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

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 365 347 222
Rank change year-on-year -18 -125 +97
Contract jobs citing PKI 309 215 471
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.59% 0.66% 1.10%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.77% 1.91% 3.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 214 169 331
10th Percentile £413 £364 £363
25th Percentile £463 £463 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.35%
75th Percentile £638 £613 £608
90th Percentile £700 £686 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £540 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -1.82% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 0 4
10th Percentile £58.94 - -
25th Percentile £71.60 - -
Median hourly rate £85.00 - £23.80
75th Percentile £99.41 - £27.91
90th Percentile £100.00 - £35.32
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.00 - £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 17,450 11,228 13,022
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.16% 34.60% 30.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,696 6,962 8,262
10th Percentile £318 £300 £281
25th Percentile £415 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.42% -2.18%
75th Percentile £627 £649 £663
90th Percentile £749 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 875 531 871
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.48 £12.25
25th Percentile £20.94 £18.87 £15.50
Median hourly rate £43.96 £31.50 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +39.56% -13.70% +21.67%
75th Percentile £70.79 £58.75 £62.50
90th Percentile £87.98 £77.50 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £32.05 £36.27
% change year-on-year +37.16% -11.64% +3.64%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 -58 253 £560 +1.77% 80
UK excluding London -42 208 £540 -1.82% 77
South East -3 104 £590 +2.61% 28
Work from Home -54 76 £550 +0.46% 38
London -51 75 £600 +4.35% 13
North of England -50 34 £446 -9.30% 17
Scotland +10 27 £481 -10.09% 8
South West -58 23 £538 -6.52% 12
North West -32 22 £418 -15.14% 10
Midlands -62 12 £450 +9.09% 7
Yorkshire - 12 £500 - 6
West Midlands -71 11 £450 +9.09% 3
Wales - 6 £463 - 2
East of England -21 4 £400 -23.81% 3
East Midlands -12 1 £475 - 4

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 12 (3.88%) Microsoft Exchange
1 12 (3.88%) SharePoint
2 10 (3.24%) Confluence
3 7 (2.27%) IIS
4 4 (1.29%) Apache
5 3 (0.97%) Exchange Server 2010
5 3 (0.97%) Tomcat
5 3 (0.97%) WebSphere
6 1 (0.32%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 5 (1.62%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 12 (3.88%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.32%) Cloudability
2 1 (0.32%) Dynamics GP
Cloud Services
1 93 (30.10%) Azure
2 69 (22.33%) AWS
3 60 (19.42%) Entra ID
4 24 (7.77%) Microsoft 365
5 19 (6.15%) Power Platform
6 17 (5.50%) GCP
7 11 (3.56%) IaaS
7 11 (3.56%) OpenShift
8 10 (3.24%) Azure Key Vault
8 10 (3.24%) PaaS
9 7 (2.27%) Azure DevOps
10 6 (1.94%) SaaS
11 5 (1.62%) AWS KMS
11 5 (1.62%) GitHub
12 4 (1.29%) Amazon EKS
13 3 (0.97%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 3 (0.97%) OCI
14 2 (0.65%) Azure Monitor
14 2 (0.65%) GitHub Actions
14 2 (0.65%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 95 (30.74%) DNS
2 72 (23.30%) Firewall
3 67 (21.68%) DHCP
4 39 (12.62%) BGP
5 37 (11.97%) VPN
6 35 (11.33%) WAN
7 33 (10.68%) LAN
8 29 (9.39%) OSPF
9 24 (7.77%) Ethernet VPN
9 24 (7.77%) SSL
9 24 (7.77%) VXLAN
10 23 (7.44%) BIG-IP
10 23 (7.44%) Junos
11 22 (7.12%) Cisco ISE
11 22 (7.12%) Network Security
12 18 (5.83%) TCP/IP
