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 27 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 421 273 282
Rank change year-on-year -148 +9 -42
Contract jobs citing Shell Script 245 290 351
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.48% 0.96% 0.81%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.78% 2.82% 2.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 159 170 246
10th Percentile £325 £324 £324
25th Percentile £392 £416 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £468 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -6.50% - -6.63%
75th Percentile £538 £600 £605
90th Percentile £638 £646 £705
UK excluding London median daily rate £455 £490 £450
% change year-on-year -7.14% +8.89% -14.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 13 8
10th Percentile £28.30 £65.60 £59.73
25th Percentile £32.13 - £64.19
Median hourly rate £39.50 £68.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -41.91% +4.62% -6.31%
75th Percentile £47.13 - £67.69
90th Percentile £51.10 £75.60 £76.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £68.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -41.91% +4.62% -5.45%

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 13,744 10,277 13,212
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.96% 33.89% 30.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,928 6,943 9,268
10th Percentile £360 £350 £350
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £511 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.20% -2.67% -4.55%
75th Percentile £606 £625 £650
90th Percentile £720 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £491 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.37% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 541 243 543
10th Percentile £34.13 £25.86 £31.45
25th Percentile £53.53 £33.91 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -12.00% +1.46%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.00 £82.37 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £61.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +5.69% -5.38% +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 27 June 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 27 June 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 27 June 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 -139 212 £470 -8.94% 33
UK excluding London -165 119 £455 -7.14% 35
London -72 102 £525 -2.33% 10
Work from Home -96 57 £488 +2.63% 21
South East -53 32 £396 -34.00% 8
Midlands -50 28 £467 +1.56% 3
West Midlands -49 27 £467 -2.74% 3
North of England -88 25 £500 +1.46% 9
East of England -24 22 £410 +26.15% 3
Yorkshire -51 14 £500 - 1
North West -59 9 £450 +12.50% 7
Scotland -54 6 £483 +1.58% 6
Wales -15 2 £305 +7.96% 3
South West -52 2 £556 +6.71% 4
Northern Ireland - 2 £190 -
East Midlands -15 1 £525 +45.83%
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 (5.71%) Apache
2 12 (4.90%) Confluence
3 9 (3.67%) Apache Airflow
4 8 (3.27%) Apache Spark
5 6 (2.45%) CICS
6 4 (1.63%) WebLogic
7 3 (1.22%) nginx
7 3 (1.22%) WebSphere
7 3 (1.22%) WebSphere Application Server
8 2 (0.82%) ArcGIS
8 2 (0.82%) JBoss
8 2 (0.82%) Oracle Spatial
8 2 (0.82%) Oracle Workflow
8 2 (0.82%) SharePoint
8 2 (0.82%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.41%) IBM HTTP Server
9 1 (0.41%) SAS
Applications
1 7 (2.86%) Notepad++
2 2 (0.82%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 1 (0.41%) FLEXCUBE
1 1 (0.41%) Oracle ERP
1 1 (0.41%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 78 (31.84%) AWS
2 46 (18.78%) Azure
3 40 (16.33%) GitHub
4 35 (14.29%) Serverless
5 30 (12.24%) GitHub Actions
6 24 (9.80%) AWS Lambda
7 23 (9.39%) Amazon S3
8 20 (8.16%) Amazon EC2
8 20 (8.16%) OpenShift
9 19 (7.76%) GCP
10 15 (6.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 12 (4.90%) Azure DevOps
