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

6 months to
31 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 324 335 230
Rank change year-on-year +11 -105 +110
Contract jobs citing PKI 286 209 471
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.74% 0.66% 1.05%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.17% 2.04% 3.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 216 116 284
10th Percentile £400 £413 £400
25th Percentile £481 £475 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £590
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% -2.54% -1.67%
75th Percentile £688 £652 £675
90th Percentile £838 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £560 £563
% change year-on-year -1.79% -0.44% +0.45%
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 13,195 10,232 13,771
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.06% 32.54% 30.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,334 6,079 8,979
10th Percentile £275 £263 £253
25th Percentile £405 £407 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% -2.82%
75th Percentile £625 £656 £650
90th Percentile £738 £769 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 624 312 773
10th Percentile £15.00 £19.25 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.27 £23.60 £17.25
Median hourly rate £28.50 £35.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.56% - +56.18%
75th Percentile £63.03 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £35.65
% change year-on-year -15.38% -8.84% +70.33%

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 31 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 31 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 31 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 +32 263 £550 -4.35% 63
UK excluding London -51 162 £550 -1.79% 50
London +29 96 £600 - 23
Work from Home +11 78 £700 +17.89% 24
South East +9 67 £600 -0.83% 28
South West -42 39 £550 - 10
West Midlands -22 31 £400 -5.88% 1
Midlands -23 31 £400 -5.88% 2
North of England -51 17 £487 -32.83% 6
North West -23 9 £444 -8.97% 1
Yorkshire -45 8 £487 -32.83% 4
Scotland -21 6 £650 +48.57% 1
East of England - 3 £550 - 4
Wales -1 1 £550 +20.22%

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 (13.29%) Microsoft Exchange
2 15 (5.24%) SharePoint
3 8 (2.80%) Confluence
4 6 (2.10%) Skype for Business
5 4 (1.40%) SharePoint Server
6 3 (1.05%) Exchange Server 2010
6 3 (1.05%) nginx
7 2 (0.70%) IIS
8 1 (0.35%) Apache
8 1 (0.35%) JBoss
Applications
1 11 (3.85%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.70%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 50 (17.48%) Azure
2 48 (16.78%) AWS
3 29 (10.14%) IaaS
4 25 (8.74%) Entra ID
5 22 (7.69%) Microsoft 365
6 11 (3.85%) GitHub
7 9 (3.15%) AWS CloudFormation
7 9 (3.15%) OpenShift
8 8 (2.80%) GCP
8 8 (2.80%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 7 (2.45%) SaaS
10 6 (2.10%) PaaS
11 5 (1.75%) AWS KMS
12 4 (1.40%) Amazon ECS
12 4 (1.40%) Amazon EKS
12 4 (1.40%) AWS Fargate
12 4 (1.40%) Power Platform
13 3 (1.05%) Azure Key Vault
13 3 (1.05%) Power Automate
13 3 (1.05%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 58 (20.28%) Firewall
2 57 (19.93%) DNS
3 40 (13.99%) BGP
3 40 (13.99%) VPN
4 31 (10.84%) Network Security
5 30 (10.49%) IPsec
