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 17 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 456 389 396
Rank change year-on-year -67 +7 +61
Contract jobs citing SSL 189 144 201
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.38% 0.49% 0.46%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 3.95% 3.88% 3.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 109 79 120
10th Percentile £330 £347 £361
25th Percentile £425 £400 £432
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £522 £575
Median % change year-on-year -0.29% -9.30% +5.99%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £638
90th Percentile £688 £700 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £520 £600
% change year-on-year +0.96% -13.33% +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% -27.44%
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% -26.73%

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 4,781 3,710 5,390
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.50% 12.50% 12.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,931 2,279 3,184
10th Percentile £258 £222 £210
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £481 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.95% -3.80% -1.96%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £470 £488
% change year-on-year +2.26% -3.59% +2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 291 174 422
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £19.81 £17.69
Median hourly rate £27.88 £42.75 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -34.78% +6.88% +110.53%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.97 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £78.50 £71.19
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.00 £31.08 £47.50
% change year-on-year -6.69% -34.57% +150.46%

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 17 June 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 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 17 June 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 -87 157 £525 - 47
UK excluding London -48 120 £525 +0.96% 50
North of England -20 62 £623 +24.60% 12
Work from Home -52 51 £533 +1.43% 32
London -76 45 £520 -9.57% 10
North West -3 36 £626 +4.33% 10
West Midlands -31 35 £358 - 1
Midlands -37 35 £358 -0.14% 4
Yorkshire -43 25 £625 +25.00% 2
South East -53 19 £488 +30.00% 15
Scotland 0 13 £600 - 2
East of England -37 6 £450 -25.00% 2
South West -28 2 £500 -14.53% 4
North East -32 2 £413 -22.90%

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 (6.88%) Confluence
2 6 (3.17%) TPMS
3 3 (1.59%) Microsoft Exchange
4 2 (1.06%) IBM HTTP Server
4 2 (1.06%) IIS
4 2 (1.06%) Oracle HTTP Server
4 2 (1.06%) WebSphere
4 2 (1.06%) WebSphere Application Server
4 2 (1.06%) WebSphere Portal
5 1 (0.53%) Apache
5 1 (0.53%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.53%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.53%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.53%) CMS
5 1 (0.53%) Drupal
5 1 (0.53%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.53%) Umbraco
Applications
1 8 (4.23%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.59%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.53%) Dynamics GP
Cloud Services
1 60 (31.75%) Azure
2 38 (20.11%) AWS
3 26 (13.76%) Entra ID
4 18 (9.52%) GCP
5 12 (6.35%) SaaS
6 11 (5.82%) GitHub
7 10 (5.29%) Datadog
7 10 (5.29%) IaaS
7 10 (5.29%) Microsoft 365
8 9 (4.76%) Serverless
8 9 (4.76%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 5 (2.65%) Azure Key Vault
9 5 (2.65%) Azure Logic Apps
9 5 (2.65%) PaaS
10 4 (2.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 4 (2.12%) Amazon EKS
