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

6 months to
21 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 320 313 243
Rank change year-on-year -7 -70 +133
Contract jobs citing PKI 279 272 469
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.78% 0.75% 1.01%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.17% 2.40% 3.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 214 151 290
10th Percentile £358 £413 £392
25th Percentile £463 £475 £469
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -5.19%
75th Percentile £675 £629 £675
90th Percentile £838 £725 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £550 £575
% change year-on-year - -4.35% +0.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 1 5
10th Percentile £74.80 - £46.38
25th Percentile £82.00 - -
Median hourly rate £90.00 £23.80 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +278.15% -56.73% -10.57%
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 - - -8.33%

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 12,834 11,323 14,776
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 35.78% 31.03% 31.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,931 6,683 9,927
10th Percentile £278 £285 £275
25th Percentile £406 £410 £417
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.67% -2.73% -
75th Percentile £638 £663 £665
90th Percentile £738 £784 £768
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 691 368 494
10th Percentile £13.50 £17.08 £16.75
25th Percentile £18.23 £22.50 £20.89
Median hourly rate £27.21 £37.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -26.46% -16.85% +36.92%
75th Percentile £53.44 £68.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.16 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £36.13 £46.18
% change year-on-year -23.88% -21.77% +74.26%

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 21 November 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 21 November 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 21 November 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 +9 261 £550 - 86
UK excluding London -59 166 £550 - 65
London +36 93 £675 +18.42% 25
Work from Home +15 89 £650 +8.33% 23
South East -4 53 £600 -0.83% 49
South West -28 52 £550 +0.55% 4
Midlands -8 37 £400 -27.27% 3
West Midlands -3 36 £400 -27.27% 3
North of England -44 12 £444 -37.72% 4
North West -7 11 £388 -18.42% 4
Scotland -35 8 £538 +4.88%
East of England -9 3 £550 - 4
Wales +1 1 £550 - 1
Yorkshire -43 1 £600 -18.64%
East Midlands - 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 39 (13.98%) Microsoft Exchange
2 18 (6.45%) Confluence
3 14 (5.02%) SharePoint
4 12 (4.30%) Apache
5 10 (3.58%) IIS
6 6 (2.15%) Skype for Business
7 4 (1.43%) JBoss
7 4 (1.43%) SharePoint Server
8 2 (0.72%) Alfresco
8 2 (0.72%) Camunda
8 2 (0.72%) Exchange Server 2010
Applications
1 24 (8.60%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.72%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (0.72%) Dynamics GP
Cloud Services
1 52 (18.64%) Azure
2 46 (16.49%) AWS
3 26 (9.32%) IaaS
4 25 (8.96%) Microsoft 365
5 21 (7.53%) Entra ID
6 14 (5.02%) GitHub
7 12 (4.30%) AWS CloudFormation
8 9 (3.23%) SaaS
9 8 (2.87%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 7 (2.51%) Amazon ECS
10 7 (2.51%) AWS Fargate
10 7 (2.51%) Power Platform
11 6 (2.15%) GCP
12 5 (1.79%) Azure Sentinel
13 4 (1.43%) Amazon S3
13 4 (1.43%) Azure DevOps
14 3 (1.08%) Amazon EC2
14 3 (1.08%) PaaS
14 3 (1.08%) Power Automate
14 3 (1.08%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 64 (22.94%) DNS
