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 16 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 378 305 314
Rank change year-on-year -73 +9 -66
Contract jobs citing Shell Script 267 250 294
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.58% 0.85% 0.67%
As % of the Programming Languages category 2.08% 2.50% 2.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 190 136 212
10th Percentile £350 £379 £364
25th Percentile £400 £447 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £530 £510
Median % change year-on-year -13.40% +3.92% -5.56%
75th Percentile £538 £607 £625
90th Percentile £625 £675 £746
UK excluding London median daily rate £465 £500 £474
% change year-on-year -7.00% +5.49% -11.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 11 9
10th Percentile £46.75 £63.50 £48.16
25th Percentile £47.50 £66.50 £61.75
Median hourly rate £50.00 £68.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -26.47% +4.62% +5.58%
75th Percentile £52.50 £76.88 £65.25
90th Percentile £53.25 £93.75 £76.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £68.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -26.47% +4.62% +10.64%

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 12,818 9,981 12,837
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 27.91% 34.07% 29.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,539 6,742 9,122
10th Percentile £355 £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 £713 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £488
% change year-on-year - -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 544 241 477
10th Percentile £41.94 £22.50 £31.00
25th Percentile £55.00 £35.00 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.50 £67.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £77.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +1.56% +2.40% -

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 16 April 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
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 16 April 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 -58 222 £475 -13.64% 54
UK excluding London -103 126 £465 -7.00% 35
London -48 100 £500 -9.09% 22
Work from Home -50 75 £466 -13.56% 18
Midlands -42 41 £469 +1.90% 6
West Midlands -35 39 £469 +1.90% 4
South East -43 29 £396 -34.00% 14
North of England -75 23 £473 -18.88% 10
East of England -24 20 £473 +1.29% 2
Yorkshire -61 13 £480 -15.23% 3
North West -34 9 £450 -25.00% 6
South West -35 7 £700 +29.03% 2
Scotland -42 4 - -
Wales -13 2 £305 - 1
East Midlands - 2 £475 - 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 (4.49%) Apache
1 12 (4.49%) Confluence
2 10 (3.75%) Apache Spark
3 5 (1.87%) Apache Airflow
3 5 (1.87%) WebLogic
4 3 (1.12%) CICS
4 3 (1.12%) JBoss
4 3 (1.12%) nginx
4 3 (1.12%) Oracle Workflow
4 3 (1.12%) SAS
4 3 (1.12%) SharePoint
4 3 (1.12%) Tomcat
4 3 (1.12%) WebSphere
4 3 (1.12%) WebSphere Application Server
5 2 (0.75%) ArcGIS
5 2 (0.75%) Oracle Spatial
6 1 (0.37%) IBM HTTP Server
6 1 (0.37%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 7 (2.62%) Notepad++
2 4 (1.50%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (0.75%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 3 (1.12%) Oracle 11i
1 3 (1.12%) Oracle Applications
2 2 (0.75%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.37%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.37%) Oracle Cash Management
3 1 (0.37%) Oracle EBS R12
3 1 (0.37%) Oracle Payables
3 1 (0.37%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.37%) Oracle Receivables
3 1 (0.37%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 102 (38.20%) AWS
2 52 (19.48%) Azure
3 39 (14.61%) GitHub
4 34 (12.73%) Serverless
5 30 (11.24%) Amazon EC2
5 30 (11.24%) Amazon S3
5 30 (11.24%) OpenShift
6 29 (10.86%) GitHub Actions
7 25 (9.36%) AWS Lambda
