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

6 months to
24 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 401 272 274
Rank change year-on-year -129 +2 -29
Contract jobs citing Shell Script 244 289 350
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.48% 0.96% 0.81%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.78% 2.84% 2.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 160 170 245
10th Percentile £325 £324 £324
25th Percentile £392 £416 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £467 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -6.57% - -7.06%
75th Percentile £538 £600 £606
90th Percentile £632 £646 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £455 £490 £450
% change year-on-year -7.14% +8.83% -14.24%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 13 8
10th Percentile £28.30 £65.60 £59.73
25th Percentile £32.13 - £64.19
Median hourly rate £39.50 £68.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -41.91% +4.62% -6.31%
75th Percentile £47.13 - £67.69
90th Percentile £51.10 £75.60 £76.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £68.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -41.91% +4.62% -5.45%

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 13,697 10,171 13,188
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.91% 33.87% 30.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,913 6,897 9,255
10th Percentile £358 £350 £350
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £608 £625 £650
90th Percentile £720 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 555 239 553
10th Percentile £35.00 £25.65 £31.25
25th Percentile £53.53 £33.91 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -12.00% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £83.27 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £61.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +5.69% -5.38% +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 24 June 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 24 June 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 24 June 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 -119 213 £470 -8.94% 29
UK excluding London -148 119 £455 -7.14% 29
London -73 100 £518 -3.72% 8
Work from Home -86 57 £488 +2.63% 15
South East -53 32 £396 -34.00% 8
Midlands -42 28 £467 +1.56% 3
West Midlands -43 27 £467 -2.74% 3
East of England -21 25 £470 +44.62% 3
North of England -98 25 £500 +1.46% 9
Yorkshire -63 14 £500 - 1
North West -58 9 £450 +12.50% 7
Scotland -63 3 £493 +3.68% 2
Wales -13 2 £305 +7.96% 3
South West -46 2 £556 +6.71% 3
Northern Ireland - 2 £190 -
East Midlands -19 1 £525 +45.83%
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 13 (5.33%) Apache
2 12 (4.92%) Confluence
3 8 (3.28%) Apache Airflow
4 7 (2.87%) Apache Spark
5 6 (2.46%) CICS
6 4 (1.64%) WebLogic
7 3 (1.23%) nginx
7 3 (1.23%) WebSphere
7 3 (1.23%) WebSphere Application Server
8 2 (0.82%) ArcGIS
8 2 (0.82%) JBoss
8 2 (0.82%) Oracle Spatial
8 2 (0.82%) Oracle Workflow
8 2 (0.82%) SharePoint
8 2 (0.82%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.41%) IBM HTTP Server
9 1 (0.41%) SAS
Applications
1 7 (2.87%) Notepad++
2 2 (0.82%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (0.41%) FLEXCUBE
1 1 (0.41%) Oracle ERP
1 1 (0.41%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 76 (31.15%) AWS
2 44 (18.03%) Azure
3 38 (15.57%) GitHub
4 35 (14.34%) Serverless
5 31 (12.70%) GitHub Actions
6 23 (9.43%) AWS Lambda
7 22 (9.02%) Amazon S3
8 20 (8.20%) Amazon EC2
8 20 (8.20%) OpenShift
9 16 (6.56%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 16 (6.56%) GCP
10 13 (5.33%) Azure DevOps
11 11 (4.51%) Amazon EKS
12 10 (4.10%) AWS CloudFormation
12 10 (4.10%) Power Platform
13 8 (3.28%) PaaS
