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 12 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 221 162 117
Rank change year-on-year -59 -45 -19
Contract jobs citing Unix 650 580 781
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.19% 1.76% 2.02%
As % of the Operating Systems category 12.18% 13.00% 14.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 414 378 490
10th Percentile £341 £296 £350
25th Percentile £418 £403 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £612 £625
90th Percentile £715 £738 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £471
% change year-on-year - +0.80% -10.24%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 5 5
10th Percentile - £30.34 -
25th Percentile £43.81 £36.48 -
Median hourly rate £52.50 £54.50 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -3.67% +128.99% -63.77%
75th Percentile £55.00 £55.00 £28.75
90th Percentile £74.60 £64.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £54.75 £27.50
% change year-on-year -4.11% +99.09% -58.69%

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 5,337 4,462 5,443
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.78% 13.52% 14.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,371 2,848 3,506
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £304 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £584
90th Percentile £675 £675 £687
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £447 £450
% change year-on-year +0.78% -0.78% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 390 275 280
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.53 £15.22
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £19.91
Median hourly rate £26.33 £25.15 £48.78
Median % change year-on-year +4.69% -48.44% +8.41%
75th Percentile £65.17 £58.13 £68.19
90th Percentile £74.36 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +29.22% -49.70% +14.29%

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 12 September 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
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Unix over the 6 months to 12 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Unix in the UK

Unix
Top 17 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 12 September 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 -59 531 £500 - 265
UK excluding London -76 342 £475 - 116
London -78 220 £550 +3.77% 185
Work from Home -21 191 £500 +3.95% 237
North of England -35 121 £475 -13.64% 22
South East -56 92 £459 +9.29% 32
North West +3 87 £475 +4.86% 7
Midlands -18 73 £470 -8.75% 9
West Midlands -16 66 £471 -9.38% 9
Scotland -63 43 £450 -5.26% 10
Yorkshire -55 26 £500 -23.08% 8
South West -41 14 £663 -11.67% 26
North East -37 11 £475 - 7
East of England -22 8 £700 +40.00% 8
East Midlands -17 6 £456 +16.24%
Wales -14 4 £383 +35.40% 5
Northern Ireland -4 1 - - 7

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 33 (5.08%) Confluence
2 28 (4.31%) SAS
3 17 (2.62%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 15 (2.31%) Apache Airflow
5 14 (2.15%) SharePoint
6 13 (2.00%) WebLogic
7 11 (1.69%) Apache Spark
8 10 (1.54%) Apache
9 7 (1.08%) OpenStack
10 5 (0.77%) WebLogic Portal
