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 14 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 469 360 402
Rank change year-on-year -109 +42 +1
Contract jobs citing SSL 222 200 154
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.40% 0.60% 0.41%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 4.36% 5.31% 3.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 106 122 87
10th Percentile £371 £368 £393
25th Percentile £464 £413 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +4.55% +10.00%
75th Percentile £600 £663 £650
90th Percentile £650 £700 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £425 £549
% change year-on-year +29.41% -22.63% +13.02%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 8 1
10th Percentile £61.00 - -
25th Percentile £66.81 £45.00 £46.25
Median hourly rate £68.75 £65.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +5.77% +36.84% -28.01%
75th Percentile £72.81 £82.26 £48.75
90th Percentile £85.00 £85.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.75 £65.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year +5.77% +36.84% -28.01%

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 5,091 3,766 4,520
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.21% 11.35% 12.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,938 2,405 2,598
10th Percentile £236 £213 £225
25th Percentile £390 £356 £365
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £677 £679 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £480
% change year-on-year +5.56% -6.25% +3.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 442 186 179
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £15.09
25th Percentile £19.50 £20.04 £25.38
Median hourly rate £32.50 £34.00 £48.56
Median % change year-on-year -4.41% -29.98% -14.04%
75th Percentile £67.49 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £92.46 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.07 £41.72 £55.00
% change year-on-year -37.51% -24.15% -4.21%

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 14 October 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 14 October 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 14 October 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 -115 192 £550 -4.35% 87
UK excluding London -66 133 £550 +29.41% 50
London -123 68 £550 -8.94% 43
Work from Home -61 64 £550 -4.35% 105
North of England -50 56 £600 +4.35% 10
North West -32 38 £588 -2.65% 8
Midlands -55 27 £469 +24.24% 7
South East -52 24 £538 +43.33% 13
West Midlands -51 22 £450 +18.42% 5
East of England -23 18 £400 -41.18% 8
Scotland -11 17 £600 +14.29% 4
Yorkshire -30 16 £600 - 2
East Midlands -16 5 £525 +46.65% 2
South West -33 4 £350 -37.16% 8
North East -41 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 12 (5.41%) Confluence
2 5 (2.25%) Apache
3 4 (1.80%) IIS
3 4 (1.80%) SharePoint
4 3 (1.35%) Microsoft Exchange
5 2 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.90%) nginx
6 1 (0.45%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.45%) JBoss
6 1 (0.45%) NetWeaver
6 1 (0.45%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 3 (1.35%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.90%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 2 (0.90%) Houdini
2 2 (0.90%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.90%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 3 (1.35%) Infor LN
2 2 (0.90%) Dynamics GP
3 1 (0.45%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.45%) Oracle General Ledger
3 1 (0.45%) Oracle Payables
3 1 (0.45%) Oracle Receivables
3 1 (0.45%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.45%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 69 (31.08%) Azure
2 45 (20.27%) AWS
3 26 (11.71%) Entra ID
4 20 (9.01%) GCP
5 18 (8.11%) GitHub
6 16 (7.21%) Azure DevOps
7 15 (6.76%) Microsoft 365
8 13 (5.86%) Power Platform
9 12 (5.41%) Azure Monitor
10 11 (4.95%) Datadog
11 8 (3.60%) Azure Key Vault