2 53 (19.00%) Firewall
3 41 (14.70%) BGP
4 40 (14.34%) IPsec
5 39 (13.98%) VPN
6 31 (11.11%) MPLS
7 27 (9.68%) WAN
8 25 (8.96%) DHCP
9 23 (8.24%) SSL
10 18 (6.45%) Network Security
11 16 (5.73%) Skype
12 12 (4.30%) Unified Communications
13 9 (3.23%) HTTPS
13 9 (3.23%) Junos
14 8 (2.87%) OSPF
14 8 (2.87%) TCP/IP
15 7 (2.51%) VSAN
16 6 (2.15%) EIGRP
16 6 (2.15%) Kerberos
16 6 (2.15%) S/MIME
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (5.38%) SQL Server
2 9 (3.23%) MongoDB
3 5 (1.79%) Amazon RDS
3 5 (1.79%) Relational Database
4 2 (0.72%) MySQL
4 2 (0.72%) PostgreSQL
5 1 (0.36%) Power BI
5 1 (0.36%) Redis
Development Applications
1 21 (7.53%) JIRA
2 12 (4.30%) GitLab
3 9 (3.23%) Jenkins
4 5 (1.79%) MSI
5 4 (1.43%) Git
5 4 (1.43%) Robot Framework
5 4 (1.43%) Sonatype Nexus
5 4 (1.43%) Terragrunt
6 2 (0.72%) Artifactory
6 2 (0.72%) JUnit
6 2 (0.72%) SpecFlow
7 1 (0.36%) CircleCI
7 1 (0.36%) Fiddler
7 1 (0.36%) Postman
General
1 61 (21.86%) Social Skills
2 56 (20.07%) Analytical Skills
3 37 (13.26%) Public Sector
4 19 (6.81%) Finance
5 18 (6.45%) Military
6 6 (2.15%) Documentation Skills
7 4 (1.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 4 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
8 3 (1.08%) Banking
9 1 (0.36%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.36%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.36%) Legal
9 1 (0.36%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.36%) Pharmaceutical
9 1 (0.36%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 72 (25.81%) Architect
2 31 (11.11%) Senior
3 26 (9.32%) 3rd Line Engineer
4 23 (8.24%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 23 (8.24%) Network Engineer
4 23 (8.24%) Support Engineer
5 18 (6.45%) 3rd Line Support
6 17 (6.09%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
6 17 (6.09%) Security Architect
7 16 (5.73%) Lead
8 15 (5.38%) Administrator
9 14 (5.02%) Platform Manager
9 14 (5.02%) Systems Administrator
9 14 (5.02%) Systems Manager
9 14 (5.02%) Wintel Administrator
9 14 (5.02%) Wintel Engineer
9 14 (5.02%) Wintel Systems Administrator
10 11 (3.94%) Consultant
10 11 (3.94%) WAN Engineer
11 10 (3.58%) 2nd Line Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (11.83%) REST
2 28 (10.04%) JSON
3 14 (5.02%) OpenID
4 13 (4.66%) Kafka
5 11 (3.94%) SAML
6 10 (3.58%) OAuth
6 10 (3.58%) OAuth2
7 9 (3.23%) Keycloak
8 7 (2.51%) cloud-init
8 7 (2.51%) NETCONF
8 7 (2.51%) RESTCONF
9 4 (1.43%) .NET
9 4 (1.43%) AngularJS
9 4 (1.43%) AWS CDK
9 4 (1.43%) LDAP
9 4 (1.43%) YAML
10 3 (1.08%) HTML
10 3 (1.08%) JDBC
10 3 (1.08%) SOAP
11 2 (0.72%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 30 (10.75%) Self-Motivation
2 11 (3.94%) Data Centre
3 10 (3.58%) Fat Client
3 10 (3.58%) Management Information System
3 10 (3.58%) Thin Client
4 8 (2.87%) Private Cloud
4 8 (2.87%) Replication
5 7 (2.51%) Algorithms
5 7 (2.51%) Onboarding
6 6 (2.15%) Security Operations Centre
7 5 (1.79%) Legacy Applications
8 4 (1.43%) Cloud Native
8 4 (1.43%) Cyber Defence
8 4 (1.43%) Security Posture
9 3 (1.08%) Public Cloud
9 3 (1.08%) Taxonomies
10 2 (0.72%) CMDB
10 2 (0.72%) CSOC
10 2 (0.72%) Cyber Threat
10 2 (0.72%) Tandem
Operating Systems
1 93 (33.33%) Windows
2 52 (18.64%) Linux
3 45 (16.13%) Windows Server
4 14 (5.02%) CentOS
4 14 (5.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 13 (4.66%) Windows 10
6 9 (3.23%) Unix
6 9 (3.23%) Windows Server 2019
7 8 (2.87%) Windows 7
7 8 (2.87%) Windows Server 2012
8 5 (1.79%) Windows Server 2008
8 5 (1.79%) Windows Server 2016
9 3 (1.08%) VMS
10 2 (0.72%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.36%) Android
