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

6 months to
3 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 211 148 136
Rank change year-on-year -63 -12 -56
Contract jobs citing Unix 551 563 741
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.16% 1.92% 1.71%
As % of the Operating Systems category 11.75% 13.72% 12.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 338 338 489
10th Percentile £257 £363 £350
25th Percentile £400 £416 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.30% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £562 £600 £650
90th Percentile £700 £725 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £449 £473 £487
% change year-on-year -5.00% -2.98% -9.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 9 21
10th Percentile £21.50 £39.70 £22.08
25th Percentile £27.34 £40.50 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £52.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year - +31.25% -31.09%
75th Percentile £53.75 £55.00 £48.75
90th Percentile £54.70 £67.25 £67.50
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 4,691 4,103 5,811
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.90% 14.01% 13.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,048 2,705 3,915
10th Percentile £185 £200 £185
25th Percentile £313 £319 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £465
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +2.15% -7.74%
75th Percentile £575 £589 £588
90th Percentile £658 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £450 £450
% change year-on-year -5.56% - -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 322 182 399
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.12 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.74 £18.10 £15.50
Median hourly rate £42.60 £24.09 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +76.85% +9.50% -44.02%
75th Percentile £67.25 £62.25 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £22.88 £22.00
% change year-on-year +107.65% +3.98% -26.67%

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 3 May 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 3 May 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 3 May 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 -61 469 £469 -6.20% 112
UK excluding London -68 322 £449 -5.00% 79
London -89 179 £565 +5.12% 51
Work from Home -57 163 £466 -3.07% 58
North of England -38 98 £468 -10.86% 15
South East -15 97 £339 -31.34% 22
Midlands -18 80 £456 -0.92% 19
North West +3 77 £474 +6.04% 9
West Midlands -8 74 £450 -3.74% 15
Scotland -54 36 £395 -15.42% 1
Yorkshire -64 18 £460 -29.23% 4
South West -26 6 £688 +51.93% 10
Wales -8 5 £265 +58.62% 3
East Midlands -34 5 £525 +15.64% 4
East of England -51 4 £300 -33.33% 7
North East -19 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 19 (3.45%) Apache
2 18 (3.27%) Apache Spark
2 18 (3.27%) WebLogic
3 16 (2.90%) Tuxedo
4 15 (2.72%) SAS
5 12 (2.18%) Confluence
6 11 (2.00%) Apache Airflow
7 10 (1.81%) CICS
8 7 (1.27%) SharePoint
9 6 (1.09%) NetWeaver
10 5 (0.91%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 4 (0.73%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 4 (0.73%) OpenStack
11 4 (0.73%) Oracle Workflow
11 4 (0.73%) Tomcat
12 3 (0.54%) IBM HTTP Server
12 3 (0.54%) WebSphere
12 3 (0.54%) WebSphere Application Server
13 2 (0.36%) Oracle Spatial
13 2 (0.36%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 12 (2.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (1.27%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.73%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.36%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.18%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (1.09%) SAP S/4HANA
1 6 (1.09%) Summit
2 4 (0.73%) Oracle 11i
2 4 (0.73%) Oracle EBS
2 4 (0.73%) Oracle EBS R12
3 3 (0.54%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.36%) Oracle BRM
4 2 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.18%) ION MarketView
5 1 (0.18%) Oracle Applications
5 1 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.18%) Oracle Cash Management
5 1 (0.18%) Oracle CRM
