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

6 months to
5 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 342 283 308
Rank change year-on-year -59 +25 -49
Contract jobs citing Shell Script 291 256 311
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.68% 0.85% 0.71%
As % of the Programming Languages category 2.30% 2.49% 2.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 203 128 212
10th Percentile £325 £359 £382
25th Percentile £392 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £505 £504
Median % change year-on-year -10.94% +0.30% -6.71%
75th Percentile £538 £602 £625
90th Percentile £612 £679 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £485 £465
% change year-on-year -5.15% +4.30% -13.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 9 8
10th Percentile £55.70 £64.70 £44.75
25th Percentile £65.00 £68.00 £59.69
Median hourly rate £68.00 £72.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.21% +11.54% +23.81%
75th Percentile - £93.75 £67.50
90th Percentile - £94.50 £76.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.00 £68.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year - +4.62% +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 12,635 10,295 12,869
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 29.68% 34.02% 29.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,423 6,697 9,089
10th Percentile £352 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -6.25%
75th Percentile £601 £638 £650
90th Percentile £720 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £477 £488 £495
% change year-on-year -2.26% -1.52% -1.98%
Number of hourly rates quoted 482 239 504
10th Percentile £41.25 £21.25 £30.81
25th Percentile £53.81 £35.00 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -7.34%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £69.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £62.00
% change year-on-year +3.17% +1.61% -4.62%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 -42 242 £465 -11.43% 55
UK excluding London -65 158 £460 -5.15% 38
London -59 90 £450 -13.88% 21
Work from Home -39 86 £455 -9.69% 27
Midlands -41 39 £480 +4.35% 8
West Midlands -36 37 £480 +4.35% 6
North of England -49 34 £471 -20.67% 9
South East -32 33 £410 -21.90% 18
East of England -14 20 £455 +14.97% 4
South West -21 19 £525 -4.55% 1
Yorkshire -63 19 £480 -18.30% 4
North West -29 14 £462 -23.00% 5
Scotland -22 13 £402 -14.47%
Wales -2 2 £305 - 2
East Midlands -28 2 £475 +33.43% 2

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 (4.12%) Apache
1 12 (4.12%) Confluence
2 7 (2.41%) JBoss
3 6 (2.06%) Apache Spark
4 5 (1.72%) IIS
4 5 (1.72%) iPlanet
4 5 (1.72%) WebLogic
4 5 (1.72%) WebSphere
4 5 (1.72%) WebSphere Application Server
5 3 (1.03%) nginx
5 3 (1.03%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.69%) ArcGIS
6 2 (0.69%) CICS
6 2 (0.69%) Oracle Spatial
6 2 (0.69%) Oracle Workflow
6 2 (0.69%) SAS
7 1 (0.34%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 1 (0.34%) Tomcat
Applications
1 5 (1.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (1.03%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (1.03%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 5 (1.72%) Oracle Applications
2 4 (1.37%) Oracle EBS
3 3 (1.03%) Oracle 11i
3 3 (1.03%) Oracle EBS R12
3 3 (1.03%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.34%) ION MarketView
4 1 (0.34%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.34%) Oracle Cash Management
4 1 (0.34%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.34%) Oracle Receivables
4 1 (0.34%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 110 (37.80%) AWS
2 45 (15.46%) Azure
3 41 (14.09%) GitHub
4 32 (11.00%) OpenShift
4 32 (11.00%) Serverless
5 28 (9.62%) Amazon EC2
5 28 (9.62%) Amazon S3
6 24 (8.25%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 23 (7.90%) AWS Lambda
