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

6 months to
27 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 453 381 402
Rank change year-on-year -72 +21 +34
Contract jobs citing SSL 213 174 171
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.40% 0.53% 0.43%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 4.29% 4.36% 3.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 123 107 105
10th Percentile £364 £350 £400
25th Percentile £450 £394 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £600
Median % change year-on-year - -12.50% +14.29%
75th Percentile £600 £617 £638
90th Percentile £650 £694 £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 3
10th Percentile - £45.00 £38.58
25th Percentile - £55.00 £41.32
Median hourly rate - £80.68 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year - +75.84% -30.46%
75th Percentile - £82.10 £47.32
90th Percentile - £84.80 £48.18
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 4,970 3,995 4,935
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.41% 12.12% 12.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,989 2,446 2,987
10th Percentile £250 £235 £213
25th Percentile £400 £374 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.41% -2.35% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £607
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.05% -5.00% +8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 333 194 348
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.15 £17.95
Median hourly rate £26.44 £48.75 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -45.76% +8.33% -10.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.70 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £44.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year -39.41% -12.00% -12.14%

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 27 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 27 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 -89 183 £525 - 46
UK excluding London -40 140 £525 +5.00% 29
North of England -28 66 £600 +20.00% 7
Work from Home -41 60 £550 +4.76% 24
London -81 55 £550 -4.35% 24
North West -12 43 £600 - 4
Midlands -29 37 £380 +4.68% 4
West Midlands -26 35 £378 -6.09% 3
South East -61 28 £488 +30.00% 11
Yorkshire -36 22 £600 +20.00% 2
Scotland +7 16 £600 +14.29% 2
East of England -34 6 £450 -26.53% 2
East Midlands -14 2 £475 +32.68% 1
North East -39 2 £413 -20.67% 2
South West -42 2 - - 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 (5.63%) Confluence
2 3 (1.41%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (0.94%) Apache
3 2 (0.94%) IBM HTTP Server
3 2 (0.94%) IIS
3 2 (0.94%) Oracle HTTP Server
3 2 (0.94%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.94%) WebSphere
3 2 (0.94%) WebSphere Application Server
3 2 (0.94%) WebSphere Portal
4 1 (0.47%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (0.47%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.47%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.47%) JBoss
Applications
1 5 (2.35%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.41%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.94%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 2 (0.94%) Houdini
3 2 (0.94%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 3 (1.41%) Infor LN
2 2 (0.94%) Dynamics GP
3 1 (0.47%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.47%) Oracle General Ledger
3 1 (0.47%) Oracle Payables
3 1 (0.47%) Oracle Receivables
3 1 (0.47%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 74 (34.74%) Azure
2 40 (18.78%) AWS
3 33 (15.49%) Entra ID
4 18 (8.45%) GCP
5 15 (7.04%) Microsoft 365
6 13 (6.10%) Azure DevOps
6 13 (6.10%) SaaS
7 12 (5.63%) GitHub
8 11 (5.16%) Datadog
9 10 (4.69%) IaaS
10 8 (3.76%) Power Platform
10 8 (3.76%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 7 (3.29%) Azure Monitor
