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

6 months to
29 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 462 389 384
Rank change year-on-year -73 -5 +63
Contract jobs citing SSL 190 146 206
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.37% 0.48% 0.47%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 3.92% 3.87% 3.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 110 86 123
10th Percentile £335 £334 £353
25th Percentile £425 £375 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £575
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -9.57% +8.18%
75th Percentile £600 £608 £638
90th Percentile £653 £695 £742
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 6 5
10th Percentile - £80.34 £40.40
25th Percentile - £80.59 -
Median hourly rate - £81.35 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year - +77.31% -27.44%
75th Percentile - £81.91 -
90th Percentile - £83.05 £47.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £81.35 £45.88
% change year-on-year - +77.31% -26.73%

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 4,844 3,768 5,421
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.48% 12.33% 12.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,966 2,296 3,192
10th Percentile £250 £225 £213
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -1.43%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £472 £490
% change year-on-year +2.28% -3.62% +3.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 300 179 433
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.87
25th Percentile £19.34 £21.99 £17.69
Median hourly rate £27.11 £45.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -39.76% - +114.29%
75th Percentile £65.00 £61.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.03 £80.20 £73.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.55 £36.57 £47.50
% change year-on-year -27.40% -23.01% +115.91%

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 June 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 June 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 -82 160 £525 +0.96% 30
UK excluding London -49 124 £525 +5.00% 28
North of England -21 65 £600 +20.00% 7
Work from Home -54 49 £550 - 19
London -85 44 £525 -4.11% 10
North West -7 39 £623 +75.99% 5
Midlands -35 35 £358 -0.14% 4
West Midlands -34 34 £340 - 2
Yorkshire -34 25 £600 +20.00% 2
South East -55 20 £475 +26.67% 12
Scotland +1 13 £600 +14.29%
East of England -32 6 £450 -20.00% 2
South West -36 2 - - 2
North East -36 2 £413 -22.90%
East Midlands -15 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 (6.32%) Confluence
2 4 (2.11%) TPMS
3 3 (1.58%) Microsoft Exchange
4 2 (1.05%) IBM HTTP Server
4 2 (1.05%) IIS
4 2 (1.05%) Oracle HTTP Server
4 2 (1.05%) SharePoint
4 2 (1.05%) WebSphere
4 2 (1.05%) WebSphere Application Server
4 2 (1.05%) WebSphere Portal
5 1 (0.53%) Apache
5 1 (0.53%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.53%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.53%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 8 (4.21%) MS Visio
2 3 (1.58%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.53%) Dynamics GP
1 1 (0.53%) Infor LN
Cloud Services
1 61 (32.11%) Azure
2 37 (19.47%) AWS
3 27 (14.21%) Entra ID
4 17 (8.95%) GCP
5 11 (5.79%) GitHub
5 11 (5.79%) SaaS
6 10 (5.26%) Datadog
6 10 (5.26%) Microsoft 365
7 9 (4.74%) IaaS
8 8 (4.21%) Serverless
8 8 (4.21%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 6 (3.16%) Azure DevOps
10 5 (2.63%) Azure Key Vault
10 5 (2.63%) Azure Logic Apps
11 4 (2.11%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 4 (2.11%) Amazon S3
11 4 (2.11%) AWS CloudFormation
11 4 (2.11%) AWS Lambda
11 4 (2.11%) PaaS
