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 6 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 423 338 369
Rank change year-on-year -85 +31 +73
Contract jobs citing SSL 182 193 226
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.46% 0.62% 0.50%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 4.46% 4.75% 3.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 107 117 115
10th Percentile £350 £381 £350
25th Percentile £380 £465 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £684 £638 £626
90th Percentile £700 £661 £669
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £550 £436
% change year-on-year -9.09% +26.15% -2.24%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 0 13
10th Percentile £52.15 - -
25th Percentile £55.00 - £45.88
Median hourly rate £65.00 - £65.98
75th Percentile £75.00 - -
90th Percentile £80.25 - £66.20
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 4,078 4,060 6,113
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.41% 13.03% 13.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,684 2,382 3,680
10th Percentile £204 £213 £206
25th Percentile £356 £360 £356
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £493
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +1.52% -5.20%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £680 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £467 £475
% change year-on-year -3.64% -1.68% +2.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 167 136 409
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.85 £15.33
25th Percentile £18.69 £21.46 £21.25
Median hourly rate £30.00 £33.75 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -11.11% -32.50% +150.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £54.69 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £69.38 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.24 £30.04 £55.00
% change year-on-year +37.28% -45.38% +176.66%

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 6 February 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 6 February 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 6 February 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 -56 155 £525 -4.55% 35
UK excluding London -69 101 £500 -9.09% 35
North of England -13 65 £670 +21.82% 6
Work from Home -53 57 £520 -5.45% 15
London -45 47 £575 +10.58% 5
North West -3 37 £520 +49.64% 5
West Midlands -13 37 £378 -17.49% 2
Midlands -28 37 £378 -17.49% 4
Yorkshire -38 27 £675 +22.73%
East of England -27 8 £427 -28.83% 11
South East -53 8 £430 -31.20% 5
Scotland -5 2 £325 -36.89% 4
North East -17 2 £550 -6.78% 1
South West -22 2 £500 +17.65% 6

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 13 (7.14%) Confluence
1 13 (7.14%) TPMS
2 3 (1.65%) Apache
2 3 (1.65%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (1.10%) Oracle HTTP Server
3 2 (1.10%) Tomcat
3 2 (1.10%) WebLogic
4 1 (0.55%) CMS
4 1 (0.55%) Drupal
4 1 (0.55%) IIS
4 1 (0.55%) JBoss
4 1 (0.55%) Umbraco
Applications
1 6 (3.30%) MS Visio
2 2 (1.10%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (0.55%) RMDS
Cloud Services
1 56 (30.77%) AWS
2 31 (17.03%) Azure
3 18 (9.89%) Virtual Private Cloud
4 16 (8.79%) GCP
4 16 (8.79%) GitHub
5 14 (7.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 14 (7.69%) Amazon EC2
5 14 (7.69%) Amazon ELB
5 14 (7.69%) Amazon S3
6 12 (6.59%) Serverless
7 11 (6.04%) Amazon EKS
8 6 (3.30%) SaaS
9 5 (2.75%) Amazon ECS
9 5 (2.75%) AWS CloudFormation
9 5 (2.75%) AWS Lambda
9 5 (2.75%) IaaS
9 5 (2.75%) OpenShift
9 5 (2.75%) PaaS
10 4 (2.20%) Entra ID
10 4 (2.20%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 85 (46.70%) DNS
