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 26 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 465 390 391
Rank change year-on-year -75 +1 +71
Contract jobs citing SSL 189 141 206
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.37% 0.47% 0.47%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 3.92% 3.79% 3.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 110 80 123
10th Percentile £335 £336 £353
25th Percentile £425 £375 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £521 £575
Median % change year-on-year +0.82% -9.43% +9.00%
75th Percentile £600 £610 £638
90th Percentile £653 £700 £742
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 6 5
10th Percentile - £80.34 £40.40
25th Percentile - £80.59 -
Median hourly rate - £81.35 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year - +77.31% -27.44%
75th Percentile - £81.91 -
90th Percentile - £83.05 £47.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £81.35 £45.88
% change year-on-year - +77.31% -26.73%

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 4,826 3,725 5,407
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.48% 12.32% 12.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,956 2,268 3,192
10th Percentile £250 £225 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £470 £493
% change year-on-year +2.77% -4.57% +3.68%
Number of hourly rates quoted 297 177 430
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.87
25th Percentile £20.50 £21.00 £17.69
Median hourly rate £27.88 £44.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -36.64% -2.22% +136.84%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.13 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.10 £77.00 £73.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £33.89 £47.50
% change year-on-year -21.32% -28.66% +150.00%

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 26 June 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 26 June 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 -96 158 £525 +0.82% 32
UK excluding London -58 122 £525 +5.00% 29
North of England -21 63 £600 +20.00% 8
Work from Home -53 50 £550 - 19
London -84 44 £525 -11.02% 10
North West -10 37 £623 +75.99% 6
Midlands -42 35 £358 -0.14% 5
West Midlands -34 34 £340 - 4
Yorkshire -34 25 £600 +20.00% 2
South East -52 20 £475 +26.67% 11
Scotland +1 13 £600 -
East of England -35 6 £450 -20.00% 2
North East -31 2 £413 -22.90%
South West -34 2 - - 2
East Midlands -12 1 £475 +32.68% 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 12 (6.35%) Confluence
2 4 (2.12%) TPMS
3 3 (1.59%) Microsoft Exchange
4 2 (1.06%) IBM HTTP Server
4 2 (1.06%) IIS
4 2 (1.06%) Oracle HTTP Server
4 2 (1.06%) SharePoint
4 2 (1.06%) WebSphere
4 2 (1.06%) WebSphere Application Server
4 2 (1.06%) WebSphere Portal
5 1 (0.53%) Apache
5 1 (0.53%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.53%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.53%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 8 (4.23%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.59%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.53%) Dynamics GP
1 1 (0.53%) Infor LN
Cloud Services
1 59 (31.22%) Azure
2 37 (19.58%) AWS
3 27 (14.29%) Entra ID
4 17 (8.99%) GCP
5 11 (5.82%) GitHub
5 11 (5.82%) SaaS
6 10 (5.29%) Datadog
6 10 (5.29%) Microsoft 365
7 9 (4.76%) IaaS
8 8 (4.23%) Serverless
8 8 (4.23%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 5 (2.65%) Azure Key Vault
9 5 (2.65%) Azure Logic Apps
10 4 (2.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 4 (2.12%) Amazon S3
10 4 (2.12%) AWS CloudFormation
10 4 (2.12%) AWS Lambda
