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

6 months to
27 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 424 368 364
Rank change year-on-year -56 -4 +84
Contract jobs citing SSL 179 182 238
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.43% 0.59% 0.54%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 4.22% 4.51% 4.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 108 114 121
10th Percentile £335 £387 £363
25th Percentile £371 £465 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £507 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.91% - +1.15%
75th Percentile £680 £638 £638
90th Percentile £700 £658 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £575 £546
% change year-on-year -13.04% +5.41% +23.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 2 11
10th Percentile £52.15 £80.46 -
25th Percentile £55.00 £80.65 £45.88
Median hourly rate £65.00 £81.26 £63.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.01% +28.99% +0.61%
75th Percentile £75.00 £81.83 £65.98
90th Percentile £80.25 £81.99 £66.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £81.26 £63.00
% change year-on-year -20.01% +28.99% +0.61%

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 4,242 4,036 5,916
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.21% 13.17% 13.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,763 2,430 3,539
10th Percentile £204 £209 £205
25th Percentile £360 £361 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £485
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% +3.09% -6.37%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £681 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £466 £468 £475
% change year-on-year -0.32% -1.58% +1.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 176 131 384
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.26 £14.27
25th Percentile £18.78 £21.46 £19.99
Median hourly rate £34.00 £35.00 £43.12
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -18.82% +123.39%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £73.75 £74.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £31.08 £50.00
% change year-on-year +34.94% -37.84% +164.41%

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 27 February 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 27 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for SSL in the UK

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 27 February 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 -65 152 £513 -6.82% 29
UK excluding London -70 107 £500 -13.04% 26
North of England -22 68 £664 +20.71% 4
Work from Home -36 54 £454 -11.41% 15
North West +4 43 £598 +71.94% 3
West Midlands -13 40 £375 -18.03% 4
Midlands -20 40 £375 -18.03% 4
London -50 40 £575 +12.75% 6
Yorkshire -51 25 £675 +22.89%
South East -53 10 £465 -25.60% 8
East of England -36 8 £427 -28.83% 7
Scotland +2 3 £325 -36.89% 1
North East -21 1 - - 1
South West -28 1 £500 +42.86% 3

