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 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 335 304 221
Rank change year-on-year -31 -83 +140
Contract jobs citing PKI 282 260 492
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.77% 0.76% 1.11%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.20% 2.38% 3.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 210 155 296
10th Percentile £400 £413 £382
25th Percentile £463 £475 £469
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £560 £575
Median % change year-on-year -1.79% -2.61% -4.17%
75th Percentile £684 £634 £675
90th Percentile £838 £733 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £533 £551 £563
% change year-on-year -3.27% -2.13% -2.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 0 5
10th Percentile £74.80 - £46.38
25th Percentile £82.00 - -
Median hourly rate £90.00 - £55.00
75th Percentile £100.00 - £56.40
90th Percentile £103.30 - £63.06
UK excluding London median hourly rate £90.00 - £55.00
% change year-on-year - - -4.35%

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 12,833 10,908 13,970
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.07% 31.91% 31.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,021 6,528 9,313
10th Percentile £275 £269 £263
25th Percentile £406 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.51% -2.27% -
75th Percentile £625 £656 £668
90th Percentile £738 £775 £770
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 642 339 495
10th Percentile £13.54 £17.45 £16.50
25th Percentile £18.01 £22.86 £20.50
Median hourly rate £27.21 £33.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -17.55% -22.35% +21.43%
75th Percentile £58.94 £64.63 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £78.47 £77.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £45.21
% change year-on-year -15.38% -28.11% +52.12%

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 December 2025.

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 December 2025.

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 18 December 2025. 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 +12 263 £550 -1.79% 92
UK excluding London -65 165 £533 -3.27% 84
London +44 91 £638 +10.39% 17
Work from Home -9 81 £700 +20.27% 42
South East -9 60 £588 -0.63% 36
South West -34 42 £550 - 14
Midlands -7 40 £400 -17.95% 6
West Midlands -1 39 £400 -17.95% 3
North of England -49 17 £489 -32.62% 17
North West -13 9 £500 +2.56% 8
Yorkshire -38 8 £487 -32.83% 9
Scotland -29 4 £575 +27.78% 1
East of England -18 3 £550 - 13
Wales +5 1 £550 +20.22% 5
East Midlands - 1 - - 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 39 (13.83%) Microsoft Exchange
2 14 (4.96%) SharePoint
3 9 (3.19%) Confluence
4 7 (2.48%) IIS
5 6 (2.13%) Skype for Business
6 4 (1.42%) SharePoint Server
7 3 (1.06%) Exchange Server 2010
7 3 (1.06%) nginx
8 2 (0.71%) Apache
9 1 (0.35%) JBoss
Applications
1 17 (6.03%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.71%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 52 (18.44%) Azure
2 49 (17.38%) AWS
3 27 (9.57%) IaaS
4 25 (8.87%) Microsoft 365
5 22 (7.80%) Entra ID
6 13 (4.61%) GitHub
7 12 (4.26%) AWS CloudFormation
8 11 (3.90%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 9 (3.19%) OpenShift
10 7 (2.48%) Amazon ECS
10 7 (2.48%) AWS Fargate
10 7 (2.48%) SaaS
11 5 (1.77%) GCP
12 4 (1.42%) AWS KMS
12 4 (1.42%) Azure DevOps
12 4 (1.42%) PaaS
12 4 (1.42%) Power Platform
12 4 (1.42%) Route 53
13 3 (1.06%) Amazon EKS
13 3 (1.06%) Nutanix
Communications & Networking
1 60 (21.28%) DNS
2 55 (19.50%) Firewall
