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

6 months to
30 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 506 489 533
Rank change year-on-year -17 +44 +135
Contract jobs citing SSH 89 31 72
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.23% 0.099% 0.16%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 2.19% 0.76% 1.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 64 21 48
10th Percentile £189 £398 £285
25th Percentile £400 £413 £359
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £413 £500 £557
Median % change year-on-year -17.50% -10.15% +7.54%
75th Percentile £600 £640 £650
90th Percentile £688 £675 £803
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £425 £431
% change year-on-year +11.76% -1.45% -16.67%
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 4,059 4,085 6,075
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.50% 12.99% 13.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,674 2,378 3,682
10th Percentile £204 £213 £208
25th Percentile £356 £363 £356
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £493
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +1.42% -4.83%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £685 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £468 £475
% change year-on-year -3.74% -1.58% +2.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 163 137 395
10th Percentile £15.50 £17.38 £15.65
25th Percentile £18.94 £21.46 £21.25
Median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% -30.00% +141.49%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £69.25 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.54 £31.79 £56.40
% change year-on-year +27.52% -43.63% +196.84%

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 30 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 10 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 30 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 -31 64 £475 -5.00% 7
UK excluding London -28 49 £475 +11.76% 7
North of England -46 26 £625 +48.81% 1
Midlands -29 23 £475 +11.76% 2
London -14 22 £500 -9.09% 1
Work from Home +1 20 £400 -23.81% 5
West Midlands -18 20 £475 +11.76%
Yorkshire -47 16 £675 +62.65%
North West -13 10 £423 -38.33% 1
East Midlands - 3 £134 - 2

