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 15 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 419 265 268
Rank change year-on-year -154 +3 +7
Contract jobs citing Shell Script 276 322 339
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.51% 0.99% 0.89%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.95% 3.03% 2.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 191 192 223
10th Percentile £325 £314 £350
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £492 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.32% -1.52% -4.76%
75th Percentile £621 £600 £600
90th Percentile £715 £638 £708
UK excluding London median daily rate £459 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -3.37% +5.56% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 12 5
10th Percentile £30.85 - £62.45
25th Percentile £38.50 - £63.50
Median hourly rate £52.50 £68.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.79% +4.62% -7.14%
75th Percentile £63.21 £74.75 £97.50
90th Percentile £68.88 £108.50 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £68.00 -
% change year-on-year -22.79% - -

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 14,150 10,627 12,177
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.00% 32.74% 31.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,188 7,032 8,268
10th Percentile £363 £340 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.90% -4.67% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 535 292 343
10th Percentile £27.75 £29.00 £27.00
25th Percentile £47.75 £37.50 £46.18
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.06 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £78.75 £78.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.75 £65.00
% change year-on-year +1.96% -1.92% -

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 15 September 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 15 September 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 15 September 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 -145 227 £500 - 213
UK excluding London -153 142 £459 -3.37% 141
London -79 114 £550 +4.76% 101
Work from Home -89 75 £470 -1.05% 88
North of England -97 37 £425 -11.46% 33
Scotland -48 26 £425 -10.53% 23
South East -73 26 £483 -13.14% 28
Midlands -34 25 £470 -3.59% 18
West Midlands -39 23 £470 -6.00% 12
Yorkshire -52 20 £463 -7.50% 9
East of England -30 15 £388 -3.13% 18
North West -55 14 £344 -22.87% 19
South West -53 11 £563 +12.50% 10
North East - 4 £469 - 5
Northern Ireland +5 2 £190 - 5
Wales -12 2 £265 -6.19% 6
East Midlands -13 2 £466 +29.31% 6

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 15 (5.43%) Apache
2 12 (4.35%) SAS
3 10 (3.62%) Apache Airflow
4 7 (2.54%) WebLogic
5 5 (1.81%) Apache Spark
5 5 (1.81%) Oracle Workflow
6 4 (1.45%) CICS
6 4 (1.45%) Confluence
6 4 (1.45%) WebSphere
7 3 (1.09%) JBoss
7 3 (1.09%) OpenStack
8 2 (0.72%) nginx
8 2 (0.72%) SharePoint
8 2 (0.72%) WebSphere Application Server
9 1 (0.36%) Tomcat
Applications
1 7 (2.54%) Notepad++
Business Applications
1 6 (2.17%) Front Arena
1 6 (2.17%) Summit
2 4 (1.45%) Oracle Assets
2 4 (1.45%) Oracle EBS
2 4 (1.45%) Oracle E-Business Tax
2 4 (1.45%) Oracle FAH
2 4 (1.45%) Oracle General Ledger
2 4 (1.45%) Oracle Internet Expenses
2 4 (1.45%) Oracle iProcurement
2 4 (1.45%) Oracle Payables
2 4 (1.45%) Oracle Receivables
3 3 (1.09%) Oracle Financials
4 2 (0.72%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.36%) FLEXCUBE
5 1 (0.36%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.36%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 101 (36.59%) AWS
2 59 (21.38%) Azure
3 58 (21.01%) GCP
4 52 (18.84%) GitHub
5 33 (11.96%) Serverless
6 27 (9.78%) AWS Lambda
6 27 (9.78%) GitHub Actions
7 24 (8.70%) Amazon S3
8 17 (6.16%) Amazon EC2
9 12 (4.35%) dbt
9 12 (4.35%) OpenShift
10 11 (3.99%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 10 (3.62%) GitHub Copilot
12 9 (3.26%) AWS CodeBuild
12 9 (3.26%) Power Platform
