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 28 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 374 346 387
Rank change year-on-year -28 +41 +94
Contract jobs citing SSL 217 200 220
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.59% 0.60% 0.51%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 5.48% 4.68% 3.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 130 124 113
10th Percentile £352 £382 £350
25th Percentile £402 £464 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £554 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.68% - +3.77%
75th Percentile £663 £641 £627
90th Percentile £700 £675 £716
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £550 £473
% change year-on-year -10.00% +16.40% +6.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 0 14
10th Percentile £45.00 - £55.35
25th Percentile £48.94 - £60.56
Median hourly rate £65.00 - £65.98
75th Percentile £77.19 - £66.18
90th Percentile £84.88 - £67.35
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 - £65.98

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 3,957 4,269 5,925
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.71% 12.72% 13.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,586 2,515 3,653
10th Percentile £206 £220 £210
25th Percentile £356 £365 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £601
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £473 £473
% change year-on-year -4.76% - +5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 179 139 332
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.90 £17.72
25th Percentile £20.00 £21.36 £22.94
Median hourly rate £34.00 £35.00 £56.45
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -37.99% +61.27%
75th Percentile £65.00 £59.31 £65.98
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.25 £75.23
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £33.75 £56.49
% change year-on-year +25.93% -40.25% +46.73%

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 28 December 2025.

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 28 December 2025.

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 28 December 2025. 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 -3 191 £555 -3.48% 74
UK excluding London -46 108 £495 -10.00% 59
London +8 77 £575 +4.55% 21
Work from Home -10 72 £525 -2.33% 33
North of England -14 53 £604 +9.73% 19
West Midlands +4 35 £380 -16.94% 6
Midlands -18 35 £380 -16.94% 7
North West -8 33 £589 +53.05% 14
Yorkshire -38 19 £675 +22.73% 4
East of England -13 18 £567 -5.50% 13
South East -38 11 £430 -31.20% 13
South West -7 4 £529 +24.35% 8
Scotland -7 4 £440 -12.00%
North East -10 1 £550 -6.78% 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 22 (10.14%) Confluence
2 9 (4.15%) TPMS
3 3 (1.38%) Apache
4 2 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.92%) Apache Spark
4 2 (0.92%) Oracle HTTP Server
4 2 (0.92%) Tomcat
4 2 (0.92%) WebLogic
5 1 (0.46%) Anypoint
5 1 (0.46%) CMS
5 1 (0.46%) Drupal
5 1 (0.46%) IIS
5 1 (0.46%) JBoss
5 1 (0.46%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.46%) Umbraco
Applications
1 3 (1.38%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.92%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.46%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 9 (4.15%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.46%) RMDS
Cloud Services
1 60 (27.65%) AWS
2 28 (12.90%) Azure
3 26 (11.98%) Virtual Private Cloud
4 24 (11.06%) Amazon S3
5 22 (10.14%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 22 (10.14%) Amazon EC2
5 22 (10.14%) Amazon ELB
6 18 (8.29%) GCP
6 18 (8.29%) GitHub
7 10 (4.61%) Amazon EKS
8 8 (3.69%) Serverless
9 5 (2.30%) Amazon ECS
9 5 (2.30%) AWS CloudFormation
9 5 (2.30%) AWS Lambda
9 5 (2.30%) Entra ID
9 5 (2.30%) GitHub Actions
9 5 (2.30%) OpenShift
