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

6 months to
18 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 215 172 132
Rank change year-on-year -43 -40 -48
Contract jobs citing Unix 591 501 763
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.17% 1.68% 1.74%
As % of the Operating Systems category 12.35% 12.02% 13.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 344 306 510
10th Percentile £304 £358 £333
25th Percentile £400 £408 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £472 £478 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.10% -9.05% -4.55%
75th Percentile £559 £599 £634
90th Percentile £654 £650 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £459 £467 £450
% change year-on-year -1.71% +3.78% -16.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 6 21
10th Percentile £21.50 £43.87 £22.30
25th Percentile £31.86 £52.19 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £55.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +37.50% -37.50%
75th Percentile £53.75 £66.25 -
90th Percentile £55.00 £73.13 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £55.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -13.56% +37.50% -32.85%

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 4,785 4,169 5,861
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.49% 14.01% 13.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,056 2,719 3,865
10th Percentile £190 £200 £188
25th Percentile £316 £313 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year - -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £585 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
% change year-on-year - - -2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 332 211 423
10th Percentile £14.60 £15.33 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.19 £17.44 £15.82
Median hourly rate £30.24 £21.28 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year +42.11% -10.59% -49.89%
75th Percentile £64.06 £39.38 £62.50
90th Percentile £70.20 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £18.87 £25.00
% change year-on-year +48.38% -24.52% -37.65%

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 June 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 18 June 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 18 June 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 -35 502 £473 -1.56% 91
UK excluding London -49 350 £459 -1.71% 66
London -51 184 £550 +10.00% 45
Work from Home -25 172 £470 +4.44% 42
North of England -24 113 £481 +10.38% 17
South East -14 107 £392 -28.73% 23
North West +8 85 £481 +16.24% 12
Midlands -4 83 £459 -0.22% 2
West Midlands +4 78 £459 -0.22% 1
Scotland -48 38 £425 -10.53% 3
Yorkshire -64 23 £483 -6.99% 4
East of England -30 9 £500 +11.11% 5
North East -32 5 £480 +28.00% 1
South West -32 5 £600 - 5
Wales -11 4 - - 4
East Midlands -24 4 £494 +23.28% 1

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 34 (5.75%) Confluence
2 26 (4.40%) SAS
3 18 (3.05%) Apache
4 16 (2.71%) Apache Spark
5 14 (2.37%) Apache Airflow
6 10 (1.69%) CICS
