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

6 months to
31 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 354 281 331
Rank change year-on-year -73 +50 -86
Contract jobs citing Shell Script 276 251 289
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.62% 0.86% 0.65%
As % of the Programming Languages category 2.17% 2.55% 2.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 195 132 201
10th Percentile £345 £358 £350
25th Percentile £400 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £454 £515 £507
Median % change year-on-year -11.89% +1.73% -6.20%
75th Percentile £538 £602 £625
90th Percentile £624 £673 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £500 £468
% change year-on-year -7.50% +6.95% -13.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 9 9
10th Percentile £47.25 £63.20 £48.16
25th Percentile £48.75 £65.00 £61.25
Median hourly rate £52.50 £68.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.79% +4.62% +16.85%
75th Percentile £60.88 £77.50 -
90th Percentile £65.15 £93.75 £76.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £66.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year -21.05% +2.31% +23.81%

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 12,722 9,854 12,934
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 28.57% 33.89% 29.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,463 6,634 9,141
10th Percentile £352 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £415 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £716 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £480 £488
% change year-on-year -1.04% -1.54% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 519 243 486
10th Percentile £41.25 £22.27 £30.63
25th Percentile £54.55 £32.51 £46.20
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.63 £67.38
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £74.72
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.00 £61.60
% change year-on-year +1.56% +3.90% -1.44%

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 31 March 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 31 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Shell Script in the UK

Shell Script
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 Shell Script within the UK over the 6 months to 31 March 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 -70 228 £475 -11.71% 53
UK excluding London -100 135 £463 -7.50% 39
London -55 101 £500 -3.85% 21
Work from Home -45 82 £460 -8.96% 27
Midlands -42 39 £471 +2.45% 6
West Midlands -34 37 £471 +2.45% 5
North of England -69 27 £455 -22.55% 8
South East -45 26 £400 -25.93% 17
East of England -24 20 £470 +0.75% 5
Yorkshire -56 17 £454 -22.48% 3
South West -29 12 £575 +5.26% 3
North West -32 9 £450 -25.00% 5
Scotland -38 9 £402 -14.47%
Wales -9 2 £305 - 2
East Midlands - 2 £475 - 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 12 (4.35%) Confluence
2 9 (3.26%) Apache
2 9 (3.26%) Apache Spark
3 5 (1.81%) Apache Airflow
3 5 (1.81%) WebLogic
4 3 (1.09%) CICS
4 3 (1.09%) nginx
4 3 (1.09%) Oracle Workflow
4 3 (1.09%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.72%) ArcGIS
5 2 (0.72%) JBoss
5 2 (0.72%) Oracle Spatial
5 2 (0.72%) SAS
5 2 (0.72%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.36%) IBM HTTP Server
6 1 (0.36%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 1 (0.36%) WebSphere
6 1 (0.36%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 5 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (1.09%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (1.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 4 (1.45%) Oracle Applications
2 3 (1.09%) Oracle 11i
2 3 (1.09%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.72%) Oracle EBS R12
3 2 (0.72%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.36%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.36%) Oracle Cash Management
4 1 (0.36%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.36%) Oracle Receivables
