Unix Contract Job Trends

Unix
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Unix skills. It covers vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 18 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 167 115 99
Rank change year-on-year -52 -16 -4
Contract jobs citing Unix 578 781 1,190
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 1.75% 2.03% 2.42%
As % of the Operating Systems category 12.97% 14.31% 15.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 377 488 808
10th Percentile £294 £350 £374
25th Percentile £404 £420 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £524 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.53% -4.77% -
75th Percentile £612 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £472 £468 £516
% change year-on-year +0.86% -9.44% -1.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 5 18
10th Percentile £30.34 - £47.66
25th Percentile £36.48 - £55.90
Median hourly rate £54.50 £23.80 £65.69
Median % change year-on-year +128.99% -63.77% -13.57%
75th Percentile £55.00 £28.75 £75.75
90th Percentile £64.00 - £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £54.75 £27.50 £66.56
% change year-on-year +99.09% -58.69% -10.65%

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 4,457 5,457 7,637
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 13.53% 14.17% 15.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,848 3,486 5,192
10th Percentile £188 £200 £185
25th Percentile £300 £326 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £576 £625
90th Percentile £673 £675 £709
UK excluding London median daily rate £435 £450 £450
% change year-on-year -3.33% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 278 274 366
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.53 £15.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.07 £18.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £49.75 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -49.45% +4.74% +98.66%
75th Percentile £58.75 £68.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.00 £70.00 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £52.75 £45.88
% change year-on-year -52.32% +14.97% +108.55%

Unix
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Unix as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Unix 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 18 September 2025.

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 18 September 2025.

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 18 September 2025. 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 -50 453 £500 -5.21% 191
UK excluding London -12 320 £472 +0.86% 164
London -49 219 £543 -4.23% 67
Work from Home -64 142 £475 -4.28% 73
Scotland +17 87 £475 +24.18% 15
South East +8 87 £420 -1.18% 48
North of England +3 75 £492 -7.17% 37
Midlands -46 43 £500 -9.09% 29
Yorkshire +3 37 £650 +12.07% 10
West Midlands -44 37 £519 -5.64% 16
North West -13 36 £453 -12.46% 25
South West +13 13 £750 +57.89% 20
East of England -8 9 £500 +11.11% 14
Northern Ireland -2 7 £410 -10.14% 1
East Midlands -1 6 £393 +1.29% 11
North East -4 3 - - 2
Wales +2 2 £283 +75.29% 4

Unix
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 34 (5.88%) Apache
2 26 (4.50%) WebLogic
3 21 (3.63%) JBoss
