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 15 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 616 480 507
Rank change year-on-year -136 +27 +76
Contract jobs citing SSH 62 77 54
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.11% 0.24% 0.14%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 1.22% 2.06% 1.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 31 53 31
10th Percentile £398 £269 £398
25th Percentile £449 £363 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year +7.89% -9.52% +16.67%
75th Percentile £605 £555 £566
90th Percentile £640 £634 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £475 £408
% change year-on-year -10.53% +16.56% -1.21%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 0 0
10th Percentile £49.68 - -
25th Percentile £50.69 - -
Median hourly rate £63.75 - -
75th Percentile £77.50 - -
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £75.00 - -

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 5,075 3,744 4,522
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.33% 11.54% 11.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,953 2,307 2,642
10th Percentile £235 £228 £231
25th Percentile £385 £363 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £478 £505
Median % change year-on-year +4.69% -5.43% +1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £610
90th Percentile £675 £676 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £454 £500
% change year-on-year +4.74% -9.30% +9.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 406 196 260
10th Percentile £14.57 £15.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.33 £25.15 £21.37
Median hourly rate £27.11 £43.00 £51.00
Median % change year-on-year -36.95% -15.69% -9.72%
75th Percentile £65.88 £64.06 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.03 £74.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.14 £42.50 £57.35
% change year-on-year -38.49% -25.89% -0.26%

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 15 September 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 15 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for SSH in the UK

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 15 September 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 -145 51 £525 +10.53% 43
UK excluding London -121 30 £425 -10.53% 23
London -98 28 £537 +13.05% 19
Work from Home -49 25 £500 +14.03% 11
South East -55 10 £615 +60.15% 3
Scotland - 8 £640 -
North West -42 7 £364 -22.59% 7
North of England -73 7 £364 -24.72% 8
East of England - 4 £425 -
South West - 1 - - 8

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 18 (29.03%) Confluence
2 10 (16.13%) SharePoint
3 6 (9.68%) nginx
4 5 (8.06%) OpenStack
Applications
1 4 (6.45%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (1.61%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Cloud Services
1 31 (50.00%) Azure
2 27 (43.55%) AWS
3 12 (19.35%) GCP
4 11 (17.74%) Entra ID
5 7 (11.29%) SaaS
6 6 (9.68%) Amazon EC2
6 6 (9.68%) Azure Monitor
6 6 (9.68%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 5 (8.06%) Azure Sentinel
7 5 (8.06%) GitHub
8 4 (6.45%) AWS KMS