11 8 (3.60%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 7 (3.15%) AWS CloudFormation
12 7 (3.15%) AWS Lambda
12 7 (3.15%) GitHub Actions
12 7 (3.15%) Serverless
13 6 (2.70%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 6 (2.70%) Amazon S3
13 6 (2.70%) AWS KMS
13 6 (2.70%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 100 (45.05%) DNS
2 75 (33.78%) Firewall
3 61 (27.48%) VPN
4 59 (26.58%) Network Security
5 57 (25.68%) TCP/IP
6 55 (24.77%) HTTP
7 41 (18.47%) WAN
8 36 (16.22%) IPsec
9 30 (13.51%) BGP
10 28 (12.61%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 27 (12.16%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
12 26 (11.71%) BIG-IP
13 24 (10.81%) DHCP
14 23 (10.36%) LAN
14 23 (10.36%) Wireless
15 22 (9.91%) OSPF
16 16 (7.21%) HTTPS
16 16 (7.21%) Wireshark
17 14 (6.31%) SD-WAN
18 13 (5.86%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (8.56%) SQL Server
2 16 (7.21%) MySQL
3 11 (4.95%) Power BI
3 11 (4.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 5 (2.25%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (1.80%) MariaDB
5 4 (1.80%) Relational Database
6 2 (0.90%) Amazon RDS
6 2 (0.90%) MongoDB
6 2 (0.90%) Oracle BI Publisher
6 2 (0.90%) Oracle Reports
6 2 (0.90%) RDBMS
6 2 (0.90%) SQLPlus
7 1 (0.45%) InfluxDB
7 1 (0.45%) Neo4j
7 1 (0.45%) NoSQL
7 1 (0.45%) SAP HANA
7 1 (0.45%) SQLite
7 1 (0.45%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 20 (9.01%) Jenkins
2 18 (8.11%) Git
2 18 (8.11%) JIRA
3 12 (5.41%) GitLab
4 11 (4.95%) Fiddler
5 6 (2.70%) Sonatype Nexus
6 3 (1.35%) Artifactory
6 3 (1.35%) Maven
7 2 (0.90%) git-flow
7 2 (0.90%) REST Assured
8 1 (0.45%) Ant
8 1 (0.45%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 1 (0.45%) Browser DevTools
8 1 (0.45%) Gerrit
8 1 (0.45%) Mockito
8 1 (0.45%) Tricentis qTest
General
1 40 (18.02%) Finance
2 39 (17.57%) Social Skills
3 31 (13.96%) Banking
4 25 (11.26%) Legal
5 24 (10.81%) Analytical Skills
6 12 (5.41%) Investment Banking
7 11 (4.95%) Public Sector
8 7 (3.15%) Documentation Skills
9 6 (2.70%) Publishing
10 5 (2.25%) Telecoms
11 4 (1.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 4 (1.80%) Manufacturing
12 3 (1.35%) Aerospace
13 1 (0.45%) Law
13 1 (0.45%) Local Government
13 1 (0.45%) Marketing
13 1 (0.45%) Organisational Skills
13 1 (0.45%) Police
13 1 (0.45%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 53 (23.87%) Network Engineer
2 26 (11.71%) Security Engineer
3 25 (11.26%) Administrator
4 23 (10.36%) Senior
5 14 (6.31%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 14 (6.31%) Lead
6 13 (5.86%) DBA
7 12 (5.41%) Architect
7 12 (5.41%) SQL DBA
8 11 (4.95%) Blue Coat Engineer
8 11 (4.95%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
8 11 (4.95%) IP Network Engineer
8 11 (4.95%) Web Engineer
9 10 (4.50%) Network Security Engineer
9 10 (4.50%) Senior Network Engineer
10 9 (4.05%) Developer
11 8 (3.60%) DevOps Engineer
11 8 (3.60%) Linux Engineer
12 7 (3.15%) Network Architect
13 6 (2.70%) Infrastructure Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (13.06%) Terraform
2 22 (9.91%) SAML
3 21 (9.46%) Middleware
4 18 (8.11%) 802.1X
5 17 (7.66%) ISPF
6 14 (6.31%) REST
7 12 (5.41%) OAuth
8 10 (4.50%) Web Services
9 9 (4.05%) LDAP
9 9 (4.05%) SOAP
10 8 (3.60%) JSON
10 8 (3.60%) OpenID
11 7 (3.15%) Kafka
11 7 (3.15%) XML
12 5 (2.25%) OAuth2
13 4 (1.80%) Apache NiFi
13 4 (1.80%) CSS
13 4 (1.80%) EDI
13 4 (1.80%) YAML
14 3 (1.35%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 34 (15.32%) PKI
2 30 (13.51%) Clustering
3 25 (11.26%) Onboarding
4 18 (8.11%) Mainframe
5 16 (7.21%) Management Information System
6 15 (6.76%) Replication
7 14 (6.31%) Data Centre
7 14 (6.31%) Self-Motivation
8 13 (5.86%) Cyber Threat
9 9 (4.05%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 9 (4.05%) Enterprise Software
10 8 (3.60%) Hybrid Cloud
11 6 (2.70%) Distributed Applications
12 5 (2.25%) Analytical Mindset
12 5 (2.25%) Linux Command Line
12 5 (2.25%) Video Conferencing
13 4 (1.80%) Cyberattack