13 8 (3.28%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 7 (2.87%) AWS CodePipeline
15 6 (2.46%) Azure Key Vault
15 6 (2.46%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 9 (3.69%) DNS
2 8 (3.28%) Network Security
2 8 (3.28%) SAN
3 7 (2.87%) PuTTY
3 7 (2.87%) WinSCP
4 5 (2.05%) SSH
5 4 (1.64%) MQTT
6 3 (1.23%) Firewall
6 3 (1.23%) HTTPS
6 3 (1.23%) NAS
6 3 (1.23%) Reverse Proxy
6 3 (1.23%) SSL
6 3 (1.23%) VPN
7 2 (0.82%) AMQP
7 2 (0.82%) HTTP
7 2 (0.82%) iSCSI
7 2 (0.82%) Multicast
7 2 (0.82%) OpenVPN
7 2 (0.82%) TCP/IP
8 1 (0.41%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (11.07%) SQL Server
2 23 (9.43%) Oracle Database
3 20 (8.20%) Relational Database
4 17 (6.97%) Data Warehouse
5 15 (6.15%) PostgreSQL
6 14 (5.74%) Metadata
6 14 (5.74%) MongoDB
7 13 (5.33%) Db2
8 12 (4.92%) MySQL
9 11 (4.51%) Amazon RDS
10 10 (4.10%) BusinessObjects
11 9 (3.69%) Data Lake
11 9 (3.69%) DynamoDB
12 7 (2.87%) Amazon Aurora
12 7 (2.87%) Elasticsearch
12 7 (2.87%) Power BI
13 6 (2.46%) Apache Cassandra
13 6 (2.46%) KDB
13 6 (2.46%) NoSQL
13 6 (2.46%) Oracle Database 12c
Development Applications
1 59 (24.18%) Jenkins
2 47 (19.26%) Git
3 43 (17.62%) GitLab
4 17 (6.97%) JIRA
5 10 (4.10%) JUnit
6 9 (3.69%) Maven
7 8 (3.28%) SonarQube
8 6 (2.46%) Mockito
9 5 (2.05%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 5 (2.05%) Bitbucket
10 4 (1.64%) JMeter
10 4 (1.64%) Sonatype Nexus
11 3 (1.23%) Artifactory
11 3 (1.23%) PyCharm
11 3 (1.23%) PyUnit
11 3 (1.23%) Terragrunt
11 3 (1.23%) Xcode
12 2 (0.82%) Gradle
13 1 (0.41%) git-flow
13 1 (0.41%) TeamCity
General
1 56 (22.95%) Finance
2 50 (20.49%) Social Skills
3 41 (16.80%) Banking
4 25 (10.25%) Public Sector
5 14 (5.74%) Analytical Skills
5 14 (5.74%) Documentation Skills
6 10 (4.10%) Investment Banking
6 10 (4.10%) Retail
7 9 (3.69%) Front Office
8 8 (3.28%) Aerospace
9 5 (2.05%) Advertising
10 2 (0.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 2 (0.82%) Organisational Skills
10 2 (0.82%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.41%) Electronics
11 1 (0.41%) Financial Institution
11 1 (0.41%) International Banking
11 1 (0.41%) Manufacturing
11 1 (0.41%) Marketing
11 1 (0.41%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 60 (24.59%) Developer
2 31 (12.70%) Data Engineer
3 22 (9.02%) Senior
4 21 (8.61%) Administrator
5 20 (8.20%) Java Developer
5 20 (8.20%) Python Developer
6 17 (6.97%) DBA
6 17 (6.97%) Linux Administrator
7 16 (6.56%) Support Engineer
8 14 (5.74%) DevOps Engineer
8 14 (5.74%) Oracle DBA
9 12 (4.92%) Analyst
10 11 (4.51%) Consultant
11 10 (4.10%) AWS DevOps
12 9 (3.69%) AWS Engineer
12 9 (3.69%) Database Engineer
12 9 (3.69%) Software Engineer
12 9 (3.69%) Support Analyst
12 9 (3.69%) Technical Support
13 8 (3.28%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (11.07%) RESTful
2 17 (6.97%) Middleware
2 17 (6.97%) Spring
3 16 (6.56%) JSON
3 16 (6.56%) Spring Boot
4 15 (6.15%) LDAP
4 15 (6.15%) Oracle GoldenGate
5 13 (5.33%) Kafka
6 11 (4.51%) Elastic Stack
6 11 (4.51%) FastAPI
7 10 (4.10%) Flask
8 9 (3.69%) Django
8 9 (3.69%) HTML
8 9 (3.69%) Pandas
9 8 (3.28%) CSS
9 8 (3.28%) JPA
9 8 (3.28%) REST
9 8 (3.28%) Web Services
10 7 (2.87%) Node.js
10 7 (2.87%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 23 (9.43%) Management Information System
2 17 (6.97%) Data Centre
3 14 (5.74%) Linux Command Line
4 12 (4.92%) Cloud Native
5 8 (3.28%) Fixed Income
5 8 (3.28%) Mainframe
6 7 (2.87%) Enterprise Software
6 7 (2.87%) Hedge funds
7 6 (2.46%) Data Structures
7 6 (2.46%) DataPower
7 6 (2.46%) Derivative
7 6 (2.46%) Legacy Systems
7 6 (2.46%) Online Banking
7 6 (2.46%) Product Ownership
7 6 (2.46%) Public Cloud
8 5 (2.05%) Equities
8 5 (2.05%) Replication
8 5 (2.05%) Self-Motivation
8 5 (2.05%) Virtual Team
