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

6 months to
3 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 172 111 109
Rank change year-on-year -61 -2 -24
Contract jobs citing Unix 595 761 1,002
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.64% 2.12% 2.22%
As % of the Operating Systems category 12.43% 15.12% 14.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 394 462 703
10th Percentile £204 £350 £363
25th Percentile £373 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £491 £506 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.96% -8.00% -
75th Percentile £625 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £761 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £505
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.94% -6.13%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 6 11
10th Percentile £26.30 £38.25 £22.00
25th Percentile £26.38 £40.50 £26.63
Median hourly rate £28.00 £41.00 £63.00
Median % change year-on-year -31.71% -34.92% -10.00%
75th Percentile £42.13 £50.13 £77.75
90th Percentile £49.70 £59.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £54.50 £47.00 £69.00
% change year-on-year +15.96% -31.88% +5.34%

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 4,786 5,034 6,806
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 13.21% 14.05% 15.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,095 3,075 4,629
10th Percentile £180 £200 £181
25th Percentile £263 £325 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% - -7.32%
75th Percentile £561 £583 £608
90th Percentile £660 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £440 £440
% change year-on-year -8.99% -0.11% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 364 206 341
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.13 £15.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £22.31 £18.00
Median hourly rate £25.11 £50.00 £32.00
Median % change year-on-year -49.78% +56.25% +28.00%
75th Percentile £56.26 £67.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.84 £70.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 £50.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year -50.00% +81.82% +22.22%

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 3 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
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Unix over the 6 months to 3 December 2025.

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 3 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 -50 494 £498 -5.24% 109
UK excluding London -50 308 £450 -5.26% 83
London -33 238 £565 -0.53% 49
Work from Home -80 153 £475 -5.00% 81
North of England -38 83 £475 -17.75% 15
South East -10 82 £208 -50.60% 36
Scotland -7 60 £450 -1.59% 2
Midlands -43 58 £485 -3.72% 12
West Midlands -44 51 £495 -5.71% 10
North West -16 48 £453 -15.80% 11
Yorkshire -29 33 £613 -2.78% 3
South West -18 16 £700 +47.37% 14
East Midlands -16 7 £430 +15.67% 2
East of England -28 6 £500 +25.00% 5
North East -6 4 £500 -9.09% 2
Wales -5 3 £265 +64.51% 2
Northern Ireland -6 3 - - 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 41 (6.89%) Apache
2 33 (5.55%) WebLogic
