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

6 months to
22 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 366 295 318
Rank change year-on-year -71 +23 -82
Contract jobs citing Shell Script 265 254 288
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.57% 0.86% 0.66%
As % of the Programming Languages category 2.07% 2.53% 2.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 185 138 209
10th Percentile £353 £381 £358
25th Percentile £400 £443 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £525 £510
Median % change year-on-year -12.57% +2.94% -5.56%
75th Percentile £538 £605 £625
90th Percentile £624 £675 £718
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £500 £472
% change year-on-year -7.50% +5.88% -12.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 14 9
10th Percentile £46.75 £63.95 £48.16
25th Percentile £47.50 - £61.75
Median hourly rate £50.00 £68.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -26.47% +4.62% +5.58%
75th Percentile £52.50 £74.19 £65.25
90th Percentile £53.25 £88.88 £76.00
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 12,825 10,032 12,701
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 27.66% 34.05% 29.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,511 6,794 9,022
10th Percentile £353 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £415 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £713 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £488
% change year-on-year - -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 554 242 475
10th Percentile £42.50 £22.48 £31.25
25th Percentile £55.00 £35.00 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -2.97%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £68.75
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 22 April 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 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 22 April 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 -83 221 £474 -13.27% 62
UK excluding London -109 123 £463 -7.50% 37
London -42 102 £500 -9.09% 28
Work from Home -44 75 £470 -12.96% 22
Midlands -42 39 £467 +1.56% 6
West Midlands -36 37 £467 +1.56% 4
South East -46 28 £400 -32.55% 16
North of England -71 24 £485 -16.74% 10
East of England -20 20 £473 +1.29% 2
Yorkshire -62 13 £480 -12.73% 3
North West -39 10 £468 -23.67% 6
South West -49 6 £700 +29.03% 2
Scotland -49 4 - -
Wales -6 2 £305 - 1
East Midlands - 2 £475 - 2

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 13 (4.91%) Apache
1 13 (4.91%) Confluence
2 11 (4.15%) Apache Spark
3 6 (2.26%) Apache Airflow
4 5 (1.89%) WebLogic
5 4 (1.51%) CICS
6 3 (1.13%) JBoss
6 3 (1.13%) nginx
6 3 (1.13%) Oracle Workflow
6 3 (1.13%) SharePoint
6 3 (1.13%) Tomcat
6 3 (1.13%) WebSphere
6 3 (1.13%) WebSphere Application Server
7 2 (0.75%) ArcGIS
7 2 (0.75%) Oracle Spatial
8 1 (0.38%) IBM HTTP Server
8 1 (0.38%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 1 (0.38%) SAS
Applications
1 7 (2.64%) Notepad++
2 4 (1.51%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (0.75%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 3 (1.13%) Oracle 11i
1 3 (1.13%) Oracle Applications
2 2 (0.75%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.38%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.38%) Oracle Cash Management
3 1 (0.38%) Oracle EBS R12
3 1 (0.38%) Oracle Payables
3 1 (0.38%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.38%) Oracle Receivables
3 1 (0.38%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 105 (39.62%) AWS
2 54 (20.38%) Azure
3 41 (15.47%) GitHub
4 36 (13.58%) Serverless
5 31 (11.70%) GitHub Actions
6 30 (11.32%) Amazon EC2
6 30 (11.32%) Amazon S3
7 29 (10.94%) OpenShift
8 27 (10.19%) AWS Lambda
9 23 (8.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 16 (6.04%) Amazon EKS
