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

6 months to
29 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 375 288 325
Rank change year-on-year -87 +37 -76
Contract jobs citing Shell Script 271 251 284
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.61% 0.86% 0.64%
As % of the Programming Languages category 2.12% 2.52% 2.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 193 132 196
10th Percentile £345 £358 £350
25th Percentile £400 £425 £422
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £515 £504
Median % change year-on-year -12.66% +2.28% -6.71%
75th Percentile £538 £602 £627
90th Percentile £625 £673 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £500 £465
% change year-on-year -8.00% +7.53% -13.57%
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% +23.81%
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 12,778 9,947 12,914
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 28.68% 33.97% 29.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,483 6,693 9,128
10th Percentile £352 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £419 £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 £715 £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 520 244 486
10th Percentile £41.13 £22.30 £30.63
25th Percentile £53.75 £32.88 £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 £68.56 £67.38
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.00 £61.60
% change year-on-year +1.56% +3.90% -3.75%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 -65 224 £473 -12.17% 53
UK excluding London -95 134 £460 -8.00% 39
London -53 98 £500 -3.85% 21
Work from Home -28 81 £454 -10.14% 27
Midlands -43 39 £471 +2.45% 6
West Midlands -34 37 £471 +2.45% 5
South East -36 27 £405 -25.00% 17
North of England -64 27 £455 -22.55% 8
East of England -21 18 £440 -5.68% 5
Yorkshire -62 17 £454 -22.48% 3
South West -30 12 £575 +5.26% 3
Scotland -36 9 £402 -14.47%
North West -40 9 £450 -25.00% 5
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 (4.43%) Confluence
2 9 (3.32%) Apache
2 9 (3.32%) Apache Spark
3 5 (1.85%) Apache Airflow
3 5 (1.85%) WebLogic
4 3 (1.11%) CICS
4 3 (1.11%) nginx
4 3 (1.11%) Oracle Workflow
4 3 (1.11%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.74%) ArcGIS
5 2 (0.74%) JBoss
5 2 (0.74%) Oracle Spatial
5 2 (0.74%) SAS
5 2 (0.74%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.37%) IBM HTTP Server
6 1 (0.37%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 1 (0.37%) WebSphere
6 1 (0.37%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 5 (1.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (1.11%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (1.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 4 (1.48%) Oracle Applications
2 3 (1.11%) Oracle 11i
2 3 (1.11%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.74%) Oracle EBS R12
3 2 (0.74%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.37%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.37%) Oracle Cash Management
4 1 (0.37%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.37%) Oracle Receivables
4 1 (0.37%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 105 (38.75%) AWS
2 51 (18.82%) Azure
3 43 (15.87%) GitHub
4 34 (12.55%) Serverless
5 31 (11.44%) Amazon EC2
5 31 (11.44%) Amazon S3
6 29 (10.70%) OpenShift
7 28 (10.33%) GitHub Actions
8 25 (9.23%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 24 (8.86%) AWS Lambda
10 17 (6.27%) Amazon EKS
11 16 (5.90%) AWS CloudFormation
12 12 (4.43%) Azure DevOps
13 11 (4.06%) GCP
14 7 (2.58%) AWS CodePipeline
14 7 (2.58%) Azure AKS
14 7 (2.58%) Pulumi
