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

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 356 341 280
Rank change year-on-year -15 -61 -1
Contract jobs citing PKI 350 230 318
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.64% 0.70% 0.82%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.89% 1.96% 2.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 247 179 215
10th Percentile £425 £350 £410
25th Percentile £463 £463 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £540
Median % change year-on-year - +1.85% -1.82%
75th Percentile £638 £626 £608
90th Percentile £705 £694 £674
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £550 £538
% change year-on-year - +2.33% -6.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 0 4
10th Percentile £94.90 - -
25th Percentile £96.00 - -
Median hourly rate £97.41 - £23.80
75th Percentile £98.82 - £27.91
90th Percentile £100.00 - £35.32
UK excluding London median hourly rate £97.41 - £38.50
% change year-on-year - - -30.00%

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 18,506 11,756 11,701
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.89% 35.61% 30.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,109 7,209 7,234
10th Percentile £319 £300 £300
25th Percentile £423 £406 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £546
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -5.68% -0.73%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £675
90th Percentile £745 £763 £818
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,154 582 502
10th Percentile £14.18 £15.13 £14.06
25th Percentile £18.00 £18.87 £21.25
Median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -36.84% +8.57%
75th Percentile £67.50 £56.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.81 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.72 £30.00 £57.35
% change year-on-year +29.07% -47.69% +25.00%

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 September 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 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for PKI in the UK

PKI
Top 16 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 September 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 -59 287 £570 +3.64% 114
UK excluding London -15 238 £550 - 80
South East -12 84 £583 +1.30% 26
London -62 84 £550 -5.98% 45
Work from Home -57 83 £570 +3.64% 49
North of England -21 62 £525 +6.71% 16
Scotland +16 37 £481 -12.55% 5
North West -18 35 £525 +6.71% 8
South West -63 34 £648 +17.73% 21
Yorkshire -13 26 £533 -11.25% 6
East of England -27 9 £500 -4.76% 5
Midlands -73 9 £475 +18.75% 4
West Midlands -72 8 £475 +18.75% 1
Wales - 6 £463 - 2
East Midlands -13 1 £475 - 3
North East - 1 £426 - 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 (5.14%) Microsoft Exchange
2 14 (4.00%) Confluence
3 10 (2.86%) SharePoint
4 6 (1.71%) IIS
5 3 (0.86%) Apache
5 3 (0.86%) Exchange Server 2010
6 2 (0.57%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.57%) WebSphere
7 1 (0.29%) nginx
Applications
1 4 (1.14%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 10 (2.86%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.29%) Dynamics GP
Cloud Services
1 114 (32.57%) Azure
2 83 (23.71%) AWS
3 70 (20.00%) Entra ID
4 39 (11.14%) GCP
5 17 (4.86%) Microsoft 365
5 17 (4.86%) Power Platform
6 14 (4.00%) Azure Key Vault
7 11 (3.14%) IaaS
8 10 (2.86%) GitHub
8 10 (2.86%) OpenShift
8 10 (2.86%) PaaS
9 8 (2.29%) SaaS
10 7 (2.00%) Azure DevOps
11 6 (1.71%) Amazon EKS
11 6 (1.71%) AWS KMS
11 6 (1.71%) GitHub Actions
11 6 (1.71%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 6 (1.71%) OCI
12 4 (1.14%) Rubrik
13 3 (0.86%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 107 (30.57%) DNS
2 78 (22.29%) DHCP
2 78 (22.29%) Firewall
3 43 (12.29%) VPN
4 33 (9.43%) TCP/IP
