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

6 months to
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 467 350 433
Rank change year-on-year -117 +83 -17
Contract jobs citing SSL 224 200 137
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.42% 0.62% 0.36%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 4.43% 5.29% 3.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 122 125 75
10th Percentile £380 £350 £389
25th Percentile £463 £381 £470
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £544 £557 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% +1.27% -
75th Percentile £600 £638 £644
90th Percentile £650 £708 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £500 £538
% change year-on-year +5.00% -6.98% +10.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 8 2
10th Percentile - - £37.70
25th Percentile - £45.00 £39.13
Median hourly rate - £65.00 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year - +51.16% -34.83%
75th Percentile - £82.26 £46.63
90th Percentile - £85.00 £47.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £65.00 £43.00
% change year-on-year - +51.16% -34.83%

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 5,054 3,781 4,531
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.42% 11.70% 11.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,983 2,320 2,685
10th Percentile £235 £237 £231
25th Percentile £398 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £608
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £467 £500
% change year-on-year +2.73% -6.55% +10.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 376 199 279
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.10 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £21.31
Median hourly rate £26.00 £43.50 £50.50
Median % change year-on-year -40.23% -13.86% -9.67%
75th Percentile £65.88 £63.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.75 £73.40 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.84 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -39.20% -25.89% +1.52%

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 4 September 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 4 September 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 -105 191 £544 -5.43% 84
UK excluding London -47 138 £525 +5.00% 43
London -118 68 £550 -8.33% 50
Work from Home -59 66 £550 -2.83% 35
North of England -37 62 £600 +12.15% 8
North West -18 41 £600 -0.29% 4
Midlands -38 34 £375 +0.27% 1
West Midlands -36 31 £350 -7.89% 1
South East -56 30 £500 +33.33% 17
Scotland -6 20 £600 +14.29% 3
Yorkshire -31 19 £600 +20.00% 4
East of England -28 5 £450 -25.31% 14
East Midlands -22 3 £475 +32.68%
South West -48 3 £350 -40.17% 1
North East -37 2 £438 -18.22%

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 (7.14%) Confluence
2 4 (1.79%) Apache
3 2 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.89%) IBM HTTP Server
3 2 (0.89%) IIS
3 2 (0.89%) Oracle HTTP Server
3 2 (0.89%) SharePoint
3 2 (0.89%) WebSphere
3 2 (0.89%) WebSphere Application Server
3 2 (0.89%) WebSphere Portal
4 1 (0.45%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.45%) JBoss
4 1 (0.45%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.45%) nginx
Applications
1 4 (1.79%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.89%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 2 (0.89%) Houdini
2 2 (0.89%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.89%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 3 (1.34%) Infor LN
2 2 (0.89%) 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 74 (33.04%) Azure
2 46 (20.54%) AWS
3 33 (14.73%) Entra ID
4 21 (9.38%) GCP
5 19 (8.48%) Azure DevOps
6 15 (6.70%) Microsoft 365
7 14 (6.25%) GitHub
8 13 (5.80%) Power Platform
9 12 (5.36%) Azure Monitor
9 12 (5.36%) Datadog
10 11 (4.91%) SaaS
11 9 (4.02%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 8 (3.57%) AWS CloudFormation