12 3 (1.58%) Akamai
Communications & Networking
1 102 (53.68%) DNS
2 78 (41.05%) Firewall
3 63 (33.16%) TCP/IP
4 57 (30.00%) HTTP
5 48 (25.26%) VPN
6 45 (23.68%) Network Security
7 44 (23.16%) BIG-IP
8 41 (21.58%) WAN
9 33 (17.37%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 30 (15.79%) IPsec
10 30 (15.79%) Wireshark
11 29 (15.26%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
12 23 (12.11%) LAN
13 20 (10.53%) DHCP
13 20 (10.53%) HTTPS
14 19 (10.00%) Internet
15 18 (9.47%) BGP
16 16 (8.42%) SD-WAN
16 16 (8.42%) Wireless
17 13 (6.84%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (2.63%) MongoDB
2 4 (2.11%) MariaDB
2 4 (2.11%) Metadata
2 4 (2.11%) PostgreSQL
2 4 (2.11%) SQL Server
3 2 (1.05%) MySQL
3 2 (1.05%) Power BI
3 2 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 2 (1.05%) SQLPlus
4 1 (0.53%) Amazon RDS
4 1 (0.53%) DocumentDB
4 1 (0.53%) Neo4j
4 1 (0.53%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 22 (11.58%) Fiddler
2 21 (11.05%) JIRA
3 11 (5.79%) Jenkins
4 8 (4.21%) Git
5 4 (2.11%) Browser DevTools
5 4 (2.11%) GitLab
5 4 (2.11%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (1.05%) Introscope
General
1 38 (20.00%) Finance
2 33 (17.37%) Banking
3 24 (12.63%) Social Skills
4 19 (10.00%) Legal
5 18 (9.47%) Investment Banking
6 13 (6.84%) Analytical Skills
7 12 (6.32%) Documentation Skills
8 11 (5.79%) Public Sector
9 7 (3.68%) Telecoms
10 5 (2.63%) Publishing
11 2 (1.05%) Retail
12 1 (0.53%) Financial Institution
12 1 (0.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.53%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.53%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.53%) Military
12 1 (0.53%) Pharmaceutical
12 1 (0.53%) Police
Job Titles
1 58 (30.53%) Network Engineer
2 24 (12.63%) Security Engineer
3 23 (12.11%) Web Engineer
4 21 (11.05%) Senior
5 20 (10.53%) IP Network Engineer
6 17 (8.95%) Administrator
6 17 (8.95%) Blue Coat Engineer
7 14 (7.37%) Architect
8 11 (5.79%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 10 (5.26%) Network Security Engineer
10 9 (4.74%) Senior Network Engineer
11 7 (3.68%) Network Architect
12 6 (3.16%) Junior
12 6 (3.16%) Linux Engineer
13 5 (2.63%) Cloud Engineer
13 5 (2.63%) DevOps Engineer
13 5 (2.63%) Junior Network Engineer
13 5 (2.63%) Lead
13 5 (2.63%) Technical Architect
13 5 (2.63%) Windows Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (16.32%) SAML
2 16 (8.42%) LDAP
2 16 (8.42%) Middleware
3 13 (6.84%) ISPF
4 11 (5.79%) OAuth
4 11 (5.79%) OpenID
5 10 (5.26%) 802.1X
6 9 (4.74%) OAuth2
7 6 (3.16%) Kafka
7 6 (3.16%) Web Services
8 5 (2.63%) CSS
9 4 (2.11%) HTML
9 4 (2.11%) XACML
10 3 (1.58%) JMS
10 3 (1.58%) REST
10 3 (1.58%) XML
11 2 (1.05%) JDBC
11 2 (1.05%) RabbitMQ
11 2 (1.05%) SOAP
11 2 (1.05%) WebSphere MQ
Miscellaneous
1 25 (13.16%) Clustering
2 19 (10.00%) PKI
3 18 (9.47%) Management Information System
4 17 (8.95%) Data Centre
5 14 (7.37%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 13 (6.84%) Mainframe
6 13 (6.84%) Security Posture
7 11 (5.79%) Cloud Security Posture
8 10 (5.26%) Onboarding
9 8 (4.21%) Cyber Threat
9 8 (4.21%) Enterprise Software
10 7 (3.68%) Self-Motivation
11 6 (3.16%) Hybrid Cloud
12 5 (2.63%) Replication
13 4 (2.11%) Algorithms
14 3 (1.58%) SCADA
15 2 (1.05%) Cyber Defence
15 2 (1.05%) Enterprise Storage
15 2 (1.05%) Linux Command Line
15 2 (1.05%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 42 (22.11%) Windows
2 37 (19.47%) Linux
3 21 (11.05%) Windows Server
4 13 (6.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 13 (6.84%) zOS
5 8 (4.21%) Unix
6 4 (2.11%) Windows Server 2019
7 3 (1.58%) Mac OS
8 2 (1.05%) CatOS
8 2 (1.05%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (1.05%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 2 (1.05%) VMS
