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

6 months to
18 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 200 129 124
Rank change year-on-year -71 -5 -42
Contract jobs citing Unix 573 634 832
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.41% 2.07% 1.87%
As % of the Operating Systems category 11.83% 14.36% 13.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 374 353 563
10th Percentile £204 £351 £363
25th Percentile £400 £423 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year -11.06% -5.45% -
75th Percentile £623 £650 £665
90th Percentile £738 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £435 £465 £500
% change year-on-year -6.46% -7.10% -7.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 7 22
10th Percentile £22.48 £38.70 £22.01
25th Percentile £25.72 £40.50 £24.54
Median hourly rate £27.50 £41.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.93% +2.50% -38.46%
75th Percentile £28.75 £59.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £29.20 £69.50 £67.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.44 £47.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -43.74% +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 4,845 4,414 6,192
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.95% 14.39% 13.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,205 2,765 4,139
10th Percentile £178 £200 £181
25th Percentile £263 £313 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £440 £470 £465
Median % change year-on-year -6.38% +1.08% -9.71%
75th Percentile £565 £588 £594
90th Percentile £675 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £409 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -3.87% - -10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 341 150 390
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.24 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.94 £17.05
Median hourly rate £23.00 £29.00 £25.52
Median % change year-on-year -20.69% +13.64% -1.85%
75th Percentile £53.75 £64.69 £62.50
90th Percentile £69.99 £70.10 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £27.50 £25.25
% change year-on-year -18.18% +8.91% -2.88%

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 18 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 18 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 -50 496 £475 -11.83% 98
UK excluding London -64 293 £435 -6.46% 81
London -42 230 £538 -6.52% 39
Work from Home -71 164 £454 -7.86% 58
North of England -19 106 £469 -20.17% 13
South East -13 82 £208 -54.30% 22
North West +8 68 £465 -15.45% 11
Midlands -38 60 £448 -2.62% 20
West Midlands -28 57 £449 -2.42% 17
Scotland -41 37 £420 -6.67% 9
Yorkshire -49 35 £478 -24.21%
South West -34 11 £700 +33.33% 7
North East -11 5 £563 +50.00% 2
East Midlands -27 3 £430 +1.78% 3
Wales -5 1 £265 +62.04% 2
East of England -41 1 £440 -2.22% 7

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 (5.41%) Apache
2 30 (5.24%) WebLogic
3 21 (3.66%) Confluence
4 16 (2.79%) JBoss
4 16 (2.79%) SharePoint
5 10 (1.75%) Tuxedo
6 9 (1.57%) Apache Spark
6 9 (1.57%) Tomcat
7 7 (1.22%) IIS
7 7 (1.22%) WebSphere
8 6 (1.05%) CICS
8 6 (1.05%) iPlanet