12 10 (4.08%) Amazon EKS
12 10 (4.08%) Power Platform
13 9 (3.67%) AWS CloudFormation
14 8 (3.27%) PaaS
14 8 (3.27%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 7 (2.86%) AWS CodePipeline
16 6 (2.45%) Azure Key Vault
16 6 (2.45%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 9 (3.67%) DNS
2 8 (3.27%) Network Security
2 8 (3.27%) SAN
3 7 (2.86%) PuTTY
3 7 (2.86%) WinSCP
4 5 (2.04%) SSH
5 4 (1.63%) MQTT
5 4 (1.63%) VPN
6 3 (1.22%) Firewall
6 3 (1.22%) HTTPS
6 3 (1.22%) Multicast
6 3 (1.22%) NAS
6 3 (1.22%) Reverse Proxy
6 3 (1.22%) SSL
7 2 (0.82%) AMQP
7 2 (0.82%) HTTP
7 2 (0.82%) iSCSI
7 2 (0.82%) OpenVPN
7 2 (0.82%) TCP/IP
8 1 (0.41%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (11.02%) SQL Server
2 23 (9.39%) Oracle Database
3 21 (8.57%) Relational Database
4 17 (6.94%) Data Warehouse
5 15 (6.12%) Metadata
5 15 (6.12%) PostgreSQL
6 14 (5.71%) Db2
6 14 (5.71%) MongoDB
7 12 (4.90%) MySQL
8 11 (4.49%) Amazon RDS
9 10 (4.08%) BusinessObjects
10 9 (3.67%) Data Lake
10 9 (3.67%) DynamoDB
11 7 (2.86%) Amazon Aurora
11 7 (2.86%) Elasticsearch
11 7 (2.86%) Power BI
12 6 (2.45%) Apache Cassandra
12 6 (2.45%) KDB
12 6 (2.45%) NoSQL
12 6 (2.45%) Oracle Database 12c
Development Applications
1 56 (22.86%) Jenkins
2 47 (19.18%) Git
3 40 (16.33%) GitLab
4 17 (6.94%) JIRA
5 10 (4.08%) JUnit
6 9 (3.67%) Maven
7 8 (3.27%) SonarQube
8 6 (2.45%) Mockito
9 5 (2.04%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 5 (2.04%) Bitbucket
10 4 (1.63%) JMeter
10 4 (1.63%) Sonatype Nexus
11 3 (1.22%) Artifactory
11 3 (1.22%) Claude Code
11 3 (1.22%) PyCharm
11 3 (1.22%) PyUnit
11 3 (1.22%) Terragrunt
11 3 (1.22%) Xcode
12 2 (0.82%) Gradle
13 1 (0.41%) Cucumber
General
1 60 (24.49%) Finance
2 52 (21.22%) Social Skills
3 44 (17.96%) Banking
4 24 (9.80%) Public Sector
5 14 (5.71%) Analytical Skills
6 12 (4.90%) Documentation Skills
6 12 (4.90%) Investment Banking
7 9 (3.67%) Front Office
7 9 (3.67%) Retail
8 6 (2.45%) Aerospace
9 5 (2.04%) Advertising
10 2 (0.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 2 (0.82%) Organisational Skills
10 2 (0.82%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.41%) Electronics
11 1 (0.41%) Financial Institution
11 1 (0.41%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.41%) International Banking
11 1 (0.41%) Manufacturing
11 1 (0.41%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 61 (24.90%) Developer
2 31 (12.65%) Data Engineer
3 22 (8.98%) Senior
4 21 (8.57%) Python Developer
5 20 (8.16%) Java Developer
6 19 (7.76%) Administrator
7 17 (6.94%) DBA
8 16 (6.53%) Support Engineer
9 15 (6.12%) Linux Administrator
10 14 (5.71%) DevOps Engineer
10 14 (5.71%) Oracle DBA
11 11 (4.49%) Analyst
11 11 (4.49%) Consultant
12 10 (4.08%) AWS DevOps
13 9 (3.67%) Architect
13 9 (3.67%) AWS Engineer
13 9 (3.67%) Database Engineer
13 9 (3.67%) Software Engineer
14 8 (3.27%) Senior Developer
14 8 (3.27%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (11.02%) RESTful
2 17 (6.94%) JSON
2 17 (6.94%) Spring
3 16 (6.53%) Middleware
3 16 (6.53%) Spring Boot
4 15 (6.12%) Oracle GoldenGate
5 14 (5.71%) Kafka
6 13 (5.31%) LDAP
7 11 (4.49%) FastAPI
8 10 (4.08%) Elastic Stack
8 10 (4.08%) Flask
9 9 (3.67%) Django
9 9 (3.67%) HTML
9 9 (3.67%) Pandas
9 9 (3.67%) REST
10 8 (3.27%) CSS
10 8 (3.27%) JPA
10 8 (3.27%) Web Services
11 7 (2.86%) .NET
11 7 (2.86%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 21 (8.57%) Management Information System
2 16 (6.53%) Data Centre
2 16 (6.53%) Linux Command Line
3 12 (4.90%) Cloud Native
4 9 (3.67%) Fixed Income
5 8 (3.27%) Mainframe
6 7 (2.86%) Enterprise Software
6 7 (2.86%) Hedge funds
7 6 (2.45%) Data Structures
7 6 (2.45%) DataPower
7 6 (2.45%) Derivative
7 6 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
7 6 (2.45%) Online Banking
7 6 (2.45%) Product Ownership
7 6 (2.45%) Public Cloud
7 6 (2.45%) Replication
