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

6 months to
8 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 358 295 308
Rank change year-on-year -63 +13 -54
Contract jobs citing Shell Script 281 251 306
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.66% 0.83% 0.69%
As % of the Programming Languages category 2.24% 2.44% 2.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 193 126 208
10th Percentile £325 £357 £362
25th Percentile £392 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £520 £504
Median % change year-on-year -13.46% +3.23% -6.71%
75th Percentile £538 £607 £626
90th Percentile £605 £681 £703
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £496 £465
% change year-on-year -6.75% +6.67% -13.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 10 9
10th Percentile £55.70 £63.35 £48.16
25th Percentile £65.00 £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 12,528 10,270 12,998
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 29.56% 34.16% 29.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,358 6,708 9,165
10th Percentile £352 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £420 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -5.41%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £719 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £476 £488 £488
% change year-on-year -2.36% - -3.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 483 245 510
10th Percentile £41.32 £21.25 £30.63
25th Percentile £53.75 £35.00 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -7.69%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £68.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.75 £62.00
% change year-on-year +1.97% +2.81% -4.62%

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 -41 232 £465 -11.43% 57
UK excluding London -64 151 £463 -6.75% 37
London -55 87 £445 -15.24% 24
Work from Home -44 86 £454 -12.69% 30
Midlands -48 39 £480 +4.35% 7
West Midlands -38 37 £480 +4.35% 6
South East -29 30 £400 -23.81% 18
North of England -54 30 £485 -17.45% 8
East of England -15 20 £455 -2.47% 3
South West -11 19 £525 -4.55% 2
Yorkshire -58 18 £460 -21.70% 3
Scotland -26 13 £402 -14.47%
North West -31 11 £485 -17.80% 5
Wales -6 2 £305 - 2
East Midlands -28 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 (4.27%) Confluence
2 9 (3.20%) Apache
3 6 (2.14%) Apache Spark
4 5 (1.78%) WebLogic
5 4 (1.42%) JBoss
6 3 (1.07%) nginx
6 3 (1.07%) SharePoint
6 3 (1.07%) WebSphere
6 3 (1.07%) WebSphere Application Server
7 2 (0.71%) Apache Airflow
7 2 (0.71%) ArcGIS
7 2 (0.71%) CICS
7 2 (0.71%) IIS
7 2 (0.71%) iPlanet
7 2 (0.71%) Oracle Spatial
7 2 (0.71%) Oracle Workflow
7 2 (0.71%) SAS
8 1 (0.36%) IBM HTTP Server
8 1 (0.36%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 1 (0.36%) Tomcat
Applications
1 5 (1.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (1.07%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (1.07%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 5 (1.78%) Oracle Applications
2 4 (1.42%) Oracle EBS
3 3 (1.07%) Oracle 11i
3 3 (1.07%) Oracle EBS R12
3 3 (1.07%) 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
1 105 (37.37%) AWS
2 45 (16.01%) Azure
3 41 (14.59%) GitHub
4 31 (11.03%) Serverless
5 29 (10.32%) OpenShift
6 28 (9.96%) Amazon EC2
6 28 (9.96%) Amazon S3
7 24 (8.54%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 22 (7.83%) AWS Lambda
9 21 (7.47%) AWS CloudFormation
10 19 (6.76%) GitHub Actions
11 17 (6.05%) Amazon EKS
12 11 (3.91%) GCP
13 8 (2.85%) Amazon ECS
13 8 (2.85%) Azure DevOps
13 8 (2.85%) PaaS
13 8 (2.85%) Virtual Private Cloud
14 7 (2.49%) Azure AKS
14 7 (2.49%) Pulumi
