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

6 months to
3 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 196 130 124
Rank change year-on-year -66 -6 -40
Contract jobs citing Unix 562 647 871
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.45% 2.10% 1.93%
As % of the Operating Systems category 11.80% 14.77% 13.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 380 363 607
10th Percentile £204 £350 £363
25th Percentile £374 £423 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £468 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -10.81% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £653 £665
90th Percentile £738 £770 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £435 £469 £500
% change year-on-year -7.36% -6.20% -7.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 7 21
10th Percentile £26.28 £38.70 £22.00
25th Percentile £26.31 £40.50 £22.30
Median hourly rate £27.75 £41.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.32% +2.50% -37.98%
75th Percentile £29.31 £59.00 £48.75
90th Percentile £29.43 £69.50 £67.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £47.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year - +17.50% -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 4,764 4,380 6,398
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.30% 14.19% 14.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,174 2,710 4,307
10th Percentile £175 £200 £181
25th Percentile £263 £313 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £440 £475 £470
Median % change year-on-year -7.37% +1.06% -8.74%
75th Percentile £565 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £689 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £403 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -5.29% - -6.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 334 157 399
10th Percentile £14.30 £16.19 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.76 £21.00 £16.96
Median hourly rate £23.79 £32.50 £25.25
Median % change year-on-year -26.81% +28.71% -1.79%
75th Percentile £55.64 £65.00 £62.00
90th Percentile £69.62 £69.25 £71.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.54 £29.89 £25.00
% change year-on-year -24.60% +19.56% +3.99%

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 February 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
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 3 February 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 -61 478 £475 -13.64% 103
UK excluding London -74 284 £435 -7.36% 82
London -34 226 £558 -7.08% 44
Work from Home -73 160 £454 -8.38% 52
North of England -27 91 £463 -24.49% 15
South East -24 77 £208 -53.89% 23
Midlands -43 65 £450 -5.66% 14
West Midlands -21 61 £450 -8.16% 10
North West -10 53 £453 -18.60% 13
Scotland -33 41 £425 -5.56% 10
Yorkshire -39 35 £495 -29.29%
South West -31 10 £700 +33.33% 11
North East -12 5 £563 +50.00% 2
East Midlands -30 4 £465 +10.06% 4
Wales 0 1 £265 +64.60% 2
Northern Ireland -8 1 - - 2
East of England -34 1 £440 +10.00% 8

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 33 (5.87%) Apache
2 31 (5.52%) WebLogic
3 21 (3.74%) Confluence
4 18 (3.20%) JBoss
5 16 (2.85%) SharePoint
6 10 (1.78%) Tomcat
7 9 (1.60%) IIS
7 9 (1.60%) Tuxedo
7 9 (1.60%) WebSphere
8 8 (1.42%) iPlanet
8 8 (1.42%) WebSphere Application Server
9 6 (1.07%) Apache Spark
10 5 (0.89%) Microsoft Exchange
10 5 (0.89%) nginx
10 5 (0.89%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 5 (0.89%) SAS
11 3 (0.53%) CICS
11 3 (0.53%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.36%) ArcGIS
12 2 (0.36%) Oracle Spatial
Applications
1 15 (2.67%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.96%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.36%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.18%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (1.07%) Oracle EBS
1 6 (1.07%) Oracle EBS R12
2 5 (0.89%) Oracle 11i
3 4 (0.71%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.53%) Kondor
4 3 (0.53%) Oracle BRM
5 2 (0.36%) ION MarketView
5 2 (0.36%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.36%) Summit
6 1 (0.18%) Finacle
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle BPM
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle Cash Management
