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

6 months to
13 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 306 282 304
Rank change year-on-year -24 +22 -29
Contract jobs citing Shell Script 307 255 316
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.84% 0.81% 0.74%
As % of the Programming Languages category 2.73% 2.48% 2.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 195 141 215
10th Percentile £325 £360 £400
25th Percentile £400 £413 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £530
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -5.66% -1.85%
75th Percentile £552 £573 £630
90th Percentile £625 £700 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £458 £475
% change year-on-year +4.92% -3.68% -11.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 7 5
10th Percentile £53.55 £66.20 £34.49
25th Percentile £65.00 £68.38 £55.00
Median hourly rate £68.00 £92.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year -26.49% +48.00% -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 11,265 10,268 12,969
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 30.78% 32.74% 30.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,468 6,519 9,222
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -4.55% -3.08%
75th Percentile £619 £640 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -1.28% -2.50% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 389 237 416
10th Percentile £35.85 £21.25 £33.66
25th Percentile £52.00 £35.75 £47.22
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% - -0.79%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.25 £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 13 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 13 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 13 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 -35 241 £478 -7.18% 91
UK excluding London +35 180 £480 +4.92% 93
Work from Home -11 93 £452 -11.42% 40
London -78 87 £439 -16.43% 10
North of England -23 50 £480 -10.70% 13
Scotland +8 35 £493 +4.89% 4
Yorkshire -18 35 £500 -16.49% 6
Midlands -21 32 £525 +28.68% 14
West Midlands -13 30 £525 +14.13% 6
South East -16 27 £420 - 30
South West -8 21 £525 -4.55% 8
East of England -2 16 £475 - 20
North West -17 15 £453 +25.83% 5
East Midlands -17 2 £425 +19.38% 8
Wales - 1 £265 - 5
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 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 17 (5.54%) Apache
2 11 (3.58%) Apache Spark
2 11 (3.58%) JBoss
3 8 (2.61%) Apache Airflow
3 8 (2.61%) IIS
3 8 (2.61%) iPlanet
3 8 (2.61%) WebSphere
3 8 (2.61%) WebSphere Application Server
4 3 (0.98%) Confluence
4 3 (0.98%) SharePoint
4 3 (0.98%) Tomcat
5 2 (0.65%) SAS
6 1 (0.33%) CICS
6 1 (0.33%) nginx
6 1 (0.33%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 1 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
6 1 (0.33%) WebLogic
Applications
1 10 (3.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (2.61%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (2.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 5 (1.63%) Oracle Applications
2 4 (1.30%) Oracle EBS
3 3 (0.98%) Oracle 11i
3 3 (0.98%) Oracle EBS R12
3 3 (0.98%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 3 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.33%) ION MarketView
4 1 (0.33%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.33%) Oracle Cash Management
4 1 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.33%) Oracle Receivables
4 1 (0.33%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 100 (32.57%) AWS
2 48 (15.64%) Azure
3 47 (15.31%) GitHub
4 35 (11.40%) OpenShift
5 28 (9.12%) Serverless
6 25 (8.14%) Amazon EC2
6 25 (8.14%) Amazon S3
7 24 (7.82%) AWS CloudFormation