11 1 (0.36%) Apple iOS
11 1 (0.36%) Mac OS
11 1 (0.36%) Solaris
11 1 (0.36%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 82 (29.39%) Agile
2 50 (17.92%) Key Management
3 36 (12.90%) ITIL
4 35 (12.54%) DevOps
5 32 (11.47%) Service Management
6 31 (11.11%) Change Management
6 31 (11.11%) CI/CD
6 31 (11.11%) Configuration Management
6 31 (11.11%) Cybersecurity
6 31 (11.11%) Problem-Solving
7 28 (10.04%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 27 (9.68%) Cryptography
8 27 (9.68%) Information Security
9 23 (8.24%) Containerisation
9 23 (8.24%) SIEM
10 22 (7.89%) Incident Response
10 22 (7.89%) Infrastructure as Code
11 19 (6.81%) Load Balancing
12 18 (6.45%) Continuous Improvement
12 18 (6.45%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 76 (27.24%) PowerShell
2 49 (17.56%) Python
3 21 (7.53%) Bash
4 17 (6.09%) SQL
5 7 (2.51%) Go
5 7 (2.51%) Java
5 7 (2.51%) Perl
6 6 (2.15%) C++
6 6 (2.15%) JavaScript
6 6 (2.15%) Shell Script
7 4 (1.43%) PHP
8 2 (0.72%) C#
9 1 (0.36%) Bicep
9 1 (0.36%) C
9 1 (0.36%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 185 (66.31%) Security Cleared
2 107 (38.35%) SC Cleared
3 70 (25.09%) DV Cleared
4 41 (14.70%) Degree
5 25 (8.96%) Cisco Certification
5 25 (8.96%) Microsoft Certification
6 20 (7.17%) CCNP
7 12 (4.30%) CISSP
7 12 (4.30%) MCSE
8 9 (3.23%) ITIL Certification
9 8 (2.87%) Computer Science Degree
10 7 (2.51%) Master's Degree
10 7 (2.51%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 6 (2.15%) CCNA
11 6 (2.15%) IISP
11 6 (2.15%) ISACA
11 6 (2.15%) JNCIA
11 6 (2.15%) JNCIS
12 5 (1.79%) AWS Certification
13 4 (1.43%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (6.45%) NCSC
2 16 (5.73%) NIST
3 10 (3.58%) PCI DSS
4 9 (3.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 7 (2.51%) GDPR
6 5 (1.79%) FIPS 140-2
7 3 (1.08%) SLA
8 2 (0.72%) Accessibility
8 2 (0.72%) COBIT
8 2 (0.72%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.72%) HIPAA
8 2 (0.72%) NIST 800
8 2 (0.72%) SOC 1
9 1 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 1 (0.36%) JSP 440
9 1 (0.36%) PMO
9 1 (0.36%) PSD2
9 1 (0.36%) QA
9 1 (0.36%) SOC 2
System Software
1 82 (29.39%) Active Directory
2 51 (18.28%) VMware Infrastructure
3 17 (6.09%) Docker
3 17 (6.09%) VMware ESXi
4 11 (3.94%) Firmware
5 10 (3.58%) Hyper-V
5 10 (3.58%) VMware NSX
6 8 (2.87%) vSphere
7 6 (2.15%) Virtual Machines
7 6 (2.15%) Virtual Servers
8 5 (1.79%) Microsoft Virtual Server
9 2 (0.72%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
9 2 (0.72%) Sendmail
10 1 (0.36%) BitLocker
10 1 (0.36%) NFS
10 1 (0.36%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 34 (12.19%) Ansible
2 25 (8.96%) Terraform
3 23 (8.24%) Kubernetes
4 16 (5.73%) Single Sign-On
4 16 (5.73%) vCenter Server
5 15 (5.38%) Microsoft Intune
5 15 (5.38%) SCCM
6 13 (4.66%) WMI
7 12 (4.30%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 11 (3.94%) WSUS
9 9 (3.23%) SCOM
10 7 (2.51%) Jamf Pro
10 7 (2.51%) Packer
11 5 (1.79%) Grafana
11 5 (1.79%) Prometheus
12 4 (1.43%) Podman
12 4 (1.43%) QRadar
13 3 (1.08%) Check_MK
13 3 (1.08%) FortiGate
13 3 (1.08%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 101 (36.20%) Microsoft
2 68 (24.37%) VMware
3 43 (15.41%) Cisco
4 38 (13.62%) Juniper
5 26 (9.32%) Splunk
6 16 (5.73%) Veeam
7 13 (4.66%) SolarWinds
8 9 (3.23%) Atlassian
9 8 (2.87%) Dell
9 8 (2.87%) Fortinet
9 8 (2.87%) Okta
10 7 (2.51%) Thales
11 6 (2.15%) Google
11 6 (2.15%) IBM
11 6 (2.15%) ServiceNow
12 5 (1.79%) CyberArk
12 5 (1.79%) Palo Alto
12 5 (1.79%) Red Hat
13 4 (1.43%) Oracle
13 4 (1.43%) Zscaler