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

6 months to
4 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 462 356 382
Rank change year-on-year -106 +26 +76
Contract jobs citing SSL 175 177 225
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.39% 0.61% 0.51%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 3.90% 4.69% 3.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 107 115 122
10th Percentile £329 £350 £376
25th Percentile £361 £437 £437
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £520 £575
Median % change year-on-year -5.77% -9.57% +4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £619 £638
90th Percentile £688 £651 £734
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £575 £600
% change year-on-year -13.04% -4.17% +20.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 5 6
10th Percentile £52.15 - £41.32
25th Percentile £55.00 £80.34 -
Median hourly rate £65.00 £81.35 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year -20.10% +77.31% -27.44%
75th Percentile £75.00 £82.10 £61.16
90th Percentile £80.25 £83.24 £66.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £81.35 £45.88
% change year-on-year -20.10% +77.31% -26.73%

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 4,485 3,776 5,869
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.93% 12.92% 13.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,861 2,338 3,544
10th Percentile £225 £213 £205
25th Percentile £380 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £480
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% +1.67% -7.79%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £468 £475
% change year-on-year +1.60% -1.58% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 195 153 407
10th Percentile £15.62 £14.99 £13.71
25th Percentile £20.41 £21.46 £17.72
Median hourly rate £42.25 £35.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +20.71% -6.67% +97.37%
75th Percentile £70.29 £63.25 £62.25
90th Percentile £77.10 £75.00 £67.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £28.00 £45.44
% change year-on-year +78.57% -38.38% +145.62%

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 April 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 4 April 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 4 April 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 -96 145 £500 -8.26% 27
UK excluding London -78 114 £500 -13.04% 25
North of England -32 61 £641 +16.55% 4
Work from Home -46 56 £470 -1.16% 17
West Midlands -20 41 £340 -25.68% 4
Midlands -35 41 £340 -25.68% 4
North West -10 39 £610 +12.96% 4
London -80 33 £514 +12.30% 4
Yorkshire -44 22 £675 +35.00%
South East -63 12 £428 -31.60% 6
East of England -39 10 £452 -24.67% 11
Scotland -1 8 £600 +16.50% 1
North East -17 1 - -
South West -32 1 £500 -7.83%

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 18 (10.29%) Confluence
2 11 (6.29%) TPMS
3 3 (1.71%) Microsoft Exchange
4 2 (1.14%) IBM HTTP Server
4 2 (1.14%) Oracle HTTP Server
4 2 (1.14%) WebSphere
4 2 (1.14%) WebSphere Application Server
4 2 (1.14%) WebSphere Portal
5 1 (0.57%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.57%) CMS
5 1 (0.57%) Drupal
5 1 (0.57%) IIS
5 1 (0.57%) Umbraco
Applications
1 8 (4.57%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.57%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 42 (24.00%) Azure
2 38 (21.71%) AWS
3 14 (8.00%) Entra ID
3 14 (8.00%) GCP
3 14 (8.00%) GitHub
4 13 (7.43%) SaaS
5 11 (6.29%) Amazon EKS
6 10 (5.71%) Serverless
7 6 (3.43%) IaaS
7 6 (3.43%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 5 (2.86%) Azure DevOps
8 5 (2.86%) Microsoft 365
8 5 (2.86%) OpenShift
8 5 (2.86%) PaaS
9 4 (2.29%) GitHub Actions