8 4 (6.45%) Azure ExpressRoute
9 3 (4.84%) Azure Key Vault
9 3 (4.84%) GitHub Actions
10 2 (3.23%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 2 (3.23%) Amazon ECS
10 2 (3.23%) Amazon ELB
10 2 (3.23%) Azure DevOps
10 2 (3.23%) Route 53
10 2 (3.23%) Sentry
Communications & Networking
1 24 (38.71%) DNS
2 17 (27.42%) TCP/IP
3 16 (25.81%) HTTPS
4 11 (17.74%) SSL
5 10 (16.13%) Firewall
6 8 (12.90%) DHCP
6 8 (12.90%) HTTP
6 8 (12.90%) VPN
7 6 (9.68%) Network Security
8 5 (8.06%) 5G
9 4 (6.45%) 4G
9 4 (6.45%) OpenVPN
10 3 (4.84%) X.509
11 2 (3.23%) FTP
11 2 (3.23%) IMAP
11 2 (3.23%) OpenLDAP
11 2 (3.23%) SMTP
12 1 (1.61%) IPv4
12 1 (1.61%) Kerberos
12 1 (1.61%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (30.65%) PostgreSQL
2 10 (16.13%) MongoDB
3 9 (14.52%) SQL Server
4 6 (9.68%) MySQL
5 5 (8.06%) MariaDB
5 5 (8.06%) NoSQL
5 5 (8.06%) Redis
6 3 (4.84%) SQLPlus
7 2 (3.23%) Amazon Aurora
7 2 (3.23%) Amazon RDS
8 1 (1.61%) Metadata
8 1 (1.61%) Power BI
8 1 (1.61%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 16 (25.81%) Git
2 15 (24.19%) JIRA
3 7 (11.29%) Jenkins
4 5 (8.06%) GitLab
5 4 (6.45%) Selenium
6 2 (3.23%) Vagrant
7 1 (1.61%) Bitbucket
General
1 11 (17.74%) Finance
2 10 (16.13%) Public Sector
2 10 (16.13%) Social Skills
3 5 (8.06%) Analytical Skills
3 5 (8.06%) Banking
3 5 (8.06%) Documentation Skills
3 5 (8.06%) Military
3 5 (8.06%) Telecoms
4 3 (4.84%) Investment Banking
5 2 (3.23%) Corporate Banking
5 2 (3.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 2 (3.23%) Retail Banking
6 1 (1.61%) Financial Institution
6 1 (1.61%) Legal
6 1 (1.61%) Organisational Skills
6 1 (1.61%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 12 (19.35%) Platform Engineer
2 10 (16.13%) Linux Engineer
3 9 (14.52%) CyberArk Engineer
3 9 (14.52%) Senior
4 7 (11.29%) AWS Engineer
4 7 (11.29%) Cloud Platform Engineer
5 6 (9.68%) Developer
6 5 (8.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 5 (8.06%) Python Developer
7 4 (6.45%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
7 4 (6.45%) Senior Linux Engineer
8 3 (4.84%) DevOps Engineer
8 3 (4.84%) Senior Platform Engineer
9 2 (3.23%) Administrator
9 2 (3.23%) AWS DevOps
9 2 (3.23%) AWS DevOps Engineer
9 2 (3.23%) AWS Platform Engineer
9 2 (3.23%) Azure Engineer
9 2 (3.23%) Cloud Engineer
9 2 (3.23%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (40.32%) Terraform
2 9 (14.52%) REST
3 6 (9.68%) ARM Templates
3 6 (9.68%) Kafka
4 5 (8.06%) CSS
4 5 (8.06%) Elastic Stack
4 5 (8.06%) FastAPI
4 5 (8.06%) Flask
4 5 (8.06%) HTML
4 5 (8.06%) Jinja
4 5 (8.06%) Pandas
4 5 (8.06%) RabbitMQ
4 5 (8.06%) RESTful
5 4 (6.45%) boto
5 4 (6.45%) JSON
5 4 (6.45%) LDAP
5 4 (6.45%) OpenTofu
5 4 (6.45%) Playwright
5 4 (6.45%) pytest
6 3 (4.84%) SPIFFE
Miscellaneous
1 23 (37.10%) Onboarding
2 14 (22.58%) PKI
3 10 (16.13%) Management Information System
4 8 (12.90%) Hybrid Cloud
5 7 (11.29%) Linux Command Line
6 6 (9.68%) Distributed Systems
7 4 (6.45%) ARM Cortex
7 4 (6.45%) Cloud Native
7 4 (6.45%) Legacy Systems
7 4 (6.45%) Replication
7 4 (6.45%) Tandem
8 3 (4.84%) Client/Server
8 3 (4.84%) Public Cloud
9 2 (3.23%) Enterprise Cloud
10 1 (1.61%) CMDB
10 1 (1.61%) Enterprise Software
