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

6 months to
11 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 421 252 273
Rank change year-on-year -169 +21 +4
Contract jobs citing Shell Script 284 342 336
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.52% 1.03% 0.89%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.99% 3.16% 2.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 199 195 209
10th Percentile £325 £309 £340
25th Percentile £413 £379 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £475 £490
Median % change year-on-year +3.68% -3.06% -6.67%
75th Percentile £613 £575 £573
90th Percentile £715 £625 £708
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £475 £420
% change year-on-year -1.05% +13.10% -16.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 16 7
10th Percentile £35.13 £65.00 £62.80
25th Percentile £49.21 - £63.50
Median hourly rate £72.66 £68.00 £68.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.85% - -2.86%
75th Percentile £79.46 - £97.50
90th Percentile £83.53 £102.50 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £72.66 £68.00 £68.00
% change year-on-year +6.85% - -2.86%

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 14,305 10,822 12,166
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.22% 32.68% 32.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,288 7,118 7,976
10th Percentile £363 £345 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £507 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.50% -3.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £649
90th Percentile £725 £734 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 553 298 332
10th Percentile £21.53 £29.00 £26.01
25th Percentile £44.50 £41.25 £45.75
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.19 £70.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £77.88 £75.00
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 11 October 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 11 October 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 11 October 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 -142 237 £524 +10.26% 188
UK excluding London -152 143 £470 -1.05% 117
London -76 120 £550 +7.32% 91
Work from Home -92 78 £470 +0.86% 82
North of England -105 36 £419 -11.84% 30
Midlands -37 28 £525 +7.69% 21
Scotland -49 28 £440 -10.75% 20
West Midlands -40 26 £525 +5.00% 17
South East -77 24 £525 +24.26% 20
Yorkshire -51 19 £425 -15.00% 11
South West -35 14 £540 +694.12% 12
North West -61 13 £313 -30.13% 15
East of England -34 11 £350 -13.58% 6
North East - 5 £463 - 4
Northern Ireland +4 2 £190 - 7
East Midlands -11 2 £466 +29.31% 4
Wales -12 2 £265 -6.19% 3

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 (4.23%) Apache
2 11 (3.87%) SAS
2 11 (3.87%) WebLogic
3 10 (3.52%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (2.11%) Apache Spark
5 5 (1.76%) Confluence
5 5 (1.76%) WebSphere
6 4 (1.41%) OpenStack
6 4 (1.41%) Oracle Workflow
7 3 (1.06%) CICS
7 3 (1.06%) JBoss
8 2 (0.70%) nginx
8 2 (0.70%) SharePoint
8 2 (0.70%) WebSphere Application Server
9 1 (0.35%) IIS
9 1 (0.35%) Tomcat
Applications
1 1 (0.35%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 6 (2.11%) Front Arena
1 6 (2.11%) Summit
2 4 (1.41%) Oracle Assets
2 4 (1.41%) Oracle EBS
2 4 (1.41%) Oracle E-Business Tax
2 4 (1.41%) Oracle FAH
2 4 (1.41%) Oracle General Ledger
2 4 (1.41%) Oracle Internet Expenses
2 4 (1.41%) Oracle iProcurement
2 4 (1.41%) Oracle Payables
2 4 (1.41%) Oracle Receivables
3 3 (1.06%) 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
1 108 (38.03%) AWS
2 66 (23.24%) GCP
3 62 (21.83%) Azure
4 53 (18.66%) GitHub
5 31 (10.92%) Serverless
6 26 (9.15%) AWS Lambda
7 21 (7.39%) Amazon S3
8 19 (6.69%) GitHub Actions
9 14 (4.93%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 14 (4.93%) Amazon EC2
10 12 (4.23%) dbt
10 12 (4.23%) GitHub Copilot
11 10 (3.52%) OpenShift
12 9 (3.17%) AWS CloudFormation
