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

6 months to
10 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 358 298 194
Rank change year-on-year -60 -104 +121
Contract jobs citing PKI 292 228 514
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.64% 0.78% 1.17%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.96% 2.31% 3.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 201 157 345
10th Percentile £412 £410 £363
25th Percentile £488 £490 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £565 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.74% +4.55% -8.33%
75th Percentile £694 £638 £638
90th Percentile £838 £725 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £575 £550
% change year-on-year -4.35% +4.55% -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 14,911 9,889 13,388
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.51% 33.85% 30.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,350 6,341 8,588
10th Percentile £300 £290 £263
25th Percentile £412 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £536
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.07% -2.53%
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 708 379 901
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.95 £12.25
25th Percentile £20.00 £22.27 £15.39
Median hourly rate £45.00 £32.50 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.46% +16.07% +24.53%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £85.40 £83.24 £67.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £31.76 £26.00
% change year-on-year +49.56% +22.15% +18.18%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 -27 265 £600 +4.35% 52
UK excluding London -84 170 £550 -4.35% 44
South East +19 105 £600 - 20
London -24 93 £625 +8.70% 11
Work from Home -24 82 £638 +10.87% 22
South West -55 19 £606 +5.43% 6
North of England -75 19 £482 -27.25% 7
West Midlands -64 18 £400 -5.88% 2
Midlands -65 18 £400 -5.88% 5
Yorkshire -50 10 £482 -33.52% 4
North West -30 9 £520 +4.84% 3
East of England -33 6 £475 -9.52% 5
Scotland -16 5 £550 +2.90% 1
Wales -12 1 £550 +20.22% 3

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 21 (7.19%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (2.05%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.71%) Confluence
4 3 (1.03%) Exchange Server 2010
4 3 (1.03%) IIS
4 3 (1.03%) nginx
5 2 (0.68%) Apache
5 2 (0.68%) Tomcat
5 2 (0.68%) WebSphere
6 1 (0.34%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 4 (1.37%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 6 (2.05%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.34%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 71 (24.32%) Azure
2 59 (20.21%) AWS
3 33 (11.30%) IaaS
4 32 (10.96%) Microsoft 365
5 29 (9.93%) Entra ID
6 11 (3.77%) GCP
6 11 (3.77%) Power Platform
7 10 (3.42%) PaaS
8 9 (3.08%) OpenShift
9 8 (2.74%) AWS KMS
9 8 (2.74%) SaaS
10 7 (2.40%) Azure Key Vault
11 6 (2.05%) Azure DevOps
12 5 (1.71%) Amazon EKS
12 5 (1.71%) GitHub
13 4 (1.37%) AWS CloudFormation
13 4 (1.37%) OneDrive
13 4 (1.37%) Power Automate
13 4 (1.37%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 3 (1.03%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 71 (24.32%) Firewall
2 69 (23.63%) DNS
3 44 (15.07%) DHCP
4 43 (14.73%) BGP
5 35 (11.99%) VPN
5 35 (11.99%) WAN
6 28 (9.59%) OSPF
7 27 (9.25%) LAN
8 25 (8.56%) Junos
9 24 (8.22%) Cisco ISE
9 24 (8.22%) Ethernet VPN
9 24 (8.22%) Network Security
9 24 (8.22%) VXLAN
10 23 (7.88%) BIG-IP
11 19 (6.51%) SSL
12 15 (5.14%) MPLS