8 22 (7.56%) AWS CloudFormation
9 19 (6.53%) GitHub Actions
10 18 (6.19%) Amazon EKS
11 13 (4.47%) GCP
12 10 (3.44%) PaaS
13 8 (2.75%) Amazon ECS
13 8 (2.75%) Azure DevOps
13 8 (2.75%) IaaS
13 8 (2.75%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 7 (2.41%) Azure AKS
14 7 (2.41%) Pulumi
Communications & Networking
1 17 (5.84%) SSH
2 11 (3.78%) DNS
3 8 (2.75%) SAN
4 7 (2.41%) TCP/IP
5 6 (2.06%) Kerberos
5 6 (2.06%) Network Security
6 5 (1.72%) Firewall
7 3 (1.03%) HTTP
8 2 (0.69%) HTTPS
8 2 (0.69%) iSCSI
8 2 (0.69%) NAS
8 2 (0.69%) OpenVPN
8 2 (0.69%) Reverse Proxy
9 1 (0.34%) AMQP
9 1 (0.34%) BIG-IP
9 1 (0.34%) DHCP
9 1 (0.34%) FTP
9 1 (0.34%) LAN
9 1 (0.34%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (12.37%) MongoDB
1 36 (12.37%) Oracle Database
2 28 (9.62%) Amazon RDS
3 22 (7.56%) Relational Database
4 18 (6.19%) PostgreSQL
4 18 (6.19%) SQL Server
5 15 (5.15%) Data Warehouse
5 15 (5.15%) NoSQL
6 13 (4.47%) MySQL
7 10 (3.44%) DB2
8 8 (2.75%) Big Data
9 7 (2.41%) DynamoDB
10 6 (2.06%) Hadoop
10 6 (2.06%) Oracle Reports
11 5 (1.72%) Data Mart
11 5 (1.72%) InfluxDB
11 5 (1.72%) Metadata
12 4 (1.37%) Couchbase
12 4 (1.37%) Elasticsearch
12 4 (1.37%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 73 (25.09%) Jenkins
2 51 (17.53%) GitLab
3 41 (14.09%) Git
4 25 (8.59%) JIRA
5 15 (5.15%) JUnit
6 8 (2.75%) Sonatype Nexus
7 7 (2.41%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 7 (2.41%) Maven
7 7 (2.41%) Mockito
8 6 (2.06%) PyCharm
8 6 (2.06%) PyUnit
9 5 (1.72%) Bitbucket Server
9 5 (1.72%) CA Release Automation
10 4 (1.37%) JMeter
10 4 (1.37%) Subversion
10 4 (1.37%) Terragrunt
11 3 (1.03%) CircleCI
11 3 (1.03%) ClearCase
11 3 (1.03%) Postman
11 3 (1.03%) Selenium
General
1 83 (28.52%) Social Skills
2 42 (14.43%) Finance
3 38 (13.06%) Analytical Skills
4 36 (12.37%) Banking
5 34 (11.68%) Public Sector
6 16 (5.50%) Investment Banking
7 10 (3.44%) Front Office
8 9 (3.09%) Retail
9 8 (2.75%) Documentation Skills
10 6 (2.06%) Aerospace
11 4 (1.37%) Law
11 4 (1.37%) Telecoms
12 3 (1.03%) Advertising
12 3 (1.03%) Local Government
12 3 (1.03%) Manufacturing
12 3 (1.03%) Military
13 2 (0.69%) Financial Institution
13 2 (0.69%) Organisational Skills
14 1 (0.34%) Multimedia
14 1 (0.34%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 76 (26.12%) Developer
2 37 (12.71%) Java Developer
3 29 (9.97%) Senior
4 25 (8.59%) DevOps Engineer
4 25 (8.59%) Support Engineer
5 22 (7.56%) Administrator
6 19 (6.53%) DBA
7 18 (6.19%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 17 (5.84%) Oracle DBA
8 17 (5.84%) Site Engineer
9 16 (5.50%) AWS Engineer
10 15 (5.15%) Data Engineer
11 13 (4.47%) AWS DevOps
12 12 (4.12%) Linux Administrator
12 12 (4.12%) Product Engineer
12 12 (4.12%) Products Support Engineer
12 12 (4.12%) Software Support Engineer
13 11 (3.78%) AWS DevOps Engineer
13 11 (3.78%) Senior Developer
14 10 (3.44%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (12.03%) Kafka
2 23 (7.90%) Spring
3 21 (7.22%) Middleware
3 21 (7.22%) Node.js
4 18 (6.19%) Elastic Stack
5 15 (5.15%) LDAP
5 15 (5.15%) Spring Boot
6 14 (4.81%) REST
7 13 (4.47%) RESTful
8 12 (4.12%) JSON
8 12 (4.12%) Oracle GoldenGate
9 11 (3.78%) SOAP
10 10 (3.44%) OpenAPI
11 9 (3.09%) XML
12 8 (2.75%) AWS CDK
12 8 (2.75%) JMS
13 7 (2.41%) pytest
13 7 (2.41%) XSD
14 6 (2.06%) RabbitMQ
14 6 (2.06%) React
Miscellaneous
1 17 (5.84%) Cloud Native
2 16 (5.50%) Management Information System
3 13 (4.47%) Equities
4 12 (4.12%) Data Centre
4 12 (4.12%) Data Structures
5 7 (2.41%) Enterprise Cloud
6 6 (2.06%) Data Protection Act
6 6 (2.06%) DataPower
6 6 (2.06%) Distributed Systems
6 6 (2.06%) Legacy Applications
6 6 (2.06%) Mainframe
7 5 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
7 5 (1.72%) Legacy Code
8 4 (1.37%) Derivative
8 4 (1.37%) Equity Derivative
8 4 (1.37%) Fixed Income
