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

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 358 333 291
Rank change year-on-year -25 -42 -12
Contract jobs citing PKI 346 232 311
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.64% 0.71% 0.81%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.89% 2.00% 2.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 243 181 211
10th Percentile £425 £350 £410
25th Percentile £463 £463 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £542
Median % change year-on-year - +1.48% -4.92%
75th Percentile £638 £626 £608
90th Percentile £704 £695 £672
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £550 £538
% change year-on-year - +2.33% -6.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 0 4
10th Percentile £94.90 - -
25th Percentile £96.00 - -
Median hourly rate £97.41 - £23.80
75th Percentile £98.82 - £27.91
90th Percentile £100.00 - £35.32
UK excluding London median hourly rate £97.41 - £38.50
% change year-on-year - - -30.00%

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 18,270 11,618 11,671
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.75% 35.54% 30.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,964 7,104 7,195
10th Percentile £320 £300 £300
25th Percentile £423 £406 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £543
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -5.07% -1.36%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £675
90th Percentile £749 £763 £813
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,144 579 488
10th Percentile £14.07 £15.13 £14.30
25th Percentile £17.99 £18.87 £21.25
Median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -40.00% +11.11%
75th Percentile £67.55 £55.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.72 £30.00 £57.35
% change year-on-year +29.07% -47.69% +20.16%

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 14 September 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 14 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for PKI in the UK

PKI
Top 16 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 14 September 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 -58 283 £566 +2.91% 261
UK excluding London -20 236 £550 - 175
Work from Home -42 84 £570 +3.64% 87
London -74 83 £544 -7.05% 106
South East -9 81 £575 - 46
North of England -25 64 £525 +6.71% 30
Scotland +10 37 £481 -12.55% 12
North West -29 36 £525 +6.71% 13
South West -61 34 £648 +17.73% 44
Yorkshire -8 27 £565 -5.83% 14
East of England -25 9 £500 -4.76% 16
Midlands -73 8 £475 +18.75% 17
West Midlands -72 7 £475 +18.75% 8
Wales - 6 £463 - 6
East Midlands -16 1 £475 - 9
North East - 1 £426 - 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 17 (4.91%) Microsoft Exchange
2 14 (4.05%) Confluence
3 10 (2.89%) SharePoint
4 6 (1.73%) IIS
5 3 (0.87%) Apache
5 3 (0.87%) Exchange Server 2010
6 2 (0.58%) nginx
6 2 (0.58%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.58%) WebSphere
7 1 (0.29%) Traefik
Applications
1 4 (1.16%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 9 (2.60%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.29%) Dynamics GP
Cloud Services
1 113 (32.66%) Azure
2 83 (23.99%) AWS
3 71 (20.52%) Entra ID
4 38 (10.98%) GCP
5 17 (4.91%) Microsoft 365
6 16 (4.62%) Power Platform
7 14 (4.05%) Azure Key Vault
8 10 (2.89%) GitHub
8 10 (2.89%) IaaS
8 10 (2.89%) OpenShift
9 9 (2.60%) PaaS
10 8 (2.31%) SaaS
11 7 (2.02%) Azure DevOps
12 6 (1.73%) Amazon EKS
12 6 (1.73%) AWS KMS
12 6 (1.73%) GitHub Actions
12 6 (1.73%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 6 (1.73%) OCI
13 4 (1.16%) Rubrik
14 3 (0.87%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 105 (30.35%) DNS
2 75 (21.68%) DHCP
2 75 (21.68%) Firewall
3 41 (11.85%) VPN
4 34 (9.83%) TCP/IP
5 28 (8.09%) Network Security
