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

6 months to
11 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 373 331 202
Rank change year-on-year -42 -129 +114
Contract jobs citing PKI 268 192 492
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.56% 0.65% 1.14%
As % of the Miscellaneous category 1.75% 1.92% 3.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 176 148 341
10th Percentile £413 £424 £363
25th Percentile £459 £513 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year - - -5.98%
75th Percentile £643 £625 £625
90th Percentile £725 £719 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £550 £550
% change year-on-year - - -3.08%
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 - - +10.00%

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 15,291 9,986 13,061
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.11% 33.96% 30.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,521 6,373 8,407
10th Percentile £308 £300 £269
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -4.29% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £651 £663
90th Percentile £738 £775 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -1.94% -2.10% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 723 400 904
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.95 £12.25
25th Percentile £19.85 £21.01 £15.17
Median hourly rate £45.00 £32.50 £31.25
Median % change year-on-year +38.46% +4.00% +38.98%
75th Percentile £70.00 £63.94 £61.30
90th Percentile £87.50 £83.22 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £31.76 £29.25
% change year-on-year +57.43% +8.58% +32.95%

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 11 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 11 May 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 11 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 -57 232 £550 -2.65% 58
UK excluding London -39 175 £550 - 43
South East +8 104 £600 +4.35% 22
London -34 62 £538 -3.33% 21
Work from Home -35 58 £555 -0.89% 26
North of England -55 27 £454 -31.55% 4
North West -33 16 £418 -15.14% 2
South West -62 16 £550 -4.35% 3
West Midlands -64 14 £450 +5.88% 2
Midlands -69 14 £450 +5.88% 6
Scotland +11 11 £451 -15.79% 1
Yorkshire -47 11 £482 -33.52% 2
East of England -29 5 £475 -9.52% 5
Wales -12 1 £550 +20.22% 2

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 14 (5.22%) Microsoft Exchange
2 8 (2.99%) SharePoint
3 7 (2.61%) Confluence
4 5 (1.87%) IIS
5 3 (1.12%) Exchange Server 2010
5 3 (1.12%) nginx
6 2 (0.75%) Apache
6 2 (0.75%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.75%) WebSphere
7 1 (0.37%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 3 (1.12%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 8 (2.99%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.37%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 70 (26.12%) Azure
2 67 (25.00%) AWS
3 30 (11.19%) Entra ID
4 27 (10.07%) Microsoft 365
5 14 (5.22%) GCP
6 13 (4.85%) Power Platform
7 10 (3.73%) OpenShift
8 8 (2.99%) AWS KMS
8 8 (2.99%) Azure Key Vault
8 8 (2.99%) IaaS
8 8 (2.99%) PaaS
8 8 (2.99%) SaaS
9 5 (1.87%) Amazon EKS
10 4 (1.49%) AWS CloudFormation
10 4 (1.49%) Azure DevOps
10 4 (1.49%) Power Automate
10 4 (1.49%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 3 (1.12%) Route 53
12 2 (0.75%) GitHub
12 2 (0.75%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 72 (26.87%) DNS
2 63 (23.51%) Firewall
3 45 (16.79%) DHCP
4 39 (14.55%) BGP
5 33 (12.31%) WAN
6 31 (11.57%) VPN
7 29 (10.82%) LAN
7 29 (10.82%) OSPF
8 26 (9.70%) Cisco ISE