2 73 (40.11%) TCP/IP
3 66 (36.26%) Firewall
4 58 (31.87%) HTTP
5 54 (29.67%) VPN
6 41 (22.53%) Network Security
7 39 (21.43%) BIG-IP
8 38 (20.88%) Wireshark
9 26 (14.29%) IPsec
10 23 (12.64%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
10 23 (12.64%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 23 (12.64%) WAN
11 19 (10.44%) SNMP
11 19 (10.44%) SSH
12 18 (9.89%) HTTPS
13 15 (8.24%) LAN
14 13 (7.14%) Wireless
15 12 (6.59%) BGP
16 11 (6.04%) OSPF
17 9 (4.95%) DHCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (5.49%) DocumentDB
1 10 (5.49%) MongoDB
1 10 (5.49%) NoSQL
2 8 (4.40%) Apache Cassandra
2 8 (4.40%) SQL Server
3 5 (2.75%) PostgreSQL
4 3 (1.65%) Redis
5 1 (0.55%) Amazon QuickSight
5 1 (0.55%) SQLite
Development Applications
1 28 (15.38%) Fiddler
2 21 (11.54%) Git
3 17 (9.34%) Jenkins
4 15 (8.24%) GitLab
4 15 (8.24%) JIRA
5 2 (1.10%) git-flow
6 1 (0.55%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.55%) CircleCI
6 1 (0.55%) Crashlytics
6 1 (0.55%) fastlane
6 1 (0.55%) JUnit
6 1 (0.55%) Robot Framework
6 1 (0.55%) Sonatype Nexus
6 1 (0.55%) Subversion
6 1 (0.55%) Xcode
6 1 (0.55%) XCTest
6 1 (0.55%) XCUITest
General
1 29 (15.93%) Social Skills
2 26 (14.29%) Analytical Skills
3 22 (12.09%) Banking
3 22 (12.09%) Finance
4 18 (9.89%) Investment Banking
5 16 (8.79%) Public Sector
6 15 (8.24%) Documentation Skills
7 6 (3.30%) Telecoms
8 4 (2.20%) Military
9 2 (1.10%) Financial Institution
9 2 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
9 2 (1.10%) Legal
9 2 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
10 1 (0.55%) Billing
10 1 (0.55%) Marketing
10 1 (0.55%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 60 (32.97%) Network Engineer
2 27 (14.84%) Senior
3 25 (13.74%) Web Engineer
4 24 (13.19%) Developer
5 19 (10.44%) Architect
6 16 (8.79%) Blue Coat Engineer
6 16 (8.79%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 15 (8.24%) Cryptography Engineer
7 15 (8.24%) IP Network Engineer
8 14 (7.69%) Junior
9 13 (7.14%) DevOps Engineer
9 13 (7.14%) Junior Network Engineer
10 12 (6.59%) Consultant
10 12 (6.59%) Security Engineer
10 12 (6.59%) Senior DevOps
10 12 (6.59%) Senior DevOps Engineer
11 11 (6.04%) Full-Stack Developer
12 7 (3.85%) Network Security Engineer
13 6 (3.30%) Analyst
13 6 (3.30%) Senior Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (10.99%) OAuth
1 20 (10.99%) SAML
2 19 (10.44%) REST
3 17 (9.34%) LDAP
4 11 (6.04%) HTML
4 11 (6.04%) Kafka
4 11 (6.04%) OpenID
4 11 (6.04%) RESTful
5 10 (5.49%) JSON
5 10 (5.49%) OAuth2
5 10 (5.49%) SOAP
5 10 (5.49%) Spring
5 10 (5.49%) Spring Boot
5 10 (5.49%) XML
6 9 (4.95%) Node.js
7 6 (3.30%) 802.1X
7 6 (3.30%) Web Services
8 5 (2.75%) XACML
9 4 (2.20%) .NET
10 3 (1.65%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 26 (14.29%) Management Information System
2 24 (13.19%) PKI
3 12 (6.59%) Data Centre
4 9 (4.95%) Analytical Mindset
5 6 (3.30%) Cyber Threat
5 6 (3.30%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
5 6 (3.30%) Onboarding
6 5 (2.75%) CSOC
6 5 (2.75%) Cyberattack
6 5 (2.75%) Security Operations Centre
7 3 (1.65%) Algorithms
7 3 (1.65%) Cloud Native
8 2 (1.10%) Hybrid Cloud
8 2 (1.10%) Linux Command Line
8 2 (1.10%) Private Cloud
9 1 (0.55%) Animation
9 1 (0.55%) Cyber Security Posture
9 1 (0.55%) Public Cloud
9 1 (0.55%) Security Posture
9 1 (0.55%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 42 (23.08%) Linux
2 33 (18.13%) Windows
3 10 (5.49%) Windows Server
4 5 (2.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (2.20%) CatOS
6 3 (1.65%) Unix
7 2 (1.10%) Apple iOS
7 2 (1.10%) CentOS