5 1 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 88 (15.97%) AWS
2 72 (13.07%) Azure
3 30 (5.44%) GitHub
4 23 (4.17%) AWS Lambda
5 22 (3.99%) Amazon S3
5 22 (3.99%) Serverless
6 21 (3.81%) GitHub Actions
7 17 (3.09%) Entra ID
7 17 (3.09%) GCP
8 14 (2.54%) Azure DevOps
8 14 (2.54%) OpenShift
8 14 (2.54%) SaaS
9 11 (2.00%) Amazon EC2
10 10 (1.81%) IaaS
10 10 (1.81%) PaaS
10 10 (1.81%) Power Platform
10 10 (1.81%) Snowflake
11 9 (1.63%) Azure Data Factory
12 8 (1.45%) AWS CloudFormation
13 7 (1.27%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 35 (6.35%) Firewall
2 21 (3.81%) DNS
3 18 (3.27%) HTTP
4 15 (2.72%) SAN
5 14 (2.54%) TCP/IP
6 13 (2.36%) Network Security
7 10 (1.81%) Wireless
8 9 (1.63%) NAS
9 8 (1.45%) InfiniBand
10 7 (1.27%) Ethernet
10 7 (1.27%) NetScaler
10 7 (1.27%) PuTTY
10 7 (1.27%) SSH
10 7 (1.27%) SSL
10 7 (1.27%) VPN
10 7 (1.27%) WinSCP
11 6 (1.09%) FTP
11 6 (1.09%) Wireshark
12 5 (0.91%) Ethernet VPN
12 5 (0.91%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 65 (11.80%) SQL Server
2 49 (8.89%) Relational Database
3 41 (7.44%) MySQL
4 37 (6.72%) Oracle Database
5 36 (6.53%) PostgreSQL
6 35 (6.35%) MongoDB
7 20 (3.63%) Metadata
8 18 (3.27%) Big Data
8 18 (3.27%) Data Warehouse
9 17 (3.09%) NoSQL
10 15 (2.72%) KDB
10 15 (2.72%) Kdb+
11 13 (2.36%) Amazon Aurora
11 13 (2.36%) BusinessObjects
11 13 (2.36%) DataStage
12 12 (2.18%) DB2
13 10 (1.81%) Power BI
13 10 (1.81%) RDBMS
13 10 (1.81%) Tick Data
14 9 (1.63%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 53 (9.62%) Jenkins
2 42 (7.62%) Git
3 33 (5.99%) GitLab
4 28 (5.08%) JIRA
5 12 (2.18%) Mockito
6 11 (2.00%) MSI
7 9 (1.63%) Sonatype Nexus
8 8 (1.45%) Maven
9 7 (1.27%) Bitbucket
10 6 (1.09%) Android Studio
10 6 (1.09%) Browser DevTools
10 6 (1.09%) Eclipse
10 6 (1.09%) Xcode
11 5 (0.91%) Artifactory
11 5 (0.91%) SonarQube
11 5 (0.91%) Toad
12 4 (0.73%) CA Gen
12 4 (0.73%) JUnit
13 3 (0.54%) Ant
13 3 (0.54%) Introscope
General
1 145 (26.32%) Finance
2 120 (21.78%) Social Skills
3 76 (13.79%) Banking
4 62 (11.25%) Analytical Skills
5 56 (10.16%) Public Sector
6 24 (4.36%) Investment Banking
7 20 (3.63%) Front Office
8 19 (3.45%) Documentation Skills
9 11 (2.00%) Influencing Skills
10 9 (1.63%) Financial Institution
11 8 (1.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 8 (1.45%) Telecoms
12 6 (1.09%) Advertising
12 6 (1.09%) Retail
13 5 (0.91%) 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
1 102 (18.51%) Developer
2 73 (13.25%) Senior
3 48 (8.71%) Data Engineer
4 44 (7.99%) Java Developer
4 44 (7.99%) Unix Engineer
5 43 (7.80%) Analyst
6 38 (6.90%) Support Engineer
7 28 (5.08%) DBA
8 27 (4.90%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 26 (4.72%) Senior Developer
9 26 (4.72%) Technical Support
10 24 (4.36%) Oracle DBA
10 24 (4.36%) Site Engineer
11 21 (3.81%) Administrator
11 21 (3.81%) Linux Engineer
12 19 (3.45%) DevOps Engineer
13 18 (3.27%) Software Engineer
14 17 (3.09%) Architect
14 17 (3.09%) Consultant
14 17 (3.09%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 57 (10.34%) Kafka
2 28 (5.08%) REST
3 26 (4.72%) Middleware
4 24 (4.36%) RESTful
5 22 (3.99%) XML
6 16 (2.90%) CSS
7 15 (2.72%) Spring
8 14 (2.54%) Elastic Stack
8 14 (2.54%) Oracle GoldenGate
8 14 (2.54%) Spring Boot
9 13 (2.36%) React
10 12 (2.18%) JAX-RS
11 11 (2.00%) ActiveMQ
11 11 (2.00%) AngularJS
11 11 (2.00%) HTML
11 11 (2.00%) SOAP
12 10 (1.81%) JSON
12 10 (1.81%) LDAP
12 10 (1.81%) Web Services
13 9 (1.63%) FIX Protocol
Miscellaneous
1 32 (5.81%) Onboarding
2 31 (5.63%) Linux Command Line
3 27 (4.90%) Management Information System
4 23 (4.17%) Data Centre
5 21 (3.81%) Cloud Native
6 20 (3.63%) Legacy Systems
7 17 (3.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 16 (2.90%) Fixed Income
9 15 (2.72%) Derivative
9 15 (2.72%) Mainframe
10 12 (2.18%) Equities
11 10 (1.81%) BYOD
11 10 (1.81%) Clustering
11 10 (1.81%) Public Cloud
11 10 (1.81%) Replication
11 10 (1.81%) Virtual Team
11 10 (1.81%) VSAM
12 8 (1.45%) Greenfield Project
13 7 (1.27%) Enterprise Software
13 7 (1.27%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 368 (66.79%) Linux
2 151 (27.40%) Windows
3 39 (7.08%) Solaris
