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 28 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 396 374 388
Rank change year-on-year -22 +14 +65
Contract jobs citing SSL 203 195 238
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.56% 0.53% 0.52%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 5.09% 4.38% 3.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 128 119 131
10th Percentile £356 £350 £350
25th Percentile £402 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £566 £540 £536
Median % change year-on-year +4.81% +0.75% +1.13%
75th Percentile £663 £644 £626
90th Percentile £700 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £538 £500
% change year-on-year -6.98% +7.50% +12.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 1 13
10th Percentile - - £54.90
25th Percentile £45.00 £46.25 -
Median hourly rate £65.00 £47.50 £65.98
Median % change year-on-year +36.84% -28.01% +14.82%
75th Percentile £80.00 £48.75 -
90th Percentile £85.00 - £67.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £47.50 £65.98
% change year-on-year +36.84% -28.01% +14.82%

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 3,987 4,455 6,359
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.04% 12.17% 13.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,585 2,559 3,940
10th Percentile £206 £223 £211
25th Percentile £356 £370 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £613
90th Percentile £675 £686 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 194 173 347
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.53 £17.72
25th Percentile £20.56 £23.59 £22.88
Median hourly rate £34.00 £42.50 £56.40
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% -24.65% +35.90%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £66.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £76.16
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £48.03 £56.49
% change year-on-year -11.51% -14.98% +25.53%

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 28 November 2025.

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 28 November 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for SSL in the UK

SSL
Top 16 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 28 November 2025. 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 +3 181 £575 +4.55% 55
UK excluding London -48 90 £500 -6.98% 47
London +30 87 £600 +14.29% 23
Work from Home +3 65 £550 +4.76% 34
North of England -25 43 £604 +9.73% 11
Midlands -7 27 £380 -16.94% 6
North West -11 27 £514 +33.57% 7
West Midlands -13 26 £380 -16.94% 5
Yorkshire -36 15 £675 +22.73% 4
East of England -11 13 £567 +95.52% 5
South East -19 12 £415 -33.60% 21
Scotland -20 5 £525 +1.94% 2
South West -7 3 £557 +31.06% 2
Wales -1 1 £500 - 3
North East -10 1 £550 -6.78%
East Midlands -18 1 - - 1

