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

6 months to
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 231 168 118
Rank change year-on-year -63 -50 -14
Contract jobs citing Unix 622 596 776
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.14% 1.80% 2.04%
As % of the Operating Systems category 11.78% 13.12% 14.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 415 393 483
10th Percentile £342 £281 £350
25th Percentile £419 £400 £403
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £492 £508
Median % change year-on-year +1.63% -3.05% -7.73%
75th Percentile £600 £621 £625
90th Percentile £725 £738 £773
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £453 £450
% change year-on-year +5.96% +0.67% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 4 6
10th Percentile - £29.32 -
25th Percentile £43.81 £33.92 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £46.91 £25.65
Median % change year-on-year +11.92% +82.88% -65.20%
75th Percentile £68.37 £58.56 £28.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £65.43 £33.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £54.50 £27.50
% change year-on-year -3.67% +98.18% -63.33%

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 5,282 4,542 5,339
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.69% 13.69% 14.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,333 2,906 3,308
10th Percentile £193 £185 £200
25th Percentile £313 £281 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -4.04%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £653 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £448
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.03% -0.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 405 305 251
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £16.25
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £22.80
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -54.27% +25.71%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £25.00 £57.25
% change year-on-year +3.08% -56.33% +41.97%

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 9 October 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 9 October 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 9 October 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 -71 515 £500 +1.01% 485
UK excluding London -82 315 £480 +5.96% 181
London -97 225 £550 - 334
Work from Home -34 183 £525 +9.83% 147
North of England -30 126 £481 +1.26% 39
North West -9 91 £483 +7.33% 21
South East -61 78 £459 +22.40% 40
Midlands -28 61 £481 -2.83% 22
West Midlands -29 56 £484 -6.07% 15
Scotland -60 35 £450 -5.26% 21
Yorkshire -44 27 £500 -19.35% 11
South West -27 17 £650 -3.70% 20
North East -33 11 £475 -5.00% 7
East of England -28 7 £700 +40.00% 17
East Midlands -20 4 £456 +16.24% 7
Wales -9 3 £383 +35.40% 7
Northern Ireland +1 1 - - 17

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 35 (5.63%) Confluence
2 23 (3.70%) SAS
3 19 (3.05%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 15 (2.41%) SharePoint
4 15 (2.41%) WebLogic
5 13 (2.09%) Apache Airflow
6 8 (1.29%) Apache Spark
7 7 (1.13%) OpenStack
8 6 (0.96%) WebLogic Portal
9 5 (0.80%) Apache
10 4 (0.64%) Oracle Workflow