10 1 (1.61%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 43 (69.35%) Linux
2 24 (38.71%) Windows
3 13 (20.97%) Windows Server
4 11 (17.74%) Unix
5 8 (12.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 4 (6.45%) Ubuntu
7 2 (3.23%) Amazon Linux
7 2 (3.23%) CentOS
7 2 (3.23%) VMS
8 1 (1.61%) Rocky
8 1 (1.61%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 28 (45.16%) DevOps
2 19 (30.65%) CI/CD
3 17 (27.42%) Computer Science
3 17 (27.42%) Infrastructure as Code
4 14 (22.58%) Validation
5 13 (20.97%) Change Management
5 13 (20.97%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 12 (19.35%) Privileged Access Management
6 12 (19.35%) Project Delivery
7 11 (17.74%) Agile
7 11 (17.74%) Cybersecurity
7 11 (17.74%) Key Management
7 11 (17.74%) Network Virtualisation
8 10 (16.13%) Information Security
8 10 (16.13%) ITIL
8 10 (16.13%) Service Management
9 9 (14.52%) Cryptography
9 9 (14.52%) Infrastructure Monitoring
9 9 (14.52%) Runbook
9 9 (14.52%) Security Operations
Programming Languages
1 37 (59.68%) Python
2 23 (37.10%) Bash
3 20 (32.26%) PowerShell
4 16 (25.81%) SQL
5 6 (9.68%) Bicep
5 6 (9.68%) Java
6 5 (8.06%) Shell Script
7 3 (4.84%) Go
8 2 (3.23%) Groovy
9 1 (1.61%) C++
9 1 (1.61%) JavaScript
9 1 (1.61%) Korn
9 1 (1.61%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 24 (38.71%) Security Cleared
2 18 (29.03%) Degree
3 13 (20.97%) DV Cleared
3 13 (20.97%) SC Cleared
4 9 (14.52%) Computer Science Degree
5 5 (8.06%) Azure Certification
6 4 (6.45%) AWS Certification
7 2 (3.23%) CISSP
7 2 (3.23%) CompTIA Security+
7 2 (3.23%) LFCS
7 2 (3.23%) RHCE
7 2 (3.23%) RHCSA
8 1 (1.61%) BPSS Clearance
8 1 (1.61%) CCNA
8 1 (1.61%) CCNP
8 1 (1.61%) CESG Certified Professional
8 1 (1.61%) Cisco Certification
8 1 (1.61%) CISM
8 1 (1.61%) CRISC
8 1 (1.61%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (11.29%) NIST
2 6 (9.68%) QA
3 4 (6.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 2 (3.23%) SLA
5 1 (1.61%) PCI DSS
5 1 (1.61%) SOC 2
System Software
1 14 (22.58%) Active Directory
2 12 (19.35%) Docker
3 10 (16.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (14.52%) Hyper-V
5 7 (11.29%) Ceph
6 6 (9.68%) Squid
7 5 (8.06%) Virtual Machines
8 3 (4.84%) OpenSSH
9 2 (3.23%) DFS Replication
9 2 (3.23%) Dovecot
9 2 (3.23%) Postfix
10 1 (1.61%) KVM
10 1 (1.61%) NFS
Systems Management
1 24 (38.71%) Ansible
2 8 (12.90%) Kubernetes
3 7 (11.29%) Grafana
3 7 (11.29%) Prometheus
4 6 (9.68%) Single Sign-On
5 5 (8.06%) Microsoft Intune
6 4 (6.45%) SCCM
7 3 (4.84%) SELinux
8 2 (3.23%) Nessus
8 2 (3.23%) Proxmox
9 1 (1.61%) Docker Swarm
9 1 (1.61%) Nagios
9 1 (1.61%) Puppet
9 1 (1.61%) WMI
9 1 (1.61%) WSUS
9 1 (1.61%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 18 (29.03%) Microsoft
1 18 (29.03%) ServiceNow
2 15 (24.19%) CyberArk
3 10 (16.13%) Oracle
3 10 (16.13%) VMware
4 7 (11.29%) Red Hat
4 7 (11.29%) Thales
5 6 (9.68%) CrowdStrike
6 5 (8.06%) Gemalto
7 4 (6.45%) BeyondTrust
7 4 (6.45%) IBM
8 3 (4.84%) Splunk
9 2 (3.23%) Cisco
9 2 (3.23%) Jaspersoft
9 2 (3.23%) Okta
10 1 (1.61%) Arista
10 1 (1.61%) Confluent
10 1 (1.61%) Juniper
10 1 (1.61%) Ping Identity
10 1 (1.61%) Snow