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

6 months to
14 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 220 141 146
Rank change year-on-year -79 +5 -64
Contract jobs citing Unix 526 567 723
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.15% 1.94% 1.66%
As % of the Operating Systems category 11.11% 13.91% 12.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 331 338 481
10th Percentile £310 £361 £350
25th Percentile £400 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £565 £600 £675
90th Percentile £713 £725 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £442 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -7.05% -5.00% -7.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 10 22
10th Percentile £21.50 £40.10 £22.01
25th Percentile £25.72 £40.50 £24.54
Median hourly rate £52.50 £52.75 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -0.47% +31.88% -30.43%
75th Percentile £53.75 £55.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £55.00 £66.13 £67.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £52.75 £40.00
% change year-on-year -9.88% +31.88% -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 4,735 4,076 5,895
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.36% 13.92% 13.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,094 2,717 3,961
10th Percentile £181 £200 £183
25th Percentile £306 £320 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £465
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +2.15% -9.27%
75th Percentile £574 £600 £594
90th Percentile £659 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £450 £450
% change year-on-year -5.56% - -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 336 174 404
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.54 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.54 £18.13 £15.23
Median hourly rate £27.25 £24.66 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year +10.50% +14.70% -28.33%
75th Percentile £65.56 £62.50 £52.37
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.00 £67.28
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.50 £24.18 £20.00
% change year-on-year +9.59% +20.90% -27.27%

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 14 April 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 14 April 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 14 April 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 -64 446 £470 -10.57% 91
UK excluding London -79 283 £442 -7.05% 69
London -71 191 £550 - 39
Work from Home -68 161 £459 -7.37% 37
Midlands -21 81 £450 -4.05% 11
North of England -61 81 £465 -11.43% 15
South East -22 77 £392 -21.60% 25
West Midlands -16 75 £450 -4.66% 7
North West -6 63 £469 -10.67% 11
Scotland -50 32 £402 -13.92% 5
Yorkshire -75 16 £461 -29.04% 1
South West -39 7 £700 +27.27% 5
East Midlands -33 6 £478 +5.18% 4
Wales -8 5 £265 +58.62% 2
East of England -46 3 - - 5
North East -19 2 £513 -8.89% 3

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 23 (4.37%) Apache
2 22 (4.18%) WebLogic
3 17 (3.23%) SAS
4 16 (3.04%) Apache Spark
4 16 (3.04%) Tuxedo
5 14 (2.66%) Confluence
6 10 (1.90%) CICS
7 7 (1.33%) SharePoint
