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 22 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 226 163 118
Rank change year-on-year -63 -45 -15
Contract jobs citing Unix 649 567 756
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.19% 1.75% 1.99%
As % of the Operating Systems category 12.15% 12.93% 14.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 419 368 472
10th Percentile £339 £284 £350
25th Percentile £418 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £498 £519
Median % change year-on-year +0.50% -4.10% -5.68%
75th Percentile £582 £617 £613
90th Percentile £715 £738 £765
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £472 £450
% change year-on-year +0.64% +4.89% -12.62%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 5 5
10th Percentile £43.81 £30.34 -
25th Percentile £47.53 £36.48 -
Median hourly rate £52.50 £54.50 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year -3.67% +128.99% -64.48%
75th Percentile £55.25 £55.00 £28.75
90th Percentile £75.56 £64.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £54.75 £27.50
% change year-on-year -4.11% +99.09% -60.00%

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 5,340 4,386 5,390
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.79% 13.50% 14.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,355 2,799 3,431
10th Percentile £190 £188 £200
25th Percentile £313 £300 £330
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £673 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £435 £450
% change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 403 284 259
10th Percentile £14.17 £15.50 £16.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.86 £21.25
Median hourly rate £26.66 £25.15 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +6.00% -52.10% +14.43%
75th Percentile £66.63 £58.75 £69.22
90th Percentile £74.94 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £56.75
% change year-on-year +29.22% -55.68% +23.68%

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 22 September 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 22 September 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 22 September 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 -58 533 £500 - 392
UK excluding London -81 342 £475 +0.64% 198
London -72 220 £550 - 244
Work from Home -14 193 £500 +5.26% 151
North of England -31 122 £475 -13.64% 42
South East -54 90 £459 +14.75% 40
North West -4 87 £475 +4.86% 23
Midlands -19 75 £471 -5.75% 25
West Midlands -17 70 £474 -8.72% 22
Scotland -58 43 £450 -5.26% 14
Yorkshire -56 26 £500 -23.08% 12
South West -36 14 £663 -11.67% 36
North East -27 12 £470 -6.00% 7
East of England -33 8 £700 +40.00% 17
East Midlands -16 4 £456 +16.24% 3
Wales -8 3 £383 +35.40% 7
Northern Ireland -1 1 - - 20

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 31 (4.78%) Confluence
2 29 (4.47%) SAS
3 18 (2.77%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 15 (2.31%) SharePoint
5 14 (2.16%) WebLogic
6 13 (2.00%) Apache Airflow
7 10 (1.54%) Apache Spark
8 7 (1.08%) Apache
8 7 (1.08%) OpenStack
9 6 (0.92%) WebLogic Portal
10 4 (0.62%) Oracle Workflow
10 4 (0.62%) WebSphere
