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 20 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 357 287 307
Rank change year-on-year -70 +20 -65
Contract jobs citing Shell Script 275 253 299
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.63% 0.86% 0.67%
As % of the Programming Languages category 2.18% 2.54% 2.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 193 131 205
10th Percentile £325 £350 £361
25th Percentile £392 £423 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £501
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% -0.20% -7.22%
75th Percentile £538 £600 £630
90th Percentile £620 £675 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £455 £490 £465
% change year-on-year -7.14% +5.38% -13.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 10 9
10th Percentile £50.60 £63.35 £48.16
25th Percentile £57.13 £65.75 £61.25
Median hourly rate £68.00 £70.25 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.20% +8.08% +23.81%
75th Percentile - £89.69 -
90th Percentile - £94.13 £76.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £68.00 £66.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +2.26% +2.31% +23.81%

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 12,617 9,972 12,901
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 29.01% 34.08% 29.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,405 6,625 9,134
10th Percentile £352 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £715 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £484 £485
% change year-on-year -1.76% -0.31% -3.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 492 245 486
10th Percentile £41.94 £22.00 £30.94
25th Percentile £54.55 £31.64 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £67.29
90th Percentile £77.00 £85.00 £74.10
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.75 £61.60
% change year-on-year +1.97% +3.48% -5.23%

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 20 March 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 20 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Shell Script in the UK

Shell Script
Top 15 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 20 March 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 -55 226 £466 -10.40% 48
UK excluding London -79 136 £455 -7.14% 34
London -49 98 £465 -6.63% 21
Work from Home -46 79 £454 -9.20% 28
Midlands -44 37 £475 +3.26% 6
West Midlands -45 35 £475 +3.26% 5
South East -45 28 £392 -26.25% 16
North of England -71 26 £450 -23.40% 5
East of England -10 19 £440 -5.68% 4
Yorkshire -59 16 £447 -23.59% 1
South West -27 13 £525 -4.55% 3
Scotland -34 11 £402 -14.69%
North West -33 9 £450 -25.00% 4
Wales -8 2 £305 - 2
East Midlands -35 2 £475 +33.43% 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 12 (4.36%) Confluence
2 9 (3.27%) Apache
2 9 (3.27%) Apache Spark
3 5 (1.82%) Apache Airflow
3 5 (1.82%) WebLogic
4 3 (1.09%) nginx
4 3 (1.09%) Oracle Workflow
5 2 (0.73%) ArcGIS
5 2 (0.73%) CICS
5 2 (0.73%) JBoss
5 2 (0.73%) Oracle Spatial
5 2 (0.73%) SAS
5 2 (0.73%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.73%) Tomcat
6 1 (0.36%) IBM HTTP Server
6 1 (0.36%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 1 (0.36%) WebSphere
6 1 (0.36%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 5 (1.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (1.09%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (1.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 4 (1.45%) Oracle Applications
2 3 (1.09%) Oracle 11i
2 3 (1.09%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.73%) Oracle EBS R12
3 2 (0.73%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.36%) ION MarketView
4 1 (0.36%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.36%) Oracle Cash Management
4 1 (0.36%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.36%) Oracle Receivables
4 1 (0.36%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 100 (36.36%) AWS
