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 8 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 449 368 415
Rank change year-on-year -81 +47 +3
Contract jobs citing SSL 218 191 156
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.41% 0.58% 0.40%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 4.32% 4.85% 3.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 123 119 97
10th Percentile £380 £350 £400
25th Percentile £456 £381 £478
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £600
Median % change year-on-year - -12.50% +10.19%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £638
90th Percentile £650 £700 £750
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 13 2
10th Percentile - £45.00 £37.70
25th Percentile - £55.00 £39.13
Median hourly rate - £80.68 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year - +87.62% -35.33%
75th Percentile - £82.10 £46.63
90th Percentile - £84.80 £47.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £80.68 £43.00
% change year-on-year - +87.62% -30.65%

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 5,042 3,940 4,725
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.41% 11.98% 12.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,994 2,409 2,866
10th Percentile £250 £240 £220
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% +9.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 361 196 322
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.15 £18.50
Median hourly rate £26.44 £48.75 £48.56
Median % change year-on-year -45.76% +0.39% -3.69%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £83.50 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £45.00 £54.88
% change year-on-year -40.76% -18.00% -4.28%

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 8 August 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 8 August 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 -96 189 £525 -2.33% 38
UK excluding London -48 137 £525 +5.00% 18
North of England -33 65 £600 +20.00% 5
London -95 65 £550 -8.33% 28
Work from Home -59 64 £550 +4.76% 18
North West -9 44 £600 - 5
Midlands -31 36 £390 +8.94% 3
West Midlands -32 34 £380 +3.40% 3
South East -52 27 £500 +33.33% 5
Yorkshire -30 19 £600 +20.00%
Scotland +1 17 £600 +14.29% 2
East of England -31 6 £450 -26.53%
East Midlands -12 2 £475 +32.68%
North East -42 2 £438 -15.87%
South West -47 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 15 (6.88%) Confluence
2 3 (1.38%) Apache
3 2 (0.92%) IBM HTTP Server
3 2 (0.92%) IIS
3 2 (0.92%) Oracle HTTP Server
3 2 (0.92%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.92%) WebSphere
3 2 (0.92%) WebSphere Application Server
3 2 (0.92%) WebSphere Portal
4 1 (0.46%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.46%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.46%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.46%) JBoss
4 1 (0.46%) nginx
Applications
1 5 (2.29%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.92%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 2 (0.92%) Houdini
3 2 (0.92%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 3 (1.38%) Infor LN
2 2 (0.92%) Dynamics GP
3 1 (0.46%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.46%) Oracle General Ledger
3 1 (0.46%) Oracle Payables
3 1 (0.46%) Oracle Receivables
3 1 (0.46%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 74 (33.94%) Azure
2 41 (18.81%) AWS
3 33 (15.14%) Entra ID
4 20 (9.17%) GCP
5 15 (6.88%) Azure DevOps
6 14 (6.42%) GitHub
6 14 (6.42%) Microsoft 365
7 12 (5.50%) Datadog
8 11 (5.05%) SaaS
9 10 (4.59%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 9 (4.13%) Power Platform
11 8 (3.67%) Azure Monitor
12 7 (3.21%) GitHub Actions
12 7 (3.21%) IaaS
13 6 (2.75%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 6 (2.75%) Amazon S3