8 5 (2.04%) Equity Derivative
8 5 (2.04%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 5 (2.04%) Self-Motivation
8 5 (2.04%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 145 (59.18%) Linux
2 109 (44.49%) Unix
3 33 (13.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 22 (8.98%) Windows
5 10 (4.08%) CentOS
6 7 (2.86%) zOS
7 6 (2.45%) Apple iOS
7 6 (2.45%) Solaris
7 6 (2.45%) Windows Server
8 3 (1.22%) AIX
8 3 (1.22%) Android
9 2 (0.82%) OpenVMS
9 2 (0.82%) Oracle Linux
9 2 (0.82%) VMS
10 1 (0.41%) Amazon Linux
10 1 (0.41%) Embedded Linux
10 1 (0.41%) SUSE
10 1 (0.41%) Windows Server 2008
10 1 (0.41%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 96 (39.18%) CI/CD
2 66 (26.94%) DevOps
3 48 (19.59%) Agile
3 48 (19.59%) Problem-Solving
4 43 (17.55%) Infrastructure as Code
5 41 (16.73%) Containerisation
6 40 (16.33%) Performance Tuning
7 37 (15.10%) Analytics
8 34 (13.88%) Migration
9 28 (11.43%) AI
9 28 (11.43%) Microservices
10 27 (11.02%) Performance Optimisation
11 25 (10.20%) Data Pipeline
12 24 (9.80%) ETL
13 23 (9.39%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 23 (9.39%) Scrum
14 22 (8.98%) Continuous Improvement
15 21 (8.57%) High Availability
16 20 (8.16%) ITIL
16 20 (8.16%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 121 (49.39%) SQL
2 112 (45.71%) Python
3 65 (26.53%) Java
4 32 (13.06%) PL/SQL
5 25 (10.20%) Bash
6 20 (8.16%) JavaScript
7 15 (6.12%) Korn
8 13 (5.31%) Perl
9 11 (4.49%) PowerShell
10 9 (3.67%) C#
10 9 (3.67%) MATLAB
11 8 (3.27%) C++
12 7 (2.86%) JCL
12 7 (2.86%) Ruby
13 6 (2.45%) C
14 5 (2.04%) Groovy
14 5 (2.04%) TypeScript
15 4 (1.63%) Go
15 4 (1.63%) Rust
16 3 (1.22%) Swift
Qualifications
1 95 (38.78%) Security Cleared
2 81 (33.06%) SC Cleared
3 24 (9.80%) Degree
4 16 (6.53%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (4.08%) Computer Science Degree
6 8 (3.27%) DV Cleared
7 6 (2.45%) Oracle Certification
8 5 (2.04%) Master's Degree
9 3 (1.22%) AWS Certification
9 3 (1.22%) CISSP
10 2 (0.82%) OCP
11 1 (0.41%) AWS Certified Developer
11 1 (0.41%) Azure Certification
11 1 (0.41%) CISM
11 1 (0.41%) ITIL Certification
11 1 (0.41%) MOS
11 1 (0.41%) PMI Certification
11 1 (0.41%) RHCA
11 1 (0.41%) RHCE
11 1 (0.41%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (4.90%) Data Quality
1 12 (4.90%) SLA
2 10 (4.08%) QA
3 5 (2.04%) Accessibility
4 3 (1.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
4 3 (1.22%) FATCA
4 3 (1.22%) GDPR
4 3 (1.22%) HIPAA
4 3 (1.22%) NIST
5 1 (0.41%) DICOM
5 1 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 53 (21.63%) Docker
2 16 (6.53%) Oracle RAC
3 13 (5.31%) Active Directory
4 7 (2.86%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (2.04%) Postfix
5 5 (2.04%) Varnish
5 5 (2.04%) VMware Infrastructure
6 4 (1.63%) NFS
6 4 (1.63%) Sendmail
7 3 (1.22%) GridGain
7 3 (1.22%) zsh
8 2 (0.82%) KVM
8 2 (0.82%) SRDF
9 1 (0.41%) HDFS
9 1 (0.41%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 58 (23.67%) Kubernetes
2 47 (19.18%) Terraform
3 46 (18.78%) Ansible
4 23 (9.39%) Grafana
5 22 (8.98%) Prometheus
6 21 (8.57%) Oracle RMAN
7 15 (6.12%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 13 (5.31%) Podman
9 9 (3.67%) Check_MK
9 9 (3.67%) Progress Chef
9 9 (3.67%) Puppet
9 9 (3.67%) Red Hat Satellite
10 7 (2.86%) Data Guard
11 6 (2.45%) Kibana
12 5 (2.04%) HAProxy
13 3 (1.22%) Control-M
13 3 (1.22%) Docker Swarm
13 3 (1.22%) NetBackup
14 2 (0.82%) Consul
14 2 (0.82%) Sysdig
Vendors
1 83 (33.88%) Oracle
2 29 (11.84%) Red Hat
3 16 (6.53%) Microsoft
3 16 (6.53%) VMware
4 11 (4.49%) Sybase
5 10 (4.08%) IBM
5 10 (4.08%) Murex
6 9 (3.67%) Google
6 9 (3.67%) Informatica
7 7 (2.86%) Splunk
8 6 (2.45%) Solace
8 6 (2.45%) Talend
8 6 (2.45%) Tenable
9 5 (2.04%) Databricks
9 5 (2.04%) NVIDIA
9 5 (2.04%) Veritas
10 4 (1.63%) Cloudera
10 4 (1.63%) Hortonworks
10 4 (1.63%) SAP
10 4 (1.63%) ServiceNow