11 7 (3.29%) Serverless
12 6 (2.82%) Azure Key Vault
13 5 (2.35%) Azure Logic Apps
13 5 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
13 5 (2.35%) PaaS
14 4 (1.88%) Akamai
14 4 (1.88%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 105 (49.30%) DNS
2 81 (38.03%) Firewall
3 61 (28.64%) TCP/IP
4 54 (25.35%) VPN
5 53 (24.88%) HTTP
6 50 (23.47%) Network Security
7 41 (19.25%) WAN
8 35 (16.43%) BIG-IP
9 33 (15.49%) IPsec
10 31 (14.55%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 27 (12.68%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
12 25 (11.74%) DHCP
13 22 (10.33%) Wireshark
14 21 (9.86%) LAN
15 20 (9.39%) Internet
16 18 (8.45%) BGP
16 18 (8.45%) HTTPS
16 18 (8.45%) Wireless
17 16 (7.51%) SD-WAN
18 11 (5.16%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (5.16%) SQL Server
2 8 (3.76%) MySQL
3 6 (2.82%) Power BI
3 6 (2.82%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 5 (2.35%) MariaDB
5 4 (1.88%) Metadata
5 4 (1.88%) MongoDB
5 4 (1.88%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (0.94%) Oracle BI Publisher
6 2 (0.94%) Oracle Reports
6 2 (0.94%) SQLPlus
7 1 (0.47%) Amazon RDS
7 1 (0.47%) Neo4j
7 1 (0.47%) NoSQL
7 1 (0.47%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 22 (10.33%) JIRA
2 17 (7.98%) Fiddler
3 15 (7.04%) Jenkins
4 11 (5.16%) Git
5 5 (2.35%) Browser DevTools
5 5 (2.35%) GitLab
5 5 (2.35%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.94%) Introscope
7 1 (0.47%) Ant
7 1 (0.47%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 1 (0.47%) Maven
General
1 49 (23.00%) Finance
2 36 (16.90%) Banking
3 30 (14.08%) Social Skills
4 25 (11.74%) Legal
5 19 (8.92%) Analytical Skills
6 16 (7.51%) Investment Banking
7 12 (5.63%) Public Sector
8 10 (4.69%) Telecoms
9 8 (3.76%) Documentation Skills
10 5 (2.35%) Publishing
11 3 (1.41%) Manufacturing
12 2 (0.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 2 (0.94%) Retail
13 1 (0.47%) Financial Institution
13 1 (0.47%) Influencing Skills
13 1 (0.47%) Marketing
13 1 (0.47%) Military
13 1 (0.47%) Pharmaceutical
13 1 (0.47%) Police
13 1 (0.47%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 55 (25.82%) Network Engineer
2 28 (13.15%) Security Engineer
3 26 (12.21%) Senior
4 23 (10.80%) Administrator
5 18 (8.45%) IP Network Engineer
5 18 (8.45%) Web Engineer
6 15 (7.04%) Blue Coat Engineer
7 14 (6.57%) Architect
8 12 (5.63%) Network Security Engineer
8 12 (5.63%) Senior Network Engineer
9 9 (4.23%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 9 (4.23%) Lead
10 8 (3.76%) Network Architect
11 7 (3.29%) DBA
11 7 (3.29%) Windows Engineer
12 6 (2.82%) Developer
12 6 (2.82%) DevOps Engineer
12 6 (2.82%) Linux Engineer
12 6 (2.82%) SQL DBA
13 5 (2.35%) Security Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (13.62%) SAML
2 23 (10.80%) Middleware
3 17 (7.98%) ISPF
4 15 (7.04%) OAuth
5 13 (6.10%) 802.1X
5 13 (6.10%) LDAP
6 12 (5.63%) OAuth2
7 10 (4.69%) OpenID
8 9 (4.23%) Web Services
9 7 (3.29%) Kafka
9 7 (3.29%) XML
10 6 (2.82%) JSON
10 6 (2.82%) REST
10 6 (2.82%) SOAP
11 4 (1.88%) CSS
11 4 (1.88%) EDI
12 3 (1.41%) EDIFACT
12 3 (1.41%) JMS
12 3 (1.41%) XACML
12 3 (1.41%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 33 (15.49%) Clustering
2 27 (12.68%) PKI
3 18 (8.45%) Mainframe
3 18 (8.45%) Management Information System
4 15 (7.04%) Data Centre
5 14 (6.57%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 12 (5.63%) Security Posture
7 11 (5.16%) Cloud Security Posture
7 11 (5.16%) Onboarding
8 10 (4.69%) Enterprise Software
8 10 (4.69%) Self-Motivation
9 9 (4.23%) Cyber Threat
9 9 (4.23%) Replication
10 7 (3.29%) Hybrid Cloud
11 4 (1.88%) Algorithms
11 4 (1.88%) Data Structures
11 4 (1.88%) Fibre Optics
11 4 (1.88%) Legacy Systems
11 4 (1.88%) Linux Command Line
12 3 (1.41%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 53 (24.88%) Windows
2 44 (20.66%) Linux
3 28 (13.15%) Windows Server
