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 25 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 372 363 387
Rank change year-on-year -9 +24 +83
Contract jobs citing SSL 223 198 219
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.60% 0.58% 0.50%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 5.56% 4.59% 3.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 137 123 112
10th Percentile £352 £382 £350
25th Percentile £400 £458 £422
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - +3.04%
75th Percentile £663 £644 £628
90th Percentile £700 £675 £718
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £550 £475
% change year-on-year -9.09% +15.79% +7.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 0 14
10th Percentile £45.00 - £55.35
25th Percentile £48.94 - £60.56
Median hourly rate £65.00 - £65.98
75th Percentile £77.19 - £66.18
90th Percentile £84.88 - £67.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 - £65.98

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 4,011 4,315 5,977
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.81% 12.73% 13.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,630 2,529 3,681
10th Percentile £212 £220 £210
25th Percentile £358 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £601
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £473 £475
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.53% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 182 144 330
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.06 £17.72
25th Percentile £20.04 £21.46 £23.00
Median hourly rate £32.00 £35.00 £56.45
Median % change year-on-year -8.57% -37.99% +37.57%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.38 £65.98
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.88 £75.71
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £35.00 £56.49
% change year-on-year +21.43% -38.04% +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 25 December 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 25 December 2025.

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 25 December 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 +2 196 £550 -4.35% 67
UK excluding London -32 110 £500 -9.09% 57
London +14 82 £575 +9.52% 18
Work from Home -10 71 £525 - 53
North of England -25 53 £604 +9.73% 20
West Midlands -1 35 £380 -16.94% 6
Midlands -17 35 £380 -16.94% 7
North West -15 33 £589 +53.05% 12
Yorkshire -32 19 £675 +22.73% 7
East of England -9 18 £567 +31.10% 11
South East -51 11 £430 -31.20% 14
Scotland -8 6 £525 +3.45%
South West -17 4 £529 +24.35% 5
North East -11 1 £550 -6.78% 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 22 (9.87%) Confluence
2 9 (4.04%) TPMS
3 3 (1.35%) Apache
4 2 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.90%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.90%) Oracle HTTP Server
4 2 (0.90%) Tomcat
4 2 (0.90%) WebLogic
5 1 (0.45%) Anypoint
5 1 (0.45%) CMS
5 1 (0.45%) Drupal
5 1 (0.45%) IIS
5 1 (0.45%) JBoss
5 1 (0.45%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.45%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.45%) Umbraco
Applications
1 3 (1.35%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.90%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.45%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 9 (4.04%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.45%) RMDS
Cloud Services
1 63 (28.25%) AWS
2 29 (13.00%) Azure
3 26 (11.66%) Virtual Private Cloud
4 24 (10.76%) Amazon S3
5 22 (9.87%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 22 (9.87%) Amazon EC2
5 22 (9.87%) Amazon ELB
6 18 (8.07%) GCP
6 18 (8.07%) GitHub
7 10 (4.48%) Amazon EKS
8 8 (3.59%) Serverless
9 6 (2.69%) Entra ID
10 5 (2.24%) Amazon ECS
10 5 (2.24%) AWS CloudFormation
10 5 (2.24%) AWS Lambda
10 5 (2.24%) GitHub Actions
