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

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 225 169 129
Rank change year-on-year -56 -40 -42
Contract jobs citing Unix 597 509 767
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.16% 1.66% 1.78%
As % of the Operating Systems category 12.21% 12.06% 13.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 338 312 509
10th Percentile £304 £358 £334
25th Percentile £401 £408 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £486 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.21% -7.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £570 £600 £623
90th Percentile £661 £649 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £459 £473 £450
% change year-on-year -2.86% +5.00% -16.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 6 21
10th Percentile £21.50 £43.87 £22.30
25th Percentile £31.86 £52.00 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £54.75 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.11% +36.88% -37.50%
75th Percentile £53.75 £55.00 -
90th Percentile £55.00 £62.50 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £54.75 £40.00
% change year-on-year -13.17% +36.88% -32.85%

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 4,888 4,219 5,865
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.52% 13.79% 13.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,114 2,739 3,860
10th Percentile £190 £200 £190
25th Percentile £313 £313 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year -0.43% -2.21% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £581 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £463
% change year-on-year - -2.70% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 331 216 435
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.75 £17.41 £16.25
Median hourly rate £26.66 £22.25 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +19.82% -11.00% -41.18%
75th Percentile £63.75 £42.56 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £66.25 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.44 £18.87 £31.25
% change year-on-year +40.12% -39.62% -6.72%

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 June 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 June 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 June 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 -37 507 £475 -0.63% 68
UK excluding London -60 347 £459 -2.86% 50
London -78 192 £550 +10.00% 28
Work from Home -23 174 £471 +4.67% 33
North of England -34 111 £481 +7.30% 19
South East -22 107 £410 -25.45% 14
North West -6 84 £478 +12.90% 17
Midlands -9 81 £459 +2.00% 7
West Midlands -2 75 £459 -0.22% 7
Scotland -52 37 £425 -10.53% 1
Yorkshire -56 22 £500 -4.76% 2
East of England -29 10 £700 +55.56% 2
North East -29 6 £480 +28.00%
Wales -10 5 £265 -6.19% 4
East Midlands -18 5 £463 +18.29%
South West -37 5 £600 - 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 36 (6.03%) Confluence
2 26 (4.36%) SAS
3 18 (3.02%) Apache
4 16 (2.68%) Apache Spark
5 14 (2.35%) Apache Airflow
