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

6 months to
23 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 465 364 419
Rank change year-on-year -101 +55 +6
Contract jobs citing SSL 218 194 145
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.40% 0.59% 0.37%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 4.27% 4.98% 3.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 119 122 87
10th Percentile £390 £350 £393
25th Percentile £459 £380 £476
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £600
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -10.42% +9.09%
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 11 2
10th Percentile - £45.00 £37.70
25th Percentile - £50.00 £39.13
Median hourly rate - £80.68 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year - +87.62% -34.83%
75th Percentile - £82.68 £46.63
90th Percentile - £85.00 £47.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £80.68 £43.00
% change year-on-year - +87.62% -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 5,100 3,898 4,676
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.47% 11.82% 12.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,009 2,380 2,821
10th Percentile £250 £243 £220
25th Percentile £400 £370 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £483 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.57% -3.45% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £470 £500
% change year-on-year +2.77% -6.00% +9.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 375 201 309
10th Percentile £15.18 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £20.50
Median hourly rate £26.14 £46.25 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -43.48% -7.50% -11.49%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.35 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.14 £44.50 £54.88
% change year-on-year -41.26% -18.91% -4.42%

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 23 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 23 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 -120 186 £525 -5.58% 30
UK excluding London -56 132 £525 +5.00% 27
London -112 70 £550 -8.33% 10
Work from Home -50 65 £550 +4.76% 14
North of England -18 60 £600 +12.15% 5
North West -13 39 £600 -0.29% 3
Midlands -30 35 £406 +11.91% 3
West Midlands -34 32 £400 +5.26% 3
South East -58 26 £475 +26.67% 12
Scotland +2 20 £600 +14.29% 2
Yorkshire -27 19 £600 +20.00% 2
East of England -31 5 £450 -25.31% 6
East Midlands -16 3 £475 +32.68%
North East -43 2 £438 -18.22%
South West -44 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%) Microsoft Exchange
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 73 (33.49%) Azure
2 46 (21.10%) AWS
3 32 (14.68%) Entra ID
4 20 (9.17%) GCP
5 15 (6.88%) Azure DevOps
5 15 (6.88%) Microsoft 365
6 14 (6.42%) GitHub
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%) AWS CloudFormation
11 8 (3.67%) AWS Lambda
11 8 (3.67%) Azure Key Vault
11 8 (3.67%) Azure Monitor
11 8 (3.67%) Serverless
12 7 (3.21%) AWS KMS
12 7 (3.21%) GitHub Actions
13 6 (2.75%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 6 (2.75%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 101 (46.33%) DNS
2 71 (32.57%) Firewall
3 57 (26.15%) TCP/IP
4 54 (24.77%) HTTP
5 51 (23.39%) VPN
6 47 (21.56%) Network Security
7 39 (17.89%) WAN
8 33 (15.14%) BIG-IP
9 32 (14.68%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 28 (12.84%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
11 26 (11.93%) IPsec
12 22 (10.09%) HTTPS
13 21 (9.63%) DHCP
13 21 (9.63%) LAN
13 21 (9.63%) Wireshark
14 20 (9.17%) Internet
15 18 (8.26%) Wireless
16 17 (7.80%) BGP
17 16 (7.34%) SD-WAN
18 11 (5.05%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (5.50%) SQL Server
2 10 (4.59%) MySQL
3 7 (3.21%) PostgreSQL
3 7 (3.21%) Power BI
3 7 (3.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 6 (2.75%) MariaDB
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
8 2 (0.92%) RDBMS
8 2 (0.92%) Relational Database
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%) Jenkins
3 16 (7.34%) Fiddler
4 13 (5.96%) Git
5 10 (4.59%) GitLab
6 6 (2.75%) Sonatype Nexus
7 5 (2.29%) Browser DevTools
8 3 (1.38%) Maven
9 2 (0.92%) git-flow
9 2 (0.92%) Introscope
10 1 (0.46%) Ant
10 1 (0.46%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (0.46%) Mockito
General
1 45 (20.64%) Finance
2 37 (16.97%) Banking
3 32 (14.68%) Social Skills
4 25 (11.47%) Legal
5 23 (10.55%) Analytical Skills
6 17 (7.80%) Investment Banking
7 14 (6.42%) Public Sector
8 9 (4.13%) Telecoms
9 7 (3.21%) 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 51 (23.39%) Network Engineer
2 27 (12.39%) Security Engineer
3 24 (11.01%) Administrator
3 24 (11.01%) Senior
4 18 (8.26%) IP Network Engineer
5 17 (7.80%) Web Engineer
6 16 (7.34%) Blue Coat Engineer
