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 22 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 163 121 104
Rank change year-on-year -42 -17 -13
Contract jobs citing Unix 590 748 1,128
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.76% 2.01% 2.37%
As % of the Operating Systems category 12.82% 14.23% 15.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 390 465 789
10th Percentile £268 £350 £363
25th Percentile £377 £403 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £491 £507 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.16% -7.82% -
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £453 £450 £500
% change year-on-year +0.67% -10.00% -5.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 6 10
10th Percentile £31.85 - £44.95
25th Percentile £40.25 £23.80 £54.02
Median hourly rate £54.50 £25.65 £70.36
Median % change year-on-year +112.48% -63.54% +0.51%
75th Percentile £62.38 £28.75 £77.88
90th Percentile £66.95 £33.38 £78.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.25 £27.50 £75.00
% change year-on-year +126.36% -63.33% +7.14%

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 4,602 5,257 7,319
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 13.74% 14.11% 15.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,939 3,233 4,976
10th Percentile £185 £200 £185
25th Percentile £275 £325 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £615
90th Percentile £650 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £420 £449 £450
% change year-on-year -6.35% -0.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 324 240 354
10th Percentile £15.25 £16.25 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.51 £22.19 £17.75
Median hourly rate £24.00 £52.50 £39.80
Median % change year-on-year -54.29% +31.91% +65.83%
75th Percentile £42.39 £68.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.00 £70.00 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.56 £55.65 £27.50
% change year-on-year -59.46% +102.36% +24.55%

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 22 October 2025.

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 22 October 2025.

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 22 October 2025. 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 -47 481 £498 -5.24% 249
UK excluding London -33 311 £453 +0.67% 188
London -27 239 £542 -4.83% 119
Work from Home -68 145 £475 -1.45% 185
North of England -6 85 £473 -14.00% 31
South East -11 80 £344 -18.15% 87
Scotland +10 74 £475 +23.78% 4
Midlands -52 48 £495 -5.71% 23
North West -3 45 £449 -14.37% 16
West Midlands -45 42 £515 -6.36% 11
Yorkshire -4 38 £590 +1.72% 14
South West 0 14 £725 +56.76% 19
East Midlands -13 6 £393 +5.58% 11
East of England -18 6 £500 +11.11% 23
Northern Ireland -8 5 - - 2
North East -6 4 £500 +42.86% 1
Wales +1 2 £283 +75.38% 4

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 31 (5.25%) Apache
2 27 (4.58%) Confluence
3 26 (4.41%) WebLogic
4 21 (3.56%) JBoss
5 16 (2.71%) WebSphere
6 15 (2.54%) SharePoint
7 14 (2.37%) Tomcat
8 9 (1.53%) IIS
8 9 (1.53%) Oracle Workflow
9 8 (1.36%) iPlanet
9 8 (1.36%) WebSphere Application Server