15 6 (2.21%) Amazon ECS
15 6 (2.21%) Azure Data Factory
15 6 (2.21%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 18 (6.64%) SSH
2 9 (3.32%) SAN
3 8 (2.95%) DNS
4 7 (2.58%) Network Security
5 6 (2.21%) TCP/IP
6 4 (1.48%) Firewall
7 3 (1.11%) HTTPS
7 3 (1.11%) NAS
7 3 (1.11%) Reverse Proxy
8 2 (0.74%) AMQP
8 2 (0.74%) HTTP
8 2 (0.74%) iSCSI
8 2 (0.74%) OpenVPN
9 1 (0.37%) BIG-IP
9 1 (0.37%) DHCP
9 1 (0.37%) FTP
9 1 (0.37%) Kerberos
9 1 (0.37%) LAN
9 1 (0.37%) Multicast
9 1 (0.37%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (10.70%) Oracle Database
2 27 (9.96%) MongoDB
3 24 (8.86%) Amazon RDS
4 23 (8.49%) SQL Server
5 21 (7.75%) Relational Database
6 19 (7.01%) PostgreSQL
7 13 (4.80%) MySQL
8 12 (4.43%) Data Warehouse
9 10 (3.69%) NoSQL
10 8 (2.95%) DynamoDB
10 8 (2.95%) Metadata
11 7 (2.58%) Big Data
11 7 (2.58%) DB2
12 6 (2.21%) Data Mart
12 6 (2.21%) Hadoop
12 6 (2.21%) InfluxDB
13 5 (1.85%) Oracle Reports
14 4 (1.48%) OLTP
14 4 (1.48%) Power BI
14 4 (1.48%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 66 (24.35%) Jenkins
2 46 (16.97%) GitLab
3 35 (12.92%) Git
4 24 (8.86%) JIRA
5 10 (3.69%) JUnit
6 7 (2.58%) Maven
7 6 (2.21%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 6 (2.21%) Mockito
8 5 (1.85%) PyCharm
8 5 (1.85%) PyUnit
9 4 (1.48%) JMeter
9 4 (1.48%) Sonatype Nexus
10 3 (1.11%) Artifactory
10 3 (1.11%) Bitbucket
10 3 (1.11%) CircleCI
10 3 (1.11%) Subversion
10 3 (1.11%) Terragrunt
11 2 (0.74%) Gatling
11 2 (0.74%) Postman
11 2 (0.74%) SonarQube
General
1 71 (26.20%) Social Skills
2 46 (16.97%) Finance
3 37 (13.65%) Banking
4 32 (11.81%) Public Sector
5 25 (9.23%) Analytical Skills
6 14 (5.17%) Investment Banking
7 12 (4.43%) Front Office
8 9 (3.32%) Retail
9 7 (2.58%) Documentation Skills
10 5 (1.85%) Aerospace
11 4 (1.48%) Advertising
11 4 (1.48%) Telecoms
12 3 (1.11%) Law
12 3 (1.11%) Local Government
13 2 (0.74%) Manufacturing
13 2 (0.74%) Organisational Skills
14 1 (0.37%) Marketing
14 1 (0.37%) Military
14 1 (0.37%) Presentation Skills
14 1 (0.37%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 74 (27.31%) Developer
2 34 (12.55%) Java Developer
3 23 (8.49%) Senior
4 21 (7.75%) Administrator
4 21 (7.75%) DBA
5 20 (7.38%) Data Engineer
6 19 (7.01%) Site Reliability Engineer
7 18 (6.64%) DevOps Engineer
7 18 (6.64%) Oracle DBA
7 18 (6.64%) Site Engineer
7 18 (6.64%) Support Engineer
8 14 (5.17%) AWS Engineer
9 13 (4.80%) Python Developer
10 12 (4.43%) Linux Administrator
11 11 (4.06%) AWS DevOps
11 11 (4.06%) Consultant
12 10 (3.69%) Analyst
12 10 (3.69%) Senior Developer
13 9 (3.32%) AWS DevOps Engineer
13 9 (3.32%) Linux Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (8.12%) Kafka
2 21 (7.75%) Node.js
3 18 (6.64%) Elastic Stack
3 18 (6.64%) Spring
4 15 (5.54%) Middleware
4 15 (5.54%) RESTful
5 14 (5.17%) Oracle GoldenGate
5 14 (5.17%) REST
5 14 (5.17%) Spring Boot
6 13 (4.80%) JSON
7 11 (4.06%) LDAP
8 10 (3.69%) OpenAPI
8 10 (3.69%) SOAP
9 9 (3.32%) XML
10 8 (2.95%) AWS CDK
11 7 (2.58%) .NET
11 7 (2.58%) Django
11 7 (2.58%) RabbitMQ
11 7 (2.58%) XSD
12 6 (2.21%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 21 (7.75%) Cloud Native
2 17 (6.27%) Management Information System
3 12 (4.43%) Data Centre
4 9 (3.32%) Equities
5 8 (2.95%) Data Structures
6 7 (2.58%) DataPower
6 7 (2.58%) Enterprise Cloud
6 7 (2.58%) Fixed Income
6 7 (2.58%) Mainframe
7 6 (2.21%) Legacy Systems
8 5 (1.85%) Data Protection Act
8 5 (1.85%) Enterprise Software
8 5 (1.85%) Legacy Code
8 5 (1.85%) Linux Command Line
9 4 (1.48%) Clustering
9 4 (1.48%) Derivative
9 4 (1.48%) Distributed Systems
9 4 (1.48%) Equity Derivative