2 50 (18.18%) Azure
3 42 (15.27%) GitHub
4 31 (11.27%) Serverless
5 29 (10.55%) Amazon EC2
5 29 (10.55%) Amazon S3
6 27 (9.82%) OpenShift
7 25 (9.09%) GitHub Actions
8 24 (8.73%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 21 (7.64%) AWS Lambda
10 17 (6.18%) Amazon EKS
10 17 (6.18%) AWS CloudFormation
11 12 (4.36%) Azure DevOps
12 11 (4.00%) GCP
13 7 (2.55%) Amazon ECS
13 7 (2.55%) Azure AKS
13 7 (2.55%) Pulumi
13 7 (2.55%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 6 (2.18%) AWS CodePipeline
14 6 (2.18%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 18 (6.55%) SSH
2 9 (3.27%) DNS
2 9 (3.27%) SAN
3 6 (2.18%) Network Security
3 6 (2.18%) TCP/IP
4 4 (1.45%) Firewall
5 3 (1.09%) HTTP
5 3 (1.09%) HTTPS
5 3 (1.09%) NAS
5 3 (1.09%) Reverse Proxy
6 2 (0.73%) iSCSI
6 2 (0.73%) OpenVPN
7 1 (0.36%) BIG-IP
7 1 (0.36%) DHCP
7 1 (0.36%) FTP
7 1 (0.36%) Kerberos
7 1 (0.36%) LAN
7 1 (0.36%) Multicast
7 1 (0.36%) VLAN
7 1 (0.36%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (10.91%) MongoDB
2 29 (10.55%) Oracle Database
3 24 (8.73%) Amazon RDS
4 22 (8.00%) Relational Database
4 22 (8.00%) SQL Server
5 19 (6.91%) PostgreSQL
6 14 (5.09%) Data Warehouse
7 13 (4.73%) MySQL
8 12 (4.36%) NoSQL
9 8 (2.91%) Big Data
9 8 (2.91%) DB2
9 8 (2.91%) Metadata
10 7 (2.55%) DynamoDB
11 6 (2.18%) Data Mart
11 6 (2.18%) Hadoop
12 5 (1.82%) InfluxDB
12 5 (1.82%) Oracle Reports
13 4 (1.45%) Data Lake
13 4 (1.45%) Oracle Database 12c
13 4 (1.45%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 65 (23.64%) Jenkins
2 47 (17.09%) GitLab
3 35 (12.73%) Git
4 25 (9.09%) JIRA
5 13 (4.73%) JUnit
6 8 (2.91%) Maven
7 7 (2.55%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 7 (2.55%) Mockito
8 6 (2.18%) PyCharm
8 6 (2.18%) PyUnit
9 4 (1.45%) JMeter
9 4 (1.45%) Sonatype Nexus
9 4 (1.45%) Subversion
10 3 (1.09%) Artifactory
10 3 (1.09%) Bitbucket
10 3 (1.09%) CircleCI
10 3 (1.09%) Postman
10 3 (1.09%) Selenium
10 3 (1.09%) SonarQube
10 3 (1.09%) Terragrunt
General
1 76 (27.64%) Social Skills
2 44 (16.00%) Finance
3 38 (13.82%) Banking
4 30 (10.91%) Analytical Skills
4 30 (10.91%) Public Sector
5 15 (5.45%) Investment Banking
6 13 (4.73%) Front Office
7 9 (3.27%) Retail
8 7 (2.55%) Documentation Skills
9 5 (1.82%) Aerospace
10 4 (1.45%) Advertising
10 4 (1.45%) Telecoms
11 3 (1.09%) Law
11 3 (1.09%) Local Government
12 2 (0.73%) Manufacturing
12 2 (0.73%) Organisational Skills
13 1 (0.36%) Marketing
13 1 (0.36%) Military
13 1 (0.36%) Multimedia
13 1 (0.36%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 78 (28.36%) Developer
2 37 (13.45%) Java Developer
3 24 (8.73%) Senior
4 20 (7.27%) DBA
4 20 (7.27%) Support Engineer
5 19 (6.91%) Administrator
6 18 (6.55%) Oracle DBA
6 18 (6.55%) Site Reliability Engineer
7 17 (6.18%) Data Engineer
7 17 (6.18%) DevOps Engineer
7 17 (6.18%) Site Engineer
8 15 (5.45%) AWS Engineer
9 12 (4.36%) AWS DevOps
9 12 (4.36%) Python Developer
10 11 (4.00%) Consultant
10 11 (4.00%) Linux Administrator
10 11 (4.00%) Senior Developer
11 10 (3.64%) Analyst
11 10 (3.64%) AWS DevOps Engineer
12 9 (3.27%) Linux Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (9.45%) Kafka
2 21 (7.64%) Node.js
2 21 (7.64%) Spring
3 18 (6.55%) Elastic Stack
4 17 (6.18%) Middleware
5 15 (5.45%) REST
5 15 (5.45%) RESTful
5 15 (5.45%) Spring Boot
6 14 (5.09%) Oracle GoldenGate
7 12 (4.36%) JSON
8 11 (4.00%) LDAP
9 10 (3.64%) OpenAPI
9 10 (3.64%) SOAP
10 9 (3.27%) XML
11 8 (2.91%) AWS CDK
12 7 (2.55%) .NET
12 7 (2.55%) Django
12 7 (2.55%) pytest
12 7 (2.55%) XSD
13 6 (2.18%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 21 (7.64%) Cloud Native
2 17 (6.18%) Management Information System
3 12 (4.36%) Data Centre
4 11 (4.00%) Equities
5 10 (3.64%) Data Structures
6 7 (2.55%) Data Protection Act
6 7 (2.55%) Enterprise Cloud
6 7 (2.55%) Fixed Income
7 6 (2.18%) DataPower
7 6 (2.18%) Legacy Systems
7 6 (2.18%) Mainframe
8 5 (1.82%) Distributed Systems
8 5 (1.82%) Legacy Code