12 8 (3.57%) AWS Lambda
12 8 (3.57%) Azure Key Vault
12 8 (3.57%) Serverless
13 7 (3.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 7 (3.13%) Amazon S3
13 7 (3.13%) AWS KMS
13 7 (3.13%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 102 (45.54%) DNS
2 73 (32.59%) Firewall
3 56 (25.00%) VPN
4 53 (23.66%) Network Security
4 53 (23.66%) TCP/IP
5 51 (22.77%) HTTP
6 44 (19.64%) WAN
7 34 (15.18%) BIG-IP
8 32 (14.29%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
8 32 (14.29%) IPsec
9 28 (12.50%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
10 22 (9.82%) DHCP
10 22 (9.82%) HTTPS
11 21 (9.38%) LAN
11 21 (9.38%) Wireless
12 20 (8.93%) BGP
12 20 (8.93%) Internet
13 19 (8.48%) Wireshark
14 17 (7.59%) SD-WAN
15 12 (5.36%) Cisco ASA
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (7.14%) SQL Server
2 14 (6.25%) MySQL
3 11 (4.91%) Power BI
3 11 (4.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 7 (3.13%) PostgreSQL
5 6 (2.68%) MariaDB
6 5 (2.23%) MongoDB
7 4 (1.79%) Metadata
8 3 (1.34%) SQLPlus
9 2 (0.89%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (0.89%) Oracle BI Publisher
9 2 (0.89%) Oracle Reports
9 2 (0.89%) RDBMS
9 2 (0.89%) Relational Database
10 1 (0.45%) Neo4j
10 1 (0.45%) NoSQL
10 1 (0.45%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 26 (11.61%) JIRA
2 17 (7.59%) Jenkins
3 14 (6.25%) Fiddler
4 11 (4.91%) Git
5 10 (4.46%) GitLab
6 5 (2.23%) Browser DevTools
6 5 (2.23%) Sonatype Nexus
7 3 (1.34%) Maven
8 2 (0.89%) git-flow
8 2 (0.89%) Introscope
9 1 (0.45%) Ant
9 1 (0.45%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 1 (0.45%) Mockito
General
1 44 (19.64%) Finance
2 33 (14.73%) Banking
2 33 (14.73%) Social Skills
3 25 (11.16%) Analytical Skills
3 25 (11.16%) Legal
4 15 (6.70%) Investment Banking
4 15 (6.70%) Public Sector
5 10 (4.46%) Telecoms
6 8 (3.57%) Documentation Skills
7 6 (2.68%) Publishing
8 3 (1.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 3 (1.34%) Manufacturing
9 2 (0.89%) Retail
10 1 (0.45%) Local Government
10 1 (0.45%) Marketing
10 1 (0.45%) Organisational Skills
10 1 (0.45%) Pharmaceutical
10 1 (0.45%) Police
10 1 (0.45%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 50 (22.32%) Network Engineer
2 31 (13.84%) Security Engineer
3 25 (11.16%) Senior
4 24 (10.71%) Administrator
5 17 (7.59%) Lead
6 16 (7.14%) IP Network Engineer
7 15 (6.70%) Web Engineer
8 14 (6.25%) Blue Coat Engineer
9 12 (5.36%) DBA
9 12 (5.36%) Network Security Engineer
9 12 (5.36%) Senior Network Engineer
10 11 (4.91%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 11 (4.91%) SQL DBA
11 10 (4.46%) Architect
11 10 (4.46%) Linux Engineer
12 9 (4.02%) Developer
13 8 (3.57%) Network Architect
14 7 (3.13%) DevOps Engineer
15 6 (2.68%) Infrastructure Specialist
15 6 (2.68%) Security Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (12.50%) SAML
2 23 (10.27%) Middleware
2 23 (10.27%) Terraform
3 17 (7.59%) 802.1X
3 17 (7.59%) ISPF
4 13 (5.80%) OAuth
5 11 (4.91%) REST
6 9 (4.02%) LDAP
6 9 (4.02%) OAuth2
6 9 (4.02%) OpenID
6 9 (4.02%) SOAP
6 9 (4.02%) Web Services
7 7 (3.13%) Kafka
7 7 (3.13%) XML
8 5 (2.23%) JSON
9 4 (1.79%) CSS
9 4 (1.79%) EDI
10 3 (1.34%) JMS
10 3 (1.34%) Spring
10 3 (1.34%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 37 (16.52%) Clustering
2 28 (12.50%) PKI
3 18 (8.04%) Mainframe
3 18 (8.04%) Onboarding
4 16 (7.14%) Data Centre
4 16 (7.14%) Management Information System
5 14 (6.25%) Replication
6 12 (5.36%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
6 12 (5.36%) Enterprise Software
7 10 (4.46%) Self-Motivation
8 9 (4.02%) Cyber Threat
9 8 (3.57%) Security Posture
10 7 (3.13%) Cloud Security Posture
11 6 (2.68%) Distributed Applications
11 6 (2.68%) Hybrid Cloud
12 5 (2.23%) Linux Command Line
13 4 (1.79%) Algorithms
13 4 (1.79%) Data Structures
13 4 (1.79%) Fibre Optics
13 4 (1.79%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 50 (22.32%) Linux
