SSH Contract Job Trends

Secure Shell (SSH)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring SSH skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 14 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 486 494 516
Rank change year-on-year +8 +22 +163
Contract jobs citing SSH 98 33 74
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.27% 0.10% 0.17%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 2.51% 0.81% 1.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 70 20 53
10th Percentile £262 £395 £303
25th Percentile £400 £404 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £458 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year -1.03% -2.63% -8.21%
75th Percentile £600 £643 £630
90th Percentile £688 £676 £740
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £425 £409
% change year-on-year +11.76% +3.98% -18.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 2
Median hourly rate - - £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £78.00

All Communications and Computer Networking Skills
UK

SSH falls under the Communications and Computer Networking category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring communications or computer networking skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for communications or computer networking skills 3,903 4,056 5,800
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.56% 12.83% 13.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,557 2,375 3,580
10th Percentile £205 £213 £210
25th Percentile £356 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -2.44%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £686 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £470 £475
% change year-on-year -4.26% -1.05% +3.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 165 135 328
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.22 £17.74
25th Percentile £19.00 £21.36 £23.07
Median hourly rate £34.00 £32.50 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year +4.62% -42.47% +125.96%
75th Percentile £65.00 £53.13 £65.98
90th Percentile £75.00 £70.00 £75.08
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.22 £31.08 £60.00
% change year-on-year +35.84% -48.20% +172.73%

SSH
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing SSH relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

SSH job vacancy trend in the UK

SSH
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SSH.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SSH

SSH
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SSH over the 6 months to 14 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SSH in the UK

SSH
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SSH.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SSH

SSH
Top 11 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SSH within the UK over the 6 months to 14 January 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 -13 74 £475 +11.76% 5
UK excluding London -20 56 £475 +11.76% 5
North of England -37 30 £575 +39.82% 3
London -10 26 £525 -17.97% 1
Midlands -16 25 £475 +11.76%
West Midlands -13 22 £475 +11.76%
Work from Home +5 21 £400 -17.95% 3
Yorkshire -40 17 £675 +65.64% 2
North West -15 13 £452 -34.10% 1
East Midlands - 3 £134 -
South East -21 1 £384 -25.07% 1

