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

6 months to
16 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 391 340 386
Rank change year-on-year -51 +46 +56
Contract jobs citing SSL 201 199 213
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.54% 0.62% 0.50%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 5.16% 4.87% 3.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 123 123 106
10th Percentile £350 £382 £350
25th Percentile £383 £464 £403
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -
75th Percentile £680 £638 £626
90th Percentile £700 £673 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £550 £468
% change year-on-year -10.91% +17.52% +5.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 0 14
10th Percentile £47.63 - £55.35
25th Percentile £51.44 - £60.56
Median hourly rate £65.00 - £65.98
75th Percentile £75.00 - £66.18
90th Percentile £79.38 - £67.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 - £65.98
% change year-on-year - - +4.35%

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 3,897 4,090 5,807
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.48% 12.84% 13.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,562 2,395 3,566
10th Percentile £205 £213 £210
25th Percentile £356 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -2.44%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £468 £475
% change year-on-year -3.74% -1.58% +2.84%
Number of hourly rates quoted 160 138 334
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.15 £17.83
25th Percentile £18.78 £21.46 £23.72
Median hourly rate £30.00 £33.75 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -11.11% -40.25% +135.38%
75th Percentile £65.00 £53.44 £65.98
90th Percentile £74.33 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £32.50 £59.75
% change year-on-year +29.05% -45.61% +185.48%

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 16 January 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 16 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for SSL in the UK

SSL
Top 14 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 16 January 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 -27 174 £550 -4.35% 34
UK excluding London -48 103 £490 -10.91% 29
Work from Home -30 67 £525 -4.55% 15
London -9 64 £575 +4.55% 9
North of England -15 57 £670 +21.82% 7
West Midlands -4 38 £378 -17.49% 3
Midlands -17 38 £378 -17.49% 4
North West +2 34 £520 +49.64% 5
Yorkshire -39 22 £675 +22.73% 2
East of England -17 10 £454 -24.33% 6
South East -44 9 £465 -25.60% 6
Scotland -9 4 £440 -12.00%
South West -19 4 £529 +24.35% 6
North East -18 1 £550 -6.78%

