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 21 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 376 345 381
Rank change year-on-year -31 +36 +87
Contract jobs citing SSL 218 194 228
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.59% 0.57% 0.52%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 5.50% 4.49% 3.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 135 122 116
10th Percentile £351 £382 £350
25th Percentile £400 £456 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - +3.77%
75th Percentile £656 £647 £627
90th Percentile £700 £675 £710
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £549 £475
% change year-on-year -8.97% +15.64% +7.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 0 14
10th Percentile £45.00 - £55.35
25th Percentile £48.94 - £60.56
Median hourly rate £65.00 - £65.98
75th Percentile £77.19 - £66.18
90th Percentile £84.88 - £67.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 - £65.98
% change year-on-year - - +27.62%

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 3,965 4,325 6,045
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.79% 12.74% 13.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,587 2,534 3,731
10th Percentile £206 £220 £210
25th Percentile £356 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £583 £600 £613
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 184 148 332
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.15 £17.72
25th Percentile £20.13 £21.46 £22.94
Median hourly rate £32.00 £35.00 £56.45
Median % change year-on-year -8.57% -37.99% +37.57%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £65.98
90th Percentile £80.00 £71.63 £75.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £35.00 £56.49
% change year-on-year +21.43% -38.04% +25.53%

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 21 December 2025.

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
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SSL over the 6 months to 21 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for SSL in the UK

SSL
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 SSL within the UK over the 6 months to 21 December 2025. 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 +10 192 £550 -4.35% 41
UK excluding London -24 106 £500 -8.97% 39
London +16 82 £575 +6.98% 10
Work from Home -16 71 £525 - 22
North of England -15 49 £602 +9.41% 14
West Midlands +2 34 £380 -16.94% 5
Midlands -12 34 £380 -16.94% 6
North West -16 31 £589 +53.05% 10
East of England -9 18 £567 +31.10% 9
Yorkshire -38 17 £675 +22.73% 4
South East -38 11 £430 -31.20% 9
Scotland -10 6 £525 +1.94%
South West -17 4 £529 +24.35% 1
North East -9 1 £550 -6.78%

