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 26 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 409 252 272
Rank change year-on-year -157 +20 +13
Contract jobs citing Shell Script 285 341 344
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.52% 1.03% 0.90%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.99% 3.13% 2.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 201 193 225
10th Percentile £325 £309 £344
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £492 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.93% -1.60% -4.76%
75th Percentile £610 £595 £600
90th Percentile £715 £626 £708
UK excluding London median daily rate £465 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -2.11% +5.56% -7.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 17 6
10th Percentile £30.85 £65.60 £62.63
25th Percentile £38.50 - £63.50
Median hourly rate £52.50 £68.00 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.79% -15.00% +14.29%
75th Percentile £63.21 - £97.50
90th Percentile £68.88 £101.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £68.00 -
% change year-on-year -22.79% - -

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 14,311 10,910 12,269
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.08% 32.98% 32.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,300 7,204 8,174
10th Percentile £363 £343 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £507 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.65% -3.52% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 550 295 344
10th Percentile £24.97 £29.00 £26.06
25th Percentile £46.39 £41.25 £44.87
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +3.17%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.25 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £77.75 £78.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 26 September 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 26 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Shell Script in the UK

Shell Script
Top 17 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 26 September 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 -143 236 £500 +1.54% 204
UK excluding London -147 147 £465 -2.11% 117
London -78 116 £550 +4.76% 99
Work from Home -77 81 £470 -1.05% 82
North of England -101 36 £419 -12.76% 26
Midlands -30 33 £475 -5.00% 22
West Midlands -28 31 £475 -7.95% 17
Scotland -51 26 £425 -13.79% 11
South East -81 26 £500 +17.65% 21
Yorkshire -64 19 £425 -15.00% 8
East of England -38 14 £425 +5.59% 11
North West -56 13 £313 -30.13% 15
South West -52 10 £550 +96.43% 17
North East - 5 £463 - 3
Northern Ireland +1 2 £190 - 6
Wales -10 2 £265 -6.19% 4
East Midlands -17 2 £466 +29.31% 5

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 15 (5.26%) Apache
2 12 (4.21%) SAS
3 10 (3.51%) Apache Airflow
4 7 (2.46%) WebLogic
5 6 (2.11%) Apache Spark
6 5 (1.75%) Confluence
6 5 (1.75%) WebSphere
7 4 (1.40%) OpenStack
7 4 (1.40%) Oracle Workflow
8 3 (1.05%) CICS
8 3 (1.05%) JBoss
9 2 (0.70%) nginx
9 2 (0.70%) SharePoint
9 2 (0.70%) WebSphere Application Server
10 1 (0.35%) Tomcat
Applications
1 7 (2.46%) Notepad++
2 1 (0.35%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 6 (2.11%) Front Arena
1 6 (2.11%) Summit
2 4 (1.40%) Oracle Assets
2 4 (1.40%) Oracle EBS
2 4 (1.40%) Oracle E-Business Tax
2 4 (1.40%) Oracle FAH
2 4 (1.40%) Oracle General Ledger
2 4 (1.40%) Oracle Internet Expenses
2 4 (1.40%) Oracle iProcurement
2 4 (1.40%) Oracle Payables
2 4 (1.40%) Oracle Receivables
3 3 (1.05%) Oracle Financials
4 2 (0.70%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.35%) FLEXCUBE
5 1 (0.35%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.35%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 106 (37.19%) AWS
2 62 (21.75%) GCP
3 61 (21.40%) Azure
4 49 (17.19%) GitHub
5 32 (11.23%) Serverless
6 27 (9.47%) AWS Lambda
7 22 (7.72%) Amazon S3
7 22 (7.72%) GitHub Actions
8 15 (5.26%) Amazon EC2
9 14 (4.91%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 13 (4.56%) OpenShift
