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 5 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 230 165 111
Rank change year-on-year -65 -54 -9
Contract jobs citing Unix 633 591 769
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.16% 1.79% 2.02%
As % of the Operating Systems category 11.94% 13.19% 14.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 419 386 478
10th Percentile £339 £293 £350
25th Percentile £418 £400 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £491 £510
Median % change year-on-year +1.83% -3.73% -7.27%
75th Percentile £600 £620 £625
90th Percentile £725 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £454 £450
% change year-on-year +5.18% +0.89% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 4 6
10th Percentile - £29.32 -
25th Percentile £43.81 £33.92 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £46.91 £25.65
Median % change year-on-year +11.92% +82.88% -63.54%
75th Percentile £55.50 £58.56 £28.75
90th Percentile £76.53 £65.43 £33.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £54.50 £27.50
% change year-on-year -3.67% +98.18% -63.02%

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 5,300 4,479 5,341
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.74% 13.57% 14.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,340 2,854 3,316
10th Percentile £193 £185 £200
25th Percentile £313 £283 £325
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 £661 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £450
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.56% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 405 303 253
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £16.25
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -52.10% +20.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £56.68 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £25.15 £56.75
% change year-on-year +6.00% -55.68% +41.29%

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 5 October 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 5 October 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 5 October 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 -78 522 £500 +1.32% 504
UK excluding London -67 325 £478 +5.18% 253
London -92 225 £550 +0.64% 305
Work from Home -38 186 £525 +9.15% 201
North of England -25 127 £481 -1.84% 55
North West -1 91 £483 +7.33% 27
South East -60 82 £459 +21.11% 54
Midlands -24 63 £481 -3.80% 35
West Midlands -29 58 £484 -6.80% 22
Scotland -50 39 £440 -7.37% 23
Yorkshire -41 27 £500 -23.08% 19
South West -35 16 £663 -1.85% 34
North East -30 12 £470 -6.00% 10
East of England -23 7 £700 +40.00% 25
East Midlands -12 4 £456 +16.24% 12
Wales -12 3 £383 +35.40% 12
Northern Ireland -1 1 - - 19

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 (5.37%) Confluence
2 23 (3.63%) SAS
3 19 (3.00%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 15 (2.37%) SharePoint
4 15 (2.37%) WebLogic
5 13 (2.05%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (1.26%) Apache Spark
7 7 (1.11%) OpenStack
8 6 (0.95%) WebLogic Portal
9 5 (0.79%) Apache
10 4 (0.63%) Oracle Workflow
11 3 (0.47%) IIS
11 3 (0.47%) WebSphere
