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

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 458 357 420
Rank change year-on-year -101 +63 -8
Contract jobs citing SSL 228 200 145
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.42% 0.61% 0.38%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 4.44% 5.31% 3.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 116 124 84
10th Percentile £380 £369 £354
25th Percentile £463 £411 £474
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £531 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.61% +4.55% +4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £653 £661
90th Percentile £650 £700 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £470 £525
% change year-on-year +11.70% -10.48% +8.02%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 8 2
10th Percentile £61.00 - £37.70
25th Percentile £66.81 £45.00 £39.13
Median hourly rate £68.75 £65.00 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.77% +51.16% -34.83%
75th Percentile £85.00 £82.26 £46.63
90th Percentile - £85.00 £47.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £76.88 £65.00 £43.00
% change year-on-year +18.27% +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 5,132 3,770 4,463
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.36% 11.53% 11.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,973 2,341 2,598
10th Percentile £235 £225 £225
25th Percentile £393 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £478 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.69% -4.48% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £608
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £500
% change year-on-year +5.56% -10.00% +8.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 424 199 229
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £25.15 £23.80
Median hourly rate £34.75 £42.50 £51.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.24% -17.48% -8.83%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £73.40 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -23.53% -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 23 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
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SSL over the 6 months to 23 September 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 23 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 -94 199 £538 -6.52% 111
UK excluding London -61 138 £525 +11.70% 61
London -105 71 £550 -8.94% 60
Work from Home -67 61 £550 -4.76% 52
North of England -49 56 £600 +12.15% 10
North West -27 38 £600 -0.58% 8
Midlands -47 31 £400 +5.96% 6
South East -49 29 £520 +38.67% 18
West Midlands -38 27 £400 +5.26% 4
Scotland -9 17 £600 +14.29% 2
East of England -28 16 £450 -25.31% 21
Yorkshire -38 16 £600 +20.00% 2
East Midlands -19 4 £475 +32.68% 2
South West -38 3 £350 -38.70% 5
North East -38 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 (7.02%) Confluence
2 5 (2.19%) Apache
3 2 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (0.88%) IIS
3 2 (0.88%) nginx
3 2 (0.88%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.44%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.44%) IBM HTTP Server
4 1 (0.44%) JBoss
4 1 (0.44%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.44%) Oracle HTTP Server
4 1 (0.44%) WebSphere
4 1 (0.44%) WebSphere Application Server
4 1 (0.44%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 3 (1.32%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.88%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 2 (0.88%) Houdini
2 2 (0.88%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.88%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 3 (1.32%) Infor LN
2 2 (0.88%) Dynamics GP
3 1 (0.44%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.44%) Oracle General Ledger
3 1 (0.44%) Oracle Payables
3 1 (0.44%) Oracle Receivables
3 1 (0.44%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 76 (33.33%) Azure
2 47 (20.61%) AWS
3 33 (14.47%) Entra ID
4 22 (9.65%) GCP
5 18 (7.89%) Azure DevOps