12 9 (3.26%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 8 (2.90%) AWS CloudFormation
13 8 (2.90%) AWS CodePipeline
14 7 (2.54%) Datadog
14 7 (2.54%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 16 (5.80%) DNS
2 13 (4.71%) TCP/IP
3 10 (3.62%) HTTP
3 10 (3.62%) SSL
4 7 (2.54%) Firewall
4 7 (2.54%) PuTTY
4 7 (2.54%) VPN
4 7 (2.54%) WinSCP
5 6 (2.17%) Network Security
5 6 (2.17%) SAN
6 5 (1.81%) SSH
7 4 (1.45%) 5G
7 4 (1.45%) MQTT
7 4 (1.45%) Multicast
8 3 (1.09%) 4G
8 3 (1.09%) BGP
8 3 (1.09%) HTTPS
9 2 (0.72%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
9 2 (0.72%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 2 (0.72%) tcpdump
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (11.59%) Data Warehouse
2 25 (9.06%) Oracle Database
3 19 (6.88%) Relational Database
4 18 (6.52%) Db2
4 18 (6.52%) MySQL
5 17 (6.16%) MongoDB
6 16 (5.80%) PostgreSQL
6 16 (5.80%) SQL Server
7 12 (4.35%) Metadata
7 12 (4.35%) NoSQL
8 11 (3.99%) PowerCenter
9 10 (3.62%) Amazon Aurora
9 10 (3.62%) BusinessObjects
9 10 (3.62%) Oracle Reports
10 9 (3.26%) BigQuery
10 9 (3.26%) Elasticsearch
10 9 (3.26%) Star Schema
11 8 (2.90%) Amazon RDS
12 7 (2.54%) Power BI
12 7 (2.54%) Redis
Development Applications
1 83 (30.07%) Git
2 55 (19.93%) Jenkins
3 37 (13.41%) GitLab
4 26 (9.42%) Maven
5 16 (5.80%) JUnit
6 12 (4.35%) Sonatype Nexus
7 11 (3.99%) Claude Code
7 11 (3.99%) JIRA
8 9 (3.26%) SonarQube
9 8 (2.90%) Mockito
10 7 (2.54%) Gradle
11 5 (1.81%) Bitbucket
11 5 (1.81%) Oracle Forms
12 4 (1.45%) JDeveloper
12 4 (1.45%) Visual Studio Code
13 3 (1.09%) Selenium
13 3 (1.09%) webpack
13 3 (1.09%) Xcode
14 2 (0.72%) JMeter
14 2 (0.72%) Terragrunt
General
1 97 (35.14%) Finance
2 58 (21.01%) Banking
3 44 (15.94%) Social Skills
4 37 (13.41%) Analytical Skills
5 21 (7.61%) Public Sector
6 16 (5.80%) Investment Banking
7 7 (2.54%) Documentation Skills
8 6 (2.17%) Telecoms
9 4 (1.45%) Aerospace
9 4 (1.45%) Front Office
9 4 (1.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (1.45%) Retail
10 3 (1.09%) General Ledger
11 2 (0.72%) Prime Brokerage
11 2 (0.72%) Publishing
12 1 (0.36%) Advertising
12 1 (0.36%) Electronics
12 1 (0.36%) Legal
12 1 (0.36%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.36%) Military
Job Titles
1 74 (26.81%) Developer
2 45 (16.30%) Senior
3 31 (11.23%) Python Developer
4 29 (10.51%) Data Engineer
5 24 (8.70%) Senior Developer
6 21 (7.61%) Java Developer
7 20 (7.25%) DevOps Engineer
8 16 (5.80%) Architect
8 16 (5.80%) Cloud Engineer
9 15 (5.43%) GCP Engineer
10 14 (5.07%) Java Engineer
11 13 (4.71%) Analyst
12 12 (4.35%) Administrator
13 10 (3.62%) Senior Python Developer
14 9 (3.26%) AWS Engineer
14 9 (3.26%) Linux Administrator
14 9 (3.26%) Senior Java Developer
14 9 (3.26%) Software Engineer
15 8 (2.90%) AWS Developer
15 8 (2.90%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 66 (23.91%) Terraform
2 35 (12.68%) RESTful
3 25 (9.06%) Spring
4 24 (8.70%) Spring Boot
5 23 (8.33%) FastAPI
5 23 (8.33%) Kafka
5 23 (8.33%) REST
6 22 (7.97%) Flask
7 18 (6.52%) Pandas
8 14 (5.07%) CSS
8 14 (5.07%) Django
8 14 (5.07%) HTML
8 14 (5.07%) JSON
9 13 (4.71%) Middleware
10 11 (3.99%) RabbitMQ
11 10 (3.62%) JPA
11 10 (3.62%) Web Services
12 9 (3.26%) Elastic Stack
13 8 (2.90%) OpenAPI
13 8 (2.90%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 30 (10.87%) Linux Command Line
2 16 (5.80%) Management Information System
3 14 (5.07%) Cloud Native
4 12 (4.35%) Enterprise Software
5 11 (3.99%) Fixed Income
6 9 (3.26%) Data Centre
7 8 (2.90%) Public Cloud
7 8 (2.90%) Replication
8 7 (2.54%) Derivative
8 7 (2.54%) Enterprise Cloud
8 7 (2.54%) Hedge funds
9 6 (2.17%) Distributed Systems
9 6 (2.17%) Hybrid Cloud
9 6 (2.17%) Mainframe
9 6 (2.17%) Market Risk
9 6 (2.17%) Product Ownership
10 5 (1.81%) AI Agents
10 5 (1.81%) Distributed Applications
10 5 (1.81%) Onboarding
10 5 (1.81%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 149 (53.99%) Linux
2 126 (45.65%) Unix
