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

6 months to
4 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 223 170 132
Rank change year-on-year -53 -38 -44
Contract jobs citing Unix 615 516 770
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.19% 1.64% 1.77%
As % of the Operating Systems category 12.37% 11.94% 13.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 354 317 510
10th Percentile £310 £358 £334
25th Percentile £406 £408 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £492 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.95% -6.29% -4.55%
75th Percentile £568 £600 £614
90th Percentile £654 £666 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £459 £473 £450
% change year-on-year -2.86% +5.00% -16.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 6 20
10th Percentile £21.50 £43.87 £22.28
25th Percentile £31.86 £52.00 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £54.75 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.11% +36.88% -37.50%
75th Percentile £53.75 £55.00 -
90th Percentile £55.00 £62.50 £55.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £54.75 £40.00
% change year-on-year -13.17% +36.88% -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 4,971 4,322 5,921
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.63% 13.70% 13.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,182 2,798 3,884
10th Percentile £190 £200 £190
25th Percentile £313 £313 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year +0.11% -2.21% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £580 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £463
% change year-on-year - -2.70% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 334 222 433
10th Percentile £14.80 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.63 £17.44 £16.25
Median hourly rate £26.00 £22.53 £24.86
Median % change year-on-year +15.40% -9.35% -41.52%
75th Percentile £63.75 £41.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £65.98 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.89 £19.27 £31.13
% change year-on-year +34.33% -38.09% -7.09%

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 4 July 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 4 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Unix in the UK

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 4 July 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 -34 519 £480 -1.18% 109
UK excluding London -48 364 £459 -2.86% 71
London -69 187 £550 +10.00% 47
Work from Home -24 183 £481 +4.46% 51
North of England -26 117 £481 +7.13% 25
South East -7 115 £425 -22.73% 17
North West +5 89 £480 +13.34% 22
Midlands +1 86 £459 +2.00% 12
West Midlands -3 80 £459 -0.22% 11
Scotland -55 38 £425 -10.53% 1
Yorkshire -57 23 £500 -4.76% 3
East of England -33 10 £700 +55.56% 3
North East -29 7 £480 +28.00%
Wales -12 6 £383 +35.40% 3
East Midlands -17 5 £463 +18.29% 1
South West -40 5 £600 - 9
Northern Ireland -8 1 - - 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 36 (5.85%) Confluence
2 26 (4.23%) SAS
3 18 (2.93%) Apache
4 16 (2.60%) Apache Spark