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 22 (10.09%) Confluence
2 7 (3.21%) TPMS
3 3 (1.38%) Apache
4 2 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.92%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.92%) Oracle HTTP Server
4 2 (0.92%) Tomcat
4 2 (0.92%) WebLogic
5 1 (0.46%) Anypoint
5 1 (0.46%) CMS
5 1 (0.46%) Drupal
5 1 (0.46%) IIS
5 1 (0.46%) JBoss
5 1 (0.46%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.46%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.46%) Umbraco
Applications
1 3 (1.38%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.92%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.46%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 9 (4.13%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.46%) RMDS
Cloud Services
1 62 (28.44%) AWS
2 28 (12.84%) Azure
3 26 (11.93%) Virtual Private Cloud
4 24 (11.01%) Amazon S3
5 22 (10.09%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 22 (10.09%) Amazon EC2
5 22 (10.09%) Amazon ELB
6 18 (8.26%) GCP
6 18 (8.26%) GitHub
7 10 (4.59%) Amazon EKS
8 7 (3.21%) Serverless
9 6 (2.75%) Entra ID
10 5 (2.29%) Amazon ECS
10 5 (2.29%) AWS CloudFormation
10 5 (2.29%) AWS Lambda
10 5 (2.29%) GitHub Actions
10 5 (2.29%) OpenShift
11 4 (1.83%) Apigee
11 4 (1.83%) Firebase
12 3 (1.38%) Kong
Communications & Networking
1 105 (48.17%) DNS
2 86 (39.45%) Firewall
2 86 (39.45%) TCP/IP
3 70 (32.11%) VPN
4 66 (30.28%) Network Security
5 61 (27.98%) HTTP
6 28 (12.84%) WAN
7 26 (11.93%) Wireshark
8 25 (11.47%) IPsec
9 22 (10.09%) BIG-IP
9 22 (10.09%) Wireless
10 19 (8.72%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 17 (7.80%) BGP
11 17 (7.80%) HTTPS
12 16 (7.34%) OSPF
13 15 (6.88%) DHCP
13 15 (6.88%) DMVPN
13 15 (6.88%) FTP
13 15 (6.88%) LAN
13 15 (6.88%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (5.05%) NoSQL
2 9 (4.13%) DocumentDB
2 9 (4.13%) MongoDB
3 8 (3.67%) Apache Cassandra
3 8 (3.67%) SQL Server
4 7 (3.21%) PostgreSQL
5 3 (1.38%) Redis
6 2 (0.92%) Big Data
6 2 (0.92%) Delta Lake
6 2 (0.92%) Hadoop
6 2 (0.92%) Parquet
7 1 (0.46%) Amazon QuickSight
7 1 (0.46%) Mixpanel
7 1 (0.46%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 36 (16.51%) Git
2 32 (14.68%) Jenkins
3 25 (11.47%) JIRA
4 20 (9.17%) GitLab
5 19 (8.72%) Fiddler
6 4 (1.83%) Robot Framework
7 2 (0.92%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.92%) git-flow
7 2 (0.92%) MLflow
7 2 (0.92%) Poetry
7 2 (0.92%) PyCharm
7 2 (0.92%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.92%) Visual Studio Code
8 1 (0.46%) CircleCI
8 1 (0.46%) Crashlytics
8 1 (0.46%) fastlane
8 1 (0.46%) Postman
8 1 (0.46%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.46%) XCTest
8 1 (0.46%) XCUITest
General
1 47 (21.56%) Social Skills
2 40 (18.35%) Analytical Skills
3 31 (14.22%) Finance
4 24 (11.01%) Public Sector
5 22 (10.09%) Banking
6 16 (7.34%) Investment Banking
7 11 (5.05%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (3.67%) Telecoms
9 5 (2.29%) Financial Institution
10 4 (1.83%) Military
11 2 (0.92%) Advertising
11 2 (0.92%) Aerospace
11 2 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.46%) Billing
12 1 (0.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.46%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.46%) Italian Language
12 1 (0.46%) Law
12 1 (0.46%) Legal
12 1 (0.46%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 54 (24.77%) Network Engineer
2 39 (17.89%) Senior
3 32 (14.68%) Developer
4 25 (11.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 20 (9.17%) Security Engineer
6 19 (8.72%) Architect
7 16 (7.34%) Analyst
7 16 (7.34%) DevOps Engineer
7 16 (7.34%) Web Engineer
8 15 (6.88%) SOC Analyst
9 13 (5.96%) Consultant
9 13 (5.96%) Full-Stack Developer
9 13 (5.96%) Network Security Engineer
9 13 (5.96%) Senior DevOps
9 13 (5.96%) Senior DevOps Engineer
10 11 (5.05%) Blue Coat Engineer
11 9 (4.13%) Cryptography Engineer
11 9 (4.13%) IP Network Engineer
11 9 (4.13%) Python Engineer
11 9 (4.13%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (17.89%) LDAP
2 31 (14.22%) REST
3 23 (10.55%) SOAP
4 22 (10.09%) SAML
5 19 (8.72%) JSON
6 18 (8.26%) HTML
6 18 (8.26%) OAuth
7 13 (5.96%) AngularJS
7 13 (5.96%) RESTful
8 11 (5.05%) 802.1X
8 11 (5.05%) Kafka
9 10 (4.59%) Web Services
9 10 (4.59%) XML
10 9 (4.13%) Apache Camel
10 9 (4.13%) HTML5
10 9 (4.13%) JDBC
10 9 (4.13%) jQuery
10 9 (4.13%) ODBC
10 9 (4.13%) RabbitMQ