3 32 (5.38%) Confluence
4 23 (3.87%) JBoss
5 20 (3.36%) SharePoint
6 14 (2.35%) Tomcat
7 13 (2.18%) WebSphere
8 9 (1.51%) IIS
9 8 (1.34%) iPlanet
9 8 (1.34%) WebSphere Application Server
10 7 (1.18%) Oracle Workflow
11 6 (1.01%) nginx
11 6 (1.01%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 5 (0.84%) Apache Spark
12 5 (0.84%) Microsoft Exchange
12 5 (0.84%) Tuxedo
13 4 (0.67%) NetWeaver
14 2 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
14 2 (0.34%) Oracle HTTP Server
14 2 (0.34%) SAS
Applications
1 19 (3.19%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (1.18%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.50%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.34%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 9 (1.51%) Oracle EBS
1 9 (1.51%) Oracle EBS R12
2 5 (0.84%) ION MarketView
2 5 (0.84%) Oracle 11i
2 5 (0.84%) Oracle Assets
2 5 (0.84%) Oracle Payables
3 4 (0.67%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 4 (0.67%) SAP IBP
4 3 (0.50%) Kondor
4 3 (0.50%) Oracle BPM
4 3 (0.50%) Oracle BRM
4 3 (0.50%) 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
1 162 (27.23%) AWS
2 110 (18.49%) Azure
3 35 (5.88%) GCP
4 34 (5.71%) GitHub
5 27 (4.54%) SaaS
6 21 (3.53%) OpenShift
7 19 (3.19%) AWS CloudFormation
7 19 (3.19%) Azure Monitor
7 19 (3.19%) Sauce Labs
8 18 (3.03%) Amazon EC2
9 16 (2.69%) Amazon S3
10 13 (2.18%) Azure DevOps
11 12 (2.02%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 11 (1.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 11 (1.85%) Cloud Computing
12 11 (1.85%) Serverless
13 10 (1.68%) AWS Lambda
14 9 (1.51%) Amazon ECS
14 9 (1.51%) Microsoft 365
15 8 (1.34%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 38 (6.39%) Firewall
2 31 (5.21%) HTTP
2 31 (5.21%) TCP/IP
3 29 (4.87%) DNS
4 20 (3.36%) SSL
4 20 (3.36%) Wireless
5 17 (2.86%) SSH
6 14 (2.35%) Network Security
7 11 (1.85%) DHCP
7 11 (1.85%) SAN
8 10 (1.68%) Kerberos
9 6 (1.01%) VPN
10 5 (0.84%) FTP
11 4 (0.67%) Internet
11 4 (0.67%) Wireshark
12 3 (0.50%) Broadband
12 3 (0.50%) GPRS
12 3 (0.50%) GSM
12 3 (0.50%) Unified Communications
12 3 (0.50%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 54 (9.08%) MongoDB
2 52 (8.74%) MySQL
2 52 (8.74%) Relational Database
3 50 (8.40%) Oracle Database
4 30 (5.04%) NoSQL
5 23 (3.87%) PostgreSQL
6 19 (3.19%) Elasticsearch
6 19 (3.19%) SQL Server
7 15 (2.52%) KDB
8 14 (2.35%) Data Warehouse
9 13 (2.18%) Amazon RDS
9 13 (2.18%) Kdb+
10 11 (1.85%) Data Lake
11 10 (1.68%) Amazon Redshift
11 10 (1.68%) Big Data
12 9 (1.51%) DB2
12 9 (1.51%) RDBMS
13 8 (1.34%) Hadoop
14 6 (1.01%) Couchbase
14 6 (1.01%) Redis
Development Applications
1 71 (11.93%) Jenkins
2 69 (11.60%) Git
3 53 (8.91%) JIRA
4 35 (5.88%) GitLab
5 32 (5.38%) JUnit
6 30 (5.04%) Eclipse
7 24 (4.03%) Xcode
8 23 (3.87%) Mockito
9 22 (3.70%) Maven
10 21 (3.53%) Sonatype Nexus
11 20 (3.36%) Browser DevTools
12 19 (3.19%) Android Studio
13 15 (2.52%) Bitbucket
13 15 (2.52%) Selenium
14 14 (2.35%) Gradle
15 12 (2.02%) IntelliJ
16 10 (1.68%) SoapUI
17 8 (1.34%) Bitbucket Server
17 8 (1.34%) CA Release Automation
17 8 (1.34%) Subversion
General
1 192 (32.27%) Social Skills
