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

6 months to
30 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 385 343 211
Rank change year-on-year -42 -132 +99
Contract jobs citing PKI 274 184 489
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.56% 0.64% 1.14%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.72% 1.87% 3.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 187 145 342
10th Percentile £414 £416 £363
25th Percentile £463 £513 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £630
90th Percentile £725 £692 £687
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -4.35% +4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 3
10th Percentile £47.22 - -
25th Percentile £56.01 - -
Median hourly rate £71.33 - £23.80
75th Percentile £72.27 - £32.03
90th Percentile £72.43 - £36.96
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 15,890 9,851 12,973
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.33% 34.12% 30.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,818 6,250 8,341
10th Percentile £313 £295 £270
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £663
90th Percentile £749 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.63% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 768 394 925
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.92 £12.25
25th Percentile £19.96 £20.09 £15.22
Median hourly rate £41.46 £32.43 £34.21
Median % change year-on-year +27.84% -5.20% +55.50%
75th Percentile £70.00 £62.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.65 £82.21 £70.82
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £31.76 £32.12
% change year-on-year +41.69% -1.11% +48.20%

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 30 May 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 30 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for PKI in the UK

PKI
Top 13 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 30 May 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 -62 236 £550 -4.35% 54
UK excluding London -40 178 £550 -4.35% 39
South East -2 102 £600 +4.35% 18
London -47 69 £550 -5.98% 20
Work from Home -62 61 £560 -2.61% 29
North of England -54 31 £482 -2.03% 3
Scotland +12 18 £540 +0.93%
North West -34 18 £418 -15.04% 2
Midlands -66 14 £466 +6.51% 8
West Midlands -74 14 £466 +6.51% 4
Yorkshire -52 13 £485 -33.17% 2
South West -64 13 £538 -8.12% 4
East of England -31 4 £400 -23.81% 4

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 9 (3.28%) SharePoint
2 8 (2.92%) Confluence
3 6 (2.19%) IIS
4 5 (1.82%) Microsoft Exchange
5 3 (1.09%) Apache
5 3 (1.09%) Tomcat
5 3 (1.09%) WebSphere
6 2 (0.73%) nginx
7 1 (0.36%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 4 (1.46%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 10 (3.65%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.36%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.36%) Dynamics GP
Cloud Services
1 83 (30.29%) Azure
2 67 (24.45%) AWS
3 39 (14.23%) Entra ID
4 25 (9.12%) Microsoft 365
5 17 (6.20%) Power Platform
6 16 (5.84%) GCP
7 10 (3.65%) OpenShift
8 9 (3.28%) Azure Key Vault
9 8 (2.92%) AWS KMS
10 7 (2.55%) Amazon EKS
10 7 (2.55%) IaaS
10 7 (2.55%) PaaS
11 6 (2.19%) Azure DevOps
12 4 (1.46%) GitHub
12 4 (1.46%) SaaS
12 4 (1.46%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 3 (1.09%) Route 53
14 2 (0.73%) Azure Sentinel
14 2 (0.73%) OneDrive
14 2 (0.73%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 72 (26.28%) DNS
2 63 (22.99%) Firewall
3 47 (17.15%) DHCP
4 39 (14.23%) BGP
5 36 (13.14%) WAN
6 34 (12.41%) VPN
7 32 (11.68%) LAN
