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

6 months to
31 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 342 299 211
Rank change year-on-year -43 -88 +108
Contract jobs citing PKI 293 225 499
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.66% 0.77% 1.13%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.00% 2.29% 3.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 201 145 332
10th Percentile £410 £407 £363
25th Percentile £488 £469 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £565 £565 £550
Median % change year-on-year - +2.73% -8.33%
75th Percentile £694 £630 £638
90th Percentile £838 £725 £725
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 14,617 9,829 13,418
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.83% 33.81% 30.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,187 6,301 8,593
10th Percentile £300 £296 £259
25th Percentile £410 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% -2.73%
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 688 377 889
10th Percentile £15.72 £16.95 £12.26
25th Percentile £19.33 £22.50 £15.39
Median hourly rate £42.60 £32.50 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +31.08% +18.18% +22.30%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £85.43 £83.20 £67.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £32.50 £25.50
% change year-on-year +39.88% +27.45% +15.91%

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 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 31 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 31 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 -28 267 £600 +4.35% 52
UK excluding London -79 173 £550 -4.35% 44
South East +17 105 £600 - 20
London -17 91 £625 +19.05% 11
Work from Home -17 81 £640 +10.80% 22
West Midlands -52 23 £400 -5.88% 2
Midlands -62 23 £400 -5.88% 5
South West -57 19 £606 +5.43% 6
North of England -65 18 £482 -32.35% 7
Yorkshire -50 10 £482 -33.52% 4
North West -30 8 £444 -11.25% 3
Scotland -27 5 £550 +2.90% 1
East of England -31 5 £550 - 5
Wales -10 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 22 (7.51%) Microsoft Exchange
2 6 (2.05%) Confluence
2 6 (2.05%) SharePoint
3 3 (1.02%) Exchange Server 2010
3 3 (1.02%) nginx
4 2 (0.68%) IIS
5 1 (0.34%) Apache
5 1 (0.34%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.34%) SharePoint Server
5 1 (0.34%) Tomcat
5 1 (0.34%) WebSphere
Applications
1 5 (1.71%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 5 (1.71%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.34%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 66 (22.53%) Azure
2 56 (19.11%) AWS
3 32 (10.92%) IaaS
3 32 (10.92%) Microsoft 365
4 29 (9.90%) Entra ID
5 10 (3.41%) Power Platform
6 9 (3.07%) GCP
6 9 (3.07%) OpenShift
6 9 (3.07%) PaaS
7 8 (2.73%) SaaS
8 6 (2.05%) GitHub
9 5 (1.71%) AWS CloudFormation
9 5 (1.71%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 4 (1.37%) Amazon EKS
10 4 (1.37%) AWS KMS
10 4 (1.37%) Azure DevOps
10 4 (1.37%) Power Automate
11 3 (1.02%) Azure Key Vault
11 3 (1.02%) OneDrive
11 3 (1.02%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 74 (25.26%) Firewall
2 68 (23.21%) DNS
3 44 (15.02%) BGP
4 43 (14.68%) DHCP
5 36 (12.29%) WAN
6 35 (11.95%) VPN
7 27 (9.22%) OSPF
8 26 (8.87%) LAN
9 25 (8.53%) Network Security
10 24 (8.19%) Junos
