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

6 months to
16 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 363 325 201
Rank change year-on-year -38 -124 +115
Contract jobs citing PKI 286 223 508
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.62% 0.76% 1.16%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.93% 2.25% 3.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 195 159 343
10th Percentile £413 £413 £363
25th Percentile £489 £492 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year - +4.55% -8.33%
75th Percentile £697 £634 £638
90th Percentile £838 £725 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £555 £570 £550
% change year-on-year -2.63% +3.64% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 0 2
10th Percentile £61.41 - £38.93
25th Percentile £70.50 - £42.19
Median hourly rate £79.50 - £50.75
75th Percentile £96.25 - £60.69
90th Percentile £101.65 - £64.78
UK excluding London median hourly rate £79.50 - £50.75
% change year-on-year - - +45.00%

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 14,844 9,914 13,363
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.32% 33.84% 30.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,287 6,351 8,565
10th Percentile £300 £295 £263
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 704 384 904
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.95 £12.25
25th Percentile £20.72 £22.44 £15.17
Median hourly rate £45.00 £32.50 £27.25
Median % change year-on-year +38.46% +19.27% +21.19%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.52 £57.50
90th Percentile £85.40 £83.20 £67.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £32.50 £25.28
% change year-on-year +46.15% +28.59% +14.89%

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 April 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 April 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 April 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 -29 259 £600 +4.35% 39
UK excluding London -69 166 £555 -2.63% 36
South East +9 102 £610 +5.40% 18
London -15 91 £625 +8.16% 10
Work from Home -25 82 £638 +10.87% 22
North of England -69 19 £482 -27.25% 4
South West -55 18 £563 -2.17% 5
West Midlands -59 18 £425 -
Midlands -68 18 £425 - 6
Yorkshire -51 10 £482 -33.52% 2
North West -34 9 £520 +4.84% 2
East of England -33 6 £475 -9.52% 1
Scotland -9 5 £550 +2.90%
Wales -14 1 £550 +20.22% 2

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 18 (6.29%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (1.75%) Confluence
2 5 (1.75%) IIS
2 5 (1.75%) SharePoint
3 3 (1.05%) Exchange Server 2010
3 3 (1.05%) nginx
4 2 (0.70%) Apache
4 2 (0.70%) Tomcat
4 2 (0.70%) WebSphere
5 1 (0.35%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 3 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 6 (2.10%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.35%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 69 (24.13%) Azure
2 60 (20.98%) AWS
3 33 (11.54%) IaaS
4 30 (10.49%) Microsoft 365
5 27 (9.44%) Entra ID
6 11 (3.85%) GCP
6 11 (3.85%) Power Platform
7 10 (3.50%) PaaS
8 9 (3.15%) OpenShift
8 9 (3.15%) SaaS
9 8 (2.80%) AWS KMS
10 7 (2.45%) Azure Key Vault
11 5 (1.75%) Amazon EKS
11 5 (1.75%) Azure DevOps
12 4 (1.40%) AWS CloudFormation
12 4 (1.40%) Power Automate
12 4 (1.40%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 3 (1.05%) GitHub
13 3 (1.05%) OneDrive
13 3 (1.05%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 70 (24.48%) Firewall
2 69 (24.13%) DNS
3 46 (16.08%) DHCP
4 42 (14.69%) BGP
5 34 (11.89%) WAN
6 32 (11.19%) VPN
7 29 (10.14%) OSPF
8 28 (9.79%) LAN
9 26 (9.09%) Junos