10 4 (2.12%) Amazon S3
10 4 (2.12%) AWS CloudFormation
10 4 (2.12%) AWS Lambda
11 3 (1.59%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 106 (56.08%) DNS
2 79 (41.80%) Firewall
3 67 (35.45%) TCP/IP
4 59 (31.22%) HTTP
5 48 (25.40%) VPN
6 46 (24.34%) BIG-IP
7 44 (23.28%) Network Security
8 38 (20.11%) WAN
9 34 (17.99%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 33 (17.46%) IPsec
11 31 (16.40%) Wireshark
12 30 (15.87%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
13 22 (11.64%) DHCP
14 21 (11.11%) LAN
15 20 (10.58%) HTTPS
16 19 (10.05%) Internet
17 17 (8.99%) BGP
18 15 (7.94%) SSH
18 15 (7.94%) Wireless
19 14 (7.41%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (2.65%) MongoDB
2 4 (2.12%) MariaDB
2 4 (2.12%) Metadata
2 4 (2.12%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (1.06%) SQL Server
3 2 (1.06%) SQLPlus
4 1 (0.53%) Amazon QuickSight
4 1 (0.53%) Amazon RDS
4 1 (0.53%) DocumentDB
4 1 (0.53%) Neo4j
4 1 (0.53%) NoSQL
4 1 (0.53%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 23 (12.17%) Fiddler
2 22 (11.64%) JIRA
3 10 (5.29%) Jenkins
4 8 (4.23%) Git
5 5 (2.65%) GitLab
6 4 (2.12%) Browser DevTools
6 4 (2.12%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (1.06%) Introscope
8 1 (0.53%) Crashlytics
8 1 (0.53%) fastlane
8 1 (0.53%) JUnit
8 1 (0.53%) Xcode
8 1 (0.53%) XCTest
8 1 (0.53%) XCUITest
General
1 35 (18.52%) Finance
2 29 (15.34%) Banking
3 25 (13.23%) Social Skills
4 18 (9.52%) Investment Banking
5 16 (8.47%) Analytical Skills
6 15 (7.94%) Legal
7 14 (7.41%) Documentation Skills
8 13 (6.88%) Public Sector
9 7 (3.70%) Telecoms
10 5 (2.65%) Publishing
11 2 (1.06%) Retail
12 1 (0.53%) Financial Institution
12 1 (0.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.53%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.53%) Marketing
12 1 (0.53%) Military
12 1 (0.53%) Pharmaceutical
12 1 (0.53%) Police
Job Titles
1 59 (31.22%) Network Engineer
2 26 (13.76%) Security Engineer
3 24 (12.70%) Web Engineer
4 23 (12.17%) Senior
5 20 (10.58%) IP Network Engineer
6 17 (8.99%) Blue Coat Engineer
7 15 (7.94%) Architect
8 12 (6.35%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 12 (6.35%) Network Security Engineer
9 11 (5.82%) Administrator
10 9 (4.76%) Senior Network Engineer
11 7 (3.70%) Junior
11 7 (3.70%) Network Architect
12 6 (3.17%) Cryptography Engineer
12 6 (3.17%) Junior Network Engineer
12 6 (3.17%) Linux Engineer
12 6 (3.17%) Technical Architect
13 5 (2.65%) DevOps Engineer
13 5 (2.65%) Senior Architect
13 5 (2.65%) Windows Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (16.93%) SAML
2 16 (8.47%) LDAP
3 13 (6.88%) OpenID
4 11 (5.82%) Middleware
4 11 (5.82%) OAuth
5 10 (5.29%) 802.1X
5 10 (5.29%) OAuth2
6 9 (4.76%) ISPF
7 6 (3.17%) Web Services
8 5 (2.65%) CSS
8 5 (2.65%) Kafka
8 5 (2.65%) XACML
9 4 (2.12%) HTML
10 2 (1.06%) JDBC
10 2 (1.06%) JMS
10 2 (1.06%) RabbitMQ
10 2 (1.06%) WebSphere MQ
10 2 (1.06%) XML
11 1 (0.53%) Node.js
11 1 (0.53%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 19 (10.05%) Clustering
1 19 (10.05%) PKI
2 18 (9.52%) Management Information System
3 17 (8.99%) Data Centre
4 15 (7.94%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
5 13 (6.88%) Security Posture
6 11 (5.82%) Cloud Security Posture
7 10 (5.29%) Onboarding
8 9 (4.76%) Cyber Threat
8 9 (4.76%) Mainframe
9 8 (4.23%) Enterprise Software
10 6 (3.17%) Self-Motivation
11 5 (2.65%) Algorithms
11 5 (2.65%) Hybrid Cloud
12 3 (1.59%) Enterprise Storage
12 3 (1.59%) SCADA
13 2 (1.06%) Analytical Mindset
13 2 (1.06%) Cyber Defence
13 2 (1.06%) Linux Command Line
13 2 (1.06%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 42 (22.22%) Windows