6 16 (7.02%) GitHub
7 14 (6.14%) Microsoft 365
8 13 (5.70%) Power Platform
9 12 (5.26%) Azure Monitor
9 12 (5.26%) Datadog
10 9 (3.95%) Azure Key Vault
10 9 (3.95%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 8 (3.51%) AWS CloudFormation
11 8 (3.51%) AWS Lambda
11 8 (3.51%) Serverless
12 7 (3.07%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 7 (3.07%) Amazon S3
12 7 (3.07%) AWS KMS
12 7 (3.07%) GitHub Actions
13 6 (2.63%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 103 (45.18%) DNS
2 76 (33.33%) Firewall
3 63 (27.63%) VPN
4 59 (25.88%) Network Security
5 57 (25.00%) TCP/IP
6 55 (24.12%) HTTP
7 44 (19.30%) WAN
8 35 (15.35%) IPsec
9 31 (13.60%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 29 (12.72%) BGP
10 29 (12.72%) BIG-IP
11 28 (12.28%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
12 27 (11.84%) DHCP
13 22 (9.65%) LAN
13 22 (9.65%) Wireless
14 21 (9.21%) OSPF
15 17 (7.46%) HTTPS
15 17 (7.46%) SD-WAN
15 17 (7.46%) Wireshark
16 12 (5.26%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (7.46%) SQL Server
2 16 (7.02%) MySQL
3 11 (4.82%) Power BI
3 11 (4.82%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 5 (2.19%) PostgreSQL
5 4 (1.75%) MariaDB
5 4 (1.75%) Metadata
6 2 (0.88%) Amazon RDS
6 2 (0.88%) MongoDB
6 2 (0.88%) Oracle BI Publisher
6 2 (0.88%) Oracle Reports
6 2 (0.88%) RDBMS
6 2 (0.88%) Relational Database
6 2 (0.88%) SQLPlus
7 1 (0.44%) InfluxDB
7 1 (0.44%) Neo4j
7 1 (0.44%) NoSQL
7 1 (0.44%) SQLite
7 1 (0.44%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 24 (10.53%) JIRA
2 18 (7.89%) Jenkins
3 16 (7.02%) Git
4 12 (5.26%) Fiddler
5 10 (4.39%) GitLab
6 6 (2.63%) Sonatype Nexus
7 3 (1.32%) Browser DevTools
7 3 (1.32%) Maven
8 2 (0.88%) Artifactory
8 2 (0.88%) git-flow
9 1 (0.44%) Ant
9 1 (0.44%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 1 (0.44%) Gerrit
9 1 (0.44%) Introscope
9 1 (0.44%) Mockito
9 1 (0.44%) Tricentis qTest
General
1 43 (18.86%) Finance
2 41 (17.98%) Social Skills
3 32 (14.04%) Banking
4 26 (11.40%) Analytical Skills
5 25 (10.96%) Legal
6 13 (5.70%) Investment Banking
7 11 (4.82%) Public Sector
8 9 (3.95%) Telecoms
9 8 (3.51%) Documentation Skills
10 6 (2.63%) Publishing
11 4 (1.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 4 (1.75%) Manufacturing
12 2 (0.88%) Aerospace
12 2 (0.88%) Retail
13 1 (0.44%) Law
13 1 (0.44%) Local Government
13 1 (0.44%) Marketing
13 1 (0.44%) Organisational Skills
13 1 (0.44%) Pharmaceutical
13 1 (0.44%) Police
Job Titles
1 55 (24.12%) Network Engineer
2 30 (13.16%) Security Engineer
3 25 (10.96%) Administrator
3 25 (10.96%) Senior
4 15 (6.58%) Lead
5 14 (6.14%) IP Network Engineer
5 14 (6.14%) Network Security Engineer
6 13 (5.70%) DBA
6 13 (5.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 13 (5.70%) Senior Network Engineer
7 12 (5.26%) Blue Coat Engineer
7 12 (5.26%) SQL DBA
7 12 (5.26%) Web Engineer
8 11 (4.82%) Architect
9 9 (3.95%) Developer
10 8 (3.51%) DevOps Engineer
10 8 (3.51%) DV Cleared Network Engineer
10 8 (3.51%) Linux Engineer
11 7 (3.07%) Network Architect
12 6 (2.63%) Infrastructure Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (12.28%) SAML
2 26 (11.40%) Terraform
3 22 (9.65%) Middleware
4 20 (8.77%) 802.1X
5 17 (7.46%) ISPF
6 14 (6.14%) OAuth
7 13 (5.70%) LDAP
7 13 (5.70%) REST
8 10 (4.39%) OpenID
9 9 (3.95%) OAuth2
9 9 (3.95%) SOAP
9 9 (3.95%) Web Services
10 8 (3.51%) JSON
11 7 (3.07%) Kafka
11 7 (3.07%) XML
12 4 (1.75%) CSS
12 4 (1.75%) EDI
12 4 (1.75%) YAML
13 3 (1.32%) EDIFACT
13 3 (1.32%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 36 (15.79%) Clustering
2 31 (13.60%) PKI
3 20 (8.77%) Onboarding
4 18 (7.89%) Mainframe
5 17 (7.46%) Data Centre
6 16 (7.02%) Management Information System
7 15 (6.58%) Replication
8 13 (5.70%) Self-Motivation
9 12 (5.26%) Cyber Threat
10 11 (4.82%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 9 (3.95%) Enterprise Software
12 8 (3.51%) Hybrid Cloud
13 6 (2.63%) Distributed Applications
14 5 (2.19%) Analytical Mindset
14 5 (2.19%) Linux Command Line
15 4 (1.75%) Algorithms