10 25 (8.74%) Cisco ISE
10 25 (8.74%) Ethernet VPN
10 25 (8.74%) VXLAN
11 24 (8.39%) BIG-IP
12 23 (8.04%) Network Security
13 19 (6.64%) SSL
14 13 (4.55%) MPLS
15 12 (4.20%) TCP/IP
16 10 (3.50%) Cisco IOS
16 10 (3.50%) IPsec
17 8 (2.80%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (3.50%) Elasticsearch
2 8 (2.80%) SQL Server
3 6 (2.10%) Power BI
4 2 (0.70%) Metadata
4 2 (0.70%) MongoDB
4 2 (0.70%) MySQL
5 1 (0.35%) Amazon QuickSight
5 1 (0.35%) Amazon RDS
5 1 (0.35%) PostgreSQL
5 1 (0.35%) RDBMS
5 1 (0.35%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 11 (3.85%) JIRA
2 8 (2.80%) GitLab
3 6 (2.10%) Robot Framework
4 4 (1.40%) Sonatype Nexus
5 3 (1.05%) Jenkins
6 2 (0.70%) Git
7 1 (0.35%) JUnit
7 1 (0.35%) MSI
General
1 39 (13.64%) Analytical Skills
2 32 (11.19%) Social Skills
3 26 (9.09%) Public Sector
4 24 (8.39%) Finance
5 7 (2.45%) Military
6 6 (2.10%) Documentation Skills
7 5 (1.75%) Banking
8 3 (1.05%) Legal
9 2 (0.70%) Financial Institution
9 2 (0.70%) Local Government
9 2 (0.70%) Retail
10 1 (0.35%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.35%) Back Office
10 1 (0.35%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.35%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.35%) Presentation Skills
10 1 (0.35%) Wearables
Job Titles
1 85 (29.72%) Architect
2 43 (15.03%) Senior
3 40 (13.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 18 (6.29%) 3rd Line Engineer
4 18 (6.29%) Network Engineer
5 17 (5.94%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
6 14 (4.90%) Network Specialist
7 13 (4.55%) Firewall Specialist
8 11 (3.85%) Security Engineer
9 10 (3.50%) Senior Architect
9 10 (3.50%) Support Engineer
10 9 (3.15%) 3rd Line Infrastructure Engineer
10 9 (3.15%) Administrator
10 9 (3.15%) Senior Network Engineer
11 8 (2.80%) Consultant
12 7 (2.45%) 3rd Line Support
12 7 (2.45%) Security Consultant
12 7 (2.45%) Storage Engineer
12 7 (2.45%) Systems Administrator
12 7 (2.45%) Systems Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (13.64%) REST
2 34 (11.89%) JSON
3 24 (8.39%) 802.1X
4 17 (5.94%) OpenID
5 16 (5.59%) SAML
6 15 (5.24%) LDAP
7 12 (4.20%) OAuth
8 6 (2.10%) OAuth2
9 4 (1.40%) Elastic Stack
10 3 (1.05%) SailPoint
11 2 (0.70%) CSS
11 2 (0.70%) eBPF
11 2 (0.70%) HTML
11 2 (0.70%) Kafka
11 2 (0.70%) Loki
11 2 (0.70%) Microsoft Graph
11 2 (0.70%) SPIFFE
11 2 (0.70%) Web Services
12 1 (0.35%) EJB
12 1 (0.35%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 38 (13.29%) Clustering
2 28 (9.79%) Data Centre
3 26 (9.09%) Self-Motivation
4 11 (3.85%) Enterprise Storage
5 10 (3.50%) Algorithms
5 10 (3.50%) Hybrid Cloud
5 10 (3.50%) Public Cloud
6 8 (2.80%) Private Cloud
7 7 (2.45%) Onboarding
8 6 (2.10%) Cloud Native
8 6 (2.10%) Fat Client
8 6 (2.10%) Management Information System
8 6 (2.10%) Operational Technology
8 6 (2.10%) Thin Client
9 5 (1.75%) Smartcard
10 4 (1.40%) Replication
11 3 (1.05%) Enterprise Software
11 3 (1.05%) Security Posture
12 2 (0.70%) CESG
12 2 (0.70%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 101 (35.31%) Windows
2 53 (18.53%) Linux
3 47 (16.43%) Windows Server
4 10 (3.50%) Windows Server 2012
5 7 (2.45%) Ubuntu
5 7 (2.45%) Windows Server 2003
6 6 (2.10%) Windows 7
7 5 (1.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 4 (1.40%) CentOS
8 4 (1.40%) Windows Server 2019
9 3 (1.05%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.70%) Debian
10 2 (0.70%) VMS
10 2 (0.70%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.35%) Android
11 1 (0.35%) Apple iOS
11 1 (0.35%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.35%) Mac OS
11 1 (0.35%) Solaris
