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

6 months to
25 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 404 265 283
Rank change year-on-year -139 +18 -38
Contract jobs citing Shell Script 244 290 351
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 160 170 246
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% +8.89% -14.29%
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 13,705 10,225 13,227
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.93% 33.95% 30.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,915 6,922 9,291
10th Percentile £360 £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 £756 £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 554 240 548
10th Percentile £35.00 £25.70 £31.25
25th Percentile £53.53 £33.91 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £54.94 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +18.32% -12.10% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £83.11 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £60.75 £65.00
% change year-on-year +7.00% -6.54% +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 25 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 25 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 25 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 -123 213 £470 -8.94% 30
UK excluding London -164 120 £455 -7.14% 32
London -70 100 £518 -3.72% 9
Work from Home -87 57 £488 +2.63% 17
South East -56 32 £396 -34.00% 8
Midlands -48 28 £467 +1.56% 3
West Midlands -44 27 £467 -2.74% 3
East of England -20 25 £470 +44.62% 2
North of England -93 25 £500 +1.46% 9
Yorkshire -65 14 £500 - 1
North West -49 9 £450 +12.50% 7
Scotland -59 4 £479 +0.79% 5
Wales -12 2 £305 +7.96% 3
South West -60 2 £556 +6.71% 4
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 34 (13.93%) Serverless
5 30 (12.30%) 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 17 (6.97%) GCP
10 15 (6.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 12 (4.92%) Azure DevOps
12 10 (4.10%) Amazon EKS
12 10 (4.10%) Power Platform
13 9 (3.69%) AWS CloudFormation
14 8 (3.28%) PaaS
14 8 (3.28%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 7 (2.87%) AWS CodePipeline
16 6 (2.46%) Azure Key Vault
16 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%) BIG-IP
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 58 (23.77%) Jenkins
2 48 (19.67%) Git
3 42 (17.21%) 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%) Claude Code
12 2 (0.82%) Gradle
13 1 (0.41%) Postman
General
1 57 (23.36%) Finance
2 50 (20.49%) Social Skills
3 42 (17.21%) Banking
4 24 (9.84%) Public Sector
5 14 (5.74%) Analytical Skills
5 14 (5.74%) Documentation Skills
6 11 (4.51%) Investment Banking
7 10 (4.10%) Retail
8 9 (3.69%) Front Office
9 8 (3.28%) Aerospace
10 5 (2.05%) Advertising
11 2 (0.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.82%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.82%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.41%) Electronics
12 1 (0.41%) Financial Institution
12 1 (0.41%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.41%) International Banking
12 1 (0.41%) Manufacturing
12 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%) Oracle DBA
9 13 (5.33%) DevOps Engineer
10 12 (4.92%) Analyst
11 11 (4.51%) Consultant
12 9 (3.69%) AWS DevOps
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%) Oracle Database Engineer
13 8 (3.28%) Senior Developer
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%) FastAPI
7 10 (4.10%) Elastic Stack
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%) React
Miscellaneous
1 23 (9.43%) Management Information System
2 17 (6.97%) Data Centre
3 15 (6.15%) 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%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 147 (60.25%) 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%) Embedded Linux
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 94 (38.52%) CI/CD
2 65 (26.64%) DevOps
3 48 (19.67%) Agile
3 48 (19.67%) Problem-Solving
4 41 (16.80%) Infrastructure as Code
5 40 (16.39%) Containerisation
6 39 (15.98%) Performance Tuning
7 36 (14.75%) Analytics
8 34 (13.93%) Migration
9 28 (11.48%) Microservices
10 26 (10.66%) AI
10 26 (10.66%) Performance Optimisation
11 24 (9.84%) Data Pipeline
12 23 (9.43%) ETL
12 23 (9.43%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 23 (9.43%) Scrum
13 22 (9.02%) Continuous Improvement
14 20 (8.20%) High Availability
14 20 (8.20%) ITIL
14 20 (8.20%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 119 (48.77%) SQL
2 108 (44.26%) Python
3 65 (26.64%) Java
4 32 (13.11%) PL/SQL
5 23 (9.43%) 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 96 (39.34%) Security Cleared
2 82 (33.61%) 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 52 (21.31%) 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
8 2 (0.82%) zsh
9 1 (0.41%) HDFS
9 1 (0.41%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 56 (22.95%) Kubernetes
2 48 (19.67%) Ansible
3 45 (18.44%) Terraform
4 23 (9.43%) Grafana
5 22 (9.02%) 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%) Consul
14 2 (0.82%) Sysdig
Vendors
1 84 (34.43%) Oracle
2 31 (12.70%) Red Hat
3 18 (7.38%) VMware
4 15 (6.15%) Microsoft
5 10 (4.10%) Murex
5 10 (4.10%) Sybase
6 9 (3.69%) IBM
6 9 (3.69%) Informatica
7 8 (3.28%) Google
8 7 (2.87%) Splunk
9 6 (2.46%) Talend
9 6 (2.46%) Tenable
10 5 (2.05%) Databricks
10 5 (2.05%) NVIDIA
10 5 (2.05%) Solace
10 5 (2.05%) Veritas
11 4 (1.64%) Cloudera
11 4 (1.64%) Hortonworks
11 4 (1.64%) SAP
11 4 (1.64%) ServiceNow