7 13 (5.96%) Lead
8 12 (5.50%) Senior Network Engineer
9 11 (5.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 10 (4.59%) Linux Engineer
10 10 (4.59%) Network Security Engineer
11 9 (4.13%) Architect
11 9 (4.13%) Developer
12 8 (3.67%) DBA
13 7 (3.21%) DevOps Engineer
13 7 (3.21%) Network Architect
13 7 (3.21%) SQL DBA
14 6 (2.75%) Infrastructure Specialist
14 6 (2.75%) Senior Linux Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (13.30%) SAML
2 25 (11.47%) Terraform
3 23 (10.55%) Middleware
4 17 (7.80%) ISPF
5 13 (5.96%) 802.1X
5 13 (5.96%) OAuth
6 10 (4.59%) LDAP
7 9 (4.13%) OAuth2
7 9 (4.13%) OpenID
7 9 (4.13%) REST
7 9 (4.13%) SOAP
7 9 (4.13%) Web Services
8 7 (3.21%) Kafka
8 7 (3.21%) XML
9 6 (2.75%) JSON
10 4 (1.83%) CSS
10 4 (1.83%) EDI
11 3 (1.38%) EDIFACT
11 3 (1.38%) JMS
11 3 (1.38%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 33 (15.14%) Clustering
2 29 (13.30%) PKI
3 19 (8.72%) Management Information System
4 18 (8.26%) Mainframe
5 15 (6.88%) Onboarding
6 13 (5.96%) Data Centre
7 12 (5.50%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 12 (5.50%) Enterprise Software
8 10 (4.59%) Replication
8 10 (4.59%) Self-Motivation
9 9 (4.13%) Cyber Threat
10 8 (3.67%) Security Posture
11 7 (3.21%) Cloud Security Posture
11 7 (3.21%) Hybrid Cloud
12 6 (2.75%) Distributed Applications
13 5 (2.29%) Linux Command Line
14 4 (1.83%) Algorithms
14 4 (1.83%) Data Structures
14 4 (1.83%) Fibre Optics
14 4 (1.83%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 50 (22.94%) Linux
2 45 (20.64%) Windows
3 24 (11.01%) Windows Server
4 20 (9.17%) zOS
5 15 (6.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (5.05%) Unix
7 4 (1.83%) Mac OS
8 3 (1.38%) Windows Server 2019
9 2 (0.92%) Oracle Linux
9 2 (0.92%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 2 (0.92%) VMS
10 1 (0.46%) Amazon Linux
10 1 (0.46%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 54 (24.77%) ITIL
2 47 (21.56%) DevOps
3 46 (21.10%) Load Balancing
4 34 (15.60%) CI/CD
5 32 (14.68%) High Availability
6 30 (13.76%) SIEM
7 29 (13.30%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 26 (11.93%) Data Loss Prevention
8 26 (11.93%) Zero Trust
9 24 (11.01%) Cybersecurity
9 24 (11.01%) Performance Optimisation
9 24 (11.01%) Performance Tuning
9 24 (11.01%) Problem-Solving
10 23 (10.55%) Change Management
11 22 (10.09%) Migration
12 20 (9.17%) Agile
13 19 (8.72%) Infrastructure as Code
14 18 (8.26%) Project Delivery
15 17 (7.80%) Network Virtualisation
16 16 (7.34%) Cloud Security
Programming Languages
1 55 (25.23%) Python
2 29 (13.30%) SQL
3 27 (12.39%) PowerShell
4 24 (11.01%) Bash
5 11 (5.05%) Java
5 11 (5.05%) Perl
6 10 (4.59%) Shell Script
7 9 (4.13%) Groovy
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 42 (19.27%) SC Cleared
3 18 (8.26%) DV Cleared
4 17 (7.80%) Degree
5 15 (6.88%) Azure Certification
6 10 (4.59%) Cisco Certification
7 9 (4.13%) CCNP
8 8 (3.67%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (3.67%) Microsoft Certification
9 7 (3.21%) CISSP
10 6 (2.75%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 4 (1.83%) CCIE
12 3 (1.38%) RHCSA
13 2 (0.92%) CompTIA Security+
13 2 (0.92%) LFCS
13 2 (0.92%) MCSE
13 2 (0.92%) PMI Certification
13 2 (0.92%) PMP
13 2 (0.92%) PRINCE2 Certification
13 2 (0.92%) RHCE
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 49 (22.48%) VMware Infrastructure
2 43 (19.72%) Active Directory
3 19 (8.72%) Firmware
3 19 (8.72%) Hyper-V
3 19 (8.72%) Virtual Machines
4 17 (7.80%) RACF
5 14 (6.42%) Docker
6 10 (4.59%) VMware NSX
7 7 (3.21%) Ceph
7 7 (3.21%) Squid
7 7 (3.21%) vSphere
8 4 (1.83%) VMware ESXi
9 3 (1.38%) Virtual Servers
10 2 (0.92%) Apache ZooKeeper
10 2 (0.92%) ProxySG
10 2 (0.92%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 2 (0.92%) Virtual Desktop
11 1 (0.46%) KVM
11 1 (0.46%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 45 (20.64%) Ansible
2 22 (10.09%) Single Sign-On
3 17 (7.80%) Kubernetes
3 17 (7.80%) OMEGAMON
4 16 (7.34%) Grafana
5 10 (4.59%) Prometheus
6 9 (4.13%) CASB
7 8 (3.67%) Puppet
8 7 (3.21%) SCOM
9 6 (2.75%) FortiGate
10 5 (2.29%) Packer
11 4 (1.83%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 4 (1.83%) CA Single Sign-On
11 4 (1.83%) Cisco CUCM
11 4 (1.83%) Microsoft Intune
11 4 (1.83%) PingFederate
11 4 (1.83%) systemd
12 3 (1.38%) Argo
12 3 (1.38%) yum
13 2 (0.92%) Consul
Vendors
1 54 (24.77%) VMware
2 48 (22.02%) F5
3 36 (16.51%) Cisco
4 35 (16.06%) Microsoft
5 31 (14.22%) ServiceNow
6 29 (13.30%) Zscaler
7 26 (11.93%) Blue Coat
8 25 (11.47%) Palo Alto
9 23 (10.55%) IBM
10 19 (8.72%) McAfee
11 16 (7.34%) NetApp
12 12 (5.50%) CheckPoint
12 12 (5.50%) Fortinet
13 11 (5.05%) Juniper
13 11 (5.05%) Oracle
13 11 (5.05%) Red Hat
13 11 (5.05%) SolarWinds
14 8 (3.67%) Dynatrace
14 8 (3.67%) Splunk
15 7 (3.21%) Ping Identity