SSL Contract Job Trends

Secure Socket Layer (SSL)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring SSL skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 30 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 448 371 409
Rank change year-on-year -77 +38 +10
Contract jobs citing SSL 212 175 167
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.40% 0.53% 0.42%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 4.26% 4.43% 3.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 122 109 103
10th Percentile £369 £350 £400
25th Percentile £450 £400 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £531 £525 £600
Median % change year-on-year +1.19% -12.50% +14.29%
75th Percentile £600 £619 £638
90th Percentile £650 £700 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £600
% change year-on-year +5.00% -16.67% +23.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 13 3
10th Percentile - £45.00 £38.58
25th Percentile - £55.00 £41.32
Median hourly rate - £80.68 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year - +75.84% -30.46%
75th Percentile - £82.10 £47.32
90th Percentile - £84.80 £48.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £80.68 £45.88
% change year-on-year - +75.84% -26.00%

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
UK

SSL falls under the Communications and Computer Networking category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring communications or computer networking skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 4,979 3,947 4,876
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.40% 12.03% 12.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,971 2,411 2,952
10th Percentile £250 £235 £213
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% +8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 340 196 342
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.15 £18.01
Median hourly rate £26.29 £48.75 £45.44
Median % change year-on-year -46.07% +7.28% -9.12%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.50 £74.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £44.00 £51.50
% change year-on-year -39.41% -14.56% -10.30%

SSL
Job Vacancy Trend

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

SSL job vacancy trend in the UK

SSL
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SSL.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SSL

SSL
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SSL over the 6 months to 30 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SSL in the UK

SSL
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SSL.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SSL

SSL
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 SSL within the UK over the 6 months to 30 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 -89 184 £525 - 43
UK excluding London -36 139 £525 +5.00% 25
North of England -22 67 £600 +20.00% 6
Work from Home -50 59 £550 +4.76% 22
London -91 57 £550 -4.35% 24
North West -15 44 £600 - 4
Midlands -35 36 £390 +7.44% 5
West Midlands -39 34 £380 -5.47% 4
South East -57 28 £488 +30.00% 10
Yorkshire -35 22 £600 +20.00% 1
Scotland -3 16 £600 +14.29% 1
East of England -30 6 £450 -26.53% 1
East Midlands -13 2 £475 +32.68% 1
South West -38 2 - -
North East -44 2 £413 -20.67% 1

