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 7 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 225 143 149
Rank change year-on-year -82 +6 -67
Contract jobs citing Unix 524 570 726
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.15% 1.95% 1.65%
As % of the Operating Systems category 10.88% 13.82% 12.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 337 337 486
10th Percentile £292 £360 £350
25th Percentile £400 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.50% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £565 £600 £670
90th Percentile £725 £725 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £435 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -8.53% -5.00% -7.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 9 22
10th Percentile - - £22.01
25th Percentile £21.50 £40.50 £24.54
Median hourly rate £40.25 £53.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -24.06% +32.50% -30.43%
75th Percentile £53.75 £55.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £53.88 £67.25 £67.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.44 £53.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -50.11% +32.50% -28.89%

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 4,816 4,124 5,955
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.56% 14.09% 13.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,154 2,755 3,984
10th Percentile £181 £200 £181
25th Percentile £300 £325 £290
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £463
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +2.70% -9.76%
75th Percentile £565 £600 £594
90th Percentile £653 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £450 £440
% change year-on-year -5.56% +2.36% -7.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 344 168 407
10th Percentile £15.30 £16.62 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.87 £18.13 £15.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £24.66 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.99% +12.09% -32.31%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.05 £68.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 £24.42 £20.00
% change year-on-year +2.38% +22.10% -30.31%

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 7 April 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 7 April 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Unix in the UK

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 7 April 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 -67 447 £469 -10.67% 90
UK excluding London -93 272 £435 -8.53% 71
London -56 202 £550 - 39
Work from Home -67 159 £459 -7.37% 47
Midlands -24 82 £447 -4.69% 12
North of England -67 77 £464 -11.67% 20
West Midlands -15 76 £447 -5.30% 8
South East -34 70 £392 -23.51% 21
North West -11 59 £469 -10.67% 10
Scotland -48 31 £402 -13.73% 6
Yorkshire -70 17 £454 -30.23% 7
South West -36 7 £700 +27.27% 3
East Midlands -32 6 £478 +5.18% 4
Wales -4 5 £265 +58.62% 2
East of England -52 3 - - 4
North East -17 1 £625 +11.11% 3

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 23 (4.39%) Apache
2 22 (4.20%) WebLogic
3 17 (3.24%) SAS
4 16 (3.05%) Tuxedo