12 2 (0.32%) CMS
12 2 (0.32%) Microsoft Exchange
12 2 (0.32%) nginx
12 2 (0.32%) Oracle Service Bus
13 1 (0.16%) NetWeaver
13 1 (0.16%) Tomcat
13 1 (0.16%) Traefik
Applications
1 14 (2.21%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (0.95%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (0.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.32%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.32%) Notepad++
Business Applications
1 14 (2.21%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (1.11%) Oracle EBS R12
3 6 (0.95%) SAP PSCD
4 4 (0.63%) Oracle Assets
4 4 (0.63%) Oracle E-Business Tax
4 4 (0.63%) Oracle FAH
4 4 (0.63%) Oracle General Ledger
4 4 (0.63%) Oracle Internet Expenses
4 4 (0.63%) Oracle iProcurement
4 4 (0.63%) Oracle Payables
4 4 (0.63%) Oracle Receivables
5 3 (0.47%) FLEXCUBE
5 3 (0.47%) Oracle Applications
5 3 (0.47%) Oracle Financials
6 2 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.32%) Oracle Retail
6 2 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
7 1 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 1 (0.16%) Payment Gateway
7 1 (0.16%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 148 (23.38%) AWS
2 85 (13.43%) Azure
3 56 (8.85%) GCP
4 36 (5.69%) GitHub
5 25 (3.95%) AWS Lambda
5 25 (3.95%) Serverless
6 23 (3.63%) Amazon S3
7 21 (3.32%) Entra ID
7 21 (3.32%) IaaS
8 20 (3.16%) GitHub Actions
9 17 (2.69%) SaaS
10 16 (2.53%) OpenShift
11 14 (2.21%) AWS CloudFormation
11 14 (2.21%) Power Platform
12 13 (2.05%) Azure DevOps
12 13 (2.05%) PaaS
13 12 (1.90%) Amazon EC2
14 10 (1.58%) Amazon ECS
15 9 (1.42%) Amazon EMR
15 9 (1.42%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 31 (4.90%) TCP/IP
2 30 (4.74%) Firewall
3 29 (4.58%) DNS
4 18 (2.84%) SAN
5 14 (2.21%) DHCP
5 14 (2.21%) HTTP
5 14 (2.21%) SSH
6 12 (1.90%) Network Security
7 9 (1.42%) NAS
7 9 (1.42%) SSL
7 9 (1.42%) WAN
8 8 (1.26%) LAN
9 7 (1.11%) LTE
10 6 (0.95%) 5G
10 6 (0.95%) Diameter Protocol
10 6 (0.95%) Radio Access Network
10 6 (0.95%) VLAN
10 6 (0.95%) VoLTE
10 6 (0.95%) VoWiFi
10 6 (0.95%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 59 (9.32%) Oracle Database
2 54 (8.53%) SQL Server
3 52 (8.21%) PostgreSQL
4 49 (7.74%) Relational Database
5 37 (5.85%) Data Warehouse
6 26 (4.11%) MongoDB
7 23 (3.63%) MySQL
8 22 (3.48%) Db2
9 19 (3.00%) Oracle Database 11g
10 18 (2.84%) NoSQL
11 17 (2.69%) RDBMS
12 15 (2.37%) DataStage
12 15 (2.37%) Oracle Database 12c
13 14 (2.21%) Power BI
14 13 (2.05%) Data Lake
14 13 (2.05%) Oracle Database 10g
14 13 (2.05%) PowerCenter
15 12 (1.90%) KDB
15 12 (1.90%) Oracle Reports
16 11 (1.74%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 83 (13.11%) Git
2 65 (10.27%) Jenkins
3 51 (8.06%) JIRA
4 50 (7.90%) GitLab
5 20 (3.16%) Artifactory
6 13 (2.05%) JUnit
6 13 (2.05%) Maven
7 12 (1.90%) Gradle
7 12 (1.90%) SonarQube
8 11 (1.74%) Bitbucket
9 9 (1.42%) Mockito
9 9 (1.42%) Oracle Forms
9 9 (1.42%) Selenium
9 9 (1.42%) Sonatype Nexus
10 8 (1.26%) eggPlant
11 7 (1.11%) HP UFT
12 6 (0.95%) Cucumber
13 5 (0.79%) LoadRunner
13 5 (0.79%) Oracle APEX
13 5 (0.79%) SoapUI
General
1 171 (27.01%) Finance
2 140 (22.12%) Social Skills
3 112 (17.69%) Analytical Skills
4 109 (17.22%) Banking
