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 24 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 459 384 410
Rank change year-on-year -75 +26 +26
Contract jobs citing SSL 210 172 179
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.40% 0.53% 0.44%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 4.22% 4.32% 3.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 119 104 108
10th Percentile £363 £350 £394
25th Percentile £450 £386 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £600
Median % change year-on-year - -12.50% +14.29%
75th Percentile £600 £620 £638
90th Percentile £650 £697 £738
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 13 4
10th Percentile - £45.00 £39.49
25th Percentile - £55.00 £43.60
Median hourly rate - £80.68 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year - +75.84% -30.46%
75th Percentile - £82.10 £46.60
90th Percentile - £84.80 £47.89
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £80.68 £45.88
% change year-on-year - +75.84% -26.00%

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 4,976 3,981 5,061
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.43% 12.18% 12.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,993 2,436 3,038
10th Percentile £250 £235 £213
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £489 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.25% -2.20% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £602
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.63% -5.00% +8.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 330 195 368
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.15 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.22 £47.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -44.80% +5.56% -10.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.60 £74.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £43.25 £48.56
% change year-on-year -38.36% -10.93% -14.42%

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 24 July 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 24 July 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 -89 180 £525 - 46
UK excluding London -51 140 £525 +5.00% 28
North of England -17 68 £600 +20.00% 7
Work from Home -45 60 £550 +7.32% 19
London -104 52 £550 -4.35% 23
North West -7 44 £600 - 4
Midlands -30 36 £378 +3.99% 5
West Midlands -36 35 £375 -6.72% 3
South East -53 28 £488 +30.00% 11
Yorkshire -33 23 £600 +20.00% 2
Scotland +1 16 £600 +14.29%
East of England -34 6 £450 -26.53% 2
North East -34 2 £413 -20.67% 2
South West -42 2 - - 1
East Midlands -14 1 £475 +32.68% 2

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 (5.71%) Confluence
2 3 (1.43%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.95%) Apache
3 2 (0.95%) IBM HTTP Server
3 2 (0.95%) IIS
3 2 (0.95%) Oracle HTTP Server
3 2 (0.95%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.95%) WebSphere
3 2 (0.95%) WebSphere Application Server
3 2 (0.95%) WebSphere Portal
4 1 (0.48%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.48%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.48%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.48%) JBoss
Applications
1 5 (2.38%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.43%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.95%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 2 (0.95%) Houdini
3 2 (0.95%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 3 (1.43%) Infor LN
2 2 (0.95%) Dynamics GP
Cloud Services
1 72 (34.29%) Azure
2 40 (19.05%) AWS
3 32 (15.24%) Entra ID
4 17 (8.10%) GCP
5 14 (6.67%) Microsoft 365
6 12 (5.71%) Azure DevOps
6 12 (5.71%) GitHub
6 12 (5.71%) SaaS
7 11 (5.24%) Datadog
8 9 (4.29%) IaaS
9 8 (3.81%) Power Platform
9 8 (3.81%) Serverless