15 4 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
15 4 (1.75%) Data Structures
15 4 (1.75%) Fibre Optics
15 4 (1.75%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 54 (23.68%) Linux
1 54 (23.68%) Windows
2 33 (14.47%) Windows Server
3 21 (9.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 20 (8.77%) zOS
5 10 (4.39%) Unix
6 3 (1.32%) Mac OS
6 3 (1.32%) Windows Server 2019
7 2 (0.88%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.88%) VMS
8 1 (0.44%) Amazon Linux
8 1 (0.44%) Oracle Linux
8 1 (0.44%) Rocky
8 1 (0.44%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 57 (25.00%) DevOps
2 55 (24.12%) ITIL
3 49 (21.49%) Load Balancing
4 36 (15.79%) CI/CD
4 36 (15.79%) High Availability
5 33 (14.47%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 27 (11.84%) Problem-Solving
7 26 (11.40%) Change Management
8 25 (10.96%) Migration
8 25 (10.96%) Performance Tuning
8 25 (10.96%) SIEM
9 24 (10.53%) Performance Optimisation
9 24 (10.53%) Zero Trust
10 21 (9.21%) Infrastructure as Code
11 19 (8.33%) Agile
11 19 (8.33%) Cybersecurity
12 17 (7.46%) Containerisation
12 17 (7.46%) Incident Response
12 17 (7.46%) Observability
12 17 (7.46%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 58 (25.44%) Python
2 34 (14.91%) PowerShell
3 30 (13.16%) SQL
4 22 (9.65%) Bash
5 12 (5.26%) Java
5 12 (5.26%) T-SQL
6 10 (4.39%) Groovy
6 10 (4.39%) Perl
6 10 (4.39%) Shell Script
7 6 (2.63%) JavaScript
8 5 (2.19%) ActionScript
9 2 (0.88%) C#
9 2 (0.88%) C++
9 2 (0.88%) Go
9 2 (0.88%) PL/SQL
10 1 (0.44%) ActionScript 2.0
10 1 (0.44%) C
10 1 (0.44%) Cypher
10 1 (0.44%) MATLAB
10 1 (0.44%) R
Qualifications
1 69 (30.26%) Security Cleared
2 46 (20.18%) SC Cleared
3 21 (9.21%) DV Cleared
4 20 (8.77%) Azure Certification
5 19 (8.33%) Degree
6 15 (6.58%) Cisco Certification
7 13 (5.70%) BPSS Clearance
8 12 (5.26%) CCNP
8 12 (5.26%) Microsoft Certification
9 10 (4.39%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 7 (3.07%) CISSP
11 6 (2.63%) CCIE
12 5 (2.19%) RHCSA
13 4 (1.75%) RHCE
14 3 (1.32%) CCNA
15 2 (0.88%) CISM
15 2 (0.88%) MCSE
15 2 (0.88%) PMI Certification
15 2 (0.88%) PMP
15 2 (0.88%) PRINCE2 Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (4.39%) NIST
2 8 (3.51%) GDPR
3 6 (2.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 6 (2.63%) SLA
4 2 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
4 2 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 2 (0.88%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.44%) DICOM
5 1 (0.44%) HL7
5 1 (0.44%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 48 (21.05%) Active Directory
2 41 (17.98%) VMware Infrastructure
3 20 (8.77%) Virtual Machines
4 17 (7.46%) Docker
4 17 (7.46%) RACF
5 16 (7.02%) Hyper-V
6 14 (6.14%) Firmware
7 12 (5.26%) vSphere
8 9 (3.95%) VMware NSX
9 5 (2.19%) Squid
10 4 (1.75%) Ceph
10 4 (1.75%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 4 (1.75%) VMware ESXi
11 3 (1.32%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.88%) Apache ZooKeeper
12 2 (0.88%) Virtual Desktop
13 1 (0.44%) KVM
13 1 (0.44%) OpenSSH
13 1 (0.44%) ProxySG
Systems Management
1 48 (21.05%) Ansible
2 20 (8.77%) Single Sign-On
3 19 (8.33%) Kubernetes
4 17 (7.46%) Grafana
4 17 (7.46%) OMEGAMON
5 12 (5.26%) Prometheus
6 11 (4.82%) SCOM
7 9 (3.95%) Puppet
8 7 (3.07%) FortiGate
9 5 (2.19%) Nagios
9 5 (2.19%) Packer
10 4 (1.75%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 4 (1.75%) Argo
10 4 (1.75%) CA Single Sign-On
10 4 (1.75%) Cisco CUCM
10 4 (1.75%) Microsoft Intune
10 4 (1.75%) PingFederate
10 4 (1.75%) systemd
11 3 (1.32%) yum
12 2 (0.88%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 53 (23.25%) F5
2 52 (22.81%) VMware
3 49 (21.49%) Cisco
4 43 (18.86%) Microsoft
5 33 (14.47%) Palo Alto
6 31 (13.60%) ServiceNow
7 27 (11.84%) Blue Coat
7 27 (11.84%) Zscaler
8 22 (9.65%) IBM
9 19 (8.33%) Juniper
10 17 (7.46%) Fortinet
11 15 (6.58%) CheckPoint
11 15 (6.58%) McAfee
12 14 (6.14%) SolarWinds
13 13 (5.70%) Red Hat
14 12 (5.26%) NetApp
15 10 (4.39%) Splunk
16 8 (3.51%) Oracle
17 7 (3.07%) Dynatrace
17 7 (3.07%) Ping Identity