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 9 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 457 392 403
Rank change year-on-year -65 +11 +38
Contract jobs citing SSL 205 149 202
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.39% 0.46% 0.47%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 4.10% 3.78% 3.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 119 90 121
10th Percentile £334 £336 £350
25th Percentile £425 £375 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £521 £575
Median % change year-on-year +0.82% -9.43% +9.52%
75th Percentile £600 £608 £638
90th Percentile £651 £700 £743
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 6 5
10th Percentile - £80.34 £40.40
25th Percentile - £80.59 -
Median hourly rate - £81.35 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year - +77.31% -26.73%
75th Percentile - £81.91 -
90th Percentile - £83.05 £47.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £81.35 £45.88
% change year-on-year - +77.31% -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 5,006 3,938 5,457
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.54% 12.19% 12.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,044 2,412 3,219
10th Percentile £238 £231 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £481 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.06% -3.90% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £470 £490
% change year-on-year +2.58% -4.08% +3.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 316 185 428
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.75
25th Percentile £19.34 £23.75 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.55 £45.00 £44.00
Median % change year-on-year -41.00% +2.27% +53.04%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £78.00 £73.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.22 £36.65 £47.50
% change year-on-year -28.45% -22.85% +5.56%

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 9 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 9 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 -82 175 £525 +0.96% 38
UK excluding London -42 137 £525 +5.00% 30
North of England -25 71 £600 +20.00% 7
Work from Home -41 54 £550 +2.33% 22
London -93 47 £538 -4.02% 13
North West 0 45 £600 +69.49% 4
Midlands -35 39 £375 +4.75% 4
West Midlands -36 38 £375 - 2
Yorkshire -36 25 £600 +20.00% 3
South East -47 22 £463 +23.33% 15
Scotland +3 14 £600 +14.29%
East of England -29 6 £450 -20.00% 2
North East -32 2 £413 -22.90% 1
South West -35 2 - - 1
East Midlands -16 1 £475 +32.68% 2

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 12 (5.85%) Confluence
2 3 (1.46%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.98%) IBM HTTP Server
3 2 (0.98%) IIS
3 2 (0.98%) Oracle HTTP Server
3 2 (0.98%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.98%) TPMS
3 2 (0.98%) WebSphere
3 2 (0.98%) WebSphere Application Server
3 2 (0.98%) WebSphere Portal
4 1 (0.49%) Apache
4 1 (0.49%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.49%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.49%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 8 (3.90%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.46%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.49%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 1 (0.49%) Houdini
3 1 (0.49%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 2 (0.98%) Infor LN
2 1 (0.49%) Dynamics GP
Cloud Services
1 69 (33.66%) Azure
2 40 (19.51%) AWS
3 31 (15.12%) Entra ID
4 18 (8.78%) GCP
5 12 (5.85%) GitHub
5 12 (5.85%) Microsoft 365
6 11 (5.37%) SaaS
7 10 (4.88%) Azure DevOps
7 10 (4.88%) Datadog
8 9 (4.39%) IaaS
9 8 (3.90%) Serverless