10 5 (2.24%) OpenShift
11 4 (1.79%) Apigee
11 4 (1.79%) Firebase
12 3 (1.35%) Kong
Communications & Networking
1 107 (47.98%) DNS
2 88 (39.46%) TCP/IP
3 86 (38.57%) Firewall
4 70 (31.39%) VPN
5 66 (29.60%) Network Security
6 63 (28.25%) HTTP
7 28 (12.56%) WAN
7 28 (12.56%) Wireshark
8 26 (11.66%) IPsec
9 24 (10.76%) BIG-IP
10 22 (9.87%) Wireless
11 20 (8.97%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
12 17 (7.62%) BGP
12 17 (7.62%) HTTPS
13 16 (7.17%) OSPF
14 15 (6.73%) DHCP
14 15 (6.73%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
14 15 (6.73%) FTP
14 15 (6.73%) LAN
14 15 (6.73%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (4.93%) NoSQL
2 9 (4.04%) DocumentDB
2 9 (4.04%) MongoDB
3 8 (3.59%) Apache Cassandra
3 8 (3.59%) SQL Server
4 7 (3.14%) PostgreSQL
5 3 (1.35%) Redis
6 2 (0.90%) Big Data
6 2 (0.90%) Delta Lake
6 2 (0.90%) Hadoop
6 2 (0.90%) Parquet
7 1 (0.45%) Amazon QuickSight
7 1 (0.45%) Mixpanel
7 1 (0.45%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 36 (16.14%) Git
2 32 (14.35%) Jenkins
3 25 (11.21%) JIRA
4 21 (9.42%) Fiddler
5 20 (8.97%) GitLab
6 4 (1.79%) Robot Framework
7 2 (0.90%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.90%) git-flow
7 2 (0.90%) MLflow
7 2 (0.90%) Poetry
7 2 (0.90%) PyCharm
7 2 (0.90%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.90%) Visual Studio Code
8 1 (0.45%) CircleCI
8 1 (0.45%) Crashlytics
8 1 (0.45%) fastlane
8 1 (0.45%) Postman
8 1 (0.45%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.45%) XCTest
8 1 (0.45%) XCUITest
General
1 47 (21.08%) Social Skills
2 40 (17.94%) Analytical Skills
3 33 (14.80%) Finance
4 25 (11.21%) Public Sector
5 23 (10.31%) Banking
6 17 (7.62%) Investment Banking
7 13 (5.83%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (3.59%) Telecoms
9 5 (2.24%) Financial Institution
10 4 (1.79%) Military
11 2 (0.90%) Advertising
11 2 (0.90%) Aerospace
11 2 (0.90%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.45%) Billing
12 1 (0.45%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.45%) Law
12 1 (0.45%) Legal
12 1 (0.45%) Marketing
12 1 (0.45%) Organisational Skills
12 1 (0.45%) Police
Job Titles
1 56 (25.11%) Network Engineer
2 40 (17.94%) Senior
3 32 (14.35%) Developer
4 27 (12.11%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 20 (8.97%) Architect
5 20 (8.97%) Security Engineer
6 18 (8.07%) Web Engineer
7 16 (7.17%) Analyst
7 16 (7.17%) DevOps Engineer
8 15 (6.73%) SOC Analyst
9 13 (5.83%) Consultant
9 13 (5.83%) Full-Stack Developer
9 13 (5.83%) Network Security Engineer
9 13 (5.83%) Senior DevOps
9 13 (5.83%) Senior DevOps Engineer
10 12 (5.38%) Blue Coat Engineer
11 11 (4.93%) Cryptography Engineer
12 10 (4.48%) IP Network Engineer
13 9 (4.04%) Junior
13 9 (4.04%) Junior Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (17.49%) LDAP
2 31 (13.90%) REST
3 23 (10.31%) SAML
3 23 (10.31%) SOAP
4 19 (8.52%) JSON
4 19 (8.52%) OAuth
5 18 (8.07%) HTML
6 13 (5.83%) AngularJS
6 13 (5.83%) RESTful
7 11 (4.93%) 802.1X
7 11 (4.93%) Kafka
7 11 (4.93%) Web Services
8 10 (4.48%) XML
9 9 (4.04%) Apache Camel
9 9 (4.04%) HTML5
9 9 (4.04%) JDBC
9 9 (4.04%) jQuery
9 9 (4.04%) ODBC
9 9 (4.04%) RabbitMQ
9 9 (4.04%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 31 (13.90%) Management Information System
2 26 (11.66%) PKI
3 17 (7.62%) Analytical Mindset
3 17 (7.62%) Data Centre
4 15 (6.73%) Cyberattack
5 14 (6.28%) Cyber Threat
6 13 (5.83%) CSOC
6 13 (5.83%) Security Operations Centre
7 11 (4.93%) Onboarding
8 5 (2.24%) Cloud Security Posture
8 5 (2.24%) Private Cloud
8 5 (2.24%) Security Posture
9 4 (1.79%) Algorithms
9 4 (1.79%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 4 (1.79%) Linux Command Line
10 3 (1.35%) Cloud Native
11 2 (0.90%) Hybrid Cloud
11 2 (0.90%) Mobile App
11 2 (0.90%) Virtual Team
12 1 (0.45%) Distributed Applications
