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

6 months to
23 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 401 269 301
Rank change year-on-year -132 +32 -62
Contract jobs citing Shell Script 243 278 310
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.50% 0.97% 0.73%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.87% 2.85% 2.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 167 158 222
10th Percentile £325 £359 £337
25th Percentile £400 £443 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £467 £520 £504
Median % change year-on-year -10.18% +3.18% -7.57%
75th Percentile £538 £600 £622
90th Percentile £628 £650 £709
UK excluding London median daily rate £457 £500 £472
% change year-on-year -8.60% +5.93% -12.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 15 8
10th Percentile £29.85 £66.20 £59.73
25th Percentile £36.00 - £64.19
Median hourly rate £47.50 £68.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -30.15% +4.62% +0.97%
75th Percentile £51.25 £72.13 £67.69
90th Percentile £52.75 £87.25 £76.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £68.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -30.15% +4.62% +5.58%

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 13,001 9,764 12,749
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.76% 34.13% 30.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,515 6,648 9,087
10th Percentile £356 £356 £350
25th Percentile £415 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £518 £530
Median % change year-on-year -3.45% -2.29% -3.64%
75th Percentile £600 £630 £650
90th Percentile £713 £763 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +1.68% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 564 218 497
10th Percentile £36.33 £26.45 £32.25
25th Percentile £53.69 £34.81 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -8.00% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £78.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +4.00% - -

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 23 May 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 23 May 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 23 May 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 -111 208 £475 -9.52% 45
UK excluding London -143 119 £457 -8.60% 26
London -70 95 £510 -7.27% 21
Work from Home -73 63 £500 -2.06% 23
South East -62 31 £396 -34.00% 10
Midlands -60 28 £467 +1.56% 3
West Midlands -52 27 £467 +1.48% 2
North of England -86 26 £460 -8.00% 6
East of England -21 25 £470 +44.62% 3
North West -39 12 £450 -13.42% 3
Yorkshire -74 12 £480 -4.00% 2
Scotland -54 4 - -
South West -49 2 £638 +22.30% 3
Northern Ireland - 2 £190 -
Wales -11 1 £345 - 1
East Midlands -30 1 £525 +10.53% 1
North East - 1 £413 - 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 14 (5.76%) Apache
2 11 (4.53%) Confluence
3 7 (2.88%) Apache Airflow
3 7 (2.88%) Apache Spark
4 4 (1.65%) CICS
4 4 (1.65%) WebLogic
5 3 (1.23%) JBoss
5 3 (1.23%) nginx
5 3 (1.23%) Tomcat
5 3 (1.23%) WebSphere
5 3 (1.23%) WebSphere Application Server
6 2 (0.82%) ArcGIS
6 2 (0.82%) Oracle Spatial
6 2 (0.82%) Oracle Workflow
6 2 (0.82%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.41%) IBM HTTP Server
7 1 (0.41%) SAS
Applications
1 7 (2.88%) Notepad++
2 2 (0.82%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 3 (1.23%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (0.41%) Oracle 11i
2 1 (0.41%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.41%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 90 (37.04%) AWS
2 49 (20.16%) Azure
3 43 (17.70%) GitHub
4 36 (14.81%) GitHub Actions
5 33 (13.58%) Serverless
6 26 (10.70%) Amazon S3
7 24 (9.88%) Amazon EC2
8 23 (9.47%) AWS Lambda
9 20 (8.23%) OpenShift
10 16 (6.58%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 16 (6.58%) Amazon EKS
11 13 (5.35%) AWS CloudFormation
