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 18 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 372 379 382
Rank change year-on-year +7 +3 +60
Contract jobs citing SSL 202 182 245
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.57% 0.50% 0.52%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 5.05% 4.18% 3.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 128 109 142
10th Percentile £374 £375 £350
25th Percentile £414 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £540 £528
Median % change year-on-year +6.48% +2.37% -1.95%
75th Percentile £663 £638 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £699
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £539 £486
% change year-on-year -7.19% +10.85% +8.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 1 13
10th Percentile - - £54.90
25th Percentile £45.00 £46.25 -
Median hourly rate £65.00 £47.50 £65.98
Median % change year-on-year +36.84% -28.01% +14.82%
75th Percentile £80.00 £48.75 -
90th Percentile £85.00 - £67.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £47.50 £65.98
% change year-on-year +36.84% -28.01% +14.82%

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 4,003 4,351 6,571
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.31% 12.07% 14.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,592 2,513 4,092
10th Percentile £206 £225 £213
25th Percentile £358 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £686 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 203 161 343
10th Percentile £15.50 £18.03 £17.72
25th Percentile £20.63 £25.75 £22.88
Median hourly rate £35.00 £47.50 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -26.32% -13.64% +31.74%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £66.25
90th Percentile £74.85 £75.00 £75.67
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £50.00 £56.49
% change year-on-year -15.00% -11.49% +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 18 November 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 18 November 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for SSL in the UK

SSL
Top 16 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 18 November 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 +3 181 £575 +4.55% 72
London +34 90 £600 +14.29% 33
UK excluding London -29 88 £500 -7.19% 43
Work from Home +4 67 £575 +6.98% 54
North of England -22 39 £600 +9.23% 7
Midlands -18 26 £380 -16.94% 2
West Midlands -6 25 £380 -16.94% 1
North West -13 25 £604 +56.75% 6
South East -12 15 £400 -34.69% 23
East of England -11 13 £567 +95.52% 8
Yorkshire -35 13 £600 +9.09%
Scotland -13 5 £525 +1.94%
South West -5 3 £557 +3.63% 3
Wales +2 1 £500 -9.09% 3
North East -9 1 £550 -6.78% 1
East Midlands -23 1 - - 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 19 (9.41%) Confluence
2 6 (2.97%) Apache
3 5 (2.48%) TPMS
4 4 (1.98%) JBoss
5 3 (1.49%) WebSphere
5 3 (1.49%) WebSphere Application Server
6 2 (0.99%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.99%) Apache Spark
6 2 (0.99%) Microsoft Exchange
6 2 (0.99%) Oracle HTTP Server
6 2 (0.99%) Oracle Service Bus
6 2 (0.99%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 2 (0.99%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.99%) WebLogic
7 1 (0.50%) Anypoint
7 1 (0.50%) SharePoint
Applications
1 2 (0.99%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.50%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 13 (6.44%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.99%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.50%) RMDS
Cloud Services
1 52 (25.74%) AWS
2 33 (16.34%) Azure
3 26 (12.87%) Amazon S3
4 25 (12.38%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 24 (11.88%) Amazon EC2
6 23 (11.39%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 22 (10.89%) Amazon ELB
8 16 (7.92%) GCP
9 10 (4.95%) GitHub
9 10 (4.95%) Serverless
10 9 (4.46%) Entra ID