2 41 (21.69%) Linux
3 18 (9.52%) Windows Server
4 13 (6.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 9 (4.76%) zOS
6 8 (4.23%) Unix
7 3 (1.59%) Mac OS
7 3 (1.59%) Windows Server 2019
8 2 (1.06%) CatOS
8 2 (1.06%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (1.06%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 2 (1.06%) VMS
9 1 (0.53%) Apple iOS
9 1 (0.53%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 44 (23.28%) Load Balancing
2 43 (22.75%) ITIL
3 35 (18.52%) Cybersecurity
4 33 (17.46%) Data Loss Prevention
5 31 (16.40%) DevOps
6 30 (15.87%) SIEM
7 29 (15.34%) High Availability
8 28 (14.81%) CI/CD
9 26 (13.76%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 26 (13.76%) Zero Trust
10 24 (12.70%) Cloud Security
11 23 (12.17%) Change Management
11 23 (12.17%) Malware Detection/Protection
12 20 (10.58%) Roadmaps
13 19 (10.05%) Agile
13 19 (10.05%) Infrastructure as Code
13 19 (10.05%) Migration
14 18 (9.52%) Problem-Solving
15 16 (8.47%) Observability
16 15 (7.94%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 48 (25.40%) Python
2 22 (11.64%) Bash
3 21 (11.11%) PowerShell
4 20 (10.58%) SQL
5 5 (2.65%) Perl
6 4 (2.12%) ActionScript
6 4 (2.12%) Groovy
6 4 (2.12%) Java
7 3 (1.59%) PL/SQL
7 3 (1.59%) Shell Script
8 2 (1.06%) C
8 2 (1.06%) JavaScript
8 2 (1.06%) Jython
9 1 (0.53%) Cypher
9 1 (0.53%) Go
9 1 (0.53%) Ruby
9 1 (0.53%) Swift
Qualifications
1 42 (22.22%) Security Cleared
2 28 (14.81%) SC Cleared
3 16 (8.47%) Degree
4 15 (7.94%) Cisco Certification
5 14 (7.41%) CCNP
6 13 (6.88%) CISSP
7 12 (6.35%) DV Cleared
8 7 (3.70%) CompTIA Security+
9 6 (3.17%) Azure Certification
9 6 (3.17%) FFIEC
10 5 (2.65%) MCSE
10 5 (2.65%) Microsoft Certification
11 4 (2.12%) BPSS Clearance
11 4 (2.12%) CCIE
11 4 (2.12%) CISM
11 4 (2.12%) MCSA
12 2 (1.06%) HND
12 2 (1.06%) Postgraduate
13 1 (0.53%) CCIP
13 1 (0.53%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (7.41%) GDPR
1 14 (7.41%) NIST
2 7 (3.70%) PCI DSS
3 6 (3.17%) GLBA
4 4 (2.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 3 (1.59%) SLA
6 1 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 1 (0.53%) DICOM
6 1 (0.53%) HL7
6 1 (0.53%) NCSC
6 1 (0.53%) RMADS
System Software
1 46 (24.34%) Active Directory
2 45 (23.81%) VMware Infrastructure
3 20 (10.58%) Firmware
4 17 (8.99%) Virtual Machines
5 16 (8.47%) VMware NSX
6 14 (7.41%) Hyper-V
6 14 (7.41%) RACF
7 7 (3.70%) Docker
7 7 (3.70%) Squid
8 6 (3.17%) VMware ESXi
9 5 (2.65%) vSphere
10 4 (2.12%) Ceph
11 2 (1.06%) ProxySG
11 2 (1.06%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 2 (1.06%) Virtual Servers
12 1 (0.53%) KVM
12 1 (0.53%) OpenSSH
12 1 (0.53%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 34 (17.99%) Ansible
2 27 (14.29%) Single Sign-On
3 18 (9.52%) Terraform
4 13 (6.88%) CASB
5 11 (5.82%) Kubernetes
6 10 (5.29%) Grafana
7 9 (4.76%) FortiGate
7 9 (4.76%) OMEGAMON
8 7 (3.70%) Puppet
9 6 (3.17%) Prometheus
10 4 (2.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 4 (2.12%) CA Single Sign-On
10 4 (2.12%) Nessus
10 4 (2.12%) Packer
10 4 (2.12%) PingFederate
11 3 (1.59%) systemd
11 3 (1.59%) yum
12 2 (1.06%) CA Wily
12 2 (1.06%) Microsoft Intune
12 2 (1.06%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 53 (28.04%) F5
2 52 (27.51%) VMware
3 37 (19.58%) Cisco
4 35 (18.52%) Microsoft
5 31 (16.40%) Blue Coat
6 26 (13.76%) Palo Alto
7 25 (13.23%) McAfee
8 24 (12.70%) Zscaler
9 19 (10.05%) ServiceNow
10 18 (9.52%) NetApp
11 16 (8.47%) CheckPoint
12 15 (7.94%) Splunk
13 13 (6.88%) Fortinet
14 12 (6.35%) Juniper
15 11 (5.82%) IBM
16 9 (4.76%) SolarWinds
17 7 (3.70%) CrowdStrike
17 7 (3.70%) Netskope
17 7 (3.70%) Ping Identity
17 7 (3.70%) Red Hat