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

6 months to
30 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 215 149 138
Rank change year-on-year -66 -11 -55
Contract jobs citing Unix 554 557 748
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.17% 1.91% 1.72%
As % of the Operating Systems category 11.78% 13.68% 12.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 345 336 493
10th Percentile £268 £363 £350
25th Percentile £400 £424 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £468 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.40% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £565 £600 £675
90th Percentile £700 £725 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £447 £475 £494
% change year-on-year -5.89% -3.80% -8.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 9 22
10th Percentile £21.50 £39.70 £22.10
25th Percentile £26.26 £40.50 £25.66
Median hourly rate £52.50 £52.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year - +31.25% -31.73%
75th Percentile £53.75 £55.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £54.90 £67.25 £67.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £52.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year -9.45% +31.25% -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 4,701 4,073 5,812
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.96% 13.94% 13.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,064 2,686 3,913
10th Percentile £185 £200 £183
25th Percentile £313 £319 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £468
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +1.50% -7.33%
75th Percentile £575 £594 £588
90th Percentile £663 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £450 £450
% change year-on-year -5.56% - -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 324 177 397
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.25 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.13 £18.13 £15.50
Median hourly rate £42.22 £24.18 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.61% +9.91% -44.02%
75th Percentile £67.84 £62.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £23.00 £22.00
% change year-on-year +106.52% +4.55% -29.60%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 -62 472 £469 -6.90% 82
UK excluding London -70 320 £447 -5.89% 61
London -66 184 £565 +2.73% 35
Work from Home -61 164 £469 -3.79% 42
North of England -54 96 £467 -11.14% 9
South East -12 92 £390 -22.05% 19
Midlands -14 84 £450 -2.17% 16
West Midlands -7 76 £450 -2.17% 11
North West -3 74 £472 +0.43% 6
Scotland -51 37 £365 -22.26% 1
Yorkshire -70 19 £460 -29.23% 1
East Midlands -27 7 £463 +1.87% 5
South West -32 6 £688 +51.93% 8
Wales -7 5 £265 +58.62%
East of England -52 4 £300 -33.33% 6
North East -17 3 £413 -26.67% 2

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 20 (3.61%) Apache
1 20 (3.61%) Apache Spark
2 19 (3.43%) WebLogic
3 17 (3.07%) Confluence
4 16 (2.89%) Tuxedo
5 15 (2.71%) SAS
6 11 (1.99%) Apache Airflow
7 10 (1.81%) CICS
8 7 (1.26%) SharePoint
9 6 (1.08%) NetWeaver
10 5 (0.90%) nginx