13 12 (4.11%) IPsec
13 12 (4.11%) TCP/IP
14 11 (3.77%) Cisco IOS
15 8 (2.74%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (3.42%) Elasticsearch
2 8 (2.74%) SQL Server
3 6 (2.05%) Power BI
4 2 (0.68%) Metadata
4 2 (0.68%) MongoDB
4 2 (0.68%) MySQL
5 1 (0.34%) Amazon QuickSight
5 1 (0.34%) Amazon RDS
5 1 (0.34%) PostgreSQL
5 1 (0.34%) RDBMS
5 1 (0.34%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 11 (3.77%) JIRA
2 8 (2.74%) GitLab
3 6 (2.05%) Robot Framework
4 4 (1.37%) Sonatype Nexus
5 3 (1.03%) Jenkins
6 2 (0.68%) Git
7 1 (0.34%) JUnit
7 1 (0.34%) MSI
General
1 40 (13.70%) Analytical Skills
2 33 (11.30%) Social Skills
3 26 (8.90%) Public Sector
4 24 (8.22%) Finance
5 7 (2.40%) Military
6 6 (2.05%) Documentation Skills
7 5 (1.71%) Banking
8 3 (1.03%) Legal
9 2 (0.68%) Financial Institution
9 2 (0.68%) Local Government
9 2 (0.68%) Retail
10 1 (0.34%) Aerospace
10 1 (0.34%) Back Office
10 1 (0.34%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.34%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.34%) Presentation Skills
10 1 (0.34%) Wearables
Job Titles
1 86 (29.45%) Architect
2 45 (15.41%) Senior
3 42 (14.38%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 19 (6.51%) 3rd Line Engineer
5 18 (6.16%) Network Engineer
5 18 (6.16%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
6 13 (4.45%) Network Specialist
7 12 (4.11%) Firewall Specialist
7 12 (4.11%) Support Engineer
8 11 (3.77%) Security Engineer
9 10 (3.42%) Senior Architect
10 9 (3.08%) 3rd Line Infrastructure Engineer
10 9 (3.08%) Senior Network Engineer
11 8 (2.74%) 3rd Line Support
11 8 (2.74%) Administrator
11 8 (2.74%) Consultant
11 8 (2.74%) Platform Manager
11 8 (2.74%) Systems Administrator
11 8 (2.74%) Systems Manager
11 8 (2.74%) Wintel Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (13.01%) REST
2 34 (11.64%) JSON
3 23 (7.88%) 802.1X
4 17 (5.82%) OpenID
5 16 (5.48%) SAML
6 15 (5.14%) LDAP
7 12 (4.11%) OAuth
8 6 (2.05%) OAuth2
9 4 (1.37%) Elastic Stack
10 3 (1.03%) Microsoft Graph
10 3 (1.03%) SailPoint
11 2 (0.68%) CSS
11 2 (0.68%) eBPF
11 2 (0.68%) HTML
11 2 (0.68%) Kafka
11 2 (0.68%) Loki
11 2 (0.68%) SPIFFE
11 2 (0.68%) Web Services
12 1 (0.34%) ARM Templates
12 1 (0.34%) Keycloak
Miscellaneous
1 35 (11.99%) Clustering
2 27 (9.25%) Data Centre
3 26 (8.90%) Self-Motivation
4 11 (3.77%) Enterprise Storage
4 11 (3.77%) Hybrid Cloud
5 10 (3.42%) Algorithms
5 10 (3.42%) Public Cloud
6 8 (2.74%) Private Cloud
7 7 (2.40%) Fat Client
7 7 (2.40%) Onboarding
7 7 (2.40%) Thin Client
8 6 (2.05%) Management Information System
8 6 (2.05%) Operational Technology
9 5 (1.71%) Cloud Native
9 5 (1.71%) Smartcard
10 4 (1.37%) Replication
11 3 (1.03%) Enterprise Software
12 2 (0.68%) Analytical Mindset
12 2 (0.68%) Security Posture
12 2 (0.68%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 103 (35.27%) Windows
2 56 (19.18%) Linux
3 47 (16.10%) Windows Server
4 9 (3.08%) Windows Server 2012
5 7 (2.40%) Ubuntu
5 7 (2.40%) Windows 7
5 7 (2.40%) Windows Server 2003
6 5 (1.71%) CentOS
6 5 (1.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (1.03%) VMS
7 3 (1.03%) Windows 10
8 2 (0.68%) Android
8 2 (0.68%) Debian
8 2 (0.68%) Windows Server 2019
9 1 (0.34%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.34%) Data ONTAP
9 1 (0.34%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.34%) Solaris
9 1 (0.34%) Unix
9 1 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 74 (25.34%) Agile
2 62 (21.23%) Key Management
3 58 (19.86%) Identity Access Management