2 163 (27.39%) Finance
3 80 (13.45%) Analytical Skills
4 54 (9.08%) Banking
5 37 (6.22%) Public Sector
6 23 (3.87%) Financial Institution
6 23 (3.87%) Front Office
7 13 (2.18%) Influencing Skills
8 10 (1.68%) Documentation Skills
8 10 (1.68%) Investment Banking
9 8 (1.34%) Legal
10 7 (1.18%) Military
11 6 (1.01%) Manufacturing
11 6 (1.01%) Telecoms
12 5 (0.84%) Back Office
13 4 (0.67%) General Ledger
13 4 (0.67%) Marketing
14 3 (0.50%) Law
14 3 (0.50%) Presentation Skills
14 3 (0.50%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 129 (21.68%) Developer
2 95 (15.97%) Senior
3 54 (9.08%) Java Developer
4 42 (7.06%) Analyst
4 42 (7.06%) Technical Support
5 34 (5.71%) DevOps Engineer
6 33 (5.55%) Support Engineer
7 27 (4.54%) Senior Developer
7 27 (4.54%) Technical Engineer
8 25 (4.20%) Technical Support Engineer
9 24 (4.03%) Linux Engineer
10 21 (3.53%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 21 (3.53%) Software Engineer
11 20 (3.36%) Platform Engineer
11 20 (3.36%) UX Engineer
12 19 (3.19%) Lead
13 18 (3.03%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
14 17 (2.86%) Kafka Engineer
14 17 (2.86%) Site Engineer
14 17 (2.86%) Unix Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 78 (13.11%) Kafka
2 48 (8.07%) SOAP
3 44 (7.39%) REST
4 38 (6.39%) React
5 34 (5.71%) AngularJS
6 33 (5.55%) Spring
7 32 (5.38%) CSS
8 31 (5.21%) Middleware
9 28 (4.71%) XML
10 24 (4.03%) HTML
11 23 (3.87%) JSON
12 21 (3.53%) ActiveMQ
13 20 (3.36%) Ajax
13 20 (3.36%) GraphQL
14 18 (3.03%) Hibernate
14 18 (3.03%) JAX-RS
15 17 (2.86%) J2EE
16 16 (2.69%) Spring Boot
17 15 (2.52%) LDAP
18 14 (2.35%) HTML5
Miscellaneous
1 37 (6.22%) Management Information System
2 23 (3.87%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 22 (3.70%) Mobile App
4 19 (3.19%) Onboarding
5 18 (3.03%) Cloud Native
6 17 (2.86%) Data Centre
6 17 (2.86%) Security Posture
7 16 (2.69%) Distributed Systems
8 15 (2.52%) Algorithms
9 14 (2.35%) Linux Command Line
10 13 (2.18%) Fixed Income
10 13 (2.18%) Tandem
11 11 (1.85%) Data Protection Act
11 11 (1.85%) Replication
12 10 (1.68%) Equities
12 10 (1.68%) Legacy Applications
12 10 (1.68%) Private Cloud
13 9 (1.51%) Enterprise Software
13 9 (1.51%) PKI
14 8 (1.34%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 428 (71.93%) Linux
2 192 (32.27%) Windows
3 29 (4.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 23 (3.87%) Mac OS X
4 23 (3.87%) Windows Server
5 21 (3.53%) Android
6 17 (2.86%) CentOS
7 11 (1.85%) Mac OS
7 11 (1.85%) Solaris
8 6 (1.01%) AIX
8 6 (1.01%) Ubuntu
9 3 (0.50%) VMS
9 3 (0.50%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.34%) Apple iOS
10 2 (0.34%) Oracle Linux
10 2 (0.34%) Windows 10
10 2 (0.34%) Windows 7
11 1 (0.17%) Debian
11 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2003
11 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 179 (30.08%) Agile
2 128 (21.51%) Problem-Solving
3 115 (19.33%) DevOps
4 111 (18.66%) CI/CD
5 71 (11.93%) Microservices
5 71 (11.93%) OO
6 68 (11.43%) Incident Response
7 59 (9.92%) Continuous Improvement
7 59 (9.92%) Infrastructure as Code
8 58 (9.75%) Test Automation
9 57 (9.58%) Computer Science
10 54 (9.08%) Software Engineering