8 29 (10.58%) Network Security
8 29 (10.58%) OSPF
9 26 (9.49%) Ethernet VPN
9 26 (9.49%) VXLAN
10 25 (9.12%) BIG-IP
10 25 (9.12%) Cisco ISE
11 24 (8.76%) Junos
12 23 (8.39%) SSL
13 10 (3.65%) Cisco ASA
13 10 (3.65%) IPsec
13 10 (3.65%) MPLS
14 9 (3.28%) TCP/IP
15 8 (2.92%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (4.74%) SQL Server
2 12 (4.38%) Power BI
3 9 (3.28%) Elasticsearch
4 5 (1.82%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (1.46%) MongoDB
5 4 (1.46%) MySQL
6 2 (0.73%) Metadata
6 2 (0.73%) NoSQL
7 1 (0.36%) Amazon QuickSight
7 1 (0.36%) Amazon RDS
7 1 (0.36%) RDBMS
7 1 (0.36%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 11 (4.01%) GitLab
1 11 (4.01%) JIRA
2 6 (2.19%) Robot Framework
3 5 (1.82%) Git
3 5 (1.82%) Jenkins
3 5 (1.82%) Sonatype Nexus
4 3 (1.09%) Terragrunt
5 2 (0.73%) MSI
6 1 (0.36%) Burp Suite
6 1 (0.36%) Cucumber
6 1 (0.36%) Gatling
6 1 (0.36%) Gradle
6 1 (0.36%) JUnit
6 1 (0.36%) LoadRunner
6 1 (0.36%) REST Assured
6 1 (0.36%) SonarQube
General
1 34 (12.41%) Social Skills
2 29 (10.58%) Finance
3 28 (10.22%) Public Sector
4 12 (4.38%) Analytical Skills
5 7 (2.55%) Documentation Skills
6 6 (2.19%) Banking
7 4 (1.46%) Military
7 4 (1.46%) Retail
8 2 (0.73%) Financial Institution
8 2 (0.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (0.73%) Legal
8 2 (0.73%) Local Government
9 1 (0.36%) Back Office
9 1 (0.36%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.36%) Law
9 1 (0.36%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.36%) Wearables
Job Titles
1 45 (16.42%) Senior
2 40 (14.60%) Architect
3 36 (13.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 23 (8.39%) Network Engineer
5 20 (7.30%) 3rd Line Engineer
6 15 (5.47%) Storage Engineer
7 14 (5.11%) Firewall Specialist
7 14 (5.11%) Network Specialist
8 13 (4.74%) Senior Network Engineer
9 12 (4.38%) Security Engineer
10 11 (4.01%) Support Engineer
11 10 (3.65%) DevOps Engineer
11 10 (3.65%) Senior Architect
12 9 (3.28%) Linux Engineer
12 9 (3.28%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 8 (2.92%) 3rd Line Infrastructure Engineer
13 8 (2.92%) Analyst
13 8 (2.92%) Lead
14 7 (2.55%) Administrator
14 7 (2.55%) NetApp Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (12.41%) 802.1X
2 18 (6.57%) OpenID
3 16 (5.84%) SAML
4 15 (5.47%) LDAP
5 14 (5.11%) OAuth
5 14 (5.11%) REST
6 7 (2.55%) JSON
6 7 (2.55%) OAuth2
7 5 (1.82%) RabbitMQ
8 4 (1.46%) Kafka
8 4 (1.46%) SailPoint
9 3 (1.09%) Elastic Stack
9 3 (1.09%) Keycloak
9 3 (1.09%) Microsoft Graph
9 3 (1.09%) SPIFFE
10 2 (0.73%) .NET Core
10 2 (0.73%) Blazor
10 2 (0.73%) CSS
10 2 (0.73%) eBPF
10 2 (0.73%) Loki
Miscellaneous
1 43 (15.69%) Clustering
2 28 (10.22%) Data Centre
3 12 (4.38%) Enterprise Storage
4 11 (4.01%) Hybrid Cloud
5 10 (3.65%) Algorithms
5 10 (3.65%) Onboarding
6 9 (3.28%) Cloud Native
7 8 (2.92%) Management Information System
7 8 (2.92%) Public Cloud
8 6 (2.19%) Linux Command Line
8 6 (2.19%) Operational Technology
9 5 (1.82%) Distributed Systems
9 5 (1.82%) Enterprise Software
9 5 (1.82%) Private Cloud
9 5 (1.82%) Smartcard
10 4 (1.46%) Enterprise Cloud
11 3 (1.09%) Data Protection Act
11 3 (1.09%) Legacy Systems
11 3 (1.09%) Security Posture
11 3 (1.09%) Tandem
Operating Systems
1 123 (44.89%) Windows
2 66 (24.09%) Linux
3 61 (22.26%) Windows Server
4 9 (3.28%) Ubuntu
5 7 (2.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 7 (2.55%) Windows Server 2003
6 6 (2.19%) Debian
6 6 (2.19%) Windows Server 2019
7 4 (1.46%) Unix
7 4 (1.46%) Windows Server 2016
8 3 (1.09%) Windows Server 2012
9 2 (0.73%) CentOS
9 2 (0.73%) Windows 7
