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 3 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 220 174 119
Rank change year-on-year -46 -55 -24
Contract jobs citing Unix 638 535 757
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.20% 1.62% 1.94%
As % of the Operating Systems category 12.51% 12.05% 13.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 383 349 508
10th Percentile £316 £357 £329
25th Percentile £413 £410 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £506
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% -1.19% -8.00%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £600
90th Percentile £698 £689 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £461 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -2.89% +5.56% -16.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 6 8
10th Percentile £21.50 £43.87 -
25th Percentile £35.85 £52.00 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £54.75 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year -4.11% +99.09% -58.02%
75th Percentile £53.88 £55.00 £58.13
90th Percentile £55.20 £62.50 £73.28
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.02 £54.75 £52.50
% change year-on-year -8.64% +4.29% -17.97%

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 5,101 4,441 5,446
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.60% 13.41% 13.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,222 2,852 3,634
10th Percentile £193 £200 £200
25th Percentile £319 £313 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £471 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +1.78% -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £656 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £455 £450 £472
% change year-on-year +1.11% -4.71% +4.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 349 258 336
10th Percentile £15.30 £15.50 £12.46
25th Percentile £17.60 £18.13 £17.00
Median hourly rate £25.77 £24.00 £27.25
Median % change year-on-year +7.38% -11.93% -35.88%
75th Percentile £65.00 £56.88 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.60 £67.30 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.44 £22.53 £38.25
% change year-on-year +17.35% -41.10% +14.18%

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 3 August 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 3 August 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 3 August 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 -39 529 £488 +0.55% 130
UK excluding London -47 372 £461 -2.89% 83
London -80 189 £550 +10.00% 73
Work from Home -24 181 £500 +8.70% 60
North of England -17 123 £480 -0.72% 21
South East -24 113 £425 -8.11% 24
North West +1 94 £478 +4.66% 14
Midlands +5 87 £460 -0.11% 10
West Midlands -9 79 £459 -3.37% 10
Scotland -50 40 £365 -27.10% 9
Yorkshire -47 24 £500 -6.98% 4
East of England -19 10 £700 +40.00% 2
North East - 8 £480 - 3
East Midlands -13 7 £463 +23.33%
Wales -10 6 £383 +35.40% 2
South West -45 6 £600 - 10
Northern Ireland -3 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 34 (5.33%) Confluence
2 31 (4.86%) SAS
3 17 (2.66%) Apache Airflow
4 15 (2.35%) Apache
4 15 (2.35%) Apache Spark