5 28 (8.00%) SSL
6 27 (7.71%) Network Security
7 19 (5.43%) LAN
8 18 (5.14%) WAN
9 17 (4.86%) IPsec
9 17 (4.86%) VLAN
10 16 (4.57%) BGP
10 16 (4.57%) VSAN
11 15 (4.29%) Wireless
12 14 (4.00%) OSPF
12 14 (4.00%) SSH
13 13 (3.71%) Cisco ASA
13 13 (3.71%) Cisco Firepower
13 13 (3.71%) Cisco Nexus
14 12 (3.43%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (8.29%) SQL Server
2 12 (3.43%) Power BI
3 8 (2.29%) MySQL
3 8 (2.29%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (2.00%) Elasticsearch
5 6 (1.71%) Amazon RDS
5 6 (1.71%) MongoDB
5 6 (1.71%) Relational Database
6 4 (1.14%) Db2
7 3 (0.86%) Big Data
7 3 (0.86%) NoSQL
8 2 (0.57%) Metadata
8 2 (0.57%) RDBMS
9 1 (0.29%) DynamoDB
9 1 (0.29%) MariaDB
9 1 (0.29%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 17 (4.86%) JIRA
2 16 (4.57%) Git
3 15 (4.29%) GitLab
4 11 (3.14%) Jenkins
5 3 (0.86%) Sonatype Nexus
5 3 (0.86%) Terragrunt
6 2 (0.57%) Burp Suite
6 2 (0.57%) Cucumber
6 2 (0.57%) Gatling
6 2 (0.57%) Gradle
6 2 (0.57%) LoadRunner
6 2 (0.57%) MSI
6 2 (0.57%) REST Assured
6 2 (0.57%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.29%) Robot Framework
General
1 77 (22.00%) Social Skills
2 45 (12.86%) Finance
3 34 (9.71%) Analytical Skills
4 28 (8.00%) Public Sector
5 18 (5.14%) Documentation Skills
6 15 (4.29%) Banking
7 6 (1.71%) Legal
7 6 (1.71%) Military
8 5 (1.43%) Influencing Skills
8 5 (1.43%) Police
8 5 (1.43%) Retail
9 4 (1.14%) Automotive
9 4 (1.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (0.86%) Aerospace
10 3 (0.86%) Investment Banking
10 3 (0.86%) Law
11 2 (0.57%) Corporate Banking
11 2 (0.57%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.57%) Retail Banking
12 1 (0.29%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 72 (20.57%) Senior
2 55 (15.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 37 (10.57%) Architect
4 28 (8.00%) Network Engineer
5 26 (7.43%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
6 23 (6.57%) Platform Engineer
7 20 (5.71%) Support Engineer
8 19 (5.43%) 3rd Line Engineer
8 19 (5.43%) Senior Network Engineer
9 16 (4.57%) Consultant
10 15 (4.29%) Storage Engineer
11 14 (4.00%) DevOps Engineer
12 13 (3.71%) Lead
13 12 (3.43%) Solutions Architect
14 10 (2.86%) Active Directory Engineer
14 10 (2.86%) Cloud Engineer
15 9 (2.57%) Linux Engineer
16 8 (2.29%) VMware Engineer
17 7 (2.00%) AWS Engineer
17 7 (2.00%) Principal Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 64 (18.29%) Terraform
2 28 (8.00%) LDAP
2 28 (8.00%) OpenID
3 27 (7.71%) SAML
4 23 (6.57%) 802.1X
5 20 (5.71%) OAuth
6 16 (4.57%) REST
7 12 (3.43%) OAuth2
8 11 (3.14%) Kafka
9 10 (2.86%) .NET
10 9 (2.57%) Keycloak
11 8 (2.29%) .NET Framework
11 8 (2.29%) XML
12 7 (2.00%) RabbitMQ
13 6 (1.71%) FIDO
14 5 (1.43%) JSON
14 5 (1.43%) Middleware
14 5 (1.43%) SailPoint
14 5 (1.43%) WebAuthn
15 4 (1.14%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 34 (9.71%) Data Centre
2 32 (9.14%) Clustering
3 20 (5.71%) Cloud Native
4 17 (4.86%) Public Cloud
5 15 (4.29%) Onboarding
6 14 (4.00%) Distributed Systems
7 13 (3.71%) Linux Command Line
8 11 (3.14%) Hybrid Cloud
9 10 (2.86%) Legacy Systems
9 10 (2.86%) Security Posture
10 9 (2.57%) Enterprise Software
10 9 (2.57%) Enterprise Storage
11 8 (2.29%) Management Information System
11 8 (2.29%) Replication
11 8 (2.29%) Self-Motivation
12 5 (1.43%) Distributed Architecture
12 5 (1.43%) Mainframe
12 5 (1.43%) Operational Technology
12 5 (1.43%) Robotics
12 5 (1.43%) Smartcard
Operating Systems
1 162 (46.29%) Windows
2 108 (30.86%) Linux
3 93 (26.57%) Windows Server
4 13 (3.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 13 (3.71%) Windows Server 2016
5 12 (3.43%) Ubuntu
5 12 (3.43%) Unix
6 10 (2.86%) Windows Server 2012
7 7 (2.00%) Windows Server 2019
8 6 (1.71%) Debian
9 4 (1.14%) Android
10 3 (0.86%) Apple iOS
10 3 (0.86%) CentOS
