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

6 months to
18 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 459 383 411
Rank change year-on-year -76 +28 +39
Contract jobs citing SSL 206 169 187
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.39% 0.52% 0.44%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 4.09% 4.28% 3.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 118 99 113
10th Percentile £363 £347 £400
25th Percentile £450 £380 £436
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -8.70% +9.00%
75th Percentile £600 £617 £638
90th Percentile £650 £700 £738
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 12 4
10th Percentile - £46.00 £39.49
25th Percentile - £55.00 £43.60
Median hourly rate - £81.01 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year - +76.57% -26.00%
75th Percentile - £82.58 £46.60
90th Percentile - £84.90 £47.89
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £81.01 £45.88
% change year-on-year - +76.57% -26.00%

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 5,032 3,950 5,255
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.51% 12.14% 12.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,041 2,407 3,109
10th Percentile £250 £235 £213
25th Percentile £400 £375 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £670 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +2.53% -4.04% +7.61%
Number of hourly rates quoted 332 192 405
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.11 £17.63
Median hourly rate £26.22 £48.75 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -46.22% +21.88% +14.29%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.90 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.22 £42.50 £47.50
% change year-on-year -38.31% -10.53% -0.87%

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 18 July 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 18 July 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 -98 176 £525 +0.67% 39
UK excluding London -58 139 £525 +5.00% 33
North of England -31 68 £600 +20.00% 10
Work from Home -54 55 £563 +9.76% 20
London -86 47 £550 -4.76% 13
North West -16 43 £600 - 7
Midlands -33 36 £378 +3.99% 5
West Midlands -35 35 £375 -6.72% 3
South East -46 28 £488 +30.00% 12
Yorkshire -29 24 £600 +20.00% 2
Scotland 0 15 £600 +14.29% 1
East of England -33 6 £450 -25.00% 2
North East -32 2 £413 -20.67% 2
South West -39 2 - - 1
East Midlands -15 1 £475 +32.68% 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 11 (5.34%) Confluence
2 3 (1.46%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.97%) IBM HTTP Server
3 2 (0.97%) IIS
3 2 (0.97%) Oracle HTTP Server
3 2 (0.97%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.97%) WebSphere
3 2 (0.97%) WebSphere Application Server
3 2 (0.97%) WebSphere Portal
4 1 (0.49%) Apache
4 1 (0.49%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.49%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.49%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.49%) TPMS
Applications
1 5 (2.43%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.46%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.97%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 2 (0.97%) Houdini
3 2 (0.97%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 3 (1.46%) Infor LN
2 2 (0.97%) Dynamics GP
Cloud Services
1 70 (33.98%) Azure
2 39 (18.93%) AWS
3 32 (15.53%) Entra ID
4 17 (8.25%) GCP
5 13 (6.31%) Microsoft 365
6 11 (5.34%) GitHub
6 11 (5.34%) SaaS
7 10 (4.85%) Azure DevOps
7 10 (4.85%) Datadog
8 9 (4.37%) IaaS
9 8 (3.88%) Serverless
9 8 (3.88%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 7 (3.40%) Power Platform
11 6 (2.91%) Azure Key Vault
