (0.70%) Cyber Essentials
9 2 (0.70%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 2 (0.70%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.70%) NIST 800
9 2 (0.70%) SOC 1
10 1 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 1 (0.35%) PSD2
10 1 (0.35%) SOC 2
System Software
1 87 (30.31%) Active Directory
2 44 (15.33%) VMware Infrastructure
3 20 (6.97%) Docker
4 13 (4.53%) Firmware
5 11 (3.83%) Hyper-V
5 11 (3.83%) VMware NSX
6 10 (3.48%) VMware ESXi
7 9 (3.14%) vSphere
8 5 (1.74%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 5 (1.74%) Virtual Servers
9 4 (1.39%) BitLocker
9 4 (1.39%) Virtual Machines
10 3 (1.05%) Microsoft App-V
10 3 (1.05%) Sendmail
11 2 (0.70%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 1 (0.35%) NFS
12 1 (0.35%) Squid
12 1 (0.35%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 30 (10.45%) Ansible
1 30 (10.45%) Kubernetes
1 30 (10.45%) Terraform
2 20 (6.97%) Single Sign-On
2 20 (6.97%) vCenter Server
3 14 (4.88%) WSUS
4 13 (4.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 13 (4.53%) Microsoft Intune
5 12 (4.18%) SCCM
5 12 (4.18%) WMI
6 10 (3.48%) SCOM
7 6 (2.09%) Grafana
7 6 (2.09%) Prometheus
8 5 (1.74%) Jamf Pro
8 5 (1.74%) Packer
9 4 (1.39%) Podman
9 4 (1.39%) QRadar
10 3 (1.05%) FortiGate
10 3 (1.05%) Proxmox
10 3 (1.05%) vMotion
Vendors
1 93 (32.40%) Microsoft
2 68 (23.69%) VMware
3 39 (13.59%) Cisco
4 34 (11.85%) Juniper
5 23 (8.01%) Splunk
6 15 (5.23%) SolarWinds
6 15 (5.23%) Veeam
7 13 (4.53%) Thales
8 10 (3.48%) Palo Alto
9 7 (2.44%) Broadcom
9 7 (2.44%) Citrix
9 7 (2.44%) Dell
10 6 (2.09%) Aruba
10 6 (2.09%) Fortinet
10 6 (2.09%) Google
11 5 (1.74%) CheckPoint
11 5 (1.74%) CyberArk
11 5 (1.74%) Netskope
11 5 (1.74%) Red Hat
11 5 (1.74%) ServiceNow