11 23 (7.85%) Cisco ISE
11 23 (7.85%) Ethernet VPN
11 23 (7.85%) VXLAN
12 22 (7.51%) BIG-IP
13 18 (6.14%) SSL
14 17 (5.80%) MPLS
15 14 (4.78%) IPsec
16 11 (3.75%) Cisco IOS
16 11 (3.75%) TCP/IP
17 8 (2.73%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (3.07%) Elasticsearch
2 8 (2.73%) SQL Server
3 5 (1.71%) Power BI
4 2 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (0.68%) Metadata
4 2 (0.68%) MongoDB
5 1 (0.34%) Amazon QuickSight
5 1 (0.34%) MySQL
5 1 (0.34%) RDBMS
5 1 (0.34%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 12 (4.10%) JIRA
2 7 (2.39%) GitLab
3 6 (2.05%) Robot Framework
4 4 (1.37%) Jenkins
4 4 (1.37%) Sonatype Nexus
5 1 (0.34%) Git
5 1 (0.34%) JUnit
5 1 (0.34%) Terragrunt
General
1 40 (13.65%) Analytical Skills
2 35 (11.95%) Social Skills
3 27 (9.22%) Public Sector
4 22 (7.51%) Finance
5 7 (2.39%) Military
6 6 (2.05%) Banking
7 5 (1.71%) Documentation Skills
8 3 (1.02%) Legal
8 3 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
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%) Wearables
Job Titles
1 88 (30.03%) Architect
2 43 (14.68%) Senior
3 38 (12.97%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 19 (6.48%) 3rd Line Engineer
5 17 (5.80%) Network Engineer
5 17 (5.80%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
6 13 (4.44%) Support Engineer
7 12 (4.10%) Network Specialist
8 11 (3.75%) Firewall Specialist
8 11 (3.75%) Security Engineer
9 10 (3.41%) Cloud Engineer
10 9 (3.07%) 3rd Line Support
10 9 (3.07%) Administrator
10 9 (3.07%) Platform Manager
10 9 (3.07%) Senior Architect
10 9 (3.07%) Senior Network Engineer
10 9 (3.07%) Systems Administrator
10 9 (3.07%) Systems Manager
10 9 (3.07%) Wintel Administrator
10 9 (3.07%) Wintel Systems Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (12.29%) REST
2 30 (10.24%) JSON
3 22 (7.51%) 802.1X
4 15 (5.12%) LDAP
5 14 (4.78%) OpenID
6 13 (4.44%) SAML
7 9 (3.07%) OAuth
8 6 (2.05%) OAuth2
9 4 (1.37%) Elastic Stack
10 3 (1.02%) 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%) Microsoft Graph
11 2 (0.68%) Web Services
12 1 (0.34%) AWS CDK
12 1 (0.34%) WPF
12 1 (0.34%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 32 (10.92%) Clustering
2 26 (8.87%) Data Centre
2 26 (8.87%) Self-Motivation
3 10 (3.41%) Public Cloud
4 9 (3.07%) Algorithms
4 9 (3.07%) Enterprise Storage
4 9 (3.07%) Hybrid Cloud
5 8 (2.73%) Fat Client
5 8 (2.73%) Thin Client
6 7 (2.39%) Management Information System
6 7 (2.39%) Onboarding
7 6 (2.05%) Operational Technology
7 6 (2.05%) Private Cloud
8 5 (1.71%) Smartcard
9 4 (1.37%) Cloud Native
9 4 (1.37%) Replication
9 4 (1.37%) Security Operations Centre
9 4 (1.37%) Security Posture
10 3 (1.02%) Enterprise Software
11 2 (0.68%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 103 (35.15%) Windows
2 56 (19.11%) Linux
3 46 (15.70%) Windows Server
4 9 (3.07%) Windows Server 2012
5 8 (2.73%) Windows 7
6 6 (2.05%) CentOS
6 6 (2.05%) Ubuntu
6 6 (2.05%) Windows Server 2003
7 5 (1.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 4 (1.37%) Windows 10
9 3 (1.02%) Unix
9 3 (1.02%) VMS
9 3 (1.02%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.68%) Android
10 2 (0.68%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.34%) Apple iOS
11 1 (0.34%) Debian
11 1 (0.34%) Mac OS
11 1 (0.34%) Solaris
