Shell Script Contract Job Trends

Shell Scripting (Shell Programming)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Shell Script skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 3 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 313 286 294
Rank change year-on-year -27 +8 -28
Contract jobs citing Shell Script 309 268 328
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.83% 0.82% 0.76%
As % of the Programming Languages category 2.70% 2.52% 2.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 196 151 224
10th Percentile £325 £360 £400
25th Percentile £400 £413 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £510 £530
Median % change year-on-year -6.86% -3.77% -1.85%
75th Percentile £559 £581 £630
90th Percentile £625 £708 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £470 £475
% change year-on-year +2.13% -1.05% -11.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 8 5
10th Percentile £53.55 £63.50 £34.49
25th Percentile £65.00 £66.88 £55.00
Median hourly rate £68.00 £82.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year -17.58% +32.00% -14.38%
75th Percentile £81.50 £97.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £110.00 - £72.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.00 £68.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year - +8.80% -14.38%

All Programming Languages
UK

Shell Script falls under the Programming Languages category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring coding skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 11,437 10,623 13,107
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 30.90% 32.57% 30.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,589 6,775 9,330
10th Percentile £350 £350 £355
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.57% -4.55% -2.65%
75th Percentile £619 £645 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -1.54% -2.50% -2.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 388 242 416
10th Percentile £34.25 £21.33 £35.00
25th Percentile £51.21 £38.89 £47.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.43
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +0.12% -0.25%
75th Percentile £69.58 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.48 £85.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +3.17% -3.08% -

Shell Script
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Shell Script relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Shell Script job vacancy trend in the UK

Shell Script
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Shell Script.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Shell Script

Shell Script
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Shell Script over the 6 months to 3 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Shell Script in the UK

Shell Script
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Shell Script.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Shell Script

Shell Script
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Shell Script over the 6 months to 3 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Shell Script in the UK

Shell Script
Top 16 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Shell Script within the UK over the 6 months to 3 January 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 -17 243 £478 -8.08% 28
UK excluding London +22 185 £480 +2.13% 25
Work from Home -4 99 £438 -14.15% 17
London -63 86 £439 -16.43% 6
North of England -22 53 £480 -3.27% 5
Scotland +7 37 £497 +5.64% 1
Yorkshire -19 37 £500 -16.49% 1
Midlands -20 31 £516 +26.47% 4
West Midlands -15 29 £525 +14.13% 1
South East -13 27 £420 - 9
South West -5 21 £525 -18.29% 2
East of England -2 17 £475 - 6
North West -19 16 £453 +25.83% 4
East Midlands -22 2 £425 +19.38% 3
Wales - 1 £265 -
Northern Ireland - 1 - -

