Unix Contract Job Trends

Unix
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Unix skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 23 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 203 128 129
Rank change year-on-year -75 +1 -49
Contract jobs citing Unix 553 631 824
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.36% 2.07% 1.85%
As % of the Operating Systems category 11.64% 14.46% 13.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 362 361 557
10th Percentile £204 £356 £358
25th Percentile £395 £425 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year -11.63% -5.45% -
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £780
UK excluding London median daily rate £430 £468 £495
% change year-on-year -8.17% -5.40% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 7 22
10th Percentile £20.91 £38.70 £22.01
25th Percentile £22.56 £40.50 £24.54
Median hourly rate £26.97 £41.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -34.22% +2.50% -38.22%
75th Percentile £28.53 £59.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £29.13 £69.50 £67.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.22 £47.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -48.47% +17.50% -30.43%

All Operating Systems
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 4,749 4,363 6,207
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.68% 14.29% 13.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,145 2,757 4,159
10th Percentile £177 £200 £180
25th Percentile £268 £315 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £465
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +2.15% -9.27%
75th Percentile £571 £588 £594
90th Percentile £675 £694 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £414 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -2.65% - -10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 337 149 385
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.95 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.94 £16.54
Median hourly rate £22.81 £29.00 £25.18
Median % change year-on-year -21.34% +15.17% -5.59%
75th Percentile £53.75 £65.00 £61.99
90th Percentile £70.00 £69.00 £70.39
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £27.75 £25.18
% change year-on-year -18.92% +10.21% -7.03%

Unix
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Unix job vacancy trend in the UK

Unix
Daily Rate Trend

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Unix

Unix
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Unix over the 6 months to 23 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Unix in the UK

Unix
Hourly Rate Trend

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Unix

Unix
Top 16 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Unix within the UK over the 6 months to 23 February 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 -56 480 £469 -10.67% 91
UK excluding London -61 288 £430 -8.17% 76
London -42 219 £550 -2.65% 36
Work from Home -76 154 £450 -7.69% 53
North of England -21 100 £465 -19.13% 15
South East -13 78 £210 -55.08% 21
North West +5 67 £467 -18.78% 13
Midlands -30 65 £437 -5.00% 17
West Midlands -31 62 £439 -4.67% 15
Scotland -37 34 £423 -6.11% 5
Yorkshire -57 31 £464 -19.35%
South West -33 11 £700 +33.33% 5
North East -16 3 £563 - 2
East Midlands -30 3 £430 +1.78% 2
Wales -6 2 £265 +62.04% 3
East of England -43 1 £440 -2.22% 8

