SLSA Contract Job Trends

Supply Chain Levels for Software Artifacts (SLSA)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring SLSA skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 16 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 586 - -
Rank change year-on-year - - -
Contract jobs citing SLSA 4 0 0
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.011% - -
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 0.048% - -
Number of daily rates quoted 4 0 0
10th Percentile £492 - -
25th Percentile £612 - -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £683 - -
75th Percentile £695 - -
90th Percentile £710 - -
UK excluding London median daily rate £683 - -

All Software Libraries and Frameworks
UK

SLSA falls under the Software Libraries and Frameworks category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring technical specification, industry standards, software libraries and framework skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for technical specification, industry standards, software libraries and framework skills 8,298 7,033 9,221
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 22.31% 22.08% 21.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,521 4,471 6,497
10th Percentile £356 £353 £356
25th Percentile £413 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.67% -2.73% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £775 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 197 84 172
10th Percentile £32.44 £22.00 £28.63
25th Percentile £44.50 £36.31 £46.18
Median hourly rate £60.00 £62.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% +13.64% -15.38%
75th Percentile £68.00 £65.19 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £76.53 £77.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.50 £62.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year - +13.64% -15.38%

SLSA
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing SLSA relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

SLSA job vacancy trend in the UK

SLSA
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SLSA over the 6 months to 16 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SLSA in the UK

SLSA
Top 5 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SLSA within the UK over the 6 months to 16 January 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
UK excluding London - 4 £683 - 6
Scotland - 3 £683 - 1
Yorkshire - 1 £705 - 2
England - 1 £705 - 5
North of England - 1 £705 - 2

SLSA
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 2 (50.00%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 4 (100.00%) Azure
2 3 (75.00%) Azure DevOps
2 3 (75.00%) GitHub
2 3 (75.00%) GitHub Actions
3 1 (25.00%) AWS
3 1 (25.00%) GCP
Communications & Networking
1 2 (50.00%) Network Security
Development Applications
1 3 (75.00%) GitLab
1 3 (75.00%) Jenkins
2 2 (50.00%) JIRA
2 2 (50.00%) Snyk
General
1 3 (75.00%) Finance
2 1 (25.00%) Financial Institution
2 1 (25.00%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 3 (75.00%) Design Engineer
1 3 (75.00%) Security Engineer
2 1 (25.00%) Applications Engineer
2 1 (25.00%) Consultant
2 1 (25.00%) DevSecOps Consultant
Miscellaneous
1 3 (75.00%) Cloud Native
2 1 (25.00%) Cyber Security Posture
2 1 (25.00%) Data Protection Act
Processes & Methodologies
1 4 (100.00%) CI/CD
1 4 (100.00%) DevOps
1 4 (100.00%) SBOM
1 4 (100.00%) Threat Modelling
2 3 (75.00%) Application Security
2 3 (75.00%) Architectural Patterns
2 3 (75.00%) Containerisation
2 3 (75.00%) Cybersecurity
2 3 (75.00%) Dynamic Application Security Testing
2 3 (75.00%) Interactive Application Security Testing
2 3 (75.00%) Microservices
2 3 (75.00%) OWASP
2 3 (75.00%) SDLC
2 3 (75.00%) Security Testing
2 3 (75.00%) Static Application Security Testing
3 2 (50.00%) Computer Science
3 2 (50.00%) SABSA
3 2 (50.00%) Software Engineering
3 2 (50.00%) TOGAF
3 2 (50.00%) UML
Qualifications
1 3 (75.00%) CISM
1 3 (75.00%) CISSP
2 2 (50.00%) Degree
2 2 (50.00%) TOGAF Certification
3 1 (25.00%) (ISC)2 CCSP
3 1 (25.00%) CCSK
3 1 (25.00%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (75.00%) NIST
Systems Management
1 4 (100.00%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 2 (50.00%) BiZZdesign
1 2 (50.00%) Black Duck
1 2 (50.00%) Checkmarx
1 2 (50.00%) Tenable