5 14 (2.28%) Apache Airflow
6 12 (1.95%) WebLogic
7 10 (1.63%) CICS
8 7 (1.14%) NetWeaver
8 7 (1.14%) SharePoint
8 7 (1.14%) Tuxedo
9 6 (0.98%) OpenStack
10 4 (0.65%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 4 (0.65%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 3 (0.49%) IBM HTTP Server
11 3 (0.49%) WebSphere
11 3 (0.49%) WebSphere Application Server
12 2 (0.33%) IIS
12 2 (0.33%) nginx
12 2 (0.33%) Oracle Spatial
12 2 (0.33%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 13 (2.11%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (1.63%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (1.14%) Notepad++
4 2 (0.33%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (1.30%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.98%) SAP PSCD
2 6 (0.98%) Summit
3 2 (0.33%) FLEXCUBE
3 2 (0.33%) Oracle Applications
3 2 (0.33%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.33%) Oracle Retail
4 1 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.16%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (0.16%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 118 (19.19%) AWS
2 77 (12.52%) Azure
3 29 (4.72%) GitHub
4 25 (4.07%) GCP
5 24 (3.90%) Entra ID
6 23 (3.74%) AWS Lambda
7 22 (3.58%) Serverless
8 21 (3.41%) GitHub Actions
9 20 (3.25%) Amazon S3
10 18 (2.93%) OpenShift
11 17 (2.76%) IaaS
11 17 (2.76%) PaaS
12 16 (2.60%) SaaS
13 14 (2.28%) Power Platform
14 11 (1.79%) Azure DevOps
15 10 (1.63%) Snowflake
16 9 (1.46%) Amazon EC2
17 8 (1.30%) Azure Data Factory
17 8 (1.30%) Azure Key Vault
18 7 (1.14%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 31 (5.04%) Firewall
2 25 (4.07%) DNS
3 21 (3.41%) SAN
4 17 (2.76%) TCP/IP
5 14 (2.28%) NAS
6 13 (2.11%) SSH
7 11 (1.79%) HTTP
8 9 (1.46%) SSL
9 8 (1.30%) Network Security
9 8 (1.30%) Wireless
9 8 (1.30%) Wireshark
10 7 (1.14%) 5G
10 7 (1.14%) FTP
10 7 (1.14%) PuTTY
10 7 (1.14%) VPN
10 7 (1.14%) WinSCP
11 6 (0.98%) DHCP
11 6 (0.98%) Diameter Protocol
11 6 (0.98%) InfiniBand
11 6 (0.98%) VoWiFi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 75 (12.20%) SQL Server
2 45 (7.32%) Oracle Database
2 45 (7.32%) Relational Database
3 35 (5.69%) MySQL
4 31 (5.04%) MongoDB
4 31 (5.04%) PostgreSQL
5 20 (3.25%) Data Warehouse
5 20 (3.25%) Db2
6 19 (3.09%) Metadata
7 18 (2.93%) DataStage
8 17 (2.76%) KDB
9 16 (2.60%) Big Data
9 16 (2.60%) BusinessObjects
10 15 (2.44%) NoSQL
11 14 (2.28%) Amazon Aurora
11 14 (2.28%) Kdb+
11 14 (2.28%) Oracle Database 11g
11 14 (2.28%) Power BI
11 14 (2.28%) Sybase ASE
12 13 (2.11%) Oracle Database 12c
Development Applications
1 56 (9.11%) Jenkins
2 53 (8.62%) JIRA
3 50 (8.13%) GitLab
4 42 (6.83%) Git
5 23 (3.74%) Artifactory
6 15 (2.44%) Mockito
7 10 (1.63%) Bitbucket
8 9 (1.46%) Maven
9 7 (1.14%) Sonatype Nexus
10 5 (0.81%) Oracle Forms
11 4 (0.65%) CA Gen
11 4 (0.65%) JUnit
11 4 (0.65%) Selenium
11 4 (0.65%) SonarQube
12 3 (0.49%) Android Studio
12 3 (0.49%) Eclipse
12 3 (0.49%) Introscope
12 3 (0.49%) MSI
12 3 (0.49%) REST Assured
12 3 (0.49%) Xcode
General
1 153 (24.88%) Finance
2 136 (22.11%) Social Skills
3 93 (15.12%) Banking
