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

6 months to
2 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 368 353 222
Rank change year-on-year -15 -131 +99
Contract jobs citing PKI 335 220 434
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.63% 0.66% 1.11%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.88% 1.91% 3.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 233 169 316
10th Percentile £415 £364 £363
25th Percentile £463 £463 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £540
Median % change year-on-year - +1.85% -4.85%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £608
90th Percentile £705 £688 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £550 £550
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 0 4
10th Percentile £64.80 - -
25th Percentile £72.54 - -
Median hourly rate £98.82 - £23.80
75th Percentile - - £27.91
90th Percentile £100.00 - £35.32
UK excluding London median hourly rate £98.82 - £38.50

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 17,847 11,525 11,987
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.45% 34.82% 30.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,874 7,108 7,705
10th Percentile £320 £302 £300
25th Percentile £420 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £640 £675
90th Percentile £750 £775 £818
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 969 552 630
10th Percentile £15.90 £15.13 £12.30
25th Percentile £19.85 £18.87 £17.61
Median hourly rate £43.96 £29.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +49.02% -30.59% +15.25%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £65.02
90th Percentile £85.00 £76.25 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £30.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year +46.53% -33.33% -

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 2 August 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 2 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for PKI in the UK

PKI
Top 15 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 2 August 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 -50 277 £575 +2.91% 81
UK excluding London -10 230 £550 - 57
South East -1 108 £590 +2.61% 20
Work from Home -48 80 £550 - 29
London -49 79 £600 +2.56% 23
North of England -34 46 £500 +1.63% 17
Scotland +14 29 £481 -10.09% 2
South West -60 27 £670 +16.52% 15
North West -41 24 £418 -15.04% 8
Yorkshire - 22 £500 - 10
Midlands -63 12 £463 +8.82% 3
West Midlands -71 11 £450 +5.88% 2
Wales - 6 £463 -
East of England -14 4 £400 -23.81% 3
East Midlands -13 1 £475 - 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 13 (3.88%) Microsoft Exchange
2 11 (3.28%) SharePoint
3 9 (2.69%) Confluence
4 7 (2.09%) IIS
5 4 (1.19%) Apache
6 3 (0.90%) Exchange Server 2010
6 3 (0.90%) Tomcat
6 3 (0.90%) WebSphere
7 1 (0.30%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 5 (1.49%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 13 (3.88%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.30%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.30%) Dynamics GP
Cloud Services
1 106 (31.64%) Azure
2 82 (24.48%) AWS
3 60 (17.91%) Entra ID
4 29 (8.66%) GCP
5 27 (8.06%) Microsoft 365
6 20 (5.97%) Power Platform
7 12 (3.58%) IaaS
8 11 (3.28%) OpenShift
8 11 (3.28%) PaaS
9 10 (2.99%) Azure Key Vault
10 8 (2.39%) SaaS
11 7 (2.09%) Azure DevOps
12 6 (1.79%) GitHub
13 5 (1.49%) Amazon EKS
13 5 (1.49%) AWS KMS
14 4 (1.19%) OCI
15 3 (0.90%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 2 (0.60%) Azure Monitor
16 2 (0.60%) Azure Sentinel
16 2 (0.60%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 111 (33.13%) DNS
2 89 (26.57%) Firewall
3 82 (24.48%) DHCP
