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

6 months to
20 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 382 280 302
Rank change year-on-year -102 +22 -67
Contract jobs citing Shell Script 251 274 299
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.52% 0.94% 0.70%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.95% 2.76% 2.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 173 156 215
10th Percentile £329 £369 £350
25th Percentile £400 £450 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £468 £520 £507
Median % change year-on-year -10.07% +2.64% -6.20%
75th Percentile £538 £602 £625
90th Percentile £625 £681 £710
UK excluding London median daily rate £459 £500 £470
% change year-on-year -8.20% +6.38% -12.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 15 8
10th Percentile £46.75 £66.20 £59.73
25th Percentile £47.50 - £64.19
Median hourly rate £50.00 £68.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -26.47% +4.62% +5.58%
75th Percentile £52.50 £72.13 £67.69
90th Percentile £53.25 £87.25 £76.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £68.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year -26.47% +4.62% +10.64%

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 12,886 9,917 12,722
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.76% 34.00% 29.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,472 6,737 9,047
10th Percentile £356 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £530
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -1.89% -3.64%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £710 £763 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £475 £489
% change year-on-year +1.39% -2.86% -2.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 561 239 494
10th Percentile £39.25 £25.25 £32.25
25th Percentile £54.55 £35.00 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.43
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +0.12% +2.85%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +1.56% +2.40% -

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 May 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
Top 16 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 May 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 -103 215 £475 -11.21% 43
UK excluding London -125 120 £459 -8.20% 28
London -56 99 £518 -11.91% 18
Work from Home -66 68 £500 -7.06% 12
Midlands -51 31 £469 +1.90% 1
West Midlands -38 30 £468 +1.63%
South East -58 30 £392 -34.67% 15
North of England -73 27 £455 -10.76% 6
East of England -19 25 £470 +44.62% 3
North West -40 13 £450 -13.42% 3
Yorkshire -68 12 £480 -4.00% 2
Scotland -60 4 - -
South West -51 2 £638 +22.30% 2
Wales -11 1 £345 -
East Midlands -29 1 £525 +10.53% 1
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 (5.58%) Apache
2 11 (4.38%) Confluence
3 8 (3.19%) Apache Spark
4 6 (2.39%) Apache Airflow
5 4 (1.59%) CICS
5 4 (1.59%) SharePoint
5 4 (1.59%) WebLogic
6 3 (1.20%) JBoss
6 3 (1.20%) nginx
6 3 (1.20%) Tomcat
6 3 (1.20%) WebSphere
6 3 (1.20%) WebSphere Application Server
7 2 (0.80%) ArcGIS
7 2 (0.80%) Oracle Spatial
7 2 (0.80%) Oracle Workflow
8 1 (0.40%) IBM HTTP Server
8 1 (0.40%) SAS
Applications
1 7 (2.79%) Notepad++
2 4 (1.59%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (0.80%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 3 (1.20%) Oracle Applications
2 1 (0.40%) Oracle 11i
2 1 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.40%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 95 (37.85%) AWS
2 51 (20.32%) Azure
3 43 (17.13%) GitHub
4 36 (14.34%) GitHub Actions
5 34 (13.55%) Serverless
6 27 (10.76%) Amazon S3
7 26 (10.36%) Amazon EC2
8 25 (9.96%) AWS Lambda
9 23 (9.16%) OpenShift
10 20 (7.97%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 17 (6.77%) Amazon EKS
