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

6 months to
5 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 446 353 398
Rank change year-on-year -93 +45 +12
Contract jobs citing SSL 222 204 151
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.41% 0.62% 0.40%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 4.42% 5.39% 3.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 107 123 83
10th Percentile £388 £369 £366
25th Percentile £463 £413 £473
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +4.55% +10.00%
75th Percentile £600 £656 £656
90th Percentile £650 £700 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £425 £538
% change year-on-year +23.53% -20.93% +10.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 8 1
10th Percentile £61.00 - -
25th Percentile - £45.00 £46.25
Median hourly rate £68.75 £65.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +5.77% +36.84% -28.01%
75th Percentile £76.88 £82.26 £48.75
90th Percentile £85.00 £85.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.75 £65.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year +5.77% +36.84% -28.01%

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 5,027 3,786 4,541
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.24% 11.47% 11.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,902 2,385 2,613
10th Percentile £231 £219 £225
25th Percentile £389 £361 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £453 £485
% change year-on-year +4.86% -6.60% +6.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 430 204 202
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £21.15 £23.90
Median hourly rate £32.50 £41.72 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.10% -16.56% -11.49%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.94 £65.00
90th Percentile £92.15 £74.40 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.55 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -37.54% -25.89% -0.26%

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 5 October 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 5 October 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for SSL in the UK

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 5 October 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 -120 192 £550 -4.35% 135
UK excluding London -64 133 £525 +23.53% 81
London -109 68 £550 -8.33% 63
Work from Home -71 62 £550 -4.35% 57
North of England -49 54 £600 +9.09% 17
North West -27 36 £600 -0.58% 13
South East -44 28 £520 +38.67% 20
Midlands -48 26 £460 +21.72% 7
West Midlands -54 22 £450 +18.42% 4
East of England -19 18 £400 -41.18% 17
Scotland -2 17 £600 +14.29% 2
Yorkshire -30 16 £600 +9.09% 3
East Midlands -10 4 £475 +32.68% 3
South West -37 3 £350 -37.16% 17
North East -38 2 £438 -18.22% 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 (5.41%) Confluence
2 5 (2.25%) Apache
3 4 (1.80%) IIS
4 2 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.90%) nginx
4 2 (0.90%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.45%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.45%) JBoss
5 1 (0.45%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 3 (1.35%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.90%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 2 (0.90%) Houdini
2 2 (0.90%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.90%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 3 (1.35%) Infor LN
2 2 (0.90%) Dynamics GP
3 1 (0.45%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.45%) Oracle General Ledger
3 1 (0.45%) Oracle Payables
3 1 (0.45%) Oracle Receivables
3 1 (0.45%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 70 (31.53%) Azure
2 43 (19.37%) AWS
3 29 (13.06%) Entra ID
4 19 (8.56%) GCP
5 17 (7.66%) GitHub
6 16 (7.21%) Azure DevOps
7 13 (5.86%) Microsoft 365
7 13 (5.86%) Power Platform
8 12 (5.41%) Azure Monitor
9 11 (4.95%) Datadog