6 10 (1.68%) CICS
6 10 (1.68%) WebLogic
7 7 (1.17%) NetWeaver
7 7 (1.17%) SharePoint
7 7 (1.17%) Tuxedo
8 6 (1.01%) OpenStack
9 4 (0.67%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 4 (0.67%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 3 (0.50%) IBM HTTP Server
10 3 (0.50%) WebSphere
10 3 (0.50%) WebSphere Application Server
11 2 (0.34%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.34%) IIS
11 2 (0.34%) Oracle HTTP Server
11 2 (0.34%) Oracle Spatial
Applications
1 7 (1.17%) Microsoft Excel
1 7 (1.17%) Notepad++
2 5 (0.84%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 8 (1.34%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.01%) Summit
3 2 (0.34%) FLEXCUBE
3 2 (0.34%) Oracle Applications
3 2 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.34%) Oracle Retail
4 1 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.17%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 117 (19.60%) AWS
2 76 (12.73%) Azure
3 29 (4.86%) GitHub
4 25 (4.19%) GCP
5 24 (4.02%) Entra ID
6 23 (3.85%) AWS Lambda
7 22 (3.69%) Serverless
8 21 (3.52%) GitHub Actions
9 20 (3.35%) Amazon S3
10 17 (2.85%) IaaS
10 17 (2.85%) OpenShift
10 17 (2.85%) PaaS
11 16 (2.68%) SaaS
12 14 (2.35%) Power Platform
13 11 (1.84%) Azure DevOps
14 10 (1.68%) Snowflake
15 9 (1.51%) Amazon EC2
16 8 (1.34%) Azure Data Factory
16 8 (1.34%) Azure Key Vault
17 7 (1.17%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 31 (5.19%) Firewall
2 25 (4.19%) DNS
3 21 (3.52%) SAN
4 17 (2.85%) TCP/IP
5 14 (2.35%) NAS
6 12 (2.01%) SSH
7 11 (1.84%) HTTP
8 9 (1.51%) SSL
9 8 (1.34%) Network Security
9 8 (1.34%) Wireless
9 8 (1.34%) Wireshark
10 7 (1.17%) 5G
10 7 (1.17%) FTP
10 7 (1.17%) PuTTY
10 7 (1.17%) VPN
10 7 (1.17%) WinSCP
11 6 (1.01%) DHCP
11 6 (1.01%) Ethernet
11 6 (1.01%) InfiniBand
11 6 (1.01%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 73 (12.23%) SQL Server
2 43 (7.20%) Relational Database
3 41 (6.87%) Oracle Database
4 35 (5.86%) MySQL
5 30 (5.03%) PostgreSQL
6 29 (4.86%) MongoDB
7 20 (3.35%) Data Warehouse
7 20 (3.35%) Db2
8 19 (3.18%) Metadata
9 17 (2.85%) KDB
10 16 (2.68%) Big Data
10 16 (2.68%) BusinessObjects
10 16 (2.68%) DataStage
11 15 (2.51%) NoSQL
12 14 (2.35%) Amazon Aurora
12 14 (2.35%) Kdb+
12 14 (2.35%) Power BI
13 13 (2.18%) Sybase ASE
14 11 (1.84%) Oracle Database 12c
15 10 (1.68%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 56 (9.38%) Jenkins
2 51 (8.54%) JIRA
3 50 (8.38%) GitLab
4 42 (7.04%) Git
5 23 (3.85%) Artifactory
6 13 (2.18%) Mockito
7 10 (1.68%) Bitbucket
8 9 (1.51%) Maven
9 7 (1.17%) Sonatype Nexus
10 5 (0.84%) Oracle Forms
11 4 (0.67%) CA Gen
11 4 (0.67%) JUnit
11 4 (0.67%) Selenium
11 4 (0.67%) SonarQube
12 3 (0.50%) Android Studio
12 3 (0.50%) Browser DevTools
12 3 (0.50%) Eclipse
12 3 (0.50%) Introscope
12 3 (0.50%) MSI
12 3 (0.50%) REST Assured
General
1 152 (25.46%) Finance
2 126 (21.11%) Social Skills
3 94 (15.75%) Banking
4 79 (13.23%) Analytical Skills
5 61 (10.22%) Public Sector
6 29 (4.86%) Investment Banking
7 24 (4.02%) Documentation Skills
8 21 (3.52%) Front Office
