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

6 months to
30 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 359 333 221
Rank change year-on-year -26 -112 +88
Contract jobs citing PKI 325 224 444
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.61% 0.68% 1.11%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.84% 1.97% 3.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 228 173 320
10th Percentile £414 £359 £363
25th Percentile £463 £463 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £544
Median % change year-on-year - +1.15% -4.61%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £608
90th Percentile £705 £688 £670
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £550 £550
% change year-on-year - - -1.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 0 4
10th Percentile £61.87 - -
25th Percentile £72.07 - -
Median hourly rate £91.91 - £23.80
75th Percentile £99.12 - £27.91
90th Percentile £100.00 - £35.32
UK excluding London median hourly rate £91.91 - £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 17,664 11,396 12,196
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.35% 34.73% 30.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,789 7,041 7,841
10th Percentile £322 £300 £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 £813
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 937 544 662
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.13 £12.28
25th Percentile £20.89 £18.87 £16.85
Median hourly rate £43.96 £29.75 £41.13
Median % change year-on-year +47.76% -27.66% +15.85%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.40 £77.13 £73.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £30.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +46.53% -29.41% -5.56%

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 30 July 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 30 July 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 30 July 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 -58 267 £575 +1.32% 63
UK excluding London -11 223 £550 - 46
South East +3 108 £590 +2.61% 14
Work from Home -44 78 £550 - 23
London -59 77 £600 +2.56% 15
North of England -41 41 £500 +1.63% 18
Scotland +8 29 £481 -10.09% 1
South West -60 25 £615 +6.91% 10
North West -40 22 £418 -15.14% 8
Yorkshire - 19 £500 - 10
Midlands -70 12 £463 +8.82% 2
West Midlands -76 11 £450 +5.88% 1
Wales - 6 £463 - 1
East of England -15 4 £400 -23.81%
East Midlands -11 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 (4.00%) Microsoft Exchange
2 11 (3.38%) SharePoint
3 9 (2.77%) Confluence
4 7 (2.15%) IIS
5 4 (1.23%) Apache
6 3 (0.92%) Exchange Server 2010
6 3 (0.92%) Tomcat
6 3 (0.92%) WebSphere
7 1 (0.31%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 5 (1.54%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 13 (4.00%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.31%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.31%) Dynamics GP
Cloud Services
1 104 (32.00%) Azure
2 80 (24.62%) AWS
3 57 (17.54%) Entra ID
4 27 (8.31%) Microsoft 365
5 26 (8.00%) GCP
6 20 (6.15%) Power Platform
7 12 (3.69%) IaaS
8 11 (3.38%) OpenShift
8 11 (3.38%) PaaS
9 10 (3.08%) Azure Key Vault
10 8 (2.46%) SaaS
11 7 (2.15%) Azure DevOps
12 6 (1.85%) GitHub
13 5 (1.54%) Amazon EKS
13 5 (1.54%) AWS KMS
14 4 (1.23%) OCI
15 3 (0.92%) Google Kubernetes Engine
16 2 (0.62%) Azure Monitor
16 2 (0.62%) GitHub Actions
16 2 (0.62%) Rubrik
Communications & Networking
1 108 (33.23%) DNS
2 86 (26.46%) Firewall
3 79 (24.31%) DHCP
4 37 (11.38%) VPN
5 36 (11.08%) BGP
6 35 (10.77%) LAN
6 35 (10.77%) WAN
7 31 (9.54%) OSPF
8 27 (8.31%) SSL
