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

6 months to
21 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 224 135 139
Rank change year-on-year -89 +4 -58
Contract jobs citing Unix 519 599 759
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.18% 2.04% 1.71%
As % of the Operating Systems category 10.83% 14.28% 12.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 339 353 512
10th Percentile £257 £356 £333
25th Percentile £392 £422 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £456 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year -11.02% -6.82% -
75th Percentile £570 £625 £652
90th Percentile £725 £738 £780
UK excluding London median daily rate £427 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -10.11% -5.00% -7.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 9 22
10th Percentile - £39.60 £22.01
25th Percentile £21.50 £40.50 £24.54
Median hourly rate £27.94 £52.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -46.78% +31.25% -30.43%
75th Percentile £53.00 £55.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £53.93 £67.25 £67.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £52.75 £40.00
% change year-on-year -58.29% +31.88% -28.89%

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 4,792 4,195 5,983
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.93% 14.30% 13.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,142 2,763 3,988
10th Percentile £181 £200 £180
25th Percentile £290 £320 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £456
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +4.17% -11.46%
75th Percentile £565 £594 £594
90th Percentile £655 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £415 £450 £430
% change year-on-year -7.78% +4.65% -9.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 345 157 405
10th Percentile £15.09 £16.60 £13.27
25th Percentile £17.69 £18.51 £15.50
Median hourly rate £22.81 £28.00 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.54% +27.27% -16.98%
75th Percentile £60.00 £63.75 £59.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £24.66 £22.00
% change year-on-year -8.76% +12.09% -15.38%

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 21 March 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 21 March 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 21 March 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 -70 447 £461 -12.14% 86
UK excluding London -87 263 £427 -10.11% 69
London -51 212 £550 -2.22% 35
Work from Home -86 149 £454 -8.38% 46
North of England -58 83 £460 -12.38% 19
Midlands -33 68 £444 -3.59% 11
South East -36 68 £320 -33.61% 20
North West -2 66 £463 -11.90% 10
West Midlands -31 62 £444 -4.52% 7
Scotland -47 30 £420 -9.63% 4
Yorkshire -70 16 £447 -18.73% 6
South West -34 8 £700 +27.27% 4
East Midlands -34 6 £478 +13.02% 4
Wales -4 5 £265 +62.04% 1
East of England -35 3 £440 -2.22% 6
North East -17 1 £625 +11.11% 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 23 (4.43%) Confluence
2 22 (4.24%) WebLogic
3 21 (4.05%) Apache
4 16 (3.08%) Tuxedo
5 14 (2.70%) SharePoint
6 12 (2.31%) Apache Spark
7 11 (2.12%) SAS
8 8 (1.54%) CICS
9 6 (1.16%) NetWeaver
10 5 (0.96%) JBoss
