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 13 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 340 328 214
Rank change year-on-year -12 -114 +99
Contract jobs citing PKI 295 209 497
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.69% 0.71% 1.12%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.07% 2.11% 3.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 207 129 327
10th Percentile £401 £411 £363
25th Percentile £495 £469 £464
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £563 £550 £554
Median % change year-on-year +2.27% -0.72% -7.67%
75th Percentile £700 £638 £639
90th Percentile £838 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £570 £550
% change year-on-year -3.51% +3.64% -2.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 0 2
10th Percentile £61.41 - £56.61
25th Percentile £70.50 - £56.93
Median hourly rate £79.50 - £59.70
75th Percentile £96.25 - £64.73
90th Percentile £101.65 - £66.39
UK excluding London median hourly rate £79.50 - £59.70
% change year-on-year - - +8.55%

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 14,232 9,917 13,501
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.23% 33.66% 30.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,946 6,231 8,642
10th Percentile £290 £278 £255
25th Percentile £408 £409 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.71% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 670 349 871
10th Percentile £15.48 £16.95 £12.50
25th Percentile £18.87 £22.27 £15.63
Median hourly rate £35.00 £32.50 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.69% +16.07% +24.53%
75th Percentile £67.25 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £84.00 £83.20 £67.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.32 £31.76 £26.00
% change year-on-year +14.36% +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 13 March 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 13 March 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 13 March 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 +16 270 £588 +2.17% 50
UK excluding London -59 173 £550 -3.51% 39
South East +16 98 £600 -0.83% 20
London +11 92 £625 +19.05% 17
Work from Home -8 76 £650 +13.04% 19
South West -45 27 £563 - 3
West Midlands -50 24 £400 -5.88% 5
Midlands -54 24 £400 -5.88% 9
North of England -63 18 £482 -32.35% 3
Yorkshire -51 10 £482 -33.52%
North West -30 8 £444 -11.25% 3
Scotland -24 5 £613 +14.59% 1
East of England - 3 £550 - 4
Wales -7 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 28 (9.49%) Microsoft Exchange
2 9 (3.05%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.69%) Confluence
4 3 (1.02%) Exchange Server 2010
4 3 (1.02%) nginx
5 2 (0.68%) IIS
5 2 (0.68%) SharePoint Server
5 2 (0.68%) Skype for Business
6 1 (0.34%) Apache
6 1 (0.34%) ArcGIS
6 1 (0.34%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.34%) WebSphere
Applications
1 7 (2.37%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (1.02%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.34%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 61 (20.68%) Azure
2 55 (18.64%) AWS
3 31 (10.51%) IaaS
4 30 (10.17%) Microsoft 365
5 27 (9.15%) Entra ID
6 9 (3.05%) GCP
6 9 (3.05%) OpenShift
7 8 (2.71%) PaaS
7 8 (2.71%) SaaS
8 7 (2.37%) GitHub
8 7 (2.37%) Power Platform
9 6 (2.03%) AWS CloudFormation
9 6 (2.03%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 4 (1.36%) Amazon EKS
10 4 (1.36%) AWS KMS
11 3 (1.02%) Azure DevOps
11 3 (1.02%) Azure Key Vault
11 3 (1.02%) OneDrive
11 3 (1.02%) Power Automate
11 3 (1.02%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 72 (24.41%) Firewall
