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

6 months to
20 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 226 165 114
Rank change year-on-year -61 -51 -17
Contract jobs citing Unix 649 576 767
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.19% 1.75% 1.99%
As % of the Operating Systems category 12.11% 12.99% 14.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 417 373 479
10th Percentile £338 £288 £350
25th Percentile £418 £402 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year - -3.85% -5.45%
75th Percentile £582 £615 £610
90th Percentile £715 £738 £765
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £450
% change year-on-year - +5.56% -11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 5 5
10th Percentile £43.81 £30.34 -
25th Percentile £47.53 £36.48 -
Median hourly rate £52.50 £54.50 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -3.67% +128.99% -63.77%
75th Percentile £55.25 £55.00 £28.75
90th Percentile £75.56 £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 5,359 4,434 5,454
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.82% 13.48% 14.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,367 2,835 3,479
10th Percentile £190 £188 £200
25th Percentile £313 £300 £330
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £673 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £435 £450
% change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 404 284 268
10th Percentile £14.21 £15.50 £16.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £20.45
Median hourly rate £27.50 £25.15 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.34% -49.70% +5.26%
75th Percentile £67.25 £58.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.90 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £55.00
% change year-on-year +29.22% -54.27% +19.88%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -54 532 £500 - 431
UK excluding London -79 343 £475 - 178
London -76 218 £550 +0.64% 305
Work from Home -22 194 £500 +5.26% 206
North of England -28 122 £475 -13.64% 35
South East -53 90 £459 +9.29% 38
North West +2 87 £475 +4.86% 16
Midlands -19 76 £471 -5.75% 20
West Midlands -17 69 £474 -8.72% 19
Scotland -55 43 £450 -5.26% 19
Yorkshire -58 26 £500 -23.08% 10
South West -34 14 £663 -11.67% 30
North East -34 12 £470 -6.00% 9
East of England -28 8 £700 +40.00% 17
East Midlands -18 6 £456 +16.24% 1
Wales -10 3 £383 +35.40% 7
Northern Ireland -1 1 - - 16

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 29 (4.47%) SAS
3 18 (2.77%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 15 (2.31%) SharePoint
5 14 (2.16%) WebLogic
6 13 (2.00%) Apache Airflow
7 10 (1.54%) Apache Spark
8 7 (1.08%) Apache
8 7 (1.08%) OpenStack
9 6 (0.92%) WebLogic Portal
10 4 (0.62%) Oracle Workflow
10 4 (0.62%) WebSphere
11 3 (0.46%) nginx
12 2 (0.31%) CICS
12 2 (0.31%) CMS
12 2 (0.31%) IIS
12 2 (0.31%) Microsoft Exchange
12 2 (0.31%) Oracle Service Bus
13 1 (0.15%) JBoss
13 1 (0.15%) Tomcat
Applications
1 14 (2.16%) 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 13 (2.00%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (1.08%) Oracle EBS R12
3 6 (0.92%) SAP PSCD
4 4 (0.62%) Oracle Assets
4 4 (0.62%) Oracle E-Business Tax
4 4 (0.62%) Oracle FAH
4 4 (0.62%) Oracle General Ledger
4 4 (0.62%) Oracle Internet Expenses
4 4 (0.62%) Oracle iProcurement
4 4 (0.62%) Oracle Payables
4 4 (0.62%) Oracle Receivables
5 3 (0.46%) FLEXCUBE
5 3 (0.46%) Oracle Applications
5 3 (0.46%) Oracle Financials
6 2 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.31%) Oracle Retail
6 2 (0.31%) SAP S/4HANA
7 1 (0.15%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 1 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
7 1 (0.15%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 148 (22.80%) AWS