11 3 (0.48%) IIS
11 3 (0.48%) WebSphere
12 2 (0.32%) Microsoft Exchange
12 2 (0.32%) nginx
12 2 (0.32%) Oracle Service Bus
13 1 (0.16%) CMS
13 1 (0.16%) NetWeaver
13 1 (0.16%) Tomcat
13 1 (0.16%) Traefik
Applications
1 14 (2.25%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (0.96%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (0.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.32%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.16%) Notepad++
Business Applications
1 14 (2.25%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (1.13%) Oracle EBS R12
3 6 (0.96%) SAP PSCD
4 4 (0.64%) Oracle Assets
4 4 (0.64%) Oracle E-Business Tax
4 4 (0.64%) Oracle FAH
4 4 (0.64%) Oracle General Ledger
4 4 (0.64%) Oracle Internet Expenses
4 4 (0.64%) Oracle iProcurement
4 4 (0.64%) Oracle Payables
4 4 (0.64%) Oracle Receivables
5 3 (0.48%) FLEXCUBE
5 3 (0.48%) Oracle Applications
5 3 (0.48%) Oracle Financials
6 2 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.32%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.32%) Oracle Retail
6 2 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
7 1 (0.16%) Payment Gateway
7 1 (0.16%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 145 (23.31%) AWS
2 87 (13.99%) Azure
3 57 (9.16%) GCP
4 36 (5.79%) GitHub
5 24 (3.86%) AWS Lambda
5 24 (3.86%) Serverless
6 22 (3.54%) Amazon S3
7 21 (3.38%) Entra ID
7 21 (3.38%) IaaS
8 19 (3.05%) GitHub Actions
9 17 (2.73%) SaaS
10 16 (2.57%) OpenShift
11 14 (2.25%) AWS CloudFormation
12 13 (2.09%) Azure DevOps
12 13 (2.09%) PaaS
12 13 (2.09%) Power Platform
13 11 (1.77%) Amazon EC2
14 10 (1.61%) Amazon ECS
15 9 (1.45%) Amazon EMR
15 9 (1.45%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 32 (5.14%) TCP/IP
2 30 (4.82%) Firewall
3 29 (4.66%) DNS
4 18 (2.89%) SAN
5 14 (2.25%) DHCP
5 14 (2.25%) SSH
6 13 (2.09%) HTTP
7 12 (1.93%) Network Security
8 9 (1.45%) NAS
8 9 (1.45%) SSL
8 9 (1.45%) WAN
9 8 (1.29%) LAN
10 7 (1.13%) LTE
11 6 (0.96%) 5G
11 6 (0.96%) Diameter Protocol
11 6 (0.96%) Radio Access Network
11 6 (0.96%) VLAN
11 6 (0.96%) VoLTE
11 6 (0.96%) VoWiFi
11 6 (0.96%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 59 (9.49%) Oracle Database
2 51 (8.20%) PostgreSQL
3 48 (7.72%) Relational Database
4 47 (7.56%) SQL Server
5 36 (5.79%) Data Warehouse
6 26 (4.18%) MongoDB
7 23 (3.70%) MySQL
8 22 (3.54%) Db2
9 19 (3.05%) Oracle Database 11g
10 18 (2.89%) NoSQL
11 16 (2.57%) RDBMS
12 15 (2.41%) DataStage
12 15 (2.41%) Oracle Database 12c
13 13 (2.09%) Data Lake
13 13 (2.09%) Oracle Database 10g
13 13 (2.09%) Power BI
13 13 (2.09%) PowerCenter
14 12 (1.93%) KDB
15 11 (1.77%) Amazon RDS
15 11 (1.77%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 82 (13.18%) Git
2 64 (10.29%) Jenkins
3 51 (8.20%) JIRA
4 50 (8.04%) GitLab
5 20 (3.22%) Artifactory
6 14 (2.25%) JUnit
6 14 (2.25%) Maven
7 13 (2.09%) Gradle
7 13 (2.09%) SonarQube
8 11 (1.77%) Bitbucket
9 10 (1.61%) Mockito
10 9 (1.45%) Oracle Forms
10 9 (1.45%) Selenium
10 9 (1.45%) Sonatype Nexus
11 8 (1.29%) eggPlant
12 7 (1.13%) Cucumber
12 7 (1.13%) HP UFT
13 5 (0.80%) JMeter
13 5 (0.80%) LoadRunner
13 5 (0.80%) Oracle APEX
General
1 168 (27.01%) Finance
2 141 (22.67%) Social Skills
3 109 (17.52%) Analytical Skills