8 27 (8.31%) TCP/IP
9 24 (7.38%) Ethernet VPN
9 24 (7.38%) VXLAN
10 23 (7.08%) BIG-IP
10 23 (7.08%) Junos
11 22 (6.77%) Cisco ISE
12 21 (6.46%) Network Security
13 16 (4.92%) IPsec
14 15 (4.62%) VSAN
15 14 (4.31%) Wireless
16 13 (4.00%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (8.62%) SQL Server
2 15 (4.62%) Power BI
3 9 (2.77%) Elasticsearch
4 6 (1.85%) MySQL
4 6 (1.85%) PostgreSQL
5 5 (1.54%) Amazon RDS
5 5 (1.54%) MongoDB
6 4 (1.23%) Db2
6 4 (1.23%) Relational Database
7 3 (0.92%) Big Data
7 3 (0.92%) NoSQL
8 2 (0.62%) Metadata
8 2 (0.62%) RDBMS
9 1 (0.31%) DynamoDB
9 1 (0.31%) MariaDB
9 1 (0.31%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 14 (4.31%) Git
2 12 (3.69%) JIRA
3 9 (2.77%) GitLab
4 8 (2.46%) Jenkins
5 3 (0.92%) Robot Framework
5 3 (0.92%) Sonatype Nexus
5 3 (0.92%) Terragrunt
6 2 (0.62%) Burp Suite
6 2 (0.62%) Cucumber
6 2 (0.62%) Gatling
6 2 (0.62%) Gradle
6 2 (0.62%) LoadRunner
6 2 (0.62%) MSI
6 2 (0.62%) REST Assured
6 2 (0.62%) SonarQube
General
1 51 (15.69%) Social Skills
2 38 (11.69%) Finance
3 30 (9.23%) Public Sector
4 20 (6.15%) Analytical Skills
5 9 (2.77%) Banking
5 9 (2.77%) Documentation Skills
6 7 (2.15%) Legal
6 7 (2.15%) Military
7 6 (1.85%) Influencing Skills
8 5 (1.54%) Retail
9 4 (1.23%) Police
10 3 (0.92%) Automotive
10 3 (0.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.62%) Corporate Banking
11 2 (0.62%) Investment Banking
11 2 (0.62%) Retail Banking
12 1 (0.31%) Back Office
12 1 (0.31%) Law
12 1 (0.31%) Local Government
12 1 (0.31%) Wearables
Job Titles
1 72 (22.15%) Senior
2 53 (16.31%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 36 (11.08%) Architect
4 32 (9.85%) Network Engineer
5 23 (7.08%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
5 23 (7.08%) Senior Network Engineer
6 21 (6.46%) 3rd Line Engineer
7 19 (5.85%) Lead
8 17 (5.23%) Storage Engineer
8 17 (5.23%) Support Engineer
9 14 (4.31%) Firewall Specialist
9 14 (4.31%) Network Specialist
10 13 (4.00%) DevOps Engineer
10 13 (4.00%) Platform Engineer
11 10 (3.08%) Senior Architect
11 10 (3.08%) Solutions Architect
12 9 (2.77%) Linux Engineer
13 8 (2.46%) 3rd Line Infrastructure Engineer
13 8 (2.46%) VMware Engineer
14 7 (2.15%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (10.77%) 802.1X
2 27 (8.31%) OpenID
3 25 (7.69%) LDAP
3 25 (7.69%) SAML
4 20 (6.15%) OAuth
5 17 (5.23%) REST
6 10 (3.08%) OAuth2
7 9 (2.77%) .NET
8 7 (2.15%) .NET Framework
8 7 (2.15%) JSON
8 7 (2.15%) Kafka
8 7 (2.15%) RabbitMQ
8 7 (2.15%) XML
9 6 (1.85%) Keycloak
9 6 (1.85%) SailPoint
10 4 (1.23%) Middleware
10 4 (1.23%) Web Services
11 3 (0.92%) FIDO
11 3 (0.92%) Microsoft Graph
11 3 (0.92%) SPIFFE
Miscellaneous
1 50 (15.38%) Clustering
2 47 (14.46%) Data Centre
3 15 (4.62%) Cloud Native
4 14 (4.31%) Onboarding
5 13 (4.00%) Hybrid Cloud
5 13 (4.00%) Public Cloud
6 12 (3.69%) Linux Command Line
7 11 (3.38%) Distributed Systems
8 8 (2.46%) Security Posture
9 7 (2.15%) Enterprise Storage
9 7 (2.15%) Legacy Systems
9 7 (2.15%) Management Information System
10 6 (1.85%) Enterprise Software
10 6 (1.85%) Self-Motivation
11 5 (1.54%) Mainframe
11 5 (1.54%) Operational Technology
11 5 (1.54%) Private Cloud
11 5 (1.54%) Smartcard
12 4 (1.23%) Robotics
12 4 (1.23%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 163 (50.15%) Windows
2 91 (28.00%) Linux
3 83 (25.54%) Windows Server
4 12 (3.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 10 (3.08%) Unix
6 8 (2.46%) Windows Server 2012
6 8 (2.46%) Windows Server 2016
7 7 (2.15%) Ubuntu
7 7 (2.15%) Windows Server 2019
8 6 (1.85%) Debian
9 5 (1.54%) Windows Server 2003
10 4 (1.23%) Android
11 3 (0.92%) Apple iOS
11 3 (0.92%) Mac OS
