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

6 months to
2 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 449 379 372
Rank change year-on-year -70 -7 +81
Contract jobs citing SSL 189 148 211
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.39% 0.51% 0.49%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 3.99% 4.06% 3.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 111 82 126
10th Percentile £325 £351 £381
25th Percentile £400 £400 £451
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £523 £575
Median % change year-on-year -2.53% -9.00% +4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £617 £638
90th Percentile £688 £700 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £600
% change year-on-year -4.76% -12.50% +20.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 6 5
10th Percentile £52.15 £80.34 £40.40
25th Percentile £55.00 £80.59 -
Median hourly rate £65.00 £81.35 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year -20.10% +77.31% -27.44%
75th Percentile £75.00 £81.91 -
90th Percentile £80.25 £83.05 £58.10
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £81.35 £45.88
% change year-on-year -20.10% +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 4,734 3,647 5,426
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.71% 12.60% 12.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,900 2,261 3,234
10th Percentile £263 £220 £206
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -2.44%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £466 £480
% change year-on-year +1.99% -2.87% +0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 281 160 417
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.67 £16.30
Median hourly rate £28.88 £40.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.69% +1.25% +119.30%
75th Percentile £65.00 £59.09 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.10 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £30.70 £45.88
% change year-on-year +5.86% -33.09% +154.89%

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 2 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
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SSL over the 6 months to 2 June 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 2 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 -89 159 £514 -2.14% 41
UK excluding London -47 124 £500 -4.76% 36
North of England -30 62 £600 +20.00% 10
Work from Home -43 53 £515 -1.90% 18
London -81 42 £525 - 11
Midlands -31 41 £358 -0.14% 3
West Midlands -31 41 £358 - 1
North West -4 37 £610 +1.67% 7
Yorkshire -49 24 £625 +25.00% 2
South East -59 17 £500 +20.48% 16
Scotland +6 11 £600 +1.05%
East of England -41 10 £450 -25.00% 1
North East -26 2 £413 -22.90% 1
South West -31 1 £500 -14.53% 3

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 17 (8.99%) Confluence
2 6 (3.17%) TPMS
3 3 (1.59%) Microsoft Exchange
4 2 (1.06%) IBM HTTP Server
4 2 (1.06%) IIS
4 2 (1.06%) Oracle HTTP Server
4 2 (1.06%) WebSphere
4 2 (1.06%) WebSphere Application Server
4 2 (1.06%) WebSphere Portal
5 1 (0.53%) Apache
5 1 (0.53%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.53%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.53%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.53%) CMS
5 1 (0.53%) Drupal
5 1 (0.53%) Umbraco
Applications
1 10 (5.29%) MS Visio
2 2 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.53%) Dynamics GP
Cloud Services
1 52 (27.51%) Azure
2 39 (20.63%) AWS
3 21 (11.11%) Entra ID
4 18 (9.52%) GCP
5 13 (6.88%) GitHub
6 12 (6.35%) SaaS
7 10 (5.29%) IaaS
8 9 (4.76%) Microsoft 365
8 9 (4.76%) Serverless
9 7 (3.70%) Amazon EKS
9 7 (3.70%) Datadog
9 7 (3.70%) OpenShift