4 106 (17.04%) Banking
5 43 (6.91%) Public Sector
6 29 (4.66%) Investment Banking
7 22 (3.54%) Front Office
8 18 (2.89%) Documentation Skills
9 10 (1.61%) Telecoms
10 9 (1.45%) Retail
11 6 (0.96%) Financial Institution
11 6 (0.96%) Military
12 5 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 5 (0.80%) Legal
13 4 (0.64%) Corporate Banking
13 4 (0.64%) Law
13 4 (0.64%) Presentation Skills
14 3 (0.48%) General Ledger
14 3 (0.48%) Influencing Skills
15 2 (0.32%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 130 (20.90%) Developer
2 100 (16.08%) Senior
3 67 (10.77%) Unix Engineer
4 47 (7.56%) Senior Developer
5 44 (7.07%) Data Engineer
6 40 (6.43%) DBA
6 40 (6.43%) Java Developer
7 37 (5.95%) Linux Engineer
8 30 (4.82%) Consultant
9 28 (4.50%) Python Developer
9 28 (4.50%) Support Engineer
10 26 (4.18%) Oracle DBA
11 22 (3.54%) Analyst
12 21 (3.38%) Administrator
12 21 (3.38%) Architect
13 18 (2.89%) Applications Support
13 18 (2.89%) DevOps Engineer
14 16 (2.57%) Lead
15 15 (2.41%) Automation Engineer
15 15 (2.41%) Senior Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 70 (11.25%) Kafka
2 56 (9.00%) REST
2 56 (9.00%) Terraform
3 44 (7.07%) Middleware
4 39 (6.27%) RESTful
5 36 (5.79%) Spring
6 34 (5.47%) Spring Boot
7 26 (4.18%) XML
8 25 (4.02%) Web Services
9 24 (3.86%) HTML
10 23 (3.70%) .NET
11 22 (3.54%) CSS
11 22 (3.54%) SOAP
12 15 (2.41%) Flask
13 13 (2.09%) Django
13 13 (2.09%) JDBC
13 13 (2.09%) RabbitMQ
14 12 (1.93%) AngularJS
14 12 (1.93%) Pandas
14 12 (1.93%) React
Miscellaneous
1 43 (6.91%) Onboarding
2 36 (5.79%) Distributed Systems
3 34 (5.47%) Legacy Systems
4 30 (4.82%) Cloud Native
5 29 (4.66%) Data Centre
6 27 (4.34%) Linux Command Line
7 22 (3.54%) Replication
8 21 (3.38%) Clustering
9 17 (2.73%) Fixed Income
9 17 (2.73%) Management Information System
10 16 (2.57%) Derivative
11 14 (2.25%) Data Protection Act
12 13 (2.09%) Mainframe
12 13 (2.09%) Market Risk
12 13 (2.09%) PKI
12 13 (2.09%) Private Cloud
12 13 (2.09%) Product Ownership
13 12 (1.93%) Data Structures
13 12 (1.93%) Enterprise Software
13 12 (1.93%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 419 (67.36%) Linux
2 141 (22.67%) Windows
3 74 (11.90%) Solaris
4 42 (6.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 42 (6.75%) Windows Server
5 31 (4.98%) AIX
6 8 (1.29%) SUSE
7 7 (1.13%) VMS
8 6 (0.96%) CentOS
8 6 (0.96%) HPUX
9 5 (0.80%) Mac OS X
9 5 (0.80%) Oracle Linux
9 5 (0.80%) zOS
10 3 (0.48%) Android
10 3 (0.48%) Check Point GAiA
11 2 (0.32%) OpenVMS
12 1 (0.16%) Ubuntu
12 1 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
12 1 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.16%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 159 (25.56%) CI/CD
2 124 (19.94%) Agile
3 114 (18.33%) DevOps
3 114 (18.33%) Migration
4 113 (18.17%) Problem-Solving
5 96 (15.43%) Test Automation
6 80 (12.86%) High Availability
6 80 (12.86%) Root Cause Analysis
7 69 (11.09%) Data Modelling
7 69 (11.09%) Performance Tuning
8 68 (10.93%) Continuous Improvement
9 64 (10.29%) Infrastructure as Code
10 61 (9.81%) Stakeholder Management
11 59 (9.49%) Validation
12 58 (9.32%) Containerisation
12 58 (9.32%) ITIL
13 56 (9.00%) Data Pipeline
