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

6 months to
18 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 376 342 204
Rank change year-on-year -34 -138 +108
Contract jobs citing PKI 264 187 485
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.55% 0.64% 1.14%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.72% 1.87% 3.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 175 143 341
10th Percentile £413 £421 £363
25th Percentile £450 £506 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £565 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.65% +2.73% -4.35%
75th Percentile £643 £614 £625
90th Percentile £725 £700 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £550 £550
% change year-on-year - - -2.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 0 3
10th Percentile £61.41 - -
25th Percentile £70.50 - -
Median hourly rate £79.50 - £23.80
75th Percentile £96.25 - £32.03
90th Percentile £101.65 - £36.96
UK excluding London median hourly rate £79.50 - £38.50
% change year-on-year - - +156.67%

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 15,307 9,975 12,915
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 31.92% 33.94% 30.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,494 6,359 8,316
10th Percentile £313 £300 £267
25th Percentile £413 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £507 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -3.43% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £663
90th Percentile £739 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +0.26% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 732 397 899
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.87 £12.25
25th Percentile £19.96 £20.75 £15.17
Median hourly rate £42.50 £31.76 £31.50
Median % change year-on-year +33.82% +0.83% +40.09%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £87.35 £83.20 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £30.39 £30.00
% change year-on-year +56.43% +1.30% +36.36%

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 18 May 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 18 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for PKI in the UK

PKI
Top 13 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 18 May 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 -45 228 £550 -3.72% 57
UK excluding London -41 174 £550 - 50
South East +3 101 £600 +4.35% 24
London -44 60 £538 -7.33% 17
Work from Home -33 55 £560 +2.75% 25
North of England -54 30 £475 -3.51% 4
North West -27 18 £418 -15.04% 3
South West -47 16 £545 -5.22% 3
West Midlands -61 14 £450 +5.88% 5
Midlands -67 14 £450 +5.88% 10
Scotland +10 13 £451 -15.79% 3
Yorkshire -48 12 £482 -33.52% 1
East of England -29 4 £400 -23.81% 5