2 89 (13.71%) Azure
3 47 (7.24%) GCP
4 41 (6.32%) GitHub
5 28 (4.31%) AWS Lambda
6 27 (4.16%) Amazon S3
6 27 (4.16%) Serverless
7 24 (3.70%) GitHub Actions
7 24 (3.70%) IaaS
8 23 (3.54%) Entra ID
9 18 (2.77%) SaaS
10 17 (2.62%) OpenShift
11 16 (2.47%) PaaS
12 15 (2.31%) AWS CloudFormation
12 15 (2.31%) Power Platform
13 14 (2.16%) Azure DevOps
14 13 (2.00%) Amazon EC2
15 11 (1.69%) Snowflake
16 10 (1.54%) Amazon ECS
17 9 (1.39%) Amazon EMR
Communications & Networking
1 31 (4.78%) Firewall
1 31 (4.78%) TCP/IP
2 30 (4.62%) DNS
3 20 (3.08%) SAN
4 14 (2.16%) HTTP
5 13 (2.00%) DHCP
6 12 (1.85%) SSH
7 10 (1.54%) NAS
7 10 (1.54%) Network Security
7 10 (1.54%) SSL
8 9 (1.39%) LAN
8 9 (1.39%) WAN
9 7 (1.08%) LTE
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%) VoWiFi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 60 (9.24%) Oracle Database
2 53 (8.17%) SQL Server
3 50 (7.70%) PostgreSQL
4 48 (7.40%) Relational Database
5 43 (6.63%) Data Warehouse
6 27 (4.16%) MongoDB
7 24 (3.70%) MySQL
8 22 (3.39%) Oracle Database 11g
9 21 (3.24%) Db2
10 18 (2.77%) NoSQL
11 16 (2.47%) DataStage
12 15 (2.31%) Oracle Database 12c
12 15 (2.31%) Power BI
13 14 (2.16%) RDBMS
14 13 (2.00%) Amazon Aurora
14 13 (2.00%) BusinessObjects
14 13 (2.00%) Data Lake
14 13 (2.00%) Oracle Database 10g
14 13 (2.00%) Oracle Reports
15 12 (1.85%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 84 (12.94%) Git
2 65 (10.02%) Jenkins
3 53 (8.17%) JIRA
4 52 (8.01%) GitLab
5 22 (3.39%) Artifactory
6 12 (1.85%) JUnit
6 12 (1.85%) SonarQube
7 11 (1.69%) Bitbucket
7 11 (1.69%) Gradle
7 11 (1.69%) Maven
7 11 (1.69%) Mockito
8 10 (1.54%) Selenium
8 10 (1.54%) Sonatype Nexus
9 9 (1.39%) Oracle Forms
10 8 (1.23%) eggPlant
11 7 (1.08%) HP UFT
12 5 (0.77%) Cucumber
12 5 (0.77%) JMeter
12 5 (0.77%) LoadRunner
12 5 (0.77%) Oracle APEX
General
1 167 (25.73%) Finance
2 145 (22.34%) Social Skills
3 108 (16.64%) Banking
4 106 (16.33%) Analytical Skills
5 53 (8.17%) Public Sector
6 27 (4.16%) Investment Banking
7 21 (3.24%) Documentation Skills
8 20 (3.08%) Front Office
9 11 (1.69%) Telecoms
10 8 (1.23%) Retail
11 7 (1.08%) Military
12 5 (0.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 5 (0.77%) Influencing Skills
12 5 (0.77%) Legal
13 4 (0.62%) Corporate Banking
13 4 (0.62%) Financial Institution
13 4 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
14 3 (0.46%) General Ledger
14 3 (0.46%) Law
15 2 (0.31%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 135 (20.80%) Developer
2 106 (16.33%) Senior
3 65 (10.02%) Unix Engineer
4 62 (9.55%) Data Engineer
5 51 (7.86%) Senior Developer
6 46 (7.09%) Java Developer
7 43 (6.63%) DBA
8 36 (5.55%) Linux Engineer
9 31 (4.78%) Python Developer
10 29 (4.47%) Oracle DBA
11 28 (4.31%) Support Engineer
12 25 (3.85%) Analyst
12 25 (3.85%) Consultant
13 24 (3.70%) Architect
14 23 (3.54%) Administrator
15 20 (3.08%) DevOps Engineer
16 19 (2.93%) Senior Java Developer
17 16 (2.47%) Applications Support
18 15 (2.31%) Lead
19 14 (2.16%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 72 (11.09%) Kafka
2 52 (8.01%) Terraform
3 49 (7.55%) REST
4 42 (6.47%) Middleware
5 40 (6.16%) RESTful
6 37 (5.70%) Spring
7 36 (5.55%) Spring Boot
8 24 (3.70%) XML
9 23 (3.54%) Web Services
10 22 (3.39%) .NET
11 20 (3.08%) HTML
11 20 (3.08%) SOAP
12 18 (2.77%) CSS
13 15 (2.31%) RabbitMQ
14 14 (2.16%) Django
14 14 (2.16%) Flask
14 14 (2.16%) Pandas
15 12 (1.85%) ActiveMQ
15 12 (1.85%) FastAPI
15 12 (1.85%) JDBC
Miscellaneous
1 47 (7.24%) Onboarding
2 36 (5.55%) Distributed Systems
2 36 (5.55%) Linux Command Line
3 34 (5.24%) Data Centre
4 33 (5.08%) Legacy Systems
5 24 (3.70%) Cloud Native
6 20 (3.08%) Replication
7 19 (2.93%) Clustering
7 19 (2.93%) Management Information System
8 16 (2.47%) Fixed Income