9 12 (2.01%) Retail
9 12 (2.01%) Telecoms
10 11 (1.84%) Influencing Skills
11 9 (1.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 8 (1.34%) Financial Institution
13 6 (1.01%) Advertising
13 6 (1.01%) Military
14 2 (0.34%) Billing
14 2 (0.34%) Law
14 2 (0.34%) Local Government
14 2 (0.34%) Organisational Skills
15 1 (0.17%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 112 (18.76%) Developer
2 75 (12.56%) Senior
3 65 (10.89%) Data Engineer
4 45 (7.54%) Unix Engineer
5 43 (7.20%) Java Developer
5 43 (7.20%) Support Engineer
6 39 (6.53%) Analyst
7 35 (5.86%) DBA
8 30 (5.03%) Senior Developer
9 25 (4.19%) Architect
10 24 (4.02%) Oracle DBA
10 24 (4.02%) Python Developer
11 21 (3.52%) Administrator
11 21 (3.52%) Consultant
12 20 (3.35%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 18 (3.02%) Site Engineer
13 18 (3.02%) Technical Support
14 16 (2.68%) Senior Java Developer
15 15 (2.51%) Applications Support
16 14 (2.35%) Linux Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 53 (8.88%) Kafka
2 36 (6.03%) REST
3 33 (5.53%) Middleware
4 26 (4.36%) RESTful
5 21 (3.52%) Spring
5 21 (3.52%) XML
6 20 (3.35%) Spring Boot
7 17 (2.85%) CSS
8 15 (2.51%) Web Services
9 14 (2.35%) Oracle GoldenGate
10 13 (2.18%) ActiveMQ
10 13 (2.18%) HTML
10 13 (2.18%) JAX-RS
10 13 (2.18%) LDAP
11 11 (1.84%) Pandas
11 11 (1.84%) RabbitMQ
12 10 (1.68%) JSON
13 9 (1.51%) FastAPI
13 9 (1.51%) Flask
13 9 (1.51%) React
Miscellaneous
1 43 (7.20%) Onboarding
2 36 (6.03%) Linux Command Line
3 30 (5.03%) Data Centre
3 30 (5.03%) Legacy Systems
4 26 (4.36%) Management Information System
5 20 (3.35%) Mainframe
6 19 (3.18%) Cloud Native
7 18 (3.02%) Derivative
7 18 (3.02%) Replication
8 17 (2.85%) Fixed Income
9 13 (2.18%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 12 (2.01%) Distributed Systems
10 12 (2.01%) Equities
11 11 (1.84%) Clustering
12 10 (1.68%) BYOD
12 10 (1.68%) Enterprise Software
12 10 (1.68%) Public Cloud
12 10 (1.68%) Virtual Team
12 10 (1.68%) VSAM
13 9 (1.51%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 395 (66.16%) Linux
2 158 (26.47%) Windows
3 53 (8.88%) Solaris
4 45 (7.54%) Windows Server
5 30 (5.03%) AIX
6 23 (3.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 12 (2.01%) Mac OS X
8 9 (1.51%) Oracle Linux
9 7 (1.17%) HPUX
10 6 (1.01%) SUSE
11 5 (0.84%) VMS
12 3 (0.50%) Android
12 3 (0.50%) Check Point GAiA
12 3 (0.50%) Mac OS
12 3 (0.50%) OpenVMS
13 2 (0.34%) CentOS
13 2 (0.34%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 2 (0.34%) Ubuntu
13 2 (0.34%) zOS
14 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 128 (21.44%) Agile
2 120 (20.10%) CI/CD
3 108 (18.09%) Problem-Solving
4 91 (15.24%) Migration
5 79 (13.23%) DevOps
5 79 (13.23%) High Availability
6 77 (12.90%) ITIL
7 66 (11.06%) Test Automation
8 61 (10.22%) Root Cause Analysis
9 55 (9.21%) Performance Tuning
10 52 (8.71%) Disaster Recovery
11 51 (8.54%) Runbook
12 49 (8.21%) Observability
13 48 (8.04%) Change Management
13 48 (8.04%) Microservices
14 47 (7.87%) Analytics
14 47 (7.87%) Data Modelling
15 46 (7.71%) Incident Management