11 1 (0.34%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 78 (26.62%) Agile
2 59 (20.14%) Key Management
3 57 (19.45%) Identity Access Management
4 45 (15.36%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 43 (14.68%) Cybersecurity
6 36 (12.29%) ITIL
7 35 (11.95%) CI/CD
8 34 (11.60%) Problem-Solving
9 32 (10.92%) Load Balancing
9 32 (10.92%) Observability
10 31 (10.58%) Change Management
10 31 (10.58%) Configuration Management
11 29 (9.90%) High Availability
12 28 (9.56%) DevOps
13 26 (8.87%) Infrastructure as Code
14 24 (8.19%) Cryptography
14 24 (8.19%) Migration
14 24 (8.19%) Service Management
15 22 (7.51%) Platform Engineering
16 21 (7.17%) Zero Trust
Programming Languages
1 81 (27.65%) PowerShell
2 40 (13.65%) Python
3 16 (5.46%) SQL
4 13 (4.44%) Bash
5 8 (2.73%) C#
6 7 (2.39%) JavaScript
7 4 (1.37%) PHP
8 3 (1.02%) C++
8 3 (1.02%) Java
9 2 (0.68%) Go
9 2 (0.68%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.34%) Perl
Qualifications
1 204 (69.62%) Security Cleared
2 103 (35.15%) DV Cleared
3 93 (31.74%) SC Cleared
4 24 (8.19%) Degree
5 22 (7.51%) Cisco Certification
6 16 (5.46%) CISM
6 16 (5.46%) CISSP
7 14 (4.78%) Microsoft Certification
8 8 (2.73%) GIAC
9 7 (2.39%) JNCIA
9 7 (2.39%) JNCIP
9 7 (2.39%) JNCIS
10 6 (2.05%) AWS Certification
10 6 (2.05%) Computer Science Degree
10 6 (2.05%) MCSE
11 5 (1.71%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 4 (1.37%) APMG
12 4 (1.37%) Azure Certification
12 4 (1.37%) CompTIA Security+
12 4 (1.37%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (6.14%) NIST
2 16 (5.46%) NCSC
3 14 (4.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 10 (3.41%) Cyber Essentials
5 7 (2.39%) GDPR
6 6 (2.05%) PCI DSS
7 5 (1.71%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 5 (1.71%) QA
8 4 (1.37%) SLA
9 3 (1.02%) 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 (29.35%) Active Directory
2 46 (15.70%) VMware Infrastructure
3 20 (6.83%) Docker
4 16 (5.46%) VMware ESXi
5 15 (5.12%) Hyper-V
6 13 (4.44%) VMware NSX
7 9 (3.07%) BitLocker
7 9 (3.07%) Firmware
8 7 (2.39%) Microsoft App-V
9 4 (1.37%) vSphere
10 3 (1.02%) Sendmail
10 3 (1.02%) Virtual Machines
11 2 (0.68%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 2 (0.68%) KVM
12 1 (0.34%) Embedded Firmware
12 1 (0.34%) NFS
12 1 (0.34%) Squid
12 1 (0.34%) Terminal Services
12 1 (0.34%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 37 (12.63%) Ansible
2 32 (10.92%) Kubernetes
2 32 (10.92%) Terraform
3 22 (7.51%) vCenter Server
4 21 (7.17%) FortiGate
5 17 (5.80%) Single Sign-On
6 13 (4.44%) Microsoft Intune
7 9 (3.07%) Prometheus
8 8 (2.73%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 8 (2.73%) Grafana
8 8 (2.73%) Puppet
8 8 (2.73%) WMI
9 7 (2.39%) SCOM
9 7 (2.39%) vMotion
9 7 (2.39%) WSUS
10 6 (2.05%) SCCM
11 4 (1.37%) QRadar
12 3 (1.02%) CA Single Sign-On
12 3 (1.02%) Podman
12 3 (1.02%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 88 (30.03%) Microsoft
2 69 (23.55%) VMware
3 51 (17.41%) Cisco
4 41 (13.99%) Splunk
5 37 (12.63%) Juniper
6 26 (8.87%) SolarWinds
7 25 (8.53%) F5
8 20 (6.83%) Extreme Networks
9 12 (4.10%) Citrix
9 12 (4.10%) Palo Alto
10 11 (3.75%) ServiceNow
11 10 (3.41%) Thales
12 8 (2.73%) Google
13 7 (2.39%) Broadcom
13 7 (2.39%) NetApp
14 6 (2.05%) Netskope
14 6 (2.05%) Okta
15 5 (1.71%) BeyondTrust
15 5 (1.71%) Red Hat
15 5 (1.71%) Zscaler