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

6 months to
28 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 610 498 529
Rank change year-on-year -112 +31 +113
Contract jobs citing SSH 57 48 43
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.11% 0.15% 0.11%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 1.15% 1.21% 0.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 28 37 24
10th Percentile £387 £325 £266
25th Percentile £438 £363 £404
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £529
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -10.21% +17.56%
75th Percentile £596 £500 £563
90th Percentile £715 £644 £598
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £316
% change year-on-year -5.26% +50.20% -9.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 0 0
10th Percentile £23.56 - -
25th Percentile £26.80 - -
Median hourly rate £52.50 - -
75th Percentile £75.02 - -
90th Percentile £77.50 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 - -

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 4,975 3,951 4,930
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.41% 12.06% 12.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,982 2,418 2,984
10th Percentile £250 £235 £213
25th Percentile £400 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.41% -2.35% -
75th Percentile £588 £589 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £489 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.95% -5.00% +8.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 335 194 348
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £25.15 £17.95
Median hourly rate £26.44 £48.75 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -45.76% +8.33% -10.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £83.70 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £44.00 £50.00
% change year-on-year -39.41% -12.00% -13.04%

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 28 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 28 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for SSH in the UK

SSH
Top 9 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 28 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 -115 44 £537 +13.05% 14
UK excluding London -84 30 £450 -5.26% 9
Work from Home -44 26 £496 +23.38% 9
London -73 20 £538 +13.16% 6
South East -55 15 £615 +60.15% 1
Scotland - 7 £670 - 1
North West -43 6 £358 -5.72% 2
North of England -73 6 £358 -14.90% 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 (24.56%) Confluence
2 10 (17.54%) SharePoint
3 4 (7.02%) nginx
4 1 (1.75%) Apache
4 1 (1.75%) JBoss
4 1 (1.75%) OpenStack
4 1 (1.75%) Tomcat
Applications
1 4 (7.02%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 24 (42.11%) Azure
2 20 (35.09%) AWS
3 15 (26.32%) Entra ID
4 7 (12.28%) GCP
5 6 (10.53%) SaaS
6 5 (8.77%) Azure Monitor
6 5 (8.77%) Azure Sentinel
7 4 (7.02%) Amazon EC2
7 4 (7.02%) GitHub
7 4 (7.02%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 3 (5.26%) Azure DevOps
8 3 (5.26%) Azure ExpressRoute
8 3 (5.26%) Azure Key Vault
8 3 (5.26%) GitHub Actions
9 2 (3.51%) AWS KMS
9 2 (3.51%) OCI
9 2 (3.51%) Sentry
10 1 (1.75%) Azure Stack
10 1 (1.75%) Nutanix
10 1 (1.75%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 11 (19.30%) DNS
1 11 (19.30%) TCP/IP
2 10 (17.54%) HTTPS
3 8 (14.04%) Firewall
4 6 (10.53%) DHCP
4 6 (10.53%) Network Security
4 6 (10.53%) SSL
4 6 (10.53%) VPN
5 4 (7.02%) OpenVPN
6 3 (5.26%) X.509
7 2 (3.51%) Reverse Proxy
7 2 (3.51%) SNMP
8 1 (1.75%) EIGRP
8 1 (1.75%) HTTP
8 1 (1.75%) ICMP
8 1 (1.75%) Kerberos
8 1 (1.75%) L2TP
8 1 (1.75%) OSPF
8 1 (1.75%) RIP
8 1 (1.75%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (21.05%) SQL Server
2 10 (17.54%) PostgreSQL
3 4 (7.02%) MariaDB
3 4 (7.02%) MongoDB
4 2 (3.51%) SQLPlus
5 1 (1.75%) OpenStack Swift
5 1 (1.75%) Oracle Database
5 1 (1.75%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 10 (17.54%) JIRA
2 9 (15.79%) Git
3 1 (1.75%) GitLab
General
1 12 (21.05%) Public Sector
2 9 (15.79%) Finance
3 8 (14.04%) Documentation Skills
3 8 (14.04%) Social Skills
4 6 (10.53%) Military
5 3 (5.26%) Analytical Skills
5 3 (5.26%) Banking
6 2 (3.51%) Corporate Banking
6 2 (3.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 2 (3.51%) Investment Banking
6 2 (3.51%) Retail Banking
7 1 (1.75%) Financial Institution
7 1 (1.75%) Legal
Job Titles
1 9 (15.79%) Platform Engineer
2 8 (14.04%) CyberArk Engineer