9 8 (3.81%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 7 (3.33%) Azure Monitor
11 6 (2.86%) Azure Key Vault
12 5 (2.38%) Azure Logic Apps
12 5 (2.38%) GitHub Actions
13 4 (1.90%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 4 (1.90%) Amazon S3
13 4 (1.90%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 105 (50.00%) DNS
2 80 (38.10%) Firewall
3 62 (29.52%) TCP/IP
4 54 (25.71%) HTTP
4 54 (25.71%) VPN
5 50 (23.81%) Network Security
6 41 (19.52%) WAN
7 36 (17.14%) BIG-IP
8 34 (16.19%) IPsec
9 32 (15.24%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 28 (13.33%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
11 25 (11.90%) DHCP
12 23 (10.95%) Wireshark
13 21 (10.00%) LAN
14 20 (9.52%) Internet
15 18 (8.57%) BGP
15 18 (8.57%) HTTPS
15 18 (8.57%) Wireless
16 16 (7.62%) SD-WAN
17 11 (5.24%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (4.76%) SQL Server
2 7 (3.33%) MySQL
3 6 (2.86%) Power BI
3 6 (2.86%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 4 (1.90%) MariaDB
4 4 (1.90%) Metadata
4 4 (1.90%) MongoDB
4 4 (1.90%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.95%) SQLPlus
6 1 (0.48%) Amazon RDS
6 1 (0.48%) Neo4j
6 1 (0.48%) NoSQL
6 1 (0.48%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 22 (10.48%) JIRA
2 18 (8.57%) Fiddler
3 13 (6.19%) Jenkins
4 9 (4.29%) Git
5 5 (2.38%) Browser DevTools
6 4 (1.90%) GitLab
6 4 (1.90%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.95%) Introscope
General
1 47 (22.38%) Finance
2 37 (17.62%) Banking
3 28 (13.33%) Social Skills
4 25 (11.90%) Legal
5 18 (8.57%) Analytical Skills
6 17 (8.10%) Investment Banking
7 13 (6.19%) Public Sector
8 10 (4.76%) Telecoms
9 7 (3.33%) Documentation Skills
10 5 (2.38%) Publishing
11 3 (1.43%) Manufacturing
12 2 (0.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 2 (0.95%) Retail
13 1 (0.48%) Financial Institution
13 1 (0.48%) Influencing Skills
13 1 (0.48%) Military
13 1 (0.48%) Pharmaceutical
13 1 (0.48%) Police
Job Titles
1 56 (26.67%) Network Engineer
2 28 (13.33%) Security Engineer
3 25 (11.90%) Senior
4 23 (10.95%) Administrator
5 19 (9.05%) IP Network Engineer
5 19 (9.05%) Web Engineer
6 16 (7.62%) Blue Coat Engineer
7 15 (7.14%) Architect
8 12 (5.71%) Network Security Engineer
8 12 (5.71%) Senior Network Engineer
9 8 (3.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 8 (3.81%) Lead
9 8 (3.81%) Network Architect
10 7 (3.33%) DBA
11 6 (2.86%) Linux Engineer
11 6 (2.86%) SQL DBA
11 6 (2.86%) Windows Engineer
12 5 (2.38%) Cloud Engineer
12 5 (2.38%) DevOps Engineer
12 5 (2.38%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (13.33%) SAML
2 23 (10.95%) Middleware
3 17 (8.10%) ISPF
4 13 (6.19%) 802.1X
4 13 (6.19%) LDAP
4 13 (6.19%) OAuth
5 11 (5.24%) OAuth2
6 10 (4.76%) OpenID
7 8 (3.81%) Web Services
8 6 (2.86%) Kafka
9 5 (2.38%) XML
10 4 (1.90%) CSS
10 4 (1.90%) EDI
10 4 (1.90%) JSON
10 4 (1.90%) REST
10 4 (1.90%) SOAP
10 4 (1.90%) XACML
11 3 (1.43%) EDIFACT
11 3 (1.43%) JMS
12 2 (0.95%) WebSphere MQ
Miscellaneous
1 33 (15.71%) Clustering
2 25 (11.90%) PKI
3 19 (9.05%) Management Information System
4 18 (8.57%) Mainframe
5 15 (7.14%) Data Centre
5 15 (7.14%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 12 (5.71%) Security Posture
7 11 (5.24%) Cloud Security Posture
7 11 (5.24%) Onboarding
8 10 (4.76%) Enterprise Software
8 10 (4.76%) Self-Motivation
9 9 (4.29%) Cyber Threat
9 9 (4.29%) Replication
10 7 (3.33%) Hybrid Cloud
11 4 (1.90%) Algorithms
11 4 (1.90%) Fibre Optics
11 4 (1.90%) Linux Command Line
12 3 (1.43%) Data Structures
12 3 (1.43%) Distributed Applications
12 3 (1.43%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 51 (24.29%) Windows
2 43 (20.48%) Linux
3 27 (12.86%) Windows Server
4 18 (8.57%) zOS
5 14 (6.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (5.24%) Unix