4 16 (2.77%) Confluence
5 15 (2.60%) WebSphere
6 14 (2.42%) Tomcat
7 13 (2.25%) Oracle Workflow
8 8 (1.38%) IIS
8 8 (1.38%) iPlanet
8 8 (1.38%) NetWeaver
8 8 (1.38%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 8 (1.38%) WebSphere Application Server
9 7 (1.21%) SharePoint
10 6 (1.04%) Apache Spark
11 4 (0.69%) Apache Airflow
11 4 (0.69%) CICS
11 4 (0.69%) SAS
12 3 (0.52%) Microsoft Exchange
13 2 (0.35%) nginx
13 2 (0.35%) Oracle HTTP Server
Applications
1 10 (1.73%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.69%) Microsoft Project
2 4 (0.69%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.17%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 13 (2.25%) Oracle EBS
1 13 (2.25%) Oracle EBS R12
2 8 (1.38%) Oracle Assets
2 8 (1.38%) Oracle Payables
2 8 (1.38%) SAP IBP
3 5 (0.87%) Kondor
3 5 (0.87%) Oracle General Ledger
4 4 (0.69%) Oracle BPM
4 4 (0.69%) Oracle ERP
5 3 (0.52%) ION MarketView
5 3 (0.52%) Oracle 11i
6 1 (0.17%) Finacle
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle E-Business Tax
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.17%) Remedy AR System
6 1 (0.17%) Remedy ITSM
6 1 (0.17%) SAP GRC
6 1 (0.17%) SAP S/4HANA
6 1 (0.17%) StreamServe
Cloud Services
1 145 (25.09%) AWS
2 96 (16.61%) Azure
3 44 (7.61%) GCP
4 27 (4.67%) GitHub
5 26 (4.50%) OpenShift
6 17 (2.94%) Azure Monitor
6 17 (2.94%) SaaS
7 16 (2.77%) Amazon EC2
7 16 (2.77%) Azure DevOps
8 14 (2.42%) AWS CloudFormation
8 14 (2.42%) IaaS
9 13 (2.25%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 12 (2.08%) Amazon S3
11 11 (1.90%) Sauce Labs
12 10 (1.73%) Cloud Computing
12 10 (1.73%) OCI
12 10 (1.73%) Serverless
13 9 (1.56%) AWS Lambda
14 7 (1.21%) Amazon ECS
15 6 (1.04%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 41 (7.09%) Firewall
2 38 (6.57%) TCP/IP
3 33 (5.71%) DNS
4 32 (5.54%) HTTP
5 25 (4.33%) SAN
6 22 (3.81%) SSL
7 19 (3.29%) VPN
8 15 (2.60%) Wireshark
9 14 (2.42%) LAN
10 13 (2.25%) Internet
10 13 (2.25%) Wireless
11 12 (2.08%) MPLS
12 11 (1.90%) Kerberos
12 11 (1.90%) SSH
12 11 (1.90%) WAN
13 10 (1.73%) ATM
13 10 (1.73%) Ethernet
13 10 (1.73%) GPRS
13 10 (1.73%) SDH
13 10 (1.73%) UMTS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 53 (9.17%) Relational Database
2 40 (6.92%) MongoDB
3 37 (6.40%) Oracle Database
4 30 (5.19%) MySQL
5 23 (3.98%) SQL Server
6 22 (3.81%) DB2
7 18 (3.11%) NoSQL
8 16 (2.77%) Oracle Reports
8 16 (2.77%) RDBMS
9 13 (2.25%) PostgreSQL
10 12 (2.08%) BigQuery
10 12 (2.08%) Elasticsearch
11 11 (1.90%) Data Warehouse
12 10 (1.73%) Big Data
12 10 (1.73%) KDB
13 9 (1.56%) Amazon RDS
13 9 (1.56%) Oracle BI Publisher
13 9 (1.56%) SAP HANA
14 8 (1.38%) SAP BW
15 7 (1.21%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 89 (15.40%) Git
2 88 (15.22%) Jenkins
3 42 (7.27%) JIRA
4 35 (6.06%) JUnit
5 31 (5.36%) Maven
6 30 (5.19%) GitLab
7 29 (5.02%) Sonatype Nexus
8 23 (3.98%) Mockito
9 20 (3.46%) Gradle
10 18 (3.11%) Eclipse
11 17 (2.94%) Xcode
12 12 (2.08%) Bitbucket Server
12 12 (2.08%) Browser DevTools
12 12 (2.08%) SonarQube
13 11 (1.90%) Android Studio
13 11 (1.90%) Atlassian Bamboo
13 11 (1.90%) Bitbucket
13 11 (1.90%) IntelliJ
14 10 (1.73%) Selenium
14 10 (1.73%) SoapUI
General
1 199 (34.43%) Social Skills
2 153 (26.47%) Finance
3 90 (15.57%) Analytical Skills