5 14 (2.67%) Apache Spark
5 14 (2.67%) Confluence
6 10 (1.91%) CICS
7 7 (1.34%) SharePoint
8 6 (1.15%) NetWeaver
9 5 (0.95%) JBoss
9 5 (0.95%) nginx
9 5 (0.95%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 5 (0.95%) Tomcat
10 4 (0.76%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 4 (0.76%) Apache Airflow
10 4 (0.76%) Oracle Workflow
11 3 (0.57%) IBM HTTP Server
11 3 (0.57%) WebSphere
11 3 (0.57%) WebSphere Application Server
12 2 (0.38%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 12 (2.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (1.34%) Microsoft Office
3 5 (0.95%) Notepad++
4 4 (0.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.19%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (1.15%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.95%) Oracle 11i
2 5 (0.95%) Summit
3 4 (0.76%) Oracle EBS
3 4 (0.76%) Oracle EBS R12
4 3 (0.57%) Oracle BRM
5 2 (0.38%) ION MarketView
5 2 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.38%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.19%) Oracle Cash Management
6 1 (0.19%) Oracle CRM
6 1 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 97 (18.51%) AWS
2 75 (14.31%) Azure
3 31 (5.92%) GitHub
4 19 (3.63%) Serverless
5 17 (3.24%) GCP
6 16 (3.05%) Amazon S3
6 16 (3.05%) GitHub Actions
7 15 (2.86%) AWS Lambda
8 13 (2.48%) Azure DevOps
8 13 (2.48%) SaaS
9 11 (2.10%) Amazon EC2
9 11 (2.10%) OpenShift
10 10 (1.91%) AWS CloudFormation
10 10 (1.91%) Azure Data Factory
10 10 (1.91%) Entra ID
10 10 (1.91%) Snowflake
11 9 (1.72%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 8 (1.53%) Power Platform
13 7 (1.34%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 7 (1.34%) Sauce Labs
Communications & Networking
1 34 (6.49%) Firewall
2 18 (3.44%) DNS
3 15 (2.86%) SAN
4 13 (2.48%) HTTP
4 13 (2.48%) TCP/IP
5 12 (2.29%) Network Security
6 11 (2.10%) Wireless
7 9 (1.72%) NAS
8 8 (1.53%) InfiniBand
8 8 (1.53%) SSH
9 7 (1.34%) Ethernet
9 7 (1.34%) NetScaler
10 6 (1.15%) SSL
10 6 (1.15%) VPN
11 5 (0.95%) Ethernet VPN
11 5 (0.95%) FTP
11 5 (0.95%) PuTTY
11 5 (0.95%) RTP
11 5 (0.95%) WinSCP
12 4 (0.76%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 50 (9.54%) SQL Server
2 45 (8.59%) MySQL
3 43 (8.21%) Relational Database
4 39 (7.44%) Oracle Database
5 36 (6.87%) MongoDB
6 30 (5.73%) PostgreSQL
7 20 (3.82%) Data Warehouse
7 20 (3.82%) Metadata
8 17 (3.24%) KDB
8 17 (3.24%) Kdb+
8 17 (3.24%) NoSQL
9 15 (2.86%) Big Data
10 11 (2.10%) DataStage
10 11 (2.10%) Tick Data
11 10 (1.91%) Data Lake
11 10 (1.91%) DB2
11 10 (1.91%) Elasticsearch
11 10 (1.91%) Hadoop
12 9 (1.72%) Pentaho
12 9 (1.72%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 48 (9.16%) Jenkins
2 46 (8.78%) Git
3 39 (7.44%) GitLab
4 31 (5.92%) JIRA
5 13 (2.48%) Mockito
6 12 (2.29%) Bitbucket
7 11 (2.10%) Eclipse
7 11 (2.10%) MSI
8 10 (1.91%) JUnit
9 8 (1.53%) Maven
9 8 (1.53%) Sonatype Nexus
10 7 (1.34%) Android Studio
10 7 (1.34%) Browser DevTools
10 7 (1.34%) Selenium
10 7 (1.34%) Xcode
11 5 (0.95%) Toad
12 4 (0.76%) Ant
12 4 (0.76%) Artifactory
12 4 (0.76%) CA Gen
12 4 (0.76%) IntelliJ
General
1 141 (26.91%) Finance
2 122 (23.28%) Social Skills