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 11 (4.17%) Microsoft Exchange
2 7 (2.65%) Confluence
2 7 (2.65%) SharePoint
3 5 (1.89%) IIS
4 3 (1.14%) nginx
5 2 (0.76%) Apache
5 2 (0.76%) Tomcat
5 2 (0.76%) WebSphere
6 1 (0.38%) ArcGIS
6 1 (0.38%) Exchange Server 2010
Applications
1 3 (1.14%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 9 (3.41%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.38%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 72 (27.27%) Azure
2 69 (26.14%) AWS
3 31 (11.74%) Entra ID
4 25 (9.47%) Microsoft 365
5 15 (5.68%) GCP
6 14 (5.30%) Power Platform
7 10 (3.79%) OpenShift
8 8 (3.03%) AWS KMS
8 8 (3.03%) Azure Key Vault
9 7 (2.65%) IaaS
9 7 (2.65%) PaaS
9 7 (2.65%) SaaS
10 6 (2.27%) Amazon EKS
11 5 (1.89%) Azure DevOps
12 4 (1.52%) AWS CloudFormation
12 4 (1.52%) Power Automate
12 4 (1.52%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 3 (1.14%) GitHub
13 3 (1.14%) Route 53
14 2 (0.76%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 69 (26.14%) DNS
2 61 (23.11%) Firewall
3 44 (16.67%) DHCP
4 39 (14.77%) BGP
5 33 (12.50%) WAN
6 31 (11.74%) VPN
7 29 (10.98%) LAN
7 29 (10.98%) OSPF
8 26 (9.85%) Ethernet VPN
8 26 (9.85%) Network Security
8 26 (9.85%) VXLAN
9 25 (9.47%) BIG-IP
9 25 (9.47%) Cisco ISE
10 24 (9.09%) Junos
11 20 (7.58%) SSL
12 11 (4.17%) TCP/IP
13 10 (3.79%) MPLS
14 8 (3.03%) SMTP
14 8 (3.03%) TACACS
15 7 (2.65%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (3.79%) Elasticsearch
1 10 (3.79%) SQL Server
2 9 (3.41%) Power BI
3 3 (1.14%) MongoDB
3 3 (1.14%) MySQL
4 2 (0.76%) Metadata
4 2 (0.76%) PostgreSQL
5 1 (0.38%) Amazon QuickSight
5 1 (0.38%) Amazon RDS
5 1 (0.38%) RDBMS
5 1 (0.38%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 13 (4.92%) JIRA
2 10 (3.79%) GitLab
3 7 (2.65%) Robot Framework
4 6 (2.27%) Sonatype Nexus
5 4 (1.52%) Git
5 4 (1.52%) Jenkins
6 3 (1.14%) Terragrunt
7 2 (0.76%) MSI
8 1 (0.38%) Burp Suite
8 1 (0.38%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.38%) Gatling
8 1 (0.38%) Gradle
8 1 (0.38%) JUnit
8 1 (0.38%) LoadRunner
8 1 (0.38%) REST Assured
8 1 (0.38%) SonarQube
General
1 30 (11.36%) Social Skills
2 29 (10.98%) Finance
3 26 (9.85%) Public Sector
4 10 (3.79%) Analytical Skills
5 6 (2.27%) Banking
5 6 (2.27%) Documentation Skills
6 4 (1.52%) Military
6 4 (1.52%) Retail
7 3 (1.14%) Legal
8 2 (0.76%) Financial Institution
8 2 (0.76%) Local Government
9 1 (0.38%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.38%) Back Office
9 1 (0.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.38%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.38%) Law
9 1 (0.38%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.38%) Wearables
Job Titles
1 44 (16.67%) Architect
1 44 (16.67%) Senior
2 40 (15.15%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 20 (7.58%) Network Engineer
4 17 (6.44%) 3rd Line Engineer
5 14 (5.30%) Firewall Specialist
5 14 (5.30%) Network Specialist
5 14 (5.30%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
6 11 (4.17%) Security Engineer
6 11 (4.17%) Storage Engineer
6 11 (4.17%) Support Engineer
7 10 (3.79%) Senior Architect
7 10 (3.79%) Senior Network Engineer
8 9 (3.41%) 3rd Line Infrastructure Engineer
8 9 (3.41%) DevOps Engineer
9 8 (3.03%) Lead
10 7 (2.65%) Administrator
10 7 (2.65%) Linux Engineer
10 7 (2.65%) NetApp Engineer
11 6 (2.27%) Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (12.12%) 802.1X
2 14 (5.30%) LDAP
2 14 (5.30%) OpenID
3 13 (4.92%) OAuth
3 13 (4.92%) REST
3 13 (4.92%) SAML
4 7 (2.65%) OAuth2
5 6 (2.27%) JSON
6 5 (1.89%) RabbitMQ
7 4 (1.52%) Elastic Stack
7 4 (1.52%) SailPoint
8 3 (1.14%) Kafka
9 2 (0.76%) CSS
9 2 (0.76%) eBPF
9 2 (0.76%) HTML
9 2 (0.76%) Keycloak
9 2 (0.76%) Loki
9 2 (0.76%) Microsoft Graph
9 2 (0.76%) SPIFFE
9 2 (0.76%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 41 (15.53%) Clustering
2 28 (10.61%) Data Centre
3 12 (4.55%) Enterprise Storage
4 11 (4.17%) Onboarding
4 11 (4.17%) Public Cloud
5 10 (3.79%) Algorithms
5 10 (3.79%) Hybrid Cloud
6 8 (3.03%) Cloud Native
7 6 (2.27%) Linux Command Line
7 6 (2.27%) Management Information System
7 6 (2.27%) Operational Technology
8 5 (1.89%) Smartcard
9 4 (1.52%) Distributed Systems
9 4 (1.52%) Enterprise Software
