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

6 months to
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 412 268 269
Rank change year-on-year -144 +1 +4
Contract jobs citing Shell Script 277 329 338
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.51% 1.00% 0.88%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.96% 3.05% 2.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 192 195 222
10th Percentile £327 £318 £350
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £482 £493 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.24% -1.44% -4.76%
75th Percentile £620 £600 £600
90th Percentile £715 £638 £710
UK excluding London median daily rate £459 £478 £445
% change year-on-year -3.87% +7.30% -11.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 12 5
10th Percentile £30.85 - £62.45
25th Percentile £38.50 - £63.50
Median hourly rate £52.50 £68.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.79% +4.62% -7.14%
75th Percentile £63.21 £74.75 £97.50
90th Percentile £68.88 £108.50 -
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 14,121 10,791 12,230
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.02% 32.76% 31.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,165 7,144 8,276
10th Percentile £363 £343 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.90% -4.67% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 536 293 341
10th Percentile £27.75 £29.00 £27.00
25th Percentile £47.88 £37.77 £46.18
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.25 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £80.00 £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +0.78% -0.77% -

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 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 16 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 16 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 -158 228 £500 - 228
UK excluding London -149 142 £459 -3.87% 140
London -84 114 £550 +4.76% 109
Work from Home -83 76 £470 -1.05% 98
North of England -106 37 £425 -11.46% 37
Scotland -54 26 £425 -10.53% 19
South East -78 26 £483 -13.14% 28
Midlands -35 25 £470 -6.00% 20
West Midlands -41 23 £470 -7.30% 14
Yorkshire -67 20 £463 -7.50% 11
East of England -23 15 £388 -3.13% 17
North West -55 14 £344 -23.21% 21
South West -50 11 £563 +12.50% 10
North East - 4 £469 - 5
Northern Ireland +5 2 £190 - 4
Wales -11 2 £265 -6.19% 5
East Midlands -12 2 £466 +29.31% 6

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 (5.42%) Apache
2 12 (4.33%) SAS
3 10 (3.61%) Apache Airflow
4 7 (2.53%) WebLogic
5 5 (1.81%) Apache Spark
5 5 (1.81%) Oracle Workflow
6 4 (1.44%) CICS
6 4 (1.44%) Confluence
6 4 (1.44%) OpenStack
6 4 (1.44%) WebSphere
7 3 (1.08%) JBoss
8 2 (0.72%) nginx
8 2 (0.72%) SharePoint
8 2 (0.72%) WebSphere Application Server
9 1 (0.36%) Tomcat
Applications
1 7 (2.53%) Notepad++
Business Applications
1 6 (2.17%) Front Arena
1 6 (2.17%) Summit
2 4 (1.44%) Oracle Assets
2 4 (1.44%) Oracle EBS
2 4 (1.44%) Oracle E-Business Tax
2 4 (1.44%) Oracle FAH
2 4 (1.44%) Oracle General Ledger
2 4 (1.44%) Oracle Internet Expenses
2 4 (1.44%) Oracle iProcurement
2 4 (1.44%) Oracle Payables
2 4 (1.44%) Oracle Receivables
3 3 (1.08%) Oracle Financials
4 2 (0.72%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.36%) FLEXCUBE
5 1 (0.36%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.36%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 101 (36.46%) AWS
2 59 (21.30%) Azure
3 58 (20.94%) GCP
4 51 (18.41%) GitHub
5 32 (11.55%) Serverless
6 26 (9.39%) AWS Lambda
6 26 (9.39%) GitHub Actions
7 23 (8.30%) Amazon S3
8 16 (5.78%) Amazon EC2
9 12 (4.33%) dbt
9 12 (4.33%) OpenShift
10 11 (3.97%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 10 (3.61%) GitHub Copilot
12 9 (3.25%) AWS CodeBuild
12 9 (3.25%) Power Platform
12 9 (3.25%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 8 (2.89%) AWS CloudFormation