Unix
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 30 (5.42%) Apache
1 30 (5.42%) WebLogic
2 21 (3.80%) Confluence
3 16 (2.89%) SharePoint
4 15 (2.71%) JBoss
5 12 (2.17%) Tuxedo
6 9 (1.63%) Apache Spark
7 8 (1.45%) Tomcat
8 7 (1.27%) SAS
9 6 (1.08%) CICS
9 6 (1.08%) IIS
9 6 (1.08%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 6 (1.08%) WebSphere
10 5 (0.90%) iPlanet
10 5 (0.90%) WebSphere Application Server
11 4 (0.72%) Microsoft Exchange
11 4 (0.72%) nginx
12 3 (0.54%) Oracle Workflow
13 2 (0.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 2 (0.36%) Oracle Spatial
Applications
1 15 (2.71%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.99%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.36%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.18%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (1.08%) Oracle EBS
1 6 (1.08%) Oracle EBS R12
2 5 (0.90%) Oracle 11i
3 4 (0.72%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.54%) Oracle BRM
5 2 (0.36%) ION MarketView
5 2 (0.36%) Kondor
5 2 (0.36%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.36%) Summit
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle BPM
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle Cash Management
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle CRM
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 127 (22.97%) AWS
2 81 (14.65%) Azure
3 26 (4.70%) GCP
4 23 (4.16%) GitHub
5 20 (3.62%) AWS CloudFormation
6 19 (3.44%) SaaS
7 17 (3.07%) Serverless
8 15 (2.71%) AWS Lambda
9 14 (2.53%) OpenShift
9 14 (2.53%) Sauce Labs
10 10 (1.81%) Amazon S3
10 10 (1.81%) Cloud Computing
10 10 (1.81%) OCI
11 8 (1.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 8 (1.45%) Amazon EC2
11 8 (1.45%) Azure DevOps
11 8 (1.45%) Entra ID
11 8 (1.45%) Microsoft 365
11 8 (1.45%) Snowflake
12 6 (1.08%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 33 (5.97%) Firewall
2 19 (3.44%) DNS
3 18 (3.25%) Wireless
4 16 (2.89%) HTTP
4 16 (2.89%) SSH
5 13 (2.35%) TCP/IP
6 10 (1.81%) Network Security
7 8 (1.45%) InfiniBand
7 8 (1.45%) NAS
7 8 (1.45%) SAN
8 7 (1.27%) Ethernet
8 7 (1.27%) NetScaler
9 6 (1.08%) FTP
9 6 (1.08%) Kerberos
9 6 (1.08%) SSL
9 6 (1.08%) VPN
10 5 (0.90%) Ethernet VPN
10 5 (0.90%) Wireshark
11 4 (0.72%) DHCP
11 4 (0.72%) FIX Connectivity
Database & Business Intelligence
1 48 (8.68%) MongoDB
1 48 (8.68%) Relational Database
2 46 (8.32%) MySQL
3 43 (7.78%) Oracle Database
4 32 (5.79%) SQL Server
5 28 (5.06%) NoSQL
6 24 (4.34%) PostgreSQL
7 20 (3.62%) Elasticsearch
8 16 (2.89%) KDB
8 16 (2.89%) Kdb+
9 14 (2.53%) Big Data
9 14 (2.53%) Data Warehouse
10 13 (2.35%) Amazon RDS
11 10 (1.81%) DB2
12 9 (1.63%) Data Lake
12 9 (1.63%) Tick Data
13 8 (1.45%) Amazon Redshift
13 8 (1.45%) Hadoop
14 7 (1.27%) DataStage
14 7 (1.27%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 48 (8.68%) Jenkins
2 44 (7.96%) Git
3 33 (5.97%) GitLab
4 31 (5.61%) JIRA
5 23 (4.16%) Eclipse
6 19 (3.44%) JUnit
7 17 (3.07%) Mockito
8 15 (2.71%) Xcode
9 14 (2.53%) Android Studio
9 14 (2.53%) Browser DevTools
10 13 (2.35%) Selenium
11 12 (2.17%) Sonatype Nexus
12 10 (1.81%) Bitbucket
12 10 (1.81%) Maven
13 9 (1.63%) IntelliJ
13 9 (1.63%) MSI
14 5 (0.90%) CA Release Automation
14 5 (0.90%) Gradle
14 5 (0.90%) SoapUI