8 26 (9.70%) Ethernet VPN
8 26 (9.70%) Network Security
8 26 (9.70%) VXLAN
9 25 (9.33%) BIG-IP
9 25 (9.33%) Junos
10 21 (7.84%) SSL
11 11 (4.10%) TCP/IP
12 10 (3.73%) MPLS
13 8 (2.99%) Cisco IOS
13 8 (2.99%) SMTP
13 8 (2.99%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (3.73%) Elasticsearch
2 9 (3.36%) SQL Server
3 8 (2.99%) Power BI
4 2 (0.75%) Metadata
4 2 (0.75%) MongoDB
4 2 (0.75%) MySQL
5 1 (0.37%) Amazon QuickSight
5 1 (0.37%) Amazon RDS
5 1 (0.37%) PostgreSQL
5 1 (0.37%) RDBMS
5 1 (0.37%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 13 (4.85%) JIRA
2 9 (3.36%) GitLab
3 7 (2.61%) Robot Framework
4 5 (1.87%) Sonatype Nexus
5 3 (1.12%) Jenkins
5 3 (1.12%) Terragrunt
6 2 (0.75%) Git
6 2 (0.75%) MSI
7 1 (0.37%) JUnit
General
1 28 (10.45%) Finance
1 28 (10.45%) Social Skills
2 24 (8.96%) Public Sector
3 11 (4.10%) Analytical Skills
4 5 (1.87%) Banking
4 5 (1.87%) Documentation Skills
5 4 (1.49%) Military
5 4 (1.49%) Retail
6 3 (1.12%) Legal
7 2 (0.75%) Financial Institution
7 2 (0.75%) Local Government
8 1 (0.37%) Aerospace
8 1 (0.37%) Back Office
8 1 (0.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (0.37%) Influencing Skills
8 1 (0.37%) Law
8 1 (0.37%) Manufacturing
8 1 (0.37%) Wearables
Job Titles
1 52 (19.40%) Architect
2 45 (16.79%) Senior
3 41 (15.30%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 21 (7.84%) Network Engineer
5 18 (6.72%) 3rd Line Engineer
6 16 (5.97%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
7 14 (5.22%) Firewall Specialist
7 14 (5.22%) Network Specialist
8 11 (4.10%) Security Engineer
8 11 (4.10%) Support Engineer
9 10 (3.73%) Senior Architect
9 10 (3.73%) Senior Network Engineer
9 10 (3.73%) Storage Engineer
10 9 (3.36%) 3rd Line Infrastructure Engineer
11 8 (2.99%) Consultant
12 7 (2.61%) Administrator
12 7 (2.61%) DevOps Engineer
12 7 (2.61%) Lead
12 7 (2.61%) NetApp Engineer
12 7 (2.61%) Security Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (11.94%) 802.1X
2 15 (5.60%) OpenID
3 14 (5.22%) LDAP
3 14 (5.22%) SAML
4 13 (4.85%) OAuth
4 13 (4.85%) REST
5 7 (2.61%) JSON
5 7 (2.61%) OAuth2
6 4 (1.49%) Elastic Stack
6 4 (1.49%) SailPoint
7 3 (1.12%) RabbitMQ
8 2 (0.75%) CSS
8 2 (0.75%) eBPF
8 2 (0.75%) HTML
8 2 (0.75%) Kafka
8 2 (0.75%) Loki
8 2 (0.75%) Microsoft Graph
8 2 (0.75%) SPIFFE
8 2 (0.75%) Web Services
9 1 (0.37%) Keycloak
Miscellaneous
1 41 (15.30%) Clustering
2 28 (10.45%) Data Centre
3 12 (4.48%) Enterprise Storage
4 11 (4.10%) Onboarding
5 10 (3.73%) Algorithms
5 10 (3.73%) Hybrid Cloud
5 10 (3.73%) Public Cloud
6 7 (2.61%) Cloud Native
6 7 (2.61%) Management Information System
7 6 (2.24%) Operational Technology
8 5 (1.87%) Private Cloud
8 5 (1.87%) Smartcard
9 4 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
9 4 (1.49%) Fat Client
9 4 (1.49%) Thin Client
10 3 (1.12%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (1.12%) Distributed Systems
10 3 (1.12%) Legacy Systems
10 3 (1.12%) Linux Command Line
10 3 (1.12%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 112 (41.79%) Windows
2 58 (21.64%) Linux
3 52 (19.40%) Windows Server
4 7 (2.61%) Ubuntu
4 7 (2.61%) Windows Server 2003
5 6 (2.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 6 (2.24%) Windows Server 2012
5 6 (2.24%) Windows Server 2019
6 4 (1.49%) Windows 7
6 4 (1.49%) Windows Server 2016
7 3 (1.12%) Debian
7 3 (1.12%) Unix
8 2 (0.75%) CentOS
9 1 (0.37%) Android
9 1 (0.37%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.37%) Data ONTAP
9 1 (0.37%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.37%) Solaris