6 10 (1.69%) WebLogic
7 7 (1.18%) NetWeaver
7 7 (1.18%) Tuxedo
8 6 (1.02%) OpenStack
8 6 (1.02%) SharePoint
9 4 (0.68%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 4 (0.68%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 3 (0.51%) IBM HTTP Server
10 3 (0.51%) WebSphere
10 3 (0.51%) WebSphere Application Server
11 2 (0.34%) nginx
11 2 (0.34%) Oracle Spatial
11 2 (0.34%) Tomcat
11 2 (0.34%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 7 (1.18%) Microsoft Excel
1 7 (1.18%) Notepad++
2 4 (0.68%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 8 (1.35%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.02%) Summit
3 2 (0.34%) FLEXCUBE
3 2 (0.34%) Oracle Applications
3 2 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.17%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.17%) Oracle Retail
4 1 (0.17%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 113 (19.12%) AWS
2 74 (12.52%) Azure
3 28 (4.74%) GitHub
4 25 (4.23%) GCP
5 24 (4.06%) Entra ID
6 23 (3.89%) AWS Lambda
7 22 (3.72%) Serverless
8 20 (3.38%) Amazon S3
8 20 (3.38%) GitHub Actions
9 18 (3.05%) OpenShift
10 15 (2.54%) IaaS
10 15 (2.54%) PaaS
10 15 (2.54%) Power Platform
11 13 (2.20%) SaaS
12 11 (1.86%) Azure DevOps
13 10 (1.69%) Snowflake
14 9 (1.52%) Amazon EC2
15 8 (1.35%) Azure Data Factory
16 7 (1.18%) Amazon ECS
16 7 (1.18%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 30 (5.08%) Firewall
2 24 (4.06%) DNS
3 19 (3.21%) SAN
4 15 (2.54%) TCP/IP
5 13 (2.20%) NAS
6 11 (1.86%) SSH
7 10 (1.69%) HTTP
8 8 (1.35%) Network Security
8 8 (1.35%) SSL
8 8 (1.35%) Wireless
8 8 (1.35%) Wireshark
9 7 (1.18%) 5G
9 7 (1.18%) FTP
9 7 (1.18%) PuTTY
9 7 (1.18%) WinSCP
10 6 (1.02%) Ethernet
10 6 (1.02%) InfiniBand
10 6 (1.02%) VoLTE
10 6 (1.02%) VoWiFi
10 6 (1.02%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 71 (12.01%) SQL Server
2 43 (7.28%) Relational Database
3 39 (6.60%) Oracle Database
4 36 (6.09%) MySQL
5 31 (5.25%) PostgreSQL
6 29 (4.91%) MongoDB
7 21 (3.55%) Data Warehouse
8 19 (3.21%) Metadata
9 16 (2.71%) Big Data
9 16 (2.71%) BusinessObjects
9 16 (2.71%) DataStage
10 15 (2.54%) Db2
10 15 (2.54%) KDB
10 15 (2.54%) Power BI
11 14 (2.37%) Amazon Aurora
11 14 (2.37%) NoSQL
12 13 (2.20%) Kdb+
13 12 (2.03%) Sybase ASE
14 11 (1.86%) Data Lake
15 10 (1.69%) Oracle Database 12c
Development Applications
1 57 (9.64%) Jenkins
2 52 (8.80%) GitLab
3 49 (8.29%) JIRA
4 46 (7.78%) Git
5 22 (3.72%) Artifactory
6 11 (1.86%) Mockito
7 9 (1.52%) Bitbucket
7 9 (1.52%) Maven
8 7 (1.18%) Sonatype Nexus
9 4 (0.68%) CA Gen
9 4 (0.68%) JUnit
9 4 (0.68%) Oracle Forms
9 4 (0.68%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.51%) Android Studio
10 3 (0.51%) Eclipse
10 3 (0.51%) Introscope
10 3 (0.51%) MSI
10 3 (0.51%) REST Assured
10 3 (0.51%) Selenium
10 3 (0.51%) Xcode
General
1 147 (24.87%) Finance
2 122 (20.64%) Social Skills
3 89 (15.06%) Banking
4 74 (12.52%) Analytical Skills
5 58 (9.81%) Public Sector
6 26 (4.40%) Investment Banking
7 25 (4.23%) Documentation Skills
8 20 (3.38%) Front Office
9 11 (1.86%) Telecoms