8 23 (7.49%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 21 (6.84%) AWS Lambda
10 19 (6.19%) GCP
11 18 (5.86%) Amazon EKS
12 17 (5.54%) GitHub Actions
13 10 (3.26%) Amazon ECS
13 10 (3.26%) Azure DevOps
13 10 (3.26%) PaaS
14 9 (2.93%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 8 (2.61%) OCI
16 6 (1.95%) Entra ID
16 6 (1.95%) Pulumi
Communications & Networking
1 15 (4.89%) SSH
2 13 (4.23%) TCP/IP
3 11 (3.58%) DNS
4 9 (2.93%) Firewall
4 9 (2.93%) Kerberos
5 7 (2.28%) HTTP
6 4 (1.30%) Network Security
7 3 (0.98%) SAN
8 2 (0.65%) SSL
9 1 (0.33%) BGP
9 1 (0.33%) FTP
9 1 (0.33%) IPsec
9 1 (0.33%) LAN
9 1 (0.33%) SMTP
9 1 (0.33%) SNMP
9 1 (0.33%) VLAN
9 1 (0.33%) VRRP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (16.94%) Oracle Database
2 42 (13.68%) MongoDB
3 28 (9.12%) Amazon RDS
3 28 (9.12%) Relational Database
4 21 (6.84%) DB2
5 20 (6.51%) NoSQL
6 18 (5.86%) PostgreSQL
7 16 (5.21%) SQL Server
8 11 (3.58%) Data Warehouse
8 11 (3.58%) Hadoop
9 10 (3.26%) MySQL
10 9 (2.93%) Elasticsearch
11 8 (2.61%) Apache Hive
12 6 (1.95%) Big Data
12 6 (1.95%) Couchbase
12 6 (1.95%) HBase
12 6 (1.95%) Oracle Reports
13 5 (1.63%) Amazon Redshift
13 5 (1.63%) InfluxDB
14 4 (1.30%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 84 (27.36%) Jenkins
2 59 (19.22%) Git
3 45 (14.66%) GitLab
4 25 (8.14%) JUnit
5 16 (5.21%) JIRA
6 11 (3.58%) Sonatype Nexus
7 9 (2.93%) Maven
8 8 (2.61%) Bitbucket Server
8 8 (2.61%) CA Release Automation
8 8 (2.61%) ClearCase
9 6 (1.95%) Mockito
9 6 (1.95%) Postman
10 5 (1.63%) Subversion
11 4 (1.30%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 4 (1.30%) CircleCI
11 4 (1.30%) PyCharm
11 4 (1.30%) PyUnit
11 4 (1.30%) Terragrunt
12 3 (0.98%) REST Assured
12 3 (0.98%) XCTest
General
1 104 (33.88%) Social Skills
2 57 (18.57%) Finance
3 53 (17.26%) Analytical Skills
4 41 (13.36%) Banking
5 30 (9.77%) Public Sector
6 26 (8.47%) Investment Banking
7 12 (3.91%) Front Office
8 7 (2.28%) Documentation Skills
9 6 (1.95%) Aerospace
10 4 (1.30%) Financial Institution
10 4 (1.30%) Law
10 4 (1.30%) Multimedia
10 4 (1.30%) Retail
11 3 (0.98%) Local Government
11 3 (0.98%) Manufacturing
11 3 (0.98%) Military
11 3 (0.98%) Wearables
12 2 (0.65%) Telecoms
13 1 (0.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 1 (0.33%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 81 (26.38%) Developer
2 41 (13.36%) Java Developer
3 39 (12.70%) DevOps Engineer
4 32 (10.42%) Senior
5 24 (7.82%) Administrator
6 20 (6.51%) Site Reliability Engineer
7 19 (6.19%) AWS Engineer
7 19 (6.19%) SQL Developer
8 18 (5.86%) Investment Banking Java Developer
9 17 (5.54%) DBA
9 17 (5.54%) Site Engineer
9 17 (5.54%) Support Engineer
10 14 (4.56%) Senior Developer
11 13 (4.23%) Oracle DBA
12 12 (3.91%) Product Engineer
12 12 (3.91%) Products Support Engineer
12 12 (3.91%) Senior Java Developer
12 12 (3.91%) Software Support Engineer
13 11 (3.58%) Automation Engineer
13 11 (3.58%) AWS DevOps
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 51 (16.61%) Kafka
2 29 (9.45%) Spring
3 21 (6.84%) Middleware
4 20 (6.51%) Node.js
5 19 (6.19%) JMS
6 18 (5.86%) REST
7 17 (5.54%) Elastic Stack
8 15 (4.89%) RESTful
9 14 (4.56%) FastAPI
9 14 (4.56%) LDAP
10 13 (4.23%) SOAP
11 10 (3.26%) Spring Boot
12 9 (2.93%) OpenID
13 8 (2.61%) AWS CDK
13 8 (2.61%) OAuth
13 8 (2.61%) OpenAPI
13 8 (2.61%) SAML
13 8 (2.61%) XML
14 7 (2.28%) JSON
14 7 (2.28%) XSD
Miscellaneous
1 21 (6.84%) Data Structures
1 21 (6.84%) Equities
2 14 (4.56%) Cloud Native
3 12 (3.91%) Data Centre
4 11 (3.58%) Management Information System
5 8 (2.61%) Data Protection Act
5 8 (2.61%) Legacy Applications
5 8 (2.61%) Replication
6 7 (2.28%) Distributed Systems
6 7 (2.28%) Enterprise Cloud
6 7 (2.28%) Linux Command Line
7 6 (1.95%) Enterprise Software
7 6 (1.95%) Onboarding
