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 11 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 446 364 424
Rank change year-on-year -82 +60 -19
Contract jobs citing SSL 230 205 139
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.42% 0.62% 0.36%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 4.49% 5.33% 3.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 122 126 77
10th Percentile £381 £350 £374
25th Percentile £463 £383 £465
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £544 £556 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.20% +1.09% +3.63%
75th Percentile £600 £643 £638
90th Percentile £650 £706 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% +8.02%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 8 2
10th Percentile £68.20 - £37.70
25th Percentile £79.00 £45.00 £39.13
Median hourly rate £85.00 £65.00 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +30.77% +51.16% -34.83%
75th Percentile - £82.26 £46.63
90th Percentile - £85.00 £47.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £85.00 £65.00 £43.00
% change year-on-year +30.77% +51.16% -34.83%

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 5,121 3,847 4,573
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.38% 11.65% 11.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,996 2,371 2,670
10th Percentile £233 £235 £228
25th Percentile £390 £363 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £609
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £477 £465 £500
% change year-on-year +2.58% -7.00% +10.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 400 201 268
10th Percentile £14.28 £15.33 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £21.37
Median hourly rate £26.66 £42.50 £51.00
Median % change year-on-year -37.27% -16.67% -9.72%
75th Percentile £66.28 £63.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.11 £73.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -38.82% -25.89% +1.52%

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 11 September 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
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SSL over the 6 months to 11 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for SSL in the UK

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 11 September 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 -110 196 £544 -5.43% 65
UK excluding London -45 143 £525 +5.00% 45
London -107 68 £550 -8.33% 30
Work from Home -76 66 £550 -2.83% 37
North of England -31 62 £600 +15.38% 3
North West -11 41 £600 -0.58% 2
Midlands -37 36 £400 +6.95% 1
West Midlands -36 32 £400 +5.26% 1
South East -45 28 £510 +36.00% 20
Scotland +1 21 £600 +14.29% 3
Yorkshire -29 19 £600 +20.00% 1
East of England -38 9 £481 -20.12% 22
East Midlands -13 4 £475 +32.68%
South West -50 3 £350 -40.17%
North East -46 2 £438 -18.22%

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 17 (7.39%) Confluence
2 5 (2.17%) Apache
3 2 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.87%) IIS
3 2 (0.87%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.43%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.43%) IBM HTTP Server
4 1 (0.43%) JBoss
4 1 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.43%) nginx
4 1 (0.43%) Oracle HTTP Server
4 1 (0.43%) WebSphere
4 1 (0.43%) WebSphere Application Server
4 1 (0.43%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 3 (1.30%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.87%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 2 (0.87%) Houdini
2 2 (0.87%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.87%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 3 (1.30%) Infor LN
2 2 (0.87%) Dynamics GP
3 1 (0.43%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.43%) Oracle General Ledger
3 1 (0.43%) Oracle Payables
3 1 (0.43%) Oracle Receivables
3 1 (0.43%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 75 (32.61%) Azure
2 47 (20.43%) AWS
3 32 (13.91%) Entra ID
4 22 (9.57%) GCP
5 18 (7.83%) Azure DevOps
6 15 (6.52%) GitHub
7 14 (6.09%) Microsoft 365
