SSH Contract Job Trends in England

Secure Shell (SSH)
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring SSH skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 12 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 560 445 501
Rank change year-on-year -115 +56 +103
Contract jobs citing SSH 35 24 38
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.086% 0.099% 0.10%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 0.92% 0.75% 0.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 20 17 23
10th Percentile £354 £325 £265
25th Percentile £406 £460 £511
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £563 £500 £540
Median % change year-on-year +12.50% -7.41% +20.54%
75th Percentile £688 £569 £597
90th Percentile £700 £640 £925
UK median daily rate £450 £500 £540
% change year-on-year -10.00% -7.41% +16.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 0 0
10th Percentile £22.48 - -
25th Percentile £25.72 - -
Median hourly rate £27.88 - -
75th Percentile £53.75 - -
90th Percentile £65.02 - -
UK median hourly rate £27.88 - -

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
England

SSH 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 in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 3,824 3,191 4,859
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.42% 13.13% 13.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,389 1,975 2,932
10th Percentile £250 £220 £208
25th Percentile £400 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £498
Median % change year-on-year - +0.50% -5.24%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK median daily rate £495 £488 £495
% change year-on-year +1.54% -1.52% -4.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 222 119 392
10th Percentile £16.52 £14.20 £13.50
25th Percentile £21.33 £15.44 £16.72
Median hourly rate £42.10 £29.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +45.16% -27.50% +116.22%
75th Percentile £65.88 £63.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.08 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £41.94 £31.79 £40.00
% change year-on-year +31.93% -20.53% +116.22%

SSH
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing SSH relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

SSH job vacancy trend in England

SSH
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing SSH.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing SSH

SSH
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SSH in England over the 6 months to 12 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SSH in England

SSH
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing SSH.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing SSH

SSH
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SSH in England over the 6 months to 12 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for SSH in England

SSH
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SSH within the England region over the 6 months to 12 May 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
North of England -55 15 £675 +92.86% 2
Yorkshire -46 10 £675 +92.86%
London -66 8 £525 +0.48%
South East - 7 £450 - 1
North West -33 5 £287 - 1
South West -31 2 - - 5
West Midlands - 2 £375 -
Midlands - 2 £375 -
SSH
UK