5 28 (8.09%) SSL
6 18 (5.20%) LAN
7 17 (4.91%) IPsec
7 17 (4.91%) VLAN
7 17 (4.91%) WAN
8 16 (4.62%) VSAN
9 15 (4.34%) BGP
9 15 (4.34%) Wireless
10 14 (4.05%) SSH
11 13 (3.76%) Cisco ASA
11 13 (3.76%) Cisco Firepower
11 13 (3.76%) Cisco Nexus
11 13 (3.76%) OSPF
11 13 (3.76%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (8.09%) SQL Server
2 11 (3.18%) Power BI
3 8 (2.31%) MySQL
3 8 (2.31%) PostgreSQL
4 7 (2.02%) MongoDB
5 6 (1.73%) Elasticsearch
5 6 (1.73%) Relational Database
6 5 (1.45%) Amazon RDS
7 4 (1.16%) Db2
8 3 (0.87%) Big Data
8 3 (0.87%) NoSQL
9 2 (0.58%) Metadata
9 2 (0.58%) RDBMS
10 1 (0.29%) DynamoDB
10 1 (0.29%) MariaDB
10 1 (0.29%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 17 (4.91%) JIRA
2 16 (4.62%) Git
2 16 (4.62%) GitLab
3 12 (3.47%) Jenkins
4 3 (0.87%) Sonatype Nexus
4 3 (0.87%) Terragrunt
5 2 (0.58%) Burp Suite
5 2 (0.58%) Cucumber
5 2 (0.58%) Gatling
5 2 (0.58%) Gradle
5 2 (0.58%) LoadRunner
5 2 (0.58%) MSI
5 2 (0.58%) REST Assured
5 2 (0.58%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.29%) Robot Framework
General
1 77 (22.25%) Social Skills
2 44 (12.72%) Finance
3 35 (10.12%) Analytical Skills
4 28 (8.09%) Public Sector
5 19 (5.49%) Documentation Skills
6 15 (4.34%) Banking
7 7 (2.02%) Military
8 6 (1.73%) Legal
9 5 (1.45%) Influencing Skills
9 5 (1.45%) Police
9 5 (1.45%) Retail
10 4 (1.16%) Automotive
10 4 (1.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.87%) Aerospace
11 3 (0.87%) Investment Banking
11 3 (0.87%) Law
12 2 (0.58%) Corporate Banking
12 2 (0.58%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.58%) Retail Banking
13 1 (0.29%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 71 (20.52%) Senior
2 53 (15.32%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 37 (10.69%) Architect
4 27 (7.80%) Network Engineer
5 26 (7.51%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
6 23 (6.65%) Platform Engineer
7 20 (5.78%) Support Engineer
8 18 (5.20%) Senior Network Engineer
9 17 (4.91%) 3rd Line Engineer
10 16 (4.62%) Consultant
11 15 (4.34%) DevOps Engineer
12 14 (4.05%) Storage Engineer
13 13 (3.76%) Lead
14 12 (3.47%) Solutions Architect
15 10 (2.89%) Active Directory Engineer
15 10 (2.89%) Cloud Engineer
16 9 (2.60%) Linux Engineer
17 8 (2.31%) AWS DevOps Engineer
17 8 (2.31%) AWS Engineer
17 8 (2.31%) VMware Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 65 (18.79%) Terraform
2 28 (8.09%) LDAP
2 28 (8.09%) OpenID
3 27 (7.80%) SAML
4 23 (6.65%) 802.1X
5 20 (5.78%) OAuth
6 15 (4.34%) REST
7 12 (3.47%) Kafka
7 12 (3.47%) OAuth2
8 10 (2.89%) .NET
8 10 (2.89%) Keycloak
9 8 (2.31%) .NET Framework
9 8 (2.31%) XML
10 7 (2.02%) RabbitMQ
11 6 (1.73%) FIDO
12 5 (1.45%) JSON
12 5 (1.45%) Middleware
12 5 (1.45%) SailPoint
12 5 (1.45%) WebAuthn
13 4 (1.16%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 32 (9.25%) Data Centre
2 29 (8.38%) Clustering
3 19 (5.49%) Cloud Native
4 17 (4.91%) Public Cloud
5 15 (4.34%) Onboarding
6 14 (4.05%) Distributed Systems
7 13 (3.76%) Linux Command Line
8 11 (3.18%) Hybrid Cloud
8 11 (3.18%) Security Posture
9 10 (2.89%) Legacy Systems
10 8 (2.31%) Enterprise Software
10 8 (2.31%) Enterprise Storage
10 8 (2.31%) Management Information System
10 8 (2.31%) Replication
10 8 (2.31%) Self-Motivation
11 6 (1.73%) Operational Technology
11 6 (1.73%) Smartcard
12 5 (1.45%) Data Protection Act
12 5 (1.45%) Distributed Architecture
12 5 (1.45%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 159 (45.95%) Windows
2 109 (31.50%) Linux
3 91 (26.30%) Windows Server
4 14 (4.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 13 (3.76%) Unix
5 13 (3.76%) Windows Server 2016
6 12 (3.47%) Ubuntu
7 10 (2.89%) Windows Server 2012
8 7 (2.02%) Windows Server 2019
9 6 (1.73%) Debian
10 4 (1.16%) Android
10 4 (1.16%) CentOS
11 3 (0.87%) Apple iOS
11 3 (0.87%) Data ONTAP