8 23 (8.61%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 16 (5.99%) Amazon EKS
10 13 (4.87%) AWS CloudFormation
11 12 (4.49%) Azure DevOps
11 12 (4.49%) GCP
12 10 (3.75%) PaaS
13 8 (3.00%) AWS CodePipeline
13 8 (3.00%) IaaS
14 7 (2.62%) Azure AKS
14 7 (2.62%) Pulumi
15 6 (2.25%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 18 (6.74%) SSH
2 9 (3.37%) DNS
2 9 (3.37%) SAN
3 8 (3.00%) Network Security
4 7 (2.62%) PuTTY
4 7 (2.62%) WinSCP
5 6 (2.25%) TCP/IP
6 5 (1.87%) Firewall
7 3 (1.12%) HTTP
7 3 (1.12%) HTTPS
7 3 (1.12%) NAS
7 3 (1.12%) Reverse Proxy
8 2 (0.75%) AMQP
8 2 (0.75%) iSCSI
8 2 (0.75%) OpenVPN
9 1 (0.37%) BIG-IP
9 1 (0.37%) IPsec
9 1 (0.37%) Kerberos
9 1 (0.37%) Multicast
9 1 (0.37%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (9.74%) Oracle Database
2 25 (9.36%) SQL Server
3 21 (7.87%) MongoDB
4 20 (7.49%) PostgreSQL
5 19 (7.12%) Amazon RDS
5 19 (7.12%) Data Warehouse
6 18 (6.74%) Relational Database
7 15 (5.62%) Metadata
8 9 (3.37%) DynamoDB
8 9 (3.37%) MySQL
9 8 (3.00%) Big Data
10 7 (2.62%) BusinessObjects
10 7 (2.62%) Hadoop
10 7 (2.62%) NoSQL
11 6 (2.25%) Data Mart
11 6 (2.25%) InfluxDB
11 6 (2.25%) Oracle Reports
12 5 (1.87%) KDB
12 5 (1.87%) Kdb+
13 4 (1.50%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 63 (23.60%) Jenkins
2 47 (17.60%) GitLab
3 40 (14.98%) Git
4 24 (8.99%) JIRA
5 8 (3.00%) Maven
6 6 (2.25%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 5 (1.87%) JUnit
7 5 (1.87%) Mockito
7 5 (1.87%) PyCharm
7 5 (1.87%) PyUnit
8 4 (1.50%) Bitbucket
8 4 (1.50%) JMeter
8 4 (1.50%) Sonatype Nexus
9 3 (1.12%) Artifactory
9 3 (1.12%) CircleCI
9 3 (1.12%) SonarQube
9 3 (1.12%) Subversion
10 2 (0.75%) Gatling
10 2 (0.75%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.75%) Toad
General
1 65 (24.34%) Social Skills
2 45 (16.85%) Finance
3 37 (13.86%) Banking
4 30 (11.24%) Public Sector
5 17 (6.37%) Analytical Skills
6 10 (3.75%) Front Office
6 10 (3.75%) Investment Banking
7 9 (3.37%) Documentation Skills
7 9 (3.37%) Retail
8 7 (2.62%) Aerospace
9 5 (1.87%) Advertising
10 3 (1.12%) Law
10 3 (1.12%) Local Government
10 3 (1.12%) Telecoms
11 2 (0.75%) Manufacturing
11 2 (0.75%) Organisational Skills
12 1 (0.37%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.37%) Marketing
12 1 (0.37%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.37%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 74 (27.72%) Developer
2 32 (11.99%) Java Developer
3 28 (10.49%) Data Engineer
4 21 (7.87%) Administrator
5 20 (7.49%) Senior
6 18 (6.74%) DBA
7 17 (6.37%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 16 (5.99%) Site Engineer
9 15 (5.62%) DevOps Engineer
9 15 (5.62%) Oracle DBA
9 15 (5.62%) Python Developer
10 14 (5.24%) Linux Administrator
10 14 (5.24%) Support Engineer
11 13 (4.87%) AWS Engineer
12 12 (4.49%) Linux Engineer
13 10 (3.75%) Analyst
13 10 (3.75%) Architect
13 10 (3.75%) AWS DevOps
13 10 (3.75%) Consultant
13 10 (3.75%) Database Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (7.49%) Node.js
2 17 (6.37%) Kafka
3 15 (5.62%) Middleware
3 15 (5.62%) Oracle GoldenGate
3 15 (5.62%) REST
3 15 (5.62%) RESTful
4 14 (5.24%) JSON
4 14 (5.24%) Spring
5 13 (4.87%) Elastic Stack
5 13 (4.87%) LDAP
5 13 (4.87%) Spring Boot
6 9 (3.37%) SOAP
6 9 (3.37%) XML
7 8 (3.00%) AWS CDK
7 8 (3.00%) Django
8 7 (2.62%) .NET
8 7 (2.62%) OpenAPI
9 6 (2.25%) pytest
9 6 (2.25%) React
9 6 (2.25%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 19 (7.12%) Management Information System
2 18 (6.74%) Cloud Native
3 14 (5.24%) Data Centre
4 12 (4.49%) Linux Command Line
5 8 (3.00%) Mainframe
6 7 (2.62%) DataPower
6 7 (2.62%) Fixed Income
7 6 (2.25%) Public Cloud
8 5 (1.87%) Data Protection Act
8 5 (1.87%) Data Structures
8 5 (1.87%) Distributed Systems
8 5 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
8 5 (1.87%) Equities
8 5 (1.87%) Legacy Code
8 5 (1.87%) Legacy Systems
8 5 (1.87%) Virtual Team