11 1 (0.35%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 73 (25.52%) Agile
2 62 (21.68%) Key Management
3 58 (20.28%) Identity Access Management
4 47 (16.43%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 42 (14.69%) Cybersecurity
6 36 (12.59%) High Availability
7 35 (12.24%) ITIL
7 35 (12.24%) Observability
7 35 (12.24%) Problem-Solving
8 34 (11.89%) CI/CD
9 33 (11.54%) Load Balancing
10 31 (10.84%) Configuration Management
11 28 (9.79%) DevOps
12 27 (9.44%) Change Management
13 25 (8.74%) Infrastructure as Code
13 25 (8.74%) Migration
14 24 (8.39%) Cryptography
15 22 (7.69%) Service Management
15 22 (7.69%) Vulnerability Management
16 21 (7.34%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 81 (28.32%) PowerShell
2 37 (12.94%) Python
3 16 (5.59%) SQL
4 14 (4.90%) Bash
5 8 (2.80%) C#
5 8 (2.80%) JavaScript
6 4 (1.40%) Java
6 4 (1.40%) PHP
7 3 (1.05%) C++
7 3 (1.05%) Go
8 1 (0.35%) Perl
8 1 (0.35%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 195 (68.18%) Security Cleared
2 98 (34.27%) DV Cleared
3 88 (30.77%) SC Cleared
4 25 (8.74%) Cisco Certification
5 20 (6.99%) Degree
6 16 (5.59%) CISSP
7 15 (5.24%) CISM
8 10 (3.50%) Microsoft Certification
9 8 (2.80%) GIAC
10 7 (2.45%) JNCIA
10 7 (2.45%) JNCIP
10 7 (2.45%) JNCIS
11 6 (2.10%) AWS Certification
12 5 (1.75%) Azure Certification
12 5 (1.75%) Computer Science Degree
12 5 (1.75%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 4 (1.40%) APMG
13 4 (1.40%) CompTIA Security+
13 4 (1.40%) MCSE
13 4 (1.40%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (7.34%) NIST
2 17 (5.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 15 (5.24%) NCSC
4 10 (3.50%) Cyber Essentials
5 7 (2.45%) PCI DSS
6 6 (2.10%) GDPR
7 5 (1.75%) QA
8 4 (1.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 3 (1.05%) RMADS
9 3 (1.05%) SLA
10 2 (0.70%) ISA99
10 2 (0.70%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 2 (0.70%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.35%) GMP
11 1 (0.35%) GxP
11 1 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 1 (0.35%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.35%) SOC 2
System Software
1 84 (29.37%) Active Directory
2 47 (16.43%) VMware Infrastructure
3 19 (6.64%) Docker
4 17 (5.94%) VMware ESXi
5 16 (5.59%) Hyper-V
6 13 (4.55%) VMware NSX
7 10 (3.50%) BitLocker
8 9 (3.15%) Firmware
9 8 (2.80%) Microsoft App-V
10 3 (1.05%) Sendmail
10 3 (1.05%) vSphere
10 3 (1.05%) XenApp
11 2 (0.70%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 2 (0.70%) KVM
11 2 (0.70%) OpenSSH
11 2 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
11 2 (0.70%) XenDesktop
12 1 (0.35%) Embedded Firmware
12 1 (0.35%) iptables
12 1 (0.35%) Squid
Systems Management
1 39 (13.64%) Ansible
2 36 (12.59%) Kubernetes
3 35 (12.24%) Terraform
4 23 (8.04%) FortiGate
5 22 (7.69%) vCenter Server
6 16 (5.59%) Single Sign-On
7 13 (4.55%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (3.50%) Prometheus
8 10 (3.50%) Puppet
9 9 (3.15%) Grafana
10 8 (2.80%) vMotion
11 7 (2.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 7 (2.45%) WSUS
12 6 (2.10%) SCCM
12 6 (2.10%) SCOM
12 6 (2.10%) WMI
13 3 (1.05%) CA Single Sign-On
14 2 (0.70%) Cilium
14 2 (0.70%) Failover Clustering
14 2 (0.70%) Suricata
Vendors
1 83 (29.02%) Microsoft
2 68 (23.78%) VMware
3 51 (17.83%) Cisco
4 40 (13.99%) Splunk
5 36 (12.59%) Juniper
6 27 (9.44%) F5
6 27 (9.44%) SolarWinds
7 22 (7.69%) Extreme Networks
8 16 (5.59%) Citrix
9 13 (4.55%) ServiceNow
10 12 (4.20%) Palo Alto
11 10 (3.50%) Thales
12 9 (3.15%) NetApp
13 7 (2.45%) Broadcom
14 6 (2.10%) BMC
14 6 (2.10%) Netskope
14 6 (2.10%) Okta
14 6 (2.10%) Remedy
15 5 (1.75%) Aruba
15 5 (1.75%) BeyondTrust