10 5 (0.90%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 4 (0.72%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 4 (0.72%) OpenStack
11 4 (0.72%) Oracle Workflow
11 4 (0.72%) Tomcat
12 3 (0.54%) IBM HTTP Server
12 3 (0.54%) WebSphere
12 3 (0.54%) WebSphere Application Server
13 2 (0.36%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 12 (2.17%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (1.26%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (1.26%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.36%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.18%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (1.08%) SAP S/4HANA
1 6 (1.08%) Summit
2 4 (0.72%) Oracle 11i
2 4 (0.72%) Oracle EBS
2 4 (0.72%) Oracle EBS R12
3 2 (0.36%) Oracle BRM
3 2 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
3 2 (0.36%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.18%) ION MarketView
4 1 (0.18%) Oracle Applications
4 1 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.18%) Oracle Cash Management
4 1 (0.18%) Oracle CRM
4 1 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 98 (17.69%) AWS
2 71 (12.82%) Azure
3 35 (6.32%) GitHub
4 23 (4.15%) AWS Lambda
5 22 (3.97%) Amazon S3
5 22 (3.97%) Serverless
6 21 (3.79%) GitHub Actions
7 18 (3.25%) GCP
8 14 (2.53%) Azure DevOps
8 14 (2.53%) OpenShift
9 13 (2.35%) Entra ID
10 12 (2.17%) SaaS
11 11 (1.99%) Power Platform
12 10 (1.81%) Amazon EC2
12 10 (1.81%) Snowflake
13 9 (1.62%) Azure Data Factory
14 8 (1.44%) AWS CloudFormation
15 7 (1.26%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 7 (1.26%) IaaS
15 7 (1.26%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 36 (6.50%) Firewall
2 21 (3.79%) DNS
3 17 (3.07%) HTTP
4 15 (2.71%) SAN
5 14 (2.53%) TCP/IP
6 13 (2.35%) Network Security
7 10 (1.81%) Wireless
8 9 (1.62%) NAS
9 8 (1.44%) InfiniBand
10 7 (1.26%) Ethernet
10 7 (1.26%) NetScaler
10 7 (1.26%) PuTTY
10 7 (1.26%) SSH
10 7 (1.26%) SSL
10 7 (1.26%) VPN
10 7 (1.26%) WinSCP
11 6 (1.08%) FTP
11 6 (1.08%) Wireshark
12 5 (0.90%) 5G
12 5 (0.90%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 64 (11.55%) SQL Server
2 48 (8.66%) Relational Database
3 41 (7.40%) MySQL
3 41 (7.40%) PostgreSQL
4 39 (7.04%) Oracle Database
5 37 (6.68%) MongoDB
6 22 (3.97%) NoSQL
7 21 (3.79%) Metadata
8 20 (3.61%) Big Data
8 20 (3.61%) Data Warehouse
9 16 (2.89%) KDB
9 16 (2.89%) Kdb+
10 13 (2.35%) Amazon Aurora
10 13 (2.35%) BusinessObjects
10 13 (2.35%) DataStage
11 12 (2.17%) DB2
12 11 (1.99%) Power BI
13 10 (1.81%) Data Lake
13 10 (1.81%) RDBMS
13 10 (1.81%) Tick Data
Development Applications
1 56 (10.11%) Jenkins
2 46 (8.30%) Git
3 36 (6.50%) GitLab
4 34 (6.14%) JIRA
5 13 (2.35%) Mockito
6 12 (2.17%) Bitbucket
7 11 (1.99%) MSI
8 9 (1.62%) Sonatype Nexus
9 8 (1.44%) Maven
10 6 (1.08%) Eclipse
11 5 (0.90%) Android Studio
11 5 (0.90%) Artifactory
11 5 (0.90%) Browser DevTools
11 5 (0.90%) JUnit
11 5 (0.90%) SonarQube
11 5 (0.90%) Toad
11 5 (0.90%) Xcode
12 4 (0.72%) CA Gen
12 4 (0.72%) ScriptRunner
12 4 (0.72%) Selenium
General
1 147 (26.53%) Finance
2 124 (22.38%) Social Skills
3 78 (14.08%) Banking
4 64 (11.55%) Analytical Skills
5 57 (10.29%) Public Sector