8 6 (1.14%) Apache Airflow
8 6 (1.14%) NetWeaver
9 5 (0.95%) JBoss
9 5 (0.95%) nginx
9 5 (0.95%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 5 (0.95%) Tomcat
10 4 (0.76%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 4 (0.76%) Oracle Workflow
11 3 (0.57%) IBM HTTP Server
11 3 (0.57%) WebSphere
11 3 (0.57%) WebSphere Application Server
12 2 (0.38%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 12 (2.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (1.33%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.19%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (1.14%) SAP S/4HANA
1 6 (1.14%) Summit
2 4 (0.76%) Oracle 11i
2 4 (0.76%) Oracle EBS
2 4 (0.76%) Oracle EBS R12
3 3 (0.57%) Oracle BRM
4 2 (0.38%) ION MarketView
4 2 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
4 2 (0.38%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.19%) Oracle Cash Management
5 1 (0.19%) Oracle CRM
5 1 (0.19%) Oracle Payables
5 1 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 100 (19.01%) AWS
2 72 (13.69%) Azure
3 30 (5.70%) GitHub
4 19 (3.61%) Serverless
5 18 (3.42%) Amazon S3
6 17 (3.23%) AWS Lambda
6 17 (3.23%) GCP
7 16 (3.04%) GitHub Actions
8 13 (2.47%) Azure DevOps
9 11 (2.09%) Amazon EC2
9 11 (2.09%) OpenShift
9 11 (2.09%) Snowflake
10 10 (1.90%) Azure Data Factory
10 10 (1.90%) Entra ID
10 10 (1.90%) SaaS
11 9 (1.71%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 9 (1.71%) Power Platform
12 8 (1.52%) AWS CloudFormation
13 7 (1.33%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 6 (1.14%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 34 (6.46%) Firewall
2 18 (3.42%) DNS
3 15 (2.85%) SAN
4 14 (2.66%) HTTP
5 13 (2.47%) TCP/IP
6 12 (2.28%) Network Security
7 10 (1.90%) Wireless
8 9 (1.71%) NAS
9 8 (1.52%) InfiniBand
10 7 (1.33%) Ethernet
10 7 (1.33%) NetScaler
10 7 (1.33%) PuTTY
10 7 (1.33%) SSH
10 7 (1.33%) WinSCP
11 6 (1.14%) FTP
11 6 (1.14%) SSL
11 6 (1.14%) VPN
12 5 (0.95%) Ethernet VPN
12 5 (0.95%) RTP
13 4 (0.76%) FIX Connectivity
Database & Business Intelligence
1 60 (11.41%) SQL Server
2 43 (8.17%) Relational Database
3 40 (7.60%) MySQL
4 38 (7.22%) MongoDB
5 34 (6.46%) Oracle Database
6 33 (6.27%) PostgreSQL
7 23 (4.37%) Metadata
8 22 (4.18%) Data Warehouse
9 19 (3.61%) NoSQL
10 17 (3.23%) Big Data
10 17 (3.23%) KDB
10 17 (3.23%) Kdb+
11 11 (2.09%) DataStage
11 11 (2.09%) Tick Data
12 10 (1.90%) BusinessObjects
12 10 (1.90%) Data Lake
12 10 (1.90%) DB2
12 10 (1.90%) Hadoop
12 10 (1.90%) RDBMS
13 9 (1.71%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 48 (9.13%) Jenkins
2 45 (8.56%) Git
3 38 (7.22%) GitLab
4 31 (5.89%) JIRA
5 13 (2.47%) Mockito
6 12 (2.28%) Bitbucket
7 11 (2.09%) MSI
8 10 (1.90%) Eclipse
9 9 (1.71%) JUnit
10 8 (1.52%) Maven
10 8 (1.52%) Sonatype Nexus
11 7 (1.33%) Selenium
12 6 (1.14%) Android Studio
12 6 (1.14%) Browser DevTools
12 6 (1.14%) Xcode
13 5 (0.95%) Toad
14 4 (0.76%) Artifactory
14 4 (0.76%) CA Gen
14 4 (0.76%) IntelliJ
14 4 (0.76%) SonarQube
General
1 139 (26.43%) Finance
2 121 (23.00%) Social Skills
3 72 (13.69%) Banking
4 60 (11.41%) Analytical Skills
5 55 (10.46%) Public Sector
6 24 (4.56%) Investment Banking