11 50 (8.40%) Containerisation
12 48 (8.07%) TDD
13 46 (7.73%) Analytics
13 46 (7.73%) Observability
14 42 (7.06%) Migration
15 40 (6.72%) Data Modelling
15 40 (6.72%) Incident Management
15 40 (6.72%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 241 (40.50%) Python
2 227 (38.15%) SQL
3 168 (28.24%) Java
4 107 (17.98%) Shell Script
5 97 (16.30%) Perl
6 71 (11.93%) Bash
7 63 (10.59%) JavaScript
8 49 (8.24%) C++
9 34 (5.71%) PowerShell
10 31 (5.21%) C#
10 31 (5.21%) PL/SQL
11 14 (2.35%) Go
12 13 (2.18%) Groovy
13 12 (2.02%) Scala
14 11 (1.85%) Korn
15 9 (1.51%) C
15 9 (1.51%) PHP
15 9 (1.51%) Search Processing Language
15 9 (1.51%) TypeScript
16 4 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 99 (16.64%) Security Cleared
2 82 (13.78%) Degree
3 69 (11.60%) SC Cleared
4 44 (7.39%) Computer Science Degree
5 24 (4.03%) BPSS Clearance
6 14 (2.35%) DV Cleared
7 13 (2.18%) AWS Certification
8 12 (2.02%) CISSP
9 10 (1.68%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 7 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
11 6 (1.01%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 6 (1.01%) OSCP
12 5 (0.84%) Cisco Certification
12 5 (0.84%) CompTIA Security+
12 5 (0.84%) GPEN
12 5 (0.84%) GWAPT
12 5 (0.84%) ISTQB
12 5 (0.84%) MCSA
12 5 (0.84%) MCSE
13 4 (0.67%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (3.19%) QA
2 10 (1.68%) SLA
3 9 (1.51%) Data Quality
4 7 (1.18%) NCSC
5 4 (0.67%) HIPAA
5 4 (0.67%) SOC 2
6 3 (0.50%) Disclosure Scotland
6 3 (0.50%) NIST
6 3 (0.50%) 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%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 84 (14.12%) Docker
2 24 (4.03%) Active Directory
3 9 (1.51%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (1.34%) Tivoli Directory Server
5 6 (1.01%) KVM
6 4 (0.67%) NFS
6 4 (0.67%) Oracle RAC
6 4 (0.67%) VMware NSX
7 3 (0.50%) QEMU
8 2 (0.34%) GridGain
8 2 (0.34%) Samba
9 1 (0.17%) Ceph
9 1 (0.17%) GPFS
9 1 (0.17%) iptables
9 1 (0.17%) Lustre
9 1 (0.17%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 1 (0.17%) Terminal Services
9 1 (0.17%) Veritas Cluster Server
9 1 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.17%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 74 (12.44%) Terraform
2 73 (12.27%) Kubernetes
3 63 (10.59%) Ansible
4 35 (5.88%) Puppet
5 28 (4.71%) Grafana
6 22 (3.70%) Prometheus
7 15 (2.52%) Progress Chef
8 10 (1.68%) Red Hat Satellite
8 10 (1.68%) Tivoli
9 9 (1.51%) Kibana
10 8 (1.34%) CA Single Sign-On
10 8 (1.34%) CA Wily
10 8 (1.34%) ITRS Geneos
11 7 (1.18%) Jamf Pro
11 7 (1.18%) Nessus
11 7 (1.18%) Packer
11 7 (1.18%) Single Sign-On
12 6 (1.01%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
13 5 (0.84%) CASB
13 5 (0.84%) SCCM
Vendors
1 177 (29.75%) Oracle
2 102 (17.14%) Splunk
3 83 (13.95%) Microsoft
4 42 (7.06%) IBM
5 34 (5.71%) ServiceNow
6 27 (4.54%) Red Hat
7 26 (4.37%) AppDynamics
7 26 (4.37%) Dynatrace
8 22 (3.70%) VMware
9 20 (3.36%) Cisco
10 16 (2.69%) F5
11 15 (2.52%) CyberArk
12 11 (1.85%) MuleSoft
12 11 (1.85%) SAP
13 10 (1.68%) Google
13 10 (1.68%) webMethods
14 9 (1.51%) Tenable
14 9 (1.51%) TIBCO
15 8 (1.34%) Confluent
15 8 (1.34%) Okta