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

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 223 164 134
Rank change year-on-year -59 -30 -49
Contract jobs citing Unix 580 497 748
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.19% 1.73% 1.75%
As % of the Operating Systems category 12.14% 12.50% 12.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 346 302 511
10th Percentile £275 £360 £333
25th Percentile £401 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £485 £536
Median % change year-on-year -3.25% -9.56% -2.55%
75th Percentile £552 £600 £650
90th Percentile £672 £659 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £457 £467 £450
% change year-on-year -2.25% +3.78% -16.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 6 20
10th Percentile £21.50 £43.87 £22.28
25th Percentile £27.88 £52.19 £25.64
Median hourly rate £52.50 £55.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +37.50% -32.85%
75th Percentile £53.75 £66.25 £42.19
90th Percentile £55.00 £73.13 £65.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £55.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -13.56% +37.50% -31.73%

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 4,779 3,975 5,781
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.77% 13.82% 13.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,055 2,624 3,916
10th Percentile £188 £200 £185
25th Percentile £313 £313 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £467 £475
Median % change year-on-year -1.66% -1.74% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £650 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
% change year-on-year - - -3.12%
Number of hourly rates quoted 347 176 403
10th Percentile £15.30 £15.17 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.44 £15.50
Median hourly rate £35.00 £22.00 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.09% -2.22% -47.06%
75th Percentile £65.00 £54.06 £60.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.07 £19.14 £22.50
% change year-on-year +78.02% -14.96% -40.00%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 -45 490 £469 -3.79% 56
UK excluding London -43 351 £457 -2.25% 46
London -80 176 £600 +20.00% 22
Work from Home -18 174 £469 +1.96% 29
North of England -28 107 £475 +5.56% 9
South East -7 103 £392 -28.73% 22
Midlands +7 94 £459 -0.22% 2
West Midlands +6 89 £459 -0.22% 1
North West +12 83 £479 +9.95% 8
Scotland -44 42 £425 -10.53% 1
Yorkshire -60 19 £461 -12.14%
North East -23 5 £480 +28.00% 1
South West -32 5 £600 +64.38% 7
East of England -36 5 £300 -33.33% 4
Wales -9 4 - - 1
East Midlands -28 4 £494 +23.28% 1

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 29 (5.00%) Confluence
2 24 (4.14%) SAS
3 20 (3.45%) WebLogic
4 18 (3.10%) Apache
5 16 (2.76%) Apache Spark
5 16 (2.76%) Tuxedo
6 14 (2.41%) Apache Airflow
7 10 (1.72%) CICS
8 7 (1.21%) NetWeaver
9 6 (1.03%) OpenStack
9 6 (1.03%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 5 (0.86%) SharePoint