10 10 (1.69%) Influencing Skills
11 9 (1.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 9 (1.52%) Retail
12 8 (1.35%) Financial Institution
13 6 (1.02%) Advertising
13 6 (1.02%) Military
14 2 (0.34%) Billing
14 2 (0.34%) Law
14 2 (0.34%) Local Government
14 2 (0.34%) Organisational Skills
15 1 (0.17%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 103 (17.43%) Developer
2 78 (13.20%) Senior
3 65 (11.00%) Data Engineer
4 51 (8.63%) Unix Engineer
5 44 (7.45%) Analyst
6 41 (6.94%) Support Engineer
7 40 (6.77%) Java Developer
8 33 (5.58%) DBA
9 29 (4.91%) Senior Developer
10 24 (4.06%) Architect
11 23 (3.89%) Oracle DBA
12 22 (3.72%) Administrator
12 22 (3.72%) Python Developer
13 20 (3.38%) Consultant
13 20 (3.38%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 20 (3.38%) Technical Support
14 18 (3.05%) Site Engineer
15 15 (2.54%) DevOps Engineer
15 15 (2.54%) Linux Engineer
15 15 (2.54%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 51 (8.63%) Kafka
2 36 (6.09%) REST
3 29 (4.91%) Middleware
4 26 (4.40%) RESTful
5 21 (3.55%) Spring
5 21 (3.55%) Spring Boot
6 19 (3.21%) XML
7 17 (2.88%) CSS
8 14 (2.37%) HTML
8 14 (2.37%) Oracle GoldenGate
8 14 (2.37%) Web Services
9 11 (1.86%) ActiveMQ
9 11 (1.86%) JAX-RS
9 11 (1.86%) LDAP
9 11 (1.86%) Pandas
9 11 (1.86%) RabbitMQ
10 10 (1.69%) JSON
11 9 (1.52%) FastAPI
11 9 (1.52%) Flask
11 9 (1.52%) React
Miscellaneous
1 44 (7.45%) Onboarding
2 37 (6.26%) Linux Command Line
3 29 (4.91%) Legacy Systems
4 26 (4.40%) Management Information System
5 24 (4.06%) Data Centre
6 19 (3.21%) Cloud Native
7 17 (2.88%) Mainframe
8 16 (2.71%) Derivative
8 16 (2.71%) Replication
9 14 (2.37%) Fixed Income
10 11 (1.86%) Clustering
10 11 (1.86%) Public Cloud
11 10 (1.69%) BYOD
11 10 (1.69%) Equities
11 10 (1.69%) Virtual Team
11 10 (1.69%) VSAM
12 9 (1.52%) Enterprise Software
12 9 (1.52%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 9 (1.52%) Market Risk
13 8 (1.35%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 387 (65.48%) Linux
2 155 (26.23%) Windows
3 56 (9.48%) Solaris
4 43 (7.28%) Windows Server
5 29 (4.91%) AIX
6 22 (3.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 12 (2.03%) Mac OS X
8 9 (1.52%) Oracle Linux
9 7 (1.18%) HPUX
10 5 (0.85%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.85%) SUSE
11 4 (0.68%) VMS
12 3 (0.51%) Android
12 3 (0.51%) Check Point GAiA
13 2 (0.34%) CentOS
13 2 (0.34%) OpenVMS
13 2 (0.34%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 2 (0.34%) Ubuntu
14 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
14 1 (0.17%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 127 (21.49%) Agile
2 118 (19.97%) CI/CD
3 103 (17.43%) Problem-Solving
4 97 (16.41%) Migration
5 80 (13.54%) DevOps
6 75 (12.69%) High Availability
7 71 (12.01%) ITIL
8 61 (10.32%) Test Automation
9 58 (9.81%) Root Cause Analysis
10 54 (9.14%) Disaster Recovery
11 53 (8.97%) Performance Tuning
12 52 (8.80%) Observability
13 51 (8.63%) Runbook
14 49 (8.29%) Data Modelling
15 48 (8.12%) Incident Management
16 46 (7.78%) Change Management
16 46 (7.78%) Microservices
