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 21 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 200 130 129
Rank change year-on-year -70 -1 -51
Contract jobs citing Unix 566 634 828
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.38% 2.06% 1.85%
As % of the Operating Systems category 11.78% 14.40% 13.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 370 361 562
10th Percentile £204 £356 £351
25th Percentile £388 £425 £442
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year -11.63% -5.45% -
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £430 £468 £500
% change year-on-year -8.02% -6.50% -7.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 7 22
10th Percentile £20.91 £38.70 £22.01
25th Percentile £22.56 £40.50 £24.54
Median hourly rate £26.97 £41.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -34.22% +2.50% -38.22%
75th Percentile £28.53 £59.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £29.13 £69.50 £67.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.22 £47.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -48.47% +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 4,803 4,403 6,227
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.73% 14.33% 13.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,177 2,792 4,174
10th Percentile £176 £200 £180
25th Percentile £268 £313 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £447 £474 £465
Median % change year-on-year -5.65% +1.88% -9.71%
75th Percentile £569 £588 £594
90th Percentile £675 £693 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -2.94% - -10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 341 151 389
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.49 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.62 £16.92
Median hourly rate £23.00 £29.00 £25.25
Median % change year-on-year -20.69% +14.85% -4.68%
75th Percentile £55.00 £64.38 £62.50
90th Percentile £69.99 £68.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £26.25 £25.22
% change year-on-year -14.29% +4.10% -4.81%

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 21 February 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
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 21 February 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 -55 493 £469 -10.67% 98
UK excluding London -68 294 £430 -8.02% 81
London -43 225 £538 -5.37% 38
Work from Home -74 159 £450 -7.69% 53
North of England -25 102 £465 -17.33% 15
South East -14 80 £210 -55.08% 22
North West +4 67 £467 -15.09% 13
Midlands -33 66 £439 -4.67% 19
West Midlands -28 63 £440 -4.35% 16
Scotland -41 34 £423 -6.11% 6
Yorkshire -61 33 £464 -19.35%
South West -33 12 £700 +33.33% 7
North East -17 5 £563 - 2
East Midlands -28 3 £430 +1.78% 3
Wales -3 2 £265 +62.04% 3
East of England -36 1 £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 30 (5.30%) Apache
1 30 (5.30%) WebLogic
2 21 (3.71%) Confluence
3 16 (2.83%) SharePoint
4 15 (2.65%) JBoss
5 12 (2.12%) Tuxedo
6 9 (1.59%) Apache Spark
6 9 (1.59%) Tomcat
7 7 (1.24%) SAS
8 6 (1.06%) CICS
8 6 (1.06%) IIS
8 6 (1.06%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 6 (1.06%) WebSphere
9 5 (0.88%) iPlanet
9 5 (0.88%) WebSphere Application Server
10 4 (0.71%) Microsoft Exchange
10 4 (0.71%) nginx
11 3 (0.53%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.35%) ArcGIS
12 2 (0.35%) Oracle Spatial
Applications
1 15 (2.65%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.94%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.35%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.18%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (1.06%) Oracle EBS
1 6 (1.06%) Oracle EBS R12
2 5 (0.88%) Oracle 11i
3 4 (0.71%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.53%) Oracle BRM
5 2 (0.35%) ION MarketView
5 2 (0.35%) Kondor
5 2 (0.35%) Oracle Applications
5 2 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.35%) 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
1 130 (22.97%) AWS
2 83 (14.66%) Azure
3 26 (4.59%) GCP
4 24 (4.24%) GitHub
5 20 (3.53%) AWS CloudFormation
