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

6 months to
1 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 449 361 442
Rank change year-on-year -88 +81 -27
Contract jobs citing SSL 224 201 141
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.42% 0.61% 0.37%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 4.42% 5.22% 3.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 122 125 79
10th Percentile £380 £350 £396
25th Percentile £458 £380 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £525 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.38% -8.70% +4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £656
90th Percentile £650 £695 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% +13.17%
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 5,069 3,853 4,615
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.45% 11.77% 11.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,982 2,359 2,742
10th Percentile £250 £238 £230
25th Percentile £400 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £469 £500
% change year-on-year +2.35% -6.20% +10.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 376 201 288
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £20.50
Median hourly rate £26.00 £45.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -42.22% -10.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £65.22 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.81 £42.50 £55.75
% change year-on-year -39.28% -23.76% -1.32%

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 1 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
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 1 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 -116 191 £538 -2.27% 82
UK excluding London -47 139 £525 +5.00% 42
London -105 67 £550 -8.33% 51
Work from Home -48 66 £550 -1.26% 32
North of England -28 62 £600 +15.38% 7
North West -26 41 £600 - 4
Midlands -41 35 £375 +1.90% 1
West Midlands -35 32 £350 -7.89% 1
South East -46 31 £488 +30.00% 18
Scotland -5 20 £600 +14.29% 3
Yorkshire -25 19 £600 +20.00% 3
East of England -35 5 £450 -25.31% 13
East Midlands -15 3 £475 +32.68%
South West -41 3 £350 -40.17% 1
North East -45 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 15 (6.70%) Confluence
2 3 (1.34%) Apache
3 2 (0.89%) IBM HTTP Server
3 2 (0.89%) IIS
3 2 (0.89%) Oracle HTTP Server
3 2 (0.89%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.89%) WebSphere
3 2 (0.89%) WebSphere Application Server
3 2 (0.89%) WebSphere Portal
4 1 (0.45%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.45%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.45%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.45%) JBoss
4 1 (0.45%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.45%) nginx
Applications
1 4 (1.79%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.89%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 2 (0.89%) Houdini
2 2 (0.89%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.89%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 3 (1.34%) Infor LN
2 2 (0.89%) 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 74 (33.04%) Azure
2 45 (20.09%) AWS
3 33 (14.73%) Entra ID
4 20 (8.93%) GCP
5 18 (8.04%) Azure DevOps
6 15 (6.70%) Microsoft 365
7 14 (6.25%) GitHub
8 12 (5.36%) Datadog
8 12 (5.36%) Power Platform
9 11 (4.91%) Azure Monitor
9 11 (4.91%) SaaS
10 9 (4.02%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 8 (3.57%) AWS CloudFormation
11 8 (3.57%) AWS Lambda
11 8 (3.57%) Azure Key Vault
11 8 (3.57%) Serverless
12 7 (3.13%) AWS KMS
12 7 (3.13%) GitHub Actions
13 6 (2.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 6 (2.68%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 103 (45.98%) DNS