12 14 (5.58%) AWS CloudFormation
12 14 (5.58%) Azure DevOps
13 10 (3.98%) GCP
13 10 (3.98%) PaaS
14 9 (3.59%) AWS CodePipeline
14 9 (3.59%) IaaS
15 8 (3.19%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 7 (2.79%) Azure AKS
16 7 (2.79%) Pulumi
Communications & Networking
1 12 (4.78%) SSH
2 11 (4.38%) DNS
3 9 (3.59%) SAN
4 7 (2.79%) PuTTY
4 7 (2.79%) TCP/IP
4 7 (2.79%) WinSCP
5 6 (2.39%) Network Security
6 5 (1.99%) Firewall
7 3 (1.20%) HTTP
7 3 (1.20%) HTTPS
7 3 (1.20%) NAS
7 3 (1.20%) Reverse Proxy
8 2 (0.80%) AMQP
8 2 (0.80%) iSCSI
8 2 (0.80%) Multicast
8 2 (0.80%) OpenVPN
8 2 (0.80%) VPN
9 1 (0.40%) DSL
9 1 (0.40%) IPsec
9 1 (0.40%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (10.36%) SQL Server
2 24 (9.56%) Oracle Database
3 22 (8.76%) Relational Database
4 20 (7.97%) PostgreSQL
5 16 (6.37%) Amazon RDS
5 16 (6.37%) Data Warehouse
5 16 (6.37%) MongoDB
6 13 (5.18%) Metadata
7 8 (3.19%) DynamoDB
7 8 (3.19%) NoSQL
8 7 (2.79%) Amazon Aurora
8 7 (2.79%) BusinessObjects
8 7 (2.79%) DB2
8 7 (2.79%) MySQL
9 6 (2.39%) Data Mart
9 6 (2.39%) Oracle Reports
10 5 (1.99%) Data Lake
10 5 (1.99%) KDB
10 5 (1.99%) Kdb+
10 5 (1.99%) Oracle Database 12c
Development Applications
1 64 (25.50%) Jenkins
2 48 (19.12%) GitLab
3 40 (15.94%) Git
4 23 (9.16%) JIRA
5 8 (3.19%) Maven
6 6 (2.39%) JUnit
6 6 (2.39%) Mockito
7 5 (1.99%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 5 (1.99%) JMeter
7 5 (1.99%) Sonatype Nexus
8 4 (1.59%) Bitbucket
8 4 (1.59%) PyCharm
8 4 (1.59%) PyUnit
8 4 (1.59%) SonarQube
9 3 (1.20%) Artifactory
9 3 (1.20%) CircleCI
9 3 (1.20%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.80%) Gatling
10 2 (0.80%) Gradle
10 2 (0.80%) Postman
General
1 59 (23.51%) Social Skills
2 51 (20.32%) Finance
3 38 (15.14%) Banking
4 30 (11.95%) Public Sector
5 15 (5.98%) Analytical Skills
6 11 (4.38%) Documentation Skills
7 10 (3.98%) Front Office
7 10 (3.98%) Investment Banking
7 10 (3.98%) Retail
8 8 (3.19%) Aerospace
9 5 (1.99%) Advertising
10 3 (1.20%) Law
10 3 (1.20%) Local Government
10 3 (1.20%) Telecoms
11 2 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.80%) Organisational Skills
12 1 (0.40%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.40%) Marketing
12 1 (0.40%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.40%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 68 (27.09%) Developer
2 29 (11.55%) Data Engineer
3 26 (10.36%) Java Developer
4 24 (9.56%) Administrator
5 22 (8.76%) Senior
6 20 (7.97%) Python Developer
7 18 (7.17%) DBA
8 17 (6.77%) DevOps Engineer
8 17 (6.77%) Linux Administrator
9 15 (5.98%) Oracle DBA
9 15 (5.98%) Support Engineer
10 13 (5.18%) AWS Engineer
11 12 (4.78%) Analyst
11 12 (4.78%) AWS DevOps
11 12 (4.78%) Site Engineer
11 12 (4.78%) Site Reliability Engineer
12 10 (3.98%) AWS DevOps Engineer
12 10 (3.98%) Consultant
12 10 (3.98%) Database Engineer
13 9 (3.59%) Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (7.97%) RESTful
2 17 (6.77%) Middleware
3 15 (5.98%) JSON
3 15 (5.98%) Kafka
3 15 (5.98%) LDAP
3 15 (5.98%) Oracle GoldenGate
4 13 (5.18%) Elastic Stack
4 13 (5.18%) Node.js
4 13 (5.18%) Spring
5 12 (4.78%) Spring Boot
6 9 (3.59%) Django
6 9 (3.59%) FastAPI
6 9 (3.59%) REST
7 8 (3.19%) AWS CDK
7 8 (3.19%) Flask
7 8 (3.19%) Pandas
8 7 (2.79%) .NET
8 7 (2.79%) Polars
8 7 (2.79%) YAML
9 6 (2.39%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 21 (8.37%) Management Information System
2 19 (7.57%) Cloud Native
3 16 (6.37%) Data Centre
4 13 (5.18%) Linux Command Line
5 8 (3.19%) Fixed Income
6 7 (2.79%) Hedge funds
6 7 (2.79%) Legacy Systems
6 7 (2.79%) Mainframe
6 7 (2.79%) Public Cloud
7 6 (2.39%) Data Structures
7 6 (2.39%) DataPower
7 6 (2.39%) Enterprise Software
8 5 (1.99%) Data Protection Act
8 5 (1.99%) Derivative
8 5 (1.99%) Distributed Systems
8 5 (1.99%) Equities
8 5 (1.99%) Legacy Code