Shell Script
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 17 (5.50%) Apache
2 11 (3.56%) Apache Spark
2 11 (3.56%) JBoss
3 8 (2.59%) Apache Airflow
3 8 (2.59%) IIS
3 8 (2.59%) iPlanet
3 8 (2.59%) WebSphere
3 8 (2.59%) WebSphere Application Server
4 3 (0.97%) Confluence
4 3 (0.97%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.97%) Tomcat
5 2 (0.65%) SAS
6 1 (0.32%) CICS
6 1 (0.32%) nginx
6 1 (0.32%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 1 (0.32%) Oracle Workflow
6 1 (0.32%) WebLogic
Applications
1 8 (2.59%) Microsoft Excel
1 8 (2.59%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (2.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 5 (1.62%) Oracle Applications
2 4 (1.29%) Oracle EBS
3 3 (0.97%) Oracle 11i
3 3 (0.97%) Oracle EBS R12
3 3 (0.97%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 3 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.32%) ION MarketView
4 1 (0.32%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.32%) Oracle Cash Management
4 1 (0.32%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.32%) Oracle Receivables
4 1 (0.32%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 98 (31.72%) AWS
2 48 (15.53%) Azure
3 46 (14.89%) GitHub
4 34 (11.00%) OpenShift
5 27 (8.74%) Serverless
6 24 (7.77%) Amazon EC2
6 24 (7.77%) Amazon S3
6 24 (7.77%) AWS CloudFormation
7 22 (7.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 21 (6.80%) AWS Lambda
9 18 (5.83%) GCP
10 17 (5.50%) Amazon EKS
11 16 (5.18%) GitHub Actions
12 10 (3.24%) Amazon ECS
12 10 (3.24%) PaaS
13 9 (2.91%) Azure DevOps
13 9 (2.91%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 8 (2.59%) OCI
15 6 (1.94%) Entra ID
16 5 (1.62%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 14 (4.53%) SSH
2 13 (4.21%) DNS
2 13 (4.21%) TCP/IP
3 11 (3.56%) Firewall
4 10 (3.24%) Kerberos
5 7 (2.27%) HTTP
6 6 (1.94%) SAN
7 4 (1.29%) Network Security
8 3 (0.97%) NAS
9 2 (0.65%) SSL
10 1 (0.32%) BGP
10 1 (0.32%) FTP
10 1 (0.32%) IPsec
10 1 (0.32%) LAN
10 1 (0.32%) SMTP
10 1 (0.32%) SNMP
10 1 (0.32%) VLAN
10 1 (0.32%) VRRP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 54 (17.48%) Oracle Database
2 44 (14.24%) MongoDB
3 29 (9.39%) Relational Database
4 27 (8.74%) Amazon RDS
5 23 (7.44%) DB2
6 21 (6.80%) PostgreSQL
7 20 (6.47%) NoSQL
8 16 (5.18%) SQL Server
9 11 (3.56%) Data Warehouse
9 11 (3.56%) Hadoop
10 10 (3.24%) MySQL
11 9 (2.91%) Elasticsearch
12 8 (2.59%) Apache Hive
13 6 (1.94%) Big Data
13 6 (1.94%) Couchbase
13 6 (1.94%) HBase
13 6 (1.94%) Oracle Reports
14 5 (1.62%) Amazon Redshift
14 5 (1.62%) OLTP
14 5 (1.62%) Redis
Development Applications
1 85 (27.51%) Jenkins
2 63 (20.39%) Git
3 46 (14.89%) GitLab
4 29 (9.39%) JUnit
5 17 (5.50%) JIRA
6 11 (3.56%) Maven
6 11 (3.56%) Sonatype Nexus
7 8 (2.59%) Bitbucket Server
7 8 (2.59%) CA Release Automation
7 8 (2.59%) ClearCase
7 8 (2.59%) Mockito
7 8 (2.59%) Postman
8 7 (2.27%) Subversion
9 6 (1.94%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 5 (1.62%) REST Assured
10 5 (1.62%) SoapUI
10 5 (1.62%) SonarQube
10 5 (1.62%) Xcode
10 5 (1.62%) XCTest
11 4 (1.29%) Terragrunt
General
1 108 (34.95%) Social Skills
2 61 (19.74%) Finance
3 54 (17.48%) Analytical Skills
4 42 (13.59%) Banking
5 30 (9.71%) Public Sector
6 25 (8.09%) Investment Banking
7 13 (4.21%) Front Office
8 6 (1.94%) Aerospace
8 6 (1.94%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.29%) Financial Institution
9 4 (1.29%) Law
9 4 (1.29%) Multimedia
9 4 (1.29%) Retail
10 3 (0.97%) Local Government
10 3 (0.97%) Manufacturing
10 3 (0.97%) Military
10 3 (0.97%) Wearables
11 2 (0.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.65%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.32%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 81 (26.21%) Developer
2 42 (13.59%) Java Developer
3 38 (12.30%) DevOps Engineer
4 34 (11.00%) Senior
5 23 (7.44%) Administrator
6 21 (6.80%) SQL Developer
7 20 (6.47%) Investment Banking Java Developer
8 18 (5.83%) AWS Engineer
8 18 (5.83%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 17 (5.50%) DBA
9 17 (5.50%) Support Engineer
10 15 (4.85%) Senior Developer
10 15 (4.85%) Site Engineer
11 13 (4.21%) Oracle DBA
11 13 (4.21%) Senior Java Developer
12 12 (3.88%) Linux Engineer
12 12 (3.88%) Product Engineer
12 12 (3.88%) Products Support Engineer
12 12 (3.88%) Software Support Engineer
13 11 (3.56%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 55 (17.80%) Kafka
2 33 (10.68%) Spring
3 22 (7.12%) Middleware
4 21 (6.80%) JMS
5 20 (6.47%) Node.js
6 19 (6.15%) REST