7 2 (1.10%) Ubuntu
8 1 (0.55%) Mac OS
8 1 (0.55%) Solaris
8 1 (0.55%) Windows Server 2016
8 1 (0.55%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 47 (25.82%) DevOps
2 41 (22.53%) CI/CD
3 40 (21.98%) Load Balancing
4 37 (20.33%) Cybersecurity
5 27 (14.84%) High Availability
6 26 (14.29%) Data Loss Prevention
6 26 (14.29%) Infrastructure as Code
7 25 (13.74%) Identity Access Management
8 24 (13.19%) Incident Response
8 24 (13.19%) Malware Detection/Protection
8 24 (13.19%) Problem-Solving
8 24 (13.19%) Test Automation
9 23 (12.64%) Key Management
9 23 (12.64%) Stakeholder Management
10 22 (12.09%) API Management
10 22 (12.09%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 21 (11.54%) Change Management
11 21 (11.54%) Observability
11 21 (11.54%) Roadmaps
11 21 (11.54%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 52 (28.57%) Python
2 22 (12.09%) Bash
3 19 (10.44%) JavaScript
4 17 (9.34%) SQL
5 11 (6.04%) Java
5 11 (6.04%) PowerShell
6 3 (1.65%) C#
7 2 (1.10%) C
7 2 (1.10%) Perl
7 2 (1.10%) PHP
7 2 (1.10%) Swift
8 1 (0.55%) C++
8 1 (0.55%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 63 (34.62%) Security Cleared
2 51 (28.02%) SC Cleared
3 14 (7.69%) Degree
4 13 (7.14%) DV Cleared
4 13 (7.14%) FFIEC
5 12 (6.59%) CISSP
6 11 (6.04%) Cisco Certification
7 8 (4.40%) CCNP
8 7 (3.85%) CISM
9 6 (3.30%) Microsoft Certification
10 4 (2.20%) Computer Science Degree
11 3 (1.65%) RHCE
12 2 (1.10%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 2 (1.10%) AWS Certification
12 2 (1.10%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 2 (1.10%) CCIE
12 2 (1.10%) CCSP
12 2 (1.10%) CEH
12 2 (1.10%) Master's Degree
12 2 (1.10%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (12.64%) GDPR
2 19 (10.44%) PCI DSS
3 14 (7.69%) NIST
4 13 (7.14%) GLBA
5 6 (3.30%) HIPAA
6 4 (2.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 3 (1.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 2 (1.10%) Accessibility
8 2 (1.10%) Data Quality
8 2 (1.10%) FIPS 140-2
9 1 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.55%) NCSC
9 1 (0.55%) RMADS
9 1 (0.55%) SOC 2
System Software
1 34 (18.68%) Docker
2 23 (12.64%) Active Directory
2 23 (12.64%) VMware Infrastructure
3 16 (8.79%) VMware NSX
4 15 (8.24%) Firmware
5 5 (2.75%) NDS
5 5 (2.75%) NetIQ eDirectory
5 5 (2.75%) RACF
6 4 (2.20%) ProxySG
7 1 (0.55%) Embedded Firmware
7 1 (0.55%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 1 (0.55%) Squid
7 1 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.55%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.55%) vSphere
7 1 (0.55%) XenApp
7 1 (0.55%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 40 (21.98%) Ansible
2 30 (16.48%) Kubernetes
3 26 (14.29%) Terraform
4 18 (9.89%) Single Sign-On
5 5 (2.75%) FortiGate
6 3 (1.65%) Nagios
6 3 (1.65%) Prometheus
7 2 (1.10%) CASB
7 2 (1.10%) SCCM
8 1 (0.55%) BladeLogic
8 1 (0.55%) Failover Clustering
8 1 (0.55%) Grafana
8 1 (0.55%) Host Intrusion Detection System
8 1 (0.55%) Microsoft Intune
8 1 (0.55%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.55%) Red Hat Satellite
8 1 (0.55%) SCOM
8 1 (0.55%) SCOrch
8 1 (0.55%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 68 (37.36%) F5
2 40 (21.98%) Blue Coat
3 35 (19.23%) VMware
4 34 (18.68%) CheckPoint
5 32 (17.58%) Cisco
5 32 (17.58%) McAfee
6 30 (16.48%) Palo Alto
7 28 (15.38%) Microsoft
8 22 (12.09%) Splunk
9 19 (10.44%) NetApp
10 17 (9.34%) Thales
11 12 (6.59%) Juniper
12 10 (5.49%) Axway
12 10 (5.49%) Oracle
13 9 (4.95%) OpenText
14 8 (4.40%) Zscaler
15 7 (3.85%) Fortinet
16 5 (2.75%) Google
16 5 (2.75%) Micro Focus
16 5 (2.75%) NetIQ