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

6 months to
10 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 223 140 142
Rank change year-on-year -83 +2 -61
Contract jobs citing Unix 530 564 737
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.16% 1.93% 1.68%
As % of the Operating Systems category 11.09% 13.78% 12.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 335 337 494
10th Percentile £286 £359 £350
25th Percentile £400 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.50% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £564 £600 £655
90th Percentile £723 £718 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £441 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -7.21% -5.00% -7.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 9 22
10th Percentile £21.50 - £22.01
25th Percentile £24.67 £40.50 £24.54
Median hourly rate £52.50 £53.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% +32.50% -30.43%
75th Percentile £53.75 £55.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £55.00 £67.25 £67.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.71 £53.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -28.85% +32.50% -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 4,781 4,092 5,983
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.42% 14.01% 13.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,130 2,732 4,011
10th Percentile £181 £200 £181
25th Percentile £303 £325 £290
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £463
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +2.70% -9.76%
75th Percentile £572 £600 £594
90th Percentile £658 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £450 £450
% change year-on-year -5.56% - -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 338 170 410
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.61 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.06 £18.13 £15.50
Median hourly rate £25.89 £24.66 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.97% +12.09% -25.80%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.08 £68.64
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.52 £24.18 £20.00
% change year-on-year +5.52% +20.90% -24.53%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 -63 452 £469 -9.81% 90
UK excluding London -87 282 £441 -7.21% 71
London -59 198 £550 - 39
Work from Home -70 162 £459 -7.37% 47
Midlands -19 81 £450 -4.05% 12
North of England -67 80 £465 -11.43% 20
South East -23 77 £392 -19.13% 21
West Midlands -17 75 £450 -4.66% 8
North West -5 62 £469 -10.67% 10
Scotland -47 32 £402 -13.92% 6
Yorkshire -70 16 £461 -29.04% 7
South West -37 7 £700 +27.27% 3
East Midlands -33 6 £478 +5.18% 4
Wales -8 5 £265 +58.62% 2
East of England -51 3 - - 4
North East -18 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 (4.34%) Apache
2 22 (4.15%) WebLogic
3 17 (3.21%) SAS
4 16 (3.02%) Tuxedo
5 14 (2.64%) Apache Spark
5 14 (2.64%) Confluence
6 10 (1.89%) CICS
7 7 (1.32%) SharePoint
8 6 (1.13%) NetWeaver
9 5 (0.94%) JBoss
9 5 (0.94%) nginx
9 5 (0.94%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 5 (0.94%) Tomcat
10 4 (0.75%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 4 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
10 4 (0.75%) 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%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 12 (2.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (1.13%) Notepad++
4 4 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.19%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (1.13%) SAP S/4HANA
1 6 (1.13%) Summit
2 4 (0.75%) Oracle 11i
2 4 (0.75%) Oracle EBS
2 4 (0.75%) 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 98 (18.49%) AWS
2 72 (13.58%) Azure
3 30 (5.66%) GitHub
4 19 (3.58%) Serverless
5 17 (3.21%) GCP
6 16 (3.02%) Amazon S3