7 16 (5.18%) Elastic Stack
8 15 (4.85%) RESTful
8 15 (4.85%) SOAP
9 14 (4.53%) FastAPI
10 13 (4.21%) LDAP
11 12 (3.88%) Spring Boot
12 10 (3.24%) OpenID
13 9 (2.91%) AWS CDK
13 9 (2.91%) HTML
13 9 (2.91%) OAuth
13 9 (2.91%) SAML
14 8 (2.59%) CSS
14 8 (2.59%) OpenAPI
14 8 (2.59%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 22 (7.12%) Data Structures
2 21 (6.80%) Equities
3 15 (4.85%) Cloud Native
4 12 (3.88%) Management Information System
5 11 (3.56%) Data Centre
6 9 (2.91%) Distributed Systems
6 9 (2.91%) Linux Command Line
7 8 (2.59%) Data Protection Act
7 8 (2.59%) Legacy Applications
7 8 (2.59%) Replication
8 7 (2.27%) Enterprise Cloud
9 6 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
9 6 (1.94%) Onboarding
9 6 (1.94%) PKI
10 5 (1.62%) Mainframe
10 5 (1.62%) Security Operations Centre
11 4 (1.29%) DataPower
11 4 (1.29%) Hedge funds
11 4 (1.29%) Legacy Code
12 3 (0.97%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 217 (70.23%) Linux
2 97 (31.39%) Unix
3 36 (11.65%) Windows
4 35 (11.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 16 (5.18%) Ubuntu
6 15 (4.85%) CentOS
7 11 (3.56%) Windows Server
8 7 (2.27%) VMS
9 5 (1.62%) Android
9 5 (1.62%) Apple iOS
10 4 (1.29%) AIX
11 3 (0.97%) Oracle Linux
12 2 (0.65%) Debian
12 2 (0.65%) Solaris
13 1 (0.32%) Mac OS X
13 1 (0.32%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 112 (36.25%) CI/CD
2 102 (33.01%) Problem-Solving
3 101 (32.69%) Agile
4 76 (24.60%) DevOps
5 54 (17.48%) Performance Tuning
6 50 (16.18%) Infrastructure as Code
7 48 (15.53%) Task Automation
8 46 (14.89%) SDLC
9 43 (13.92%) Containerisation
10 32 (10.36%) Software Engineering
11 31 (10.03%) Observability
12 28 (9.06%) Migration
13 27 (8.74%) Root Cause Analysis
14 25 (8.09%) Infrastructure Automation
14 25 (8.09%) Microservices
14 25 (8.09%) Multithreading
15 23 (7.44%) ITIL
16 22 (7.12%) Site Reliability Engineering
17 21 (6.80%) Analytics
17 21 (6.80%) Database Tuning
Programming Languages
1 159 (51.46%) Python
2 110 (35.60%) SQL
3 90 (29.13%) Java
4 44 (14.24%) JavaScript
5 38 (12.30%) Bash
6 23 (7.44%) C
7 21 (6.80%) Perl
8 18 (5.83%) PL/SQL
8 18 (5.83%) TypeScript
9 17 (5.50%) Go
10 16 (5.18%) C++
11 13 (4.21%) Groovy
12 12 (3.88%) Ada
13 9 (2.91%) PowerShell
14 7 (2.27%) Korn
15 5 (1.62%) MATLAB
15 5 (1.62%) ProC
16 2 (0.65%) JCL
16 2 (0.65%) PHP
16 2 (0.65%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 77 (24.92%) Security Cleared
2 56 (18.12%) SC Cleared
3 17 (5.50%) BPSS Clearance
4 14 (4.53%) Degree
4 14 (4.53%) DV Cleared
5 10 (3.24%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (2.27%) AWS Certification
7 6 (1.94%) OCP
7 6 (1.94%) Oracle Certification
8 4 (1.29%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.65%) RHCE
9 2 (0.65%) RHCSA
10 1 (0.32%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 1 (0.32%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 1 (0.32%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (5.18%) SLA
2 11 (3.56%) Data Quality
3 7 (2.27%) QA
4 5 (1.62%) NCSC
5 4 (1.29%) GDPR
6 2 (0.65%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.32%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.32%) WCAG
System Software
1 64 (20.71%) Docker
2 21 (6.80%) Active Directory
3 11 (3.56%) Oracle RAC
4 10 (3.24%) Virtual Machines
5 8 (2.59%) Tivoli Directory Server
6 7 (2.27%) HDFS
6 7 (2.27%) KVM
6 7 (2.27%) VMware Infrastructure
7 2 (0.65%) GridGain
7 2 (0.65%) VMware NSX
7 2 (0.65%) vSphere
8 1 (0.32%) Apache ZooKeeper
8 1 (0.32%) Snort
8 1 (0.32%) Squid
8 1 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 80 (25.89%) Ansible
2 72 (23.30%) Kubernetes
3 69 (22.33%) Terraform
4 40 (12.94%) Grafana
5 35 (11.33%) Prometheus
6 21 (6.80%) Progress Chef
7 16 (5.18%) Red Hat Satellite
8 14 (4.53%) Data Guard
9 13 (4.21%) Puppet
10 10 (3.24%) yum
11 9 (2.91%) Single Sign-On
11 9 (2.91%) Tivoli
12 8 (2.59%) CA Single Sign-On
12 8 (2.59%) CA Wily
12 8 (2.59%) Packer
13 7 (2.27%) Hadoop YARN
13 7 (2.27%) Podman
14 6 (1.94%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
15 5 (1.62%) Check_MK
15 5 (1.62%) Dell DRAC
Vendors
1 89 (28.80%) Oracle
2 47 (15.21%) Red Hat
2 47 (15.21%) Splunk
3 27 (8.74%) Microsoft
4 24 (7.77%) Sybase
5 22 (7.12%) IBM
6 15 (4.85%) VMware
7 12 (3.88%) Dynatrace
7 12 (3.88%) ServiceNow
8 11 (3.56%) AppDynamics
9 10 (3.24%) MuleSoft
10 9 (2.91%) Google
10 9 (2.91%) NetApp
11 8 (2.59%) Broadcom
11 8 (2.59%) Confluent
11 8 (2.59%) Dell
12 5 (1.62%) CA Agile Central
12 5 (1.62%) Informatica
12 5 (1.62%) Okta
13 4 (1.29%) F5