5 9 (1.41%) WebLogic
6 7 (1.10%) CICS
6 7 (1.10%) NetWeaver
6 7 (1.10%) Tuxedo
7 6 (0.94%) OpenStack
8 5 (0.78%) Oracle Workflow
8 5 (0.78%) SharePoint
9 4 (0.63%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 4 (0.63%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 3 (0.47%) IBM HTTP Server
10 3 (0.47%) WebSphere
10 3 (0.47%) WebSphere Application Server
11 2 (0.31%) CMS
11 2 (0.31%) nginx
11 2 (0.31%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 12 (1.88%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (1.10%) Notepad++
3 6 (0.94%) Microsoft Excel
4 2 (0.31%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (1.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.94%) Oracle EBS
2 6 (0.94%) SAP PSCD
3 4 (0.63%) Oracle Assets
3 4 (0.63%) Oracle E-Business Tax
3 4 (0.63%) Oracle FAH
3 4 (0.63%) Oracle General Ledger
3 4 (0.63%) Oracle Internet Expenses
3 4 (0.63%) Oracle iProcurement
3 4 (0.63%) Oracle Payables
3 4 (0.63%) Oracle Receivables
3 4 (0.63%) Summit
4 3 (0.47%) FLEXCUBE
4 3 (0.47%) Oracle Financials
5 2 (0.31%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.31%) Oracle Retail
6 1 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.16%) Payment Gateway
6 1 (0.16%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 123 (19.28%) AWS
2 81 (12.70%) Azure
3 36 (5.64%) GitHub
4 28 (4.39%) GCP
5 25 (3.92%) AWS Lambda
5 25 (3.92%) Entra ID
6 24 (3.76%) Serverless
7 22 (3.45%) GitHub Actions
8 21 (3.29%) Amazon S3
9 20 (3.13%) IaaS
10 18 (2.82%) PaaS
11 16 (2.51%) SaaS
12 15 (2.35%) OpenShift
13 14 (2.19%) Power Platform
14 13 (2.04%) Azure DevOps
14 13 (2.04%) Snowflake
15 9 (1.41%) Amazon EC2
15 9 (1.41%) Azure Data Factory
16 8 (1.25%) Amazon ECS
16 8 (1.25%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 33 (5.17%) Firewall
2 27 (4.23%) DNS
3 25 (3.92%) SAN
4 21 (3.29%) TCP/IP
5 14 (2.19%) HTTP
5 14 (2.19%) NAS
5 14 (2.19%) SSH
6 11 (1.72%) SSL
7 9 (1.41%) DHCP
7 9 (1.41%) Network Security
8 8 (1.25%) VPN
8 8 (1.25%) WAN
8 8 (1.25%) Wireshark
9 7 (1.10%) 5G
9 7 (1.10%) FTP
9 7 (1.10%) LAN
9 7 (1.10%) PuTTY
9 7 (1.10%) WinSCP
9 7 (1.10%) Wireless
10 6 (0.94%) Diameter Protocol
Database & Business Intelligence
1 74 (11.60%) SQL Server
2 50 (7.84%) Oracle Database
3 42 (6.58%) Relational Database
4 36 (5.64%) PostgreSQL
5 34 (5.33%) Data Warehouse
6 32 (5.02%) MongoDB
7 28 (4.39%) MySQL
8 21 (3.29%) Db2
9 19 (2.98%) DataStage
9 19 (2.98%) Metadata
10 16 (2.51%) BusinessObjects
10 16 (2.51%) Oracle Database 11g
11 15 (2.35%) NoSQL
11 15 (2.35%) Oracle Database 12c
12 14 (2.19%) Amazon Aurora
12 14 (2.19%) Oracle Reports
12 14 (2.19%) Power BI
12 14 (2.19%) Sybase ASE
13 13 (2.04%) Data Lake
13 13 (2.04%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 59 (9.25%) Jenkins
2 57 (8.93%) JIRA
3 55 (8.62%) Git
4 46 (7.21%) GitLab
5 23 (3.61%) Artifactory
6 18 (2.82%) Mockito
7 12 (1.88%) Bitbucket
8 10 (1.57%) Maven
8 10 (1.57%) Sonatype Nexus
9 9 (1.41%) Oracle Forms
10 6 (0.94%) JUnit
11 4 (0.63%) CA Gen
11 4 (0.63%) JDeveloper
11 4 (0.63%) Selenium
11 4 (0.63%) SonarQube
12 3 (0.47%) Android Studio
12 3 (0.47%) Browser DevTools
12 3 (0.47%) Gradle
12 3 (0.47%) Introscope
12 3 (0.47%) MSI
General
