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

6 months to
6 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 204 129 123
Rank change year-on-year -75 -6 -43
Contract jobs citing Unix 555 648 863
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.42% 2.08% 1.93%
As % of the Operating Systems category 11.63% 14.63% 13.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 375 367 602
10th Percentile £204 £350 £363
25th Percentile £381 £423 £458
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -10.67% -4.55% -0.09%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £665
90th Percentile £738 £755 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £435 £468 £500
% change year-on-year -7.21% -6.35% -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% -38.22%
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 4,771 4,429 6,336
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.18% 14.21% 14.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,182 2,762 4,264
10th Percentile £175 £198 £180
25th Percentile £263 £313 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £444 £475 £465
Median % change year-on-year -6.58% +2.15% -10.14%
75th Percentile £563 £588 £596
90th Percentile £675 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £403 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -5.24% - -8.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 338 156 399
10th Percentile £14.70 £16.18 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.05 £21.00 £16.89
Median hourly rate £23.54 £31.79 £25.25
Median % change year-on-year -25.96% +25.90% -1.79%
75th Percentile £55.64 £64.63 £62.00
90th Percentile £69.12 £69.38 £71.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.54 £28.50 £25.06
% change year-on-year -20.92% +13.74% +0.23%

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 6 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 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 6 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 -55 475 £475 -13.64% 112
UK excluding London -83 279 £435 -7.21% 89
London -38 226 £550 -7.25% 47
Work from Home -84 158 £454 -8.38% 57
North of England -26 89 £465 -22.50% 25
South East -28 76 £208 -53.89% 26
Midlands -41 65 £450 -5.66% 10
West Midlands -29 61 £450 -5.66% 7
North West -7 51 £455 -18.33% 22
Scotland -38 40 £425 -5.56% 9
Yorkshire -46 35 £495 -25.56%
South West -28 10 £700 +33.33% 10
North East -12 5 £563 +50.00% 3
East Midlands -29 4 £465 +10.06% 3
Wales -4 1 £265 +64.60% 1
East of England -41 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 31 (5.59%) Apache
2 30 (5.41%) WebLogic
3 21 (3.78%) Confluence
4 16 (2.88%) JBoss
4 16 (2.88%) SharePoint
5 10 (1.80%) Tomcat
6 9 (1.62%) Tuxedo
7 7 (1.26%) Apache Spark
7 7 (1.26%) IIS
7 7 (1.26%) WebSphere
8 6 (1.08%) iPlanet
8 6 (1.08%) WebSphere Application Server
9 5 (0.90%) nginx
9 5 (0.90%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 5 (0.90%) SAS
10 4 (0.72%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.54%) CICS
11 3 (0.54%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.36%) ArcGIS
12 2 (0.36%) Oracle Spatial
Applications
1 15 (2.70%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.98%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.36%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.18%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (1.08%) Oracle EBS
1 6 (1.08%) Oracle EBS R12
2 5 (0.90%) Oracle 11i
3 4 (0.72%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.54%) Kondor
4 3 (0.54%) 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
1 135 (24.32%) AWS
2 87 (15.68%) Azure
3 31 (5.59%) GCP
4 25 (4.50%) GitHub
5 21 (3.78%) AWS CloudFormation
5 21 (3.78%) SaaS
6 15 (2.70%) Sauce Labs
7 13 (2.34%) OpenShift
8 11 (1.98%) Amazon S3
8 11 (1.98%) AWS Lambda
8 11 (1.98%) Cloud Computing
8 11 (1.98%) Serverless