9 15 (2.31%) Derivative
9 15 (2.31%) Mainframe
10 13 (2.00%) PKI
10 13 (2.00%) Private Cloud
11 12 (1.85%) Data Protection Act
11 12 (1.85%) Legacy Applications
11 12 (1.85%) Product Ownership
12 11 (1.69%) Data Structures
12 11 (1.69%) Enterprise Software
12 11 (1.69%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 439 (67.64%) Linux
2 148 (22.80%) Windows
3 73 (11.25%) Solaris
4 44 (6.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 42 (6.47%) Windows Server
6 31 (4.78%) AIX
7 9 (1.39%) SUSE
8 8 (1.23%) HPUX
8 8 (1.23%) Oracle Linux
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
14 2 (0.31%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
15 1 (0.15%) Windows Server 2008
15 1 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 164 (25.27%) CI/CD
2 134 (20.65%) Agile
3 110 (16.95%) DevOps
3 110 (16.95%) Migration
4 109 (16.80%) Problem-Solving
5 100 (15.41%) Test Automation
6 79 (12.17%) High Availability
6 79 (12.17%) Root Cause Analysis
7 68 (10.48%) Continuous Improvement
7 68 (10.48%) Data Modelling
8 64 (9.86%) Performance Tuning
9 63 (9.71%) Infrastructure as Code
9 63 (9.71%) ITIL
10 61 (9.40%) ETL
11 59 (9.09%) Containerisation
12 58 (8.94%) Data Pipeline
13 57 (8.78%) Runbook
14 56 (8.63%) Validation
15 55 (8.47%) Microservices
16 53 (8.17%) Analytics
Programming Languages
1 252 (38.83%) SQL
2 247 (38.06%) Python
3 135 (20.80%) Java
4 123 (18.95%) Shell Script
5 91 (14.02%) PL/SQL
6 63 (9.71%) Bash
7 54 (8.32%) PowerShell
8 42 (6.47%) Perl
9 34 (5.24%) JavaScript
10 30 (4.62%) C#
11 21 (3.24%) C++
12 15 (2.31%) C
13 9 (1.39%) 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
1 237 (36.52%) Security Cleared
2 190 (29.28%) SC Cleared
3 64 (9.86%) Degree
4 34 (5.24%) BPSS Clearance
5 21 (3.24%) DV Cleared
6 14 (2.16%) CISSP
6 14 (2.16%) Computer Science Degree
7 9 (1.39%) 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
10 6 (0.92%) Master's Degree
11 5 (0.77%) RHCE
11 5 (0.77%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (5.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 35 (5.39%) NIST
3 33 (5.08%) QA
4 32 (4.93%) Data Quality
5 12 (1.85%) GDPR
5 12 (1.85%) SLA
6 9 (1.39%) ISO 20022
7 7 (1.08%) Cyber Essentials
8 6 (0.92%) ISO 31000
9 5 (0.77%) GRC
9 5 (0.77%) ISO 15022
9 5 (0.77%) PCI DSS
10 4 (0.62%) Basel III
10 4 (0.62%) Disclosure Scotland
11 3 (0.46%) NCSC
11 3 (0.46%) NIST 800
11 3 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 2 (0.31%) SEPA
13 1 (0.15%) ISO 8583
13 1 (0.15%) WCAG
System Software
1 68 (10.48%) Docker
2 40 (6.16%) Active Directory
3 26 (4.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (2.62%) Oracle RAC
5 16 (2.47%) NFS
6 9 (1.39%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (0.77%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (0.62%) Firmware
8 4 (0.62%) GPFS
8 4 (0.62%) Postfix
8 4 (0.62%) PowerHA
8 4 (0.62%) Varnish
8 4 (0.62%) Veritas Volume Manager
8 4 (0.62%) vSphere
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
10 1 (0.15%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 81 (12.48%) Kubernetes
2 63 (9.71%) Ansible
3 39 (6.01%) Grafana
4 31 (4.78%) Oracle RMAN
5 27 (4.16%) Prometheus
6 21 (3.24%) Data Guard
7 18 (2.77%) Progress Chef
8 16 (2.47%) Puppet
9 14 (2.16%) Control-M
10 11 (1.69%) Kibana
11 9 (1.39%) 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%) SCCM
Vendors
1 243 (37.44%) Oracle
2 54 (8.32%) IBM
3 51 (7.86%) Splunk
4 50 (7.70%) Microsoft
5 40 (6.16%) BeyondTrust
6 33 (5.08%) Red Hat
7 32 (4.93%) Informatica
8 31 (4.78%) CyberArk
9 29 (4.47%) VMware
10 24 (3.70%) Sybase
11 23 (3.54%) Talend
12 20 (3.08%) SAP
12 20 (3.08%) ServiceNow
13 18 (2.77%) Denodo
14 15 (2.31%) Dynatrace
14 15 (2.31%) Google
15 12 (1.85%) HP
15 12 (1.85%) SaltStack
16 11 (1.69%) BT
17 10 (1.54%) AppDynamics