SSH
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 34 (34.69%) Confluence
2 12 (12.24%) SharePoint
2 12 (12.24%) TPMS
3 9 (9.18%) nginx
4 1 (1.02%) Apache
4 1 (1.02%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (1.02%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 11 (11.22%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (9.18%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 2 (2.04%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (1.02%) MS Visio
4 1 (1.02%) OmniGraffle
Cloud Services
1 22 (22.45%) AWS
2 16 (16.33%) Amazon S3
3 15 (15.31%) Amazon CloudWatch
3 15 (15.31%) Amazon EC2
3 15 (15.31%) Amazon ELB
3 15 (15.31%) AWS KMS
3 15 (15.31%) Azure
3 15 (15.31%) Virtual Private Cloud
4 9 (9.18%) Amazon ECS
4 9 (9.18%) Microsoft 365
4 9 (9.18%) Route 53
5 6 (6.12%) Amazon Glacier
5 6 (6.12%) Nutanix
6 3 (3.06%) GitHub
7 2 (2.04%) SaaS
8 1 (1.02%) GCP
8 1 (1.02%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 24 (24.49%) DNS
2 23 (23.47%) Firewall
3 22 (22.45%) HTTP
4 19 (19.39%) FTP
5 18 (18.37%) SNMP
6 17 (17.35%) SSL
7 16 (16.33%) SMTP
8 9 (9.18%) IMAP
8 9 (9.18%) OpenLDAP
9 7 (7.14%) Kerberos
10 5 (5.10%) Cisco IOS
10 5 (5.10%) Spanning Tree
11 4 (4.08%) Ethernet
11 4 (4.08%) TACACS
11 4 (4.08%) TCP/IP
12 3 (3.06%) PuTTY
12 3 (3.06%) SD-WAN
12 3 (3.06%) Telnet
12 3 (3.06%) WAN
12 3 (3.06%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (15.31%) Amazon RDS
2 11 (11.22%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (9.18%) Amazon Aurora
4 3 (3.06%) Hadoop
5 2 (2.04%) Apache Hive
5 2 (2.04%) Elasticsearch
5 2 (2.04%) Impala
6 1 (1.02%) Big Data
6 1 (1.02%) Delta Lake
6 1 (1.02%) MySQL
6 1 (1.02%) NoSQL
6 1 (1.02%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 40 (40.82%) JIRA
2 25 (25.51%) Git
3 18 (18.37%) Jenkins
4 15 (15.31%) Vagrant
5 3 (3.06%) SonarQube
6 2 (2.04%) TeamCity
7 1 (1.02%) Bitbucket
7 1 (1.02%) MLflow
7 1 (1.02%) Poetry
7 1 (1.02%) PyCharm
7 1 (1.02%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 48 (48.98%) Social Skills
2 24 (24.49%) Finance
3 19 (19.39%) Documentation Skills
4 16 (16.33%) Public Sector
5 14 (14.29%) Presentation Skills
6 6 (6.12%) Analytical Skills
7 3 (3.06%) Banking
7 3 (3.06%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 17 (17.35%) Developer
2 16 (16.33%) DevOps Engineer
2 16 (16.33%) Platform Engineer
3 15 (15.31%) AWS Engineer
3 15 (15.31%) Cloud Platform Engineer
3 15 (15.31%) Java Developer
4 14 (14.29%) Analyst
4 14 (14.29%) Cryptography Engineer
5 13 (13.27%) AWS DevOps
5 13 (13.27%) AWS DevOps Engineer
6 10 (10.20%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 9 (9.18%) AWS Platform Engineer
7 9 (9.18%) Consultant
8 8 (8.16%) DevOps Platform Engineer
9 6 (6.12%) Management Consultant
10 3 (3.06%) Kafka Developer
10 3 (3.06%) Network Engineer
10 3 (3.06%) Support Engineer
10 3 (3.06%) Technical Engineer
10 3 (3.06%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (23.47%) LDAP
2 15 (15.31%) Node.js
3 7 (7.14%) Kafka
4 5 (5.10%) OAuth
4 5 (5.10%) SAML
5 2 (2.04%) SailPoint
6 1 (1.02%) Apache Avro
6 1 (1.02%) Elastic Stack
6 1 (1.02%) Flask
6 1 (1.02%) LAMP
6 1 (1.02%) LAPP Stack
6 1 (1.02%) libvirt
6 1 (1.02%) Middleware
6 1 (1.02%) NumPy
6 1 (1.02%) Pandas
6 1 (1.02%) TIBCO EMS
Miscellaneous
1 17 (17.35%) Replication
2 12 (12.24%) Tandem
3 5 (5.10%) Data Protection Act
3 5 (5.10%) PKI
4 3 (3.06%) Linux Command Line
4 3 (3.06%) Management Information System
5 2 (2.04%) Algorithms
