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

6 months to
5 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 209 130 135
Rank change year-on-year -79 +5 -54
Contract jobs citing Unix 547 615 782
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.29% 2.03% 1.78%
As % of the Operating Systems category 11.26% 14.28% 12.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 359 358 528
10th Percentile £217 £356 £350
25th Percentile £392 £422 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £453 £523 £550
Median % change year-on-year -13.30% -5.00% -0.09%
75th Percentile £575 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £777
UK excluding London median daily rate £429 £472 £495
% change year-on-year -9.11% -4.65% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 7 22
10th Percentile £21.50 £38.70 £22.01
25th Percentile £23.61 £40.50 £24.54
Median hourly rate £27.88 £41.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.00% +2.50% -36.03%
75th Percentile £53.38 £59.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £54.00 £69.50 £67.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.44 £47.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -43.74% +17.50% -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 4,858 4,307 6,055
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.41% 14.23% 13.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,203 2,761 4,054
10th Percentile £178 £200 £180
25th Percentile £275 £317 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £458
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +3.71% -10.63%
75th Percentile £568 £589 £588
90th Percentile £668 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £436 £425
% change year-on-year -5.44% +2.65% -10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 352 149 393
10th Percentile £15.02 £16.25 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.91 £20.30 £16.25
Median hourly rate £23.25 £29.00 £23.50
Median % change year-on-year -19.83% +23.40% -14.55%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £60.75
90th Percentile £68.68 £69.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.69 £27.50 £22.50
% change year-on-year -17.48% +22.22% -15.03%

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 5 March 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 5 March 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 5 March 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 -53 476 £459 -12.57% 92
UK excluding London -73 285 £429 -9.11% 76
London -51 216 £545 -3.11% 32
Work from Home -78 157 £450 -8.86% 57
North of England -38 95 £463 -15.91% 17
South East -29 75 £320 -32.10% 27
North West -1 72 £465 -15.45% 11
Midlands -30 72 £439 -4.67% 10
West Midlands -20 68 £439 -4.67% 8
Scotland -41 31 £420 -6.67% 1
Yorkshire -76 21 £460 -16.36% 4
South West -40 9 £700 +27.27% 6
East Midlands -32 4 £478 +13.02% 2
Wales -3 3 £265 +62.04% 5
North East -10 3 £563 - 2
East of England -38 3 £440 -2.22% 8

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 29 (5.30%) Apache
1 29 (5.30%) WebLogic
2 24 (4.39%) Confluence
3 16 (2.93%) SharePoint
3 16 (2.93%) Tuxedo
4 15 (2.74%) JBoss
5 11 (2.01%) SAS