11 3 (0.46%) nginx
12 2 (0.31%) CICS
12 2 (0.31%) CMS
12 2 (0.31%) IIS
12 2 (0.31%) Microsoft Exchange
12 2 (0.31%) Oracle Service Bus
13 1 (0.15%) JBoss
13 1 (0.15%) Tomcat
Applications
1 14 (2.16%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (1.23%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (1.08%) Notepad++
4 2 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.31%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 13 (2.00%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (1.08%) Oracle EBS R12
3 6 (0.92%) SAP PSCD
4 4 (0.62%) Oracle Assets
4 4 (0.62%) Oracle E-Business Tax
4 4 (0.62%) Oracle FAH
4 4 (0.62%) Oracle General Ledger
4 4 (0.62%) Oracle Internet Expenses
4 4 (0.62%) Oracle iProcurement
4 4 (0.62%) Oracle Payables
4 4 (0.62%) Oracle Receivables
5 3 (0.46%) FLEXCUBE
5 3 (0.46%) Oracle Applications
5 3 (0.46%) Oracle Financials
6 2 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
6 2 (0.31%) Oracle Retail
6 2 (0.31%) SAP S/4HANA
7 1 (0.15%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 1 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
7 1 (0.15%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 148 (22.80%) AWS
2 88 (13.56%) Azure
3 49 (7.55%) GCP
4 41 (6.32%) GitHub
5 28 (4.31%) AWS Lambda
6 27 (4.16%) Amazon S3
6 27 (4.16%) Serverless
7 24 (3.70%) GitHub Actions
7 24 (3.70%) IaaS
8 23 (3.54%) Entra ID
9 18 (2.77%) SaaS
10 17 (2.62%) OpenShift
11 16 (2.47%) PaaS
12 15 (2.31%) AWS CloudFormation
12 15 (2.31%) Power Platform
13 13 (2.00%) Amazon EC2
13 13 (2.00%) Azure DevOps
14 11 (1.69%) Snowflake
15 10 (1.54%) Amazon ECS
16 9 (1.39%) Amazon EMR
Communications & Networking
1 31 (4.78%) Firewall
1 31 (4.78%) TCP/IP
2 30 (4.62%) DNS
3 20 (3.08%) SAN
4 14 (2.16%) HTTP
5 13 (2.00%) DHCP
6 12 (1.85%) SSH
7 10 (1.54%) NAS
7 10 (1.54%) Network Security
7 10 (1.54%) SSL
8 9 (1.39%) LAN
8 9 (1.39%) WAN
9 7 (1.08%) LTE
9 7 (1.08%) PuTTY
9 7 (1.08%) WinSCP
10 6 (0.92%) 5G
10 6 (0.92%) Diameter Protocol
10 6 (0.92%) Radio Access Network
10 6 (0.92%) VoWiFi
10 6 (0.92%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 60 (9.24%) Oracle Database
2 53 (8.17%) SQL Server
3 52 (8.01%) PostgreSQL
4 49 (7.55%) Relational Database
5 44 (6.78%) Data Warehouse
6 28 (4.31%) MongoDB
7 25 (3.85%) MySQL
8 22 (3.39%) Db2
8 22 (3.39%) Oracle Database 11g
9 18 (2.77%) NoSQL
10 17 (2.62%) DataStage
11 15 (2.31%) Oracle Database 12c
11 15 (2.31%) Power BI
12 14 (2.16%) RDBMS
13 13 (2.00%) Amazon Aurora
13 13 (2.00%) BusinessObjects
13 13 (2.00%) Data Lake
13 13 (2.00%) Oracle Database 10g
13 13 (2.00%) Oracle Reports
14 12 (1.85%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 85 (13.10%) Git
2 64 (9.86%) Jenkins
3 53 (8.17%) GitLab
4 51 (7.86%) JIRA
5 20 (3.08%) Artifactory
6 13 (2.00%) JUnit
7 12 (1.85%) Gradle
7 12 (1.85%) Maven
7 12 (1.85%) Mockito
8 11 (1.69%) SonarQube
9 10 (1.54%) Selenium
10 9 (1.39%) Bitbucket
10 9 (1.39%) Oracle Forms
11 8 (1.23%) eggPlant
11 8 (1.23%) Sonatype Nexus
12 7 (1.08%) HP UFT
13 6 (0.92%) Cucumber
14 5 (0.77%) Oracle APEX
14 5 (0.77%) Postman
14 5 (0.77%) SoapUI
General
1 167 (25.73%) Finance
2 143 (22.03%) Social Skills