4 82 (13.33%) Analytical Skills
5 62 (10.08%) Public Sector
6 28 (4.55%) Investment Banking
7 24 (3.90%) Documentation Skills
8 20 (3.25%) Front Office
9 12 (1.95%) Retail
9 12 (1.95%) Telecoms
10 11 (1.79%) Influencing Skills
11 9 (1.46%) Financial Institution
11 9 (1.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 6 (0.98%) Advertising
12 6 (0.98%) Military
13 2 (0.33%) Billing
13 2 (0.33%) Law
13 2 (0.33%) Local Government
13 2 (0.33%) Organisational Skills
14 1 (0.16%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 119 (19.35%) Developer
2 75 (12.20%) Senior
3 65 (10.57%) Data Engineer
4 49 (7.97%) Unix Engineer
5 46 (7.48%) Java Developer
6 43 (6.99%) Support Engineer
7 40 (6.50%) DBA
8 37 (6.02%) Analyst
9 33 (5.37%) Senior Developer
10 28 (4.55%) Oracle DBA
11 27 (4.39%) Consultant
12 25 (4.07%) Architect
12 25 (4.07%) Python Developer
13 21 (3.41%) Administrator
14 19 (3.09%) Site Reliability Engineer
15 18 (2.93%) Senior Java Developer
15 18 (2.93%) Technical Support
16 17 (2.76%) Site Engineer
17 16 (2.60%) Linux Engineer
18 15 (2.44%) Applications Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 54 (8.78%) Kafka
2 42 (6.83%) REST
3 35 (5.69%) Middleware
4 26 (4.23%) RESTful
5 22 (3.58%) Spring
6 21 (3.41%) XML
7 20 (3.25%) Spring Boot
8 17 (2.76%) CSS
9 15 (2.44%) ActiveMQ
9 15 (2.44%) JAX-RS
9 15 (2.44%) Web Services
10 14 (2.28%) Oracle GoldenGate
11 13 (2.11%) HTML
11 13 (2.11%) LDAP
11 13 (2.11%) SOAP
12 11 (1.79%) Pandas
12 11 (1.79%) RabbitMQ
13 10 (1.63%) .NET
13 10 (1.63%) JSON
14 9 (1.46%) JDBC
Miscellaneous
1 41 (6.67%) Onboarding
2 36 (5.85%) Linux Command Line
3 34 (5.53%) Legacy Systems
4 30 (4.88%) Data Centre
5 26 (4.23%) Management Information System
6 20 (3.25%) Cloud Native
6 20 (3.25%) Mainframe
7 18 (2.93%) Derivative
7 18 (2.93%) Replication
8 17 (2.76%) Fixed Income
9 13 (2.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 12 (1.95%) Distributed Systems
10 12 (1.95%) Equities
11 11 (1.79%) Clustering
12 10 (1.63%) BYOD
12 10 (1.63%) Enterprise Software
12 10 (1.63%) Virtual Team
12 10 (1.63%) VSAM
13 9 (1.46%) PKI
13 9 (1.46%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 406 (66.02%) Linux
2 160 (26.02%) Windows
3 60 (9.76%) Solaris
4 45 (7.32%) Windows Server
5 31 (5.04%) AIX
6 27 (4.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 14 (2.28%) Mac OS X
8 9 (1.46%) Oracle Linux
9 7 (1.14%) HPUX
10 6 (0.98%) SUSE
11 5 (0.81%) CentOS
11 5 (0.81%) VMS
12 3 (0.49%) Android
12 3 (0.49%) Check Point GAiA
12 3 (0.49%) Mac OS
12 3 (0.49%) OpenVMS
13 2 (0.33%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 2 (0.33%) Ubuntu
13 2 (0.33%) zOS
14 1 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 128 (20.81%) Agile
2 121 (19.67%) CI/CD
3 114 (18.54%) Problem-Solving
4 91 (14.80%) Migration
5 81 (13.17%) ITIL
6 80 (13.01%) High Availability
7 77 (12.52%) DevOps
8 68 (11.06%) Test Automation
9 63 (10.24%) Root Cause Analysis
10 58 (9.43%) Performance Tuning
11 52 (8.46%) Disaster Recovery
11 52 (8.46%) Runbook
12 50 (8.13%) Microservices
13 48 (7.80%) Observability
14 47 (7.64%) Analytics
14 47 (7.64%) Change Management