9 4 (1.64%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 148 (60.66%) Linux
2 107 (43.85%) Unix
3 35 (14.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 23 (9.43%) Windows
5 12 (4.92%) CentOS
6 7 (2.87%) zOS
7 6 (2.46%) Apple iOS
7 6 (2.46%) Solaris
7 6 (2.46%) Windows Server
8 3 (1.23%) AIX
8 3 (1.23%) Android
9 2 (0.82%) OpenVMS
9 2 (0.82%) Oracle Linux
9 2 (0.82%) VMS
10 1 (0.41%) Amazon Linux
10 1 (0.41%) Rocky
10 1 (0.41%) SUSE
10 1 (0.41%) Windows Server 2008
10 1 (0.41%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 95 (38.93%) CI/CD
2 65 (26.64%) DevOps
3 49 (20.08%) Agile
4 48 (19.67%) Problem-Solving
5 41 (16.80%) Infrastructure as Code
6 40 (16.39%) Containerisation
6 40 (16.39%) Performance Tuning
7 36 (14.75%) Analytics
8 34 (13.93%) Migration
9 28 (11.48%) Microservices
10 26 (10.66%) Performance Optimisation
11 25 (10.25%) AI
12 24 (9.84%) Data Pipeline
12 24 (9.84%) Scrum
13 23 (9.43%) Continuous Improvement
13 23 (9.43%) ETL
13 23 (9.43%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 20 (8.20%) Configuration Management
14 20 (8.20%) High Availability
14 20 (8.20%) ITIL
Programming Languages
1 119 (48.77%) SQL
2 107 (43.85%) Python
3 65 (26.64%) Java
4 32 (13.11%) PL/SQL
5 22 (9.02%) Bash
6 20 (8.20%) JavaScript
7 15 (6.15%) Korn
8 13 (5.33%) Perl
9 11 (4.51%) MATLAB
9 11 (4.51%) PowerShell
10 9 (3.69%) C#
11 8 (3.28%) C++
12 7 (2.87%) JCL
12 7 (2.87%) Ruby
13 6 (2.46%) C
14 5 (2.05%) Groovy
14 5 (2.05%) TypeScript
15 4 (1.64%) Go
15 4 (1.64%) Rust
16 3 (1.23%) Swift
Qualifications
1 97 (39.75%) Security Cleared
2 83 (34.02%) SC Cleared
3 24 (9.84%) Degree
4 16 (6.56%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (4.10%) Computer Science Degree
6 8 (3.28%) DV Cleared
7 6 (2.46%) Oracle Certification
8 5 (2.05%) Master's Degree
9 3 (1.23%) AWS Certification
9 3 (1.23%) CISSP
10 2 (0.82%) OCP
11 1 (0.41%) AWS Certified Developer
11 1 (0.41%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.41%) CISM
11 1 (0.41%) ITIL Certification
11 1 (0.41%) MOS
11 1 (0.41%) PMI Certification
11 1 (0.41%) RHCA
11 1 (0.41%) RHCE
11 1 (0.41%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (5.74%) SLA
2 11 (4.51%) Data Quality
3 10 (4.10%) QA
4 4 (1.64%) Accessibility
5 3 (1.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 3 (1.23%) FATCA
5 3 (1.23%) GDPR
5 3 (1.23%) HIPAA
5 3 (1.23%) NIST
6 1 (0.41%) DICOM
6 1 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 53 (21.72%) Docker
2 16 (6.56%) Oracle RAC
3 15 (6.15%) Active Directory
4 7 (2.87%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (2.05%) Postfix
5 5 (2.05%) Varnish
5 5 (2.05%) VMware Infrastructure
6 4 (1.64%) NFS
6 4 (1.64%) Sendmail
7 3 (1.23%) GridGain
8 2 (0.82%) KVM
8 2 (0.82%) SRDF
9 1 (0.41%) HDFS
9 1 (0.41%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.41%) zsh
Systems Management
1 56 (22.95%) Kubernetes
2 48 (19.67%) Ansible
3 45 (18.44%) Terraform
4 24 (9.84%) Grafana
5 23 (9.43%) Prometheus
6 21 (8.61%) Oracle RMAN
7 15 (6.15%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
7 15 (6.15%) Podman
8 11 (4.51%) Check_MK
8 11 (4.51%) Red Hat Satellite
9 9 (3.69%) Progress Chef
9 9 (3.69%) Puppet
10 7 (2.87%) Data Guard
11 6 (2.46%) Kibana
12 5 (2.05%) HAProxy
13 3 (1.23%) Control-M
13 3 (1.23%) Docker Swarm
13 3 (1.23%) NetBackup
14 2 (0.82%) Argo
14 2 (0.82%) Thomson Reuters DACS
Vendors
1 84 (34.43%) Oracle
2 31 (12.70%) Red Hat
3 18 (7.38%) VMware
4 14 (5.74%) Microsoft
5 10 (4.10%) Murex
5 10 (4.10%) Sybase
6 9 (3.69%) IBM
6 9 (3.69%) Informatica
7 7 (2.87%) Google
7 7 (2.87%) Splunk
8 6 (2.46%) Talend
8 6 (2.46%) Tenable
9 5 (2.05%) Databricks
9 5 (2.05%) NVIDIA
9 5 (2.05%) Solace
9 5 (2.05%) Veritas
10 4 (1.64%) Cloudera
10 4 (1.64%) Hortonworks
10 4 (1.64%) SAP
10 4 (1.64%) ServiceNow