12 2 (0.62%) CentOS
12 2 (0.62%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.31%) Data ONTAP
13 1 (0.31%) VMS
13 1 (0.31%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 101 (31.08%) Identity Access Management
2 59 (18.15%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 58 (17.85%) ITIL
4 55 (16.92%) High Availability
5 53 (16.31%) Problem-Solving
6 50 (15.38%) Cybersecurity
6 50 (15.38%) Infrastructure as Code
7 45 (13.85%) DevOps
8 44 (13.54%) Zero Trust
9 43 (13.23%) CI/CD
10 42 (12.92%) Agile
11 40 (12.31%) Observability
12 36 (11.08%) ITSM
13 34 (10.46%) Service Management
14 32 (9.85%) Continuous Improvement
15 30 (9.23%) Load Balancing
15 30 (9.23%) Technical Leadership
16 29 (8.92%) Cryptography
16 29 (8.92%) Key Management
16 29 (8.92%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 87 (26.77%) PowerShell
2 58 (17.85%) Python
3 26 (8.00%) Bash
4 15 (4.62%) SQL
5 14 (4.31%) JavaScript
6 13 (4.00%) C#
7 10 (3.08%) Java
8 3 (0.92%) Go
9 2 (0.62%) Ruby
9 2 (0.62%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.31%) C++
10 1 (0.31%) PHP
Qualifications
1 167 (51.38%) Security Cleared
2 102 (31.38%) DV Cleared
3 66 (20.31%) SC Cleared
4 36 (11.08%) Cisco Certification
5 20 (6.15%) Degree
6 18 (5.54%) Microsoft Certification
7 15 (4.62%) CCNP
8 12 (3.69%) Azure Certification
9 11 (3.38%) CISSP
9 11 (3.38%) MCSE
10 10 (3.08%) JNCIP
10 10 (3.08%) JNCIS
11 8 (2.46%) VCAP
12 7 (2.15%) JNCIA
13 5 (1.54%) AWS Certification
13 5 (1.54%) CISM
13 5 (1.54%) CompTIA Security+
13 5 (1.54%) GIAC
13 5 (1.54%) Master's Degree
14 4 (1.23%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (9.23%) NIST
2 19 (5.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 16 (4.92%) NCSC
4 11 (3.38%) SLA
5 9 (2.77%) QA
6 7 (2.15%) Cyber Essentials
7 5 (1.54%) GDPR
8 3 (0.92%) PCI DSS
8 3 (0.92%) SOC 2
9 2 (0.62%) Government Security Classifications
9 2 (0.62%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 2 (0.62%) ISA99
9 2 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 2 (0.62%) ITGC
9 2 (0.62%) JSP 440
9 2 (0.62%) NIST 800
9 2 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 1 (0.31%) GMP
10 1 (0.31%) GxP
System Software
1 137 (42.15%) Active Directory
2 67 (20.62%) VMware Infrastructure
3 40 (12.31%) Docker
4 34 (10.46%) Hyper-V
5 31 (9.54%) VMware NSX
6 12 (3.69%) vSphere
7 11 (3.38%) VMware ESXi
8 9 (2.77%) BitLocker
9 8 (2.46%) Microsoft App-V
9 8 (2.46%) Virtual Machines
10 4 (1.23%) Firmware
10 4 (1.23%) NFS
10 4 (1.23%) OpenSSH
10 4 (1.23%) Terminal Services
10 4 (1.23%) Virtual Desktop
11 3 (0.92%) KVM
11 3 (0.92%) OpenAM
12 2 (0.62%) XenApp
12 2 (0.62%) XenDesktop
13 1 (0.31%) iptables
Systems Management
1 62 (19.08%) Kubernetes
2 59 (18.15%) Ansible
3 55 (16.92%) Terraform
4 29 (8.92%) Single Sign-On
5 25 (7.69%) vCenter Server
6 23 (7.08%) FortiGate
7 15 (4.62%) Microsoft Intune
8 14 (4.31%) SCOM
9 13 (4.00%) Avamar
10 12 (3.69%) Puppet
11 11 (3.38%) VxRail
12 10 (3.08%) Prometheus
13 9 (2.77%) Grafana
14 8 (2.46%) SCCM
14 8 (2.46%) vMotion
15 7 (2.15%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 7 (2.15%) CA Single Sign-On
16 6 (1.85%) Kibana
17 5 (1.54%) Failover Clustering
17 5 (1.54%) WSUS
Vendors
1 122 (37.54%) Microsoft
2 86 (26.46%) VMware
3 60 (18.46%) Cisco
4 36 (11.08%) Splunk
5 32 (9.85%) Juniper
6 30 (9.23%) SolarWinds
7 26 (8.00%) F5
7 26 (8.00%) ServiceNow
8 23 (7.08%) Thales
9 22 (6.77%) Extreme Networks
10 20 (6.15%) Okta
11 18 (5.54%) Citrix
12 15 (4.62%) BeyondTrust
12 15 (4.62%) Dell
13 13 (4.00%) BMC
13 13 (4.00%) CyberArk
13 13 (4.00%) Palo Alto
13 13 (4.00%) Remedy
14 11 (3.38%) Google
15 10 (3.08%) NetApp