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

6 months to
15 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 513 506 533
Rank change year-on-year -7 +27 +154
Contract jobs citing SSH 80 28 65
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.20% 0.091% 0.14%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 1.93% 0.69% 1.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 56 17 42
10th Percentile £214 £398 £285
25th Percentile £400 £413 £366
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £413 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -21.05% -0.48% +16.67%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £669
90th Percentile £688 £679 £908
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £425 £475
% change year-on-year +35.29% -10.53% +9.51%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 0 2
10th Percentile £21.94 - -
25th Percentile £24.37 - -
Median hourly rate £27.16 - £78.00
75th Percentile £39.05 - -
90th Percentile £59.14 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.16 - £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 4,135 4,062 6,014
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.35% 13.14% 13.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,717 2,404 3,588
10th Percentile £204 £210 £205
25th Percentile £355 £360 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £488
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +2.56% -5.89%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £680 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £470 £475
% change year-on-year -4.26% -1.05% +1.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 168 128 405
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.01 £14.41
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.46 £20.82
Median hourly rate £28.38 £32.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -12.68% -31.58% +143.59%
75th Percentile £65.00 £60.47 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £70.38 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.54 £26.75 £51.89
% change year-on-year +51.55% -48.45% +160.23%

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 15 February 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
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SSH over the 6 months to 15 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for SSH in the UK

