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

6 months to
17 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 454 354 435
Rank change year-on-year -100 +81 -30
Contract jobs citing SSL 231 209 138
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.42% 0.63% 0.36%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 4.52% 5.49% 3.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 115 130 77
10th Percentile £358 £350 £374
25th Percentile £456 £386 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £554 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.19% +0.68% +4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £643 £650
90th Percentile £650 £700 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £470 £525
% change year-on-year +11.70% -10.48% +8.02%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 8 2
10th Percentile £61.00 - £37.70
25th Percentile £66.81 £45.00 £39.13
Median hourly rate £68.75 £65.00 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.77% +51.16% -34.83%
75th Percentile £85.00 £82.26 £46.63
90th Percentile - £85.00 £47.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £76.88 £65.00 £43.00
% change year-on-year +18.27% +51.16% -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 5,111 3,807 4,537
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.35% 11.56% 11.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,962 2,354 2,642
10th Percentile £232 £225 £225
25th Percentile £390 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £476 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.04% -4.80% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £675 £677 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £452 £500
% change year-on-year +5.20% -9.70% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 419 198 255
10th Percentile £14.74 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.15 £21.37
Median hourly rate £32.50 £43.00 £50.50
Median % change year-on-year -24.42% -14.85% -10.60%
75th Percentile £68.75 £64.69 £65.00
90th Percentile £88.55 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.69 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -37.20% -25.89% -0.26%

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 17 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
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SSL over the 6 months to 17 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for SSL in the UK

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 17 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 -118 198 £525 -5.58% 139
UK excluding London -66 141 £525 +11.70% 73
London -119 70 £550 -8.33% 79
Work from Home -60 62 £525 -7.24% 60
North of England -50 57 £600 +15.38% 15
North West -18 39 £600 -0.58% 9
Midlands -43 34 £400 +5.96% 5
West Midlands -47 30 £375 -1.32% 2
South East -58 28 £510 +36.00% 24
Scotland -8 20 £600 +14.29% 4
Yorkshire -40 16 £600 +20.00% 5
East of England -30 14 £450 -25.31% 24
East Midlands -7 4 £475 +32.68% 3
South West -45 3 £350 -40.17% 4
North East -41 2 £438 -18.22% 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 18 (7.79%) Confluence
2 5 (2.16%) Apache
3 2 (0.87%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.87%) IIS
3 2 (0.87%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.43%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.43%) IBM HTTP Server
4 1 (0.43%) JBoss
4 1 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.43%) nginx
4 1 (0.43%) Oracle HTTP Server
4 1 (0.43%) WebSphere
4 1 (0.43%) WebSphere Application Server
4 1 (0.43%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 3 (1.30%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.87%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 2 (0.87%) Houdini
2 2 (0.87%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.87%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 3 (1.30%) Infor LN
2 2 (0.87%) Dynamics GP
3 1 (0.43%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.43%) Oracle General Ledger
3 1 (0.43%) Oracle Payables
3 1 (0.43%) Oracle Receivables
3 1 (0.43%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 78 (33.77%) Azure