10 8 (3.60%) Azure Key Vault
10 8 (3.60%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 7 (3.15%) AWS CloudFormation
11 7 (3.15%) AWS Lambda
11 7 (3.15%) GitHub Actions
11 7 (3.15%) Serverless
12 6 (2.70%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 6 (2.70%) Amazon S3
12 6 (2.70%) AWS KMS
12 6 (2.70%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 100 (45.05%) DNS
2 73 (32.88%) Firewall
3 61 (27.48%) VPN
4 58 (26.13%) Network Security
5 55 (24.77%) TCP/IP
6 54 (24.32%) HTTP
7 41 (18.47%) WAN
8 34 (15.32%) IPsec
9 32 (14.41%) BGP
10 29 (13.06%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 28 (12.61%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
12 27 (12.16%) BIG-IP
13 25 (11.26%) DHCP
14 24 (10.81%) OSPF
15 23 (10.36%) LAN
16 22 (9.91%) Wireless
17 16 (7.21%) Wireshark
18 15 (6.76%) HTTPS
18 15 (6.76%) SD-WAN
19 12 (5.41%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (8.56%) SQL Server
2 16 (7.21%) MySQL
3 11 (4.95%) Power BI
3 11 (4.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 5 (2.25%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (1.80%) MariaDB
5 4 (1.80%) Relational Database
6 2 (0.90%) Amazon RDS
6 2 (0.90%) MongoDB
6 2 (0.90%) Oracle BI Publisher
6 2 (0.90%) Oracle Reports
6 2 (0.90%) RDBMS
6 2 (0.90%) SQLPlus
7 1 (0.45%) InfluxDB
7 1 (0.45%) Neo4j
7 1 (0.45%) NoSQL
7 1 (0.45%) SQLite
7 1 (0.45%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 19 (8.56%) Jenkins
2 17 (7.66%) Git
2 17 (7.66%) JIRA
3 11 (4.95%) Fiddler
3 11 (4.95%) GitLab
4 7 (3.15%) Sonatype Nexus
5 3 (1.35%) Artifactory
5 3 (1.35%) Maven
6 2 (0.90%) git-flow
7 1 (0.45%) Ant
7 1 (0.45%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 1 (0.45%) Browser DevTools
7 1 (0.45%) Gerrit
7 1 (0.45%) Mockito
7 1 (0.45%) REST Assured
7 1 (0.45%) Tricentis qTest
General
1 41 (18.47%) Social Skills
2 38 (17.12%) Finance
3 31 (13.96%) Banking
4 25 (11.26%) Legal
5 24 (10.81%) Analytical Skills
6 12 (5.41%) Investment Banking
7 11 (4.95%) Public Sector
8 8 (3.60%) Documentation Skills
9 6 (2.70%) Publishing
9 6 (2.70%) Telecoms
10 4 (1.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 4 (1.80%) Manufacturing
11 2 (0.90%) Aerospace
12 1 (0.45%) Law
12 1 (0.45%) Local Government
12 1 (0.45%) Marketing
12 1 (0.45%) Organisational Skills
12 1 (0.45%) Police
12 1 (0.45%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 55 (24.77%) Network Engineer
2 28 (12.61%) Security Engineer
3 25 (11.26%) Administrator
4 24 (10.81%) Senior
5 14 (6.31%) Lead
6 13 (5.86%) DBA
6 13 (5.86%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 13 (5.86%) IP Network Engineer
7 12 (5.41%) Network Security Engineer
7 12 (5.41%) Senior Network Engineer
7 12 (5.41%) SQL DBA
8 11 (4.95%) Architect
8 11 (4.95%) Blue Coat Engineer
8 11 (4.95%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
8 11 (4.95%) Web Engineer
9 9 (4.05%) Developer
10 8 (3.60%) DevOps Engineer
10 8 (3.60%) Linux Engineer
11 7 (3.15%) Network Architect
12 6 (2.70%) Infrastructure Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (12.61%) Terraform
2 22 (9.91%) SAML
3 21 (9.46%) Middleware
4 20 (9.01%) 802.1X
5 17 (7.66%) ISPF
6 13 (5.86%) REST
7 12 (5.41%) OAuth
8 10 (4.50%) Web Services
9 9 (4.05%) LDAP
9 9 (4.05%) SOAP
10 8 (3.60%) JSON
10 8 (3.60%) OpenID
11 7 (3.15%) Kafka
11 7 (3.15%) XML
12 5 (2.25%) OAuth2
13 4 (1.80%) Apache NiFi
13 4 (1.80%) CSS
13 4 (1.80%) EDI
13 4 (1.80%) YAML
14 3 (1.35%) EDIFACT
Miscellaneous
1 33 (14.86%) PKI
2 30 (13.51%) Clustering
3 23 (10.36%) Onboarding
4 18 (8.11%) Mainframe
5 16 (7.21%) Data Centre
5 16 (7.21%) Management Information System
6 15 (6.76%) Replication
7 14 (6.31%) Self-Motivation
8 13 (5.86%) Cyber Threat
9 9 (4.05%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 8 (3.60%) Enterprise Software
10 8 (3.60%) Hybrid Cloud
11 6 (2.70%) Distributed Applications
12 5 (2.25%) Analytical Mindset
12 5 (2.25%) Linux Command Line