8 4 (1.37%) Linux Command Line
8 4 (1.37%) Onboarding
8 4 (1.37%) PKI
8 4 (1.37%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 194 (66.67%) Linux
2 96 (32.99%) Unix
3 41 (14.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 29 (9.97%) Windows
5 16 (5.50%) Ubuntu
6 13 (4.47%) CentOS
7 6 (2.06%) Android
7 6 (2.06%) Apple iOS
7 6 (2.06%) Windows Server
8 4 (1.37%) VMS
9 2 (0.69%) AIX
9 2 (0.69%) Debian
9 2 (0.69%) OpenVMS
9 2 (0.69%) zOS
10 1 (0.34%) Amazon Linux
10 1 (0.34%) Solaris
10 1 (0.34%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 112 (38.49%) CI/CD
2 83 (28.52%) Problem-Solving
3 76 (26.12%) Agile
4 60 (20.62%) DevOps
5 50 (17.18%) Infrastructure as Code
6 49 (16.84%) Performance Tuning
7 46 (15.81%) Containerisation
8 36 (12.37%) Task Automation
9 33 (11.34%) Software Engineering
10 30 (10.31%) SDLC
11 28 (9.62%) Observability
12 26 (8.93%) ITIL
13 25 (8.59%) Continuous Improvement
13 25 (8.59%) Microservices
14 24 (8.25%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 24 (8.25%) Migration
15 23 (7.90%) Data Modelling
15 23 (7.90%) Scrum
16 22 (7.56%) Site Reliability Engineering
17 21 (7.22%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 120 (41.24%) Python
2 116 (39.86%) SQL
3 96 (32.99%) Java
4 43 (14.78%) JavaScript
5 26 (8.93%) Bash
6 21 (7.22%) C++
7 20 (6.87%) PL/SQL
8 19 (6.53%) C
9 18 (6.19%) Korn
9 18 (6.19%) TypeScript
10 16 (5.50%) Perl
11 13 (4.47%) Go
12 12 (4.12%) Ada
13 8 (2.75%) Groovy
14 7 (2.41%) MATLAB
14 7 (2.41%) PowerShell
15 5 (1.72%) ProC
16 3 (1.03%) JCL
16 3 (1.03%) PHP
17 2 (0.69%) VBA
Qualifications
1 108 (37.11%) Security Cleared
2 86 (29.55%) SC Cleared
3 23 (7.90%) BPSS Clearance
4 21 (7.22%) Degree
5 15 (5.15%) DV Cleared
6 14 (4.81%) Computer Science Degree
7 7 (2.41%) OCP
7 7 (2.41%) Oracle Certification
8 3 (1.03%) AWS Certification
8 3 (1.03%) Azure Certification
8 3 (1.03%) Master's Degree
9 2 (0.69%) CISSP
9 2 (0.69%) RHCE
10 1 (0.34%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 1 (0.34%) AWS Certified Developer
10 1 (0.34%) CISM
10 1 (0.34%) ITIL Certification
10 1 (0.34%) RHCA
10 1 (0.34%) RHCSA
10 1 (0.34%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (6.19%) SLA
2 13 (4.47%) Data Quality
3 10 (3.44%) QA
4 6 (2.06%) GDPR
5 3 (1.03%) FATCA
5 3 (1.03%) NCSC
6 2 (0.69%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 2 (0.69%) HIPAA
6 2 (0.69%) NIST
7 1 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 60 (20.62%) Docker
2 17 (5.84%) Active Directory
3 11 (3.78%) Oracle RAC
4 10 (3.44%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (1.72%) Tivoli Directory Server
6 4 (1.37%) VMware Infrastructure
7 3 (1.03%) KVM
8 2 (0.69%) GridGain
8 2 (0.69%) HDFS
8 2 (0.69%) Postfix
8 2 (0.69%) SRDF
8 2 (0.69%) Varnish
9 1 (0.34%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 1 (0.34%) NFS
9 1 (0.34%) Sendmail
9 1 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 72 (24.74%) Kubernetes
2 66 (22.68%) Terraform
3 52 (17.87%) Ansible
4 36 (12.37%) Grafana
5 34 (11.68%) Prometheus
6 22 (7.56%) Progress Chef
7 16 (5.50%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 14 (4.81%) Oracle RMAN
8 14 (4.81%) Red Hat Satellite
9 8 (2.75%) Podman
9 8 (2.75%) Puppet
10 7 (2.41%) Check_MK
10 7 (2.41%) Single Sign-On
11 6 (2.06%) Tivoli
12 5 (1.72%) CA Single Sign-On
12 5 (1.72%) CA Wily
12 5 (1.72%) Dell DRAC
13 4 (1.37%) Kibana
13 4 (1.37%) Packer
14 3 (1.03%) Docker Swarm
Vendors
1 84 (28.87%) Oracle
2 49 (16.84%) Red Hat
3 27 (9.28%) Splunk
4 23 (7.90%) Microsoft
5 16 (5.50%) IBM
5 16 (5.50%) VMware
6 14 (4.81%) Sybase
7 11 (3.78%) Dell
7 11 (3.78%) ServiceNow
8 8 (2.75%) AppDynamics
9 7 (2.41%) Broadcom
9 7 (2.41%) Murex
10 6 (2.06%) Dynatrace
10 6 (2.06%) MuleSoft
11 5 (1.72%) Confluent
11 5 (1.72%) Google
11 5 (1.72%) Informatica
11 5 (1.72%) Talend
12 4 (1.37%) CyberArk
12 4 (1.37%) NetApp