4 1 (0.36%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 108 (39.13%) AWS
2 52 (18.84%) Azure
3 45 (16.30%) GitHub
4 35 (12.68%) Serverless
5 32 (11.59%) Amazon EC2
5 32 (11.59%) Amazon S3
6 30 (10.87%) GitHub Actions
6 30 (10.87%) OpenShift
7 25 (9.06%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 25 (9.06%) AWS Lambda
8 17 (6.16%) Amazon EKS
9 16 (5.80%) AWS CloudFormation
10 12 (4.35%) Azure DevOps
10 12 (4.35%) GCP
11 8 (2.90%) AWS CodePipeline
12 7 (2.54%) Azure AKS
12 7 (2.54%) Pulumi
13 6 (2.17%) Amazon ECS
13 6 (2.17%) Azure Data Factory
13 6 (2.17%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 18 (6.52%) SSH
2 9 (3.26%) SAN
3 8 (2.90%) DNS
4 7 (2.54%) Network Security
5 6 (2.17%) TCP/IP
6 5 (1.81%) Firewall
7 3 (1.09%) HTTPS
7 3 (1.09%) NAS
7 3 (1.09%) Reverse Proxy
8 2 (0.72%) AMQP
8 2 (0.72%) HTTP
8 2 (0.72%) iSCSI
8 2 (0.72%) OpenVPN
9 1 (0.36%) BIG-IP
9 1 (0.36%) DHCP
9 1 (0.36%) FTP
9 1 (0.36%) Kerberos
9 1 (0.36%) LAN
9 1 (0.36%) Multicast
9 1 (0.36%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (10.51%) Oracle Database
2 26 (9.42%) MongoDB
3 24 (8.70%) Amazon RDS
4 23 (8.33%) SQL Server
5 21 (7.61%) Relational Database
6 19 (6.88%) PostgreSQL
7 13 (4.71%) MySQL
8 12 (4.35%) Data Warehouse
9 10 (3.62%) NoSQL
10 8 (2.90%) DynamoDB
10 8 (2.90%) Metadata
11 7 (2.54%) Big Data
11 7 (2.54%) DB2
12 6 (2.17%) Data Mart
12 6 (2.17%) Hadoop
12 6 (2.17%) InfluxDB
13 5 (1.81%) Oracle Reports
14 4 (1.45%) KDB
14 4 (1.45%) Pentaho
14 4 (1.45%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 68 (24.64%) Jenkins
2 48 (17.39%) GitLab
3 39 (14.13%) Git
4 24 (8.70%) JIRA
5 10 (3.62%) JUnit
6 7 (2.54%) Maven
7 6 (2.17%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 6 (2.17%) Mockito
8 5 (1.81%) PyCharm
8 5 (1.81%) PyUnit
9 4 (1.45%) JMeter
9 4 (1.45%) Sonatype Nexus
10 3 (1.09%) Artifactory
10 3 (1.09%) Bitbucket
10 3 (1.09%) CircleCI
10 3 (1.09%) Subversion
10 3 (1.09%) Terragrunt
11 2 (0.72%) Postman
11 2 (0.72%) Selenium
11 2 (0.72%) Toad
General
1 71 (25.72%) Social Skills
2 46 (16.67%) Finance
3 38 (13.77%) Banking
4 33 (11.96%) Public Sector
5 25 (9.06%) Analytical Skills
6 14 (5.07%) Investment Banking
7 12 (4.35%) Front Office
8 9 (3.26%) Documentation Skills
8 9 (3.26%) Retail
9 7 (2.54%) Aerospace
10 4 (1.45%) Advertising
10 4 (1.45%) Telecoms
11 3 (1.09%) Law
11 3 (1.09%) Local Government
12 2 (0.72%) Manufacturing
12 2 (0.72%) Organisational Skills
13 1 (0.36%) Influencing Skills
13 1 (0.36%) Marketing
13 1 (0.36%) Presentation Skills
13 1 (0.36%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 77 (27.90%) Developer
2 35 (12.68%) Java Developer
3 24 (8.70%) Senior
4 23 (8.33%) Administrator
5 21 (7.61%) DBA
6 20 (7.25%) Data Engineer
7 19 (6.88%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 18 (6.52%) DevOps Engineer
8 18 (6.52%) Oracle DBA
8 18 (6.52%) Site Engineer
8 18 (6.52%) Support Engineer
9 15 (5.43%) Python Developer
10 14 (5.07%) AWS Engineer
10 14 (5.07%) Linux Administrator
11 11 (3.99%) AWS DevOps
11 11 (3.99%) Consultant
11 11 (3.99%) Senior Developer
12 10 (3.62%) Analyst
13 9 (3.26%) AWS DevOps Engineer
13 9 (3.26%) Linux Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (7.97%) Kafka
2 21 (7.61%) Node.js
3 18 (6.52%) Spring
4 17 (6.16%) Elastic Stack
4 17 (6.16%) Middleware
5 16 (5.80%) RESTful
6 14 (5.07%) REST
6 14 (5.07%) Spring Boot
7 13 (4.71%) JSON
7 13 (4.71%) LDAP
7 13 (4.71%) Oracle GoldenGate
8 10 (3.62%) OpenAPI
8 10 (3.62%) SOAP
9 9 (3.26%) AWS CDK
9 9 (3.26%) XML
10 8 (2.90%) Django
11 7 (2.54%) .NET
11 7 (2.54%) RabbitMQ
11 7 (2.54%) XSD
12 6 (2.17%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 21 (7.61%) Cloud Native
2 19 (6.88%) Management Information System
3 14 (5.07%) Data Centre
4 9 (3.26%) Equities
5 8 (2.90%) Data Structures
5 8 (2.90%) Fixed Income
6 7 (2.54%) DataPower
6 7 (2.54%) Enterprise Cloud
6 7 (2.54%) Mainframe
7 6 (2.17%) Legacy Systems
8 5 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