8 5 (1.99%) Self-Motivation
8 5 (1.99%) Virtual Team
9 4 (1.59%) Equity Derivative
Operating Systems
1 160 (63.75%) Linux
2 103 (41.04%) Unix
3 38 (15.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 24 (9.56%) Windows
5 13 (5.18%) CentOS
6 6 (2.39%) Windows Server
7 5 (1.99%) zOS
8 4 (1.59%) Android
8 4 (1.59%) Apple iOS
8 4 (1.59%) Ubuntu
9 3 (1.20%) VMS
10 2 (0.80%) AIX
10 2 (0.80%) Debian
10 2 (0.80%) OpenVMS
10 2 (0.80%) Solaris
11 1 (0.40%) Amazon Linux
11 1 (0.40%) Embedded Linux
11 1 (0.40%) Oracle Linux
11 1 (0.40%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 101 (40.24%) CI/CD
2 64 (25.50%) DevOps
3 56 (22.31%) Problem-Solving
4 54 (21.51%) Agile
5 44 (17.53%) Performance Tuning
6 43 (17.13%) Containerisation
6 43 (17.13%) Infrastructure as Code
7 37 (14.74%) Migration
8 29 (11.55%) Analytics
9 27 (10.76%) Observability
10 26 (10.36%) Microservices
11 25 (9.96%) High Availability
11 25 (9.96%) Task Automation
12 23 (9.16%) Performance Optimisation
13 22 (8.76%) ETL
13 22 (8.76%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 22 (8.76%) ITIL
14 21 (8.37%) Configuration Management
14 21 (8.37%) Data Pipeline
15 20 (7.97%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 121 (48.21%) SQL
2 107 (42.63%) Python
3 74 (29.48%) Java
4 32 (12.75%) PL/SQL
5 24 (9.56%) Bash
5 24 (9.56%) JavaScript
6 18 (7.17%) Korn
7 14 (5.58%) Perl
8 12 (4.78%) TypeScript
9 11 (4.38%) MATLAB
10 9 (3.59%) C#
11 8 (3.19%) C++
11 8 (3.19%) Go
11 8 (3.19%) PowerShell
12 7 (2.79%) C
13 5 (1.99%) Groovy
14 4 (1.59%) JCL
14 4 (1.59%) ProC
14 4 (1.59%) Ruby
15 3 (1.20%) PHP
Qualifications
1 97 (38.65%) Security Cleared
2 84 (33.47%) SC Cleared
3 18 (7.17%) Degree
4 17 (6.77%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (3.98%) Oracle Certification
6 9 (3.59%) Computer Science Degree
6 9 (3.59%) DV Cleared
7 6 (2.39%) OCP
8 4 (1.59%) Master's Degree
9 3 (1.20%) Azure Certification
9 3 (1.20%) CISSP
10 1 (0.40%) AWS Certification
10 1 (0.40%) AWS Certified Developer
10 1 (0.40%) CISM
10 1 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
10 1 (0.40%) MOS
10 1 (0.40%) PMI Certification
10 1 (0.40%) RHCA
10 1 (0.40%) RHCE
10 1 (0.40%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (7.17%) SLA
2 9 (3.59%) Data Quality
3 8 (3.19%) QA
4 6 (2.39%) GDPR
5 3 (1.20%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 3 (1.20%) FATCA
5 3 (1.20%) HIPAA
5 3 (1.20%) NIST
6 1 (0.40%) DICOM
6 1 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 55 (21.91%) Docker
2 15 (5.98%) Oracle RAC
3 14 (5.58%) Active Directory
4 9 (3.59%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (1.99%) Postfix
5 5 (1.99%) Varnish
5 5 (1.99%) VMware Infrastructure
6 4 (1.59%) NFS
6 4 (1.59%) Sendmail
7 3 (1.20%) GridGain
8 2 (0.80%) HDFS
8 2 (0.80%) SRDF
9 1 (0.40%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 1 (0.40%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 56 (22.31%) Kubernetes
2 49 (19.52%) Ansible
2 49 (19.52%) Terraform
3 29 (11.55%) Grafana
4 28 (11.16%) Prometheus
5 22 (8.76%) Oracle RMAN
6 17 (6.77%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
7 12 (4.78%) Podman
7 12 (4.78%) Progress Chef
7 12 (4.78%) Red Hat Satellite
8 11 (4.38%) Check_MK
9 8 (3.19%) Data Guard
10 6 (2.39%) Kibana
10 6 (2.39%) Puppet
11 5 (1.99%) HAProxy
12 3 (1.20%) Docker Swarm
13 2 (0.80%) Argo
13 2 (0.80%) logstash
13 2 (0.80%) systemd
13 2 (0.80%) Thomson Reuters DACS
Vendors
1 88 (35.06%) Oracle
2 40 (15.94%) Red Hat
3 19 (7.57%) VMware
4 16 (6.37%) Microsoft
5 11 (4.38%) Murex
6 9 (3.59%) IBM
6 9 (3.59%) Informatica
7 8 (3.19%) Sybase
8 7 (2.79%) Splunk
9 6 (2.39%) ServiceNow
9 6 (2.39%) Talend
10 5 (1.99%) Cloudera
10 5 (1.99%) Databricks
10 5 (1.99%) Dell
10 5 (1.99%) Dynatrace
10 5 (1.99%) Veritas
11 4 (1.59%) Hortonworks
11 4 (1.59%) Solace
12 3 (1.20%) CyberArk
12 3 (1.20%) HP