8 13 (5.65%) Power Platform
9 12 (5.22%) Azure Monitor
9 12 (5.22%) Datadog
10 11 (4.78%) SaaS
11 9 (3.91%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 8 (3.48%) AWS CloudFormation
12 8 (3.48%) AWS Lambda
12 8 (3.48%) Azure Key Vault
12 8 (3.48%) Serverless
13 7 (3.04%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 7 (3.04%) Amazon S3
13 7 (3.04%) AWS KMS
13 7 (3.04%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 106 (46.09%) DNS
2 74 (32.17%) Firewall
3 58 (25.22%) VPN
4 57 (24.78%) Network Security
5 53 (23.04%) TCP/IP
6 52 (22.61%) HTTP
7 43 (18.70%) WAN
8 34 (14.78%) IPsec
9 33 (14.35%) BIG-IP
9 33 (14.35%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 29 (12.61%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
11 24 (10.43%) DHCP
12 22 (9.57%) BGP
13 21 (9.13%) Wireless
14 20 (8.70%) HTTPS
15 19 (8.26%) Internet
15 19 (8.26%) LAN
16 18 (7.83%) Wireshark
17 16 (6.96%) SD-WAN
18 14 (6.09%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (7.39%) SQL Server
2 15 (6.52%) MySQL
3 11 (4.78%) Power BI
3 11 (4.78%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 8 (3.48%) PostgreSQL
5 6 (2.61%) MariaDB
6 5 (2.17%) MongoDB
7 4 (1.74%) Metadata
8 3 (1.30%) SQLPlus
9 2 (0.87%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.87%) Oracle BI Publisher
9 2 (0.87%) Oracle Reports
9 2 (0.87%) RDBMS
9 2 (0.87%) Relational Database
10 1 (0.43%) InfluxDB
10 1 (0.43%) Neo4j
10 1 (0.43%) NoSQL
10 1 (0.43%) SQLite
10 1 (0.43%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 25 (10.87%) JIRA
2 17 (7.39%) Jenkins
3 14 (6.09%) Fiddler
4 13 (5.65%) Git
5 9 (3.91%) GitLab
6 5 (2.17%) Sonatype Nexus
7 3 (1.30%) Browser DevTools
7 3 (1.30%) Maven
8 2 (0.87%) git-flow
9 1 (0.43%) Ant
9 1 (0.43%) Artifactory
9 1 (0.43%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 1 (0.43%) Gerrit
9 1 (0.43%) Introscope
9 1 (0.43%) Mockito
9 1 (0.43%) Tricentis qTest
General
1 44 (19.13%) Finance
2 39 (16.96%) Social Skills
3 33 (14.35%) Banking
4 26 (11.30%) Analytical Skills
5 25 (10.87%) Legal
6 15 (6.52%) Investment Banking
7 14 (6.09%) Public Sector
8 10 (4.35%) Telecoms
9 8 (3.48%) Documentation Skills
10 6 (2.61%) Publishing
11 4 (1.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 4 (1.74%) Manufacturing
12 2 (0.87%) Retail
13 1 (0.43%) Aerospace
13 1 (0.43%) Local Government
13 1 (0.43%) Marketing
13 1 (0.43%) Organisational Skills
13 1 (0.43%) Pharmaceutical
13 1 (0.43%) Police
13 1 (0.43%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 51 (22.17%) Network Engineer
2 33 (14.35%) Security Engineer
3 25 (10.87%) Administrator
4 24 (10.43%) Senior
5 17 (7.39%) Lead
6 16 (6.96%) IP Network Engineer
7 14 (6.09%) Blue Coat Engineer
7 14 (6.09%) Network Security Engineer
7 14 (6.09%) Web Engineer
8 13 (5.65%) DBA
9 12 (5.22%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 12 (5.22%) Senior Network Engineer
9 12 (5.22%) SQL DBA
10 10 (4.35%) Architect
10 10 (4.35%) Linux Engineer
11 9 (3.91%) Developer
12 8 (3.48%) DevOps Engineer
12 8 (3.48%) Network Architect
13 7 (3.04%) Security Specialist
14 6 (2.61%) Infrastructure Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (11.74%) SAML
2 24 (10.43%) Terraform
3 22 (9.57%) Middleware
4 18 (7.83%) 802.1X
5 17 (7.39%) ISPF
6 13 (5.65%) OAuth
7 12 (5.22%) LDAP
8 11 (4.78%) REST
9 9 (3.91%) OAuth2
9 9 (3.91%) OpenID
9 9 (3.91%) SOAP
9 9 (3.91%) Web Services
10 7 (3.04%) XML
11 6 (2.61%) JSON
11 6 (2.61%) Kafka
12 4 (1.74%) CSS
12 4 (1.74%) EDI
13 3 (1.30%) EDIFACT
13 3 (1.30%) Spring
13 3 (1.30%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 36 (15.65%) Clustering
2 28 (12.17%) PKI
3 18 (7.83%) Mainframe
3 18 (7.83%) Management Information System
3 18 (7.83%) Onboarding
4 17 (7.39%) Data Centre
5 15 (6.52%) Replication
6 12 (5.22%) Cyber Threat
6 12 (5.22%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 10 (4.35%) Enterprise Software
8 9 (3.91%) Self-Motivation
9 8 (3.48%) Security Posture
10 7 (3.04%) Cloud Security Posture
10 7 (3.04%) Hybrid Cloud
11 6 (2.61%) Distributed Applications
12 5 (2.17%) Analytical Mindset
12 5 (2.17%) Linux Command Line
