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 7 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 557 511 558
Rank change year-on-year -46 +47 +120
Contract jobs citing SSH 73 20 45
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.17% 0.065% 0.10%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 1.69% 0.49% 0.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 53 14 32
10th Percentile £282 £386 £276
25th Percentile £400 £466 £296
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £413 £536 £409
Median % change year-on-year -23.08% +31.19% -8.76%
75th Percentile £688 £648 £595
90th Percentile £698 £682 £925
UK excluding London median daily rate £613 £425 £405
% change year-on-year +44.12% +4.94% -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 0 1
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 4,332 4,074 6,043
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.14% 13.29% 13.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,816 2,461 3,625
10th Percentile £205 £208 £205
25th Percentile £363 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% +5.26% -8.65%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £680 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £466 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -1.89% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 174 141 394
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.44 £14.27
25th Percentile £20.04 £21.46 £19.25
Median hourly rate £36.75 £35.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -12.50% +110.53%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £73.72
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £32.50 £47.50
% change year-on-year +29.05% -31.58% +152.39%

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 7 March 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 7 March 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 7 March 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 -76 46 £513 -4.43% 12
UK excluding London -46 39 £613 +44.12% 16
Work from Home -12 24 £400 -23.81% 7
North of England -47 23 £650 +25.59% 1
Yorkshire -50 13 £675 +92.86%
North West -27 10 £423 -38.33% 1
London -42 9 £488 -11.36% 2
West Midlands -48 7 £375 -11.76% 2
Midlands -58 7 £375 -11.76% 3
South East -30 6 £450 -12.20% 3
Scotland - 2 £700 - 2
South West -25 1 - - 3

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 12 (16.44%) TPMS
2 11 (15.07%) Confluence
3 7 (9.59%) SharePoint
4 3 (4.11%) Microsoft Exchange
5 2 (2.74%) Apache
6 1 (1.37%) JBoss
6 1 (1.37%) nginx
6 1 (1.37%) OpenStack
Applications
1 4 (5.48%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (1.37%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Cloud Services
1 6 (8.22%) AWS
1 6 (8.22%) Azure
1 6 (8.22%) Entra ID
2 5 (6.85%) Nutanix
3 2 (2.74%) SaaS
4 1 (1.37%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 1 (1.37%) Amazon EC2
4 1 (1.37%) Amazon ECS
4 1 (1.37%) Amazon ELB
4 1 (1.37%) Amazon S3
4 1 (1.37%) AWS KMS
4 1 (1.37%) Azure DevOps
4 1 (1.37%) Microsoft 365
4 1 (1.37%) Power Platform
4 1 (1.37%) Route 53
4 1 (1.37%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 20 (27.40%) SNMP
2 17 (23.29%) SSL
3 10 (13.70%) DNS
4 8 (10.96%) Firewall
4 8 (10.96%) HTTP
5 7 (9.59%) FTP
6 5 (6.85%) DHCP
6 5 (6.85%) Kerberos
6 5 (6.85%) Spanning Tree
6 5 (6.85%) TCP/IP
7 4 (5.48%) Cisco IOS
7 4 (5.48%) SMTP
7 4 (5.48%) TACACS
8 3 (4.11%) Ethernet
8 3 (4.11%) SD-WAN
8 3 (4.11%) Telnet
8 3 (4.11%) VLAN
8 3 (4.11%) WAN
8 3 (4.11%) Wireshark
9 2 (2.74%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (4.11%) SQL Server
2 2 (2.74%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (1.37%) Amazon Aurora
3 1 (1.37%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (1.37%) MySQL
3 1 (1.37%) OpenStack Swift
Development Applications
1 15 (20.55%) JIRA
2 6 (8.22%) Git
3 1 (1.37%) Jenkins
3 1 (1.37%) Vagrant
General
1 28 (38.36%) Social Skills
2 21 (28.77%) Documentation Skills
3 16 (21.92%) Finance
4 8 (10.96%) Public Sector
5 5 (6.85%) Analytical Skills
5 5 (6.85%) Presentation Skills
6 3 (4.11%) Telecoms
7 2 (2.74%) Banking
8 1 (1.37%) Military
