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

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 446 358 423
Rank change year-on-year -88 +65 -3
Contract jobs citing SSL 223 204 140
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.41% 0.62% 0.36%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 4.42% 5.40% 3.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 114 126 79
10th Percentile £380 £350 £378
25th Percentile £463 £382 £470
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £554 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.19% +0.68% +4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £643 £650
90th Percentile £650 £700 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £440 £525
% change year-on-year +19.32% -16.19% +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 5,044 3,781 4,544
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.32% 11.57% 11.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,936 2,333 2,657
10th Percentile £231 £230 £231
25th Percentile £385 £363 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £505
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.95% +1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £610
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £455 £500
% change year-on-year +4.40% -9.00% +9.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 402 198 261
10th Percentile £14.35 £15.45 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £21.37
Median hourly rate £26.72 £42.50 £51.50
Median % change year-on-year -37.13% -17.48% -8.83%
75th Percentile £65.88 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.88 £73.60 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.14 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -38.49% -25.89% -0.11%

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 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 14 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 14 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 -111 191 £531 -4.62% 116
UK excluding London -54 136 £525 +19.32% 63
London -114 68 £550 -8.33% 63
Work from Home -66 61 £538 -6.52% 113
North of England -41 58 £600 +15.38% 11
North West -24 40 £600 -0.58% 7
Midlands -40 34 £400 +5.96% 4
West Midlands -39 30 £375 -1.32% 2
South East -41 28 £510 +36.00% 24
Scotland -7 19 £600 +14.29% 2
Yorkshire -28 16 £600 +20.00% 4
East of England -36 9 £481 -20.12% 24
East Midlands -16 4 £475 +32.68% 2
South West -48 3 £350 -40.17% 2
North East -39 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 (7.62%) Confluence
2 5 (2.24%) Apache
3 2 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.90%) IIS
3 2 (0.90%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.45%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.45%) IBM HTTP Server
4 1 (0.45%) JBoss
4 1 (0.45%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.45%) nginx
4 1 (0.45%) Oracle HTTP Server
4 1 (0.45%) WebSphere
4 1 (0.45%) WebSphere Application Server
4 1 (0.45%) WebSphere Portal
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%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 76 (34.08%) Azure
2 47 (21.08%) AWS
3 32 (14.35%) Entra ID
4 22 (9.87%) GCP
5 18 (8.07%) Azure DevOps
6 15 (6.73%) GitHub
7 14 (6.28%) Microsoft 365
8 13 (5.83%) Power Platform
9 12 (5.38%) Azure Monitor
9 12 (5.38%) Datadog
10 9 (4.04%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 8 (3.59%) AWS CloudFormation
11 8 (3.59%) AWS Lambda
11 8 (3.59%) Azure Key Vault
11 8 (3.59%) Serverless
12 7 (3.14%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 7 (3.14%) Amazon S3
12 7 (3.14%) AWS KMS
12 7 (3.14%) GitHub Actions
13 6 (2.69%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 105 (47.09%) DNS
2 73 (32.74%) Firewall
3 58 (26.01%) VPN
