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

6 months to
20 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 457 365 412
Rank change year-on-year -92 +47 -3
Contract jobs citing SSL 227 201 146
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.42% 0.61% 0.38%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 4.45% 5.30% 3.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 114 125 84
10th Percentile £380 £358 £354
25th Percentile £463 £402 £474
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% +4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £653
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 5,096 3,795 4,582
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.34% 11.53% 11.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,949 2,356 2,663
10th Percentile £231 £225 £225
25th Percentile £393 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £500
% change year-on-year +5.56% -10.00% +9.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 418 200 250
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £24.75 £21.37
Median hourly rate £32.50 £42.50 £50.50
Median % change year-on-year -23.53% -15.84% -10.60%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £88.74 £73.20 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.50 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -30.59% -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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -107 197 £531 -7.61% 123
UK excluding London -61 138 £525 +11.70% 67
London -103 69 £550 -8.33% 66
Work from Home -69 61 £550 -4.35% 52
North of England -36 57 £600 +12.15% 12
North West -24 39 £600 -0.58% 9
Midlands -48 32 £400 +5.96% 5
South East -47 29 £520 +38.67% 20
West Midlands -45 28 £400 +5.26% 3
Scotland -10 17 £600 +14.29% 3
Yorkshire -38 16 £600 +20.00% 2
East of England -27 15 £450 -25.31% 25
East Midlands -18 4 £475 +32.68% 2
South West -36 3 £350 -38.70% 5
North East -42 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 16 (7.05%) Confluence
2 5 (2.20%) Apache
3 2 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.88%) IIS
3 2 (0.88%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.44%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.44%) IBM HTTP Server
4 1 (0.44%) JBoss
4 1 (0.44%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.44%) nginx
4 1 (0.44%) Oracle HTTP Server
4 1 (0.44%) WebSphere
4 1 (0.44%) WebSphere Application Server
4 1 (0.44%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 3 (1.32%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.88%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 2 (0.88%) Houdini
2 2 (0.88%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.88%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 3 (1.32%) Infor LN
2 2 (0.88%) Dynamics GP
3 1 (0.44%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.44%) Oracle General Ledger
3 1 (0.44%) Oracle Payables
3 1 (0.44%) Oracle Receivables
3 1 (0.44%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 74 (32.60%) Azure
2 46 (20.26%) AWS
3 32 (14.10%) Entra ID
4 21 (9.25%) GCP
5 18 (7.93%) Azure DevOps
6 16 (7.05%) GitHub
7 14 (6.17%) Microsoft 365
8 13 (5.73%) Power Platform
9 12 (5.29%) Azure Monitor
9 12 (5.29%) Datadog
10 9 (3.96%) Azure Key Vault
10 9 (3.96%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 8 (3.52%) AWS CloudFormation
11 8 (3.52%) AWS Lambda
11 8 (3.52%) Serverless
12 7 (3.08%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 7 (3.08%) Amazon S3
12 7 (3.08%) AWS KMS
12 7 (3.08%) GitHub Actions
13 6 (2.64%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 104 (45.81%) DNS
2 76 (33.48%) Firewall
3 61 (26.87%) VPN
4 59 (25.99%) Network Security
4 59 (25.99%) TCP/IP
5 57 (25.11%) HTTP
6 44 (19.38%) WAN