10 5 (0.96%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 5 (0.96%) Tomcat
11 4 (0.77%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 4 (0.77%) Apache Airflow
11 4 (0.77%) nginx
11 4 (0.77%) Oracle Workflow
12 3 (0.58%) WebSphere
13 2 (0.39%) ArcGIS
13 2 (0.39%) IBM HTTP Server
13 2 (0.39%) Oracle Spatial
Applications
1 12 (2.31%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (2.12%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.39%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.19%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (1.16%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.96%) Oracle 11i
2 5 (0.96%) Oracle EBS
2 5 (0.96%) Oracle EBS R12
2 5 (0.96%) Summit
3 3 (0.58%) Oracle BRM
3 3 (0.58%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.39%) ION MarketView
4 2 (0.39%) Kondor
4 2 (0.39%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.19%) Oracle Applications
5 1 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.19%) Oracle Cash Management
5 1 (0.19%) Oracle CRM
5 1 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 97 (18.69%) AWS
2 75 (14.45%) Azure
3 28 (5.39%) GitHub
4 15 (2.89%) GCP
4 15 (2.89%) SaaS
5 14 (2.70%) AWS CloudFormation
5 14 (2.70%) Serverless
6 13 (2.50%) Azure DevOps
7 11 (2.12%) Amazon S3
7 11 (2.12%) AWS Lambda
8 10 (1.93%) GitHub Actions
8 10 (1.93%) Sauce Labs
9 9 (1.73%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 9 (1.73%) Azure Data Factory
9 9 (1.73%) OpenShift
10 8 (1.54%) Amazon EC2
10 8 (1.54%) Entra ID
10 8 (1.54%) Power Platform
11 7 (1.35%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 7 (1.35%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 31 (5.97%) Firewall
2 16 (3.08%) DNS
3 15 (2.89%) SSH
4 14 (2.70%) Wireless
5 13 (2.50%) SAN
6 12 (2.31%) HTTP
6 12 (2.31%) TCP/IP
7 11 (2.12%) Network Security
8 8 (1.54%) InfiniBand
8 8 (1.54%) NAS
9 7 (1.35%) Ethernet
9 7 (1.35%) NetScaler
10 6 (1.16%) VPN
11 5 (0.96%) Ethernet VPN
11 5 (0.96%) FTP
11 5 (0.96%) RTP
11 5 (0.96%) SSL
12 4 (0.77%) FIX Connectivity
12 4 (0.77%) MPLS
13 3 (0.58%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 48 (9.25%) MySQL
2 46 (8.86%) SQL Server
3 45 (8.67%) Relational Database
4 38 (7.32%) Oracle Database
5 36 (6.94%) MongoDB
6 27 (5.20%) PostgreSQL
7 19 (3.66%) KDB
7 19 (3.66%) Kdb+
7 19 (3.66%) NoSQL
8 14 (2.70%) Big Data
8 14 (2.70%) Metadata
9 12 (2.31%) Data Warehouse
9 12 (2.31%) Elasticsearch
10 11 (2.12%) Data Lake
10 11 (2.12%) Tick Data
11 10 (1.93%) Hadoop
12 9 (1.73%) DataStage
12 9 (1.73%) DB2
12 9 (1.73%) RDBMS
13 8 (1.54%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 48 (9.25%) Jenkins
2 41 (7.90%) Git
3 39 (7.51%) JIRA
4 37 (7.13%) GitLab
5 14 (2.70%) Eclipse
6 13 (2.50%) Bitbucket
6 13 (2.50%) JUnit
7 11 (2.12%) Mockito
7 11 (2.12%) MSI
7 11 (2.12%) Xcode
8 10 (1.93%) Android Studio
8 10 (1.93%) Browser DevTools
8 10 (1.93%) Maven
9 8 (1.54%) Selenium
9 8 (1.54%) Sonatype Nexus
10 5 (0.96%) SoapUI
10 5 (0.96%) SonarQube
10 5 (0.96%) Toad
11 4 (0.77%) IntelliJ
11 4 (0.77%) Subversion
General
1 143 (27.55%) Finance
2 136 (26.20%) Social Skills
3 64 (12.33%) Banking
4 62 (11.95%) Analytical Skills