SSL
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 13 (6.13%) Confluence
2 2 (0.94%) Apache
2 2 (0.94%) IBM HTTP Server
2 2 (0.94%) IIS
2 2 (0.94%) Oracle HTTP Server
2 2 (0.94%) SharePoint
2 2 (0.94%) WebSphere
2 2 (0.94%) WebSphere Application Server
2 2 (0.94%) WebSphere Portal
3 1 (0.47%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (0.47%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.47%) ArcGIS
3 1 (0.47%) JBoss
Applications
1 5 (2.36%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.42%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.94%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 2 (0.94%) Houdini
3 2 (0.94%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 3 (1.42%) Infor LN
2 2 (0.94%) Dynamics GP
3 1 (0.47%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.47%) Oracle General Ledger
3 1 (0.47%) Oracle Payables
3 1 (0.47%) Oracle Receivables
3 1 (0.47%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 74 (34.91%) Azure
2 40 (18.87%) AWS
3 33 (15.57%) Entra ID
4 18 (8.49%) GCP
5 15 (7.08%) Microsoft 365
6 13 (6.13%) Azure DevOps
6 13 (6.13%) SaaS
7 12 (5.66%) Datadog
7 12 (5.66%) GitHub
8 10 (4.72%) IaaS
9 8 (3.77%) Power Platform
9 8 (3.77%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 7 (3.30%) Azure Monitor
10 7 (3.30%) Serverless
11 6 (2.83%) Azure Key Vault
12 5 (2.36%) Akamai
12 5 (2.36%) Azure Logic Apps
12 5 (2.36%) GitHub Actions
12 5 (2.36%) PaaS
13 4 (1.89%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 103 (48.58%) DNS
2 80 (37.74%) Firewall
3 59 (27.83%) TCP/IP
4 54 (25.47%) VPN
5 51 (24.06%) HTTP
5 51 (24.06%) Network Security
6 41 (19.34%) WAN
7 35 (16.51%) BIG-IP
8 33 (15.57%) IPsec
9 31 (14.62%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 27 (12.74%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
11 23 (10.85%) Wireshark
12 22 (10.38%) DHCP
13 21 (9.91%) LAN
14 20 (9.43%) Internet
15 18 (8.49%) BGP
15 18 (8.49%) Wireless
16 17 (8.02%) HTTPS
17 16 (7.55%) SD-WAN
18 11 (5.19%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (5.19%) SQL Server
2 8 (3.77%) MySQL
3 6 (2.83%) Power BI
3 6 (2.83%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 5 (2.36%) MariaDB
5 4 (1.89%) Metadata
5 4 (1.89%) MongoDB
5 4 (1.89%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (0.94%) Oracle BI Publisher
6 2 (0.94%) Oracle Reports
6 2 (0.94%) SQLPlus
7 1 (0.47%) Amazon RDS
7 1 (0.47%) Neo4j
7 1 (0.47%) NoSQL
7 1 (0.47%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 23 (10.85%) JIRA
2 18 (8.49%) Fiddler
3 15 (7.08%) Jenkins
4 11 (5.19%) Git
5 5 (2.36%) Browser DevTools
5 5 (2.36%) GitLab
5 5 (2.36%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.94%) Introscope
7 1 (0.47%) Ant
7 1 (0.47%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 1 (0.47%) Maven
General
1 48 (22.64%) Finance
2 37 (17.45%) Banking
3 29 (13.68%) Social Skills
4 25 (11.79%) Legal
5 19 (8.96%) Analytical Skills
6 17 (8.02%) Investment Banking
7 12 (5.66%) Public Sector
8 10 (4.72%) Telecoms
9 8 (3.77%) Documentation Skills
10 5 (2.36%) Publishing
11 3 (1.42%) Manufacturing
12 2 (0.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 2 (0.94%) Retail
13 1 (0.47%) Financial Institution
13 1 (0.47%) Influencing Skills
13 1 (0.47%) Marketing
13 1 (0.47%) Military
13 1 (0.47%) Pharmaceutical
13 1 (0.47%) Police
13 1 (0.47%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 55 (25.94%) Network Engineer
2 29 (13.68%) Security Engineer
3 26 (12.26%) Senior
4 23 (10.85%) Administrator
5 19 (8.96%) IP Network Engineer
5 19 (8.96%) Web Engineer
6 16 (7.55%) Blue Coat Engineer
7 14 (6.60%) Architect
8 12 (5.66%) Network Security Engineer
8 12 (5.66%) Senior Network Engineer
9 9 (4.25%) Lead
10 8 (3.77%) Network Architect
11 7 (3.30%) DBA
11 7 (3.30%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 6 (2.83%) Developer
12 6 (2.83%) DevOps Engineer
12 6 (2.83%) Linux Engineer
12 6 (2.83%) SQL DBA
13 5 (2.36%) Cloud Engineer
13 5 (2.36%) Windows Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (13.68%) SAML
2 23 (10.85%) Middleware
3 17 (8.02%) ISPF
4 15 (7.08%) OAuth
5 13 (6.13%) 802.1X
5 13 (6.13%) LDAP
6 12 (5.66%) OAuth2
7 10 (4.72%) OpenID
8 9 (4.25%) Web Services
9 7 (3.30%) Kafka
9 7 (3.30%) XML
10 6 (2.83%) JSON
10 6 (2.83%) REST
10 6 (2.83%) SOAP
11 4 (1.89%) CSS
11 4 (1.89%) EDI
12 3 (1.42%) EDIFACT
12 3 (1.42%) JMS
12 3 (1.42%) XACML
12 3 (1.42%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 33 (15.57%) Clustering
2 27 (12.74%) PKI