3 24 (8.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 17 (6.16%) Windows
5 10 (3.62%) Solaris
6 5 (1.81%) AIX
6 5 (1.81%) CentOS
6 5 (1.81%) zOS
7 4 (1.45%) VMS
7 4 (1.45%) Windows Server
8 3 (1.09%) Apple iOS
8 3 (1.09%) Rocky
9 2 (0.72%) HPUX
9 2 (0.72%) Oracle Linux
9 2 (0.72%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.36%) Amazon Linux
10 1 (0.36%) Embedded Linux
10 1 (0.36%) SUSE
10 1 (0.36%) Windows Server 2008
10 1 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 124 (44.93%) CI/CD
2 78 (28.26%) DevOps
3 67 (24.28%) Infrastructure as Code
4 64 (23.19%) Containerisation
5 50 (18.12%) Agile
6 49 (17.75%) AI
7 43 (15.58%) Data Pipeline
7 43 (15.58%) Problem-Solving
8 42 (15.22%) Performance Tuning
9 40 (14.49%) Migration
10 39 (14.13%) ETL
11 36 (13.04%) Root Cause Analysis
12 35 (12.68%) Code Quality
12 35 (12.68%) Observability
13 34 (12.32%) Analytics
13 34 (12.32%) Performance Optimisation
14 31 (11.23%) Configuration Management
15 29 (10.51%) Microservices
15 29 (10.51%) SDLC
16 28 (10.14%) Batch Processing
Programming Languages
1 152 (55.07%) Python
1 152 (55.07%) SQL
2 75 (27.17%) Java
3 56 (20.29%) Bash
4 47 (17.03%) PL/SQL
5 21 (7.61%) PowerShell
6 17 (6.16%) JavaScript
7 15 (5.43%) Groovy
8 14 (5.07%) Perl
9 9 (3.26%) C#
9 9 (3.26%) Korn
10 6 (2.17%) Scala
10 6 (2.17%) TypeScript
11 5 (1.81%) Go
11 5 (1.81%) JCL
11 5 (1.81%) Ruby
12 4 (1.45%) C
12 4 (1.45%) C++
12 4 (1.45%) MATLAB
12 4 (1.45%) Rust
Qualifications
1 78 (28.26%) Security Cleared
2 58 (21.01%) SC Cleared
3 28 (10.14%) Degree
4 22 (7.97%) BPSS Clearance
5 11 (3.99%) DV Cleared
6 10 (3.62%) Computer Science Degree
7 7 (2.54%) Master's Degree
8 6 (2.17%) AWS Certification
9 5 (1.81%) Oracle Certification
10 2 (0.72%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 2 (0.72%) Azure Certification
10 2 (0.72%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.72%) CISSP
11 1 (0.36%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 1 (0.36%) CISM
11 1 (0.36%) GIAC
11 1 (0.36%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
11 1 (0.36%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 1 (0.36%) OCP
11 1 (0.36%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (11.96%) Data Quality
2 16 (5.80%) QA
3 7 (2.54%) SLA
4 6 (2.17%) Accessibility
5 3 (1.09%) Basel III
5 3 (1.09%) Disclosure Scotland
5 3 (1.09%) ISO 20022
6 2 (0.72%) ISO 15022
7 1 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 1 (0.36%) DICOM
7 1 (0.36%) GDPR
7 1 (0.36%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.36%) NIST
7 1 (0.36%) SEPA
System Software
1 73 (26.45%) Docker
2 9 (3.26%) Active Directory
3 8 (2.90%) Virtual Machines
4 6 (2.17%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (1.81%) Oracle RAC
5 5 (1.81%) zsh
6 4 (1.45%) NFS
7 3 (1.09%) GridGain
7 3 (1.09%) Postfix
7 3 (1.09%) Sendmail
7 3 (1.09%) Varnish
7 3 (1.09%) VMware ESXi
8 2 (0.72%) KVM
8 2 (0.72%) vSphere
9 1 (0.36%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.36%) Veritas Cluster Server
9 1 (0.36%) Veritas Volume Manager
Systems Management
1 81 (29.35%) Kubernetes
2 57 (20.65%) Ansible
3 28 (10.14%) Grafana
4 23 (8.33%) Prometheus
5 10 (3.62%) Kibana
5 10 (3.62%) Podman
6 9 (3.26%) Control-M
6 9 (3.26%) Oracle RMAN
7 8 (2.90%) Data Guard
8 6 (2.17%) Puppet
9 5 (1.81%) Check_MK
9 5 (1.81%) NetBackup
10 4 (1.45%) HP ALM
10 4 (1.45%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
10 4 (1.45%) Packer
10 4 (1.45%) Red Hat Satellite
11 3 (1.09%) Consul
11 3 (1.09%) HAProxy
11 3 (1.09%) ITRS Geneos
11 3 (1.09%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 85 (30.80%) Oracle
2 36 (13.04%) Google
3 20 (7.25%) Informatica
3 20 (7.25%) Splunk
4 18 (6.52%) Red Hat
5 17 (6.16%) IBM
6 14 (5.07%) Sybase
7 13 (4.71%) Microsoft
8 12 (4.35%) VMware
9 9 (3.26%) New Relic
10 8 (2.90%) Murex
11 7 (2.54%) Dynatrace
11 7 (2.54%) ServiceNow
11 7 (2.54%) Solace
12 6 (2.17%) Calypso
12 6 (2.17%) Checkmarx
12 6 (2.17%) FIS
12 6 (2.17%) HP
12 6 (2.17%) Tenable
12 6 (2.17%) Teradata