17 45 (7.61%) Analytics
18 42 (7.11%) Computer Science
19 41 (6.94%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 225 (38.07%) SQL
2 219 (37.06%) Python
3 109 (18.44%) Java
4 102 (17.26%) Shell Script
5 69 (11.68%) PL/SQL
6 54 (9.14%) PowerShell
7 52 (8.80%) Bash
8 39 (6.60%) Perl
9 37 (6.26%) JavaScript
10 24 (4.06%) C#
11 23 (3.89%) C++
12 15 (2.54%) Korn
13 12 (2.03%) COBOL
14 8 (1.35%) Scala
15 5 (0.85%) C
16 4 (0.68%) Kotlin
16 4 (0.68%) Ruby
16 4 (0.68%) T-SQL
17 3 (0.51%) HiveQL
17 3 (0.51%) R
Qualifications
1 197 (33.33%) Security Cleared
2 166 (28.09%) SC Cleared
3 71 (12.01%) Degree
4 29 (4.91%) BPSS Clearance
5 23 (3.89%) Computer Science Degree
6 19 (3.21%) CISSP
7 11 (1.86%) CompTIA Security+
8 10 (1.69%) DV Cleared
9 9 (1.52%) CISM
10 7 (1.18%) Cisco Certification
10 7 (1.18%) CRISC
11 6 (1.02%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 6 (1.02%) CESG Certified Professional
11 6 (1.02%) GIAC
11 6 (1.02%) Microsoft Certification
11 6 (1.02%) RHCE
12 5 (0.85%) MCSA
12 5 (0.85%) MCSE
12 5 (0.85%) SANS
13 4 (0.68%) GSEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 36 (6.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 35 (5.92%) NIST
3 19 (3.21%) QA
4 18 (3.05%) SLA
5 11 (1.86%) Data Quality
6 7 (1.18%) Cyber Essentials
7 6 (1.02%) ISO 31000
8 5 (0.85%) GRC
9 4 (0.68%) ISO 20022
9 4 (0.68%) NIST 800
9 4 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 3 (0.51%) Disclosure Scotland
10 3 (0.51%) FATCA
10 3 (0.51%) PCI DSS
11 2 (0.34%) GDPR
11 2 (0.34%) GMP
11 2 (0.34%) ISO 15022
11 2 (0.34%) NCSC
12 1 (0.17%) SEPA
12 1 (0.17%) SOC 2
System Software
1 57 (9.64%) Docker
2 41 (6.94%) Active Directory
3 21 (3.55%) Oracle RAC
4 18 (3.05%) VMware Infrastructure
5 16 (2.71%) NFS
6 11 (1.86%) Virtual Machines
7 8 (1.35%) GPFS
8 6 (1.02%) Hyper-V
8 6 (1.02%) KVM
8 6 (1.02%) Postfix
8 6 (1.02%) Varnish
8 6 (1.02%) VMware ESXi
9 5 (0.85%) vSphere
10 4 (0.68%) HDFS
10 4 (0.68%) Sendmail
11 3 (0.51%) Firmware
11 3 (0.51%) GridGain
11 3 (0.51%) PowerHA
11 3 (0.51%) Veritas Volume Manager
12 2 (0.34%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 70 (11.84%) Kubernetes
2 61 (10.32%) Ansible
3 38 (6.43%) Grafana
4 36 (6.09%) Terraform
5 30 (5.08%) Oracle RMAN
6 25 (4.23%) Prometheus
7 14 (2.37%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 13 (2.20%) Data Guard
9 11 (1.86%) Kibana
10 10 (1.69%) Puppet
11 9 (1.52%) NetBackup
11 9 (1.52%) Progress Chef
11 9 (1.52%) Single Sign-On
12 6 (1.02%) Control-M
12 6 (1.02%) HAProxy
12 6 (1.02%) IBM BigFix
12 6 (1.02%) Nessus
12 6 (1.02%) Tivoli
12 6 (1.02%) vCenter Server
13 5 (0.85%) vRealize
Vendors
1 236 (39.93%) Oracle
2 46 (7.78%) Splunk
3 45 (7.61%) IBM
4 39 (6.60%) Microsoft
5 36 (6.09%) CyberArk
6 35 (5.92%) BeyondTrust
7 34 (5.75%) Talend
8 28 (4.74%) ServiceNow
9 27 (4.57%) VMware
10 26 (4.40%) Informatica
11 21 (3.55%) Cisco
11 21 (3.55%) Denodo
11 21 (3.55%) Sybase
12 15 (2.54%) Red Hat
13 14 (2.37%) Dynatrace
14 13 (2.20%) SAP
15 12 (2.03%) Veritas
16 11 (1.86%) CheckPoint
17 10 (1.69%) BT
18 9 (1.52%) Murex