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

6 months to
9 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 225 146 142
Rank change year-on-year -79 -4 -62
Contract jobs citing Unix 530 570 726
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.16% 1.95% 1.65%
As % of the Operating Systems category 11.06% 13.88% 12.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 335 338 486
10th Percentile £286 £359 £350
25th Percentile £400 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.50% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £564 £600 £670
90th Percentile £723 £725 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £440 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -7.37% -5.00% -7.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 9 22
10th Percentile £21.50 - £22.01
25th Percentile £23.61 £40.50 £24.54
Median hourly rate £52.50 £53.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% +32.50% -30.43%
75th Percentile £53.75 £55.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £55.00 £67.25 £67.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.88 £53.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -47.40% +32.50% -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 4,794 4,107 5,963
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.47% 14.05% 13.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,134 2,739 3,991
10th Percentile £181 £200 £181
25th Percentile £300 £325 £290
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £463
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +2.70% -9.76%
75th Percentile £570 £600 £594
90th Percentile £657 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £450 £448
% change year-on-year -5.56% +0.56% -5.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 338 173 408
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.63 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.00 £18.13 £15.50
Median hourly rate £25.52 £24.66 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.47% +12.09% -24.91%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.14 £68.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.21 £24.42 £20.00
% change year-on-year +3.21% +22.10% -24.53%

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 9 April 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 9 April 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 9 April 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 -70 452 £469 -10.67% 90
UK excluding London -88 280 £440 -7.37% 71
London -53 200 £550 - 39
Work from Home -70 161 £459 -7.37% 47
Midlands -18 82 £450 -4.05% 12
North of England -63 79 £465 -11.43% 20
West Midlands -12 76 £450 -4.66% 8
South East -27 75 £392 -20.61% 21
North West -7 61 £469 -10.67% 10
Scotland -46 32 £402 -13.92% 6
Yorkshire -72 16 £461 -29.04% 7
South West -33 7 £700 +27.27% 3
East Midlands -33 6 £478 +5.18% 4
Wales -8 5 £265 +58.62% 2
East of England -51 3 - - 4
North East -17 2 £513 -8.89% 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 (4.34%) Apache
2 22 (4.15%) WebLogic
3 17 (3.21%) SAS
4 16 (3.02%) Tuxedo
5 14 (2.64%) Apache Spark