4 33 (5.99%) Windows Server
5 30 (5.44%) AIX
6 22 (3.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 13 (2.36%) Mac OS X
8 7 (1.27%) Oracle Linux
9 6 (1.09%) Android
10 5 (0.91%) HPUX
11 4 (0.73%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.73%) SUSE
12 2 (0.36%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 2 (0.36%) VMS
13 1 (0.18%) CentOS
13 1 (0.18%) OpenVMS
13 1 (0.18%) Rocky
13 1 (0.18%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.18%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 118 (21.42%) Agile
2 100 (18.15%) Problem-Solving
3 98 (17.79%) CI/CD
4 82 (14.88%) Migration
5 79 (14.34%) DevOps
6 63 (11.43%) Observability
7 60 (10.89%) High Availability
8 59 (10.71%) ITIL
9 54 (9.80%) Root Cause Analysis
10 53 (9.62%) Performance Tuning
11 52 (9.44%) Disaster Recovery
12 48 (8.71%) Containerisation
13 46 (8.35%) Computer Science
14 44 (7.99%) Change Management
14 44 (7.99%) Incident Management
14 44 (7.99%) Infrastructure as Code
14 44 (7.99%) Microservices
14 44 (7.99%) Software Engineering
15 42 (7.62%) Site Reliability Engineering
16 41 (7.44%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 209 (37.93%) SQL
2 205 (37.21%) Python
3 127 (23.05%) Java
4 108 (19.60%) Shell Script
5 59 (10.71%) Bash
6 55 (9.98%) Perl
7 52 (9.44%) PL/SQL
8 48 (8.71%) PowerShell
9 40 (7.26%) JavaScript
10 29 (5.26%) C#
11 25 (4.54%) C++
12 24 (4.36%) Korn
13 11 (2.00%) COBOL
14 10 (1.81%) PHP
15 9 (1.63%) Go
16 8 (1.45%) Scala
17 4 (0.73%) Kotlin
18 3 (0.54%) C
18 3 (0.54%) HiveQL
18 3 (0.54%) Jython
Qualifications
1 165 (29.95%) Security Cleared
2 134 (24.32%) SC Cleared
3 67 (12.16%) Degree
4 30 (5.44%) Computer Science Degree
5 21 (3.81%) BPSS Clearance
6 15 (2.72%) CISSP
7 9 (1.63%) CompTIA Security+
7 9 (1.63%) DV Cleared
8 6 (1.09%) CISM
8 6 (1.09%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (0.91%) Cisco Certification
9 5 (0.91%) MCSA
9 5 (0.91%) MCSE
9 5 (0.91%) RHCE
10 4 (0.73%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 4 (0.73%) CESG Certified Professional
10 4 (0.73%) CRISC
10 4 (0.73%) GIAC
11 3 (0.54%) GSEC
11 3 (0.54%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (4.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 26 (4.72%) NIST
3 19 (3.45%) SLA
4 17 (3.09%) QA
5 10 (1.81%) Data Quality
6 5 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
7 4 (0.73%) GRC
7 4 (0.73%) ISO 31000
7 4 (0.73%) NIST 800
7 4 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 3 (0.54%) Disclosure Scotland
8 3 (0.54%) FATCA
9 2 (0.36%) GMP
9 2 (0.36%) ISO 15022
9 2 (0.36%) ISO 20022
9 2 (0.36%) NCSC
9 2 (0.36%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.36%) SEPA
10 1 (0.18%) GDPR
10 1 (0.18%) MIL-STD-1553
System Software
1 68 (12.34%) Docker
2 30 (5.44%) Active Directory
3 18 (3.27%) Oracle RAC
4 12 (2.18%) NFS
4 12 (2.18%) VMware Infrastructure
5 8 (1.45%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (1.27%) GPFS
6 7 (1.27%) KVM
7 6 (1.09%) Hyper-V
8 4 (0.73%) HDFS
8 4 (0.73%) Postfix
8 4 (0.73%) Varnish
9 3 (0.54%) Firmware
9 3 (0.54%) GridGain
9 3 (0.54%) PowerHA
9 3 (0.54%) Sendmail
9 3 (0.54%) VMware ESXi
9 3 (0.54%) vSphere
10 2 (0.36%) SRDF
11 1 (0.18%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 70 (12.70%) Kubernetes
2 65 (11.80%) Ansible
3 45 (8.17%) Grafana
4 41 (7.44%) Terraform
5 25 (4.54%) Prometheus
6 24 (4.36%) Oracle RMAN
7 16 (2.90%) Kibana
7 16 (2.90%) Puppet
8 15 (2.72%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 8 (1.45%) Data Guard
9 8 (1.45%) Single Sign-On
10 7 (1.27%) NetBackup
10 7 (1.27%) Progress Chef
11 6 (1.09%) Control-M
11 6 (1.09%) IBM BigFix
11 6 (1.09%) vCenter Server
12 5 (0.91%) CASB
12 5 (0.91%) HAProxy
12 5 (0.91%) Nessus
12 5 (0.91%) Salt
Vendors
1 205 (37.21%) Oracle
2 55 (9.98%) Splunk
3 43 (7.80%) Microsoft
4 40 (7.26%) IBM
5 26 (4.72%) CyberArk
5 26 (4.72%) ServiceNow
6 25 (4.54%) BeyondTrust
7 22 (3.99%) Informatica
8 20 (3.63%) VMware
9 19 (3.45%) Cisco
10 18 (3.27%) Red Hat
11 15 (2.72%) Sybase
12 13 (2.36%) Talend
13 9 (1.63%) CheckPoint
13 9 (1.63%) F5
13 9 (1.63%) Fujitsu
14 8 (1.45%) Aruba
14 8 (1.45%) Remedy
14 8 (1.45%) Veritas
15 7 (1.27%) AppDynamics