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 19 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 593 508 537
Rank change year-on-year -85 +29 +109
Contract jobs citing SSH 59 45 44
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.11% 0.14% 0.10%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 1.17% 1.13% 0.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 31 36 24
10th Percentile £364 £319 £263
25th Percentile £425 £363 £372
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £529
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -10.21% -2.17%
75th Percentile £605 £500 £563
90th Percentile £700 £625 £598
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £225
% change year-on-year -5.26% +111.11% -58.39%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 0 0
10th Percentile £23.02 - -
25th Percentile £26.26 - -
Median hourly rate £40.19 - -
75th Percentile £67.84 - -
90th Percentile £75.02 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.19 - -

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 5,032 3,979 5,251
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.50% 12.14% 12.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,041 2,428 3,120
10th Percentile £250 £235 £213
25th Percentile £400 £375 £357
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £594 £600
90th Percentile £670 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.53% -5.00% +8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 332 192 401
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.11 £16.86
Median hourly rate £26.22 £48.75 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -46.22% +21.88% -11.11%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.90 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.22 £42.50 £47.50
% change year-on-year -38.31% -10.53% -16.67%

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 19 July 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 19 July 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 19 July 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 -120 45 £537 +13.05% 10
UK excluding London -93 32 £450 -5.26% 7
Work from Home -43 25 £492 +22.39% 6
London -80 19 £538 +13.16% 4
South East -56 13 £615 +60.15% 3
North of England -71 8 £364 -13.54% 1
Scotland - 7 £670 -
North West -46 6 £358 -5.72% 1
Yorkshire -51 2 £675 +35.00%
Midlands -58 2 £375 -21.05% 2
West Midlands -69 2 £375 -21.05% 1
South West - 2 - - 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 15 (25.42%) Confluence
2 10 (16.95%) SharePoint
3 4 (6.78%) nginx
4 3 (5.08%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (1.69%) Apache
5 1 (1.69%) JBoss
5 1 (1.69%) OpenStack
5 1 (1.69%) Tomcat
5 1 (1.69%) TPMS
Applications
1 4 (6.78%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 22 (37.29%) Azure
2 19 (32.20%) AWS
3 12 (20.34%) Entra ID
4 7 (11.86%) GCP
5 5 (8.47%) SaaS
6 4 (6.78%) Amazon EC2
6 4 (6.78%) Azure Monitor
6 4 (6.78%) Azure Sentinel
6 4 (6.78%) GitHub
6 4 (6.78%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 3 (5.08%) Azure DevOps
7 3 (5.08%) Azure Key Vault
7 3 (5.08%) GitHub Actions
8 2 (3.39%) AWS KMS
8 2 (3.39%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 2 (3.39%) OCI
8 2 (3.39%) Sentry
9 1 (1.69%) Azure Stack
9 1 (1.69%) Nutanix
9 1 (1.69%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 13 (22.03%) DNS
1 13 (22.03%) TCP/IP
2 11 (18.64%) HTTPS
3 10 (16.95%) SSL
4 8 (13.56%) DHCP
5 7 (11.86%) Firewall
6 6 (10.17%) SNMP
7 5 (8.47%) Network Security
7 5 (8.47%) VPN
8 4 (6.78%) HTTP
8 4 (6.78%) OpenVPN
9 3 (5.08%) FTP
9 3 (5.08%) SMTP
9 3 (5.08%) Telnet
9 3 (5.08%) X.509
10 2 (3.39%) Reverse Proxy
11 1 (1.69%) IPsec
11 1 (1.69%) Software-Defined Networking
11 1 (1.69%) VLAN
11 1 (1.69%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (18.64%) SQL Server
2 10 (16.95%) PostgreSQL
3 4 (6.78%) MariaDB
3 4 (6.78%) MongoDB
4 2 (3.39%) SQLPlus
5 1 (1.69%) OpenStack Swift
5 1 (1.69%) Oracle Database
5 1 (1.69%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 11 (18.64%) JIRA
2 9 (15.25%) Git
3 1 (1.69%) GitLab
General
1 11 (18.64%) Public Sector
2 9 (15.25%) Finance
3 8 (13.56%) Documentation Skills
3 8 (13.56%) Social Skills
4 5 (8.47%) Military
5 2 (3.39%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (3.39%) Banking
5 2 (3.39%) Corporate Banking
5 2 (3.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 2 (3.39%) Investment Banking
5 2 (3.39%) Retail Banking
6 1 (1.69%) Financial Institution
6 1 (1.69%) Legal
Job Titles
