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 29 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 467 362 420
Rank change year-on-year -105 +58 -24
Contract jobs citing SSL 223 202 137
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.41% 0.61% 0.36%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 4.36% 5.19% 2.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 122 126 77
10th Percentile £380 £350 £393
25th Percentile £456 £380 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £575
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -6.52% +4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £663
90th Percentile £650 £698 £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 5,110 3,889 4,614
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.48% 11.80% 11.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,012 2,381 2,747
10th Percentile £250 £238 £227
25th Percentile £400 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £470 £500
% change year-on-year +2.13% -6.00% +9.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 376 202 294
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% -9.62%
75th Percentile £65.06 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £79.50 £74.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.81 £42.50 £54.94
% change year-on-year -39.28% -22.64% -2.75%

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 29 August 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 29 August 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 -109 190 £525 -4.98% 77
UK excluding London -46 136 £525 +5.00% 42
London -104 69 £550 -8.33% 45
Work from Home -55 66 £550 -1.26% 28
North of England -31 59 £600 +15.38% 8
North West -32 38 £600 - 5
Midlands -33 36 £400 +8.70% 2
West Midlands -23 33 £375 -1.32% 2
South East -52 30 £475 +26.67% 17
Scotland -6 20 £600 +14.29% 3
Yorkshire -32 19 £600 +20.00% 3
East of England -36 5 £450 -25.31% 12
East Midlands -15 3 £475 +32.68%
South West -42 3 £350 -40.17% 1
North East -37 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 (6.73%) Confluence
2 3 (1.35%) Apache
3 2 (0.90%) IBM HTTP Server
3 2 (0.90%) IIS
3 2 (0.90%) Oracle HTTP Server
3 2 (0.90%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.90%) WebSphere
3 2 (0.90%) WebSphere Application Server
3 2 (0.90%) 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 (0.90%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 2 (0.90%) Houdini
2 2 (0.90%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.90%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 3 (1.35%) Infor LN
2 2 (0.90%) 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 72 (32.29%) Azure
2 46 (20.63%) AWS
3 33 (14.80%) Entra ID
4 20 (8.97%) GCP
5 15 (6.73%) Azure DevOps
5 15 (6.73%) Microsoft 365
6 14 (6.28%) GitHub
7 12 (5.38%) Datadog
8 11 (4.93%) SaaS
9 10 (4.48%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 9 (4.04%) Power Platform
11 8 (3.59%) AWS CloudFormation
11 8 (3.59%) AWS Lambda
11 8 (3.59%) Azure Key Vault
11 8 (3.59%) Azure Monitor
11 8 (3.59%) Serverless
12 7 (3.14%) AWS KMS
12 7 (3.14%) GitHub Actions
13 6 (2.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 6 (2.69%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 105 (47.09%) DNS
2 74 (33.18%) Firewall
3 57 (25.56%) VPN
4 56 (25.11%) TCP/IP
5 53 (23.77%) HTTP
6 52 (23.32%) Network Security
7 44 (19.73%) WAN
8 34 (15.25%) BIG-IP
9 32 (14.35%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 31 (13.90%) IPsec
11 28 (12.56%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