2 71 (24.07%) DNS
3 46 (15.59%) BGP
4 44 (14.92%) DHCP
5 37 (12.54%) WAN
6 33 (11.19%) VPN
7 27 (9.15%) Network Security
8 26 (8.81%) OSPF
9 25 (8.47%) LAN
10 23 (7.80%) Ethernet VPN
10 23 (7.80%) Junos
10 23 (7.80%) VXLAN
11 21 (7.12%) BIG-IP
12 20 (6.78%) Cisco ISE
13 19 (6.44%) MPLS
14 18 (6.10%) SSL
15 14 (4.75%) IPsec
16 12 (4.07%) TCP/IP
17 11 (3.73%) Cisco IOS
18 8 (2.71%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (2.71%) Elasticsearch
1 8 (2.71%) SQL Server
2 3 (1.02%) Amazon RDS
2 3 (1.02%) MongoDB
2 3 (1.02%) Power BI
3 1 (0.34%) Amazon QuickSight
3 1 (0.34%) MySQL
3 1 (0.34%) RDBMS
3 1 (0.34%) Redis
3 1 (0.34%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 11 (3.73%) JIRA
2 9 (3.05%) GitLab
3 6 (2.03%) Robot Framework
4 4 (1.36%) Jenkins
4 4 (1.36%) Sonatype Nexus
5 2 (0.68%) Terragrunt
6 1 (0.34%) Git
6 1 (0.34%) JUnit
General
1 44 (14.92%) Analytical Skills
2 39 (13.22%) Social Skills
3 28 (9.49%) Public Sector
4 18 (6.10%) Finance
5 9 (3.05%) Military
6 7 (2.37%) Banking
7 6 (2.03%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (1.36%) Presentation Skills
9 3 (1.02%) Legal
10 2 (0.68%) Financial Institution
10 2 (0.68%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (0.68%) Local Government
11 1 (0.34%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.34%) Back Office
11 1 (0.34%) Manufacturing
11 1 (0.34%) Retail Banking
11 1 (0.34%) Wearables
Job Titles
1 91 (30.85%) Architect
2 44 (14.92%) Senior
3 35 (11.86%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 19 (6.44%) 3rd Line Engineer
5 17 (5.76%) Network Engineer
6 16 (5.42%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
7 14 (4.75%) Support Engineer
8 12 (4.07%) Wintel Engineer
9 11 (3.73%) Lead
9 11 (3.73%) Network Specialist
10 10 (3.39%) 3rd Line Support
10 10 (3.39%) Administrator
10 10 (3.39%) Firewall Specialist
10 10 (3.39%) Platform Manager
10 10 (3.39%) Systems Administrator
10 10 (3.39%) Systems Manager
10 10 (3.39%) Wintel Administrator
10 10 (3.39%) Wintel Systems Administrator
11 9 (3.05%) Consultant
11 9 (3.05%) Senior Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (11.53%) REST
2 30 (10.17%) JSON
3 21 (7.12%) 802.1X
4 16 (5.42%) OpenID
5 14 (4.75%) LDAP
5 14 (4.75%) SAML
6 11 (3.73%) OAuth
7 8 (2.71%) OAuth2
8 5 (1.69%) Elastic Stack
9 3 (1.02%) CSS
9 3 (1.02%) HTML
9 3 (1.02%) Kafka
9 3 (1.02%) SailPoint
10 2 (0.68%) .NET
10 2 (0.68%) cloud-init
10 2 (0.68%) eBPF
10 2 (0.68%) Keycloak
10 2 (0.68%) Loki
10 2 (0.68%) Microsoft Graph
10 2 (0.68%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 27 (9.15%) Clustering
2 26 (8.81%) Data Centre
2 26 (8.81%) Self-Motivation
3 10 (3.39%) Fat Client
3 10 (3.39%) Thin Client
4 9 (3.05%) Algorithms
4 9 (3.05%) Management Information System
5 8 (2.71%) Enterprise Storage
6 7 (2.37%) Hybrid Cloud
6 7 (2.37%) Onboarding
6 7 (2.37%) Public Cloud
7 6 (2.03%) Private Cloud
8 5 (1.69%) Smartcard
9 4 (1.36%) Operational Technology
9 4 (1.36%) Replication
9 4 (1.36%) Security Operations Centre
9 4 (1.36%) Security Posture
10 3 (1.02%) Cloud Native
11 2 (0.68%) Analytical Mindset
11 2 (0.68%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 105 (35.59%) Windows
2 53 (17.97%) Linux
3 47 (15.93%) Windows Server
4 9 (3.05%) Windows 7
4 9 (3.05%) Windows Server 2012
5 7 (2.37%) CentOS
5 7 (2.37%) Ubuntu
6 6 (2.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 5 (1.69%) Windows 10
7 5 (1.69%) Windows Server 2003
8 4 (1.36%) Unix
9 3 (1.02%) VMS
9 3 (1.02%) Windows Server 2016
9 3 (1.02%) Windows Server 2019
10 1 (0.34%) Android
10 1 (0.34%) Solaris