13 6 (2.75%) Azure Key Vault
14 5 (2.29%) AWS KMS
14 5 (2.29%) AWS Lambda
14 5 (2.29%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 107 (49.08%) DNS
2 78 (35.78%) Firewall
3 62 (28.44%) TCP/IP
4 54 (24.77%) HTTP
5 53 (24.31%) VPN
6 51 (23.39%) Network Security
7 41 (18.81%) WAN
8 34 (15.60%) BIG-IP
9 32 (14.68%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 29 (13.30%) IPsec
11 28 (12.84%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
12 23 (10.55%) DHCP
13 22 (10.09%) Wireshark
14 21 (9.63%) LAN
15 20 (9.17%) HTTPS
15 20 (9.17%) Internet
16 18 (8.26%) BGP
16 18 (8.26%) Wireless
17 16 (7.34%) SD-WAN
18 11 (5.05%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (5.05%) SQL Server
2 10 (4.59%) MySQL
3 7 (3.21%) Power BI
3 7 (3.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 6 (2.75%) MariaDB
4 6 (2.75%) PostgreSQL
5 5 (2.29%) MongoDB
6 4 (1.83%) Metadata
7 3 (1.38%) SQLPlus
8 2 (0.92%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (0.92%) Oracle BI Publisher
8 2 (0.92%) Oracle Reports
9 1 (0.46%) Neo4j
9 1 (0.46%) NoSQL
9 1 (0.46%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 25 (11.47%) JIRA
2 17 (7.80%) Fiddler
2 17 (7.80%) Jenkins
3 12 (5.50%) Git
4 7 (3.21%) GitLab
5 6 (2.75%) Sonatype Nexus
6 5 (2.29%) Browser DevTools
7 2 (0.92%) Introscope
7 2 (0.92%) Maven
8 1 (0.46%) Ant
8 1 (0.46%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 49 (22.48%) Finance
2 37 (16.97%) Banking
3 31 (14.22%) Social Skills
4 25 (11.47%) Legal
5 22 (10.09%) Analytical Skills
6 17 (7.80%) Investment Banking
7 14 (6.42%) Public Sector
8 9 (4.13%) Telecoms
9 8 (3.67%) Documentation Skills
10 6 (2.75%) Publishing
11 3 (1.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (1.38%) Manufacturing
12 2 (0.92%) Retail
13 1 (0.46%) Financial Institution
13 1 (0.46%) Marketing
13 1 (0.46%) Organisational Skills
13 1 (0.46%) Pharmaceutical
13 1 (0.46%) Police
13 1 (0.46%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 53 (24.31%) Network Engineer
2 29 (13.30%) Security Engineer
3 25 (11.47%) Administrator
4 24 (11.01%) Senior
5 18 (8.26%) IP Network Engineer
5 18 (8.26%) Web Engineer
6 16 (7.34%) Blue Coat Engineer
7 12 (5.50%) Network Security Engineer
7 12 (5.50%) Senior Network Engineer
8 11 (5.05%) Architect
9 10 (4.59%) Lead
10 8 (3.67%) DBA
10 8 (3.67%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 8 (3.67%) Linux Engineer
10 8 (3.67%) Network Architect
11 7 (3.21%) DevOps Engineer
11 7 (3.21%) SQL DBA
12 6 (2.75%) Developer
13 5 (2.29%) Analyst
13 5 (2.29%) Infrastructure Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (12.84%) SAML
2 23 (10.55%) Middleware
3 17 (7.80%) ISPF
4 14 (6.42%) LDAP
5 13 (5.96%) 802.1X
6 12 (5.50%) OAuth
7 9 (4.13%) OAuth2
8 8 (3.67%) OpenID
9 7 (3.21%) Kafka
9 7 (3.21%) XML
10 6 (2.75%) JSON
10 6 (2.75%) REST
10 6 (2.75%) SOAP
10 6 (2.75%) Web Services
11 4 (1.83%) CSS
11 4 (1.83%) EDI
12 3 (1.38%) EDIFACT
12 3 (1.38%) JMS
12 3 (1.38%) XSLT
13 2 (0.92%) WebSphere MQ
Miscellaneous
1 34 (15.60%) Clustering
2 29 (13.30%) PKI
3 19 (8.72%) Management Information System
4 18 (8.26%) Mainframe
5 15 (6.88%) Data Centre
5 15 (6.88%) Onboarding
6 12 (5.50%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 12 (5.50%) Security Posture
7 11 (5.05%) Cloud Security Posture
8 10 (4.59%) Enterprise Software
8 10 (4.59%) Replication
8 10 (4.59%) Self-Motivation
9 9 (4.13%) Cyber Threat
10 8 (3.67%) Hybrid Cloud
11 5 (2.29%) Distributed Applications
11 5 (2.29%) Linux Command Line
12 4 (1.83%) Algorithms
12 4 (1.83%) Data Structures
12 4 (1.83%) Fibre Optics
12 4 (1.83%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 51 (23.39%) Windows
2 50 (22.94%) Linux
3 26 (11.93%) Windows Server
4 20 (9.17%) zOS
5 15 (6.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 14 (6.42%) Unix
7 4 (1.83%) Mac OS