9 9 (1.62%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 9 (1.62%) Amazon EC2
9 9 (1.62%) Azure Monitor
9 9 (1.62%) OCI
10 8 (1.44%) Azure DevOps
10 8 (1.44%) Microsoft 365
10 8 (1.44%) Snowflake
11 6 (1.08%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 30 (5.41%) Firewall
2 20 (3.60%) HTTP
3 19 (3.42%) DNS
4 15 (2.70%) TCP/IP
4 15 (2.70%) Wireless
5 11 (1.98%) Network Security
5 11 (1.98%) SSH
6 7 (1.26%) Kerberos
7 6 (1.08%) FTP
8 5 (0.90%) SAN
8 5 (0.90%) Wireshark
9 4 (0.72%) DHCP
9 4 (0.72%) FIX Connectivity
9 4 (0.72%) NAS
10 3 (0.54%) Broadband
10 3 (0.54%) GPRS
10 3 (0.54%) GSM
10 3 (0.54%) SSL
10 3 (0.54%) Unified Communications
10 3 (0.54%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 54 (9.73%) Relational Database
2 50 (9.01%) MySQL
3 48 (8.65%) MongoDB
4 41 (7.39%) Oracle Database
5 26 (4.68%) NoSQL
6 25 (4.50%) PostgreSQL
7 23 (4.14%) Elasticsearch
8 18 (3.24%) KDB
8 18 (3.24%) Kdb+
8 18 (3.24%) SQL Server
9 15 (2.70%) Data Warehouse
10 13 (2.34%) Big Data
11 11 (1.98%) Amazon RDS
12 10 (1.80%) Data Lake
13 9 (1.62%) Amazon Redshift
13 9 (1.62%) Tick Data
14 7 (1.26%) DB2
14 7 (1.26%) Hadoop
14 7 (1.26%) Metadata
14 7 (1.26%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 52 (9.37%) Jenkins
2 43 (7.75%) Git
3 32 (5.77%) GitLab
3 32 (5.77%) JIRA
4 24 (4.32%) Eclipse
5 20 (3.60%) JUnit
5 20 (3.60%) Mockito
6 17 (3.06%) Xcode
7 16 (2.88%) Browser DevTools
8 15 (2.70%) Android Studio
9 13 (2.34%) Selenium
9 13 (2.34%) Sonatype Nexus
10 9 (1.62%) Bitbucket
10 9 (1.62%) IntelliJ
10 9 (1.62%) Maven
11 8 (1.44%) MSI
12 6 (1.08%) Bitbucket Server
12 6 (1.08%) CA Release Automation
12 6 (1.08%) SoapUI
13 5 (0.90%) Gradle
General
1 156 (28.11%) Social Skills
2 144 (25.95%) Finance
3 74 (13.33%) Analytical Skills
4 56 (10.09%) Banking
5 34 (6.13%) Public Sector
6 26 (4.68%) Front Office
7 16 (2.88%) Influencing Skills
7 16 (2.88%) Investment Banking
8 14 (2.52%) Financial Institution
9 13 (2.34%) Documentation Skills
10 7 (1.26%) Legal
10 7 (1.26%) Telecoms
11 6 (1.08%) Military
12 5 (0.90%) Law
13 4 (0.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 3 (0.54%) Billing
14 3 (0.54%) Manufacturing
15 2 (0.36%) Marketing
15 2 (0.36%) Organisational Skills
15 2 (0.36%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 112 (20.18%) Developer
2 98 (17.66%) Senior
3 46 (8.29%) Java Developer
4 43 (7.75%) Technical Support
5 39 (7.03%) Analyst
6 33 (5.95%) Unix Engineer
7 30 (5.41%) Site Reliability Engineer
7 30 (5.41%) Support Engineer
8 29 (5.23%) DevOps Engineer
9 28 (5.05%) Linux Engineer
10 26 (4.68%) Senior Developer
11 24 (4.32%) Site Engineer
11 24 (4.32%) Software Engineer
11 24 (4.32%) Technical Engineer
12 22 (3.96%) Consultant
12 22 (3.96%) Kafka Engineer
12 22 (3.96%) Technical Support Engineer
13 21 (3.78%) C++ Software Engineer
13 21 (3.78%) Lead
13 21 (3.78%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 78 (14.05%) Kafka
2 39 (7.03%) REST
3 35 (6.31%) React
4 33 (5.95%) SOAP
5 28 (5.05%) XML
6 24 (4.32%) CSS
7 23 (4.14%) Middleware
8 22 (3.96%) AngularJS
8 22 (3.96%) HTML
9 21 (3.78%) JSON
10 19 (3.42%) ActiveMQ
11 18 (3.24%) JAX-RS
12 16 (2.88%) Ajax
12 16 (2.88%) Elastic Stack
12 16 (2.88%) GraphQL
12 16 (2.88%) Spring
13 15 (2.70%) HTML5
14 12 (2.16%) Hibernate
14 12 (2.16%) J2EE
15 10 (1.80%) FIX Protocol
Miscellaneous
1 30 (5.41%) Management Information System
2 20 (3.60%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 19 (3.42%) Linux Command Line
4 18 (3.24%) Mobile App
4 18 (3.24%) Onboarding
5 16 (2.88%) Cloud Native
6 13 (2.34%) Algorithms
6 13 (2.34%) Equities
6 13 (2.34%) Fixed Income
7 12 (2.16%) Data Centre
8 11 (1.98%) Derivative
8 11 (1.98%) Greenfield Project
9 10 (1.80%) Security Posture
10 9 (1.62%) Data Protection Act
10 9 (1.62%) Replication
11 8 (1.44%) Enterprise Cloud
11 8 (1.44%) Enterprise Software
11 8 (1.44%) Tandem
12 7 (1.26%) PKI