2 73 (32.59%) Firewall
3 56 (25.00%) VPN
4 54 (24.11%) TCP/IP
5 52 (23.21%) HTTP
5 52 (23.21%) Network Security
6 44 (19.64%) WAN
7 35 (15.63%) BIG-IP
8 33 (14.73%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 32 (14.29%) IPsec
10 29 (12.95%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
11 22 (9.82%) HTTPS
12 21 (9.38%) DHCP
12 21 (9.38%) LAN
12 21 (9.38%) Wireless
13 20 (8.93%) BGP
13 20 (8.93%) Internet
13 20 (8.93%) Wireshark
14 17 (7.59%) SD-WAN
15 12 (5.36%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (6.70%) SQL Server
2 13 (5.80%) MySQL
3 10 (4.46%) Power BI
3 10 (4.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 7 (3.13%) PostgreSQL
5 6 (2.68%) MariaDB
6 5 (2.23%) MongoDB
7 4 (1.79%) Metadata
8 3 (1.34%) SQLPlus
9 2 (0.89%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.89%) Oracle BI Publisher
9 2 (0.89%) Oracle Reports
9 2 (0.89%) RDBMS
9 2 (0.89%) Relational Database
10 1 (0.45%) Neo4j
10 1 (0.45%) NoSQL
10 1 (0.45%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 25 (11.16%) JIRA
2 17 (7.59%) Jenkins
3 15 (6.70%) Fiddler
4 12 (5.36%) Git
5 10 (4.46%) GitLab
6 5 (2.23%) Browser DevTools
6 5 (2.23%) Sonatype Nexus
7 3 (1.34%) Maven
8 2 (0.89%) git-flow
8 2 (0.89%) Introscope
9 1 (0.45%) Ant
9 1 (0.45%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 1 (0.45%) Mockito
General
1 43 (19.20%) Finance
2 35 (15.63%) Banking
3 32 (14.29%) Social Skills
4 25 (11.16%) Legal
5 23 (10.27%) Analytical Skills
6 16 (7.14%) Investment Banking
7 14 (6.25%) Public Sector
8 10 (4.46%) Telecoms
9 8 (3.57%) Documentation Skills
10 6 (2.68%) Publishing
11 3 (1.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (1.34%) Manufacturing
12 2 (0.89%) Retail
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 51 (22.77%) Network Engineer
2 31 (13.84%) Security Engineer
3 25 (11.16%) Senior
4 24 (10.71%) Administrator
5 17 (7.59%) IP Network Engineer
6 16 (7.14%) Web Engineer
7 15 (6.70%) Blue Coat Engineer
7 15 (6.70%) Lead
8 12 (5.36%) Network Security Engineer
8 12 (5.36%) Senior Network Engineer
9 11 (4.91%) DBA
9 11 (4.91%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 10 (4.46%) Architect
10 10 (4.46%) Linux Engineer
10 10 (4.46%) SQL DBA
11 9 (4.02%) Developer
12 8 (3.57%) Network Architect
13 7 (3.13%) DevOps Engineer
14 6 (2.68%) Infrastructure Specialist
14 6 (2.68%) Senior Linux Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (12.95%) SAML
2 24 (10.71%) Terraform
3 23 (10.27%) Middleware
4 17 (7.59%) 802.1X
4 17 (7.59%) ISPF
5 13 (5.80%) OAuth
6 11 (4.91%) REST
7 9 (4.02%) LDAP
7 9 (4.02%) OAuth2
7 9 (4.02%) OpenID
7 9 (4.02%) SOAP
7 9 (4.02%) Web Services
8 7 (3.13%) Kafka
8 7 (3.13%) XML
9 6 (2.68%) JSON
10 4 (1.79%) CSS
10 4 (1.79%) EDI
11 3 (1.34%) EDIFACT
11 3 (1.34%) JMS
11 3 (1.34%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 36 (16.07%) Clustering
2 29 (12.95%) PKI
3 18 (8.04%) Mainframe
4 17 (7.59%) Management Information System
4 17 (7.59%) Onboarding
5 16 (7.14%) Data Centre
6 13 (5.80%) Replication
7 12 (5.36%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 12 (5.36%) Enterprise Software
8 10 (4.46%) Self-Motivation
9 9 (4.02%) Cyber Threat
10 8 (3.57%) Security Posture
11 7 (3.13%) Cloud Security Posture
12 6 (2.68%) Distributed Applications
12 6 (2.68%) Hybrid Cloud
13 5 (2.23%) Linux Command Line
14 4 (1.79%) Algorithms
14 4 (1.79%) Data Structures
14 4 (1.79%) Fibre Optics
14 4 (1.79%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 50 (22.32%) Linux
2 48 (21.43%) Windows
3 27 (12.05%) Windows Server
4 20 (8.93%) zOS
5 15 (6.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (4.91%) Unix
7 4 (1.79%) Mac OS
8 3 (1.34%) Windows Server 2019
