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

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 392 264 295
Rank change year-on-year -128 +31 -48
Contract jobs citing Shell Script 247 283 314
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.51% 0.99% 0.73%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.88% 2.90% 2.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 171 164 227
10th Percentile £325 £358 £344
25th Percentile £400 £439 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £467 £520 £501
Median % change year-on-year -10.18% +3.74% -7.61%
75th Percentile £538 £600 £614
90th Percentile £631 £650 £704
UK excluding London median daily rate £459 £500 £470
% change year-on-year -8.20% +6.38% -12.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 14 8
10th Percentile £29.85 £65.90 £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 - £67.69
90th Percentile £52.75 £77.13 £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 13,141 9,774 12,842
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.91% 34.12% 30.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,582 6,655 9,153
10th Percentile £358 £358 £350
25th Percentile £415 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £518 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.38% -1.43% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £630 £650
90th Percentile £713 £763 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +1.47% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 571 215 505
10th Percentile £36.25 £27.00 £32.25
25th Percentile £53.53 £34.33 £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 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.37 £62.50
% change year-on-year +2.57% +1.40% -

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 -119 213 £475 -9.52% 46
UK excluding London -135 120 £459 -8.20% 32
London -68 98 £510 -7.27% 17
Work from Home -83 62 £500 -1.04% 24
South East -48 32 £400 -33.33% 15
Midlands -50 28 £467 +1.56% 3
West Midlands -49 27 £467 +1.48% 2
North of England -87 26 £460 -8.00% 7
East of England -19 25 £470 +44.62% 5
North West -41 12 £450 -13.42% 4
Yorkshire -71 12 £480 -4.00% 2
South West -39 3 £575 +10.31% 2
Scotland -58 3 - -
Northern Ireland - 2 £190 -
Wales -15 1 £345 - 1
East Midlands -26 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 (5.67%) Apache
2 11 (4.45%) Confluence
3 7 (2.83%) Apache Airflow
3 7 (2.83%) Apache Spark
4 6 (2.43%) CICS
5 4 (1.62%) WebLogic
6 3 (1.21%) JBoss
6 3 (1.21%) nginx
6 3 (1.21%) Tomcat
6 3 (1.21%) WebSphere
6 3 (1.21%) WebSphere Application Server
7 2 (0.81%) ArcGIS
7 2 (0.81%) Oracle Spatial
7 2 (0.81%) Oracle Workflow
7 2 (0.81%) SharePoint
8 1 (0.40%) IBM HTTP Server
8 1 (0.40%) SAS
Applications
1 7 (2.83%) Notepad++
2 2 (0.81%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 3 (1.21%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (0.40%) FLEXCUBE
2 1 (0.40%) Oracle 11i
2 1 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.40%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.40%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 93 (37.65%) AWS
2 51 (20.65%) Azure
3 42 (17.00%) GitHub
4 36 (14.57%) GitHub Actions
4 36 (14.57%) Serverless
5 27 (10.93%) Amazon S3
6 26 (10.53%) AWS Lambda
7 25 (10.12%) Amazon EC2
8 21 (8.50%) OpenShift
9 18 (7.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 16 (6.48%) Amazon EKS
11 14 (5.67%) Azure DevOps
12 13 (5.26%) AWS CloudFormation
13 11 (4.45%) GCP
14 10 (4.05%) PaaS
15 9 (3.64%) AWS CodePipeline
16 8 (3.24%) IaaS
16 8 (3.24%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 6 (2.43%) Azure AKS
17 6 (2.43%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 11 (4.45%) DNS
1 11 (4.45%) SSH