11 12 (4.21%) dbt
12 10 (3.51%) GitHub Copilot
13 9 (3.16%) AWS CloudFormation
13 9 (3.16%) Power Platform
13 9 (3.16%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 8 (2.81%) Amazon SQS
15 7 (2.46%) Cloud Computing
15 7 (2.46%) Datadog
15 7 (2.46%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 20 (7.02%) DNS
2 16 (5.61%) TCP/IP
3 12 (4.21%) HTTP
4 10 (3.51%) SSL
5 8 (2.81%) Firewall
6 7 (2.46%) PuTTY
6 7 (2.46%) VPN
6 7 (2.46%) WinSCP
7 6 (2.11%) Network Security
7 6 (2.11%) SSH
8 5 (1.75%) 5G
8 5 (1.75%) SAN
9 4 (1.40%) 4G
9 4 (1.40%) MQTT
10 3 (1.05%) BGP
10 3 (1.05%) Multicast
11 2 (0.70%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
11 2 (0.70%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 2 (0.70%) HTTPS
11 2 (0.70%) tcpdump
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (11.23%) Data Warehouse
2 27 (9.47%) Oracle Database
3 21 (7.37%) MySQL
4 19 (6.67%) PostgreSQL
5 18 (6.32%) MongoDB
5 18 (6.32%) Relational Database
6 17 (5.96%) Db2
7 14 (4.91%) SQL Server
8 13 (4.56%) NoSQL
9 12 (4.21%) Metadata
10 11 (3.86%) PowerCenter
11 10 (3.51%) BusinessObjects
11 10 (3.51%) Oracle Reports
12 9 (3.16%) BigQuery
12 9 (3.16%) DynamoDB
12 9 (3.16%) Elasticsearch
12 9 (3.16%) Star Schema
13 8 (2.81%) Amazon Aurora
13 8 (2.81%) Power BI
13 8 (2.81%) Redis
Development Applications
1 86 (30.18%) Git
2 53 (18.60%) Jenkins
3 44 (15.44%) GitLab
4 29 (10.18%) Maven
5 22 (7.72%) JUnit
6 14 (4.91%) Mockito
7 12 (4.21%) JIRA
8 11 (3.86%) Claude Code
9 9 (3.16%) SonarQube
9 9 (3.16%) Sonatype Nexus
10 7 (2.46%) Gradle
11 6 (2.11%) Selenium
12 5 (1.75%) Bitbucket
12 5 (1.75%) Oracle Forms
13 4 (1.40%) Cucumber
13 4 (1.40%) JDeveloper
13 4 (1.40%) Visual Studio Code
14 3 (1.05%) webpack
14 3 (1.05%) Xcode
15 2 (0.70%) Subversion
General
1 93 (32.63%) Finance
2 55 (19.30%) Banking
3 41 (14.39%) Social Skills
4 38 (13.33%) Analytical Skills
5 21 (7.37%) Public Sector
6 13 (4.56%) Investment Banking
7 8 (2.81%) Telecoms
8 7 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.40%) Aerospace
9 4 (1.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (1.40%) Retail
10 3 (1.05%) General Ledger
11 2 (0.70%) Financial Institution
11 2 (0.70%) Prime Brokerage
11 2 (0.70%) Publishing
12 1 (0.35%) Advertising
12 1 (0.35%) Electronics
12 1 (0.35%) Front Office
12 1 (0.35%) Legal
12 1 (0.35%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 70 (24.56%) Developer
2 42 (14.74%) Senior
3 30 (10.53%) Data Engineer
3 30 (10.53%) Python Developer
4 22 (7.72%) Senior Developer
5 20 (7.02%) DevOps Engineer
6 19 (6.67%) Java Developer
7 18 (6.32%) Java Engineer
8 16 (5.61%) Architect
8 16 (5.61%) Cloud Engineer
9 15 (5.26%) GCP Engineer
10 13 (4.56%) Analyst
11 10 (3.51%) Administrator
11 10 (3.51%) AWS Engineer
11 10 (3.51%) Software Engineer
12 9 (3.16%) Senior Python Developer
13 8 (2.81%) Lead
13 8 (2.81%) Linux Administrator
13 8 (2.81%) Senior Java Developer
13 8 (2.81%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 66 (23.16%) Terraform
2 36 (12.63%) RESTful
3 30 (10.53%) Spring
4 29 (10.18%) REST
4 29 (10.18%) Spring Boot
5 26 (9.12%) Kafka
6 23 (8.07%) Flask
7 22 (7.72%) FastAPI
8 17 (5.96%) CSS
8 17 (5.96%) HTML
8 17 (5.96%) Pandas
9 16 (5.61%) JSON
10 15 (5.26%) Middleware
11 14 (4.91%) Django
11 14 (4.91%) JPA
12 12 (4.21%) OpenAPI
12 12 (4.21%) Web Services
13 11 (3.86%) RabbitMQ
14 10 (3.51%) Elastic Stack
14 10 (3.51%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 29 (10.18%) Linux Command Line
2 16 (5.61%) Cloud Native
3 15 (5.26%) Management Information System
4 12 (4.21%) Enterprise Software
5 9 (3.16%) Data Centre
6 8 (2.81%) Fixed Income
6 8 (2.81%) Public Cloud
7 7 (2.46%) Derivative
7 7 (2.46%) Distributed Systems
7 7 (2.46%) Enterprise Cloud
8 6 (2.11%) AI Agents
8 6 (2.11%) Algorithms
8 6 (2.11%) Hybrid Cloud
8 6 (2.11%) Market Risk
8 6 (2.11%) Product Ownership
8 6 (2.11%) Replication
9 5 (1.75%) Distributed Applications
9 5 (1.75%) Hedge funds
9 5 (1.75%) Mainframe