11 4 (0.69%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 3 (0.52%) IBM HTTP Server
12 3 (0.52%) Oracle Workflow
12 3 (0.52%) WebSphere
12 3 (0.52%) WebSphere Application Server
13 2 (0.34%) ArcGIS
13 2 (0.34%) Oracle HTTP Server
13 2 (0.34%) Oracle Spatial
Applications
1 7 (1.21%) Microsoft Excel
1 7 (1.21%) Notepad++
2 4 (0.69%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 8 (1.38%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.03%) Summit
3 5 (0.86%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.52%) Oracle EBS R12
4 3 (0.52%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.34%) FLEXCUBE
5 2 (0.34%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 111 (19.14%) AWS
2 72 (12.41%) Azure
3 30 (5.17%) GitHub
4 23 (3.97%) AWS Lambda
4 23 (3.97%) GitHub Actions
5 22 (3.79%) Entra ID
5 22 (3.79%) Serverless
6 21 (3.62%) Amazon S3
7 20 (3.45%) OpenShift
8 19 (3.28%) GCP
9 15 (2.59%) IaaS
9 15 (2.59%) PaaS
10 14 (2.41%) SaaS
11 12 (2.07%) Azure DevOps
12 11 (1.90%) Power Platform
13 10 (1.72%) Amazon EC2
13 10 (1.72%) Snowflake
14 8 (1.38%) AWS CloudFormation
14 8 (1.38%) Azure Data Factory
14 8 (1.38%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 30 (5.17%) Firewall
2 26 (4.48%) DNS
3 20 (3.45%) SAN
4 14 (2.41%) NAS
4 14 (2.41%) TCP/IP
5 9 (1.55%) HTTP
5 9 (1.55%) Wireless
6 8 (1.38%) Network Security
6 8 (1.38%) SSH
6 8 (1.38%) Wireshark
7 7 (1.21%) 5G
7 7 (1.21%) Ethernet
7 7 (1.21%) FTP
7 7 (1.21%) InfiniBand
7 7 (1.21%) NetScaler
7 7 (1.21%) PuTTY
7 7 (1.21%) SSL
7 7 (1.21%) VPN
7 7 (1.21%) WinSCP
8 6 (1.03%) VoWiFi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 66 (11.38%) SQL Server
2 44 (7.59%) Relational Database
3 36 (6.21%) MySQL
4 34 (5.86%) Oracle Database
5 33 (5.69%) MongoDB
5 33 (5.69%) PostgreSQL
6 19 (3.28%) Data Warehouse
6 19 (3.28%) Metadata
7 16 (2.76%) Big Data
8 15 (2.59%) KDB
9 14 (2.41%) Amazon Aurora
9 14 (2.41%) DB2
9 14 (2.41%) NoSQL
10 13 (2.24%) BusinessObjects
10 13 (2.24%) DataStage
10 13 (2.24%) Kdb+
11 11 (1.90%) Power BI
12 10 (1.72%) Sybase ASE
13 9 (1.55%) Oracle Database 11g
13 9 (1.55%) Oracle Database 12c
Development Applications
1 54 (9.31%) Jenkins
2 52 (8.97%) GitLab
3 44 (7.59%) JIRA
4 43 (7.41%) Git
5 20 (3.45%) Artifactory
6 11 (1.90%) Mockito
6 11 (1.90%) MSI
7 8 (1.38%) Bitbucket
7 8 (1.38%) Maven
7 8 (1.38%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (1.03%) Android Studio
8 6 (1.03%) Browser DevTools
8 6 (1.03%) Eclipse
8 6 (1.03%) Xcode
9 4 (0.69%) CA Gen
9 4 (0.69%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.52%) CircleCI
10 3 (0.52%) Introscope
10 3 (0.52%) REST Assured
10 3 (0.52%) Selenium
General
1 138 (23.79%) Finance
2 119 (20.52%) Social Skills
3 84 (14.48%) Banking
4 69 (11.90%) Analytical Skills
5 57 (9.83%) Public Sector
6 25 (4.31%) Investment Banking
7 21 (3.62%) Documentation Skills
8 19 (3.28%) Front Office
9 10 (1.72%) Influencing Skills
9 10 (1.72%) Telecoms
10 8 (1.38%) Financial Institution
10 8 (1.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 7 (1.21%) Retail
