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

6 months to
17 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 317 331 236
Rank change year-on-year +14 -95 +89
Contract jobs citing PKI 299 203 463
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.74% 0.67% 1.04%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.21% 2.02% 3.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 215 113 285
10th Percentile £400 £413 £401
25th Percentile £469 £475 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £585
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% -1.71% -2.50%
75th Percentile £675 £638 £675
90th Percentile £838 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £570 £569
% change year-on-year -3.51% +0.22% +1.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 0 5
10th Percentile £61.41 - £46.38
25th Percentile £70.50 - -
Median hourly rate £79.50 - £55.00
75th Percentile £96.25 - £56.40
90th Percentile £101.65 - £63.06
UK excluding London median hourly rate £79.50 - £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 13,545 10,063 13,663
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.68% 33.03% 30.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,552 6,048 8,790
10th Percentile £273 £264 £258
25th Percentile £402 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £768 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -4.04% -1.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 657 309 824
10th Percentile £15.25 £18.51 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £23.59 £16.63
Median hourly rate £30.11 £34.50 £32.31
Median % change year-on-year -12.74% +6.79% +43.68%
75th Percentile £63.75 £65.00 £58.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.25 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £34.21
% change year-on-year -7.69% -5.00% +55.50%

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 17 February 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 17 February 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 17 February 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 +33 276 £550 -4.35% 81
UK excluding London -53 174 £550 -3.51% 65
London +39 97 £575 -4.17% 24
South East +27 80 £600 -1.64% 38
Work from Home -8 79 £700 +19.66% 24
South West -39 39 £550 - 6
West Midlands -29 32 £400 -5.88% 6
Midlands -36 32 £400 -5.88% 12
North of England -61 16 £482 -33.52% 6
North West -24 8 £379 -22.31% 1
Yorkshire -49 8 £482 -33.52% 5
Scotland -26 6 £650 +31.65% 1
East of England - 3 £550 - 3
Wales -4 1 £550 +20.22% 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 35 (11.71%) Microsoft Exchange
2 15 (5.02%) SharePoint
3 7 (2.34%) Confluence
4 6 (2.01%) Skype for Business
5 4 (1.34%) SharePoint Server
6 3 (1.00%) Exchange Server 2010
6 3 (1.00%) nginx
7 1 (0.33%) Apache
7 1 (0.33%) IIS
7 1 (0.33%) JBoss
Applications
1 11 (3.68%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.33%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (0.33%) Cloudability
1 1 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 52 (17.39%) Azure
2 48 (16.05%) AWS
3 30 (10.03%) IaaS
4 28 (9.36%) Entra ID
5 25 (8.36%) Microsoft 365
6 10 (3.34%) GitHub
7 9 (3.01%) AWS CloudFormation
7 9 (3.01%) GCP
7 9 (3.01%) OpenShift
8 8 (2.68%) SaaS
8 8 (2.68%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 7 (2.34%) PaaS
10 5 (1.67%) Power Platform
11 4 (1.34%) Amazon ECS
11 4 (1.34%) Amazon EKS
11 4 (1.34%) AWS Fargate
11 4 (1.34%) AWS KMS
12 3 (1.00%) Azure DevOps
12 3 (1.00%) Azure Key Vault
12 3 (1.00%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 71 (23.75%) DNS
2 69 (23.08%) Firewall