5 46 (8.86%) Public Sector
6 25 (4.82%) Front Office
7 22 (4.24%) Investment Banking
8 16 (3.08%) Documentation Skills
8 16 (3.08%) Influencing Skills
9 9 (1.73%) Financial Institution
10 7 (1.35%) Telecoms
11 6 (1.16%) Advertising
11 6 (1.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 5 (0.96%) Law
12 5 (0.96%) Legal
13 4 (0.77%) Retail
14 3 (0.58%) Billing
14 3 (0.58%) Manufacturing
14 3 (0.58%) Military
14 3 (0.58%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 96 (18.50%) Developer
2 77 (14.84%) Senior
3 47 (9.06%) Analyst
4 36 (6.94%) Java Developer
5 34 (6.55%) Support Engineer
5 34 (6.55%) Unix Engineer
6 27 (5.20%) Linux Engineer
6 27 (5.20%) Technical Support
7 25 (4.82%) DBA
7 25 (4.82%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 23 (4.43%) DevOps Engineer
9 22 (4.24%) Data Engineer
9 22 (4.24%) Oracle DBA
10 21 (4.05%) Site Engineer
11 20 (3.85%) Software Engineer
12 19 (3.66%) Administrator
12 19 (3.66%) Senior Developer
12 19 (3.66%) Unix Linux Engineer
13 18 (3.47%) Kafka Engineer
14 17 (3.28%) Senior Unix Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 60 (11.56%) Kafka
2 33 (6.36%) REST
3 27 (5.20%) XML
4 24 (4.62%) Middleware
5 22 (4.24%) React
6 20 (3.85%) SOAP
7 18 (3.47%) JSON
8 17 (3.28%) CSS
9 16 (3.08%) AngularJS
10 15 (2.89%) Elastic Stack
10 15 (2.89%) Spring
11 13 (2.50%) Oracle GoldenGate
12 12 (2.31%) HTML
13 10 (1.93%) Ajax
13 10 (1.93%) FIX Protocol
13 10 (1.93%) GraphQL
13 10 (1.93%) JAX-RS
13 10 (1.93%) Spring Boot
14 9 (1.73%) HTML5
14 9 (1.73%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 28 (5.39%) Management Information System
2 23 (4.43%) Cloud Native
3 21 (4.05%) Linux Command Line
4 20 (3.85%) Onboarding
5 18 (3.47%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 17 (3.28%) Fixed Income
7 16 (3.08%) Data Centre
8 15 (2.89%) Legacy Systems
9 13 (2.50%) Derivative
10 12 (2.31%) Equities
11 11 (2.12%) Greenfield Project
12 10 (1.93%) Algorithms
12 10 (1.93%) Mobile App
12 10 (1.93%) Security Posture
13 9 (1.73%) Mainframe
13 9 (1.73%) Public Cloud
14 8 (1.54%) BYOD
14 8 (1.54%) Enterprise Cloud
14 8 (1.54%) Replication
14 8 (1.54%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 335 (64.55%) Linux
2 159 (30.64%) Windows
3 29 (5.59%) Windows Server
4 25 (4.82%) Solaris
5 23 (4.43%) AIX
6 22 (4.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 11 (2.12%) Mac OS X
8 10 (1.93%) Android
9 5 (0.96%) Mac OS
10 3 (0.58%) CentOS
11 2 (0.39%) Oracle Linux
11 2 (0.39%) VMS
12 1 (0.19%) OpenVMS
12 1 (0.19%) Rocky
12 1 (0.19%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 1 (0.19%) Ubuntu
12 1 (0.19%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.19%) Windows 7
12 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2003
12 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 137 (26.40%) Agile
2 106 (20.42%) Problem-Solving
3 94 (18.11%) DevOps
4 81 (15.61%) CI/CD
5 57 (10.98%) Migration
6 55 (10.60%) Observability
7 53 (10.21%) Computer Science
8 52 (10.02%) ITIL
9 49 (9.44%) Incident Response
10 48 (9.25%) Software Engineering
11 46 (8.86%) Containerisation
12 45 (8.67%) OO
12 45 (8.67%) Performance Tuning
13 44 (8.48%) Microservices
14 43 (8.29%) Data Modelling