14 5 (0.90%) Toad
General
1 154 (27.85%) Social Skills
2 145 (26.22%) Finance
3 69 (12.48%) Analytical Skills
4 55 (9.95%) Banking
5 46 (8.32%) Public Sector
6 24 (4.34%) Front Office
7 19 (3.44%) Influencing Skills
8 16 (2.89%) Investment Banking
9 15 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
10 11 (1.99%) Financial Institution
11 7 (1.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 7 (1.27%) Telecoms
12 6 (1.08%) Legal
13 5 (0.90%) Law
13 5 (0.90%) Military
14 4 (0.72%) Manufacturing
15 3 (0.54%) Advertising
15 3 (0.54%) Billing
16 2 (0.36%) Organisational Skills
16 2 (0.36%) Retail
Job Titles
1 109 (19.71%) Developer
2 94 (17.00%) Senior
3 50 (9.04%) Java Developer
4 43 (7.78%) Analyst
5 35 (6.33%) Technical Support
6 33 (5.97%) Unix Engineer
7 30 (5.42%) Site Reliability Engineer
7 30 (5.42%) Support Engineer
8 27 (4.88%) Linux Engineer
9 26 (4.70%) DevOps Engineer
9 26 (4.70%) Site Engineer
10 24 (4.34%) Software Engineer
11 23 (4.16%) Senior Developer
12 21 (3.80%) Kafka Engineer
12 21 (3.80%) Lead
12 21 (3.80%) Technical Engineer
13 20 (3.62%) C++ Software Engineer
13 20 (3.62%) Data Engineer
13 20 (3.62%) Senior C++ Software Engineer
13 20 (3.62%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 74 (13.38%) Kafka
2 40 (7.23%) REST
3 32 (5.79%) React
4 29 (5.24%) SOAP
4 29 (5.24%) XML
5 26 (4.70%) Middleware
6 23 (4.16%) CSS
6 23 (4.16%) JSON
7 21 (3.80%) AngularJS
7 21 (3.80%) HTML
8 18 (3.25%) Spring
9 17 (3.07%) Elastic Stack
10 16 (2.89%) ActiveMQ
10 16 (2.89%) JAX-RS
11 14 (2.53%) Ajax
11 14 (2.53%) GraphQL
11 14 (2.53%) HTML5
12 13 (2.35%) J2EE
12 13 (2.35%) LDAP
13 11 (1.99%) Hibernate
Miscellaneous
1 34 (6.15%) Management Information System
2 20 (3.62%) Onboarding
3 19 (3.44%) Cloud Native
3 19 (3.44%) Linux Command Line
4 18 (3.25%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 16 (2.89%) Data Centre
6 15 (2.71%) Mobile App
7 13 (2.35%) Security Posture
8 12 (2.17%) Equities
9 11 (1.99%) Algorithms
9 11 (1.99%) Fixed Income
9 11 (1.99%) Greenfield Project
9 11 (1.99%) Legacy Systems
10 10 (1.81%) Derivative
10 10 (1.81%) Replication
11 8 (1.45%) Enterprise Cloud
11 8 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
11 8 (1.45%) Legacy Applications
11 8 (1.45%) Public Cloud
11 8 (1.45%) Tandem
Operating Systems
1 371 (67.09%) Linux
2 174 (31.46%) Windows
3 31 (5.61%) Windows Server
4 26 (4.70%) Solaris
5 24 (4.34%) Mac OS X
5 24 (4.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 17 (3.07%) AIX
7 15 (2.71%) Android
8 14 (2.53%) Mac OS
9 11 (1.99%) CentOS
10 5 (0.90%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.18%) Apple iOS
11 1 (0.18%) VMS
11 1 (0.18%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.18%) Windows 7
11 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2003
11 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 153 (27.67%) Agile
2 118 (21.34%) Problem-Solving
3 100 (18.08%) DevOps
4 90 (16.27%) CI/CD
5 62 (11.21%) Computer Science
6 61 (11.03%) Microservices
7 59 (10.67%) Incident Response
7 59 (10.67%) Observability
8 55 (9.95%) OO
9 54 (9.76%) Infrastructure as Code
10 53 (9.58%) Software Engineering
11 50 (9.04%) Containerisation
11 50 (9.04%) Migration
11 50 (9.04%) TDD
12 47 (8.50%) Test Automation