12 22 (9.87%) HTTPS
13 21 (9.42%) DHCP
13 21 (9.42%) LAN
13 21 (9.42%) Wireless
14 20 (8.97%) BGP
14 20 (8.97%) Internet
14 20 (8.97%) Wireshark
15 17 (7.62%) SD-WAN
16 12 (5.38%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (5.38%) SQL Server
2 10 (4.48%) MySQL
3 7 (3.14%) PostgreSQL
3 7 (3.14%) Power BI
3 7 (3.14%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 6 (2.69%) MariaDB
5 5 (2.24%) MongoDB
6 4 (1.79%) Metadata
7 3 (1.35%) SQLPlus
8 2 (0.90%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (0.90%) Oracle BI Publisher
8 2 (0.90%) Oracle Reports
8 2 (0.90%) RDBMS
8 2 (0.90%) Relational Database
9 1 (0.45%) Neo4j
9 1 (0.45%) NoSQL
9 1 (0.45%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 25 (11.21%) JIRA
2 17 (7.62%) Jenkins
3 15 (6.73%) Fiddler
4 13 (5.83%) Git
5 10 (4.48%) GitLab
6 6 (2.69%) Sonatype Nexus
7 5 (2.24%) Browser DevTools
8 3 (1.35%) Maven
9 2 (0.90%) git-flow
9 2 (0.90%) Introscope
10 1 (0.45%) Ant
10 1 (0.45%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (0.45%) Mockito
General
1 45 (20.18%) Finance
2 36 (16.14%) Banking
3 32 (14.35%) Social Skills
4 25 (11.21%) Legal
5 23 (10.31%) Analytical Skills
6 16 (7.17%) Investment Banking
7 14 (6.28%) Public Sector
8 10 (4.48%) Telecoms
9 8 (3.59%) Documentation Skills
10 6 (2.69%) Publishing
11 3 (1.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (1.35%) Manufacturing
12 2 (0.90%) Retail
13 1 (0.45%) Financial Institution
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 (22.87%) Network Engineer
2 31 (13.90%) Security Engineer
3 24 (10.76%) Administrator
3 24 (10.76%) Senior
4 17 (7.62%) IP Network Engineer
5 16 (7.17%) Web Engineer
6 15 (6.73%) Blue Coat Engineer
7 13 (5.83%) Lead
8 12 (5.38%) Network Security Engineer
8 12 (5.38%) Senior Network Engineer
9 11 (4.93%) Architect
9 11 (4.93%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 10 (4.48%) Linux Engineer
11 9 (4.04%) Developer
11 9 (4.04%) Network Architect
12 8 (3.59%) DBA
13 7 (3.14%) DevOps Engineer
13 7 (3.14%) SQL DBA
14 6 (2.69%) Infrastructure Specialist
14 6 (2.69%) Senior Linux Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (13.45%) SAML
2 25 (11.21%) Terraform
3 23 (10.31%) Middleware
4 17 (7.62%) 802.1X
4 17 (7.62%) ISPF
5 13 (5.83%) OAuth
6 10 (4.48%) LDAP
6 10 (4.48%) REST
7 9 (4.04%) OAuth2
7 9 (4.04%) OpenID
7 9 (4.04%) SOAP
7 9 (4.04%) Web Services
8 7 (3.14%) Kafka
8 7 (3.14%) XML
9 6 (2.69%) JSON
10 4 (1.79%) CSS
10 4 (1.79%) EDI
11 3 (1.35%) JMS
11 3 (1.35%) Spring
11 3 (1.35%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 33 (14.80%) Clustering
2 29 (13.00%) PKI
3 18 (8.07%) Mainframe
4 17 (7.62%) Data Centre
4 17 (7.62%) Management Information System
5 16 (7.17%) Onboarding
6 12 (5.38%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 12 (5.38%) Enterprise Software
7 10 (4.48%) Replication
7 10 (4.48%) Self-Motivation
8 9 (4.04%) Cyber Threat
9 8 (3.59%) Security Posture
10 7 (3.14%) Cloud Security Posture
10 7 (3.14%) Hybrid Cloud
11 6 (2.69%) Distributed Applications
12 5 (2.24%) Linux Command Line
13 4 (1.79%) Algorithms
13 4 (1.79%) Data Structures
13 4 (1.79%) Fibre Optics
13 4 (1.79%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 50 (22.42%) Linux
2 45 (20.18%) Windows
3 24 (10.76%) Windows Server
4 20 (8.97%) zOS
5 15 (6.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (4.93%) Unix
7 4 (1.79%) Mac OS
8 3 (1.35%) Windows Server 2019
9 2 (0.90%) Oracle Linux
9 2 (0.90%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 2 (0.90%) VMS
10 1 (0.45%) Amazon Linux