12 6 (1.03%) Advertising
13 5 (0.86%) Law
13 5 (0.86%) Military
14 2 (0.34%) Billing
14 2 (0.34%) Local Government
14 2 (0.34%) Organisational Skills
15 1 (0.17%) International Banking
Job Titles
1 94 (16.21%) Developer
2 73 (12.59%) Senior
3 63 (10.86%) Data Engineer
4 55 (9.48%) Unix Engineer
5 44 (7.59%) Analyst
6 42 (7.24%) Support Engineer
7 37 (6.38%) Java Developer
8 31 (5.34%) DBA
9 27 (4.66%) Senior Developer
9 27 (4.66%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 25 (4.31%) Oracle DBA
10 25 (4.31%) Technical Support
11 23 (3.97%) Administrator
11 23 (3.97%) Site Engineer
12 22 (3.79%) Architect
13 21 (3.62%) Python Developer
14 19 (3.28%) Linux Engineer
15 18 (3.10%) Software Engineer
16 17 (2.93%) DevOps Engineer
17 16 (2.76%) Technical Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 54 (9.31%) Kafka
2 33 (5.69%) REST
3 26 (4.48%) RESTful
4 24 (4.14%) Middleware
5 16 (2.76%) CSS
5 16 (2.76%) XML
6 15 (2.59%) Spring
7 14 (2.41%) Spring Boot
8 13 (2.24%) Oracle GoldenGate
8 13 (2.24%) React
9 12 (2.07%) Web Services
10 11 (1.90%) AngularJS
10 11 (1.90%) Elastic Stack
10 11 (1.90%) HTML
10 11 (1.90%) JAX-RS
11 10 (1.72%) ActiveMQ
11 10 (1.72%) LDAP
11 10 (1.72%) Pandas
11 10 (1.72%) RabbitMQ
12 9 (1.55%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 39 (6.72%) Onboarding
2 33 (5.69%) Linux Command Line
3 27 (4.66%) Management Information System
4 26 (4.48%) Legacy Systems
5 23 (3.97%) Data Centre
6 17 (2.93%) Cloud Native
6 17 (2.93%) Mainframe
7 15 (2.59%) Derivative
8 13 (2.24%) Fixed Income
8 13 (2.24%) Replication
9 12 (2.07%) Clustering
10 11 (1.90%) Equities
10 11 (1.90%) Public Cloud
11 10 (1.72%) BYOD
11 10 (1.72%) Greenfield Project
11 10 (1.72%) Virtual Team
11 10 (1.72%) VSAM
12 9 (1.55%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 8 (1.38%) Enterprise Software
13 8 (1.38%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 373 (64.31%) Linux
2 162 (27.93%) Windows
3 52 (8.97%) Solaris
4 38 (6.55%) Windows Server
5 28 (4.83%) AIX
6 23 (3.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 12 (2.07%) Mac OS X
8 8 (1.38%) Oracle Linux
9 6 (1.03%) Android
9 6 (1.03%) HPUX
10 5 (0.86%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.69%) SUSE
12 2 (0.34%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 2 (0.34%) VMS
13 1 (0.17%) CentOS
13 1 (0.17%) OpenVMS
13 1 (0.17%) Rocky
13 1 (0.17%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.17%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 125 (21.55%) Agile
2 110 (18.97%) CI/CD
3 105 (18.10%) Problem-Solving
4 96 (16.55%) Migration
5 80 (13.79%) DevOps
6 71 (12.24%) High Availability
7 68 (11.72%) ITIL
8 62 (10.69%) Disaster Recovery
9 60 (10.34%) Observability
10 59 (10.17%) Root Cause Analysis
10 59 (10.17%) Test Automation
11 52 (8.97%) Incident Management
11 52 (8.97%) Performance Tuning
12 49 (8.45%) Data Modelling
13 47 (8.10%) Change Management
14 44 (7.59%) Computer Science
14 44 (7.59%) Infrastructure as Code
14 44 (7.59%) Runbook