6 24 (4.33%) Investment Banking
7 20 (3.61%) Front Office
8 18 (3.25%) Documentation Skills
9 12 (2.17%) Influencing Skills
10 8 (1.44%) Financial Institution
10 8 (1.44%) Telecoms
11 7 (1.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 6 (1.08%) Advertising
12 6 (1.08%) Retail
13 4 (0.72%) Military
14 3 (0.54%) Billing
14 3 (0.54%) Law
15 2 (0.36%) Legal
15 2 (0.36%) Local Government
15 2 (0.36%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 106 (19.13%) Developer
2 71 (12.82%) Senior
3 48 (8.66%) Data Engineer
4 45 (8.12%) Java Developer
5 43 (7.76%) Analyst
6 42 (7.58%) Unix Engineer
7 37 (6.68%) Support Engineer
8 29 (5.23%) DBA
9 27 (4.87%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 25 (4.51%) Oracle DBA
10 25 (4.51%) Senior Developer
10 25 (4.51%) Technical Support
11 24 (4.33%) Site Engineer
12 22 (3.97%) Administrator
12 22 (3.97%) Linux Engineer
13 19 (3.43%) DevOps Engineer
14 17 (3.07%) Architect
14 17 (3.07%) Python Developer
14 17 (3.07%) Software Engineer
15 16 (2.89%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 57 (10.29%) Kafka
2 29 (5.23%) REST
3 26 (4.69%) Middleware
4 24 (4.33%) RESTful
5 23 (4.15%) XML
6 16 (2.89%) Spring
7 15 (2.71%) CSS
8 14 (2.53%) Elastic Stack
8 14 (2.53%) Oracle GoldenGate
8 14 (2.53%) Spring Boot
9 13 (2.35%) JAX-RS
10 12 (2.17%) ActiveMQ
10 12 (2.17%) HTML
10 12 (2.17%) React
10 12 (2.17%) SOAP
11 11 (1.99%) JSON
12 10 (1.81%) AngularJS
12 10 (1.81%) LDAP
12 10 (1.81%) Web Services
13 9 (1.62%) FIX Protocol
Miscellaneous
1 31 (5.60%) Linux Command Line
2 30 (5.42%) Onboarding
3 26 (4.69%) Management Information System
4 23 (4.15%) Cloud Native
4 23 (4.15%) Data Centre
5 20 (3.61%) Legacy Systems
6 18 (3.25%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 16 (2.89%) Fixed Income
8 15 (2.71%) Derivative
8 15 (2.71%) Mainframe
9 11 (1.99%) Equities
10 10 (1.81%) BYOD
10 10 (1.81%) Public Cloud
10 10 (1.81%) Replication
10 10 (1.81%) Virtual Team
10 10 (1.81%) VSAM
11 9 (1.62%) Clustering
12 8 (1.44%) Greenfield Project
13 7 (1.26%) Algorithms
13 7 (1.26%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 369 (66.61%) Linux
2 145 (26.17%) Windows
3 39 (7.04%) Solaris
4 34 (6.14%) Windows Server
5 30 (5.42%) AIX
6 23 (4.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 13 (2.35%) Mac OS X
8 7 (1.26%) Oracle Linux
9 5 (0.90%) Android
9 5 (0.90%) HPUX
10 4 (0.72%) Mac OS
10 4 (0.72%) SUSE
11 2 (0.36%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 2 (0.36%) VMS
12 1 (0.18%) CentOS
12 1 (0.18%) OpenVMS
12 1 (0.18%) Rocky
12 1 (0.18%) Ubuntu
12 1 (0.18%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 128 (23.10%) Agile
2 101 (18.23%) Problem-Solving
3 98 (17.69%) CI/CD
4 85 (15.34%) DevOps
5 81 (14.62%) Migration
6 61 (11.01%) ITIL
7 60 (10.83%) Observability
8 56 (10.11%) High Availability
9 54 (9.75%) Performance Tuning
10 52 (9.39%) Root Cause Analysis
11 51 (9.21%) Disaster Recovery
12 48 (8.66%) Containerisation
13 45 (8.12%) Change Management
13 45 (8.12%) Computer Science
13 45 (8.12%) Microservices
14 44 (7.94%) Infrastructure as Code
15 43 (7.76%) Data Modelling
15 43 (7.76%) Software Engineering