5 14 (2.64%) Confluence
6 10 (1.89%) CICS
7 7 (1.32%) SharePoint
8 6 (1.13%) NetWeaver
9 5 (0.94%) JBoss
9 5 (0.94%) nginx
9 5 (0.94%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 5 (0.94%) Tomcat
10 4 (0.75%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 4 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
10 4 (0.75%) Oracle Workflow
11 3 (0.57%) IBM HTTP Server
11 3 (0.57%) WebSphere
11 3 (0.57%) WebSphere Application Server
12 2 (0.38%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 12 (2.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (1.13%) Notepad++
4 4 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.19%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (1.13%) SAP S/4HANA
1 6 (1.13%) Summit
2 5 (0.94%) Oracle 11i
3 4 (0.75%) Oracle EBS
3 4 (0.75%) Oracle EBS R12
4 3 (0.57%) Oracle BRM
5 2 (0.38%) ION MarketView
5 2 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.38%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.19%) Oracle Cash Management
6 1 (0.19%) Oracle CRM
6 1 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 97 (18.30%) AWS
2 73 (13.77%) Azure
3 30 (5.66%) GitHub
4 19 (3.58%) Serverless
5 17 (3.21%) GCP
6 16 (3.02%) Amazon S3
6 16 (3.02%) GitHub Actions
7 15 (2.83%) AWS Lambda
8 13 (2.45%) Azure DevOps
8 13 (2.45%) SaaS
9 11 (2.08%) Amazon EC2
9 11 (2.08%) OpenShift
9 11 (2.08%) Snowflake
10 10 (1.89%) Azure Data Factory
10 10 (1.89%) Entra ID
11 9 (1.70%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 9 (1.70%) Power Platform
12 8 (1.51%) AWS CloudFormation
13 7 (1.32%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 7 (1.32%) Sauce Labs
Communications & Networking
1 34 (6.42%) Firewall
2 17 (3.21%) DNS
3 15 (2.83%) SAN
4 14 (2.64%) HTTP
5 13 (2.45%) TCP/IP
6 12 (2.26%) Network Security
7 11 (2.08%) Wireless
8 9 (1.70%) NAS
8 9 (1.70%) SSH
9 8 (1.51%) InfiniBand
10 7 (1.32%) Ethernet
10 7 (1.32%) NetScaler
11 6 (1.13%) PuTTY
11 6 (1.13%) SSL
11 6 (1.13%) VPN
11 6 (1.13%) WinSCP
12 5 (0.94%) Ethernet VPN
12 5 (0.94%) FTP
12 5 (0.94%) RTP
13 4 (0.75%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 57 (10.75%) SQL Server
2 45 (8.49%) Relational Database
3 42 (7.92%) MySQL
4 36 (6.79%) MongoDB
5 35 (6.60%) Oracle Database
6 32 (6.04%) PostgreSQL
7 22 (4.15%) Metadata
8 21 (3.96%) Data Warehouse
9 17 (3.21%) KDB
9 17 (3.21%) Kdb+
9 17 (3.21%) NoSQL
10 15 (2.83%) Big Data
11 11 (2.08%) DataStage
11 11 (2.08%) Tick Data
12 10 (1.89%) Data Lake
12 10 (1.89%) DB2
12 10 (1.89%) Elasticsearch
12 10 (1.89%) Hadoop
12 10 (1.89%) RDBMS
13 9 (1.70%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 46 (8.68%) Jenkins
2 45 (8.49%) Git
3 38 (7.17%) GitLab
4 31 (5.85%) JIRA
5 13 (2.45%) Mockito
6 12 (2.26%) Bitbucket
7 11 (2.08%) Eclipse
7 11 (2.08%) MSI
8 10 (1.89%) JUnit
9 8 (1.51%) Maven
9 8 (1.51%) Sonatype Nexus
10 7 (1.32%) Android Studio
10 7 (1.32%) Browser DevTools
10 7 (1.32%) Selenium
10 7 (1.32%) Xcode
11 5 (0.94%) Toad
12 4 (0.75%) Ant
12 4 (0.75%) Artifactory
12 4 (0.75%) CA Gen
12 4 (0.75%) IntelliJ
General
1 143 (26.98%) Finance
2 125 (23.58%) Social Skills
3 72 (13.58%) Banking
4 61 (11.51%) Analytical Skills