10 3 (0.86%) Data ONTAP
10 3 (0.86%) Mac OS
10 3 (0.86%) Windows Server 2003
11 2 (0.57%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.29%) VMS
12 1 (0.29%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 94 (26.86%) Identity Access Management
2 71 (20.29%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 63 (18.00%) Infrastructure as Code
4 60 (17.14%) Cybersecurity
5 58 (16.57%) ITIL
6 57 (16.29%) Problem-Solving
7 55 (15.71%) DevOps
8 51 (14.57%) High Availability
9 50 (14.29%) CI/CD
10 49 (14.00%) Zero Trust
11 46 (13.14%) Key Management
12 45 (12.86%) Stakeholder Management
13 44 (12.57%) Technical Leadership
14 43 (12.29%) Agile
15 42 (12.00%) Continuous Improvement
16 39 (11.14%) Secrets Management
17 38 (10.86%) Platform Engineering
18 37 (10.57%) Change Management
19 36 (10.29%) Cryptography
20 35 (10.00%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 100 (28.57%) PowerShell
2 69 (19.71%) Python
3 37 (10.57%) Bash
4 16 (4.57%) SQL
5 11 (3.14%) C#
5 11 (3.14%) JavaScript
6 9 (2.57%) Java
7 7 (2.00%) Go
8 3 (0.86%) Ruby
9 2 (0.57%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.29%) Bicep
10 1 (0.29%) C++
Qualifications
1 178 (50.86%) Security Cleared
2 102 (29.14%) DV Cleared
3 82 (23.43%) SC Cleared
4 26 (7.43%) Cisco Certification
5 22 (6.29%) Microsoft Certification
6 21 (6.00%) Degree
7 18 (5.14%) CCNP
8 16 (4.57%) CISSP
9 14 (4.00%) Azure Certification
10 12 (3.43%) MCSE
10 12 (3.43%) VCAP
11 9 (2.57%) AWS Certification
12 8 (2.29%) CISM
13 7 (2.00%) BPSS Clearance
14 6 (1.71%) GIAC
15 5 (1.43%) ISTQB
15 5 (1.43%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 5 (1.43%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 5 (1.43%) JNCIP
15 5 (1.43%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (10.57%) NIST
2 28 (8.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 23 (6.57%) NCSC
4 14 (4.00%) SLA
5 8 (2.29%) JSP 440
6 7 (2.00%) GRC
7 6 (1.71%) QA
8 5 (1.43%) GDPR
8 5 (1.43%) SOC 2
9 4 (1.14%) Cyber Essentials
10 3 (0.86%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 2 (0.57%) Government Security Classifications
11 2 (0.57%) ISA99
11 2 (0.57%) ITGC
11 2 (0.57%) NIST 800
11 2 (0.57%) PCI DSS
11 2 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.29%) Accessibility
12 1 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 1 (0.29%) PSD2
System Software
1 173 (49.43%) Active Directory
2 76 (21.71%) VMware Infrastructure
3 42 (12.00%) Docker
4 34 (9.71%) Hyper-V
5 31 (8.86%) VMware NSX
6 21 (6.00%) vSphere
7 15 (4.29%) VMware ESXi
8 7 (2.00%) BitLocker
9 6 (1.71%) Microsoft App-V
9 6 (1.71%) Virtual Desktop
9 6 (1.71%) Virtual Machines
10 4 (1.14%) NFS
10 4 (1.14%) OpenSSH
10 4 (1.14%) Terminal Services
11 3 (0.86%) Firmware
11 3 (0.86%) OpenAM
11 3 (0.86%) UAG
12 2 (0.57%) XenApp
12 2 (0.57%) XenDesktop
13 1 (0.29%) KVM
Systems Management
1 73 (20.86%) Kubernetes
2 60 (17.14%) Ansible
3 35 (10.00%) Single Sign-On
4 25 (7.14%) vCenter Server
5 22 (6.29%) Microsoft Intune
6 16 (4.57%) VxRail
7 14 (4.00%) SCOM
8 13 (3.71%) Avamar
9 11 (3.14%) Grafana
9 11 (3.14%) Prometheus
10 9 (2.57%) Puppet
11 8 (2.29%) Istio
11 8 (2.29%) SCCM
11 8 (2.29%) WSUS
12 6 (1.71%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 6 (1.71%) CA Single Sign-On
12 6 (1.71%) Kibana
12 6 (1.71%) vMotion
13 5 (1.43%) Failover Clustering
13 5 (1.43%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 152 (43.43%) Microsoft
2 92 (26.29%) VMware
3 48 (13.71%) Cisco
4 28 (8.00%) Thales
5 27 (7.71%) ServiceNow
6 23 (6.57%) Okta
7 19 (5.43%) BeyondTrust
8 16 (4.57%) Citrix
8 16 (4.57%) CyberArk
8 16 (4.57%) Dell
8 16 (4.57%) Google
9 14 (4.00%) Juniper
10 12 (3.43%) NetApp
10 12 (3.43%) Palo Alto
10 12 (3.43%) SolarWinds
11 10 (2.86%) BMC
11 10 (2.86%) CheckPoint
11 10 (2.86%) Remedy
12 9 (2.57%) F5
12 9 (2.57%) Fortinet