13 4 (1.74%) Data Structures
13 4 (1.74%) Fibre Optics
13 4 (1.74%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 50 (21.74%) Linux
2 48 (20.87%) Windows
3 28 (12.17%) Windows Server
4 20 (8.70%) zOS
5 15 (6.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (4.35%) Unix
7 3 (1.30%) Mac OS
7 3 (1.30%) Windows Server 2019
8 2 (0.87%) Ubuntu
8 2 (0.87%) VMS
9 1 (0.43%) Amazon Linux
9 1 (0.43%) Oracle Linux
9 1 (0.43%) Rocky
9 1 (0.43%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 55 (23.91%) ITIL
2 52 (22.61%) DevOps
3 46 (20.00%) Load Balancing
4 35 (15.22%) High Availability
5 33 (14.35%) CI/CD
6 32 (13.91%) SIEM
7 31 (13.48%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 28 (12.17%) Change Management
9 26 (11.30%) Cybersecurity
9 26 (11.30%) Performance Tuning
9 26 (11.30%) Problem-Solving
9 26 (11.30%) Zero Trust
10 24 (10.43%) Data Loss Prevention
10 24 (10.43%) Migration
11 23 (10.00%) Performance Optimisation
12 21 (9.13%) Agile
13 18 (7.83%) Infrastructure as Code
13 18 (7.83%) Project Delivery
14 17 (7.39%) Network Virtualisation
15 16 (6.96%) Cloud Security
Programming Languages
1 57 (24.78%) Python
2 35 (15.22%) SQL
3 30 (13.04%) PowerShell
4 24 (10.43%) Bash
5 12 (5.22%) T-SQL
6 11 (4.78%) Java
7 10 (4.35%) Groovy
7 10 (4.35%) Perl
7 10 (4.35%) Shell Script
8 5 (2.17%) ActionScript
8 5 (2.17%) JavaScript
9 4 (1.74%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.87%) Go
11 1 (0.43%) ActionScript 2.0
11 1 (0.43%) C
11 1 (0.43%) C#
11 1 (0.43%) C++
11 1 (0.43%) MATLAB
11 1 (0.43%) R
11 1 (0.43%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 77 (33.48%) Security Cleared
2 56 (24.35%) SC Cleared
3 20 (8.70%) Degree
3 20 (8.70%) DV Cleared
4 18 (7.83%) Azure Certification
5 13 (5.65%) BPSS Clearance
6 12 (5.22%) Cisco Certification
6 12 (5.22%) Microsoft Certification
7 10 (4.35%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 9 (3.91%) CCNP
9 7 (3.04%) CISSP
10 6 (2.61%) CCIE
11 3 (1.30%) RHCSA
12 2 (0.87%) CISM
12 2 (0.87%) JNCIE
12 2 (0.87%) MCSE
12 2 (0.87%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.87%) PMP
12 2 (0.87%) PRINCE2 Certification
12 2 (0.87%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (4.35%) NIST
2 8 (3.48%) GDPR
3 6 (2.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 6 (2.61%) SLA
4 2 (0.87%) Cyber Essentials
4 2 (0.87%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 2 (0.87%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.43%) DICOM
5 1 (0.43%) HL7
5 1 (0.43%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 46 (20.00%) VMware Infrastructure
2 42 (18.26%) Active Directory
3 22 (9.57%) Virtual Machines
4 19 (8.26%) Hyper-V
5 17 (7.39%) RACF
6 16 (6.96%) Firmware
7 15 (6.52%) Docker
8 9 (3.91%) VMware NSX
9 7 (3.04%) Ceph
9 7 (3.04%) Squid
9 7 (3.04%) vSphere
10 4 (1.74%) VMware ESXi
11 3 (1.30%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.87%) Apache ZooKeeper
12 2 (0.87%) ProxySG
12 2 (0.87%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 2 (0.87%) Virtual Desktop
13 1 (0.43%) KVM
13 1 (0.43%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 46 (20.00%) Ansible
2 20 (8.70%) Single Sign-On
3 17 (7.39%) Kubernetes
3 17 (7.39%) OMEGAMON
4 16 (6.96%) Grafana
5 11 (4.78%) Prometheus
5 11 (4.78%) SCOM
6 9 (3.91%) CASB
7 8 (3.48%) FortiGate
7 8 (3.48%) Puppet
8 5 (2.17%) Packer
9 4 (1.74%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 4 (1.74%) CA Single Sign-On
9 4 (1.74%) Cisco CUCM
9 4 (1.74%) Microsoft Intune
9 4 (1.74%) PingFederate
9 4 (1.74%) systemd
10 3 (1.30%) Argo
10 3 (1.30%) yum
11 2 (0.87%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 55 (23.91%) F5
2 52 (22.61%) VMware
3 43 (18.70%) Cisco
4 40 (17.39%) Microsoft
5 36 (15.65%) ServiceNow
6 34 (14.78%) Zscaler
7 32 (13.91%) Palo Alto
8 29 (12.61%) Blue Coat
9 22 (9.57%) IBM
10 19 (8.26%) Juniper
11 17 (7.39%) McAfee
12 16 (6.96%) Fortinet
13 15 (6.52%) CheckPoint
14 14 (6.09%) NetApp
15 10 (4.35%) Oracle
15 10 (4.35%) Red Hat
16 9 (3.91%) SolarWinds
17 8 (3.48%) Splunk
18 7 (3.04%) Dynatrace
18 7 (3.04%) Ping Identity