4 38 (11.34%) VPN
5 36 (10.75%) BGP
6 35 (10.45%) LAN
6 35 (10.45%) WAN
7 31 (9.25%) OSPF
8 30 (8.96%) TCP/IP
9 28 (8.36%) SSL
10 24 (7.16%) Ethernet VPN
10 24 (7.16%) VXLAN
11 23 (6.87%) BIG-IP
11 23 (6.87%) Junos
12 22 (6.57%) Cisco ISE
12 22 (6.57%) Network Security
13 17 (5.07%) VSAN
14 16 (4.78%) IPsec
15 14 (4.18%) VLAN
15 14 (4.18%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (8.36%) SQL Server
2 15 (4.48%) Power BI
3 9 (2.69%) Elasticsearch
4 7 (2.09%) PostgreSQL
5 6 (1.79%) MySQL
6 5 (1.49%) Amazon RDS
6 5 (1.49%) MongoDB
7 4 (1.19%) Db2
7 4 (1.19%) Relational Database
8 3 (0.90%) Big Data
8 3 (0.90%) NoSQL
9 2 (0.60%) Metadata
9 2 (0.60%) RDBMS
10 1 (0.30%) DynamoDB
10 1 (0.30%) MariaDB
10 1 (0.30%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 15 (4.48%) Git
2 12 (3.58%) JIRA
3 9 (2.69%) GitLab
4 8 (2.39%) Jenkins
5 3 (0.90%) Robot Framework
5 3 (0.90%) Sonatype Nexus
5 3 (0.90%) Terragrunt
6 2 (0.60%) Burp Suite
6 2 (0.60%) Cucumber
6 2 (0.60%) Gatling
6 2 (0.60%) Gradle
6 2 (0.60%) LoadRunner
6 2 (0.60%) MSI
6 2 (0.60%) REST Assured
6 2 (0.60%) SonarQube
General
1 52 (15.52%) Social Skills
2 39 (11.64%) Finance
3 31 (9.25%) Public Sector
4 23 (6.87%) Analytical Skills
5 10 (2.99%) Banking
6 9 (2.69%) Documentation Skills
7 7 (2.09%) Legal
7 7 (2.09%) Military
8 6 (1.79%) Influencing Skills
9 5 (1.49%) Retail
10 4 (1.19%) Automotive
10 4 (1.19%) Police
11 3 (0.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 2 (0.60%) Corporate Banking
12 2 (0.60%) Investment Banking
12 2 (0.60%) Retail Banking
13 1 (0.30%) Law
13 1 (0.30%) Local Government
13 1 (0.30%) Manufacturing
13 1 (0.30%) Wearables
Job Titles
1 74 (22.09%) Senior
2 54 (16.12%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 38 (11.34%) Architect
4 33 (9.85%) Network Engineer
5 24 (7.16%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
5 24 (7.16%) Senior Network Engineer
6 21 (6.27%) 3rd Line Engineer
7 19 (5.67%) Lead
7 19 (5.67%) Support Engineer
8 17 (5.07%) Platform Engineer
8 17 (5.07%) Storage Engineer
9 14 (4.18%) Firewall Specialist
9 14 (4.18%) Network Specialist
10 13 (3.88%) DevOps Engineer
11 11 (3.28%) Solutions Architect
12 10 (2.99%) Senior Architect
13 9 (2.69%) Linux Engineer
14 8 (2.39%) 3rd Line Infrastructure Engineer
14 8 (2.39%) VMware Engineer
15 7 (2.09%) Principal Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (10.75%) 802.1X
2 28 (8.36%) OpenID
3 26 (7.76%) SAML
4 25 (7.46%) LDAP
5 21 (6.27%) OAuth
6 17 (5.07%) REST
7 11 (3.28%) OAuth2
8 9 (2.69%) .NET
9 7 (2.09%) .NET Framework
9 7 (2.09%) JSON
9 7 (2.09%) Kafka
9 7 (2.09%) RabbitMQ
9 7 (2.09%) XML
10 6 (1.79%) Keycloak
10 6 (1.79%) SailPoint
11 4 (1.19%) Middleware
11 4 (1.19%) Web Services
12 3 (0.90%) FIDO
12 3 (0.90%) Microsoft Graph
12 3 (0.90%) SPIFFE
Miscellaneous
1 50 (14.93%) Clustering
2 49 (14.63%) Data Centre
3 18 (5.37%) Cloud Native
4 15 (4.48%) Onboarding
4 15 (4.48%) Public Cloud
5 14 (4.18%) Hybrid Cloud
6 13 (3.88%) Linux Command Line
7 11 (3.28%) Distributed Systems
8 8 (2.39%) Security Posture
9 7 (2.09%) Enterprise Storage
9 7 (2.09%) Legacy Systems
9 7 (2.09%) Management Information System
10 6 (1.79%) Enterprise Software
10 6 (1.79%) Self-Motivation
11 5 (1.49%) Data Protection Act
11 5 (1.49%) Mainframe
11 5 (1.49%) Operational Technology
11 5 (1.49%) Private Cloud
11 5 (1.49%) Robotics
11 5 (1.49%) Smartcard
Operating Systems
1 165 (49.25%) Windows
2 97 (28.96%) Linux
3 83 (24.78%) Windows Server
4 12 (3.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 10 (2.99%) Unix
6 9 (2.69%) Ubuntu
7 8 (2.39%) Windows Server 2012
7 8 (2.39%) Windows Server 2016
8 7 (2.09%) Windows Server 2019
9 6 (1.79%) Debian
10 5 (1.49%) Windows Server 2003