9 1 (0.53%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 49 (25.79%) ITIL
2 43 (22.63%) Load Balancing
3 33 (17.37%) DevOps
4 32 (16.84%) Cybersecurity
4 32 (16.84%) Data Loss Prevention
5 30 (15.79%) High Availability
5 30 (15.79%) SIEM
6 26 (13.68%) CI/CD
7 25 (13.16%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 25 (13.16%) Zero Trust
8 23 (12.11%) Cloud Security
9 22 (11.58%) Change Management
9 22 (11.58%) Malware Detection/Protection
10 19 (10.00%) Migration
11 18 (9.47%) Infrastructure as Code
12 17 (8.95%) Agile
12 17 (8.95%) Roadmaps
13 16 (8.42%) Performance Optimisation
13 16 (8.42%) Problem-Solving
14 15 (7.89%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 46 (24.21%) Python
2 23 (12.11%) PowerShell
3 22 (11.58%) SQL
4 21 (11.05%) Bash
5 5 (2.63%) Groovy
5 5 (2.63%) Java
5 5 (2.63%) Perl
6 4 (2.11%) ActionScript
7 3 (1.58%) JavaScript
7 3 (1.58%) PL/SQL
7 3 (1.58%) Shell Script
8 2 (1.05%) Jython
8 2 (1.05%) T-SQL
9 1 (0.53%) C
9 1 (0.53%) Cypher
9 1 (0.53%) Go
9 1 (0.53%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 43 (22.63%) Security Cleared
2 29 (15.26%) SC Cleared
3 17 (8.95%) Degree
4 14 (7.37%) Cisco Certification
4 14 (7.37%) CISSP
5 13 (6.84%) CCNP
6 12 (6.32%) DV Cleared
7 8 (4.21%) Azure Certification
8 7 (3.68%) CompTIA Security+
8 7 (3.68%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (2.63%) CCIE
9 5 (2.63%) MCSE
10 4 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
10 4 (2.11%) CISM
10 4 (2.11%) FFIEC
10 4 (2.11%) MCSA
11 2 (1.05%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 1 (0.53%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 1 (0.53%) AWS Certification
12 1 (0.53%) CCIE Security
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (6.32%) GDPR
1 12 (6.32%) NIST
2 5 (2.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 5 (2.63%) PCI DSS
3 4 (2.11%) GLBA
3 4 (2.11%) SLA
4 2 (1.05%) Cyber Essentials
4 2 (1.05%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 1 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
5 1 (0.53%) DICOM
5 1 (0.53%) HL7
5 1 (0.53%) NCSC
5 1 (0.53%) RMADS
System Software
1 46 (24.21%) VMware Infrastructure
2 45 (23.68%) Active Directory
3 20 (10.53%) Firmware
4 19 (10.00%) Virtual Machines
5 17 (8.95%) RACF
6 15 (7.89%) VMware NSX
7 14 (7.37%) Hyper-V
8 6 (3.16%) Docker
8 6 (3.16%) Squid
8 6 (3.16%) VMware ESXi
8 6 (3.16%) vSphere
9 4 (2.11%) Ceph
10 2 (1.05%) ProxySG
10 2 (1.05%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 2 (1.05%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (1.05%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.53%) Apache ZooKeeper
11 1 (0.53%) KVM
11 1 (0.53%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 34 (17.89%) Ansible
2 26 (13.68%) Single Sign-On
3 18 (9.47%) Terraform
4 13 (6.84%) CASB
4 13 (6.84%) OMEGAMON
5 11 (5.79%) Kubernetes
6 10 (5.26%) Grafana
7 9 (4.74%) FortiGate
8 7 (3.68%) Puppet
9 6 (3.16%) Prometheus
10 4 (2.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 4 (2.11%) CA Single Sign-On
10 4 (2.11%) Nessus
10 4 (2.11%) Packer
10 4 (2.11%) PingFederate
11 3 (1.58%) Microsoft Intune
11 3 (1.58%) systemd
11 3 (1.58%) yum
12 2 (1.05%) CA Wily
12 2 (1.05%) SCOM
Vendors
1 52 (27.37%) VMware
2 51 (26.84%) F5
3 36 (18.95%) Cisco
3 36 (18.95%) Microsoft
4 30 (15.79%) Blue Coat
5 25 (13.16%) Palo Alto
6 24 (12.63%) McAfee
6 24 (12.63%) Zscaler
7 21 (11.05%) ServiceNow
8 18 (9.47%) NetApp
9 16 (8.42%) CheckPoint
9 16 (8.42%) IBM
10 15 (7.89%) Fortinet
11 13 (6.84%) Splunk
12 10 (5.26%) Juniper
13 9 (4.74%) SolarWinds
14 7 (3.68%) Netskope
14 7 (3.68%) Oracle
14 7 (3.68%) Ping Identity
14 7 (3.68%) Red Hat