8 6 (1.05%) WebSphere Application Server
9 5 (0.87%) nginx
9 5 (0.87%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 5 (0.87%) SAS
10 4 (0.70%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.52%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.35%) Oracle HTTP Server
12 2 (0.35%) Oracle Spatial
Applications
1 15 (2.62%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.92%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.35%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.17%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (1.05%) Oracle EBS
1 6 (1.05%) Oracle EBS R12
2 5 (0.87%) Oracle 11i
3 4 (0.70%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.52%) Oracle BRM
5 2 (0.35%) ION MarketView
5 2 (0.35%) Kondor
5 2 (0.35%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.35%) Summit
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle BPM
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle Cash Management
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle CRM
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 136 (23.73%) AWS
2 86 (15.01%) Azure
3 31 (5.41%) GCP
4 26 (4.54%) GitHub
5 21 (3.66%) AWS CloudFormation
5 21 (3.66%) SaaS
6 15 (2.62%) Sauce Labs
6 15 (2.62%) Serverless
7 14 (2.44%) AWS Lambda
7 14 (2.44%) OpenShift
8 11 (1.92%) Cloud Computing
9 10 (1.75%) Amazon S3
10 9 (1.57%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 9 (1.57%) Entra ID
10 9 (1.57%) OCI
10 9 (1.57%) Snowflake
11 8 (1.40%) Azure DevOps
11 8 (1.40%) Azure Monitor
11 8 (1.40%) Microsoft 365
12 7 (1.22%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 34 (5.93%) Firewall
2 24 (4.19%) DNS
3 20 (3.49%) HTTP
3 20 (3.49%) Wireless
4 18 (3.14%) TCP/IP
5 16 (2.79%) SSH
6 10 (1.75%) Network Security
7 8 (1.40%) InfiniBand
8 7 (1.22%) Ethernet
8 7 (1.22%) FTP
8 7 (1.22%) Kerberos
8 7 (1.22%) NAS
8 7 (1.22%) NetScaler
8 7 (1.22%) SAN
9 6 (1.05%) SSL
9 6 (1.05%) VPN
9 6 (1.05%) Wireshark
10 5 (0.87%) Ethernet VPN
11 4 (0.70%) FIX Connectivity
11 4 (0.70%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 54 (9.42%) MongoDB
2 52 (9.08%) Relational Database
3 48 (8.38%) MySQL
4 42 (7.33%) Oracle Database
5 29 (5.06%) NoSQL
6 28 (4.89%) SQL Server
7 25 (4.36%) PostgreSQL
8 23 (4.01%) Elasticsearch
9 17 (2.97%) KDB
9 17 (2.97%) Kdb+
10 16 (2.79%) Data Warehouse
11 14 (2.44%) Big Data
12 13 (2.27%) Amazon RDS
13 11 (1.92%) Data Lake
14 10 (1.75%) DB2
15 9 (1.57%) Tick Data
16 8 (1.40%) Amazon Redshift
16 8 (1.40%) Hadoop
17 7 (1.22%) DataStage
17 7 (1.22%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 51 (8.90%) Jenkins
2 44 (7.68%) Git
3 32 (5.58%) GitLab
4 31 (5.41%) JIRA
5 24 (4.19%) Eclipse
6 22 (3.84%) Mockito
7 19 (3.32%) JUnit
8 16 (2.79%) Browser DevTools
8 16 (2.79%) Xcode
9 15 (2.62%) Android Studio
10 13 (2.27%) Selenium
10 13 (2.27%) Sonatype Nexus
11 10 (1.75%) Bitbucket
12 9 (1.57%) IntelliJ
12 9 (1.57%) Maven
12 9 (1.57%) MSI
13 6 (1.05%) Bitbucket Server
13 6 (1.05%) CA Release Automation
14 5 (0.87%) Gradle
14 5 (0.87%) Toad
General
1 154 (26.88%) Social Skills
2 149 (26.00%) Finance
3 71 (12.39%) Analytical Skills
4 54 (9.42%) Banking
5 46 (8.03%) Public Sector
6 25 (4.36%) Front Office