10 1 (0.45%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 53 (23.77%) ITIL
2 47 (21.08%) DevOps
2 47 (21.08%) Load Balancing
3 34 (15.25%) CI/CD
4 33 (14.80%) High Availability
5 30 (13.45%) SIEM
6 29 (13.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 27 (12.11%) Zero Trust
8 25 (11.21%) Change Management
8 25 (11.21%) Data Loss Prevention
9 24 (10.76%) Cybersecurity
9 24 (10.76%) Performance Optimisation
9 24 (10.76%) Performance Tuning
9 24 (10.76%) Problem-Solving
10 22 (9.87%) Migration
11 20 (8.97%) Agile
12 19 (8.52%) Infrastructure as Code
13 18 (8.07%) Project Delivery
14 17 (7.62%) Network Virtualisation
15 16 (7.17%) Cloud Security
Programming Languages
1 57 (25.56%) Python
2 29 (13.00%) SQL
3 27 (12.11%) PowerShell
4 24 (10.76%) Bash
5 11 (4.93%) Java
5 11 (4.93%) Perl
6 10 (4.48%) Shell Script
7 9 (4.04%) Groovy
8 7 (3.14%) T-SQL
9 5 (2.24%) ActionScript
9 5 (2.24%) JavaScript
10 4 (1.79%) PL/SQL
11 2 (0.90%) Go
11 2 (0.90%) Jython
12 1 (0.45%) ActionScript 2.0
12 1 (0.45%) C
12 1 (0.45%) C#
12 1 (0.45%) Cypher
12 1 (0.45%) R
12 1 (0.45%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 68 (30.49%) Security Cleared
2 48 (21.52%) SC Cleared
3 18 (8.07%) DV Cleared
4 16 (7.17%) Degree
5 15 (6.73%) Azure Certification
6 10 (4.48%) Cisco Certification
7 9 (4.04%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (3.59%) CCNP
8 8 (3.59%) Microsoft Certification
9 7 (3.14%) CISSP
10 6 (2.69%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 5 (2.24%) CCIE
12 3 (1.35%) RHCSA
13 2 (0.90%) CompTIA Security+
13 2 (0.90%) LFCS
13 2 (0.90%) MCSE
13 2 (0.90%) PMI Certification
13 2 (0.90%) PMP
13 2 (0.90%) PRINCE2 Certification
13 2 (0.90%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (5.38%) NIST
2 8 (3.59%) GDPR
3 7 (3.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 6 (2.69%) SLA
5 2 (0.90%) Cyber Essentials
5 2 (0.90%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 2 (0.90%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.45%) DICOM
6 1 (0.45%) HL7
6 1 (0.45%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 48 (21.52%) VMware Infrastructure
2 43 (19.28%) Active Directory
3 19 (8.52%) Hyper-V
3 19 (8.52%) Virtual Machines
4 18 (8.07%) Firmware
5 17 (7.62%) RACF
6 14 (6.28%) Docker
7 10 (4.48%) VMware NSX
8 7 (3.14%) Ceph
8 7 (3.14%) Squid
8 7 (3.14%) vSphere
9 4 (1.79%) VMware ESXi
10 3 (1.35%) Virtual Servers
11 2 (0.90%) Apache ZooKeeper
11 2 (0.90%) ProxySG
11 2 (0.90%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 2 (0.90%) Virtual Desktop
12 1 (0.45%) KVM
12 1 (0.45%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 47 (21.08%) Ansible
2 22 (9.87%) Single Sign-On
3 17 (7.62%) Kubernetes
3 17 (7.62%) OMEGAMON
4 16 (7.17%) Grafana
5 10 (4.48%) Prometheus
6 9 (4.04%) CASB
7 8 (3.59%) Puppet
8 7 (3.14%) FortiGate
8 7 (3.14%) SCOM
9 5 (2.24%) Packer
10 4 (1.79%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 4 (1.79%) CA Single Sign-On
10 4 (1.79%) Cisco CUCM
10 4 (1.79%) Microsoft Intune
10 4 (1.79%) PingFederate
10 4 (1.79%) systemd
11 3 (1.35%) Argo
11 3 (1.35%) yum
12 2 (0.90%) Consul
Vendors
1 53 (23.77%) F5
1 53 (23.77%) VMware
2 41 (18.39%) Cisco
3 35 (15.70%) Microsoft
4 33 (14.80%) Zscaler
5 31 (13.90%) ServiceNow
6 29 (13.00%) Blue Coat
6 29 (13.00%) Palo Alto
7 23 (10.31%) IBM
8 18 (8.07%) McAfee
9 16 (7.17%) Juniper
10 15 (6.73%) CheckPoint
10 15 (6.73%) NetApp
11 14 (6.28%) Fortinet
12 11 (4.93%) Oracle
12 11 (4.93%) Red Hat
12 11 (4.93%) SolarWinds
13 8 (3.59%) Dynatrace
13 8 (3.59%) Splunk
14 7 (3.14%) Ping Identity