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 3 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 336 327 213
Rank change year-on-year -9 -114 +111
Contract jobs citing PKI 296 203 494
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.71% 0.68% 1.11%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 2.12% 2.04% 3.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 210 122 328
10th Percentile £400 £408 £363
25th Percentile £490 £469 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £570 £575
Median % change year-on-year -3.51% -0.87% -4.17%
75th Percentile £694 £638 £650
90th Percentile £838 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £575 £563
% change year-on-year -4.35% +2.22% -1.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 0 4
10th Percentile £61.41 - -
25th Percentile £70.50 - £55.00
Median hourly rate £79.50 - £55.70
75th Percentile £96.25 - £59.18
90th Percentile £101.65 - £64.17
UK excluding London median hourly rate £79.50 - £55.70
% change year-on-year - - +1.27%

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 13,937 9,968 13,515
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.41% 33.38% 30.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,783 6,129 8,678
10th Percentile £285 £275 £256
25th Percentile £406 £408 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £768 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £496 £500
% change year-on-year -4.26% -0.77% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 655 331 843
10th Percentile £15.40 £18.13 £12.86
25th Percentile £18.85 £22.72 £16.25
Median hourly rate £33.50 £32.50 £30.16
Median % change year-on-year +3.08% +7.76% +34.13%
75th Percentile £65.00 £66.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £83.20 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.50 £31.76 £31.13
% change year-on-year +5.48% +2.04% +41.48%

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 3 March 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 3 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for PKI in the UK

PKI
Top 14 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 3 March 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 +34 276 £550 -4.35% 64
UK excluding London -52 176 £550 -4.35% 47
London +20 95 £610 +16.19% 22
South East +30 92 £600 -0.83% 29
Work from Home -8 78 £650 +11.94% 25
South West -29 33 £550 -4.35% 5
West Midlands -36 28 £375 -11.76% 5
Midlands -40 28 £375 -11.76% 10
North of England -60 17 £482 -32.35% 2
Yorkshire -58 9 £482 -33.52% 1
North West -34 8 £444 -11.25% 1
Scotland -20 5 £650 +21.61%
East of England - 3 £550 - 3
Wales -5 1 £550 +20.22% 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 31 (10.47%) Microsoft Exchange
2 13 (4.39%) SharePoint
3 6 (2.03%) Confluence
4 4 (1.35%) SharePoint Server
4 4 (1.35%) Skype for Business
5 3 (1.01%) Exchange Server 2010
5 3 (1.01%) nginx
6 1 (0.34%) IIS
Applications
1 10 (3.38%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (1.01%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.34%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 53 (17.91%) Azure
2 48 (16.22%) AWS
3 30 (10.14%) IaaS
4 27 (9.12%) Entra ID
5 25 (8.45%) Microsoft 365
6 8 (2.70%) AWS CloudFormation
6 8 (2.70%) GCP
6 8 (2.70%) GitHub
6 8 (2.70%) OpenShift
6 8 (2.70%) SaaS
7 7 (2.36%) PaaS
7 7 (2.36%) Power Platform
7 7 (2.36%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 4 (1.35%) Amazon EKS
8 4 (1.35%) AWS KMS
9 3 (1.01%) Amazon ECS
9 3 (1.01%) Azure Key Vault
9 3 (1.01%) OneDrive
9 3 (1.01%) Power Automate
9 3 (1.01%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 71 (23.99%) DNS
