Unix Contract Job Trends in Cheshire

Unix
North West > Cheshire

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in Cheshire requiring Unix skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 31 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 52 48 28
Rank change year-on-year -4 -20 +1
Contract jobs citing Unix 23 8 35
As % of all contract jobs in Cheshire 3.47% 1.76% 6.86%
As % of the Operating Systems category 21.50% 11.94% 30.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 21 7 22
10th Percentile £305 £356 £465
25th Percentile £313 £374 £495
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £446 £538 £498
Median % change year-on-year -17.10% +8.14% +40.14%
75th Percentile £488 £680 £579
90th Percentile £500 £706 £582
North West median daily rate £455 £557 £500
% change year-on-year -18.33% +11.30% -0.10%

All Operating Systems
Cheshire

Unix falls under the Operating Systems category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring operating system skills in Cheshire.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 107 67 116
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Cheshire 16.16% 14.76% 22.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 79 40 67
10th Percentile £185 £250 £137
25th Percentile £305 £318 £311
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £361 £400 £495
Median % change year-on-year -9.69% -19.19% +41.43%
75th Percentile £436 £541 £563
90th Percentile £488 £593 £586
North West median daily rate £358 £385 £438
% change year-on-year -7.01% -12.00% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 5 4
10th Percentile - £17.55 £16.75
25th Percentile £15.50 £21.05 £17.07
Median hourly rate £16.00 £22.09 £17.61
Median % change year-on-year -27.57% +25.44% -41.61%
75th Percentile £18.87 £24.18 £19.06
90th Percentile £18.90 - £21.43
North West median hourly rate £21.46 £22.09 £18.25
% change year-on-year -2.85% +21.04% -45.93%

Unix
Job Vacancy Trend in Cheshire

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Unix relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in Cheshire.

Unix job vacancy trend in Cheshire

Unix
Daily Rate Trend in Cheshire

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Cheshire citing Unix.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Cheshire citing Unix

Unix
Daily Rate Histogram in Cheshire

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Unix in Cheshire over the 6 months to 31 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Unix in Cheshire

Unix
Hourly Rate Trend in Cheshire

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Cheshire citing Unix.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Cheshire citing Unix

Unix
Contract Job Locations in Cheshire

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Unix within the Cheshire region over the 6 months to 31 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
Knutsford -11 21 £442 +12.98% 1
Chester -12 1 £675 -3.57% 2
Unix
North West