9 4 (1.50%) Clustering
9 4 (1.50%) Derivative
9 4 (1.50%) Equity Derivative
9 4 (1.50%) Hedge funds
Operating Systems
1 169 (63.30%) Linux
2 105 (39.33%) Unix
3 41 (15.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 22 (8.24%) Windows
5 11 (4.12%) CentOS
6 6 (2.25%) Windows Server
7 5 (1.87%) Android
7 5 (1.87%) Apple iOS
7 5 (1.87%) VMS
8 4 (1.50%) Ubuntu
8 4 (1.50%) zOS
9 3 (1.12%) AIX
10 2 (0.75%) Debian
10 2 (0.75%) OpenVMS
10 2 (0.75%) Solaris
11 1 (0.37%) Amazon Linux
11 1 (0.37%) Embedded Linux
11 1 (0.37%) Oracle Linux
11 1 (0.37%) Windows Server 2008
11 1 (0.37%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 108 (40.45%) CI/CD
2 67 (25.09%) Problem-Solving
3 65 (24.34%) Agile
4 59 (22.10%) DevOps
5 45 (16.85%) Containerisation
5 45 (16.85%) Infrastructure as Code
6 43 (16.10%) Performance Tuning
7 37 (13.86%) Migration
8 33 (12.36%) Task Automation
9 29 (10.86%) Analytics
10 27 (10.11%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 27 (10.11%) Observability
11 25 (9.36%) Microservices
12 24 (8.99%) ETL
12 24 (8.99%) ITIL
13 23 (8.61%) Configuration Management
14 22 (8.24%) Continuous Improvement
14 22 (8.24%) High Availability
15 21 (7.87%) Scrum
15 21 (7.87%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 123 (46.07%) SQL
2 106 (39.70%) Python
3 87 (32.58%) Java
4 33 (12.36%) PL/SQL
5 28 (10.49%) JavaScript
6 22 (8.24%) Bash
7 20 (7.49%) Korn
8 17 (6.37%) TypeScript
9 13 (4.87%) Perl
10 10 (3.75%) Go
11 9 (3.37%) MATLAB
12 8 (3.00%) C++
13 6 (2.25%) C#
13 6 (2.25%) PowerShell
14 5 (1.87%) C
14 5 (1.87%) ProC
15 4 (1.50%) Groovy
15 4 (1.50%) JCL
16 3 (1.12%) PHP
16 3 (1.12%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 107 (40.07%) Security Cleared
2 88 (32.96%) SC Cleared
3 22 (8.24%) BPSS Clearance
4 18 (6.74%) Degree
5 15 (5.62%) DV Cleared
6 11 (4.12%) Oracle Certification
7 10 (3.75%) Computer Science Degree
8 8 (3.00%) OCP
9 4 (1.50%) Master's Degree
10 3 (1.12%) Azure Certification
11 2 (0.75%) CISSP
12 1 (0.37%) AWS Certification
12 1 (0.37%) AWS Certified Developer
12 1 (0.37%) CISM
12 1 (0.37%) ITIL Certification
12 1 (0.37%) MOS
12 1 (0.37%) PMI Certification
12 1 (0.37%) RHCA
12 1 (0.37%) RHCE
12 1 (0.37%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (6.74%) SLA
2 11 (4.12%) Data Quality
3 6 (2.25%) QA
4 5 (1.87%) GDPR
5 3 (1.12%) FATCA
6 2 (0.75%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 2 (0.75%) HIPAA
6 2 (0.75%) NIST
7 1 (0.37%) DICOM
7 1 (0.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 56 (20.97%) Docker
2 15 (5.62%) Oracle RAC
3 12 (4.49%) Active Directory
4 11 (4.12%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (1.87%) VMware Infrastructure
6 4 (1.50%) Postfix
6 4 (1.50%) Varnish
7 3 (1.12%) GridGain
7 3 (1.12%) NFS
7 3 (1.12%) Sendmail
8 2 (0.75%) HDFS
8 2 (0.75%) SRDF
9 1 (0.37%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 1 (0.37%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 62 (23.22%) Kubernetes
2 55 (20.60%) Terraform
3 50 (18.73%) Ansible
4 31 (11.61%) Grafana
5 30 (11.24%) Prometheus
6 21 (7.87%) Oracle RMAN
7 18 (6.74%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 15 (5.62%) Progress Chef
8 15 (5.62%) Red Hat Satellite
9 10 (3.75%) Podman
10 9 (3.37%) Check_MK
11 8 (3.00%) Puppet
12 7 (2.62%) Data Guard
13 6 (2.25%) Kibana
14 5 (1.87%) Dell DRAC
15 4 (1.50%) Docker Swarm
15 4 (1.50%) HAProxy
16 2 (0.75%) Control-M
16 2 (0.75%) logstash
16 2 (0.75%) systemd
Vendors
1 90 (33.71%) Oracle
2 43 (16.10%) Red Hat
3 18 (6.74%) Microsoft
4 17 (6.37%) VMware
5 12 (4.49%) Splunk
6 11 (4.12%) Dell
6 11 (4.12%) Murex
7 10 (3.75%) IBM
7 10 (3.75%) Informatica
8 9 (3.37%) Sybase
9 6 (2.25%) ServiceNow
9 6 (2.25%) Talend
10 5 (1.87%) Veritas
11 4 (1.50%) Cloudera
11 4 (1.50%) Databricks
11 4 (1.50%) Dynatrace
12 3 (1.12%) Hortonworks
12 3 (1.12%) MuleSoft
12 3 (1.12%) Pure Storage
12 3 (1.12%) Solace