6 9 (1.65%) Apache Spark
7 8 (1.46%) CICS
8 7 (1.28%) Tomcat
9 6 (1.10%) IIS
9 6 (1.10%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 6 (1.10%) WebSphere
10 5 (0.91%) iPlanet
10 5 (0.91%) WebSphere Application Server
11 4 (0.73%) NetWeaver
11 4 (0.73%) nginx
11 4 (0.73%) Oracle Workflow
12 3 (0.55%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 2 (0.37%) Oracle Spatial
Applications
1 13 (2.38%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (2.01%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.73%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.18%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (1.10%) Oracle EBS
1 6 (1.10%) Oracle EBS R12
2 5 (0.91%) Oracle 11i
3 4 (0.73%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 4 (0.73%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.55%) Oracle BRM
5 2 (0.37%) ION MarketView
5 2 (0.37%) Kondor
5 2 (0.37%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.37%) Summit
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle BPM
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle Cash Management
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle CRM
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 118 (21.57%) AWS
2 79 (14.44%) Azure
3 24 (4.39%) GitHub
4 23 (4.20%) GCP
5 18 (3.29%) AWS CloudFormation
5 18 (3.29%) SaaS
6 14 (2.56%) OpenShift
6 14 (2.56%) Serverless
7 13 (2.38%) Sauce Labs
8 12 (2.19%) AWS Lambda
9 10 (1.83%) Amazon S3
10 9 (1.65%) Cloud Computing
10 9 (1.65%) Entra ID
11 8 (1.46%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 8 (1.46%) Amazon EC2
11 8 (1.46%) Azure DevOps
11 8 (1.46%) OCI
11 8 (1.46%) Power Platform
12 7 (1.28%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 7 (1.28%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 36 (6.58%) Firewall
2 20 (3.66%) DNS
3 17 (3.11%) Wireless
4 16 (2.93%) SSH
5 15 (2.74%) HTTP
6 13 (2.38%) TCP/IP
7 12 (2.19%) SAN
8 11 (2.01%) Network Security
9 8 (1.46%) InfiniBand
9 8 (1.46%) NAS
10 7 (1.28%) Ethernet
10 7 (1.28%) NetScaler
11 6 (1.10%) FTP
11 6 (1.10%) Kerberos
11 6 (1.10%) SSL
11 6 (1.10%) VPN
12 5 (0.91%) Ethernet VPN
13 4 (0.73%) DHCP
13 4 (0.73%) MPLS
13 4 (0.73%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 49 (8.96%) MySQL
2 46 (8.41%) Relational Database
3 45 (8.23%) MongoDB
4 44 (8.04%) Oracle Database
5 39 (7.13%) SQL Server
6 26 (4.75%) PostgreSQL
7 24 (4.39%) NoSQL
8 17 (3.11%) Elasticsearch
9 16 (2.93%) KDB
9 16 (2.93%) Kdb+
10 14 (2.56%) Big Data
11 13 (2.38%) Data Warehouse
12 11 (2.01%) Amazon RDS
12 11 (2.01%) Hadoop
13 9 (1.65%) Amazon Redshift
13 9 (1.65%) DataStage
13 9 (1.65%) DB2
13 9 (1.65%) Tick Data
14 8 (1.46%) Data Lake
14 8 (1.46%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 51 (9.32%) Jenkins
2 46 (8.41%) Git
3 37 (6.76%) GitLab
4 36 (6.58%) JIRA
5 22 (4.02%) Eclipse
6 19 (3.47%) JUnit
7 14 (2.56%) Mockito
7 14 (2.56%) Selenium
7 14 (2.56%) Xcode
8 13 (2.38%) Android Studio
8 13 (2.38%) Browser DevTools
9 12 (2.19%) Bitbucket
10 11 (2.01%) MSI
10 11 (2.01%) Sonatype Nexus
11 10 (1.83%) Maven
12 9 (1.65%) IntelliJ
13 5 (0.91%) Bitbucket Server
13 5 (0.91%) CA Release Automation
13 5 (0.91%) SoapUI
13 5 (0.91%) Toad