10 7 (1.19%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 5 (0.85%) Microsoft Exchange
12 4 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
12 4 (0.68%) CICS
12 4 (0.68%) NetWeaver
13 3 (0.51%) Apache Spark
14 2 (0.34%) nginx
14 2 (0.34%) Oracle HTTP Server
15 1 (0.17%) OpenEdge
Applications
1 15 (2.54%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.68%) Microsoft Project
2 4 (0.68%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 11 (1.86%) Oracle EBS
1 11 (1.86%) Oracle EBS R12
2 5 (0.85%) Kondor
2 5 (0.85%) Oracle Assets
2 5 (0.85%) Oracle BPM
2 5 (0.85%) Oracle Payables
3 4 (0.68%) Oracle 11i
3 4 (0.68%) Oracle ERP
3 4 (0.68%) Oracle General Ledger
3 4 (0.68%) SAP IBP
4 3 (0.51%) ION MarketView
4 3 (0.51%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.34%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.17%) Finacle
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle BRM
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle E-Business Tax
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.17%) SAP GRC
6 1 (0.17%) SAP S/4HANA
6 1 (0.17%) StreamServe
Cloud Services
1 157 (26.61%) AWS
2 107 (18.14%) Azure
3 42 (7.12%) GCP
4 31 (5.25%) GitHub
5 24 (4.07%) OpenShift
5 24 (4.07%) SaaS
6 21 (3.56%) AWS CloudFormation
7 18 (3.05%) Azure Monitor
8 16 (2.71%) Sauce Labs
9 15 (2.54%) Amazon EC2
9 15 (2.54%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 14 (2.37%) Azure DevOps
11 12 (2.03%) Amazon S3
12 11 (1.86%) OCI
13 9 (1.53%) Amazon ECS
13 9 (1.53%) IaaS
13 9 (1.53%) Serverless
14 8 (1.36%) AWS Lambda
14 8 (1.36%) Cloud Computing
14 8 (1.36%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 39 (6.61%) Firewall
2 36 (6.10%) TCP/IP
3 32 (5.42%) DNS
4 28 (4.75%) HTTP
5 20 (3.39%) SSL
6 18 (3.05%) Wireless
7 17 (2.88%) SSH
8 14 (2.37%) SAN
9 12 (2.03%) Internet
10 11 (1.86%) VPN
11 9 (1.53%) DHCP
11 9 (1.53%) Kerberos
12 8 (1.36%) Network Security
13 7 (1.19%) Wireshark
14 4 (0.68%) FTP
14 4 (0.68%) LAN
14 4 (0.68%) MPLS
15 3 (0.51%) GPRS
15 3 (0.51%) GSM
15 3 (0.51%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 53 (8.98%) Relational Database
2 44 (7.46%) MySQL
3 43 (7.29%) MongoDB
3 43 (7.29%) Oracle Database
4 22 (3.73%) NoSQL
4 22 (3.73%) SQL Server
5 16 (2.71%) DB2
5 16 (2.71%) Elasticsearch
6 15 (2.54%) PostgreSQL
7 13 (2.20%) Amazon RDS
8 12 (2.03%) KDB
9 11 (1.86%) Data Warehouse
10 10 (1.69%) BigQuery
10 10 (1.69%) Oracle Reports
11 9 (1.53%) Kdb+
12 8 (1.36%) Amazon Redshift
12 8 (1.36%) Big Data
12 8 (1.36%) Data Lake
12 8 (1.36%) RDBMS
13 7 (1.19%) Redis
Development Applications
1 84 (14.24%) Jenkins
2 82 (13.90%) Git
3 51 (8.64%) JIRA
4 32 (5.42%) GitLab
4 32 (5.42%) JUnit
5 30 (5.08%) Maven
6 27 (4.58%) Sonatype Nexus
7 24 (4.07%) Mockito
8 23 (3.90%) Eclipse
9 22 (3.73%) Xcode
10 18 (3.05%) Gradle
11 17 (2.88%) Browser DevTools
12 16 (2.71%) Android Studio
13 13 (2.20%) Bitbucket
13 13 (2.20%) Selenium
14 12 (2.03%) SonarQube
15 11 (1.86%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 11 (1.86%) IntelliJ
15 11 (1.86%) SoapUI
16 10 (1.69%) Postman
General
1 192 (32.54%) Social Skills
2 159 (26.95%) Finance
3 87 (14.75%) Analytical Skills
4 58 (9.83%) Banking
5 40 (6.78%) Public Sector
6 28 (4.75%) Financial Institution