SSH
Top 12 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 15 February 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 -52 53 £513 +0.24% 6
UK excluding London -45 43 £575 +35.29% 9
North of England -48 24 £650 +52.94% 3
Work from Home 0 23 £400 -27.27% 4
London -15 14 £525 -4.55% 1
Yorkshire -57 14 £675 +58.82% 1
West Midlands -33 12 £475 +11.76% 1
Midlands -42 12 £475 +11.76% 1
North West -23 10 £423 -38.33% 2
South East -28 5 - -
Scotland +4 1 £700 +7.69% 2
South West -25 1 - - 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 19 (23.75%) Confluence
2 13 (16.25%) TPMS
3 8 (10.00%) SharePoint
4 4 (5.00%) nginx
5 3 (3.75%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (1.25%) Apache
Applications
1 5 (6.25%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (5.00%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 1 (1.25%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (1.25%) MS Visio
3 1 (1.25%) OmniGraffle
Cloud Services
1 13 (16.25%) AWS
2 10 (12.50%) Azure
3 6 (7.50%) Amazon CloudWatch
3 6 (7.50%) Amazon EC2
3 6 (7.50%) Amazon ELB
3 6 (7.50%) Amazon S3
3 6 (7.50%) AWS KMS
3 6 (7.50%) Nutanix
3 6 (7.50%) Virtual Private Cloud
4 5 (6.25%) Entra ID
5 4 (5.00%) Amazon ECS
5 4 (5.00%) Microsoft 365
5 4 (5.00%) Route 53
6 2 (2.50%) Amazon Glacier
6 2 (2.50%) SaaS
7 1 (1.25%) GitHub
7 1 (1.25%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 22 (27.50%) SNMP
2 19 (23.75%) SSL
3 17 (21.25%) DNS
4 15 (18.75%) Firewall
4 15 (18.75%) HTTP
5 13 (16.25%) FTP
6 9 (11.25%) SMTP
7 5 (6.25%) Cisco IOS
7 5 (6.25%) DHCP
7 5 (6.25%) Kerberos
7 5 (6.25%) Spanning Tree
7 5 (6.25%) TCP/IP
8 4 (5.00%) Ethernet
8 4 (5.00%) IMAP
8 4 (5.00%) OpenLDAP
8 4 (5.00%) TACACS
9 3 (3.75%) SD-WAN
9 3 (3.75%) Telnet
9 3 (3.75%) WAN
9 3 (3.75%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (7.50%) Amazon RDS
2 5 (6.25%) PostgreSQL
3 4 (5.00%) Amazon Aurora
4 3 (3.75%) SQL Server
5 1 (1.25%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 24 (30.00%) JIRA
2 13 (16.25%) Git
3 6 (7.50%) Jenkins
3 6 (7.50%) Vagrant
General
1 34 (42.50%) Social Skills
2 22 (27.50%) Documentation Skills
3 18 (22.50%) Finance
4 11 (13.75%) Public Sector
5 8 (10.00%) Presentation Skills
6 6 (7.50%) Analytical Skills
7 3 (3.75%) Telecoms
8 2 (2.50%) Banking
9 1 (1.25%) Military
Job Titles
1 18 (22.50%) Developer
2 16 (20.00%) Java Developer
3 14 (17.50%) Cryptography Engineer
4 13 (16.25%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 12 (15.00%) Analyst
6 6 (7.50%) AWS Engineer
6 6 (7.50%) Cloud Platform Engineer
6 6 (7.50%) Consultant
6 6 (7.50%) Platform Engineer
7 5 (6.25%) AWS DevOps
7 5 (6.25%) AWS DevOps Engineer
7 5 (6.25%) DevOps Engineer
8 4 (5.00%) AWS Platform Engineer
8 4 (5.00%) Management Consultant
9 3 (3.75%) DevOps Platform Engineer
9 3 (3.75%) Kafka Developer
9 3 (3.75%) Network Engineer
9 3 (3.75%) Test Engineer
10 2 (2.50%) Active Directory Consultant
10 2 (2.50%) Server Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (20.00%) Node.js
2 15 (18.75%) LDAP
3 6 (7.50%) Kafka
4 4 (5.00%) OAuth
4 4 (5.00%) SAML
5 2 (2.50%) SailPoint
6 1 (1.25%) LAMP
6 1 (1.25%) LAPP Stack
6 1 (1.25%) libvirt
Miscellaneous
1 8 (10.00%) Tandem
2 7 (8.75%) Management Information System
2 7 (8.75%) Onboarding
2 7 (8.75%) Replication
3 5 (6.25%) PKI
4 4 (5.00%) Data Protection Act
5 2 (2.50%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (1.25%) Algorithms
6 1 (1.25%) BYOD
6 1 (1.25%) Data Centre
6 1 (1.25%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 48 (60.00%) Linux
1 48 (60.00%) Windows
2 16 (20.00%) Unix
3 9 (11.25%) Windows Server
4 6 (7.50%) Amazon Linux
4 6 (7.50%) VMS
5 4 (5.00%) AIX
5 4 (5.00%) Solaris
5 4 (5.00%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 26 (32.50%) Problem-Solving
2 25 (31.25%) Cryptography
3 24 (30.00%) Agile
4 23 (28.75%) Stakeholder Management
5 21 (26.25%) Cybersecurity
6 20 (25.00%) CI/CD
7 18 (22.50%) Roadmaps
7 18 (22.50%) Task Automation
8 17 (21.25%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 16 (20.00%) SDLC
10 14 (17.50%) Computer Science
11 13 (16.25%) Change Management
11 13 (16.25%) Data Security
11 13 (16.25%) Information Security
11 13 (16.25%) ITIL
11 13 (16.25%) Key Management
11 13 (16.25%) Observability
11 13 (16.25%) OWASP
12 11 (13.75%) Project Management
13 9 (11.25%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 23 (28.75%) Python
2 18 (22.50%) Java
3 16 (20.00%) JavaScript
3 16 (20.00%) Shell Script
3 16 (20.00%) TypeScript
4 13 (16.25%) PowerShell
5 6 (7.50%) Bash
5 6 (7.50%) Groovy
5 6 (7.50%) SQL
6 3 (3.75%) Perl
Qualifications
1 21 (26.25%) BPSS Clearance
2 19 (23.75%) Degree
3 18 (22.50%) Security Cleared
4 13 (16.25%) FFIEC
5 12 (15.00%) SC Cleared
6 8 (10.00%) Computer Science Degree
7 5 (6.25%) CISSP
7 5 (6.25%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 4 (5.00%) AWS Certification
8 4 (5.00%) Azure Certification
8 4 (5.00%) CISM
9 2 (2.50%) ITIL Certification
9 2 (2.50%) Master's Degree
10 1 (1.25%) CEH
10 1 (1.25%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (23.75%) NIST
2 16 (20.00%) PCI DSS
3 13 (16.25%) GDPR
3 13 (16.25%) GLBA
4 6 (7.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (2.50%) SOC 2
6 1 (1.25%) Data Quality
6 1 (1.25%) FIPS 140-2
System Software
1 24 (30.00%) Active Directory
2 7 (8.75%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (7.50%) DFS Replication
3 6 (7.50%) Docker
4 4 (5.00%) Dovecot
4 4 (5.00%) Postfix
4 4 (5.00%) Squid
5 3 (3.75%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (2.50%) KVM
7 1 (1.25%) Ceph
7 1 (1.25%) Hyper-V
7 1 (1.25%) iptables
7 1 (1.25%) Lustre
7 1 (1.25%) NFS
7 1 (1.25%) Samba
7 1 (1.25%) Slurm Workload Manager
7 1 (1.25%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 7 (8.75%) Ansible
1 7 (8.75%) Terraform
2 6 (7.50%) Grafana
2 6 (7.50%) Prometheus
2 6 (7.50%) Single Sign-On
3 4 (5.00%) Nessus
3 4 (5.00%) Proxmox
4 1 (1.25%) Failover Clustering
4 1 (1.25%) FortiGate
4 1 (1.25%) HAProxy
4 1 (1.25%) SELinux
Vendors
1 21 (26.25%) Thales
2 14 (17.50%) ServiceNow
2 14 (17.50%) Splunk
3 9 (11.25%) BeyondTrust
3 9 (11.25%) CyberArk
4 8 (10.00%) Gemalto
4 8 (10.00%) IBM
4 8 (10.00%) Microsoft
5 7 (8.75%) VMware
6 5 (6.25%) Cisco
7 4 (5.00%) Jaspersoft
8 3 (3.75%) BiZZdesign
8 3 (3.75%) Meraki
9 2 (2.50%) Ciena
9 2 (2.50%) Fortinet
9 2 (2.50%) Oracle
9 2 (2.50%) Tenable
10 1 (1.25%) CheckPoint