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 26 (29.21%) Confluence
2 13 (14.61%) TPMS
3 8 (8.99%) nginx
3 8 (8.99%) SharePoint
4 3 (3.37%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (1.12%) Apache
Applications
1 8 (8.99%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 7 (7.87%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (2.25%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (1.12%) MS Visio
4 1 (1.12%) OmniGraffle
Cloud Services
1 19 (21.35%) AWS
2 14 (15.73%) Azure
3 12 (13.48%) Amazon CloudWatch
3 12 (13.48%) Amazon EC2
3 12 (13.48%) Amazon ELB
3 12 (13.48%) Amazon S3
3 12 (13.48%) AWS KMS
3 12 (13.48%) Virtual Private Cloud
4 8 (8.99%) Amazon ECS
4 8 (8.99%) Microsoft 365
4 8 (8.99%) Route 53
5 6 (6.74%) Nutanix
6 4 (4.49%) Amazon Glacier
7 2 (2.25%) GitHub
7 2 (2.25%) SaaS
8 1 (1.12%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 23 (25.84%) DNS
2 22 (24.72%) HTTP
2 22 (24.72%) SNMP
3 20 (22.47%) Firewall
3 20 (22.47%) SSL
4 19 (21.35%) FTP
5 16 (17.98%) SMTP
6 8 (8.99%) IMAP
6 8 (8.99%) OpenLDAP
7 6 (6.74%) Kerberos
7 6 (6.74%) TCP/IP
7 6 (6.74%) Telnet
8 5 (5.62%) Cisco IOS
8 5 (5.62%) DHCP
8 5 (5.62%) Spanning Tree
9 4 (4.49%) Ethernet
9 4 (4.49%) TACACS
10 3 (3.37%) PuTTY
10 3 (3.37%) WAN
10 3 (3.37%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (13.48%) Amazon RDS
2 9 (10.11%) PostgreSQL
3 8 (8.99%) Amazon Aurora
4 2 (2.25%) Apache Hive
4 2 (2.25%) Elasticsearch
4 2 (2.25%) Hadoop
4 2 (2.25%) Impala
5 1 (1.12%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 32 (35.96%) JIRA
2 21 (23.60%) Git
3 14 (15.73%) Jenkins
4 12 (13.48%) Vagrant
5 2 (2.25%) SonarQube
5 2 (2.25%) TeamCity
6 1 (1.12%) Bitbucket
General
1 42 (47.19%) Social Skills
2 22 (24.72%) Finance
3 19 (21.35%) Documentation Skills
4 13 (14.61%) Public Sector
5 12 (13.48%) Presentation Skills
6 5 (5.62%) Analytical Skills
7 3 (3.37%) Banking
7 3 (3.37%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 18 (20.22%) Developer
2 16 (17.98%) Java Developer
3 15 (16.85%) Cryptography Engineer
4 13 (14.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 13 (14.61%) Platform Engineer
5 12 (13.48%) AWS Engineer
5 12 (13.48%) Cloud Platform Engineer
5 12 (13.48%) DevOps Engineer
6 10 (11.24%) Analyst
6 10 (11.24%) AWS DevOps
6 10 (11.24%) AWS DevOps Engineer
7 8 (8.99%) AWS Platform Engineer
7 8 (8.99%) Consultant
8 7 (7.87%) DevOps Platform Engineer
9 5 (5.62%) Management Consultant
10 3 (3.37%) Kafka Developer
10 3 (3.37%) Network Engineer
10 3 (3.37%) Support Engineer
10 3 (3.37%) Test Engineer
11 2 (2.25%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (23.60%) LDAP
2 16 (17.98%) Node.js
3 7 (7.87%) Kafka
4 4 (4.49%) OAuth
4 4 (4.49%) SAML
5 2 (2.25%) SailPoint
6 1 (1.12%) LAMP
6 1 (1.12%) LAPP Stack
6 1 (1.12%) libvirt
6 1 (1.12%) Middleware
6 1 (1.12%) TIBCO EMS
Miscellaneous
1 14 (15.73%) Replication
2 8 (8.99%) Tandem
3 5 (5.62%) PKI
4 4 (4.49%) Data Protection Act
5 3 (3.37%) Management Information System
6 2 (2.25%) Algorithms
6 2 (2.25%) Market Risk
6 2 (2.25%) Onboarding
6 2 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
7 1 (1.12%) BYOD
7 1 (1.12%) Data Centre
7 1 (1.12%) Enterprise Software
7 1 (1.12%) Linux Command Line
7 1 (1.12%) Machine to Machine
7 1 (1.12%) Virtual Team
7 1 (1.12%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 57 (64.04%) Windows
2 55 (61.80%) Linux
3 12 (13.48%) Amazon Linux
3 12 (13.48%) Unix
3 12 (13.48%) VMS
4 8 (8.99%) Ubuntu
5 6 (6.74%) AIX
5 6 (6.74%) Solaris
5 6 (6.74%) Windows Server
6 3 (3.37%) Windows 10
6 3 (3.37%) Windows 7
6 3 (3.37%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 29 (32.58%) Cryptography
2 27 (30.34%) Problem-Solving
3 26 (29.21%) CI/CD
4 23 (25.84%) Agile
4 23 (25.84%) Stakeholder Management
5 20 (22.47%) Key Management
6 19 (21.35%) Change Management
6 19 (21.35%) Cybersecurity
6 19 (21.35%) Roadmaps
7 18 (20.22%) Task Automation
8 17 (19.10%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 16 (17.98%) DevOps
9 16 (17.98%) SDLC
10 15 (16.85%) Configuration Management
10 15 (16.85%) Observability
11 13 (14.61%) Data Security
11 13 (14.61%) ITIL
11 13 (14.61%) OWASP
11 13 (14.61%) Platform Engineering
12 12 (13.48%) Cloud Security
Programming Languages
1 28 (31.46%) Python
2 21 (23.60%) Java
3 18 (20.22%) PowerShell
4 16 (17.98%) JavaScript
4 16 (17.98%) Shell Script
4 16 (17.98%) TypeScript
5 12 (13.48%) Groovy
5 12 (13.48%) SQL
6 6 (6.74%) Bash
7 5 (5.62%) Perl
Qualifications
1 20 (22.47%) BPSS Clearance
2 19 (21.35%) Degree
3 16 (17.98%) Security Cleared
4 13 (14.61%) FFIEC
4 13 (14.61%) SC Cleared
5 8 (8.99%) AWS Certification
5 8 (8.99%) Azure Certification
5 8 (8.99%) Computer Science Degree
6 6 (6.74%) CISSP
7 5 (5.62%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 4 (4.49%) CISM
9 2 (2.25%) CEH
9 2 (2.25%) ITIL Certification
9 2 (2.25%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (19.10%) PCI DSS
2 16 (17.98%) NIST
3 13 (14.61%) GDPR
3 13 (14.61%) GLBA
4 2 (2.25%) FIPS 140-2
4 2 (2.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (2.25%) SLA
4 2 (2.25%) SOC 2
System Software
1 26 (29.21%) Active Directory
2 14 (15.73%) Docker
3 12 (13.48%) DFS Replication
4 8 (8.99%) Dovecot
4 8 (8.99%) Postfix
4 8 (8.99%) Squid
5 7 (7.87%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (3.37%) BitLocker
6 3 (3.37%) Firmware
7 2 (2.25%) HDFS
8 1 (1.12%) Apache ZooKeeper
8 1 (1.12%) Ceph
8 1 (1.12%) iptables
8 1 (1.12%) KVM
8 1 (1.12%) Lustre
8 1 (1.12%) NFS
8 1 (1.12%) Samba
8 1 (1.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 1 (1.12%) Virtual Machines
8 1 (1.12%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 13 (14.61%) Terraform
2 12 (13.48%) Grafana
2 12 (13.48%) Prometheus
3 10 (11.24%) Ansible
4 8 (8.99%) Nessus
4 8 (8.99%) Proxmox
5 6 (6.74%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (3.37%) SCCM
7 2 (2.25%) Kibana
7 2 (2.25%) Progress Chef
8 1 (1.12%) Failover Clustering
8 1 (1.12%) FortiGate
8 1 (1.12%) HAProxy
8 1 (1.12%) SELinux
Vendors
1 22 (24.72%) Thales
2 20 (22.47%) ServiceNow
3 15 (16.85%) Splunk
4 13 (14.61%) Microsoft
5 8 (8.99%) Cisco
5 8 (8.99%) CyberArk
5 8 (8.99%) Gemalto
5 8 (8.99%) IBM
5 8 (8.99%) Jaspersoft
6 7 (7.87%) VMware
7 6 (6.74%) BeyondTrust
8 3 (3.37%) BiZZdesign
8 3 (3.37%) Dell
8 3 (3.37%) Draytek
8 3 (3.37%) McAfee
8 3 (3.37%) Meraki
9 2 (2.25%) Ciena
10 1 (1.12%) Fortinet
10 1 (1.12%) Solace
10 1 (1.12%) TIBCO