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 (7.96%) Confluence
2 12 (5.97%) TPMS
3 3 (1.49%) Apache
4 2 (1.00%) Oracle HTTP Server
4 2 (1.00%) Tomcat
4 2 (1.00%) WebLogic
5 1 (0.50%) CMS
5 1 (0.50%) Drupal
5 1 (0.50%) IIS
5 1 (0.50%) JBoss
5 1 (0.50%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.50%) Umbraco
Applications
1 6 (2.99%) MS Visio
2 2 (1.00%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.50%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (1.49%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.50%) RMDS
Cloud Services
1 60 (29.85%) AWS
2 27 (13.43%) Azure
3 26 (12.94%) Virtual Private Cloud
4 22 (10.95%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 22 (10.95%) Amazon EC2
4 22 (10.95%) Amazon ELB
4 22 (10.95%) Amazon S3
5 16 (7.96%) GitHub
6 15 (7.46%) GCP
7 11 (5.47%) Amazon EKS
8 8 (3.98%) Serverless
9 5 (2.49%) Amazon ECS
9 5 (2.49%) AWS CloudFormation
9 5 (2.49%) AWS Lambda
9 5 (2.49%) OpenShift
10 4 (1.99%) Entra ID
10 4 (1.99%) GitHub Actions
11 3 (1.49%) Kong
12 2 (1.00%) Azure API Management
12 2 (1.00%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 93 (46.27%) DNS
2 85 (42.29%) TCP/IP
3 79 (39.30%) Firewall
4 66 (32.84%) VPN
5 61 (30.35%) HTTP
6 52 (25.87%) Network Security
7 34 (16.92%) Wireshark
8 33 (16.42%) BIG-IP
9 28 (13.93%) IPsec
10 27 (13.43%) WAN
11 19 (9.45%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
11 19 (9.45%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 19 (9.45%) Wireless
12 18 (8.96%) HTTPS
13 16 (7.96%) SSH
14 15 (7.46%) LAN
14 15 (7.46%) SNMP
15 12 (5.97%) BGP
16 11 (5.47%) DMVPN
16 11 (5.47%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (4.98%) DocumentDB
1 10 (4.98%) MongoDB
1 10 (4.98%) NoSQL
2 8 (3.98%) Apache Cassandra
2 8 (3.98%) SQL Server
3 5 (2.49%) PostgreSQL
4 3 (1.49%) Redis
5 1 (0.50%) Amazon QuickSight
5 1 (0.50%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 32 (15.92%) Git
2 27 (13.43%) Jenkins
3 24 (11.94%) Fiddler
4 20 (9.95%) GitLab
5 19 (9.45%) JIRA
6 3 (1.49%) Robot Framework
7 2 (1.00%) Bitbucket
7 2 (1.00%) git-flow
8 1 (0.50%) CircleCI
8 1 (0.50%) Crashlytics
8 1 (0.50%) fastlane
8 1 (0.50%) JUnit
8 1 (0.50%) Subversion
8 1 (0.50%) Xcode
8 1 (0.50%) XCTest
8 1 (0.50%) XCUITest
General
1 37 (18.41%) Social Skills
2 31 (15.42%) Analytical Skills
3 28 (13.93%) Finance
4 23 (11.44%) Banking
5 22 (10.95%) Public Sector
6 17 (8.46%) Investment Banking
7 16 (7.96%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (3.98%) Telecoms
9 4 (1.99%) Financial Institution
9 4 (1.99%) Military
10 2 (1.00%) Advertising
10 2 (1.00%) Presentation Skills
11 1 (0.50%) Billing
11 1 (0.50%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.50%) Italian Language
11 1 (0.50%) Legal
11 1 (0.50%) Marketing
11 1 (0.50%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.50%) Polish Language
11 1 (0.50%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 61 (30.35%) Network Engineer
2 32 (15.92%) Senior
3 29 (14.43%) Developer
4 27 (13.43%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 22 (10.95%) Web Engineer
6 14 (6.97%) Architect
6 14 (6.97%) Blue Coat Engineer
6 14 (6.97%) Cryptography Engineer
6 14 (6.97%) Security Engineer
7 13 (6.47%) DevOps Engineer
8 12 (5.97%) Consultant
8 12 (5.97%) Full-Stack Developer
8 12 (5.97%) IP Network Engineer
8 12 (5.97%) Junior
8 12 (5.97%) Senior DevOps
8 12 (5.97%) Senior DevOps Engineer
9 11 (5.47%) Junior Network Engineer
10 10 (4.98%) Network Security Engineer
11 9 (4.48%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 8 (3.98%) Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (11.94%) LDAP
1 24 (11.94%) REST
2 19 (9.45%) SAML
3 17 (8.46%) OAuth
4 15 (7.46%) SOAP
5 14 (6.97%) HTML
6 13 (6.47%) JSON
7 12 (5.97%) Kafka
7 12 (5.97%) RESTful
8 11 (5.47%) 802.1X
9 10 (4.98%) Spring
9 10 (4.98%) Spring Boot
9 10 (4.98%) XML
10 9 (4.48%) Node.js
11 7 (3.48%) OAuth2
11 7 (3.48%) OpenID
12 5 (2.49%) AngularJS
12 5 (2.49%) Web Services
13 4 (1.99%) .NET
13 4 (1.99%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 27 (13.43%) Management Information System
2 25 (12.44%) PKI
3 15 (7.46%) Data Centre
4 11 (5.47%) Analytical Mindset
5 8 (3.98%) Cyber Threat
6 7 (3.48%) CSOC
6 7 (3.48%) Cyberattack