12 5 (2.43%) Azure Logic Apps
12 5 (2.43%) Azure Monitor
13 4 (1.94%) Amazon S3
13 4 (1.94%) AWS KMS
13 4 (1.94%) AWS Lambda
13 4 (1.94%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 106 (51.46%) DNS
2 80 (38.83%) Firewall
3 63 (30.58%) TCP/IP
4 55 (26.70%) VPN
5 54 (26.21%) HTTP
6 50 (24.27%) Network Security
7 41 (19.90%) WAN
8 38 (18.45%) BIG-IP
9 34 (16.50%) IPsec
10 33 (16.02%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 29 (14.08%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
12 26 (12.62%) DHCP
13 24 (11.65%) Wireshark
14 21 (10.19%) LAN
15 19 (9.22%) BGP
15 19 (9.22%) Internet
16 18 (8.74%) HTTPS
16 18 (8.74%) Wireless
17 16 (7.77%) SD-WAN
18 12 (5.83%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (4.37%) SQL Server
2 5 (2.43%) MySQL
2 5 (2.43%) Power BI
2 5 (2.43%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 4 (1.94%) MariaDB
3 4 (1.94%) Metadata
3 4 (1.94%) MongoDB
3 4 (1.94%) PostgreSQL
4 2 (0.97%) SQLPlus
5 1 (0.49%) Amazon RDS
5 1 (0.49%) Neo4j
5 1 (0.49%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 21 (10.19%) JIRA
2 19 (9.22%) Fiddler
3 12 (5.83%) Jenkins
4 9 (4.37%) Git
5 5 (2.43%) Browser DevTools
6 4 (1.94%) GitLab
6 4 (1.94%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.97%) Introscope
General
1 46 (22.33%) Finance
2 37 (17.96%) Banking
3 28 (13.59%) Social Skills
4 24 (11.65%) Legal
5 17 (8.25%) Investment Banking
6 16 (7.77%) Analytical Skills
7 13 (6.31%) Public Sector
8 10 (4.85%) Telecoms
9 8 (3.88%) Documentation Skills
10 5 (2.43%) Publishing
11 3 (1.46%) Manufacturing
12 2 (0.97%) Retail
13 1 (0.49%) Financial Institution
13 1 (0.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 1 (0.49%) Influencing Skills
13 1 (0.49%) Military
13 1 (0.49%) Pharmaceutical
13 1 (0.49%) Police
Job Titles
1 57 (27.67%) Network Engineer
2 27 (13.11%) Security Engineer
3 25 (12.14%) Senior
4 22 (10.68%) Administrator
5 20 (9.71%) Web Engineer
6 19 (9.22%) IP Network Engineer
7 16 (7.77%) Blue Coat Engineer
8 15 (7.28%) Architect
9 12 (5.83%) Network Security Engineer
9 12 (5.83%) Senior Network Engineer
10 9 (4.37%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 8 (3.88%) Network Architect
12 7 (3.40%) Lead
13 6 (2.91%) DBA
13 6 (2.91%) Linux Engineer
13 6 (2.91%) Windows Engineer
14 5 (2.43%) Developer
14 5 (2.43%) Security Specialist
14 5 (2.43%) SQL DBA
14 5 (2.43%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (13.59%) SAML
2 22 (10.68%) Middleware
3 17 (8.25%) ISPF
4 13 (6.31%) 802.1X
4 13 (6.31%) LDAP
4 13 (6.31%) OAuth
5 11 (5.34%) OAuth2
6 10 (4.85%) OpenID
7 8 (3.88%) Web Services
8 6 (2.91%) Kafka
9 5 (2.43%) XML
10 4 (1.94%) CSS
10 4 (1.94%) JSON
10 4 (1.94%) REST
10 4 (1.94%) SOAP
10 4 (1.94%) XACML
11 3 (1.46%) EDI
11 3 (1.46%) EDIFACT
11 3 (1.46%) JMS
12 2 (0.97%) JDBC
Miscellaneous
1 31 (15.05%) Clustering
2 25 (12.14%) PKI
3 19 (9.22%) Management Information System
4 17 (8.25%) Mainframe
5 16 (7.77%) Data Centre
6 14 (6.80%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 12 (5.83%) Security Posture
8 11 (5.34%) Cloud Security Posture
9 10 (4.85%) Enterprise Software
9 10 (4.85%) Self-Motivation
10 9 (4.37%) Onboarding
11 8 (3.88%) Cyber Threat
11 8 (3.88%) Replication
12 6 (2.91%) Hybrid Cloud
13 4 (1.94%) Algorithms
13 4 (1.94%) Fibre Optics
13 4 (1.94%) Linux Command Line
14 3 (1.46%) Data Structures
14 3 (1.46%) Legacy Systems
14 3 (1.46%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 49 (23.79%) Windows
2 40 (19.42%) Linux
3 26 (12.62%) Windows Server
4 17 (8.25%) zOS
5 13 (6.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 9 (4.37%) Unix
7 4 (1.94%) Mac OS
7 4 (1.94%) Windows Server 2019
