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

6 months to
22 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 213 154 140
Rank change year-on-year -59 -14 -55
Contract jobs citing Unix 568 518 732
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.18% 1.80% 1.72%
As % of the Operating Systems category 12.14% 12.92% 12.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 341 308 496
10th Percentile £265 £360 £334
25th Percentile £400 £414 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £480 £545
Median % change year-on-year -2.08% -11.93% -0.91%
75th Percentile £552 £600 £650
90th Percentile £675 £688 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £465 £450
% change year-on-year -3.23% +3.33% -16.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 6 18
10th Percentile £21.50 £43.87 £22.23
25th Percentile £27.88 £52.19 £27.85
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 £46.56
90th Percentile £55.00 £73.13 £66.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £55.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -13.56% +37.50% -31.09%

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 4,677 4,010 5,685
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.68% 13.92% 13.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,998 2,635 3,850
10th Percentile £185 £200 £185
25th Percentile £313 £313 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £456 £465 £465
Median % change year-on-year -1.89% - -7.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £651 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £447 £450
% change year-on-year +0.56% -0.67% -4.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 325 170 393
10th Percentile £15.75 £15.32 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.44 £15.50
Median hourly rate £41.71 £22.00 £22.15
Median % change year-on-year +89.59% -0.68% -44.07%
75th Percentile £65.00 £56.88 £60.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.36 £20.47 £22.50
% change year-on-year +102.03% -9.02% -25.00%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 -38 481 £470 -4.47% 102
UK excluding London -49 339 £450 -3.23% 82
London -67 178 £590 +17.98% 42
Work from Home -32 167 £470 -0.53% 49
North of England -31 103 £475 +5.56% 22
South East -13 98 £358 -31.81% 27
Midlands -9 89 £459 -0.22% 5
West Midlands +3 83 £457 -0.76% 4
North West -1 79 £478 +6.82% 15
Scotland -45 41 £425 -10.05% 3
Yorkshire -59 19 £461 -12.14% 5
North East -24 5 £480 +28.00% 2
East Midlands -25 5 £525 +31.09% 1
South West -29 5 £600 +64.38% 10
East of England -37 5 £300 -33.33% 7
Wales -11 4 - - 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 24 (4.23%) Confluence
2 20 (3.52%) WebLogic
3 18 (3.17%) Apache
4 17 (2.99%) SAS
5 16 (2.82%) Apache Spark
5 16 (2.82%) Tuxedo
6 13 (2.29%) Apache Airflow
7 10 (1.76%) CICS
8 7 (1.23%) NetWeaver
9 6 (1.06%) OpenStack
9 6 (1.06%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 4 (0.70%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 4 (0.70%) SharePoint