10 4 (1.84%) Firebase
11 3 (1.38%) Kong
11 3 (1.38%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 102 (47.00%) DNS
2 87 (40.09%) TCP/IP
3 83 (38.25%) Firewall
4 66 (30.41%) VPN
5 62 (28.57%) HTTP
5 62 (28.57%) Network Security
6 28 (12.90%) Wireshark
7 26 (11.98%) IPsec
8 25 (11.52%) BIG-IP
9 24 (11.06%) WAN
10 18 (8.29%) Wireless
11 17 (7.83%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 17 (7.83%) HTTPS
12 16 (7.37%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
13 15 (6.91%) FTP
13 15 (6.91%) SMTP
13 15 (6.91%) SSH
14 13 (5.99%) BGP
15 12 (5.53%) OSPF
15 12 (5.53%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (5.07%) NoSQL
2 9 (4.15%) DocumentDB
2 9 (4.15%) MongoDB
3 8 (3.69%) Apache Cassandra
3 8 (3.69%) SQL Server
4 7 (3.23%) PostgreSQL
5 3 (1.38%) Redis
6 2 (0.92%) Big Data
6 2 (0.92%) Delta Lake
6 2 (0.92%) Hadoop
6 2 (0.92%) Parquet
7 1 (0.46%) Amazon QuickSight
7 1 (0.46%) Mixpanel
7 1 (0.46%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 34 (15.67%) Git
2 30 (13.82%) Jenkins
3 25 (11.52%) JIRA
4 21 (9.68%) Fiddler
5 20 (9.22%) GitLab
6 4 (1.84%) Robot Framework
7 2 (0.92%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.92%) git-flow
7 2 (0.92%) MLflow
7 2 (0.92%) Poetry
7 2 (0.92%) PyCharm
7 2 (0.92%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.92%) Visual Studio Code
8 1 (0.46%) CircleCI
8 1 (0.46%) Crashlytics
8 1 (0.46%) fastlane
8 1 (0.46%) Postman
8 1 (0.46%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.46%) XCTest
8 1 (0.46%) XCUITest
General
1 45 (20.74%) Social Skills
2 38 (17.51%) Analytical Skills
3 31 (14.29%) Finance
4 24 (11.06%) Public Sector
5 21 (9.68%) Banking
6 15 (6.91%) Investment Banking
7 13 (5.99%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (3.69%) Telecoms
9 5 (2.30%) Financial Institution
10 4 (1.84%) Military
11 2 (0.92%) Advertising
11 2 (0.92%) Aerospace
11 2 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.46%) Italian Language
12 1 (0.46%) Law
12 1 (0.46%) Legal
12 1 (0.46%) Marketing
12 1 (0.46%) Police
12 1 (0.46%) Polish Language
12 1 (0.46%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 55 (25.35%) Network Engineer
2 40 (18.43%) Senior
3 30 (13.82%) Developer
4 26 (11.98%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 20 (9.22%) Architect
6 19 (8.76%) Security Engineer
7 18 (8.29%) Web Engineer
8 16 (7.37%) Analyst
8 16 (7.37%) DevOps Engineer
9 15 (6.91%) SOC Analyst
10 13 (5.99%) Consultant
10 13 (5.99%) Senior DevOps
10 13 (5.99%) Senior DevOps Engineer
11 12 (5.53%) Blue Coat Engineer
11 12 (5.53%) Network Security Engineer
12 11 (5.07%) Cryptography Engineer
12 11 (5.07%) Full-Stack Developer
13 10 (4.61%) IP Network Engineer
14 9 (4.15%) Junior Network Engineer
14 9 (4.15%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (17.97%) LDAP
2 29 (13.36%) REST
3 23 (10.60%) SAML
4 21 (9.68%) SOAP
5 19 (8.76%) JSON
5 19 (8.76%) OAuth
6 18 (8.29%) HTML
7 11 (5.07%) 802.1X
7 11 (5.07%) AngularJS
7 11 (5.07%) Kafka
7 11 (5.07%) RESTful
7 11 (5.07%) Web Services
8 10 (4.61%) XML
9 9 (4.15%) Apache Camel
9 9 (4.15%) HTML5
9 9 (4.15%) JDBC
9 9 (4.15%) jQuery
9 9 (4.15%) ODBC
9 9 (4.15%) RabbitMQ
9 9 (4.15%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 31 (14.29%) Management Information System
2 25 (11.52%) PKI
3 17 (7.83%) Analytical Mindset
4 15 (6.91%) Cyberattack
4 15 (6.91%) Data Centre
5 14 (6.45%) Cyber Threat
6 13 (5.99%) CSOC
6 13 (5.99%) Security Operations Centre
7 8 (3.69%) Onboarding
8 5 (2.30%) Cloud Security Posture
8 5 (2.30%) Private Cloud
8 5 (2.30%) Security Posture
9 4 (1.84%) Algorithms
9 4 (1.84%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 4 (1.84%) Linux Command Line
10 3 (1.38%) Cloud Native
11 2 (0.92%) Hybrid Cloud
11 2 (0.92%) Mobile App
11 2 (0.92%) Virtual Team