10 4 (2.12%) Azure DevOps
10 4 (2.12%) PaaS
11 3 (1.59%) Akamai
Communications & Networking
1 103 (54.50%) DNS
2 79 (41.80%) Firewall
3 64 (33.86%) TCP/IP
4 58 (30.69%) HTTP
5 48 (25.40%) VPN
6 45 (23.81%) BIG-IP
6 45 (23.81%) Network Security
7 41 (21.69%) WAN
8 34 (17.99%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 30 (15.87%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
9 30 (15.87%) IPsec
9 30 (15.87%) Wireshark
10 23 (12.17%) LAN
11 20 (10.58%) DHCP
11 20 (10.58%) HTTPS
12 19 (10.05%) Internet
13 18 (9.52%) BGP
14 16 (8.47%) SD-WAN
14 16 (8.47%) Wireless
15 13 (6.88%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (2.65%) MongoDB
2 4 (2.12%) MariaDB
2 4 (2.12%) Metadata
2 4 (2.12%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (1.06%) SQL Server
3 2 (1.06%) SQLPlus
4 1 (0.53%) Amazon RDS
4 1 (0.53%) DocumentDB
4 1 (0.53%) Neo4j
4 1 (0.53%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 22 (11.64%) Fiddler
2 21 (11.11%) JIRA
3 11 (5.82%) Jenkins
4 8 (4.23%) Git
5 4 (2.12%) Browser DevTools
5 4 (2.12%) GitLab
5 4 (2.12%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (1.06%) Introscope
General
1 38 (20.11%) Finance
2 33 (17.46%) Banking
3 24 (12.70%) Social Skills
4 19 (10.05%) Legal
5 18 (9.52%) Investment Banking
6 13 (6.88%) Analytical Skills
7 12 (6.35%) Documentation Skills
8 11 (5.82%) Public Sector
9 7 (3.70%) Telecoms
10 5 (2.65%) Publishing
11 2 (1.06%) Retail
12 1 (0.53%) Financial Institution
12 1 (0.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.53%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.53%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.53%) Military
12 1 (0.53%) Pharmaceutical
12 1 (0.53%) Police
Job Titles
1 58 (30.69%) Network Engineer
2 24 (12.70%) Security Engineer
3 23 (12.17%) Web Engineer
4 21 (11.11%) Senior
5 20 (10.58%) IP Network Engineer
6 17 (8.99%) Blue Coat Engineer
7 16 (8.47%) Administrator
8 14 (7.41%) Architect
9 11 (5.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 10 (5.29%) Network Security Engineer
11 9 (4.76%) Senior Network Engineer
12 7 (3.70%) Network Architect
13 6 (3.17%) Junior
13 6 (3.17%) Linux Engineer
14 5 (2.65%) Cloud Engineer
14 5 (2.65%) DevOps Engineer
14 5 (2.65%) Junior Network Engineer
14 5 (2.65%) Technical Architect
14 5 (2.65%) Windows Engineer
15 4 (2.12%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (16.40%) SAML
2 16 (8.47%) LDAP
2 16 (8.47%) Middleware
3 13 (6.88%) ISPF
4 11 (5.82%) OAuth
4 11 (5.82%) OpenID
5 10 (5.29%) 802.1X
6 9 (4.76%) OAuth2
7 6 (3.17%) Kafka
7 6 (3.17%) Web Services
8 5 (2.65%) CSS
9 4 (2.12%) HTML
9 4 (2.12%) XACML
10 3 (1.59%) JMS
10 3 (1.59%) REST
10 3 (1.59%) XML
11 2 (1.06%) JDBC
11 2 (1.06%) JSON
11 2 (1.06%) RabbitMQ
11 2 (1.06%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 23 (12.17%) Clustering
2 19 (10.05%) PKI
3 18 (9.52%) Management Information System
4 17 (8.99%) Data Centre
5 14 (7.41%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 13 (6.88%) Mainframe
6 13 (6.88%) Security Posture
7 11 (5.82%) Cloud Security Posture
8 10 (5.29%) Onboarding
9 8 (4.23%) Cyber Threat
9 8 (4.23%) Enterprise Software
10 7 (3.70%) Self-Motivation
11 6 (3.17%) Hybrid Cloud
12 4 (2.12%) Algorithms
13 3 (1.59%) Replication
13 3 (1.59%) SCADA
14 2 (1.06%) Cyber Defence
14 2 (1.06%) Enterprise Storage
14 2 (1.06%) Linux Command Line
14 2 (1.06%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 40 (21.16%) Windows
2 37 (19.58%) Linux
3 19 (10.05%) Windows Server
4 13 (6.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 13 (6.88%) zOS
5 8 (4.23%) Unix
6 4 (2.12%) Windows Server 2019
7 3 (1.59%) Mac OS
8 2 (1.06%) CatOS