3 108 (16.64%) Banking
4 106 (16.33%) Analytical Skills
5 54 (8.32%) Public Sector
6 26 (4.01%) Investment Banking
7 21 (3.24%) Documentation Skills
8 20 (3.08%) Front Office
9 11 (1.69%) Telecoms
10 8 (1.23%) Retail
11 7 (1.08%) Military
12 5 (0.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 5 (0.77%) Influencing Skills
12 5 (0.77%) Legal
13 4 (0.62%) Corporate Banking
13 4 (0.62%) Financial Institution
13 4 (0.62%) Presentation Skills
14 3 (0.46%) General Ledger
14 3 (0.46%) Law
15 2 (0.31%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 138 (21.26%) Developer
2 103 (15.87%) Senior
3 64 (9.86%) Unix Engineer
4 62 (9.55%) Data Engineer
5 51 (7.86%) Senior Developer
6 48 (7.40%) Java Developer
7 42 (6.47%) DBA
8 35 (5.39%) Linux Engineer
9 31 (4.78%) Python Developer
10 29 (4.47%) Oracle DBA
11 28 (4.31%) Support Engineer
12 25 (3.85%) Analyst
12 25 (3.85%) Consultant
13 23 (3.54%) Architect
14 22 (3.39%) Administrator
15 19 (2.93%) Senior Java Developer
16 18 (2.77%) DevOps Engineer
17 16 (2.47%) Applications Support
18 15 (2.31%) Lead
19 14 (2.16%) Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 73 (11.25%) Kafka
2 52 (8.01%) Terraform
3 49 (7.55%) REST
4 42 (6.47%) Middleware
5 41 (6.32%) RESTful
6 39 (6.01%) Spring
7 37 (5.70%) Spring Boot
8 25 (3.85%) XML
9 24 (3.70%) Web Services
10 22 (3.39%) .NET
11 21 (3.24%) HTML
11 21 (3.24%) SOAP
12 19 (2.93%) CSS
13 15 (2.31%) RabbitMQ
14 14 (2.16%) Django
14 14 (2.16%) Flask
14 14 (2.16%) Pandas
15 13 (2.00%) ActiveMQ
16 12 (1.85%) FastAPI
16 12 (1.85%) JAX-RS
Miscellaneous
1 47 (7.24%) Onboarding
2 36 (5.55%) Distributed Systems
2 36 (5.55%) Linux Command Line
3 34 (5.24%) Data Centre
4 33 (5.08%) Legacy Systems
5 22 (3.39%) Cloud Native
6 19 (2.93%) Clustering
6 19 (2.93%) Management Information System
6 19 (2.93%) Replication
7 16 (2.47%) Fixed Income
8 15 (2.31%) Derivative
8 15 (2.31%) Mainframe
9 13 (2.00%) PKI
9 13 (2.00%) Private Cloud
10 12 (1.85%) Data Protection Act
10 12 (1.85%) Enterprise Software
10 12 (1.85%) Legacy Applications
10 12 (1.85%) Product Ownership
11 11 (1.69%) Data Structures
11 11 (1.69%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 438 (67.49%) Linux
2 148 (22.80%) Windows
3 72 (11.09%) Solaris
4 43 (6.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 42 (6.47%) Windows Server
6 31 (4.78%) AIX
7 9 (1.39%) SUSE
8 8 (1.23%) HPUX
8 8 (1.23%) Oracle Linux
9 7 (1.08%) VMS
10 6 (0.92%) CentOS
10 6 (0.92%) Mac OS X
11 4 (0.62%) zOS
12 3 (0.46%) Android
12 3 (0.46%) Check Point GAiA
13 2 (0.31%) Mac OS
13 2 (0.31%) OpenVMS
13 2 (0.31%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
14 1 (0.15%) Ubuntu
14 1 (0.15%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 164 (25.27%) CI/CD
2 135 (20.80%) Agile
3 110 (16.95%) Migration
4 109 (16.80%) DevOps
4 109 (16.80%) Problem-Solving
5 101 (15.56%) Test Automation
6 79 (12.17%) Root Cause Analysis
7 78 (12.02%) High Availability
8 68 (10.48%) Continuous Improvement
8 68 (10.48%) Data Modelling
9 64 (9.86%) Performance Tuning
10 63 (9.71%) Infrastructure as Code
10 63 (9.71%) ITIL
11 62 (9.55%) ETL
12 59 (9.09%) Data Pipeline
13 58 (8.94%) Containerisation
14 57 (8.78%) Runbook