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 (6.70%) Confluence
1 12 (6.70%) TPMS
2 3 (1.68%) Apache
2 3 (1.68%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (1.12%) Oracle HTTP Server
3 2 (1.12%) Tomcat
3 2 (1.12%) WebLogic
4 1 (0.56%) CMS
4 1 (0.56%) Drupal
4 1 (0.56%) IIS
4 1 (0.56%) JBoss
4 1 (0.56%) Umbraco
Applications
1 7 (3.91%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.56%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.56%) RMDS
Cloud Services
1 54 (30.17%) AWS
2 37 (20.67%) Azure
3 17 (9.50%) Virtual Private Cloud
4 16 (8.94%) GCP
5 14 (7.82%) GitHub
6 13 (7.26%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 13 (7.26%) Amazon EC2
6 13 (7.26%) Amazon ELB
6 13 (7.26%) Amazon S3
7 11 (6.15%) Amazon EKS
7 11 (6.15%) Serverless
8 7 (3.91%) Entra ID
9 6 (3.35%) IaaS
9 6 (3.35%) SaaS
10 5 (2.79%) OpenShift
10 5 (2.79%) PaaS
11 4 (2.23%) Amazon ECS
11 4 (2.23%) AWS CloudFormation
11 4 (2.23%) AWS Lambda
11 4 (2.23%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 95 (53.07%) DNS
2 77 (43.02%) TCP/IP
3 69 (38.55%) Firewall
4 59 (32.96%) HTTP
5 50 (27.93%) VPN
6 42 (23.46%) BIG-IP
7 41 (22.91%) Wireshark
8 40 (22.35%) Network Security
9 27 (15.08%) IPsec
10 25 (13.97%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
10 25 (13.97%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 23 (12.85%) WAN
12 17 (9.50%) SSH
13 16 (8.94%) SNMP
14 14 (7.82%) LAN
14 14 (7.82%) Wireless
15 13 (7.26%) HTTPS
16 11 (6.15%) BGP
16 11 (6.15%) DHCP
16 11 (6.15%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (5.59%) DocumentDB
1 10 (5.59%) MongoDB
1 10 (5.59%) NoSQL
2 9 (5.03%) SQL Server
3 5 (2.79%) PostgreSQL
4 4 (2.23%) Apache Cassandra
5 3 (1.68%) Redis
6 1 (0.56%) Amazon QuickSight
6 1 (0.56%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 31 (17.32%) Fiddler
2 18 (10.06%) Git
3 16 (8.94%) Jenkins
4 14 (7.82%) GitLab
4 14 (7.82%) JIRA
5 2 (1.12%) git-flow
6 1 (0.56%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.56%) CircleCI
6 1 (0.56%) Crashlytics
6 1 (0.56%) fastlane
6 1 (0.56%) JUnit
6 1 (0.56%) Sonatype Nexus
6 1 (0.56%) Subversion
6 1 (0.56%) Xcode
6 1 (0.56%) XCTest
6 1 (0.56%) XCUITest
General
1 28 (15.64%) Analytical Skills
1 28 (15.64%) Social Skills
2 25 (13.97%) Finance
3 24 (13.41%) Banking
4 20 (11.17%) Investment Banking
5 16 (8.94%) Public Sector
6 15 (8.38%) Documentation Skills
7 6 (3.35%) Telecoms
8 4 (2.23%) Military
9 2 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
9 2 (1.12%) Legal
9 2 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
10 1 (0.56%) Billing
10 1 (0.56%) Financial Institution
10 1 (0.56%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 65 (36.31%) Network Engineer
2 29 (16.20%) Web Engineer
3 27 (15.08%) Senior
4 19 (10.61%) Blue Coat Engineer
5 18 (10.06%) Architect
5 18 (10.06%) Developer
5 18 (10.06%) IP Network Engineer
6 14 (7.82%) Junior
6 14 (7.82%) Security Engineer
7 13 (7.26%) DevOps Engineer
7 13 (7.26%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 13 (7.26%) Junior Network Engineer
8 12 (6.70%) Cryptography Engineer
8 12 (6.70%) Senior DevOps
8 12 (6.70%) Senior DevOps Engineer
9 10 (5.59%) Consultant
9 10 (5.59%) Full-Stack Developer
10 9 (5.03%) Network Security Engineer
11 6 (3.35%) Analyst
11 6 (3.35%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (11.73%) LDAP
2 20 (11.17%) SAML
3 15 (8.38%) OAuth
4 14 (7.82%) REST
5 11 (6.15%) HTML
5 11 (6.15%) Kafka
5 11 (6.15%) OpenID
5 11 (6.15%) RESTful
6 10 (5.59%) OAuth2
6 10 (5.59%) Spring
6 10 (5.59%) Spring Boot
7 9 (5.03%) Node.js
8 7 (3.91%) 802.1X
9 6 (3.35%) Web Services
10 5 (2.79%) JSON
10 5 (2.79%) SOAP
10 5 (2.79%) XACML
10 5 (2.79%) XML
11 4 (2.23%) .NET
12 3 (1.68%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 28 (15.64%) Management Information System
2 20 (11.17%) PKI
3 12 (6.70%) Data Centre
4 10 (5.59%) Analytical Mindset
5 7 (3.91%) Cyber Threat
6 6 (3.35%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 5 (2.79%) CSOC
7 5 (2.79%) Cyberattack
7 5 (2.79%) Onboarding
7 5 (2.79%) Security Operations Centre
