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 26 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 417 271 270
Rank change year-on-year -146 -1 -5
Contract jobs citing Shell Script 274 320 357
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.51% 0.98% 0.92%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.96% 2.98% 2.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 190 196 240
10th Percentile £325 £329 £335
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £474 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.25% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £597 £600 £606
90th Percentile £702 £641 £710
UK excluding London median daily rate £441 £493 £450
% change year-on-year -10.58% +9.53% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 12 6
10th Percentile £30.85 £62.60 £62.63
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 - £66.50
90th Percentile £68.88 £92.30 £82.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £68.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -22.79% +4.62% -7.14%

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 13,990 10,743 12,235
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.08% 32.84% 31.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,106 7,166 8,475
10th Percentile £363 £340 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £505 £530
Median % change year-on-year +2.77% -4.72% -3.64%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £498 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.93% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 518 297 383
10th Percentile £28.50 £28.25 £27.00
25th Percentile £50.00 £36.25 £46.18
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +4.55%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.23 £79.25 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.25 £65.00
% change year-on-year +4.42% -4.23% +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 26 August 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 26 August 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 26 August 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 -129 227 £475 -5.66% 98
UK excluding London -134 140 £441 -10.58% 59
London -67 114 £550 +4.76% 51
Work from Home -90 75 £470 -1.05% 34
North of England -104 32 £375 -23.84% 16
South East -71 31 £424 -29.38% 10
Scotland -49 26 £425 -10.99% 6
Midlands -44 24 £470 -1.05% 5
West Midlands -49 21 £470 -6.00% 3
Yorkshire -63 18 £403 -19.50% 3
East of England -24 16 £350 -12.50% 9
North West -58 12 £312 -15.81% 9
South West -52 8 £544 +8.75% 9
East Midlands -16 3 £481 +33.61% 2
North East - 3 £463 - 4
Northern Ireland +2 2 £190 - 3
Wales -15 1 £265 -6.19% 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 20 (7.30%) Apache
2 14 (5.11%) Apache Airflow
3 12 (4.38%) SAS
4 8 (2.92%) Apache Spark
5 6 (2.19%) Oracle Workflow
5 6 (2.19%) WebLogic
6 5 (1.82%) CICS
6 5 (1.82%) WebSphere
7 4 (1.46%) Confluence
8 3 (1.09%) JBoss
8 3 (1.09%) OpenStack
8 3 (1.09%) WebSphere Application Server
9 2 (0.73%) nginx
9 2 (0.73%) SharePoint
9 2 (0.73%) Tomcat
10 1 (0.36%) IBM HTTP Server
Applications
1 7 (2.55%) Notepad++
Business Applications
1 4 (1.46%) Oracle Assets
1 4 (1.46%) Oracle EBS
1 4 (1.46%) Oracle E-Business Tax
1 4 (1.46%) Oracle FAH
1 4 (1.46%) Oracle General Ledger
1 4 (1.46%) Oracle Internet Expenses
1 4 (1.46%) Oracle iProcurement
1 4 (1.46%) Oracle Payables
1 4 (1.46%) Oracle Receivables
2 3 (1.09%) Oracle Financials
3 1 (0.36%) FLEXCUBE
3 1 (0.36%) Front Arena
3 1 (0.36%) Oracle EBS R12
3 1 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.36%) Summit
3 1 (0.36%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 99 (36.13%) AWS
2 63 (22.99%) Azure
3 51 (18.61%) GCP
4 48 (17.52%) GitHub
5 33 (12.04%) Serverless
6 27 (9.85%) AWS Lambda
6 27 (9.85%) GitHub Actions
7 25 (9.12%) Amazon S3
8 17 (6.20%) Amazon EC2
9 13 (4.74%) OpenShift