6 28 (9.79%) WAN
7 27 (9.44%) MPLS
8 25 (8.74%) DHCP
9 24 (8.39%) SSL
10 16 (5.59%) Skype
11 12 (4.20%) OSPF
12 11 (3.85%) TCP/IP
13 10 (3.50%) Cisco IOS
14 9 (3.15%) S/MIME
15 8 (2.80%) HTTPS
16 7 (2.45%) Cisco ASA
16 7 (2.45%) Junos
16 7 (2.45%) LAN
16 7 (2.45%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (3.85%) SQL Server
2 6 (2.10%) Elasticsearch
3 5 (1.75%) MongoDB
4 4 (1.40%) Amazon RDS
5 1 (0.35%) Amazon QuickSight
5 1 (0.35%) MySQL
5 1 (0.35%) RDBMS
5 1 (0.35%) Redis
5 1 (0.35%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 13 (4.55%) JIRA
2 12 (4.20%) GitLab
3 6 (2.10%) Jenkins
4 4 (1.40%) Robot Framework
4 4 (1.40%) Sonatype Nexus
4 4 (1.40%) Terragrunt
5 2 (0.70%) Git
6 1 (0.35%) CircleCI
6 1 (0.35%) JUnit
6 1 (0.35%) MSI
General
1 48 (16.78%) Analytical Skills
2 46 (16.08%) Social Skills
3 35 (12.24%) Public Sector
4 18 (6.29%) Finance
5 7 (2.45%) Banking
5 7 (2.45%) Military
6 6 (2.10%) Documentation Skills
7 4 (1.40%) 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%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 89 (31.12%) Architect
2 33 (11.54%) Senior
3 26 (9.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 25 (8.74%) 3rd Line Engineer
4 25 (8.74%) Support Engineer
5 19 (6.64%) 3rd Line Support
6 18 (6.29%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
7 17 (5.94%) Network Engineer
7 17 (5.94%) Wintel Engineer
8 16 (5.59%) Security Architect
9 14 (4.90%) Administrator
9 14 (4.90%) Platform Manager
9 14 (4.90%) Systems Administrator
9 14 (4.90%) Systems Manager
9 14 (4.90%) Wintel Administrator
9 14 (4.90%) Wintel Systems Administrator
10 12 (4.20%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
11 10 (3.50%) 2nd Line Engineer
11 10 (3.50%) Lead
12 9 (3.15%) WAN Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (10.84%) REST
2 28 (9.79%) JSON
3 15 (5.24%) OpenID
4 11 (3.85%) LDAP
5 10 (3.50%) OAuth
5 10 (3.50%) SAML
6 9 (3.15%) OAuth2
7 6 (2.10%) Elastic Stack
7 6 (2.10%) Kafka
8 4 (1.40%) AWS CDK
8 4 (1.40%) cloud-init
8 4 (1.40%) Keycloak
9 3 (1.05%) CSS
9 3 (1.05%) HTML
9 3 (1.05%) JDBC
9 3 (1.05%) SOAP
10 2 (0.70%) .NET
10 2 (0.70%) 802.1X
10 2 (0.70%) Microsoft Graph
10 2 (0.70%) ModSecurity
Miscellaneous
1 29 (10.14%) Self-Motivation
2 13 (4.55%) Fat Client
2 13 (4.55%) Thin Client
3 11 (3.85%) Algorithms
4 9 (3.15%) Data Centre
5 8 (2.80%) Management Information System
5 8 (2.80%) Private Cloud
6 5 (1.75%) Enterprise Storage
6 5 (1.75%) Public Cloud
6 5 (1.75%) Replication
6 5 (1.75%) Smartcard
7 4 (1.40%) Cloud Native
7 4 (1.40%) Clustering
7 4 (1.40%) Legacy Applications
7 4 (1.40%) Onboarding
7 4 (1.40%) Security Operations Centre
7 4 (1.40%) Security Posture
8 3 (1.05%) Cyber Defence
8 3 (1.05%) Taxonomies
9 2 (0.70%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 96 (33.57%) Windows
2 54 (18.88%) Linux
3 45 (15.73%) Windows Server
4 13 (4.55%) Windows 10
5 11 (3.85%) Windows 7
6 9 (3.15%) Windows Server 2012
7 7 (2.45%) CentOS
7 7 (2.45%) Unix
8 6 (2.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 6 (2.10%) Ubuntu
9 5 (1.75%) Windows Server 2008
9 5 (1.75%) Windows Server 2016
9 5 (1.75%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (1.05%) VMS
10 3 (1.05%) Windows Server 2003
11 1 (0.35%) Android
11 1 (0.35%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 76 (26.57%) Agile