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle CRM
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 140 (24.91%) AWS
2 88 (15.66%) Azure
3 31 (5.52%) GCP
4 25 (4.45%) GitHub
5 22 (3.91%) SaaS
6 21 (3.74%) AWS CloudFormation
7 16 (2.85%) Sauce Labs
8 15 (2.67%) OpenShift
9 11 (1.96%) Amazon S3
9 11 (1.96%) AWS Lambda
9 11 (1.96%) Cloud Computing
9 11 (1.96%) Serverless
10 10 (1.78%) Amazon EC2
10 10 (1.78%) Azure Monitor
11 9 (1.60%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 9 (1.60%) OCI
12 8 (1.42%) Azure DevOps
12 8 (1.42%) Microsoft 365
12 8 (1.42%) Snowflake
13 6 (1.07%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 31 (5.52%) Firewall
2 19 (3.38%) DNS
2 19 (3.38%) HTTP
3 16 (2.85%) Wireless
4 15 (2.67%) TCP/IP
5 11 (1.96%) Network Security
5 11 (1.96%) SSH
6 9 (1.60%) Kerberos
7 5 (0.89%) FTP
7 5 (0.89%) SAN
8 4 (0.71%) DHCP
8 4 (0.71%) FIX Connectivity
8 4 (0.71%) NAS
8 4 (0.71%) Wireshark
9 3 (0.53%) Broadband
9 3 (0.53%) GPRS
9 3 (0.53%) GSM
9 3 (0.53%) InfiniBand
9 3 (0.53%) Unified Communications
9 3 (0.53%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (9.79%) Relational Database
2 53 (9.43%) MySQL
3 48 (8.54%) MongoDB
4 43 (7.65%) Oracle Database
5 27 (4.80%) NoSQL
6 25 (4.45%) PostgreSQL
7 23 (4.09%) Elasticsearch
8 18 (3.20%) KDB
8 18 (3.20%) Kdb+
8 18 (3.20%) SQL Server
9 15 (2.67%) Data Warehouse
10 12 (2.14%) Big Data
11 11 (1.96%) Amazon RDS
12 10 (1.78%) Data Lake
13 9 (1.60%) Amazon Redshift
13 9 (1.60%) Tick Data
14 7 (1.25%) Metadata
14 7 (1.25%) RDBMS
15 6 (1.07%) Couchbase
15 6 (1.07%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 55 (9.79%) Jenkins
2 45 (8.01%) Git
3 32 (5.69%) GitLab
3 32 (5.69%) JIRA
4 25 (4.45%) Eclipse
5 20 (3.56%) JUnit
5 20 (3.56%) Mockito
6 18 (3.20%) Xcode
7 17 (3.02%) Browser DevTools
8 16 (2.85%) Android Studio
9 15 (2.67%) Sonatype Nexus
10 13 (2.31%) Selenium
11 10 (1.78%) Bitbucket
12 9 (1.60%) IntelliJ
12 9 (1.60%) Maven
13 8 (1.42%) Bitbucket Server
13 8 (1.42%) CA Release Automation
13 8 (1.42%) MSI
14 6 (1.07%) SoapUI
15 5 (0.89%) QUnit
General
1 157 (27.94%) Social Skills
2 148 (26.33%) Finance
3 74 (13.17%) Analytical Skills
4 55 (9.79%) Banking
5 34 (6.05%) Public Sector
6 27 (4.80%) Front Office
7 16 (2.85%) Influencing Skills
8 15 (2.67%) Investment Banking
9 14 (2.49%) Financial Institution
10 13 (2.31%) Documentation Skills
11 7 (1.25%) Legal
12 6 (1.07%) Military
12 6 (1.07%) Telecoms
13 5 (0.89%) Law
14 4 (0.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 3 (0.53%) Billing
15 3 (0.53%) Manufacturing
16 2 (0.36%) Back Office
16 2 (0.36%) Organisational Skills
16 2 (0.36%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 114 (20.28%) Developer
2 100 (17.79%) Senior
3 46 (8.19%) Java Developer
4 44 (7.83%) Technical Support
5 38 (6.76%) Analyst
6 33 (5.87%) Unix Engineer
7 31 (5.52%) DevOps Engineer
7 31 (5.52%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 30 (5.34%) Support Engineer
9 29 (5.16%) Linux Engineer
10 26 (4.63%) Senior Developer
11 25 (4.45%) Site Engineer
12 24 (4.27%) Software Engineer
12 24 (4.27%) Technical Engineer
13 23 (4.09%) Consultant
14 22 (3.91%) C++ Software Engineer
14 22 (3.91%) Kafka Engineer
14 22 (3.91%) Senior C++ Software Engineer
14 22 (3.91%) Senior Software Engineer
14 22 (3.91%) Technical Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 78 (13.88%) Kafka
2 37 (6.58%) REST
3 36 (6.41%) React
4 32 (5.69%) SOAP
5 28 (4.98%) XML
6 25 (4.45%) CSS
7 24 (4.27%) Middleware
8 22 (3.91%) AngularJS
8 22 (3.91%) HTML
9 21 (3.74%) JSON
10 19 (3.38%) ActiveMQ
11 18 (3.20%) JAX-RS
12 17 (3.02%) Ajax
12 17 (3.02%) GraphQL
13 16 (2.85%) Elastic Stack
14 15 (2.67%) HTML5
14 15 (2.67%) Spring
15 12 (2.14%) Hibernate
15 12 (2.14%) J2EE
16 10 (1.78%) FIX Protocol
Miscellaneous
1 30 (5.34%) Management Information System
2 20 (3.56%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 19 (3.38%) Mobile App
4 18 (3.20%) Linux Command Line
4 18 (3.20%) Onboarding
5 15 (2.67%) Cloud Native
6 13 (2.31%) Algorithms
6 13 (2.31%) Equities
6 13 (2.31%) Fixed Income
7 12 (2.14%) Data Centre
8 11 (1.96%) Derivative
8 11 (1.96%) Greenfield Project
9 10 (1.78%) Security Posture
10 9 (1.60%) Data Protection Act
11 8 (1.42%) Enterprise Cloud
11 8 (1.42%) Enterprise Software
11 8 (1.42%) Replication
11 8 (1.42%) Tandem