12 9 (3.17%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 9 (3.17%) Power Platform
12 9 (3.17%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 8 (2.82%) Amazon SQS
13 8 (2.82%) Datadog
14 7 (2.46%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 19 (6.69%) DNS
2 17 (5.99%) TCP/IP
3 13 (4.58%) HTTP
4 11 (3.87%) SSL
5 10 (3.52%) Firewall
6 7 (2.46%) Network Security
6 7 (2.46%) VPN
7 5 (1.76%) 5G
7 5 (1.76%) SAN
7 5 (1.76%) SSH
8 4 (1.41%) 4G
8 4 (1.41%) MQTT
9 3 (1.06%) BGP
9 3 (1.06%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
9 3 (1.06%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 3 (1.06%) Multicast
10 2 (0.70%) HTTPS
10 2 (0.70%) tcpdump
11 1 (0.35%) DHCP
11 1 (0.35%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (9.15%) Data Warehouse
1 26 (9.15%) Oracle Database
2 22 (7.75%) MySQL
3 21 (7.39%) MongoDB
4 19 (6.69%) Relational Database
5 18 (6.34%) Db2
6 17 (5.99%) PostgreSQL
7 16 (5.63%) NoSQL
8 15 (5.28%) SQL Server
9 12 (4.23%) PowerCenter
10 10 (3.52%) BigQuery
10 10 (3.52%) Oracle Reports
10 10 (3.52%) Redis
11 9 (3.17%) DynamoDB
11 9 (3.17%) Star Schema
12 8 (2.82%) Amazon RDS
12 8 (2.82%) Data Lake
12 8 (2.82%) Elasticsearch
12 8 (2.82%) Power BI
13 7 (2.46%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 88 (30.99%) Git
2 55 (19.37%) Jenkins
3 46 (16.20%) GitLab
4 34 (11.97%) Maven
5 22 (7.75%) JUnit
6 15 (5.28%) JIRA
7 14 (4.93%) Mockito
8 11 (3.87%) Claude Code
9 10 (3.52%) SonarQube
9 10 (3.52%) Sonatype Nexus
10 7 (2.46%) Gradle
11 6 (2.11%) Bitbucket
11 6 (2.11%) Selenium
12 5 (1.76%) Oracle Forms
13 4 (1.41%) Cucumber
13 4 (1.41%) JDeveloper
13 4 (1.41%) Visual Studio Code
14 3 (1.06%) Team Foundation Server
14 3 (1.06%) webpack
14 3 (1.06%) Xcode
General
1 94 (33.10%) Finance
2 57 (20.07%) Banking
3 45 (15.85%) Social Skills
4 42 (14.79%) Analytical Skills
5 20 (7.04%) Public Sector
6 17 (5.99%) Investment Banking
7 8 (2.82%) Telecoms
8 5 (1.76%) Documentation Skills
8 5 (1.76%) Retail
9 4 (1.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (1.06%) Aerospace
10 3 (1.06%) General Ledger
11 2 (0.70%) Financial Institution
11 2 (0.70%) Prime Brokerage
11 2 (0.70%) Publishing
12 1 (0.35%) Avionics
12 1 (0.35%) Electronics
12 1 (0.35%) Front Office
12 1 (0.35%) International Banking
12 1 (0.35%) Military
Job Titles
1 77 (27.11%) Developer
2 43 (15.14%) Senior
3 34 (11.97%) Python Developer
4 21 (7.39%) Senior Developer
5 20 (7.04%) Data Engineer
5 20 (7.04%) DevOps Engineer
5 20 (7.04%) Java Developer
6 19 (6.69%) Java Engineer
7 16 (5.63%) Cloud Engineer
8 15 (5.28%) GCP Engineer
9 14 (4.93%) Architect
10 13 (4.58%) Analyst
11 11 (3.87%) AWS Engineer
12 10 (3.52%) Lead
13 9 (3.17%) Software Engineer
13 9 (3.17%) Support Engineer
14 8 (2.82%) Administrator
14 8 (2.82%) Consultant
14 8 (2.82%) Senior Java Developer
14 8 (2.82%) Senior Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 74 (26.06%) Terraform
2 37 (13.03%) RESTful
3 35 (12.32%) REST
4 29 (10.21%) Spring
4 29 (10.21%) Spring Boot
5 28 (9.86%) Kafka
6 27 (9.51%) Flask
7 22 (7.75%) FastAPI
8 20 (7.04%) JSON
9 19 (6.69%) CSS
9 19 (6.69%) HTML
10 17 (5.99%) Pandas
11 16 (5.63%) Django
12 14 (4.93%) JPA
13 13 (4.58%) Middleware
13 13 (4.58%) Web Services
13 13 (4.58%) XML
14 12 (4.23%) OpenAPI
14 12 (4.23%) RabbitMQ
15 11 (3.87%) React
Miscellaneous
1 28 (9.86%) Linux Command Line
2 20 (7.04%) Cloud Native
3 15 (5.28%) Enterprise Software
4 14 (4.93%) Management Information System
5 10 (3.52%) Derivative
6 9 (3.17%) Fixed Income
7 8 (2.82%) Market Risk
8 7 (2.46%) Data Centre
8 7 (2.46%) Enterprise Cloud
8 7 (2.46%) Hybrid Cloud
8 7 (2.46%) Product Ownership
8 7 (2.46%) Replication
9 6 (2.11%) AI Agents
9 6 (2.11%) Algorithms
9 6 (2.11%) Distributed Systems
9 6 (2.11%) Legacy Systems
9 6 (2.11%) Mainframe
9 6 (2.11%) Onboarding
9 6 (2.11%) Public Cloud
10 5 (1.76%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 159 (55.99%) Linux
2 115 (40.49%) Unix