16 42 (7.04%) Computer Science
16 42 (7.04%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 225 (37.69%) SQL
2 223 (37.35%) Python
3 110 (18.43%) Java
4 109 (18.26%) Shell Script
5 72 (12.06%) PL/SQL
6 53 (8.88%) PowerShell
7 52 (8.71%) Bash
8 35 (5.86%) JavaScript
8 35 (5.86%) Perl
9 25 (4.19%) C#
10 21 (3.52%) C++
11 16 (2.68%) Korn
12 12 (2.01%) COBOL
13 8 (1.34%) Scala
14 7 (1.17%) C
15 5 (0.84%) Go
15 5 (0.84%) ProC
16 4 (0.67%) Kotlin
16 4 (0.67%) Ruby
16 4 (0.67%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 197 (33.00%) Security Cleared
2 166 (27.81%) SC Cleared
3 71 (11.89%) Degree
4 32 (5.36%) BPSS Clearance
5 20 (3.35%) Computer Science Degree
6 19 (3.18%) CISSP
7 11 (1.84%) CompTIA Security+
8 10 (1.68%) DV Cleared
9 9 (1.51%) CISM
10 7 (1.17%) Cisco Certification
10 7 (1.17%) CRISC
11 6 (1.01%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 6 (1.01%) CESG Certified Professional
11 6 (1.01%) GIAC
11 6 (1.01%) Microsoft Certification
11 6 (1.01%) RHCE
12 5 (0.84%) MCSA
12 5 (0.84%) MCSE
12 5 (0.84%) SANS
13 4 (0.67%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (6.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 38 (6.37%) NIST
2 23 (3.85%) QA
3 16 (2.68%) SLA
4 11 (1.84%) Data Quality
5 7 (1.17%) Cyber Essentials
6 6 (1.01%) ISO 31000
7 5 (0.84%) GRC
8 4 (0.67%) ISO 20022
8 4 (0.67%) NIST 800
8 4 (0.67%) PCI DSS
8 4 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 3 (0.50%) Disclosure Scotland
9 3 (0.50%) FATCA
10 2 (0.34%) GDPR
10 2 (0.34%) GMP
10 2 (0.34%) ISO 15022
10 2 (0.34%) NCSC
11 1 (0.17%) MIL-STD-1553
11 1 (0.17%) SOC 2
System Software
1 55 (9.21%) Docker
2 45 (7.54%) Active Directory
3 21 (3.52%) Oracle RAC
4 18 (3.02%) VMware Infrastructure
5 17 (2.85%) NFS
6 11 (1.84%) Virtual Machines
7 7 (1.17%) GPFS
8 6 (1.01%) Hyper-V
8 6 (1.01%) KVM
8 6 (1.01%) Postfix
8 6 (1.01%) Varnish
8 6 (1.01%) VMware ESXi
9 5 (0.84%) vSphere
10 4 (0.67%) HDFS
10 4 (0.67%) Sendmail
11 3 (0.50%) Firmware
11 3 (0.50%) GridGain
11 3 (0.50%) PowerHA
11 3 (0.50%) Veritas Volume Manager
12 2 (0.34%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 69 (11.56%) Kubernetes
2 59 (9.88%) Ansible
3 37 (6.20%) Terraform
4 36 (6.03%) Grafana
5 31 (5.19%) Oracle RMAN
6 25 (4.19%) Prometheus
7 15 (2.51%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 14 (2.35%) Data Guard
9 10 (1.68%) Kibana
10 9 (1.51%) Progress Chef
10 9 (1.51%) Puppet
10 9 (1.51%) Single Sign-On
11 8 (1.34%) NetBackup
12 7 (1.17%) Control-M
13 6 (1.01%) HAProxy
13 6 (1.01%) IBM BigFix
13 6 (1.01%) Nessus
13 6 (1.01%) Tivoli
13 6 (1.01%) vCenter Server
14 5 (0.84%) vRealize
Vendors
1 235 (39.36%) Oracle
2 47 (7.87%) IBM
3 46 (7.71%) Splunk
4 39 (6.53%) Microsoft
5 38 (6.37%) BeyondTrust
5 38 (6.37%) CyberArk
6 34 (5.70%) Talend
7 27 (4.52%) ServiceNow
7 27 (4.52%) VMware
8 26 (4.36%) Informatica
8 26 (4.36%) Sybase
9 21 (3.52%) Denodo
10 19 (3.18%) Cisco
11 16 (2.68%) Red Hat
12 15 (2.51%) Dynatrace
13 13 (2.18%) SAP
14 11 (1.84%) BT
14 11 (1.84%) CheckPoint
15 10 (1.68%) Veritas
16 9 (1.51%) Murex