14 57 (8.78%) Validation
15 54 (8.32%) Analytics
15 54 (8.32%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 254 (39.14%) SQL
2 247 (38.06%) Python
3 135 (20.80%) Java
4 123 (18.95%) Shell Script
5 91 (14.02%) PL/SQL
6 63 (9.71%) Bash
7 54 (8.32%) PowerShell
8 42 (6.47%) Perl
9 35 (5.39%) JavaScript
10 30 (4.62%) C#
11 21 (3.24%) C++
12 15 (2.31%) C
13 9 (1.39%) Go
14 7 (1.08%) MUMPS
15 6 (0.92%) ABAP
15 6 (0.92%) Korn
15 6 (0.92%) Kotlin
15 6 (0.92%) Scala
15 6 (0.92%) T-SQL
16 5 (0.77%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 237 (36.52%) Security Cleared
2 191 (29.43%) SC Cleared
3 66 (10.17%) Degree
4 35 (5.39%) BPSS Clearance
5 22 (3.39%) DV Cleared
6 15 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
7 14 (2.16%) CISSP
8 9 (1.39%) CISM
9 8 (1.23%) Cisco Certification
10 7 (1.08%) CRISC
10 7 (1.08%) Master's Degree
10 7 (1.08%) Oracle Certification
11 6 (0.92%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 6 (0.92%) CESG Certified Professional
11 6 (0.92%) CompTIA Security+
11 6 (0.92%) GIAC
11 6 (0.92%) ISEB
11 6 (0.92%) ISTQB
12 5 (0.77%) RHCE
12 5 (0.77%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (5.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 35 (5.39%) NIST
3 33 (5.08%) Data Quality
3 33 (5.08%) QA
4 12 (1.85%) GDPR
4 12 (1.85%) SLA
5 9 (1.39%) ISO 20022
6 7 (1.08%) Cyber Essentials
7 6 (0.92%) ISO 31000
8 5 (0.77%) Basel III
8 5 (0.77%) GRC
8 5 (0.77%) ISO 15022
8 5 (0.77%) PCI DSS
9 4 (0.62%) Disclosure Scotland
10 3 (0.46%) NCSC
10 3 (0.46%) NIST 800
10 3 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.31%) SEPA
12 1 (0.15%) ISO 8583
12 1 (0.15%) WCAG
System Software
1 67 (10.32%) Docker
2 40 (6.16%) Active Directory
3 26 (4.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (2.62%) Oracle RAC
5 16 (2.47%) NFS
6 9 (1.39%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (0.77%) VMware ESXi
8 4 (0.62%) Firmware
8 4 (0.62%) GPFS
8 4 (0.62%) Postfix
8 4 (0.62%) PowerHA
8 4 (0.62%) Varnish
8 4 (0.62%) Veritas Volume Manager
8 4 (0.62%) vSphere
9 3 (0.46%) Sendmail
9 3 (0.46%) VirtualBox
10 1 (0.15%) HDFS
10 1 (0.15%) RACF
10 1 (0.15%) Veritas Cluster Server
10 1 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 80 (12.33%) Kubernetes
2 60 (9.24%) Ansible
3 39 (6.01%) Grafana
4 31 (4.78%) Oracle RMAN
5 27 (4.16%) Prometheus
6 21 (3.24%) Data Guard
7 18 (2.77%) Progress Chef
8 14 (2.16%) Control-M
8 14 (2.16%) Puppet
9 11 (1.69%) Kibana
10 9 (1.39%) Single Sign-On
11 8 (1.23%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 7 (1.08%) Tivoli Storage Manager
13 5 (0.77%) HAProxy
13 5 (0.77%) HP Fortify
13 5 (0.77%) ITRS Geneos
13 5 (0.77%) NetBackup
13 5 (0.77%) Tivoli
13 5 (0.77%) ZABBIX
14 4 (0.62%) SCCM
Vendors
1 243 (37.44%) Oracle
2 55 (8.47%) IBM
3 51 (7.86%) Splunk
4 50 (7.70%) Microsoft
5 40 (6.16%) BeyondTrust
6 32 (4.93%) Informatica
6 32 (4.93%) Red Hat
7 31 (4.78%) CyberArk
8 29 (4.47%) VMware
9 23 (3.54%) Sybase
9 23 (3.54%) Talend
10 20 (3.08%) SAP
10 20 (3.08%) ServiceNow
11 18 (2.77%) Denodo
12 16 (2.47%) Google
13 15 (2.31%) Dynatrace
14 12 (1.85%) HP
14 12 (1.85%) SaltStack
15 11 (1.69%) BT
16 10 (1.54%) AppDynamics