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

6 months to
18 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 496 490 520
Rank change year-on-year -6 +30 +153
Contract jobs citing SSH 90 34 75
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.24% 0.11% 0.17%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 2.31% 0.83% 1.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 65 21 53
10th Percentile £201 £398 £303
25th Percentile £400 £413 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +5.26% -8.21%
75th Percentile £600 £640 £630
90th Percentile £688 £675 £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 3,894 4,087 5,896
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.49% 12.87% 13.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,562 2,383 3,621
10th Percentile £204 £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 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £470 £475
% change year-on-year -4.26% -1.05% +2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 160 140 347
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.22 £17.72
25th Percentile £18.78 £21.46 £23.00
Median hourly rate £32.00 £35.00 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -8.57% -38.04% +132.95%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.81 £65.49
90th Percentile £74.33 £70.00 £74.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £32.50 £57.99
% change year-on-year +29.05% -43.96% +177.07%

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 18 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 18 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 -12 67 £475 +2.70% 7
UK excluding London -31 50 £475 +11.76% 7
North of England -37 26 £575 +38.55% 5
London +6 25 £500 -9.09% 1
Midlands -21 24 £475 +11.76%
West Midlands -16 21 £475 +11.76%
Work from Home -4 19 £400 -20.00% 4
Yorkshire -45 14 £675 +64.13% 3
North West -17 12 £438 -36.14% 1
East Midlands - 3 £134 -