11 4 (1.19%) Android
12 3 (0.90%) Apple iOS
12 3 (0.90%) Mac OS
13 2 (0.60%) CentOS
13 2 (0.60%) Windows 10
14 1 (0.30%) Data ONTAP
14 1 (0.30%) VMS
14 1 (0.30%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 106 (31.64%) Identity Access Management
2 60 (17.91%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 58 (17.31%) High Availability
3 58 (17.31%) ITIL
4 55 (16.42%) Infrastructure as Code
4 55 (16.42%) Problem-Solving
5 52 (15.52%) Cybersecurity
6 47 (14.03%) CI/CD
6 47 (14.03%) DevOps
7 46 (13.73%) Zero Trust
8 43 (12.84%) Agile
9 42 (12.54%) Observability
10 36 (10.75%) ITSM
11 35 (10.45%) Continuous Improvement
12 34 (10.15%) Service Management
13 33 (9.85%) Technical Leadership
14 32 (9.55%) Load Balancing
15 31 (9.25%) DevSecOps
15 31 (9.25%) Stakeholder Management
16 30 (8.96%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 89 (26.57%) PowerShell
2 61 (18.21%) Python
3 29 (8.66%) Bash
4 16 (4.78%) SQL
5 14 (4.18%) JavaScript
6 13 (3.88%) C#
7 10 (2.99%) Java
8 3 (0.90%) Go
9 2 (0.60%) Ruby
9 2 (0.60%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.30%) C++
10 1 (0.30%) PHP
Qualifications
1 171 (51.04%) Security Cleared
2 104 (31.04%) DV Cleared
3 69 (20.60%) SC Cleared
4 37 (11.04%) Cisco Certification
5 20 (5.97%) Degree
6 18 (5.37%) Microsoft Certification
7 16 (4.78%) CCNP
8 12 (3.58%) Azure Certification
9 11 (3.28%) CISSP
9 11 (3.28%) JNCIP
9 11 (3.28%) JNCIS
9 11 (3.28%) MCSE
10 10 (2.99%) VCAP
11 7 (2.09%) JNCIA
12 6 (1.79%) AWS Certification
13 5 (1.49%) CISM
13 5 (1.49%) CompTIA Security+
13 5 (1.49%) GIAC
13 5 (1.49%) Master's Degree
14 4 (1.19%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (8.96%) NIST
2 19 (5.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 16 (4.78%) NCSC
4 13 (3.88%) SLA
5 9 (2.69%) QA
6 7 (2.09%) Cyber Essentials
7 5 (1.49%) GDPR
8 3 (0.90%) PCI DSS
8 3 (0.90%) SOC 2
9 2 (0.60%) Government Security Classifications
9 2 (0.60%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 2 (0.60%) ISA99
9 2 (0.60%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 2 (0.60%) ITGC
9 2 (0.60%) JSP 440
9 2 (0.60%) NIST 800
9 2 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 1 (0.30%) GMP
10 1 (0.30%) GxP
System Software
1 141 (42.09%) Active Directory
2 69 (20.60%) VMware Infrastructure
3 41 (12.24%) Docker
4 35 (10.45%) Hyper-V
5 33 (9.85%) VMware NSX
6 14 (4.18%) vSphere
7 11 (3.28%) VMware ESXi
8 9 (2.69%) BitLocker
9 8 (2.39%) Microsoft App-V
9 8 (2.39%) Virtual Machines
10 4 (1.19%) Firmware
10 4 (1.19%) NFS
10 4 (1.19%) OpenSSH
10 4 (1.19%) Terminal Services
10 4 (1.19%) Virtual Desktop
11 3 (0.90%) KVM
11 3 (0.90%) OpenAM
12 2 (0.60%) XenApp
12 2 (0.60%) XenDesktop
13 1 (0.30%) iptables
Systems Management
1 67 (20.00%) Kubernetes
2 62 (18.51%) Ansible
3 60 (17.91%) Terraform
4 30 (8.96%) Single Sign-On
5 25 (7.46%) vCenter Server
6 23 (6.87%) FortiGate
7 15 (4.48%) Microsoft Intune
8 14 (4.18%) SCOM
9 13 (3.88%) Avamar
9 13 (3.88%) VxRail
10 12 (3.58%) Puppet
11 10 (2.99%) Prometheus
12 9 (2.69%) Grafana
13 8 (2.39%) SCCM
13 8 (2.39%) vMotion
14 7 (2.09%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 7 (2.09%) CA Single Sign-On
14 7 (2.09%) Istio
15 6 (1.79%) Kibana
16 5 (1.49%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 125 (37.31%) Microsoft
2 88 (26.27%) VMware
3 61 (18.21%) Cisco
4 36 (10.75%) Splunk
5 33 (9.85%) Juniper
6 30 (8.96%) SolarWinds
7 27 (8.06%) ServiceNow
8 26 (7.76%) F5
9 23 (6.87%) Thales
10 22 (6.57%) Extreme Networks
10 22 (6.57%) Okta
11 18 (5.37%) Citrix
12 17 (5.07%) BeyondTrust
13 15 (4.48%) Dell
14 13 (3.88%) BMC
14 13 (3.88%) CyberArk
14 13 (3.88%) Google
14 13 (3.88%) Palo Alto
14 13 (3.88%) Remedy
15 10 (2.99%) NetApp