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

6 months to
13 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 352 298 309
Rank change year-on-year -54 +11 -61
Contract jobs citing Shell Script 282 249 312
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.66% 0.85% 0.70%
As % of the Programming Languages category 2.25% 2.48% 2.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 193 126 210
10th Percentile £325 £360 £362
25th Percentile £392 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £520 £508
Median % change year-on-year -13.46% +2.31% -5.88%
75th Percentile £538 £607 £629
90th Percentile £605 £681 £714
UK excluding London median daily rate £455 £496 £465
% change year-on-year -8.27% +6.67% -13.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 10 9
10th Percentile £55.70 £63.35 £48.16
25th Percentile £65.00 £65.75 £61.25
Median hourly rate £68.00 £70.25 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.20% +8.08% +23.81%
75th Percentile - £89.69 -
90th Percentile - £94.13 £76.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.00 £66.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +2.26% +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 12,548 10,051 12,959
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 29.30% 34.11% 29.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,338 6,636 9,140
10th Percentile £354 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £423 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -5.75%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £719 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £488
% change year-on-year -2.56% - -3.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 490 240 501
10th Percentile £41.55 £21.25 £30.63
25th Percentile £54.14 £35.00 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -6.80%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £67.38
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.75 £61.60
% change year-on-year +1.97% +3.48% -5.23%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 -42 233 £460 -12.38% 46
UK excluding London -73 147 £455 -8.27% 30
London -48 93 £454 -13.52% 22
Work from Home -35 85 £454 -12.69% 22
Midlands -46 39 £480 +4.35% 5
West Midlands -43 37 £480 +4.35% 3
South East -39 30 £392 -25.33% 16
North of England -60 28 £460 -21.70% 4
East of England -16 19 £440 -5.68% 3
South West -19 19 £525 -4.55% 2
Yorkshire -53 18 £460 -21.37% 1
Scotland -26 12 £402 -14.47%
North West -33 9 £453 -24.50% 3
Wales -6 2 £305 - 2
East Midlands -32 2 £475 +33.43% 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 (4.26%) Confluence
2 10 (3.55%) Apache
3 9 (3.19%) Apache Spark
4 5 (1.77%) Apache Airflow
4 5 (1.77%) WebLogic
5 3 (1.06%) JBoss
5 3 (1.06%) nginx
5 3 (1.06%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.71%) ArcGIS
6 2 (0.71%) CICS
6 2 (0.71%) Oracle Spatial
6 2 (0.71%) Oracle Workflow
6 2 (0.71%) SAS
6 2 (0.71%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.71%) WebSphere
6 2 (0.71%) WebSphere Application Server
7 1 (0.35%) IBM HTTP Server
7 1 (0.35%) IIS
7 1 (0.35%) iPlanet
7 1 (0.35%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 5 (1.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (1.06%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 5 (1.77%) Oracle Applications
2 4 (1.42%) Oracle EBS
3 3 (1.06%) Oracle 11i
3 3 (1.06%) Oracle EBS R12
3 3 (1.06%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.35%) ION MarketView
4 1 (0.35%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.35%) Oracle Cash Management
4 1 (0.35%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.35%) Oracle Receivables
4 1 (0.35%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 100 (35.46%) AWS
2 49 (17.38%) Azure
3 42 (14.89%) GitHub
4 29 (10.28%) Serverless
5 28 (9.93%) Amazon EC2