13 8 (2.89%) AWS CodePipeline
14 7 (2.53%) Datadog
14 7 (2.53%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 17 (6.14%) DNS
2 14 (5.05%) TCP/IP
3 11 (3.97%) HTTP
4 10 (3.61%) SSL
5 7 (2.53%) Firewall
5 7 (2.53%) PuTTY
5 7 (2.53%) VPN
5 7 (2.53%) WinSCP
6 6 (2.17%) Network Security
6 6 (2.17%) SAN
6 6 (2.17%) SSH
7 5 (1.81%) 5G
8 4 (1.44%) 4G
8 4 (1.44%) MQTT
8 4 (1.44%) Multicast
9 3 (1.08%) BGP
9 3 (1.08%) HTTPS
10 2 (0.72%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
10 2 (0.72%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 2 (0.72%) tcpdump
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (11.55%) Data Warehouse
2 25 (9.03%) Oracle Database
3 19 (6.86%) MySQL
3 19 (6.86%) Relational Database
4 18 (6.50%) Db2
4 18 (6.50%) MongoDB
5 17 (6.14%) PostgreSQL
6 16 (5.78%) SQL Server
7 13 (4.69%) NoSQL
8 12 (4.33%) Metadata
9 11 (3.97%) PowerCenter
10 10 (3.61%) BusinessObjects
10 10 (3.61%) Oracle Reports
11 9 (3.25%) Amazon Aurora
11 9 (3.25%) BigQuery
11 9 (3.25%) Elasticsearch
11 9 (3.25%) Star Schema
12 8 (2.89%) Amazon RDS
12 8 (2.89%) Redis
13 7 (2.53%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 83 (29.96%) Git
2 55 (19.86%) Jenkins
3 39 (14.08%) GitLab
4 27 (9.75%) Maven
5 17 (6.14%) JUnit
6 12 (4.33%) Sonatype Nexus
7 11 (3.97%) Claude Code
7 11 (3.97%) JIRA
8 9 (3.25%) Mockito
8 9 (3.25%) SonarQube
9 7 (2.53%) Gradle
10 5 (1.81%) Bitbucket
10 5 (1.81%) Oracle Forms
11 4 (1.44%) JDeveloper
11 4 (1.44%) Selenium
11 4 (1.44%) Visual Studio Code
12 3 (1.08%) webpack
12 3 (1.08%) Xcode
13 2 (0.72%) JMeter
13 2 (0.72%) Terragrunt
General
1 96 (34.66%) Finance
2 58 (20.94%) Banking
3 44 (15.88%) Social Skills
4 37 (13.36%) Analytical Skills
5 21 (7.58%) Public Sector
6 16 (5.78%) Investment Banking
7 7 (2.53%) Documentation Skills
7 7 (2.53%) Telecoms
8 4 (1.44%) Aerospace
8 4 (1.44%) Front Office
8 4 (1.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 4 (1.44%) Retail
9 3 (1.08%) General Ledger
10 2 (0.72%) Prime Brokerage
10 2 (0.72%) Publishing
11 1 (0.36%) Electronics
11 1 (0.36%) Financial Institution
11 1 (0.36%) International Banking
11 1 (0.36%) Legal
11 1 (0.36%) Military
Job Titles
1 74 (26.71%) Developer
2 45 (16.25%) Senior
3 31 (11.19%) Python Developer
4 29 (10.47%) Data Engineer
5 24 (8.66%) Senior Developer
6 21 (7.58%) Java Developer
7 20 (7.22%) DevOps Engineer
8 16 (5.78%) Architect
8 16 (5.78%) Cloud Engineer
9 15 (5.42%) GCP Engineer
9 15 (5.42%) Java Engineer
10 13 (4.69%) Analyst
11 12 (4.33%) Administrator
12 10 (3.61%) Senior Python Developer
13 9 (3.25%) AWS Engineer
13 9 (3.25%) Linux Administrator
13 9 (3.25%) Senior Java Developer
13 9 (3.25%) Software Engineer
14 8 (2.89%) DBA
14 8 (2.89%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 66 (23.83%) Terraform
2 35 (12.64%) RESTful
3 26 (9.39%) Spring
4 25 (9.03%) Spring Boot
5 24 (8.66%) Kafka
5 24 (8.66%) REST
6 23 (8.30%) FastAPI
7 22 (7.94%) Flask
8 18 (6.50%) Pandas
9 15 (5.42%) CSS
9 15 (5.42%) HTML
10 14 (5.05%) Django
10 14 (5.05%) JSON
11 13 (4.69%) Middleware
12 12 (4.33%) RabbitMQ
13 11 (3.97%) JPA
14 10 (3.61%) Elastic Stack
14 10 (3.61%) Web Services
15 9 (3.25%) OpenAPI
16 8 (2.89%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 30 (10.83%) Linux Command Line
2 16 (5.78%) Management Information System
3 14 (5.05%) Cloud Native
4 12 (4.33%) Enterprise Software
5 11 (3.97%) Fixed Income
6 9 (3.25%) Data Centre
7 8 (2.89%) Public Cloud
7 8 (2.89%) Replication
8 7 (2.53%) Derivative
8 7 (2.53%) Enterprise Cloud
8 7 (2.53%) Product Ownership
9 6 (2.17%) Distributed Systems
9 6 (2.17%) Hedge funds
9 6 (2.17%) Hybrid Cloud
9 6 (2.17%) Mainframe
9 6 (2.17%) Market Risk
10 5 (1.81%) AI Agents
10 5 (1.81%) Distributed Applications
10 5 (1.81%) Onboarding
10 5 (1.81%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 149 (53.79%) Linux
2 125 (45.13%) Unix
3 24 (8.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 17 (6.14%) Windows