9 7 (3.70%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 5 (2.65%) PaaS
11 4 (2.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 4 (2.12%) Amazon S3
11 4 (2.12%) AWS CloudFormation
11 4 (2.12%) AWS Lambda
11 4 (2.12%) Azure Logic Apps
12 3 (1.59%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 110 (58.20%) DNS
2 74 (39.15%) Firewall
3 69 (36.51%) TCP/IP
4 67 (35.45%) HTTP
5 51 (26.98%) BIG-IP
6 43 (22.75%) Network Security
7 42 (22.22%) VPN
8 39 (20.63%) WAN
9 35 (18.52%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 35 (18.52%) IPsec
10 34 (17.99%) Wireshark
11 31 (16.40%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
12 24 (12.70%) LAN
13 22 (11.64%) HTTPS
14 21 (11.11%) DHCP
15 18 (9.52%) Internet
16 15 (7.94%) SSH
16 15 (7.94%) Wireless
17 14 (7.41%) BGP
18 13 (6.88%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (4.76%) MongoDB
2 5 (2.65%) DocumentDB
2 5 (2.65%) NoSQL
3 4 (2.12%) MariaDB
3 4 (2.12%) Metadata
3 4 (2.12%) PostgreSQL
4 2 (1.06%) SQL Server
4 2 (1.06%) SQLPlus
5 1 (0.53%) Amazon QuickSight
5 1 (0.53%) Amazon RDS
5 1 (0.53%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 27 (14.29%) JIRA
2 25 (13.23%) Fiddler
3 10 (5.29%) Jenkins
4 9 (4.76%) Git
5 5 (2.65%) GitLab
6 4 (2.12%) Browser DevTools
6 4 (2.12%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (1.06%) git-flow
7 2 (1.06%) Introscope
8 1 (0.53%) Crashlytics
8 1 (0.53%) fastlane
8 1 (0.53%) JUnit
8 1 (0.53%) Xcode
8 1 (0.53%) XCTest
8 1 (0.53%) XCUITest
General
1 32 (16.93%) Finance
2 28 (14.81%) Social Skills
3 27 (14.29%) Banking
4 20 (10.58%) Analytical Skills
5 19 (10.05%) Investment Banking
6 15 (7.94%) Public Sector
7 14 (7.41%) Documentation Skills
8 7 (3.70%) Telecoms
9 6 (3.17%) Legal
10 2 (1.06%) Publishing
10 2 (1.06%) Retail
11 1 (0.53%) Financial Institution
11 1 (0.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.53%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.53%) Marketing
11 1 (0.53%) Military
11 1 (0.53%) Pharmaceutical
11 1 (0.53%) Police
Job Titles
1 63 (33.33%) Network Engineer
2 26 (13.76%) Security Engineer
2 26 (13.76%) Web Engineer
3 23 (12.17%) Senior
4 21 (11.11%) IP Network Engineer
5 18 (9.52%) Blue Coat Engineer
6 12 (6.35%) Architect
6 12 (6.35%) Network Security Engineer
7 9 (4.76%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 9 (4.76%) Senior Network Engineer
8 8 (4.23%) Analyst
8 8 (4.23%) Junior
9 7 (3.70%) Junior Network Engineer
10 6 (3.17%) Administrator
10 6 (3.17%) Cryptography Engineer
10 6 (3.17%) Developer
10 6 (3.17%) Linux Engineer
10 6 (3.17%) Technical Architect
11 5 (2.65%) SOC Analyst
11 5 (2.65%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (17.46%) SAML
2 24 (12.70%) LDAP
3 13 (6.88%) OpenID
4 11 (5.82%) OAuth
5 10 (5.29%) OAuth2
6 9 (4.76%) 802.1X
6 9 (4.76%) HTML
7 8 (4.23%) Kafka
8 7 (3.70%) Middleware
9 6 (3.17%) Web Services
10 5 (2.65%) ISPF
10 5 (2.65%) Node.js
10 5 (2.65%) RESTful
10 5 (2.65%) Spring
10 5 (2.65%) Spring Boot
10 5 (2.65%) XACML
11 4 (2.12%) CSS
12 3 (1.59%) REST
13 2 (1.06%) RabbitMQ
13 2 (1.06%) WebSphere MQ
Miscellaneous
1 24 (12.70%) Management Information System
2 22 (11.64%) PKI
3 15 (7.94%) Data Centre
4 14 (7.41%) Clustering
4 14 (7.41%) Cyber Threat
5 13 (6.88%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
5 13 (6.88%) Security Posture
6 11 (5.82%) Cloud Security Posture
7 9 (4.76%) Onboarding
8 7 (3.70%) Analytical Mindset
8 7 (3.70%) Enterprise Software
9 6 (3.17%) Self-Motivation
10 5 (2.65%) Algorithms
10 5 (2.65%) CSOC
10 5 (2.65%) Cyberattack
10 5 (2.65%) Mainframe
10 5 (2.65%) Security Operations Centre
11 3 (1.59%) Enterprise Storage
11 3 (1.59%) SCADA