11 3 (0.53%) IBM HTTP Server
11 3 (0.53%) Oracle Workflow
11 3 (0.53%) WebSphere
11 3 (0.53%) WebSphere Application Server
12 2 (0.35%) ArcGIS
12 2 (0.35%) Oracle Spatial
12 2 (0.35%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 7 (1.23%) Microsoft Excel
1 7 (1.23%) Notepad++
2 4 (0.70%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 8 (1.41%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.06%) Summit
3 5 (0.88%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.53%) Oracle EBS R12
5 2 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.35%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.18%) FLEXCUBE
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle 11i
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.18%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 102 (17.96%) AWS
2 75 (13.20%) Azure
3 31 (5.46%) GitHub
4 24 (4.23%) AWS Lambda
5 23 (4.05%) GitHub Actions
5 23 (4.05%) Serverless
6 21 (3.70%) Amazon S3
6 21 (3.70%) Entra ID
7 19 (3.35%) GCP
7 19 (3.35%) OpenShift
8 15 (2.64%) IaaS
8 15 (2.64%) PaaS
9 14 (2.46%) SaaS
10 13 (2.29%) Azure DevOps
11 10 (1.76%) Amazon EC2
11 10 (1.76%) Power Platform
11 10 (1.76%) Snowflake
12 8 (1.41%) AWS CloudFormation
12 8 (1.41%) Azure Data Factory
12 8 (1.41%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 31 (5.46%) Firewall
2 24 (4.23%) DNS
3 19 (3.35%) SAN
4 15 (2.64%) TCP/IP
5 13 (2.29%) NAS
6 11 (1.94%) HTTP
7 9 (1.58%) SSH
7 9 (1.58%) Wireless
8 8 (1.41%) InfiniBand
8 8 (1.41%) Network Security
8 8 (1.41%) Wireshark
9 7 (1.23%) 5G
9 7 (1.23%) Ethernet
9 7 (1.23%) NetScaler
9 7 (1.23%) PuTTY
9 7 (1.23%) SSL
9 7 (1.23%) VPN
9 7 (1.23%) WinSCP
10 6 (1.06%) LTE
10 6 (1.06%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 66 (11.62%) SQL Server
2 45 (7.92%) Relational Database
3 38 (6.69%) MySQL
4 35 (6.16%) Oracle Database
5 34 (5.99%) PostgreSQL
6 33 (5.81%) MongoDB
7 19 (3.35%) Metadata
8 18 (3.17%) Data Warehouse
9 16 (2.82%) Big Data
10 15 (2.64%) KDB
10 15 (2.64%) NoSQL
11 14 (2.46%) Amazon Aurora
11 14 (2.46%) DB2
12 13 (2.29%) BusinessObjects
12 13 (2.29%) DataStage
12 13 (2.29%) Kdb+
13 10 (1.76%) Power BI
13 10 (1.76%) Sybase ASE
14 9 (1.58%) Oracle Database 11g
14 9 (1.58%) Oracle Database 12c
Development Applications
1 56 (9.86%) Jenkins
2 45 (7.92%) Git
3 43 (7.57%) GitLab
4 39 (6.87%) JIRA
5 15 (2.64%) Artifactory
6 11 (1.94%) Mockito
6 11 (1.94%) MSI
7 9 (1.58%) Bitbucket
7 9 (1.58%) Sonatype Nexus
8 8 (1.41%) Maven
9 6 (1.06%) Android Studio
9 6 (1.06%) Browser DevTools
9 6 (1.06%) Eclipse
9 6 (1.06%) Xcode
10 5 (0.88%) SonarQube
11 4 (0.70%) CA Gen
12 3 (0.53%) CircleCI
12 3 (0.53%) Introscope
12 3 (0.53%) REST Assured
12 3 (0.53%) Selenium
General
1 137 (24.12%) Finance
2 119 (20.95%) Social Skills
3 83 (14.61%) Banking
4 68 (11.97%) Analytical Skills
5 57 (10.04%) Public Sector
6 25 (4.40%) Investment Banking
7 19 (3.35%) Documentation Skills
7 19 (3.35%) Front Office
8 11 (1.94%) Telecoms