1 71 (23.99%) Firewall
2 48 (16.22%) BGP
3 41 (13.85%) DHCP
4 37 (12.50%) WAN
5 34 (11.49%) VPN
6 28 (9.46%) Network Security
7 26 (8.78%) OSPF
8 23 (7.77%) LAN
9 21 (7.09%) Junos
9 21 (7.09%) MPLS
10 20 (6.76%) Ethernet VPN
10 20 (6.76%) VXLAN
11 19 (6.42%) IPsec
12 18 (6.08%) BIG-IP
12 18 (6.08%) Cisco ISE
12 18 (6.08%) SSL
13 12 (4.05%) TCP/IP
14 11 (3.72%) Cisco IOS
14 11 (3.72%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (4.05%) SQL Server
2 7 (2.36%) Elasticsearch
3 4 (1.35%) MongoDB
4 3 (1.01%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (1.01%) Power BI
5 1 (0.34%) Amazon QuickSight
5 1 (0.34%) MySQL
5 1 (0.34%) RDBMS
5 1 (0.34%) Redis
5 1 (0.34%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 12 (4.05%) JIRA
2 10 (3.38%) GitLab
3 5 (1.69%) Jenkins
3 5 (1.69%) Robot Framework
4 4 (1.35%) Sonatype Nexus
5 3 (1.01%) Terragrunt
6 1 (0.34%) JUnit
General
1 46 (15.54%) Analytical Skills
2 43 (14.53%) Social Skills
3 32 (10.81%) Public Sector
4 19 (6.42%) Finance
5 10 (3.38%) Military
6 7 (2.36%) Banking
7 6 (2.03%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (1.35%) Presentation Skills
9 3 (1.01%) Legal
10 2 (0.68%) Financial Institution
10 2 (0.68%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (0.68%) Local Government
11 1 (0.34%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.34%) Back Office
11 1 (0.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.34%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 93 (31.42%) Architect
2 42 (14.19%) Senior
3 30 (10.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 21 (7.09%) 3rd Line Engineer
5 18 (6.08%) Network Engineer
5 18 (6.08%) Support Engineer
6 14 (4.73%) 3rd Line Support
6 14 (4.73%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
6 14 (4.73%) Wintel Engineer
7 13 (4.39%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
8 12 (4.05%) Lead
9 11 (3.72%) Administrator
9 11 (3.72%) Platform Manager
9 11 (3.72%) Systems Administrator
9 11 (3.72%) Systems Manager
9 11 (3.72%) Wintel Administrator
9 11 (3.72%) Wintel Systems Administrator
10 10 (3.38%) Network Specialist
10 10 (3.38%) Security Architect
10 10 (3.38%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (11.15%) REST
2 28 (9.46%) JSON
3 18 (6.08%) 802.1X
4 16 (5.41%) OpenID
5 12 (4.05%) LDAP
5 12 (4.05%) OAuth
5 12 (4.05%) SAML
6 11 (3.72%) OAuth2
7 5 (1.69%) Elastic Stack
8 4 (1.35%) Kafka
9 3 (1.01%) AWS CDK
9 3 (1.01%) cloud-init
9 3 (1.01%) CSS
9 3 (1.01%) HTML
9 3 (1.01%) JDBC
9 3 (1.01%) Keycloak
9 3 (1.01%) SailPoint
9 3 (1.01%) SOAP
10 2 (0.68%) .NET
10 2 (0.68%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 27 (9.12%) Self-Motivation
2 23 (7.77%) Data Centre
3 22 (7.43%) Clustering
4 11 (3.72%) Fat Client
4 11 (3.72%) Thin Client
5 9 (3.04%) Algorithms
5 9 (3.04%) Management Information System
6 7 (2.36%) Enterprise Storage
6 7 (2.36%) Public Cloud
7 6 (2.03%) Hybrid Cloud
7 6 (2.03%) Private Cloud
8 5 (1.69%) Smartcard
9 4 (1.35%) Onboarding
9 4 (1.35%) Replication
9 4 (1.35%) Security Operations Centre
9 4 (1.35%) Security Posture
10 3 (1.01%) Cloud Native
10 3 (1.01%) Legacy Applications
10 3 (1.01%) Operational Technology
10 3 (1.01%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 106 (35.81%) Windows
2 53 (17.91%) Linux
3 47 (15.88%) Windows Server
4 10 (3.38%) Windows 7
5 9 (3.04%) Windows 10
5 9 (3.04%) Windows Server 2012
6 7 (2.36%) CentOS
6 7 (2.36%) Ubuntu
7 6 (2.03%) Unix
8 5 (1.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 5 (1.69%) Windows Server 2016
9 4 (1.35%) Windows Server 2003
10 3 (1.01%) VMS
10 3 (1.01%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.34%) Android
