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

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 596 495 548
Rank change year-on-year -101 +53 +104
Contract jobs citing SSH 55 42 44
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.10% 0.13% 0.10%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 1.10% 1.06% 0.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 30 34 24
10th Percentile £364 £306 £263
25th Percentile £403 £363 £372
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £484 £475 £529
Median % change year-on-year +1.79% -10.21% -3.82%
75th Percentile £570 £498 £563
90th Percentile £705 £599 £598
UK excluding London median daily rate £415 £475 £225
% change year-on-year -12.63% +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 5,003 3,960 5,336
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.51% 12.19% 12.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,036 2,406 3,154
10th Percentile £245 £235 £213
25th Percentile £400 £365 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £484 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.31% -3.20% -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £670 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £489 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +2.89% -4.04% +7.03%
Number of hourly rates quoted 325 194 420
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £13.50
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.15 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.44 £50.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -47.12% +25.00% +18.52%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.70 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.22 £43.25 £47.50
% change year-on-year -39.38% -8.95% -0.48%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 -109 40 £492 +3.58% 13
UK excluding London -91 28 £415 -12.63% 9
Work from Home -58 22 £492 +22.39% 7
London -75 18 £538 +13.16% 6
South East -52 9 £450 +17.19% 4
North of England -78 8 £364 +4.00% 1
Scotland - 7 £670 -
North West -46 6 £358 +33.68% 1
Yorkshire -53 2 £675 +35.00%
West Midlands -64 2 £375 -21.05% 1
Midlands -68 2 £375 -21.05% 2
South West - 2 - - 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 14 (25.45%) Confluence
2 9 (16.36%) SharePoint
3 3 (5.45%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (5.45%) nginx
4 1 (1.82%) Apache
4 1 (1.82%) JBoss
4 1 (1.82%) OpenStack
4 1 (1.82%) Tomcat
4 1 (1.82%) TPMS
Applications
1 4 (7.27%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 18 (32.73%) AWS
1 18 (32.73%) Azure
2 9 (16.36%) Entra ID
3 7 (12.73%) GCP
4 5 (9.09%) SaaS
5 3 (5.45%) Amazon EC2
5 3 (5.45%) Azure DevOps
5 3 (5.45%) Azure Key Vault
5 3 (5.45%) GitHub
5 3 (5.45%) GitHub Actions
5 3 (5.45%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 2 (3.64%) AWS KMS
6 2 (3.64%) OCI
6 2 (3.64%) Sentry
7 1 (1.82%) Azure Sentinel
7 1 (1.82%) Azure Stack
7 1 (1.82%) Nutanix
7 1 (1.82%) OpenShift
7 1 (1.82%) PaaS
7 1 (1.82%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 11 (20.00%) HTTPS
2 10 (18.18%) SSL
3 9 (16.36%) DNS
4 8 (14.55%) TCP/IP
5 6 (10.91%) SNMP
6 4 (7.27%) DHCP
6 4 (7.27%) HTTP
7 3 (5.45%) Firewall
7 3 (5.45%) FTP
7 3 (5.45%) Network Security
7 3 (5.45%) OpenVPN
7 3 (5.45%) SMTP
7 3 (5.45%) Telnet
7 3 (5.45%) X.509
8 2 (3.64%) Reverse Proxy
9 1 (1.82%) IPsec
9 1 (1.82%) NAS
9 1 (1.82%) Software-Defined Networking
9 1 (1.82%) VLAN
9 1 (1.82%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (20.00%) SQL Server
2 10 (18.18%) PostgreSQL
3 4 (7.27%) MariaDB
3 4 (7.27%) MongoDB
4 2 (3.64%) SQLPlus
5 1 (1.82%) OpenStack Swift
5 1 (1.82%) Oracle Database
5 1 (1.82%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 11 (20.00%) JIRA
2 8 (14.55%) Git
3 1 (1.82%) GitLab
General
1 10 (18.18%) Public Sector
2 9 (16.36%) Finance
2 9 (16.36%) Social Skills
3 8 (14.55%) Documentation Skills
4 3 (5.45%) Military
5 2 (3.64%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (3.64%) Banking
5 2 (3.64%) Corporate Banking
5 2 (3.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 2 (3.64%) Investment Banking
5 2 (3.64%) Retail Banking
6 1 (1.82%) Financial Institution
6 1 (1.82%) Legal
Job Titles
1 7 (12.73%) CyberArk Engineer
2 6 (10.91%) Linux Engineer
3 5 (9.09%) Senior