11 8 (3.96%) AWS CloudFormation
11 8 (3.96%) AWS Lambda
12 6 (2.97%) Amazon ECS
12 6 (2.97%) GitHub Actions
13 5 (2.48%) Azure DevOps
14 4 (1.98%) Apigee
14 4 (1.98%) Firebase
14 4 (1.98%) Microsoft 365
15 3 (1.49%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 92 (45.54%) DNS
2 84 (41.58%) Firewall
3 80 (39.60%) TCP/IP
4 65 (32.18%) VPN
5 60 (29.70%) Network Security
6 48 (23.76%) HTTP
7 21 (10.40%) WAN
8 18 (8.91%) IPsec
8 18 (8.91%) Wireless
8 18 (8.91%) Wireshark
9 17 (8.42%) DHCP
9 17 (8.42%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 17 (8.42%) HTTPS
10 14 (6.93%) BGP
10 14 (6.93%) BIG-IP
10 14 (6.93%) DMVPN
11 13 (6.44%) OSPF
12 12 (5.94%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
13 11 (5.45%) FTP
13 11 (5.45%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (4.95%) SQL Server
2 8 (3.96%) Apache Cassandra
3 7 (3.47%) PostgreSQL
4 3 (1.49%) Relational Database
5 2 (0.99%) Big Data
5 2 (0.99%) Delta Lake
5 2 (0.99%) Hadoop
5 2 (0.99%) NoSQL
5 2 (0.99%) Parquet
6 1 (0.50%) Amazon RDS
6 1 (0.50%) DynamoDB
6 1 (0.50%) Mixpanel
Development Applications
1 37 (18.32%) Jenkins
2 33 (16.34%) Git
3 21 (10.40%) JIRA
4 20 (9.90%) GitLab
5 14 (6.93%) Fiddler
6 4 (1.98%) Robot Framework
6 4 (1.98%) SonarQube
7 3 (1.49%) Log4j
8 2 (0.99%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.99%) MLflow
8 2 (0.99%) Poetry
8 2 (0.99%) PyCharm
8 2 (0.99%) Visual Studio Code
9 1 (0.50%) CircleCI
9 1 (0.50%) Crashlytics
9 1 (0.50%) fastlane
9 1 (0.50%) Postman
9 1 (0.50%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (0.50%) Subversion
9 1 (0.50%) XCUITest
General
1 46 (22.77%) Social Skills
2 32 (15.84%) Analytical Skills
3 27 (13.37%) Finance
4 19 (9.41%) Public Sector
5 18 (8.91%) Banking
6 14 (6.93%) Investment Banking
7 8 (3.96%) Documentation Skills
8 7 (3.47%) Telecoms
9 5 (2.48%) Military
10 4 (1.98%) Financial Institution
11 3 (1.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 2 (0.99%) Advertising
12 2 (0.99%) Aerospace
12 2 (0.99%) Presentation Skills
13 1 (0.50%) Billing
13 1 (0.50%) Influencing Skills
13 1 (0.50%) Italian Language
13 1 (0.50%) Law
13 1 (0.50%) Polish Language
13 1 (0.50%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 41 (20.30%) Network Engineer
2 39 (19.31%) Senior
3 31 (15.35%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 25 (12.38%) Architect
5 24 (11.88%) Developer
6 20 (9.90%) Security Engineer
7 17 (8.42%) DevOps Engineer
8 15 (7.43%) Consultant
9 13 (6.44%) Senior DevOps
9 13 (6.44%) Senior DevOps Engineer
10 12 (5.94%) Lead
11 11 (5.45%) Analyst
11 11 (5.45%) Network Security Engineer
11 11 (5.45%) Web Engineer
12 10 (4.95%) ServiceNow Architect
12 10 (4.95%) SOC Analyst
13 9 (4.46%) Blue Coat Engineer
13 9 (4.46%) Python Engineer
13 9 (4.46%) Senior Architect
13 9 (4.46%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (18.32%) LDAP
2 34 (16.83%) REST
3 29 (14.36%) SOAP
4 25 (12.38%) SAML
5 23 (11.39%) JSON
5 23 (11.39%) OAuth
6 17 (8.42%) AngularJS
7 16 (7.92%) JDBC
8 15 (7.43%) Web Services
9 13 (6.44%) Apache Camel
9 13 (6.44%) HTML
9 13 (6.44%) HTML5
9 13 (6.44%) jQuery
9 13 (6.44%) ODBC
9 13 (6.44%) RabbitMQ
10 10 (4.95%) 802.1X
10 10 (4.95%) XML
11 8 (3.96%) OAuth2
12 7 (3.47%) Kafka
13 6 (2.97%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 25 (12.38%) Management Information System
2 23 (11.39%) PKI
3 16 (7.92%) Data Centre
4 12 (5.94%) Analytical Mindset
4 12 (5.94%) Onboarding
5 10 (4.95%) Cyberattack
6 8 (3.96%) CSOC
6 8 (3.96%) Cyber Threat
6 8 (3.96%) Security Operations Centre
7 6 (2.97%) Cloud Native
7 6 (2.97%) Linux Command Line
7 6 (2.97%) Security Posture
8 5 (2.48%) Algorithms
8 5 (2.48%) Cloud Security Posture
8 5 (2.48%) Private Cloud
9 4 (1.98%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 2 (0.99%) Hybrid Cloud
10 2 (0.99%) Replication
10 2 (0.99%) Virtual Team