11 1 (0.34%) Solaris
11 1 (0.34%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 79 (26.69%) Agile
2 65 (21.96%) Key Management
3 49 (16.55%) Identity Access Management
4 38 (12.84%) CI/CD
4 38 (12.84%) Problem-Solving
5 37 (12.50%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 37 (12.50%) ITIL
6 36 (12.16%) Cybersecurity
7 33 (11.15%) Change Management
8 32 (10.81%) Configuration Management
9 29 (9.80%) Service Management
10 28 (9.46%) Load Balancing
11 27 (9.12%) DevOps
11 27 (9.12%) Observability
12 25 (8.45%) Cryptography
13 24 (8.11%) Incident Response
13 24 (8.11%) Infrastructure as Code
14 23 (7.77%) Containerisation
14 23 (7.77%) High Availability
14 23 (7.77%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 74 (25.00%) PowerShell
2 45 (15.20%) Python
3 21 (7.09%) SQL
4 17 (5.74%) Bash
5 9 (3.04%) JavaScript
6 6 (2.03%) C#
7 5 (1.69%) C++
7 5 (1.69%) Java
8 4 (1.35%) Go
8 4 (1.35%) PHP
9 3 (1.01%) Perl
9 3 (1.01%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.34%) Bicep
10 1 (0.34%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 205 (69.26%) Security Cleared
2 102 (34.46%) DV Cleared
3 100 (33.78%) SC Cleared
4 29 (9.80%) Degree
5 27 (9.12%) Cisco Certification
6 20 (6.76%) Microsoft Certification
7 19 (6.42%) CISSP
8 16 (5.41%) CISM
9 10 (3.38%) CCNP
9 10 (3.38%) MCSE
10 9 (3.04%) Computer Science Degree
11 8 (2.70%) GIAC
11 8 (2.70%) JNCIA
11 8 (2.70%) JNCIS
12 7 (2.36%) Master's Degree
13 6 (2.03%) AWS Certification
13 6 (2.03%) ITIL Certification
13 6 (2.03%) JNCIP
13 6 (2.03%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 5 (1.69%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (6.08%) NIST
2 16 (5.41%) NCSC
3 15 (5.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 8 (2.70%) PCI DSS
5 7 (2.36%) Cyber Essentials
5 7 (2.36%) GDPR
6 5 (1.69%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 4 (1.35%) RMADS
7 4 (1.35%) SLA
8 3 (1.01%) JSP 440
8 3 (1.01%) NIST 800
8 3 (1.01%) QA
9 2 (0.68%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.68%) HMG Security Policy Framework
10 1 (0.34%) Accessibility
10 1 (0.34%) PSD2
10 1 (0.34%) SOC 2
System Software
1 93 (31.42%) Active Directory
2 47 (15.88%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (7.09%) Docker
4 14 (4.73%) VMware NSX
5 13 (4.39%) Hyper-V
5 13 (4.39%) VMware ESXi
6 10 (3.38%) Firmware
7 8 (2.70%) vSphere
8 5 (1.69%) BitLocker
9 4 (1.35%) Microsoft App-V
9 4 (1.35%) Microsoft Virtual Server
9 4 (1.35%) Virtual Servers
10 3 (1.01%) Sendmail
10 3 (1.01%) Virtual Machines
11 2 (0.68%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 2 (0.68%) KVM
12 1 (0.34%) NFS
12 1 (0.34%) Squid
12 1 (0.34%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 33 (11.15%) Ansible
1 33 (11.15%) Terraform
2 32 (10.81%) Kubernetes
3 22 (7.43%) vCenter Server
4 19 (6.42%) FortiGate
4 19 (6.42%) Single Sign-On
5 13 (4.39%) Microsoft Intune
5 13 (4.39%) WSUS
6 12 (4.05%) SCCM
7 11 (3.72%) SCOM
8 10 (3.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 10 (3.38%) WMI
9 8 (2.70%) Prometheus
10 7 (2.36%) Grafana
11 5 (1.69%) Puppet
12 4 (1.35%) QRadar
12 4 (1.35%) vMotion
13 3 (1.01%) Packer
13 3 (1.01%) Podman
13 3 (1.01%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 89 (30.07%) Microsoft
2 73 (24.66%) VMware
3 56 (18.92%) Cisco
4 40 (13.51%) Juniper
5 36 (12.16%) Splunk
6 29 (9.80%) SolarWinds
7 21 (7.09%) F5
8 17 (5.74%) Extreme Networks
9 13 (4.39%) Palo Alto
10 12 (4.05%) Veeam
11 11 (3.72%) Thales
12 8 (2.70%) Citrix
13 7 (2.36%) Broadcom
13 7 (2.36%) Google
13 7 (2.36%) Okta
14 6 (2.03%) Dell
14 6 (2.03%) ServiceNow
15 5 (1.69%) CheckPoint
15 5 (1.69%) CyberArk
15 5 (1.69%) Fortinet