6 16 (3.02%) GitHub Actions
7 15 (2.83%) AWS Lambda
8 13 (2.45%) Azure DevOps
8 13 (2.45%) SaaS
9 11 (2.08%) Amazon EC2
9 11 (2.08%) OpenShift
9 11 (2.08%) Snowflake
10 10 (1.89%) Azure Data Factory
10 10 (1.89%) Entra ID
11 9 (1.70%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 9 (1.70%) Power Platform
12 8 (1.51%) AWS CloudFormation
13 7 (1.32%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 7 (1.32%) Sauce Labs
Communications & Networking
1 34 (6.42%) Firewall
2 18 (3.40%) DNS
3 15 (2.83%) SAN
4 14 (2.64%) HTTP
5 13 (2.45%) TCP/IP
6 12 (2.26%) Network Security
7 11 (2.08%) Wireless
8 9 (1.70%) NAS
8 9 (1.70%) SSH
9 8 (1.51%) InfiniBand
10 7 (1.32%) Ethernet
10 7 (1.32%) NetScaler
11 6 (1.13%) FTP
11 6 (1.13%) PuTTY
11 6 (1.13%) SSL
11 6 (1.13%) VPN
11 6 (1.13%) WinSCP
12 5 (0.94%) Ethernet VPN
12 5 (0.94%) RTP
13 4 (0.75%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 59 (11.13%) SQL Server
2 45 (8.49%) Relational Database
3 42 (7.92%) MySQL
4 36 (6.79%) MongoDB
5 34 (6.42%) Oracle Database
6 32 (6.04%) PostgreSQL
7 22 (4.15%) Metadata
8 21 (3.96%) Data Warehouse
9 17 (3.21%) KDB
9 17 (3.21%) Kdb+
9 17 (3.21%) NoSQL
10 15 (2.83%) Big Data
11 11 (2.08%) DataStage
11 11 (2.08%) Tick Data
12 10 (1.89%) Data Lake
12 10 (1.89%) DB2
12 10 (1.89%) Hadoop
12 10 (1.89%) RDBMS
13 9 (1.70%) Elasticsearch
13 9 (1.70%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 46 (8.68%) Jenkins
2 45 (8.49%) Git
3 38 (7.17%) GitLab
4 31 (5.85%) JIRA
5 13 (2.45%) Mockito
6 12 (2.26%) Bitbucket
7 11 (2.08%) Eclipse
7 11 (2.08%) MSI
8 9 (1.70%) JUnit
9 8 (1.51%) Maven
9 8 (1.51%) Sonatype Nexus
10 7 (1.32%) Android Studio
10 7 (1.32%) Browser DevTools
10 7 (1.32%) Selenium
10 7 (1.32%) Xcode
11 5 (0.94%) Toad
12 4 (0.75%) Artifactory
12 4 (0.75%) CA Gen
12 4 (0.75%) IntelliJ
12 4 (0.75%) SonarQube
General
1 142 (26.79%) Finance
2 124 (23.40%) Social Skills
3 72 (13.58%) Banking
4 60 (11.32%) Analytical Skills
5 54 (10.19%) Public Sector
6 24 (4.53%) Investment Banking
7 21 (3.96%) Front Office
8 17 (3.21%) Influencing Skills
9 15 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
10 8 (1.51%) Financial Institution
10 8 (1.51%) Telecoms
11 6 (1.13%) Advertising
11 6 (1.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 4 (0.75%) Military
12 4 (0.75%) 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
1 107 (20.19%) Developer
2 78 (14.72%) Senior
3 44 (8.30%) Java Developer
4 43 (8.11%) Analyst
5 39 (7.36%) Data Engineer
6 36 (6.79%) Unix Engineer
7 32 (6.04%) Support Engineer
8 26 (4.91%) Linux Engineer
9 24 (4.53%) DBA
9 24 (4.53%) Senior Developer
9 24 (4.53%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 23 (4.34%) Technical Support
11 21 (3.96%) Administrator
11 21 (3.96%) Oracle DBA
12 20 (3.77%) Site Engineer
13 19 (3.58%) DevOps Engineer
13 19 (3.58%) Software Engineer
14 17 (3.21%) Architect
14 17 (3.21%) Unix Linux Engineer
15 16 (3.02%) Senior Unix Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (11.13%) Kafka
2 31 (5.85%) REST
3 27 (5.09%) XML
4 25 (4.72%) Middleware
5 18 (3.40%) Spring
6 17 (3.21%) React
7 16 (3.02%) SOAP
8 15 (2.83%) JSON
8 15 (2.83%) RESTful
9 14 (2.64%) Oracle GoldenGate
10 13 (2.45%) Elastic Stack
10 13 (2.45%) JAX-RS
10 13 (2.45%) Spring Boot
11 12 (2.26%) ActiveMQ
11 12 (2.26%) AngularJS
12 11 (2.08%) CSS
13 9 (1.70%) FIX Protocol
13 9 (1.70%) HTML
14 8 (1.51%) HTML5
14 8 (1.51%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 29 (5.47%) Onboarding
2 28 (5.28%) Linux Command Line
3 25 (4.72%) Management Information System
4 22 (4.15%) Cloud Native
5 19 (3.58%) Data Centre
6 18 (3.40%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 16 (3.02%) Fixed Income
7 16 (3.02%) Legacy Systems
8 14 (2.64%) Derivative
9 13 (2.45%) Mainframe
10 12 (2.26%) Equities
11 11 (2.08%) Greenfield Project
12 10 (1.89%) BYOD