13 15 (4.85%) Cisco ASA
14 14 (4.53%) IPsec
15 12 (3.88%) Wireless
16 11 (3.56%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (7.77%) SQL Server
2 14 (4.53%) Power BI
3 9 (2.91%) Elasticsearch
4 5 (1.62%) MongoDB
4 5 (1.62%) MySQL
4 5 (1.62%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (1.29%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (1.29%) Relational Database
6 3 (0.97%) Big Data
6 3 (0.97%) Db2
6 3 (0.97%) NoSQL
7 2 (0.65%) Metadata
7 2 (0.65%) RDBMS
8 1 (0.32%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 13 (4.21%) JIRA
2 10 (3.24%) Git
3 8 (2.59%) GitLab
4 6 (1.94%) Jenkins
5 3 (0.97%) Robot Framework
5 3 (0.97%) Sonatype Nexus
5 3 (0.97%) Terragrunt
6 2 (0.65%) Burp Suite
6 2 (0.65%) Cucumber
6 2 (0.65%) Gatling
6 2 (0.65%) Gradle
6 2 (0.65%) LoadRunner
6 2 (0.65%) MSI
6 2 (0.65%) REST Assured
6 2 (0.65%) SonarQube
General
1 50 (16.18%) Social Skills
2 35 (11.33%) Finance
3 33 (10.68%) Public Sector
4 17 (5.50%) Analytical Skills
5 11 (3.56%) Documentation Skills
6 9 (2.91%) Banking
7 7 (2.27%) Legal
8 6 (1.94%) Military
9 5 (1.62%) Retail
10 4 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (0.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.97%) Police
12 2 (0.65%) Corporate Banking
12 2 (0.65%) Investment Banking
12 2 (0.65%) Retail Banking
13 1 (0.32%) Automotive
13 1 (0.32%) Back Office
13 1 (0.32%) Law
13 1 (0.32%) Local Government
13 1 (0.32%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 67 (21.68%) Senior
2 52 (16.83%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 30 (9.71%) Architect
4 28 (9.06%) Network Engineer
5 20 (6.47%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
6 19 (6.15%) 3rd Line Engineer
6 19 (6.15%) Lead
7 18 (5.83%) Senior Network Engineer
8 16 (5.18%) Support Engineer
9 15 (4.85%) Storage Engineer
10 14 (4.53%) Firewall Specialist
10 14 (4.53%) Network Specialist
11 13 (4.21%) DevOps Engineer
12 10 (3.24%) Analyst
12 10 (3.24%) Senior Architect
13 9 (2.91%) Linux Engineer
13 9 (2.91%) Security Engineer
14 8 (2.59%) 3rd Line Infrastructure Engineer
14 8 (2.59%) Consultant
15 7 (2.27%) VMware Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (10.68%) 802.1X
2 27 (8.74%) LDAP
3 23 (7.44%) OpenID
4 22 (7.12%) SAML
5 16 (5.18%) OAuth
5 16 (5.18%) REST
6 7 (2.27%) .NET
6 7 (2.27%) JSON
6 7 (2.27%) OAuth2
6 7 (2.27%) RabbitMQ
7 6 (1.94%) Kafka
8 5 (1.62%) .NET Framework
8 5 (1.62%) SailPoint
8 5 (1.62%) XML
9 4 (1.29%) Keycloak
9 4 (1.29%) Web Services
10 3 (0.97%) FIDO
10 3 (0.97%) Microsoft Graph
10 3 (0.97%) Middleware
10 3 (0.97%) SPIFFE
Miscellaneous
1 49 (15.86%) Clustering
2 38 (12.30%) Data Centre
3 14 (4.53%) Onboarding
4 11 (3.56%) Hybrid Cloud
5 10 (3.24%) Cloud Native
5 10 (3.24%) Distributed Systems
5 10 (3.24%) Linux Command Line
6 9 (2.91%) Public Cloud
7 8 (2.59%) Enterprise Storage
7 8 (2.59%) Management Information System
8 7 (2.27%) Legacy Systems
8 7 (2.27%) Security Posture
9 6 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
9 6 (1.94%) Operational Technology
10 5 (1.62%) Private Cloud
10 5 (1.62%) Smartcard
11 4 (1.29%) Enterprise Cloud
11 4 (1.29%) Mainframe
11 4 (1.29%) Self-Motivation
11 4 (1.29%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 151 (48.87%) Windows
2 86 (27.83%) Linux
3 78 (25.24%) Windows Server
4 12 (3.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 10 (3.24%) Ubuntu
5 10 (3.24%) Unix
6 8 (2.59%) Windows Server 2016
7 7 (2.27%) Windows Server 2012
7 7 (2.27%) Windows Server 2019
8 6 (1.94%) Debian
9 5 (1.62%) Windows Server 2003
10 4 (1.29%) Android
11 3 (0.97%) Apple iOS
11 3 (0.97%) Mac OS
12 2 (0.65%) CentOS