7 20 (3.39%) Front Office
8 9 (1.53%) Documentation Skills
8 9 (1.53%) Investment Banking
9 8 (1.36%) Telecoms
10 7 (1.19%) Back Office
10 7 (1.19%) General Ledger
10 7 (1.19%) Influencing Skills
11 6 (1.02%) Military
12 5 (0.85%) Legal
12 5 (0.85%) Manufacturing
13 4 (0.68%) Marketing
14 3 (0.51%) Law
14 3 (0.51%) Organisational Skills
14 3 (0.51%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 128 (21.69%) Developer
2 101 (17.12%) Senior
3 55 (9.32%) Java Developer
4 43 (7.29%) Analyst
5 37 (6.27%) Technical Support
6 34 (5.76%) DevOps Engineer
7 29 (4.92%) Senior Developer
7 29 (4.92%) Support Engineer
8 27 (4.58%) Technical Engineer
9 25 (4.24%) Architect
10 23 (3.90%) Linux Engineer
10 23 (3.90%) Technical Support Engineer
11 21 (3.56%) Software Engineer
12 20 (3.39%) Platform Engineer
12 20 (3.39%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 19 (3.22%) Administrator
13 19 (3.22%) Consultant
14 18 (3.05%) Data Engineer
14 18 (3.05%) Lead
14 18 (3.05%) Senior Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 76 (12.88%) Kafka
2 46 (7.80%) SOAP
3 42 (7.12%) REST
4 37 (6.27%) React
5 36 (6.10%) Spring
6 34 (5.76%) Middleware
7 33 (5.59%) AngularJS
8 30 (5.08%) CSS
9 27 (4.58%) XML
10 25 (4.24%) HTML
11 24 (4.07%) Spring Boot
12 23 (3.90%) JSON
13 19 (3.22%) ActiveMQ
13 19 (3.22%) J2EE
14 17 (2.88%) Ajax
14 17 (2.88%) GraphQL
14 17 (2.88%) Hibernate
14 17 (2.88%) LDAP
15 16 (2.71%) JAX-RS
16 13 (2.20%) Spring Cloud
Miscellaneous
1 38 (6.44%) Management Information System
2 24 (4.07%) Data Centre
2 24 (4.07%) Onboarding
3 23 (3.90%) Distributed Systems
4 19 (3.22%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 19 (3.22%) Mobile App
4 19 (3.22%) Security Posture
5 16 (2.71%) Cloud Native
6 15 (2.54%) Data Protection Act
6 15 (2.54%) Linux Command Line
7 13 (2.20%) Tandem
8 12 (2.03%) Fixed Income
8 12 (2.03%) Replication
9 11 (1.86%) Algorithms
9 11 (1.86%) Legacy Applications
10 10 (1.69%) Enterprise Software
10 10 (1.69%) FPGA
10 10 (1.69%) Private Cloud
11 9 (1.53%) Data Structures
11 9 (1.53%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 422 (71.53%) Linux
2 187 (31.69%) Windows
3 30 (5.08%) Windows Server
4 29 (4.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 22 (3.73%) Mac OS X
6 20 (3.39%) CentOS
7 18 (3.05%) Android
8 15 (2.54%) Solaris
9 14 (2.37%) Mac OS
10 10 (1.69%) AIX
11 9 (1.53%) Ubuntu
12 3 (0.51%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 3 (0.51%) VMS
12 3 (0.51%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.34%) Apple iOS
13 2 (0.34%) Oracle Linux
14 1 (0.17%) Debian
14 1 (0.17%) Windows 10
14 1 (0.17%) Windows 7
14 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 176 (29.83%) Agile
2 123 (20.85%) Problem-Solving
3 121 (20.51%) CI/CD
4 112 (18.98%) DevOps
5 72 (12.20%) Microservices
6 68 (11.53%) OO
7 63 (10.68%) Incident Response
8 60 (10.17%) Test Automation
9 56 (9.49%) Software Engineering
10 53 (8.98%) Infrastructure as Code
11 52 (8.81%) Continuous Improvement
12 50 (8.47%) Computer Science
13 45 (7.63%) Containerisation
13 45 (7.63%) TDD
14 42 (7.12%) ITIL
14 42 (7.12%) Migration
15 41 (6.95%) Observability
16 38 (6.44%) Mentoring
17 37 (6.27%) Analytics