10 1 (0.36%) Android
10 1 (0.36%) Apple iOS
10 1 (0.36%) Data ONTAP
10 1 (0.36%) Mac OS
10 1 (0.36%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 78 (28.47%) Identity Access Management
2 48 (17.52%) Agile
3 46 (16.79%) High Availability
4 44 (16.06%) ITIL
5 43 (15.69%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 41 (14.96%) Cybersecurity
7 38 (13.87%) Observability
8 35 (12.77%) DevOps
8 35 (12.77%) Key Management
8 35 (12.77%) Load Balancing
8 35 (12.77%) Problem-Solving
9 34 (12.41%) CI/CD
10 31 (11.31%) Zero Trust
11 29 (10.58%) Change Management
12 28 (10.22%) Infrastructure as Code
13 27 (9.85%) ITSM
14 26 (9.49%) RBAC
14 26 (9.49%) Service Management
15 23 (8.39%) Migration
16 22 (8.03%) Vulnerability Management
Programming Languages
1 55 (20.07%) PowerShell
2 40 (14.60%) Python
3 15 (5.47%) SQL
4 12 (4.38%) JavaScript
5 11 (4.01%) Bash
6 8 (2.92%) C#
7 7 (2.55%) Java
8 4 (1.46%) PHP
9 3 (1.09%) C++
9 3 (1.09%) Go
10 1 (0.36%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 159 (58.03%) Security Cleared
2 99 (36.13%) DV Cleared
3 61 (22.26%) SC Cleared
4 30 (10.95%) Cisco Certification
5 22 (8.03%) CISSP
6 20 (7.30%) CISM
7 16 (5.84%) Degree
8 11 (4.01%) GIAC
9 10 (3.65%) Microsoft Certification
10 8 (2.92%) CompTIA Security+
11 7 (2.55%) Azure Certification
11 7 (2.55%) CCNP
11 7 (2.55%) JNCIA
11 7 (2.55%) JNCIP
11 7 (2.55%) JNCIS
12 6 (2.19%) MCSE
13 5 (1.82%) CCNA
14 4 (1.46%) APMG
14 4 (1.46%) Network+ Certification
14 4 (1.46%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (11.68%) NIST
2 22 (8.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 13 (4.74%) NCSC
4 10 (3.65%) Cyber Essentials
5 8 (2.92%) PCI DSS
6 7 (2.55%) QA
7 6 (2.19%) SLA
8 5 (1.82%) GDPR
9 4 (1.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 3 (1.09%) RMADS
11 2 (0.73%) Government Security Classifications
11 2 (0.73%) ISA99
11 2 (0.73%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 2 (0.73%) JSP 440
11 2 (0.73%) NIST 800
12 1 (0.36%) GMP
12 1 (0.36%) GRC
12 1 (0.36%) GxP
12 1 (0.36%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 1 (0.36%) SOC 2
System Software
1 88 (32.12%) Active Directory
2 50 (18.25%) VMware Infrastructure
3 22 (8.03%) Docker
4 18 (6.57%) VMware NSX
5 17 (6.20%) Hyper-V
6 14 (5.11%) VMware ESXi
7 9 (3.28%) BitLocker
8 8 (2.92%) Microsoft App-V
9 7 (2.55%) Virtual Machines
10 5 (1.82%) Firmware
11 3 (1.09%) KVM
11 3 (1.09%) vSphere
12 2 (0.73%) OpenSSH
12 2 (0.73%) Virtual Desktop
12 2 (0.73%) XenApp
12 2 (0.73%) XenDesktop
13 1 (0.36%) Embedded Firmware
13 1 (0.36%) iptables
13 1 (0.36%) Squid
13 1 (0.36%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 46 (16.79%) Ansible
2 40 (14.60%) Kubernetes
2 40 (14.60%) Terraform
3 24 (8.76%) vCenter Server
4 23 (8.39%) FortiGate
5 22 (8.03%) Single Sign-On
6 15 (5.47%) Microsoft Intune
7 13 (4.74%) Prometheus
8 12 (4.38%) Grafana
8 12 (4.38%) Puppet
8 12 (4.38%) SCOM
9 8 (2.92%) Avamar
9 8 (2.92%) vMotion
10 7 (2.55%) SCCM
11 5 (1.82%) WMI
12 4 (1.46%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 4 (1.46%) WSUS
13 3 (1.09%) CA Single Sign-On
14 2 (0.73%) Istio
14 2 (0.73%) Suricata
Vendors
1 82 (29.93%) Microsoft
2 71 (25.91%) VMware
3 56 (20.44%) Cisco
4 41 (14.96%) Splunk
5 30 (10.95%) Juniper
6 29 (10.58%) SolarWinds
7 27 (9.85%) F5
8 22 (8.03%) Extreme Networks
9 20 (7.30%) ServiceNow
10 19 (6.93%) Citrix
10 19 (6.93%) Thales
11 15 (5.47%) Palo Alto
12 14 (5.11%) Okta
13 10 (3.65%) BMC
13 10 (3.65%) Dell
13 10 (3.65%) NetApp
13 10 (3.65%) Remedy
14 9 (3.28%) BeyondTrust
15 8 (2.92%) ForeScout
16 7 (2.55%) Aruba