6 7 (3.48%) Onboarding
6 7 (3.48%) Security Operations Centre
7 4 (1.99%) Algorithms
7 4 (1.99%) Linux Command Line
7 4 (1.99%) Private Cloud
8 3 (1.49%) Cloud Native
8 3 (1.49%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 2 (1.00%) Hybrid Cloud
10 1 (0.50%) Animation
10 1 (0.50%) Clustering
10 1 (0.50%) Data Protection Act
10 1 (0.50%) Replication
10 1 (0.50%) Tandem
Operating Systems
1 52 (25.87%) Linux
2 32 (15.92%) Windows
3 13 (6.47%) Unix
4 7 (3.48%) Windows Server
5 6 (2.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 4 (1.99%) CatOS
7 3 (1.49%) Ubuntu
8 2 (1.00%) Apple iOS
8 2 (1.00%) CentOS
9 1 (0.50%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.50%) Solaris
9 1 (0.50%) VMS
9 1 (0.50%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.50%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 53 (26.37%) DevOps
2 44 (21.89%) CI/CD
3 38 (18.91%) Load Balancing
4 36 (17.91%) High Availability
5 35 (17.41%) Cybersecurity
6 32 (15.92%) Infrastructure as Code
7 31 (15.42%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 27 (13.43%) Incident Response
9 26 (12.94%) Data Loss Prevention
9 26 (12.94%) Infrastructure Automation
9 26 (12.94%) Problem-Solving
9 26 (12.94%) Test Automation
10 25 (12.44%) Change Management
10 25 (12.44%) Root Cause Analysis
11 24 (11.94%) Identity Access Management
11 24 (11.94%) Migration
12 23 (11.44%) Key Management
13 22 (10.95%) API Management
13 22 (10.95%) Observability
13 22 (10.95%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 66 (32.84%) Python
2 31 (15.42%) Bash
3 24 (11.94%) JavaScript
4 13 (6.47%) Java
4 13 (6.47%) PowerShell
4 13 (6.47%) SQL
5 9 (4.48%) Perl
6 3 (1.49%) C#
7 2 (1.00%) C
7 2 (1.00%) PHP
7 2 (1.00%) Shell Script
7 2 (1.00%) Swift
8 1 (0.50%) C++
8 1 (0.50%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 78 (38.81%) Security Cleared
2 65 (32.34%) SC Cleared
3 15 (7.46%) Degree
4 13 (6.47%) CISSP
4 13 (6.47%) DV Cleared
5 12 (5.97%) FFIEC
6 10 (4.98%) Cisco Certification
7 7 (3.48%) CISM
7 7 (3.48%) Microsoft Certification
8 6 (2.99%) CCNP
9 4 (1.99%) Computer Science Degree
10 3 (1.49%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 3 (1.49%) RHCE
11 2 (1.00%) AWS Certification
11 2 (1.00%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (1.00%) CCSP
11 2 (1.00%) CEH
11 2 (1.00%) Master's Degree
11 2 (1.00%) MCSE
11 2 (1.00%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (10.95%) GDPR
2 19 (9.45%) PCI DSS
3 14 (6.97%) NIST
4 12 (5.97%) GLBA
5 6 (2.99%) HIPAA
6 4 (1.99%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 3 (1.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 2 (1.00%) Accessibility
8 2 (1.00%) Data Quality
8 2 (1.00%) FIPS 140-2
9 1 (0.50%) QA
9 1 (0.50%) SOC 2
System Software
1 43 (21.39%) Docker
2 23 (11.44%) Active Directory
3 21 (10.45%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (6.97%) Firmware
4 14 (6.97%) VMware NSX
5 5 (2.49%) NDS
5 5 (2.49%) NetIQ eDirectory
6 4 (1.99%) ProxySG
7 1 (0.50%) Embedded Firmware
7 1 (0.50%) RACF
7 1 (0.50%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 1 (0.50%) Squid
7 1 (0.50%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.50%) vSphere
7 1 (0.50%) XenApp
7 1 (0.50%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 53 (26.37%) Ansible
2 40 (19.90%) Terraform
3 31 (15.42%) Kubernetes
4 17 (8.46%) Single Sign-On
5 5 (2.49%) FortiGate
6 3 (1.49%) CASB
6 3 (1.49%) Nagios
6 3 (1.49%) Prometheus
7 2 (1.00%) Microsoft Intune
7 2 (1.00%) Nessus
7 2 (1.00%) SCCM
7 2 (1.00%) SCOM
8 1 (0.50%) BladeLogic
8 1 (0.50%) Failover Clustering
8 1 (0.50%) Grafana
8 1 (0.50%) Host Intrusion Detection System
8 1 (0.50%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.50%) Red Hat Satellite
8 1 (0.50%) Rsyslog
8 1 (0.50%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 82 (40.80%) F5
2 45 (22.39%) CheckPoint
3 44 (21.89%) Blue Coat
4 37 (18.41%) Palo Alto
5 34 (16.92%) Cisco
6 32 (15.92%) VMware
7 28 (13.93%) McAfee
8 23 (11.44%) Microsoft
8 23 (11.44%) Splunk
9 17 (8.46%) NetApp
9 17 (8.46%) Thales
10 16 (7.96%) Juniper
11 10 (4.98%) Axway
11 10 (4.98%) Fortinet
11 10 (4.98%) Oracle
11 10 (4.98%) Zscaler
12 9 (4.48%) OpenText
13 8 (3.98%) ServiceNow
13 8 (3.98%) Symantec
14 5 (2.49%) NetIQ