Job Titles
1 19 (26.03%) Developer
2 17 (23.29%) Java Developer
3 12 (16.44%) Cryptography Engineer
3 12 (16.44%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 11 (15.07%) Analyst
5 6 (8.22%) Consultant
6 4 (5.48%) Management Consultant
6 4 (5.48%) Network Engineer
7 3 (4.11%) Kafka Developer
7 3 (4.11%) Test Engineer
8 2 (2.74%) Active Directory Consultant
8 2 (2.74%) Senior
8 2 (2.74%) Senior Network Engineer
8 2 (2.74%) Server Engineer
8 2 (2.74%) Vulnerability Analyst
8 2 (2.74%) Windows Engineer
9 1 (1.37%) Automation Engineer
9 1 (1.37%) Design Engineer
9 1 (1.37%) Senior Automation Engineer
9 1 (1.37%) Telecoms Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (23.29%) Node.js
2 10 (13.70%) LDAP
3 6 (8.22%) Kafka
4 4 (5.48%) OAuth
4 4 (5.48%) SAML
5 2 (2.74%) SailPoint
6 1 (1.37%) LAMP
6 1 (1.37%) LAPP Stack
6 1 (1.37%) libvirt
6 1 (1.37%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 7 (9.59%) Onboarding
1 7 (9.59%) Tandem
2 6 (8.22%) Management Information System
3 4 (5.48%) Data Protection Act
4 3 (4.11%) PKI
5 2 (2.74%) Replication
5 2 (2.74%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 44 (60.27%) Linux
2 39 (53.42%) Windows
3 15 (20.55%) Unix
4 8 (10.96%) Windows Server
5 4 (5.48%) AIX
5 4 (5.48%) Solaris
6 2 (2.74%) Ubuntu
7 1 (1.37%) Amazon Linux
7 1 (1.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (1.37%) Rocky
7 1 (1.37%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 23 (31.51%) Problem-Solving
2 22 (30.14%) Agile
2 22 (30.14%) Cryptography
3 21 (28.77%) Stakeholder Management
4 20 (27.40%) CI/CD
5 19 (26.03%) Cybersecurity
5 19 (26.03%) Task Automation
6 18 (24.66%) Roadmaps
7 17 (23.29%) SDLC
8 16 (21.92%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 13 (17.81%) Computer Science
10 12 (16.44%) Data Security
10 12 (16.44%) Information Security
10 12 (16.44%) ITIL
10 12 (16.44%) Observability
10 12 (16.44%) OWASP
11 11 (15.07%) Key Management
12 10 (13.70%) Privileged Access Management
13 8 (10.96%) Requirements Gathering
13 8 (10.96%) Security Operations
Programming Languages
1 20 (27.40%) Python
2 17 (23.29%) Java
2 17 (23.29%) JavaScript
2 17 (23.29%) Shell Script
2 17 (23.29%) TypeScript
3 8 (10.96%) PowerShell
4 7 (9.59%) Bash
5 3 (4.11%) SQL
6 1 (1.37%) Groovy
6 1 (1.37%) Perl
Qualifications
1 22 (30.14%) BPSS Clearance
2 16 (21.92%) Degree
3 15 (20.55%) Security Cleared
4 12 (16.44%) FFIEC
5 9 (12.33%) SC Cleared
6 7 (9.59%) Computer Science Degree
7 5 (6.85%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 4 (5.48%) CISM
8 4 (5.48%) CISSP
9 2 (2.74%) ITIL Certification
9 2 (2.74%) Master's Degree
10 1 (1.37%) AWS Certification
10 1 (1.37%) Azure Certification
10 1 (1.37%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (24.66%) NIST
2 14 (19.18%) PCI DSS
3 12 (16.44%) GDPR
3 12 (16.44%) GLBA
4 6 (8.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (2.74%) SOC 2
6 1 (1.37%) Data Quality
System Software
1 21 (28.77%) Active Directory
2 4 (5.48%) VMware Infrastructure
3 3 (4.11%) Virtual Machines
4 2 (2.74%) iptables
4 2 (2.74%) KVM
4 2 (2.74%) NFS
4 2 (2.74%) Samba
5 1 (1.37%) Ceph
5 1 (1.37%) DFS Replication
5 1 (1.37%) Docker
5 1 (1.37%) Dovecot
5 1 (1.37%) Hyper-V
5 1 (1.37%) IAG
5 1 (1.37%) Lustre
5 1 (1.37%) Postfix
5 1 (1.37%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 1 (1.37%) Squid
Systems Management
1 6 (8.22%) Ansible
2 4 (5.48%) Single Sign-On
3 2 (2.74%) Grafana
3 2 (2.74%) SELinux
3 2 (2.74%) Terraform
4 1 (1.37%) Failover Clustering
4 1 (1.37%) FortiGate
4 1 (1.37%) HAProxy
4 1 (1.37%) Nessus
4 1 (1.37%) Prometheus
4 1 (1.37%) Proxmox
4 1 (1.37%) Rundeck
4 1 (1.37%) systemd
4 1 (1.37%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 20 (27.40%) Thales
2 12 (16.44%) Splunk
3 10 (13.70%) BeyondTrust
4 9 (12.33%) CyberArk
5 8 (10.96%) Gemalto
6 7 (9.59%) IBM
6 7 (9.59%) ServiceNow
7 6 (8.22%) Microsoft
8 5 (6.85%) Cisco
9 4 (5.48%) VMware
10 3 (4.11%) BiZZdesign
10 3 (4.11%) Meraki
11 2 (2.74%) Ciena
11 2 (2.74%) Fortinet
11 2 (2.74%) Oracle
11 2 (2.74%) Tenable
12 1 (1.37%) CheckPoint
12 1 (1.37%) Infoblox
12 1 (1.37%) Juniper
12 1 (1.37%) SaltStack