4 57 (25.56%) Network Security
5 52 (23.32%) TCP/IP
6 51 (22.87%) HTTP
7 43 (19.28%) WAN
8 34 (15.25%) IPsec
9 32 (14.35%) BIG-IP
9 32 (14.35%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 28 (12.56%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
11 24 (10.76%) DHCP
12 22 (9.87%) BGP
13 21 (9.42%) Wireless
14 20 (8.97%) HTTPS
15 19 (8.52%) LAN
16 17 (7.62%) Wireshark
17 16 (7.17%) SD-WAN
18 14 (6.28%) OSPF
19 11 (4.93%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (7.62%) SQL Server
2 15 (6.73%) MySQL
3 11 (4.93%) Power BI
3 11 (4.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 8 (3.59%) PostgreSQL
5 6 (2.69%) MariaDB
6 5 (2.24%) MongoDB
7 4 (1.79%) Metadata
8 3 (1.35%) SQLPlus
9 2 (0.90%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.90%) Oracle BI Publisher
9 2 (0.90%) Oracle Reports
9 2 (0.90%) RDBMS
9 2 (0.90%) Relational Database
10 1 (0.45%) InfluxDB
10 1 (0.45%) Neo4j
10 1 (0.45%) NoSQL
10 1 (0.45%) SQLite
10 1 (0.45%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 25 (11.21%) JIRA
2 17 (7.62%) Jenkins
3 13 (5.83%) Fiddler
3 13 (5.83%) Git
4 9 (4.04%) GitLab
5 5 (2.24%) Sonatype Nexus
6 3 (1.35%) Browser DevTools
6 3 (1.35%) Maven
7 2 (0.90%) git-flow
8 1 (0.45%) Ant
8 1 (0.45%) Artifactory
8 1 (0.45%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 1 (0.45%) Gerrit
8 1 (0.45%) Introscope
8 1 (0.45%) Mockito
8 1 (0.45%) Tricentis qTest
General
1 44 (19.73%) Finance
2 39 (17.49%) Social Skills
3 33 (14.80%) Banking
4 26 (11.66%) Analytical Skills
5 25 (11.21%) Legal
6 14 (6.28%) Investment Banking
7 13 (5.83%) Public Sector
8 10 (4.48%) Telecoms
9 8 (3.59%) Documentation Skills
10 6 (2.69%) Publishing
11 4 (1.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 4 (1.79%) Manufacturing
12 2 (0.90%) Retail
13 1 (0.45%) Aerospace
13 1 (0.45%) Local Government
13 1 (0.45%) Marketing
13 1 (0.45%) Organisational Skills
13 1 (0.45%) Pharmaceutical
13 1 (0.45%) Police
13 1 (0.45%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 50 (22.42%) Network Engineer
2 29 (13.00%) Security Engineer
3 25 (11.21%) Administrator
4 24 (10.76%) Senior
5 17 (7.62%) Lead
6 15 (6.73%) IP Network Engineer
7 14 (6.28%) Network Security Engineer
8 13 (5.83%) Blue Coat Engineer
8 13 (5.83%) DBA
8 13 (5.83%) Web Engineer
9 12 (5.38%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 12 (5.38%) Senior Network Engineer
9 12 (5.38%) SQL DBA
10 11 (4.93%) Architect
11 10 (4.48%) Linux Engineer
12 9 (4.04%) Developer
13 8 (3.59%) DevOps Engineer
13 8 (3.59%) Network Architect
14 7 (3.14%) Security Specialist
15 6 (2.69%) Infrastructure Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (12.56%) SAML
2 24 (10.76%) Terraform
3 22 (9.87%) Middleware
4 19 (8.52%) 802.1X
5 17 (7.62%) ISPF
6 13 (5.83%) LDAP
6 13 (5.83%) OAuth
7 11 (4.93%) REST
8 9 (4.04%) OAuth2
8 9 (4.04%) OpenID
8 9 (4.04%) SOAP
8 9 (4.04%) Web Services
9 7 (3.14%) XML
10 6 (2.69%) JSON
10 6 (2.69%) Kafka
11 4 (1.79%) CSS
11 4 (1.79%) EDI
12 3 (1.35%) EDIFACT
12 3 (1.35%) JWT
12 3 (1.35%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 36 (16.14%) Clustering
2 28 (12.56%) PKI
3 19 (8.52%) Onboarding
4 18 (8.07%) Mainframe
5 17 (7.62%) Data Centre
5 17 (7.62%) Management Information System
6 15 (6.73%) Replication
7 12 (5.38%) Cyber Threat
7 12 (5.38%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 9 (4.04%) Enterprise Software
8 9 (4.04%) Self-Motivation
9 7 (3.14%) Hybrid Cloud
10 6 (2.69%) Distributed Applications
11 5 (2.24%) Analytical Mindset
11 5 (2.24%) Linux Command Line
12 4 (1.79%) Algorithms
12 4 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
12 4 (1.79%) Data Structures
12 4 (1.79%) Fibre Optics
12 4 (1.79%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 50 (22.42%) Linux
2 49 (21.97%) Windows