15 6 (2.14%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 17 (6.05%) SSH
2 11 (3.91%) DNS
3 8 (2.85%) SAN
4 7 (2.49%) TCP/IP
5 6 (2.14%) Network Security
6 5 (1.78%) Firewall
7 3 (1.07%) HTTP
7 3 (1.07%) Kerberos
8 2 (0.71%) HTTPS
8 2 (0.71%) iSCSI
8 2 (0.71%) NAS
8 2 (0.71%) OpenVPN
8 2 (0.71%) Reverse Proxy
9 1 (0.36%) AMQP
9 1 (0.36%) BIG-IP
9 1 (0.36%) DHCP
9 1 (0.36%) FTP
9 1 (0.36%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (12.81%) MongoDB
2 32 (11.39%) Oracle Database
3 27 (9.61%) Amazon RDS
4 22 (7.83%) Relational Database
5 19 (6.76%) PostgreSQL
6 16 (5.69%) SQL Server
7 15 (5.34%) Data Warehouse
8 14 (4.98%) NoSQL
9 13 (4.63%) MySQL
10 10 (3.56%) DB2
11 8 (2.85%) Big Data
12 7 (2.49%) DynamoDB
13 6 (2.14%) Hadoop
13 6 (2.14%) Oracle Reports
14 5 (1.78%) Data Mart
14 5 (1.78%) InfluxDB
14 5 (1.78%) Metadata
15 4 (1.42%) OLTP
15 4 (1.42%) Pentaho
15 4 (1.42%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 68 (24.20%) Jenkins
2 51 (18.15%) GitLab
3 37 (13.17%) Git
4 25 (8.90%) JIRA
5 15 (5.34%) JUnit
6 7 (2.49%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 7 (2.49%) Mockito
7 6 (2.14%) PyCharm
7 6 (2.14%) PyUnit
8 5 (1.78%) Maven
9 4 (1.42%) JMeter
9 4 (1.42%) Subversion
9 4 (1.42%) Terragrunt
10 3 (1.07%) Artifactory
10 3 (1.07%) Bitbucket
10 3 (1.07%) CircleCI
10 3 (1.07%) Postman
10 3 (1.07%) Selenium
10 3 (1.07%) SonarQube
10 3 (1.07%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 80 (28.47%) Social Skills
2 38 (13.52%) Finance
3 36 (12.81%) Analytical Skills
4 35 (12.46%) Banking
5 34 (12.10%) Public Sector
6 15 (5.34%) Investment Banking
7 9 (3.20%) Front Office
7 9 (3.20%) Retail
8 8 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
9 6 (2.14%) Aerospace
10 4 (1.42%) Law
10 4 (1.42%) Telecoms
11 3 (1.07%) Advertising
11 3 (1.07%) Local Government
11 3 (1.07%) Manufacturing
11 3 (1.07%) Military
12 2 (0.71%) Organisational Skills
13 1 (0.36%) Aviation
13 1 (0.36%) Influencing Skills
13 1 (0.36%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 74 (26.33%) Developer
2 35 (12.46%) Java Developer
3 26 (9.25%) Support Engineer
4 25 (8.90%) Senior
5 22 (7.83%) DevOps Engineer
6 20 (7.12%) Administrator
7 19 (6.76%) DBA
8 18 (6.41%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 17 (6.05%) Oracle DBA
9 17 (6.05%) Site Engineer
10 16 (5.69%) AWS Engineer
11 14 (4.98%) Data Engineer
12 13 (4.63%) AWS DevOps
13 12 (4.27%) Product Engineer
13 12 (4.27%) Products Support Engineer
13 12 (4.27%) Software Support Engineer
14 11 (3.91%) AWS DevOps Engineer
14 11 (3.91%) Linux Administrator
15 10 (3.56%) Python Developer
15 10 (3.56%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (11.39%) Kafka
2 23 (8.19%) Spring
3 22 (7.83%) Middleware
3 22 (7.83%) Node.js
4 18 (6.41%) Elastic Stack
5 15 (5.34%) REST
5 15 (5.34%) Spring Boot
6 14 (4.98%) RESTful
7 12 (4.27%) JSON
7 12 (4.27%) LDAP
7 12 (4.27%) Oracle GoldenGate
8 11 (3.91%) SOAP
9 10 (3.56%) OpenAPI
10 9 (3.20%) XML
11 8 (2.85%) AWS CDK
11 8 (2.85%) JMS
12 7 (2.49%) pytest
12 7 (2.49%) XSD
13 6 (2.14%) Lambda Expressions
13 6 (2.14%) React
Miscellaneous
1 17 (6.05%) Cloud Native
2 16 (5.69%) Management Information System
3 13 (4.63%) Equities
4 12 (4.27%) Data Centre
4 12 (4.27%) Data Structures
5 7 (2.49%) Enterprise Cloud
6 6 (2.14%) Data Protection Act
6 6 (2.14%) DataPower
6 6 (2.14%) Distributed Systems
6 6 (2.14%) Legacy Applications
6 6 (2.14%) Mainframe
7 5 (1.78%) Legacy Code
7 5 (1.78%) Linux Command Line
8 4 (1.42%) Clustering
8 4 (1.42%) Derivative
8 4 (1.42%) Enterprise Software
8 4 (1.42%) Equity Derivative
8 4 (1.42%) Fixed Income
8 4 (1.42%) PKI
9 3 (1.07%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 186 (66.19%) Linux