5 28 (9.93%) Amazon S3
5 28 (9.93%) OpenShift
6 24 (8.51%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 23 (8.16%) GitHub Actions
8 20 (7.09%) AWS Lambda
9 17 (6.03%) Amazon EKS
9 17 (6.03%) AWS CloudFormation
10 12 (4.26%) Azure DevOps
11 11 (3.90%) GCP
12 8 (2.84%) PaaS
13 7 (2.48%) Amazon ECS
13 7 (2.48%) Azure AKS
13 7 (2.48%) Pulumi
13 7 (2.48%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 6 (2.13%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 18 (6.38%) SSH
2 9 (3.19%) DNS
3 8 (2.84%) SAN
4 6 (2.13%) Network Security
4 6 (2.13%) TCP/IP
5 5 (1.77%) Firewall
6 3 (1.06%) HTTP
6 3 (1.06%) Reverse Proxy
7 2 (0.71%) HTTPS
7 2 (0.71%) iSCSI
7 2 (0.71%) Kerberos
7 2 (0.71%) NAS
7 2 (0.71%) OpenVPN
8 1 (0.35%) AMQP
8 1 (0.35%) BIG-IP
8 1 (0.35%) DHCP
8 1 (0.35%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (12.06%) MongoDB
2 30 (10.64%) Oracle Database
3 24 (8.51%) Amazon RDS
4 22 (7.80%) Relational Database
5 19 (6.74%) PostgreSQL
6 18 (6.38%) SQL Server
7 15 (5.32%) Data Warehouse
8 13 (4.61%) MySQL
9 12 (4.26%) NoSQL
10 10 (3.55%) DB2
11 8 (2.84%) Big Data
11 8 (2.84%) Metadata
12 7 (2.48%) DynamoDB
13 6 (2.13%) Data Mart
13 6 (2.13%) Hadoop
14 5 (1.77%) InfluxDB
14 5 (1.77%) Oracle Reports
15 4 (1.42%) Data Lake
15 4 (1.42%) Oracle Database 12c
15 4 (1.42%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 64 (22.70%) Jenkins
2 49 (17.38%) GitLab
3 35 (12.41%) Git
4 25 (8.87%) JIRA
5 15 (5.32%) JUnit
6 7 (2.48%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 7 (2.48%) Mockito
7 6 (2.13%) PyCharm
7 6 (2.13%) PyUnit
8 5 (1.77%) Maven
9 4 (1.42%) JMeter
9 4 (1.42%) Subversion
10 3 (1.06%) Artifactory
10 3 (1.06%) Bitbucket
10 3 (1.06%) CircleCI
10 3 (1.06%) Postman
10 3 (1.06%) Selenium
10 3 (1.06%) SonarQube
10 3 (1.06%) Terragrunt
11 2 (0.71%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 79 (28.01%) Social Skills
2 41 (14.54%) Finance
3 35 (12.41%) Banking
4 34 (12.06%) Analytical Skills
5 31 (10.99%) Public Sector
6 15 (5.32%) Investment Banking
7 11 (3.90%) Front Office
8 9 (3.19%) Retail
9 7 (2.48%) Documentation Skills
10 6 (2.13%) Aerospace
11 4 (1.42%) Advertising
11 4 (1.42%) Law
11 4 (1.42%) Telecoms
12 3 (1.06%) Local Government
12 3 (1.06%) Manufacturing
12 3 (1.06%) Military
13 2 (0.71%) Organisational Skills
14 1 (0.35%) Aviation
14 1 (0.35%) Marketing
14 1 (0.35%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 75 (26.60%) Developer
2 35 (12.41%) Java Developer
3 26 (9.22%) Support Engineer
4 24 (8.51%) Senior
5 20 (7.09%) Administrator
5 20 (7.09%) DBA
5 20 (7.09%) DevOps Engineer
6 18 (6.38%) Oracle DBA
6 18 (6.38%) Site Reliability Engineer
7 17 (6.03%) Data Engineer
7 17 (6.03%) Site Engineer
8 15 (5.32%) AWS Engineer
9 12 (4.26%) AWS DevOps
9 12 (4.26%) Product Engineer
9 12 (4.26%) Products Support Engineer
9 12 (4.26%) Software Support Engineer
10 11 (3.90%) Consultant
10 11 (3.90%) Linux Administrator
11 10 (3.55%) AWS DevOps Engineer
11 10 (3.55%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (9.93%) Kafka
2 23 (8.16%) Spring
3 22 (7.80%) Middleware
4 21 (7.45%) Node.js
5 18 (6.38%) Elastic Stack
6 15 (5.32%) REST
6 15 (5.32%) Spring Boot
7 14 (4.96%) Oracle GoldenGate
7 14 (4.96%) RESTful
8 12 (4.26%) JSON
9 11 (3.90%) LDAP
10 10 (3.55%) OpenAPI
10 10 (3.55%) SOAP
11 9 (3.19%) XML
12 8 (2.84%) JMS
13 7 (2.48%) AWS CDK
13 7 (2.48%) pytest
13 7 (2.48%) XSD
14 6 (2.13%) Lambda Expressions
14 6 (2.13%) React
Miscellaneous
1 21 (7.45%) Cloud Native
2 16 (5.67%) Management Information System
3 13 (4.61%) Equities
4 12 (4.26%) Data Centre
4 12 (4.26%) Data Structures
5 7 (2.48%) Enterprise Cloud
6 6 (2.13%) Data Protection Act
6 6 (2.13%) DataPower
6 6 (2.13%) Legacy Systems
6 6 (2.13%) Mainframe
7 5 (1.77%) Distributed Systems
7 5 (1.77%) Legacy Applications
7 5 (1.77%) Legacy Code
