Unix Contract Job Trends in the South East

Unix
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the South East requiring Unix skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 25 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 106 90 93
Rank change year-on-year -16 +3 +10
Contract jobs citing Unix 79 76 117
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 1.76% 2.34% 2.19%
As % of the Operating Systems category 11.02% 13.22% 11.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 57 37 86
10th Percentile - £203 £280
25th Percentile £204 £350 £305
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £208 £435 £400
Median % change year-on-year -52.30% +8.75% -20.00%
75th Percentile £445 £495 £538
90th Percentile £543 £578 £623
England median daily rate £480 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -12.73% - -1.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 5
10th Percentile - - £37.25
25th Percentile - - £46.25
Median hourly rate - - £63.00
75th Percentile - - £78.00
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £27.75 £59.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -52.97% +47.50% -38.22%

All Operating Systems
South East

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 the South East.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 717 575 1,035
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 16.00% 17.69% 19.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 518 387 687
10th Percentile £190 £200 £165
25th Percentile £255 £263 £210
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £434 £400
Median % change year-on-year +3.69% +8.50% -17.61%
75th Percentile £543 £575 £563
90th Percentile £638 £658 £638
England median daily rate £450 £475 £470
% change year-on-year -5.26% +1.06% -8.74%
Number of hourly rates quoted 66 26 85
10th Percentile £12.50 £22.33 £16.65
25th Percentile £15.50 £34.69 £27.50
Median hourly rate £20.79 £59.13 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -64.84% +7.50% +150.00%
75th Percentile £48.75 £63.44 £68.63
90th Percentile £75.00 £73.13 £76.53
England median hourly rate £23.54 £53.00 £30.00
% change year-on-year -55.59% +76.67% +16.69%

Unix
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

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

Unix job vacancy trend in the South East

Unix
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Unix.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Unix

Unix
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Unix in the South East over the 6 months to 25 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Unix in the South East

Unix
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Unix.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Unix

Unix
Contract Job Locations in the South East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Unix within the South East region over the 6 months to 25 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
Thames Valley -23 33 £420 -13.36% 15
Surrey +13 31 £208 -5.68% 5
Berkshire -22 23 £420 -10.06% 10
Oxfordshire -8 10 - - 2
Hampshire -28 7 £430 +2.38% 3
Middlesex - 5 - -
Kent - 3 £338 - 3
West Sussex -16 1 £525 +20.90% 3
Unix
England

