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

6 months to
13 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 412 266 264
Rank change year-on-year -146 -2 +13
Contract jobs citing Shell Script 272 327 347
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.50% 0.99% 0.90%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.92% 3.03% 2.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 187 195 230
10th Percentile £325 £311 £350
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £493 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.39% -1.44% -4.76%
75th Percentile £617 £600 £600
90th Percentile £719 £638 £708
UK excluding London median daily rate £461 £480 £433
% change year-on-year -4.01% +10.98% -13.50%
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 14,132 10,803 12,309
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.00% 32.82% 31.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,166 7,151 8,379
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 538 295 347
10th Percentile £27.75 £29.00 £27.00
25th Percentile £48.16 £36.69 £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 £67.25 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £79.50 £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +2.36% -2.31% -

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 -133 223 £500 - 117
UK excluding London -144 140 £461 -4.01% 86
London -86 112 £550 +4.76% 57
Work from Home -94 75 £470 -1.05% 163
North of England -96 37 £425 -11.46% 16
Scotland -56 26 £425 -10.53% 15
South East -73 26 £483 -17.66% 22
Midlands -35 23 £470 -3.59% 13
West Midlands -36 21 £470 -6.00% 8
Yorkshire -59 20 £463 -7.50% 5
East of England -22 15 £388 -3.13% 7
North West -66 14 £344 -22.87% 8
South West -46 11 £563 +12.50% 5
North East - 4 £469 - 3
Northern Ireland +4 2 £190 - 4
Wales -14 2 £265 -6.19% 5
East Midlands -18 2 £466 +29.31% 5

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 (5.51%) Apache
2 12 (4.41%) SAS
3 10 (3.68%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (2.21%) WebLogic
5 5 (1.84%) Apache Spark
5 5 (1.84%) Oracle Workflow
6 4 (1.47%) CICS
6 4 (1.47%) Confluence
6 4 (1.47%) WebSphere
7 3 (1.10%) JBoss
7 3 (1.10%) OpenStack
8 2 (0.74%) nginx
8 2 (0.74%) SharePoint
8 2 (0.74%) WebSphere Application Server
9 1 (0.37%) Tomcat
Applications
1 7 (2.57%) Notepad++
Business Applications
1 6 (2.21%) Front Arena
1 6 (2.21%) Summit
2 4 (1.47%) Oracle Assets
2 4 (1.47%) Oracle EBS
2 4 (1.47%) Oracle E-Business Tax
2 4 (1.47%) Oracle FAH
2 4 (1.47%) Oracle General Ledger
2 4 (1.47%) Oracle Internet Expenses
2 4 (1.47%) Oracle iProcurement
2 4 (1.47%) Oracle Payables
2 4 (1.47%) Oracle Receivables
3 3 (1.10%) Oracle Financials
4 2 (0.74%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.37%) FLEXCUBE
5 1 (0.37%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.37%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 101 (37.13%) AWS
2 59 (21.69%) Azure
3 56 (20.59%) GCP
4 52 (19.12%) GitHub
5 33 (12.13%) Serverless
6 27 (9.93%) AWS Lambda
6 27 (9.93%) GitHub Actions
7 24 (8.82%) Amazon S3
8 17 (6.25%) Amazon EC2
9 12 (4.41%) dbt
9 12 (4.41%) OpenShift
10 11 (4.04%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 10 (3.68%) GitHub Copilot
12 9 (3.31%) AWS CodeBuild
12 9 (3.31%) Power Platform
12 9 (3.31%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 8 (2.94%) AWS CloudFormation
13 8 (2.94%) AWS CodePipeline
14 7 (2.57%) Datadog
14 7 (2.57%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 16 (5.88%) DNS
2 13 (4.78%) TCP/IP
3 10 (3.68%) HTTP
3 10 (3.68%) SSL
4 7 (2.57%) Firewall
4 7 (2.57%) PuTTY
4 7 (2.57%) VPN
4 7 (2.57%) WinSCP
5 6 (2.21%) Network Security
5 6 (2.21%) SAN
6 5 (1.84%) SSH
7 4 (1.47%) 5G
7 4 (1.47%) MQTT