Operating Systems
1 60 (26.91%) Linux
2 35 (15.70%) Windows
3 20 (8.97%) Unix
4 8 (3.59%) Windows Server
5 7 (3.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 4 (1.79%) Ubuntu
7 3 (1.35%) Apple iOS
8 2 (0.90%) CatOS
8 2 (0.90%) CentOS
8 2 (0.90%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.45%) Android
9 1 (0.45%) Solaris
9 1 (0.45%) VMS
9 1 (0.45%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.45%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 64 (28.70%) DevOps
2 49 (21.97%) CI/CD
3 39 (17.49%) Cybersecurity
4 36 (16.14%) High Availability
5 35 (15.70%) Load Balancing
6 34 (15.25%) Incident Response
7 33 (14.80%) Infrastructure as Code
8 32 (14.35%) Problem-Solving
9 31 (13.90%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 31 (13.90%) Root Cause Analysis
10 30 (13.45%) Infrastructure Automation
11 28 (12.56%) Test Automation
12 24 (10.76%) Agile
12 24 (10.76%) Change Management
13 23 (10.31%) Cloud Security
13 23 (10.31%) Data Loss Prevention
13 23 (10.31%) Identity Access Management
13 23 (10.31%) Migration
14 22 (9.87%) Containerisation
14 22 (9.87%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 76 (34.08%) Python
2 35 (15.70%) Bash
3 30 (13.45%) JavaScript
4 20 (8.97%) PowerShell
5 16 (7.17%) Java
6 15 (6.73%) SQL
7 12 (5.38%) Perl
8 3 (1.35%) C#
9 2 (0.90%) C
9 2 (0.90%) Groovy
9 2 (0.90%) PHP
9 2 (0.90%) Shell Script
9 2 (0.90%) Swift
10 1 (0.45%) C++
10 1 (0.45%) Kotlin
10 1 (0.45%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 91 (40.81%) Security Cleared
2 77 (34.53%) SC Cleared
3 17 (7.62%) CISSP
3 17 (7.62%) DV Cleared
4 15 (6.73%) Degree
5 14 (6.28%) Cisco Certification
6 11 (4.93%) Microsoft Certification
7 10 (4.48%) CCNP
8 9 (4.04%) FFIEC
9 7 (3.14%) CISM
10 6 (2.69%) MCSE
11 5 (2.24%) CCSA
11 5 (2.24%) CompTIA Security+
11 5 (2.24%) MCSA
12 4 (1.79%) Computer Science Degree
13 3 (1.35%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 3 (1.35%) RHCE
14 2 (0.90%) CCSP
14 2 (0.90%) CEH
14 2 (0.90%) JNCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (8.52%) GDPR
2 16 (7.17%) PCI DSS
3 11 (4.93%) NIST
4 9 (4.04%) GLBA
5 6 (2.69%) HIPAA
6 4 (1.79%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 3 (1.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 2 (0.90%) Accessibility
8 2 (0.90%) Data Quality
8 2 (0.90%) FIPS 140-2
8 2 (0.90%) QA
9 1 (0.45%) SLA
9 1 (0.45%) SOC 2
System Software
1 46 (20.63%) Docker
2 26 (11.66%) Active Directory
3 16 (7.17%) Firmware
3 16 (7.17%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (4.04%) VMware NSX
5 5 (2.24%) NDS
5 5 (2.24%) NetIQ eDirectory
6 4 (1.79%) ProxySG
7 2 (0.90%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.45%) Embedded Firmware
8 1 (0.45%) RACF
8 1 (0.45%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 1 (0.45%) Squid
8 1 (0.45%) vSphere
8 1 (0.45%) XenApp
8 1 (0.45%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 55 (24.66%) Ansible
2 43 (19.28%) Terraform
3 34 (15.25%) Kubernetes
4 22 (9.87%) Single Sign-On
5 7 (3.14%) CASB
6 6 (2.69%) Nessus
7 4 (1.79%) CA Spectrum
8 3 (1.35%) FortiGate
8 3 (1.35%) Microsoft Intune
8 3 (1.35%) Nagios
8 3 (1.35%) Prometheus
8 3 (1.35%) SCCM
8 3 (1.35%) SCOM
9 2 (0.90%) Argo
9 2 (0.90%) Istio
9 2 (0.90%) Rsyslog
10 1 (0.45%) Failover Clustering
10 1 (0.45%) Grafana
10 1 (0.45%) Host Intrusion Detection System
10 1 (0.45%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 81 (36.32%) F5
2 46 (20.63%) CheckPoint
3 40 (17.94%) Blue Coat
4 34 (15.25%) Cisco
4 34 (15.25%) Palo Alto
5 26 (11.66%) VMware
6 25 (11.21%) McAfee
6 25 (11.21%) Splunk
7 23 (10.31%) Juniper
8 22 (9.87%) Microsoft
9 15 (6.73%) NetApp
10 14 (6.28%) Remedy
10 14 (6.28%) ServiceNow
10 14 (6.28%) Thales
11 11 (4.93%) Fortinet
11 11 (4.93%) Zscaler
12 10 (4.48%) Axway
12 10 (4.48%) Oracle
13 9 (4.04%) BMC
13 9 (4.04%) HP