3 23 (8.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 19 (6.69%) Windows
5 12 (4.23%) Solaris
6 6 (2.11%) AIX
7 4 (1.41%) SUSE
7 4 (1.41%) VMS
7 4 (1.41%) Windows Server
7 4 (1.41%) zOS
8 3 (1.06%) Apple iOS
8 3 (1.06%) CentOS
9 2 (0.70%) HPUX
9 2 (0.70%) Rocky
9 2 (0.70%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
9 2 (0.70%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.35%) Amazon Linux
10 1 (0.35%) macOS
10 1 (0.35%) Oracle Linux
10 1 (0.35%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 133 (46.83%) CI/CD
2 83 (29.23%) DevOps
3 72 (25.35%) Infrastructure as Code
4 70 (24.65%) Containerisation
5 58 (20.42%) Agile
6 54 (19.01%) AI
7 50 (17.61%) Problem-Solving
8 45 (15.85%) Data Pipeline
9 43 (15.14%) Performance Tuning
10 41 (14.44%) Migration
11 38 (13.38%) Code Quality
11 38 (13.38%) Root Cause Analysis
12 37 (13.03%) Observability
13 34 (11.97%) Continuous Improvement
14 33 (11.62%) ETL
14 33 (11.62%) Microservices
14 33 (11.62%) SDLC
14 33 (11.62%) Test Automation
14 33 (11.62%) Validation
15 32 (11.27%) Batch Processing
Programming Languages
1 156 (54.93%) Python
2 148 (52.11%) SQL
3 85 (29.93%) Java
4 70 (24.65%) Bash
5 35 (12.32%) PL/SQL
6 26 (9.15%) PowerShell
7 23 (8.10%) JavaScript
8 17 (5.99%) Groovy
9 14 (4.93%) Perl
10 9 (3.17%) Korn
10 9 (3.17%) TypeScript
11 8 (2.82%) Go
12 7 (2.46%) T-SQL
13 6 (2.11%) C#
13 6 (2.11%) Scala
14 4 (1.41%) JCL
14 4 (1.41%) Ruby
14 4 (1.41%) Rust
15 3 (1.06%) Cypher
15 3 (1.06%) Swift
Qualifications
1 81 (28.52%) Security Cleared
2 56 (19.72%) SC Cleared
3 30 (10.56%) Degree
4 26 (9.15%) BPSS Clearance
5 13 (4.58%) DV Cleared
6 12 (4.23%) Computer Science Degree
7 10 (3.52%) Master's Degree
8 6 (2.11%) AWS Certification
9 2 (0.70%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 2 (0.70%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.70%) Cisco Certification
9 2 (0.70%) CISSP
10 1 (0.35%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 1 (0.35%) CCNA
10 1 (0.35%) CISM
10 1 (0.35%) GIAC
10 1 (0.35%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
10 1 (0.35%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 1 (0.35%) Oracle Certification
10 1 (0.35%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (13.03%) Data Quality
2 20 (7.04%) QA
3 6 (2.11%) Accessibility
4 5 (1.76%) Basel III
4 5 (1.76%) SLA
5 3 (1.06%) Disclosure Scotland
5 3 (1.06%) ISO 20022
6 2 (0.70%) ISO 15022
7 1 (0.35%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 1 (0.35%) DO-254
7 1 (0.35%) GDPR
7 1 (0.35%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.35%) NIST
7 1 (0.35%) SEPA
System Software
1 75 (26.41%) Docker
2 8 (2.82%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (2.46%) Active Directory
4 6 (2.11%) zsh
5 4 (1.41%) Oracle RAC
5 4 (1.41%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (1.06%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.70%) KVM
7 2 (0.70%) NFS
7 2 (0.70%) vSphere
8 1 (0.35%) HDFS
8 1 (0.35%) Postfix
8 1 (0.35%) Sendmail
8 1 (0.35%) Varnish
8 1 (0.35%) Veritas Cluster Server
8 1 (0.35%) Veritas Volume Manager
Systems Management
1 92 (32.39%) Kubernetes
2 58 (20.42%) Ansible
3 34 (11.97%) Grafana
4 26 (9.15%) Prometheus
5 13 (4.58%) Kibana
6 10 (3.52%) Control-M
7 8 (2.82%) Podman
8 6 (2.11%) Puppet
9 5 (1.76%) Data Guard
9 5 (1.76%) Oracle RMAN
9 5 (1.76%) Single Sign-On
10 4 (1.41%) HP ALM
10 4 (1.41%) NetBackup
10 4 (1.41%) Packer
11 3 (1.06%) Check_MK
11 3 (1.06%) Consul
11 3 (1.06%) ITRS Geneos
11 3 (1.06%) logstash
11 3 (1.06%) Netcool
11 3 (1.06%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 75 (26.41%) Oracle
2 39 (13.73%) Google
3 25 (8.80%) Splunk
4 20 (7.04%) IBM
5 16 (5.63%) Microsoft
5 16 (5.63%) Red Hat
6 14 (4.93%) Informatica
7 10 (3.52%) Sybase
8 9 (3.17%) New Relic
8 9 (3.17%) ServiceNow
8 9 (3.17%) VMware
9 8 (2.82%) Dynatrace
9 8 (2.82%) HP
10 7 (2.46%) Checkmarx
10 7 (2.46%) Murex
11 6 (2.11%) AppDynamics
11 6 (2.11%) Calypso
11 6 (2.11%) FIS
11 6 (2.11%) Tenable
11 6 (2.11%) Teradata