9 10 (1.76%) Influencing Skills
10 9 (1.58%) Financial Institution
11 8 (1.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 7 (1.23%) Retail
13 6 (1.06%) Advertising
14 5 (0.88%) Law
14 5 (0.88%) Military
15 2 (0.35%) Local Government
15 2 (0.35%) Organisational Skills
16 1 (0.18%) Billing
16 1 (0.18%) Private Banking
Job Titles
1 94 (16.55%) Developer
2 75 (13.20%) Senior
3 56 (9.86%) Data Engineer
4 52 (9.15%) Unix Engineer
5 45 (7.92%) Analyst
6 41 (7.22%) Support Engineer
7 37 (6.51%) Java Developer
8 30 (5.28%) DBA
9 28 (4.93%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 27 (4.75%) Senior Developer
11 26 (4.58%) Technical Support
12 24 (4.23%) Oracle DBA
12 24 (4.23%) Site Engineer
13 23 (4.05%) Administrator
13 23 (4.05%) Architect
14 21 (3.70%) Python Developer
15 19 (3.35%) Software Engineer
16 18 (3.17%) DevOps Engineer
17 17 (2.99%) Linux Engineer
18 16 (2.82%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 55 (9.68%) Kafka
2 31 (5.46%) REST
3 26 (4.58%) RESTful
4 25 (4.40%) Middleware
5 18 (3.17%) XML
6 16 (2.82%) CSS
7 15 (2.64%) Spring
8 14 (2.46%) Oracle GoldenGate
8 14 (2.46%) Spring Boot
9 13 (2.29%) Elastic Stack
9 13 (2.29%) React
10 12 (2.11%) Web Services
11 11 (1.94%) AngularJS
11 11 (1.94%) HTML
11 11 (1.94%) JAX-RS
11 11 (1.94%) LDAP
12 10 (1.76%) ActiveMQ
12 10 (1.76%) Pandas
13 9 (1.58%) JSON
13 9 (1.58%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 37 (6.51%) Onboarding
2 33 (5.81%) Linux Command Line
3 29 (5.11%) Management Information System
4 24 (4.23%) Legacy Systems
5 23 (4.05%) Data Centre
6 19 (3.35%) Cloud Native
7 17 (2.99%) Mainframe
8 16 (2.82%) Derivative
9 14 (2.46%) Fixed Income
10 13 (2.29%) Replication
11 11 (1.94%) Clustering
11 11 (1.94%) Equities
11 11 (1.94%) Public Cloud
12 10 (1.76%) BYOD
12 10 (1.76%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 10 (1.76%) Greenfield Project
12 10 (1.76%) Virtual Team
12 10 (1.76%) VSAM
13 8 (1.41%) Operational Technology
14 7 (1.23%) Equity Derivative
Operating Systems
1 374 (65.85%) Linux
2 159 (27.99%) Windows
3 49 (8.63%) Solaris
4 35 (6.16%) Windows Server
5 27 (4.75%) AIX
6 20 (3.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 12 (2.11%) Mac OS X
8 7 (1.23%) Oracle Linux
9 6 (1.06%) Android
10 5 (0.88%) HPUX
10 5 (0.88%) Mac OS
11 4 (0.70%) SUSE
12 2 (0.35%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
12 2 (0.35%) 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
1 122 (21.48%) Agile
2 110 (19.37%) CI/CD
3 103 (18.13%) Problem-Solving
4 91 (16.02%) Migration
5 83 (14.61%) DevOps
6 70 (12.32%) High Availability
7 66 (11.62%) ITIL
8 61 (10.74%) Observability
9 60 (10.56%) Root Cause Analysis
10 59 (10.39%) Disaster Recovery
11 53 (9.33%) Performance Tuning
12 51 (8.98%) Incident Management
12 51 (8.98%) Test Automation
13 47 (8.27%) Change Management
14 46 (8.10%) Computer Science
15 45 (7.92%) Software Engineering
16 44 (7.75%) Containerisation
16 44 (7.75%) Data Modelling
16 44 (7.75%) Infrastructure as Code