5 50 (7.90%) Public Sector
6 30 (4.74%) Investment Banking
7 22 (3.48%) Front Office
8 21 (3.32%) Documentation Skills
9 11 (1.74%) Telecoms
10 8 (1.26%) Retail
11 7 (1.11%) Military
12 5 (0.79%) Financial Institution
12 5 (0.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 5 (0.79%) Legal
13 4 (0.63%) Corporate Banking
13 4 (0.63%) Law
13 4 (0.63%) Presentation Skills
14 3 (0.47%) General Ledger
14 3 (0.47%) Influencing Skills
15 2 (0.32%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 133 (21.01%) Developer
2 101 (15.96%) Senior
3 69 (10.90%) Unix Engineer
4 47 (7.42%) Senior Developer
5 45 (7.11%) Data Engineer
6 44 (6.95%) Java Developer
7 40 (6.32%) DBA
8 37 (5.85%) Linux Engineer
9 29 (4.58%) Consultant
10 28 (4.42%) Python Developer
11 27 (4.27%) Support Engineer
12 26 (4.11%) Analyst
12 26 (4.11%) Oracle DBA
13 21 (3.32%) Architect
14 20 (3.16%) Administrator
15 18 (2.84%) DevOps Engineer
16 17 (2.69%) Applications Support
17 16 (2.53%) Lead
17 16 (2.53%) Senior Java Developer
18 15 (2.37%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 70 (11.06%) Kafka
2 56 (8.85%) Terraform
3 54 (8.53%) REST
4 44 (6.95%) Middleware
5 41 (6.48%) RESTful
6 38 (6.00%) Spring
7 35 (5.53%) Spring Boot
8 26 (4.11%) XML
9 24 (3.79%) Web Services
10 23 (3.63%) .NET
10 23 (3.63%) HTML
11 21 (3.32%) CSS
11 21 (3.32%) SOAP
12 15 (2.37%) Flask
13 13 (2.05%) JDBC
13 13 (2.05%) RabbitMQ
14 12 (1.90%) Django
14 12 (1.90%) Pandas
15 11 (1.74%) FastAPI
15 11 (1.74%) React
Miscellaneous
1 46 (7.27%) Onboarding
2 36 (5.69%) Distributed Systems
2 36 (5.69%) Legacy Systems
3 31 (4.90%) Data Centre
4 30 (4.74%) Linux Command Line
5 29 (4.58%) Cloud Native
6 22 (3.48%) Replication
7 21 (3.32%) Clustering
8 20 (3.16%) Management Information System
9 17 (2.69%) Derivative
9 17 (2.69%) Fixed Income
10 13 (2.05%) Data Protection Act
10 13 (2.05%) PKI
10 13 (2.05%) Private Cloud
11 12 (1.90%) Data Structures
11 12 (1.90%) Enterprise Software
11 12 (1.90%) Legacy Applications
11 12 (1.90%) Mainframe
11 12 (1.90%) Market Risk
11 12 (1.90%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 430 (67.93%) Linux
2 144 (22.75%) Windows
3 76 (12.01%) Solaris
4 44 (6.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 44 (6.95%) Windows Server
5 32 (5.06%) AIX
6 10 (1.58%) SUSE
7 8 (1.26%) HPUX
8 7 (1.11%) Oracle Linux
8 7 (1.11%) VMS
9 6 (0.95%) CentOS
10 4 (0.63%) Mac OS X
10 4 (0.63%) zOS
11 3 (0.47%) Android
11 3 (0.47%) Check Point GAiA
12 2 (0.32%) OpenVMS
13 1 (0.16%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
13 1 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 161 (25.43%) CI/CD
2 126 (19.91%) Agile
3 116 (18.33%) Migration
4 114 (18.01%) Problem-Solving
5 112 (17.69%) DevOps
6 96 (15.17%) Test Automation
7 82 (12.95%) Root Cause Analysis
8 79 (12.48%) High Availability
9 70 (11.06%) Continuous Improvement
9 70 (11.06%) Data Modelling
10 68 (10.74%) Performance Tuning
11 65 (10.27%) Infrastructure as Code
12 60 (9.48%) ITIL
12 60 (9.48%) Validation
13 59 (9.32%) Runbook
14 58 (9.16%) Containerisation
14 58 (9.16%) Stakeholder Management
15 57 (9.00%) Data Pipeline
16 53 (8.37%) Analytics