2 49 (21.21%) AWS
3 32 (13.85%) Entra ID
4 24 (10.39%) GCP
5 18 (7.79%) Azure DevOps
6 16 (6.93%) GitHub
7 14 (6.06%) Microsoft 365
8 13 (5.63%) Power Platform
9 12 (5.19%) Azure Monitor
9 12 (5.19%) Datadog
10 9 (3.90%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 8 (3.46%) AWS CloudFormation
11 8 (3.46%) AWS Lambda
11 8 (3.46%) Azure Key Vault
11 8 (3.46%) Serverless
12 7 (3.03%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 7 (3.03%) Amazon S3
12 7 (3.03%) AWS KMS
12 7 (3.03%) GitHub Actions
13 6 (2.60%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 108 (46.75%) DNS
2 78 (33.77%) Firewall
3 60 (25.97%) Network Security
3 60 (25.97%) VPN
4 59 (25.54%) TCP/IP
5 57 (24.68%) HTTP
6 44 (19.05%) WAN
7 35 (15.15%) IPsec
8 34 (14.72%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 32 (13.85%) BIG-IP
10 30 (12.99%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
11 28 (12.12%) BGP
12 27 (11.69%) DHCP
13 22 (9.52%) LAN
13 22 (9.52%) Wireless
14 20 (8.66%) HTTPS
14 20 (8.66%) OSPF
15 18 (7.79%) Wireshark
16 17 (7.36%) SD-WAN
17 12 (5.19%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (7.36%) SQL Server
2 15 (6.49%) MySQL
3 11 (4.76%) Power BI
3 11 (4.76%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 8 (3.46%) PostgreSQL
5 6 (2.60%) MariaDB
6 5 (2.16%) MongoDB
7 4 (1.73%) Metadata
8 3 (1.30%) SQLPlus
9 2 (0.87%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.87%) Oracle BI Publisher
9 2 (0.87%) Oracle Reports
9 2 (0.87%) RDBMS
9 2 (0.87%) Relational Database
10 1 (0.43%) InfluxDB
10 1 (0.43%) Neo4j
10 1 (0.43%) NoSQL
10 1 (0.43%) SQLite
10 1 (0.43%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 26 (11.26%) JIRA
2 17 (7.36%) Jenkins
3 15 (6.49%) Git
4 13 (5.63%) Fiddler
5 9 (3.90%) GitLab
6 5 (2.16%) Sonatype Nexus
7 3 (1.30%) Browser DevTools
7 3 (1.30%) Maven
8 2 (0.87%) git-flow
9 1 (0.43%) Ant
9 1 (0.43%) Artifactory
9 1 (0.43%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 1 (0.43%) Gerrit
9 1 (0.43%) Introscope
9 1 (0.43%) Mockito
9 1 (0.43%) Tricentis qTest
General
1 44 (19.05%) Finance
2 41 (17.75%) Social Skills
3 33 (14.29%) Banking
4 26 (11.26%) Analytical Skills
5 25 (10.82%) Legal
6 14 (6.06%) Investment Banking
7 13 (5.63%) Public Sector
8 10 (4.33%) Telecoms
9 8 (3.46%) Documentation Skills
10 6 (2.60%) Publishing
11 4 (1.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 4 (1.73%) Manufacturing
12 2 (0.87%) Aerospace
12 2 (0.87%) Retail
13 1 (0.43%) Law
13 1 (0.43%) Local Government
13 1 (0.43%) Marketing
13 1 (0.43%) Organisational Skills
13 1 (0.43%) Pharmaceutical
13 1 (0.43%) Police
Job Titles
1 56 (24.24%) Network Engineer
2 30 (12.99%) Security Engineer
3 26 (11.26%) Senior
4 25 (10.82%) Administrator
5 17 (7.36%) Lead
6 15 (6.49%) IP Network Engineer
7 14 (6.06%) Network Security Engineer
8 13 (5.63%) Blue Coat Engineer
8 13 (5.63%) DBA
8 13 (5.63%) Senior Network Engineer
8 13 (5.63%) Web Engineer
9 12 (5.19%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 12 (5.19%) SQL DBA
10 10 (4.33%) Architect
10 10 (4.33%) Linux Engineer
11 9 (3.90%) Developer
12 8 (3.46%) DevOps Engineer
12 8 (3.46%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
13 7 (3.03%) Network Architect
13 7 (3.03%) Security Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (12.12%) SAML
2 25 (10.82%) Terraform
3 22 (9.52%) Middleware
4 19 (8.23%) 802.1X
5 17 (7.36%) ISPF
6 13 (5.63%) LDAP
6 13 (5.63%) OAuth
7 12 (5.19%) REST
8 9 (3.90%) OAuth2
8 9 (3.90%) OpenID
8 9 (3.90%) SOAP
8 9 (3.90%) Web Services
9 8 (3.46%) JSON
10 7 (3.03%) XML
11 6 (2.60%) Kafka
12 4 (1.73%) CSS
12 4 (1.73%) EDI
12 4 (1.73%) YAML
13 3 (1.30%) EDIFACT
13 3 (1.30%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 36 (15.58%) Clustering
2 28 (12.12%) PKI
3 19 (8.23%) Onboarding
4 18 (7.79%) Mainframe
5 17 (7.36%) Data Centre
5 17 (7.36%) Management Information System
6 15 (6.49%) Replication
7 12 (5.19%) Cyber Threat
7 12 (5.19%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
7 12 (5.19%) Self-Motivation
8 9 (3.90%) Enterprise Software
9 8 (3.46%) Hybrid Cloud
10 6 (2.60%) Distributed Applications
11 5 (2.16%) Analytical Mindset