4 64 (11.07%) Banking
5 37 (6.40%) Public Sector
6 32 (5.54%) Financial Institution
7 20 (3.46%) Front Office
8 16 (2.77%) Telecoms
9 12 (2.08%) Investment Banking
10 10 (1.73%) General Ledger
11 6 (1.04%) Back Office
11 6 (1.04%) Documentation Skills
11 6 (1.04%) Military
12 5 (0.87%) Influencing Skills
12 5 (0.87%) Retail Banking
13 4 (0.69%) Marketing
14 3 (0.52%) Law
14 3 (0.52%) Legal
14 3 (0.52%) Manufacturing
14 3 (0.52%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 128 (22.15%) Developer
2 87 (15.05%) Senior
3 64 (11.07%) Java Developer
4 37 (6.40%) Analyst
5 31 (5.36%) DevOps Engineer
6 29 (5.02%) Technical Support
7 26 (4.50%) Architect
7 26 (4.50%) Linux Engineer
8 25 (4.33%) Platform Engineer
8 25 (4.33%) Senior Developer
9 24 (4.15%) Support Engineer
9 24 (4.15%) Technical Engineer
10 23 (3.98%) Consultant
11 21 (3.63%) Administrator
12 19 (3.29%) Senior Java Developer
12 19 (3.29%) Software Engineer
13 18 (3.11%) Applications Support
13 18 (3.11%) Technical Support Engineer
14 17 (2.94%) Data Engineer
15 16 (2.77%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 72 (12.46%) Kafka
2 42 (7.27%) SOAP
3 41 (7.09%) Spring
4 39 (6.75%) REST
5 34 (5.88%) Middleware
6 30 (5.19%) AngularJS
7 28 (4.84%) React
7 28 (4.84%) Spring Boot
8 23 (3.98%) CSS
8 23 (3.98%) HTML
8 23 (3.98%) XML
9 21 (3.63%) LDAP
10 19 (3.29%) J2EE
10 19 (3.29%) JSON
11 18 (3.11%) Hibernate
12 17 (2.94%) ActiveMQ
13 15 (2.60%) JAX-RS
13 15 (2.60%) Web Services
14 13 (2.25%) Spring Cloud
15 12 (2.08%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 38 (6.57%) Management Information System
2 27 (4.67%) Distributed Systems
3 26 (4.50%) Data Centre
4 24 (4.15%) Onboarding
5 22 (3.81%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 18 (3.11%) Data Protection Act
7 15 (2.60%) Cloud Native
7 15 (2.60%) FPGA
7 15 (2.60%) Security Posture
8 14 (2.42%) Mobile App
9 13 (2.25%) Equities
9 13 (2.25%) Linux Command Line
9 13 (2.25%) Replication
9 13 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
9 13 (2.25%) Virtual Team
10 12 (2.08%) Verilog
11 11 (1.90%) Fixed Income
12 10 (1.73%) Algorithms
12 10 (1.73%) Enterprise Software
12 10 (1.73%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 422 (73.01%) Linux
2 166 (28.72%) Windows
3 35 (6.06%) Windows Server
4 29 (5.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 20 (3.46%) Mac OS X
6 18 (3.11%) CentOS
7 17 (2.94%) Solaris
8 13 (2.25%) Android
9 11 (1.90%) AIX
9 11 (1.90%) Mac OS
10 9 (1.56%) Ubuntu
11 3 (0.52%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 3 (0.52%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.35%) Apple iOS
12 2 (0.35%) Data ONTAP
12 2 (0.35%) Oracle Linux
12 2 (0.35%) VMS
13 1 (0.17%) Debian
13 1 (0.17%) HPUX
13 1 (0.17%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 155 (26.82%) Agile
2 130 (22.49%) Problem-Solving
3 113 (19.55%) CI/CD
4 99 (17.13%) DevOps
5 67 (11.59%) Microservices
6 60 (10.38%) OO
7 55 (9.52%) Software Engineering
8 52 (9.00%) Test Automation
9 48 (8.30%) Incident Response
10 44 (7.61%) Infrastructure as Code
11 43 (7.44%) Containerisation
12 41 (7.09%) Migration
13 40 (6.92%) Continuous Improvement
14 39 (6.75%) ITIL
15 38 (6.57%) Full-Stack Development
15 38 (6.57%) Mentoring
16 37 (6.40%) Computer Science