6 19 (3.36%) SaaS
7 17 (3.00%) Serverless
8 15 (2.65%) AWS Lambda
9 14 (2.47%) OpenShift
9 14 (2.47%) Sauce Labs
10 11 (1.94%) Cloud Computing
11 10 (1.77%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 10 (1.77%) Amazon S3
11 10 (1.77%) OCI
12 8 (1.41%) Amazon EC2
12 8 (1.41%) Azure DevOps
12 8 (1.41%) Entra ID
12 8 (1.41%) Microsoft 365
12 8 (1.41%) Snowflake
13 7 (1.24%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 34 (6.01%) Firewall
2 20 (3.53%) DNS
3 18 (3.18%) Wireless
4 17 (3.00%) HTTP
5 16 (2.83%) SSH
6 14 (2.47%) TCP/IP
7 10 (1.77%) Network Security
8 8 (1.41%) InfiniBand
8 8 (1.41%) NAS
8 8 (1.41%) SAN
9 7 (1.24%) Ethernet
9 7 (1.24%) FTP
9 7 (1.24%) NetScaler
10 6 (1.06%) Kerberos
10 6 (1.06%) SSL
10 6 (1.06%) VPN
10 6 (1.06%) Wireshark
11 5 (0.88%) Ethernet VPN
12 4 (0.71%) DHCP
12 4 (0.71%) FIX Connectivity
Database & Business Intelligence
1 50 (8.83%) MongoDB
2 49 (8.66%) Relational Database
3 47 (8.30%) MySQL
4 45 (7.95%) Oracle Database
5 32 (5.65%) SQL Server
6 28 (4.95%) NoSQL
7 24 (4.24%) PostgreSQL
8 20 (3.53%) Elasticsearch
9 16 (2.83%) KDB
9 16 (2.83%) Kdb+
10 14 (2.47%) Big Data
10 14 (2.47%) Data Warehouse
11 13 (2.30%) Amazon RDS
12 10 (1.77%) DB2
13 9 (1.59%) Data Lake
13 9 (1.59%) Tick Data
14 8 (1.41%) Amazon Redshift
14 8 (1.41%) Hadoop
15 7 (1.24%) DataStage
15 7 (1.24%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 50 (8.83%) Jenkins
2 44 (7.77%) Git
3 33 (5.83%) GitLab
4 31 (5.48%) JIRA
5 23 (4.06%) Eclipse
6 19 (3.36%) JUnit
6 19 (3.36%) Mockito
7 15 (2.65%) Xcode
8 14 (2.47%) Android Studio
8 14 (2.47%) Browser DevTools
9 13 (2.30%) Selenium
10 12 (2.12%) Sonatype Nexus
11 10 (1.77%) Bitbucket
11 10 (1.77%) Maven
12 9 (1.59%) IntelliJ
12 9 (1.59%) MSI
13 5 (0.88%) CA Release Automation
13 5 (0.88%) Gradle
13 5 (0.88%) SoapUI
13 5 (0.88%) Toad
General
1 156 (27.56%) Social Skills
2 146 (25.80%) Finance
3 72 (12.72%) Analytical Skills
4 55 (9.72%) Banking
5 46 (8.13%) Public Sector
6 24 (4.24%) Front Office
7 19 (3.36%) Influencing Skills
8 16 (2.83%) Investment Banking
9 15 (2.65%) Documentation Skills
10 12 (2.12%) Financial Institution
11 7 (1.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 7 (1.24%) Telecoms
12 6 (1.06%) Legal
13 5 (0.88%) Law
13 5 (0.88%) Military
14 4 (0.71%) Manufacturing
15 3 (0.53%) Advertising
15 3 (0.53%) Billing
16 2 (0.35%) Organisational Skills
16 2 (0.35%) Retail
Job Titles
1 112 (19.79%) Developer
2 97 (17.14%) Senior
3 52 (9.19%) Java Developer
4 43 (7.60%) Analyst
5 37 (6.54%) Technical Support
6 33 (5.83%) Site Reliability Engineer
6 33 (5.83%) Unix Engineer
7 31 (5.48%) Support Engineer
8 29 (5.12%) DevOps Engineer
9 27 (4.77%) Linux Engineer
9 27 (4.77%) Site Engineer
10 25 (4.42%) Senior Developer
11 24 (4.24%) Software Engineer
12 22 (3.89%) Technical Engineer
13 21 (3.71%) Kafka Engineer
13 21 (3.71%) Lead
14 20 (3.53%) C++ Software Engineer
14 20 (3.53%) Data Engineer
14 20 (3.53%) Senior Software Engineer
14 20 (3.53%) Technical Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 78 (13.78%) Kafka
2 41 (7.24%) REST
3 32 (5.65%) React
4 30 (5.30%) SOAP
5 29 (5.12%) XML
6 26 (4.59%) Middleware
7 23 (4.06%) CSS
7 23 (4.06%) JSON
8 21 (3.71%) AngularJS
8 21 (3.71%) HTML
9 18 (3.18%) ActiveMQ
9 18 (3.18%) JAX-RS
9 18 (3.18%) Spring
10 17 (3.00%) Elastic Stack
11 14 (2.47%) Ajax
11 14 (2.47%) GraphQL
11 14 (2.47%) HTML5
12 13 (2.30%) J2EE
12 13 (2.30%) LDAP
13 11 (1.94%) Hibernate
Miscellaneous
1 34 (6.01%) Management Information System
2 20 (3.53%) Onboarding
3 19 (3.36%) Cloud Native
3 19 (3.36%) Linux Command Line
4 18 (3.18%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 17 (3.00%) Data Centre
6 16 (2.83%) Mobile App
7 13 (2.30%) Security Posture
8 12 (2.12%) Equities
9 11 (1.94%) Algorithms
9 11 (1.94%) Fixed Income
9 11 (1.94%) Greenfield Project
9 11 (1.94%) Legacy Systems
10 10 (1.77%) Derivative
10 10 (1.77%) Replication
11 9 (1.59%) Enterprise Software
12 8 (1.41%) Enterprise Cloud
12 8 (1.41%) Legacy Applications
12 8 (1.41%) Public Cloud
12 8 (1.41%) Tandem
Operating Systems
1 378 (66.78%) Linux