7 4 (1.90%) Mac OS
7 4 (1.90%) Windows Server 2019
8 2 (0.95%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.95%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 2 (0.95%) VMS
9 1 (0.48%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 61 (29.05%) ITIL
2 45 (21.43%) Load Balancing
3 41 (19.52%) DevOps
4 36 (17.14%) High Availability
5 30 (14.29%) CI/CD
5 30 (14.29%) SIEM
6 28 (13.33%) Data Loss Prevention
7 27 (12.86%) Cybersecurity
8 26 (12.38%) Zero Trust
9 24 (11.43%) Change Management
9 24 (11.43%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 24 (11.43%) Performance Optimisation
10 22 (10.48%) Cloud Security
11 20 (9.52%) Migration
11 20 (9.52%) Problem-Solving
12 18 (8.57%) Agile
12 18 (8.57%) Malware Detection/Protection
12 18 (8.57%) Performance Tuning
13 17 (8.10%) Infrastructure as Code
14 16 (7.62%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 48 (22.86%) Python
2 29 (13.81%) SQL
3 25 (11.90%) PowerShell
4 20 (9.52%) Bash
5 8 (3.81%) Perl
6 7 (3.33%) Groovy
7 6 (2.86%) Java
7 6 (2.86%) Shell Script
7 6 (2.86%) T-SQL
8 5 (2.38%) ActionScript
9 3 (1.43%) JavaScript
9 3 (1.43%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.95%) Jython
11 1 (0.48%) ActionScript 2.0
11 1 (0.48%) C
11 1 (0.48%) Cypher
11 1 (0.48%) Go
11 1 (0.48%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 54 (25.71%) Security Cleared
2 39 (18.57%) SC Cleared
3 19 (9.05%) Degree
4 14 (6.67%) DV Cleared
5 13 (6.19%) Azure Certification
5 13 (6.19%) CISSP
6 12 (5.71%) Cisco Certification
7 11 (5.24%) CCNP
7 11 (5.24%) Microsoft Certification
8 7 (3.33%) BPSS Clearance
8 7 (3.33%) CompTIA Security+
9 6 (2.86%) MCSE
10 5 (2.38%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 4 (1.90%) CCIE
11 4 (1.90%) MCSA
12 3 (1.43%) CISM
13 1 (0.48%) CCIP
13 1 (0.48%) CCSE
13 1 (0.48%) CEH
13 1 (0.48%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (5.71%) NIST
2 8 (3.81%) GDPR
3 7 (3.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 5 (2.38%) SLA
5 2 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
5 2 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 1 (0.48%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.48%) DICOM
6 1 (0.48%) HL7
6 1 (0.48%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 50 (23.81%) Active Directory
2 48 (22.86%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (10.00%) RACF
3 21 (10.00%) Virtual Machines
4 19 (9.05%) Firmware
5 16 (7.62%) Hyper-V
6 12 (5.71%) VMware NSX
7 8 (3.81%) vSphere
8 7 (3.33%) Docker
9 6 (2.86%) Squid
9 6 (2.86%) VMware ESXi
10 4 (1.90%) Ceph
11 3 (1.43%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.95%) Apache ZooKeeper
12 2 (0.95%) ProxySG
12 2 (0.95%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 2 (0.95%) Virtual Desktop
13 1 (0.48%) KVM
13 1 (0.48%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 37 (17.62%) Ansible
2 24 (11.43%) Single Sign-On
3 21 (10.00%) Terraform
4 17 (8.10%) OMEGAMON
5 13 (6.19%) CASB
5 13 (6.19%) Grafana
5 13 (6.19%) Kubernetes
6 8 (3.81%) Prometheus
7 7 (3.33%) FortiGate
7 7 (3.33%) Puppet
8 6 (2.86%) SCOM
9 4 (1.90%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 4 (1.90%) CA Single Sign-On
9 4 (1.90%) Cisco CUCM
9 4 (1.90%) Microsoft Intune
9 4 (1.90%) Nessus
9 4 (1.90%) Packer
9 4 (1.90%) PingFederate
10 3 (1.43%) systemd
10 3 (1.43%) yum
Vendors
1 52 (24.76%) VMware
2 49 (23.33%) F5
3 41 (19.52%) Microsoft
4 37 (17.62%) Cisco
5 29 (13.81%) Blue Coat
6 28 (13.33%) Zscaler
7 26 (12.38%) ServiceNow
8 25 (11.90%) Palo Alto
9 21 (10.00%) IBM
9 21 (10.00%) McAfee
10 17 (8.10%) NetApp
11 15 (7.14%) CheckPoint
12 14 (6.67%) Fortinet
13 12 (5.71%) Juniper
14 11 (5.24%) SolarWinds
14 11 (5.24%) Splunk
15 9 (4.29%) Oracle
16 8 (3.81%) Citrix
16 8 (3.81%) Red Hat
17 7 (3.33%) Ping Identity