3 19 (8.96%) Management Information System
4 18 (8.49%) Mainframe
5 15 (7.08%) Data Centre
5 15 (7.08%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 12 (5.66%) Onboarding
6 12 (5.66%) Security Posture
7 11 (5.19%) Cloud Security Posture
8 10 (4.72%) Cyber Threat
8 10 (4.72%) Enterprise Software
8 10 (4.72%) Self-Motivation
9 9 (4.25%) Replication
10 7 (3.30%) Hybrid Cloud
11 4 (1.89%) Algorithms
11 4 (1.89%) Data Structures
11 4 (1.89%) Fibre Optics
11 4 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
11 4 (1.89%) Linux Command Line
12 3 (1.42%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 50 (23.58%) Windows
2 44 (20.75%) Linux
3 25 (11.79%) Windows Server
4 19 (8.96%) zOS
5 14 (6.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (5.19%) Unix
7 4 (1.89%) Mac OS
7 4 (1.89%) Windows Server 2019
8 2 (0.94%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.94%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 2 (0.94%) VMS
9 1 (0.47%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 58 (27.36%) ITIL
2 44 (20.75%) Load Balancing
3 42 (19.81%) DevOps
4 35 (16.51%) High Availability
5 31 (14.62%) CI/CD
5 31 (14.62%) SIEM
6 28 (13.21%) Data Loss Prevention
7 27 (12.74%) Zero Trust
8 26 (12.26%) Cybersecurity
9 24 (11.32%) Performance Optimisation
9 24 (11.32%) Problem-Solving
10 23 (10.85%) Change Management
10 23 (10.85%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 22 (10.38%) Cloud Security
12 21 (9.91%) Performance Tuning
13 20 (9.43%) Migration
14 18 (8.49%) Agile
14 18 (8.49%) Infrastructure as Code
14 18 (8.49%) Malware Detection/Protection
15 15 (7.08%) Vulnerability Remediation
Programming Languages
1 50 (23.58%) Python
2 29 (13.68%) SQL
3 25 (11.79%) PowerShell
4 20 (9.43%) Bash
5 8 (3.77%) Groovy
5 8 (3.77%) Java
5 8 (3.77%) Perl
6 6 (2.83%) Shell Script
6 6 (2.83%) T-SQL
7 5 (2.36%) ActionScript
7 5 (2.36%) JavaScript
8 4 (1.89%) PL/SQL
9 2 (0.94%) Jython
10 1 (0.47%) ActionScript 2.0
10 1 (0.47%) C
10 1 (0.47%) C#
10 1 (0.47%) C++
10 1 (0.47%) Cypher
10 1 (0.47%) Go
10 1 (0.47%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 58 (27.36%) Security Cleared
2 40 (18.87%) SC Cleared
3 19 (8.96%) Degree
4 17 (8.02%) DV Cleared
5 14 (6.60%) Azure Certification
6 13 (6.13%) CISSP
7 12 (5.66%) Cisco Certification
8 11 (5.19%) CCNP
8 11 (5.19%) Microsoft Certification
9 7 (3.30%) BPSS Clearance
9 7 (3.30%) CompTIA Security+
10 6 (2.83%) MCSE
11 5 (2.36%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 4 (1.89%) CCIE
12 4 (1.89%) MCSA
13 3 (1.42%) CISM
14 1 (0.47%) AWS Certification
14 1 (0.47%) CCSE
14 1 (0.47%) CEH
14 1 (0.47%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (5.66%) NIST
2 8 (3.77%) GDPR
3 7 (3.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 5 (2.36%) SLA
5 2 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
5 2 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 1 (0.47%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.47%) DICOM
6 1 (0.47%) HL7
6 1 (0.47%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 48 (22.64%) Active Directory
1 48 (22.64%) VMware Infrastructure
2 21 (9.91%) Virtual Machines
3 20 (9.43%) RACF
4 19 (8.96%) Firmware
5 17 (8.02%) Hyper-V
6 12 (5.66%) VMware NSX
7 8 (3.77%) Docker
7 8 (3.77%) vSphere
8 6 (2.83%) Squid
8 6 (2.83%) VMware ESXi
9 4 (1.89%) Ceph
10 3 (1.42%) Virtual Servers
11 2 (0.94%) Apache ZooKeeper
11 2 (0.94%) ProxySG
11 2 (0.94%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 2 (0.94%) Virtual Desktop
12 1 (0.47%) KVM
12 1 (0.47%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 39 (18.40%) Ansible
2 23 (10.85%) Single Sign-On
3 22 (10.38%) Terraform
4 17 (8.02%) OMEGAMON
5 14 (6.60%) Grafana
5 14 (6.60%) Kubernetes
6 13 (6.13%) CASB
7 8 (3.77%) Prometheus
7 8 (3.77%) Puppet
8 6 (2.83%) FortiGate
8 6 (2.83%) SCOM
9 4 (1.89%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 4 (1.89%) CA Single Sign-On
9 4 (1.89%) Cisco CUCM
9 4 (1.89%) Microsoft Intune
9 4 (1.89%) Nessus
9 4 (1.89%) Packer
9 4 (1.89%) PingFederate
10 3 (1.42%) Argo
10 3 (1.42%) yum
Vendors
1 54 (25.47%) VMware
2 48 (22.64%) F5
3 38 (17.92%) Microsoft
4 37 (17.45%) Cisco
5 29 (13.68%) Blue Coat
6 28 (13.21%) Zscaler
7 27 (12.74%) ServiceNow
8 25 (11.79%) Palo Alto
9 22 (10.38%) IBM
10 21 (9.91%) McAfee
11 17 (8.02%) NetApp
12 15 (7.08%) CheckPoint
13 14 (6.60%) Fortinet
14 12 (5.66%) Juniper
15 11 (5.19%) Oracle
15 11 (5.19%) SolarWinds
15 11 (5.19%) Splunk
16 8 (3.77%) Citrix
16 8 (3.77%) Red Hat
17 7 (3.30%) Ping Identity