5 53 (10.00%) Public Sector
6 24 (4.53%) Investment Banking
7 21 (3.96%) Front Office
8 18 (3.40%) Influencing Skills
9 13 (2.45%) Documentation Skills
10 8 (1.51%) Financial Institution
10 8 (1.51%) Telecoms
11 6 (1.13%) Advertising
11 6 (1.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 4 (0.75%) Military
12 4 (0.75%) Retail
13 3 (0.57%) Billing
13 3 (0.57%) Law
13 3 (0.57%) Legal
14 2 (0.38%) Manufacturing
15 1 (0.19%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 108 (20.38%) Developer
2 78 (14.72%) Senior
3 44 (8.30%) Java Developer
4 43 (8.11%) Analyst
5 39 (7.36%) Data Engineer
6 36 (6.79%) Unix Engineer
7 32 (6.04%) Support Engineer
8 25 (4.72%) Linux Engineer
8 25 (4.72%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 24 (4.53%) DBA
9 24 (4.53%) Senior Developer
10 23 (4.34%) Technical Support
11 21 (3.96%) Administrator
11 21 (3.96%) Oracle DBA
11 21 (3.96%) Site Engineer
12 19 (3.58%) DevOps Engineer
12 19 (3.58%) Software Engineer
13 17 (3.21%) Architect
13 17 (3.21%) Unix Linux Engineer
14 16 (3.02%) Senior Unix Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 60 (11.32%) Kafka
2 31 (5.85%) REST
3 27 (5.09%) Middleware
3 27 (5.09%) XML
4 18 (3.40%) Spring
5 17 (3.21%) React
5 17 (3.21%) SOAP
6 15 (2.83%) JSON
6 15 (2.83%) RESTful
7 14 (2.64%) Elastic Stack
7 14 (2.64%) Oracle GoldenGate
8 13 (2.45%) JAX-RS
8 13 (2.45%) Spring Boot
9 12 (2.26%) ActiveMQ
9 12 (2.26%) AngularJS
10 11 (2.08%) CSS
11 9 (1.70%) FIX Protocol
11 9 (1.70%) HTML
12 8 (1.51%) HTML5
12 8 (1.51%) J2EE
Miscellaneous
1 28 (5.28%) Linux Command Line
2 27 (5.09%) Onboarding
3 26 (4.91%) Management Information System
4 22 (4.15%) Cloud Native
5 19 (3.58%) Data Centre
6 18 (3.40%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 16 (3.02%) Fixed Income
7 16 (3.02%) Legacy Systems
8 14 (2.64%) Derivative
9 13 (2.45%) Mainframe
10 12 (2.26%) Equities
11 11 (2.08%) Greenfield Project
12 10 (1.89%) BYOD
12 10 (1.89%) Public Cloud
12 10 (1.89%) VSAM
13 9 (1.70%) Virtual Team
14 8 (1.51%) Clustering
14 8 (1.51%) Replication
15 7 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
15 7 (1.32%) Market Risk
Operating Systems
1 352 (66.42%) Linux
2 149 (28.11%) Windows
3 33 (6.23%) Windows Server
4 31 (5.85%) Solaris
5 27 (5.09%) AIX
6 23 (4.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 13 (2.45%) Mac OS X
8 7 (1.32%) Android
9 5 (0.94%) Oracle Linux
10 4 (0.75%) Mac OS
11 3 (0.57%) VMS
12 2 (0.38%) HPUX
12 2 (0.38%) SUSE
12 2 (0.38%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 1 (0.19%) CentOS
13 1 (0.19%) Rocky
13 1 (0.19%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.19%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.19%) Windows 7
13 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 129 (24.34%) Agile
2 105 (19.81%) Problem-Solving
3 89 (16.79%) CI/CD
4 86 (16.23%) DevOps
5 69 (13.02%) Migration
6 55 (10.38%) Observability
7 53 (10.00%) ITIL
8 48 (9.06%) Containerisation
8 48 (9.06%) Microservices
9 47 (8.87%) Computer Science
9 47 (8.87%) Performance Tuning
10 45 (8.49%) Root Cause Analysis
10 45 (8.49%) Software Engineering
11 41 (7.74%) Analytics