7 4 (1.47%) Multicast
8 3 (1.10%) 4G
8 3 (1.10%) BGP
8 3 (1.10%) HTTPS
9 2 (0.74%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
9 2 (0.74%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 2 (0.74%) tcpdump
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (11.76%) Data Warehouse
2 24 (8.82%) Oracle Database
3 19 (6.99%) Relational Database
4 18 (6.62%) Db2
4 18 (6.62%) MySQL
5 16 (5.88%) MongoDB
5 16 (5.88%) PostgreSQL
5 16 (5.88%) SQL Server
6 12 (4.41%) Metadata
6 12 (4.41%) NoSQL
7 11 (4.04%) PowerCenter
8 10 (3.68%) Amazon Aurora
8 10 (3.68%) BusinessObjects
8 10 (3.68%) Oracle Reports
9 9 (3.31%) Elasticsearch
9 9 (3.31%) Star Schema
10 8 (2.94%) Amazon RDS
10 8 (2.94%) BigQuery
11 7 (2.57%) Data Lake
11 7 (2.57%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 79 (29.04%) Git
2 55 (20.22%) Jenkins
3 37 (13.60%) GitLab
4 25 (9.19%) Maven
5 16 (5.88%) JUnit
6 12 (4.41%) Sonatype Nexus
7 11 (4.04%) Claude Code
7 11 (4.04%) JIRA
8 9 (3.31%) SonarQube
9 8 (2.94%) Mockito
10 7 (2.57%) Gradle
11 5 (1.84%) Bitbucket
11 5 (1.84%) Oracle Forms
12 4 (1.47%) JDeveloper
12 4 (1.47%) Visual Studio Code
13 3 (1.10%) Selenium
13 3 (1.10%) webpack
13 3 (1.10%) Xcode
14 2 (0.74%) JMeter
14 2 (0.74%) Terragrunt
General
1 95 (34.93%) Finance
2 56 (20.59%) Banking
3 44 (16.18%) Social Skills
4 35 (12.87%) Analytical Skills
5 20 (7.35%) Public Sector
6 16 (5.88%) Investment Banking
7 7 (2.57%) Documentation Skills
8 6 (2.21%) Telecoms
9 4 (1.47%) Aerospace
9 4 (1.47%) Front Office
9 4 (1.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (1.47%) Retail
10 3 (1.10%) General Ledger
11 2 (0.74%) Prime Brokerage
11 2 (0.74%) Publishing
12 1 (0.37%) Advertising
12 1 (0.37%) Electronics
12 1 (0.37%) Legal
12 1 (0.37%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.37%) Military
Job Titles
1 72 (26.47%) Developer
2 45 (16.54%) Senior
3 31 (11.40%) Python Developer
4 29 (10.66%) Data Engineer
5 24 (8.82%) Senior Developer
6 20 (7.35%) DevOps Engineer
7 19 (6.99%) Java Developer
8 16 (5.88%) Architect
8 16 (5.88%) Cloud Engineer
9 15 (5.51%) GCP Engineer
10 14 (5.15%) Java Engineer
11 13 (4.78%) Analyst
12 12 (4.41%) Administrator
13 10 (3.68%) Senior Python Developer
14 9 (3.31%) AWS Engineer
14 9 (3.31%) Linux Administrator
14 9 (3.31%) Senior Java Developer
14 9 (3.31%) Software Engineer
15 8 (2.94%) AWS Developer
15 8 (2.94%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 66 (24.26%) Terraform
2 35 (12.87%) RESTful
3 24 (8.82%) Spring
4 23 (8.46%) FastAPI
4 23 (8.46%) Kafka
4 23 (8.46%) REST
4 23 (8.46%) Spring Boot
5 22 (8.09%) Flask
6 18 (6.62%) Pandas
7 14 (5.15%) CSS
7 14 (5.15%) Django
7 14 (5.15%) HTML
7 14 (5.15%) JSON
8 13 (4.78%) Middleware
9 11 (4.04%) RabbitMQ
10 10 (3.68%) JPA
10 10 (3.68%) Web Services
11 9 (3.31%) Elastic Stack
12 8 (2.94%) PySpark
13 7 (2.57%) React
Miscellaneous
1 29 (10.66%) Linux Command Line
2 16 (5.88%) Management Information System
3 14 (5.15%) Cloud Native
4 11 (4.04%) Enterprise Software
4 11 (4.04%) Fixed Income
5 9 (3.31%) Data Centre
6 8 (2.94%) Public Cloud
6 8 (2.94%) Replication
7 7 (2.57%) Derivative
7 7 (2.57%) Enterprise Cloud
7 7 (2.57%) Hedge funds
8 6 (2.21%) Distributed Systems
8 6 (2.21%) Hybrid Cloud
8 6 (2.21%) Mainframe
8 6 (2.21%) Market Risk
8 6 (2.21%) Product Ownership
9 5 (1.84%) AI Agents
9 5 (1.84%) Distributed Applications
9 5 (1.84%) Onboarding
9 5 (1.84%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 148 (54.41%) Linux
2 124 (45.59%) Unix
3 24 (8.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 17 (6.25%) Windows
5 10 (3.68%) Solaris
6 5 (1.84%) AIX
6 5 (1.84%) CentOS
6 5 (1.84%) zOS
7 4 (1.47%) VMS
7 4 (1.47%) Windows Server
8 3 (1.10%) Apple iOS
8 3 (1.10%) Rocky
9 2 (0.74%) HPUX
9 2 (0.74%) Oracle Linux