4 18 (8.45%) zOS
5 14 (6.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (5.16%) Unix
7 4 (1.88%) Mac OS
7 4 (1.88%) Windows Server 2019
8 2 (0.94%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.94%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 2 (0.94%) VMS
9 1 (0.47%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 61 (28.64%) ITIL
2 44 (20.66%) Load Balancing
3 42 (19.72%) DevOps
4 36 (16.90%) High Availability
5 31 (14.55%) CI/CD
6 30 (14.08%) SIEM
7 27 (12.68%) Data Loss Prevention
7 27 (12.68%) Zero Trust
8 26 (12.21%) Cybersecurity
9 25 (11.74%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 24 (11.27%) Change Management
10 24 (11.27%) Performance Optimisation
10 24 (11.27%) Problem-Solving
11 22 (10.33%) Cloud Security
12 21 (9.86%) Migration
13 20 (9.39%) Performance Tuning
14 18 (8.45%) Agile
14 18 (8.45%) Infrastructure as Code
15 17 (7.98%) Malware Detection/Protection
16 16 (7.51%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 50 (23.47%) Python
2 29 (13.62%) SQL
3 25 (11.74%) PowerShell
4 20 (9.39%) Bash
5 8 (3.76%) Groovy
5 8 (3.76%) Java
5 8 (3.76%) Perl
6 6 (2.82%) Shell Script
6 6 (2.82%) T-SQL
7 5 (2.35%) ActionScript
7 5 (2.35%) JavaScript
8 4 (1.88%) PL/SQL
9 2 (0.94%) Jython
10 1 (0.47%) ActionScript 2.0
10 1 (0.47%) C
10 1 (0.47%) C#
10 1 (0.47%) C++
10 1 (0.47%) Cypher
10 1 (0.47%) Go
10 1 (0.47%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 58 (27.23%) Security Cleared
2 40 (18.78%) SC Cleared
3 20 (9.39%) Degree
4 17 (7.98%) DV Cleared
5 14 (6.57%) Azure Certification
6 13 (6.10%) CISSP
7 12 (5.63%) Cisco Certification
8 11 (5.16%) CCNP
8 11 (5.16%) Microsoft Certification
9 7 (3.29%) BPSS Clearance
9 7 (3.29%) CompTIA Security+
10 6 (2.82%) MCSE
11 5 (2.35%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 4 (1.88%) CCIE
12 4 (1.88%) MCSA
13 3 (1.41%) CISM
14 1 (0.47%) CCIP
14 1 (0.47%) CCSE
14 1 (0.47%) CEH
14 1 (0.47%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (5.63%) NIST
2 8 (3.76%) GDPR
3 7 (3.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 5 (2.35%) SLA
5 2 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
5 2 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 1 (0.47%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.47%) DICOM
6 1 (0.47%) HL7
6 1 (0.47%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 51 (23.94%) Active Directory
2 47 (22.07%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (9.86%) Virtual Machines
4 20 (9.39%) RACF
5 18 (8.45%) Firmware
6 17 (7.98%) Hyper-V
7 12 (5.63%) VMware NSX
8 8 (3.76%) Docker
8 8 (3.76%) vSphere
9 6 (2.82%) Squid
9 6 (2.82%) VMware ESXi
10 4 (1.88%) Ceph
11 3 (1.41%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.94%) Apache ZooKeeper
12 2 (0.94%) ProxySG
12 2 (0.94%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 2 (0.94%) Virtual Desktop
13 1 (0.47%) KVM
13 1 (0.47%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 39 (18.31%) Ansible
2 23 (10.80%) Single Sign-On
3 22 (10.33%) Terraform
4 17 (7.98%) OMEGAMON
5 14 (6.57%) Kubernetes
6 13 (6.10%) CASB
6 13 (6.10%) Grafana
7 8 (3.76%) Prometheus
7 8 (3.76%) Puppet
8 7 (3.29%) FortiGate
9 6 (2.82%) SCOM
10 4 (1.88%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 4 (1.88%) CA Single Sign-On
10 4 (1.88%) Cisco CUCM
10 4 (1.88%) Microsoft Intune
10 4 (1.88%) Nessus
10 4 (1.88%) Packer
10 4 (1.88%) PingFederate
11 3 (1.41%) Argo
11 3 (1.41%) systemd
Vendors
1 53 (24.88%) VMware
2 48 (22.54%) F5
3 41 (19.25%) Microsoft
4 37 (17.37%) Cisco
5 28 (13.15%) Blue Coat
5 28 (13.15%) Zscaler
6 26 (12.21%) ServiceNow
7 25 (11.74%) Palo Alto
8 21 (9.86%) IBM
9 20 (9.39%) McAfee
10 16 (7.51%) NetApp
11 15 (7.04%) CheckPoint
12 14 (6.57%) Fortinet
13 12 (5.63%) Juniper
14 11 (5.16%) Oracle
14 11 (5.16%) SolarWinds
14 11 (5.16%) Splunk
15 8 (3.76%) Citrix
15 8 (3.76%) Red Hat
16 7 (3.29%) Ping Identity