15 42 (8.09%) Infrastructure as Code
16 41 (7.90%) Analytics
17 39 (7.51%) Root Cause Analysis
17 39 (7.51%) Site Reliability Engineering
18 38 (7.32%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 201 (38.73%) SQL
2 184 (35.45%) Python
3 129 (24.86%) Java
4 101 (19.46%) Shell Script
5 62 (11.95%) Bash
6 60 (11.56%) Perl
7 37 (7.13%) C++
7 37 (7.13%) JavaScript
8 36 (6.94%) PowerShell
9 32 (6.17%) PL/SQL
10 26 (5.01%) C#
11 24 (4.62%) Korn
12 10 (1.93%) PHP
13 9 (1.73%) Go
13 9 (1.73%) Scala
14 8 (1.54%) COBOL
15 3 (0.58%) HiveQL
16 2 (0.39%) C-shell
16 2 (0.39%) Jython
16 2 (0.39%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 127 (24.47%) Security Cleared
2 97 (18.69%) SC Cleared
3 74 (14.26%) Degree
4 39 (7.51%) Computer Science Degree
5 16 (3.08%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (1.54%) CISSP
7 6 (1.16%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 6 (1.16%) Microsoft Certification
7 6 (1.16%) OSCP
8 5 (0.96%) CompTIA Security+
8 5 (0.96%) DV Cleared
8 5 (0.96%) GPEN
8 5 (0.96%) GWAPT
8 5 (0.96%) MCSA
8 5 (0.96%) MCSE
9 4 (0.77%) ISTQB
9 4 (0.77%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 4 (0.77%) PMI Certification
10 3 (0.58%) AWS Certification
10 3 (0.58%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (3.47%) SLA
2 16 (3.08%) QA
3 13 (2.50%) Data Quality
4 9 (1.73%) NIST
5 7 (1.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (0.58%) FATCA
6 3 (0.58%) GMP
6 3 (0.58%) SEPA
7 2 (0.39%) GDPR
7 2 (0.39%) ISO 15022
7 2 (0.39%) ISO 20022
7 2 (0.39%) NCSC
7 2 (0.39%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.19%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.19%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 68 (13.10%) Docker
2 16 (3.08%) Active Directory
3 14 (2.70%) Oracle RAC
4 9 (1.73%) VMware Infrastructure
5 7 (1.35%) KVM
6 6 (1.16%) Hyper-V
6 6 (1.16%) NFS
6 6 (1.16%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (0.96%) GPFS
8 4 (0.77%) HDFS
9 3 (0.58%) Firmware
9 3 (0.58%) GridGain
9 3 (0.58%) PowerHA
9 3 (0.58%) VMware NSX
10 2 (0.39%) Postfix
10 2 (0.39%) SRDF
10 2 (0.39%) Varnish
10 2 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
10 2 (0.39%) vSphere
11 1 (0.19%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 73 (14.07%) Kubernetes
2 65 (12.52%) Ansible
3 50 (9.63%) Terraform
4 38 (7.32%) Grafana
5 23 (4.43%) Prometheus
6 22 (4.24%) Puppet
7 16 (3.08%) Oracle RMAN
8 15 (2.89%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 11 (2.12%) Kibana
10 7 (1.35%) NetBackup
11 6 (1.16%) Control-M
11 6 (1.16%) IBM BigFix
11 6 (1.16%) Progress Chef
11 6 (1.16%) Red Hat Satellite
11 6 (1.16%) vCenter Server
12 5 (0.96%) CASB
12 5 (0.96%) Dell DRAC
12 5 (0.96%) Nessus
12 5 (0.96%) Salt
12 5 (0.96%) SCCM
Vendors
1 168 (32.37%) Oracle
2 62 (11.95%) Splunk
3 51 (9.83%) Microsoft
4 42 (8.09%) IBM
5 30 (5.78%) ServiceNow
6 18 (3.47%) VMware
7 16 (3.08%) Cisco
8 15 (2.89%) Red Hat
9 14 (2.70%) Sybase
10 12 (2.31%) CyberArk
11 11 (2.12%) Talend
12 10 (1.93%) Informatica
12 10 (1.93%) Remedy
13 9 (1.73%) Fujitsu
14 8 (1.54%) Aruba
14 8 (1.54%) Dell
14 8 (1.54%) Veritas
15 7 (1.35%) Ab Initio
15 7 (1.35%) AppDynamics
15 7 (1.35%) CheckPoint