General
1 153 (27.97%) Social Skills
2 148 (27.06%) Finance
3 67 (12.25%) Analytical Skills
4 59 (10.79%) Banking
5 45 (8.23%) Public Sector
6 25 (4.57%) Front Office
7 21 (3.84%) Influencing Skills
8 17 (3.11%) Investment Banking
9 15 (2.74%) Documentation Skills
10 10 (1.83%) Financial Institution
11 7 (1.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 7 (1.28%) Telecoms
12 5 (0.91%) Advertising
12 5 (0.91%) Law
12 5 (0.91%) Legal
13 4 (0.73%) Manufacturing
14 3 (0.55%) Billing
14 3 (0.55%) Military
14 3 (0.55%) Organisational Skills
14 3 (0.55%) Retail
Job Titles
1 99 (18.10%) Developer
2 81 (14.81%) Senior
3 45 (8.23%) Analyst
4 41 (7.50%) Java Developer
5 37 (6.76%) Support Engineer
6 33 (6.03%) Technical Support
6 33 (6.03%) Unix Engineer
7 28 (5.12%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 26 (4.75%) DevOps Engineer
8 26 (4.75%) Linux Engineer
8 26 (4.75%) Software Engineer
9 24 (4.39%) Site Engineer
10 21 (3.84%) Data Engineer
10 21 (3.84%) DBA
10 21 (3.84%) Oracle DBA
11 20 (3.66%) C++ Software Engineer
11 20 (3.66%) Kafka Engineer
12 19 (3.47%) Lead
12 19 (3.47%) Senior C++ Software Engineer
12 19 (3.47%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (12.43%) Kafka
2 39 (7.13%) REST
3 30 (5.48%) XML
4 29 (5.30%) Middleware
4 29 (5.30%) React
5 28 (5.12%) SOAP
6 24 (4.39%) JSON
7 22 (4.02%) CSS
8 20 (3.66%) AngularJS
8 20 (3.66%) HTML
9 19 (3.47%) Spring
10 16 (2.93%) Elastic Stack
11 14 (2.56%) HTML5
12 13 (2.38%) ActiveMQ
12 13 (2.38%) Ajax
12 13 (2.38%) GraphQL
12 13 (2.38%) J2EE
12 13 (2.38%) JAX-RS
12 13 (2.38%) LDAP
13 11 (2.01%) Oracle GoldenGate
Miscellaneous
1 30 (5.48%) Management Information System
2 21 (3.84%) Onboarding
3 20 (3.66%) Cloud Native
4 19 (3.47%) Linux Command Line
5 18 (3.29%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 17 (3.11%) Data Centre
7 13 (2.38%) Mobile App
7 13 (2.38%) Security Posture
8 12 (2.19%) Equities
8 12 (2.19%) Legacy Systems
9 11 (2.01%) Algorithms
9 11 (2.01%) Fixed Income
9 11 (2.01%) Greenfield Project
10 10 (1.83%) Derivative
11 9 (1.65%) Mainframe
11 9 (1.65%) Public Cloud
11 9 (1.65%) Replication
12 8 (1.46%) BYOD
12 8 (1.46%) Enterprise Cloud
12 8 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 353 (64.53%) Linux
2 169 (30.90%) Windows
3 30 (5.48%) Windows Server
4 27 (4.94%) Solaris
5 26 (4.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 21 (3.84%) AIX
7 17 (3.11%) Mac OS X
8 13 (2.38%) Android
9 10 (1.83%) CentOS
10 9 (1.65%) Mac OS
11 5 (0.91%) Ubuntu
12 2 (0.37%) VMS
13 1 (0.18%) OpenVMS
13 1 (0.18%) Windows 10
13 1 (0.18%) Windows 7
13 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2003
13 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 147 (26.87%) Agile
2 119 (21.76%) Problem-Solving
3 104 (19.01%) DevOps
4 91 (16.64%) CI/CD
5 60 (10.97%) Computer Science
6 58 (10.60%) Software Engineering
7 56 (10.24%) Migration
7 56 (10.24%) Observability
8 54 (9.87%) Infrastructure as Code
9 52 (9.51%) Microservices
10 51 (9.32%) OO
11 50 (9.14%) Containerisation
11 50 (9.14%) Incident Response
12 45 (8.23%) ITIL
12 45 (8.23%) Performance Tuning
13 43 (7.86%) Continuous Improvement
13 43 (7.86%) Data Modelling