9 2 (0.89%) Oracle Linux
9 2 (0.89%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 2 (0.89%) VMS
10 1 (0.45%) Amazon Linux
10 1 (0.45%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 55 (24.55%) ITIL
2 50 (22.32%) DevOps
3 46 (20.54%) Load Balancing
4 34 (15.18%) High Availability
5 33 (14.73%) CI/CD
6 30 (13.39%) SIEM
7 29 (12.95%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 26 (11.61%) Performance Tuning
8 26 (11.61%) Zero Trust
9 25 (11.16%) Change Management
9 25 (11.16%) Data Loss Prevention
10 24 (10.71%) Cybersecurity
10 24 (10.71%) Problem-Solving
11 23 (10.27%) Performance Optimisation
12 22 (9.82%) Migration
13 20 (8.93%) Agile
14 18 (8.04%) Infrastructure as Code
14 18 (8.04%) Project Delivery
15 17 (7.59%) Network Virtualisation
16 16 (7.14%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 57 (25.45%) Python
2 32 (14.29%) SQL
3 30 (13.39%) PowerShell
4 24 (10.71%) Bash
5 11 (4.91%) Java
5 11 (4.91%) Perl
6 10 (4.46%) Shell Script
6 10 (4.46%) T-SQL
7 9 (4.02%) Groovy
8 5 (2.23%) ActionScript
8 5 (2.23%) JavaScript
9 4 (1.79%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.89%) Go
10 2 (0.89%) Jython
11 1 (0.45%) ActionScript 2.0
11 1 (0.45%) C
11 1 (0.45%) C#
11 1 (0.45%) Cypher
11 1 (0.45%) R
11 1 (0.45%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 72 (32.14%) Security Cleared
2 52 (23.21%) SC Cleared
3 19 (8.48%) Degree
4 18 (8.04%) Azure Certification
4 18 (8.04%) DV Cleared
5 12 (5.36%) BPSS Clearance
6 11 (4.91%) Cisco Certification
6 11 (4.91%) Microsoft Certification
7 9 (4.02%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 8 (3.57%) CCNP
9 7 (3.13%) CISSP
10 6 (2.68%) CCIE
11 3 (1.34%) RHCSA
12 2 (0.89%) CompTIA Security+
12 2 (0.89%) JNCIE
12 2 (0.89%) LFCS
12 2 (0.89%) MCSE
12 2 (0.89%) PMP
12 2 (0.89%) PRINCE2 Certification
12 2 (0.89%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (4.91%) NIST
2 8 (3.57%) GDPR
3 6 (2.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 6 (2.68%) SLA
4 2 (0.89%) Cyber Essentials
4 2 (0.89%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 2 (0.89%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.45%) DICOM
5 1 (0.45%) HL7
5 1 (0.45%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 48 (21.43%) VMware Infrastructure
2 43 (19.20%) Active Directory
3 22 (9.82%) Virtual Machines
4 19 (8.48%) Hyper-V
5 17 (7.59%) Firmware
5 17 (7.59%) RACF
6 14 (6.25%) Docker
7 10 (4.46%) VMware NSX
8 7 (3.13%) Ceph
8 7 (3.13%) Squid
8 7 (3.13%) vSphere
9 4 (1.79%) VMware ESXi
10 3 (1.34%) Virtual Servers
11 2 (0.89%) Apache ZooKeeper
11 2 (0.89%) ProxySG
11 2 (0.89%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 2 (0.89%) Virtual Desktop
12 1 (0.45%) KVM
12 1 (0.45%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 47 (20.98%) Ansible
2 22 (9.82%) Single Sign-On
3 17 (7.59%) Kubernetes
3 17 (7.59%) OMEGAMON
4 15 (6.70%) Grafana
5 10 (4.46%) Prometheus
5 10 (4.46%) SCOM
6 9 (4.02%) CASB
7 8 (3.57%) FortiGate
7 8 (3.57%) Puppet
8 5 (2.23%) Packer
9 4 (1.79%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 4 (1.79%) CA Single Sign-On
9 4 (1.79%) Cisco CUCM
9 4 (1.79%) Microsoft Intune
9 4 (1.79%) PingFederate
9 4 (1.79%) systemd
10 3 (1.34%) Argo
10 3 (1.34%) yum
11 2 (0.89%) Consul
Vendors
1 54 (24.11%) F5
2 53 (23.66%) VMware
3 41 (18.30%) Cisco
4 38 (16.96%) Microsoft
5 34 (15.18%) ServiceNow
6 33 (14.73%) Zscaler
7 29 (12.95%) Blue Coat
7 29 (12.95%) Palo Alto
8 23 (10.27%) IBM
9 18 (8.04%) McAfee
10 17 (7.59%) Juniper
11 15 (6.70%) CheckPoint
11 15 (6.70%) Fortinet
11 15 (6.70%) NetApp
12 11 (4.91%) Oracle
12 11 (4.91%) Red Hat
13 10 (4.46%) SolarWinds
14 8 (3.57%) Splunk
15 7 (3.13%) Dynatrace
15 7 (3.13%) Ping Identity