7 4 (1.83%) Windows Server 2019
8 2 (0.92%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.92%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 2 (0.92%) VMS
9 1 (0.46%) Amazon Linux
9 1 (0.46%) Data ONTAP
9 1 (0.46%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 59 (27.06%) ITIL
2 46 (21.10%) Load Balancing
3 44 (20.18%) DevOps
4 36 (16.51%) High Availability
5 32 (14.68%) CI/CD
6 31 (14.22%) SIEM
7 27 (12.39%) Data Loss Prevention
7 27 (12.39%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 27 (12.39%) Zero Trust
8 25 (11.47%) Change Management
9 24 (11.01%) Performance Optimisation
9 24 (11.01%) Performance Tuning
9 24 (11.01%) Problem-Solving
10 22 (10.09%) Cybersecurity
11 21 (9.63%) Cloud Security
11 21 (9.63%) Migration
12 20 (9.17%) Infrastructure as Code
13 17 (7.80%) Malware Detection/Protection
14 16 (7.34%) Project Delivery
14 16 (7.34%) Vulnerability Remediation
Programming Languages
1 54 (24.77%) Python
2 30 (13.76%) SQL
3 28 (12.84%) PowerShell
4 23 (10.55%) Bash
5 10 (4.59%) Perl
6 9 (4.13%) Groovy
6 9 (4.13%) Shell Script
7 8 (3.67%) Java
8 7 (3.21%) T-SQL
9 5 (2.29%) ActionScript
9 5 (2.29%) JavaScript
10 4 (1.83%) PL/SQL
11 2 (0.92%) Go
11 2 (0.92%) Jython
12 1 (0.46%) ActionScript 2.0
12 1 (0.46%) C
12 1 (0.46%) C#
12 1 (0.46%) Cypher
12 1 (0.46%) R
12 1 (0.46%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 62 (28.44%) Security Cleared
2 43 (19.72%) SC Cleared
3 19 (8.72%) Degree
4 18 (8.26%) DV Cleared
5 15 (6.88%) Azure Certification
6 13 (5.96%) CISSP
7 12 (5.50%) Microsoft Certification
8 11 (5.05%) Cisco Certification
9 10 (4.59%) CCNP
10 8 (3.67%) BPSS Clearance
11 7 (3.21%) CompTIA Security+
12 6 (2.75%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 6 (2.75%) MCSE
13 4 (1.83%) CCIE
13 4 (1.83%) MCSA
14 3 (1.38%) CISM
15 2 (0.92%) RHCSA
16 1 (0.46%) AWS Certification
16 1 (0.46%) CCSE
16 1 (0.46%) CEH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (5.50%) NIST
2 8 (3.67%) GDPR
3 7 (3.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 7 (3.21%) SLA
4 2 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials
4 2 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 2 (0.92%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.46%) DICOM
5 1 (0.46%) HL7
5 1 (0.46%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 50 (22.94%) VMware Infrastructure
2 48 (22.02%) Active Directory
3 22 (10.09%) Virtual Machines
4 19 (8.72%) Firmware
4 19 (8.72%) Hyper-V
5 17 (7.80%) RACF
6 11 (5.05%) VMware NSX
7 10 (4.59%) Docker
8 8 (3.67%) vSphere
9 7 (3.21%) Squid
10 6 (2.75%) Ceph
10 6 (2.75%) VMware ESXi
11 3 (1.38%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.92%) Apache ZooKeeper
12 2 (0.92%) ProxySG
12 2 (0.92%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 2 (0.92%) Virtual Desktop
13 1 (0.46%) KVM
13 1 (0.46%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 44 (20.18%) Ansible
2 26 (11.93%) Terraform
3 21 (9.63%) Single Sign-On
4 17 (7.80%) OMEGAMON
5 16 (7.34%) Grafana
5 16 (7.34%) Kubernetes
6 13 (5.96%) CASB
7 10 (4.59%) Prometheus
8 8 (3.67%) Puppet
9 7 (3.21%) SCOM
10 6 (2.75%) FortiGate
11 5 (2.29%) Packer
12 4 (1.83%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 4 (1.83%) CA Single Sign-On
12 4 (1.83%) Cisco CUCM
12 4 (1.83%) Microsoft Intune
12 4 (1.83%) Nessus
12 4 (1.83%) PingFederate
12 4 (1.83%) systemd
13 3 (1.38%) yum
Vendors
1 56 (25.69%) VMware
2 49 (22.48%) F5
3 36 (16.51%) Cisco
4 35 (16.06%) Microsoft
5 31 (14.22%) ServiceNow
6 28 (12.84%) Blue Coat
6 28 (12.84%) Zscaler
7 25 (11.47%) Palo Alto
8 23 (10.55%) IBM
9 20 (9.17%) McAfee
10 17 (7.80%) NetApp
11 14 (6.42%) CheckPoint
12 13 (5.96%) Fortinet
12 13 (5.96%) Splunk
13 11 (5.05%) Juniper
13 11 (5.05%) Oracle
13 11 (5.05%) SolarWinds
14 10 (4.59%) Red Hat
15 8 (3.67%) Dynatrace
16 7 (3.21%) Ping Identity