2 67 (23.43%) Key Management
3 36 (12.59%) Change Management
4 34 (11.89%) CI/CD
5 33 (11.54%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 33 (11.54%) ITIL
6 31 (10.84%) Configuration Management
7 30 (10.49%) Cybersecurity
8 29 (10.14%) DevOps
8 29 (10.14%) Identity Access Management
8 29 (10.14%) Problem-Solving
9 26 (9.09%) Incident Response
10 25 (8.74%) SIEM
11 24 (8.39%) Containerisation
11 24 (8.39%) Platform Engineering
11 24 (8.39%) Security Architecture
11 24 (8.39%) Service Management
12 23 (8.04%) Cryptography
13 22 (7.69%) Infrastructure as Code
14 21 (7.34%) Information Security
Programming Languages
1 70 (24.48%) PowerShell
2 46 (16.08%) Python
3 21 (7.34%) SQL
4 19 (6.64%) Bash
5 8 (2.80%) C++
6 6 (2.10%) JavaScript
6 6 (2.10%) Perl
7 5 (1.75%) Java
7 5 (1.75%) Shell Script
8 4 (1.40%) Go
9 3 (1.05%) C#
9 3 (1.05%) PHP
10 1 (0.35%) Bicep
10 1 (0.35%) C
10 1 (0.35%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 197 (68.88%) Security Cleared
2 107 (37.41%) SC Cleared
3 90 (31.47%) DV Cleared
4 30 (10.49%) Degree
5 25 (8.74%) Microsoft Certification
6 23 (8.04%) CISSP
7 20 (6.99%) Cisco Certification
8 17 (5.94%) CISM
9 15 (5.24%) CCNP
10 12 (4.20%) MCSE
11 10 (3.50%) Computer Science Degree
12 8 (2.80%) GIAC
12 8 (2.80%) Master's Degree
13 7 (2.45%) ITIL Certification
14 6 (2.10%) AWS Certification
14 6 (2.10%) CCNA
14 6 (2.10%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 5 (1.75%) JNCIA
15 5 (1.75%) JNCIS
16 3 (1.05%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (5.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 16 (5.59%) NCSC
1 16 (5.59%) NIST
2 11 (3.85%) PCI DSS
3 7 (2.45%) GDPR
4 4 (1.40%) Cyber Essentials
4 4 (1.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 4 (1.40%) RMADS
4 4 (1.40%) SLA
5 3 (1.05%) JSP 440
6 2 (0.70%) FIPS 140-2
6 2 (0.70%) HIPAA
6 2 (0.70%) NIST 800
6 2 (0.70%) SOC 1
7 1 (0.35%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 1 (0.35%) PSD2
7 1 (0.35%) SOC 2
System Software
1 92 (32.17%) Active Directory
2 48 (16.78%) VMware Infrastructure
3 20 (6.99%) Docker
4 14 (4.90%) VMware ESXi
5 12 (4.20%) Firmware
6 11 (3.85%) Hyper-V
6 11 (3.85%) VMware NSX
7 9 (3.15%) vSphere
8 5 (1.75%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 5 (1.75%) Virtual Servers
9 4 (1.40%) BitLocker
9 4 (1.40%) 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 31 (10.84%) Ansible
2 30 (10.49%) Kubernetes
2 30 (10.49%) Terraform
3 24 (8.39%) vCenter Server
4 20 (6.99%) Single Sign-On
5 14 (4.90%) WSUS
6 13 (4.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 13 (4.55%) Microsoft Intune
7 12 (4.20%) SCCM
7 12 (4.20%) SCOM
7 12 (4.20%) WMI
8 7 (2.45%) Grafana
8 7 (2.45%) Prometheus
9 4 (1.40%) Jamf Pro
9 4 (1.40%) Packer
9 4 (1.40%) Podman
9 4 (1.40%) Puppet
9 4 (1.40%) QRadar
10 3 (1.05%) Proxmox
10 3 (1.05%) vMotion
Vendors
1 95 (33.22%) Microsoft
2 73 (25.52%) VMware
3 43 (15.03%) Cisco
4 34 (11.89%) Juniper
5 22 (7.69%) Splunk
6 15 (5.24%) SolarWinds
6 15 (5.24%) Veeam
7 12 (4.20%) Thales
8 10 (3.50%) Palo Alto
9 8 (2.80%) Okta
10 7 (2.45%) Broadcom
10 7 (2.45%) Citrix
10 7 (2.45%) Dell
11 6 (2.10%) Fortinet
11 6 (2.10%) Google
12 5 (1.75%) Aruba
12 5 (1.75%) CheckPoint
12 5 (1.75%) CyberArk
12 5 (1.75%) Red Hat
12 5 (1.75%) ServiceNow