16 37 (6.40%) Observability
17 36 (6.23%) High Availability
17 36 (6.23%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 239 (41.35%) Python
2 212 (36.68%) SQL
3 170 (29.41%) Java
4 106 (18.34%) Shell Script
5 93 (16.09%) Perl
6 59 (10.21%) Bash
7 51 (8.82%) JavaScript
8 40 (6.92%) C++
9 36 (6.23%) PowerShell
10 30 (5.19%) PL/SQL
11 19 (3.29%) C#
12 18 (3.11%) C
13 17 (2.94%) Groovy
14 15 (2.60%) SystemVerilog
14 15 (2.60%) Tcl
15 12 (2.08%) TypeScript
16 10 (1.73%) Go
17 9 (1.56%) Erlang
17 9 (1.56%) Prolog
17 9 (1.56%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 72 (12.46%) Security Cleared
2 62 (10.73%) Degree
3 54 (9.34%) SC Cleared
4 24 (4.15%) Computer Science Degree
5 18 (3.11%) Cisco Certification
6 16 (2.77%) CCNP
7 15 (2.60%) AWS Certification
8 13 (2.25%) BPSS Clearance
9 12 (2.08%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 11 (1.90%) ISEB
10 11 (1.90%) ISTQB
11 10 (1.73%) CISSP
12 9 (1.56%) DV Cleared
13 7 (1.21%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 7 (1.21%) Microsoft Certification
14 5 (0.87%) CCIE
14 5 (0.87%) CompTIA Security+
14 5 (0.87%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 5 (0.87%) MCSA
14 5 (0.87%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (3.29%) QA
2 7 (1.21%) Disclosure Scotland
3 6 (1.04%) SLA
4 5 (0.87%) Accessibility
4 5 (0.87%) Data Quality
4 5 (0.87%) NCSC
5 4 (0.69%) Cyber Essentials
5 4 (0.69%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
5 4 (0.69%) HIPAA
5 4 (0.69%) SOC 2
6 3 (0.52%) Basel III
6 3 (0.52%) MiFID
6 3 (0.52%) SEPA
7 2 (0.35%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.17%) Def Stans
8 1 (0.17%) GMP
8 1 (0.17%) IEC 61508
8 1 (0.17%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.17%) MISRA
8 1 (0.17%) MISRA C
System Software
1 70 (12.11%) Docker
2 27 (4.67%) Active Directory
3 20 (3.46%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (1.38%) Tivoli Directory Server
5 7 (1.21%) Oracle RAC
6 6 (1.04%) KVM
7 5 (0.87%) NFS
8 4 (0.69%) Veritas Cluster Server
8 4 (0.69%) VMware NSX
9 3 (0.52%) Hyper-V
9 3 (0.52%) QEMU
9 3 (0.52%) Virtual Servers
9 3 (0.52%) vSphere
10 2 (0.35%) GPFS
10 2 (0.35%) GridGain
10 2 (0.35%) HDFS
11 1 (0.17%) RACF
11 1 (0.17%) Samba
11 1 (0.17%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
11 1 (0.17%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 71 (12.28%) Kubernetes
2 56 (9.69%) Terraform
3 54 (9.34%) Ansible
4 31 (5.36%) Puppet
5 24 (4.15%) Grafana
6 21 (3.63%) Prometheus
7 19 (3.29%) Progress Chef
8 9 (1.56%) ITRS Geneos
8 9 (1.56%) Tivoli
9 8 (1.38%) CA Single Sign-On
9 8 (1.38%) CA Wily
9 8 (1.38%) Control-M
9 8 (1.38%) Oracle RMAN
9 8 (1.38%) Single Sign-On
10 7 (1.21%) Nessus
10 7 (1.21%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 6 (1.04%) Packer
12 5 (0.87%) Jamf Pro
12 5 (0.87%) Nagios
12 5 (0.87%) Red Hat Satellite
Vendors
1 163 (28.20%) Oracle
2 86 (14.88%) Splunk
3 69 (11.94%) Microsoft
4 38 (6.57%) IBM
5 37 (6.40%) VMware
6 32 (5.54%) Cisco
7 30 (5.19%) Dynatrace
8 26 (4.50%) AppDynamics
9 25 (4.33%) Red Hat
10 21 (3.63%) ServiceNow
11 16 (2.77%) F5
12 15 (2.60%) CyberArk
12 15 (2.60%) Google
12 15 (2.60%) SAP
12 15 (2.60%) Sybase
13 12 (2.08%) Xilinx
14 11 (1.90%) Juniper
15 9 (1.56%) MuleSoft
16 8 (1.38%) Broadcom
16 8 (1.38%) TIBCO