3 47 (15.72%) BGP
4 38 (12.71%) DHCP
4 38 (12.71%) VPN
5 36 (12.04%) WAN
6 30 (10.03%) Network Security
7 25 (8.36%) IPsec
7 25 (8.36%) MPLS
8 23 (7.69%) OSPF
9 22 (7.36%) SSL
10 18 (6.02%) LAN
11 17 (5.69%) Junos
12 15 (5.02%) Cisco ISE
13 14 (4.68%) Ethernet VPN
13 14 (4.68%) VXLAN
14 13 (4.35%) BIG-IP
14 13 (4.35%) Skype
15 11 (3.68%) Cisco IOS
15 11 (3.68%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (4.01%) SQL Server
2 7 (2.34%) Elasticsearch
3 5 (1.67%) MongoDB
4 4 (1.34%) Amazon RDS
5 1 (0.33%) Amazon QuickSight
5 1 (0.33%) MySQL
5 1 (0.33%) Power BI
5 1 (0.33%) RDBMS
5 1 (0.33%) Redis
5 1 (0.33%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 13 (4.35%) JIRA
2 12 (4.01%) GitLab
3 6 (2.01%) Jenkins
4 4 (1.34%) Robot Framework
4 4 (1.34%) Sonatype Nexus
4 4 (1.34%) Terragrunt
5 1 (0.33%) CircleCI
5 1 (0.33%) Git
5 1 (0.33%) JUnit
5 1 (0.33%) MSI
General
1 47 (15.72%) Analytical Skills
2 46 (15.38%) Social Skills
3 32 (10.70%) Public Sector
4 16 (5.35%) Finance
5 10 (3.34%) Military
6 7 (2.34%) Banking
7 6 (2.01%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (1.34%) Presentation Skills
9 3 (1.00%) Legal
10 2 (0.67%) Financial Institution
10 2 (0.67%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (0.67%) Local Government
11 1 (0.33%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.33%) Back Office
11 1 (0.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.33%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 90 (30.10%) Architect
2 37 (12.37%) Senior
3 28 (9.36%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 24 (8.03%) 3rd Line Engineer
5 22 (7.36%) Support Engineer
6 19 (6.35%) Network Engineer
7 17 (5.69%) 3rd Line Support
7 17 (5.69%) Wintel Engineer
8 16 (5.35%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
9 13 (4.35%) Administrator
9 13 (4.35%) Platform Manager
9 13 (4.35%) Systems Administrator
9 13 (4.35%) Systems Manager
9 13 (4.35%) Wintel Administrator
9 13 (4.35%) Wintel Systems Administrator
10 12 (4.01%) Lead
10 12 (4.01%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 10 (3.34%) Security Architect
11 10 (3.34%) Security Engineer
12 9 (3.01%) Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (10.70%) REST
2 28 (9.36%) JSON
3 17 (5.69%) OpenID
4 13 (4.35%) 802.1X
5 12 (4.01%) LDAP
5 12 (4.01%) OAuth
5 12 (4.01%) SAML
6 11 (3.68%) OAuth2
7 6 (2.01%) Elastic Stack
7 6 (2.01%) Kafka
8 4 (1.34%) AWS CDK
8 4 (1.34%) cloud-init
8 4 (1.34%) Keycloak
9 3 (1.00%) CSS
9 3 (1.00%) HTML
9 3 (1.00%) JDBC
9 3 (1.00%) SailPoint
9 3 (1.00%) SOAP
10 2 (0.67%) .NET
10 2 (0.67%) Microsoft Graph
Miscellaneous
1 28 (9.36%) Self-Motivation
2 16 (5.35%) Clustering
2 16 (5.35%) Data Centre
3 13 (4.35%) Fat Client
3 13 (4.35%) Thin Client
4 10 (3.34%) Algorithms
5 9 (3.01%) Management Information System
6 7 (2.34%) Enterprise Storage
7 6 (2.01%) Public Cloud
8 5 (1.67%) Private Cloud
8 5 (1.67%) Replication
8 5 (1.67%) Smartcard
9 4 (1.34%) Cloud Native
9 4 (1.34%) Legacy Applications
9 4 (1.34%) Onboarding
9 4 (1.34%) Security Operations Centre
9 4 (1.34%) Security Posture
10 3 (1.00%) Hybrid Cloud
10 3 (1.00%) Operational Technology
10 3 (1.00%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 107 (35.79%) Windows
2 55 (18.39%) Linux
3 46 (15.38%) Windows Server
4 11 (3.68%) Windows 7
5 10 (3.34%) Windows 10
6 9 (3.01%) Windows Server 2012
7 7 (2.34%) CentOS
7 7 (2.34%) Ubuntu
7 7 (2.34%) Unix
8 6 (2.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 5 (1.67%) Windows Server 2016
10 4 (1.34%) Windows Server 2003
11 3 (1.00%) VMS
11 3 (1.00%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.67%) Windows Server 2008