10 3 (1.71%) AWS CloudFormation
10 3 (1.71%) AWS Lambda
10 3 (1.71%) Kong
11 2 (1.14%) Amazon ECS
11 2 (1.14%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 86 (49.14%) DNS
2 65 (37.14%) TCP/IP
3 62 (35.43%) HTTP
4 59 (33.71%) Firewall
5 45 (25.71%) BIG-IP
6 36 (20.57%) Wireshark
7 33 (18.86%) VPN
8 29 (16.57%) Network Security
9 28 (16.00%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 25 (14.29%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
10 25 (14.29%) IPsec
10 25 (14.29%) WAN
11 19 (10.86%) SSH
12 18 (10.29%) LAN
13 16 (9.14%) HTTPS
13 16 (9.14%) Internet
14 15 (8.57%) SNMP
15 13 (7.43%) DHCP
16 11 (6.29%) Wireless
17 10 (5.71%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (7.43%) MongoDB
2 10 (5.71%) DocumentDB
2 10 (5.71%) NoSQL
3 5 (2.86%) PostgreSQL
4 4 (2.29%) Metadata
4 4 (2.29%) SQL Server
5 3 (1.71%) MariaDB
5 3 (1.71%) Redis
6 1 (0.57%) Amazon QuickSight
6 1 (0.57%) SQLite
6 1 (0.57%) SQLPlus
Development Applications
1 29 (16.57%) Fiddler
2 26 (14.86%) JIRA
3 8 (4.57%) Git
4 5 (2.86%) Jenkins
5 4 (2.29%) Browser DevTools
6 3 (1.71%) GitLab
7 2 (1.14%) git-flow
7 2 (1.14%) Introscope
7 2 (1.14%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.57%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.57%) CircleCI
8 1 (0.57%) Crashlytics
8 1 (0.57%) fastlane
8 1 (0.57%) JUnit
8 1 (0.57%) Xcode
8 1 (0.57%) XCTest
8 1 (0.57%) XCUITest
General
1 30 (17.14%) Finance
2 27 (15.43%) Analytical Skills
3 24 (13.71%) Banking
4 23 (13.14%) Social Skills
5 19 (10.86%) Investment Banking
6 17 (9.71%) Public Sector
7 14 (8.00%) Documentation Skills
8 7 (4.00%) Telecoms
9 2 (1.14%) Financial Institution
9 2 (1.14%) Legal
9 2 (1.14%) Retail
10 1 (0.57%) Billing
10 1 (0.57%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.57%) Marketing
10 1 (0.57%) Military
10 1 (0.57%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 55 (31.43%) Network Engineer
2 31 (17.71%) Web Engineer
3 21 (12.00%) Blue Coat Engineer
4 20 (11.43%) IP Network Engineer
5 17 (9.71%) Senior
6 15 (8.57%) Architect
7 14 (8.00%) Security Engineer
8 13 (7.43%) Developer
9 11 (6.29%) Cryptography Engineer
9 11 (6.29%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 11 (6.29%) Junior
10 10 (5.71%) Junior Network Engineer
11 9 (5.14%) Full-Stack Developer
12 8 (4.57%) Analyst
12 8 (4.57%) Consultant
13 6 (3.43%) Network Security Engineer
13 6 (3.43%) Technical Architect
14 5 (2.86%) Network Architect
14 5 (2.86%) Senior Architect
14 5 (2.86%) SOC Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (15.43%) LDAP
1 27 (15.43%) SAML
2 14 (8.00%) OAuth
2 14 (8.00%) OpenID
3 12 (6.86%) Kafka
3 12 (6.86%) OAuth2
4 11 (6.29%) HTML
4 11 (6.29%) RESTful
5 10 (5.71%) REST
5 10 (5.71%) Spring
5 10 (5.71%) Spring Boot
6 9 (5.14%) Node.js
7 6 (3.43%) Web Services
8 5 (2.86%) XACML
9 3 (1.71%) 802.1X
9 3 (1.71%) GraphQL
9 3 (1.71%) SignalR
10 2 (1.14%) .NET Core
10 2 (1.14%) Core Data
10 2 (1.14%) Microsoft Graph
Miscellaneous
1 25 (14.29%) Management Information System
2 19 (10.86%) PKI
3 12 (6.86%) Security Posture
4 11 (6.29%) Cloud Security Posture
5 10 (5.71%) Data Centre
6 9 (5.14%) Analytical Mindset
6 9 (5.14%) Clustering
7 8 (4.57%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
8 7 (4.00%) Cyber Threat
9 6 (3.43%) Enterprise Software
10 5 (2.86%) Algorithms
10 5 (2.86%) CSOC
10 5 (2.86%) Cyberattack
10 5 (2.86%) Security Operations Centre
11 4 (2.29%) SCADA
11 4 (2.29%) Self-Motivation
12 3 (1.71%) Enterprise Storage
13 2 (1.14%) Cyber Defence
13 2 (1.14%) Linux Command Line
13 2 (1.14%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 41 (23.43%) Windows
2 32 (18.29%) Linux
3 16 (9.14%) Windows Server