2 8 (14.04%) Senior
3 6 (10.53%) Linux Engineer
4 5 (8.77%) AWS Engineer
4 5 (8.77%) Cloud Platform Engineer
5 4 (7.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 3 (5.26%) Consultant
6 3 (5.26%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
7 2 (3.51%) Analyst
7 2 (3.51%) Azure Engineer
7 2 (3.51%) Cloud Engineer
7 2 (3.51%) Developer
7 2 (3.51%) Java Developer
7 2 (3.51%) Network Engineer
7 2 (3.51%) Python Engineer
7 2 (3.51%) Senior Linux Engineer
7 2 (3.51%) Senior Network Engineer
7 2 (3.51%) Senior Platform Engineer
7 2 (3.51%) Vulnerability Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (8.77%) ARM Templates
2 4 (7.02%) boto
2 4 (7.02%) JSON
3 3 (5.26%) LDAP
3 3 (5.26%) REST
3 3 (5.26%) SPIFFE
4 2 (3.51%) Node.js
5 1 (1.75%) Elastic Stack
5 1 (1.75%) Kafka
5 1 (1.75%) OAuth
5 1 (1.75%) OAuth2
5 1 (1.75%) OpenID
5 1 (1.75%) RabbitMQ
5 1 (1.75%) RESTful
5 1 (1.75%) SailPoint
5 1 (1.75%) SAML
5 1 (1.75%) X-Windows
5 1 (1.75%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 23 (40.35%) Onboarding
2 14 (24.56%) Management Information System
3 11 (19.30%) PKI
4 7 (12.28%) Hybrid Cloud
4 7 (12.28%) Linux Command Line
5 5 (8.77%) Distributed Systems
6 4 (7.02%) ARM Cortex
6 4 (7.02%) Cloud Native
6 4 (7.02%) Legacy Systems
7 3 (5.26%) Client/Server
7 3 (5.26%) Public Cloud
7 3 (5.26%) Tandem
8 2 (3.51%) Enterprise Cloud
9 1 (1.75%) CMDB
9 1 (1.75%) Enterprise Software
9 1 (1.75%) Product Ownership
9 1 (1.75%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 37 (64.91%) Linux
2 26 (45.61%) Windows
3 15 (26.32%) Windows Server
4 14 (24.56%) Unix
5 8 (14.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (5.26%) Ubuntu
7 2 (3.51%) CentOS
7 2 (3.51%) Rocky
8 1 (1.75%) SUSE
8 1 (1.75%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 17 (29.82%) DevOps
2 16 (28.07%) Privileged Access Management
3 15 (26.32%) Computer Science
3 15 (26.32%) Cybersecurity
3 15 (26.32%) Runbook
4 14 (24.56%) CI/CD
5 13 (22.81%) Information Security
5 13 (22.81%) Security Operations
6 10 (17.54%) Infrastructure as Code
6 10 (17.54%) Key Management
6 10 (17.54%) SIEM
7 9 (15.79%) ITIL
7 9 (15.79%) Security Monitoring
7 9 (15.79%) Service Management
8 8 (14.04%) Change Management
8 8 (14.04%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 8 (14.04%) Infrastructure Monitoring
8 8 (14.04%) Task Automation
9 7 (12.28%) Project Delivery
9 7 (12.28%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 30 (52.63%) Python
2 19 (33.33%) PowerShell
3 15 (26.32%) Bash
4 7 (12.28%) Java
5 5 (8.77%) Bicep
6 4 (7.02%) SQL
7 3 (5.26%) Shell Script
8 2 (3.51%) Go
8 2 (3.51%) JavaScript
8 2 (3.51%) TypeScript
9 1 (1.75%) Korn
Qualifications
1 28 (49.12%) Security Cleared
2 18 (31.58%) SC Cleared
3 16 (28.07%) Degree
4 10 (17.54%) DV Cleared
5 4 (7.02%) BPSS Clearance
6 3 (5.26%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (3.51%) Azure Certification
7 2 (3.51%) CISM
7 2 (3.51%) CISSP
8 1 (1.75%) AWS Certification
8 1 (1.75%) CCNA
8 1 (1.75%) CCNP
8 1 (1.75%) Cisco Certification
8 1 (1.75%) CompTIA Security+
8 1 (1.75%) CRISC
8 1 (1.75%) MOS
8 1 (1.75%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (17.54%) NIST
2 8 (14.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (1.75%) Data Quality
3 1 (1.75%) PCI DSS
3 1 (1.75%) SOC 2
System Software
1 18 (31.58%) Active Directory
2 7 (12.28%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (10.53%) Hyper-V
4 5 (8.77%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (7.02%) Ceph
5 4 (7.02%) Docker
6 3 (5.26%) OpenSSH
6 3 (5.26%) Squid
7 2 (3.51%) KVM
7 2 (3.51%) NFS
8 1 (1.75%) IAG
8 1 (1.75%) iptables
8 1 (1.75%) Samba
Systems Management
1 21 (36.84%) Terraform
2 19 (33.33%) Ansible
3 7 (12.28%) Kubernetes
4 5 (8.77%) Microsoft Intune
4 5 (8.77%) Single Sign-On
5 4 (7.02%) SCCM
5 4 (7.02%) SELinux
6 2 (3.51%) Grafana
6 2 (3.51%) ZABBIX
7 1 (1.75%) Docker Swarm
7 1 (1.75%) Nagios
7 1 (1.75%) Prometheus
7 1 (1.75%) Rundeck
7 1 (1.75%) systemd
Vendors
1 17 (29.82%) Microsoft
2 16 (28.07%) CyberArk
3 15 (26.32%) ServiceNow
4 13 (22.81%) Oracle
5 10 (17.54%) BeyondTrust
6 6 (10.53%) CrowdStrike
6 6 (10.53%) Thales
7 5 (8.77%) Red Hat
7 5 (8.77%) VMware
8 4 (7.02%) Gemalto
9 3 (5.26%) IBM
9 3 (5.26%) Splunk
10 2 (3.51%) Cisco
10 2 (3.51%) Okta
10 2 (3.51%) Tenable
11 1 (1.75%) Arista
11 1 (1.75%) BiZZdesign
11 1 (1.75%) Palo Alto
11 1 (1.75%) Ping Identity
11 1 (1.75%) SaltStack