8 5 (1.81%) Enterprise Software
8 5 (1.81%) Legacy Code
8 5 (1.81%) Linux Command Line
8 5 (1.81%) Virtual Team
9 4 (1.45%) Clustering
9 4 (1.45%) Derivative
9 4 (1.45%) Equity Derivative
9 4 (1.45%) Hybrid Cloud
9 4 (1.45%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 183 (66.30%) Linux
2 106 (38.41%) Unix
3 42 (15.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 22 (7.97%) Windows
5 12 (4.35%) CentOS
6 8 (2.90%) Ubuntu
7 5 (1.81%) Android
7 5 (1.81%) Apple iOS
7 5 (1.81%) VMS
7 5 (1.81%) Windows Server
8 3 (1.09%) AIX
8 3 (1.09%) zOS
9 2 (0.72%) Debian
9 2 (0.72%) OpenVMS
10 1 (0.36%) Amazon Linux
10 1 (0.36%) Oracle Linux
10 1 (0.36%) Rocky
10 1 (0.36%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 113 (40.94%) CI/CD
2 76 (27.54%) Agile
3 74 (26.81%) Problem-Solving
4 60 (21.74%) DevOps
5 47 (17.03%) Containerisation
6 46 (16.67%) Infrastructure as Code
7 44 (15.94%) Performance Tuning
8 33 (11.96%) Task Automation
9 28 (10.14%) Analytics
10 27 (9.78%) Observability
11 26 (9.42%) Continuous Improvement
11 26 (9.42%) Microservices
12 25 (9.06%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 24 (8.70%) Migration
13 24 (8.70%) SDLC
14 23 (8.33%) High Availability
14 23 (8.33%) ITIL
14 23 (8.33%) Scrum
14 23 (8.33%) Site Reliability Engineering
14 23 (8.33%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 124 (44.93%) SQL
2 110 (39.86%) Python
3 95 (34.42%) Java
4 31 (11.23%) JavaScript
5 23 (8.33%) PL/SQL
6 21 (7.61%) Bash
7 19 (6.88%) Korn
8 17 (6.16%) TypeScript
9 12 (4.35%) C++
10 11 (3.99%) Perl
11 10 (3.62%) Go
12 9 (3.26%) C
12 9 (3.26%) MATLAB
13 6 (2.17%) PowerShell
14 5 (1.81%) C#
14 5 (1.81%) ProC
15 4 (1.45%) Ada
15 4 (1.45%) Groovy
15 4 (1.45%) JCL
16 3 (1.09%) PHP
Qualifications
1 109 (39.49%) Security Cleared
2 89 (32.25%) SC Cleared
3 23 (8.33%) BPSS Clearance
4 19 (6.88%) Degree
5 16 (5.80%) DV Cleared
6 11 (3.99%) Computer Science Degree
7 9 (3.26%) Oracle Certification
8 8 (2.90%) OCP
9 4 (1.45%) Master's Degree
10 3 (1.09%) Azure Certification
11 2 (0.72%) CISSP
12 1 (0.36%) AWS Certification
12 1 (0.36%) AWS Certified Developer
12 1 (0.36%) CISM
12 1 (0.36%) ITIL Certification
12 1 (0.36%) MOS
12 1 (0.36%) PMI Certification
12 1 (0.36%) RHCA
12 1 (0.36%) RHCE
12 1 (0.36%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (7.25%) SLA
2 13 (4.71%) Data Quality
3 10 (3.62%) QA
4 6 (2.17%) GDPR
5 3 (1.09%) FATCA
6 2 (0.72%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 2 (0.72%) HIPAA
6 2 (0.72%) NIST
7 1 (0.36%) DICOM
7 1 (0.36%) NCSC
7 1 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 62 (22.46%) Docker
2 13 (4.71%) Oracle RAC
3 12 (4.35%) Active Directory
4 10 (3.62%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (1.45%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (1.09%) GridGain
7 2 (0.72%) HDFS
7 2 (0.72%) KVM
7 2 (0.72%) Postfix
7 2 (0.72%) SRDF
7 2 (0.72%) Varnish
8 1 (0.36%) Apache ZooKeeper
8 1 (0.36%) Hyper-V
8 1 (0.36%) NFS
8 1 (0.36%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 70 (25.36%) Kubernetes
2 59 (21.38%) Terraform
3 48 (17.39%) Ansible
4 37 (13.41%) Grafana
5 35 (12.68%) Prometheus
6 17 (6.16%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
6 17 (6.16%) Oracle RMAN
6 17 (6.16%) Progress Chef
7 15 (5.43%) Red Hat Satellite
8 10 (3.62%) Podman
9 9 (3.26%) Check_MK
10 8 (2.90%) Puppet
11 5 (1.81%) Dell DRAC
12 4 (1.45%) Data Guard
12 4 (1.45%) Docker Swarm
12 4 (1.45%) Kibana
13 2 (0.72%) HAProxy
13 2 (0.72%) Sysdig
13 2 (0.72%) systemd
13 2 (0.72%) Thomson Reuters DACS
Vendors
1 84 (30.43%) Oracle
2 44 (15.94%) Red Hat
3 18 (6.52%) Microsoft
4 16 (5.80%) VMware
5 13 (4.71%) Sybase
6 12 (4.35%) Splunk
7 11 (3.99%) Dell
7 11 (3.99%) Murex
8 7 (2.54%) IBM
8 7 (2.54%) ServiceNow
9 6 (2.17%) MuleSoft
10 5 (1.81%) Talend
10 5 (1.81%) Veritas
11 4 (1.45%) Cloudera
11 4 (1.45%) Databricks
11 4 (1.45%) Dynatrace
12 3 (1.09%) Ab Initio
12 3 (1.09%) CyberArk
12 3 (1.09%) Pure Storage
12 3 (1.09%) Solace