3 68 (12.98%) Banking
4 58 (11.07%) Analytical Skills
5 46 (8.78%) Public Sector
6 23 (4.39%) Investment Banking
7 21 (4.01%) Front Office
8 18 (3.44%) Influencing Skills
9 11 (2.10%) Documentation Skills
10 9 (1.72%) Financial Institution
11 8 (1.53%) Telecoms
12 6 (1.15%) Advertising
12 6 (1.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 4 (0.76%) Retail
14 3 (0.57%) Billing
14 3 (0.57%) Law
14 3 (0.57%) Legal
14 3 (0.57%) Military
15 2 (0.38%) Manufacturing
16 1 (0.19%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 105 (20.04%) Developer
2 78 (14.89%) Senior
3 41 (7.82%) Analyst
3 41 (7.82%) Java Developer
4 38 (7.25%) Data Engineer
5 34 (6.49%) Unix Engineer
6 32 (6.11%) Support Engineer
7 28 (5.34%) DBA
8 25 (4.77%) Linux Engineer
8 25 (4.77%) Oracle DBA
9 24 (4.58%) Senior Developer
9 24 (4.58%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 23 (4.39%) Technical Support
11 22 (4.20%) DevOps Engineer
12 21 (4.01%) Administrator
13 20 (3.82%) Site Engineer
14 19 (3.63%) Software Engineer
15 17 (3.24%) Architect
15 17 (3.24%) Unix Linux Engineer
16 16 (3.05%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 61 (11.64%) Kafka
2 31 (5.92%) REST
3 27 (5.15%) Middleware
4 26 (4.96%) XML
5 17 (3.24%) React
5 17 (3.24%) SOAP
6 16 (3.05%) Spring
7 15 (2.86%) JSON
8 14 (2.67%) Elastic Stack
8 14 (2.67%) Oracle GoldenGate
9 13 (2.48%) JAX-RS
9 13 (2.48%) RESTful
10 12 (2.29%) ActiveMQ
10 12 (2.29%) AngularJS
10 12 (2.29%) Spring Boot
11 11 (2.10%) CSS
12 9 (1.72%) FIX Protocol
12 9 (1.72%) HTML
13 8 (1.53%) HTML5
13 8 (1.53%) J2EE
Miscellaneous
1 27 (5.15%) Linux Command Line
2 23 (4.39%) Management Information System
2 23 (4.39%) Onboarding
3 22 (4.20%) Cloud Native
4 18 (3.44%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 17 (3.24%) Data Centre
6 15 (2.86%) Fixed Income
7 14 (2.67%) Legacy Systems
8 13 (2.48%) Derivative
8 13 (2.48%) Mainframe
9 12 (2.29%) Equities
10 11 (2.10%) Greenfield Project
11 10 (1.91%) BYOD
11 10 (1.91%) Public Cloud
11 10 (1.91%) VSAM
12 8 (1.53%) Clustering
12 8 (1.53%) Replication
12 8 (1.53%) Virtual Team
13 7 (1.34%) Algorithms
13 7 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 342 (65.27%) Linux
2 144 (27.48%) Windows
3 30 (5.73%) Windows Server
4 28 (5.34%) Solaris
5 25 (4.77%) AIX
6 22 (4.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 13 (2.48%) Mac OS X
8 7 (1.34%) Android
9 4 (0.76%) Mac OS
10 3 (0.57%) Oracle Linux
10 3 (0.57%) VMS
11 2 (0.38%) CentOS
11 2 (0.38%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 1 (0.19%) OpenVMS
12 1 (0.19%) Rocky
12 1 (0.19%) Ubuntu
12 1 (0.19%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.19%) Windows 7
12 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2003
12 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 130 (24.81%) Agile
2 101 (19.27%) Problem-Solving
3 90 (17.18%) CI/CD
4 89 (16.98%) DevOps
5 66 (12.60%) Migration
6 55 (10.50%) Observability
7 50 (9.54%) ITIL
8 49 (9.35%) Containerisation
9 48 (9.16%) Performance Tuning
10 47 (8.97%) Microservices
11 45 (8.59%) Software Engineering
12 43 (8.21%) Computer Science
13 42 (8.02%) Root Cause Analysis
14 41 (7.82%) Analytics