9 8 (3.90%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 6 (2.93%) Azure Key Vault
10 6 (2.93%) Power Platform
11 5 (2.44%) Azure Logic Apps
11 5 (2.44%) Azure Monitor
12 4 (1.95%) Amazon S3
12 4 (1.95%) AWS KMS
12 4 (1.95%) AWS Lambda
12 4 (1.95%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 103 (50.24%) DNS
2 79 (38.54%) Firewall
3 63 (30.73%) TCP/IP
4 56 (27.32%) HTTP
5 53 (25.85%) VPN
6 47 (22.93%) Network Security
7 43 (20.98%) BIG-IP
8 42 (20.49%) WAN
9 32 (15.61%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 31 (15.12%) IPsec
11 29 (14.15%) Wireshark
12 28 (13.66%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
13 24 (11.71%) LAN
14 22 (10.73%) DHCP
15 20 (9.76%) HTTPS
15 20 (9.76%) Internet
16 18 (8.78%) BGP
16 18 (8.78%) Wireless
17 17 (8.29%) SD-WAN
18 13 (6.34%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (3.90%) SQL Server
2 5 (2.44%) MongoDB
2 5 (2.44%) MySQL
2 5 (2.44%) Power BI
2 5 (2.44%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 4 (1.95%) MariaDB
3 4 (1.95%) Metadata
3 4 (1.95%) PostgreSQL
4 2 (0.98%) NoSQL
4 2 (0.98%) SQLPlus
5 1 (0.49%) Amazon RDS
5 1 (0.49%) DocumentDB
5 1 (0.49%) Neo4j
Development Applications
1 22 (10.73%) JIRA
2 21 (10.24%) Fiddler
3 12 (5.85%) Jenkins
4 8 (3.90%) Git
5 5 (2.44%) Browser DevTools
6 4 (1.95%) GitLab
6 4 (1.95%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.98%) Introscope
General
1 45 (21.95%) Finance
2 37 (18.05%) Banking
3 28 (13.66%) Social Skills
4 25 (12.20%) Legal
5 18 (8.78%) Investment Banking
6 15 (7.32%) Analytical Skills
7 13 (6.34%) Public Sector
8 10 (4.88%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (3.41%) Telecoms
10 5 (2.44%) Publishing
11 2 (0.98%) Manufacturing
11 2 (0.98%) Retail
12 1 (0.49%) Financial Institution
12 1 (0.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.49%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.49%) Military
12 1 (0.49%) Pharmaceutical
12 1 (0.49%) Police
Job Titles
1 57 (27.80%) Network Engineer
2 25 (12.20%) Security Engineer
3 22 (10.73%) Administrator
3 22 (10.73%) Senior
3 22 (10.73%) Web Engineer
4 20 (9.76%) IP Network Engineer
5 17 (8.29%) Blue Coat Engineer
6 16 (7.80%) Architect
7 10 (4.88%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 10 (4.88%) Network Security Engineer
8 9 (4.39%) Network Architect
8 9 (4.39%) Senior Network Engineer
9 7 (3.41%) Lead
10 6 (2.93%) DBA
10 6 (2.93%) Linux Engineer
10 6 (2.93%) Windows Engineer
11 5 (2.44%) Developer
11 5 (2.44%) Junior
11 5 (2.44%) SQL DBA
11 5 (2.44%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (15.61%) SAML
2 21 (10.24%) Middleware
3 17 (8.29%) ISPF
4 16 (7.80%) LDAP
5 12 (5.85%) OAuth
6 11 (5.37%) OpenID
7 10 (4.88%) 802.1X
7 10 (4.88%) OAuth2
8 7 (3.41%) Kafka
8 7 (3.41%) Web Services
9 5 (2.44%) CSS
10 4 (1.95%) HTML
10 4 (1.95%) REST
10 4 (1.95%) XACML
10 4 (1.95%) XML
11 3 (1.46%) JMS
11 3 (1.46%) JSON
11 3 (1.46%) SOAP
12 2 (0.98%) EDIFACT
12 2 (0.98%) WebSphere MQ
Miscellaneous
1 31 (15.12%) Clustering
2 23 (11.22%) PKI
3 19 (9.27%) Management Information System
4 17 (8.29%) Data Centre
4 17 (8.29%) Mainframe
5 14 (6.83%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 13 (6.34%) Security Posture
7 11 (5.37%) Cloud Security Posture
8 10 (4.88%) Enterprise Software
8 10 (4.88%) Onboarding
9 9 (4.39%) Self-Motivation
10 8 (3.90%) Cyber Threat
10 8 (3.90%) Replication
11 6 (2.93%) Hybrid Cloud
12 4 (1.95%) Algorithms
13 3 (1.46%) SCADA
14 2 (0.98%) Data Protection Act
14 2 (0.98%) Data Structures
14 2 (0.98%) Enterprise Storage
14 2 (0.98%) Smartcard
Operating Systems
1 46 (22.44%) Windows
2 37 (18.05%) Linux
3 25 (12.20%) Windows Server
4 17 (8.29%) zOS
5 13 (6.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 9 (4.39%) Unix
7 4 (1.95%) Mac OS
