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 30 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 180 124 117
Rank change year-on-year -56 -7 -35
Contract jobs citing Unix 590 683 923
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.59% 2.05% 2.13%
As % of the Operating Systems category 12.42% 14.65% 14.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 396 414 656
10th Percentile £204 £348 £359
25th Percentile £371 £414 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £516 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.99% -6.14% -
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £772 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £447 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.89% -5.00% -7.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 7 10
10th Percentile £26.28 £38.70 £21.88
25th Percentile £26.31 £40.50 £24.31
Median hourly rate £27.75 £41.00 £57.75
Median % change year-on-year -32.32% -29.00% -10.81%
75th Percentile £29.31 £59.00 £75.00
90th Percentile £29.43 £69.50 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £47.00 £63.00
% change year-on-year - -25.40% +14.55%

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 4,751 4,661 6,442
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.84% 14.00% 14.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,106 2,909 4,380
10th Percentile £175 £200 £180
25th Percentile £263 £313 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% - -7.32%
75th Percentile £563 £588 £600
90th Percentile £668 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £410 £425 £430
% change year-on-year -3.53% -1.16% -4.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 351 174 312
10th Percentile £15.22 £16.33 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.96 £17.72
Median hourly rate £25.15 £37.25 £32.25
Median % change year-on-year -32.48% +15.50% +29.00%
75th Percentile £61.75 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.64 £26.09
% change year-on-year -20.51% +21.27% +18.59%

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 30 December 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
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 30 December 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 -46 489 £480 -12.73% 344
UK excluding London -47 302 £447 -5.89% 287
London -28 233 £570 -0.96% 90
Work from Home -75 155 £454 -8.79% 278
North of England -28 85 £471 -24.64% 62
South East -8 83 £208 -51.69% 84
Midlands -43 62 £483 -3.34% 56
Scotland -6 58 £450 - 17
West Midlands -24 57 £484 -4.60% 29
North West -6 48 £465 -18.56% 39
Yorkshire -37 35 £495 -29.29% 23
South West -16 10 £700 +33.33% 28
East Midlands -21 5 £437 +22.75% 23
East of England -26 5 £500 +25.00% 39
North East -5 4 £500 -9.09% 1
Wales -5 1 £265 +64.43% 9
Northern Ireland -14 1 - - 2

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 39 (6.61%) Apache
2 37 (6.27%) WebLogic
3 30 (5.08%) Confluence
4 20 (3.39%) SharePoint
5 18 (3.05%) JBoss
6 10 (1.69%) Tomcat
7 9 (1.53%) IIS
7 9 (1.53%) Tuxedo
7 9 (1.53%) WebSphere
8 8 (1.36%) iPlanet
8 8 (1.36%) WebSphere Application Server