9 2 (0.74%) Ubuntu
10 1 (0.37%) Amazon Linux
10 1 (0.37%) Embedded Linux
10 1 (0.37%) SUSE
10 1 (0.37%) Windows Server 2008
10 1 (0.37%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 122 (44.85%) CI/CD
2 78 (28.68%) DevOps
3 67 (24.63%) Infrastructure as Code
4 63 (23.16%) Containerisation
5 48 (17.65%) Agile
6 47 (17.28%) AI
7 42 (15.44%) Performance Tuning
7 42 (15.44%) Problem-Solving
8 41 (15.07%) Data Pipeline
9 40 (14.71%) Migration
10 39 (14.34%) ETL
11 36 (13.24%) Root Cause Analysis
12 35 (12.87%) Observability
13 34 (12.50%) Performance Optimisation
14 32 (11.76%) Analytics
14 32 (11.76%) Code Quality
15 31 (11.40%) Configuration Management
16 29 (10.66%) SDLC
17 28 (10.29%) Microservices
18 27 (9.93%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 150 (55.15%) Python
2 148 (54.41%) SQL
3 73 (26.84%) Java
4 56 (20.59%) Bash
5 47 (17.28%) PL/SQL
6 21 (7.72%) PowerShell
7 17 (6.25%) JavaScript
8 15 (5.51%) Groovy
9 14 (5.15%) Perl
10 9 (3.31%) C#
10 9 (3.31%) Korn
11 6 (2.21%) Scala
11 6 (2.21%) TypeScript
12 5 (1.84%) Go
12 5 (1.84%) JCL
12 5 (1.84%) Ruby
13 4 (1.47%) C
13 4 (1.47%) C++
13 4 (1.47%) MATLAB
13 4 (1.47%) Rust
Qualifications
1 77 (28.31%) Security Cleared
2 57 (20.96%) SC Cleared
3 26 (9.56%) Degree
4 20 (7.35%) BPSS Clearance
5 11 (4.04%) DV Cleared
6 10 (3.68%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (2.21%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.84%) Master's Degree
8 5 (1.84%) Oracle Certification
9 2 (0.74%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 2 (0.74%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.74%) Cisco Certification
9 2 (0.74%) CISSP
10 1 (0.37%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 1 (0.37%) CISM
10 1 (0.37%) GIAC
10 1 (0.37%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
10 1 (0.37%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 1 (0.37%) OCP
10 1 (0.37%) RHCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (11.40%) Data Quality
2 16 (5.88%) QA
3 7 (2.57%) SLA
4 6 (2.21%) Accessibility
5 3 (1.10%) Disclosure Scotland
5 3 (1.10%) ISO 20022
6 2 (0.74%) ISO 15022
7 1 (0.37%) Basel III
7 1 (0.37%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 1 (0.37%) DICOM
7 1 (0.37%) GDPR
7 1 (0.37%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.37%) NIST
7 1 (0.37%) SEPA
System Software
1 73 (26.84%) Docker
2 9 (3.31%) Active Directory
3 8 (2.94%) Virtual Machines
4 6 (2.21%) VMware Infrastructure
5 5 (1.84%) Oracle RAC
5 5 (1.84%) zsh
6 4 (1.47%) NFS
7 3 (1.10%) GridGain
7 3 (1.10%) Postfix
7 3 (1.10%) Sendmail
7 3 (1.10%) Varnish
7 3 (1.10%) VMware ESXi
8 2 (0.74%) KVM
8 2 (0.74%) vSphere
9 1 (0.37%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.37%) Veritas Cluster Server
9 1 (0.37%) Veritas Volume Manager
Systems Management
1 79 (29.04%) Kubernetes
2 57 (20.96%) Ansible
3 28 (10.29%) Grafana
4 23 (8.46%) Prometheus
5 10 (3.68%) Kibana
5 10 (3.68%) Podman
6 9 (3.31%) Control-M
6 9 (3.31%) Oracle RMAN
7 8 (2.94%) Data Guard
8 6 (2.21%) Puppet
9 5 (1.84%) Check_MK
9 5 (1.84%) NetBackup
10 4 (1.47%) HP ALM
10 4 (1.47%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
10 4 (1.47%) Packer
10 4 (1.47%) Red Hat Satellite
11 3 (1.10%) Consul
11 3 (1.10%) HAProxy
11 3 (1.10%) ITRS Geneos
11 3 (1.10%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 84 (30.88%) Oracle
2 36 (13.24%) Google
3 20 (7.35%) Informatica
3 20 (7.35%) Splunk
4 18 (6.62%) Red Hat
5 17 (6.25%) IBM
6 14 (5.15%) Sybase
7 13 (4.78%) Microsoft
8 12 (4.41%) VMware
9 9 (3.31%) New Relic
10 8 (2.94%) Murex
11 7 (2.57%) Dynatrace
11 7 (2.57%) ServiceNow
11 7 (2.57%) Solace
12 6 (2.21%) Calypso
12 6 (2.21%) Checkmarx
12 6 (2.21%) FIS
12 6 (2.21%) HP
12 6 (2.21%) Tenable
12 6 (2.21%) Teradata