7 4 (1.95%) Windows Server 2019
8 2 (0.98%) CatOS
8 2 (0.98%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.98%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 2 (0.98%) VMS
9 1 (0.49%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 57 (27.80%) ITIL
2 45 (21.95%) Load Balancing
3 38 (18.54%) DevOps
4 34 (16.59%) High Availability
5 31 (15.12%) Cybersecurity
5 31 (15.12%) Data Loss Prevention
6 30 (14.63%) SIEM
7 27 (13.17%) CI/CD
7 27 (13.17%) Zero Trust
8 24 (11.71%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 23 (11.22%) Cloud Security
9 23 (11.22%) Performance Optimisation
10 22 (10.73%) Change Management
11 21 (10.24%) Malware Detection/Protection
12 20 (9.76%) Migration
13 19 (9.27%) Problem-Solving
14 18 (8.78%) Infrastructure as Code
15 17 (8.29%) Agile
16 16 (7.80%) Project Delivery
17 15 (7.32%) Vulnerability Remediation
Programming Languages
1 47 (22.93%) Python
2 26 (12.68%) SQL
3 24 (11.71%) PowerShell
4 21 (10.24%) Bash
5 6 (2.93%) Groovy
5 6 (2.93%) Java
6 5 (2.44%) Perl
6 5 (2.44%) T-SQL
7 4 (1.95%) ActionScript
7 4 (1.95%) JavaScript
8 3 (1.46%) PL/SQL
8 3 (1.46%) Shell Script
9 2 (0.98%) Jython
10 1 (0.49%) C
10 1 (0.49%) Cypher
10 1 (0.49%) Go
10 1 (0.49%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 48 (23.41%) Security Cleared
2 34 (16.59%) SC Cleared
3 19 (9.27%) Degree
4 14 (6.83%) Cisco Certification
4 14 (6.83%) CISSP
5 13 (6.34%) CCNP
6 12 (5.85%) Azure Certification
6 12 (5.85%) DV Cleared
7 9 (4.39%) Microsoft Certification
8 7 (3.41%) CompTIA Security+
9 6 (2.93%) BPSS Clearance
10 5 (2.44%) CCIE
10 5 (2.44%) MCSE
11 4 (1.95%) CISM
11 4 (1.95%) MCSA
12 3 (1.46%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 2 (0.98%) FFIEC
14 1 (0.49%) AWS Certification
14 1 (0.49%) CCIE Security
14 1 (0.49%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (6.34%) NIST
2 10 (4.88%) GDPR
3 7 (3.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 4 (1.95%) SLA
5 3 (1.46%) PCI DSS
6 2 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
6 2 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 2 (0.98%) GLBA
7 1 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.49%) DICOM
7 1 (0.49%) HL7
7 1 (0.49%) NCSC
7 1 (0.49%) RMADS
System Software
1 49 (23.90%) Active Directory
2 47 (22.93%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (10.24%) RACF
3 21 (10.24%) Virtual Machines
4 20 (9.76%) Firmware
5 15 (7.32%) Hyper-V
6 14 (6.83%) VMware NSX
7 7 (3.41%) vSphere
8 6 (2.93%) Docker
8 6 (2.93%) Squid
8 6 (2.93%) VMware ESXi
9 4 (1.95%) Ceph
10 3 (1.46%) Virtual Servers
11 2 (0.98%) Apache ZooKeeper
11 2 (0.98%) ProxySG
11 2 (0.98%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 2 (0.98%) Virtual Desktop
12 1 (0.49%) KVM
12 1 (0.49%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 36 (17.56%) Ansible
2 27 (13.17%) Single Sign-On
3 20 (9.76%) Terraform
4 17 (8.29%) OMEGAMON
5 13 (6.34%) CASB
6 12 (5.85%) Kubernetes
7 11 (5.37%) Grafana
8 8 (3.90%) FortiGate
9 7 (3.41%) Prometheus
9 7 (3.41%) Puppet
10 5 (2.44%) SCOM
11 4 (1.95%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 4 (1.95%) CA Single Sign-On
11 4 (1.95%) Nessus
11 4 (1.95%) Packer
11 4 (1.95%) PingFederate
12 3 (1.46%) Microsoft Intune
12 3 (1.46%) systemd
12 3 (1.46%) yum
13 2 (0.98%) CA Wily
Vendors
1 53 (25.85%) VMware
2 50 (24.39%) F5
3 42 (20.49%) Microsoft
4 36 (17.56%) Cisco
5 29 (14.15%) Blue Coat
6 25 (12.20%) Palo Alto
6 25 (12.20%) Zscaler
7 24 (11.71%) McAfee
7 24 (11.71%) ServiceNow
8 20 (9.76%) IBM
9 18 (8.78%) NetApp
10 17 (8.29%) CheckPoint
11 15 (7.32%) Fortinet
12 11 (5.37%) Splunk
13 10 (4.88%) Juniper
14 9 (4.39%) SolarWinds
15 8 (3.90%) Citrix
15 8 (3.90%) Oracle
16 7 (3.41%) Ping Identity
16 7 (3.41%) Red Hat