10 1 (0.34%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 78 (26.44%) Agile
2 63 (21.36%) Key Management
3 55 (18.64%) Identity Access Management
4 42 (14.24%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 38 (12.88%) Cybersecurity
6 37 (12.54%) CI/CD
6 37 (12.54%) Problem-Solving
7 34 (11.53%) ITIL
8 32 (10.85%) Configuration Management
8 32 (10.85%) Observability
9 31 (10.51%) Change Management
9 31 (10.51%) Load Balancing
10 27 (9.15%) DevOps
11 26 (8.81%) High Availability
12 25 (8.47%) Cryptography
12 25 (8.47%) Service Management
13 24 (8.14%) Infrastructure as Code
14 22 (7.46%) Containerisation
14 22 (7.46%) Platform Engineering
14 22 (7.46%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 77 (26.10%) PowerShell
2 44 (14.92%) Python
3 19 (6.44%) SQL
4 14 (4.75%) Bash
5 7 (2.37%) C#
6 6 (2.03%) JavaScript
7 4 (1.36%) PHP
8 3 (1.02%) C++
8 3 (1.02%) Go
8 3 (1.02%) Java
8 3 (1.02%) Shell Script
9 1 (0.34%) Kusto Query Language
9 1 (0.34%) Perl
Qualifications
1 204 (69.15%) Security Cleared
2 101 (34.24%) DV Cleared
3 97 (32.88%) SC Cleared
4 28 (9.49%) Degree
5 26 (8.81%) Cisco Certification
6 19 (6.44%) CISSP
7 17 (5.76%) Microsoft Certification
8 16 (5.42%) CISM
9 8 (2.71%) Computer Science Degree
9 8 (2.71%) GIAC
9 8 (2.71%) MCSE
10 7 (2.37%) JNCIA
10 7 (2.37%) JNCIP
10 7 (2.37%) JNCIS
11 6 (2.03%) AWS Certification
11 6 (2.03%) CCNP
11 6 (2.03%) Master's Degree
11 6 (2.03%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 4 (1.36%) Azure Certification
12 4 (1.36%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (5.76%) NIST
2 14 (4.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 14 (4.75%) NCSC
3 8 (2.71%) PCI DSS
4 7 (2.37%) Cyber Essentials
4 7 (2.37%) GDPR
5 5 (1.69%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 5 (1.69%) QA
6 4 (1.36%) SLA
7 3 (1.02%) NIST 800
7 3 (1.02%) RMADS
8 2 (0.68%) HIPAA
8 2 (0.68%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 2 (0.68%) JSP 440
9 1 (0.34%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.34%) GMP
9 1 (0.34%) GxP
9 1 (0.34%) SOC 2
System Software
1 89 (30.17%) Active Directory
2 44 (14.92%) VMware Infrastructure
3 23 (7.80%) Docker
4 15 (5.08%) VMware ESXi
5 13 (4.41%) Hyper-V
6 12 (4.07%) VMware NSX
7 9 (3.05%) Firmware
8 7 (2.37%) BitLocker
9 6 (2.03%) Microsoft App-V
9 6 (2.03%) vSphere
10 4 (1.36%) Virtual Machines
11 3 (1.02%) Sendmail
12 2 (0.68%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 2 (0.68%) KVM
12 2 (0.68%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 2 (0.68%) Virtual Servers
13 1 (0.34%) Embedded Firmware
13 1 (0.34%) Squid
13 1 (0.34%) Terminal Services
13 1 (0.34%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 37 (12.54%) Ansible
2 35 (11.86%) Terraform
3 34 (11.53%) Kubernetes
4 22 (7.46%) vCenter Server
5 21 (7.12%) FortiGate
6 16 (5.42%) Single Sign-On
7 11 (3.73%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (3.39%) WSUS
9 9 (3.05%) Prometheus
9 9 (3.05%) SCOM
9 9 (3.05%) WMI
10 8 (2.71%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 8 (2.71%) Grafana
10 8 (2.71%) SCCM
11 7 (2.37%) Puppet
12 6 (2.03%) vMotion
13 4 (1.36%) QRadar
14 3 (1.02%) Podman
14 3 (1.02%) Proxmox
15 2 (0.68%) Cilium
Vendors
1 86 (29.15%) Microsoft
2 69 (23.39%) VMware
3 50 (16.95%) Cisco
4 43 (14.58%) Splunk
5 38 (12.88%) Juniper
6 28 (9.49%) SolarWinds
7 24 (8.14%) F5
8 19 (6.44%) Extreme Networks
9 11 (3.73%) Palo Alto
9 11 (3.73%) Thales
10 10 (3.39%) Citrix
11 8 (2.71%) Google
11 8 (2.71%) Veeam
12 7 (2.37%) Broadcom
12 7 (2.37%) Dell
12 7 (2.37%) Okta
12 7 (2.37%) ServiceNow
13 6 (2.03%) NetApp
14 5 (1.69%) Aruba
14 5 (1.69%) Red Hat