4 6 (3.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 6 (3.43%) Unix
5 4 (2.29%) CatOS
5 4 (2.29%) Mac OS
6 2 (1.14%) Apple iOS
6 2 (1.14%) Oracle Linux
6 2 (1.14%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
6 2 (1.14%) Windows Server 2019
7 1 (0.57%) Data ONTAP
7 1 (0.57%) Solaris
7 1 (0.57%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 41 (23.43%) Load Balancing
2 39 (22.29%) Cybersecurity
3 37 (21.14%) Data Loss Prevention
4 29 (16.57%) Change Management
4 29 (16.57%) Malware Detection/Protection
5 28 (16.00%) CI/CD
6 27 (15.43%) DevOps
7 25 (14.29%) Cloud Security
7 25 (14.29%) ITIL
8 23 (13.14%) Identity Access Management
8 23 (13.14%) Migration
9 22 (12.57%) High Availability
10 20 (11.43%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 20 (11.43%) Observability
10 20 (11.43%) Problem-Solving
10 20 (11.43%) Roadmaps
10 20 (11.43%) Stakeholder Management
11 18 (10.29%) Agile
12 17 (9.71%) Key Management
12 17 (9.71%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 29 (16.57%) Python
2 20 (11.43%) SQL
3 16 (9.14%) JavaScript
3 16 (9.14%) PowerShell
4 11 (6.29%) Bash
5 8 (4.57%) Java
6 3 (1.71%) Perl
6 3 (1.71%) PL/SQL
7 2 (1.14%) C#
7 2 (1.14%) Jython
7 2 (1.14%) PHP
7 2 (1.14%) Swift
8 1 (0.57%) C
8 1 (0.57%) Groovy
8 1 (0.57%) Objective-C
Qualifications
1 56 (32.00%) Security Cleared
2 43 (24.57%) SC Cleared
3 16 (9.14%) CISSP
4 15 (8.57%) DV Cleared
5 14 (8.00%) Degree
6 11 (6.29%) FFIEC
7 10 (5.71%) Cisco Certification
8 9 (5.14%) CCNP
8 9 (5.14%) CISM
9 7 (4.00%) CompTIA Security+
10 6 (3.43%) Microsoft Certification
11 4 (2.29%) MCSA
11 4 (2.29%) MCSE
12 3 (1.71%) Azure Certification
13 2 (1.14%) HND
13 2 (1.14%) Postgraduate
14 1 (0.57%) CCA
14 1 (0.57%) CCIE
14 1 (0.57%) CCIP
14 1 (0.57%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (11.43%) GDPR
2 15 (8.57%) NIST
3 14 (8.00%) PCI DSS
4 11 (6.29%) GLBA
5 3 (1.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (1.14%) Accessibility
6 2 (1.14%) Data Quality
6 2 (1.14%) HIPAA
6 2 (1.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 1 (0.57%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.57%) NCSC
7 1 (0.57%) RMADS
7 1 (0.57%) SLA
System Software
1 38 (21.71%) Active Directory
1 38 (21.71%) VMware Infrastructure
2 20 (11.43%) Firmware
3 17 (9.71%) VMware NSX
4 13 (7.43%) Docker
5 8 (4.57%) Virtual Machines
6 5 (2.86%) Hyper-V
6 5 (2.86%) ProxySG
6 5 (2.86%) RACF
7 4 (2.29%) Squid
8 3 (1.71%) Ceph
8 3 (1.71%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (1.14%) NDS
9 2 (1.14%) NetIQ eDirectory
9 2 (1.14%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 2 (1.14%) vSphere
10 1 (0.57%) XenApp
10 1 (0.57%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 24 (13.71%) Ansible
2 22 (12.57%) Single Sign-On
3 20 (11.43%) Kubernetes
4 13 (7.43%) CASB
5 11 (6.29%) Terraform
6 6 (3.43%) FortiGate
7 4 (2.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 4 (2.29%) CA Single Sign-On
7 4 (2.29%) Nessus
7 4 (2.29%) PingFederate
8 2 (1.14%) CA Wily
8 2 (1.14%) Grafana
8 2 (1.14%) SCCM
8 2 (1.14%) Tivoli
8 2 (1.14%) vCenter Server
9 1 (0.57%) Microsoft Intune
9 1 (0.57%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.57%) Puppet
9 1 (0.57%) Red Hat Satellite
9 1 (0.57%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 54 (30.86%) F5
2 50 (28.57%) VMware
3 37 (21.14%) Blue Coat
4 33 (18.86%) Microsoft
5 32 (18.29%) McAfee
6 28 (16.00%) Cisco
7 21 (12.00%) NetApp
8 19 (10.86%) CheckPoint
8 19 (10.86%) Palo Alto
9 16 (9.14%) Splunk
10 14 (8.00%) Thales
11 13 (7.43%) ServiceNow
11 13 (7.43%) Zscaler
12 10 (5.71%) Juniper
13 8 (4.57%) Citrix
14 7 (4.00%) CrowdStrike
14 7 (4.00%) OpenText
14 7 (4.00%) Oracle
15 6 (3.43%) Symantec
16 5 (2.86%) Fortinet