7 20 (3.80%) Front Office
8 17 (3.23%) Influencing Skills
9 15 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
10 8 (1.52%) Financial Institution
10 8 (1.52%) Telecoms
11 6 (1.14%) Advertising
11 6 (1.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 4 (0.76%) Military
12 4 (0.76%) Retail
13 3 (0.57%) Billing
13 3 (0.57%) Law
13 3 (0.57%) Legal
14 2 (0.38%) Manufacturing
15 1 (0.19%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 104 (19.77%) Developer
2 76 (14.45%) Senior
3 44 (8.37%) Java Developer
4 43 (8.17%) Analyst
5 42 (7.98%) Data Engineer
6 35 (6.65%) Unix Engineer
7 31 (5.89%) Support Engineer
8 26 (4.94%) Linux Engineer
9 24 (4.56%) DBA
9 24 (4.56%) Senior Developer
9 24 (4.56%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 21 (3.99%) Administrator
10 21 (3.99%) Oracle DBA
10 21 (3.99%) Technical Support
11 20 (3.80%) Site Engineer
12 19 (3.61%) DevOps Engineer
13 18 (3.42%) Software Engineer
14 17 (3.23%) Architect
15 16 (3.04%) Consultant
15 16 (3.04%) Unix Linux Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 58 (11.03%) Kafka
2 30 (5.70%) REST
3 27 (5.13%) XML
4 24 (4.56%) Middleware
5 18 (3.42%) Spring
6 16 (3.04%) React
6 16 (3.04%) SOAP
7 15 (2.85%) JSON
8 14 (2.66%) Oracle GoldenGate
8 14 (2.66%) RESTful
9 13 (2.47%) Elastic Stack
9 13 (2.47%) JAX-RS
9 13 (2.47%) Spring Boot
10 12 (2.28%) ActiveMQ
10 12 (2.28%) CSS
11 11 (2.09%) AngularJS
11 11 (2.09%) HTML
12 9 (1.71%) FIX Protocol
13 8 (1.52%) HTML5
13 8 (1.52%) J2EE
Miscellaneous
1 29 (5.51%) Linux Command Line
2 27 (5.13%) Onboarding
3 25 (4.75%) Management Information System
4 22 (4.18%) Cloud Native
5 19 (3.61%) Data Centre
6 18 (3.42%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 16 (3.04%) Fixed Income
7 16 (3.04%) Legacy Systems
8 14 (2.66%) Derivative
9 13 (2.47%) Mainframe
10 12 (2.28%) Equities
11 10 (1.90%) BYOD
11 10 (1.90%) Greenfield Project
11 10 (1.90%) Public Cloud
11 10 (1.90%) VSAM
12 9 (1.71%) Virtual Team
13 8 (1.52%) Clustering
13 8 (1.52%) Replication
14 7 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
14 7 (1.33%) Market Risk
Operating Systems
1 350 (66.54%) Linux
2 145 (27.57%) Windows
3 34 (6.46%) Windows Server
4 30 (5.70%) Solaris
5 28 (5.32%) AIX
6 23 (4.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 13 (2.47%) Mac OS X
8 6 (1.14%) Android
9 5 (0.95%) Oracle Linux
10 4 (0.76%) Mac OS
11 3 (0.57%) VMS
12 2 (0.38%) HPUX
12 2 (0.38%) SUSE
12 2 (0.38%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
13 1 (0.19%) Rocky
13 1 (0.19%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.19%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.19%) Windows 7
13 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2003
13 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 128 (24.33%) Agile
2 100 (19.01%) Problem-Solving
3 89 (16.92%) CI/CD
4 85 (16.16%) DevOps
5 67 (12.74%) Migration
6 54 (10.27%) Observability
7 53 (10.08%) ITIL
8 47 (8.94%) Containerisation
8 47 (8.94%) Performance Tuning
9 46 (8.75%) Microservices
10 45 (8.56%) Computer Science
11 44 (8.37%) Root Cause Analysis
12 43 (8.17%) Software Engineering
13 40 (7.60%) Analytics
13 40 (7.60%) Disaster Recovery