3 37 (13.12%) VPN
4 36 (12.77%) BGP
5 32 (11.35%) IPsec
6 29 (10.28%) WAN
7 27 (9.57%) SSL
8 25 (8.87%) DHCP
9 24 (8.51%) MPLS
10 19 (6.74%) Network Security
11 16 (5.67%) Skype
12 10 (3.55%) Junos
12 10 (3.55%) TCP/IP
13 9 (3.19%) OSPF
14 8 (2.84%) HTTPS
15 7 (2.48%) S/MIME
15 7 (2.48%) VSAN
16 6 (2.13%) Internet
16 6 (2.13%) Kerberos
17 5 (1.77%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (4.26%) SQL Server
2 7 (2.48%) MongoDB
3 5 (1.77%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (1.42%) Elasticsearch
5 1 (0.35%) Redis
Development Applications
1 14 (4.96%) GitLab
1 14 (4.96%) JIRA
2 9 (3.19%) Jenkins
3 4 (1.42%) Terragrunt
4 3 (1.06%) Robot Framework
4 3 (1.06%) Sonatype Nexus
5 2 (0.71%) Git
5 2 (0.71%) MSI
6 1 (0.35%) Artifactory
6 1 (0.35%) CircleCI
6 1 (0.35%) Fiddler
6 1 (0.35%) Postman
6 1 (0.35%) SpecFlow
General
1 53 (18.79%) Social Skills
2 51 (18.09%) Analytical Skills
3 33 (11.70%) Public Sector
4 19 (6.74%) Finance
5 16 (5.67%) Military
6 4 (1.42%) Documentation Skills
6 4 (1.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 4 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
7 3 (1.06%) Banking
8 1 (0.35%) Aerospace
8 1 (0.35%) Influencing Skills
8 1 (0.35%) Legal
8 1 (0.35%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.35%) Pharmaceutical
8 1 (0.35%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 82 (29.08%) Architect
2 30 (10.64%) Senior
3 27 (9.57%) 3rd Line Engineer
4 24 (8.51%) Support Engineer
5 22 (7.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 20 (7.09%) 3rd Line Support
7 19 (6.74%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
8 18 (6.38%) Network Engineer
9 15 (5.32%) Security Architect
9 15 (5.32%) Wintel Engineer
10 14 (4.96%) Administrator
10 14 (4.96%) Platform Manager
10 14 (4.96%) Systems Administrator
10 14 (4.96%) Systems Manager
10 14 (4.96%) Wintel Administrator
10 14 (4.96%) Wintel Systems Administrator
11 13 (4.61%) Lead
12 12 (4.26%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
13 11 (3.90%) WAN Engineer
14 10 (3.55%) 2nd Line Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (10.99%) REST
2 28 (9.93%) JSON
3 15 (5.32%) OpenID
4 11 (3.90%) SAML
5 10 (3.55%) OAuth
6 9 (3.19%) OAuth2
7 8 (2.84%) Kafka
8 7 (2.48%) cloud-init
8 7 (2.48%) Keycloak
9 6 (2.13%) Elastic Stack
9 6 (2.13%) LDAP
10 4 (1.42%) AWS CDK
11 3 (1.06%) .NET
11 3 (1.06%) JDBC
11 3 (1.06%) SOAP
12 2 (0.71%) CSS
12 2 (0.71%) HTML
12 2 (0.71%) Microsoft Graph
12 2 (0.71%) ModSecurity
13 1 (0.35%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 30 (10.64%) Self-Motivation
2 13 (4.61%) Data Centre
3 12 (4.26%) Fat Client
3 12 (4.26%) Thin Client
4 8 (2.84%) Algorithms
4 8 (2.84%) Private Cloud
5 7 (2.48%) Management Information System
5 7 (2.48%) Replication
6 6 (2.13%) Onboarding
7 5 (1.77%) Legacy Applications
7 5 (1.77%) Public Cloud
8 4 (1.42%) Security Operations Centre
8 4 (1.42%) Security Posture
9 3 (1.06%) Analytical Mindset
9 3 (1.06%) Cloud Native
9 3 (1.06%) Cyber Defence
9 3 (1.06%) Taxonomies
10 2 (0.71%) Clustering
10 2 (0.71%) Enterprise Storage
10 2 (0.71%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 95 (33.69%) Windows
2 52 (18.44%) Linux
3 47 (16.67%) Windows Server
4 13 (4.61%) Windows 10
5 11 (3.90%) CentOS
5 11 (3.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (3.55%) Windows 7
7 9 (3.19%) Unix
7 9 (3.19%) Windows Server 2012
8 7 (2.48%) Windows Server 2019
9 6 (2.13%) Windows Server 2016
10 5 (1.77%) Windows Server 2008
11 3 (1.06%) VMS
12 2 (0.71%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.35%) Android
13 1 (0.35%) Apple iOS
13 1 (0.35%) Mac OS