11 4 (0.62%) Oracle Workflow
11 4 (0.62%) WebSphere
12 3 (0.46%) nginx
13 2 (0.31%) CICS
13 2 (0.31%) CMS
13 2 (0.31%) IIS
13 2 (0.31%) Microsoft Exchange
13 2 (0.31%) NetWeaver
13 2 (0.31%) Oracle Service Bus
14 1 (0.15%) Oracle HTTP Server
Applications
1 14 (2.15%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (1.23%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (1.08%) Notepad++
4 2 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.31%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 12 (1.85%) Oracle EBS
2 6 (0.92%) Oracle EBS R12
2 6 (0.92%) SAP PSCD
3 4 (0.62%) Oracle Assets
3 4 (0.62%) Oracle E-Business Tax
3 4 (0.62%) Oracle FAH
3 4 (0.62%) Oracle General Ledger
3 4 (0.62%) Oracle Internet Expenses
3 4 (0.62%) Oracle iProcurement
3 4 (0.62%) Oracle Payables
3 4 (0.62%) Oracle Receivables
4 3 (0.46%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.46%) Oracle Applications
4 3 (0.46%) Oracle Financials
4 3 (0.46%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.46%) Summit
5 2 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.31%) Oracle Retail
6 1 (0.15%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.15%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 148 (22.77%) AWS
2 90 (13.85%) Azure
3 46 (7.08%) GitHub
4 43 (6.62%) GCP
5 29 (4.46%) GitHub Actions
6 28 (4.31%) AWS Lambda
6 28 (4.31%) Serverless
7 26 (4.00%) Amazon S3
8 24 (3.69%) IaaS
9 22 (3.38%) Entra ID
10 18 (2.77%) SaaS
11 17 (2.62%) Azure DevOps
12 16 (2.46%) PaaS
13 15 (2.31%) OpenShift
14 14 (2.15%) AWS CloudFormation
14 14 (2.15%) Power Platform
15 13 (2.00%) Amazon EC2
16 11 (1.69%) Azure Data Factory
16 11 (1.69%) Snowflake
17 10 (1.54%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 29 (4.46%) Firewall
2 28 (4.31%) DNS
2 28 (4.31%) TCP/IP
3 21 (3.23%) SAN
4 14 (2.15%) HTTP
5 12 (1.85%) DHCP
6 11 (1.69%) SSH
7 10 (1.54%) NAS
7 10 (1.54%) SSL
8 8 (1.23%) LAN
8 8 (1.23%) WAN
9 7 (1.08%) LTE
9 7 (1.08%) Network Security
9 7 (1.08%) PuTTY
9 7 (1.08%) WinSCP
10 6 (0.92%) 5G
10 6 (0.92%) Diameter Protocol
10 6 (0.92%) Radio Access Network
10 6 (0.92%) VoLTE
10 6 (0.92%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 59 (9.08%) Oracle Database
2 57 (8.77%) SQL Server
3 51 (7.85%) Relational Database
4 49 (7.54%) PostgreSQL
5 41 (6.31%) Data Warehouse
6 27 (4.15%) MongoDB
7 25 (3.85%) MySQL
8 21 (3.23%) Db2
8 21 (3.23%) Oracle Database 11g
9 18 (2.77%) NoSQL
10 16 (2.46%) DataStage
10 16 (2.46%) Metadata
10 16 (2.46%) RDBMS
11 15 (2.31%) Data Lake
12 14 (2.15%) Amazon Aurora
12 14 (2.15%) Oracle Database 12c
12 14 (2.15%) Power BI
13 13 (2.00%) BusinessObjects
13 13 (2.00%) Oracle Reports
14 12 (1.85%) Oracle Database 10g
Development Applications
1 82 (12.62%) Git
2 69 (10.62%) Jenkins
3 54 (8.31%) JIRA
4 52 (8.00%) GitLab
5 22 (3.38%) Artifactory
6 13 (2.00%) Maven
6 13 (2.00%) Sonatype Nexus
7 12 (1.85%) JUnit
7 12 (1.85%) SonarQube
8 11 (1.69%) Bitbucket
8 11 (1.69%) Mockito
9 10 (1.54%) Gradle
10 9 (1.38%) Oracle Forms
11 8 (1.23%) eggPlant
11 8 (1.23%) Selenium
12 5 (0.77%) HP UFT
12 5 (0.77%) JMeter
12 5 (0.77%) Oracle APEX
12 5 (0.77%) Postman
12 5 (0.77%) SoapUI
General
1 166 (25.54%) Finance
2 147 (22.62%) Social Skills