9 4 (1.52%) Private Cloud
10 3 (1.14%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (1.14%) Fat Client
10 3 (1.14%) Legacy Systems
10 3 (1.14%) Security Posture
10 3 (1.14%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 113 (42.80%) Windows
2 64 (24.24%) Linux
3 52 (19.70%) Windows Server
4 8 (3.03%) Ubuntu
5 7 (2.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 7 (2.65%) Windows Server 2003
6 6 (2.27%) Windows Server 2019
7 5 (1.89%) Debian
8 4 (1.52%) Windows Server 2012
8 4 (1.52%) Windows Server 2016
9 3 (1.14%) Unix
9 3 (1.14%) Windows 7
10 2 (0.76%) CentOS
11 1 (0.38%) Android
11 1 (0.38%) Apple iOS
11 1 (0.38%) Data ONTAP
11 1 (0.38%) Mac OS
11 1 (0.38%) Solaris
11 1 (0.38%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 71 (26.89%) Identity Access Management
2 46 (17.42%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 45 (17.05%) Agile
4 42 (15.91%) High Availability
5 41 (15.53%) Cybersecurity
6 39 (14.77%) ITIL
6 39 (14.77%) Problem-Solving
7 37 (14.02%) Observability
8 36 (13.64%) CI/CD
9 35 (13.26%) DevOps
10 34 (12.88%) Load Balancing
11 33 (12.50%) Key Management
12 30 (11.36%) Infrastructure as Code
13 28 (10.61%) Zero Trust
14 27 (10.23%) Service Management
15 25 (9.47%) ITSM
16 24 (9.09%) Change Management
17 22 (8.33%) Incident Response
17 22 (8.33%) Migration
17 22 (8.33%) Vulnerability Management
Programming Languages
1 58 (21.97%) PowerShell
2 44 (16.67%) Python
3 16 (6.06%) Bash
3 16 (6.06%) SQL
4 11 (4.17%) JavaScript
5 8 (3.03%) C#
6 6 (2.27%) Java
7 4 (1.52%) PHP
8 3 (1.14%) C++
8 3 (1.14%) Go
9 1 (0.38%) Perl
9 1 (0.38%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 157 (59.47%) Security Cleared
2 92 (34.85%) DV Cleared
3 61 (23.11%) SC Cleared
4 30 (11.36%) Cisco Certification
5 20 (7.58%) CISSP
6 18 (6.82%) CISM
7 16 (6.06%) Degree
8 11 (4.17%) GIAC
9 8 (3.03%) CompTIA Security+
10 7 (2.65%) CCNP
10 7 (2.65%) JNCIA
10 7 (2.65%) JNCIP
10 7 (2.65%) JNCIS
11 6 (2.27%) AWS Certification
11 6 (2.27%) Azure Certification
12 5 (1.89%) CCNA
12 5 (1.89%) Computer Science Degree
12 5 (1.89%) Microsoft Certification
13 4 (1.52%) Network+ Certification
13 4 (1.52%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (10.61%) NIST
2 21 (7.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 13 (4.92%) NCSC
4 10 (3.79%) Cyber Essentials
5 7 (2.65%) PCI DSS
6 6 (2.27%) GDPR
6 6 (2.27%) SLA
7 5 (1.89%) QA
8 4 (1.52%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 3 (1.14%) RMADS
10 2 (0.76%) ISA99
10 2 (0.76%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 2 (0.76%) JSP 440
10 2 (0.76%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.38%) GMP
11 1 (0.38%) GRC
11 1 (0.38%) GxP
11 1 (0.38%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 1 (0.38%) SOC 2
System Software
1 82 (31.06%) Active Directory
2 48 (18.18%) VMware Infrastructure
3 25 (9.47%) Docker
4 18 (6.82%) Hyper-V
5 15 (5.68%) VMware ESXi
6 14 (5.30%) VMware NSX
7 9 (3.41%) BitLocker
8 8 (3.03%) Microsoft App-V
9 7 (2.65%) Virtual Machines
10 5 (1.89%) Firmware
11 3 (1.14%) KVM
11 3 (1.14%) vSphere
12 2 (0.76%) OpenSSH
12 2 (0.76%) XenApp
12 2 (0.76%) XenDesktop
13 1 (0.38%) Embedded Firmware
13 1 (0.38%) iptables
13 1 (0.38%) Sendmail
13 1 (0.38%) Squid
13 1 (0.38%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 49 (18.56%) Ansible
2 43 (16.29%) Kubernetes
3 42 (15.91%) Terraform
4 23 (8.71%) FortiGate
5 21 (7.95%) vCenter Server
6 19 (7.20%) Single Sign-On
7 12 (4.55%) Prometheus
8 11 (4.17%) Grafana
8 11 (4.17%) Puppet
9 10 (3.79%) Microsoft Intune
10 9 (3.41%) SCOM
11 8 (3.03%) vMotion
12 5 (1.89%) SCCM
12 5 (1.89%) WMI
12 5 (1.89%) WSUS
13 4 (1.52%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 4 (1.52%) Avamar
14 3 (1.14%) CA Single Sign-On
15 2 (0.76%) Cilium
15 2 (0.76%) Istio
Vendors
1 76 (28.79%) Microsoft
2 69 (26.14%) VMware
3 51 (19.32%) Cisco
4 40 (15.15%) Splunk
5 30 (11.36%) Juniper
6 27 (10.23%) F5
7 26 (9.85%) SolarWinds
8 22 (8.33%) Extreme Networks
9 18 (6.82%) Citrix
10 17 (6.44%) ServiceNow
11 14 (5.30%) Thales
12 13 (4.92%) Okta
13 12 (4.55%) Palo Alto
14 10 (3.79%) NetApp
15 9 (3.41%) BeyondTrust
15 9 (3.41%) BMC
15 9 (3.41%) Remedy
16 8 (3.03%) ForeScout
17 7 (2.65%) Aruba
18 6 (2.27%) Dell