9 1 (0.37%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 65 (24.25%) Identity Access Management
2 47 (17.54%) Agile
3 46 (17.16%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 42 (15.67%) Cybersecurity
5 41 (15.30%) High Availability
6 38 (14.18%) ITIL
7 37 (13.81%) Key Management
7 37 (13.81%) Problem-Solving
8 36 (13.43%) Observability
9 35 (13.06%) CI/CD
10 33 (12.31%) DevOps
10 33 (12.31%) Load Balancing
11 29 (10.82%) Infrastructure as Code
12 28 (10.45%) Zero Trust
13 25 (9.33%) Change Management
13 25 (9.33%) Service Management
14 24 (8.96%) ITSM
14 24 (8.96%) Migration
15 23 (8.58%) Cryptography
15 23 (8.58%) Security Architecture
Programming Languages
1 58 (21.64%) PowerShell
2 42 (15.67%) Python
3 15 (5.60%) Bash
3 15 (5.60%) SQL
4 10 (3.73%) JavaScript
5 8 (2.99%) C#
6 5 (1.87%) Java
7 4 (1.49%) PHP
8 3 (1.12%) C++
8 3 (1.12%) Go
9 1 (0.37%) Perl
9 1 (0.37%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 165 (61.57%) Security Cleared
2 96 (35.82%) DV Cleared
3 63 (23.51%) SC Cleared
4 30 (11.19%) Cisco Certification
5 20 (7.46%) CISSP
6 19 (7.09%) Degree
7 18 (6.72%) CISM
8 11 (4.10%) GIAC
9 8 (2.99%) CompTIA Security+
10 7 (2.61%) CCNP
10 7 (2.61%) Computer Science Degree
10 7 (2.61%) JNCIA
10 7 (2.61%) JNCIP
10 7 (2.61%) JNCIS
11 6 (2.24%) AWS Certification
11 6 (2.24%) Azure Certification
11 6 (2.24%) Microsoft Certification
12 5 (1.87%) CCNA
13 4 (1.49%) Network+ Certification
13 4 (1.49%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (10.45%) NIST
2 21 (7.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 14 (5.22%) NCSC
4 10 (3.73%) Cyber Essentials
5 7 (2.61%) PCI DSS
6 6 (2.24%) GDPR
7 5 (1.87%) QA
7 5 (1.87%) SLA
8 4 (1.49%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 3 (1.12%) RMADS
10 2 (0.75%) ISA99
10 2 (0.75%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 2 (0.75%) JSP 440
10 2 (0.75%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.37%) GMP
11 1 (0.37%) GRC
11 1 (0.37%) GxP
11 1 (0.37%) HMG Security Policy Framework
11 1 (0.37%) SOC 2
System Software
1 85 (31.72%) Active Directory
2 51 (19.03%) VMware Infrastructure
3 22 (8.21%) Docker
4 18 (6.72%) Hyper-V
5 16 (5.97%) VMware ESXi
6 13 (4.85%) VMware NSX
7 10 (3.73%) BitLocker
8 8 (2.99%) Microsoft App-V
9 7 (2.61%) Virtual Machines
10 6 (2.24%) Firmware
11 3 (1.12%) KVM
11 3 (1.12%) Sendmail
11 3 (1.12%) vSphere
11 3 (1.12%) XenApp
12 2 (0.75%) OpenSSH
12 2 (0.75%) XenDesktop
13 1 (0.37%) Embedded Firmware
13 1 (0.37%) iptables
13 1 (0.37%) Squid
13 1 (0.37%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 45 (16.79%) Ansible
2 40 (14.93%) Terraform
3 39 (14.55%) Kubernetes
4 23 (8.58%) FortiGate
5 21 (7.84%) vCenter Server
6 20 (7.46%) Single Sign-On
7 11 (4.10%) Prometheus
8 10 (3.73%) Grafana
8 10 (3.73%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (3.73%) Puppet
9 8 (2.99%) SCOM
9 8 (2.99%) vMotion
10 6 (2.24%) SCCM
10 6 (2.24%) WMI
11 5 (1.87%) WSUS
12 4 (1.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 3 (1.12%) Avamar
13 3 (1.12%) CA Single Sign-On
14 2 (0.75%) Cilium
14 2 (0.75%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 80 (29.85%) Microsoft
2 71 (26.49%) VMware
3 52 (19.40%) Cisco
4 40 (14.93%) Splunk
5 31 (11.57%) Juniper
6 27 (10.07%) F5
6 27 (10.07%) SolarWinds
7 22 (8.21%) Extreme Networks
8 17 (6.34%) Citrix
9 16 (5.97%) ServiceNow
10 14 (5.22%) Thales
11 12 (4.48%) Okta
11 12 (4.48%) Palo Alto
12 10 (3.73%) NetApp
13 9 (3.36%) BeyondTrust
14 8 (2.99%) BMC
14 8 (2.99%) ForeScout
14 8 (2.99%) Remedy
15 7 (2.61%) Aruba
16 6 (2.24%) Netskope