10 12 (4.38%) dbt
11 11 (4.01%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 10 (3.65%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 9 (3.28%) Azure DevOps
13 9 (3.28%) Power Platform
14 8 (2.92%) AWS CloudFormation
15 7 (2.55%) Amazon SQS
16 6 (2.19%) Cloud Composer
16 6 (2.19%) GitHub Copilot
16 6 (2.19%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 17 (6.20%) DNS
2 12 (4.38%) TCP/IP
3 10 (3.65%) HTTP
3 10 (3.65%) SSL
4 7 (2.55%) Network Security
4 7 (2.55%) PuTTY
4 7 (2.55%) VPN
4 7 (2.55%) WinSCP
5 6 (2.19%) SSH
6 5 (1.82%) Firewall
6 5 (1.82%) SAN
7 4 (1.46%) 5G
7 4 (1.46%) MQTT
7 4 (1.46%) Multicast
8 3 (1.09%) 4G
8 3 (1.09%) BGP
8 3 (1.09%) HTTPS
9 2 (0.73%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
9 2 (0.73%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 2 (0.73%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (11.31%) Data Warehouse
2 28 (10.22%) Oracle Database
3 23 (8.39%) SQL Server
4 20 (7.30%) Relational Database
5 18 (6.57%) MySQL
5 18 (6.57%) PostgreSQL
6 17 (6.20%) Db2
7 15 (5.47%) Metadata
7 15 (5.47%) MongoDB
8 12 (4.38%) NoSQL
9 11 (4.01%) Data Lake
9 11 (4.01%) PowerCenter
10 10 (3.65%) Amazon Aurora
10 10 (3.65%) Amazon RDS
10 10 (3.65%) BusinessObjects
10 10 (3.65%) Oracle Reports
11 9 (3.28%) BigQuery
11 9 (3.28%) Elasticsearch
11 9 (3.28%) Star Schema
12 7 (2.55%) DataStage
Development Applications
1 69 (25.18%) Git
2 56 (20.44%) Jenkins
3 36 (13.14%) GitLab
4 22 (8.03%) Maven
5 16 (5.84%) JUnit
6 11 (4.01%) Claude Code
6 11 (4.01%) JIRA
7 9 (3.28%) Mockito
7 9 (3.28%) Sonatype Nexus
8 8 (2.92%) SonarQube
9 5 (1.82%) Bitbucket
9 5 (1.82%) Gradle
9 5 (1.82%) Oracle Forms
10 4 (1.46%) Artifactory
10 4 (1.46%) JDeveloper
11 3 (1.09%) JMeter
11 3 (1.09%) Selenium
11 3 (1.09%) webpack
11 3 (1.09%) Xcode
12 2 (0.73%) Gatling
General
1 88 (32.12%) Finance
2 57 (20.80%) Banking
3 46 (16.79%) Social Skills
4 27 (9.85%) Analytical Skills
5 22 (8.03%) Public Sector
6 16 (5.84%) Investment Banking
7 7 (2.55%) Documentation Skills
7 7 (2.55%) Front Office
8 6 (2.19%) Telecoms
9 4 (1.46%) Aerospace
9 4 (1.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (1.46%) Retail
10 3 (1.09%) Advertising
10 3 (1.09%) General Ledger
11 2 (0.73%) Prime Brokerage
11 2 (0.73%) Publishing
12 1 (0.36%) International Banking
12 1 (0.36%) Legal
12 1 (0.36%) Marketing
12 1 (0.36%) Military
Job Titles
1 68 (24.82%) Developer
2 36 (13.14%) Data Engineer
2 36 (13.14%) Senior
3 29 (10.58%) Python Developer
4 18 (6.57%) Java Developer
4 18 (6.57%) Senior Developer
5 17 (6.20%) Architect
6 16 (5.84%) Cloud Engineer
7 14 (5.11%) DevOps Engineer
7 14 (5.11%) Java Engineer
7 14 (5.11%) Support Engineer
8 13 (4.74%) DBA
8 13 (4.74%) GCP Engineer
9 11 (4.01%) Administrator
9 11 (4.01%) Oracle DBA
10 10 (3.65%) Analyst
11 9 (3.28%) AWS DevOps
11 9 (3.28%) AWS Engineer
11 9 (3.28%) Software Engineer
12 8 (2.92%) Senior Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 61 (22.26%) Terraform
2 37 (13.50%) RESTful
3 24 (8.76%) Kafka
3 24 (8.76%) REST
4 23 (8.39%) Spring
5 22 (8.03%) Spring Boot
6 21 (7.66%) FastAPI
6 21 (7.66%) Flask
7 18 (6.57%) Pandas
8 15 (5.47%) JSON
9 14 (5.11%) CSS
9 14 (5.11%) HTML
9 14 (5.11%) Middleware
10 12 (4.38%) PySpark
11 11 (4.01%) Elastic Stack
11 11 (4.01%) Oracle GoldenGate
11 11 (4.01%) RabbitMQ
12 10 (3.65%) Django
12 10 (3.65%) JPA
13 8 (2.92%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 30 (10.95%) Linux Command Line
2 14 (5.11%) Cloud Native
2 14 (5.11%) Management Information System
3 11 (4.01%) Fixed Income
4 8 (2.92%) Data Centre
4 8 (2.92%) Enterprise Software
4 8 (2.92%) Replication
5 7 (2.55%) Derivative
5 7 (2.55%) Enterprise Cloud
5 7 (2.55%) Hedge funds
5 7 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
5 7 (2.55%) Mainframe
5 7 (2.55%) Self-Motivation
6 6 (2.19%) Distributed Systems
6 6 (2.19%) Market Risk
6 6 (2.19%) Product Ownership
6 6 (2.19%) Public Cloud