12 1 (0.46%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 58 (26.73%) Linux
2 34 (15.67%) Windows
3 18 (8.29%) Unix
4 7 (3.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 7 (3.23%) Windows Server
5 4 (1.84%) Ubuntu
6 3 (1.38%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.92%) CatOS
7 2 (0.92%) CentOS
7 2 (0.92%) Mac OS
8 1 (0.46%) Android
8 1 (0.46%) Solaris
8 1 (0.46%) VMS
8 1 (0.46%) Windows Server 2016
8 1 (0.46%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 64 (29.49%) DevOps
2 47 (21.66%) CI/CD
3 39 (17.97%) Cybersecurity
4 36 (16.59%) High Availability
5 35 (16.13%) Load Balancing
6 34 (15.67%) Incident Response
7 33 (15.21%) Infrastructure as Code
8 31 (14.29%) Root Cause Analysis
9 30 (13.82%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 30 (13.82%) Problem-Solving
10 28 (12.90%) Infrastructure Automation
10 28 (12.90%) Test Automation
11 25 (11.52%) Change Management
12 23 (10.60%) Cloud Security
12 23 (10.60%) Data Loss Prevention
12 23 (10.60%) Identity Access Management
13 22 (10.14%) Containerisation
13 22 (10.14%) Continuous Improvement
13 22 (10.14%) Microservices
13 22 (10.14%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 74 (34.10%) Python
2 33 (15.21%) Bash
3 28 (12.90%) JavaScript
4 19 (8.76%) PowerShell
5 15 (6.91%) SQL
6 14 (6.45%) Java
7 10 (4.61%) Perl
8 3 (1.38%) C#
9 2 (0.92%) C
9 2 (0.92%) Groovy
9 2 (0.92%) PHP
9 2 (0.92%) Shell Script
9 2 (0.92%) Swift
10 1 (0.46%) C++
10 1 (0.46%) Kotlin
10 1 (0.46%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 89 (41.01%) Security Cleared
2 76 (35.02%) SC Cleared
3 17 (7.83%) CISSP
3 17 (7.83%) DV Cleared
4 15 (6.91%) Degree
5 11 (5.07%) Microsoft Certification
6 10 (4.61%) Cisco Certification
7 9 (4.15%) FFIEC
8 7 (3.23%) CISM
9 6 (2.76%) CCNP
9 6 (2.76%) MCSE
10 5 (2.30%) CompTIA Security+
10 5 (2.30%) MCSA
11 4 (1.84%) Computer Science Degree
12 3 (1.38%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 3 (1.38%) RHCE
13 2 (0.92%) AWS Certification
13 2 (0.92%) CEH
13 2 (0.92%) Master's Degree
13 2 (0.92%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (8.76%) GDPR
2 16 (7.37%) PCI DSS
3 11 (5.07%) NIST
4 9 (4.15%) GLBA
5 6 (2.76%) HIPAA
6 4 (1.84%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 3 (1.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 2 (0.92%) Accessibility
8 2 (0.92%) Data Quality
8 2 (0.92%) FIPS 140-2
8 2 (0.92%) QA
9 1 (0.46%) SOC 2
System Software
1 46 (21.20%) Docker
2 25 (11.52%) Active Directory
3 16 (7.37%) VMware Infrastructure
4 13 (5.99%) Firmware
5 9 (4.15%) VMware NSX
6 5 (2.30%) NDS
6 5 (2.30%) NetIQ eDirectory
7 4 (1.84%) ProxySG
8 1 (0.46%) Embedded Firmware
8 1 (0.46%) RACF
8 1 (0.46%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 1 (0.46%) Squid
8 1 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.46%) vSphere
8 1 (0.46%) XenApp
8 1 (0.46%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 55 (25.35%) Ansible
2 43 (19.82%) Terraform
3 34 (15.67%) Kubernetes
4 21 (9.68%) Single Sign-On
5 7 (3.23%) CASB
6 6 (2.76%) Nessus
7 4 (1.84%) FortiGate
8 3 (1.38%) Nagios
8 3 (1.38%) Prometheus
8 3 (1.38%) SCOM
9 2 (0.92%) Argo
9 2 (0.92%) Istio
9 2 (0.92%) Microsoft Intune
9 2 (0.92%) Rsyslog
9 2 (0.92%) SCCM
10 1 (0.46%) Failover Clustering
10 1 (0.46%) Grafana
10 1 (0.46%) Host Intrusion Detection System
10 1 (0.46%) Progress Chef
10 1 (0.46%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 76 (35.02%) F5
2 42 (19.35%) CheckPoint
3 40 (18.43%) Blue Coat
4 34 (15.67%) Palo Alto
5 30 (13.82%) Cisco
6 25 (11.52%) Splunk
6 25 (11.52%) VMware
7 24 (11.06%) McAfee
8 21 (9.68%) Microsoft
9 19 (8.76%) Juniper
10 15 (6.91%) NetApp
11 14 (6.45%) Remedy
11 14 (6.45%) ServiceNow
11 14 (6.45%) Thales
12 11 (5.07%) Fortinet
12 11 (5.07%) Zscaler
13 10 (4.61%) Axway
13 10 (4.61%) Oracle
14 9 (4.15%) BMC
14 9 (4.15%) HP