13 44 (7.96%) Data Modelling
13 44 (7.96%) Site Reliability Engineering
14 43 (7.78%) Continuous Improvement
15 42 (7.59%) Performance Tuning
16 41 (7.41%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 203 (36.71%) SQL
2 201 (36.35%) Python
3 152 (27.49%) Java
4 91 (16.46%) Shell Script
5 75 (13.56%) Bash
6 67 (12.12%) Perl
7 48 (8.68%) JavaScript
8 44 (7.96%) C++
9 42 (7.59%) PowerShell
10 28 (5.06%) C#
10 28 (5.06%) PL/SQL
11 17 (3.07%) Korn
12 14 (2.53%) Scala
13 12 (2.17%) Go
14 8 (1.45%) PHP
15 6 (1.08%) COBOL
15 6 (1.08%) Groovy
16 4 (0.72%) C
16 4 (0.72%) TypeScript
17 3 (0.54%) PromQL
Qualifications
1 124 (22.42%) Security Cleared
2 91 (16.46%) SC Cleared
3 88 (15.91%) Degree
4 47 (8.50%) Computer Science Degree
5 25 (4.52%) BPSS Clearance
6 9 (1.63%) CISSP
7 8 (1.45%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 7 (1.27%) AWS Certification
8 7 (1.27%) DV Cleared
9 6 (1.08%) Microsoft Certification
9 6 (1.08%) OSCP
10 5 (0.90%) CompTIA Security+
10 5 (0.90%) GPEN
10 5 (0.90%) GWAPT
10 5 (0.90%) ISTQB
10 5 (0.90%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 5 (0.90%) MCSA
10 5 (0.90%) MCSE
10 5 (0.90%) RHCE
11 3 (0.54%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (3.07%) SLA
2 16 (2.89%) QA
3 9 (1.63%) Data Quality
3 9 (1.63%) NIST
4 7 (1.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 4 (0.72%) GMP
6 3 (0.54%) FATCA
6 3 (0.54%) NCSC
6 3 (0.54%) SEPA
7 2 (0.36%) ISO 15022
7 2 (0.36%) ISO 20022
7 2 (0.36%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.18%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.18%) GDPR
8 1 (0.18%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.18%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.18%) SOC 2
System Software
1 79 (14.29%) Docker
2 20 (3.62%) Active Directory
3 9 (1.63%) KVM
3 9 (1.63%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (1.27%) Oracle RAC
5 6 (1.08%) Hyper-V
5 6 (1.08%) Virtual Machines
6 5 (0.90%) Tivoli Directory Server
7 4 (0.72%) GPFS
7 4 (0.72%) NFS
7 4 (0.72%) VMware NSX
8 2 (0.36%) GridGain
9 1 (0.18%) Ceph
9 1 (0.18%) HDFS
9 1 (0.18%) iptables
9 1 (0.18%) Lustre
9 1 (0.18%) Samba
9 1 (0.18%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 1 (0.18%) Varnish
9 1 (0.18%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 79 (14.29%) Kubernetes
2 62 (11.21%) Ansible
3 59 (10.67%) Terraform
4 35 (6.33%) Grafana
5 31 (5.61%) Puppet
6 25 (4.52%) Prometheus
7 15 (2.71%) Kibana
8 11 (1.99%) Progress Chef
9 9 (1.63%) Oracle RMAN
10 8 (1.45%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 7 (1.27%) NetBackup
12 6 (1.08%) IBM BigFix
12 6 (1.08%) Red Hat Satellite
12 6 (1.08%) SCCM
12 6 (1.08%) Tivoli
12 6 (1.08%) vCenter Server
13 5 (0.90%) CA Single Sign-On
13 5 (0.90%) CASB
13 5 (0.90%) Nessus
13 5 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 170 (30.74%) Oracle
2 83 (15.01%) Splunk
3 65 (11.75%) Microsoft
4 46 (8.32%) IBM
5 34 (6.15%) ServiceNow
6 21 (3.80%) Red Hat
7 19 (3.44%) VMware
8 16 (2.89%) Cisco
9 14 (2.53%) AppDynamics
10 11 (1.99%) CyberArk
11 10 (1.81%) Remedy
12 9 (1.63%) Dynatrace
12 9 (1.63%) Tenable
12 9 (1.63%) webMethods
13 8 (1.45%) Aruba
13 8 (1.45%) CrowdStrike
13 8 (1.45%) Veritas
14 7 (1.27%) CheckPoint
14 7 (1.27%) Fujitsu
14 7 (1.27%) Talend