14 42 (7.68%) Site Reliability Engineering
14 42 (7.68%) TDD
14 42 (7.68%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 202 (36.93%) Python
1 202 (36.93%) SQL
2 144 (26.33%) Java
3 96 (17.55%) Shell Script
4 75 (13.71%) Bash
5 66 (12.07%) Perl
6 44 (8.04%) JavaScript
7 43 (7.86%) C++
8 42 (7.68%) PowerShell
9 33 (6.03%) PL/SQL
10 28 (5.12%) C#
11 22 (4.02%) Korn
12 14 (2.56%) Scala
13 11 (2.01%) Go
14 9 (1.65%) PHP
15 8 (1.46%) COBOL
16 6 (1.10%) Groovy
17 4 (0.73%) C
18 3 (0.55%) HiveQL
18 3 (0.55%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 123 (22.49%) Security Cleared
2 93 (17.00%) SC Cleared
3 84 (15.36%) Degree
4 45 (8.23%) Computer Science Degree
5 21 (3.84%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (1.46%) CISSP
7 6 (1.10%) AWS Certification
7 6 (1.10%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 6 (1.10%) Microsoft Certification
7 6 (1.10%) OSCP
8 5 (0.91%) CompTIA Security+
8 5 (0.91%) DV Cleared
8 5 (0.91%) GPEN
8 5 (0.91%) GWAPT
8 5 (0.91%) ISTQB
8 5 (0.91%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 5 (0.91%) MCSA
8 5 (0.91%) MCSE
8 5 (0.91%) RHCE
9 3 (0.55%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (3.11%) SLA
2 16 (2.93%) QA
3 9 (1.65%) Data Quality
3 9 (1.65%) NIST
4 7 (1.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 4 (0.73%) GMP
6 3 (0.55%) FATCA
6 3 (0.55%) NCSC
6 3 (0.55%) SEPA
7 2 (0.37%) GDPR
7 2 (0.37%) ISO 15022
7 2 (0.37%) ISO 20022
7 2 (0.37%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.18%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.18%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.18%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.18%) SOC 2
System Software
1 79 (14.44%) Docker
2 21 (3.84%) Active Directory
3 12 (2.19%) Oracle RAC
3 12 (2.19%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (1.65%) KVM
5 6 (1.10%) Hyper-V
5 6 (1.10%) NFS
5 6 (1.10%) Virtual Machines
6 5 (0.91%) GPFS
6 5 (0.91%) Tivoli Directory Server
7 4 (0.73%) HDFS
7 4 (0.73%) VMware NSX
8 2 (0.37%) Firmware
8 2 (0.37%) GridGain
8 2 (0.37%) Postfix
8 2 (0.37%) PowerHA
8 2 (0.37%) SRDF
8 2 (0.37%) Varnish
8 2 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
8 2 (0.37%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 79 (14.44%) Kubernetes
2 68 (12.43%) Ansible
3 57 (10.42%) Terraform
4 38 (6.95%) Grafana
5 31 (5.67%) Puppet
6 24 (4.39%) Prometheus
7 14 (2.56%) Kibana
7 14 (2.56%) Oracle RMAN
8 13 (2.38%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 13 (2.38%) Progress Chef
9 7 (1.28%) NetBackup
10 6 (1.10%) IBM BigFix
10 6 (1.10%) Red Hat Satellite
10 6 (1.10%) SCCM
10 6 (1.10%) Single Sign-On
10 6 (1.10%) Tivoli
10 6 (1.10%) vCenter Server
11 5 (0.91%) CA Wily
11 5 (0.91%) CASB
11 5 (0.91%) Dell DRAC
Vendors
1 175 (31.99%) Oracle
2 76 (13.89%) Splunk
3 63 (11.52%) Microsoft
4 49 (8.96%) IBM
5 34 (6.22%) ServiceNow
6 24 (4.39%) VMware
7 19 (3.47%) Red Hat
8 16 (2.93%) Cisco
9 12 (2.19%) CyberArk
10 11 (2.01%) AppDynamics
10 11 (2.01%) Talend
11 10 (1.83%) Informatica
11 10 (1.83%) Remedy
12 9 (1.65%) Fujitsu
12 9 (1.65%) Sybase
12 9 (1.65%) Tenable
12 9 (1.65%) webMethods
13 8 (1.46%) Aruba
13 8 (1.46%) Dell
13 8 (1.46%) Veritas