11 14 (5.28%) AWS CloudFormation
12 13 (4.91%) Azure DevOps
13 11 (4.15%) GCP
14 10 (3.77%) PaaS
15 9 (3.40%) AWS CodePipeline
16 8 (3.02%) IaaS
17 7 (2.64%) Azure AKS
17 7 (2.64%) Azure Data Factory
17 7 (2.64%) Pulumi
Communications & Networking
1 16 (6.04%) SSH
2 9 (3.40%) DNS
2 9 (3.40%) SAN
3 8 (3.02%) Network Security
4 7 (2.64%) PuTTY
4 7 (2.64%) WinSCP
5 6 (2.26%) TCP/IP
6 5 (1.89%) Firewall
7 3 (1.13%) HTTP
7 3 (1.13%) HTTPS
7 3 (1.13%) NAS
7 3 (1.13%) Reverse Proxy
8 2 (0.75%) AMQP
8 2 (0.75%) iSCSI
8 2 (0.75%) OpenVPN
9 1 (0.38%) BIG-IP
9 1 (0.38%) Kerberos
9 1 (0.38%) LAN
9 1 (0.38%) Multicast
9 1 (0.38%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (10.19%) Oracle Database
2 26 (9.81%) SQL Server
3 21 (7.92%) PostgreSQL
4 20 (7.55%) MongoDB
5 19 (7.17%) Amazon RDS
5 19 (7.17%) Relational Database
6 18 (6.79%) Data Warehouse
7 16 (6.04%) Metadata
8 10 (3.77%) DynamoDB
9 9 (3.40%) MySQL
10 8 (3.02%) NoSQL
11 7 (2.64%) Big Data
11 7 (2.64%) BusinessObjects
11 7 (2.64%) Hadoop
12 6 (2.26%) Data Mart
12 6 (2.26%) InfluxDB
12 6 (2.26%) Oracle Reports
13 5 (1.89%) Amazon Aurora
13 5 (1.89%) Data Lake
13 5 (1.89%) Kdb+
Development Applications
1 63 (23.77%) Jenkins
2 47 (17.74%) GitLab
3 38 (14.34%) Git
4 25 (9.43%) JIRA
5 8 (3.02%) Maven
6 6 (2.26%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 5 (1.89%) JMeter
7 5 (1.89%) JUnit
7 5 (1.89%) Mockito
7 5 (1.89%) PyCharm
7 5 (1.89%) PyUnit
8 4 (1.51%) Bitbucket
8 4 (1.51%) SonarQube
8 4 (1.51%) Sonatype Nexus
9 3 (1.13%) Artifactory
9 3 (1.13%) CircleCI
9 3 (1.13%) Subversion
10 2 (0.75%) Gatling
10 2 (0.75%) Postman
10 2 (0.75%) Terragrunt
General
1 63 (23.77%) Social Skills
2 49 (18.49%) Finance
3 37 (13.96%) Banking
4 30 (11.32%) Public Sector
5 17 (6.42%) Analytical Skills
6 10 (3.77%) Front Office
7 9 (3.40%) Documentation Skills
7 9 (3.40%) Investment Banking
7 9 (3.40%) Retail
8 7 (2.64%) Aerospace
9 5 (1.89%) Advertising
10 3 (1.13%) Law
10 3 (1.13%) Local Government
10 3 (1.13%) Telecoms
11 2 (0.75%) Manufacturing
11 2 (0.75%) Organisational Skills
12 1 (0.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.38%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.38%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.38%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 73 (27.55%) Developer
2 30 (11.32%) Java Developer
3 29 (10.94%) Data Engineer
4 20 (7.55%) Administrator
4 20 (7.55%) Senior
5 19 (7.17%) DBA
6 16 (6.04%) Oracle DBA
6 16 (6.04%) Python Developer
6 16 (6.04%) Site Engineer
6 16 (6.04%) Site Reliability Engineer
7 15 (5.66%) DevOps Engineer
8 14 (5.28%) Linux Administrator
8 14 (5.28%) Support Engineer
9 13 (4.91%) AWS Engineer
10 11 (4.15%) Consultant
10 11 (4.15%) Linux Engineer
11 10 (3.77%) Analyst
11 10 (3.77%) Architect
11 10 (3.77%) AWS DevOps
11 10 (3.77%) Database Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (6.79%) Node.js
2 17 (6.42%) Kafka
2 17 (6.42%) RESTful
3 15 (5.66%) JSON
3 15 (5.66%) Middleware
3 15 (5.66%) Oracle GoldenGate
4 14 (5.28%) Spring
5 13 (4.91%) Elastic Stack
5 13 (4.91%) LDAP
5 13 (4.91%) Spring Boot
6 12 (4.53%) REST
7 10 (3.77%) SOAP
8 9 (3.40%) XML
9 8 (3.02%) AWS CDK
9 8 (3.02%) Django
10 7 (2.64%) .NET
10 7 (2.64%) OpenAPI
10 7 (2.64%) YAML
11 6 (2.26%) RabbitMQ
11 6 (2.26%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 20 (7.55%) Cloud Native
1 20 (7.55%) Management Information System
2 14 (5.28%) Data Centre
3 13 (4.91%) Linux Command Line
4 9 (3.40%) Mainframe
5 8 (3.02%) DataPower
6 7 (2.64%) Fixed Income
7 6 (2.26%) Legacy Systems
7 6 (2.26%) Public Cloud
8 5 (1.89%) Data Protection Act
8 5 (1.89%) Data Structures
8 5 (1.89%) Distributed Systems
8 5 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
8 5 (1.89%) Equities
8 5 (1.89%) Hedge funds
8 5 (1.89%) Legacy Code
8 5 (1.89%) Self-Motivation
8 5 (1.89%) Virtual Team