5 10 (3.61%) Solaris
6 5 (1.81%) AIX
6 5 (1.81%) CentOS
6 5 (1.81%) zOS
7 4 (1.44%) VMS
7 4 (1.44%) Windows Server
8 3 (1.08%) Apple iOS
8 3 (1.08%) Rocky
9 2 (0.72%) HPUX
9 2 (0.72%) Oracle Linux
9 2 (0.72%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.36%) Amazon Linux
10 1 (0.36%) Embedded Linux
10 1 (0.36%) SUSE
10 1 (0.36%) Windows Server 2008
10 1 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 125 (45.13%) CI/CD
2 80 (28.88%) DevOps
3 68 (24.55%) Infrastructure as Code
4 64 (23.10%) Containerisation
5 52 (18.77%) Agile
6 49 (17.69%) AI
7 43 (15.52%) Problem-Solving
8 42 (15.16%) Data Pipeline
8 42 (15.16%) Performance Tuning
9 40 (14.44%) Migration
10 39 (14.08%) ETL
11 36 (13.00%) Root Cause Analysis
12 35 (12.64%) Observability
13 34 (12.27%) Code Quality
14 33 (11.91%) Analytics
14 33 (11.91%) Performance Optimisation
15 31 (11.19%) Configuration Management
16 29 (10.47%) SDLC
16 29 (10.47%) Test Automation
17 28 (10.11%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 153 (55.23%) SQL
2 152 (54.87%) Python
3 76 (27.44%) Java
4 57 (20.58%) Bash
5 47 (16.97%) PL/SQL
6 21 (7.58%) PowerShell
7 17 (6.14%) JavaScript
8 15 (5.42%) Groovy
9 14 (5.05%) Perl
10 9 (3.25%) Korn
11 8 (2.89%) C#
12 6 (2.17%) Scala
12 6 (2.17%) TypeScript
13 5 (1.81%) Go
13 5 (1.81%) JCL
13 5 (1.81%) Ruby
14 4 (1.44%) C
14 4 (1.44%) C++
14 4 (1.44%) MATLAB
14 4 (1.44%) Rust
Qualifications
1 79 (28.52%) Security Cleared
2 59 (21.30%) SC Cleared
3 29 (10.47%) Degree
4 23 (8.30%) BPSS Clearance
5 11 (3.97%) Computer Science Degree
5 11 (3.97%) DV Cleared
6 7 (2.53%) Master's Degree
7 6 (2.17%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.81%) Oracle Certification
9 2 (0.72%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 2 (0.72%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.72%) Cisco Certification
9 2 (0.72%) CISSP
10 1 (0.36%) CCNA
10 1 (0.36%) CISM
10 1 (0.36%) GIAC
10 1 (0.36%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
10 1 (0.36%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 1 (0.36%) OCP
10 1 (0.36%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (11.91%) Data Quality
2 17 (6.14%) QA
3 7 (2.53%) SLA
4 6 (2.17%) Accessibility
5 3 (1.08%) Basel III
5 3 (1.08%) Disclosure Scotland
5 3 (1.08%) ISO 20022
6 2 (0.72%) ISO 15022
7 1 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 1 (0.36%) DICOM
7 1 (0.36%) GDPR
7 1 (0.36%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.36%) NIST
7 1 (0.36%) SEPA
System Software
1 73 (26.35%) Docker
2 9 (3.25%) Active Directory
3 8 (2.89%) Virtual Machines
4 6 (2.17%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (1.81%) Oracle RAC
5 5 (1.81%) zsh
6 4 (1.44%) NFS
7 3 (1.08%) GridGain
7 3 (1.08%) Postfix
7 3 (1.08%) Sendmail
7 3 (1.08%) Varnish
7 3 (1.08%) VMware ESXi
8 2 (0.72%) KVM
8 2 (0.72%) vSphere
9 1 (0.36%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.36%) Veritas Cluster Server
9 1 (0.36%) Veritas Volume Manager
Systems Management
1 81 (29.24%) Kubernetes
2 57 (20.58%) Ansible
3 29 (10.47%) Grafana
4 24 (8.66%) Prometheus
5 11 (3.97%) Kibana
6 10 (3.61%) Podman
7 9 (3.25%) Control-M
7 9 (3.25%) Oracle RMAN
8 8 (2.89%) Data Guard
9 6 (2.17%) Puppet
10 5 (1.81%) Check_MK
10 5 (1.81%) NetBackup
11 4 (1.44%) HP ALM
11 4 (1.44%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 4 (1.44%) Packer
11 4 (1.44%) Red Hat Satellite
12 3 (1.08%) Consul
12 3 (1.08%) HAProxy
12 3 (1.08%) ITRS Geneos
12 3 (1.08%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 85 (30.69%) Oracle
2 36 (13.00%) Google
3 20 (7.22%) Informatica
3 20 (7.22%) Splunk
4 18 (6.50%) Red Hat
5 17 (6.14%) IBM
6 14 (5.05%) Sybase
7 13 (4.69%) Microsoft
8 12 (4.33%) VMware
9 9 (3.25%) New Relic
10 8 (2.89%) Murex
11 7 (2.53%) Dynatrace
11 7 (2.53%) ServiceNow
11 7 (2.53%) Solace
12 6 (2.17%) Calypso
12 6 (2.17%) Checkmarx
12 6 (2.17%) FIS
12 6 (2.17%) HP
12 6 (2.17%) Tenable
12 6 (2.17%) Teradata