SSH
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 7 (20.00%) TPMS
2 4 (11.43%) Confluence
3 2 (5.71%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (5.71%) SharePoint
4 1 (2.86%) Apache
Applications
1 2 (5.71%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 7 (20.00%) Entra ID
2 4 (11.43%) AWS
2 4 (11.43%) Azure
3 2 (5.71%) AWS KMS
3 2 (5.71%) Azure DevOps
3 2 (5.71%) Azure Key Vault
4 1 (2.86%) Azure Stack
4 1 (2.86%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 14 (40.00%) SNMP
2 10 (28.57%) SSL
3 5 (14.29%) DHCP
3 5 (14.29%) FTP
3 5 (14.29%) Spanning Tree
3 5 (14.29%) TCP/IP
4 4 (11.43%) Cisco IOS
4 4 (11.43%) DNS
4 4 (11.43%) TACACS
5 3 (8.57%) Ethernet
5 3 (8.57%) Firewall
5 3 (8.57%) SD-WAN
5 3 (8.57%) WAN
5 3 (8.57%) Wireshark
6 2 (5.71%) HTTP
6 2 (5.71%) IOS XR
6 2 (5.71%) Kerberos
6 2 (5.71%) LAN
6 2 (5.71%) SMTP
6 2 (5.71%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (11.43%) SQL Server
2 1 (2.86%) MySQL
2 1 (2.86%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 4 (11.43%) JIRA
2 1 (2.86%) Git
2 1 (2.86%) GitLab
General
1 11 (31.43%) Documentation Skills
2 10 (28.57%) Finance
3 6 (17.14%) Public Sector
4 3 (8.57%) Telecoms
5 2 (5.71%) Military
5 2 (5.71%) Social Skills
6 1 (2.86%) Analytical Skills
6 1 (2.86%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 7 (20.00%) Cryptography Engineer
1 7 (20.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 4 (11.43%) Network Engineer
3 3 (8.57%) Analyst
3 3 (8.57%) Test Engineer
4 2 (5.71%) Senior
4 2 (5.71%) Senior Network Engineer
4 2 (5.71%) Windows Engineer
5 1 (2.86%) Automation Engineer
5 1 (2.86%) Azure Consultant
5 1 (2.86%) Designer
5 1 (2.86%) DevOps Engineer
5 1 (2.86%) Linux Infrastructure Engineer
5 1 (2.86%) Python Engineer
5 1 (2.86%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
5 1 (2.86%) Senior Automation Engineer
5 1 (2.86%) Telecoms Test Engineer
5 1 (2.86%) Voice Network Engineer
5 1 (2.86%) Vulnerability Analyst
5 1 (2.86%) Windows Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (5.71%) JSON
1 2 (5.71%) LDAP
1 2 (5.71%) SPIFFE
2 1 (2.86%) Elastic Stack
2 1 (2.86%) LAMP
2 1 (2.86%) LAPP Stack
2 1 (2.86%) libvirt
2 1 (2.86%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 7 (20.00%) Management Information System
2 6 (17.14%) Onboarding
2 6 (17.14%) PKI
3 2 (5.71%) Distributed Systems
3 2 (5.71%) Legacy Systems
3 2 (5.71%) Self-Motivation
3 2 (5.71%) Tandem
4 1 (2.86%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 18 (51.43%) Windows
2 17 (48.57%) Linux
3 9 (25.71%) Unix
4 8 (22.86%) Windows Server
5 1 (2.86%) CentOS
5 1 (2.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (2.86%) Rocky
5 1 (2.86%) SUSE
5 1 (2.86%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 14 (40.00%) Cybersecurity
2 12 (34.29%) Cryptography
3 11 (31.43%) Stakeholder Management
4 9 (25.71%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 8 (22.86%) Computer Science
5 8 (22.86%) Information Security
5 8 (22.86%) Roadmaps
6 7 (20.00%) Data Security
6 7 (20.00%) Key Management
6 7 (20.00%) Observability
6 7 (20.00%) OWASP
6 7 (20.00%) Privileged Access Management
6 7 (20.00%) Runbook
6 7 (20.00%) Security Operations
6 7 (20.00%) SIEM
7 6 (17.14%) ITIL
7 6 (17.14%) Security Monitoring
8 4 (11.43%) Change Management
8 4 (11.43%) ITSM
8 4 (11.43%) Requirements Gathering
Programming Languages
1 17 (48.57%) Python
2 7 (20.00%) Bash
3 6 (17.14%) PowerShell
4 2 (5.71%) Go
5 1 (2.86%) Perl
Qualifications
1 11 (31.43%) Security Cleared
2 10 (28.57%) Degree
3 7 (20.00%) FFIEC
3 7 (20.00%) SC Cleared
4 3 (8.57%) BPSS Clearance
5 2 (5.71%) CISM
5 2 (5.71%) CISSP
5 2 (5.71%) Computer Science Degree
5 2 (5.71%) ITIL Certification
5 2 (5.71%) Master's Degree
6 1 (2.86%) Azure Certification
6 1 (2.86%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (40.00%) NIST
2 7 (20.00%) GDPR
2 7 (20.00%) GLBA
2 7 (20.00%) PCI DSS
3 5 (14.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (2.86%) Data Quality
System Software
1 11 (31.43%) Active Directory
2 3 (8.57%) KVM
3 2 (5.71%) Hyper-V
3 2 (5.71%) NFS
3 2 (5.71%) OpenSSH
3 2 (5.71%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (2.86%) Ceph
4 1 (2.86%) Docker
4 1 (2.86%) IAG
4 1 (2.86%) iptables
4 1 (2.86%) Lustre
4 1 (2.86%) Samba
4 1 (2.86%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 1 (2.86%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 6 (17.14%) Ansible
2 4 (11.43%) Terraform
3 3 (8.57%) Kubernetes
4 1 (2.86%) Failover Clustering
4 1 (2.86%) FortiGate
4 1 (2.86%) Grafana
4 1 (2.86%) HAProxy
4 1 (2.86%) Microsoft Intune
4 1 (2.86%) Nagios
4 1 (2.86%) Prometheus
4 1 (2.86%) SELinux
4 1 (2.86%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 11 (31.43%) Thales
2 8 (22.86%) Splunk
3 7 (20.00%) BeyondTrust
4 5 (14.29%) Cisco
5 4 (11.43%) CyberArk
5 4 (11.43%) Gemalto
5 4 (11.43%) Microsoft
6 3 (8.57%) Meraki
6 3 (8.57%) Oracle
7 2 (5.71%) BiZZdesign
7 2 (5.71%) Ciena
7 2 (5.71%) IBM
8 1 (2.86%) Arista
8 1 (2.86%) F5
8 1 (2.86%) Fortinet
8 1 (2.86%) Juniper
8 1 (2.86%) Palo Alto
8 1 (2.86%) ServiceNow
8 1 (2.86%) Tenable
8 1 (2.86%) VMware