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 21 (10.34%) Confluence
2 7 (3.45%) TPMS
3 6 (2.96%) Apache
4 4 (1.97%) JBoss
5 3 (1.48%) WebSphere
5 3 (1.48%) WebSphere Application Server
6 2 (0.99%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.99%) Apache Spark
6 2 (0.99%) Microsoft Exchange
6 2 (0.99%) Oracle HTTP Server
6 2 (0.99%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.99%) WebLogic
7 1 (0.49%) Anypoint
7 1 (0.49%) SharePoint
Applications
1 2 (0.99%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.49%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 13 (6.40%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.49%) RMDS
Cloud Services
1 55 (27.09%) AWS
2 27 (13.30%) Azure
3 26 (12.81%) Amazon S3
4 24 (11.82%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 24 (11.82%) Amazon EC2
4 24 (11.82%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 22 (10.84%) Amazon ELB
6 16 (7.88%) GCP
7 12 (5.91%) GitHub
8 9 (4.43%) Serverless
9 7 (3.45%) AWS CloudFormation
9 7 (3.45%) AWS Lambda
10 6 (2.96%) Entra ID
11 5 (2.46%) Amazon ECS
12 4 (1.97%) Amazon EKS
12 4 (1.97%) Apigee
12 4 (1.97%) GitHub Actions
12 4 (1.97%) Microsoft 365
13 3 (1.48%) Firebase
13 3 (1.48%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 93 (45.81%) DNS
2 82 (40.39%) Firewall
3 79 (38.92%) TCP/IP
4 66 (32.51%) VPN
5 61 (30.05%) Network Security
6 49 (24.14%) HTTP
7 22 (10.84%) WAN
8 19 (9.36%) IPsec
8 19 (9.36%) Wireless
8 19 (9.36%) Wireshark
9 17 (8.37%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 15 (7.39%) BIG-IP
10 15 (7.39%) DHCP
10 15 (7.39%) DMVPN
11 14 (6.90%) BGP
11 14 (6.90%) HTTPS
12 13 (6.40%) OSPF
13 12 (5.91%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
13 12 (5.91%) SSH
14 11 (5.42%) Cisco IPT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (4.93%) SQL Server
2 8 (3.94%) Apache Cassandra
3 7 (3.45%) PostgreSQL
4 6 (2.96%) NoSQL
5 4 (1.97%) DocumentDB
5 4 (1.97%) MongoDB
6 3 (1.48%) Relational Database
7 2 (0.99%) Big Data
7 2 (0.99%) Delta Lake
7 2 (0.99%) Hadoop
7 2 (0.99%) Parquet
7 2 (0.99%) Redis
8 1 (0.49%) Mixpanel
Development Applications
1 35 (17.24%) Jenkins
2 34 (16.75%) Git
3 23 (11.33%) JIRA
4 19 (9.36%) GitLab
5 15 (7.39%) Fiddler
6 4 (1.97%) Robot Framework
7 3 (1.48%) Log4j
8 2 (0.99%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.99%) MLflow
8 2 (0.99%) Poetry
8 2 (0.99%) PyCharm
8 2 (0.99%) SonarQube
8 2 (0.99%) Visual Studio Code
9 1 (0.49%) CircleCI
9 1 (0.49%) Postman
9 1 (0.49%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (0.49%) Subversion
General
1 45 (22.17%) Social Skills
2 33 (16.26%) Analytical Skills
3 30 (14.78%) Finance
4 21 (10.34%) Public Sector
5 19 (9.36%) Banking
6 14 (6.90%) Investment Banking
7 10 (4.93%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (3.94%) Telecoms
9 5 (2.46%) Financial Institution
9 5 (2.46%) Military
10 3 (1.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.99%) Advertising
11 2 (0.99%) Aerospace
11 2 (0.99%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.49%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.49%) Italian Language
12 1 (0.49%) Law
12 1 (0.49%) Legal
12 1 (0.49%) Polish Language
12 1 (0.49%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 43 (21.18%) Network Engineer
2 40 (19.70%) Senior
3 29 (14.29%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 27 (13.30%) Developer
5 21 (10.34%) Architect
6 19 (9.36%) Security Engineer
7 16 (7.88%) DevOps Engineer
8 15 (7.39%) Consultant
9 13 (6.40%) Senior DevOps
9 13 (6.40%) Senior DevOps Engineer
10 12 (5.91%) Web Engineer
11 11 (5.42%) Analyst
11 11 (5.42%) Network Security Engineer
12 10 (4.93%) ServiceNow Architect
12 10 (4.93%) SOC Analyst
13 9 (4.43%) Blue Coat Engineer
13 9 (4.43%) Cryptography Engineer
13 9 (4.43%) Full-Stack Developer
13 9 (4.43%) Python Engineer
13 9 (4.43%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (18.72%) LDAP
2 32 (15.76%) REST
3 27 (13.30%) SOAP
4 25 (12.32%) SAML
5 23 (11.33%) JSON
6 20 (9.85%) OAuth
7 17 (8.37%) AngularJS
8 16 (7.88%) HTML
8 16 (7.88%) JDBC
9 13 (6.40%) Apache Camel
9 13 (6.40%) HTML5
9 13 (6.40%) jQuery
9 13 (6.40%) ODBC
9 13 (6.40%) RabbitMQ
9 13 (6.40%) Web Services
10 11 (5.42%) 802.1X
10 11 (5.42%) Kafka
11 10 (4.93%) XML
12 8 (3.94%) RESTful
13 5 (2.46%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 24 (11.82%) Management Information System
2 23 (11.33%) PKI
3 17 (8.37%) Data Centre