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 30 (33.33%) Confluence
2 12 (13.33%) TPMS
3 11 (12.22%) SharePoint
4 9 (10.00%) nginx
5 1 (1.11%) Apache
Applications
1 10 (11.11%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (10.00%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 2 (2.22%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (1.11%) MS Visio
4 1 (1.11%) OmniGraffle
Cloud Services
1 21 (23.33%) AWS
2 15 (16.67%) Azure
3 14 (15.56%) Amazon CloudWatch
3 14 (15.56%) Amazon EC2
3 14 (15.56%) Amazon ELB
3 14 (15.56%) Amazon S3
3 14 (15.56%) AWS KMS
3 14 (15.56%) Virtual Private Cloud
4 9 (10.00%) Amazon ECS
4 9 (10.00%) Microsoft 365
4 9 (10.00%) Route 53
5 6 (6.67%) Nutanix
6 5 (5.56%) Amazon Glacier
7 2 (2.22%) GitHub
7 2 (2.22%) SaaS
8 1 (1.11%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 22 (24.44%) DNS
1 22 (24.44%) Firewall
2 21 (23.33%) HTTP
3 18 (20.00%) FTP
3 18 (20.00%) SNMP
4 16 (17.78%) SSL
5 15 (16.67%) SMTP
6 9 (10.00%) IMAP
6 9 (10.00%) OpenLDAP
7 7 (7.78%) Kerberos
8 5 (5.56%) Cisco IOS
8 5 (5.56%) Spanning Tree
9 4 (4.44%) Ethernet
9 4 (4.44%) TACACS
10 3 (3.33%) PuTTY
10 3 (3.33%) SD-WAN
10 3 (3.33%) TCP/IP
10 3 (3.33%) Telnet
10 3 (3.33%) WAN
10 3 (3.33%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (15.56%) Amazon RDS
2 10 (11.11%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (10.00%) Amazon Aurora
4 2 (2.22%) Apache Hive
4 2 (2.22%) Elasticsearch
4 2 (2.22%) Hadoop
4 2 (2.22%) Impala
5 1 (1.11%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 36 (40.00%) JIRA
2 23 (25.56%) Git
3 16 (17.78%) Jenkins
4 14 (15.56%) Vagrant
5 2 (2.22%) SonarQube
5 2 (2.22%) TeamCity
6 1 (1.11%) Bitbucket
General
1 46 (51.11%) Social Skills
2 23 (25.56%) Finance
3 19 (21.11%) Documentation Skills
4 15 (16.67%) Public Sector
5 14 (15.56%) Presentation Skills
6 6 (6.67%) Analytical Skills
7 3 (3.33%) Banking
7 3 (3.33%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 17 (18.89%) Developer
2 15 (16.67%) Java Developer
2 15 (16.67%) Platform Engineer
3 14 (15.56%) AWS Engineer
3 14 (15.56%) Cloud Platform Engineer
3 14 (15.56%) Cryptography Engineer
3 14 (15.56%) DevOps Engineer
4 13 (14.44%) Analyst
5 12 (13.33%) AWS DevOps
5 12 (13.33%) AWS DevOps Engineer
6 10 (11.11%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 9 (10.00%) AWS Platform Engineer
7 9 (10.00%) Consultant
8 8 (8.89%) DevOps Platform Engineer
9 6 (6.67%) Management Consultant
10 3 (3.33%) Kafka Developer
10 3 (3.33%) Network Engineer
10 3 (3.33%) Support Engineer
10 3 (3.33%) Test Engineer
11 2 (2.22%) Break Fix Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (25.56%) LDAP
2 15 (16.67%) Node.js
3 7 (7.78%) Kafka
4 5 (5.56%) OAuth
4 5 (5.56%) SAML
5 2 (2.22%) SailPoint
6 1 (1.11%) LAMP
6 1 (1.11%) LAPP Stack
6 1 (1.11%) libvirt
6 1 (1.11%) Middleware
6 1 (1.11%) TIBCO EMS
Miscellaneous
1 16 (17.78%) Replication
2 11 (12.22%) Tandem
3 5 (5.56%) Data Protection Act
3 5 (5.56%) PKI
4 3 (3.33%) Management Information System
5 2 (2.22%) Algorithms
5 2 (2.22%) Linux Command Line
5 2 (2.22%) Market Risk
5 2 (2.22%) Onboarding
5 2 (2.22%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (1.11%) BYOD
6 1 (1.11%) Data Centre
6 1 (1.11%) Enterprise Software
6 1 (1.11%) Machine to Machine
6 1 (1.11%) Virtual Team
6 1 (1.11%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 59 (65.56%) Windows
2 57 (63.33%) Linux
3 15 (16.67%) Unix
4 14 (15.56%) Amazon Linux
4 14 (15.56%) VMS
5 9 (10.00%) Ubuntu
6 7 (7.78%) AIX
6 7 (7.78%) Solaris
7 3 (3.33%) Windows 10
7 3 (3.33%) Windows 7
7 3 (3.33%) Windows 8
7 3 (3.33%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 31 (34.44%) Cryptography
2 27 (30.00%) Problem-Solving
3 26 (28.89%) CI/CD
4 25 (27.78%) Key Management
4 25 (27.78%) Stakeholder Management
5 24 (26.67%) Change Management
6 22 (24.44%) Agile
7 19 (21.11%) Roadmaps
8 18 (20.00%) DevOps
8 18 (20.00%) Task Automation
9 17 (18.89%) Configuration Management
9 17 (18.89%) Cybersecurity
10 15 (16.67%) Patch Management
10 15 (16.67%) Platform Engineering
10 15 (16.67%) SDLC
11 14 (15.56%) Cloud Security
11 14 (15.56%) Information Security
11 14 (15.56%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 14 (15.56%) Observability
11 14 (15.56%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 31 (34.44%) Python
2 21 (23.33%) Java
2 21 (23.33%) PowerShell
3 15 (16.67%) JavaScript
3 15 (16.67%) Shell Script
3 15 (16.67%) TypeScript
4 14 (15.56%) Groovy
5 13 (14.44%) SQL
6 7 (7.78%) Bash
7 6 (6.67%) Perl
Qualifications
1 22 (24.44%) Degree
2 19 (21.11%) BPSS Clearance
3 18 (20.00%) Security Cleared
4 15 (16.67%) SC Cleared
5 12 (13.33%) FFIEC
6 11 (12.22%) Computer Science Degree
7 9 (10.00%) AWS Certification
7 9 (10.00%) Azure Certification
8 5 (5.56%) CISSP
8 5 (5.56%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 3 (3.33%) CISM
10 2 (2.22%) CEH
10 2 (2.22%) ITIL Certification
11 1 (1.11%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (18.89%) PCI DSS
2 16 (17.78%) NIST
3 12 (13.33%) GDPR
3 12 (13.33%) GLBA
4 3 (3.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 3 (3.33%) SOC 2
5 2 (2.22%) FIPS 140-2
5 2 (2.22%) SLA
System Software
1 25 (27.78%) Active Directory
2 16 (17.78%) Docker
3 14 (15.56%) DFS Replication
4 9 (10.00%) Dovecot
4 9 (10.00%) Postfix
4 9 (10.00%) Squid
5 7 (7.78%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (3.33%) BitLocker
6 3 (3.33%) Firmware
7 2 (2.22%) HDFS
8 1 (1.11%) Apache ZooKeeper
8 1 (1.11%) Ceph
8 1 (1.11%) iptables
8 1 (1.11%) KVM
8 1 (1.11%) Lustre
8 1 (1.11%) NFS
8 1 (1.11%) Samba
8 1 (1.11%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 1 (1.11%) Virtual Machines
8 1 (1.11%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 15 (16.67%) Terraform
2 14 (15.56%) Grafana
2 14 (15.56%) Prometheus
3 11 (12.22%) Ansible
4 9 (10.00%) Nessus
4 9 (10.00%) Proxmox
5 6 (6.67%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (3.33%) SCCM
7 2 (2.22%) Kibana
7 2 (2.22%) Progress Chef
8 1 (1.11%) Failover Clustering
8 1 (1.11%) FortiGate
8 1 (1.11%) HAProxy
8 1 (1.11%) SELinux
Vendors
1 22 (24.44%) ServiceNow
2 21 (23.33%) Thales
3 14 (15.56%) Splunk
4 12 (13.33%) Microsoft
5 11 (12.22%) IBM
6 10 (11.11%) CyberArk
7 9 (10.00%) Jaspersoft
8 8 (8.89%) Cisco
8 8 (8.89%) Gemalto
9 7 (7.78%) BeyondTrust
9 7 (7.78%) VMware
10 3 (3.33%) Dell
10 3 (3.33%) Draytek
10 3 (3.33%) McAfee
10 3 (3.33%) Meraki
11 2 (2.22%) BiZZdesign
11 2 (2.22%) Ciena
12 1 (1.11%) Fortinet
12 1 (1.11%) Solace
12 1 (1.11%) TIBCO