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

6 months to
20 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 494 481 511
Rank change year-on-year -13 +30 +163
Contract jobs citing SSH 92 34 74
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.25% 0.11% 0.17%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 2.35% 0.84% 1.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 67 21 53
10th Percentile £226 £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 3,908 4,028 5,905
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.48% 12.88% 13.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,574 2,340 3,619
10th Percentile £205 £213 £209
25th Percentile £356 £363 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -2.91%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £469 £475
% change year-on-year -4.00% -1.32% +2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 165 138 353
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.95 £17.72
25th Percentile £19.00 £21.46 £23.09
Median hourly rate £30.00 £35.00 £56.49
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% -38.04% +156.77%
75th Percentile £65.00 £56.56 £65.98
90th Percentile £74.26 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.94 £32.50 £59.00
% change year-on-year +29.05% -44.92% +212.00%

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 20 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 20 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 -17 68 £475 +2.70% 6
UK excluding London -20 51 £475 +11.76% 6
North of England -39 27 £588 +41.57% 4
London -14 25 £500 -9.09% 1
Midlands -18 24 £475 +11.76%
West Midlands -12 21 £475 +11.76%
Work from Home -4 19 £400 -20.00% 4
Yorkshire -45 15 £675 +64.13% 2
North West -14 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 (32.61%) Confluence
2 13 (14.13%) TPMS
3 11 (11.96%) SharePoint
4 9 (9.78%) nginx
5 1 (1.09%) Apache
Applications
1 10 (10.87%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (9.78%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 2 (2.17%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (1.09%) MS Visio
4 1 (1.09%) OmniGraffle
Cloud Services
1 21 (22.83%) AWS
2 15 (16.30%) Azure
3 14 (15.22%) Amazon CloudWatch
3 14 (15.22%) Amazon EC2
3 14 (15.22%) Amazon ELB
3 14 (15.22%) Amazon S3
3 14 (15.22%) AWS KMS
3 14 (15.22%) Virtual Private Cloud
4 9 (9.78%) Amazon ECS
4 9 (9.78%) Microsoft 365
4 9 (9.78%) Route 53
5 6 (6.52%) Nutanix
6 5 (5.43%) Amazon Glacier
7 2 (2.17%) GitHub
7 2 (2.17%) SaaS
8 1 (1.09%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 22 (23.91%) DNS
1 22 (23.91%) Firewall
2 21 (22.83%) HTTP
3 19 (20.65%) SNMP
4 18 (19.57%) FTP
5 17 (18.48%) SSL
6 15 (16.30%) SMTP
7 9 (9.78%) IMAP
7 9 (9.78%) OpenLDAP
8 7 (7.61%) Kerberos
9 5 (5.43%) Cisco IOS
9 5 (5.43%) Spanning Tree
10 4 (4.35%) Ethernet
10 4 (4.35%) TACACS
11 3 (3.26%) PuTTY
11 3 (3.26%) SD-WAN
11 3 (3.26%) TCP/IP
11 3 (3.26%) Telnet
11 3 (3.26%) WAN
11 3 (3.26%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (15.22%) Amazon RDS
2 10 (10.87%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (9.78%) Amazon Aurora
4 2 (2.17%) Apache Hive
4 2 (2.17%) Elasticsearch
4 2 (2.17%) Hadoop
4 2 (2.17%) Impala
5 1 (1.09%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 36 (39.13%) JIRA
2 23 (25.00%) Git
3 16 (17.39%) Jenkins
4 14 (15.22%) Vagrant
5 2 (2.17%) SonarQube
5 2 (2.17%) TeamCity
6 1 (1.09%) Bitbucket
General
1 47 (51.09%) Social Skills
2 24 (26.09%) Finance
3 20 (21.74%) Documentation Skills
4 15 (16.30%) Public Sector
5 14 (15.22%) Presentation Skills
6 6 (6.52%) Analytical Skills
7 3 (3.26%) Banking
7 3 (3.26%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 18 (19.57%) Developer
2 16 (17.39%) Java Developer
3 15 (16.30%) Cryptography Engineer
3 15 (16.30%) Platform Engineer
4 14 (15.22%) AWS Engineer
4 14 (15.22%) Cloud Platform Engineer
4 14 (15.22%) DevOps Engineer
5 13 (14.13%) Analyst
6 12 (13.04%) AWS DevOps
6 12 (13.04%) AWS DevOps Engineer
7 11 (11.96%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 9 (9.78%) AWS Platform Engineer