3 107 (16.46%) Banking
4 104 (16.00%) Analytical Skills
5 53 (8.15%) Public Sector
6 29 (4.46%) Investment Banking
7 22 (3.38%) Front Office
8 20 (3.08%) Documentation Skills
9 11 (1.69%) Telecoms
10 8 (1.23%) Retail
11 6 (0.92%) Military
12 5 (0.77%) Financial Institution
12 5 (0.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 5 (0.77%) Influencing Skills
13 4 (0.62%) Corporate Banking
13 4 (0.62%) Legal
13 4 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
14 3 (0.46%) General Ledger
15 2 (0.31%) Law
15 2 (0.31%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 140 (21.54%) Developer
2 106 (16.31%) Senior
3 66 (10.15%) Unix Engineer
4 63 (9.69%) Data Engineer
5 54 (8.31%) Senior Developer
6 50 (7.69%) Java Developer
7 42 (6.46%) DBA
8 33 (5.08%) Linux Engineer
8 33 (5.08%) Python Developer
9 30 (4.62%) Analyst
10 29 (4.46%) Support Engineer
11 28 (4.31%) Oracle DBA
12 26 (4.00%) Consultant
13 24 (3.69%) Administrator
13 24 (3.69%) Architect
14 21 (3.23%) Senior Java Developer
15 19 (2.92%) DevOps Engineer
16 17 (2.62%) Applications Support
17 15 (2.31%) Lead
18 13 (2.00%) Unix Linux Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 70 (10.77%) Kafka
2 52 (8.00%) Terraform
3 47 (7.23%) REST
4 42 (6.46%) Middleware
5 41 (6.31%) RESTful
6 36 (5.54%) Spring
7 35 (5.38%) Spring Boot
8 26 (4.00%) XML
9 23 (3.54%) Web Services
10 22 (3.38%) .NET
11 20 (3.08%) HTML
11 20 (3.08%) SOAP
12 18 (2.77%) CSS
13 15 (2.31%) Django
13 15 (2.31%) Flask
13 15 (2.31%) Pandas
13 15 (2.31%) RabbitMQ
14 13 (2.00%) FastAPI
15 12 (1.85%) ActiveMQ
15 12 (1.85%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 47 (7.23%) Onboarding
2 36 (5.54%) Linux Command Line
3 35 (5.38%) Distributed Systems
3 35 (5.38%) Legacy Systems
4 33 (5.08%) Data Centre
5 27 (4.15%) Cloud Native
6 20 (3.08%) Fixed Income
6 20 (3.08%) Management Information System
6 20 (3.08%) Replication
7 18 (2.77%) Clustering
8 17 (2.62%) Derivative
9 15 (2.31%) Mainframe
10 13 (2.00%) Data Protection Act
10 13 (2.00%) PKI
10 13 (2.00%) Virtual Team
11 12 (1.85%) Private Cloud
11 12 (1.85%) Product Ownership
12 11 (1.69%) Data Structures
12 11 (1.69%) Enterprise Software
12 11 (1.69%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 442 (68.00%) Linux
2 150 (23.08%) Windows
3 72 (11.08%) Solaris
4 43 (6.62%) Windows Server
5 42 (6.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 32 (4.92%) AIX
7 9 (1.38%) Oracle Linux
8 8 (1.23%) HPUX
9 7 (1.08%) SUSE
9 7 (1.08%) VMS
10 6 (0.92%) CentOS
11 5 (0.77%) Mac OS X
12 4 (0.62%) zOS
13 3 (0.46%) Android
13 3 (0.46%) Check Point GAiA
14 2 (0.31%) Mac OS
14 2 (0.31%) OpenVMS
15 1 (0.15%) Ubuntu
15 1 (0.15%) Windows Server 2008
15 1 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 161 (24.77%) CI/CD
2 135 (20.77%) Agile
3 114 (17.54%) DevOps
4 111 (17.08%) Problem-Solving
5 108 (16.62%) Migration
6 100 (15.38%) Test Automation
7 81 (12.46%) High Availability
8 77 (11.85%) Root Cause Analysis
9 70 (10.77%) Data Modelling
10 65 (10.00%) Continuous Improvement
10 65 (10.00%) Performance Tuning
11 64 (9.85%) ITIL
12 63 (9.69%) Infrastructure as Code
13 59 (9.08%) Containerisation
13 59 (9.08%) ETL
14 57 (8.77%) Data Pipeline
14 57 (8.77%) Runbook