13 4 (1.80%) Data Protection Act
13 4 (1.80%) Data Structures
13 4 (1.80%) Smartcard
Operating Systems
1 56 (25.23%) Linux
2 52 (23.42%) Windows
3 33 (14.86%) Windows Server
4 22 (9.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 20 (9.01%) zOS
6 9 (4.05%) Unix
7 3 (1.35%) Windows Server 2019
8 2 (0.90%) Android
8 2 (0.90%) Apple iOS
8 2 (0.90%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.45%) Amazon Linux
9 1 (0.45%) macOS
9 1 (0.45%) Rocky
9 1 (0.45%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 55 (24.77%) DevOps
2 50 (22.52%) Load Balancing
3 47 (21.17%) ITIL
4 38 (17.12%) CI/CD
5 32 (14.41%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 29 (13.06%) High Availability
7 26 (11.71%) Problem-Solving
8 25 (11.26%) Migration
9 24 (10.81%) Infrastructure as Code
9 24 (10.81%) Performance Optimisation
9 24 (10.81%) Performance Tuning
9 24 (10.81%) SIEM
10 23 (10.36%) Change Management
10 23 (10.36%) Zero Trust
11 21 (9.46%) Cybersecurity
12 20 (9.01%) Agile
13 18 (8.11%) Containerisation
13 18 (8.11%) Observability
14 17 (7.66%) Incident Response
14 17 (7.66%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 59 (26.58%) Python
2 33 (14.86%) PowerShell
3 32 (14.41%) SQL
4 22 (9.91%) Bash
5 12 (5.41%) Shell Script
5 12 (5.41%) T-SQL
6 10 (4.50%) Java
7 9 (4.05%) Groovy
7 9 (4.05%) Perl
8 7 (3.15%) ActionScript
8 7 (3.15%) JavaScript
9 3 (1.35%) C#
9 3 (1.35%) C++
10 2 (0.90%) Go
11 1 (0.45%) ABAP
11 1 (0.45%) ActionScript 2.0
11 1 (0.45%) Cypher
11 1 (0.45%) MATLAB
11 1 (0.45%) PL/SQL
11 1 (0.45%) R
Qualifications
1 66 (29.73%) Security Cleared
2 42 (18.92%) SC Cleared
3 25 (11.26%) DV Cleared
4 20 (9.01%) Degree
5 18 (8.11%) Azure Certification
6 15 (6.76%) Cisco Certification
7 13 (5.86%) BPSS Clearance
7 13 (5.86%) CCNP
8 12 (5.41%) Microsoft Certification
9 10 (4.50%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 6 (2.70%) CCNA
11 5 (2.25%) CCIE
11 5 (2.25%) CISSP
11 5 (2.25%) RHCSA
12 4 (1.80%) RHCE
13 2 (0.90%) JNCIE
13 2 (0.90%) MCSE
13 2 (0.90%) PMI Certification
13 2 (0.90%) PMP
13 2 (0.90%) PRINCE2 Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (4.50%) NIST
2 6 (2.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 6 (2.70%) SLA
3 4 (1.80%) GDPR
4 2 (0.90%) Cyber Essentials
4 2 (0.90%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 2 (0.90%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.45%) DICOM
5 1 (0.45%) HL7
5 1 (0.45%) QA
System Software
1 46 (20.72%) Active Directory
2 39 (17.57%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (8.11%) Docker
4 17 (7.66%) RACF
4 17 (7.66%) Virtual Machines
5 15 (6.76%) vSphere
6 13 (5.86%) Firmware
6 13 (5.86%) Hyper-V
7 9 (4.05%) VMware NSX
8 4 (1.80%) Ceph
8 4 (1.80%) Squid
9 3 (1.35%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 2 (0.90%) Apache ZooKeeper
10 2 (0.90%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (0.90%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.45%) KVM
11 1 (0.45%) OpenSSH
11 1 (0.45%) ProxySG
11 1 (0.45%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 49 (22.07%) Ansible
2 20 (9.01%) Kubernetes
3 18 (8.11%) Grafana
4 17 (7.66%) OMEGAMON
5 16 (7.21%) Single Sign-On
6 13 (5.86%) Prometheus
7 11 (4.95%) SCOM
8 10 (4.50%) Puppet
9 8 (3.60%) Nagios
10 5 (2.25%) Argo
10 5 (2.25%) FortiGate
10 5 (2.25%) Packer
11 4 (1.80%) Cisco CUCM
11 4 (1.80%) Microsoft Intune
11 4 (1.80%) systemd
12 3 (1.35%) Progress Chef
12 3 (1.35%) yum
13 2 (0.90%) Consul
13 2 (0.90%) HAProxy
13 2 (0.90%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 51 (22.97%) VMware
2 50 (22.52%) F5
3 49 (22.07%) Cisco
4 44 (19.82%) Microsoft
5 32 (14.41%) Palo Alto
6 27 (12.16%) ServiceNow
7 26 (11.71%) Blue Coat
8 25 (11.26%) Zscaler
9 21 (9.46%) IBM
10 18 (8.11%) Juniper
11 17 (7.66%) SolarWinds
12 15 (6.76%) Fortinet
13 14 (6.31%) CheckPoint
13 14 (6.31%) McAfee
14 12 (5.41%) Splunk
15 11 (4.95%) NetApp
15 11 (4.95%) Red Hat
16 7 (3.15%) Dynatrace
17 6 (2.70%) Oracle
18 5 (2.25%) Aruba