7 5 (1.82%) DataPower
7 5 (1.82%) Online Banking
8 4 (1.46%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 149 (54.38%) Linux
2 125 (45.62%) Unix
3 23 (8.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 19 (6.93%) Windows
5 9 (3.28%) Solaris
6 6 (2.19%) zOS
7 5 (1.82%) AIX
7 5 (1.82%) CentOS
7 5 (1.82%) Windows Server
8 3 (1.09%) Apple iOS
9 2 (0.73%) HPUX
9 2 (0.73%) Oracle Linux
9 2 (0.73%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.36%) Amazon Linux
10 1 (0.36%) Embedded Linux
10 1 (0.36%) Rocky
10 1 (0.36%) SUSE
10 1 (0.36%) Windows Server 2008
10 1 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 114 (41.61%) CI/CD
2 77 (28.10%) DevOps
3 57 (20.80%) Infrastructure as Code
4 52 (18.98%) Containerisation
5 46 (16.79%) Performance Tuning
6 45 (16.42%) Agile
6 45 (16.42%) Data Pipeline
7 43 (15.69%) AI
8 42 (15.33%) Migration
9 39 (14.23%) ETL
9 39 (14.23%) Problem-Solving
10 38 (13.87%) Performance Optimisation
11 37 (13.50%) Analytics
12 33 (12.04%) Observability
13 32 (11.68%) Root Cause Analysis
14 31 (11.31%) Code Quality
15 30 (10.95%) Microservices
16 28 (10.22%) Data Modelling
17 27 (9.85%) Configuration Management
17 27 (9.85%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 149 (54.38%) SQL
2 139 (50.73%) Python
3 71 (25.91%) Java
4 46 (16.79%) Bash
4 46 (16.79%) PL/SQL
5 17 (6.20%) JavaScript
6 16 (5.84%) PowerShell
7 14 (5.11%) Groovy
8 12 (4.38%) Korn
8 12 (4.38%) Perl
9 9 (3.28%) C#
10 6 (2.19%) JCL
10 6 (2.19%) Ruby
10 6 (2.19%) Scala
10 6 (2.19%) TypeScript
11 5 (1.82%) C
11 5 (1.82%) C++
11 5 (1.82%) Go
12 4 (1.46%) MATLAB
12 4 (1.46%) Rust
Qualifications
1 81 (29.56%) Security Cleared
2 63 (22.99%) SC Cleared
3 26 (9.49%) Degree
4 18 (6.57%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (3.65%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (2.55%) DV Cleared
7 6 (2.19%) AWS Certification
7 6 (2.19%) Oracle Certification
8 5 (1.82%) Master's Degree
9 2 (0.73%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 2 (0.73%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.73%) Cisco Certification
9 2 (0.73%) CISSP
9 2 (0.73%) OCP
10 1 (0.36%) CCNA
10 1 (0.36%) CISM
10 1 (0.36%) GIAC
10 1 (0.36%) ITIL Certification
10 1 (0.36%) MOS
10 1 (0.36%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (12.41%) Data Quality
2 15 (5.47%) QA
3 7 (2.55%) SLA
4 6 (2.19%) Accessibility
5 3 (1.09%) Disclosure Scotland
5 3 (1.09%) ISO 20022
6 2 (0.73%) 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%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 1 (0.36%) SEPA
System Software
1 63 (22.99%) Docker
2 11 (4.01%) Oracle RAC
3 9 (3.28%) Active Directory
4 6 (2.19%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (1.82%) zsh
6 4 (1.46%) NFS
6 4 (1.46%) Postfix
6 4 (1.46%) Sendmail
6 4 (1.46%) Varnish
6 4 (1.46%) VMware Infrastructure
7 3 (1.09%) GridGain
8 2 (0.73%) KVM
9 1 (0.36%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.36%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 75 (27.37%) Kubernetes
2 48 (17.52%) Ansible
3 25 (9.12%) Grafana
4 22 (8.03%) Prometheus
5 16 (5.84%) Oracle RMAN
6 11 (4.01%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
7 10 (3.65%) Kibana
8 9 (3.28%) Control-M
9 8 (2.92%) Data Guard
9 8 (2.92%) Podman
10 6 (2.19%) Puppet
11 4 (1.46%) Check_MK
11 4 (1.46%) HAProxy
11 4 (1.46%) HP ALM
11 4 (1.46%) NetBackup
11 4 (1.46%) Red Hat Satellite
12 3 (1.09%) Consul
12 3 (1.09%) ITRS Geneos
12 3 (1.09%) logstash
12 3 (1.09%) Packer
Vendors
1 93 (33.94%) Oracle
2 32 (11.68%) Google
3 20 (7.30%) Informatica
4 18 (6.57%) Splunk
5 17 (6.20%) Red Hat
6 16 (5.84%) IBM
7 13 (4.74%) Microsoft
8 12 (4.38%) Sybase
9 10 (3.65%) New Relic
10 9 (3.28%) VMware
11 7 (2.55%) Dynatrace
11 7 (2.55%) ServiceNow
11 7 (2.55%) Solace
12 6 (2.19%) HP
12 6 (2.19%) Murex
12 6 (2.19%) Tenable
12 6 (2.19%) Teradata
13 5 (1.82%) Databricks
13 5 (1.82%) NVIDIA
13 5 (1.82%) SAP