4 49 (16.78%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 42 (14.38%) Cybersecurity
6 35 (11.99%) CI/CD
6 35 (11.99%) ITIL
6 35 (11.99%) Problem-Solving
7 34 (11.64%) Observability
8 33 (11.30%) High Availability
8 33 (11.30%) Load Balancing
9 31 (10.62%) Configuration Management
10 29 (9.93%) Change Management
10 29 (9.93%) DevOps
11 27 (9.25%) Infrastructure as Code
12 25 (8.56%) Migration
13 24 (8.22%) Cryptography
13 24 (8.22%) Service Management
14 22 (7.53%) Vulnerability Management
15 21 (7.19%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 85 (29.11%) PowerShell
2 40 (13.70%) Python
3 17 (5.82%) SQL
4 14 (4.79%) Bash
5 8 (2.74%) C#
5 8 (2.74%) JavaScript
6 4 (1.37%) Java
6 4 (1.37%) PHP
7 3 (1.03%) C++
7 3 (1.03%) Go
8 1 (0.34%) Perl
8 1 (0.34%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 203 (69.52%) Security Cleared
2 103 (35.27%) DV Cleared
3 92 (31.51%) SC Cleared
4 24 (8.22%) Cisco Certification
5 22 (7.53%) Degree
6 16 (5.48%) CISSP
7 15 (5.14%) CISM
8 13 (4.45%) Microsoft Certification
9 8 (2.74%) GIAC
10 7 (2.40%) JNCIA
10 7 (2.40%) JNCIP
10 7 (2.40%) JNCIS
11 6 (2.05%) AWS Certification
11 6 (2.05%) Azure Certification
12 5 (1.71%) Computer Science Degree
12 5 (1.71%) MCSE
12 5 (1.71%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 4 (1.37%) APMG
13 4 (1.37%) CompTIA Security+
13 4 (1.37%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (7.19%) NIST
2 17 (5.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 15 (5.14%) NCSC
4 10 (3.42%) Cyber Essentials
5 7 (2.40%) PCI DSS
6 6 (2.05%) GDPR
7 5 (1.71%) QA
8 4 (1.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 4 (1.37%) SLA
9 3 (1.03%) RMADS
10 2 (0.68%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 2 (0.68%) ISA99
10 2 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 2 (0.68%) JSP 440
11 1 (0.34%) Accessibility
11 1 (0.34%) GMP
11 1 (0.34%) GxP
11 1 (0.34%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.34%) SOC 2
System Software
1 86 (29.45%) Active Directory
2 46 (15.75%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (7.19%) Docker
4 17 (5.82%) VMware ESXi
5 16 (5.48%) Hyper-V
6 13 (4.45%) VMware NSX
7 10 (3.42%) BitLocker
8 9 (3.08%) Firmware
9 8 (2.74%) Microsoft App-V
10 4 (1.37%) vSphere
11 3 (1.03%) Sendmail
12 2 (0.68%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 2 (0.68%) KVM
12 2 (0.68%) OpenSSH
12 2 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
13 1 (0.34%) Embedded Firmware
13 1 (0.34%) iptables
13 1 (0.34%) Squid
13 1 (0.34%) Terminal Services
13 1 (0.34%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 41 (14.04%) Ansible
2 35 (11.99%) Kubernetes
2 35 (11.99%) Terraform
3 22 (7.53%) FortiGate
3 22 (7.53%) vCenter Server
4 17 (5.82%) Single Sign-On
5 15 (5.14%) Microsoft Intune
6 10 (3.42%) Prometheus
6 10 (3.42%) Puppet
7 9 (3.08%) Grafana
8 8 (2.74%) vMotion
9 7 (2.40%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 7 (2.40%) SCOM
9 7 (2.40%) WMI
10 6 (2.05%) WSUS
11 5 (1.71%) SCCM
12 3 (1.03%) CA Single Sign-On
13 2 (0.68%) PingFederate
13 2 (0.68%) Proxmox
13 2 (0.68%) Suricata
Vendors
1 86 (29.45%) Microsoft
2 69 (23.63%) VMware
3 52 (17.81%) Cisco
4 39 (13.36%) Splunk
5 37 (12.67%) Juniper
6 26 (8.90%) F5
6 26 (8.90%) SolarWinds
7 21 (7.19%) Extreme Networks
8 14 (4.79%) Citrix
9 13 (4.45%) ServiceNow
10 12 (4.11%) Palo Alto
11 10 (3.42%) Thales
12 9 (3.08%) NetApp
13 7 (2.40%) Broadcom
14 6 (2.05%) BMC
14 6 (2.05%) Netskope
14 6 (2.05%) Okta
14 6 (2.05%) Remedy
15 5 (1.71%) BeyondTrust
15 5 (1.71%) Red Hat