2 9 (3.64%) SAN
3 7 (2.83%) Network Security
3 7 (2.83%) PuTTY
3 7 (2.83%) TCP/IP
3 7 (2.83%) WinSCP
4 5 (2.02%) Firewall
5 3 (1.21%) HTTP
5 3 (1.21%) HTTPS
5 3 (1.21%) NAS
5 3 (1.21%) Reverse Proxy
6 2 (0.81%) AMQP
6 2 (0.81%) iSCSI
6 2 (0.81%) MQTT
6 2 (0.81%) Multicast
6 2 (0.81%) OpenVPN
6 2 (0.81%) VPN
7 1 (0.40%) IPsec
7 1 (0.40%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (10.93%) SQL Server
2 23 (9.31%) Oracle Database
3 20 (8.10%) Relational Database
4 19 (7.69%) PostgreSQL
5 18 (7.29%) MongoDB
6 16 (6.48%) Data Warehouse
7 15 (6.07%) Amazon RDS
8 13 (5.26%) Metadata
9 10 (4.05%) DB2
10 9 (3.64%) DynamoDB
11 7 (2.83%) Amazon Aurora
11 7 (2.83%) BusinessObjects
11 7 (2.83%) MySQL
11 7 (2.83%) NoSQL
12 6 (2.43%) Oracle Reports
13 5 (2.02%) Data Lake
13 5 (2.02%) Data Mart
13 5 (2.02%) KDB
13 5 (2.02%) Kdb+
13 5 (2.02%) Oracle Database 12c
Development Applications
1 62 (25.10%) Jenkins
2 48 (19.43%) GitLab
3 44 (17.81%) Git
4 21 (8.50%) JIRA
5 7 (2.83%) Maven
6 6 (2.43%) SonarQube
7 5 (2.02%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 5 (2.02%) JMeter
7 5 (2.02%) JUnit
7 5 (2.02%) Mockito
7 5 (2.02%) Sonatype Nexus
8 4 (1.62%) Bitbucket
8 4 (1.62%) PyCharm
8 4 (1.62%) PyUnit
9 3 (1.21%) Artifactory
9 3 (1.21%) CircleCI
9 3 (1.21%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.81%) Gatling
10 2 (0.81%) Gradle
10 2 (0.81%) Postman
General
1 57 (23.08%) Social Skills
2 52 (21.05%) Finance
3 39 (15.79%) Banking
4 28 (11.34%) Public Sector
5 16 (6.48%) Analytical Skills
6 12 (4.86%) Documentation Skills
7 10 (4.05%) Front Office
7 10 (4.05%) Retail
8 9 (3.64%) Investment Banking
9 8 (3.24%) Aerospace
10 5 (2.02%) Advertising
11 3 (1.21%) Law
11 3 (1.21%) Local Government
12 2 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 2 (0.81%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.81%) Telecoms
13 1 (0.40%) Influencing Skills
13 1 (0.40%) International Banking
13 1 (0.40%) Presentation Skills
13 1 (0.40%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 64 (25.91%) Developer
2 31 (12.55%) Data Engineer
3 24 (9.72%) Administrator
3 24 (9.72%) Java Developer
4 21 (8.50%) Senior
5 20 (8.10%) Python Developer
6 19 (7.69%) DBA
7 17 (6.88%) Linux Administrator
8 16 (6.48%) DevOps Engineer
8 16 (6.48%) Oracle DBA
9 15 (6.07%) Support Engineer
10 12 (4.86%) Analyst
10 12 (4.86%) AWS Engineer
11 11 (4.45%) AWS DevOps
12 10 (4.05%) Site Engineer
12 10 (4.05%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 9 (3.64%) AWS DevOps Engineer
13 9 (3.64%) Database Engineer
13 9 (3.64%) Software Engineer
13 9 (3.64%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (9.31%) RESTful
2 17 (6.88%) Middleware
3 16 (6.48%) JSON
3 16 (6.48%) Kafka
4 15 (6.07%) LDAP
4 15 (6.07%) Oracle GoldenGate
5 12 (4.86%) Node.js
5 12 (4.86%) Spring
6 11 (4.45%) Elastic Stack
6 11 (4.45%) Spring Boot
7 9 (3.64%) Django
7 9 (3.64%) FastAPI
8 8 (3.24%) AWS CDK
8 8 (3.24%) Flask
8 8 (3.24%) Pandas
8 8 (3.24%) React
8 8 (3.24%) REST
8 8 (3.24%) SOAP
8 8 (3.24%) Web Services
9 7 (2.83%) .NET
Miscellaneous
1 22 (8.91%) Management Information System
2 16 (6.48%) Cloud Native
2 16 (6.48%) Data Centre
3 13 (5.26%) Linux Command Line
4 8 (3.24%) Fixed Income
4 8 (3.24%) Mainframe
5 7 (2.83%) Hedge funds
5 7 (2.83%) Public Cloud
6 6 (2.43%) Data Structures
6 6 (2.43%) DataPower
6 6 (2.43%) Enterprise Software
6 6 (2.43%) Legacy Systems
6 6 (2.43%) Online Banking
7 5 (2.02%) Data Protection Act
7 5 (2.02%) Derivative
7 5 (2.02%) Equities
7 5 (2.02%) Legacy Code
7 5 (2.02%) Self-Motivation
7 5 (2.02%) Virtual Team
8 4 (1.62%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 158 (63.97%) Linux
2 100 (40.49%) Unix
3 39 (15.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 24 (9.72%) Windows