12 40 (7.55%) Data Modelling
12 40 (7.55%) Disaster Recovery
12 40 (7.55%) High Availability
12 40 (7.55%) OO
13 39 (7.36%) Infrastructure as Code
13 39 (7.36%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 216 (40.75%) SQL
2 182 (34.34%) Python
3 129 (24.34%) Java
4 106 (20.00%) Shell Script
5 65 (12.26%) Bash
6 58 (10.94%) Perl
7 46 (8.68%) PL/SQL
8 43 (8.11%) PowerShell
9 31 (5.85%) JavaScript
10 30 (5.66%) C++
11 28 (5.28%) C#
12 25 (4.72%) Korn
13 10 (1.89%) COBOL
13 10 (1.89%) PHP
14 7 (1.32%) Go
14 7 (1.32%) Scala
15 3 (0.57%) C
15 3 (0.57%) HiveQL
15 3 (0.57%) Jython
16 2 (0.38%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 146 (27.55%) Security Cleared
2 118 (22.26%) SC Cleared
3 65 (12.26%) Degree
4 30 (5.66%) Computer Science Degree
5 18 (3.40%) BPSS Clearance
6 9 (1.70%) CISSP
7 7 (1.32%) CompTIA Security+
7 7 (1.32%) DV Cleared
8 6 (1.13%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (0.94%) MCSA
9 5 (0.94%) MCSE
10 3 (0.57%) ITIL Certification
10 3 (0.57%) RHCE
11 2 (0.38%) CISM
11 2 (0.38%) ISTQB
11 2 (0.38%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 2 (0.38%) PMI Certification
11 2 (0.38%) TOGAF Certification
12 1 (0.19%) AWS Certification
12 1 (0.19%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (3.21%) SLA
2 16 (3.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 16 (3.02%) QA
3 15 (2.83%) NIST
4 13 (2.45%) Data Quality
5 4 (0.75%) NIST 800
5 4 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 3 (0.57%) FATCA
6 3 (0.57%) SEPA
7 2 (0.38%) Disclosure Scotland
7 2 (0.38%) GDPR
7 2 (0.38%) GMP
7 2 (0.38%) GRC
7 2 (0.38%) ISO 15022
7 2 (0.38%) ISO 20022
7 2 (0.38%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.19%) MIL-STD-1553
System Software
1 70 (13.21%) Docker
2 25 (4.72%) Active Directory
3 16 (3.02%) Oracle RAC
4 12 (2.26%) VMware Infrastructure
5 10 (1.89%) NFS
6 7 (1.32%) KVM
7 6 (1.13%) GPFS
7 6 (1.13%) Hyper-V
7 6 (1.13%) Virtual Machines
8 4 (0.75%) HDFS
8 4 (0.75%) Postfix
8 4 (0.75%) Varnish
9 3 (0.57%) Firmware
9 3 (0.57%) GridGain
9 3 (0.57%) PowerHA
9 3 (0.57%) Sendmail
9 3 (0.57%) VMware ESXi
9 3 (0.57%) vSphere
10 2 (0.38%) SRDF
10 2 (0.38%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 71 (13.40%) Kubernetes
2 63 (11.89%) Ansible
3 42 (7.92%) Terraform
4 38 (7.17%) Grafana
5 24 (4.53%) Prometheus
6 21 (3.96%) Puppet
7 20 (3.77%) Oracle RMAN
8 16 (3.02%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 11 (2.08%) Kibana
10 7 (1.32%) NetBackup
11 6 (1.13%) Control-M
11 6 (1.13%) IBM BigFix
11 6 (1.13%) Progress Chef
11 6 (1.13%) Red Hat Satellite
11 6 (1.13%) vCenter Server
12 5 (0.94%) CASB
12 5 (0.94%) Data Guard
12 5 (0.94%) HAProxy
12 5 (0.94%) Nessus
12 5 (0.94%) Salt
Vendors
1 186 (35.09%) Oracle
2 51 (9.62%) Splunk
3 40 (7.55%) Microsoft
4 37 (6.98%) IBM
5 25 (4.72%) ServiceNow
6 22 (4.15%) CyberArk
7 20 (3.77%) VMware
8 18 (3.40%) Informatica
8 18 (3.40%) Red Hat
9 17 (3.21%) BeyondTrust
9 17 (3.21%) Cisco
10 15 (2.83%) Sybase
11 13 (2.45%) Talend
12 9 (1.70%) Ab Initio
12 9 (1.70%) Fujitsu
13 8 (1.51%) AppDynamics
13 8 (1.51%) Aruba
13 8 (1.51%) Dell
13 8 (1.51%) Remedy
13 8 (1.51%) Veritas