11 5 (2.16%) Linux Command Line
12 4 (1.73%) Algorithms
12 4 (1.73%) Data Protection Act
12 4 (1.73%) Data Structures
12 4 (1.73%) Fibre Optics
12 4 (1.73%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 55 (23.81%) Linux
2 53 (22.94%) Windows
3 33 (14.29%) Windows Server
4 20 (8.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 20 (8.66%) zOS
5 10 (4.33%) Unix
6 3 (1.30%) Mac OS
6 3 (1.30%) Windows Server 2019
7 2 (0.87%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.87%) VMS
8 1 (0.43%) Amazon Linux
8 1 (0.43%) Oracle Linux
8 1 (0.43%) Rocky
8 1 (0.43%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 57 (24.68%) DevOps
2 55 (23.81%) ITIL
3 50 (21.65%) Load Balancing
4 36 (15.58%) High Availability
5 34 (14.72%) CI/CD
6 31 (13.42%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 30 (12.99%) Change Management
8 27 (11.69%) Performance Tuning
9 26 (11.26%) Problem-Solving
10 25 (10.82%) Migration
10 25 (10.82%) SIEM
11 24 (10.39%) Performance Optimisation
11 24 (10.39%) Zero Trust
12 21 (9.09%) Agile
13 19 (8.23%) Cybersecurity
13 19 (8.23%) Infrastructure as Code
14 18 (7.79%) Project Delivery
15 17 (7.36%) Network Virtualisation
15 17 (7.36%) Runbook
16 16 (6.93%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 59 (25.54%) Python
2 35 (15.15%) SQL
3 32 (13.85%) PowerShell
4 25 (10.82%) Bash
5 12 (5.19%) T-SQL
6 11 (4.76%) Java
7 10 (4.33%) Groovy
7 10 (4.33%) Perl
7 10 (4.33%) Shell Script
8 5 (2.16%) ActionScript
8 5 (2.16%) JavaScript
9 4 (1.73%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.87%) Go
11 1 (0.43%) ActionScript 2.0
11 1 (0.43%) C
11 1 (0.43%) Cypher
11 1 (0.43%) Jython
11 1 (0.43%) MATLAB
11 1 (0.43%) R
11 1 (0.43%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 73 (31.60%) Security Cleared
2 50 (21.65%) SC Cleared
3 23 (9.96%) DV Cleared
4 20 (8.66%) Degree
5 19 (8.23%) Azure Certification
6 15 (6.49%) Cisco Certification
7 13 (5.63%) BPSS Clearance
8 12 (5.19%) CCNP
8 12 (5.19%) Microsoft Certification
9 10 (4.33%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 7 (3.03%) CISSP
11 6 (2.60%) CCIE
12 4 (1.73%) RHCSA
13 3 (1.30%) CCNA
13 3 (1.30%) RHCE
14 2 (0.87%) CISM
14 2 (0.87%) JNCIE
14 2 (0.87%) PMI Certification
14 2 (0.87%) PMP
14 2 (0.87%) PRINCE2 Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (4.33%) NIST
2 8 (3.46%) GDPR
3 6 (2.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 6 (2.60%) SLA
4 2 (0.87%) Cyber Essentials
4 2 (0.87%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 2 (0.87%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.43%) DICOM
5 1 (0.43%) HL7
5 1 (0.43%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 47 (20.35%) Active Directory
1 47 (20.35%) VMware Infrastructure
2 22 (9.52%) Virtual Machines
3 19 (8.23%) Hyper-V
4 17 (7.36%) RACF
5 16 (6.93%) Docker
6 15 (6.49%) Firmware
7 11 (4.76%) vSphere
8 9 (3.90%) VMware NSX
9 7 (3.03%) Ceph
9 7 (3.03%) Squid
10 4 (1.73%) VMware ESXi
11 3 (1.30%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 3 (1.30%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.87%) Apache ZooKeeper
12 2 (0.87%) Virtual Desktop
13 1 (0.43%) KVM
13 1 (0.43%) OpenSSH
13 1 (0.43%) ProxySG
Systems Management
1 49 (21.21%) Ansible
2 20 (8.66%) Single Sign-On
3 17 (7.36%) Kubernetes
3 17 (7.36%) OMEGAMON
4 16 (6.93%) Grafana
5 11 (4.76%) Prometheus
5 11 (4.76%) SCOM
6 8 (3.46%) FortiGate
6 8 (3.46%) Puppet
7 5 (2.16%) Packer
8 4 (1.73%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 4 (1.73%) CA Single Sign-On
8 4 (1.73%) Cisco CUCM
8 4 (1.73%) Microsoft Intune
8 4 (1.73%) Nagios
8 4 (1.73%) PingFederate
8 4 (1.73%) systemd
9 3 (1.30%) Argo
9 3 (1.30%) yum
10 2 (0.87%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 57 (24.68%) VMware
2 56 (24.24%) F5
3 48 (20.78%) Cisco
4 41 (17.75%) Microsoft
5 32 (13.85%) Palo Alto
6 30 (12.99%) ServiceNow
7 28 (12.12%) Blue Coat
8 27 (11.69%) Zscaler
9 22 (9.52%) IBM
10 19 (8.23%) Juniper
11 16 (6.93%) Fortinet
11 16 (6.93%) McAfee
12 15 (6.49%) CheckPoint
13 13 (5.63%) NetApp
13 13 (5.63%) SolarWinds
14 11 (4.76%) Red Hat
15 10 (4.33%) Oracle
15 10 (4.33%) Splunk
16 7 (3.03%) Dynatrace
16 7 (3.03%) Ping Identity