2 91 (32.38%) Unix
3 40 (14.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 26 (9.25%) Windows
5 16 (5.69%) Ubuntu
6 12 (4.27%) CentOS
7 6 (2.14%) Android
7 6 (2.14%) Apple iOS
8 5 (1.78%) Windows Server
9 4 (1.42%) VMS
10 3 (1.07%) AIX
11 2 (0.71%) Debian
11 2 (0.71%) OpenVMS
11 2 (0.71%) zOS
12 1 (0.36%) Amazon Linux
12 1 (0.36%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 108 (38.43%) CI/CD
2 81 (28.83%) Problem-Solving
3 77 (27.40%) Agile
4 54 (19.22%) DevOps
5 48 (17.08%) Infrastructure as Code
6 47 (16.73%) Performance Tuning
7 45 (16.01%) Containerisation
8 33 (11.74%) Software Engineering
8 33 (11.74%) Task Automation
9 30 (10.68%) SDLC
10 27 (9.61%) Observability
11 26 (9.25%) Microservices
12 25 (8.90%) Continuous Improvement
12 25 (8.90%) ITIL
13 23 (8.19%) Data Modelling
13 23 (8.19%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 23 (8.19%) Scrum
14 22 (7.83%) Migration
14 22 (7.83%) Site Reliability Engineering
15 21 (7.47%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 116 (41.28%) SQL
2 114 (40.57%) Python
3 95 (33.81%) Java
4 43 (15.30%) JavaScript
5 24 (8.54%) Bash
6 21 (7.47%) C++
7 20 (7.12%) PL/SQL
8 19 (6.76%) C
9 18 (6.41%) Korn
9 18 (6.41%) TypeScript
10 15 (5.34%) Perl
11 13 (4.63%) Go
12 12 (4.27%) Ada
13 7 (2.49%) MATLAB
13 7 (2.49%) PowerShell
14 5 (1.78%) Groovy
14 5 (1.78%) ProC
15 3 (1.07%) JCL
15 3 (1.07%) PHP
16 2 (0.71%) VBA
Qualifications
1 107 (38.08%) Security Cleared
2 85 (30.25%) SC Cleared
3 23 (8.19%) BPSS Clearance
4 21 (7.47%) Degree
5 15 (5.34%) DV Cleared
6 14 (4.98%) Computer Science Degree
7 7 (2.49%) OCP
7 7 (2.49%) Oracle Certification
8 3 (1.07%) Azure Certification
8 3 (1.07%) Master's Degree
9 2 (0.71%) AWS Certification
9 2 (0.71%) CISSP
10 1 (0.36%) AWS Certified Developer
10 1 (0.36%) CISM
10 1 (0.36%) ITIL Certification
10 1 (0.36%) PMI Certification
10 1 (0.36%) RHCA
10 1 (0.36%) RHCE
10 1 (0.36%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (6.41%) SLA
2 13 (4.63%) Data Quality
3 9 (3.20%) QA
4 6 (2.14%) GDPR
5 3 (1.07%) FATCA
5 3 (1.07%) NCSC
6 2 (0.71%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 2 (0.71%) HIPAA
6 2 (0.71%) NIST
7 1 (0.36%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 55 (19.57%) Docker
2 12 (4.27%) Active Directory
3 11 (3.91%) Oracle RAC
4 10 (3.56%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.71%) HDFS
5 2 (0.71%) KVM
5 2 (0.71%) Postfix
5 2 (0.71%) SRDF
5 2 (0.71%) Tivoli Directory Server
5 2 (0.71%) Varnish
5 2 (0.71%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.36%) Apache ZooKeeper
6 1 (0.36%) NFS
6 1 (0.36%) Sendmail
6 1 (0.36%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 68 (24.20%) Kubernetes
2 63 (22.42%) Terraform
3 48 (17.08%) Ansible
4 36 (12.81%) Grafana
5 34 (12.10%) Prometheus
6 18 (6.41%) Progress Chef
7 16 (5.69%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 14 (4.98%) Oracle RMAN
9 13 (4.63%) Red Hat Satellite
10 8 (2.85%) Podman
10 8 (2.85%) Puppet
11 7 (2.49%) Check_MK
12 5 (1.78%) Dell DRAC
13 4 (1.42%) Kibana
13 4 (1.42%) Packer
14 3 (1.07%) CA Wily
14 3 (1.07%) Data Guard
14 3 (1.07%) Docker Swarm
14 3 (1.07%) Jamf Pro
14 3 (1.07%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 79 (28.11%) Oracle
2 47 (16.73%) Red Hat
3 23 (8.19%) Splunk
4 20 (7.12%) Microsoft
5 14 (4.98%) VMware
6 12 (4.27%) IBM
6 12 (4.27%) Sybase
7 11 (3.91%) Dell
8 10 (3.56%) ServiceNow
9 7 (2.49%) Murex
10 6 (2.14%) MuleSoft
11 5 (1.78%) Dynatrace
11 5 (1.78%) Informatica
11 5 (1.78%) Talend
12 4 (1.42%) AppDynamics
12 4 (1.42%) Broadcom
12 4 (1.42%) Confluent
12 4 (1.42%) CyberArk
12 4 (1.42%) NetApp
13 3 (1.07%) Okta