14 53 (8.52%) Disaster Recovery
15 52 (8.36%) Analytics
16 51 (8.20%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 239 (38.42%) Python
2 236 (37.94%) SQL
3 127 (20.42%) Java
4 116 (18.65%) Shell Script
5 78 (12.54%) PL/SQL
6 70 (11.25%) Bash
7 49 (7.88%) PowerShell
8 40 (6.43%) JavaScript
8 40 (6.43%) Perl
9 28 (4.50%) C#
10 22 (3.54%) C++
11 15 (2.41%) C
12 8 (1.29%) Go
13 7 (1.13%) Groovy
13 7 (1.13%) MUMPS
13 7 (1.13%) T-SQL
14 6 (0.96%) ABAP
14 6 (0.96%) Korn
14 6 (0.96%) Kotlin
14 6 (0.96%) Scala
Qualifications
1 221 (35.53%) Security Cleared
2 176 (28.30%) SC Cleared
3 68 (10.93%) Degree
4 29 (4.66%) BPSS Clearance
5 23 (3.70%) DV Cleared
6 22 (3.54%) Computer Science Degree
7 12 (1.93%) CISSP
8 9 (1.45%) Cisco Certification
9 8 (1.29%) CISM
9 8 (1.29%) Master's Degree
10 7 (1.13%) CRISC
10 7 (1.13%) Oracle Certification
11 6 (0.96%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 6 (0.96%) CESG Certified Professional
11 6 (0.96%) GIAC
11 6 (0.96%) ISEB
11 6 (0.96%) ISTQB
12 5 (0.80%) SANS
13 4 (0.64%) CompTIA Security+
13 4 (0.64%) GSEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (5.47%) QA
2 33 (5.31%) Data Quality
3 30 (4.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 26 (4.18%) NIST
5 12 (1.93%) GDPR
6 11 (1.77%) SLA
7 9 (1.45%) ISO 20022
8 7 (1.13%) Cyber Essentials
8 7 (1.13%) PCI DSS
9 6 (0.96%) ISO 31000
10 5 (0.80%) Basel III
10 5 (0.80%) ISO 15022
11 4 (0.64%) NCSC
12 3 (0.48%) GRC
13 2 (0.32%) Disclosure Scotland
13 2 (0.32%) SEPA
14 1 (0.16%) Accessibility
14 1 (0.16%) ISO 8583
14 1 (0.16%) SOC 2
14 1 (0.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 62 (9.97%) Docker
2 33 (5.31%) Active Directory
3 26 (4.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 16 (2.57%) Oracle RAC
5 12 (1.93%) NFS
6 11 (1.77%) Virtual Machines
7 4 (0.64%) Firmware
7 4 (0.64%) PowerHA
7 4 (0.64%) Veritas Volume Manager
7 4 (0.64%) VirtualBox
7 4 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
8 3 (0.48%) GPFS
8 3 (0.48%) vSphere
9 2 (0.32%) Postfix
9 2 (0.32%) Varnish
10 1 (0.16%) HDFS
10 1 (0.16%) Sendmail
10 1 (0.16%) Veritas Cluster Server
10 1 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.16%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 84 (13.50%) Kubernetes
2 65 (10.45%) Ansible
3 40 (6.43%) Grafana
4 28 (4.50%) Oracle RMAN
5 27 (4.34%) Prometheus
6 19 (3.05%) Control-M
6 19 (3.05%) Data Guard
7 18 (2.89%) Progress Chef
8 14 (2.25%) Puppet
9 11 (1.77%) Kibana
10 7 (1.13%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
10 7 (1.13%) Single Sign-On
10 7 (1.13%) Tivoli Storage Manager
11 6 (0.96%) Tivoli
12 5 (0.80%) Failover Clustering
12 5 (0.80%) HP Fortify
12 5 (0.80%) ITRS Geneos
12 5 (0.80%) NetBackup
12 5 (0.80%) Netcool
12 5 (0.80%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 224 (36.01%) Oracle
2 57 (9.16%) IBM
2 57 (9.16%) Splunk
3 47 (7.56%) Microsoft
4 30 (4.82%) Red Hat
5 29 (4.66%) BeyondTrust
5 29 (4.66%) VMware
6 25 (4.02%) Informatica
7 24 (3.86%) ServiceNow
8 23 (3.70%) CyberArk
8 23 (3.70%) Sybase
9 22 (3.54%) Talend
10 21 (3.38%) SAP
11 20 (3.22%) Google
12 19 (3.05%) Dynatrace
13 16 (2.57%) Denodo
14 12 (1.93%) SaltStack
15 11 (1.77%) AppDynamics
15 11 (1.77%) BT
16 10 (1.61%) HP