11 13 (5.35%) Azure DevOps
12 10 (4.12%) GCP
12 10 (4.12%) PaaS
13 9 (3.70%) AWS CodePipeline
13 9 (3.70%) IaaS
14 8 (3.29%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 6 (2.47%) Azure AKS
15 6 (2.47%) Pulumi
Communications & Networking
1 11 (4.53%) DNS
1 11 (4.53%) SSH
2 9 (3.70%) SAN
3 7 (2.88%) PuTTY
3 7 (2.88%) TCP/IP
3 7 (2.88%) WinSCP
4 6 (2.47%) Network Security
5 5 (2.06%) Firewall
6 3 (1.23%) HTTP
6 3 (1.23%) HTTPS
6 3 (1.23%) NAS
6 3 (1.23%) Reverse Proxy
7 2 (0.82%) AMQP
7 2 (0.82%) iSCSI
7 2 (0.82%) Multicast
7 2 (0.82%) OpenVPN
7 2 (0.82%) VPN
8 1 (0.41%) BIG-IP
8 1 (0.41%) IPsec
8 1 (0.41%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (10.70%) SQL Server
2 22 (9.05%) Oracle Database
3 20 (8.23%) PostgreSQL
4 19 (7.82%) Relational Database
5 18 (7.41%) MongoDB
6 16 (6.58%) Data Warehouse
7 14 (5.76%) Amazon RDS
8 13 (5.35%) Metadata
9 8 (3.29%) DB2
10 7 (2.88%) Amazon Aurora
10 7 (2.88%) BusinessObjects
10 7 (2.88%) MySQL
11 6 (2.47%) Data Mart
11 6 (2.47%) DynamoDB
11 6 (2.47%) NoSQL
11 6 (2.47%) Oracle Reports
12 5 (2.06%) Data Lake
12 5 (2.06%) KDB
12 5 (2.06%) Kdb+
12 5 (2.06%) Oracle Database 12c
Development Applications
1 61 (25.10%) Jenkins
2 45 (18.52%) GitLab
3 43 (17.70%) Git
4 22 (9.05%) JIRA
5 7 (2.88%) Maven
6 5 (2.06%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 5 (2.06%) JMeter
6 5 (2.06%) JUnit
6 5 (2.06%) Mockito
6 5 (2.06%) SonarQube
6 5 (2.06%) Sonatype Nexus
7 4 (1.65%) Bitbucket
7 4 (1.65%) PyCharm
7 4 (1.65%) PyUnit
8 3 (1.23%) Artifactory
8 3 (1.23%) CircleCI
8 3 (1.23%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.82%) Gatling
9 2 (0.82%) Gradle
9 2 (0.82%) Postman
General
1 55 (22.63%) Social Skills
2 51 (20.99%) Finance
3 37 (15.23%) Banking
4 28 (11.52%) Public Sector
5 16 (6.58%) Analytical Skills
6 12 (4.94%) Documentation Skills
7 10 (4.12%) Front Office
7 10 (4.12%) Investment Banking
7 10 (4.12%) Retail
8 8 (3.29%) Aerospace
9 5 (2.06%) Advertising
10 3 (1.23%) Law
10 3 (1.23%) Local Government
11 2 (0.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.82%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.82%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.41%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.41%) Military
12 1 (0.41%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.41%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 62 (25.51%) Developer
2 30 (12.35%) Data Engineer
3 24 (9.88%) Administrator
3 24 (9.88%) Java Developer
4 21 (8.64%) Senior
5 20 (8.23%) Python Developer
6 18 (7.41%) DBA
7 17 (7.00%) Linux Administrator
8 16 (6.58%) DevOps Engineer
9 15 (6.17%) Oracle DBA
9 15 (6.17%) Support Engineer
10 12 (4.94%) Analyst
10 12 (4.94%) AWS Engineer
11 11 (4.53%) AWS DevOps
12 10 (4.12%) Database Engineer
12 10 (4.12%) Site Engineer
12 10 (4.12%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 9 (3.70%) AWS DevOps Engineer
13 9 (3.70%) Support Analyst
13 9 (3.70%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (8.23%) RESTful
2 17 (7.00%) Middleware
3 15 (6.17%) Kafka
3 15 (6.17%) LDAP
3 15 (6.17%) Oracle GoldenGate
4 14 (5.76%) JSON
5 12 (4.94%) Node.js
5 12 (4.94%) Spring
6 11 (4.53%) Elastic Stack
6 11 (4.53%) Spring Boot
7 9 (3.70%) Django
7 9 (3.70%) FastAPI
8 8 (3.29%) AWS CDK
8 8 (3.29%) Flask
8 8 (3.29%) Pandas
8 8 (3.29%) React
8 8 (3.29%) REST
9 7 (2.88%) .NET
9 7 (2.88%) Polars
9 7 (2.88%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 22 (9.05%) Management Information System
2 17 (7.00%) Cloud Native
3 16 (6.58%) Data Centre
4 13 (5.35%) Linux Command Line
5 8 (3.29%) Fixed Income
6 7 (2.88%) Hedge funds
6 7 (2.88%) Public Cloud
7 6 (2.47%) Data Structures
7 6 (2.47%) Enterprise Software
7 6 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
7 6 (2.47%) Mainframe
8 5 (2.06%) Data Protection Act
8 5 (2.06%) Derivative
8 5 (2.06%) Distributed Systems
8 5 (2.06%) Equities
8 5 (2.06%) Legacy Code