12 5 (2.25%) Video Conferencing
13 4 (1.80%) Data Protection Act
13 4 (1.80%) Data Structures
13 4 (1.80%) Fibre Optics
13 4 (1.80%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 55 (24.77%) Linux
2 54 (24.32%) Windows
3 35 (15.77%) Windows Server
4 22 (9.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 20 (9.01%) zOS
6 9 (4.05%) Unix
7 3 (1.35%) Windows Server 2019
8 2 (0.90%) Ubuntu
8 2 (0.90%) VMS
9 1 (0.45%) Amazon Linux
9 1 (0.45%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.45%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 54 (24.32%) DevOps
2 49 (22.07%) Load Balancing
3 47 (21.17%) ITIL
4 37 (16.67%) CI/CD
5 33 (14.86%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 30 (13.51%) High Availability
7 26 (11.71%) Problem-Solving
8 24 (10.81%) Migration
8 24 (10.81%) Performance Optimisation
8 24 (10.81%) SIEM
9 23 (10.36%) Infrastructure as Code
9 23 (10.36%) Performance Tuning
10 21 (9.46%) Change Management
10 21 (9.46%) Zero Trust
11 20 (9.01%) Cybersecurity
12 18 (8.11%) Agile
12 18 (8.11%) Containerisation
13 17 (7.66%) Configuration Management
13 17 (7.66%) Incident Response
13 17 (7.66%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 59 (26.58%) Python
2 32 (14.41%) PowerShell
2 32 (14.41%) SQL
3 21 (9.46%) Bash
4 12 (5.41%) T-SQL
5 11 (4.95%) Shell Script
6 9 (4.05%) Groovy
6 9 (4.05%) Java
6 9 (4.05%) Perl
7 7 (3.15%) JavaScript
8 6 (2.70%) ActionScript
9 3 (1.35%) C#
9 3 (1.35%) C++
10 2 (0.90%) Go
11 1 (0.45%) ActionScript 2.0
11 1 (0.45%) C
11 1 (0.45%) Cypher
11 1 (0.45%) MATLAB
11 1 (0.45%) PL/SQL
11 1 (0.45%) R
Qualifications
1 68 (30.63%) Security Cleared
2 43 (19.37%) SC Cleared
3 25 (11.26%) DV Cleared
4 19 (8.56%) Degree
5 18 (8.11%) Azure Certification
6 17 (7.66%) Cisco Certification
7 15 (6.76%) CCNP
8 13 (5.86%) BPSS Clearance
9 12 (5.41%) Microsoft Certification
10 10 (4.50%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 6 (2.70%) CCIE
11 6 (2.70%) CCNA
12 5 (2.25%) RHCSA
13 4 (1.80%) CISSP
13 4 (1.80%) RHCE
14 2 (0.90%) JNCIE
14 2 (0.90%) MCSE
14 2 (0.90%) PMI Certification
14 2 (0.90%) PMP
14 2 (0.90%) PRINCE2 Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (4.05%) NIST
2 6 (2.70%) SLA
3 5 (2.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 4 (1.80%) GDPR
5 2 (0.90%) Cyber Essentials
5 2 (0.90%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 2 (0.90%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.45%) DICOM
6 1 (0.45%) HL7
System Software
1 46 (20.72%) Active Directory
2 42 (18.92%) VMware Infrastructure
3 19 (8.56%) Virtual Machines
4 18 (8.11%) Docker
5 17 (7.66%) RACF
6 16 (7.21%) Hyper-V
7 15 (6.76%) vSphere
8 13 (5.86%) Firmware
9 9 (4.05%) VMware NSX
10 4 (1.80%) Ceph
10 4 (1.80%) Squid
10 4 (1.80%) VMware ESXi
11 3 (1.35%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 3 (1.35%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.90%) Apache ZooKeeper
12 2 (0.90%) Virtual Desktop
13 1 (0.45%) KVM
13 1 (0.45%) OpenSSH
13 1 (0.45%) ProxySG
Systems Management
1 49 (22.07%) Ansible
2 20 (9.01%) Kubernetes
3 18 (8.11%) Grafana
4 17 (7.66%) OMEGAMON
5 16 (7.21%) Single Sign-On
6 13 (5.86%) Prometheus
7 11 (4.95%) SCOM
8 10 (4.50%) Puppet
9 8 (3.60%) Nagios
10 7 (3.15%) FortiGate
11 5 (2.25%) Argo
11 5 (2.25%) Packer
12 4 (1.80%) Cisco CUCM
12 4 (1.80%) Microsoft Intune
12 4 (1.80%) systemd
13 3 (1.35%) Progress Chef
13 3 (1.35%) yum
14 2 (0.90%) Consul
14 2 (0.90%) HAProxy
14 2 (0.90%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 53 (23.87%) VMware
2 51 (22.97%) Cisco
2 51 (22.97%) F5
3 43 (19.37%) Microsoft
4 32 (14.41%) Palo Alto
5 26 (11.71%) Blue Coat
5 26 (11.71%) ServiceNow
6 25 (11.26%) Zscaler
7 21 (9.46%) IBM
8 18 (8.11%) Juniper
9 17 (7.66%) Fortinet
9 17 (7.66%) SolarWinds
10 14 (6.31%) CheckPoint
10 14 (6.31%) McAfee
11 11 (4.95%) NetApp
11 11 (4.95%) Red Hat
11 11 (4.95%) Splunk
12 7 (3.15%) Dynatrace
13 6 (2.70%) Oracle
14 5 (2.25%) Aruba