17 37 (6.27%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 249 (42.20%) Python
2 211 (35.76%) SQL
3 166 (28.14%) Java
4 114 (19.32%) Shell Script
5 91 (15.42%) Perl
6 61 (10.34%) JavaScript
7 60 (10.17%) Bash
8 51 (8.64%) C++
9 36 (6.10%) PowerShell
10 28 (4.75%) PL/SQL
11 24 (4.07%) C#
12 15 (2.54%) Groovy
13 14 (2.37%) C
14 13 (2.20%) Go
15 11 (1.86%) TypeScript
16 10 (1.69%) Scala
16 10 (1.69%) SystemVerilog
17 9 (1.53%) Search Processing Language
18 8 (1.36%) Korn
18 8 (1.36%) Tcl
Qualifications
1 83 (14.07%) Security Cleared
2 79 (13.39%) Degree
3 60 (10.17%) SC Cleared
4 38 (6.44%) Computer Science Degree
5 21 (3.56%) BPSS Clearance
6 17 (2.88%) AWS Certification
7 12 (2.03%) CISSP
8 10 (1.69%) DV Cleared
8 10 (1.69%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 8 (1.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 7 (1.19%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 7 (1.19%) Cisco Certification
10 7 (1.19%) ISTQB
10 7 (1.19%) Microsoft Certification
11 5 (0.85%) CCNP
11 5 (0.85%) CompTIA Security+
11 5 (0.85%) MCSA
11 5 (0.85%) MCSE
11 5 (0.85%) OSCP
12 4 (0.68%) GWAPT
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 23 (3.90%) QA
2 8 (1.36%) SLA
3 7 (1.19%) NCSC
4 6 (1.02%) Disclosure Scotland
5 4 (0.68%) HIPAA
5 4 (0.68%) SEPA
5 4 (0.68%) SOC 2
6 3 (0.51%) Accessibility
6 3 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials
6 3 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 3 (0.51%) Data Quality
6 3 (0.51%) NIST
7 2 (0.34%) Basel III
7 2 (0.34%) GMP
7 2 (0.34%) MiFID
7 2 (0.34%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.17%) Def Stans
8 1 (0.17%) IEC 61508
8 1 (0.17%) MISRA C
8 1 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 78 (13.22%) Docker
2 29 (4.92%) Active Directory
3 13 (2.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (1.36%) Tivoli Directory Server
5 7 (1.19%) Oracle RAC
6 5 (0.85%) KVM
7 4 (0.68%) Veritas Cluster Server
8 3 (0.51%) Hyper-V
8 3 (0.51%) NFS
8 3 (0.51%) QEMU
8 3 (0.51%) Virtual Servers
8 3 (0.51%) VMware NSX
8 3 (0.51%) vSphere
9 2 (0.34%) GridGain
10 1 (0.17%) RACF
10 1 (0.17%) Samba
10 1 (0.17%) Terminal Services
10 1 (0.17%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
Systems Management
1 71 (12.03%) Kubernetes
2 65 (11.02%) Terraform
3 58 (9.83%) Ansible
4 34 (5.76%) Puppet
5 25 (4.24%) Grafana
6 22 (3.73%) Prometheus
7 17 (2.88%) Progress Chef
8 9 (1.53%) ITRS Geneos
8 9 (1.53%) Tivoli
9 8 (1.36%) CA Single Sign-On
9 8 (1.36%) CA Wily
9 8 (1.36%) Packer
10 7 (1.19%) Jamf Pro
10 7 (1.19%) Nessus
10 7 (1.19%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
10 7 (1.19%) Oracle RMAN
10 7 (1.19%) Single Sign-On
11 6 (1.02%) Control-M
11 6 (1.02%) Kibana
12 5 (0.85%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 172 (29.15%) Oracle
2 98 (16.61%) Splunk
3 78 (13.22%) Microsoft
4 43 (7.29%) IBM
5 32 (5.42%) ServiceNow
6 30 (5.08%) VMware
7 29 (4.92%) Dynatrace
8 26 (4.41%) Red Hat
9 24 (4.07%) AppDynamics
10 21 (3.56%) Cisco
11 16 (2.71%) F5
12 15 (2.54%) CyberArk
13 14 (2.37%) Google
14 12 (2.03%) MuleSoft
15 11 (1.86%) SAP
16 9 (1.53%) Tenable
16 9 (1.53%) TIBCO
17 8 (1.36%) Confluent
17 8 (1.36%) CrowdStrike
17 8 (1.36%) Okta