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 17 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 53 50 42
Rank change year-on-year -3 -8 -16
Contract jobs citing Unix 20 12 18
As % of all contract jobs in Cheshire 2.74% 2.35% 3.25%
As % of the Operating Systems category 23.81% 14.63% 22.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 14 12 12
10th Percentile £262 £335 £358
25th Percentile £379 £358 £444
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £474 £358 £506
Median % change year-on-year +32.40% -29.25% +1.71%
75th Percentile £505 £375 £540
90th Percentile £623 £441 £565
North West median daily rate £481 £414 £528
% change year-on-year +16.24% -21.59% +5.49%

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 84 82 80
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Cheshire 11.51% 16.05% 14.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 52 63 52
10th Percentile £258 £227 £200
25th Percentile £353 £350 £312
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £388 £445
Median % change year-on-year +16.00% -12.82% +4.59%
75th Percentile £544 £486 £520
90th Percentile £614 £520 £576
North West median daily rate £433 £400 £441
% change year-on-year +8.25% -9.25% -7.21%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 7
10th Percentile - - £14.00
25th Percentile £15.93 - £15.40
Median hourly rate £16.87 - £17.72
Median % change year-on-year - - +26.57%
75th Percentile £17.80 - -
90th Percentile - - £17.74
North West median hourly rate £123.38 £17.44 £14.00
% change year-on-year +607.45% +24.57% -49.09%

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 17 June 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 17 June 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 -6 14 £474 +32.40%
Warrington - 1 £550 - 1
Chester - 1 £450 - 3
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 4 (20.00%) Confluence
1 4 (20.00%) SharePoint
Applications
1 4 (20.00%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 6 (30.00%) AWS
2 3 (15.00%) Azure
Communications & Networking
1 4 (20.00%) DNS
2 3 (15.00%) FTP
2 3 (15.00%) SSH
3 1 (5.00%) Firewall
3 1 (5.00%) SSL
3 1 (5.00%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (15.00%) NoSQL
1 3 (15.00%) SQL Server
1 3 (15.00%) Sybase ASE
2 2 (10.00%) Db2
Development Applications
1 4 (20.00%) JIRA
General
1 8 (40.00%) Social Skills
2 7 (35.00%) Finance
3 5 (25.00%) Banking
4 3 (15.00%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (10.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (5.00%) Documentation Skills
6 1 (5.00%) Investment Banking
6 1 (5.00%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 3 (15.00%) DBA
1 3 (15.00%) Developer
1 3 (15.00%) Linux Engineer
1 3 (15.00%) Sybase DBA
1 3 (15.00%) Unix Engineer
2 2 (10.00%) Senior
2 2 (10.00%) Technical Specialist
3 1 (5.00%) Analyst
3 1 (5.00%) Analyst Developer
3 1 (5.00%) Architect
3 1 (5.00%) Consultant
3 1 (5.00%) Infrastructure Analyst
3 1 (5.00%) Migration Engineer
3 1 (5.00%) Optimisation Engineer
3 1 (5.00%) Senior Unix Engineer
3 1 (5.00%) Solaris Engineer
3 1 (5.00%) Vulnerability Management Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (5.00%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 6 (30.00%) Legacy Systems
2 3 (15.00%) Data Centre
2 3 (15.00%) Distributed Systems
2 3 (15.00%) Enterprise Software
2 3 (15.00%) Management Information System
2 3 (15.00%) PKI
2 3 (15.00%) Replication
2 3 (15.00%) Tandem
3 2 (10.00%) Analytical Mindset
3 2 (10.00%) Linux Command Line
3 2 (10.00%) Virtual Team
4 1 (5.00%) Cloud Security Posture
4 1 (5.00%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 15 (75.00%) Linux
2 10 (50.00%) Windows
3 8 (40.00%) AIX
4 6 (30.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (25.00%) Windows Server
6 4 (20.00%) Solaris
7 3 (15.00%) HPUX
7 3 (15.00%) Oracle Linux
7 3 (15.00%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 9 (45.00%) ITIL
2 7 (35.00%) Change Management
3 6 (30.00%) Stakeholder Management
3 6 (30.00%) Storage Management
4 4 (20.00%) Cryptography
4 4 (20.00%) Data Protection
4 4 (20.00%) Incident Response
4 4 (20.00%) Information Security
4 4 (20.00%) Key Management
4 4 (20.00%) Migration
4 4 (20.00%) Project Management
4 4 (20.00%) Vulnerability Management
4 4 (20.00%) Vulnerability Remediation
5 3 (15.00%) Continuous Improvement
5 3 (15.00%) Customer Experience
5 3 (15.00%) Incident Management
5 3 (15.00%) RBAC
5 3 (15.00%) Root Cause Analysis
5 3 (15.00%) Security Hardening
5 3 (15.00%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 10 (50.00%) Python
2 5 (25.00%) SQL
3 3 (15.00%) Java
4 2 (10.00%) Bash
4 2 (10.00%) PowerShell
5 1 (5.00%) Perl
5 1 (5.00%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 7 (35.00%) Degree
2 4 (20.00%) CISSP
2 4 (20.00%) CompTIA Security+
3 3 (15.00%) Computer Science Degree
3 3 (15.00%) RHCE
4 2 (10.00%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
5 1 (5.00%) MCSA
5 1 (5.00%) MCSE
5 1 (5.00%) Microsoft Certification
5 1 (5.00%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (15.00%) GRC
System Software
1 4 (20.00%) Virtual Machines
2 3 (15.00%) NFS
2 3 (15.00%) Veritas Volume Manager
3 2 (10.00%) Hyper-V
3 2 (10.00%) KVM
4 1 (5.00%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 6 (30.00%) Ansible
2 3 (15.00%) PowerBroker
2 3 (15.00%) Progress Chef
2 3 (15.00%) Terraform
2 3 (15.00%) Tivoli
2 3 (15.00%) Tivoli Storage Manager
3 2 (10.00%) IBM BigFix
3 2 (10.00%) vCenter Server
4 1 (5.00%) CASB
4 1 (5.00%) Nessus
4 1 (5.00%) Oracle ZFS
Vendors
1 7 (35.00%) Oracle
2 6 (30.00%) Red Hat
3 5 (25.00%) IBM
4 3 (15.00%) Gemalto
4 3 (15.00%) HP
4 3 (15.00%) Sybase
4 3 (15.00%) Thales
4 3 (15.00%) Veritas
5 2 (10.00%) Microsoft
6 1 (5.00%) CyberArk
6 1 (5.00%) Remedy
6 1 (5.00%) Splunk
6 1 (5.00%) Tenable