9 5 (1.75%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 154 (54.04%) Linux
2 125 (43.86%) Unix
3 24 (8.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 17 (5.96%) Windows
5 12 (4.21%) Solaris
6 6 (2.11%) AIX
7 5 (1.75%) CentOS
8 4 (1.40%) VMS
8 4 (1.40%) zOS
9 3 (1.05%) Apple iOS
9 3 (1.05%) SUSE
9 3 (1.05%) Windows Server
10 2 (0.70%) HPUX
10 2 (0.70%) Rocky
10 2 (0.70%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.35%) Embedded Linux
11 1 (0.35%) Mac OS
11 1 (0.35%) Windows Server 2008
11 1 (0.35%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 128 (44.91%) CI/CD
2 78 (27.37%) DevOps
3 69 (24.21%) Infrastructure as Code
4 67 (23.51%) Containerisation
5 54 (18.95%) Agile
6 51 (17.89%) AI
7 47 (16.49%) Problem-Solving
8 44 (15.44%) Migration
9 43 (15.09%) Data Pipeline
9 43 (15.09%) Performance Tuning
10 39 (13.68%) ETL
10 39 (13.68%) Root Cause Analysis
11 38 (13.33%) Code Quality
12 37 (12.98%) Observability
13 33 (11.58%) Analytics
13 33 (11.58%) Microservices
13 33 (11.58%) Performance Optimisation
13 33 (11.58%) Test Automation
14 32 (11.23%) SDLC
15 31 (10.88%) Configuration Management
Programming Languages
1 153 (53.68%) SQL
2 151 (52.98%) Python
3 79 (27.72%) Java
4 62 (21.75%) Bash
5 46 (16.14%) PL/SQL
6 23 (8.07%) PowerShell
7 20 (7.02%) JavaScript
8 15 (5.26%) Groovy
9 14 (4.91%) Perl
10 10 (3.51%) Korn
11 9 (3.16%) TypeScript
12 7 (2.46%) C#
13 6 (2.11%) Go
13 6 (2.11%) Scala
14 5 (1.75%) Ruby
14 5 (1.75%) T-SQL
15 4 (1.40%) C
15 4 (1.40%) JCL
15 4 (1.40%) MATLAB
15 4 (1.40%) Rust
Qualifications
1 84 (29.47%) Security Cleared
2 64 (22.46%) SC Cleared
3 29 (10.18%) Degree
4 26 (9.12%) BPSS Clearance
5 11 (3.86%) DV Cleared
6 10 (3.51%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (2.81%) Master's Degree
8 6 (2.11%) AWS Certification
9 5 (1.75%) Oracle Certification
10 2 (0.70%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 2 (0.70%) Azure Certification
10 2 (0.70%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.70%) CISSP
11 1 (0.35%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 1 (0.35%) CCNA
11 1 (0.35%) CISM
11 1 (0.35%) GIAC
11 1 (0.35%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 1 (0.35%) OCP
11 1 (0.35%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (12.63%) Data Quality
2 17 (5.96%) QA
3 7 (2.46%) SLA
4 6 (2.11%) Accessibility
5 5 (1.75%) Basel III
6 3 (1.05%) Disclosure Scotland
6 3 (1.05%) ISO 20022
7 2 (0.70%) ISO 15022
8 1 (0.35%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 1 (0.35%) GDPR
8 1 (0.35%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.35%) NIST
8 1 (0.35%) SEPA
System Software
1 72 (25.26%) Docker
2 8 (2.81%) Active Directory
2 8 (2.81%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (2.11%) zsh
4 5 (1.75%) Oracle RAC
4 5 (1.75%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (1.40%) NFS
6 3 (1.05%) Postfix
6 3 (1.05%) Sendmail
6 3 (1.05%) Varnish
6 3 (1.05%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.70%) KVM
7 2 (0.70%) vSphere
8 1 (0.35%) HDFS
8 1 (0.35%) Veritas Cluster Server
8 1 (0.35%) Veritas Volume Manager
Systems Management
1 82 (28.77%) Kubernetes
2 57 (20.00%) Ansible
3 31 (10.88%) Grafana
4 26 (9.12%) Prometheus
5 14 (4.91%) Kibana
6 10 (3.51%) Podman
7 9 (3.16%) Control-M
7 9 (3.16%) Oracle RMAN
8 8 (2.81%) Data Guard
9 6 (2.11%) Puppet
10 5 (1.75%) Check_MK
10 5 (1.75%) NetBackup
10 5 (1.75%) Single Sign-On
11 4 (1.40%) HP ALM
11 4 (1.40%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 4 (1.40%) Packer
11 4 (1.40%) Red Hat Satellite
12 3 (1.05%) HAProxy
12 3 (1.05%) ITRS Geneos
12 3 (1.05%) Netcool
Vendors
1 80 (28.07%) Oracle
2 37 (12.98%) Google
3 22 (7.72%) Splunk
4 21 (7.37%) Informatica
5 20 (7.02%) IBM
6 19 (6.67%) Red Hat
7 14 (4.91%) Microsoft
8 11 (3.86%) VMware
9 9 (3.16%) New Relic
9 9 (3.16%) Sybase
10 8 (2.81%) Dynatrace
10 8 (2.81%) HP
10 8 (2.81%) ServiceNow
11 7 (2.46%) Murex
12 6 (2.11%) Calypso
12 6 (2.11%) Checkmarx
12 6 (2.11%) FIS
12 6 (2.11%) Tenable
12 6 (2.11%) Teradata
13 5 (1.75%) NVIDIA