8 5 (1.82%) Linux Command Line
9 4 (1.45%) Clustering
9 4 (1.45%) Derivative
9 4 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
9 4 (1.45%) Equity Derivative
9 4 (1.45%) Self-Motivation
9 4 (1.45%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 182 (66.18%) Linux
2 100 (36.36%) Unix
3 39 (14.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 24 (8.73%) Windows
5 11 (4.00%) CentOS
6 10 (3.64%) Ubuntu
7 6 (2.18%) Android
7 6 (2.18%) Apple iOS
8 5 (1.82%) Windows Server
9 4 (1.45%) VMS
10 3 (1.09%) AIX
11 2 (0.73%) Debian
11 2 (0.73%) OpenVMS
11 2 (0.73%) zOS
12 1 (0.36%) Amazon Linux
12 1 (0.36%) Oracle Linux
12 1 (0.36%) Rocky
12 1 (0.36%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 107 (38.91%) CI/CD
2 78 (28.36%) Agile
3 76 (27.64%) Problem-Solving
4 57 (20.73%) DevOps
5 45 (16.36%) Containerisation
6 43 (15.64%) Infrastructure as Code
6 43 (15.64%) Performance Tuning
7 32 (11.64%) Task Automation
8 27 (9.82%) Observability
8 27 (9.82%) SDLC
8 27 (9.82%) Software Engineering
9 26 (9.45%) Analytics
9 26 (9.45%) Continuous Improvement
9 26 (9.45%) Microservices
10 25 (9.09%) Migration
11 24 (8.73%) Data Modelling
11 24 (8.73%) ITIL
12 23 (8.36%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 23 (8.36%) Scrum
13 22 (8.00%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 122 (44.36%) SQL
2 113 (41.09%) Python
3 99 (36.00%) Java
4 37 (13.45%) JavaScript
5 22 (8.00%) Bash
6 19 (6.91%) Korn
6 19 (6.91%) PL/SQL
7 17 (6.18%) TypeScript
8 14 (5.09%) C++
9 12 (4.36%) Perl
10 11 (4.00%) C
10 11 (4.00%) Go
11 7 (2.55%) MATLAB
11 7 (2.55%) PowerShell
12 6 (2.18%) Ada
13 5 (1.82%) Groovy
13 5 (1.82%) ProC
14 3 (1.09%) C#
14 3 (1.09%) JCL
14 3 (1.09%) PHP
Qualifications
1 104 (37.82%) Security Cleared
2 86 (31.27%) SC Cleared
3 23 (8.36%) BPSS Clearance
4 22 (8.00%) Degree
5 15 (5.45%) DV Cleared
6 14 (5.09%) Computer Science Degree
7 7 (2.55%) OCP
7 7 (2.55%) Oracle Certification
8 4 (1.45%) Master's Degree
9 3 (1.09%) Azure Certification
10 2 (0.73%) CISSP
11 1 (0.36%) AWS Certification
11 1 (0.36%) AWS Certified Developer
11 1 (0.36%) CISM
11 1 (0.36%) ITIL Certification
11 1 (0.36%) MOS
11 1 (0.36%) PMI Certification
11 1 (0.36%) RHCA
11 1 (0.36%) RHCE
11 1 (0.36%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (6.55%) SLA
2 15 (5.45%) Data Quality
3 10 (3.64%) QA
4 6 (2.18%) GDPR
5 3 (1.09%) FATCA
6 2 (0.73%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 2 (0.73%) HIPAA
6 2 (0.73%) NCSC
6 2 (0.73%) NIST
7 1 (0.36%) DICOM
7 1 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 57 (20.73%) Docker
2 13 (4.73%) Oracle RAC
3 10 (3.64%) Active Directory
4 9 (3.27%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (1.09%) GridGain
5 3 (1.09%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.73%) HDFS
6 2 (0.73%) KVM
6 2 (0.73%) Postfix
6 2 (0.73%) SRDF
6 2 (0.73%) Varnish
7 1 (0.36%) Apache ZooKeeper
7 1 (0.36%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.36%) NFS
7 1 (0.36%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 69 (25.09%) Kubernetes
2 57 (20.73%) Terraform
3 45 (16.36%) Ansible
4 36 (13.09%) Grafana
5 34 (12.36%) Prometheus
6 18 (6.55%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
7 16 (5.82%) Oracle RMAN
7 16 (5.82%) Progress Chef
8 13 (4.73%) Red Hat Satellite
9 8 (2.91%) Podman
9 8 (2.91%) Puppet
10 7 (2.55%) Check_MK
11 5 (1.82%) Dell DRAC
12 4 (1.45%) Kibana
13 3 (1.09%) Data Guard
13 3 (1.09%) Docker Swarm
14 2 (0.73%) HAProxy
14 2 (0.73%) Jamf Pro
14 2 (0.73%) Sysdig
14 2 (0.73%) systemd
Vendors
1 83 (30.18%) Oracle
2 42 (15.27%) Red Hat
3 19 (6.91%) Microsoft
4 16 (5.82%) Splunk
5 14 (5.09%) Sybase
5 14 (5.09%) VMware
6 11 (4.00%) Dell
6 11 (4.00%) Murex
7 8 (2.91%) ServiceNow
8 7 (2.55%) IBM
9 6 (2.18%) MuleSoft
10 5 (1.82%) Dynatrace
10 5 (1.82%) Talend
11 4 (1.45%) Cloudera
11 4 (1.45%) CyberArk
11 4 (1.45%) Databricks
11 4 (1.45%) Informatica
11 4 (1.45%) Veritas
12 3 (1.09%) Pure Storage
12 3 (1.09%) Solace