4 12 (5.91%) Analytical Mindset
4 12 (5.91%) Onboarding
5 10 (4.93%) Cyberattack
6 8 (3.94%) CSOC
6 8 (3.94%) Cyber Threat
6 8 (3.94%) Security Operations Centre
7 6 (2.96%) Cloud Native
7 6 (2.96%) Security Posture
8 5 (2.46%) Cloud Security Posture
8 5 (2.46%) Private Cloud
9 4 (1.97%) Algorithms
9 4 (1.97%) Linux Command Line
10 3 (1.48%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 2 (0.99%) Hybrid Cloud
11 2 (0.99%) Replication
11 2 (0.99%) Virtual Team
12 1 (0.49%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 63 (31.03%) Linux
2 36 (17.73%) Windows
3 20 (9.85%) Unix
4 8 (3.94%) Windows Server
5 7 (3.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 4 (1.97%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.99%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.99%) CentOS
7 2 (0.99%) Mac OS
8 1 (0.49%) Android
8 1 (0.49%) Solaris
8 1 (0.49%) VMS
8 1 (0.49%) Windows Server 2003
8 1 (0.49%) Windows Server 2016
8 1 (0.49%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 65 (32.02%) DevOps
2 42 (20.69%) CI/CD
3 35 (17.24%) High Availability
4 32 (15.76%) Infrastructure as Code
4 32 (15.76%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 31 (15.27%) Problem-Solving
6 30 (14.78%) Infrastructure Automation
7 29 (14.29%) Incident Response
7 29 (14.29%) Load Balancing
8 28 (13.79%) Agile
8 28 (13.79%) Cybersecurity
9 27 (13.30%) Root Cause Analysis
10 23 (11.33%) Test Automation
11 21 (10.34%) DevSecOps
12 20 (9.85%) Microservices
12 20 (9.85%) Migration
13 19 (9.36%) Containerisation
14 17 (8.37%) Change Management
14 17 (8.37%) SIEM
14 17 (8.37%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 68 (33.50%) Python
2 34 (16.75%) Bash
3 28 (13.79%) JavaScript
4 16 (7.88%) Java
4 16 (7.88%) PowerShell
5 13 (6.40%) SQL
6 12 (5.91%) Perl
7 3 (1.48%) C#
8 2 (0.99%) Groovy
8 2 (0.99%) PHP
8 2 (0.99%) Shell Script
9 1 (0.49%) ActionScript
9 1 (0.49%) ActionScript 2.0
9 1 (0.49%) C
9 1 (0.49%) C++
9 1 (0.49%) Kotlin
9 1 (0.49%) Objective-C
9 1 (0.49%) Swift
9 1 (0.49%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 82 (40.39%) Security Cleared
2 71 (34.98%) SC Cleared
3 13 (6.40%) CISSP
4 12 (5.91%) Microsoft Certification
5 11 (5.42%) Degree
5 11 (5.42%) DV Cleared
6 10 (4.93%) Cisco Certification
7 7 (3.45%) FFIEC
8 6 (2.96%) CCNP
8 6 (2.96%) MCSE
9 5 (2.46%) CCSA
9 5 (2.46%) CompTIA Security+
9 5 (2.46%) MCSA
10 3 (1.48%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 3 (1.48%) Computer Science Degree
10 3 (1.48%) RHCE
11 2 (0.99%) CCSP
11 2 (0.99%) CEH
11 2 (0.99%) CISM
11 2 (0.99%) IBM Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (7.39%) GDPR
2 12 (5.91%) PCI DSS
3 9 (4.43%) NIST
4 7 (3.45%) GLBA
5 6 (2.96%) HIPAA
6 4 (1.97%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 3 (1.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (1.48%) QA
8 2 (0.99%) Data Quality
8 2 (0.99%) FIPS 140-2
9 1 (0.49%) SLA
9 1 (0.49%) SOC 2
System Software
1 43 (21.18%) Docker
2 22 (10.84%) Active Directory
3 13 (6.40%) Firmware
4 12 (5.91%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (2.46%) NDS
5 5 (2.46%) NetIQ eDirectory
6 4 (1.97%) ProxySG
6 4 (1.97%) VMware ESXi
7 3 (1.48%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.49%) Embedded Firmware
8 1 (0.49%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.49%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 1 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
8 1 (0.49%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.49%) vSphere
8 1 (0.49%) XenApp
8 1 (0.49%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 52 (25.62%) Ansible
2 39 (19.21%) Terraform
3 26 (12.81%) Kubernetes
4 24 (11.82%) Single Sign-On
5 7 (3.45%) CASB
6 6 (2.96%) Nessus
7 5 (2.46%) Prometheus
8 4 (1.97%) CA Spectrum
9 3 (1.48%) Microsoft Intune
9 3 (1.48%) Nagios
9 3 (1.48%) SCCM
9 3 (1.48%) SCOM
10 2 (0.99%) Argo
10 2 (0.99%) FortiGate
10 2 (0.99%) Istio
10 2 (0.99%) McAfee ePO
10 2 (0.99%) Progress Chef
10 2 (0.99%) Rsyslog
10 2 (0.99%) SELinux
11 1 (0.49%) VxRail
Vendors
1 71 (34.98%) F5
2 41 (20.20%) CheckPoint
3 34 (16.75%) Blue Coat
4 28 (13.79%) Palo Alto
5 27 (13.30%) Cisco
6 26 (12.81%) Splunk
7 21 (10.34%) Juniper
8 20 (9.85%) McAfee
9 19 (9.36%) Microsoft
10 18 (8.87%) Remedy
10 18 (8.87%) ServiceNow
10 18 (8.87%) VMware
11 13 (6.40%) BMC
11 13 (6.40%) HP
11 13 (6.40%) Ivanti
11 13 (6.40%) Oracle
12 12 (5.91%) NetApp
12 12 (5.91%) Zscaler
13 11 (5.42%) Fortinet
13 11 (5.42%) Thales