14 44 (7.59%) Software Engineering
15 43 (7.41%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 220 (37.93%) SQL
2 219 (37.76%) Python
3 107 (18.45%) Java
4 98 (16.90%) Shell Script
5 60 (10.34%) Bash
5 60 (10.34%) PL/SQL
6 54 (9.31%) PowerShell
7 46 (7.93%) Perl
8 38 (6.55%) JavaScript
9 28 (4.83%) C++
10 25 (4.31%) C#
11 19 (3.28%) Korn
12 12 (2.07%) COBOL
13 9 (1.55%) Go
14 8 (1.38%) Scala
15 4 (0.69%) Kotlin
15 4 (0.69%) Ruby
15 4 (0.69%) T-SQL
16 3 (0.52%) C
16 3 (0.52%) R
Qualifications
1 198 (34.14%) Security Cleared
2 166 (28.62%) SC Cleared
3 73 (12.59%) Degree
4 29 (5.00%) Computer Science Degree
5 25 (4.31%) BPSS Clearance
6 17 (2.93%) CISSP
7 10 (1.72%) DV Cleared
8 9 (1.55%) CompTIA Security+
9 8 (1.38%) CISM
10 7 (1.21%) Cisco Certification
11 6 (1.03%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 6 (1.03%) CESG Certified Professional
11 6 (1.03%) CRISC
11 6 (1.03%) GIAC
11 6 (1.03%) Microsoft Certification
12 5 (0.86%) MCSA
12 5 (0.86%) MCSE
12 5 (0.86%) RHCE
12 5 (0.86%) SANS
13 4 (0.69%) GSEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (5.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 30 (5.17%) NIST
3 22 (3.79%) SLA
4 16 (2.76%) QA
5 9 (1.55%) Data Quality
6 7 (1.21%) Cyber Essentials
7 6 (1.03%) ISO 31000
8 4 (0.69%) GRC
8 4 (0.69%) ISO 20022
8 4 (0.69%) NIST 800
8 4 (0.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 3 (0.52%) Disclosure Scotland
9 3 (0.52%) FATCA
10 2 (0.34%) GDPR
10 2 (0.34%) GMP
10 2 (0.34%) ISO 15022
10 2 (0.34%) NCSC
10 2 (0.34%) PCI DSS
11 1 (0.17%) MIL-STD-1553
11 1 (0.17%) SEPA
System Software
1 63 (10.86%) Docker
2 36 (6.21%) Active Directory
3 19 (3.28%) Oracle RAC
4 16 (2.76%) NFS
4 16 (2.76%) VMware Infrastructure
5 9 (1.55%) Virtual Machines
6 8 (1.38%) GPFS
7 6 (1.03%) Hyper-V
7 6 (1.03%) KVM
7 6 (1.03%) Postfix
7 6 (1.03%) Varnish
8 5 (0.86%) VMware ESXi
8 5 (0.86%) vSphere
9 4 (0.69%) HDFS
9 4 (0.69%) Sendmail
10 3 (0.52%) Firmware
10 3 (0.52%) GridGain
10 3 (0.52%) PowerHA
10 3 (0.52%) Veritas Volume Manager
11 2 (0.34%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 72 (12.41%) Kubernetes
2 63 (10.86%) Ansible
3 42 (7.24%) Grafana
4 38 (6.55%) Terraform
5 29 (5.00%) Oracle RMAN
6 25 (4.31%) Prometheus
7 15 (2.59%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 14 (2.41%) Kibana
8 14 (2.41%) Puppet
9 11 (1.90%) Data Guard
9 11 (1.90%) Progress Chef
10 10 (1.72%) NetBackup
11 9 (1.55%) Single Sign-On
12 6 (1.03%) Control-M
12 6 (1.03%) HAProxy
12 6 (1.03%) IBM BigFix
12 6 (1.03%) Tivoli
12 6 (1.03%) vCenter Server
13 5 (0.86%) Nessus
13 5 (0.86%) Salt
Vendors
1 226 (38.97%) Oracle
2 55 (9.48%) Splunk
3 40 (6.90%) Microsoft
4 38 (6.55%) IBM
5 33 (5.69%) Talend
6 30 (5.17%) CyberArk
7 28 (4.83%) ServiceNow
8 27 (4.66%) BeyondTrust
9 26 (4.48%) VMware
10 25 (4.31%) Informatica
11 21 (3.62%) Cisco
12 20 (3.45%) Denodo
13 18 (3.10%) Red Hat
14 17 (2.93%) Sybase
15 13 (2.24%) Veritas
16 12 (2.07%) Dynatrace
17 9 (1.55%) CheckPoint
17 9 (1.55%) F5
17 9 (1.55%) Fujitsu
17 9 (1.55%) SAP