5 2 (2.04%) Enterprise Software
5 2 (2.04%) Machine to Machine
5 2 (2.04%) Market Risk
5 2 (2.04%) Onboarding
5 2 (2.04%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (1.02%) BYOD
6 1 (1.02%) Data Centre
6 1 (1.02%) Virtual Team
6 1 (1.02%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 61 (62.24%) Windows
2 60 (61.22%) Linux
3 16 (16.33%) Unix
4 15 (15.31%) Amazon Linux
4 15 (15.31%) VMS
5 9 (9.18%) Ubuntu
6 7 (7.14%) AIX
6 7 (7.14%) Solaris
7 3 (3.06%) Windows 10
7 3 (3.06%) Windows 7
7 3 (3.06%) Windows 8
7 3 (3.06%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 36 (36.73%) Cryptography
2 31 (31.63%) Key Management
3 29 (29.59%) Problem-Solving
4 27 (27.55%) Change Management
5 26 (26.53%) CI/CD
5 26 (26.53%) Stakeholder Management
6 22 (22.45%) Agile
7 20 (20.41%) DevOps
8 19 (19.39%) Cybersecurity
8 19 (19.39%) Roadmaps
8 19 (19.39%) Task Automation
9 18 (18.37%) Configuration Management
10 17 (17.35%) Patch Management
11 16 (16.33%) Information Security
11 16 (16.33%) Platform Engineering
12 15 (15.31%) Cloud Security
12 15 (15.31%) Computer Science
12 15 (15.31%) Project Management
12 15 (15.31%) SDLC
13 14 (14.29%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 33 (33.67%) Python
2 22 (22.45%) Java
2 22 (22.45%) PowerShell
3 16 (16.33%) Groovy
4 15 (15.31%) JavaScript
4 15 (15.31%) Shell Script
4 15 (15.31%) TypeScript
5 14 (14.29%) SQL
6 8 (8.16%) Bash
7 7 (7.14%) Perl
Qualifications
1 24 (24.49%) Degree
2 19 (19.39%) BPSS Clearance
2 19 (19.39%) Security Cleared
3 16 (16.33%) SC Cleared
4 12 (12.24%) Computer Science Degree
4 12 (12.24%) FFIEC
5 9 (9.18%) AWS Certification
5 9 (9.18%) Azure Certification
6 6 (6.12%) CISSP
7 5 (5.10%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 4 (4.08%) CISM
9 2 (2.04%) CEH
9 2 (2.04%) ITIL Certification
9 2 (2.04%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (17.35%) NIST
1 17 (17.35%) PCI DSS
2 12 (12.24%) GDPR
2 12 (12.24%) GLBA
3 3 (3.06%) FIPS 140-2
3 3 (3.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 3 (3.06%) SOC 2
4 2 (2.04%) SLA
System Software
1 26 (26.53%) Active Directory
2 18 (18.37%) Docker
3 15 (15.31%) DFS Replication
4 9 (9.18%) Dovecot
4 9 (9.18%) Postfix
4 9 (9.18%) Squid
5 7 (7.14%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (3.06%) BitLocker
6 3 (3.06%) Firmware
7 2 (2.04%) HDFS
8 1 (1.02%) Apache ZooKeeper
8 1 (1.02%) Ceph
8 1 (1.02%) iptables
8 1 (1.02%) KVM
8 1 (1.02%) Lustre
8 1 (1.02%) NFS
8 1 (1.02%) Samba
8 1 (1.02%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 1 (1.02%) Virtual Machines
8 1 (1.02%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 16 (16.33%) Terraform
2 15 (15.31%) Grafana
2 15 (15.31%) Prometheus
3 12 (12.24%) Ansible
4 9 (9.18%) Nessus
4 9 (9.18%) Proxmox
5 6 (6.12%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (3.06%) SCCM
7 2 (2.04%) Kibana
7 2 (2.04%) Progress Chef
8 1 (1.02%) Argo
8 1 (1.02%) Failover Clustering
8 1 (1.02%) FortiGate
8 1 (1.02%) HAProxy
8 1 (1.02%) Istio
8 1 (1.02%) Kubernetes
8 1 (1.02%) SELinux
Vendors
1 23 (23.47%) ServiceNow
2 21 (21.43%) Thales
3 14 (14.29%) Splunk
4 12 (12.24%) IBM
4 12 (12.24%) Microsoft
5 11 (11.22%) CyberArk
6 9 (9.18%) Jaspersoft
7 8 (8.16%) Cisco
7 8 (8.16%) Gemalto
8 7 (7.14%) BeyondTrust
8 7 (7.14%) VMware
9 4 (4.08%) BiZZdesign
10 3 (3.06%) Dell
10 3 (3.06%) Draytek
10 3 (3.06%) McAfee
10 3 (3.06%) Meraki
11 2 (2.04%) Ciena
12 1 (1.02%) Red Hat
12 1 (1.02%) Solace
12 1 (1.02%) TIBCO