13 1 (0.35%) Solaris
13 1 (0.35%) SUSE
13 1 (0.35%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 82 (29.08%) Agile
2 64 (22.70%) Key Management
3 39 (13.83%) Change Management
4 38 (13.48%) ITIL
5 37 (13.12%) CI/CD
6 31 (10.99%) DevOps
7 30 (10.64%) Configuration Management
8 29 (10.28%) Cryptography
8 29 (10.28%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 28 (9.93%) Cybersecurity
9 28 (9.93%) Problem-Solving
10 27 (9.57%) Service Management
11 26 (9.22%) Migration
12 25 (8.87%) Containerisation
12 25 (8.87%) Information Security
13 24 (8.51%) Incident Response
14 23 (8.16%) Identity Access Management
14 23 (8.16%) Load Balancing
15 22 (7.80%) Infrastructure as Code
15 22 (7.80%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 74 (26.24%) PowerShell
2 43 (15.25%) Python
3 21 (7.45%) Bash
3 21 (7.45%) SQL
4 7 (2.48%) Go
5 6 (2.13%) JavaScript
5 6 (2.13%) Perl
5 6 (2.13%) Shell Script
6 5 (1.77%) C++
6 5 (1.77%) Java
7 1 (0.35%) Bicep
7 1 (0.35%) C
7 1 (0.35%) C#
7 1 (0.35%) Kusto Query Language
7 1 (0.35%) PHP
Qualifications
1 193 (68.44%) Security Cleared
2 106 (37.59%) SC Cleared
3 80 (28.37%) DV Cleared
4 37 (13.12%) Degree
5 25 (8.87%) Microsoft Certification
6 21 (7.45%) CISSP
7 18 (6.38%) Cisco Certification
8 15 (5.32%) CISM
9 14 (4.96%) CCNP
10 12 (4.26%) MCSE
11 10 (3.55%) Computer Science Degree
12 8 (2.84%) ITIL Certification
12 8 (2.84%) Master's Degree
13 7 (2.48%) AWS Certification
13 7 (2.48%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 6 (2.13%) CCNA
14 6 (2.13%) IISP
14 6 (2.13%) ISACA
15 5 (1.77%) JNCIA
15 5 (1.77%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (6.38%) NCSC
2 17 (6.03%) NIST
3 13 (4.61%) PCI DSS
4 11 (3.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 10 (3.55%) GDPR
6 5 (1.77%) FIPS 140-2
7 2 (0.71%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.71%) COBIT
7 2 (0.71%) HIPAA
7 2 (0.71%) NIST 800
7 2 (0.71%) SLA
7 2 (0.71%) SOC 1
8 1 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 1 (0.35%) GxP
8 1 (0.35%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 1 (0.35%) JSP 440
8 1 (0.35%) PMO
8 1 (0.35%) PSD2
8 1 (0.35%) RMADS
System Software
1 86 (30.50%) Active Directory
2 42 (14.89%) VMware Infrastructure
3 17 (6.03%) Docker
4 12 (4.26%) VMware NSX
5 11 (3.90%) Firmware
6 10 (3.55%) VMware ESXi
7 9 (3.19%) Hyper-V
7 9 (3.19%) vSphere
8 6 (2.13%) Virtual Machines
8 6 (2.13%) Virtual Servers
9 5 (1.77%) Microsoft Virtual Server
10 3 (1.06%) Sendmail
11 2 (0.71%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 2 (0.71%) BitLocker
12 1 (0.35%) Microsoft App-V
12 1 (0.35%) NFS
12 1 (0.35%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 28 (9.93%) Terraform
2 27 (9.57%) Kubernetes
3 25 (8.87%) Ansible
4 18 (6.38%) vCenter Server
5 17 (6.03%) Single Sign-On
6 14 (4.96%) SCCM
6 14 (4.96%) WSUS
7 13 (4.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 13 (4.61%) Microsoft Intune
8 12 (4.26%) WMI
9 9 (3.19%) SCOM
10 7 (2.48%) Grafana
10 7 (2.48%) Jamf Pro
10 7 (2.48%) Packer
10 7 (2.48%) Prometheus
11 4 (1.42%) Podman
11 4 (1.42%) QRadar
12 3 (1.06%) Check_MK
12 3 (1.06%) FortiGate
12 3 (1.06%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 95 (33.69%) Microsoft
2 64 (22.70%) VMware
3 38 (13.48%) Cisco
3 38 (13.48%) Juniper
4 29 (10.28%) Splunk
5 16 (5.67%) Veeam
6 15 (5.32%) SolarWinds
7 10 (3.55%) Thales
8 8 (2.84%) Dell
9 7 (2.48%) Fortinet
9 7 (2.48%) Okta
9 7 (2.48%) Palo Alto
10 6 (2.13%) Broadcom
10 6 (2.13%) Citrix
10 6 (2.13%) Google
10 6 (2.13%) ServiceNow
11 5 (1.77%) CyberArk
11 5 (1.77%) Red Hat
12 4 (1.42%) CheckPoint
12 4 (1.42%) Zscaler