12 2 (1.06%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 38 (20.11%) Windows
2 35 (18.52%) Linux
3 15 (7.94%) Windows Server
4 9 (4.76%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 7 (3.70%) Unix
6 5 (2.65%) zOS
7 4 (2.12%) CatOS
8 3 (1.59%) Mac OS
8 3 (1.59%) Windows Server 2019
9 2 (1.06%) Oracle Linux
9 2 (1.06%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
10 1 (0.53%) Apple iOS
10 1 (0.53%) Data ONTAP
10 1 (0.53%) VMS
10 1 (0.53%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 40 (21.16%) Load Balancing
2 38 (20.11%) Cybersecurity
3 37 (19.58%) ITIL
4 35 (18.52%) Data Loss Prevention
5 32 (16.93%) CI/CD
6 31 (16.40%) SIEM
7 29 (15.34%) Change Management
7 29 (15.34%) Cloud Security
7 29 (15.34%) DevOps
8 26 (13.76%) High Availability
9 25 (13.23%) Malware Detection/Protection
9 25 (13.23%) Migration
10 23 (12.17%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 22 (11.64%) Identity Access Management
11 22 (11.64%) Zero Trust
12 20 (10.58%) Agile
13 18 (9.52%) Runbook
14 17 (8.99%) Incident Response
15 16 (8.47%) Roadmaps
16 15 (7.94%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 47 (24.87%) Python
2 22 (11.64%) PowerShell
3 19 (10.05%) SQL
4 17 (8.99%) Bash
5 7 (3.70%) JavaScript
6 4 (2.12%) ActionScript
6 4 (2.12%) Groovy
6 4 (2.12%) Java
6 4 (2.12%) Perl
7 3 (1.59%) PL/SQL
8 2 (1.06%) C
8 2 (1.06%) Jython
9 1 (0.53%) Go
9 1 (0.53%) Ruby
9 1 (0.53%) Shell Script
9 1 (0.53%) Swift
Qualifications
1 50 (26.46%) Security Cleared
2 37 (19.58%) SC Cleared
3 18 (9.52%) CISSP
4 17 (8.99%) DV Cleared
5 14 (7.41%) Cisco Certification
6 13 (6.88%) CCNP
6 13 (6.88%) Degree
7 9 (4.76%) CISM
8 7 (3.70%) CompTIA Security+
9 6 (3.17%) FFIEC
10 5 (2.65%) MCSE
10 5 (2.65%) Microsoft Certification
11 4 (2.12%) Azure Certification
11 4 (2.12%) BPSS Clearance
11 4 (2.12%) MCSA
12 3 (1.59%) CCIE
13 2 (1.06%) HND
13 2 (1.06%) Postgraduate
14 1 (0.53%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 1 (0.53%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (7.41%) NIST
2 13 (6.88%) GDPR
3 9 (4.76%) PCI DSS
4 6 (3.17%) GLBA
5 3 (1.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (1.06%) SLA
7 1 (0.53%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.53%) DICOM
7 1 (0.53%) HL7
7 1 (0.53%) NCSC
7 1 (0.53%) RMADS
System Software
1 46 (24.34%) VMware Infrastructure
2 45 (23.81%) Active Directory
3 20 (10.58%) VMware NSX
4 19 (10.05%) Firmware
5 12 (6.35%) Hyper-V
5 12 (6.35%) Virtual Machines
6 10 (5.29%) RACF
7 8 (4.23%) Docker
8 7 (3.70%) Squid
9 4 (2.12%) Ceph
9 4 (2.12%) VMware ESXi
9 4 (2.12%) vSphere
10 2 (1.06%) ProxySG
10 2 (1.06%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 2 (1.06%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.53%) KVM
Systems Management
1 32 (16.93%) Ansible
2 30 (15.87%) Single Sign-On
3 18 (9.52%) Terraform
4 15 (7.94%) Kubernetes
5 13 (6.88%) CASB
6 10 (5.29%) FortiGate
7 7 (3.70%) Grafana
8 5 (2.65%) OMEGAMON
9 4 (2.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 4 (2.12%) CA Single Sign-On
9 4 (2.12%) Nessus
9 4 (2.12%) Packer
9 4 (2.12%) PingFederate
9 4 (2.12%) Puppet
10 3 (1.59%) Prometheus
11 2 (1.06%) CA Wily
11 2 (1.06%) Microsoft Intune
11 2 (1.06%) SCCM
11 2 (1.06%) Tivoli
12 1 (0.53%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 56 (29.63%) F5
1 56 (29.63%) VMware
2 36 (19.05%) Cisco
3 35 (18.52%) Microsoft
4 33 (17.46%) Blue Coat
5 28 (14.81%) Palo Alto
6 26 (13.76%) McAfee
7 23 (12.17%) Zscaler
8 21 (11.11%) CheckPoint
9 19 (10.05%) NetApp
10 18 (9.52%) ServiceNow
11 14 (7.41%) Splunk
12 11 (5.82%) SolarWinds
13 10 (5.29%) Fortinet
14 9 (4.76%) Juniper
14 9 (4.76%) Netskope
15 7 (3.70%) Citrix
15 7 (3.70%) CrowdStrike
15 7 (3.70%) IBM
16 6 (3.17%) Oracle