8 2 (0.97%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.97%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 2 (0.97%) VMS
9 1 (0.49%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 59 (28.64%) ITIL
2 45 (21.84%) Load Balancing
3 38 (18.45%) DevOps
4 35 (16.99%) High Availability
5 29 (14.08%) Data Loss Prevention
5 29 (14.08%) SIEM
6 28 (13.59%) Cybersecurity
7 27 (13.11%) CI/CD
8 26 (12.62%) Zero Trust
9 25 (12.14%) Change Management
10 24 (11.65%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 23 (11.17%) Performance Optimisation
12 22 (10.68%) Cloud Security
13 20 (9.71%) Migration
13 20 (9.71%) Problem-Solving
14 19 (9.22%) Malware Detection/Protection
15 18 (8.74%) Agile
16 17 (8.25%) Infrastructure as Code
17 16 (7.77%) Project Delivery
18 15 (7.28%) Vulnerability Remediation
Programming Languages
1 47 (22.82%) Python
2 27 (13.11%) SQL
3 23 (11.17%) PowerShell
4 20 (9.71%) Bash
5 7 (3.40%) Groovy
6 6 (2.91%) Java
7 5 (2.43%) Perl
7 5 (2.43%) Shell Script
7 5 (2.43%) T-SQL
8 4 (1.94%) ActionScript
9 3 (1.46%) JavaScript
9 3 (1.46%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.97%) Jython
11 1 (0.49%) C
11 1 (0.49%) Cypher
11 1 (0.49%) Go
11 1 (0.49%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 53 (25.73%) Security Cleared
2 37 (17.96%) SC Cleared
3 18 (8.74%) Degree
4 15 (7.28%) DV Cleared
5 14 (6.80%) CISSP
6 13 (6.31%) Cisco Certification
7 12 (5.83%) Azure Certification
7 12 (5.83%) CCNP
8 10 (4.85%) Microsoft Certification
9 7 (3.40%) CompTIA Security+
10 6 (2.91%) BPSS Clearance
10 6 (2.91%) MCSE
11 5 (2.43%) CCIE
12 4 (1.94%) CISM
12 4 (1.94%) MCSA
13 3 (1.46%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 1 (0.49%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 1 (0.49%) AWS Certification
14 1 (0.49%) CCSE
14 1 (0.49%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (6.31%) NIST
2 9 (4.37%) GDPR
3 7 (3.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 4 (1.94%) SLA
5 2 (0.97%) Cyber Essentials
5 2 (0.97%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 2 (0.97%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.49%) DICOM
6 1 (0.49%) GLBA
6 1 (0.49%) HL7
6 1 (0.49%) NCSC
6 1 (0.49%) RMADS
System Software
1 50 (24.27%) Active Directory
2 48 (23.30%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (10.19%) RACF
4 20 (9.71%) Virtual Machines
5 19 (9.22%) Firmware
6 16 (7.77%) Hyper-V
7 13 (6.31%) VMware NSX
8 8 (3.88%) vSphere
9 6 (2.91%) Docker
9 6 (2.91%) Squid
9 6 (2.91%) VMware ESXi
10 4 (1.94%) Ceph
11 3 (1.46%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.97%) Apache ZooKeeper
12 2 (0.97%) ProxySG
12 2 (0.97%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 2 (0.97%) Virtual Desktop
13 1 (0.49%) KVM
13 1 (0.49%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 37 (17.96%) Ansible
2 24 (11.65%) Single Sign-On
3 19 (9.22%) Terraform
4 17 (8.25%) OMEGAMON
5 13 (6.31%) CASB
6 12 (5.83%) Kubernetes
7 11 (5.34%) Grafana
8 8 (3.88%) FortiGate
9 7 (3.40%) Prometheus
9 7 (3.40%) Puppet
10 5 (2.43%) SCOM
11 4 (1.94%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 4 (1.94%) CA Single Sign-On
11 4 (1.94%) Cisco CUCM
11 4 (1.94%) Microsoft Intune
11 4 (1.94%) Nessus
11 4 (1.94%) Packer
11 4 (1.94%) PingFederate
12 3 (1.46%) systemd
12 3 (1.46%) yum
Vendors
1 53 (25.73%) VMware
2 50 (24.27%) F5
3 39 (18.93%) Cisco
3 39 (18.93%) Microsoft
4 30 (14.56%) Blue Coat
5 27 (13.11%) Zscaler
6 26 (12.62%) Palo Alto
7 24 (11.65%) ServiceNow
8 22 (10.68%) McAfee
9 20 (9.71%) IBM
10 17 (8.25%) NetApp
11 16 (7.77%) CheckPoint
12 15 (7.28%) Fortinet
13 13 (6.31%) Juniper
14 11 (5.34%) SolarWinds
15 10 (4.85%) Splunk
16 9 (4.37%) Oracle
17 8 (3.88%) Citrix
18 7 (3.40%) Ping Identity
18 7 (3.40%) Red Hat