12 7 (1.25%) Security Operations Centre
12 7 (1.25%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 384 (68.33%) Linux
2 176 (31.32%) Windows
3 25 (4.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 24 (4.27%) Mac OS X
4 24 (4.27%) Solaris
5 22 (3.91%) Windows Server
6 18 (3.20%) Android
7 13 (2.31%) Mac OS
8 12 (2.14%) CentOS
9 11 (1.96%) AIX
10 4 (0.71%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.36%) Apple iOS
12 1 (0.18%) VMS
12 1 (0.18%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.18%) Windows 7
12 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2003
12 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 155 (27.58%) Agile
2 115 (20.46%) Problem-Solving
3 108 (19.22%) DevOps
4 97 (17.26%) CI/CD
5 63 (11.21%) Microservices
6 62 (11.03%) Computer Science
7 61 (10.85%) Incident Response
8 59 (10.50%) OO
9 56 (9.96%) Observability
9 56 (9.96%) Software Engineering
10 51 (9.07%) Infrastructure as Code
11 48 (8.54%) Containerisation
11 48 (8.54%) Data Modelling
11 48 (8.54%) Migration
11 48 (8.54%) TDD
11 48 (8.54%) Test Automation
12 45 (8.01%) Analytics
13 44 (7.83%) Continuous Improvement
14 43 (7.65%) Performance Tuning
15 41 (7.30%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 221 (39.32%) Python
2 215 (38.26%) SQL
3 154 (27.40%) Java
4 96 (17.08%) Shell Script
5 79 (14.06%) Bash
6 76 (13.52%) Perl
7 53 (9.43%) JavaScript
8 48 (8.54%) C++
9 42 (7.47%) PowerShell
10 31 (5.52%) C#
11 27 (4.80%) PL/SQL
12 13 (2.31%) Go
13 12 (2.14%) Korn
13 12 (2.14%) Scala
14 10 (1.78%) Groovy
15 9 (1.60%) PHP
16 7 (1.25%) Search Processing Language
17 6 (1.07%) TypeScript
18 4 (0.71%) C
18 4 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 115 (20.46%) Security Cleared
2 89 (15.84%) Degree
3 82 (14.59%) SC Cleared
4 51 (9.07%) Computer Science Degree
5 21 (3.74%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (1.78%) DV Cleared
6 10 (1.78%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 9 (1.60%) AWS Certification
8 6 (1.07%) OSCP
9 5 (0.89%) Cisco Certification
9 5 (0.89%) GPEN
9 5 (0.89%) GWAPT
9 5 (0.89%) ISTQB
9 5 (0.89%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 5 (0.89%) RHCE
10 4 (0.71%) CISSP
11 3 (0.53%) CCIE
11 3 (0.53%) CCNA
11 3 (0.53%) CCNP
11 3 (0.53%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (3.20%) SLA
2 16 (2.85%) QA
3 9 (1.60%) Data Quality
4 4 (0.71%) GMP
4 4 (0.71%) HIPAA
4 4 (0.71%) NCSC
4 4 (0.71%) SOC 2
5 3 (0.53%) Disclosure Scotland
5 3 (0.53%) FATCA
5 3 (0.53%) NIST
5 3 (0.53%) SEPA
6 2 (0.36%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.18%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.18%) GDPR
7 1 (0.18%) ISO 15022
7 1 (0.18%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 83 (14.77%) Docker
2 13 (2.31%) Active Directory
3 10 (1.78%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (1.42%) Tivoli Directory Server
5 6 (1.07%) KVM
6 5 (0.89%) VMware NSX
7 3 (0.53%) GPFS
7 3 (0.53%) Hyper-V
7 3 (0.53%) NFS
7 3 (0.53%) QEMU
7 3 (0.53%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (0.36%) GridGain
8 2 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.18%) Ceph
9 1 (0.18%) iptables
9 1 (0.18%) Lustre
9 1 (0.18%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 1 (0.18%) Varnish
9 1 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.18%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 79 (14.06%) Kubernetes
2 60 (10.68%) Ansible
2 60 (10.68%) Terraform
3 31 (5.52%) Grafana
3 31 (5.52%) Puppet
4 20 (3.56%) Prometheus
5 15 (2.67%) Kibana
6 14 (2.49%) Progress Chef
7 9 (1.60%) Tivoli
8 8 (1.42%) CA Single Sign-On
8 8 (1.42%) CA Wily
9 7 (1.25%) Single Sign-On
10 6 (1.07%) Red Hat Satellite
10 6 (1.07%) SCCM
11 5 (0.89%) Dell DRAC
11 5 (0.89%) ITRS Geneos
11 5 (0.89%) Jamf Pro
11 5 (0.89%) NetBackup
12 4 (0.71%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 4 (0.71%) Packer
Vendors
1 173 (30.78%) Oracle
2 92 (16.37%) Splunk
3 72 (12.81%) Microsoft
4 41 (7.30%) IBM
5 32 (5.69%) ServiceNow
6 22 (3.91%) Red Hat
7 20 (3.56%) AppDynamics
8 19 (3.38%) VMware
9 15 (2.67%) Cisco
10 13 (2.31%) Dynatrace
11 9 (1.60%) webMethods
12 8 (1.42%) Broadcom
12 8 (1.42%) Confluent
12 8 (1.42%) CrowdStrike
12 8 (1.42%) CyberArk
13 7 (1.25%) Dell
14 6 (1.07%) Ab Initio
14 6 (1.07%) Fujitsu
14 6 (1.07%) MuleSoft
14 6 (1.07%) Veritas