16 44 (7.75%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 221 (38.91%) Python
2 214 (37.68%) SQL
3 112 (19.72%) Java
4 99 (17.43%) Shell Script
5 62 (10.92%) Bash
6 53 (9.33%) PL/SQL
6 53 (9.33%) PowerShell
7 50 (8.80%) Perl
8 39 (6.87%) JavaScript
9 28 (4.93%) C++
10 25 (4.40%) C#
11 21 (3.70%) Korn
12 12 (2.11%) COBOL
13 9 (1.58%) Go
14 8 (1.41%) Scala
15 4 (0.70%) Kotlin
15 4 (0.70%) Ruby
16 3 (0.53%) C
16 3 (0.53%) Jython
16 3 (0.53%) R
Qualifications
1 189 (33.27%) Security Cleared
2 156 (27.46%) SC Cleared
3 73 (12.85%) Degree
4 31 (5.46%) Computer Science Degree
5 23 (4.05%) BPSS Clearance
6 17 (2.99%) CISSP
7 10 (1.76%) DV Cleared
8 9 (1.58%) CompTIA Security+
9 8 (1.41%) CISM
10 7 (1.23%) Cisco Certification
11 6 (1.06%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 6 (1.06%) CESG Certified Professional
11 6 (1.06%) CRISC
11 6 (1.06%) GIAC
11 6 (1.06%) Microsoft Certification
12 5 (0.88%) MCSA
12 5 (0.88%) MCSE
12 5 (0.88%) RHCE
12 5 (0.88%) SANS
13 4 (0.70%) SSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (5.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 29 (5.11%) NIST
3 22 (3.87%) SLA
4 15 (2.64%) QA
5 8 (1.41%) Data Quality
6 7 (1.23%) Cyber Essentials
7 6 (1.06%) ISO 31000
8 4 (0.70%) GRC
8 4 (0.70%) ISO 20022
8 4 (0.70%) NIST 800
8 4 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 3 (0.53%) Disclosure Scotland
9 3 (0.53%) FATCA
10 2 (0.35%) GDPR
10 2 (0.35%) GMP
10 2 (0.35%) ISO 15022
10 2 (0.35%) NCSC
10 2 (0.35%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.35%) SEPA
11 1 (0.18%) MIL-STD-1553
System Software
1 64 (11.27%) Docker
2 34 (5.99%) Active Directory
3 18 (3.17%) Oracle RAC
4 16 (2.82%) VMware Infrastructure
5 15 (2.64%) NFS
6 8 (1.41%) GPFS
6 8 (1.41%) Virtual Machines
7 7 (1.23%) KVM
8 6 (1.06%) Hyper-V
8 6 (1.06%) Postfix
8 6 (1.06%) Varnish
9 5 (0.88%) VMware ESXi
9 5 (0.88%) vSphere
10 4 (0.70%) HDFS
10 4 (0.70%) Sendmail
11 3 (0.53%) Firmware
11 3 (0.53%) GridGain
11 3 (0.53%) PowerHA
12 2 (0.35%) SRDF
13 1 (0.18%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 73 (12.85%) Kubernetes
2 67 (11.80%) Ansible
3 42 (7.39%) Grafana
4 39 (6.87%) Terraform
5 28 (4.93%) Oracle RMAN
6 25 (4.40%) Prometheus
7 16 (2.82%) Puppet
8 15 (2.64%) Kibana
8 15 (2.64%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 11 (1.94%) Data Guard
10 9 (1.58%) NetBackup
10 9 (1.58%) Progress Chef
10 9 (1.58%) Single Sign-On
11 7 (1.23%) HAProxy
12 6 (1.06%) Control-M
12 6 (1.06%) IBM BigFix
12 6 (1.06%) vCenter Server
13 5 (0.88%) CASB
13 5 (0.88%) Salt
13 5 (0.88%) vRealize
Vendors
1 216 (38.03%) Oracle
2 57 (10.04%) Splunk
3 40 (7.04%) IBM
4 39 (6.87%) Microsoft
5 28 (4.93%) ServiceNow
6 27 (4.75%) CyberArk
7 26 (4.58%) BeyondTrust
7 26 (4.58%) VMware
8 24 (4.23%) Talend
9 22 (3.87%) Informatica
10 21 (3.70%) Cisco
11 17 (2.99%) Sybase
12 16 (2.82%) Red Hat
13 14 (2.46%) Denodo
14 12 (2.11%) Dynatrace
15 10 (1.76%) Veritas
16 9 (1.58%) CheckPoint
16 9 (1.58%) F5
16 9 (1.58%) Fujitsu
17 8 (1.41%) Aruba