16 42 (7.58%) Site Reliability Engineering
16 42 (7.58%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 216 (38.99%) SQL
2 210 (37.91%) Python
3 129 (23.29%) Java
4 112 (20.22%) Shell Script
5 64 (11.55%) Bash
6 55 (9.93%) Perl
7 53 (9.57%) PL/SQL
8 46 (8.30%) PowerShell
9 38 (6.86%) JavaScript
10 28 (5.05%) C#
11 24 (4.33%) C++
11 24 (4.33%) Korn
12 11 (1.99%) COBOL
13 10 (1.81%) PHP
14 9 (1.62%) Go
14 9 (1.62%) Scala
15 4 (0.72%) Kotlin
16 3 (0.54%) C
16 3 (0.54%) HiveQL
16 3 (0.54%) Jython
Qualifications
1 165 (29.78%) Security Cleared
2 135 (24.37%) SC Cleared
3 63 (11.37%) Degree
4 29 (5.23%) Computer Science Degree
5 22 (3.97%) BPSS Clearance
6 12 (2.17%) CISSP
7 9 (1.62%) CompTIA Security+
8 8 (1.44%) DV Cleared
9 6 (1.08%) Microsoft Certification
10 5 (0.90%) MCSA
10 5 (0.90%) MCSE
10 5 (0.90%) RHCE
11 3 (0.54%) CISM
11 3 (0.54%) ITIL Certification
12 2 (0.36%) Cisco Certification
12 2 (0.36%) Oracle Certification
12 2 (0.36%) PMI Certification
12 2 (0.36%) TOGAF Certification
13 1 (0.18%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 1 (0.18%) GXPN
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (3.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 21 (3.79%) NIST
3 20 (3.61%) SLA
4 19 (3.43%) QA
5 12 (2.17%) Data Quality
6 4 (0.72%) GRC
6 4 (0.72%) NIST 800
6 4 (0.72%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 3 (0.54%) Disclosure Scotland
7 3 (0.54%) FATCA
8 2 (0.36%) GDPR
8 2 (0.36%) GMP
8 2 (0.36%) ISO 15022
8 2 (0.36%) ISO 20022
8 2 (0.36%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.36%) SEPA
9 1 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials
9 1 (0.18%) ISO 31000
9 1 (0.18%) MIL-STD-1553
9 1 (0.18%) NCSC
System Software
1 73 (13.18%) Docker
2 27 (4.87%) Active Directory
3 18 (3.25%) Oracle RAC
4 13 (2.35%) VMware Infrastructure
5 12 (2.17%) NFS
6 8 (1.44%) Virtual Machines
7 7 (1.26%) GPFS
7 7 (1.26%) KVM
8 6 (1.08%) Hyper-V
9 4 (0.72%) HDFS
9 4 (0.72%) Postfix
9 4 (0.72%) Varnish
9 4 (0.72%) VMware ESXi
9 4 (0.72%) vSphere
10 3 (0.54%) Firmware
10 3 (0.54%) GridGain
10 3 (0.54%) PowerHA
10 3 (0.54%) Sendmail
11 2 (0.36%) SRDF
12 1 (0.18%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 74 (13.36%) Kubernetes
2 66 (11.91%) Ansible
3 46 (8.30%) Terraform
4 45 (8.12%) Grafana
5 25 (4.51%) Prometheus
6 24 (4.33%) Oracle RMAN
7 17 (3.07%) Puppet
8 16 (2.89%) Kibana
8 16 (2.89%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 8 (1.44%) Data Guard
9 8 (1.44%) Single Sign-On
10 7 (1.26%) NetBackup
10 7 (1.26%) Progress Chef
11 6 (1.08%) Control-M
11 6 (1.08%) IBM BigFix
11 6 (1.08%) vCenter Server
12 5 (0.90%) CASB
12 5 (0.90%) HAProxy
12 5 (0.90%) Nessus
12 5 (0.90%) Salt
Vendors
1 203 (36.64%) Oracle
2 53 (9.57%) Splunk
3 40 (7.22%) Microsoft
4 39 (7.04%) IBM
5 26 (4.69%) ServiceNow
6 25 (4.51%) CyberArk
7 23 (4.15%) BeyondTrust
8 22 (3.97%) Informatica
9 21 (3.79%) VMware
10 19 (3.43%) Cisco
10 19 (3.43%) Red Hat
11 15 (2.71%) Sybase
12 13 (2.35%) Talend
13 9 (1.62%) CheckPoint
13 9 (1.62%) F5
13 9 (1.62%) Fujitsu
13 9 (1.62%) Veritas
14 8 (1.44%) Aruba
14 8 (1.44%) Remedy
15 7 (1.26%) Ab Initio