2 49 (21.88%) Windows
3 28 (12.50%) Windows Server
4 20 (8.93%) zOS
5 15 (6.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (4.91%) Unix
7 4 (1.79%) Mac OS
8 3 (1.34%) Windows Server 2019
9 2 (0.89%) Oracle Linux
9 2 (0.89%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 2 (0.89%) VMS
10 1 (0.45%) Amazon Linux
10 1 (0.45%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 56 (25.00%) ITIL
2 52 (23.21%) DevOps
3 46 (20.54%) Load Balancing
4 34 (15.18%) High Availability
5 33 (14.73%) CI/CD
6 30 (13.39%) SIEM
7 29 (12.95%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 27 (12.05%) Performance Tuning
9 26 (11.61%) Change Management
9 26 (11.61%) Zero Trust
10 25 (11.16%) Problem-Solving
11 24 (10.71%) Cybersecurity
11 24 (10.71%) Data Loss Prevention
12 23 (10.27%) Performance Optimisation
13 22 (9.82%) Agile
13 22 (9.82%) Migration
14 18 (8.04%) Project Delivery
15 17 (7.59%) Infrastructure as Code
15 17 (7.59%) Network Virtualisation
15 17 (7.59%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 56 (25.00%) Python
2 33 (14.73%) SQL
3 30 (13.39%) PowerShell
4 24 (10.71%) Bash
5 11 (4.91%) Java
5 11 (4.91%) Perl
5 11 (4.91%) T-SQL
6 10 (4.46%) Shell Script
7 9 (4.02%) Groovy
8 5 (2.23%) ActionScript
8 5 (2.23%) JavaScript
9 4 (1.79%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.89%) Go
10 2 (0.89%) Jython
11 1 (0.45%) ActionScript 2.0
11 1 (0.45%) C
11 1 (0.45%) C#
11 1 (0.45%) C++
11 1 (0.45%) R
11 1 (0.45%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 74 (33.04%) Security Cleared
2 54 (24.11%) SC Cleared
3 20 (8.93%) Degree
4 19 (8.48%) Azure Certification
5 18 (8.04%) DV Cleared
6 13 (5.80%) BPSS Clearance
7 12 (5.36%) Microsoft Certification
8 11 (4.91%) Cisco Certification
9 10 (4.46%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 8 (3.57%) CCNP
11 7 (3.13%) CISSP
12 6 (2.68%) CCIE
13 3 (1.34%) RHCSA
14 2 (0.89%) CISM
14 2 (0.89%) JNCIE
14 2 (0.89%) MCSE
14 2 (0.89%) PMI Certification
14 2 (0.89%) PMP
14 2 (0.89%) PRINCE2 Certification
14 2 (0.89%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (4.46%) NIST
2 8 (3.57%) GDPR
3 6 (2.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 6 (2.68%) SLA
4 2 (0.89%) Cyber Essentials
4 2 (0.89%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 2 (0.89%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.45%) DICOM
5 1 (0.45%) HL7
5 1 (0.45%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 47 (20.98%) VMware Infrastructure
2 43 (19.20%) Active Directory
3 22 (9.82%) Virtual Machines
4 19 (8.48%) Hyper-V
5 17 (7.59%) RACF
6 16 (7.14%) Firmware
7 14 (6.25%) Docker
8 10 (4.46%) VMware NSX
9 7 (3.13%) Ceph
9 7 (3.13%) Squid
9 7 (3.13%) vSphere
10 4 (1.79%) VMware ESXi
11 3 (1.34%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.89%) Apache ZooKeeper
12 2 (0.89%) ProxySG
12 2 (0.89%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 2 (0.89%) Virtual Desktop
13 1 (0.45%) KVM
13 1 (0.45%) OpenSSH
Systems Management
1 46 (20.54%) Ansible
2 22 (9.82%) Single Sign-On
3 17 (7.59%) Kubernetes
3 17 (7.59%) OMEGAMON
4 15 (6.70%) Grafana
5 11 (4.91%) SCOM
6 10 (4.46%) Prometheus
7 9 (4.02%) CASB
8 8 (3.57%) FortiGate
9 7 (3.13%) Puppet
10 5 (2.23%) Packer
11 4 (1.79%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 4 (1.79%) CA Single Sign-On
11 4 (1.79%) Cisco CUCM
11 4 (1.79%) Microsoft Intune
11 4 (1.79%) PingFederate
11 4 (1.79%) systemd
12 3 (1.34%) Argo
12 3 (1.34%) yum
13 2 (0.89%) CA Wily
Vendors
1 53 (23.66%) F5
2 52 (23.21%) VMware
3 41 (18.30%) Cisco
4 39 (17.41%) Microsoft
5 36 (16.07%) ServiceNow
6 33 (14.73%) Zscaler
7 29 (12.95%) Palo Alto
8 28 (12.50%) Blue Coat
9 23 (10.27%) IBM
10 17 (7.59%) Juniper
10 17 (7.59%) McAfee
11 15 (6.70%) CheckPoint
11 15 (6.70%) Fortinet
12 14 (6.25%) NetApp
13 11 (4.91%) Oracle
13 11 (4.91%) Red Hat
14 10 (4.46%) SolarWinds
15 8 (3.57%) Splunk
16 7 (3.13%) Dynatrace
16 7 (3.13%) Ping Identity