1 152 (23.82%) Finance
2 144 (22.57%) Social Skills
3 95 (14.89%) Banking
4 81 (12.70%) Analytical Skills
5 65 (10.19%) Public Sector
6 29 (4.55%) Investment Banking
7 23 (3.61%) Documentation Skills
8 20 (3.13%) Front Office
9 12 (1.88%) Retail
10 10 (1.57%) Influencing Skills
11 9 (1.41%) Telecoms
12 7 (1.10%) Military
13 6 (0.94%) Financial Institution
13 6 (0.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 5 (0.78%) Advertising
15 3 (0.47%) General Ledger
16 2 (0.31%) Aviation
16 2 (0.31%) Billing
16 2 (0.31%) Local Government
16 2 (0.31%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 131 (20.53%) Developer
2 91 (14.26%) Senior
3 67 (10.50%) Data Engineer
4 61 (9.56%) Unix Engineer
5 52 (8.15%) Java Developer
6 47 (7.37%) Senior Developer
7 41 (6.43%) DBA
7 41 (6.43%) Support Engineer
8 37 (5.80%) Analyst
9 29 (4.55%) Oracle DBA
10 27 (4.23%) Python Developer
11 25 (3.92%) Consultant
12 23 (3.61%) Senior Java Developer
13 22 (3.45%) Architect
13 22 (3.45%) Linux Engineer
14 21 (3.29%) Administrator
15 17 (2.66%) Applications Support
16 14 (2.19%) Technical Engineer
16 14 (2.19%) Technical Support
17 13 (2.04%) Technical Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 60 (9.40%) Kafka
2 47 (7.37%) REST
3 38 (5.96%) Middleware
4 32 (5.02%) RESTful
5 28 (4.39%) Spring
6 26 (4.08%) Spring Boot
7 20 (3.13%) XML
8 18 (2.82%) ActiveMQ
8 18 (2.82%) JAX-RS
9 17 (2.66%) CSS
10 16 (2.51%) Web Services
11 15 (2.35%) LDAP
11 15 (2.35%) Oracle GoldenGate
11 15 (2.35%) Pandas
12 14 (2.19%) SOAP
13 13 (2.04%) FastAPI
13 13 (2.04%) Flask
13 13 (2.04%) RabbitMQ
14 12 (1.88%) JDBC
15 11 (1.72%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 46 (7.21%) Onboarding
2 38 (5.96%) Legacy Systems
3 37 (5.80%) Data Centre
3 37 (5.80%) Linux Command Line
4 25 (3.92%) Cloud Native
5 24 (3.76%) Management Information System
6 23 (3.61%) Distributed Systems
7 22 (3.45%) Fixed Income
8 21 (3.29%) Replication
9 18 (2.82%) Derivative
9 18 (2.82%) Mainframe
10 16 (2.51%) Clustering
11 12 (1.88%) Virtual Team
12 11 (1.72%) Market Risk
13 10 (1.57%) Data Structures
13 10 (1.57%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 10 (1.57%) PKI
14 9 (1.41%) Enterprise Software
14 9 (1.41%) Public Cloud
14 9 (1.41%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 420 (65.83%) Linux
2 161 (25.24%) Windows
3 71 (11.13%) Solaris
4 44 (6.90%) Windows Server
5 35 (5.49%) AIX
6 34 (5.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 13 (2.04%) Mac OS X
8 10 (1.57%) Oracle Linux
9 8 (1.25%) HPUX
10 7 (1.10%) SUSE
11 5 (0.78%) CentOS
11 5 (0.78%) VMS
12 3 (0.47%) Android
12 3 (0.47%) Check Point GAiA
12 3 (0.47%) Mac OS
12 3 (0.47%) OpenVMS
13 2 (0.31%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 2 (0.31%) Ubuntu
13 2 (0.31%) zOS
14 1 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 132 (20.69%) CI/CD
2 126 (19.75%) Agile
3 111 (17.40%) Problem-Solving
4 105 (16.46%) Migration
5 87 (13.64%) ITIL
6 83 (13.01%) DevOps
7 82 (12.85%) High Availability
8 81 (12.70%) Test Automation
9 76 (11.91%) Root Cause Analysis
10 64 (10.03%) Performance Tuning
11 59 (9.25%) Microservices
12 57 (8.93%) Data Modelling
13 54 (8.46%) Disaster Recovery