7 19 (3.32%) Influencing Skills
8 16 (2.79%) Investment Banking
9 15 (2.62%) Documentation Skills
10 12 (2.09%) Financial Institution
11 7 (1.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 7 (1.22%) Legal
11 7 (1.22%) Telecoms
12 6 (1.05%) Military
13 5 (0.87%) Law
14 4 (0.70%) Manufacturing
15 3 (0.52%) Billing
16 2 (0.35%) Marketing
16 2 (0.35%) Organisational Skills
16 2 (0.35%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 120 (20.94%) Developer
2 99 (17.28%) Senior
3 55 (9.60%) Java Developer
4 43 (7.50%) Analyst
5 41 (7.16%) Technical Support
6 33 (5.76%) Unix Engineer
7 32 (5.58%) Site Reliability Engineer
7 32 (5.58%) Support Engineer
8 30 (5.24%) DevOps Engineer
9 28 (4.89%) Linux Engineer
9 28 (4.89%) Senior Developer
10 26 (4.54%) Site Engineer
11 25 (4.36%) Technical Engineer
12 24 (4.19%) Software Engineer
13 23 (4.01%) Technical Support Engineer
14 22 (3.84%) Kafka Engineer
14 22 (3.84%) Lead
15 21 (3.66%) Consultant
16 20 (3.49%) C++ Software Engineer
16 20 (3.49%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 82 (14.31%) Kafka
2 41 (7.16%) REST
3 35 (6.11%) React
4 33 (5.76%) SOAP
5 28 (4.89%) XML
6 26 (4.54%) Middleware
7 24 (4.19%) CSS
8 22 (3.84%) AngularJS
9 21 (3.66%) ActiveMQ
9 21 (3.66%) HTML
9 21 (3.66%) JAX-RS
9 21 (3.66%) JSON
10 17 (2.97%) Elastic Stack
10 17 (2.97%) Spring
11 16 (2.79%) Ajax
11 16 (2.79%) GraphQL
12 14 (2.44%) HTML5
12 14 (2.44%) LDAP
13 12 (2.09%) J2EE
14 11 (1.92%) Hibernate
Miscellaneous
1 33 (5.76%) Management Information System
2 22 (3.84%) Linux Command Line
2 22 (3.84%) Onboarding
3 19 (3.32%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 18 (3.14%) Mobile App
5 17 (2.97%) Cloud Native
5 17 (2.97%) Data Centre
6 15 (2.62%) Security Posture
7 13 (2.27%) Equities
8 12 (2.09%) Algorithms
8 12 (2.09%) Fixed Income
9 11 (1.92%) Derivative
9 11 (1.92%) Greenfield Project
10 10 (1.75%) Replication
11 9 (1.57%) Data Protection Act
11 9 (1.57%) Enterprise Software
11 9 (1.57%) Legacy Systems
12 8 (1.40%) Enterprise Cloud
12 8 (1.40%) Tandem
13 7 (1.22%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 391 (68.24%) Linux
2 178 (31.06%) Windows
3 30 (5.24%) Windows Server
4 28 (4.89%) Mac OS X
5 27 (4.71%) Solaris
6 25 (4.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 17 (2.97%) AIX
7 17 (2.97%) Android
8 14 (2.44%) Mac OS
9 12 (2.09%) CentOS
10 4 (0.70%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.35%) Apple iOS
12 1 (0.17%) VMS
12 1 (0.17%) Windows 10
12 1 (0.17%) Windows 7
12 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2003
12 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 159 (27.75%) Agile
2 120 (20.94%) Problem-Solving
3 107 (18.67%) DevOps
4 97 (16.93%) CI/CD
5 68 (11.87%) Microservices
6 63 (10.99%) Computer Science
6 63 (10.99%) Incident Response
7 58 (10.12%) Observability
8 56 (9.77%) OO
9 55 (9.60%) Software Engineering
10 54 (9.42%) Infrastructure as Code
10 54 (9.42%) TDD
10 54 (9.42%) Test Automation
11 49 (8.55%) Containerisation
12 48 (8.38%) Migration
13 47 (8.20%) Data Modelling
13 47 (8.20%) Site Reliability Engineering
14 43 (7.50%) Performance Tuning
15 42 (7.33%) Analytics