15 54 (8.31%) Microservices
16 53 (8.15%) Analytics
17 52 (8.00%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 254 (39.08%) SQL
2 250 (38.46%) Python
3 135 (20.77%) Java
4 127 (19.54%) Shell Script
5 90 (13.85%) PL/SQL
6 62 (9.54%) Bash
7 52 (8.00%) PowerShell
8 44 (6.77%) Perl
9 34 (5.23%) JavaScript
10 29 (4.46%) C#
11 21 (3.23%) C++
12 15 (2.31%) C
13 9 (1.38%) Go
14 7 (1.08%) MUMPS
15 6 (0.92%) ABAP
15 6 (0.92%) Korn
15 6 (0.92%) Kotlin
15 6 (0.92%) Scala
15 6 (0.92%) T-SQL
16 5 (0.77%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 234 (36.00%) Security Cleared
2 191 (29.38%) SC Cleared
3 61 (9.38%) Degree
4 34 (5.23%) BPSS Clearance
5 21 (3.23%) DV Cleared
6 14 (2.15%) CISSP
6 14 (2.15%) Computer Science Degree
7 9 (1.38%) CISM
8 8 (1.23%) Cisco Certification
9 7 (1.08%) CRISC
9 7 (1.08%) Oracle Certification
10 6 (0.92%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 6 (0.92%) CESG Certified Professional
10 6 (0.92%) CompTIA Security+
10 6 (0.92%) GIAC
10 6 (0.92%) ISEB
10 6 (0.92%) ISTQB
11 5 (0.77%) RHCE
11 5 (0.77%) SANS
12 4 (0.62%) GSEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (5.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 35 (5.38%) NIST
3 34 (5.23%) QA
4 29 (4.46%) Data Quality
5 12 (1.85%) GDPR
6 11 (1.69%) SLA
7 9 (1.38%) ISO 20022
8 7 (1.08%) Cyber Essentials
9 6 (0.92%) ISO 31000
10 5 (0.77%) GRC
10 5 (0.77%) ISO 15022
10 5 (0.77%) PCI DSS
11 4 (0.62%) Disclosure Scotland
12 3 (0.46%) NCSC
12 3 (0.46%) NIST 800
12 3 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 2 (0.31%) SEPA
14 1 (0.15%) Accessibility
14 1 (0.15%) MIL-STD-1553
14 1 (0.15%) SOC 2
System Software
1 71 (10.92%) Docker
2 39 (6.00%) Active Directory
3 26 (4.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (2.62%) Oracle RAC
5 16 (2.46%) NFS
6 9 (1.38%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (0.77%) Firmware
7 5 (0.77%) PowerHA
7 5 (0.77%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (0.62%) GPFS
8 4 (0.62%) Postfix
8 4 (0.62%) Varnish
8 4 (0.62%) Veritas Volume Manager
8 4 (0.62%) vSphere
9 3 (0.46%) GridGain
9 3 (0.46%) Sendmail
9 3 (0.46%) VirtualBox
10 1 (0.15%) RACF
10 1 (0.15%) Veritas Cluster Server
10 1 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 82 (12.62%) Kubernetes
2 65 (10.00%) Ansible
3 38 (5.85%) Grafana
4 30 (4.62%) Oracle RMAN
5 26 (4.00%) Prometheus
6 21 (3.23%) Data Guard
7 18 (2.77%) Progress Chef
8 16 (2.46%) Puppet
9 15 (2.31%) Control-M
10 11 (1.69%) Kibana
11 9 (1.38%) Single Sign-On
12 8 (1.23%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
13 7 (1.08%) Tivoli Storage Manager
14 5 (0.77%) HAProxy
14 5 (0.77%) HP Fortify
14 5 (0.77%) ITRS Geneos
14 5 (0.77%) NetBackup
14 5 (0.77%) Tivoli
14 5 (0.77%) ZABBIX
15 4 (0.62%) VxRail
Vendors
1 248 (38.15%) Oracle
2 54 (8.31%) IBM
3 50 (7.69%) Splunk
4 48 (7.38%) Microsoft
5 40 (6.15%) BeyondTrust
6 31 (4.77%) Red Hat
7 30 (4.62%) CyberArk
7 30 (4.62%) Informatica
8 29 (4.46%) VMware
9 28 (4.31%) Sybase
10 23 (3.54%) Talend
11 21 (3.23%) SAP
12 20 (3.08%) ServiceNow
13 18 (2.77%) Denodo
14 15 (2.31%) Dynatrace
15 14 (2.15%) Google
16 12 (1.85%) SaltStack
17 11 (1.69%) BT
17 11 (1.69%) Solace
18 10 (1.54%) AppDynamics