13 40 (7.60%) High Availability
14 39 (7.41%) Data Modelling
14 39 (7.41%) Infrastructure as Code
14 39 (7.41%) Test Automation
15 38 (7.22%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 215 (40.87%) SQL
2 182 (34.60%) Python
3 127 (24.14%) Java
4 106 (20.15%) Shell Script
5 63 (11.98%) Bash
6 55 (10.46%) Perl
7 46 (8.75%) PL/SQL
8 45 (8.56%) PowerShell
9 31 (5.89%) JavaScript
10 28 (5.32%) C++
11 27 (5.13%) C#
12 24 (4.56%) Korn
13 10 (1.90%) COBOL
13 10 (1.90%) PHP
14 9 (1.71%) Scala
15 7 (1.33%) Go
16 3 (0.57%) C
16 3 (0.57%) HiveQL
16 3 (0.57%) Jython
17 2 (0.38%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 149 (28.33%) Security Cleared
2 121 (23.00%) SC Cleared
3 63 (11.98%) Degree
4 27 (5.13%) Computer Science Degree
5 20 (3.80%) BPSS Clearance
6 9 (1.71%) CISSP
7 7 (1.33%) CompTIA Security+
7 7 (1.33%) DV Cleared
8 6 (1.14%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (0.95%) MCSA
9 5 (0.95%) MCSE
10 3 (0.57%) ITIL Certification
10 3 (0.57%) RHCE
11 2 (0.38%) CISM
11 2 (0.38%) ISTQB
11 2 (0.38%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 2 (0.38%) PMI Certification
11 2 (0.38%) TOGAF Certification
12 1 (0.19%) CREST Certified
12 1 (0.19%) GXPN
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (3.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 18 (3.42%) NIST
3 17 (3.23%) SLA
4 16 (3.04%) QA
5 13 (2.47%) Data Quality
6 4 (0.76%) NIST 800
6 4 (0.76%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 3 (0.57%) FATCA
8 2 (0.38%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.38%) GDPR
8 2 (0.38%) GMP
8 2 (0.38%) GRC
8 2 (0.38%) ISO 15022
8 2 (0.38%) ISO 20022
8 2 (0.38%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.38%) SEPA
9 1 (0.19%) MIL-STD-1553
System Software
1 71 (13.50%) Docker
2 26 (4.94%) Active Directory
3 16 (3.04%) Oracle RAC
4 12 (2.28%) VMware Infrastructure
5 11 (2.09%) NFS
6 7 (1.33%) KVM
6 7 (1.33%) Virtual Machines
7 6 (1.14%) GPFS
7 6 (1.14%) Hyper-V
8 4 (0.76%) HDFS
8 4 (0.76%) Postfix
8 4 (0.76%) Varnish
9 3 (0.57%) Firmware
9 3 (0.57%) GridGain
9 3 (0.57%) PowerHA
9 3 (0.57%) Sendmail
9 3 (0.57%) VMware ESXi
9 3 (0.57%) vSphere
10 2 (0.38%) SRDF
10 2 (0.38%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 70 (13.31%) Kubernetes
2 62 (11.79%) Ansible
3 44 (8.37%) Terraform
4 40 (7.60%) Grafana
5 24 (4.56%) Prometheus
6 20 (3.80%) Oracle RMAN
6 20 (3.80%) Puppet
7 16 (3.04%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 12 (2.28%) Kibana
9 7 (1.33%) NetBackup
9 7 (1.33%) Progress Chef
10 6 (1.14%) Control-M
10 6 (1.14%) IBM BigFix
10 6 (1.14%) Red Hat Satellite
10 6 (1.14%) vCenter Server
11 5 (0.95%) CASB
11 5 (0.95%) Data Guard
11 5 (0.95%) Dell DRAC
11 5 (0.95%) HAProxy
11 5 (0.95%) Salt
Vendors
1 186 (35.36%) Oracle
2 51 (9.70%) Splunk
3 39 (7.41%) Microsoft
4 36 (6.84%) IBM
5 24 (4.56%) ServiceNow
6 23 (4.37%) CyberArk
7 20 (3.80%) BeyondTrust
8 19 (3.61%) Informatica
8 19 (3.61%) Red Hat
8 19 (3.61%) VMware
9 17 (3.23%) Cisco
10 15 (2.85%) Sybase
11 13 (2.47%) Talend
12 9 (1.71%) Ab Initio
12 9 (1.71%) Fujitsu
12 9 (1.71%) Veritas
13 8 (1.52%) AppDynamics
13 8 (1.52%) Aruba
13 8 (1.52%) Dell
13 8 (1.52%) Remedy