12 10 (1.89%) Public Cloud
12 10 (1.89%) VSAM
13 9 (1.70%) Virtual Team
14 8 (1.51%) Clustering
14 8 (1.51%) Replication
15 7 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
15 7 (1.32%) Market Risk
Operating Systems
1 353 (66.60%) Linux
2 149 (28.11%) Windows
3 34 (6.42%) Windows Server
4 31 (5.85%) Solaris
5 28 (5.28%) AIX
6 24 (4.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 13 (2.45%) Mac OS X
8 7 (1.32%) Android
9 5 (0.94%) Oracle Linux
10 4 (0.75%) 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%) CentOS
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 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 129 (24.34%) Agile
2 104 (19.62%) Problem-Solving
3 89 (16.79%) CI/CD
4 85 (16.04%) DevOps
5 68 (12.83%) Migration
6 54 (10.19%) Observability
7 53 (10.00%) ITIL
8 48 (9.06%) Microservices
9 47 (8.87%) Computer Science
9 47 (8.87%) Containerisation
9 47 (8.87%) Performance Tuning
10 45 (8.49%) Root Cause Analysis
10 45 (8.49%) Software Engineering
11 41 (7.74%) Analytics
12 40 (7.55%) Disaster Recovery
12 40 (7.55%) High Availability
12 40 (7.55%) OO
13 39 (7.36%) Data Modelling
13 39 (7.36%) Infrastructure as Code
14 38 (7.17%) Site Reliability Engineering
Programming Languages
1 215 (40.57%) SQL
2 183 (34.53%) Python
3 128 (24.15%) Java
4 106 (20.00%) Shell Script
5 64 (12.08%) Bash
6 57 (10.75%) Perl
7 45 (8.49%) PL/SQL
7 45 (8.49%) PowerShell
8 31 (5.85%) JavaScript
9 30 (5.66%) C++
10 28 (5.28%) C#
11 24 (4.53%) Korn
12 10 (1.89%) COBOL
12 10 (1.89%) PHP
13 7 (1.32%) Go
13 7 (1.32%) Scala
14 3 (0.57%) C
14 3 (0.57%) HiveQL
14 3 (0.57%) Jython
15 2 (0.38%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 148 (27.92%) Security Cleared
2 120 (22.64%) SC Cleared
3 66 (12.45%) Degree
4 29 (5.47%) Computer Science Degree
5 18 (3.40%) BPSS Clearance
6 9 (1.70%) CISSP
7 7 (1.32%) CompTIA Security+
7 7 (1.32%) DV Cleared
8 6 (1.13%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (0.94%) MCSA
9 5 (0.94%) 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%) AWS Certification
12 1 (0.19%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 18 (3.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 17 (3.21%) NIST
2 17 (3.21%) SLA
3 16 (3.02%) QA
4 13 (2.45%) Data Quality
5 4 (0.75%) NIST 800
5 4 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 3 (0.57%) FATCA
7 2 (0.38%) Disclosure Scotland
7 2 (0.38%) GDPR
7 2 (0.38%) GMP
7 2 (0.38%) GRC
7 2 (0.38%) ISO 15022
7 2 (0.38%) ISO 20022
7 2 (0.38%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.38%) SEPA
8 1 (0.19%) MIL-STD-1553
System Software
1 69 (13.02%) Docker
2 27 (5.09%) Active Directory
3 16 (3.02%) Oracle RAC
4 12 (2.26%) VMware Infrastructure
5 11 (2.08%) NFS
6 7 (1.32%) KVM
6 7 (1.32%) Virtual Machines
7 6 (1.13%) GPFS
7 6 (1.13%) Hyper-V
8 4 (0.75%) HDFS
8 4 (0.75%) Postfix
8 4 (0.75%) 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 (13.21%) Kubernetes
2 62 (11.70%) Ansible
3 42 (7.92%) Terraform
4 38 (7.17%) Grafana
5 24 (4.53%) Prometheus
6 20 (3.77%) Oracle RMAN
6 20 (3.77%) Puppet
7 16 (3.02%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 10 (1.89%) Kibana
9 7 (1.32%) NetBackup
9 7 (1.32%) Progress Chef
10 6 (1.13%) Control-M
10 6 (1.13%) IBM BigFix
10 6 (1.13%) Red Hat Satellite
10 6 (1.13%) vCenter Server
11 5 (0.94%) CASB
11 5 (0.94%) Data Guard
11 5 (0.94%) Dell DRAC
11 5 (0.94%) HAProxy
11 5 (0.94%) Salt
Vendors
1 187 (35.28%) Oracle
2 50 (9.43%) Splunk
3 40 (7.55%) Microsoft
4 36 (6.79%) IBM
5 25 (4.72%) ServiceNow
6 24 (4.53%) CyberArk
7 20 (3.77%) VMware
8 19 (3.58%) BeyondTrust
8 19 (3.58%) Red Hat
9 18 (3.40%) Informatica
10 17 (3.21%) Cisco
11 15 (2.83%) Sybase
12 13 (2.45%) Talend
13 9 (1.70%) Ab Initio
13 9 (1.70%) Fujitsu
13 9 (1.70%) Veritas
14 8 (1.51%) AppDynamics
14 8 (1.51%) Aruba
14 8 (1.51%) Dell
14 8 (1.51%) Remedy