10 9 (4.13%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 30 (13.76%) Management Information System
2 26 (11.93%) PKI
3 17 (7.80%) Analytical Mindset
3 17 (7.80%) Data Centre
4 15 (6.88%) Cyberattack
5 14 (6.42%) Cyber Threat
6 13 (5.96%) CSOC
6 13 (5.96%) Security Operations Centre
7 11 (5.05%) Onboarding
8 5 (2.29%) Cloud Security Posture
8 5 (2.29%) Private Cloud
8 5 (2.29%) Security Posture
9 4 (1.83%) Algorithms
9 4 (1.83%) Linux Command Line
10 3 (1.38%) Cloud Native
10 3 (1.38%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 2 (0.92%) Hybrid Cloud
11 2 (0.92%) Mobile App
11 2 (0.92%) Virtual Team
12 1 (0.46%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 58 (26.61%) Linux
2 33 (15.14%) Windows
3 20 (9.17%) Unix
4 8 (3.67%) Windows Server
5 7 (3.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 4 (1.83%) Ubuntu
7 3 (1.38%) Apple iOS
8 2 (0.92%) CatOS
8 2 (0.92%) CentOS
8 2 (0.92%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.46%) Android
9 1 (0.46%) Solaris
9 1 (0.46%) VMS
9 1 (0.46%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.46%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 63 (28.90%) DevOps
2 48 (22.02%) CI/CD
3 36 (16.51%) Cybersecurity
3 36 (16.51%) High Availability
4 34 (15.60%) Incident Response
5 33 (15.14%) Infrastructure as Code
5 33 (15.14%) Load Balancing
6 32 (14.68%) Problem-Solving
7 31 (14.22%) Root Cause Analysis
8 30 (13.76%) Infrastructure Automation
9 29 (13.30%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 28 (12.84%) Test Automation
11 24 (11.01%) Change Management
12 23 (10.55%) Agile
12 23 (10.55%) Cloud Security
12 23 (10.55%) Identity Access Management
12 23 (10.55%) Migration
13 22 (10.09%) Continuous Improvement
13 22 (10.09%) Key Management
13 22 (10.09%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 75 (34.40%) Python
2 35 (16.06%) Bash
3 30 (13.76%) JavaScript
4 20 (9.17%) PowerShell
5 16 (7.34%) Java
6 14 (6.42%) SQL
7 12 (5.50%) Perl
8 3 (1.38%) C#
9 2 (0.92%) C
9 2 (0.92%) Groovy
9 2 (0.92%) PHP
9 2 (0.92%) Shell Script
9 2 (0.92%) Swift
10 1 (0.46%) C++
10 1 (0.46%) Kotlin
10 1 (0.46%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 91 (41.74%) Security Cleared
2 77 (35.32%) SC Cleared
3 17 (7.80%) CISSP
3 17 (7.80%) DV Cleared
4 15 (6.88%) Degree
5 14 (6.42%) Cisco Certification
6 11 (5.05%) Microsoft Certification
7 10 (4.59%) CCNP
8 7 (3.21%) CISM
8 7 (3.21%) FFIEC
9 6 (2.75%) MCSE
10 5 (2.29%) CCSA
10 5 (2.29%) CompTIA Security+
10 5 (2.29%) MCSA
11 4 (1.83%) Computer Science Degree
12 3 (1.38%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 3 (1.38%) RHCE
13 2 (0.92%) CCSP
13 2 (0.92%) CEH
13 2 (0.92%) JNCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (7.80%) GDPR
2 14 (6.42%) PCI DSS
3 9 (4.13%) NIST
4 7 (3.21%) GLBA
5 6 (2.75%) HIPAA
6 4 (1.83%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 3 (1.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 2 (0.92%) Accessibility
8 2 (0.92%) Data Quality
8 2 (0.92%) FIPS 140-2
8 2 (0.92%) QA
9 1 (0.46%) SLA
9 1 (0.46%) SOC 2
System Software
1 46 (21.10%) Docker
2 26 (11.93%) Active Directory
3 15 (6.88%) Firmware
3 15 (6.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (3.67%) VMware NSX
5 5 (2.29%) NDS
5 5 (2.29%) NetIQ eDirectory
6 4 (1.83%) ProxySG
7 2 (0.92%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.46%) Embedded Firmware
8 1 (0.46%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 1 (0.46%) Squid
8 1 (0.46%) vSphere
8 1 (0.46%) XenApp
8 1 (0.46%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 54 (24.77%) Ansible
2 43 (19.72%) Terraform
3 34 (15.60%) Kubernetes
4 21 (9.63%) Single Sign-On
5 7 (3.21%) CASB
6 6 (2.75%) Nessus
7 4 (1.83%) CA Spectrum
8 3 (1.38%) FortiGate
8 3 (1.38%) Microsoft Intune
8 3 (1.38%) Nagios
8 3 (1.38%) Prometheus
8 3 (1.38%) SCCM
8 3 (1.38%) SCOM
9 2 (0.92%) Argo
9 2 (0.92%) Istio
9 2 (0.92%) Rsyslog
10 1 (0.46%) BladeLogic
10 1 (0.46%) HP Operations Orchestration
10 1 (0.46%) McAfee ePO
10 1 (0.46%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 79 (36.24%) F5
2 46 (21.10%) CheckPoint
3 38 (17.43%) Blue Coat
4 34 (15.60%) Cisco
4 34 (15.60%) Palo Alto
5 24 (11.01%) VMware
6 23 (10.55%) Juniper
6 23 (10.55%) McAfee
6 23 (10.55%) Splunk
7 21 (9.63%) Microsoft
8 14 (6.42%) NetApp
8 14 (6.42%) Remedy
8 14 (6.42%) ServiceNow
9 12 (5.50%) Thales
10 11 (5.05%) Fortinet
10 11 (5.05%) Zscaler
11 10 (4.59%) Axway
11 10 (4.59%) Oracle
12 9 (4.13%) BMC
12 9 (4.13%) HP