8 5 (2.06%) Self-Motivation
8 5 (2.06%) Virtual Team
9 4 (1.65%) DataPower
9 4 (1.65%) Market Risk
Operating Systems
1 155 (63.79%) Linux
2 99 (40.74%) Unix
3 38 (15.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 24 (9.88%) Windows
5 13 (5.35%) CentOS
6 6 (2.47%) Windows Server
7 5 (2.06%) Apple iOS
7 5 (2.06%) zOS
8 4 (1.65%) Android
8 4 (1.65%) Ubuntu
9 2 (0.82%) AIX
9 2 (0.82%) Debian
9 2 (0.82%) OpenVMS
9 2 (0.82%) Solaris
9 2 (0.82%) VMS
10 1 (0.41%) Amazon Linux
10 1 (0.41%) Embedded Linux
10 1 (0.41%) Oracle Linux
10 1 (0.41%) Windows Server 2008
10 1 (0.41%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 98 (40.33%) CI/CD
2 64 (26.34%) DevOps
3 56 (23.05%) Problem-Solving
4 53 (21.81%) Agile
5 43 (17.70%) Infrastructure as Code
6 40 (16.46%) Performance Tuning
7 38 (15.64%) Containerisation
8 34 (13.99%) Migration
9 30 (12.35%) Analytics
10 24 (9.88%) Microservices
10 24 (9.88%) Observability
11 23 (9.47%) High Availability
11 23 (9.47%) Task Automation
12 22 (9.05%) ITIL
13 21 (8.64%) Data Pipeline
13 21 (8.64%) Performance Optimisation
14 20 (8.23%) ETL
14 20 (8.23%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 20 (8.23%) Software Engineering
15 19 (7.82%) Configuration Management
Programming Languages
1 116 (47.74%) SQL
2 105 (43.21%) Python
3 70 (28.81%) Java
4 30 (12.35%) PL/SQL
5 23 (9.47%) Bash
5 23 (9.47%) JavaScript
6 18 (7.41%) Korn
7 12 (4.94%) Perl
8 11 (4.53%) MATLAB
8 11 (4.53%) TypeScript
9 9 (3.70%) C#
9 9 (3.70%) PowerShell
10 8 (3.29%) C++
11 7 (2.88%) C
11 7 (2.88%) Go
12 5 (2.06%) Groovy
12 5 (2.06%) Ruby
13 4 (1.65%) JCL
13 4 (1.65%) ProC
14 2 (0.82%) VBA
Qualifications
1 96 (39.51%) Security Cleared
2 83 (34.16%) SC Cleared
3 20 (8.23%) Degree
4 16 (6.58%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (4.12%) Computer Science Degree
6 9 (3.70%) Oracle Certification
7 8 (3.29%) DV Cleared
8 5 (2.06%) Master's Degree
8 5 (2.06%) OCP
9 3 (1.23%) Azure Certification
9 3 (1.23%) CISSP
10 1 (0.41%) AWS Certification
10 1 (0.41%) AWS Certified Developer
10 1 (0.41%) CISM
10 1 (0.41%) ITIL Certification
10 1 (0.41%) MOS
10 1 (0.41%) PMI Certification
10 1 (0.41%) RHCA
10 1 (0.41%) RHCE
10 1 (0.41%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (7.41%) SLA
2 9 (3.70%) Data Quality
3 8 (3.29%) QA
4 6 (2.47%) GDPR
5 3 (1.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 3 (1.23%) FATCA
5 3 (1.23%) HIPAA
5 3 (1.23%) NIST
6 1 (0.41%) Accessibility
6 1 (0.41%) DICOM
6 1 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 53 (21.81%) Docker
2 15 (6.17%) Oracle RAC
3 14 (5.76%) Active Directory
4 8 (3.29%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (2.06%) Postfix
5 5 (2.06%) Varnish
5 5 (2.06%) VMware Infrastructure
6 4 (1.65%) NFS
6 4 (1.65%) Sendmail
7 3 (1.23%) GridGain
8 2 (0.82%) HDFS
8 2 (0.82%) SRDF
9 1 (0.41%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 1 (0.41%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 52 (21.40%) Kubernetes
2 48 (19.75%) Terraform
3 47 (19.34%) Ansible
4 26 (10.70%) Grafana
5 25 (10.29%) Prometheus
6 22 (9.05%) Oracle RMAN
7 17 (7.00%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 13 (5.35%) Podman
9 12 (4.94%) Red Hat Satellite
10 11 (4.53%) Check_MK
11 10 (4.12%) Progress Chef
12 8 (3.29%) Data Guard
13 7 (2.88%) Puppet
14 5 (2.06%) HAProxy
15 4 (1.65%) Kibana
16 3 (1.23%) Docker Swarm
17 2 (0.82%) Argo
17 2 (0.82%) Packer
17 2 (0.82%) systemd
17 2 (0.82%) Thomson Reuters DACS
Vendors
1 86 (35.39%) Oracle
2 40 (16.46%) Red Hat
3 19 (7.82%) VMware
4 14 (5.76%) Microsoft
5 11 (4.53%) Murex
6 8 (3.29%) Informatica
6 8 (3.29%) Splunk
6 8 (3.29%) Sybase
7 7 (2.88%) IBM
8 6 (2.47%) ServiceNow
8 6 (2.47%) Talend
9 5 (2.06%) Cloudera
9 5 (2.06%) Databricks
9 5 (2.06%) Dynatrace
9 5 (2.06%) Veritas
10 4 (1.65%) Dell
10 4 (1.65%) Hortonworks
10 4 (1.65%) Solace
11 3 (1.23%) CyberArk
11 3 (1.23%) New Relic