9 7 (1.19%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 7 (1.19%) Oracle Workflow
10 6 (1.02%) nginx
11 5 (0.85%) Apache Spark
11 5 (0.85%) Microsoft Exchange
12 4 (0.68%) NetWeaver
13 2 (0.34%) Oracle HTTP Server
13 2 (0.34%) SAS
14 1 (0.17%) CICS
Applications
1 19 (3.22%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (1.19%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.51%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.34%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 10 (1.69%) Oracle EBS
1 10 (1.69%) Oracle EBS R12
2 5 (0.85%) Oracle 11i
2 5 (0.85%) Oracle Assets
2 5 (0.85%) Oracle Payables
2 5 (0.85%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 4 (0.68%) SAP IBP
4 3 (0.51%) ION MarketView
4 3 (0.51%) Kondor
4 3 (0.51%) Oracle BPM
4 3 (0.51%) Oracle BRM
4 3 (0.51%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.34%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.17%) Finacle
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle CRM
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.17%) SAP GRC
6 1 (0.17%) StreamServe
Cloud Services
1 154 (26.10%) AWS
2 108 (18.31%) Azure
3 35 (5.93%) GCP
4 29 (4.92%) GitHub
5 25 (4.24%) SaaS
6 22 (3.73%) AWS CloudFormation
7 21 (3.56%) Sauce Labs
8 19 (3.22%) Azure Monitor
9 16 (2.71%) Amazon EC2
9 16 (2.71%) OpenShift
10 14 (2.37%) Amazon S3
11 13 (2.20%) Azure DevOps
12 11 (1.86%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 11 (1.86%) Cloud Computing
12 11 (1.86%) Serverless
12 11 (1.86%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 10 (1.69%) AWS Lambda
14 9 (1.53%) Microsoft 365
14 9 (1.53%) OCI
15 8 (1.36%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 38 (6.44%) Firewall
2 30 (5.08%) TCP/IP
3 28 (4.75%) DNS
4 27 (4.58%) HTTP
5 21 (3.56%) Wireless
6 18 (3.05%) SSL
7 17 (2.88%) SSH
8 15 (2.54%) Network Security
9 10 (1.69%) Kerberos
10 8 (1.36%) SAN
11 6 (1.02%) DHCP
12 5 (0.85%) FTP
13 4 (0.68%) VPN
13 4 (0.68%) Wireshark
14 3 (0.51%) Broadband
14 3 (0.51%) GPRS
14 3 (0.51%) GSM
14 3 (0.51%) Unified Communications
14 3 (0.51%) VoIP
15 2 (0.34%) InfiniBand
Database & Business Intelligence
1 56 (9.49%) MySQL
1 56 (9.49%) Relational Database
2 53 (8.98%) MongoDB
3 46 (7.80%) Oracle Database
4 27 (4.58%) PostgreSQL
5 26 (4.41%) NoSQL
6 22 (3.73%) Elasticsearch
7 19 (3.22%) SQL Server
8 15 (2.54%) Data Warehouse
9 12 (2.03%) KDB
9 12 (2.03%) Kdb+
10 11 (1.86%) Amazon RDS
10 11 (1.86%) Data Lake
11 10 (1.69%) Amazon Redshift
12 8 (1.36%) Big Data
12 8 (1.36%) Hadoop
12 8 (1.36%) RDBMS
13 7 (1.19%) Oracle Reports
14 6 (1.02%) Couchbase
14 6 (1.02%) DB2
Development Applications
1 67 (11.36%) Jenkins
2 55 (9.32%) Git
3 46 (7.80%) JIRA
4 30 (5.08%) Eclipse
4 30 (5.08%) GitLab
5 26 (4.41%) JUnit
5 26 (4.41%) Xcode
6 23 (3.90%) Mockito
7 22 (3.73%) Browser DevTools
8 21 (3.56%) Android Studio
9 15 (2.54%) Selenium
9 15 (2.54%) Sonatype Nexus
10 13 (2.20%) Bitbucket
10 13 (2.20%) Maven
11 10 (1.69%) SoapUI
12 9 (1.53%) IntelliJ
13 8 (1.36%) Bitbucket Server
13 8 (1.36%) CA Release Automation
13 8 (1.36%) MSI
13 8 (1.36%) Subversion
General
1 195 (33.05%) Social Skills
2 163 (27.63%) Finance