7 35 (15.42%) IPsec
8 33 (14.54%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 31 (13.66%) BIG-IP
10 30 (13.22%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
11 29 (12.78%) BGP
12 27 (11.89%) DHCP
13 22 (9.69%) LAN
13 22 (9.69%) Wireless
14 21 (9.25%) OSPF
15 18 (7.93%) Wireshark
16 17 (7.49%) HTTPS
16 17 (7.49%) SD-WAN
17 12 (5.29%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (7.49%) SQL Server
2 15 (6.61%) MySQL
3 11 (4.85%) Power BI
3 11 (4.85%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 5 (2.20%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (1.76%) Metadata
6 3 (1.32%) MariaDB
7 2 (0.88%) Amazon RDS
7 2 (0.88%) MongoDB
7 2 (0.88%) Oracle BI Publisher
7 2 (0.88%) Oracle Reports
7 2 (0.88%) RDBMS
7 2 (0.88%) Relational Database
7 2 (0.88%) SQLPlus
8 1 (0.44%) InfluxDB
8 1 (0.44%) Neo4j
8 1 (0.44%) NoSQL
8 1 (0.44%) SQLite
8 1 (0.44%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 24 (10.57%) JIRA
2 17 (7.49%) Jenkins
3 15 (6.61%) Git
4 13 (5.73%) Fiddler
5 9 (3.96%) GitLab
6 5 (2.20%) Sonatype Nexus
7 3 (1.32%) Browser DevTools
7 3 (1.32%) Maven
8 2 (0.88%) git-flow
9 1 (0.44%) Ant
9 1 (0.44%) Artifactory
9 1 (0.44%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 1 (0.44%) Gerrit
9 1 (0.44%) Introscope
9 1 (0.44%) Mockito
9 1 (0.44%) Tricentis qTest
General
1 44 (19.38%) Finance
2 41 (18.06%) Social Skills
3 33 (14.54%) Banking
4 26 (11.45%) Analytical Skills
5 25 (11.01%) Legal
6 14 (6.17%) Investment Banking
7 11 (4.85%) Public Sector
8 9 (3.96%) Telecoms
9 8 (3.52%) Documentation Skills
10 6 (2.64%) Publishing
11 4 (1.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 4 (1.76%) Manufacturing
12 2 (0.88%) Aerospace
12 2 (0.88%) Retail
13 1 (0.44%) Law
13 1 (0.44%) Local Government
13 1 (0.44%) Marketing
13 1 (0.44%) Organisational Skills
13 1 (0.44%) Pharmaceutical
13 1 (0.44%) Police
Job Titles
1 57 (25.11%) Network Engineer
2 30 (13.22%) Security Engineer
3 25 (11.01%) Administrator
4 24 (10.57%) Senior
5 15 (6.61%) IP Network Engineer
5 15 (6.61%) Lead
6 14 (6.17%) Network Security Engineer
7 13 (5.73%) Blue Coat Engineer
7 13 (5.73%) DBA
7 13 (5.73%) Senior Network Engineer
7 13 (5.73%) Web Engineer
8 12 (5.29%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 12 (5.29%) SQL DBA
9 10 (4.41%) Architect
10 9 (3.96%) Developer
11 8 (3.52%) DevOps Engineer
11 8 (3.52%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
12 7 (3.08%) Linux Engineer
12 7 (3.08%) Network Architect
13 6 (2.64%) Infrastructure Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (12.33%) SAML
2 25 (11.01%) Terraform
3 22 (9.69%) Middleware
4 19 (8.37%) 802.1X
5 17 (7.49%) ISPF
6 13 (5.73%) LDAP
6 13 (5.73%) OAuth
6 13 (5.73%) REST
7 9 (3.96%) OAuth2
7 9 (3.96%) OpenID
7 9 (3.96%) SOAP
7 9 (3.96%) Web Services
8 8 (3.52%) JSON
9 7 (3.08%) XML
10 6 (2.64%) Kafka
11 4 (1.76%) CSS
11 4 (1.76%) EDI
11 4 (1.76%) YAML
12 3 (1.32%) EDIFACT
12 3 (1.32%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 36 (15.86%) Clustering
2 29 (12.78%) PKI
3 20 (8.81%) Onboarding
4 18 (7.93%) Mainframe
5 17 (7.49%) Data Centre
5 17 (7.49%) Management Information System
6 15 (6.61%) Replication
7 13 (5.73%) Self-Motivation
8 12 (5.29%) Cyber Threat
9 11 (4.85%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 9 (3.96%) Enterprise Software
11 8 (3.52%) Hybrid Cloud
12 6 (2.64%) Distributed Applications
13 5 (2.20%) Analytical Mindset
13 5 (2.20%) Linux Command Line
14 4 (1.76%) Algorithms
14 4 (1.76%) Data Protection Act
14 4 (1.76%) Data Structures
14 4 (1.76%) Fibre Optics
14 4 (1.76%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 53 (23.35%) Windows
2 52 (22.91%) Linux
3 33 (14.54%) Windows Server
4 20 (8.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 20 (8.81%) zOS