Unix
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Cheshire 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 8 (34.78%) Apache
1 8 (34.78%) Confluence
1 8 (34.78%) JBoss
1 8 (34.78%) SharePoint
2 7 (30.43%) IIS
2 7 (30.43%) iPlanet
2 7 (30.43%) WebSphere
2 7 (30.43%) WebSphere Application Server
3 2 (8.70%) Tomcat
4 1 (4.35%) Apache Spark
4 1 (4.35%) OpenStack
Applications
1 5 (21.74%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (4.35%) Finacle
Cloud Services
1 9 (39.13%) OpenShift
2 8 (34.78%) AWS
3 1 (4.35%) Amazon EC2
3 1 (4.35%) Amazon S3
3 1 (4.35%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 7 (30.43%) Kerberos
1 7 (30.43%) SSH
2 2 (8.70%) Firewall
3 1 (4.35%) HTTP
3 1 (4.35%) Network Security
3 1 (4.35%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (30.43%) Oracle Database
2 3 (13.04%) NoSQL
3 1 (4.35%) Big Data
3 1 (4.35%) Data Warehouse
3 1 (4.35%) DataStage
3 1 (4.35%) DB2
3 1 (4.35%) Hadoop
3 1 (4.35%) Redis
3 1 (4.35%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 10 (43.48%) JIRA
2 9 (39.13%) Jenkins
3 8 (34.78%) Git
3 8 (34.78%) Sonatype Nexus
4 7 (30.43%) Bitbucket Server
4 7 (30.43%) CA Release Automation
5 1 (4.35%) Gradle
5 1 (4.35%) JUnit
5 1 (4.35%) Maven
General
1 8 (34.78%) Finance
1 8 (34.78%) Social Skills
2 3 (13.04%) Banking
2 3 (13.04%) Documentation Skills
3 2 (8.70%) Public Sector
4 1 (4.35%) Analytical Skills
4 1 (4.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 1 (4.35%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 7 (30.43%) Analyst
2 5 (21.74%) DevOps Engineer
3 4 (17.39%) Developer
3 4 (17.39%) Senior
4 3 (13.04%) Senior DevOps
4 3 (13.04%) Senior DevOps Engineer
5 2 (8.70%) Platform Engineer
6 1 (4.35%) Ab Initio Developer
6 1 (4.35%) Architect
6 1 (4.35%) Consultant
6 1 (4.35%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 1 (4.35%) Java Developer
6 1 (4.35%) Linux DevOps Engineer
6 1 (4.35%) Linux Engineer
6 1 (4.35%) Linux/Unix DevOps
6 1 (4.35%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
6 1 (4.35%) Technical Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (30.43%) LDAP
1 7 (30.43%) OAuth
1 7 (30.43%) OpenID
1 7 (30.43%) SAML
2 2 (8.70%) RESTful
3 1 (4.35%) Node.js
3 1 (4.35%) RabbitMQ
3 1 (4.35%) REST
3 1 (4.35%) SOAP
3 1 (4.35%) Spring
3 1 (4.35%) Spring Boot
3 1 (4.35%) Spring Cloud
Miscellaneous
1 7 (30.43%) Tandem
2 2 (8.70%) Enterprise Software
2 2 (8.70%) Management Information System
3 1 (4.35%) Cloud Native
3 1 (4.35%) Distributed Systems
3 1 (4.35%) Linux Command Line
3 1 (4.35%) Onboarding
3 1 (4.35%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 18 (78.26%) Windows
2 14 (60.87%) Linux
3 9 (39.13%) Windows Server
4 1 (4.35%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 8 (34.78%) CI/CD
1 8 (34.78%) Cryptography
1 8 (34.78%) Information Security
1 8 (34.78%) ITIL
1 8 (34.78%) Stakeholder Management
2 7 (30.43%) Computer Science
2 7 (30.43%) DevOps
2 7 (30.43%) Identity Access Management
2 7 (30.43%) Incident Response
3 6 (26.09%) Change Management
3 6 (26.09%) Containerisation
3 6 (26.09%) Problem Management
4 5 (21.74%) Key Management
4 5 (21.74%) Release Management
5 4 (17.39%) Data Protection
5 4 (17.39%) Deployment Automation
5 4 (17.39%) Project Management
5 4 (17.39%) Task Automation
6 3 (13.04%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 3 (13.04%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 10 (43.48%) Python
2 9 (39.13%) Shell Script
3 7 (30.43%) Groovy
4 4 (17.39%) Java
5 2 (8.70%) Bash
5 2 (8.70%) SQL
6 1 (4.35%) PHP
6 1 (4.35%) PL/SQL
6 1 (4.35%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 8 (34.78%) Degree
2 7 (30.43%) Computer Science Degree
3 6 (26.09%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
4 3 (13.04%) AWS Certification
4 3 (13.04%) Security Cleared
5 2 (8.70%) BPSS Clearance
6 1 (4.35%) CISM
6 1 (4.35%) CISSP
System Software
1 8 (34.78%) Docker
2 7 (30.43%) Active Directory
2 7 (30.43%) Tivoli Directory Server
3 1 (4.35%) Hyper-V
3 1 (4.35%) KVM
3 1 (4.35%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 8 (34.78%) Tivoli
2 7 (30.43%) CA Single Sign-On
2 7 (30.43%) CA Wily
2 7 (30.43%) Progress Chef
3 4 (17.39%) Single Sign-On
4 2 (8.70%) Ansible
4 2 (8.70%) Kubernetes
4 2 (8.70%) Terraform
5 1 (4.35%) Grafana
5 1 (4.35%) IBM BigFix
5 1 (4.35%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 15 (65.22%) IBM
2 9 (39.13%) Microsoft
2 9 (39.13%) Oracle
3 8 (34.78%) AppDynamics
3 8 (34.78%) Splunk
4 7 (30.43%) Broadcom
5 6 (26.09%) Gemalto
5 6 (26.09%) Thales
6 1 (4.35%) Ab Initio
6 1 (4.35%) Dynatrace
6 1 (4.35%) Informatica