11 3 (0.87%) Mac OS
12 2 (0.58%) Windows 10
12 2 (0.58%) Windows Server 2003
13 1 (0.29%) VMS
13 1 (0.29%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 93 (26.88%) Identity Access Management
2 69 (19.94%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 64 (18.50%) Infrastructure as Code
4 61 (17.63%) Cybersecurity
5 57 (16.47%) Problem-Solving
6 56 (16.18%) ITIL
7 55 (15.90%) DevOps
8 51 (14.74%) CI/CD
8 51 (14.74%) High Availability
9 48 (13.87%) Zero Trust
10 46 (13.29%) Key Management
11 45 (13.01%) Stakeholder Management
11 45 (13.01%) Technical Leadership
12 42 (12.14%) Agile
12 42 (12.14%) Continuous Improvement
13 40 (11.56%) Secrets Management
14 38 (10.98%) Platform Engineering
15 37 (10.69%) Change Management
16 35 (10.12%) Cryptography
16 35 (10.12%) DevSecOps
Programming Languages
1 98 (28.32%) PowerShell
2 69 (19.94%) Python
3 38 (10.98%) Bash
4 15 (4.34%) SQL
5 10 (2.89%) JavaScript
6 9 (2.60%) C#
6 9 (2.60%) Java
7 8 (2.31%) Go
8 3 (0.87%) Ruby
9 2 (0.58%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.29%) Bicep
10 1 (0.29%) C++
Qualifications
1 174 (50.29%) Security Cleared
2 98 (28.32%) DV Cleared
3 83 (23.99%) SC Cleared
4 25 (7.23%) Cisco Certification
5 22 (6.36%) Microsoft Certification
6 20 (5.78%) Degree
7 18 (5.20%) CCNP
8 16 (4.62%) CISSP
9 15 (4.34%) Azure Certification
10 12 (3.47%) MCSE
10 12 (3.47%) VCAP
11 10 (2.89%) AWS Certification
12 8 (2.31%) CISM
13 7 (2.02%) BPSS Clearance
14 6 (1.73%) GIAC
15 5 (1.45%) Computer Science Degree
15 5 (1.45%) ISTQB
15 5 (1.45%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 5 (1.45%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 5 (1.45%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (10.69%) NIST
2 28 (8.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 24 (6.94%) NCSC
4 14 (4.05%) SLA
5 8 (2.31%) JSP 440
6 7 (2.02%) GRC
7 6 (1.73%) QA
8 5 (1.45%) GDPR
8 5 (1.45%) SOC 2
9 4 (1.16%) Cyber Essentials
10 3 (0.87%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
11 2 (0.58%) Government Security Classifications
11 2 (0.58%) ISA99
11 2 (0.58%) ITGC
11 2 (0.58%) NIST 800
11 2 (0.58%) PCI DSS
11 2 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.29%) Accessibility
12 1 (0.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 1 (0.29%) PSD2
System Software
1 171 (49.42%) Active Directory
2 75 (21.68%) VMware Infrastructure
3 40 (11.56%) Docker
4 32 (9.25%) Hyper-V
5 31 (8.96%) VMware NSX
6 21 (6.07%) vSphere
7 14 (4.05%) VMware ESXi
8 6 (1.73%) Virtual Desktop
8 6 (1.73%) Virtual Machines
9 5 (1.45%) BitLocker
10 4 (1.16%) Microsoft App-V
10 4 (1.16%) NFS
10 4 (1.16%) OpenSSH
11 3 (0.87%) OpenAM
11 3 (0.87%) Terminal Services
11 3 (0.87%) UAG
12 2 (0.58%) Firmware
12 2 (0.58%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.58%) XenApp
12 2 (0.58%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 72 (20.81%) Kubernetes
2 59 (17.05%) Ansible
3 34 (9.83%) Single Sign-On
4 23 (6.65%) vCenter Server
5 22 (6.36%) Microsoft Intune
6 17 (4.91%) VxRail
7 14 (4.05%) SCOM
8 13 (3.76%) Avamar
9 12 (3.47%) Grafana
9 12 (3.47%) Prometheus
10 9 (2.60%) Istio
11 8 (2.31%) Puppet
11 8 (2.31%) SCCM
11 8 (2.31%) WSUS
12 6 (1.73%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 6 (1.73%) CA Single Sign-On
12 6 (1.73%) Kibana
13 5 (1.45%) Failover Clustering
14 4 (1.16%) Cisco CUCM
14 4 (1.16%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 151 (43.64%) Microsoft
2 91 (26.30%) VMware
3 47 (13.58%) Cisco
4 28 (8.09%) Thales
5 26 (7.51%) ServiceNow
6 24 (6.94%) Okta
7 19 (5.49%) BeyondTrust
8 16 (4.62%) CyberArk
8 16 (4.62%) Dell
9 15 (4.34%) Google
10 14 (4.05%) Citrix
11 13 (3.76%) Juniper
12 12 (3.47%) Palo Alto
13 11 (3.18%) SolarWinds
14 10 (2.89%) CheckPoint
14 10 (2.89%) Fortinet
14 10 (2.89%) NetApp
15 9 (2.60%) BMC
15 9 (2.60%) Remedy
15 9 (2.60%) Splunk