11 1 (0.50%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 62 (30.69%) Linux
2 35 (17.33%) Windows
3 20 (9.90%) Unix
4 7 (3.47%) Windows Server
5 6 (2.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 4 (1.98%) Ubuntu
7 3 (1.49%) Apple iOS
7 3 (1.49%) Windows Server 2003
8 2 (0.99%) Android
8 2 (0.99%) CentOS
8 2 (0.99%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.50%) VMS
9 1 (0.50%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.50%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 73 (36.14%) DevOps
2 43 (21.29%) CI/CD
3 35 (17.33%) Infrastructure as Code
4 34 (16.83%) Problem-Solving
5 33 (16.34%) High Availability
6 32 (15.84%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 31 (15.35%) Agile
7 31 (15.35%) Infrastructure Automation
8 30 (14.85%) Incident Response
9 27 (13.37%) Cybersecurity
9 27 (13.37%) Load Balancing
9 27 (13.37%) Root Cause Analysis
10 23 (11.39%) Test Automation
11 22 (10.89%) DevSecOps
12 21 (10.40%) Cloud Security
13 20 (9.90%) Migration
14 19 (9.41%) SIEM
15 18 (8.91%) Continuous Improvement
16 17 (8.42%) Scrum
17 16 (7.92%) Kalman Filter
Programming Languages
1 68 (33.66%) Python
2 33 (16.34%) Bash
3 24 (11.88%) JavaScript
4 18 (8.91%) PowerShell
5 17 (8.42%) Java
6 15 (7.43%) SQL
7 11 (5.45%) Perl
8 3 (1.49%) C#
8 3 (1.49%) Shell Script
9 2 (0.99%) Groovy
9 2 (0.99%) Kotlin
9 2 (0.99%) PHP
9 2 (0.99%) PL/SQL
9 2 (0.99%) Swift
10 1 (0.50%) ActionScript
10 1 (0.50%) ActionScript 2.0
10 1 (0.50%) C
10 1 (0.50%) C++
10 1 (0.50%) Objective-C
10 1 (0.50%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 83 (41.09%) Security Cleared
2 72 (35.64%) SC Cleared
3 13 (6.44%) CISSP
4 12 (5.94%) Microsoft Certification
5 11 (5.45%) DV Cleared
6 10 (4.95%) Cisco Certification
6 10 (4.95%) Degree
7 6 (2.97%) CCNP
7 6 (2.97%) MCSE
8 5 (2.48%) CCSA
8 5 (2.48%) CompTIA Security+
8 5 (2.48%) FFIEC
8 5 (2.48%) MCSA
9 3 (1.49%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 3 (1.49%) AWS Certification
9 3 (1.49%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 3 (1.49%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (1.49%) RHCE
9 3 (1.49%) SANS
10 2 (0.99%) IBM Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (6.93%) GDPR
2 10 (4.95%) PCI DSS
3 8 (3.96%) NIST
4 6 (2.97%) HIPAA
5 5 (2.48%) GLBA
6 4 (1.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (1.98%) QA
6 4 (1.98%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 2 (0.99%) Data Quality
7 2 (0.99%) FIPS 140-2
7 2 (0.99%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.50%) SLA
System Software
1 40 (19.80%) Docker
2 22 (10.89%) Active Directory
3 13 (6.44%) Firmware
4 10 (4.95%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (2.48%) NDS
5 5 (2.48%) NetIQ eDirectory
6 3 (1.49%) Hyper-V
6 3 (1.49%) ProxySG
6 3 (1.49%) VMware ESXi
6 3 (1.49%) vSphere
7 2 (0.99%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.50%) Embedded Firmware
8 1 (0.50%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 1 (0.50%) Virtual Machines
8 1 (0.50%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 54 (26.73%) Ansible
2 43 (21.29%) Terraform
3 25 (12.38%) Kubernetes
4 24 (11.88%) Single Sign-On
5 7 (3.47%) CASB
6 6 (2.97%) Nessus
6 6 (2.97%) Prometheus
7 4 (1.98%) CA Spectrum
8 3 (1.49%) Microsoft Intune
8 3 (1.49%) Nagios
8 3 (1.49%) Tivoli
9 2 (0.99%) Argo
9 2 (0.99%) FortiGate
9 2 (0.99%) Istio
9 2 (0.99%) McAfee ePO
9 2 (0.99%) Progress Chef
9 2 (0.99%) Rsyslog
9 2 (0.99%) SCCM
9 2 (0.99%) SCOM
9 2 (0.99%) SELinux
Vendors
1 67 (33.17%) F5
2 40 (19.80%) CheckPoint
3 31 (15.35%) Blue Coat
4 28 (13.86%) Palo Alto
5 26 (12.87%) Cisco
6 25 (12.38%) Splunk
7 20 (9.90%) Juniper
8 18 (8.91%) McAfee
8 18 (8.91%) Microsoft
8 18 (8.91%) Remedy
8 18 (8.91%) ServiceNow
9 17 (8.42%) VMware
10 15 (7.43%) Oracle
11 13 (6.44%) BMC
11 13 (6.44%) HP
11 13 (6.44%) Ivanti
12 12 (5.94%) NetApp
12 12 (5.94%) Zscaler
13 11 (5.45%) Fortinet
14 10 (4.95%) Axway