16 41 (7.16%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 216 (37.70%) Python
2 205 (35.78%) SQL
3 161 (28.10%) Java
4 96 (16.75%) Shell Script
5 80 (13.96%) Bash
6 70 (12.22%) Perl
7 51 (8.90%) JavaScript
8 46 (8.03%) C++
9 43 (7.50%) PowerShell
10 30 (5.24%) C#
11 25 (4.36%) PL/SQL
12 14 (2.44%) Korn
12 14 (2.44%) Scala
13 13 (2.27%) Go
14 9 (1.57%) PHP
15 7 (1.22%) Groovy
16 6 (1.05%) COBOL
16 6 (1.05%) Search Processing Language
17 5 (0.87%) TypeScript
18 4 (0.70%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 118 (20.59%) Security Cleared
2 89 (15.53%) Degree
3 84 (14.66%) SC Cleared
4 48 (8.38%) Computer Science Degree
5 25 (4.36%) BPSS Clearance
6 9 (1.57%) CISSP
7 8 (1.40%) AWS Certification
7 8 (1.40%) DV Cleared
7 8 (1.40%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 6 (1.05%) Microsoft Certification
8 6 (1.05%) OSCP
9 5 (0.87%) CompTIA Security+
9 5 (0.87%) GPEN
9 5 (0.87%) GWAPT
9 5 (0.87%) ISTQB
9 5 (0.87%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 5 (0.87%) MCSA
9 5 (0.87%) MCSE
9 5 (0.87%) RHCE
10 3 (0.52%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (3.32%) SLA
2 16 (2.79%) QA
3 9 (1.57%) Data Quality
3 9 (1.57%) NIST
4 6 (1.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 4 (0.70%) GMP
5 4 (0.70%) NCSC
6 3 (0.52%) Disclosure Scotland
6 3 (0.52%) FATCA
6 3 (0.52%) HIPAA
6 3 (0.52%) PCI DSS
6 3 (0.52%) SEPA
6 3 (0.52%) SOC 2
7 1 (0.17%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.17%) GDPR
7 1 (0.17%) ISO 15022
7 1 (0.17%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.17%) NIST 800
7 1 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 80 (13.96%) Docker
2 22 (3.84%) Active Directory
3 11 (1.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (1.57%) KVM
5 6 (1.05%) Hyper-V
5 6 (1.05%) Tivoli Directory Server
5 6 (1.05%) Virtual Machines
6 4 (0.70%) GPFS
6 4 (0.70%) NFS
6 4 (0.70%) Oracle RAC
6 4 (0.70%) VMware NSX
7 2 (0.35%) GridGain
7 2 (0.35%) QEMU
8 1 (0.17%) HDFS
8 1 (0.17%) Postfix
8 1 (0.17%) Terminal Services
8 1 (0.17%) Varnish
8 1 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.17%) VMware Server
8 1 (0.17%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 81 (14.14%) Kubernetes
2 65 (11.34%) Ansible
3 61 (10.65%) Terraform
4 35 (6.11%) Grafana
5 31 (5.41%) Puppet
6 26 (4.54%) Prometheus
7 15 (2.62%) Kibana
8 12 (2.09%) Progress Chef
9 7 (1.22%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (1.22%) Tivoli
10 6 (1.05%) CA Single Sign-On
10 6 (1.05%) CA Wily
10 6 (1.05%) IBM BigFix
10 6 (1.05%) Nessus
10 6 (1.05%) NetBackup
10 6 (1.05%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
10 6 (1.05%) Red Hat Satellite
10 6 (1.05%) SCCM
10 6 (1.05%) vCenter Server
11 5 (0.87%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 169 (29.49%) Oracle
2 92 (16.06%) Splunk
3 72 (12.57%) Microsoft
4 46 (8.03%) IBM
5 37 (6.46%) ServiceNow
6 22 (3.84%) Red Hat
7 21 (3.66%) VMware
8 17 (2.97%) Cisco
9 15 (2.62%) AppDynamics
10 11 (1.92%) CyberArk
11 10 (1.75%) Remedy
12 9 (1.57%) Dynatrace
12 9 (1.57%) Tenable
12 9 (1.57%) webMethods
13 8 (1.40%) Aruba
13 8 (1.40%) Confluent
13 8 (1.40%) CrowdStrike
14 7 (1.22%) Ab Initio
14 7 (1.22%) F5
14 7 (1.22%) Fujitsu