1 8 (13.56%) Platform Engineer
1 8 (13.56%) Senior
2 7 (11.86%) CyberArk Engineer
2 7 (11.86%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 6 (10.17%) Linux Engineer
4 5 (8.47%) Cloud Platform Engineer
5 4 (6.78%) AWS Engineer
6 3 (5.08%) Consultant
6 3 (5.08%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
7 2 (3.39%) Analyst
7 2 (3.39%) AWS Platform Engineer
7 2 (3.39%) Cloud Engineer
7 2 (3.39%) Developer
7 2 (3.39%) Java Developer
7 2 (3.39%) Network Engineer
7 2 (3.39%) Senior Linux Engineer
7 2 (3.39%) Senior Network Engineer
7 2 (3.39%) Server Engineer
7 2 (3.39%) Vulnerability Analyst
7 2 (3.39%) Windows Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (6.78%) ARM Templates
1 4 (6.78%) boto
1 4 (6.78%) JSON
2 3 (5.08%) LDAP
2 3 (5.08%) REST
2 3 (5.08%) SPIFFE
3 2 (3.39%) Node.js
4 1 (1.69%) Elastic Stack
4 1 (1.69%) Kafka
4 1 (1.69%) OAuth
4 1 (1.69%) OAuth2
4 1 (1.69%) OpenID
4 1 (1.69%) RabbitMQ
4 1 (1.69%) RESTful
4 1 (1.69%) SailPoint
4 1 (1.69%) SAML
4 1 (1.69%) X-Windows
4 1 (1.69%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 20 (33.90%) Onboarding
2 12 (20.34%) Management Information System
3 11 (18.64%) PKI
4 7 (11.86%) Linux Command Line
5 6 (10.17%) Hybrid Cloud
6 5 (8.47%) Distributed Systems
7 4 (6.78%) Cloud Native
7 4 (6.78%) Legacy Systems
8 3 (5.08%) ARM Cortex
8 3 (5.08%) Client/Server
8 3 (5.08%) Public Cloud
8 3 (5.08%) Tandem
9 1 (1.69%) CMDB
9 1 (1.69%) Enterprise Cloud
9 1 (1.69%) Enterprise Software
9 1 (1.69%) Product Ownership
9 1 (1.69%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 35 (59.32%) Linux
2 27 (45.76%) Windows
3 16 (27.12%) Windows Server
4 13 (22.03%) Unix
5 8 (13.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (5.08%) Ubuntu
7 2 (3.39%) CentOS
7 2 (3.39%) Rocky
8 1 (1.69%) SUSE
8 1 (1.69%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 16 (27.12%) DevOps
2 15 (25.42%) Cybersecurity
3 14 (23.73%) Computer Science
3 14 (23.73%) Privileged Access Management
4 13 (22.03%) Runbook
5 12 (20.34%) CI/CD
5 12 (20.34%) Information Security
6 11 (18.64%) ITIL
6 11 (18.64%) Security Operations
7 10 (16.95%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 10 (16.95%) Key Management
8 9 (15.25%) Infrastructure as Code
8 9 (15.25%) SIEM
9 8 (13.56%) Change Management
9 8 (13.56%) Project Delivery
9 8 (13.56%) Security Monitoring
9 8 (13.56%) Service Management
10 7 (11.86%) Cryptography
10 7 (11.86%) Stakeholder Management
10 7 (11.86%) Task Automation
Programming Languages
1 29 (49.15%) Python
2 17 (28.81%) PowerShell
3 14 (23.73%) Bash
4 7 (11.86%) Java
5 4 (6.78%) Bicep
5 4 (6.78%) SQL
6 3 (5.08%) Shell Script
7 2 (3.39%) Go
7 2 (3.39%) JavaScript
7 2 (3.39%) TypeScript
8 1 (1.69%) Korn
Qualifications
1 26 (44.07%) Security Cleared
2 17 (28.81%) SC Cleared
3 15 (25.42%) Degree
4 10 (16.95%) DV Cleared
5 4 (6.78%) BPSS Clearance
6 3 (5.08%) CISM
6 3 (5.08%) CISSP
6 3 (5.08%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (3.39%) Azure Certification
8 1 (1.69%) AWS Certification
8 1 (1.69%) CCNA
8 1 (1.69%) CCNP
8 1 (1.69%) Cisco Certification
8 1 (1.69%) CompTIA Security+
8 1 (1.69%) CRISC
8 1 (1.69%) FFIEC
8 1 (1.69%) Master's Degree
8 1 (1.69%) MOS
8 1 (1.69%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (16.95%) NIST
2 7 (11.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (3.39%) PCI DSS
4 1 (1.69%) Data Quality
4 1 (1.69%) GDPR
4 1 (1.69%) GLBA
4 1 (1.69%) SOC 2
System Software
1 19 (32.20%) Active Directory
2 7 (11.86%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (10.17%) Hyper-V
4 5 (8.47%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (6.78%) Ceph
5 4 (6.78%) Docker
6 3 (5.08%) OpenSSH
6 3 (5.08%) Squid
7 2 (3.39%) KVM
7 2 (3.39%) NFS
8 1 (1.69%) IAG
8 1 (1.69%) iptables
8 1 (1.69%) Samba
Systems Management
1 19 (32.20%) Terraform
2 18 (30.51%) Ansible
3 6 (10.17%) Kubernetes
4 5 (8.47%) Single Sign-On
5 4 (6.78%) Microsoft Intune
5 4 (6.78%) SELinux
6 3 (5.08%) SCCM
7 2 (3.39%) Grafana
7 2 (3.39%) ZABBIX
8 1 (1.69%) Docker Swarm
8 1 (1.69%) Nagios
8 1 (1.69%) Prometheus
8 1 (1.69%) Rundeck
8 1 (1.69%) systemd
Vendors
1 18 (30.51%) Microsoft
2 14 (23.73%) CyberArk
2 14 (23.73%) ServiceNow
3 12 (20.34%) Oracle
4 9 (15.25%) BeyondTrust
5 7 (11.86%) Thales
6 5 (8.47%) CrowdStrike
6 5 (8.47%) Red Hat
6 5 (8.47%) VMware
7 4 (6.78%) Gemalto
7 4 (6.78%) Splunk
8 3 (5.08%) IBM
9 2 (3.39%) BiZZdesign
9 2 (3.39%) Cisco
9 2 (3.39%) Okta
9 2 (3.39%) Tenable
10 1 (1.69%) Arista
10 1 (1.69%) F5
10 1 (1.69%) Ping Identity
10 1 (1.69%) Siebel