7 6 (1.95%) PKI
8 5 (1.63%) Mainframe
8 5 (1.63%) Security Operations Centre
9 4 (1.30%) DataPower
9 4 (1.30%) Hedge funds
9 4 (1.30%) Legacy Code
10 3 (0.98%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 217 (70.68%) Linux
2 98 (31.92%) Unix
3 36 (11.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 32 (10.42%) Windows
5 16 (5.21%) Ubuntu
6 14 (4.56%) CentOS
7 7 (2.28%) Windows Server
8 6 (1.95%) Android
8 6 (1.95%) Apple iOS
9 5 (1.63%) VMS
10 4 (1.30%) AIX
11 2 (0.65%) Debian
11 2 (0.65%) Solaris
12 1 (0.33%) Mac OS X
12 1 (0.33%) Oracle Linux
12 1 (0.33%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 114 (37.13%) CI/CD
2 97 (31.60%) Problem-Solving
3 96 (31.27%) Agile
4 76 (24.76%) DevOps
5 53 (17.26%) Performance Tuning
6 50 (16.29%) Infrastructure as Code
7 49 (15.96%) Task Automation
8 43 (14.01%) Containerisation
8 43 (14.01%) SDLC
9 33 (10.75%) Observability
10 32 (10.42%) Software Engineering
11 28 (9.12%) Migration
12 26 (8.47%) Root Cause Analysis
13 24 (7.82%) Microservices
13 24 (7.82%) Site Reliability Engineering
14 23 (7.49%) Configuration Management
15 22 (7.17%) Analytics
15 22 (7.17%) ITIL
16 21 (6.84%) Multithreading
17 20 (6.51%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 155 (50.49%) Python
2 109 (35.50%) SQL
3 88 (28.66%) Java
4 43 (14.01%) JavaScript
5 38 (12.38%) Bash
6 23 (7.49%) C
7 20 (6.51%) Perl
8 18 (5.86%) PL/SQL
8 18 (5.86%) TypeScript
9 16 (5.21%) C++
9 16 (5.21%) Go
10 12 (3.91%) Ada
11 11 (3.58%) Groovy
12 7 (2.28%) Korn
13 6 (1.95%) MATLAB
14 5 (1.63%) PowerShell
14 5 (1.63%) ProC
15 2 (0.65%) Bourne shell
15 2 (0.65%) Search Processing Language
15 2 (0.65%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 79 (25.73%) Security Cleared
2 58 (18.89%) SC Cleared
3 18 (5.86%) BPSS Clearance
4 14 (4.56%) DV Cleared
5 12 (3.91%) Degree
6 8 (2.61%) Computer Science Degree
7 7 (2.28%) AWS Certification
8 6 (1.95%) OCP
8 6 (1.95%) Oracle Certification
9 4 (1.30%) Azure Certification
10 2 (0.65%) RHCE
10 2 (0.65%) RHCSA
11 1 (0.33%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 1 (0.33%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 1 (0.33%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (6.51%) SLA
2 11 (3.58%) Data Quality
3 7 (2.28%) QA
4 5 (1.63%) NCSC
5 4 (1.30%) GDPR
6 2 (0.65%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.33%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.33%) WCAG
System Software
1 65 (21.17%) Docker
2 18 (5.86%) Active Directory
3 11 (3.58%) Oracle RAC
4 8 (2.61%) Tivoli Directory Server
4 8 (2.61%) Virtual Machines
5 7 (2.28%) HDFS
5 7 (2.28%) KVM
6 5 (1.63%) VMware Infrastructure
7 2 (0.65%) GridGain
8 1 (0.33%) Apache ZooKeeper
8 1 (0.33%) Snort
8 1 (0.33%) Squid
8 1 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 79 (25.73%) Ansible
2 72 (23.45%) Kubernetes
3 70 (22.80%) Terraform
4 42 (13.68%) Grafana
5 37 (12.05%) Prometheus
6 22 (7.17%) Progress Chef
7 17 (5.54%) Red Hat Satellite
8 14 (4.56%) Data Guard
8 14 (4.56%) Puppet
9 10 (3.26%) yum
10 9 (2.93%) Single Sign-On
10 9 (2.93%) Tivoli
11 8 (2.61%) CA Single Sign-On
11 8 (2.61%) CA Wily
11 8 (2.61%) Podman
12 7 (2.28%) Hadoop YARN
12 7 (2.28%) Packer
13 6 (1.95%) Check_MK
13 6 (1.95%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
14 5 (1.63%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 85 (27.69%) Oracle
2 46 (14.98%) Red Hat
3 45 (14.66%) Splunk
4 30 (9.77%) Microsoft
5 24 (7.82%) Sybase
6 22 (7.17%) IBM
7 14 (4.56%) VMware
8 12 (3.91%) ServiceNow
9 11 (3.58%) AppDynamics
10 10 (3.26%) Dynatrace
10 10 (3.26%) MuleSoft
11 9 (2.93%) Google
11 9 (2.93%) NetApp
12 8 (2.61%) Broadcom
12 8 (2.61%) Confluent
12 8 (2.61%) Dell
13 5 (1.63%) Informatica
13 5 (1.63%) Murex
13 5 (1.63%) Okta
14 3 (0.98%) SAP