15 46 (7.48%) Data Modelling
15 46 (7.48%) Incident Management
16 42 (6.83%) SIEM
17 41 (6.67%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 231 (37.56%) SQL
2 223 (36.26%) Python
3 120 (19.51%) Java
4 111 (18.05%) Shell Script
5 76 (12.36%) PL/SQL
6 53 (8.62%) PowerShell
7 52 (8.46%) Bash
8 36 (5.85%) Perl
9 35 (5.69%) JavaScript
10 25 (4.07%) C#
11 20 (3.25%) C++
12 17 (2.76%) Korn
13 12 (1.95%) COBOL
14 8 (1.30%) Scala
15 7 (1.14%) C
16 6 (0.98%) ABAP
17 5 (0.81%) Go
17 5 (0.81%) ProC
18 4 (0.65%) Kotlin
18 4 (0.65%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 211 (34.31%) Security Cleared
2 180 (29.27%) SC Cleared
3 73 (11.87%) Degree
4 32 (5.20%) BPSS Clearance
5 19 (3.09%) CISSP
5 19 (3.09%) Computer Science Degree
6 13 (2.11%) DV Cleared
7 11 (1.79%) CompTIA Security+
8 9 (1.46%) CISM
9 7 (1.14%) Cisco Certification
9 7 (1.14%) CRISC
10 6 (0.98%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 6 (0.98%) CESG Certified Professional
10 6 (0.98%) GIAC
10 6 (0.98%) Microsoft Certification
10 6 (0.98%) RHCE
11 5 (0.81%) MCSA
11 5 (0.81%) MCSE
11 5 (0.81%) SANS
12 4 (0.65%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 38 (6.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 38 (6.18%) NIST
2 23 (3.74%) QA
3 18 (2.93%) SLA
4 11 (1.79%) Data Quality
5 7 (1.14%) Cyber Essentials
6 6 (0.98%) ISO 31000
7 5 (0.81%) GRC
8 4 (0.65%) GDPR
8 4 (0.65%) ISO 20022
8 4 (0.65%) NIST 800
8 4 (0.65%) PCI DSS
8 4 (0.65%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 3 (0.49%) Disclosure Scotland
9 3 (0.49%) FATCA
10 2 (0.33%) GMP
10 2 (0.33%) ISO 15022
10 2 (0.33%) NCSC
11 1 (0.16%) ISO 8583
11 1 (0.16%) SOC 2
System Software
1 53 (8.62%) Docker
2 45 (7.32%) Active Directory
3 25 (4.07%) Oracle RAC
4 19 (3.09%) VMware Infrastructure
5 16 (2.60%) NFS
6 11 (1.79%) Virtual Machines
7 6 (0.98%) GPFS
7 6 (0.98%) Hyper-V
7 6 (0.98%) KVM
7 6 (0.98%) Postfix
7 6 (0.98%) Varnish
7 6 (0.98%) VMware ESXi
8 5 (0.81%) vSphere
9 4 (0.65%) HDFS
9 4 (0.65%) Sendmail
10 3 (0.49%) Firmware
10 3 (0.49%) GridGain
10 3 (0.49%) PowerHA
10 3 (0.49%) Veritas Volume Manager
11 2 (0.33%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 67 (10.89%) Kubernetes
2 60 (9.76%) Ansible
3 37 (6.02%) Terraform
4 36 (5.85%) Grafana
5 35 (5.69%) Oracle RMAN
6 25 (4.07%) Prometheus
7 18 (2.93%) Data Guard
8 15 (2.44%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 9 (1.46%) Kibana
9 9 (1.46%) Progress Chef
9 9 (1.46%) Single Sign-On
10 8 (1.30%) NetBackup
10 8 (1.30%) Puppet
11 7 (1.14%) Control-M
12 6 (0.98%) HAProxy
12 6 (0.98%) IBM BigFix
12 6 (0.98%) Nessus
12 6 (0.98%) Tivoli
12 6 (0.98%) vCenter Server
13 5 (0.81%) vRealize
Vendors
1 239 (38.86%) Oracle
2 49 (7.97%) IBM
3 45 (7.32%) Microsoft
3 45 (7.32%) Splunk
4 40 (6.50%) BeyondTrust
5 38 (6.18%) CyberArk
6 34 (5.53%) Talend
7 28 (4.55%) Sybase
7 28 (4.55%) VMware
8 26 (4.23%) Informatica
8 26 (4.23%) ServiceNow
9 21 (3.41%) Denodo
10 19 (3.09%) SAP
11 18 (2.93%) Cisco
12 17 (2.76%) Red Hat
13 15 (2.44%) Dynatrace
14 11 (1.79%) BT
14 11 (1.79%) CheckPoint
15 10 (1.63%) Veritas
16 9 (1.46%) Remedy