3 69 (11.69%) Analytical Skills
4 55 (9.32%) Banking
5 37 (6.27%) Public Sector
6 27 (4.58%) Front Office
7 16 (2.71%) Financial Institution
8 13 (2.20%) Influencing Skills
9 11 (1.86%) Documentation Skills
10 9 (1.53%) Investment Banking
11 7 (1.19%) Legal
11 7 (1.19%) Military
12 6 (1.02%) Law
13 4 (0.68%) Back Office
13 4 (0.68%) General Ledger
14 3 (0.51%) Billing
14 3 (0.51%) Manufacturing
14 3 (0.51%) Presentation Skills
14 3 (0.51%) Telecoms
14 3 (0.51%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 110 (18.64%) Developer
2 100 (16.95%) Senior
3 48 (8.14%) Technical Support
4 46 (7.80%) Java Developer
5 43 (7.29%) Analyst
6 35 (5.93%) DevOps Engineer
6 35 (5.93%) Support Engineer
7 30 (5.08%) Unix Engineer
8 29 (4.92%) Technical Engineer
9 27 (4.58%) Linux Engineer
9 27 (4.58%) Site Reliability Engineer
9 27 (4.58%) Technical Support Engineer
10 26 (4.41%) Senior Developer
11 23 (3.90%) Software Engineer
12 22 (3.73%) Site Engineer
12 22 (3.73%) UX Engineer
13 21 (3.56%) Kafka Engineer
13 21 (3.56%) Lead
13 21 (3.56%) Platform Engineer
14 20 (3.39%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 87 (14.75%) Kafka
2 41 (6.95%) React
3 38 (6.44%) REST
3 38 (6.44%) SOAP
4 34 (5.76%) AngularJS
5 33 (5.59%) CSS
6 25 (4.24%) Middleware
7 24 (4.07%) XML
8 23 (3.90%) HTML
9 22 (3.73%) Ajax
9 22 (3.73%) GraphQL
10 21 (3.56%) ActiveMQ
10 21 (3.56%) Spring
11 19 (3.22%) JSON
12 18 (3.05%) JAX-RS
13 17 (2.88%) Hibernate
14 15 (2.54%) Elastic Stack
14 15 (2.54%) HTML5
14 15 (2.54%) J2EE
14 15 (2.54%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 33 (5.59%) Management Information System
2 24 (4.07%) Mobile App
3 21 (3.56%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 19 (3.22%) Onboarding
5 17 (2.88%) Cloud Native
6 15 (2.54%) Security Posture
7 14 (2.37%) Data Centre
7 14 (2.37%) Distributed Systems
8 13 (2.20%) Algorithms
8 13 (2.20%) Linux Command Line
8 13 (2.20%) Tandem
9 12 (2.03%) Replication
10 11 (1.86%) Equities
10 11 (1.86%) Fixed Income
11 9 (1.53%) Data Protection Act
12 8 (1.36%) Enterprise Cloud
12 8 (1.36%) Greenfield Project
12 8 (1.36%) Legacy Applications
12 8 (1.36%) PKI
13 7 (1.19%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 409 (69.32%) Linux
2 198 (33.56%) Windows
3 29 (4.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 23 (3.90%) Android
4 23 (3.90%) Mac OS X
5 18 (3.05%) Solaris
6 15 (2.54%) Windows Server
7 13 (2.20%) CentOS
7 13 (2.20%) Mac OS
8 6 (1.02%) AIX
9 4 (0.68%) Ubuntu
10 3 (0.51%) VMS
11 2 (0.34%) Apple iOS
11 2 (0.34%) Oracle Linux
11 2 (0.34%) Windows 10
11 2 (0.34%) Windows 7
12 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2003
12 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 172 (29.15%) Agile
2 121 (20.51%) Problem-Solving
3 111 (18.81%) DevOps
4 100 (16.95%) CI/CD
5 73 (12.37%) Incident Response
5 73 (12.37%) OO
6 62 (10.51%) Computer Science
6 62 (10.51%) Microservices
7 59 (10.00%) Observability
8 57 (9.66%) Continuous Improvement
8 57 (9.66%) Infrastructure as Code
9 56 (9.49%) Test Automation
10 55 (9.32%) Software Engineering
11 51 (8.64%) Containerisation
12 48 (8.14%) Analytics
12 48 (8.14%) TDD