12 2 (0.65%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.32%) Data ONTAP
13 1 (0.32%) VMS
13 1 (0.32%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 92 (29.77%) Identity Access Management
2 57 (18.45%) ITIL
3 56 (18.12%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 51 (16.50%) Cybersecurity
5 50 (16.18%) High Availability
6 46 (14.89%) Problem-Solving
7 41 (13.27%) DevOps
8 40 (12.94%) Agile
9 38 (12.30%) Observability
10 37 (11.97%) Infrastructure as Code
10 37 (11.97%) Zero Trust
11 33 (10.68%) CI/CD
11 33 (10.68%) ITSM
12 32 (10.36%) Service Management
13 31 (10.03%) Load Balancing
14 29 (9.39%) Cryptography
15 27 (8.74%) Continuous Improvement
15 27 (8.74%) Key Management
15 27 (8.74%) RBAC
16 26 (8.41%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 78 (25.24%) PowerShell
2 52 (16.83%) Python
3 18 (5.83%) Bash
4 14 (4.53%) SQL
5 13 (4.21%) C#
6 12 (3.88%) JavaScript
7 9 (2.91%) Java
8 4 (1.29%) PHP
9 3 (0.97%) C++
9 3 (0.97%) Go
10 2 (0.65%) Ruby
10 2 (0.65%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 158 (51.13%) Security Cleared
2 91 (29.45%) DV Cleared
3 69 (22.33%) SC Cleared
4 32 (10.36%) Cisco Certification
5 20 (6.47%) Degree
6 18 (5.83%) Microsoft Certification
7 11 (3.56%) Azure Certification
7 11 (3.56%) CCNP
7 11 (3.56%) MCSE
8 10 (3.24%) CISSP
9 8 (2.59%) CompTIA Security+
9 8 (2.59%) GIAC
9 8 (2.59%) JNCIP
9 8 (2.59%) JNCIS
10 7 (2.27%) JNCIA
11 5 (1.62%) CISM
11 5 (1.62%) Master's Degree
11 5 (1.62%) SSCP
12 4 (1.29%) CCNA
12 4 (1.29%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (11.00%) NIST
2 23 (7.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 14 (4.53%) NCSC
4 11 (3.56%) SLA
5 10 (3.24%) Cyber Essentials
6 9 (2.91%) QA
7 4 (1.29%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 4 (1.29%) GDPR
8 3 (0.97%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.65%) Government Security Classifications
9 2 (0.65%) ISA99
9 2 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 2 (0.65%) ITGC
9 2 (0.65%) NIST 800
9 2 (0.65%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 2 (0.65%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.32%) GMP
10 1 (0.32%) GRC
10 1 (0.32%) GxP
10 1 (0.32%) JSP 440
System Software
1 128 (41.42%) Active Directory
2 63 (20.39%) VMware Infrastructure
3 36 (11.65%) Docker
4 29 (9.39%) Hyper-V
5 24 (7.77%) VMware NSX
6 16 (5.18%) VMware ESXi
7 9 (2.91%) BitLocker
8 8 (2.59%) Microsoft App-V
8 8 (2.59%) Virtual Machines
9 6 (1.94%) vSphere
10 4 (1.29%) Firmware
10 4 (1.29%) OpenSSH
10 4 (1.29%) Terminal Services
10 4 (1.29%) Virtual Desktop
11 3 (0.97%) KVM
11 3 (0.97%) NFS
11 3 (0.97%) OpenAM
12 2 (0.65%) XenApp
12 2 (0.65%) XenDesktop
13 1 (0.32%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 52 (16.83%) Ansible
2 49 (15.86%) Kubernetes
3 43 (13.92%) Terraform
4 29 (9.39%) Single Sign-On
5 28 (9.06%) vCenter Server
6 23 (7.44%) FortiGate
7 15 (4.85%) Microsoft Intune
7 15 (4.85%) SCOM
8 12 (3.88%) Puppet
9 11 (3.56%) Avamar
9 11 (3.56%) Prometheus
10 10 (3.24%) Grafana
11 8 (2.59%) SCCM
11 8 (2.59%) vMotion
12 7 (2.27%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 6 (1.94%) CA Single Sign-On
13 6 (1.94%) Kibana
14 5 (1.62%) Failover Clustering
14 5 (1.62%) VxRail
14 5 (1.62%) WSUS
Vendors
1 117 (37.86%) Microsoft
2 80 (25.89%) VMware
3 60 (19.42%) Cisco
4 36 (11.65%) Splunk
5 31 (10.03%) Juniper
6 29 (9.39%) SolarWinds
7 27 (8.74%) F5
8 25 (8.09%) ServiceNow
9 24 (7.77%) Okta
10 22 (7.12%) Extreme Networks
11 19 (6.15%) BeyondTrust
11 19 (6.15%) Thales
12 18 (5.83%) Citrix
13 13 (4.21%) Dell
14 12 (3.88%) BMC
14 12 (3.88%) Palo Alto
14 12 (3.88%) Remedy
15 10 (3.24%) CyberArk
15 10 (3.24%) NetApp
16 7 (2.27%) Google