9 4 (1.51%) Derivative
9 4 (1.51%) Equity Derivative
Operating Systems
1 167 (63.02%) Linux
2 107 (40.38%) Unix
3 40 (15.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 22 (8.30%) Windows
5 11 (4.15%) CentOS
6 6 (2.26%) Windows Server
7 5 (1.89%) Android
7 5 (1.89%) Apple iOS
7 5 (1.89%) VMS
7 5 (1.89%) zOS
8 4 (1.51%) Ubuntu
9 3 (1.13%) AIX
10 2 (0.75%) Debian
10 2 (0.75%) OpenVMS
10 2 (0.75%) Solaris
11 1 (0.38%) Amazon Linux
11 1 (0.38%) Embedded Linux
11 1 (0.38%) Oracle Linux
11 1 (0.38%) Windows Server 2008
11 1 (0.38%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 105 (39.62%) CI/CD
2 64 (24.15%) Problem-Solving
3 63 (23.77%) Agile
4 62 (23.40%) DevOps
5 45 (16.98%) Containerisation
6 44 (16.60%) Infrastructure as Code
7 43 (16.23%) Performance Tuning
8 39 (14.72%) Migration
9 31 (11.70%) Task Automation
10 29 (10.94%) Analytics
11 28 (10.57%) Observability
12 27 (10.19%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 26 (9.81%) Microservices
14 24 (9.06%) Configuration Management
14 24 (9.06%) ETL
14 24 (9.06%) ITIL
15 23 (8.68%) Continuous Improvement
16 22 (8.30%) High Availability
17 21 (7.92%) Scrum
18 20 (7.55%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 127 (47.92%) SQL
2 108 (40.75%) Python
3 84 (31.70%) Java
4 34 (12.83%) PL/SQL
5 26 (9.81%) JavaScript
6 22 (8.30%) Bash
7 20 (7.55%) Korn
8 15 (5.66%) TypeScript
9 13 (4.91%) Perl
10 9 (3.40%) Go
10 9 (3.40%) MATLAB
11 8 (3.02%) C++
12 7 (2.64%) C#
12 7 (2.64%) PowerShell
13 5 (1.89%) C
13 5 (1.89%) JCL
13 5 (1.89%) ProC
14 4 (1.51%) Groovy
15 3 (1.13%) PHP
15 3 (1.13%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 105 (39.62%) Security Cleared
2 87 (32.83%) SC Cleared
3 20 (7.55%) BPSS Clearance
4 19 (7.17%) Degree
5 14 (5.28%) DV Cleared
6 12 (4.53%) Oracle Certification
7 10 (3.77%) Computer Science Degree
8 8 (3.02%) OCP
9 4 (1.51%) Master's Degree
10 3 (1.13%) Azure Certification
10 3 (1.13%) CISSP
11 1 (0.38%) AWS Certification
11 1 (0.38%) AWS Certified Developer
11 1 (0.38%) CISM
11 1 (0.38%) ITIL Certification
11 1 (0.38%) MOS
11 1 (0.38%) PMI Certification
11 1 (0.38%) RHCA
11 1 (0.38%) RHCE
11 1 (0.38%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (6.79%) SLA
2 12 (4.53%) Data Quality
3 7 (2.64%) QA
4 6 (2.26%) GDPR
5 3 (1.13%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 3 (1.13%) FATCA
5 3 (1.13%) HIPAA
5 3 (1.13%) NIST
6 1 (0.38%) DICOM
6 1 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 55 (20.75%) Docker
2 15 (5.66%) Oracle RAC
3 12 (4.53%) Active Directory
4 11 (4.15%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (1.89%) VMware Infrastructure
6 4 (1.51%) Postfix
6 4 (1.51%) Varnish
7 3 (1.13%) GridGain
7 3 (1.13%) NFS
7 3 (1.13%) Sendmail
8 2 (0.75%) HDFS
8 2 (0.75%) SRDF
9 1 (0.38%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 1 (0.38%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 60 (22.64%) Kubernetes
2 55 (20.75%) Terraform
3 52 (19.62%) Ansible
4 32 (12.08%) Grafana
5 31 (11.70%) Prometheus
6 22 (8.30%) Oracle RMAN
7 18 (6.79%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 15 (5.66%) Progress Chef
9 14 (5.28%) Red Hat Satellite
10 10 (3.77%) Podman
11 9 (3.40%) Check_MK
12 8 (3.02%) Data Guard
12 8 (3.02%) Puppet
13 6 (2.26%) Kibana
14 4 (1.51%) Dell DRAC
14 4 (1.51%) Docker Swarm
14 4 (1.51%) HAProxy
15 2 (0.75%) logstash
15 2 (0.75%) systemd
15 2 (0.75%) Thomson Reuters DACS
Vendors
1 91 (34.34%) Oracle
2 42 (15.85%) Red Hat
3 18 (6.79%) Microsoft
4 17 (6.42%) VMware
5 11 (4.15%) Murex
6 10 (3.77%) Dell
6 10 (3.77%) IBM
6 10 (3.77%) Informatica
6 10 (3.77%) Splunk
7 8 (3.02%) Sybase
8 6 (2.26%) ServiceNow
8 6 (2.26%) Talend
9 5 (1.89%) Cloudera
9 5 (1.89%) Databricks
9 5 (1.89%) Veritas
10 4 (1.51%) Dynatrace
10 4 (1.51%) Hortonworks
11 3 (1.13%) CyberArk
11 3 (1.13%) MuleSoft
11 3 (1.13%) Solace