5 13 (5.26%) CentOS
6 7 (2.83%) zOS
7 6 (2.43%) Windows Server
8 5 (2.02%) Apple iOS
9 4 (1.62%) Android
9 4 (1.62%) Ubuntu
10 3 (1.21%) AIX
11 2 (0.81%) Debian
11 2 (0.81%) OpenVMS
11 2 (0.81%) Oracle Linux
11 2 (0.81%) Solaris
11 2 (0.81%) VMS
12 1 (0.40%) Amazon Linux
12 1 (0.40%) Embedded Linux
12 1 (0.40%) Windows Server 2008
12 1 (0.40%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 100 (40.49%) CI/CD
2 65 (26.32%) DevOps
3 57 (23.08%) Problem-Solving
4 54 (21.86%) Agile
5 43 (17.41%) Infrastructure as Code
6 42 (17.00%) Performance Tuning
7 39 (15.79%) Containerisation
8 33 (13.36%) Migration
9 30 (12.15%) Analytics
10 25 (10.12%) Microservices
10 25 (10.12%) Observability
11 24 (9.72%) Task Automation
12 23 (9.31%) High Availability
12 23 (9.31%) ITIL
13 22 (8.91%) Data Pipeline
13 22 (8.91%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 21 (8.50%) ETL
14 21 (8.50%) Performance Optimisation
15 20 (8.10%) Continuous Improvement
15 20 (8.10%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 120 (48.58%) SQL
2 107 (43.32%) Python
3 71 (28.74%) Java
4 31 (12.55%) PL/SQL
5 23 (9.31%) Bash
6 22 (8.91%) JavaScript
7 18 (7.29%) Korn
8 12 (4.86%) Perl
9 11 (4.45%) MATLAB
9 11 (4.45%) TypeScript
10 9 (3.64%) C#
10 9 (3.64%) PowerShell
11 8 (3.24%) C++
11 8 (3.24%) Go
12 7 (2.83%) C
13 6 (2.43%) JCL
14 5 (2.02%) Groovy
14 5 (2.02%) Ruby
15 4 (1.62%) ProC
16 2 (0.81%) Rust
Qualifications
1 98 (39.68%) Security Cleared
2 84 (34.01%) SC Cleared
3 21 (8.50%) Degree
4 17 (6.88%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (4.05%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (4.05%) DV Cleared
6 9 (3.64%) Oracle Certification
7 5 (2.02%) Master's Degree
7 5 (2.02%) OCP
8 3 (1.21%) Azure Certification
8 3 (1.21%) CISSP
9 1 (0.40%) AWS Certification
9 1 (0.40%) AWS Certified Developer
9 1 (0.40%) CISM
9 1 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
9 1 (0.40%) MOS
9 1 (0.40%) PMI Certification
9 1 (0.40%) RHCA
9 1 (0.40%) RHCE
9 1 (0.40%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (7.29%) SLA
2 9 (3.64%) Data Quality
3 8 (3.24%) QA
4 6 (2.43%) GDPR
5 3 (1.21%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 3 (1.21%) FATCA
5 3 (1.21%) HIPAA
5 3 (1.21%) NIST
6 1 (0.40%) Accessibility
6 1 (0.40%) DICOM
6 1 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 55 (22.27%) Docker
2 16 (6.48%) Oracle RAC
3 14 (5.67%) Active Directory
4 8 (3.24%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (2.02%) Postfix
5 5 (2.02%) Varnish
5 5 (2.02%) VMware Infrastructure
6 4 (1.62%) NFS
6 4 (1.62%) Sendmail
7 3 (1.21%) GridGain
8 2 (0.81%) HDFS
8 2 (0.81%) SRDF
9 1 (0.40%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 1 (0.40%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 54 (21.86%) Kubernetes
2 49 (19.84%) Terraform
3 48 (19.43%) Ansible
4 28 (11.34%) Grafana
5 27 (10.93%) Prometheus
6 23 (9.31%) Oracle RMAN
7 17 (6.88%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 14 (5.67%) Podman
9 12 (4.86%) Red Hat Satellite
10 11 (4.45%) Check_MK
10 11 (4.45%) Progress Chef
11 9 (3.64%) Data Guard
12 8 (3.24%) Puppet
13 5 (2.02%) HAProxy
14 4 (1.62%) Docker Swarm
14 4 (1.62%) Kibana
15 2 (0.81%) Argo
15 2 (0.81%) Packer
15 2 (0.81%) systemd
15 2 (0.81%) Thomson Reuters DACS
Vendors
1 86 (34.82%) Oracle
2 40 (16.19%) Red Hat
3 19 (7.69%) VMware
4 14 (5.67%) Microsoft
5 10 (4.05%) Murex
6 9 (3.64%) Informatica
7 8 (3.24%) Splunk
7 8 (3.24%) Sybase
8 7 (2.83%) IBM
9 6 (2.43%) ServiceNow
9 6 (2.43%) Talend
10 5 (2.02%) Cloudera
10 5 (2.02%) Databricks
10 5 (2.02%) Dynatrace
10 5 (2.02%) Veritas
11 4 (1.62%) Dell
11 4 (1.62%) Hortonworks
11 4 (1.62%) Solace
11 4 (1.62%) Tenable
12 3 (1.21%) HP