7 5 (1.77%) Linux Command Line
8 4 (1.42%) Clustering
8 4 (1.42%) Derivative
8 4 (1.42%) Enterprise Software
8 4 (1.42%) Equity Derivative
8 4 (1.42%) Fixed Income
8 4 (1.42%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 185 (65.60%) Linux
2 94 (33.33%) Unix
3 38 (13.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 24 (8.51%) Windows
5 16 (5.67%) Ubuntu
6 11 (3.90%) CentOS
7 6 (2.13%) Android
7 6 (2.13%) Apple iOS
8 5 (1.77%) Windows Server
9 4 (1.42%) VMS
10 3 (1.06%) AIX
11 2 (0.71%) Debian
11 2 (0.71%) OpenVMS
11 2 (0.71%) zOS
12 1 (0.35%) Amazon Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 107 (37.94%) CI/CD
2 81 (28.72%) Agile
2 81 (28.72%) Problem-Solving
3 55 (19.50%) DevOps
4 44 (15.60%) Containerisation
4 44 (15.60%) Infrastructure as Code
4 44 (15.60%) Performance Tuning
5 33 (11.70%) Software Engineering
6 32 (11.35%) Task Automation
7 30 (10.64%) SDLC
8 29 (10.28%) Observability
9 27 (9.57%) ITIL
10 26 (9.22%) Continuous Improvement
10 26 (9.22%) Data Modelling
10 26 (9.22%) Migration
11 25 (8.87%) Microservices
12 24 (8.51%) Analytics
13 23 (8.16%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 23 (8.16%) Scrum
14 22 (7.80%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 121 (42.91%) SQL
2 116 (41.13%) Python
3 96 (34.04%) Java
4 43 (15.25%) JavaScript
5 22 (7.80%) Bash
6 20 (7.09%) PL/SQL
7 19 (6.74%) C++
7 19 (6.74%) Korn
8 17 (6.03%) C
8 17 (6.03%) TypeScript
9 14 (4.96%) Perl
10 12 (4.26%) Ada
11 11 (3.90%) Go
12 7 (2.48%) MATLAB
12 7 (2.48%) PowerShell
13 6 (2.13%) Groovy
14 5 (1.77%) ProC
15 3 (1.06%) JCL
15 3 (1.06%) PHP
16 2 (0.71%) VBA
Qualifications
1 109 (38.65%) Security Cleared
2 89 (31.56%) SC Cleared
3 23 (8.16%) BPSS Clearance
4 21 (7.45%) Degree
5 15 (5.32%) DV Cleared
6 14 (4.96%) Computer Science Degree
7 7 (2.48%) OCP
7 7 (2.48%) Oracle Certification
8 3 (1.06%) Azure Certification
8 3 (1.06%) Master's Degree
9 2 (0.71%) CISSP
10 1 (0.35%) AWS Certification
10 1 (0.35%) AWS Certified Developer
10 1 (0.35%) CISM
10 1 (0.35%) ITIL Certification
10 1 (0.35%) MOS
10 1 (0.35%) PMI Certification
10 1 (0.35%) RHCA
10 1 (0.35%) RHCE
10 1 (0.35%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (6.38%) SLA
2 16 (5.67%) Data Quality
3 9 (3.19%) QA
4 6 (2.13%) GDPR
5 3 (1.06%) FATCA
6 2 (0.71%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 2 (0.71%) HIPAA
6 2 (0.71%) NCSC
6 2 (0.71%) NIST
7 1 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 54 (19.15%) Docker
2 13 (4.61%) Oracle RAC
3 10 (3.55%) Active Directory
4 9 (3.19%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.71%) HDFS
5 2 (0.71%) KVM
5 2 (0.71%) Postfix
5 2 (0.71%) SRDF
5 2 (0.71%) Varnish
5 2 (0.71%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.35%) Apache ZooKeeper
6 1 (0.35%) NFS
6 1 (0.35%) Sendmail
6 1 (0.35%) Tivoli Directory Server
Systems Management
1 67 (23.76%) Kubernetes
2 58 (20.57%) Terraform
3 45 (15.96%) Ansible
4 36 (12.77%) Grafana
5 34 (12.06%) Prometheus
6 18 (6.38%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
7 17 (6.03%) Progress Chef
8 16 (5.67%) Oracle RMAN
9 13 (4.61%) Red Hat Satellite
10 8 (2.84%) Podman
10 8 (2.84%) Puppet
11 7 (2.48%) Check_MK
12 5 (1.77%) Dell DRAC
13 4 (1.42%) Kibana
14 3 (1.06%) Data Guard
14 3 (1.06%) Docker Swarm
15 2 (0.71%) Jamf Pro
15 2 (0.71%) Sysdig
15 2 (0.71%) systemd
15 2 (0.71%) Thomson Reuters DACS
Vendors
1 79 (28.01%) Oracle
2 47 (16.67%) Red Hat
3 21 (7.45%) Splunk
4 19 (6.74%) Microsoft
5 13 (4.61%) VMware
6 12 (4.26%) Sybase
7 11 (3.90%) Dell
8 10 (3.55%) Murex
8 10 (3.55%) ServiceNow
9 8 (2.84%) IBM
10 6 (2.13%) MuleSoft
11 5 (1.77%) Dynatrace
11 5 (1.77%) Informatica
11 5 (1.77%) Talend
12 4 (1.42%) Cloudera
12 4 (1.42%) CyberArk
12 4 (1.42%) Databricks
13 3 (1.06%) AppDynamics
13 3 (1.06%) Broadcom
13 3 (1.06%) Pure Storage