13 54 (8.46%) ETL
14 53 (8.31%) Data Pipeline
14 53 (8.31%) Runbook
15 50 (7.84%) Analytics
16 46 (7.21%) SIEM
17 45 (7.05%) Incident Management
18 44 (6.90%) Performance Optimisation
Programming Languages
1 233 (36.52%) SQL
2 226 (35.42%) Python
3 124 (19.44%) Shell Script
4 121 (18.97%) Java
5 87 (13.64%) PL/SQL
6 52 (8.15%) PowerShell
7 47 (7.37%) Bash
8 40 (6.27%) Perl
9 33 (5.17%) JavaScript
10 25 (3.92%) C#
11 17 (2.66%) C++
12 16 (2.51%) Korn
13 11 (1.72%) C
14 9 (1.41%) COBOL
15 8 (1.25%) Scala
16 6 (0.94%) ABAP
16 6 (0.94%) Kotlin
17 5 (0.78%) Go
17 5 (0.78%) MUMPS
17 5 (0.78%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 228 (35.74%) Security Cleared
2 194 (30.41%) SC Cleared
3 61 (9.56%) Degree
4 34 (5.33%) BPSS Clearance
5 19 (2.98%) CISSP
6 13 (2.04%) DV Cleared
7 12 (1.88%) Computer Science Degree
8 11 (1.72%) CompTIA Security+
9 9 (1.41%) CISM
10 8 (1.25%) Cisco Certification
11 7 (1.10%) CRISC
12 6 (0.94%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 6 (0.94%) CESG Certified Professional
12 6 (0.94%) GIAC
12 6 (0.94%) Microsoft Certification
13 5 (0.78%) MCSA
13 5 (0.78%) MCSE
13 5 (0.78%) RHCE
13 5 (0.78%) SANS
14 4 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 40 (6.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 40 (6.27%) NIST
2 24 (3.76%) Data Quality
3 22 (3.45%) QA
4 15 (2.35%) SLA
5 10 (1.57%) GDPR
6 7 (1.10%) Cyber Essentials
7 6 (0.94%) ISO 20022
7 6 (0.94%) ISO 31000
8 5 (0.78%) GRC
9 4 (0.63%) Disclosure Scotland
9 4 (0.63%) NIST 800
9 4 (0.63%) PCI DSS
9 4 (0.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 3 (0.47%) ISO 15022
11 2 (0.31%) NCSC
12 1 (0.16%) MIL-STD-1553
12 1 (0.16%) SEPA
12 1 (0.16%) SOC 2
12 1 (0.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 52 (8.15%) Docker
2 49 (7.68%) Active Directory
3 27 (4.23%) Oracle RAC
4 20 (3.13%) VMware Infrastructure
5 18 (2.82%) NFS
6 8 (1.25%) Virtual Machines
7 7 (1.10%) Firmware
7 7 (1.10%) PowerHA
8 6 (0.94%) GPFS
8 6 (0.94%) VMware ESXi
9 5 (0.78%) Postfix
9 5 (0.78%) Varnish
9 5 (0.78%) vSphere
10 4 (0.63%) HDFS
10 4 (0.63%) Sendmail
11 3 (0.47%) GridGain
11 3 (0.47%) Hyper-V
11 3 (0.47%) KVM
11 3 (0.47%) Veritas Volume Manager
12 2 (0.31%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 61 (9.56%) Kubernetes
2 58 (9.09%) Ansible
3 37 (5.80%) Oracle RMAN
4 36 (5.64%) Terraform
5 31 (4.86%) Grafana
6 20 (3.13%) Data Guard
6 20 (3.13%) Prometheus
7 16 (2.51%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 13 (2.04%) Control-M
8 13 (2.04%) Progress Chef
9 11 (1.72%) Puppet
10 9 (1.41%) Single Sign-On
11 8 (1.25%) Kibana
12 7 (1.10%) Tivoli Storage Manager
13 6 (0.94%) Nessus
13 6 (0.94%) NetBackup
13 6 (0.94%) Tivoli
14 5 (0.78%) HAProxy
14 5 (0.78%) ITRS Geneos
14 5 (0.78%) vRealize
Vendors
1 242 (37.93%) Oracle
2 55 (8.62%) IBM
3 45 (7.05%) Splunk
4 44 (6.90%) BeyondTrust
5 43 (6.74%) Microsoft
6 39 (6.11%) CyberArk
7 33 (5.17%) Informatica
8 29 (4.55%) Sybase
8 29 (4.55%) Talend
9 27 (4.23%) ServiceNow
9 27 (4.23%) VMware
10 22 (3.45%) Red Hat
11 21 (3.29%) Denodo
12 19 (2.98%) SAP
13 18 (2.82%) Cisco
14 13 (2.04%) Dynatrace
15 12 (1.88%) HP
16 11 (1.72%) BT
17 10 (1.57%) CheckPoint
17 10 (1.57%) F5