5 10 (4.41%) Unix
6 3 (1.32%) Mac OS
6 3 (1.32%) Windows Server 2019
7 2 (0.88%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.88%) VMS
8 1 (0.44%) Amazon Linux
8 1 (0.44%) Oracle Linux
8 1 (0.44%) Rocky
8 1 (0.44%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 56 (24.67%) DevOps
2 55 (24.23%) ITIL
3 50 (22.03%) Load Balancing
4 36 (15.86%) High Availability
5 35 (15.42%) CI/CD
6 32 (14.10%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 27 (11.89%) Change Management
7 27 (11.89%) Problem-Solving
8 26 (11.45%) Migration
9 25 (11.01%) Performance Tuning
9 25 (11.01%) SIEM
10 24 (10.57%) Performance Optimisation
10 24 (10.57%) Zero Trust
11 20 (8.81%) Infrastructure as Code
12 19 (8.37%) Agile
12 19 (8.37%) Cybersecurity
13 17 (7.49%) Project Delivery
13 17 (7.49%) Runbook
14 16 (7.05%) Containerisation
14 16 (7.05%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 57 (25.11%) Python
2 33 (14.54%) PowerShell
3 30 (13.22%) SQL
4 22 (9.69%) Bash
5 12 (5.29%) T-SQL
6 11 (4.85%) Java
7 10 (4.41%) Groovy
7 10 (4.41%) Perl
7 10 (4.41%) Shell Script
8 5 (2.20%) ActionScript
8 5 (2.20%) JavaScript
9 2 (0.88%) Go
9 2 (0.88%) PL/SQL
10 1 (0.44%) ActionScript 2.0
10 1 (0.44%) C
10 1 (0.44%) Cypher
10 1 (0.44%) Jython
10 1 (0.44%) MATLAB
10 1 (0.44%) R
10 1 (0.44%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 68 (29.96%) Security Cleared
2 46 (20.26%) SC Cleared
3 20 (8.81%) Azure Certification
3 20 (8.81%) Degree
3 20 (8.81%) DV Cleared
4 15 (6.61%) Cisco Certification
5 13 (5.73%) BPSS Clearance
6 12 (5.29%) CCNP
6 12 (5.29%) Microsoft Certification
7 10 (4.41%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 7 (3.08%) CISSP
9 6 (2.64%) CCIE
10 4 (1.76%) RHCSA
11 3 (1.32%) CCNA
11 3 (1.32%) RHCE
12 2 (0.88%) CISM
12 2 (0.88%) JNCIE
12 2 (0.88%) MCSE
12 2 (0.88%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.88%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (4.41%) NIST
2 8 (3.52%) GDPR
3 6 (2.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 6 (2.64%) SLA
4 2 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
4 2 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 2 (0.88%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.44%) DICOM
5 1 (0.44%) HL7
5 1 (0.44%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 47 (20.70%) Active Directory
2 42 (18.50%) VMware Infrastructure
3 20 (8.81%) Virtual Machines
4 17 (7.49%) RACF
5 16 (7.05%) Docker
5 16 (7.05%) Hyper-V
6 15 (6.61%) Firmware
7 12 (5.29%) vSphere
8 9 (3.96%) VMware NSX
9 5 (2.20%) Squid
10 4 (1.76%) Ceph
10 4 (1.76%) VMware ESXi
11 3 (1.32%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 3 (1.32%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.88%) Apache ZooKeeper
12 2 (0.88%) Virtual Desktop
13 1 (0.44%) KVM
13 1 (0.44%) OpenSSH
13 1 (0.44%) ProxySG
Systems Management
1 46 (20.26%) Ansible
2 20 (8.81%) Single Sign-On
3 18 (7.93%) Kubernetes
4 17 (7.49%) OMEGAMON
5 16 (7.05%) Grafana
6 11 (4.85%) Prometheus
6 11 (4.85%) SCOM
7 8 (3.52%) FortiGate
7 8 (3.52%) Puppet
8 5 (2.20%) Nagios
8 5 (2.20%) Packer
9 4 (1.76%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 4 (1.76%) CA Single Sign-On
9 4 (1.76%) Cisco CUCM
9 4 (1.76%) Microsoft Intune
9 4 (1.76%) PingFederate
9 4 (1.76%) systemd
10 3 (1.32%) Argo
10 3 (1.32%) yum
11 2 (0.88%) Consul
Vendors
1 55 (24.23%) F5
2 53 (23.35%) VMware
3 49 (21.59%) Cisco
4 41 (18.06%) Microsoft
5 33 (14.54%) Palo Alto
6 30 (13.22%) ServiceNow
7 28 (12.33%) Blue Coat
8 27 (11.89%) Zscaler
9 22 (9.69%) IBM
10 19 (8.37%) Juniper
11 17 (7.49%) Fortinet
12 16 (7.05%) McAfee
13 15 (6.61%) CheckPoint
14 14 (6.17%) SolarWinds
15 13 (5.73%) NetApp
16 12 (5.29%) Red Hat
17 10 (4.41%) Splunk
18 8 (3.52%) Oracle
19 7 (3.08%) Dynatrace
19 7 (3.08%) Ping Identity