2 178 (31.45%) Windows
3 31 (5.48%) Windows Server
4 27 (4.77%) Solaris
5 26 (4.59%) Mac OS X
6 25 (4.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 17 (3.00%) AIX
8 16 (2.83%) Android
9 14 (2.47%) Mac OS
10 11 (1.94%) CentOS
11 5 (0.88%) Ubuntu
12 2 (0.35%) Apple iOS
13 1 (0.18%) VMS
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
1 156 (27.56%) Agile
2 122 (21.55%) Problem-Solving
3 103 (18.20%) DevOps
4 93 (16.43%) CI/CD
5 65 (11.48%) Microservices
6 63 (11.13%) Computer Science
7 59 (10.42%) Incident Response
7 59 (10.42%) Observability
8 57 (10.07%) OO
9 55 (9.72%) Infrastructure as Code
10 53 (9.36%) Software Engineering
11 52 (9.19%) TDD
12 51 (9.01%) Migration
13 50 (8.83%) Containerisation
13 50 (8.83%) Test Automation
14 47 (8.30%) Site Reliability Engineering
15 44 (7.77%) Data Modelling
16 43 (7.60%) Continuous Improvement
16 43 (7.60%) Performance Tuning
17 41 (7.24%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 206 (36.40%) SQL
2 205 (36.22%) Python
3 157 (27.74%) Java
4 96 (16.96%) Shell Script
5 77 (13.60%) Bash
6 69 (12.19%) Perl
7 49 (8.66%) JavaScript
8 44 (7.77%) C++
9 42 (7.42%) PowerShell
10 29 (5.12%) PL/SQL
11 28 (4.95%) C#
12 17 (3.00%) Korn
13 14 (2.47%) Scala
14 12 (2.12%) Go
15 8 (1.41%) PHP
16 6 (1.06%) COBOL
16 6 (1.06%) Groovy
17 4 (0.71%) C
17 4 (0.71%) TypeScript
18 3 (0.53%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 126 (22.26%) Security Cleared
2 91 (16.08%) SC Cleared
3 89 (15.72%) Degree
4 48 (8.48%) Computer Science Degree
5 25 (4.42%) BPSS Clearance
6 9 (1.59%) CISSP
7 8 (1.41%) DV Cleared
7 8 (1.41%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 7 (1.24%) AWS Certification
9 6 (1.06%) Microsoft Certification
9 6 (1.06%) OSCP
10 5 (0.88%) CompTIA Security+
10 5 (0.88%) GPEN
10 5 (0.88%) GWAPT
10 5 (0.88%) ISTQB
10 5 (0.88%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 5 (0.88%) MCSA
10 5 (0.88%) MCSE
10 5 (0.88%) RHCE
11 3 (0.53%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (3.36%) SLA
2 16 (2.83%) QA
3 9 (1.59%) Data Quality
3 9 (1.59%) NIST
4 7 (1.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 4 (0.71%) GMP
6 3 (0.53%) FATCA
6 3 (0.53%) NCSC
6 3 (0.53%) PCI DSS
6 3 (0.53%) SEPA
7 2 (0.35%) ISO 15022
7 2 (0.35%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.18%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.18%) GDPR
8 1 (0.18%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.18%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.18%) SOC 2
System Software
1 81 (14.31%) Docker
2 21 (3.71%) Active Directory
3 11 (1.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (1.59%) KVM
5 7 (1.24%) Oracle RAC
6 6 (1.06%) Hyper-V
6 6 (1.06%) Virtual Machines
7 5 (0.88%) Tivoli Directory Server
8 4 (0.71%) GPFS
8 4 (0.71%) NFS
8 4 (0.71%) VMware NSX
9 2 (0.35%) GridGain
9 2 (0.35%) QEMU
10 1 (0.18%) Ceph
10 1 (0.18%) iptables
10 1 (0.18%) Postfix
10 1 (0.18%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 1 (0.18%) Varnish
10 1 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
10 1 (0.18%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 82 (14.49%) Kubernetes
2 63 (11.13%) Ansible
3 59 (10.42%) Terraform
4 36 (6.36%) Grafana
5 31 (5.48%) Puppet
6 26 (4.59%) Prometheus
7 15 (2.65%) Kibana
8 11 (1.94%) Progress Chef
9 9 (1.59%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 9 (1.59%) Oracle RMAN
10 7 (1.24%) NetBackup
10 7 (1.24%) Single Sign-On
11 6 (1.06%) IBM BigFix
11 6 (1.06%) Nessus
11 6 (1.06%) Red Hat Satellite
11 6 (1.06%) SCCM
11 6 (1.06%) Tivoli
11 6 (1.06%) vCenter Server
12 5 (0.88%) CA Single Sign-On
12 5 (0.88%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 174 (30.74%) Oracle
2 85 (15.02%) Splunk
3 66 (11.66%) Microsoft
4 46 (8.13%) IBM
5 34 (6.01%) ServiceNow
6 22 (3.89%) Red Hat
7 21 (3.71%) VMware
8 17 (3.00%) Cisco
9 14 (2.47%) AppDynamics
10 11 (1.94%) CyberArk
11 10 (1.77%) Remedy
12 9 (1.59%) Dynatrace
12 9 (1.59%) Tenable
12 9 (1.59%) webMethods
13 8 (1.41%) Aruba
13 8 (1.41%) Confluent
13 8 (1.41%) CrowdStrike
13 8 (1.41%) Veritas
14 7 (1.24%) CheckPoint
14 7 (1.24%) Dell