8 9 (9.78%) Consultant
9 8 (8.70%) DevOps Platform Engineer
10 6 (6.52%) Management Consultant
11 3 (3.26%) Kafka Developer
11 3 (3.26%) Network Engineer
11 3 (3.26%) Support Engineer
11 3 (3.26%) Test Engineer
12 2 (2.17%) Break Fix Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (25.00%) LDAP
2 16 (17.39%) Node.js
3 7 (7.61%) Kafka
4 5 (5.43%) OAuth
4 5 (5.43%) SAML
5 2 (2.17%) SailPoint
6 1 (1.09%) LAMP
6 1 (1.09%) LAPP Stack
6 1 (1.09%) libvirt
6 1 (1.09%) Middleware
6 1 (1.09%) TIBCO EMS
Miscellaneous
1 16 (17.39%) Replication
2 11 (11.96%) Tandem
3 5 (5.43%) Data Protection Act
3 5 (5.43%) PKI
4 3 (3.26%) Management Information System
5 2 (2.17%) Algorithms
5 2 (2.17%) Linux Command Line
5 2 (2.17%) Market Risk
5 2 (2.17%) Onboarding
5 2 (2.17%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (1.09%) BYOD
6 1 (1.09%) Data Centre
6 1 (1.09%) Enterprise Software
6 1 (1.09%) Machine to Machine
6 1 (1.09%) Virtual Team
6 1 (1.09%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 60 (65.22%) Windows
2 59 (64.13%) Linux
3 15 (16.30%) Unix
4 14 (15.22%) Amazon Linux
4 14 (15.22%) VMS
5 9 (9.78%) Ubuntu
6 7 (7.61%) AIX
6 7 (7.61%) Solaris
7 3 (3.26%) Windows 10
7 3 (3.26%) Windows 7
7 3 (3.26%) Windows 8
7 3 (3.26%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 32 (34.78%) Cryptography
2 28 (30.43%) Problem-Solving
3 27 (29.35%) CI/CD
4 26 (28.26%) Stakeholder Management
5 25 (27.17%) Key Management
6 24 (26.09%) Change Management
7 23 (25.00%) Agile
8 20 (21.74%) Roadmaps
9 19 (20.65%) Task Automation
10 18 (19.57%) Cybersecurity
10 18 (19.57%) DevOps
11 17 (18.48%) Configuration Management
12 16 (17.39%) SDLC
13 15 (16.30%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 15 (16.30%) Observability
13 15 (16.30%) Patch Management
13 15 (16.30%) Platform Engineering
14 14 (15.22%) Cloud Security
14 14 (15.22%) Information Security
14 14 (15.22%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 31 (33.70%) Python
2 22 (23.91%) Java
3 21 (22.83%) PowerShell
4 16 (17.39%) JavaScript
4 16 (17.39%) Shell Script
4 16 (17.39%) TypeScript
5 14 (15.22%) Groovy
6 13 (14.13%) SQL
7 7 (7.61%) Bash
8 6 (6.52%) Perl
Qualifications
1 22 (23.91%) Degree
2 20 (21.74%) BPSS Clearance
3 18 (19.57%) Security Cleared
4 15 (16.30%) SC Cleared
5 13 (14.13%) FFIEC
6 11 (11.96%) Computer Science Degree
7 9 (9.78%) AWS Certification
7 9 (9.78%) Azure Certification
8 5 (5.43%) CISSP
8 5 (5.43%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 3 (3.26%) CISM
10 2 (2.17%) CEH
10 2 (2.17%) ITIL Certification
11 1 (1.09%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (19.57%) PCI DSS
2 17 (18.48%) NIST
3 13 (14.13%) GDPR
3 13 (14.13%) GLBA
4 3 (3.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 3 (3.26%) SOC 2
5 2 (2.17%) FIPS 140-2
5 2 (2.17%) SLA
System Software
1 25 (27.17%) Active Directory
2 16 (17.39%) Docker
3 14 (15.22%) DFS Replication
4 9 (9.78%) Dovecot
4 9 (9.78%) Postfix
4 9 (9.78%) Squid
5 7 (7.61%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (3.26%) BitLocker
6 3 (3.26%) Firmware
7 2 (2.17%) HDFS
8 1 (1.09%) Apache ZooKeeper
8 1 (1.09%) Ceph
8 1 (1.09%) iptables
8 1 (1.09%) KVM
8 1 (1.09%) Lustre
8 1 (1.09%) NFS
8 1 (1.09%) Samba
8 1 (1.09%) Slurm Workload Manager
8 1 (1.09%) Virtual Machines
8 1 (1.09%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 15 (16.30%) Terraform
2 14 (15.22%) Grafana
2 14 (15.22%) Prometheus
3 11 (11.96%) Ansible
4 9 (9.78%) Nessus
4 9 (9.78%) Proxmox
5 6 (6.52%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (3.26%) SCCM
7 2 (2.17%) Kibana
7 2 (2.17%) Progress Chef
8 1 (1.09%) Failover Clustering
8 1 (1.09%) FortiGate
8 1 (1.09%) HAProxy
8 1 (1.09%) SELinux
Vendors
1 22 (23.91%) ServiceNow
1 22 (23.91%) Thales
2 15 (16.30%) Splunk
3 12 (13.04%) Microsoft
4 11 (11.96%) IBM
5 10 (10.87%) CyberArk
6 9 (9.78%) Jaspersoft
7 8 (8.70%) Cisco
7 8 (8.70%) Gemalto
8 7 (7.61%) BeyondTrust
8 7 (7.61%) VMware
9 3 (3.26%) Dell
9 3 (3.26%) Draytek
9 3 (3.26%) McAfee
9 3 (3.26%) Meraki
10 2 (2.17%) BiZZdesign
10 2 (2.17%) Ciena
11 1 (1.09%) Fortinet
11 1 (1.09%) Solace
11 1 (1.09%) TIBCO