3 29 (13.00%) Windows Server
4 20 (8.97%) zOS
5 15 (6.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (4.48%) Unix
7 3 (1.35%) Mac OS
7 3 (1.35%) Windows Server 2019
8 2 (0.90%) Ubuntu
8 2 (0.90%) VMS
9 1 (0.45%) Amazon Linux
9 1 (0.45%) Oracle Linux
9 1 (0.45%) Rocky
9 1 (0.45%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 55 (24.66%) ITIL
2 52 (23.32%) DevOps
3 45 (20.18%) Load Balancing
4 36 (16.14%) High Availability
5 33 (14.80%) CI/CD
6 31 (13.90%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 28 (12.56%) Change Management
8 27 (12.11%) Performance Tuning
9 26 (11.66%) Problem-Solving
10 25 (11.21%) SIEM
10 25 (11.21%) Zero Trust
11 24 (10.76%) Migration
11 24 (10.76%) Performance Optimisation
12 21 (9.42%) Agile
13 19 (8.52%) Cybersecurity
14 18 (8.07%) Infrastructure as Code
14 18 (8.07%) Project Delivery
15 17 (7.62%) Network Virtualisation
16 16 (7.17%) User Acceptance Testing
17 15 (6.73%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 57 (25.56%) Python
2 35 (15.70%) SQL
3 31 (13.90%) PowerShell
4 24 (10.76%) Bash
5 12 (5.38%) T-SQL
6 11 (4.93%) Java
7 10 (4.48%) Groovy
7 10 (4.48%) Perl
7 10 (4.48%) Shell Script
8 5 (2.24%) ActionScript
8 5 (2.24%) JavaScript
9 4 (1.79%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.90%) Go
11 1 (0.45%) ActionScript 2.0
11 1 (0.45%) C
11 1 (0.45%) Cypher
11 1 (0.45%) Jython
11 1 (0.45%) MATLAB
11 1 (0.45%) R
11 1 (0.45%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 69 (30.94%) Security Cleared
2 49 (21.97%) SC Cleared
3 20 (8.97%) Degree
3 20 (8.97%) DV Cleared
4 19 (8.52%) Azure Certification
5 13 (5.83%) BPSS Clearance
6 12 (5.38%) Cisco Certification
6 12 (5.38%) Microsoft Certification
7 10 (4.48%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 9 (4.04%) CCNP
9 7 (3.14%) CISSP
10 6 (2.69%) CCIE
11 3 (1.35%) RHCSA
12 2 (0.90%) CISM
12 2 (0.90%) CompTIA Security+
12 2 (0.90%) JNCIE
12 2 (0.90%) LFCS
12 2 (0.90%) MCSE
12 2 (0.90%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.90%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (4.48%) NIST
2 8 (3.59%) GDPR
3 6 (2.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 6 (2.69%) SLA
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%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 45 (20.18%) VMware Infrastructure
2 43 (19.28%) Active Directory
3 22 (9.87%) Virtual Machines
4 19 (8.52%) Hyper-V
5 17 (7.62%) RACF
6 15 (6.73%) Docker
6 15 (6.73%) Firmware
7 9 (4.04%) VMware NSX
8 7 (3.14%) Ceph
8 7 (3.14%) Squid
8 7 (3.14%) vSphere
9 4 (1.79%) VMware ESXi
10 3 (1.35%) Virtual Servers
11 2 (0.90%) Apache ZooKeeper
11 2 (0.90%) ProxySG
11 2 (0.90%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 2 (0.90%) Virtual Desktop
12 1 (0.45%) KVM
12 1 (0.45%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 46 (20.63%) Ansible
2 20 (8.97%) Single Sign-On
3 17 (7.62%) Kubernetes
3 17 (7.62%) OMEGAMON
4 16 (7.17%) Grafana
5 11 (4.93%) Prometheus
5 11 (4.93%) SCOM
6 8 (3.59%) FortiGate
6 8 (3.59%) Puppet
7 5 (2.24%) Packer
8 4 (1.79%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 4 (1.79%) CA Single Sign-On
8 4 (1.79%) Cisco CUCM
8 4 (1.79%) Microsoft Intune
8 4 (1.79%) PingFederate
8 4 (1.79%) systemd
9 3 (1.35%) Argo
9 3 (1.35%) yum
10 2 (0.90%) Consul
10 2 (0.90%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 54 (24.22%) F5
2 51 (22.87%) VMware
3 43 (19.28%) Cisco
4 41 (18.39%) Microsoft
5 32 (14.35%) Palo Alto
6 29 (13.00%) ServiceNow
7 28 (12.56%) Blue Coat
8 27 (12.11%) Zscaler
9 22 (9.87%) IBM
10 19 (8.52%) Juniper
11 16 (7.17%) Fortinet
11 16 (7.17%) McAfee
12 15 (6.73%) CheckPoint
13 13 (5.83%) NetApp
14 10 (4.48%) Oracle
14 10 (4.48%) Red Hat
15 9 (4.04%) SolarWinds
15 9 (4.04%) Splunk
16 7 (3.14%) Dynatrace
16 7 (3.14%) Ping Identity