15 40 (7.63%) Disaster Recovery
15 40 (7.63%) High Availability
15 40 (7.63%) Infrastructure as Code
15 40 (7.63%) OO
16 39 (7.44%) Data Modelling
17 38 (7.25%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 214 (40.84%) SQL
2 180 (34.35%) Python
3 125 (23.85%) Java
4 112 (21.37%) Shell Script
5 65 (12.40%) Bash
6 58 (11.07%) Perl
7 44 (8.40%) PL/SQL
8 37 (7.06%) PowerShell
9 31 (5.92%) C++
10 30 (5.73%) JavaScript
11 29 (5.53%) C#
12 25 (4.77%) Korn
13 10 (1.91%) COBOL
13 10 (1.91%) PHP
14 8 (1.53%) Go
14 8 (1.53%) Scala
15 3 (0.57%) C
15 3 (0.57%) HiveQL
15 3 (0.57%) Jython
16 2 (0.38%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 140 (26.72%) Security Cleared
2 114 (21.76%) SC Cleared
3 61 (11.64%) Degree
4 30 (5.73%) Computer Science Degree
5 17 (3.24%) BPSS Clearance
6 7 (1.34%) CISSP
6 7 (1.34%) DV Cleared
7 6 (1.15%) Microsoft Certification
8 5 (0.95%) CompTIA Security+
8 5 (0.95%) MCSA
8 5 (0.95%) MCSE
9 3 (0.57%) ITIL Certification
10 2 (0.38%) CISM
10 2 (0.38%) ISTQB
10 2 (0.38%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 2 (0.38%) PMI Certification
10 2 (0.38%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.19%) AWS Certification
11 1 (0.19%) CREST Certified
11 1 (0.19%) GXPN
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (3.44%) SLA
2 15 (2.86%) QA
3 13 (2.48%) Data Quality
4 10 (1.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 9 (1.72%) NIST
6 4 (0.76%) NIST 800
6 4 (0.76%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 3 (0.57%) FATCA
7 3 (0.57%) SEPA
8 2 (0.38%) GDPR
8 2 (0.38%) GMP
8 2 (0.38%) ISO 15022
8 2 (0.38%) ISO 20022
8 2 (0.38%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.19%) Disclosure Scotland
9 1 (0.19%) MIL-STD-1553
9 1 (0.19%) NCSC
System Software
1 72 (13.74%) Docker
2 19 (3.63%) Active Directory
3 16 (3.05%) Oracle RAC
4 12 (2.29%) VMware Infrastructure
5 10 (1.91%) NFS
6 7 (1.34%) KVM
7 6 (1.15%) GPFS
7 6 (1.15%) Hyper-V
7 6 (1.15%) Virtual Machines
8 4 (0.76%) HDFS
8 4 (0.76%) Postfix
8 4 (0.76%) Varnish
9 3 (0.57%) Firmware
9 3 (0.57%) GridGain
9 3 (0.57%) PowerHA
9 3 (0.57%) Sendmail
9 3 (0.57%) VMware ESXi
9 3 (0.57%) vSphere
10 2 (0.38%) SRDF
10 2 (0.38%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 73 (13.93%) Kubernetes
2 66 (12.60%) Ansible
3 46 (8.78%) Terraform
4 39 (7.44%) Grafana
5 23 (4.39%) Prometheus
6 21 (4.01%) Puppet
7 20 (3.82%) Oracle RMAN
8 16 (3.05%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 10 (1.91%) Kibana
10 7 (1.34%) NetBackup
11 6 (1.15%) Control-M
11 6 (1.15%) IBM BigFix
11 6 (1.15%) Progress Chef
11 6 (1.15%) Red Hat Satellite
11 6 (1.15%) vCenter Server
12 5 (0.95%) CASB
12 5 (0.95%) Data Guard
12 5 (0.95%) Dell DRAC
12 5 (0.95%) HAProxy
12 5 (0.95%) Salt
Vendors
1 180 (34.35%) Oracle
2 52 (9.92%) Splunk
3 40 (7.63%) Microsoft
4 37 (7.06%) IBM
5 26 (4.96%) ServiceNow
6 20 (3.82%) VMware
7 17 (3.24%) Cisco
7 17 (3.24%) Informatica
8 16 (3.05%) CyberArk
8 16 (3.05%) Red Hat
9 15 (2.86%) Sybase
10 13 (2.48%) Talend
11 11 (2.10%) BeyondTrust
12 9 (1.72%) Ab Initio
12 9 (1.72%) Fujitsu
13 8 (1.53%) AppDynamics
13 8 (1.53%) Aruba
13 8 (1.53%) Dell
13 8 (1.53%) Remedy
13 8 (1.53%) Veritas