13 1 (0.33%) Android
13 1 (0.33%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 78 (26.09%) Agile
2 66 (22.07%) Key Management
3 45 (15.05%) Identity Access Management
4 36 (12.04%) Problem-Solving
5 35 (11.71%) Change Management
5 35 (11.71%) CI/CD
5 35 (11.71%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 35 (11.71%) ITIL
6 34 (11.37%) Cybersecurity
7 33 (11.04%) Configuration Management
8 29 (9.70%) DevOps
9 27 (9.03%) Load Balancing
9 27 (9.03%) Service Management
10 26 (8.70%) Incident Response
11 24 (8.03%) Containerisation
11 24 (8.03%) Platform Engineering
12 23 (7.69%) Infrastructure as Code
12 23 (7.69%) Observability
12 23 (7.69%) SIEM
13 22 (7.36%) Cryptography
Programming Languages
1 73 (24.41%) PowerShell
2 47 (15.72%) Python
3 19 (6.35%) Bash
3 19 (6.35%) SQL
4 7 (2.34%) C++
4 7 (2.34%) JavaScript
5 5 (1.67%) Go
5 5 (1.67%) Java
5 5 (1.67%) Perl
5 5 (1.67%) Shell Script
6 4 (1.34%) C#
6 4 (1.34%) PHP
7 1 (0.33%) Bicep
7 1 (0.33%) C
7 1 (0.33%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 206 (68.90%) Security Cleared
2 103 (34.45%) SC Cleared
3 100 (33.44%) DV Cleared
4 30 (10.03%) Degree
5 26 (8.70%) Cisco Certification
6 25 (8.36%) Microsoft Certification
7 21 (7.02%) CISSP
8 17 (5.69%) CISM
9 14 (4.68%) CCNP
10 12 (4.01%) MCSE
11 9 (3.01%) Computer Science Degree
12 8 (2.68%) GIAC
12 8 (2.68%) JNCIA
12 8 (2.68%) JNCIS
12 8 (2.68%) Master's Degree
13 7 (2.34%) ITIL Certification
14 6 (2.01%) AWS Certification
14 6 (2.01%) CCNA
14 6 (2.01%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 4 (1.34%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (5.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 15 (5.02%) NIST
2 14 (4.68%) NCSC
3 8 (2.68%) PCI DSS
4 7 (2.34%) GDPR
5 5 (1.67%) Cyber Essentials
5 5 (1.67%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 4 (1.34%) RMADS
6 4 (1.34%) SLA
7 3 (1.00%) JSP 440
8 2 (0.67%) HIPAA
8 2 (0.67%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 2 (0.67%) NIST 800
9 1 (0.33%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.33%) FIPS 140-2
9 1 (0.33%) PSD2
9 1 (0.33%) SOC 2
System Software
1 96 (32.11%) Active Directory
2 47 (15.72%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (7.02%) Docker
4 13 (4.35%) Hyper-V
4 13 (4.35%) VMware ESXi
5 11 (3.68%) Firmware
5 11 (3.68%) VMware NSX
6 9 (3.01%) vSphere
7 5 (1.67%) BitLocker
7 5 (1.67%) Microsoft Virtual Server
7 5 (1.67%) Virtual Servers
8 4 (1.34%) Microsoft App-V
8 4 (1.34%) Virtual Machines
9 3 (1.00%) Sendmail
10 2 (0.67%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 1 (0.33%) KVM
11 1 (0.33%) NFS
11 1 (0.33%) Squid
11 1 (0.33%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 33 (11.04%) Ansible
1 33 (11.04%) Kubernetes
2 32 (10.70%) Terraform
3 23 (7.69%) vCenter Server
4 20 (6.69%) Single Sign-On
5 14 (4.68%) FortiGate
5 14 (4.68%) WSUS
6 13 (4.35%) Microsoft Intune
6 13 (4.35%) SCCM
6 13 (4.35%) SCOM
7 12 (4.01%) WMI
8 11 (3.68%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 9 (3.01%) Prometheus
10 8 (2.68%) Grafana
11 5 (1.67%) Puppet
12 4 (1.34%) Jamf Pro
12 4 (1.34%) Packer
12 4 (1.34%) Podman
12 4 (1.34%) QRadar
12 4 (1.34%) vMotion
Vendors
1 95 (31.77%) Microsoft
2 73 (24.41%) VMware
3 54 (18.06%) Cisco
4 41 (13.71%) Juniper
5 33 (11.04%) Splunk
6 26 (8.70%) SolarWinds
7 15 (5.02%) F5
7 15 (5.02%) Veeam
8 12 (4.01%) Extreme Networks
9 11 (3.68%) Thales
10 10 (3.34%) Palo Alto
11 8 (2.68%) Citrix
11 8 (2.68%) Okta
12 7 (2.34%) Broadcom
12 7 (2.34%) Dell
12 7 (2.34%) Google
13 6 (2.01%) Fortinet
14 5 (1.67%) Aruba
14 5 (1.67%) CyberArk
14 5 (1.67%) ServiceNow