17 52 (8.21%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 245 (38.70%) Python
2 235 (37.12%) SQL
3 131 (20.70%) Java
4 116 (18.33%) Shell Script
5 79 (12.48%) PL/SQL
6 71 (11.22%) Bash
7 54 (8.53%) PowerShell
8 41 (6.48%) Perl
9 39 (6.16%) JavaScript
10 28 (4.42%) C#
11 20 (3.16%) C++
12 14 (2.21%) C
13 8 (1.26%) Go
14 7 (1.11%) Groovy
14 7 (1.11%) Kotlin
14 7 (1.11%) MUMPS
14 7 (1.11%) T-SQL
15 6 (0.95%) ABAP
15 6 (0.95%) Korn
15 6 (0.95%) Scala
Qualifications
1 226 (35.70%) Security Cleared
2 180 (28.44%) SC Cleared
3 69 (10.90%) Degree
4 30 (4.74%) BPSS Clearance
5 21 (3.32%) DV Cleared
6 20 (3.16%) Computer Science Degree
7 14 (2.21%) CISSP
8 9 (1.42%) Cisco Certification
9 8 (1.26%) CISM
9 8 (1.26%) Master's Degree
10 7 (1.11%) CRISC
10 7 (1.11%) Oracle Certification
11 6 (0.95%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 6 (0.95%) CESG Certified Professional
11 6 (0.95%) CompTIA Security+
11 6 (0.95%) GIAC
11 6 (0.95%) ISEB
11 6 (0.95%) ISTQB
12 5 (0.79%) RHCE
12 5 (0.79%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (5.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 35 (5.53%) QA
3 33 (5.21%) Data Quality
4 32 (5.06%) NIST
5 12 (1.90%) GDPR
5 12 (1.90%) SLA
6 9 (1.42%) ISO 20022
7 7 (1.11%) Cyber Essentials
7 7 (1.11%) PCI DSS
8 6 (0.95%) ISO 31000
9 5 (0.79%) Basel III
9 5 (0.79%) GRC
9 5 (0.79%) ISO 15022
10 4 (0.63%) NCSC
11 3 (0.47%) Disclosure Scotland
12 2 (0.32%) SEPA
13 1 (0.16%) Accessibility
13 1 (0.16%) ISO 8583
13 1 (0.16%) SOC 2
13 1 (0.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 63 (9.95%) Docker
2 38 (6.00%) Active Directory
3 26 (4.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 16 (2.53%) Oracle RAC
5 13 (2.05%) NFS
6 10 (1.58%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (0.79%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (0.63%) Firmware
8 4 (0.63%) GPFS
8 4 (0.63%) PowerHA
8 4 (0.63%) Veritas Volume Manager
8 4 (0.63%) VirtualBox
8 4 (0.63%) vSphere
9 2 (0.32%) Postfix
9 2 (0.32%) Varnish
10 1 (0.16%) HDFS
10 1 (0.16%) Sendmail
10 1 (0.16%) Veritas Cluster Server
10 1 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.16%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 84 (13.27%) Kubernetes
2 63 (9.95%) Ansible
3 41 (6.48%) Grafana
4 28 (4.42%) Oracle RMAN
4 28 (4.42%) Prometheus
5 19 (3.00%) Data Guard
6 18 (2.84%) Control-M
6 18 (2.84%) Progress Chef
7 14 (2.21%) Puppet
8 12 (1.90%) Kibana
9 7 (1.11%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 7 (1.11%) Tivoli Storage Manager
10 6 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
10 6 (0.95%) Tivoli
11 5 (0.79%) Failover Clustering
11 5 (0.79%) HP Fortify
11 5 (0.79%) ITRS Geneos
11 5 (0.79%) NetBackup
11 5 (0.79%) Netcool
11 5 (0.79%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 234 (36.97%) Oracle
2 56 (8.85%) IBM
3 55 (8.69%) Splunk
4 48 (7.58%) Microsoft
5 35 (5.53%) BeyondTrust
6 32 (5.06%) Red Hat
7 29 (4.58%) VMware
8 28 (4.42%) CyberArk
9 26 (4.11%) Informatica
10 23 (3.63%) Sybase
11 22 (3.48%) ServiceNow
11 22 (3.48%) Talend
12 21 (3.32%) SAP
13 19 (3.00%) Google
14 18 (2.84%) Dynatrace
15 16 (2.53%) Denodo
16 12 (1.90%) HP
16 12 (1.90%) SaltStack
17 11 (1.74%) BT
18 10 (1.58%) Cisco