7 5 (2.79%) Security Posture
8 4 (2.23%) Cloud Security Posture
9 3 (1.68%) Cloud Native
9 3 (1.68%) Enterprise Storage
10 2 (1.12%) Clustering
10 2 (1.12%) Linux Command Line
11 1 (0.56%) Animation
11 1 (0.56%) CESG
11 1 (0.56%) SCADA
11 1 (0.56%) Tandem
Operating Systems
1 39 (21.79%) Linux
2 38 (21.23%) Windows
3 12 (6.70%) Windows Server
4 6 (3.35%) Unix
5 4 (2.23%) CatOS
5 4 (2.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (1.12%) Apple iOS
6 2 (1.12%) CentOS
6 2 (1.12%) Ubuntu
6 2 (1.12%) Windows Server 2019
7 1 (0.56%) Data ONTAP
7 1 (0.56%) Mac OS
7 1 (0.56%) Solaris
7 1 (0.56%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 40 (22.35%) CI/CD
2 39 (21.79%) Load Balancing
3 38 (21.23%) DevOps
4 33 (18.44%) Cybersecurity
5 30 (16.76%) Data Loss Prevention
5 30 (16.76%) High Availability
6 28 (15.64%) Malware Detection/Protection
7 25 (13.97%) Identity Access Management
7 25 (13.97%) Infrastructure as Code
8 23 (12.85%) Change Management
8 23 (12.85%) Problem-Solving
9 21 (11.73%) Incident Response
9 21 (11.73%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 21 (11.73%) Key Management
9 21 (11.73%) Root Cause Analysis
9 21 (11.73%) Stakeholder Management
10 20 (11.17%) Cloud Security
10 20 (11.17%) Observability
11 19 (10.61%) Migration
11 19 (10.61%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 50 (27.93%) Python
2 21 (11.73%) Bash
3 18 (10.06%) JavaScript
3 18 (10.06%) SQL
4 13 (7.26%) PowerShell
5 11 (6.15%) Java
6 3 (1.68%) C#
7 2 (1.12%) PHP
7 2 (1.12%) Swift
8 1 (0.56%) C
8 1 (0.56%) Objective-C
8 1 (0.56%) Perl
Qualifications
1 58 (32.40%) Security Cleared
2 45 (25.14%) SC Cleared
3 18 (10.06%) Degree
4 15 (8.38%) CISSP
5 13 (7.26%) DV Cleared
6 12 (6.70%) FFIEC
7 11 (6.15%) Cisco Certification
8 9 (5.03%) CCNP
8 9 (5.03%) Microsoft Certification
9 7 (3.91%) CISM
10 5 (2.79%) CompTIA Security+
11 4 (2.23%) Computer Science Degree
11 4 (2.23%) MCSA
11 4 (2.23%) MCSE
12 3 (1.68%) TOGAF Certification
13 2 (1.12%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 2 (1.12%) AWS Certification
13 2 (1.12%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 2 (1.12%) CCSP
13 2 (1.12%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (12.29%) GDPR
2 16 (8.94%) PCI DSS
3 13 (7.26%) NIST
4 12 (6.70%) GLBA
5 6 (3.35%) HIPAA
6 4 (2.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 3 (1.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 2 (1.12%) Accessibility
8 2 (1.12%) Data Quality
9 1 (0.56%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.56%) NCSC
9 1 (0.56%) RMADS
9 1 (0.56%) SLA
9 1 (0.56%) SOC 2
System Software
1 33 (18.44%) Docker
2 30 (16.76%) Active Directory
3 29 (16.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (9.50%) Firmware
4 17 (9.50%) VMware NSX
5 5 (2.79%) NDS
5 5 (2.79%) NetIQ eDirectory
5 5 (2.79%) RACF
6 4 (2.23%) ProxySG
6 4 (2.23%) Virtual Machines
7 3 (1.68%) VMware ESXi
8 2 (1.12%) Hyper-V
8 2 (1.12%) vSphere
9 1 (0.56%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 1 (0.56%) Squid
9 1 (0.56%) XenApp
9 1 (0.56%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 40 (22.35%) Ansible
2 29 (16.20%) Kubernetes
3 26 (14.53%) Terraform
4 18 (10.06%) Single Sign-On
5 5 (2.79%) FortiGate
6 4 (2.23%) CASB
6 4 (2.23%) Nessus
7 3 (1.68%) Prometheus
8 2 (1.12%) Nagios
8 2 (1.12%) SCCM
8 2 (1.12%) vCenter Server
9 1 (0.56%) BladeLogic
9 1 (0.56%) Failover Clustering
9 1 (0.56%) Grafana
9 1 (0.56%) Microsoft Intune
9 1 (0.56%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.56%) QRadar
9 1 (0.56%) Red Hat Satellite
9 1 (0.56%) SCOM
9 1 (0.56%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 69 (38.55%) F5
2 44 (24.58%) Blue Coat
3 42 (23.46%) VMware
4 35 (19.55%) CheckPoint
5 34 (18.99%) McAfee
6 31 (17.32%) Cisco
6 31 (17.32%) Microsoft
7 30 (16.76%) Palo Alto
8 24 (13.41%) Splunk
9 22 (12.29%) NetApp
10 15 (8.38%) Thales
11 13 (7.26%) Juniper
12 10 (5.59%) Oracle
13 9 (5.03%) OpenText
14 8 (4.47%) Zscaler
15 6 (3.35%) Fortinet
16 5 (2.79%) Axway
16 5 (2.79%) Micro Focus
16 5 (2.79%) NetIQ
16 5 (2.79%) Symantec