13 46 (7.80%) Incident Management
14 44 (7.46%) Migration
15 43 (7.29%) Performance Tuning
16 42 (7.12%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 239 (40.51%) Python
2 224 (37.97%) SQL
3 161 (27.29%) Java
4 99 (16.78%) Perl
4 99 (16.78%) Shell Script
5 75 (12.71%) Bash
6 62 (10.51%) JavaScript
7 47 (7.97%) C++
8 39 (6.61%) PowerShell
9 31 (5.25%) C#
10 27 (4.58%) PL/SQL
11 16 (2.71%) Go
12 13 (2.20%) Groovy
13 12 (2.03%) Korn
13 12 (2.03%) Scala
14 9 (1.53%) PHP
14 9 (1.53%) Search Processing Language
15 8 (1.36%) TypeScript
16 4 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
16 4 (0.68%) PromQL
Qualifications
1 110 (18.64%) Security Cleared
2 90 (15.25%) Degree
3 76 (12.88%) SC Cleared
4 50 (8.47%) Computer Science Degree
5 26 (4.41%) BPSS Clearance
6 13 (2.20%) AWS Certification
7 12 (2.03%) CISSP
8 11 (1.86%) DV Cleared
9 10 (1.69%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 7 (1.19%) Microsoft Certification
11 6 (1.02%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 6 (1.02%) OSCP
12 5 (0.85%) Cisco Certification
12 5 (0.85%) CompTIA Security+
12 5 (0.85%) GPEN
12 5 (0.85%) GWAPT
12 5 (0.85%) ISTQB
12 5 (0.85%) MCSA
12 5 (0.85%) MCSE
13 4 (0.68%) MCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (2.71%) SLA
2 15 (2.54%) QA
3 9 (1.53%) Data Quality
4 6 (1.02%) NCSC
5 4 (0.68%) HIPAA
5 4 (0.68%) SOC 2
6 3 (0.51%) Disclosure Scotland
6 3 (0.51%) NIST
6 3 (0.51%) SEPA
7 2 (0.34%) GMP
7 2 (0.34%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.17%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.17%) GDPR
8 1 (0.17%) ISO 15022
8 1 (0.17%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 90 (15.25%) Docker
2 20 (3.39%) Active Directory
3 8 (1.36%) Tivoli Directory Server
4 7 (1.19%) VMware Infrastructure
5 6 (1.02%) KVM
6 4 (0.68%) VMware NSX
7 3 (0.51%) QEMU
8 2 (0.34%) GPFS
8 2 (0.34%) GridGain
8 2 (0.34%) NFS
8 2 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
8 2 (0.34%) Samba
9 1 (0.17%) Ceph
9 1 (0.17%) iptables
9 1 (0.17%) Lustre
9 1 (0.17%) RACF
9 1 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 1 (0.17%) Terminal Services
9 1 (0.17%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
9 1 (0.17%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 78 (13.22%) Kubernetes
2 70 (11.86%) Terraform
3 69 (11.69%) Ansible
4 34 (5.76%) Grafana
5 31 (5.25%) Puppet
6 22 (3.73%) Prometheus
7 15 (2.54%) Progress Chef
8 12 (2.03%) Kibana
9 10 (1.69%) Red Hat Satellite
9 10 (1.69%) Tivoli
10 8 (1.36%) CA Single Sign-On
10 8 (1.36%) CA Wily
11 7 (1.19%) Jamf Pro
11 7 (1.19%) Nessus
11 7 (1.19%) Single Sign-On
12 6 (1.02%) ITRS Geneos
12 6 (1.02%) Packer
12 6 (1.02%) SCCM
13 5 (0.85%) CASB
13 5 (0.85%) Dell DRAC
Vendors
1 182 (30.85%) Oracle
2 113 (19.15%) Splunk
3 82 (13.90%) Microsoft
4 40 (6.78%) IBM
5 36 (6.10%) ServiceNow
6 29 (4.92%) AppDynamics
7 26 (4.41%) Red Hat
8 24 (4.07%) Dynatrace
9 21 (3.56%) Cisco
10 16 (2.71%) VMware
11 15 (2.54%) CyberArk
12 11 (1.86%) F5
13 10 (1.69%) webMethods
14 9 (1.53%) Google
14 9 (1.53%) Tenable
15 8 (1.36%) Broadcom
15 8 (1.36%) Confluent
15 8 (1.36%) CrowdStrike
15 8 (1.36%) MuleSoft
15 8 (1.36%) Remedy