Unix
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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 3 (3.80%) Tomcat
2 2 (2.53%) Microsoft Exchange
2 2 (2.53%) Oracle SOA Suite
2 2 (2.53%) Oracle Workflow
2 2 (2.53%) WebLogic
3 1 (1.27%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 2 (2.53%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (2.53%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (3.80%) Oracle BRM
1 3 (3.80%) Oracle EBS
1 3 (3.80%) Oracle EBS R12
2 2 (2.53%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (1.27%) Oracle CRM
Cloud Services
1 18 (22.78%) SaaS
2 17 (21.52%) Sauce Labs
3 16 (20.25%) AWS
4 10 (12.66%) Azure
5 9 (11.39%) GCP
5 9 (11.39%) OCI
6 7 (8.86%) AWS Lambda
6 7 (8.86%) Serverless
7 6 (7.59%) AWS CloudFormation
8 2 (2.53%) Google Workspace
8 2 (2.53%) Microsoft 365
9 1 (1.27%) Amazon S3
9 1 (1.27%) OpenShift
9 1 (1.27%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 15 (18.99%) Wireless
2 4 (5.06%) FTP
2 4 (5.06%) HTTP
2 4 (5.06%) Wireshark
3 3 (3.80%) Broadband
3 3 (3.80%) DHCP
3 3 (3.80%) DNS
3 3 (3.80%) Firewall
3 3 (3.80%) GPRS
3 3 (3.80%) GSM
4 2 (2.53%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (40.51%) Relational Database
2 31 (39.24%) MySQL
3 7 (8.86%) NoSQL
4 6 (7.59%) Amazon RDS
4 6 (7.59%) Amazon Redshift
4 6 (7.59%) Couchbase
5 5 (6.33%) Oracle Database
6 2 (2.53%) Oracle BI EE
7 1 (1.27%) Big Data
7 1 (1.27%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (1.27%) DynamoDB
7 1 (1.27%) PostgreSQL
7 1 (1.27%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 18 (22.78%) Browser DevTools
2 17 (21.52%) Android Studio
2 17 (21.52%) Eclipse
2 17 (21.52%) Xcode
3 5 (6.33%) Jenkins
4 1 (1.27%) Git
4 1 (1.27%) Subversion
General
1 30 (37.97%) Social Skills
2 8 (10.13%) Analytical Skills
3 5 (6.33%) Military
4 3 (3.80%) Billing
5 2 (2.53%) Finance
6 1 (1.27%) Banking
6 1 (1.27%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 36 (45.57%) Technical Support
2 24 (30.38%) Support Engineer
3 23 (29.11%) Technical Engineer
3 23 (29.11%) Technical Support Engineer
4 18 (22.78%) UX Engineer
5 14 (17.72%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
6 8 (10.13%) Senior
7 6 (7.59%) Applications Support
7 6 (7.59%) Data Engineer
7 6 (7.59%) Developer
7 6 (7.59%) Unix Specialist
8 5 (6.33%) Applications Support Technician
8 5 (6.33%) Platform Engineer
8 5 (6.33%) Senior Applications Support
8 5 (6.33%) Senior Support Technician
8 5 (6.33%) Senior Technician
8 5 (6.33%) Support Technician
9 4 (5.06%) Automation Engineer
10 3 (3.80%) Designer
10 3 (3.80%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (26.58%) CSS
1 21 (26.58%) React
2 18 (22.78%) Ajax
2 18 (22.78%) AngularJS
2 18 (22.78%) GraphQL
3 7 (8.86%) Kafka
4 4 (5.06%) REST
4 4 (5.06%) SOAP
5 3 (3.80%) HTML
6 1 (1.27%) Spring
6 1 (1.27%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 18 (22.78%) Mobile App
2 6 (7.59%) Replication
3 4 (5.06%) Onboarding
4 3 (3.80%) IPTV
5 2 (2.53%) CMDB
5 2 (2.53%) Distributed Architecture
5 2 (2.53%) Distributed Systems
5 2 (2.53%) IoT
5 2 (2.53%) Linux Command Line
5 2 (2.53%) Management Information System
6 1 (1.27%) Clustering
6 1 (1.27%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 55 (69.62%) Linux
2 43 (54.43%) Windows
3 17 (21.52%) Android
4 2 (2.53%) CentOS
4 2 (2.53%) Mac OS
4 2 (2.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (2.53%) Ubuntu
5 1 (1.27%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 34 (43.04%) OO
2 21 (26.58%) User Experience
3 18 (22.78%) Mobile Application Development
4 17 (21.52%) OOP
5 15 (18.99%) Performance Tuning
5 15 (18.99%) Process Improvement
6 11 (13.92%) Computer Science
7 10 (12.66%) CI/CD
8 9 (11.39%) Problem-Solving
9 8 (10.13%) High Availability
10 7 (8.86%) Data Modelling
10 7 (8.86%) ITIL
10 7 (8.86%) Platform Engineering
11 6 (7.59%) Capacity Planning
11 6 (7.59%) Infrastructure as Code
11 6 (7.59%) Security Patching
12 5 (6.33%) Asset Management
12 5 (6.33%) Preventative Maintenance
12 5 (6.33%) Task Automation
12 5 (6.33%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 46 (58.23%) Python
2 39 (49.37%) Java
3 37 (46.84%) Perl
4 34 (43.04%) JavaScript
5 29 (36.71%) SQL
6 7 (8.86%) Bash
6 7 (8.86%) PL/SQL
6 7 (8.86%) Shell Script
7 4 (5.06%) PowerShell
7 4 (5.06%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 12 (15.19%) Degree
2 11 (13.92%) Computer Science Degree
3 5 (6.33%) DV Cleared
3 5 (6.33%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
3 5 (6.33%) Security Cleared
4 2 (2.53%) (ISC)2 CCSP
4 2 (2.53%) AWS Certification
4 2 (2.53%) CCSP
4 2 (2.53%) Cisco Certification
4 2 (2.53%) CISM
4 2 (2.53%) CISSP
4 2 (2.53%) GCFA
4 2 (2.53%) GCFE
4 2 (2.53%) GCIH
4 2 (2.53%) GREM
4 2 (2.53%) RHCE
4 2 (2.53%) RHCSA
5 1 (1.27%) ISTQB
5 1 (1.27%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (5.06%) HIPAA
1 4 (5.06%) SOC 2
2 1 (1.27%) GDPR
2 1 (1.27%) GMP
2 1 (1.27%) QA
System Software
1 3 (3.80%) VMware Infrastructure
2 2 (2.53%) Docker
2 2 (2.53%) KVM
2 2 (2.53%) Oracle RAC
3 1 (1.27%) GPFS
3 1 (1.27%) VMware ESXi
3 1 (1.27%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 10 (12.66%) Terraform
2 8 (10.13%) Ansible
3 4 (5.06%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
4 3 (3.80%) Kubernetes
5 2 (2.53%) EnCase
5 2 (2.53%) Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
5 2 (2.53%) FTK
5 2 (2.53%) Oracle RMAN
5 2 (2.53%) Progress Chef
5 2 (2.53%) Puppet
6 1 (1.27%) BladeLogic
6 1 (1.27%) Red Hat Satellite
6 1 (1.27%) SELinux
Vendors
1 40 (50.63%) Oracle
2 22 (27.85%) Microsoft
3 21 (26.58%) Splunk
4 15 (18.99%) ServiceNow
5 7 (8.86%) IBM
6 6 (7.59%) Confluent
7 4 (5.06%) Red Hat
8 3 (3.80%) Teradata
8 3 (3.80%) VMware
9 2 (2.53%) CrowdStrike
9 2 (2.53%) Darktrace
9 2 (2.53%) Google
10 1 (1.27%) Ab Initio
10 1 (1.27%) HP
10 1 (1.27%) Mellanox
10 1 (1.27%) Okta
10 1 (1.27%) Solarflare
10 1 (1.27%) SolarWinds
10 1 (1.27%) Symantec
10 1 (1.27%) Veritas