8 2 (1.06%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (1.06%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 2 (1.06%) VMS
9 1 (0.53%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 47 (24.87%) ITIL
2 43 (22.75%) Load Balancing
3 32 (16.93%) Cybersecurity
3 32 (16.93%) Data Loss Prevention
4 31 (16.40%) DevOps
5 30 (15.87%) High Availability
5 30 (15.87%) SIEM
6 26 (13.76%) CI/CD
7 25 (13.23%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 25 (13.23%) Zero Trust
8 23 (12.17%) Change Management
8 23 (12.17%) Cloud Security
9 22 (11.64%) Malware Detection/Protection
10 20 (10.58%) Migration
11 18 (9.52%) Infrastructure as Code
12 17 (8.99%) Agile
12 17 (8.99%) Roadmaps
13 16 (8.47%) Performance Optimisation
13 16 (8.47%) Problem-Solving
14 15 (7.94%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 46 (24.34%) Python
2 21 (11.11%) Bash
2 21 (11.11%) PowerShell
3 20 (10.58%) SQL
4 5 (2.65%) Groovy
4 5 (2.65%) Java
4 5 (2.65%) Perl
5 4 (2.12%) ActionScript
6 3 (1.59%) JavaScript
6 3 (1.59%) PL/SQL
6 3 (1.59%) Shell Script
7 2 (1.06%) Jython
8 1 (0.53%) C
8 1 (0.53%) Cypher
8 1 (0.53%) Go
8 1 (0.53%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 41 (21.69%) Security Cleared
2 27 (14.29%) SC Cleared
3 15 (7.94%) Degree
4 14 (7.41%) Cisco Certification
4 14 (7.41%) CISSP
5 13 (6.88%) CCNP
6 12 (6.35%) DV Cleared
7 7 (3.70%) CompTIA Security+
8 6 (3.17%) Azure Certification
9 5 (2.65%) CCIE
9 5 (2.65%) MCSE
9 5 (2.65%) Microsoft Certification
10 4 (2.12%) BPSS Clearance
10 4 (2.12%) CISM
10 4 (2.12%) FFIEC
10 4 (2.12%) MCSA
11 1 (0.53%) AWS Certification
11 1 (0.53%) CCSE
11 1 (0.53%) CEH
11 1 (0.53%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (6.35%) GDPR
1 12 (6.35%) NIST
2 5 (2.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 5 (2.65%) PCI DSS
3 4 (2.12%) GLBA
3 4 (2.12%) SLA
4 2 (1.06%) Cyber Essentials
4 2 (1.06%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 1 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
5 1 (0.53%) DICOM
5 1 (0.53%) HL7
5 1 (0.53%) NCSC
5 1 (0.53%) RMADS
System Software
1 46 (24.34%) VMware Infrastructure
2 45 (23.81%) Active Directory
3 20 (10.58%) Firmware
4 17 (8.99%) RACF
4 17 (8.99%) Virtual Machines
5 15 (7.94%) VMware NSX
6 14 (7.41%) Hyper-V
7 6 (3.17%) Docker
7 6 (3.17%) Squid
7 6 (3.17%) VMware ESXi
7 6 (3.17%) vSphere
8 4 (2.12%) Ceph
9 2 (1.06%) ProxySG
9 2 (1.06%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 2 (1.06%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (1.06%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.53%) Apache ZooKeeper
10 1 (0.53%) KVM
10 1 (0.53%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 34 (17.99%) Ansible
2 26 (13.76%) Single Sign-On
3 18 (9.52%) Terraform
4 13 (6.88%) CASB
4 13 (6.88%) OMEGAMON
5 11 (5.82%) Kubernetes
6 10 (5.29%) FortiGate
6 10 (5.29%) Grafana
7 7 (3.70%) Puppet
8 6 (3.17%) Prometheus
9 4 (2.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 4 (2.12%) CA Single Sign-On
9 4 (2.12%) Nessus
9 4 (2.12%) Packer
9 4 (2.12%) PingFederate
10 3 (1.59%) Microsoft Intune
10 3 (1.59%) systemd
10 3 (1.59%) yum
11 2 (1.06%) CA Wily
11 2 (1.06%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 52 (27.51%) F5
1 52 (27.51%) VMware
2 37 (19.58%) Cisco
3 34 (17.99%) Microsoft
4 30 (15.87%) Blue Coat
5 25 (13.23%) Palo Alto
6 24 (12.70%) McAfee
6 24 (12.70%) Zscaler
7 19 (10.05%) ServiceNow
8 18 (9.52%) NetApp
9 16 (8.47%) CheckPoint
9 16 (8.47%) IBM
10 15 (7.94%) Fortinet
11 13 (6.88%) Splunk
12 10 (5.29%) Juniper
13 9 (4.76%) SolarWinds
14 7 (3.70%) CrowdStrike
14 7 (3.70%) Oracle
14 7 (3.70%) Ping Identity
14 7 (3.70%) Red Hat