12 7 (1.26%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 377 (67.93%) Linux
2 171 (30.81%) Windows
3 25 (4.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 24 (4.32%) Mac OS X
4 24 (4.32%) Solaris
5 20 (3.60%) Windows Server
6 17 (3.06%) Android
7 13 (2.34%) Mac OS
8 12 (2.16%) CentOS
9 11 (1.98%) AIX
10 4 (0.72%) 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
1 153 (27.57%) Agile
2 116 (20.90%) Problem-Solving
3 106 (19.10%) DevOps
4 93 (16.76%) CI/CD
5 63 (11.35%) Microservices
6 61 (10.99%) Computer Science
7 59 (10.63%) Incident Response
8 58 (10.45%) OO
9 55 (9.91%) Software Engineering
10 54 (9.73%) Observability
11 51 (9.19%) Infrastructure as Code
12 48 (8.65%) Data Modelling
12 48 (8.65%) Migration
12 48 (8.65%) TDD
12 48 (8.65%) Test Automation
13 46 (8.29%) Containerisation
14 43 (7.75%) Analytics
14 43 (7.75%) Continuous Improvement
14 43 (7.75%) Performance Tuning
15 40 (7.21%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 218 (39.28%) Python
2 209 (37.66%) SQL
3 153 (27.57%) Java
4 93 (16.76%) Shell Script
5 79 (14.23%) Bash
6 75 (13.51%) Perl
7 52 (9.37%) JavaScript
8 47 (8.47%) C++
9 42 (7.57%) PowerShell
10 30 (5.41%) C#
11 27 (4.86%) PL/SQL
12 13 (2.34%) Go
12 13 (2.34%) Scala
13 12 (2.16%) Korn
14 9 (1.62%) PHP
15 8 (1.44%) Groovy
16 7 (1.26%) Search Processing Language
17 6 (1.08%) TypeScript
18 4 (0.72%) C
18 4 (0.72%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 114 (20.54%) Security Cleared
2 87 (15.68%) Degree
3 81 (14.59%) SC Cleared
4 50 (9.01%) Computer Science Degree
5 21 (3.78%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (1.80%) DV Cleared
6 10 (1.80%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 7 (1.26%) AWS Certification
8 6 (1.08%) OSCP
9 5 (0.90%) Cisco Certification
9 5 (0.90%) GPEN
9 5 (0.90%) GWAPT
9 5 (0.90%) ISTQB
9 5 (0.90%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 5 (0.90%) RHCE
10 4 (0.72%) CISSP
11 3 (0.54%) CCIE
11 3 (0.54%) CCNA
11 3 (0.54%) CCNP
11 3 (0.54%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (3.24%) SLA
2 16 (2.88%) QA
3 9 (1.62%) Data Quality
4 4 (0.72%) GMP
4 4 (0.72%) HIPAA
4 4 (0.72%) NCSC
4 4 (0.72%) SOC 2
5 3 (0.54%) Disclosure Scotland
5 3 (0.54%) FATCA
5 3 (0.54%) NIST
5 3 (0.54%) 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 80 (14.41%) Docker
2 11 (1.98%) Active Directory
3 10 (1.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (1.08%) KVM
4 6 (1.08%) Tivoli Directory Server
5 5 (0.90%) VMware NSX
6 4 (0.72%) GPFS
6 4 (0.72%) NFS
7 3 (0.54%) Hyper-V
7 3 (0.54%) QEMU
7 3 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (0.36%) GridGain
8 2 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
9 1 (0.18%) Postfix
9 1 (0.18%) Samba
9 1 (0.18%) Terminal Services
9 1 (0.18%) Varnish
9 1 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.18%) VMware Server
9 1 (0.18%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 80 (14.41%) Kubernetes
2 60 (10.81%) Ansible
2 60 (10.81%) Terraform
3 31 (5.59%) Puppet
4 30 (5.41%) Grafana
5 19 (3.42%) Prometheus
6 15 (2.70%) Kibana
7 12 (2.16%) Progress Chef
8 7 (1.26%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (1.26%) Tivoli
9 6 (1.08%) CA Single Sign-On
9 6 (1.08%) CA Wily
9 6 (1.08%) Red Hat Satellite
9 6 (1.08%) SCCM
10 5 (0.90%) Dell DRAC
10 5 (0.90%) ITRS Geneos
10 5 (0.90%) Jamf Pro
10 5 (0.90%) NetBackup
11 4 (0.72%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 4 (0.72%) Packer
Vendors
1 170 (30.63%) Oracle
2 87 (15.68%) Splunk
3 69 (12.43%) Microsoft
4 40 (7.21%) IBM
5 32 (5.77%) ServiceNow
6 22 (3.96%) Red Hat
7 19 (3.42%) VMware
8 17 (3.06%) AppDynamics
9 14 (2.52%) Cisco
10 12 (2.16%) Dynatrace
11 9 (1.62%) webMethods
12 8 (1.44%) Confluent
12 8 (1.44%) CrowdStrike
12 8 (1.44%) CyberArk
13 7 (1.26%) Dell
14 6 (1.08%) Ab Initio
14 6 (1.08%) Broadcom
14 6 (1.08%) Fujitsu
14 6 (1.08%) MuleSoft
14 6 (1.08%) Veritas