9 4 (1.48%) Self-Motivation
9 4 (1.48%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 177 (65.31%) Linux
2 103 (38.01%) Unix
3 39 (14.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 22 (8.12%) Windows
5 10 (3.69%) CentOS
6 8 (2.95%) Ubuntu
7 5 (1.85%) Android
7 5 (1.85%) Apple iOS
7 5 (1.85%) Windows Server
8 4 (1.48%) VMS
9 3 (1.11%) AIX
9 3 (1.11%) zOS
10 2 (0.74%) Debian
10 2 (0.74%) OpenVMS
11 1 (0.37%) Amazon Linux
11 1 (0.37%) Oracle Linux
11 1 (0.37%) Rocky
11 1 (0.37%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 110 (40.59%) CI/CD
2 75 (27.68%) Agile
3 73 (26.94%) Problem-Solving
4 60 (22.14%) DevOps
5 46 (16.97%) Containerisation
6 45 (16.61%) Infrastructure as Code
7 44 (16.24%) Performance Tuning
8 33 (12.18%) Task Automation
9 26 (9.59%) Analytics
9 26 (9.59%) Continuous Improvement
9 26 (9.59%) Observability
10 25 (9.23%) Microservices
11 24 (8.86%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 24 (8.86%) Migration
11 24 (8.86%) SDLC
12 23 (8.49%) High Availability
12 23 (8.49%) ITIL
12 23 (8.49%) Scrum
12 23 (8.49%) Site Reliability Engineering
12 23 (8.49%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 124 (45.76%) SQL
2 106 (39.11%) Python
3 94 (34.69%) Java
4 32 (11.81%) JavaScript
5 24 (8.86%) PL/SQL
6 21 (7.75%) Bash
7 19 (7.01%) Korn
8 17 (6.27%) TypeScript
9 12 (4.43%) C++
10 11 (4.06%) Perl
11 10 (3.69%) Go
12 9 (3.32%) C
13 7 (2.58%) MATLAB
14 6 (2.21%) PowerShell
15 5 (1.85%) ProC
16 4 (1.48%) Ada
16 4 (1.48%) C#
16 4 (1.48%) Groovy
16 4 (1.48%) JCL
17 3 (1.11%) PHP
Qualifications
1 107 (39.48%) Security Cleared
2 87 (32.10%) SC Cleared
3 23 (8.49%) BPSS Clearance
4 18 (6.64%) Degree
5 16 (5.90%) DV Cleared
6 11 (4.06%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (2.95%) Oracle Certification
8 7 (2.58%) OCP
9 4 (1.48%) Master's Degree
10 3 (1.11%) Azure Certification
11 2 (0.74%) 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 (6.64%) SLA
2 13 (4.80%) Data Quality
3 10 (3.69%) QA
4 6 (2.21%) GDPR
5 3 (1.11%) FATCA
6 2 (0.74%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 2 (0.74%) HIPAA
6 2 (0.74%) NIST
7 1 (0.37%) DICOM
7 1 (0.37%) NCSC
7 1 (0.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 60 (22.14%) Docker
2 13 (4.80%) Oracle RAC
3 10 (3.69%) Active Directory
4 9 (3.32%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (1.11%) GridGain
5 3 (1.11%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.74%) HDFS
6 2 (0.74%) KVM
6 2 (0.74%) Postfix
6 2 (0.74%) SRDF
6 2 (0.74%) Varnish
7 1 (0.37%) Apache ZooKeeper
7 1 (0.37%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.37%) NFS
7 1 (0.37%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 69 (25.46%) Kubernetes
2 58 (21.40%) Terraform
3 47 (17.34%) Ansible
4 37 (13.65%) Grafana
5 35 (12.92%) Prometheus
6 18 (6.64%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
7 17 (6.27%) Oracle RMAN
7 17 (6.27%) Progress Chef
8 13 (4.80%) Red Hat Satellite
9 8 (2.95%) Podman
9 8 (2.95%) Puppet
10 7 (2.58%) Check_MK
11 5 (1.85%) Dell DRAC
12 4 (1.48%) Data Guard
12 4 (1.48%) Docker Swarm
12 4 (1.48%) Kibana
13 2 (0.74%) HAProxy
13 2 (0.74%) Sysdig
13 2 (0.74%) systemd
13 2 (0.74%) Thomson Reuters DACS
Vendors
1 85 (31.37%) Oracle
2 41 (15.13%) Red Hat
3 18 (6.64%) Microsoft
4 14 (5.17%) VMware
5 13 (4.80%) Sybase
6 12 (4.43%) Splunk
7 11 (4.06%) Dell
7 11 (4.06%) Murex
8 7 (2.58%) IBM
8 7 (2.58%) ServiceNow
9 6 (2.21%) MuleSoft
10 5 (1.85%) Talend
11 4 (1.48%) Cloudera
11 4 (1.48%) CyberArk
11 4 (1.48%) Databricks
11 4 (1.48%) Dynatrace
11 4 (1.48%) Veritas
12 3 (1.11%) Google
12 3 (1.11%) Pure Storage
12 3 (1.11%) Solace