4 4 (7.27%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 4 (7.27%) Platform Engineer
5 3 (5.45%) AWS Engineer
5 3 (5.45%) Cloud Platform Engineer
5 3 (5.45%) Consultant
5 3 (5.45%) Developer
5 3 (5.45%) Java Developer
6 2 (3.64%) Analyst
6 2 (3.64%) Cloud Engineer
6 2 (3.64%) Network Engineer
6 2 (3.64%) Python Engineer
6 2 (3.64%) Senior Linux Engineer
6 2 (3.64%) Senior Network Engineer
6 2 (3.64%) Server Engineer
6 2 (3.64%) Vulnerability Analyst
6 2 (3.64%) Windows Engineer
7 1 (1.82%) Designer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 4 (7.27%) JSON
2 3 (5.45%) boto
2 3 (5.45%) LDAP
2 3 (5.45%) Node.js
2 3 (5.45%) REST
2 3 (5.45%) SPIFFE
3 1 (1.82%) Elastic Stack
3 1 (1.82%) Kafka
3 1 (1.82%) OAuth
3 1 (1.82%) OAuth2
3 1 (1.82%) OpenID
3 1 (1.82%) RabbitMQ
3 1 (1.82%) RESTful
3 1 (1.82%) SailPoint
3 1 (1.82%) SAML
3 1 (1.82%) X-Windows
3 1 (1.82%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 16 (29.09%) Onboarding
2 11 (20.00%) PKI
3 10 (18.18%) Management Information System
4 6 (10.91%) Linux Command Line
5 5 (9.09%) Distributed Systems
6 4 (7.27%) Cloud Native
6 4 (7.27%) Legacy Systems
7 3 (5.45%) Client/Server
7 3 (5.45%) Public Cloud
7 3 (5.45%) Tandem
8 2 (3.64%) Hybrid Cloud
9 1 (1.82%) CMDB
9 1 (1.82%) Enterprise Cloud
9 1 (1.82%) Enterprise Software
9 1 (1.82%) Product Ownership
9 1 (1.82%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 31 (56.36%) Linux
2 23 (41.82%) Windows
3 13 (23.64%) Unix
4 12 (21.82%) Windows Server
5 7 (12.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (5.45%) Ubuntu
7 2 (3.64%) CentOS
7 2 (3.64%) Rocky
8 1 (1.82%) SUSE
8 1 (1.82%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 14 (25.45%) Privileged Access Management
2 13 (23.64%) Runbook
3 12 (21.82%) Computer Science
3 12 (21.82%) Cybersecurity
3 12 (21.82%) DevOps
3 12 (21.82%) Information Security
4 10 (18.18%) Key Management
5 9 (16.36%) CI/CD
5 9 (16.36%) Security Operations
5 9 (16.36%) SIEM
6 8 (14.55%) Change Management
6 8 (14.55%) ITIL
6 8 (14.55%) Project Delivery
6 8 (14.55%) Security Monitoring
7 7 (12.73%) Cryptography
7 7 (12.73%) Stakeholder Management
8 6 (10.91%) Agile
8 6 (10.91%) Incident Response
8 6 (10.91%) Infrastructure as Code
8 6 (10.91%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 29 (52.73%) Python
2 13 (23.64%) PowerShell
3 10 (18.18%) Bash
4 7 (12.73%) Java
5 4 (7.27%) Shell Script
5 4 (7.27%) SQL
6 3 (5.45%) JavaScript
6 3 (5.45%) TypeScript
7 2 (3.64%) Go
8 1 (1.82%) Korn
Qualifications
1 21 (38.18%) Security Cleared
2 16 (29.09%) SC Cleared
3 13 (23.64%) Degree
4 6 (10.91%) DV Cleared
5 5 (9.09%) BPSS Clearance
6 3 (5.45%) CISM
6 3 (5.45%) CISSP
6 3 (5.45%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (3.64%) Azure Certification
8 1 (1.82%) AWS Certification
8 1 (1.82%) CCNA
8 1 (1.82%) CCNP
8 1 (1.82%) Cisco Certification
8 1 (1.82%) CompTIA Security+
8 1 (1.82%) CRISC
8 1 (1.82%) FFIEC
8 1 (1.82%) Master's Degree
8 1 (1.82%) MOS
8 1 (1.82%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (18.18%) NIST
2 7 (12.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (3.64%) PCI DSS
4 1 (1.82%) Data Quality
4 1 (1.82%) GDPR
4 1 (1.82%) GLBA
4 1 (1.82%) SOC 2
System Software
1 15 (27.27%) Active Directory
2 7 (12.73%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (10.91%) Hyper-V
4 5 (9.09%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (7.27%) Ceph
5 4 (7.27%) Docker
6 3 (5.45%) OpenSSH
6 3 (5.45%) Squid
7 2 (3.64%) KVM
7 2 (3.64%) NFS
8 1 (1.82%) IAG
8 1 (1.82%) iptables
8 1 (1.82%) Samba
Systems Management
1 14 (25.45%) Ansible
1 14 (25.45%) Terraform
2 6 (10.91%) Kubernetes
3 4 (7.27%) SELinux
3 4 (7.27%) Single Sign-On
4 2 (3.64%) Grafana
4 2 (3.64%) ZABBIX
5 1 (1.82%) Docker Swarm
5 1 (1.82%) Microsoft Intune
5 1 (1.82%) Nagios
5 1 (1.82%) Prometheus
5 1 (1.82%) Rundeck
5 1 (1.82%) systemd
Vendors
1 14 (25.45%) CyberArk
2 13 (23.64%) Microsoft
2 13 (23.64%) ServiceNow
3 12 (21.82%) Oracle
4 9 (16.36%) BeyondTrust
5 7 (12.73%) Thales
6 5 (9.09%) VMware
7 4 (7.27%) Gemalto
7 4 (7.27%) Red Hat
7 4 (7.27%) Splunk
8 3 (5.45%) IBM
9 2 (3.64%) BiZZdesign
9 2 (3.64%) Cisco
9 2 (3.64%) CrowdStrike
9 2 (3.64%) Okta
9 2 (3.64%) Tenable
10 1 (1.82%) Arista
10 1 (1.82%) Palo Alto
10 1 (1.82%) SaltStack
10 1 (1.82%) Siebel